and glanced at the admiral, waiting.
'It was startling, to say the least,' said the old admiral, quickly covering for Vorr. 'I saw a small green world below me, and there was a voice in my head that said the world was called Torus. The world was round but had a hole through it. It was so clear when I saw it.'
'Sufficient proof now you have?' inquired the lich, edging closer to the table where the disk and chain lay. 'Now my servants you will become, my cloak to rightfully rescue from the touch of a groundling human?'
Vorr felt something inside him snap. 'We're not servants to any being but our own kind, Skarkesh,' he said, his jaw tightening. 'You'd best drop that word from your vocabulary before it gets some of your thin, little bones broken.'
'Brave the gray giant's tongue is,' retorted the yellow-eyed lich, stepping back and raising a hand toward him. 'Will so brave the tongue be if in flames it is wrapped?'
Vorr's hand went for the hilt of his sword.
'Stop it!' bellowed the scro admiral. He slammed a fist onto a wooden tabletop. 'By the Holy Tomb of Dukagsh, you will both cease this damned bickering! If we are to work together, then we are
The admiral pointed a withered hand at the lich. 'Skarkesh, you threaten us once more, and not even a wishing ring will save you from us. I won't tolerate that kind of crap from anyone, especially not a dead wizard. If you want slaves, you can get them dirt cheap at any marketplace, and you can treat them however you want. But if you want a wildspace navy to back you up, you're going to pay through your eye sockets for it, and you're going to cut out this krajen dung about us being your servants. If we decide to help you-and I mean if we help you-you're not going to become our little brass god. If you don't like it, you can load your big rock-diggers out there back on your ship and get your bone-white ass off our planet. Do you understand me?'
General Vorr waited, watching the lich. His hand still hovered over his sword hilt. The next time he pulled it out, he'd use it, the admiral be damned.
The lich made no immediate reply, but the yellow-green light in its skull burned furiously. It lowered its hand quickly, reaching some decision. 'Money and gems you may have,' it said, its voice devoid of emotion. 'Magic you may have. Slaves you may have. The cloak, not. For the cloak much I have suffered, too much to see in other hands it held. To me the cloak must go. Agree you must.'
The old scro tilted his chin up. 'We'd have no use for a gods-damned cloak. It's yours, but we'll have to work out the basics of what you're going to pay us. Trust me that it will be a king's sum, but if we accept your mission, we'll make it worth the cost.'
'Then agreement we have?' asked the lich, appearing to have no trouble with those terms. 'You my serv-my helpers on this quest will be? Soon we must leave if so, on to the Rock of Bral.'
'General Vorr and I need to talk first,' the admiral said, his anger appearing to dissipate. 'But we need to talk alone. Will you excuse us?'
The lich was taken off guard, but it recovered quickly. It reached down and snatched up the bronze disk and chain, then sidestepped to the door. With a last look at the two, it pushed the door open and stepped outside.
With a nod from the admiral, General Vorr reached over and shut the door lightly, allowing them to hear any noises in the other room. The general trusted his ogres to raise a shout and attack if the lich made any hostile move. They wouldn't be able to do much to stop it, but once Vorr came out, the fight would be over. The ogres would have to handle the umber hulks on their own, but Vorr had faith in them.
Halker leaned against a table and massaged his pale, watery eyes with a thumb and forefinger. 'Paranoid bastard, isn't he?' he remarked.
Vorr said nothing, still feeling the raw heat of his anger, but he nodded.
'I think our undead friend is insane,' said the scro, looking up at the general, 'but I also think he's telling the truth. I can't describe what happened when I touched that medallion. The vision I had was so real that…' He raised his hands helplessly. 'The damned thing convinced me. Maybe he enchanted the medallion to do that, just to fool us, but I don't think so. He has nothing to gain. I think he needs us.'
'I can believe he needs us to get the cloak that will let him control this
'Mmm-hmm,' mumbled the admiral. He rubbed his wrinkled chin with thin fingers. 'Certainly. Unless…' He left the thought unfinished.
The two commanders looked at each other in silence.
'I don't believe it would be the first time for you, would it?' said the admiral at last.
'I'd love the chance,' said the general, 'but I couldn't do a thing with the cloak. You know that.'
'I'll need someone like that,' said the admiral. 'Someone I could trust to handle things. If a spell-casting lich can use the cloak, then perhaps a spell-casting scro admiral can, too.' He raised both his hands, fingers apart. He didn't smile. 'We'll need all the information we can get on this
Vorr's interest was rising by the second. He was starting to imagine leading his marines into action again. It would be good to fight after so long a peace. 'We'd still have to follow his lead for a while,' he said.
'That's another thing,' said Halker. 'He claims he can show us the way to the cloak, though I'm damned if I know how he could. Does he have a crystal ball, a seeing pool, a spell, or a helpful godling? I want to know
'One more thing. Skarkesh wants us to fly to the Rock of Bral, which, the last time I heard, has its own little navy. We could crush it, but we'd be wasting our strength on humans, not the Imperial Fleet. I'd like to avoid that unless absolutely necessary, no matter what the lich wants. Maybe a marine raid, in and out, something like that. You'd know what to do. Then we'd have the cloak.'
Vorr nodded again, looking at the door as if he were looking through it. His face was set in stone, broad teeth showing between his drawn lips.
'Later,' said Halker. 'First, the cloak. Then…' He tilted his head toward the door.
Vorr considered that and smiled, showing all of his teeth. It was the first time the admiral had seen him smile since the landings on Spiral, when a zwarth had attacked the general's command post. 'Don't want to forget the elves,' Vorr said.
'I haven't,' said the admiral.
'Then we're agreed to help him?'
'Mmm-hmm. But first have Usso check him out, just to make sure he's not pulling us along for something else. If his story is dear, then let's get on with it.'
'Agreed.' The general reached for the doorknob-and stopped, deep in thought.
'What's on your mind, General?'
Vorr shook his head briefly. 'I was just wondering what route the lich took into the building.'
Halker raised an eyebrow. 'He and his bodyguards walked in. They came up through the goblins' quarter of the camp. The 'hulks wore those eye shrouds, and none of them gave us any trouble. Why?'
'Just curious, sir,' he said. That tears it, he thought. If goblins wouldn't run from a lich, something was wrong. The truth was suddenly undeniable.
Skarkesh was not a real lich.
The general grunted, then opened the door. Together, they went out to greet their guest.
*****
When General Vorr got back to his office late that night, he found his charcoaled chair replaced by a less- comfortable one. Fortunately, he'd been told that scro carpenters were at work on a replacement, though it would take a few days. A single light globe illuminated his command room. It looked a lot tidier now, but it still smelled of smoke and death. The breezes that blew through the broken windows would clear even that out in time. It being