“If not…” He walked just behind Phoran and whispered something Phoran couldn’t quite hear.

“My father will kill you after my mother boils you in oil,” said Rinnie, and Phoran’s heart twisted in fear.

He knew that she struggled because she bumped against him.

“I don’t think so,” Willon purred. “I think she will do exactly what I ask because otherwise you will pay the price.”

She was a child, and Phoran could do nothing. A bead of sweat slipped into one of Phoran’s eyes, burning it, but no matter how hard he struggled, he could only move his eyes.

“Bring her,” Willon said. “Meet me at the top of that tower. I’ll go to the Owl’s temple and see to it that no more enterprising explorers happen onto the names of the gods.” He walked back in front of Phoran, but without Rinnie. He must have given her to Ielian. He bent down so he could see Lehr’s eyes. “Lehr Tieraganson, tell your mother we’ll be up there in that tower, waiting for her answer. Her daughter and I.”

“There’re ghosts and whatnot here in the city,” said Ielian. “It might be better to find a place outside.”

“I assure you that I know how to keep them away,” said Willon, straightening. “I lived here for five years, once. I learned how to deal with the ghosts. Bring her up to the tower.”

One moment Willon was standing in front of Phoran, and the next there was a golden hawk where he had stood. The hawk crouched and, in a graceful swoop of wings, took flight.

Everyone knew wizards couldn’t change shape, thought Phoran. Apparently the Shadowed didn’t need to worry about what everyone knew.

“Traitor, oath breaker,” said Rinnie, her anger almost hiding the fear that made her voice shake.

Ielian laughed. “No, they’re the oath breakers: Toarsen, Kissel, and Rufort. I took my oath to the Masters of the Path, and I’ve never broken it.”

“He’s the Shadowed,” Rinnie said. “How can you serve the Shadowed?”

“Because,” said Ielian, his voice slick and hungry, “he gives me people to kill.”

Gura whined again, clearly agitated at Rinnie’s fear, but Ielian was supposed to be a friend.

“Rinnie, Rinnie,” Ielian chided. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice the gathering clouds? You’re a Cormorant, a weather witch. But I noticed something while I was riding with your family. Do you want to know what it is? Unless you’re a farmer, Cormorants are all but useless.” His voice became mockingly sympathetic. “It takes such a long time to build a storm. And all it takes to stop you is—” There was the dull sound of flesh hitting flesh—and Phoran couldn’t move.

Gura could.

Phoran heard the threatening growl and the sound of a scuffle. A grunt—dog or human he couldn’t tell. Phoran’s frustration rose to new heights. A body fell to the ground.

“Gods that felt good,” said Ielian. He appeared in Phoran’s view, splattered with the dog’s blood, a hunting knife in his hands.

He rolled his head, first one way than the other, like a fighter loosening up his neck muscles before a battle.

“I’ve forgotten how good it feels.” His face was flushed with agitation, his hands vibrating with some extreme emotion. He spoke rapidly, almost unintelligibly. “I can’t kill Lehr. The Master is right. Seraph would never cooperate if we hurt her son. And the Emperor might be useful. Can’t kill the Emperor.”

With a strike as swift as a snake, Ielian slit Rufort’s throat. Blood spurted, and Ielian jumped back with an excited laugh. Rufort stayed standing as he had been while he bled out with the beating of his heart. At last he fell face forward into the puddle of his blood that covered the cobbles.

Ielian crouched beside the body. “What did that feel like, Rufort? Did you feel helpless? Did you feel death coming to take you? Or were you lost in disbelief?” He looked up, meeting Phoran’s eyes. “I could have killed you a thousand times, Emperor. That makes me a very powerful man indeed. More powerful than you could ever be. Do you know what it is to hold a man’s life in your hands?” He reached out and ran his fingers through Rufort’s hair. “No one will ever love him more than I did at the moment of his death. How could I not love someone who gave me such pleasure? Did you see how he stood, soldier-straight until death took him?” He shuddered with pleasure at the memory, like a man might when recalling a particularly good whore.

He stood up and shed that strange aura of intensity and looked calm and competent. “I’d better get going. The Master is expecting me.” He walked past Phoran. “Here,” he said. “Why don’t you hold this for me? I’ll leave it in to slow the bleeding. Maybe the Master’s spell will fade before you bleed to death.”

Kissel or Toarsen, thought Phoran. Ielian had stabbed one of the two. Phoran struggled as hard as he’d ever struggled in his entire life, but he couldn’t move so much as a fingertip.

Ielian appeared again, blood staining his shirt. He had a limp Rinnie over one shoulder and an expression as peaceful as any Hennea had ever worn. As he left them there, he softly whistled one of the songs Tier had sung last night.

CHAPTER 19

“No,” said Hennea. “I don’t feel anything. What’s wrong?”

“The Shadowed is here,” Hinnum said. “I know the magic of my apprentice.”

Tier’s hands tightened on Seraph’s shoulders. “Here? In Colossae?”

Hinnum nodded and looked at Hennea. “I am no match for the Destroyer’s power, not in a man who has had it for two hundred years. I can buy you time to run, my lady, but you must run far and fast. Find your six Ordered and destroy this monster I helped to make.”

“We can’t go without Rinnie and the boys,” said Seraph.

Hinnum looked at her and nodded toward the city where a group of low-lying clouds were forming. “He has them already,” he said gently. “There is nothing you can do. A Falcon and a Cormorant have no chance against him. No more do two Ravens, a Bard, and an Eagle. Even if one of you used to be a goddess, even if I give you all the help I can. I tell you that I have seen the power of the Shadowed before. If the Unnamed King had not been mad, Red Ernave and Kerine would never have been able to kill him. Our Shadowed is no Unnamed King. I’ll do my best to delay him, but you have to run.”

Seraph’s hand closed on the tigereye ring. “We need a Lark,” she said. “I have one here. My daughter or whoever this Order once belonged to would have given her life to destroy the Shadowed. If you can help my children, we can destroy him now.”

Phoran stood in helpless, hopeless anger. He had promised Seraph no harm would come to her daughter. An emperor should keep his promises—but Willon’s spell held him firmly.

Willon was an illusionist. What had he said? Tier could see through his illusions. Did he mean that this spell would not have held Tier? Could this spell be some form of illusion?

Phoran had grown up in a court littered with mages of one sort or another. The illusions he’d seen had been minor magic, when it wasn’t outright legerdemain and not magic at all. It was common knowledge that disbelief would break an illusion—one of the reasons that illusionists were considered second-rate mages.

Phoran tried to convince himself the spell was just an illusion, something he could break. Of course I can move—I’ve done so all my life. How can a magician stop me with one word?

The problem with disbelief was that Willon quite obviously had managed to stop him with one word—it was hard to disbelieve something true. This would be a story to tell his children—whose future existence was in serious doubt: The story of how the lowborn wizard overcame the Emperor with one word—because the Emperor was so weak-willed as to allow it.

Anger began to stir, and Phoran welcomed it. He was Emperor, no wizard had the right to force his will upon him. Phoran pushed aside his recent realizations of how little difference there was between a farmer and the Emperor. He wasn’t a Bard. This wasn’t about truth, it was about a peasant-born trader-illusionist who thought he had the right to command an emperor.