CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Disaster.

THE COUNCIL WAS IN AN UPROAR.

Several factions loyal to the Emperor had banded together to block what they felt was the blatant attempt by the Warlord to re-establish a predominance not seen since before the time of the Mistress of the Empire. Tetsu of the Minwanabi, Warlord of the Nations of Tsuranuanni, by grace of his cousin the Emperor, stood and held up his hands. 'Silence!' he commanded.

The office of Warlord was supreme, in the absence of the Emperor, but he faced a generation of ruling lords and ladies who had never before been confronted by anyone wearing that mantle. They were far less inclined to heed his commands than their ancestors might have been. Even so, Tetsu was a charismatic leader and he carried the majesty of office, as well as a dozen Imperial Guards who now moved around the vast hall urging the raucous rulers of the Empire to calm.

'Heed me!' shouted Tetsu.

Tetsu of the Minwanabi was torn. He had been raised unlike any other heir to the mantle of power in the Empire. House Minwanabi was one of the five great houses of the Empire, and his place among the ruling elite of the nations had been secured before his birth. But history had conspired always to place the Minwanabi in a subsidiary role to their cousins the Acoma, the Emperor's house. For as long as he could remember, Tetsu of the Minwanabi had plotted and schemed to rise to the highest position possible in the High Council, and whatever murderous fantasy he might imagine that would put him on the golden throne he had kept to himself, for he was, at the last, Tsurani. But today he was shaken to the fibre of his being, for today was his first day ruling the High Council in the Emperor's name, and today he had left the Emperor's retreat on the old Acoma estates, where over a long breakfast the Light of Heaven had told him things no sane man could hear without being shaken. He had been given a mandate by the Emperor and no matter what fantasies of ambition had filled his nights, he put them aside in the light of day, for he was, at the last, Tsurani.

'Heed me!' he bellowed and at last the room fell silent. He looked from face to face of the rulers, many of whom were friends or political enemies, and he said, 'This day I spoke with the Light of Heaven. By the arts of a Great One I was transported from his side to this very palace. My first duty is to relay his wishes that all here are well and prosperous.' He paused for effect. 'My second duty is to remind you of the unthinkable attack on his person in this very palace less than a week ago.'

Now the room fell dead silent, for to a man or woman, the ruling elite of the Empire could not imagine a more horrific event than an a.s.sault on the person of the Emperor. In their tradition, the Emperor was a beacon of hope for the Tsurani, placed on Kelewan by the G.o.ds, to show their pleasure with the nations. He was a benediction.

'Hark to the words of the Light of Heaven!' shouted Tetsu. 'The armies have been called! The Red Seal of War on the door to the Temple of Jastur has been broken! The light of day now shines on the symbols of war! The Empire of Tsuranuanni now goes to war with a race known as the Dasati!'

Azulos of the Kechendawa shouted, 'Where are these Dasagi? I have never heard of these people!'

'Dasati,' corrected the Warlord. 'And as to where they abide... heed the words of the Great One, Alenca, speaking for the a.s.sembly and for the Light of Heaven.'

The old magician had been standing close to the Warlord's throne, waiting for his moment to speak. He slowly walked to the centre of the hall and looked around, seemingly identifying every face in the chamber.

'Let me speak of the Dasati,' began the old magician. For nearly an hour he repeated every detail so far discovered about the would-be invaders, building upon the earlier warning given to the Emperor and High Council by Miranda. Those rulers who had been in attendance the first time were subdued and looked gravely concerned, and those lords who had not been in attendance the first time appeared confused or incredulous. At first there were many whispered questions but by the end of Alenca's narrative the leaders of the Empire were silent and convinced. For the first time in the history of the Empire a terrible danger was upon them, an enemy more powerful, more ruthless, as determined and with a far vaster army than the Tsurani.

The Warlord rose. 'I thank the Great One Alenca for his calm reciting of the facts. Now, I speak for the Empire!'

