Роберт Асприн - Forever After

A Baen Books Original.

ISBN: 0-671-87699-6

Cover art by David Mattingly

First printing, December 1995

I’ve been asked to dedicate

this book, Roger’s final work,

to those who loved him,

and I do.

Jane Lindskold

Prince Rango stepped out onto the balcony and regarded the pair of comets hung in the night sky.

Pair?

He squinted at the strange, low patch of light in the west which had not been present the previous evening. It looked pretty much the way the others had but a few nights ago. Therefore, a third comet was probably on its way. Things such as this were supposed to presage the deaths of monarchs, changes in administration, social upheavals, natural disasters, the loss of price supports in industries run by one’s relatives, bad weather, plagues, and losing lottery tickets. Rango smiled. He did not need signs in the heavens to tell him that change was in the air. He was part of it.

Abruptly, an ear-tormenting squeal filled the night. It was the sound of a stringed instrument played at at least a hundred times the volume of any stringed instrument ever heard in the area. Since last night, anyway. It had been occurring in the middle of the night, on and off, for about a week, and once it fell into a regular rhythm other amplified instruments joined it. Yes. There came some sort of bass…. And now a frantic drumbeat. Soon an invisible singer would begin shouting incomprehensible lyrics in an unknown language.

A tall, darkly handsome man, Rango raised his wine goblet and sipped from it as a ground-shaking thudding began somewhere to the east.

He sighed and turned his head in that direction. It had been strange enough, these past two months, living in a land that was not torn by civil war, a place that, for well over a decade, had been backdrop to assassinations, dark sorceries, skirmishes, quests, pursuits, escapes, vendettas, duels, betrayals, great acts of courage as well as treachery, all of them leading at last to a war in which the line was finally drawn and Good and Evil, Light and Dark, Order and Chaos, and all those other antonyms had faced off and had it out, steel against steel, spell against spell, dark gods and goddesses against their brighter relatives, toe to toe and hand to hand, the world red in tooth and claw and other combative appendages. When the dust settled, Good — in the person of himself and his followers — had just managed to squeak by.

Rango lowered his goblet and smiled. It had been touch and go there at the end, and, ultimately, nothing had gone according to the book, but he stood now in the imperial palace in Caltus, capital of the Faltane, with less than two months before the day of his wedding and coronation. Finally, with all of the perils laid to rest, he would be wed to his betrothed, the tall, dark-haired Rissa.

As the thudding sounds came more heavily out of the east — even the weird music could not completely smother them — he thought back over the years the respective adventures had taken, all rushing to culmination this past summer….

Kalaran, demigod gone bad — Fallen Sunbird of high Vallada Tahana, home of the gods — had seemed to have everything going for him on the eve of the final battle. The four things which had tipped the balance against him had been the amulet, the ring, the sword, and the scroll — Anachron, Sombrisio, Mothganger, and Gwyk-ander.

Gar Quithnick, the turncoat hingu master, had succeeded in recovering the lost amulet. Its protective, magic-dampening effect had saved the defenders from Kalaran’s wrath. Sombrisio, the deadly ring of power, returned from the city of the dead, Anthurus, by Rissa and her big-boned blond companion, Jancy Gaine, had actually hurt Kalaran, reducing him to physical combat with the Prince. Even so, he would have faced no problem against a mortal hero no matter how well muscled, save that that muscular arm had wielded Mothganger — a godslayer of a weapon which he and his partner Spotty Gulick had brought back from their quest. And then there was the scroll of Gwykander — containing the words to the ancient rite of grand exorcism — delivered from the bottom of a monster-haunted lake, and rushed to the Faltane just in time. Along with the other magical tools, it was there when it was needed. Looking back, he reflected on all the coincidences, and just plain luck, involved in the four tools being conveyed to the proper place at the proper time within minutes of each other. The outcome had truly been balanced on the edge of a blade.

A white line traced itself slowly through the heavens, expanding in the wake of whatever emitted it. Shortly, there came a distant, muffled boom from overhead, followed by a growling sound.

He shook his head. While he could tell that it was neither meteor nor comet, he had no idea what the thing was. This disturbed him more than a little. He’d had enough of unknown variables tracking muddy footprints across his life’s trail these past few years.

Yet, while he did not understand the nature of the disturbance, he had a fairly good idea as to what was causing it, even knew himself to be partly responsible for it. It was of a piece with the recent showers of blood, toads, rats, with the raucous parodies of music which filled the air, with the thing which shook the earth with its heavy, approaching footsteps. Indeed, it was also connected with the recent spate of unnatural births, of two-headed sheep and calves.

He sighed and smiled. It would be all dealt with. He would figure a way, as he had figured ways to deal with everything from minor annoyances to imminent doom in recent years. He had always been very fast on his mental feet.

With a sudden, silvery agitation, the small lake at the foot of one of the northern hills began to drain over its eastern edge, as if the land had suddenly been tipped. He nodded. That, too. Geography tended to rearrange itself periodically these days. Just where all that water was getting off to was not readily apparent. The site of the lake would be a muddy pit in the morning. Possibly, eventually, it would became a swamp. Or it might even be a lake again by tomorrow night. The interfaces between realities having grown somewhat thin in the neighborhood of Caltus, it was possible that a stream from some other place might be diverted to refill it.

There would be a meeting. Of course. With his chief advisers. In the morning. They would discuss the situation. He could see it all now, falling into place. Yes.

He waited out of misspent curiosity until the source of the approaching footsteps came into view — an enormous, heavy-footed, long-necked, long-tailed reptile — stomping its way slowly through the center of town, browsing leaves from various trees and thatching from peasant cottages along its course. He watched it make its way into the west, under the angled light of a rising piece of the moon. He finished his wine as it disappeared from sight, then turned and entered his apartments.

The following afternoon, as he inspected the new northern mud pit, viewing the long line of dinosaur tracks leading through it, Prince Rango was approached by the Princess Rissa along what had been the scenic lakeside trail.

“Rango, what the devil’s going on?” she asked.

“Another bit of overstressed reality seems to have given way—” he began.