Except omnipotence was not one of his patron’s virtues. Fradi’s good hand flicked, the small amulet arched inconspicuously across the chamber, barely even another irrelevant mote, and entered the steam cloud. The pillar made a horrid grinding sound like a tornado plowing suddenly into a mountain of broken glass, stood up straight, and then fell over stiff as a log. Once on its side on the endless plain, the steam cloud unrolled itself, carpet-like, and began dissolving quickly into the air. Left revealed behind it writhing on the ground was a balding man in a cut-back tunic, short pants, and sandals, wearing wire-rimmed spectacles looped over his protruding ears, and mumbling in a voice that was the same as the Voice of the earlier Presence stripped back to human or even less-than-human proportions.
Fradjikan swung himself belly-down over the side of the glass coffin and was reaching with his feet for the floor when a door behind the coffin’s head flew open. A nimbus of golden light like an abruptly exploding sun expanded through the door toward him, around him, through him. The room reeled. Fradi found himself lying on the floor, limp but for an occasional spasmodic twitch, as something seemed to be freezing his bones from within.
His head had come to rest on one cheek, giving his lolling eye a view beneath the coffin and across the room onto the endless plain. A set of feet came into view from the now out-of-sight doorway and hurried quickly toward the incarnate but equally supine form of Fradi’s master. “He was more clever than I had expected,” the owner of the feet was calling, “and so quick! How can I forgive myself?”
It was a voice Fradi recognized. It was far more than a casual recognition. He had spent hours in the presence of that voice over the past days, planning, honing, sparring. Now the rest of the Scapula came into view as well as he bent over the other man. “Appalling,” Fradi’s late master croaked. “He might have eradicated me if not for your warning. You have nothing to apologize for.” He coughed weakly. “I was the fool to have doubted you. Is he dead?”
The Scapula looked across at Fradi, his gaze impassive. “Even now his eye glazes over. Shall I finish the disposal for you?”
Fradi’s ex-patron snarled without power. “Let him lie there and putrefy, the treacherous dog. We have more important matters at hand, and a visit to conduct.”
CHAPTER 7
our associate Jardin has been attacked,” Zalzyn Shaa said quickly to Jill-tang, hoping to get enough words in to make her hesitate before carrying through her likely knee-jerk reaction of eradication first, conversation later. “Not by me,” he added, with even more haste.
“Attacked?” she said blankly. The door burst open behind Shaa, and in one of the mirrors across the room he could see the charging forms of some of the priests he had just evaded coming through it after his head. “Wait!” Jill ordered, and then, “Outside!” As they reluctantly crept back through the doorway, Jill glanced around the remaining group still present, wetting her lips nervously with her tongue. She was clearly swamped, overcome by too many unexpected and novel situations cascading simultaneously on her head. She was supposed to be in the elect category of players on the world stage, too. Of the others in the room, the Creeping Sword didn’t seem to be in much better shape, but then he was an odd one; you could never tell in exactly what shape he might really be at a particular moment, anyway. Only Gashanatantra, by his deliberately raised eyebrow and folded-arm posture, appeared to appreciate both the content and the absurdity of the situation. Of course, as a master of counterplots and intrigue he did have the most practice in these things of anyone present.
“Yes, unfortunately, but not killed, at least not outright; he was still breathing the last time I saw him,” continued Shaa. He decided that perhaps it might be better not to mention the Jardin finger-amputation at quite this point in the exposition. “I was under duress at the moment myself, but it did seem quite certain that his mantle of power was also stolen at the same time, as part of this attack.”
Jill sat down heavily. Fortunately a divan was a convenient distance behind her knees; additional provocation might not sit well right at the moment. Suddenly she wheeled on the Creeping Sword. “You! You almost eliminated him once - you decided you had to finish the job?”
The Sword was shaking his head. “No, not me, not this one. I haven’t seen Jardin since the two of you left my room. I certainly didn’t steal anybody’s mantle of power. I mean, look at me.”
She was looking at him. Whatever she saw - or perhaps whatever she remembered - made her expression falter in its rage and certainty, and even acquire - could it be? - more than a tinge of fear.
Gashanatantra was ignoring the entire exchange as he leaned against the mirror frame that led to the secret passage; his eye was fixed only on Shaa. “Your brother?” he stated.
“You flatter me,” Shaa said, “to know me that well by reputation. Unfortunately you have the right of it. My brother was indeed behind this act.” He couldn’t help feeling his back crawl and his neck tense. This was perhaps the moment of most extreme hazard.
Jill-tang’s attention had suddenly returned to him; she was rising back off her couch, her hands were coming up. Shaa saw the Creeping Sword mirroring across the room his own grimace and clenching of teeth. Well, if I die now, Shaa thought, at least it may upset Arznaak’s master plan for fullest enjoyment. What spell-work might he remember, after the years of enforced retirement, that might stand a chance of deflecting the forthcoming harsh decree?
“I would not do that,” said Gashanatantra, his concentrated stare now on Jill. “I would certainly not do that at this particular time. Whatever has passed between us does not bear on this point. Events are spinning too far out of control to indulge a momentary pique, which you in any case would soon surely regret.”
“But by his own admission this bug’s brother -”
“He is not a bug,” Gash said patiently, as though reasoning with a petulant child. “And he has far more reason to see his own brother humbled than you do. In case it has missed your notice, his brother is Arznaak the Scapula. Now, Shaa -”
“Not so fast,” said Jill. “No one in this room will move until you tell me why you are all here, and just what is really going on.”
“If I may be so bold,” inserted Shaa, “there are likely issues of some urgency at hand. As I indicated, my brother has assumed Jardin’s mantle of office and Transcended, ordering the damaged Jardin to be dumped in a street. It occurred to me that you of anyone would want to recover him while there is hope of restoration.”
During Shaa’s statement the color had drained definitively and completely from Jill-tang’s face. “Don’t move,” she repeated. She was almost running by the time she reached the door, flinging it open hard enough to knock over an adjacent knee-high glazed pot housing a decorative flowering bush. Hollering for her priests, she slammed the door shut after her.
Shaa discovered that Gashanatantra was again staring at him, rather than after the departing Jill. “Transcended?” Gash questioned. “Are you sure?”
“That was what he wanted me to believe,” said Shaa. “It was also consistent with the progression of the situation as a whole. He’s not one of your protégés, is he?”
“No,” said Gashanatantra. “He’s a bit too dangerous for that, like deciding to train an asp as a house pet. It can be done, but why bother? Is this then his culmination? Have we seen all of his plan, do you think?”