Wizards at War, New Millennium Edition (13 page)

“Nice,” Dairine said. Then she realized there was something on her head. She put her hands up to feel it.

Her eyes widened, and then she grinned. Tiaras might have gone out of fashion again after their recent brief period as a fashion accessory, but Dairine paid only so much attention to fashion as pleased her, and right now it pleased her to wear the thing, if only for shock value. She turned toward Roshaun. “That okay?” she said.

Roshaun looked impressed. “There are likenesses to our own idiom,” he said. “To what land of your world is such raiment native?”

“Possibly Oz,” Dairine said, “but I doubt the Good Witch of the North’s gonna come after me for stealing her look.”

“Good,” Roshaun said. “This way—”

They headed toward those crystalline doors, Spot spidering along behind them. Out beyond the doors lay a goldstone terrace with a broad stone railing, and beyond that, a huge formal garden full of red and golden flowers and plants. Past the garden, the surface of the “sunside” of Wellakh spread: miles and miles of unrelieved flatness reaching straight to the horizon on every side—the everlasting reminder of the catastrophic sunstorm that had blasted half the surface of Wellakh to slag all those centuries ago.

Just in the doorway, before stepping out onto the terrace, Roshaun suddenly paused. He stood there for some seconds simply looking at the setting sun—straight at it, blinding as it was. Finally he dropped his gaze. “This is not good,” Roshaun said softly. “Still, let us go.”

They walked through the doors and out across the terrace, and as they did, Dairine thought she saw something stirring out there, a waving movement. Her first thought was that she was seeing the motion of wind in the garden plants.
But there isn’t any wind,
she thought as they came closer to the rail.
Is there a—

She froze. There were
people
out there… about a million of them.
Or two, for all I know,
Dairine thought.
Since I
don’t know a thing about counting crowds—

Two million, six hundred and eight thousand, four hundred twenty-four,
said Spot silently.

The multitude of Wellakhit men and women started just past the formal garden and went on and on, seemingly all the way to the horizon. The slight motion Dairine had seen was the million-times–multiplied tremor of people shifting a little in place as they stood waiting for someone to appear.

Roshaun walked up to the railing and just stood there, resting his hands on the broad rail. As he came to where everyone could see him, a sound started to go up from the crowd nearest the balustrade, and rolled back across it like a wave: a murmur of comment, curiosity … and straightforward hostility. These people wanted to see Roshaun, but not because they liked him. The murmur sounded to Dairine like the thoughtful sound an animal makes deep in its throat when it sees something it considers a threat, an utterance just short of a growl.

Roshaun simply stood there with his head up and let it wash over him. The sound got not necessarily more angry, but more pronounced. Roshaun moved not a muscle, said nothing. Very slowly the murmur began to die away again. Only when the crowd was quiet did Roshaun move at all, to look over his shoulder.

“Don’t stay hiding back there,” he said. “They know you are here. Come out and let them see you.”

At the moment, it was the last thing Dairine wanted. No one could ever have called her shy—but not being shy in front of a classroom full of kids, or a crowd of wizards, was one thing. Not being shy in front of a couple of million pairs of staring, hostile eyes was something else entirely.

Dairine swallowed and stepped forward to stand beside Roshaun at the railing. She couldn’t think of anything to do with her hands. She put them down on the balustrade as Roshaun had, and held very still.

She had thought it was quiet before, but she was mistaken. A silence fell over all the people at the edge of the garden, rolling back from them right across that vast multitude. The stillness became incredible.

Dairine didn’t move a muscle, though she desperately wanted to bolt. The pressure of all those eyes was nearly unbearable. The faces closest to the two of them wore a look very like Roshaun’s normal one: proud, aloof, very reserved. They were all as tall as he was, or taller, which made Dairine feel, if possible, even smaller than usual. And the expression in the eyes of the closest people held a hostility of a different kind than what they’d turned on Roshaun.
Alien,
it said.
Stranger. Not like us. What is
that
doing here?

