Glen Cook - Splinter Of The Mind's Eye

Startled and puzzled, he could think of no appropriate reply.

He glanced at his companions. They had fallen asleep where they had stopped. Even the animals had surrendered to exhaustion. He listened. The pursuit seemed no closer.

The imp grinned again, shrugged, stepped backward, vanished. Haroun was baffled. That was sorcery, yet his shaghûn's senses hadn't detected a thing. He started to follow the imp...

Things exploded from the doorway. The first was a blinking, puzzled lion which, pausing to assess its situation, died under Haroun's blade. Then came vampire bats that ripped and tore and let his blood a dozen times before he finished the last. Then came snakes and scorpions and spiders.

He never considered flight. He defeated each wave by summoning reserves of energy, anger and courage he didn't know he possessed.

Then came the nebulous thing, the real enemy, the dark shifting form on which he painted his own faces of horror. It flung parts of itself to the sides, to strike from behind. With it came scents and whispers of evil that tore at already tortured nerves.

He stepped back, raised his torn left arm to shield himself. With a cackling, wicked roar the thing doubled in size. Haroun swung wildly. His blade encountered nothing, yet elicited a screech of pain.

Weariness threatened to drag him down. Pain became unbearable. He knew he was doomed. Yet he persisted. The screech convinced him his sole hope was attack. He stumbled forward, sword cleaving Night in wild strokes.

Darkness took him into its gentle arms. For a moment he thought he saw a beautiful, weeping woman approaching, and knew he had glimpsed the face of Death. There was one instant of trepidation and reluctance as he remembered the Scourge of God close behind him, then nothing.

He wakened to warmth and daylight and a sense of well-being. A bent old man stood over him, examining his injuries. Imp-Child watched from a doorway.

He was inside the tower. Its interior was no ruin. He tried to rise.

The old man restrained him. "Let me finish." Haroun found his accent difficult. Sad tones crowded his reassuring smile.

"What time is it? How long have I been here?"

"Three days. You needed the rest."

Haroun surged up. The old man pressed down on his chest with all the weight of the world.

"My people—"

"All safe and well. Resting and healing at the foot of the tower. Your enemies won't find them. Child!"

Imp-Child brought a copper mirror with a surface clouded by age. "Stare into your own eyes," the old man said. He did something strange with his fingers.

At first Haroun was too shaken by changes in his appearance to see anything else. Youth had fled him. The brown of his skin had deepened. His thin, long face had become an emaciated death's head. His hawkish nose had become more shadowed and pronounced. His eyes looked haunted. Anger and pain had etched deep furrows across his forehead.

Then he began to discern the hunters deep in the pools of his eyes. The Scourge of God and two score Invincibles followed a trail implacably.

There was something wrong. Their eyes blazed with madness. They were within a mile of the tower, but never glanced its way.

"They're following their own trail around the stronghold," the old man said. He giggled crazily.

Haroun glanced at him and surprised a malice which instantly transformed into sorrow. "Four hundred winters of despair," his savior said in a voice gone sepulchral. "And finally you've come. I hope it's you. Pray, be the One. This charge has grown tedious. I long for the embrace of the Dark Woman."

Haroun felt he was an audience of one. There was something subtly unconvincing about this old man. "Where am I?" he demanded.

"The place has no name. A watchtower. It had a number once, but I've forgotten it."

"Who are you?" The old man seemed not to hear. "Why are you helping me? If you're helping."

"Because you are of the Blood. Because you are the Candidate."

Haroun frowned. "Candidate? For what?"

"For the Invisible Crown."

Each answer left Haroun more baffled. "Why are you hiding out here? This is the least explored part of Hammad al Nakir." The inquisitiveness and skepticism he had acquired from Radetic kept him from accepting the old man's answers. "You'd better tell me a story, old man. A good one. This is all crap and wasted time. I should be heading for the border."

The old man looked surprised and disappointed. "I am the son of Ethrian of Ilkazar, the wise man who predicted the Fall. He was unable to avert that disaster. During the destruction of the Imperial City, hoping to revivify the Empire one day, he smuggled myself and the symbols of Imperial power through the besiegers' lines. He sent me here under a compulsion to await the coming of a suitable Imperial heir. Someone Fate would bring here. Someone of the Blood. I am to test him, and, if he is worthy, to invest him with the Imperial power. My father meant to join me, but he was killed. I've been trapped here for four centuries. Never before has a candidate come."

The story dovetailed with known history and old legend. But when, his head swimming with visions of armies rallying to his Imperial standard, Haroun asked specific questions and received only evasions in reply, his credulity faded. "Get serious, old-timer. You're dodging like a hare chased by a fennec. Give me straight answers or go away."

The old man reddened. He cursed, and stalked out of the room.

Imp-Child giggled, winked at Haroun, followed.

Haroun stared at the bronze mirror, watching Nassef follow an endless trail. He wanted to go down, collect Bragi and move on. Instead, he fell asleep.

The old man returned that night. "Come with me," he said. Puzzled, Haroun followed him to the tower's parapet, which was spectral in the moonlight. He watched distant manshapes doggedly pursue a circular trail.

A milky globe rested atop a tripod standing at the parapet's center. It glowed softly. "Look into this," the old man said.

Haroun looked. And saw the past. He watched his father, brother, uncle and King Aboud die brave deaths. Aboud fought like the lion he had been as a young man. He watched his mother and sisters die. He watched the confrontation between Ahmed and Nassef. He could not turn away, though each second was an eternity of torture. Something compelled him to study Nassef in action.

The scene changed. He recognized the desert near the ruins of Ilkazar. A horde of horsemen milled nearby.

"Those are Royalists," the old man said. "They began gathering when news spread from Al Rhemish." Flick. A change of time. "Earlier today. These are El Murid's men, commanded by Karim and el-Kader, who on their own initiative followed Nassef and the Disciple."

The enemy spied the Royalist host. They charged. The Royalists scattered like chaff before the wind. In minutes there remained no foundation upon which the Royalist cause could be rebuilt. Haroun sighed. The arrangements his father and Megelin had made, for camps beyond the border, would have to serve to rally the cause.

Haroun divined a bleak future. Exile. Warfare. The constant threat of the Harish kill dagger.

The old man crooned over the globe and showed him what it might be like. Endless flight and fear. Frequent despair. He shuddered at the prospects.

Then the old man said, "But that need not be." Flick, flick, flick. "Here. Here. Here. We can reach back. A moment of blindness. A strayed swordstroke. A captain's horse stumbling at an inopportune moment. Little things can shift the course of history."

"You can do that?"

"If you wish." The battle before the ruins reappeared. "Here. An order misinterpreted."

"That's too easy," Haroun muttered, though he was not sure why. "But tempting." Was it something Megelin had taught him? "What's the price?" There would be a price. Nothing was free. The more desirable it became, the crueler the cost. It would be more bitter than the price he had paid already.