The Palace Job (38 page)

"Arrogant apple, babbling brook, creep... erk," said one of the guards, and then fell over.

"Dawdling duckling, excellent eggshells," said the second guard, fumbling with a whistle around his throat. He got it to his lips and blew a shrill screech of noise before finally mumbling, "Fondling fern, gullible goat," and keeling over.

Ululenia heard pounding footsteps and drawn swords in the hall outside, which was, unfortunately, located quite near one of the guard barracks.

Their minds are polluted,
Ululenia thought sadly, looking down at them.
Their very essence corrupted. Be careful. They are as the crew on the airship. They will kill without hesitation.

Then she transformed into a snowy-white wolf, howled at the group of guards who had just come around the corner, and pelted down the hall in the opposite direction.

When she and the guards were gone, Icy pulled himself out and crept quickly to the guard barracks, leaving a little trail of watery footprints behind him.

"So," said Hessler as Tern stuck pieces of metal together, "why have the gods demanded that you stop the Glimmering
Man?"

"That'd be ninety-seven feet..." Tern peeked around a hedge through a pair of telescoping lenses.

"I don't know." Desidora shrugged. "I only know that he must be stopped."

"Ninety-degree right turn, assume we go another foot forward while making the turn..."

"Have you a theory as to how he manipulated your illusion?" Desidora asked a moment later.

"Twenty feet after the turn, taking into account the change in surface..." Something of the spring persuasion clipped on somewhere.

"The Glimmering Folk are said to be from a world that only brushes our own," Hessler said uncomfortably. "The only
reasonable
hypothesis is that the magical substance of illusion is drawn from the matter of their world. If this Bi'ul is a wizard in his own world, then manipulating the matter of his own world would be easier for him than it would be for me."

"Probably need an upward angle of maybe sixty degrees, force of... Ghyl?"

"Besyn larveth'is!"

"Yeah, see, that doesn't really help me."

"I think," said Desidora, "that the Glimmering Man made a reference to shadows. He said that you toyed with shadows, and then he made the shadows real."

"Well, yes, but—" said Hessler.

"Ghyl, if you were gonna be flung into the air, would it better to fling you straight up or end over end?"

"Kutesosh gajair'is!"

"End over end," Desidora translated, and then to Hessler said,
"Shadow-master, spirit-caster, drain the life and leave the husk."

"Oh
hell
no," said Hessler.

"Light shall mark the spirit stark that brings the Champion of Dusk."
She cocked her head. "Would you say that the radiant aura of the Glimmering Man was a light that marked him?"

Tern held out her hand for Ghylspwr. Desidora handed him to her without looking, and Tern put Ghylspwr into what looked like a very tiny toy wagon made of metal spokes and wires. "Okay, here we go! Bessin-whateveritisyousay!" She placed the wagon by the hedge and pulled a tiny switch.

"Why do priests bring up prophecies every time something the least bit strange happens?" Hessler demanded as the little wagon rolled through the grass, ticking softly.

"Well, when the gods strip me of my priestly duties and demand that I go kill some powerful wizard from another world, I start to consider the possibility," Desidora said, raising an eyebrow. "Legends of the Champion of Dawn and the Champion of Dusk existed even in the time of the ancients. There's evidence that those legends are
why
the ancients left the land in the first place."

The little wagon ticked slowly toward the skeletal warriors, who watched it without evident interest.

"Oh, please," said Hessler. "It's your standard false duality designed to draw gullible believers into a world of monochromatic enemies and strip away any moral ambiguity—
usually
utilized by the ruling government to bolster whatever policies it wishes to implement." As it drew level with the mausoleum's entry gateway, the little wagon paused, then made a slow right turn and ticked its way between the skeletal warriors and into the mausoleum entryway.

"So, even though there's no way that your arcane studies can possibly account for it—"

"They
can
account for it, it's a dimensional warping crossover, and Ambassador Bi'ul, as a wizard powerful enough to breach the boundaries of his world to reach ours, is obviously quite talented—"

"—you see
no possible way
that Bi'ul could be the Champion of Dusk?"

"No, Desidora, as a matter of fact, I
don't,
because it's a stupid prophecy with no basis in fact!"

The little wagon finally finished its journey, ticking to a stop just past inside the arch. Something on the wagon went
snap,
and Ghylspwr whirled into the
air.

"
Kutesosh gajair'is!"

Something inside the archway exploded, and the air around the mausoleum flashed blue for an instant.

"So this Glimmering Man is a wizard who breached the worlds and came here?" Desidora reached around the hedge and made a hooking motion with two fingers. The skeletal warriors crumpled limply to the ground. "Would that be anything like
casting
his
spirit?"
Desidora stalked angrily across the grass with Tern and Hessler in tow.

"The prophecy is vague enough that it could mean
anything!"
Hessler insisted. Ghylspwr flashed back into Desidora's hand.

