Michael A. Stackpole (21 page)

“But, Highness, no one would refuse you if you asked them to join us.”

“Of this I am well aware, and that is very much at the core of the problem. I have been told that when going into Chaos—where I have never been—a cadre must be chosen for their ability and the trust they have in one another, i believe—I
have to believe
—you and Christoforos will make the correct choices of those who will accompany you. And those people will have to know that their chances of coming back alive are hair-thin and dry-rot-weak.”

I nodded calmly. “And will have to choose to go with us despite the poor odds, for their own reasons, not out of any feeling that they had to go because you have suggested they go.”

“Precisely.” A wry grin twisted across the Emperor’s lips. “Despite the fact that 1 have given you and your cousin no such freedom to refuse.”

1 laughed lightly. “We’ll be like Jhesti the Lost Prince. We’ll have to beard Lord Disaster in his own den, get from him his newfound staff, then defeat the whole of the B
harashadi,
including those killed over the past five centuries. The stuff of legends, just like the Lost Prince. How could any sane person resist?”

“The tally of sane folk willing to accompany you will not be great, Lachlan.” The Emperor shook his head slowly. “In fact, given the nature of the assignment, I would think you would want to recruit from a group that has already shown itself mentally unstable.”

“Yes, sire, the Chaos Riders.” 1 smiled and remembered my promise to find Roarke. “If I may have your leave, 1 think I will begin my recruiting drive at the Umbra.”

From things I had read and heard I knew polite society considered the waterfront area of the capital an enclave of Chaos because of its relative lawlessness. Even in the wee hours of the first day of the Bear things remained rather wild. Wandering in drunken knots, sailors on liberty from ships filled the streets. More often than not, when these little groups managed to collide with each other fistfights broke out, but being pounded into a bloody pulp didn’t seem to spoil anyone’s fun.

Despite the clear abandon with which the denizens of the waterfront greeted the new year, the riotous action stopped toward the south end. There the zone reserved for Chaos Riders began, and even the blind drunk seemed to shun it. Dodging roiling brawls got easier as I headed into that section of the city, and the preternatural quiet in the area made it easy to understand why Chaos Riders call it the Asylum.

The nature of the denizens made it simple to see why most others call it Quarantine.

Much of the waterfront area, which is largely the older part of the city, is not paved with stones. Consequently, the snow, being churned to mush by wagons and hooves, left the streets muddy. At night, as the temperature dropped and the traffic slowed, the mud froze, leaving the Asylum’s streets a chilly catalog of the odd creatures that had wandered through it. I saw more than one track of an animal that, because of the depth of the print, had to weigh as much as a horse, yet the splayed-foot spoor suggested it was something else entirely.

Like the rest of Old Town, the Asylum’s buildings were largely made of wood, though a fair number had been built out of sod or stone. A few had signs in front proclaiming them to be businesses, but most were just dark. The streets ran this way and that, splitting and becoming far narrower paths the deeper I went into that section of the city.

Though I felt as foolish as someone walking through a graveyard in the wee hours of the morning, I could not feel afraid here. I knew I would see people and things I had never seen before, if Roarke and Eirene were in any way typical of Chaos Riders. While those people would be queer and terrifying, they had braved Chaos. I could do nothing but respect that, especially if I meant to recruit people for the Emperor’s mission here.

Deep in the Asylum, back hidden amid a labyrinth of streets, I found the Umbra. My feet seemed to know the path as if I had been there a million times before. I descended the rickety wooden steps to enter the tavern as easily as 1 would walk into my grandmother’s house. I pulled aside the thick hide covering the doorway and stood alone on a compact landing. A stairway led down on my right, and another headed up a half level straight ahead. 1 looked down, and between the steps I could see more stairs that descended at least one more level below the street.

Drifting clouds of smoke diffused the yellow light from the thick candles burning atop tables and in wax-encrusted wall brackets. The murk made it difficult to see very far into the place at all, but the people I did spot seemed to come in all sorts of lumps and bumps and colors—easily from all the races of the Empire and every province. A muted buzz punctuated by an occasional shout reverberated from each level, and the thick stench reminded me of a stable that had not been mucked out in far too long.

