Valaran’s seal, an owl clutching a scroll in either claw, was genuine, but Tylocost, for one, was not impressed.
“He could be an imperial rat-catcher. Or he might have stolen the document,” the elf said, drawing a look of outrage from the Red Robe.
The remainder of the wizard’s books and papers yielded nothing of particular interest. He’d kept a log of his travels and had copious notes regarding magical processes, such as warding off scryers, confounding pursuers, and cloaking a location from sight-all perfectly reasonable since Helbin’s specialty was seeing far and not being seen. Then the searchers came upon a small brass-bound box just over two handspans long, one wide, and one deep. Its seamless sides betrayed no lid.
“Don’t touch that!” Helbin snapped at the warriors handling the box. He refused to say what it was, so Tol ordered his men to break it open.
The wizard tried to stand, but the soldiers behind him pressed him down again. “My lord, please!” he begged.
“I will have this open, Helbin,” Tol said flatly, lifting Number Six.
Brass and wood, however cunningly joined, could not withstand a stroke of steel, and Helbin gave in rather than see the box broken. “As you wish, my lord, but I should like to reveal its contents only to you!”
Though Kiya protested, Tol agreed. He and the wizard left the others by the campfire. Kiya tried to follow, but Tol ordered her to remain.
Wizard and warrior went to the center of the nomad camp. Shielded by piles of stolen goods higher than their own heads, they stopped.
As Helbin complained about his treatment and the general lack of respect shown to him, Tol examined the box. It was weighty for its size. There was no obvious clasp or latch. If the box was sealed by magical means, the millstone Tol wore in a concealed pocket should have dispersed the spell by now. He shook it hard, but heard nothing rattle inside.
“My lord, I beg you,” Helbin urged. “Do not open this box. I give you my word it is not dangerous to you. But opening it-” The wizard shuddered. “The effect could be incalculable!”
Sweat had beaded Helbin’s sunburned brow and trickled into his close-cropped beard. Tol was beginning to wonder about the possible danger. Still, he had to know what was in this box.
With Tol’s wary gaze upon him, and muttering all the while about dire consequences, Helbin opened the box. On the middle finger of his left hand he wore a large amethyst ring. He tapped the round purple jewel on the box four times. One edge of the brass rim popped up.
Tol waved him back and lifted the hinged door. The box was lined with soft black felt. Nestled inside was a dully gleaming object, a statuette wrought in gray lead.
The small figurine hardly seemed worth all the trouble. Tol noticed tiny screw clamps attached to its head. His puzzlement showed, and Helbin, averting his eyes from the figurine, whispered, “Look at its features.”
Tol bent closer, then straightened abruptly, nearly dropping the statue in shock.
“Nazramin!”
Helbin nodded miserably. “The image you hold was made by the late sorcerer Mandes. These”-he flicked a finger toward the screw clamps-“are intended to destroy the emperor’s mind, slowly and painfully.”
Tol was far less shocked than Helbin by the statue and its purpose. It surprised him not at all to discover that the devious, traitorous Mandes had been hexing his own patron. Then Helbin’s last words suddenly sparked a revelation.
“This is how Nazramin destroyed his brother!” he exclaimed.
Image magic was the lowest, vilest form of sorcery, a practice of scrubby shamans or mercenary sorcerers. It shamed a proud wizard like Helbin to possess such a monstrous object.
Seeing it again loosed the floodgates of Helbin’s memory, and the story of how it had come to him poured out.
After Mandes’s death, one of the wizard’s servants had delivered certain scrolls and the figurine to Empress Valaran. The scrolls described how Prince Nazramin had employed Mandes to ruin the mind and body of his brother, Ackal IV, through black magic. The prince did not know, of course, that Mandes had made a second image, of Nazramin himself. The new emperor’s natural cruelty had been magnified tenfold by Mandes’s sorcery.
