Emperor Mage (29 page)

Daine
stared down at Varice Kingsford, fingers knotting in her mammoth s long fur.
"Tell me why I shouldn't have you ripped to pieces?" she demanded.
"Were you at his killing? Were you serving pretty food and fancy
wine?"

Varice
got herself under control, and shook her head,

"Did
you betray him to the emperor?"

"I
don't expect you to believe me, but no. Maybe I would have, if he'd come to me.
You don't know what it's like, to be in the service of a man like Ozorne. But I
didn't betray Arram."

Zek
looked at Daine from his seat on the mammoth s head. Why are you angry? he
asked. She has been sad. She isn't wearing the smelly stuff she likes, or the
pretty colors on her face and hands.

He was
right. The woman was pale, her eyes red with long weeping. She wore no makeup
at all. Her blonde hair, uncurled and unarranged, hung lank and straight down
her back. Even her dress was plain, a loose-fitting gown of dove-gray cotton,
Her mage's robe was nowhere to be seen.

Varice
met Daines eyes. "You must think I'm useless and silly. Maybe I am, I just
like things pretty. Is that so bad, to want people to enjoy themselves? Only,
when you have the Gift, you can't just go to parties and keep house. They
expect you to study, and to do something in life. Arram—he always wanted me to
learn more spells and be famous. I don't want to be famous! What I do is
useful. And I like using my Gift for cooking and baking. Great power hasn't
brought the mages I know happiness or peace of mind."

Daine
stared down at the blonde. Varice sounded like Ma, whose greatest pleasure had
lain in dancing and working in the garden or kitchen. Quietly she said,
"You needn't explain yourself to me.

Varice
blotted her eyes on her sleeve. "I she said, voice hoarse. "Sometimes
it works. I said, what's the point of killing Arram? Other monarchs would fear
Carthak more, if he showed mercy to his betrayer. But it didn't help. He made
me watch when they killed— I'll never forget that as long as I live."

"Varice,"
Daine said. The cold inside her prevented tears, but she felt bad for the older
woman. "We have no quarrel with you. The gods are unhappy with Ozorne, and
I'm helping them, but you don't have to be involved. Get out of here. Shelter
at the university, if you can get across the river, or the estates outside the
palace grounds. You won't be safe here."

Varice
nodded and gathered up her skirts. Daine s army parted to let her pass, then
set about destroying the room. The horn-faced lizards, testing the walls, found
they were wood, not stone. They began to smash them, wall after wall, working
back through the storage rooms. When Daine moved on, some armored lizards and a
mammoth stayed, as did the bull three-horn, to handle the stone walls. The echo
of crashing stone followed Daine out.

TEN

STEEL FEATHER

They
came to a long passage where the ceiling was supported by columns studded with
semi-precious stones. At the end waited a squad of determined-looking soldiers.
Half bore small, double-curved bows; the rest long-bladed pikes.

She
held up a hand; her army stopped, "I wish you no harm," she called.
"But I want the emperor. Give him to me or get out of my way, but
choose."

"We
will defend our emperor to the death!" cried one.

"That's
fair foolish. My friends are a bit hard to kill. They've been dead
already."

One of
them fired. His hands shook so much that the arrow flew wide.

"Witch!"
a man screamed. "Sorceress!"

Did
they think names mattered anymore? "For the last time, get out of my
way."

They
did not move. She waved: the spiked three-horn came up and lowered his head,
the spines on his neck frill like rays of the sun. Five armored

lizards
stumped into place behind him. A wedge formed, the skeletons headed for the
guards. Arrows flew. Those that struck their targets shattered; the rest could
as well have been rain. The pikemen lunged, to find their weapons gripped in
bony jaws and wrenched from their grasp.

Those
still on their feet ran. Three lay on the floor after being knocked down. The
armored lizards nudged them out of the way.

Impatient,
the spiked three-horn rammed the door. It shattered. Orange fire billowed out
of the room; the skeletal creature exploded into a million fragments.

The
armored lizards opened their jaws in what Daine knew was a silent roar, and
charged. Orange fire ripped the side off a double-armored lizard and broke the
right-side spines on its neighbor. The remaining skeletons kept going. Daine
covered her eyes against a bright flare of magic beyond the door, then urged
her mammoth forward. Inside the doorway, Chioke lay crushed. He was pinned
there by a thirty-threc-foot-long armored forest lizard whose skull and front
half were melting, Daine slid down and went to the dinosaur, trying not to cry
as it fought to look at her.

"Go
back to sleep," she said, patting the undamaged spine. "You've done a
wondrous thing here, and I thank you. Go back to sleep."

The
dinosaur relaxed, letting what remained of his head drift to the floor. For a
moment copper fire shone brightly in the girl's eyes, running along her friends
bones. In it she saw the forest lizard as he must have looked in life, skin a
gleaming chestnut brown, all his spines and plates whole. He was trotting away
from her, bound for a lush forest that shone in the distance. When her vision
cleared, even his skeleton was gone.

Checking
the pair who had been half destroyed outside the door, she saw that they, too,
had vanished.

A
snake-neck grabbed her by the waistband and lifted her onto the mammoth s back.
Please be careful about getting downl scolded Zek. Even if we fight the ones
with magic, you are safer up here!

