„And?"
„You're not contributing much."
„What do you want me to say?"
„Your best guess about her. Is she really involved? Can she do anything if she is? What would the consequences be, from my viewpoint? Both if she pulled it off and if she lost out."
„Is she involved? Of course. Once you attain a throne, you don't give it up without a fight. She felt constrained while Valther was alive. Now she doesn't. Consider her viewpoint. There's nothing here for her since Palmisano. There once was there. Her need for a feeling of self-worth will make her grasp for what's hers by right."
„She's vulnerable, though. Through her children."
„Aren't we all?" Varthlokkur sounded sour. „They're hostages to fortune."
„Can she make a comeback?"
„I wouldn't know. I don't know what's going on in Shinsan. I don't want to. I want to ignore them, and have them ignore me."
„But they won't."
„Of course not. Which brings us to consequences. My feeling is, it won't really matter if she wins or loses. Shinsan is Shinsan, and always was and will be. When the moment comes, it won't matter who rules there. You and Kavelin have earned special attention. Be it tomorrow, or a hundred years from tomorrow, a blow will fall. I think it'll be a while coming. They have to recover from a devastating couple of decades. They have to survive external threats. They have to preserve their new frontiers. They'll be hopping like the one-legged whore the day the fleet came in."
Ragnarson chuckled and looked at the wizard askance. That was not a Varthlokkur metaphor.
„Excuse me. You mentioned Mist. That reminded me of Visigodred, which made me think of his apprentice, Marco. I heard Marco say something of the sort once."
Visigodred was a mutual acquaintance, an Itaskian wiz ard who had helped during the Great Eastern Wars. He was a long-time friend of Mist. His apprentice, a foul-mouthed dwarf named Marco, had perished at Palmisano.
„Marco. That's funny. Every damned conversation today leads to somebody who died at Palmisano."
„We left a lot of good people there. A lot of good people. Victory may have cost us more than we could afford. It took the good people and left the blackguards. They'll start their power games before long."
They were in the back exercise court now, standing over the body. The soldiers had beaten a hasty retreat. Bragi said, „Maybe they've already started."
„Maybe. Move back. You don't want to be too close."
„I don't want to be in the same province," Ragnarson muttered. Nevertheless, he seated himself on some steps and waited.
Varthlokkur did not do anything flashy. He just stood there, head bowed, eyes closed, concentrating. Neither he nor the King moved for twenty minutes.
Ragnarson felt it before he saw it. He stiffened. His right hand strayed to the sword he always carried. He grimaced. As if mere steel could avail against the Unborn.
He hated the thing. Created by one of the Princes Thaumaturge, it had been insinuated into the womb of his Fiana. It had grown there, and grown there, and its coming forth had killed her.
Varthlokkur had delivered that child of evil, had made of it a terrible tool, and had turned the tool upon its creators.
It drifted over the east wall, looking like some new, bizarre little moon. It glowed softly, palely, the color of the full moon soon after rising. It bobbed gently, like a child's soap bubble drifting on the breeze.
It settled toward Varthlokkur, becoming more denned as it drew nearer. A luminescent globe about two feet in diameter. Inside, something hunched and curled... . Up close, clearly a fetus. Humanoid. But nothing human. Far from human.
Its eyes were open. It met Ragnarson's gaze. He battled a surge of hatred, an impulse to hack away with his sword, to hurl a rock, to do something to destroy that wickedness. That thing had killed his Fiana.
Varthlokkur had used it to terrible effect during the war. It kept the Tervola east of the Mountains of M'Hand even now. It was the one weapon in the western arsenal capable of intimidating them. They would find a way of destroying it before coming west again.
It made Ragnarson secure on his throne. At Varthlokkur's command it would drift through Kavelin's nights routing out every treachery. It could do countless wicked and wonderous things, and was almost invulnerable itself.
Ragnarson compelled himself to remain seated. He forced his eyes away from the bobbing globe. He did not want to see the mockery in that tiny, cruel face.
Varthlokkur beckoned his creation down, down, till it hovered over the dead assassin. He murmured. Bragi recog nized the language of ancient Ilkazar. He did not under stand it. It was the tongue of the wizard's youth. He used it in all his sorceries.
The dead man's skin twitched. His legs jerked. He rose like a marionette on uncertain strings. Once upright, he sagged against whatever force it was the Unborn used to support him.
„Who are you?" Varthlokkur demanded.
The dead man did not reply. A puzzled look did cross his face.
The wizard exchanged glances with Ragnarson. The corpse should have responded more positively.
„Why are you here? Where is your home? Why did you attack the General? Where are your comrades?" Every question elicited an equally uninformative silence. „Wait a minute," the wizard told his creature.
He sat down beside Ragnarson, elbow on knee, chin in the cup of his hand. „I don't understand," he grumbled. „He shouldn't be able to hide from me."
„Maybe he isn't."
„Uhm?"
„Maybe there's nothing there to hide."
„Everyone has a past. That past is stamped on body and soul. When the soul flies, the body remembers. I'll try something else." He stared at the Unborn, his face intense.
The dead man ran in circles. He leaped. He jumped an imaginary skip-rope. He turned tumblesaults. He did push ups and sit-ups. He flapped his arms, crowed like a rooster, and tried to fly.
„What's all that prove?" Ragnarson asked afterward.
„That the Unborn does have control. That this is a man."
„So maybe he's a hollow man. Maybe he never had a soul."
„You could be right. But I hope not."
„Why?"
„He would have to be a created thing, then. Something brought to life full grown and devoid of anything but the command to kill. Which means an accomplished enemy. Probably one we thought already destroyed. The question is, why would he go after the General? Why attack the lion's paw and waste what could have been a telling blow to the head?"
„You lost me. What the hell are you babbling about?" „I think we've been laboring under a mistaken presump tion of death."
„You're not telling me anything." The wizard had a habit of orbiting in on a subject, circling as a moth circles a flame. Ragnarson found it irritating.
„We accounted, directly or indirectly, for all the Pracchia but one. We assumed his body was lost in the heaps at Palmisano." That climactic battle had been hard on every one. Insofar as Ragnarson knew, the other side had lost every captain but Ko Feng.
He scratched his beard, listened to the hungry rumble of his stomach, wished he were somewhere snoring, and made several false starts at trying to unravel the riddle the wizard had posed. „Okay. I give up. Who are we talking about?"
„Norath. Magden Norath, the Escalonian renegade. The Pracchia's chief researcher and monster-maker. We never located a body."
„How do you know? I never met anybody who knew what he looked like."
Norath had been a wizard with a difference. His tools had not consisted of incantation and the demons of night. He had shaped life. He had created men and monsters every bit as dangerous as anything Varthlokkur, Mist, and their ilk, were able to summon from Outside.