Tol stared at the figurine. The cunningly crafted metal face bore the perfect impression of the emperor’s outthrust chin, high forehead, arrogant eyes, and his perpetual sneer beneath an upswept mustache.
Helbin begged Tol to put the statuette back in its box. Instead, Tol asked, “If I damaged this thing, would the same hurt be inflicted on Ackal V?”
“Not literally. With sympathetic magic, parallel harm occurs,” Helbin said. The two screw clamps, he explained, were simply a representation of the power summoned to damage the emperor’s mind.
Why had Mandes sent this awful object to Valaran after his death? Tol wondered. Not for atonement. The rogue wizard had never felt a moment’s remorse in his life. No, Tol realized this was Mandes’s final act of malice. Valaran, loathing Ackal V herself and inviolate within the imperial precinct, was the perfect choice to inherit the figurine and fulfill Mandes’s plan for revenge.
He asked Helbin why Valaran had sent the statuette out of the city.
“Her Majesty enlisted me in her plan to save the empire,” Helbin said slowly. “I was glad to oblige. The bakali were pouring across the border. What everyone else saw as a disaster, Empress Valaran saw as the possible salvation of Ergoth. She ordered me to travel the countryside, using my skills to obscure the movements of the bakali host from my colleagues in the Tower of High Sorcery. Without advance knowledge of the enemy’s movements, the incompetent generals of the Great Horde stood no chance of defeating the invaders.”
The explanation took Tol’s breath away. “That’s treason!”
Helbin stiffened. “Strong medicine for an ailing patient, my lord. The emperor’s corruption and brutality will surely destroy the empire. Empress Valaran lacks powerful allies at court. She reasoned, quite sensibly, that a major military defeat would stir the provincial warlords to rise up against the emperor, inspiring the cowed warlords in Daltigoth to follow suit.”
Tol swore under his breath. Scheming wench! In her grand design, who did Valaran see leading the landed hordes to the rescue? That simple, dutiful soldier, Tol of Juramona, of course! He couldn’t decide whether her grandiose machinations filled him with pride, or fear.
“You still haven’t answered the question-why send the image out of the city with you? Why not use it to destroy Ackal V, as the Mist-Maker used one to kill the emperor’s brother?”
Helbin said distastefully, “My lord, Empress Valaran is a woman of high purpose and great courage. She would not stain her soul by stooping to Mandes’s methods. She reasoned that if conditions in the palace deteriorated too rapidly, her life, and that of her son, Crown Prince Dalar, would be in danger. Her Majesty placed the statue in my keeping to ensure it remained hidden.”
That was face-saving nonsense. Ridding herself of the figure removed the temptation to kill her husband outright. His death, at this time, would be inopportune. Valaran was of noble blood, but not royal, and she would have no support to rule herself. Claimants to the imperial throne would spring up like toadstools after a summer rain. The result would be chaos on an unimaginably bloody scale.
That’s where Tol came in. Returned to Daltigoth, he and his army could maintain order while the warlords deposed or executed the crazed Ackal V. The crown prince could be enthroned, with Valaran overtly or covertly the power behind the throne, backed by Tol’s hordes. It was a brilliant plan, devious and twisted, worthy of a lifelong resident of the imperial palace.
Helbin was still talking, but Tol had stopped listening. He grasped the clamp encircling the statuette’s temples, and the wizard yelped. Helbin might loathe the statuette and all it stood for, but it had been placed in his charge by the empress herself.
Ignoring his protestations, Tol removed the two clamps. Deep dents remained on both of the statuette’s temples and on its forehead.
“This is not how Ergoth will be saved,” Tol said. He waved Number Six, torchlight flashing off its polished steel blade.
He hunted up a piece of cloth from a nearby pile of loot, wrapped it around the evil image, and tied the whole thing to his back, where his mantle concealed it. After filling the small brass-bound box with coins and jewels from a nearby pile of treasure, he led a sorely complaining Helbin back to the campfire.