That formal declaration caused every ruling lord and ruling lady in the High Council to focus their undivided attention on the Warlord, for those words signalled that what came next was in no way said for personal glory, house-honour or gain, but would be solely for the good of the nations.

'We all are bound by our pledge to the Empire, and to the Light of Heaven, and I have been given the great burden of conducting this war. I will issue edicts today. Each of twenty-five houses, whose rulers will be contacted at the end of this meeting, will be given to the command of a regional-'

A shattering sound accompanied a blast of air which knocked Alenca across the hall as if a giant hand had swatted him. The old magician struck the floor hard and slid for a dozen yards, his body as limp as a rag.

A purple oval of energy hung above the floor of the great hall of the High Council, and through it erupted a stream of warriors in black, with gold trim at the points and edges of their armour, shouting incomprehensible words as they ran straight at the first Tsurani n.o.ble they spied.

Ceremonial swords and robes of silk were batted aside effortlessly as the n.o.bility of Tsuranuanni was slaughtered with frightening efficiency. The Imperial Guards in the great hall died defending the rulers of the Empire, for despite being among the most dedicated warriors in the Empire, the Palace Guard were soon overmatched and overwhelmed. Within half a minute, fully a quarter of those in the hall were dead or dying.

As Dasati warriors flooded into the palace, a figure emerged from the shadows of a remote hallway, one rarely used by functionaries shuttling doc.u.ments from the great hall to an administrative wing of the palace. He moved to where Alenca lay stunned to insensibility, perhaps dying from internal wounds. He looked down and with an expression of mock regret, lifted his foot and crushed the old man's windpipe with the heel of his sandal, ensuring that the first of many Great Ones of the Empire was dead this day.

The sharp downward step threw him off-balance and he barely avoided falling over. The body of Wyntakata, now host to Leso Varen, was troubled by a lameness that the magician found annoying. But until he could establish a safe location where he could begin to fashion his dark and murderous magic and create the means to possess another body, he was confined to this one. He smiled at the screaming and carnage. He smiled to see valiant Tsurani rulers die like so many children as the Dasati guards of the TeKarana killed every human they saw. He waved his hand slightly and employed a spell of seeming, so that no Dasati would mistake him for a target. He was certain that no matter his arrangement with the Deathpriests he had contacted on Omadrabar it was unlikely that any of these warriors had been told, 'Oh, by the way, don't kill the slightly decrepit, lame fellow in the black robe'.

As often as death was his chosen means to power and the heart of his black arts, Varen was certainly no stranger to blood and pain, but he found this wholesale murder far less entertaining than would have been the case had humans invaded the Tsurani palace. The alarm had sounded and more Imperial Guards, among the finest warriors in the Empire, came rushing in to die like kittens attacking a lion. It just wasn't fair, Varen thought. In this realm the Dasati were simply too powerful. Yet, he noticed with interest, some of the first to arrive were already showing signs of that odd intoxication he had noticed the first time he had encountered the little simulacrum who had been their first explorer into this realm. That delightful little creature had burst into flames after being in the sunlight of this world too long. He wondered if he would ever understand that aspect of the realms, the different levels of life and heat and light, the heart of energy-magic that so many of these Great Ones delighted in learning. That type of magic had never interested him very much, except for the life aspect, and that only when he was taking it in order to capture the dying energies. He paused for a moment to consider how useful fanatics could be. The Tsurani would, to a man or woman, die to defend the Emperor who, he a.s.sumed, was somewhere far from here. And the Dasati, personal guards of the TeKarana, were already doomed to die for the Dark G.o.d and their master, for those who survived this slaughter would succ.u.mb to the excess of energy in this world. He wondered if they would just fall over and die, or if they would burst into flames like that little creature did. Too bad he couldn't linger to observe.

Varen looked around the hall, now reduced to an abattoir with blood bathing every stone. He noted with amus.e.m.e.nt that some of the blood was orange, so despite their decided advantage in strength and power, it seemed the Dasati were taking some damage as they destroyed the leadership of the Tsurani Empire.

