should have recruited some bad ones, then.»
«Maybe I should have,» Abivard agreed. «I'll tell you what I've thought of doing: I've thought of making every mage in this crew shorter by a head and showing the heads to the next lot I recruit. That might get their attention and make them work fast.» He regretfully spread his hands. «However tempting that is, though, gathering up a new lot would take too long. For better or worse, I'm stuck with these six.»
He supposed it was poetic justice, then, that only a little while after he had called the six mages from the land of the Thousand Cities every name he could think of, they sent him a servant who said, «Lord, the wizards say to tell you they are ready to begin the conjuration. Will you watch?»
Abivard shook his head. «What they do wouldn't mean anything to me. Besides, I don't care how the magic works. I care only that it works. I'll go up on the city wall and look out over the fields to the canals. What I see there will tell the tale one way or the other.»
«I shall take your words to the mages, lord, so they will know they may begin without you,» the messenger said.
«Yes. Go.» Abivard made little impatient brushing motions with his hands, sending the young man on his way. When the fellow had gone, Abivard walked through Nashvar's twisting, crowded streets to the wall. A couple of garrison soldiers stood at the base to keep just anyone from ascending it. Recognizing Abivard, they lowered their spears and stepped aside, bowing as they did so.
He had not climbed more than a third of the mud-brick stairs when he felt the world begin to change around him. It reminded him of the thrum in the ground just before an earthquake, when you could tell it was coming but the world hadn't yet started dancing under your feet.
He climbed faster. He didn't want to miss whatever was about to happen. The feeling of pressure grew until his head felt ready to burst. He waited for others to exclaim over it, but no one did. Up on the wall sentries tramped along, unconcerned. Down on the ground behind him merchants and customers told one another lies that had been passed down from father to son and from mother to daughter for generations uncounted.
Why was he, alone among mankind, privileged to feel the magic build to a peak of power? Maybe, he thought, because he had been the one who had set the sorcery in motion and so had some special affinity for it even if he was no wizard. And maybe, too, he was imagining all this, and nobody else felt it because it wasn't really there.
He couldn't make himself believe that. He looked out over the broad, flat floodplain. It seemed no different from the way it had the last time he'd seen it: fields and date palms and peasants in loincloths down in a perpetual stoop, weeding or manuring or gathering or trying to catch little fish in streams or canals.
Canals… Abivard looked out at the long straight channels that endless labor had created and more endless labor now maintained. Some of the fishermen, tiny as ants in the distance, suddenly sprang to their feet. One or two of them, for no apparent reason, looked back toward Abivard up on the city wall of Nashvar. He wondered if they had some tiny share of magical ability, enough at any rate to sense the rising power of the spell.
Would it never stop rising? Abivard thought he would have to start pounding his temples with his fists to let out the pressure inside. And then, all at once, almost like an orgasm, came release. He staggered and nearly fell, feeling as if he'd suddenly been emptied.
And all across the floodplain, as far as he could see, the banks of canals were opening up, spilling water over the land in a broad sheet that sparkled silver as the sunlight glinted off it. Thin in the distance came the cries of fishers and farmers caught unaware by the flood. Some fled. Some splashed in the water. Abivard hoped they could swim.
He wondered how widely through the land of the Thousand Cities canal banks were crumbling and water was pouring out over the land. For all he knew for certain, the flood might have been limited to the narrow area he could see with his own eyes.
But he didn't believe it The flood felt bigger than that. Whatever he'd felt inside himself, whatever had made him feel he was about to explode like a sealed pot in a fire, was too big to be merely a local marvel. He had no way to prove that—not yet—but he would have sworn by the God it was so.
People began running out of Nashvar toward the breached canals. Some carried mattocks, others hoes, others spades. Wherever they could reach a magically broken bank, they started to repair it with no more magic than that engendered by diligent work.
Abivard scowled when he saw that. It made perfect sense—the peasants didn't want to see their crops drowned and all the labor they'd put into them lost—but it took him by surprise all the same. He'd been so intent on covering the floodplain with water, he hadn't stopped to think what the people would do when that happened. He'd realized that they wouldn't be delighted; that they'd immediately try to set things right hadn't occurred to him.
He'd pictured the land between the Tutub and the Tib underwater, with only the Thousand Cities sticking up out of it on their artificial hillocks like islands from the sea. With the certainty that told him the flood stretched farther than his body's eyes could reach, he now saw in his mind's eye men—aye, and probably women, too— pouring out of the cities all across the floodplain to repair what the great conjuration had wrought.
«But don't they want to be rid of the Videssians?» Abivard said out loud, as if someone had challenged him on that very point.
The folk who lived—or had lived—in cities Maniakes and his army had sacked undoubtedly hoped every Videssian ever bom would vanish into the Void. But the Videssians had sacked but a handful of the Thousand Cities. In all the other towns, they were no more than a hypothetical danger. Flood was real and immediate—and familiar. The peasants wouldn't know, or care, what had caused it They would know what to do about it.
That worked against Makuran and for Videssos. The land between the Tutub and the Tib would, Abivard realized, come back to normal faster than he had expected. And, during the time when it wasn't normal, he would have as much trouble moving as Maniakes did. Maybe, though, Turan could strike a blow at some of the Videssians if they'd grown careless and split their forces. Less happy than he'd thought he'd be, Abivard descended from the wall and walked back toward the city governor's residence. There he found Utpanisht, who looked all but dead from exhaustion, and Glathpilesh, who was methodically working his way through a tray of roasted songbirds stuffed with dates. Fragile bones crunched between his teeth as he chewed.
Swallowing, he grudged Abivard a curt nod. «It is accomplished,» he said, and reached for another songbird. More tiny bones crunched.
«So it is, for which I thank you,» Abivard answered with a bow. He could not resist adding, «And done well, in spite of its not being done as you first had in mind.»
That got him a glare; he would have been disappointed if it hadn't Utpanisht held up a bony, trembling hand. «Speak not against Glathpilesh, lord,» he said in a voice like wind whispering through dry, dry straw. «He served Makuran nobly this day.»
«So he did,» Abivard admitted. «So did all of you. Sharbaraz King of Kings owes you a debt of gratitude.»
Glathpilesh spit out a bone that might have choked him had he swallowed it. «What he owes us and what we'll get from him are liable to be two different things,» he said. His shrug made his flabby jowls wobble. «Such is life: what you get is always less than you deserve.»
Such a breathtakingly sardonic view of life would have annoyed Abivard most of the time. Now he said only, «Regardless of what Sharbaraz does, I shall reward all six of you as you deserve.»
«You are generous, lord,» Utpanisht said in that dry, quavering voice.
«Just deserts, eh?' Glathpilesh said with his mouth full. He studied Abivard with eyes that, while not very friendly, were disconcertingly keen. «And will Sharbaraz King of Kings, may his days be long and his realm increase—» He made a mockery of the honorific formula.'—reward you as you deserve?»
Abivard felt his face heat. «That is as the King of Kings wishes. I have no say in the matter.»
«Evidently not,» Glathpilesh said scornfully.
«I am sorry,» Abivard told him, «but your wit is too pointed for me today. I'd better go and find the best way to take advantage of what your flood has done to the Videssians. If we had a great fleet of light boats… but I might as well wish for the moon while I'm at it.»
«Use well the chance you have,» Utpanisht told him, almost as if prophesying. «Its like may be long in coming.»
«That I know,» Abivard said. «I did not do all I could with our journey by canal. The God will think less of me if I let this chance slip, too. But—» He grimaced. «—it will not be so easy as I thought when I asked you to flood
