Glen Cook - Shadow of all Night Falling

The door swung easily inward. He burst through following mighty figure-eight sword strokes, his gaze sweeping the chamber. There were no defenses.

A young man's face, red and damp, rose from furs piled-high beneath a large mirror. His questioning expression quickly changed to one of horror. Pleasure lightninged through Mocker. Though Varthlokkur had changed, he still recognized the man. He altered the direction of his charge, raising his sword fora punishing overhand stroke.

A second face rose from the furs. Dread swept across it.

And the fight deserted Mocker. "Nepanthe!" he screamed. He became a stunned, limp thing moving on impetus alone, his sword arm wilting, his unsteady steps betraying the sudden return of his weariness. He no longer saw, did not want to see, the shame so obvious before him. Wearing the horns already...

Nepanthe and Varthlokkur both babbled explanations, she pleadingly, he in a voice of infuriatingly calm reason. Mocker dropped into a chair, shut them both out. Mad thoughts, and questions... Had he come so far, through so" much, for such a bleak reward? He heard, again from afar, the earlier evil laughter. Taunting him? Truly, Varthlokkur had played wickedly. The clincher, now, would have to be an auto-da-fe, death by his own hand, to make the mockery complete.

His hatred flared. Varthlokkur's centuries of madness must end tonight! He leapt from the chair, refreshed by his hatred. He wheeled on the couple as they gathered their clothing. He moved in slowly, the tip of his sword drifting toward Varthlokkur's chest. This should be slow, agonizing, the deserved thrust through the bowels, but he would make it the heart. Not out of consideration, though. Gut wounds, tended by a life-magician of the Old Man's skill, might heal...

The evil laughter came from the doorway as he thrust, as he stared into Varthlokkur's wide, unfearing eyes. The wizard's face was filled with another emotion entirely. Sadness, perhaps?

It was a bad thrust, disturbed as it was by that laughter, but Mocker knew it would be fatal in the long run. Varthlokkur would take a little while dying, that was all-if the Old Man could be kept away.

Nepanthe screamed.

Mocker turned to see what new factor had to be considered.

An old man, surely the fabled Old Man of the Mountain, stood just within the door. He seemed stricken. Behind him stood someone else, clad all in black and cowled so deeply that his face remained invisible.

"Yo Hsi," Varthlokkur gasped. "You're a bit earlier than we expected."

The dark one jerked slightly, as if startled.

Mocker was startled. That name-like an ill wind, long ago, he had heard it come whispering down from the borderland mountains above Matayanga, wrapped in tales of horror and evil. It was the name of one of the Princes Thaumaturge, one of the two dread lords of Shinsan.

So this was why Varthlokkur had been unconcerned with his own approach. A small fish indeed was he beside this grim destroyer. Could Bragi and Haroun have possibly hired?... But no. Yo Hsi mastered half an empire. He would be no man's hireling. There must be a depth to recent events that he had never suspected. He glanced at Varthlokkur's complex magical construct. Was that elegant device fated to play a part in this drama?

"The curse of the Golmune pollutes even its bastard blood," said Yo Hsi. His laughter filled the room.

The Golmune had been the ruling family of llkazar.

"What?" Varthlokkur demanded. He was weakening.

Mocker examined faces quickly. Nepanthe's eyes still sought his own, pleadingly. Varthlokkur stared at Yo Hsi, obviously more distressed by the easterner's presence than by his own approaching death.

The Old Man stood still as stone, expression agonized. But his stillness wasn't the uncanny frozennness of the servants below. His eyes remained in motion. To him Yo Hsi was an enigma, an unfathomable black hole in the fabric of the situation. His would be the direction to strike. Mocker was but a man with a sword.

"Vilis slew his father, Valis, by poison, for the crown, as ever it had been with the Imperial succession. Vilis took a mistress. On her he fathered a son she called Ethrian, after the philosopher. A time came when Imperial political pressures made disavowal of the son necessary. The mistress had become a liability in other affairs. Conveniently, a witchcraft charge was tendered by an intimate of the King."

"No!" Varthlokkur gasped. And yet, from his expression, Mocker saw that he wasn't surprised. There was nothing sudden about the guilt in the wizard's face.

"The woman was burned. Her possessions reverted to the Crown. The son disappeared. Years later he reappeared, to waste llkazar, to destroy his father in the family tradition. I was pleased." Yo Hsi laughed that evil laughter.

"Later, there came another Ethrian, born of a serving woman but with the Imperial blood, who was spirited off in revenge by a castle fool, under my protection. In time the child became a wanderer, a thief, an actor."

Mocker's gaze locked with Varthlokkur's. Not possible, he thought. Yet, if the wizard had suspected even a little, some of his strange reluctances would be answered.

"Tonight the father again dies by the hand of the son."

"Why?" The Old Man spoke for the first time.

"The curse of Sebil el Selib. And even now the woman carries in her womb the son that will be the death of this one." Laughter.

Nepanthe whimpered, looked to her husband, nodded slightly. She might indeed. She thought that she had conceived that wedding night on the Candareen.

"Not that," snapped the Old Man, his normal testiness returning. "Why are you here? Why have you, for centuries, fed false divinations to my friend?"

"You know that, do you?" Yo Hsi didn't seem pleased.

"Yes. An answer, if you please. You've offered nothing but nonsense and laughter since appearing." He didn't believe this encounter to be part of the Director's plan. The scripts had never thrust him into such deadly peril.

"A game? An old contest. A war, a struggle." Yo Hsi gestured sweepingly. For a moment the Old Man was puzzled. Then he identified the wrongness. The Prince Thaumaturge, called the Demon Prince in his home domain, was missing a hand. "My brother and I have been using the West as a board on which to play for mastery of Shinsan," said Yo Hsi. "Warfareandthaumaturgicdispute have proven pointless on our home grounds. We're too evenly matched. Yet one of us must be master. An empire divided against itself can't grow. The way to shift the balance of power may exist somewhere out here, where there're so many unknowns and unpredictables. Here one of us migh: find the knowledge or weapon to seize the day. So here we do battle, each to grab first or to deny the other.

"Varthlokkur was once my agent, once my most important tool, for which I made him powerful. My Tervola trained him well. He began his service elegantly, by shattering the single power capable of keeping Nu Li Hsi and myself from using the West-the wizards of Ilkazar. And he demolished the Empire itself, a state with such iron control that nothing could be accomplished here while it endured. But he stopped with that. He ceased returning knowledge to me. Eventually, he hid himself here. I sent divinations meant to get him back in harness, but Nu Li Hsi interfered, subtly twisting them to his own ends. Varthlokkur continued to do nothing. In time 1 became angry. My Tervola have advised me to come west myself, to punish him for not fulfilling the contract he made with me. I have come, though, too late. Centuries too late. I see that Varthlokkur had forgotten that contract till just now."

"I cheated you," Varthlokkur gasped. "As you would've cheated me. I made that bargain knowing Nu Li Hsi would cleanse from my mind anything that didn't suit him. And now I've cheated you again," he declared, his words scarcely audible. "You destroyed my soul in Shinsan. Your machinations have robbed me of love, cursed me with the hatred of an unknown son, and killed me. But I've done the impossible. I've repaid my debt to Ilkazar. I've defied Yo Hsi, and won. Nu Li Hsi has won, and thus I fulfill one promise made in Shinsan, to the lesser of a pair of evils." He laughed weakly. "His Tervola taught me too, Yo Hsi."