A huge creature peered down at me from the upper level. I guessed he was a man, though his head sat lopsided on his neck, as if someone had tried to twist his head around so his ears would be top and bottom on it. His eyes, which I thought were set perilously close to each other, glowed with
Chaosfire.
His left hand he kept hidden in his vest, while the other grabbed the stair railing. “What would you be wanting, hatchling? You’ve ne’er left the nest, so you’re not the sort we want here. Be gone.”

1 smiled politely at the man-thing. “1 have come to…”

“Deaf, are you?” He took one step down toward me, and I saw that his left knee appeared not to move in the normal way. “There are other places you can go to gawk, boy. Leave ‘neath your own power, or I’ll throw you out.” He came another step closer, and his left knee definitely bent backward when he moved. “Go on, out!”

Off to my right a silvery behemoth leaped from the lower level to the landing and imposed himself between me and the man-thing. A low growl rumbled from Cruach’s throat, then he barked once, sharply, at the man. The hound lifted his broad head beneath my left hand, and I scratched him behind his right ear.

The man-thing dexter-slashed a toothy smile across the lower half of his face. “So you know Roarke, do you? You’ll find him down there. Whatever your business, be quick about it.”

“Thank you, sir. Best of the new year to you, sir.”

He snarled in response to my greeting, but retreated quickly enough as Cruach’s ears came forward, and the hound swung his head around to look up the stairs. I patted Cruach heartily on his right shoulder, then scratched under his chin. “And the best of the new year to you, too, Cruach. Now, where’s Roarke?”

Cruach, being an intelligent hound, and having heard his master’s name more than once, turned and trotted down the steps to the first level below the street. He looked back to see 1 was following him, then trotted on deeper into the room. Despite plunging directly into a sea of round tables distributed in an utterly random pattern, Cruach’s tall silver back remained in sight like a ghost ship sailing through an archipelago.

I followed his course as best I could, though various individuals shifted their benches to make my progress difficult. 1 heard the words “hatchling” and “virgin” muttered more than once, and from a host of throats barely suited to mouthing human speech. Many of the Chaos Riders appeared to be little more than misshapen figures hidden by thick cloaks, and fairly often 1 saw two or more
Chaosfire-fired
eyes staring out at me from hoods. The words and glances and actions told me 1 was not wanted here, and that most of them wanted nothing more than to have me break and run.

Virgin I might be in the ways of Chaos, but being intimidated by hostility was a habit of which my brother Dalt had long ago broken me. I kept my head high and worked my way through the crowd as best 1 could. I avoided touching people when possible, and politely slipped past the impromptu barricades raised to impede me.

Without too much delay I found my way back to a distant table where Roarke sat with his typical grin plastered on his face. “Welcome to the Umbra, Locke.” He sat back in his chair, his motions obviously lubricated by whatever lurked beneath the froth in his tankard. “You came to Herakopolis to attend the Emperor’s Ball. By the look of your clothes either you missed it, or my invite misstated the requisite color scheme.”

“A little of both, actually, 1 think.” 1 lowered myself onto a bench, then nodded to Eirene as she sat down across from me. “Joyous new year to you, Eirene.”

“And you, Locke.” She set a tankard down in front of me, then took a sip from its twin. “So, is it true what they say happened at the ball tonight?”

I wrapped my hands around the steaming tankard and tried to suppress a shiver. “It depends up on what they say happened. It certainly
was
a Bear’s Eve Ball I will never forget.” The drink smelled like hot spiced cider, but I sipped it carefully in case it was something else entirely.

Roarke laughed easily. “The way the word filtered down here, Lord Disaster and a horde of
Bfiarasfiadi
lighted in the midst of the ball and slew the lot of nobles there. Said they burned the palace, too, but I have some doubt about that as I can’t see the glow from here.”

I leaned forward and lowered my voice. “Fialchar did show up, and he had the Staff of Emeterio with him.”

