Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

He didn’t hesitate. He plunged into the inverted palace of crystallized sugar, his shell oiling odiferously.

Moments later he led two thousand swarming clawsps into the house of Jagd of Uda. The man heard them coming and just had time to turn his head to look. No one kept better informed of current events than merchants. In that split second Jagd knew exactly what was happening, and his mouth gaped open in self-pity. Then he was screaming in horrified agony. Terril buzzed aside to watch, wanting to insure that the job was well done. When Flayh heard this news, Terril wanted there to be no mistaking that it had been carried out to the letter. Naturally the little powershaper would know who was responsible. Who but Terril could do murder by insects?

By the time Jagd stopped screaming and pitched over onto the floor, a crowd of his kinsmen and servants had rushed into the office. Terril waited until the resident herbalist announced that Jagd was dead before leading his purple army out the window. He was amused at the expressions he left behind him. Jagd’s death had summoned almost as many shocked smiles from the terrified Udans as it had tears.

He wasn’t quite finished. A disdainful peddler somewhere

along this road had raised his ire, and Terril was nothing if not vengeful. He found the man in moments and left him squirming in the streets, crying out for someone to take a knife and end his unspeakable misery. A very satisfactory conclusion, Terril thought to himself as he left his army clustered upon the peddler and soared off toward the heart of the city. That should be sufficient to panic the local residents.

From this height he could look down on the Imperial House itself. Should he rouse the rest of the clawsps in the city and make his move immediately upon the palace? He could, he supposed. What recourse would its residents have against him?

Something caught his eye that made him pause. Far across the spires and roofs of the city he saw a vast field that rippled with wave after wave of color. A wall of people reared up into the sky over the plain, and now he began to hear their roar. He angled toward this deafening crowd noise, and was quickly able to make tout the outlines of a wooden grandstand. The closer he came the more impressed he was with the size of this land’s population. Never had he seen a crowd so huge in Ngandib-Mar. When he saw why they were cheering, his heart quailed.

There was an army spread out below him. Terril had seen many armies in his life and had even led a few.

But at a glance he realized that the Mari definition of army had little in common with that of the Golden Throng. His tiny body shuddered. He’d expected to conquer a land this size with just a swarm of insects?

He circled down toward the foot of the grandstand, his mind working furiously. He needed to get control of himself. He was Terril the twin-killer, master magician, not some impressionable peasant. He had powers these Chaons could not imagine. He needed only to stop and take stock of them and to plan carefully his next step. First, however, he needed information.

He flew under the grandstand in search of a private place and finally found one. There he took his human form again and walked out to take a human measure of this throng he expected soon to rule.

It still took his breath away, but Terril’s cunning was beginning to reassert itself. He glanced around and saw a group of adolescent girls in giddy, giggling conversation. “Pardon me,” he said in as suave a tone as he could manage, and the conversation broke off into shocked stares. Terril chuckled self deprecatingly and said, “I realize this may seem very odd to you, but can you tell me why this crowd has gathered?”

“You don’t know?” One girl frowned archly.

Terril’s eyebrows drooped menacingly, and the child’s frown turned fearful. “Would I ask if I did?” he asked.

“The Golden Throng,” another of the girls said quickly.

“Yes,” the first said. “We’ve come to watch the Golden Throng!”

“I see. And where is the Golden Throng going?”

“North!” one said. Then she looked at her friends and added with a slight giggle, “I guess.” It really didn’t matter to them. When the girls quit giggling and looked back at the curious stranger, they experienced a terrible shock. He had disappeared.

“Just look at that,” Bronwynn murmured, enthralled by the Golden Throng as it paraded before her. The cheers of the crowd below engulfed her. “Just look!” she cried above them.

Kherda obeyed. He gazed at the gilded column and nodded appreciatively. He was remembering the last time he’d stood upon this reviewing stand, on the day Bronwynn’s father led the Throng away to war.

He hoped Bronwynn wasn’t thinking about that. He’d been up to his neck in treachery at the time. This present army seemed rather pitiful by comparison to Talith’s throng, and the thought dismayed him. If that army had been so savagely destroyed by their Man enemies, what could be expected from this military venture? Not even Joss had been able to dissuade her, although they’d argued far into the night.

The girl was every bit as hardheaded as her father.

“Here comes Joss,” Bronwynn shouted, pointing downward, and Kherda leaned over the railing to look. As they watched the solitary figure wrapped in a heavy cloak make his careful way up the steps of the platform to join them, they missed seeing the tiny purple insect swoop over their heads and down between them to alight on the underside of the rail. When Joss finally reached them he was wheezing, and Bronwynn patted him on the shoulder. “It’s a long climb,” she said in his ear.

General Joss noded grimly, and surveyed the force below them with a dour frown.

“It’s a splendid army.” Bronwynn smiled.

“It is a skeleton, my Lady.” Joss did not mince words on matters affecting national security.

“But you’ve done wonders with it,” she replied evenly, not looking at him.

“Drills and discipline are valuable, my Lady, but they hardly make up for a lack of warriors and weapons.”

“I take it you still disapprove of my military adventure.”

“My objections are a matter of record, your Highness, based entirely on objective analysis.”

“My lady,” Kherda began meekly, “what he means is—”

“I need no one else to interpret my words to the Queen,” Joss snapped.

“Nor do I need any further discussion on the matter,” Bronwynn announced. “It’s heartening to know that the two of you can agree on something, at least. But my mind is made up.” She glanced first at Kherda, then at Joss. “It’s doubtful you’ll change it.”

“We are unprepared, my Lady,” Joss grunted insistently, reopening the door Bronwynn had so emphatically shut.

Kherda summoned new courage and followed him through it. “We just hate to see your father’s folly repeated—”

“You’ve compared me to my father quite enough, Kherda,” Bronwynn snarled, cowing her Prime Minister.

“Obviously not quite enough,” Joss said between clenched teeth, “or you would take it more seriously.

Your father led the Golden Throng in search of you, my Queen, and lost it on a foreign field to a much inferior force. Had he not lost his army there, he might well have lost it here instead, fighting to regain the very throne he’d left behind.”

“You supported the usurper!” Bronwynn flared. “And you, Kherda—you planned her triumph!”

Kherda cringed, and his eyes pleaded with the general to let the matter drop. But Joss had built a career upon faithfully pointing out realities, and would not be silenced. “Yes we did, my Queen. Reprehensible behavior, perhaps, but your father’s foolishness was largely to blame. He left the state in chaos.”