Qiro awaited them, Holgaara beside him. The new troops waited behind them, arrayed in neat ranks ten wide and deep. They contrasted poorly with Holgaara. They contrast poorly with Qiro.
Nelesquin glanced at Kaerinus. “I thought you said they brought me troops. These are shallow-skulled, stoop-shouldered wildmen. We’ve not seen their like in these parts for eons, and these are more brutish than ones that haunted the jungles of Ummummorar.”
Qiro smiled. “You will find, Highness, that you are mistaken.” The cartographer joined him at the base of the stairs, then nodded to the Durrani.
The blue-skinned warrior turned and shouted orders in some pidgin tongue. The soldiers split evenly and with precision in their movements. Half of them bore spears, the other half cudgels. The weapons had been crudely manufactured, but had a brutal quality to them that intrigued Nelesquin. The spearmen attacked when ordered to, and the clubbers parried, then attacked in response. Most of the spearmen blocked the blows, but several of those who failed went down hard.
The drill continued. The sharp clack of wood on wood echoed within the storage chamber. More soldiers went down and a few would never rise again. The injured, when they could, crawled away and the survivors paired up again.
Nelesquin clapped his hands once and Holgaara shouted an order that ended the fighting. The warriors sprang into their ranks again, with little concern for their fallen comrades.
“You have done well, Holgaara. Take your troops back and continue training.”
The Durrani bowed, then shouted another order. The injured and dead were hauled away, leaving the three men alone in the bowels of the Bear Tower. Nelesquin descended the last step to the room’s floor, spread his arms wide, and turned back to face Qiro.
“How is it, Master Anturasi, that I ask of you a simple thing, and you fail to deliver it even after you tell me you can?”
“You asked for an army, and I found it for you.”
“I wanted you to build me an army. You said you could breed Durrani and women here. What happened?”
Qiro’s expression hardened. “What happened, sire, is that no one took into account what we did when we created the Durrani. On Anturasixan we had ample food. We did not have enough here to grow another army.”
“Not enough food?” Nelesquin frowned. “Our stores, Kaerinus?”
“Running low, but we have more food coming up from Erumvirine.”
“Good.” He rubbed the center of his forehead. “How, Qiro, did you find these brutes?”
“Be careful calling them brutes, Highness, for they have more claim to this land than you do.” Qiro smiled slowly in the manner of men pleased with their own genius. “The pocket world encompasses all that was Nalenyr, if you will recall. We have stripped it of metal for your dari armor, and I wondered if we might be able to strip it of food. Harvests are cyclical, of course…”
“I am aware of the vagaries of agriculture, Master Anturasi.”
“I’m sure you are, Highness. So I wished to explore reaping more grain. My limits here, of course, pertain to things that are known, so I wanted harvests that were unknown. Records have been kept throughout the Imperial period-rather exact ones, if one knows which minister to bribe. I had to delve past that, so I did, into the time before.”
“The time before?”
“Yes.” Qiro’s smile grew. “You yourself noted that men such as these had not been seen in this area for eons. This is because I have opened a path to history and have brought them forward into my pocket world. They breed prodigiously. Half of them I have slaving to gather food, the other half train as soldiers.”
“How many do you have?”
“Twenty thousand.”
Nelesquin’s jaw dropped. “Twenty thousand? When did you start?”
“Just after I began the river’s narrowing.” Qiro nodded. “Ten thousand more become available each day, fully trained and armed. You will have ninety thousand when the walls collide.”
Nelesquin covered his mouth with a hand. As crude as they were, the brutes might work, making up in numbers what they lacked in quality and endurance. Waves of them pouring over the river wall and invading North Moriande could sweep away all resistance. There was no way the Empress could kill all of them.
“Kaerinus, work with Holgaara. He is the new Dost. Have him reorganize the forces. I want Durrani in charge of each brute unit. Have the brutes work with our remaining creatures so they get used to each other. I cannot have panic break my army.”
“As you wish, Highness.”
Nelesquin nodded, then graced Qiro with a bow. “You have done well, Master Cartographer. My victory shall owe much to you.”
“ Our victory, Highness.” Qiro returned the bow. “And this is not all I shall do for you. The enemy might prepare themselves for what you will bring, but they never can be prepared for what I bring.”
Urardsa, the Soth Gloon, lurked like Grija’s shadow in my room. Pale, with an oversized head and seven eyes, black and gold, he watched me pull on a clean robe and tie my hair back. I caught his reflection in the mirror, as I dabbed at a bloody droplet on my neck-a remnant of shaving.
“Say whatever you have to say, ghoul, and no riddles.”
“Virisken Soshir dies soon.”
I laughed. “You can’t even pretend to be direct.”
“This mission to assassinate Nelesquin will be the end of you.”
I turned. “The end of me, or the end of Virisken Soshir?”
The Gloon opened his hands but remained mute.
“When I recovered the memory of who I had been, you told me I could die, but I think I was already dead. I think Virisken Soshir died when Nelesquin did, and was only resurrected because Nelesquin was. What started so long ago has to be finished. If that means I die again if he does, too, my life will have served well.”
The Gloon rose from his crouch and paced to the window. The owl moon’s bright light limned him. “Frustration is not my goal, Master Soshir. Once I, too, was blind to the future.”
“I remember. You were Enangia. You came on the Turasynd expedition. You fought, and well.”
“In the city are many life-threads. Too many. And too many end quickly.”
“Mine included, I assume.”
The Gloon grunted. “There is more to life-threads than beginnings and ends. Colors and textures. Patterns. The pattern could continue, or it can change. Something old, something new, or nothing.”
He stared at me. Though shadow hid his face, his eyes glowed. “Nelesquin would repeat the pattern of the past. Cyron, the Empress, they would make a different pattern. The past we understand. It has problems for which we know solutions.”
I frowned. “The problems of the past are never the same as those in the future.”
“If you know this, then why do you believe you are the solution now?”
I started to answer, but words stuck in my throat. Nelesquin and I had been friends who grew to be rivals. I had chafed beneath his superior attitude-which had been born out of nothing but his birthright. This had led me to resent him, resent my father, and desire power for my own. I knew the stories of my past, and I had been every bit the petty tyrant Nelesquin was.
But this time it was different. I was no longer Virisken Soshir. My sense of who I was had been shaped by my training and the years I’d spent as xidantzu. Soshir had spent his life in service to the Empire and himself. I had served many, shielding them from evil and misfortune.
It struck me that I really did feel Virisken Soshir was another person. I could not escape responsibility for who he had been and what he had done, but I didn’t need to be imprisoned by it, either. Nelesquin might well have been an old problem, but applying an old solution would only kill me along with him.