mother's bruises. Ikavi said little, only that the mage-king himself had ordered that he stay at the palace from now on. His family would not be punished. His mother hugged him briefly, but let him go. Everyone else in his family was too stunned to react.
Ikavi went away. In the evenings he could be seen standing in the high windows of the palace's lone tower, looking down at the countless poor dwellings beyond the city walls. He had been saved by the mage-king of Doegan, Aetheric III, the unseen master of Doegan's great bloodforge- but saved for what? No one knew at first. The haughty Ffolk of the palace hated the child's presence, especially as he'd slain a Ffolk soldier, but they dared not challenge the mage-king's decree.
After his arrival at the palace, Ikavi was regularly brought into the mage-king's meeting halls. It soon became clear that he was being trained for some purpose. The Ffolk soon feared little Ikavi almost as much as they feared their mage-king, for the boy's telepathic ability was combined with a great knowledge of the kingdom and its people, and many secrets beyond. Military officers and priests were ordered to teach him all they knew. Ikavi was given political and military powers, which were gradually increased and sharpened.
In time, Ikavi Garkim was acknowledged to be the mage-king's personal agent in Doegan. He was loyal and patriotic, educated and well-spoken, determined and ruthless. At last the mage-king sent his voice to the Chamber of Councilors and announced that Lord Ikavi Garkim was one of them. Doegan, said the mage-king, was infested with unseen forces that would bring it low unless they were stopped. Only Lord Garkim-a small, brown, flat-nosed outsider in a sea of white, sharp-nosed faces-could detect those unseen forces, and he had been given almost unlimited authority to root out such evil wherever he found it.
The other lords took to Ikavi as they would to a serpent in their beds, but they, too, knew a bit about the unseen forces arrayed against Doegan, and they felt their lives were better with the serpent at their sides than not. Left with no other choice, they smiled in his presence.
Ikavi Garkim had been nobody and was now the mage-king's right hand. But whether he was better off than before was a question not even Ikavi could answer.
Lord Ikavi Garkim, Councilor of Internal Investigations, returned to his old neighborhood an hour before dawn, twenty-six years after he had left. Twenty hand-picked soldiers were at his back and a hacking machete was in his right hand. No one noticed him or his soldiers as they walked down the deserted street in the half-light. They were invisible, covered by magic so that even a wizard would be hard pressed to find them, their boots wrapped in cloth to muffle their steps. The sky glowed pink in the east, the sun still low behind the distant mountains. The wind at their backs was cool, a breeze blowing from the shores of the Great Sea. A sparrow chirped from a rooftop.
Lord Garkim recognized the doorway where he had once sat and carved wooden toys at his father's side. He had steeled himself for this moment, but it still hurt. His fingers tightened on the thick leather grip of his machete.
Prepare yourselves, he ordered, sending his thoughts behind him to his soldiers. He sensed their excitement and fear. He took a breath, unaware that he was walking faster, then leaned forward into a dead run for the open doorway. Now! he signaled.
He went through the doorway with his left arm up, covering his face. The edge of the doorway suddenly blazed with red glyphs as he went through. Trap A roar of flame burned his skin from all sides. The pain, even muffled by his protective magic, was terrific. Instinctively he shut his eyes, saving them from being scorched along with his clothing and hair. He ran into someone and had the presence of mind to shove hard with his left hand, then hack down with his right. The razor-sharp machete slashed through flesh and bone. Stumbling over a carpet, Garkim and his screaming victim fell to the floor.
Garkim shoved himself up, keeping his eyes shut to boost his awareness of the thoughts around him. He could hardly have seen anything in the unlit house anyway. He hacked a second time at the struggling figure beneath him, then sensed more people around him and lashed out at the closest one. They were ragged figures who moments before had been eating their morning meal. Garkim sensed their alarm, read their sudden fears, knew their plans to escape.
And smelled their meal. His nose was filled with the stomach-churning odor. He nearly vomited then, but redoubled his wild attacks and fought down his nausea. Blows landed on his arms, whether from fists or clubs he couldn't tell. He got up to strike at a man trying to get behind him. Someone else, a woman, grabbed one of his legs and clumsily tried to force him down. The air stank of fresh blood and burnt meat. Garkim gripped his machete with both hands and fought like a crazed man, the screams and curses of those whom he wounded ringing through the cramped room.
