“This barrier,” Carl continued, “represents the application of extreme power; I have examined it myself. It is similar to one described by Iskendarian in his text on intruder protection, some of you may be familiar with it. Certain other unusual emanations have appeared as well, clustered around the north city wall. It seems a new power has appeared in our midst.”
I blinked. A dark mist, so thin it was all but invisible, was creeping along the walls of the room below. When I looked at it, my stomach rang alarm bells. The haze was perfectly transparent, lending just a hint of black to whatever was behind it, but it wasn’t my imagination. It was really there, and it was spreading out to surround everyone in the room.
“When confronted with a new order, what should we do, each of us? Could we resist, hm? Perhaps flee? Or perhaps be passive, patient, yes, waiting to see, and with the potential of absorbing for ourselves whatever benefits may accrue? Or perhaps …” Carl glanced around. “Perhaps we understand the implications, and establish the only appropriate new allegiance.”
Now no one was saying anything. In fact, Carl was the only person who was even moving. They were all covered, every last one of them except Carl and his servant, by that sinister black mist. I tightened my grip on the walking stick.
“You have no discussion, hm? Later, perhaps, we will discuss. For now,” Carl said, in a new forceful note, “you are present to hear the way things are, yes, the ways things are. Then perhaps you will have a choice to make. Of course, hm, perhaps you will not.
“I would ask you to rise, but as you will now surely be aware, yes, you are indeed immobilized, hm? We will thus sadly omit the formalities.” He stood up straight, straight as a training sergeant, and the kink in his gimpy leg was straight and true as an arrowed bullseye. That’s what I’d missed, and what I thought I’d seen when I’d followed him before. The limp was gone.
“These manifestations, yes, everyone, have in common the association with a particular individual. Fellow colleagues, I now give you the new, true master of Roosing Oolvaya.”
Right below my vantage point, a door opened. A form stepped through it into the room. His head was below mine and he wore a dark cloak, but at the mere sight of him my stomach spun over into the heart of the whirlpool and my balance reeled. The dark mist clung to him, too, but more than that, it wheeled about him in gleeful billowing gales. That was his aura, I realized suddenly, and I didn’t know how I knew it but I’d hopefully be able to worry about that later. The aura was feeding off the magicians in the room, probably off me too. That wasn’t all. From the same depth of perception that let me see these sights and understand them, at least in part, came another dreadful fact.
There’s that old saying, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.’“ Well, I’d always known it was wrong, I had a nasty habit of ending up in situations where exactly the opposite applied, but I hadn’t until that moment appreciated just how bad it could get. Not knowing something existed, not knowing it could exist, was not going to protect me one bit. I hadn’t known what I’d have to face, hadn’t even known it was a physical possibility, but now that was so much crying in the wind. That wasn’t just some magician down there. The black figure in the room below was Death.
The figure spoke. “I am Oskin Yahlei,” it said.
10. SHAA AND MONT GO BOATING
“I don’t know about this,” Mont said.
“The amount of preparation goes in direct proportion to the length of the boat desired.”
“The length of the boat.”
“Yes,” Shaa said, “at the waterline. Now, be quiet. This is perfectly straightforward.”
Jurtan Mont looked at the new knife in his hand, and the iron bar in Shaa’s. A muscle in his neck sent lancing pains up toward his ear whenever he moved; they’d been hunched over behind the crate on a quiet stretch of wharf for the last half-hour. Waiting for the Guard. This guy is crazy, Mont thought.
Shaa, for his part, was right at home, having spent a significant portion of his life hunched over under similar circumstances. In this kind of operation he would have preferred to drop unexpectedly from above, but taking into account the limited experience of his new colleague a simpler and less flashy plan had seemed appropriate. Still - suddenly Shaa felt a nudge in his side. Mont, barely visible in the dim splashes of light from a lantern gently swaying from its bracket on the wall of a nearby warehouse, pointed down the wharf. Shaa held up two fingers and waggled them interrogatively. Mont nodded. Shaa produced three largish pebbles, took aim, and tossed. The rocks landed some yards to the side along the wharf, one-two-three, sounding to the suspicious ear just like three hurried, somewhat stealthy footsteps.
Mont grasped his knife gingerly around the guard and reversed it, presenting the hilt. The familiar rattle of cuirasses and running men became audible over the splat of river swells, then increased. Two Guardsmen burst into sight around the corner of the crate. They paused, looking away toward the source of the spectral footsteps. Shaa swung his bar. The second Guardsman heard a muffled “clunk” mixed with the clang of ringing metal, wheeled, saw a glinting streak as Mont’s knife hurtled hilt-first past his nose, blinked, opened his mouth, and went for his sword. Shaa let the bar continue its follow-through, using its angular momentum to help throw himself forward, half-leapt, half-fell over the subsiding form of the first Guardsman, and slammed fist-first into the second. The man exhaled forcefully as Shaa compressed his chest; then he fell roughly to the deck, quivered briefly, and relaxed. Shaa bashed the man’s head on the planks once more for good measure, stood up, dusted off his hands, and retrieved the bar. “Good balance,” he said, hefting the bar. “One must never overlook a promising rubbish-heap. You wouldn’t believe some of the useful things people just toss away.”
“Why are we doing this?” Mont said. “We could easily have avoided these guys.”
“When we arrive at the palace,” Shaa said, fastidiously wiping off the bar, “we’re going to want a disguise. Since nobody knows all of these Guardsmen anyway - you get the idea?”
“Uh, yeah, but why waste the time now? We could have been in the palace already. I’m sure they’ve got plenty of Guard in there.”
Shaa raised an eyebrow. “Indeed. However, when we get there, I imagine we may be rather busy - here, give me a hand. The cuirasses buckle at the shoulder and under the arms.”
“How much of this stuff do we need?” Mont said, fumbling in the gloom.
“Cuirass, sword-belt, and jerkin. The rest isn’t standard; it looks to be what each man was wearing when they signed up. You’ve got the same kind of leggings anyway, so you should do fine.”
They worked in silence, punctuated by grunts from Mont.
“This thing doesn’t fit,” he said finally.
“They never do.” Shaa, however, due to his previous experience, had had the foresight to choose the Guardsman closest to his own size. One of the men groaned and stirred.
“Aren’t we going to do something to them?” Mont said, looking around.
“You’re welcome to roll them into the river if you want,” Shaa said, his voice now some distance away. “I tend to choose the path of forbearance, on the grounds that we live in a world full with enough casual violence as it is. One should remember that these men are not necessarily evil, just Guards, which is a job, not a predilection. Ah, here we are.” His shape rematerialized at Mont’s side. Mont jumped, his new cuirass rattling. “This, I believe, is yours?” A shard of light became Mont’s knife, balancing neatly on its point in the center of Shaa’s palm.