The
mammoth waited for the last of the skeletons to enter Ozorne s rooms, then
followed. Two snake-necks, finding that they would never get their large bones
through the door, began to lean against the walls, trying to force them.

"Emperor
Ozorne!" shouted Daine. No one answered. The girl looked at her warriors.
"I think you'd best go to work."

They
ripped the elaborate suite of rooms to shreds. They tore open chests and
closets, broke whatever could be broken: furnishings, tiles, glass, pottery.
The secret exit through which Zek had seen Ozorne go to visit a captive girl
was laid bare. Daine urged her mammoth through the different chambers

until
they passed through Ozorne's bedroom and entered the aviary.

Here
were the benches, and the table where he'd fed her dreamrose. A book lay open
on it, and a decanter of wine had shattered on the floor. Someone had been here
recently, and had left in a hurry. Looking around she saw that the panes of the
rear wall were shattered, as though a giant fist had punched through the glass
and its green metal fittings. Soot streaked the panes on the outside; the odor
of scorched bone hung in the air. More than ever, she was glad she had arranged
for the birds to be taken away before any of this began.

Her
mammoth followed the tyrant lizard through the broken wall and into the gardens.
Here lay some of the warriors from another part of ner army: a four-toothed
elephant, two plated lizards, and a snake-neck. Their remains were blackened
and twisted by magical fire.

"Thank
you," she whispered to all of them.

Copper
fire bloomed; scorched bones rose and became whole bodies. The dinosaurs headed
toward a distant forest, to vanish as the copper light faded.

"Curse
it," she muttered, looking at the burned area where they had lain.
"Curse it, curse it—" She pounded the mammoth s back in fury. Where
had Ozorne gone, if indeed he was the one who had done this? He could be
anywhere, up to any kind of mischief!

A
small, winged shape with long, leathery ears dropped to flutter before her
nose, squeaking a welcome. This was a large, mouse-eared bat, on his nights
hunt for insects. He was glad to see her, he said. All kinds of strange things
were going on tonight. Was there anything he and his colony of the People could
do?

Zek
eyed him suspiciously. Can they be of any use? he asked.

"One
way to find out," she replied with a grim smile.

Cradling
the bat against her shirt, she called the others, both mouse-eared bats and
common pip-istrelles. The ones close by came to Daine herself, gripping her
clothes or lighting on the mammoth s wide back. Those bats within the range of
her magic but not close enough to reach her in person found roosts and waited
to hear what she had to say.

As Zek
peered curiously at these new guests, Daine built for them an image of Ozorne
as he would "look" to bats, his face and form drawn with sound, not
light. She gave them everything, from the tinny echo of beads in his hair to
the clear whispers that would return from his gems. "Can you hear
him?" she asked. "Is he anywhere near you?"

Wait,
they told her in a single voice, and took to the air.

As the
rest of her third of the skeleton army caught up, Ozorne s chambers now so much
rubble, she wondered what to do if the bats were unsuccessful. They could find
him outdoors, even if he were invisible: no cloaking spell was invulnerable to
sound. If he were indoors, or wore another shape, that was a different matter.
They would recognize the form, not the wearer.

If he
couldn't defeat the dinosaurs, would he run? It was hard to imagine the Emperor
Mage running from a girl and her army of dead animals. Still, blasts like the
one that had finished the dinosaurs outside the aviary had to be costly in
terms of his magical strength.

Reports
began to come back from her spies. Bats were fast in the air, and they built
sound pictures quickly. Within minutes Daine knew that not only was the emperor
nowhere in the gardens, towers, or outlying buildings, but that parts of the
complex were in flames.

"Pull
back, then, all of you," she said, wanting to cry. "It's no good you
getting cooked."

Maybe
we can help, a voice said from behind her.

Daine
turned, and gasped. The hyenas were out.

"How—what—?"
she stammered.

Teeu,
the boss female, came forward to sniff Daine s mammoth. The Mistress let us
out, she said. Old One-Eye. She is a goddess of two-leggers, but she helps us,
too, now and then.

Light
reflected from metal in the air. Rikash landed on a balcony nearby. "I believe
she felt you would require assistance," drawled the green-eyed Stormwing.
"You might want to know, a company of dinosaur skeletons opened the
menagerie cages and dumped trees into the pits so the animals could climb
out."

"Kitten?"
she asked Rikash. "My dragon? I dreamed she was in the immortals'
menagerie."

"You
dreamed truly. She is there under a sleep spell," he replied. "Your
friends tried to break into that collection, but failed. The spells on the gate
and cages are keyed to Ozorne. They won't give way until he dies."

We are
going to find this Ozorne, Teeu said cheerfully. The Mistress reminded us: we
have a score to settle. She said you might want to come, too.

Daine
thought fast. A hyenas sense of smell was keener than any other living creature
she'd ever met. She was willing to bet Ozorne wouldn't think to change the
unique scent given off by his body, no matter what shape he took. Better still,
Teeu and her "boys," Iry and Aranh, were creatures Ozorne had reason
to fear. What better hunters could a girl bent on vengeance ask for?

"Lift
me down, please?" she asked the mammoth, who complied. On the ground once
more, she looked at Teeu, "I want to shape-shift and

become
one of you. Then we can hunt the emperor together, if you're willing."