So Johan's porters, bodyguards, seer, lesser mage, barbarian bearers and others camped in the moldy cellar of a decrepit tower without windows or proper chimney. Only the huntsman and two porters had permission to leave the castle grounds to hunt food, and the cook and helper to fetch firewood. Thus the entourage kept a house cramped and cold and miserable. In nine days the Tirrans had grown haggard and haunted. Not that Johan cared about their comfort, but sick troops and porters would hinder his efforts to leave when he wished.
'I fear the barbarians might bolt by night, Your Grace,' said the Tirran captain. 'If they desert, you'd be stranded.'
'Ah.' That interested the emperor.
As night fell, the two stood before the empty doorway of the crumbling tower. Johan had found almost two dozen volumes intact, and he studied daily. Arcane lore swirled in his mind like dust devils. He'd read so many spells and remedies and potions and histories that the real world was becoming a blur. Yet so much seemed familiar. Finding information on the cat warriors had thrilled him at first, but the more he read, the less he seemed to know. How could that be? Such confusion felt queer.
Just as odd as dining with Lady Shauku last evening. A gracious host, the liege lord invited him to sup each night. The emperor was not much for social graces, preferring the company of his own mind, yet he conceded to keep his privileges in Shauku's fabulous library. Every night the two wizards sat under the stars in the ruin of the great hall and talked of magical lore, though they ate barely enough to keep a pigeon alive. Johan found the conversations bland and unhelpful, but he suffered in silence. Even last night, when both had sat in an ugly slanting rain tinged with sleet, both pretending the weather was delightful. Worrisome, Johan reflected. He was not mad…
'Milord?'
Frustrated and disturbed, Johan forced himself to attend his captain's wishes. 'Summon the bearers.'
Rounding the tower, the captain drove the barbarians before Johan with blows and curses. The sullen hulks stood slack-armed and loose-jawed. Short tusks glowed yellow in fading light. Dumbly they awaited orders.
Johan frowned. Like all his minions, the barbarians were dressed in the imperial uniform, a linen tunic painted with the four-pointed star that represented Johan's skull. Yet each northman had added new designs to the sigils, so one bore a yellow glyph, one a white, one red, and one green.
'Who ordered those devices painted?' demanded the tyrant.
'Milord?' The Tirran captain squinted at the uniforms. 'Uh, you did, milord.'
'Of course I did,' snapped Johan, 'but I recollect no additional devices be painted atop my star. They are not provosts nor zephyr captains nor any other elite force.'
'Of course not, milord.' Stupefied, the captain fell back on simple agreement.
Johan frowned deeper. Why this insolence? He shook his horned head, promising to address it later. Bad enough Johan himself was painted with Shauku's weird glyphs in a chain around his shoulders.
Raising a lank hand, Johan waved the barbarians to the tumbledown gates of Shauku's castle. Both gatehouses were mere heaps of rocks rife with weeds and briars. Bidding the men stop, Johan reached out with deceptive gentleness and touched each on a tusk, fuddling the brutes mightily. Touching his own teeth, Johan duckwalked while his charmed hand sketched a line in the grass and weeds where once had stood iron-barred gates.
Rising, Johan gestured to the outside world. 'Leave. If you dare.'
The four men grunted, flummoxed, but too looked at freedom hungrily. Finally, snorting through thick nostrils, one stepped forward.
And, crossing the invisible line, immediately collapsed.
Howling, shrieking, the barbarian thrashed amid briars in unspeakable agony. His mates stared goggle-eyed as the interloper curled in a ball from pain. The victim seemed distorted. His fingers knotted and splayed, his arms dislocated, his legs contorted as if he suffered rickets and crippling arthritis. Sobbing, begging for mercy, the northman tossed like a child in nightmare. Johan ordered the remaining three to grab their companion. As they did, their fingers twisted and knotted, so they howled until they'd pulled their comrade over the invisible line, where all quieted.
Touching a tooth, Johan explained, 'One's teeth are the only visible part of one's skeleton. I touched your tusks, each one, and laid a curse. Step over the line, and every bone in your body will curve and flex until it snaps. You'll not leave the castle grounds until I allow it. Do you understand? Good.'
Leaving them to sweat and squirm, Johan turned to his captain. Again he frowned. Standing alongside the officer was a greyhound. Holding onto the dog's collar sat a white monkey with luminous golden eyes.
'Whose pets?' demanded the master. 'Do they belong to the legionnaires? Or Lady Shauku?'
'Pets, milord?'
'Yes!' snarled Johan. 'Are you deaf as well as blind? This dog-'
The mage blinked. Dog and monkey were gone.
Johan watched the captain's face swell like an overripe melon. The man's eyes bulged. Red veins throbbed in his forehead. Abruptly, both eyes popped from their sockets like corks from a bottle. The ghastly orbs hung by their nerves down the man's cheeks, yet the captain seemed oblivious.
'Captain…' For the first time in ages, Johan felt a faint stirring of terror. 'Captain, your eyes…'
'Eyes, milord?' The man's dangling eyeballs bounced as the man's lips moved. Still swelling, the orbs exploded into gobs of white-red goo. Yet the captain never flinched. 'Wh-what about them, Your Grace?'
Without answering, Johan reached with a cold hand. He touched warm cheeks dappled by sweat, not ichor. Two healthy blue eyes stared back. Johan glanced at the bearers. The colored glyphs painted on their breasts had disappeared.
Sipping air through his regal eagle's nose, Johan pondered. He remembered the sigils now. He'd seen them in a book. Too, he remembered a domination spell illustrated with a saluki, a greyhound. And a potency spell sporting a white monkey. And a spell to blind a foe at a distance.
Why hallucinations?
Then, a jarring thought: perhaps he was mad.
Gingerly Johan touched the glyphs painted on his lizard-skin robe. Rather than the paint flaking off, it had etched the purple hide stark as a cattle brand. A badge of servitude, a yoke. Affecting his mind, altering his very thoughts, inducing bizarre daymares.
Shauku's doing. As tyrant, Johan had enthralled enough servants to see the pattern. Now was too late to prevent it. Fear knotted his stomach. Would he only be enslaved or be reduced to a drooling moron, the castle fool, the village idiot?
Time, Johan thought, to learn more about his mysterious host, and gain a hold upon her.
Chapter 16
Come late evening, in the privacy of the ravaged library, Johan uttered a spell to render himself invisible.
More than invisible, actually-intangible. He uttered another spell while swiping his hands down his body to mask his smell, the sound of his breathing, the rustling of robes, even any footprints he might make. Padding down the stairs and entering the passage to the great hall, Johan knew he'd succeeded when the Akron Legionnaire didn't even stir.
Behind Lady Shauku's open-air great hall, Johan discovered the kitchen roof intact, in fact cory with a low roof and working fireplace, though the walls were stained and a window overgrown by vines. Two yellow-skinned boys in yellow tunics without emblems, no doubt cadets, polished boots by the fire. The walls were hung with soldierly gear, and off the kitchen, in what had been a pantry or larder, Johan saw bunks and heard snores.
Passing through the kitchen, the emperor descended a flight of circular stairs that must sink to the wine cellar. That, Johan reasoned, was the only place Lady Shauku could live. Down, around, and down he sank in absolute silence. Everywhere were signs of rot: mildew, water stains, crumbled mortar, and dust. A putrid smell of rotted flesh and offal assailed Johan's nostrils, though he was rarely fussy. How could Lady Shauku endure the odor?
At the bottom of the stairs, he found two stone-lined rooms. One room was black and reeked of an ancient