As Garkim killed the ragged people, he read their minds. Accursed names and unspeakable deeds blew by him in a typhoon wind. This one had cut the throat of a girl who knew his secret. That one, who spied on soldiers, was going to run to a house across the street where he would hide in a cellar. The woman biting into his left thigh had sacrificed her baby to join this group. Garkim knocked her away, then killed her with a blow to the head.
No one was left standing near him. He opened his eyes. The last ragged one alive was running for the doorway, but suddenly stopped and ran back toward him. The man must have seen what had happened to the others who had fled into the street. Garkim read his mind. It was the man Garkim wanted most.
Garkim threw his machete hard at the man's legs. The man cried out and stumbled when the blade hit. He crashed into a low table and fell, knocking several baskets down over him. Garkim was on him in an instant. His fingers caught the man's filthy hair and pulled his head back as far as it would go without breaking his neck.
'Your master!' Garkim shouted in Maran, one knee planted in the man's back. 'Name your master!'
But there was no master in the man's thoughts. He had never seen his master, the high priest of the Fallen Temple. His dreams had told him what to do, only his dreams. The injured man's thoughts spilled out in a flood. Garkim read flickering images, listened to scattered words, and found nothing more of interest. For three decades he had studied the worst secrets imaginable and had seen horrors to fill ten lifetimes. The horrors present in this mind were no different.
Garkim picked up his machete and, with one movement, cut his prisoner's throat.
The victim's struggles quickly ceased. Garkim let go of the man's head and sat back on the floor, his right hand splashed with dripping warmth. All his energy had left him. His breath came in gasps. He tried to stand up, but nausea got to him and he fell, vomiting. His head was pounding. A sergeant helped him outside. Garkim was sick and sat, his head buried in his arms. He did not see the blanket-draped things from the one-room house that the rest of his soldiers dragged out into the street. The troops laid the blood-soaked bundles before the astonished eyes of the neighborhood tarok, who hung back from the stony-faced soldiers and what they brought into the morning light. Garkim merely sat in the street beside the wall of his childhood home, trembling as from a fever.
'My lord,' said the sergeant later. 'All is ready.'
Garkim coughed, then slowly got to his feet. It was already dawn. His soldiers had finished cleaning out the house. A large pile of blanket-covered debris and a row of limp, ragged bodies occupied the center of the street.
Lord Garkim looked down at his uniform. He was as filthy and bloody as the bodies in the street. It did not matter. Nothing like that mattered to him most days now.
He nodded to the sergeant, who stepped back and faced the frightened crowd. 'Citizens of the Imperial Reaches of Doegan!' the sergeant shouted in Maran. 'Listen to the words of Lord Garkim!' He said 'DOH kun' as some of the Mar did, instead of 'DOH eh gen' with a hard g, as did the Ffolk. He then turned and nodded to Garkim, who was ready.
'These people you see dead before you were your neighbors!' Garkim cried in Maran, both arms raised the way Mar tribal elders did at clan meetings. 'Look at them! Look at their faces! They lived among you, spoke with you, shared food with you! Now look at them! You ask yourself, why did we do this? Why did we kill them?'
He swiftly strode over to one of the blankets covering things pulled from the one-room house. He seized a corner and whipped the blanket back. He knew what lay beneath it. 'See this! Look at what they ate this morning, as they prayed to the monsters that lead their Fallen Temple!'
Women and children looked down and shrieked; some fainted or ran. Grown men choked and drew back, swallowing. Hundreds of dark eyes rimmed with white stared down at the half-eaten meal that lay in the dust of the street. The soldiers glanced at it, then turned away with grim faces. They already knew who it had been.
Garkim flipped the blanket back down. Hundreds of wide eyes looked up at him. 'You know me!' he shouted, his voice carrying easily over the crowd. 'You remember that I was a boy here! I am one of you! I tell you that this'-his hand swept down to the blanket and the thing it covered on the street-'this is the work of evil, the work of