Dairine manufactured the small the-hell-with-you smile that she usually applied just before getting into a fight with somebody. “You might have mentioned this beforehand,” she said under her breath.

“Why?” Roshaun said. “Would you have worn something different?”

Maybe a force field!
“Who are they all?”

“My people,” Roshaun said. “They have come to look at their new king.”

“How long have they been here?”

“I have no idea,” Roshaun said. “Perhaps since the time they heard that my father had abdicated.”

Dairine tried to figure out when that might have been. A couple of days ago? She wasn’t sure. “What do they want?”

“What I do not think I can give them,” Roshaun said.

He turned his back on the great throng of people. Reluctantly—for to her it felt somehow rude—Dairine did the same. “Our transport will be here in a moment,” Roshaun said. “We have very little time. However casually you may enjoy speaking to me, believe me when I tell you that such a mode would not be wise with my father. He may have resigned his position, but he keeps his power as a wizard—”

“However much of that anyone his age is going to have for much longer,” Dairine said.

Roshaun looked at her, and for the first time Dairine understood what it was like to see someone’s eyes burn. That sunset light got into them and glowed, impossibly seeming to heat up still further in Roshaun’s anger. “I would not put too much emphasis on that if I were you,” he said. “Not with him,
or
with me. He and I may have our differences, but anybody who would find humor in a wizard losing his power should probably consider how it would feel to them. Or
does
feel.”

Spot came spidering along to Dairine. She bent down to pick him up, glad of the chance to get control of her face, for she was blushing with embarrassment at how right Roshaun was. “Sorry,” she said.

“Yes,” Roshaun said. And more quietly, over the upscaling scream of an aircar that Dairine heard approaching, he said, “I, too. Now stand straight and properly represent your planet.”

Dairine stood straight. Between them and the crystalline doors of Roshaun’s residence-wing, the egg-shaped aircar, ornately gilded like everything else here, settled onto the terrace and balanced effortlessly on its underside’s curve without rocking an inch to one side or the other. Dairine looked up past it to what she had partly forgotten—the mountainous bulk of the rest of the Palace of Wellakh, bastion upon bastion and height above height, all carved from and built into the one peak that had survived the solar flare that slagged down everything else on this side of the world. The palace was not only a residence but a reminder to the kings who lived in it.
Your family saved us all once,
it said in the voice of the people of Wellakh,
and you showed such power then that now we fear you. We keep you in wealth and splendor now; just make sure you protect us. Because if the Terror by Sunfire should ever come again, and you
don’t—And the message was far stronger than usual with them all standing there, silent, watching.

What will
you
do now, new young king? We are waiting…

Manservants dressed in quieter versions of Roshaun’s “normal” clothes, the Wellakhit long tunic and soft trousers, appeared from the front of the aircar and came around to bow before the two of them and touch the car’s surface. It opened before them, and Roshaun turned to Dairine and nodded; she picked up Spot and stepped in. Inside were luxurious cushioned seats that followed the curved contour of the aircar, and as Dairine sat down and Roshaun sat across from her, she saw that the aircar’s surface was selectively transparent—they could see out, but no one could see in. As the car rose, Dairine looked out past the palace and toward the horizon, clutching Spot to her, gazing out a little desperately across the widening landscape to see where the people ended and the landscape began. It took a long time before she got a glimpse of the plain stone of the “sunside,” golden colored or striated in blood and bronze, barren and desolate.

Turning back to Roshaun, she was surprised to see him looking at her with concern. “Are you all right?”

“They scare me,” Dairine said after a moment.

“You would not be alone,” Roshaun said.

The aircar kept rising past the face of the palace; terrace after terrace, building after building fell away beneath them as the peak into which the palace was built narrowed almost to a needle. Beneath the final height was one last terrace, and the aircar made for this, lifting just slightly above it and settling down onto the polished paving.

The door opened for them. Roshaun got out first, and then turned to help Dairine down. She was surprised to feel, as he took her hand, that his was sweating.

Without warning, she found herself starting to get angry.
Here’s one of the most arrogant, self-assured people I know,
she thought,
and just the thought of going to see his father has him freaked. That’s not the way things should be!
As she stepped onto the paving, she squeezed his hand a little.

