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. “This is the instrument of our deliverance! Nothing else!”
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.
Queen Casberry and Tylocost were trading stories about the stupidity of humans. Kiya hailed Tol in relief.
“You arrive just in time, Husband. These two are talking us all to death!”
Tol dropped the box on the ground. Rubies and golden coins spilled out.
“That’s all there was,” he said, meeting their eyes. “Release Master Helbin from his bonds.”
Kiya wasn’t certain this was wise, but Tol said the wizard was joining their company. He directed a pointed look at Helbin, adding, “His freedom and continued good health are entirely in his own hands.”
Tol sent for horde commanders Trudo and Argonnel. The treasure confiscated from the nomads would be invaluable in sustaining their fight and must be safeguarded against any attempts by plainsmen (or others) to abscond with it. Tol wanted the treasure promptly moved, all of it.
White-haired Trudo, eldest of the commanders of the landed hordes, stroked his beard thoughtfully. “Where are we to take it?” he asked.
“To the only place strong enough to hold it: Caergoth.”
His words provoked ominous silence. Trudo and the younger Argonnel exchanged worried looks. Zala, not understanding the swift change of mood, whispered to Tylocost, “What’s the matter?”
He murmured, “Caergoth’s governor is one of the emperor’s most notorious toadies. Lord Tolandruth is proscribed. In Caergoth he can be arrested, even executed.”
After an instant’s surprised silence, Zala laughed. The bright sound earned scowls from the assembled warlords. Queen Casberry demanded to know the joke.
Zala grinned at the somber faces. “Lord Tolandruth should fear going to Caergoth?” she said, disbelieving. “I think you’ve got it all backwards. It’s Caergoth that should fear Lord Tolandruth!”
Casberry cackled, and Tylocost muttered about wisdom from the mouths of children.
Valaran awoke with a start. An instant later, the noise came again: a loud knock at her door and the sounds of movement in the antechamber.
“Come,” she said, sitting up.
The door swung inward. Framed in the dark opening was a disheveled servant bearing a lamp. “Your Majesty,” she said, “the emperor is calling for you!”
Valaran frowned. “Now?”
“Yes, Majesty. Most urgently.”
Dismissing the servant, Valaran slid out of bed. A silk robe of brown and gold brocaded with crimson metallic thread lay across the foot of her bed. She drew it on and donned matching slippers. Her long chestnut hair was braided for bed, so she merely tucked a few errant strands behind her ears before fitting a copper-colored veil over her head and face.
The servant who’d awakened her had withdrawn beyond the tall white doors that marked the entrance to the empress’s suite. There she waited, flanked by sleepy ladies-in-waiting with no more idea what was happening than Valaran. With the women surrounding the empress, the entourage journeyed through the maze of palace corridors.