Then he butterflied about the west, studying the readiness, the alertness, of numerous little kingdoms. Some, at least, were responding to Varthlokkur's warning.
He was pleased. Western politics were at work. Several incipient wars seemed likely to flare. Mobilizations were taking place along the boundaries of Hammad al Nakir too, in fear that El Murid might reassume his old conqueror's dream.
The raw materials for a holocaust were assembling.
He nudged a few places, then returned to his island in the east. He began hunting Chin's replacement.
Lord Wu was initiated into the Pracchia minutes before Badalamen announced his defeat in Kavelin. Wu showed no enthusiasm for his role. Badalamen blamed a lack of reliable intelligence. Both men, supported by Magden Norath, peti-tioned the return of the Power.
"What can I do about it?" the bent man demanded. "It comes and goes. I can only predict it.... Fadema. Are you ready to go home?"
"To a ruin? Why?"
"It's no ruin yet. Your people are still holding out. Necremnos's leaders are too busy one-uping each other to finish it. A rallying point, a leader, a little supernatural help, should turn it around. Badalamen. Go with the Fadema. Destroy Necremnos. They're too stubborn ever to be useful. Then head west. Seize the Savernake Gap. Throyes will help."
Badalamen nodded. He had this strength, from the viewpoint of the bent man: he didn't question. He carried out his orders.
He was, in all respects, the perfect soldier.
"What supernatural aid?" the Fadema demanded. "Without the Power...."
"Products of the Power, my lady. Norath. Your children of darkness. Your pets. Are they ready?"
"Of course. Haven't I said so for a year? But I have to go with them, to control them."
"Take a half-dozen, then." He buried his face in his hands momentarily. To the Old Man, who sat silently beside him, he muttered, "The fat man. He failed. Or refused. Throw the boy to Norath's children."
A pale vein of rebellion coursed through the Old Man as he rose.
The boy gulped, shivered in the Old Man's grip. He stared across the mile-wide strait. A long swim. With desert on the farther shore.
But it was a chance. Better than that offered by the savan dalage.
Shaking, he descended to the stony beach.
It was the turning of the year and, the bent man hoped, the shifting of luck to the Pracchia. Wu would have finalized plans for the removal of O Shing. Badalamen's report on the war with Necremnos would be favorable....
The Pracchia gathered.
Badalamen's report could have been no better. Norath and his creatures had turned it around. When Shinsan marched, the Roe basin would be tributary to the Hidden Kingdom. The holocaust had swept the flood plain and steppes. Argon was closing in on Necremnos.
But Lord Wu didn't show. The Pracchia waited and waited for Locust Mask to come mincing arrogantly into the room.
Later the bent man wearily mounted his winged steed. His flight was brief. It ended at Liaontung.
THIRTY-ONE: Baxendala Redux
"Man, I don't know," said Trebilcock. He surveyed Ragnarson's captains.
"What's that?" Kildragon asked. Reskird was still grey around the gills from wounds he had received at Norbury. His left arm hung in a sling. Badalamen had overcome a dozen champions in fighting free.
"Might as well wait for everybody. Save telling it twice." Trebilcock approached Ragnarson.
"Where's your shadow, Michael?"
"At his father's. Learning bookkeeping."
"Last summer took the vinegar out of him, eh?"
"His father claims it gave him perspective. What I wanted to say.... I should tell everybody. Old friend of Aral's dad showed up while I was there. First man through the Savernake Gap this year."
"Oh? News?"
Ragnarson didn't ask if it was bad. There wasn't any other kind these days.
"Go ahead. Latecomers can hear it from somebody else." He pounded his table. "Michael has got some news."
Trebilcock faced the captains, stammered.
"I'll be damned," Bragi muttered. "Stage fright."
"I just talked to a man from Necremnos." Michael eyed his audience. Half he didn't know. Many were foreign military officers. Most of his acquaintances were recovering from wounds. Gjerdrum still couldn't walk without help. He'd had a savage campaign of his own.
"He says Argon is kicking Necremnos all over the Roe basin. The Fadema reappeared with a general named Badalamen and a wizard named Norath. Since then everything's gone her way."
A murmur answered him.
"Yes. The same Badalamen we whipped a couple months ago. But Norath, even without the Power, was the real difference." He glanced into the shadows where the Egg of God lurked. It seemed excited. Did it know Norath?
"Magden Norath?" Valther asked.
"Yes."
"I heard about him in Escalon. The Monitor exiled him for undertaking forbidden research. Everybody thought he was dead."
"He's running some nasty creatures ahead of the Argonese army," Trebilcock continued. "The worst is called a savan dalage."
"Means 'beasts of the night' in Escalonian." Valther interjected.
"They're supposedly invulnerable. They prowl at night, killing everything. Aristithorn has only found one way to control them. He lures one into a cave or tomb and buries it."
"I hope our friends from the Brotherhood can find a better solution," said Ragnarson. "I expect we'll get a look at them ourselves. Anything else, Michael?"
"Necremnos probably won't last through spring."
"Anything about our friend in the mask?"
"No. But the man said there's been a palace revolution in Shinsan. O Shing was killed. The Tervola are feuding."
"Varthlokkur. That good or bad?"
The wizard stepped up behind Ragnarson. "I don't know enough about what's happening to guess."
"Mist?"
The woman sat in an out-of-the-way seat. When she rose, the foreigners gawked. Few had encountered a beauty approaching hers.
"It's bad. They'd overthrow him only if he were too timid. The Tervola have grown anxious to grab Destiny. They're tired of waiting. As soon as they've decided who'll take over, they'll be here. The shame of Baxendala."
"Michael, bring this Necremnen to Varthlokkur. Varthlokkur, if you can get in touch with Visigodred.ask him to send Marco to see what's going on around Necremnos."
Visigodred had returned home after Badalamen's defeat in Moerschel. He was a genuine Itaskian count and couldn't abandon his feudal duties forever.
"I'll have Radeachar tell him." The wizard left with
Trebilcock. Varthlokkur was developing a liking for Michael simply because the man wasn't afraid of him.
Varthlokkur had lived for centuries in a world where mere mention of his name inspired terror. He was a lonely man, desperate for companionship.
Ragnarson peered after them, frowning. An hour earlier Varthlokkur had asked him to be best man at his wedding.
The pain hadn't yet eased. Thoughts of Mocker made him ache to the roots of his soul. And in the wounds his friend had inflicted.
Wachtel insisted he had healed perfectly, yet he often wakened in the night suffering such agony that he couldn't get back to sleep.
The temptation to drink, to turn to opiates, was maddening, yet he stubbornly endured the pain. Other voices whispered of his mission.
He turned to the Nordmen baron who was the Thing's observer here. "Baron Krilian, haven't you people found a candidate yet?"
Ragnarson hadn't visited the Thing since his eastern expedition. There hadn't been time. Derel Prataxis handled all his business with the parliament now.