He gave her a look she couldn’t read. Dairine dropped the hand, unsure whether she’d misstepped, and followed him toward the pair of huge bronze doors that faced the sunset and were emblazoned with the sun.

That sun split before them as the doors ponderously swung open. Dairine put Spot down, and they all walked in.

Their footsteps rang in the huge and echoing space they entered, and their shadows ran far before them down the length of the polished floor, to merge with the dimness at the far end of the severely plain great hall.
Use the time to compose yourself,
Roshaun said silently.

Like
you’re
doing?
said Dairine. She could feel all too clearly what was going on inside his head. But then that had started to be a problem lately.

Roshaun didn’t reply. But by the time they were actually getting close to the throne, the racket inside his head had started to die down somewhat.

Throne
was not the best word for the chair in which that very tall man sat waiting for them. It was backless and had arms that rose from its seat on curving uprights; it sat not on any dais, but on the floor. However, the man sitting in it made it look like a throne by the way he sat, both erect and somehow completely casual about it. He watched them come without moving a muscle, and as they got close enough to get a decent impression, Dairine tried to size him up. His clothes were like Roshaun’s, though in a darker shade of red-orange; his red hair was shorter than Roshaun’s by a couple of feet, and he wore it tied back, so that the angles and planes of a face very much like Roshaun’s, sharp and high-cheekboned, were made more obvious. His eyes, as emerald as Roshaun’s, were more deeply sunken, a little more shadowed by the brows; his face looked both more thoughtful and more dangerous.

Roshaun stopped about six feet from the throne. Dairine half expected him to bow, but he simply stood there, silent, waiting.

Slowly the man stood up. Roshaun locked eyes with him as he did so. His height astounded Dairine; meeting this man’s eyes for long would give even her father a sore neck.

“You came more quickly than I thought you might,” said the man. The voice was like Roshaun’s, a light tenor, somewhat roughened by age.

“This promises to be a busy time for us all,” Roshaun said, “and it seemed discourteous to keep you waiting any longer than necessary.”

Roshaun nodded, and glanced at Dairine. “I would make you known,” he said, “to Nelaid ke Seriv am Teliuyve am Meseph am Veliz am Teriaunst am Antev det Nuiiliat; Brother of the Sun, Lord of Wellakh, the Guarantor—”

Roshaun fell suddenly silent, as if not knowing quite what to say next.

“Guarantor that
was,
” Nelaid said, looking at Dairine. “It does sound strange, the first time one says it.” And now his eyes were on Roshaun again.

Roshaun swallowed. “Father, this is Dhairine ke Khallahan,” he said, “wizard.”

It’s title enough for me,
she thought. She gave Nelaid a very slight nod, thinking that between wizards, even if they were royalty, that was gesture enough.
Besides, if I nod too hard, this crown could fall right on the floor.
“I am on errantry,” Dairine said, looking up at Nelaid, “and I greet you.”

“I greet you also,” Roshaun’s father said in the Speech. He stepped away from the throne, looked at Roshaun.

“Well, son,” he said, “you were not long in donning the Sunstone, as is your right. This only remains to complete the accession.” And he glanced at the chair.

Roshaun swallowed again. “I wanted to talk to you about that,” he said.

His father tilted his head a little to one side. “I fail to see what could still need discussion,” he said.

Roshaun turned to look back down the length of the hall, toward the doors and straight into the light of the Wellakhit sun, still slowly setting. The light caught strangely in the great gem at his throat, washing out its amber fire and leaving it as colorless as water.

“I will not be staying,” he said, turning back toward his father. “Errantry takes me elsewhere.”

Nelaid nodded, just once, very slowly. “What the Son of the Sun says is, of course, law.” But Dairine could hear something else coming. “From the sound of it, however, you came not to ask me what you should do, but to tell me what you had already made up your mind to do. I suspected as much.”

“Royal sire,” Roshaun said, “I would hardly make such a choice without consulting with the Aethyrs.”