to Dubaku and headed back out the window. He gripped the balcony, pulled himself over and disappeared from sight. I listened for a moment, heard a shout, and then others as he was spotted and the chase was on again. I shook my head in wonder. Twenty-three. Not for the first time I wondered where my father had found him, and where he was from. Training begins at five, he had said, training to be an assassin? Where did they train assassins from age five? And what did they begin to teach them at that age?
“This is rash,” Dubaku said.
“Yes, but I am going to do it anyway.”
“A knife won't kill him.”
“I know. It was a joke. For Sapphire. I have another idea for that. I plan to set him on fire. I figure he is dry and will burn pretty good.”
“He will be guarded.”
“I know. I'll assess it when I see him.”
“We are not idle, Sumto. Things are happening. Sapphire is not alone in addressing the numbers of the enemy.”
“What are you doing?”
“Raising the populous. The army is gone. There is only a small garrison here. It might be wiser to wait.”
I shook my head. “I won't wait. I know my own limits. If I obey him it will get to be a habit. I think that is what happens to all of them, regardless of how he makes them obey him the first time. I've been thinking about it. Pretending to be him. Working out what he thinks, how he thinks, what it would be like to be dead and yet alive, how he would 'feel' and what would amuse him. I think all the torture and trickery just amuses him and the secret is that he has a spell that reinforces obedience. He will order me to show him a spell today, not ask me. I know it.”
Dubaku was silent. “And if you obey once, will it be enough for him to own you?”
“I won't obey, I'll push power into an unknown spell form, knowing that whatever happens cannot yet be called a spell by any sane being. I won't cast a spell, I'll unleash chaos.”
After a moment he nodded. “Shankara.”
“What?”
A faint luminescence grew into the form of a tall woman who stood behind him and wrapped him in her arms, fading into nothing as she did so, and taking him with her.
After a moment I stirred back to life and went to the door. I waited to be sure he was ready and then opened it.
The guards became instantly alert. “What do you want?”
The door had not been locked once since I was put in the room. I hadn't found it odd at the time but why take the chance, I wondered? Part of a game? Or were they so sure that I could not get out? Over-confidence. They had been overconfident with Sapphire and that had cost them twenty-three men so far.
“What? Oh, food. I'm famished.”
“And some more beer, eh?” The other piped up.
“Yes. More beer. Good idea.”
“Shut the door. We'll see if it is possible.”
I nodded. “Right. Good.”
83
I realized that I was still holding the gifted silver ring in my hand and wondered what it did. Without another thought I slipped it on. Nothing happened.
Well, that was unlikely. Jocasta was no fool. I looked at my hands and saw it after just a second, a tattoo on the back of my left hand, near the wrist. I pulled back my sleeve to reveal a brawnier arm than I now possessed. The tattoo ran up my arm. It was an illusion. A ring that made me look like… who? A barbarian soldier almost certainly. I looked at the ring. There was no stone. The only way to make such an item was to sacrifice a stone in the making, putting it into the metal. The ring would never do anything else but cast this illusion on the wearer. The cost was high. It might well be useful. If I caused enough chaos and yet had to flee this might make the difference.
Taking off the ring, I slipped it in my pocket and took a turn around the room, pacing. How much time? Too much. I didn't want to think. The plan, such as it was, was laid. This afternoon I would be brought into the presence of Kukran Epthel. If there were too many with him, I would have to change my plan, if few enough I would act. He would command me to show him a spell, and with the sorcerers' loupe in his eye socket he would watch. I would need stone to do the casting. I would use the form Jocasta had shown me as a base, change it and cast randomly, and as strongly as the stone allowed. It would achieve something, if not something good enough then I would change it again and cast again. Anything could happen. But one way or another I would end this today. I couldn't stand it any more, and perhaps it was as simple as that. I had hit my limit and it was time to end it.
Stepping through the ward made me wince, but I had become accustomed to the pain. Fewer guards responded to the alarm than ever, and with less enthusiasm. They watched me. I watched them. It would have been simpler to put me in a room without windows. To lock the door. But that had not happened. Something about that bothered me and I worried at it until I saw that Kukran Epthel would not change the terms of the game once they were set. I remembered the nameless girl who had tried to catch me in her fantasy; the door had been unlocked then. The guards outside guarding me in that fantasy, not keeping me from escaping. The orders had been given to set the fantasy and they had not changed. No one had changed them. Kukran Epthel was guilty of rigid thinking. Perhaps, I thought, it is a price paid for his existence. An inability to change his mind, to issue new orders when the situation changed. And underlings tend to mimic the thinking of their master. Inertia, coupled with the tendency to forget that the routine itself is not the purpose.
Thoughtfully, I wondered back into the room. Could I use this to my advantage? What decisions had been made that he would not think to change? The room I was in, the unlocked door, what else did I know? I thought about the audience chamber, remembering details. Imagining myself there again, trying to recall every detail. Two guards on the door. Were there two guards on every door, no matter the circumstances? It didn't matter now, but yes, there were two guards at the door of the audience chamber. The undead that he kept with him or who were always there, waiting. Did he go anywhere, do anything, without strong motive? His body was dead, it had no needs to be fulfilled. Did he lack purpose? Was inertia part of his nature? Probably. Yes. That fit. It made sense, he needed no exercise, no food or drink. He need not move or act to fulfill the desires of his body as he had none. If that seeped into his thinking then he would be slow to react to anything new. His servants would be the same. All of a sudden it made sense that Sapphire had been able to roam freely, killing as he willed and disappearing and never being tracked down. What was it Sapphire had said? 'If I am not under their noses it's like I don't exist.' The barbarians had lost the ability to respond to change, the culture of inertia seeping into their thinking. They did not band and perform methodical searches in numbers sufficient to deal with the problem. They reacted sluggishly, a stirred nest, then returned to routine as soon as the immediate threat was gone. The new servants, the mages and healers, they were not so moribund in their thinking. Larner had put the ward at the balcony, embedded the stone in my skull, created his monstrous dogs to hunt me should I escape. Ferrian had thought to wonder how I had been found, and sought until he found an answer – the attuning of my stone and that of Jocasta. These were more dynamic minds, not yet steeped in the culture of obedience and inertia. If I was right, Larner would come to fetch me into the presence of the lich, who would still be in the audience room where I had encountered him before. My two doorkeepers would come with us. If I was right there would be two guards on the door outside. The undead would be there, but no one else. Their presence was enough to intimidate. Larner, two guards inside, two outside, and the undead. Plus whatever spirits Kukran Epthel could summon to his aid. And, of course, whatever he had learned from the battle mages in the meantime.
My short list of enemies suddenly seemed impossibly long. Four guards, eight undead, one battle mage and Kukran Epthel himself.
Set patterns, inertia, slow to react. To deal with that, do what? Sow the seeds of chaos? How did it advantage me to let them set the pace, to work within the rigid framework Kukran Epthel had set? How had
