Tracka nodded. The Thaumaturge-General's face remained expressionless. It seemed nothing fazed the man.
"Theis, stay here. If Mulenex starts to come round, kill him. Give it half an hour. Then do it anyway."
The dwarf protested, but found himself talking to the Swordbearer's back. Gathrid last heard Gacioch trying to convince Rogala that this was the best strategy.
Bleibel met them in the council chamber, ten minutes past deadline. Tracka's soldiers had managed to stall him without further bloodshed.
The Colonel stared for a long time. Finally, "You'll come with me now?"
"Yes," Gathrid said. "I wouldn't miss it."
"Yes," said Tracka, distracted. He was lost in the nuances of sorceries he might need to survive this day. Gathrid had shared his suspicions during their climb from the Shield Chamber.
"Your weapons, then."
"Don't be silly."
Tracka's hand went to his hilt. "I know only one way to give a weapon, Colonel."
"We're going with you," Gathrid said. "But don't expect us to put ourselves at your mercy. The grandest fool wouldn't do that after all that's happened."
The right side of Bleibel's face twitched. His sword hand strayed weaponward. He thought better of it, spun, stamped up the stairs. Gathrid followed. Tracka assembled his men, followed too. Near the door, at Gathrid's gesture, he recovered the Staff of Chuchain.
Lines of ragged Guards Oldani formed to their flanks once they descended the Hundred Steps.
Glancing back, Gathrid reflected that this tattered, limping parade was a microcosmic crosssection of the continent west of the Nirgenaus. It had been a bitter, demanding, devouring series of wars. A lot that was good had been destroyed.
To what purpose?
It was not finished yet. He might find an answer.
He hoped it would be acceptable, and feared that it would not be.
Chapter Eighteen
Imperial Palace The palace was more impressive than the Raftery. Like the Queen City itself, it had grown with the centuries. Its vast maze rolled down Faron's flanks like melted wax down the sides of a candle. In places it had begun insinuating fingers into the surrounding city.
The Raftery, externally, had remained little changed since the reign of the Immortal Twins. The Frays Ma-gister, when unable to resist the desire to expand, had added new chambers underground.
Not so the.Emperors. They had insisted that their works be on public display. Many had built to overawe the memories of their predecessors.
Plain vanity was the raison d 'etre for most of the vast stonework crowning Faron. The palace had become a city within the Queen City.
Gathrid had no time to sightsee. He was busy learning the ways of the Shield. By concentrating he could compel it to remain quiescent. When not shining it looked like just another battered instrument of war.
The thing was as slippery as Daubendiek. He had to stay with it every second.
The route they followed was so jagged Gathrid stopped the guide they had collected at the palace gate. "Straight on from here, fellow. No more stalling. Unless you'd prefer the Kiss of Suchara to that of your wife."
The man gulped. Internal conflict revealed itself in stance and expression. "Yes, Lord." Two minutes later he opened a door on a vast hall with a floor of jade.
Daubendiek quivered, hummed softly. It remembered this place. There, near that alabaster throne, looming so huge despite distance, Tureck Aarant had slain Karkai-nen. The floor remained scarletly alive where the Immortal Twin's lifeblood had poured out.
Guards tramped, stamped. They formed a precise line shielding the preposterously bloated specimen ensconced on Anderle's throne. They were quick and dangerous, the cream of the Guards Oldani.
Gathrid advanced cautiously. He sensed the presence of Nevenka Nieroda.
She was in that disgusting man-mountain called Elgar!
In this hour when Anderle's dream waxed strongest, when circumstance had made the Empire the one force capable of reuniting the west, its soul had been vampir-ized. The last dreamer had been dragged down. Nieroda had cut them out one by one and had brought their fancies to an end.
I'm the last one left, Gathrid thought. And anything I do is futile. She's murdered the dream. In that sense she can no longer lose.
The loss of Anderle angered him as much as the loss of Loida or Anyeck. The Empire was the last of the realities of his boyhood.
A gravelly voice deep within him rumbled, demanding attention. The Empire was not dead, it insisted.
Yedon Hildreth remained a stubborn man.
Gathrid thought the chance too remote, too improbable, too dependent on the unknown quality of the Contessa Cuneo. She was just an Oldani girl, a soldier's brat, thinly lacquered with civilization.
What could she do, battling the subtle rigors of imperium?
She is my flesh, Cuneo insisted.
Gathrid had not met her. He admitted he could not know. If she were her father's daughter ...
But what value will and stubbornness against such as Nevenka Nieroda?
Irritably, Gathrid brushed off an attack by the Guards.
Bleibel went berserk. He screamed. Hordes of Sar-tainians swept in. They hurled themselves on the bewildered Ventimiglians.
Gathrid felt removed from it all. He seemed to be an observer watching killing machines at work.
The attackers kept coming. Their corpses piled in drifts. Their blood gathered in lakes on the vast jade floor.
He felt no sense of time. It just seemed that, finally, they stopped coming. He stood alone except for grim, pale Tracka.
He felt stronger than ever. Daubendiek had fed on countless lives. He felt no connection with place or event. He was the Instrument of Suchara... .
He began speaking the words she wanted said.
Something inside him monitored and adjusted them. "Now, Nieroda. Now we settle the accounts.
Finally. Forever." He thought he used a tight-throated whisper. Why were the walls shaking? "For all that you've done, and been, this time you die the death from which there can be no resurrection."
That great mass of flesh twitched a finger.
From behind the throne came the surviving Toal. They bore Gerdes Mulenex. They dragged Rogala, chained, collared and stumbling.
"You've blinded him!"
A monstrous cackle filled the hall. Gathrid saw that one of the Dead Captains was not a Toal at all, but the demon Gacioch restored to a whole body. He held Rogala's lead chain, and mocked the dwarf with every step.
Outmaneuvered again, Gathrid thought. But riot beaten. Far from beaten. As he would teach Nieroda.
Gacioch had been deceiving them. Crafty demon. He had done his spying well.
Gathrid felt no pity for Rogala. Perhaps Suchara's indifference to the welfare of her tools was leaking over.
He sprang at the Toal, destroying one'before it could defend itself. The second took but a moment longer.
Tracka handled the demon. He attacked with that savagery unique to masters betrayed by slaves.
Gacioch let out one great long wail of surprise and dismay. He cursed Nieroda as he faded.
Gathrid laughed, a peal like a long roll of thunder. The demon had not foreseen his own fate. The Dark Champion had tricked him. "Roast forever," he called after Gacioch. "May it be a solitary Hell."
Gathrid turned to the throne. The thing that had been Gerdes Mulenex began to twitch. The gross corpulence of the Emperor began to snore.
The youth moved toward the two.
"Watch out!" the blind dwarf shrieked. "Trap!"
A storm of poisoned darts hurtled from a thousand hidden recesses. Their numbers darkened the chamber.
The Shield came alive. Missiles pattered off it like hail off a tin roof. Gathrid sighed. Its protection enveloped him completely.
Tracka was less fortunate. Gasping, one hand extended eastward as if he meant to yank himself home, he died. He was the last Ventimiglian.