Imperial soldiers were still flooding into the room, and Varen was getting bored with watching other people killing one another, so he turned and ambled back down the hallway to the administrative wing of the palace. As he pa.s.sed the first door into a suite of offices used by functionaries who worked on behalf of the Imperial First Advisor, he glanced inside to admire the scene of his own handiwork. A dozen officers of the court lay in contorted poses, several clawing at their own faces from the pain that had killed them mere minutes before. Now that, he thought, was death as art!

He whistled a meaningless ditty as he strolled down the hall, past another half a dozen offices littered with bodies. Grinning, he thought that killing off the leaders of every great house was amusing and would certainly cause the Tsurani a lot of problems, but it would be hard for the boy emperor to try and run his Empire without a bureaucracy!

Martuch hurried down the ladder to the hideout and said, 'Word has reached the palace of the TeKarana, and we now know what the muster yesterday was about.'

Pug, Magnus and Hirea sat on cots and all looked at the old warrior.

'At the Dark One's bidding, the TeKarana sent two legions, the Third and Fifth, ten thousand warriors, through what they are calling portals, into your realm.' He spoke to Pug and Magnus.

'Where?' asked Pug.

'The Tsurani world. I do not know the details, but the rumour is that each warrior was told to prepare his death legacy.'

'Death legacy?' asked Magnus.

Hirea said, 'Each warrior in the service of the TeKarana or one of the Karanas has a box within which he places any items he might wish to have pa.s.sed back to his house or society. It can be personal items, messages to fathers or mentors, or anything the warrior wishes to leave as a legacy.'

'It means,' Martuch added, 'that every warrior was being sent to his death. This was both a murder raid and a suicide raid. The warriors were being told they were to die for His Darkness.'

Hirea shook his head in disbelief. 'Two legions,' he said softly. To Martuch he said, 'You know Astamon of the Hingalara's oldest son served with the Fifth.'

'I liked Astamon, even though House Hingalara were Salmodi.' He looked at Pug and Magnus. 'The Salmodi and Sadharin almost always end up on opposite sides of any dispute. But there are some good men in every society.'

'What does this mean?' asked Pug. 'Why the suicide raid?'

'It means a lot of Tsurani are now dead, and the Dark One doesn't care how many of us he kills accomplishing that end.' Martuch sighed. 'So much of what I have come to reject is accepted as normal among my people, but even the most die-hard of us would have trouble accepting the loss often thousand lives merely to b.l.o.o.d.y a foe. We are conquerors,' he added, 'not chattak chattak to be slaughtered at a whim!' to be slaughtered at a whim!'

Magnus said, 'I don't understand.'

Pug said, 'Cattle.'

Hirea said, 'It is a matter of personal pride for any Dasati warrior that what we take, we keep. Six worlds have been conquered since the rise of the Dark. One, and in every case we have never surrendered a jot of what we have taken. For a Dasati to die is one thing, for we all expect that, but we die so our people may expand their territory. We do not die just to die. It is not the Dasati way.'

Martuch saw that the explanation wasn't entirely clear to Pug and Magnus, for he had lived among the beings of the first realm and knew more about their ways. 'We are not a philosophical people, like the Ipiliac. They understand things we can not imagine. They imagine things we can not comprehend. We are a violent race which judges conquest as the highest manifestation of successful violence, for violence without purpose is-'

'Comedy,' said Pug softly. 'Other people's pain.'

'And that is offensive,' said Martuch. 'It makes a mockery of what ten thousand Dasati warriors, the best of us, were born to do: conquer!'

'To laugh with contempt at the pain of others, that is one thing. But to see waste like this...' Hirea's words trailed off.

Magnus said, 'It depends on what they were chosen to do, why they were used.'

'What do you mean?' asked Martuch.

Magnus looked at the old warrior thoughtfully. 'If the TeKarana wanted merely to overwhelm Kelewan, he could have ordered millions of you into the field.'

Martuch and Hirea both nodded in agreement.

