The oldest crone of the lot spoke, and though she spoke softly her words sounded forth loudly enough that none need not hear. "Stand ye forth, Pretender, and surrender yourself to our custody that you may be tested."
The crowd made an ugly noise of disapproval. But Will put up his hands and silenced them.
"Be calm, my people!" he cried. It was a spontaneous decision not to employ the royal we, but it felt right that their new monarch should impress them with his natural and unaffected humility. "It is just and proper that the Council of Magi should demand proof of my parentage. Nor is Pretender an ignoble title, for it does not mean that my claim is false, but only that it has yet to be tested. Which tests I not only submit myself to but demand — for the kingship of Babel is not a petty thing, to be given up lightly, but a solemn responsibility that falls only upon the blood line of Marduk. So I am well pleased with these, my loyal crones and wizards. Faithfully have they guarded my throne, and for this shall they be richly rewarded when I have ascended to it. As shall you all, my dear and loving subjects. As shall you all!" All cheered.
"Now I leave you to be taken to the Palace of Leaves and there put to such tests and questions as shall prove my legitimacy. Such things are prescribed by custom, and are not to be hurried. They may well take weeks."
The crowd groaned.
"But I am not impatient. Nor should you be, knowing well the happy and inevitable outcome of these tests. Meanwhile, you can follow my progress through the media, so that in this manner we are not separated, you and I, but united in our common purpose and determination. We are together now and will remain so forever."
Then, as the crowds cheered and cheered, Will gestured and an aisle opened up stretching from his makeshift Chippendale throne to the distant mages who stood motionless and grim, their faces burning as bright as magnesium flares.
He stepped down from the flatbed (a kneeling ogre served as a step, and this he acknowledged with the faintest of sideway nods) and, still barefoot, began to walk toward the Council of Magi. Those to either side of the aisle knelt and bowed their heads.
Somebody screamed.
There was an abrupt change of tone and cadence of the sounds to one side of Will, as jarring as might be were the sea itself to abruptly change its voice. A red warmth sprouted and in its wake a wash of dread as well. Will turned.
He saw.
How and where had the Burning Man acquired a horse? How had he regained his lance? How could he have gotten so close without being detected? Such were the irrelevant and distracting questions that filled Will's thoughts, leaving him with neither a sensible understanding of his situation nor any proper notion of what he should do.
Briefly, the Burning Man filled the doorway of a hotel, the exploded shards of the doors themselves lying at his feet.
Then, eyes bulging and nostrils wide with terror, his charger ran straight toward Will.
The crowd screamed and scattered before it.
Will stood frozen.
He was all alone at the center of the street, empty tarmac appearing before him as if by magic. The Burning Man had his head lowered and his spear set. He spurred his mount forward.
"Bastard!" he cried. "You die at last!"
The lancer swelled in Will's vision. Deep inside him, Will heard the dragon screaming, demanding that he let loose its reins and surrender control to it. Which seemed a reasonable thing to do. He just couldn't bring himself to take action. He was like a deer caught in the headlights or a moth entranced by the flame, save only that for him the paralyzing light was the shocked awareness that his life was about to end.
Out of nowhere, hands seized Will and flung him out of the horse's path.
As Will stumbled and fell, he saw Nat standing in the precise space that Will had just vacated. He saw the spear run through Nat's body. He saw Nat's face screw up with pain. He saw blood spurt.
He saw Nat die.
But then the crowd had surged back upon Will and triumphantly lifted him up, so that all might see that he lived. Capering with joy they delivered him to the waiting mages, who bowed and with utmost deference slid him into a waiting sedan chair. Uniformed officers of the political police formed an honor guard about him. Ranks of high-elven dignitaries, Lords of the Governance, all fell into place behind them. Then four of the oldest and most revered crones hoisted the chair onto their shoulders and all processed into the lobby of Ararat where elevators waited to lift them up to the Palace of Leaves.
Behind him, sirens shrieked and wailed like so many banshees. Camera flashes strobed. Police fought to keep the reporters at bay and the camera operators struggled to break through their lines. Will did not care. He threw his head back and howled.
Nat Whilk was dead.
"To the music of bodhran, flute, and sackbut, the procession carried Will helplessly away from the body. Rage and shout as he might, nobody listened.
Outside the building a band of duppies was playing reggae and citizens were dancing in the street. The king's heir had been found and the monarchy was restored. The stewardship of the Council of Magi, the Liosalfar and the Dockalfar, and the Lords of the Mayoralty was over. Democracy was no more. The king had returned to set everything right, and everyone who lived in Babel, it seemed, was mad with joy.
For them it was the happiest day in the world.
18
In the Shadow of the Obsidian Throne
A train whistle at night was a word that meant the same thing in all languages. It was compounded of loneliness and otherness and the futile desire to be anywhere but here, anybody but one's own wretched self. What made the heart ache at the sound of it was the knowledge that the locomotive was pulling out without you and always would. You were never going to catch that imaginary train that would carry you to the faraway land containing the solutions to all your problems. You were never going to arrive at the impossible city where all the things for which you secretly yearned were given away free in the streets.
Sitting on a carved serpentine bench in the midnight garden, listening to the whistle fade, Will almost wished that the train would come and carry him away to his death.
He heaved a sigh.
"Sir? Is there anything you want?" the disembodied voice of his majordomo asked.
"No. Of course not. I have everything. What could I possibly want?"
"Sir?"
"Go away, Ariel."
At Will's feet was a pond as black as ink. Above him was the moon.
He looked from one to the other. There were fish in the pond as strange as anything to be found in the crystal cities of the moon. Yet in all the universe he could think of nothing as strange as he himself, a king apparent who wanted only to escape his servants, wealth, and palace, a con man who had scammed himself into the most opulent prison in the history of the world.
"The Master of the Tests approaches."
"Shut up, Ariel."
A shadowy figure came down the garden path, his feet almost silent on the gravel, and sat down on the bench alongside Will. "You understand things better now, I imagine, than when first we met." It was Florian L'Inconnu. He didn't exactly smile, but his expression was nowhere near so unfriendly as Will would have expected it to be.
"I understand that I'm trapped here."
"You shouldn't feel that way. Not when the tests have gone so well." So they had. The blood work had proven Will to be part mortal, which had not surprised him, and the ring that Nat had given him had been declared sufficiently old and plausibly similar enough to the recorded aspects of the kings signet to pass muster, which, given Nat's attention to detail, was only to be expected. But he had also passed tests — the spontaneous cure of a scrofulous imp after Will touched him, the wizards' approval of a humble wooden spoon plucked at random from a trove of hundreds of gaudy trinkets—that he had expected to fail. That very afternoon, the sibyls had thrown seventeen coins minted of virgin silver and they had all come up heads. Which convinced Will as nothing else would have—for he could work that same trick in a dozen different ways—that the tests had been rigged in his favor.