“The whole body, sire? Not just the head?”
“That is your order, Captain.”
The Wolves began clearing away the weights. A delegation of White and Red Robe wizards approached the emperor cautiously. They had chosen a middle-aged White Robe named Winath to speak for them.
“Gracious Majesty,” Winath said. “Permit us to honor our late chief with a proper burial.”
“Oropash was a traitor,” was the cold reply. “Like his colleague, Helbin.”
Winath bowed. “It is true Helbin has disappeared from the city, Mighty Emperor, but poor Oropash had nothing to do with that. Oropash was no traitor.”
The Wolves ceased their labors, their eyes fixing on the wizard. Behind Winath, her colleagues froze. They too stared at Winath’s slight figure, but for a different reason. A glance at the Wolves would be taken as a challenge.
Ackal V replied with deliberate emphasis. “Under Oropash’s leadership, you failed, not once or twice, but three times to keep the bakali host from entering the heartland of the empire. Is that not so?”
The female White Robe inclined her iron-gray head. “It is, Great One.”
“Oropash was a weakling, a fool, and incompetent. That makes him a traitor, too.”
Silence descended in the plaza as Winath considered Ackal V’s words carefully.
“If Your Majesty judges so, it is so,” she finally replied, and it seemed that all present, save the Wolves and their liege, breathed a collective sigh of relief.
The emperor delayed dismissing the wizards until they had witnessed one final humiliation. A rope was tied around one of Oropash’s ankles, and two Wolves dragged him away. The knot of mages tried to show no reaction. Many failed.
Ackal turned his attention back to Winath. “You’re the traitor’s successor, are you not?” he said.
She nodded. She had been Oropash’s second, and until the White Robes convened and elected a new leader, she had command of the order.
“I want new and different spells,” said the emperor. “The bakali have reached the bend of the Dalti River, barely twenty leagues from here. They are not to cross it. Do whatever is needed to stop them.”
“Is that not a task for the Great Horde, Majesty?”
Winath’s boldness earned her one of Ackal V’s unnerving smiles.
“The army is being re-formed. You keep those lizards east of the river, or I’ll begin to question your loyalty, too.”
From the palace emerged a group of Wolves, manhandling some prisoners. The captives, eleven in all, had cloth sacks over their heads. Unable to see, their hands hound behind their backs, the prisoners stumbled awkwardly down the palace steps. The Wolves yanked them roughly to a halt at the bottom.
“Wait a moment longer,” Ackal said to Winath, his tone almost pleasant. “I have another lesson to give.”
Drawing his saber, he swept away from the closely clustered wizards. The emperor’s weapon was no flimsy ceremonial blade, but a standard cavalry saber, deeply curved and well oiled. Only the ornate golden hilt and egg- sized ruby in the pommel distinguished it from an ordinary sword.
“Down, you worthless dogs!” Ackal bellowed, and the Wolves kicked the prisoners’ legs out from under them. The hooded men fell hard to the ancient mosaic pavement. At the emperor’s command, the hoods were removed.
Shocked exclamations, hastily muffled, rippled across the imperial plaza. The men kneeling before the emperor were well-known warlords. Their long hair and beards had been crudely shorn.
“By the law of my illustrious predecessor, Ackal Dermount, I sentence you all to death,” the emperor said. “You abandoned your men and your honor on the field of battle. For that, your heads will dry on the city wall!”
In the center of the line of captives was Lord Relfas, face bruised, beardless jaw looking naked and pale in the torchlight. He tried to straighten his back, struggling against the harsh grips of the Wolves who held his shoulders.
“Majesty!” he cried. “The fault is mine! I commanded the army. Kill me, but spare the others! They fought well! They did not dishonor the empire!”
Ackal V sneered. “You lost. That’s dishonor enough.” Smiling, he added, “Still, since you accept the fault of failure, I shall give you this dispensation: you will be the one who dies last.”
The Wolves guffawed at their master’s clever joke. What he called a favor was of course the worst of punishments. Lord Relfas must watch his subordinates executed, one by one, before the mercy of death blotted out his horror for good.
Relfas’s face went ashen. Two Wolves yanked him to his feet and dragged him to one side.
No specially trained executioner was called. No broad headsman’s blade was used to cleanly behead the captives. The Wolves simply drew their swords and slashed the ten warlords to pieces. When they were done, Ackal V turned and beheaded Relfas with a single sidelong blow. The Wolves raised a cheer for his keen eye and steady hand.
Ackal V returned to the group of wizards. “Remember what I said. Impede the bakali-now.”
He wiped his blade with a hood that had once covered a captive’s head. Relfas’s blood ran down the back of the emperor’s hand.
Dismissed at last, Winath led her colleagues across the great plaza and through the line of torch-bearing guardsmen. As they entered the grove that surrounded the Tower of High Sorcery, one of the Red Robes would have spoken, but Winath’s upraised hand silenced her.
With the setting of the white moon, the great tower’s usual brilliant halo had dimmed and the lofty structure glowed only softly, like foxfire in the forest. Alabaster walls appeared seamless and translucent by starlight. Small minarets sprouted from its sides at regular intervals all along its height. Their crystal peaks gave off a faintly pinkish light.
Winath always allowed herself at least a brief moment to drink in the sight of the tower. It never failed to steady her. For her predecessor, the unfortunate Oropash, the tower had been a hiding place. He hated every moment he was outside its enclosing safety. Winath did not share that feeling. There was too much she wanted to accomplish, goals that could be attained only through the concerted efforts of herself and her colleagues. For her, then, the Tower of High Sorcery was the rational center of her being, an unchanging certainty amidst the maelstrom of the uncertain world.
Enclosing the tower on three sides was the wizards’ college. Each of its four floors was faced by a colonnade. Although the columned walkways were deserted just now, lights burned in several of the building’s many windows. Few were the nights that found no lights burning in the wizards’ college, and sleep had become even more rare since the invading bakali had pushed closer to the capital.
The wizards quickly traversed the white marble courtyard surrounding the tower. The instant they crossed the threshold of the tower’s only entrance, silence could be maintained no longer.
“Beast!” exclaimed a Red Robe. “He murdered Oropash!”
The deaths of the dishonored warlords meant little to her, but Oropash had been one of their own. Other Red Robes echoed her sentiments.
“Remember where you are!” Winath snapped. All knew she referred not to the sanctity of their surroundings, but to the prevalence of imperial spies. The emperor could have eyes and ears even in their ranks, and any number of spies might be hiding behind the alabaster columns of the two levels of galleries overhead.
“We should all have left with Helbin,” another Red Robe despaired.
“No!”
Winath stamped her sandaled foot. The movement made little noise in the vast, circular chamber, yet the tower quivered from foundation to pinnacle. Already the power that had been Oropash’s was beginning to flow within her.
“Helbin betrayed us all!” she said, her voice ringing off the chamber’s domed ceiling. “For three hundred years we slaved to establish this sanctuary in the heart of the empire. In my lifetime I have seen a living tower rise where nothing but a dream once stood. I will not endanger the gains we have made by running afoul of the emperor!”
“He’s a madman!”
This came from one of her own order, but Winath folded her arms and directed her words to the entire assembly. “Read your chronicles. Many cruel tyrants have worn the crown of Ackal Ergot. We have survived them,
