He announced, “It’s time. We begin.”
His pitiful army raised no cheers.
…
Breathless, Josiah Gales said, “It won’t take a sell to convince them that Shinsan might be a problem.”
Inger nodded numbly. That was pure understatement. The spell suppressing emotion in the Thing hall was fading. Chaos was breeding, though the delegates no longer wanted to flee.
Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir stepped past, vaulted the rail, rushed the transfer portal, flung herself at the last Imperial lifeguard. She was half his size but her momentum knocked him sideways.
Dahl Haas shrieked at her to show some goddamned sense! He got there two steps behind her, hammered the man’s helmet with the butt of his belt knife, cracked the nonmetallic material. The blow stunned the man. Several Thing members piled on. Class and ethnicity were not factors.
“Stop!” Inger’s bellow pierced the excitement. “Let him get up.” The easterner grasped what was expected. He rose slowly, looked around carefully. He had been disarmed. Half his armor had been torn away. He would enjoy a fine crop of bruises if he survived.
Inger said, “That’s enough, people. Josiah, take charge of him. We’ll hear an exchange proposal soon.”
Its nature and details should be revelatory.
The Empress was interested only in Bragi and Michael. She might not know who Babeltausque or the Depar girl were.
Delegates eased away from the captive, awed and wary alike. The easterner submitted. He knew he needed only be patient.
Inger announced, “Stay away from the gateway. It might take you somewhere you really don’t want to go.”
The portal tweeted and crackled. It now canted slightly. The angle was visually disconcerting.
“Josiah, once you have him safe, see if you can’t come up with a way to communicate if they don’t contact us.”
Gales inclined his head. He did little talking anymore. Dr. Wachtel said he was in continuous pain and did not want to take it out on anyone.
Maybe she could exchange the lifeguard for treatment for Josiah. They were good at fixing people in the Dread Empire. Bragi should not have survived. And look what that woman had done for herself… Flash of jealousy. To look that good at her unnatural age!
The gate still hummed. Could she shove Kristen and Haas through, then work a deal to keep them over there?
Probably should not try, sweet as that sounded. Bragi would not approve. And he would be back.
“Josiah, don’t take him far. I need you handy.” On reflection, if she had to trade she would ask for Babeltausque back. Though Bragi might argue, the sorcerer was invaluable.
“Gentlemen, the interruption is over. Take your seats.” She had to milk this while it was fresh.
Chapter Twenty-Nine:
Winter, 1018-1019 AFE:
Fire and Maneuver
O ther than an exotic half-breed girl-child, whose beauty nearly unmanned him, no one paid attention to Babeltausque or Carrie. Most were too busy, even when all they did was look over one another’s shoulders. The couple tried their best to stay small and unnoticed, day after day.
The exotic took it on herself to see that they touched nothing in what she called the Wind Tower, a place Babeltausque felt should exist only in fairy tales.
He and Carrie were free to come and go so long as they touched nothing and did not get underfoot. Slyly, the exotic girl explained that they could leave whenever they wanted-if they could find a way out and were ready to cross the Dragon’s Teeth in winter.
The girl was curious about Carrie, jumpy around him, and reluctant to chat. She seldom left her young man long enough for a conversation, anyway.
She impacted Babeltausque like a kick to the heart of his fantasies but he managed his weakness.
Carrie murmured, “She is incredible, isn’t she?” No doubt to remind him that in this place self-control came under the heading Life or Death.
“I saw her once when we were little. I envied her so much.”
“I won’t lie, darling. She is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen. But she is more dangerous than a bushel of cobras.” She intimidated him in more than just the survival mode. The girl had a sinister psychic air that no one else seemed to notice.
The eastern Empress emerged from a transfer portal. Lord Yuan followed. Mist and her Tervola henchmen had vanished shortly after their return from Kavelin, leaving King Bragi in charge. Varthlokkur had gone soon after they did. Ragnarson seemed confused. There was nothing for him to do. He hung around with a dour, dark man from Hammad al Nakir, also supposedly a king, and with that man’s wife. That marriage seemed totally bizarre. She was in the throes of a difficult pregnancy. She was too old to be carrying a child. The three spent hours at a time gathered together not saying a thing.
Varthlokkur’s wife kept things going.
And that man, yonder, was the Disciple? Truly? And that one was the Old Man of the Mountain? And that other one was Kuo Wen-chin, who was once Lord Protector of Shinsan?
Fortune had delivered him into such company?
Carrie murmured, “And this is her mother, which explains so much.”
Yes, indeed. Even he was smitten, though his need insisted that they be so much younger.
The Empress announced, “That’s done. Now we wait.”
Babeltausque had little real idea what was happening. Nobody explained. What he knew he figured out from what he overheard in the few conversations in languages he could understand. He was not asked to contribute. He had nothing to do. He and Carrie were putting in hours till Mist had time to swap them for a lifeguard who had gotten left behind.
Carrie was more daring than he. She tackled the crowd, engaged in conversations where she could. Her luck was limited. Few spoke her language. Those who did were inclined to shy away because she was intimate with a sorcerer.
The Ekaterina girl had implied that she and her brother had spied on their private moments. Scalza thought it a great dirty joke. Ekaterina was troubled.
These people had bigger worries. At some level each was working to end the tyranny of the Star Rider.
Just the thought sparked terror. It showed more hubris than would mocking the gods themselves. The gods did not meddle in mundane affairs anymore.
Babeltausque surveyed the crowd while hugging Carrie close, her proximity offering reassurance. If he understood correctly, these misfits had generated all the information Varthlokkur and the Empress needed.
Where had the wizard gone? He had spent time close up with the Old Man before leaving. Babeltausque thought he was on a spoiling mission unconnected with Mist’s operation.
…
Radeachar carried Varthlokkur over and around what had to be the Place of the Iron Statues. There was little to be seen: rocky hill country spotted by scraggly oaks, stunted pines, breaks of scrub brush, and dried brown grass. Varthlokkur saw no running water. He saw nothing manmade. He looked in from a variety of angles in changing light and never saw anything remarkable.
And yet he sensed the presence of something there.
No angle showed him the entrance he had been told to seek. He saw nothing even vaguely familiar. If he had visited before, that had been erased from his memory.
The echo of a memory that did haunt him was of something resembling a crowded old Itaskian graveyard, behind grey stone walls wearing lichens and creepers. There should be massive wrought-iron gates. Inside, there should be forests of monuments. Amongst those would be iron statues and statues in noble stone.
Varthlokkur could see no ground that looked suitable for such a graveyard.
He did discover redundant protective barriers unlike those associated with other masks for reality, such as the one surrounding the temple Ragnarson had found outside Vorgreberg.
He decided that his memories must have been distorted by an outside influence.