Eirene tucked a green-streaked lock of hair behind one of her pointed ears. “The Staff of Emeterio? I don’t think I know of it.”

Roarke waved her to silence. “It’s a trinket of some power, but that’s not the whole of the story, is it, Locke?”

“No, not by half.” I kept my voice quiet. “At the same time a
Bfiarasfiadi
sorcerer and some Black Churchers managed to steal the Fistfire Sceptre from the Imperial Treasury Vault below the palace.”

Eirene’s expression closed up, and she sipped at her cider to mask her face. Roarke frowned as if willing himself to clearheadedness. “Locke, that can’t be. No
Bfiarasfiadi
sorcerer could be inside the Ward Walls.”

I unbuttoned the cuff of my tunic and pulled the sleeve back to show them my bandage. “He used a spell to try to kill me, and by luck alone I survived. I saw him, Roarke. Sure, I’ve only seen Black Shadows in my dreams, but this one matched every description of them I’ve heard.”

“First time I’ve heard the word dream used to describe seeing Black Shadows in your sleep.” Eirene shook her head. “Sensible folks call them nightmares.”

I nodded. “You have the right of it, Eirene. I fear I will see this one in many a nightmare.” I pulled the Imperial Medallions from the pouch on my belt and placed one each in front of them. “The Emperor believes the Black Shadows will use the sceptre to stage an invasion of the Empire. He wants an expedition to go into Chaos to stop the invasion, or delay things enough for the Warlord to field an army that can stop them.”

Eirene stared at the coin as if it was a snake coiled to strike at her. “An Imperial expedition? How many of us are there?”

1 winced. “Twelve, counting my cousin and me. He’s a scout with the Emperor’s Horse Guards. He will have his patrol, and I am to recruit five people to go with us. We can have thirteen with Cruach.”

Roarke raised a finger. “Not a good idea to be mentioning thirteen as the number in your little venture, Locke. Fialchar was the thirteenth person involved with the Seal of Reality, and he shattered it, so thirteen is not seen as very auspicious.”

“Sorry.”

“Superstition isn’t what’s bothering me.” Eirene pushed the medallion back in my direction. “A dozen people going into Chaos to put a stop to a
Bharasfiadi
invasion? Locke, in the event someone has hidden this information from you, that is exactly the sort of mission that got your father killed, and the Valiant Lancers numbered a dozen dozen.” Eirene glanced over at Roarke. “As for him, even drunk he would not go back into Chaos. It cost him too much last time.”

I looked over at Roarke, dreading his confirmation of Eirene’s statement. He looked shocked and had paled considerably. Cruach forced his head between Roarke’s right hand and his body, but the man just let his arm dangle by the beast’s flank. “Roarke?”

He swallowed hard. “It’s about the Necroleum, isn’t it?”

“Yes. How do you know about it?”

He shook his head. “I know because I know.”

I watched him carefully. The Emperor had said they had learned of the Necroleum from the fevered ravings of a Chaos Rider. I wondered for a moment if that rider had been Roarke. “If you know of the Necroleum, you know how important this is. With the Fistfire Sceptre it’s possible to raise all the B
harashadi
from the dead. If that gets done …”

“I have a grasp of the general scenario, Locke.” Roarke picked up the medallion I’d set before him and spun it around between forefinger and thumb. “Been a long time since I’ve had one of these in my hand.” His fist closed over it. “I’m in.”

Eirene drew back away from him. “Roarke, are you crazy? You said you would never go back.”

“No, Eirene, I said I’d only go back if the objective was worth going blind for. If the
Bharashadi
get the Fistfire Sceptre to the Necroleum,
everyone
will become Chaos Riders. I reckon this is the quest that I’ve been waiting for.” He pushed her medallion back toward her. “Come on, Eirene, you’re too pretty to want to live till old age will take you, and too damned spiteful to die in the Empire.”

She picked the medallion up and hefted it in her right hand. “I’ll go, Roarke, but only so I know the truth behind the bragging you’ll be doing when we return.
If
we return.”