'The Tsurani are valiant warriors, and to a man they will die defending their homeland, but they could not withstand such an attack.'

'So there must be a compelling reason to sacrifice ten thousand of his personal guards, rather than launch a full-scale invasion of Kelewan,' said Pug. 'I do not know for a fact, but I suspect it will take as much adjustment for the Dasati warriors to exist on my plane as it did for us to exist here.'

Martuch said, 'Absolutely. I can travel to Delecordia without much discomfort. The Ipiliac are as much like me as Hirea is, but they live in a world caught half way between this realm and yours. But it must have taken centuries for them to have grown accustomed to the energies of that world.' He paused. 'Without preparation it would be difficult for any of us to live there for more than a week or two. Some might adapt, but others would sicken and die. But Delecordia is not in the first realm. It would be impossible without much the same preparation as you endured for any Dasati to exist in your world for more than a few hours, perhaps a day or so at the most.'

Pug recalled just how arduous the conditioning he, Nakor, Bek, and Magnus had endured had been. 'How can they hope to prepare an army of non-magicians to invade?' he asked quietly.

'They don't,' said Martuch. 'We Dasati do not change to exist in the new world; we change the world to our liking.'

'How?' asked Magnus.

'By magic,' said Hirea, as if it was an obvious answer to the question.

'But,' said Pug, 'magic on that scale...' He fell silent. 'The Dark One does not need so many lives merely to open rifts to the first plane of reality, or to move armies through them; he needs millions of lives so that he has enough power to remake worlds!' Pug fell silent. Magnus looked down at his father and saw a man nearly overwhelmed by the enormity of what confronted them. 'Father?'

'This attack today, it's not to conquer, but to confuse.'

'What do you mean, human?' asked Martuch.

'Your TeKarana has an ally, an insane necromancer by the name of Leso Varen. He's a body stealer, and is somewhere within the Empire of Tsuranuanni. My wife and others are trying to track him down, but he could have taken the body of anyone. They're looking for signs of his death-magic, but until he reveals himself...'

'How do you know they are in league?' asked Hirea. , 'Because they have similar goals: wholesale destruction and death on Kelewan.'

'Why would any human desire that?'

'He's mad,' said Magnus.

'But he's not stupid,' said Pug. 'If he sees a gain by throwing open the gateway to Kelewan to your people, he will. And no Dasati would ever understand what he must have told them.' Martuch and Hirea both were paying rapt attention. 'He knows enough of the Tsurani to realize that if the Dark One's agents attempt to establish a foothold to begin changing that world, the Emperor could order a million warriors to swarm the position, each willing to die for the Empire. And the combined might of the a.s.sembly of Magicians and every magic at the disposal of every temple would also be unleashed on the invaders. It might wreak havoc on the Tsurani, but they would shut down any foothold on their world as soon as it was detected.' Pug fell silent for a moment, considering what he had just said. 'The Dark One needs time to establish a large enough presence on Kelewan so that the entire might of Tsuranuanni, a million warriors, thousands of magicians and priests, all together, can't stop him.'

'That means chaos,' said Magnus.

'Yes,' agreed Pug. 'He needs to plunge the Empire into chaos so that they cannot respond to his incursion.'

'How?' asked Martuch.

'By killing the Emperor,' said Magnus.

'Or obliterating the a.s.sembly,' said Pug. 'Varen cannot dislodge the temples, they're too scattered and it would take too long. So it must be the Emperor or the a.s.sembly.'

'Or the High Council,' suggested Magnus.

'Yes, that could be his...' Pug stood up and looked at Martuch and Hirea. 'I must speak to Nakor, tonight.'

'Impossible,' said the old fighter. 'We already said our official farewells as mentor and trainer. You can't go alone. There is no reason for anyone, let alone two Lessers, to come requesting a meeting with the Lesser of a recruit to the Imperial Guard.'

'Is there a way of keeping track of what the recruits are doing, in case an opportunity presents itself?' Pug asked.