"Hey, guys, really, it was nothing," Tern muttered.

"But the gods don't create death priests for
everything,
Magister!"

"Besyn larveth'is,"
Ghylspwr rumbled to Tern.

"Thanks, big guy."

Ululenia dashed through the hallways with guards behind her, their minds hateful and strange, warped by the same magic as the poor souls from the airship. She could have changed into a bird to escape them easily, but it was important that Indomitable Courteous have time to get to freedom. Her horn shone in the dim torchlight of the back hallway as she fled.

Hunter Mirrkir stepped out into the hallway ahead of her, his golden armor shining and his spear crackling with hateful blue light. "Again we meet, little unicorn. Another filthy creature of magic falls today."

With a panicked yelp, Ululenia staggered to a halt, turned, flashed into a bird, and darted for the nearest corner as though hell itself pursued her.

Behind her, Hunter Mirrkir ran as quickly as she flew.

Tern turned turned the mausoleum door's handle and then dropped to her knees. As the door opened, a spear flashed out from a nearby statue and imbedded itself in the doorframe a few inches over her head. "S'open," she called back.

"Thank you, Tern," Desidora said calmly, and stepped into the chamber, where a great stone sarcophagus had been carved in the likeness of a stern-looking man with a sword. She held out a hand and spoke in some old religious language.

"So, what's the deal with the prophecy thing?" Tern asked Hessler, who was frowning.

"Oh, it's nothing, it's..." He glared at Desidora with a cute little frustrated look. "There's a very old story that says that in the eyes of the gods, the world sits with the sun half-behind the mountains, and has been that way for eons. Er, not that it's actually like that all the time. It's more of—"

"Hessler, if you try to explain what a metaphor is, I'm going to kick you in the shins."

Desidora kept chanting. Her skin was pale, and her hair and robes were dark. The ancient statues of the gods had started to twist into gargoyles and skeletal monsters.

"Right," said Hessler. "Anyway, the gods don't know whether the sun is halfway risen or halfway set, and they said that one day Dawn and Dusk would each send a champion to do battle, and that would determine whether the world were entering into a bright and glorious day, or the cold darkness of eternal night."

"Your basic good and evil thing." Tern nodded.

Hessler cocked his head, looking at Desidora, who was surrounded by a field of coiling black in which countless humanoid shadows writhed. Her voice was cold and imperious, and her eyes were portals to a world of eternal darkness. Her skin was flawless as an ancient statue seen by moonlight. Applecheeked Tern would have
killed
for skin like that.

"Desidora," Hessler said derisively, "believes Ambassador Bi'ul might be the Champion of Dusk."

"He does seem pretty evil," Tern suggested. "And your spells didn't hurt him. Neither did that chandelier Desidora dropped on him."

With a faint glow of green-gold light, the lid of the sarcophagus drew back, and an ancient figure pulled itself upright with stiff, jerky movements.

"But if Bi'ul is the Champion of Dusk," Hessler said absently, "we'd need the Champion of Dawn to fight him. I haven't seen anyone untouchable by shadow or marked by the phoenix blade."

"Who dares summon me from the slumber of the dead?" rasped the figure in the sarcophagus.

"In the name of Byn-kodar'isti kuru'ur, I bind you to the will of the gods!" Lightning flashed from Desidora's hand and wreathed the zombie in green-gold fire.

"Right," said the zombie, dusting himself off. "What do you need?"

For a minute, Desidora was silent. The shadows writhed, clutching at her, and the gargoyle statues turned their tusked heads to hear her demands.

Then, slowly, her color returned.

"A drink," Desidora said in her own voice, breathing hard. "Tern, Hessler, I've altered his aura slightly to match that of his great-grandson. I've got to get to the console chamber. Tern, see you there. Hessler, remember what I said."

"Which part?" Hessler demanded irately, but Desidora was already walking out. "You're
leaving
us here?"

"We're behind schedule!"

"With
him?"
Hessler glared after her.

"Hey, look on the bright side," Tern said, elbowing him. "You've got me. Until I get you in through the side door, that is. Then you're on your own with Silestin's grandfather, here."

"I suppose it could be worse," Hessler said, grimacing, and then looked at Tern and tried to smile, which honestly didn't work as well as his frown, but it was nice of him to try.

The zombie looked at them both with a stern, if somewhat decayed, visage. "Are you going to give me an order? I
assume
I was wrenched back to the living realm for something other than the observation of your adolescent sexual tension."

Hessler and Tern stepped apart as though a sword had come down between them. "Get your dead ass out of the sarcophagus and follow along," Tern muttered. "And no yelling for guards, and no continuing forward when we stop and then stomping all over us and crushing our spines and skulls under your undead feet because we didn't explicitly tell you not to do that."

"The thought," said the zombie, "had not even
begun
to cross my worm-feasted mind."