'It's possible,' said Martuch. 'Members of the White are gathering in key locations throughout the Empire, but especially around the palace of the Karanas, the TeKarana, and the Dark One's Temple. We have not told anyone of what you have revealed about the Gardener and the Bloodwitches. For the time being let everyone believe we are under the guidance of a single, wise intelligence.' He sounded tired as he added, 'We must do what we must: there are no options, and we cannot choose our time. If we are to strike soon, then it will be soon.'

'Ready or not,' said Magnus.

'If I can reach Nakor, perhaps I can at least contribute to your being more ready than not.'

'I'll see what I can do,' said Martuch, standing up. He moved towards the ladder leading up to the surface. 'Rest for now. I fear that in a short time we may either have no time to rest, or be resting for eternity.'

Hirea waited until his friend had departed, then said, 'What you told us about the Gardener weighs heavy upon him. The Gardener was the one we believe was going to deliver us from the Dark One's madness.'

Pug considered his next words carefully. At last he said, 'You may still be right.' When Hirea looked at Pug with a curious expression, he added, 'Before he left us, the intelligence that was Macros, that tiny bit of him which had been placed in the Dasati body led me to believe that Nakor is the key to this. "Find Nakor", he said, and I believe that is the key. Nakor and Bek.'

'Bek,' said Hirea, almost as if it were a question. 'I have trained many warriors, human, some among the greatest of my lifetime, but that one is not a natural being. From what I know of your race, no human should be able to do what he does, and now, no Dasati can do what he does.' He looked at Pug. 'What is he, really?'

'I think he's a weapon,' said Pug. 'But only Nakor knows for certain.'

Hirea removed his sword-belt and laid it on an empty bunk. He stretched out on another. 'Then we must wait.'

Pug said, 'But not for long.' To Magnus he said, 'No matter what Martuch finds out, tonight we must find Nakor.'

Miranda was nearly frantic at the reports coming through the rift from Kelewan. A ma.s.sive a.s.sault was underway in the Holy City. Despite the estrangement between her husband and the leadership at Stardock, many of those at the Academy were still friends or agents.

From all reports, a wave of thousands of Dasati had literally erupted through a rift in the chamber of the High Council. No Tsurani in that room or within half a mile of it had survived.

The Imperial Guard, except for those around the Emperor at the old Acoma estates, had given their lives defending the Tsurani n.o.bles. Alenca and half a dozen Tsurani Great Ones had died within minutes of the start of the a.s.sault. Others had arrived in response to the alarm and most had been killed as well. Most magic appeared to have no effect on the Dasati, though one enterprising magician who survived managed to do so by the expedient method of dropping a ma.s.sive stone statue on two Deathknights. Thinking back to her own encounter with the lesser Dread up near the Peaks of the Quor, Miranda wondered why she hadn't thought to use her powers to pick up a boulder and drop it on one. It might have worked.

Miranda sat back in the chair usually occupied by Pug, feeling overwhelmed. Caleb entered a few minutes later.

'More word from Kelewan.'

'What?'

He handed her the message. 'The last Dasati died less than two hours ago. Some were weakened, apparently, by exposure to the Tsurani sun or because of something in the air that sickened them. Whatever the cause, the last Deathknight was overwhelmed in a market square by a dozen merchants who tore it apart using tools and kitchen implements.'

'It's nice to know they can die,' said Miranda bitterly. 'What else do we know?'

'There are as many as fifty thousand dead or wounded.'

'G.o.ds!' she exclaimed. 'That many?'

'It's estimated that ten thousand Dasati came into the city in three locations, two in the Imperial palace one right in the heart of the High Council's meeting chamber, while they were in session, one in the centre of the administrative suite where all the palace functionaries work, and the third in the richest merchants' quarter in the Holy City.'

Miranda had already read a report which indicated that the High Council had been sitting when the attack came. She. still had no word on the sum of the damage, but given the number of dead and wounded Caleb relayed, she was certain the damage had been appalling. 'Varen.'

'How do you know?'