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  Dardash, who much preferred the comparative coolness of the coast, had no relish for the four days’ ride that lay ahead. Urging his horse forward alongside Urtarra, he consoled himself with the thought that this journey was probably the last he would have to undertake in such a commonplace and uncomfortable manner. When the knowledge reposing in the twelve scrolls was available to him, he would waft himself effortlessly to his destinations by other means, perhaps sailing on clouds, perhaps by methods as yet undreamed of. Until then he would have to make the best of things as they were.

  “The woman,” he said pensively, “has she any knowledge of what we’re about?”

  “None! Nobody else must learn what has passed between us; otherwise your power and mine increased a hundredfold couldn’t preserve our lives.”

  “Don’t your men regard this expedition as being a little…unusual?”

  “They are trained never to ask nor to answer questions. However, I have told them what I will tell Marcurades: that you are a superb mathematician and that I need your help in calculating horoscopes. I have spread word that the stars are hinting at some major event, but are doing it in such an obscure way that even I am baffled. It all helps to prepare the ground.”

  Dardash’s thoughts returned to the female figure ahead. “And where did you obtain the woman?”

  “Nirrineen is the daughter of one of my cousins.” Urtarra gave a satisfied chuckle. “It was fortunate that she was so well qualified for the task I assigned her. Shall I send her to you tonight?”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Dardash said, concealing his annoyance at what he regarded as an insult. “She will come to me of her own accord.”

  The group trekked across the arid plain—seemingly at the center of a hazy hemisphere of blinding radiance—until, with the lowering of the sun, the horizons became sharp again, and the world was created anew all around them. In the period of tranquility that preceded nightfall, they set up camp—the stately square tent for Urtarra’s sole usage, humbler conical structures for the others—and fires were lit. Nirrineen began to prepare a meal for Urtarra and Dardash, leaving the four guards to cater to their own needs. Dardash chose to stand close to the young woman while she worked, placing her within the orbit of a personal power that was slow-acting but sure.

  “You were excellent when we met this morning,” he said. “I quite believed you were a princess.”

  “And I quite believe you are a flatterer.” Nirrineen did not raise her eyes from the dishes she was preparing.

  “I never employ flattery.”

  “It exists most in its denial.”

  “Very good,” Dardash said, chuckling, his desire quickening as he realized that the woman kneeling before him was a complete person and not merely a shell of flesh. “Yesterday, when I watched you bathe, I knew—”

  “Yesterday?” Her eyes glimmered briefly in the dusk, like twin moons.

  “Yes. Don’t forget that I’m as much magician as mathematician. Yesterday, by proxy, I stood very close to you for a long time, and knew then that you and I had been fashioned for each other. Like sword and sheath.”

  “Sword! Can it be that you now flatter yourself?”

  “There’s but one way for you to find out,” Dardash replied easily.

  Much later, as they lay together in the darkness, with Nirrineen contentedly asleep in his arms, he exulted in the discovery that his mind had regained all of its former clarity.

  He began to consider ways of killing the king.

  The city of Bhitsala was clustered around a semicircular bay that provided good anchorage for trading ships. It was protected by a range of low hills that merged with the shoreline at the bay’s southern edge, creating a cliff-edged prominence upon which sat the palace of the Koldanian kings. It was a sprawling, multicentered building, the colonnades of which had been sheathed with beaten gold until Marcurades’s accession to the throne. One of the young king’s first actions after assuming power had been to strip the columns and distribute the gold among his people. The underlying cores of white marble shone almost as brightly, however, and at the end of the day, when they reflected the aureate light of sunset, the dwellers in the city below told their children that the gods had gilded the palace anew to repay Marcurades for his generosity.

  Dardash imagined he could sense the universal adoration of the king as he rode into the city, and for him it was an atmosphere of danger. The task he had undertaken would have to be planned and carried out with the utmost care. He had already decided that it must not appear to be a murder at all, but even a naturally occurring illness could lead to suspicions of poisoning; and a magician, a reputed brewer of strange potions and philtres, was one of the most likely to be accused. It was essential, Dardash told himself, that Marcurades’s death should occur in public, before as many witnesses as possible, and that it should appear as either a pure accident or, even better, a malign stroke of fate. The trouble was that divine acts were difficult to simulate.

  “I have prepared a room for you in my own quarters at the palace,” Urtarra said as they passed through the city’s afternoon heat and began the gradual climb to the royal residence. “You will be able to rest there and have a meal.”

  “That’s good,” Dardash replied, “but first I’m going to bathe and have Nirrineen massage me with scented oils: I’ve begun to smell worse than this accursed horse.”

  “My intention was to send Nirrineen straight back to her father.”

  “No! I want her to stay with me.”

  “But many women are available at the palace.” Urtarra brought his horse closer and lowered his voice. “It wouldn’t be wise at this time to share your bed with one who has a special interest in you.”

  Dardash realized at once that Urtarra’s counsel was good, but the thought of parting with Nirrineen—the she-creature who worked her own kind of voluptuous magic on him through the sweet hours of night—was oddly painful. “Don’t alarm yourself; she will know nothing,” he said. “Do you take me for a fool?”

  “I was thinking only of your own safety.”

  “There is only one whose safety is at risk,” Dardash said, fixing his gaze on the complex architecture of the palace, which had begun to dominate the skyline ahead.

  When they reached the palace gates a short time later, Urtarra conferred briefly with his men and sent them on their way to nearby lodgings. Dardash, Urtarra, and Nirrineen were able to ride through the gates after only a perfunctory examination by the captain of the palace guard—yet another indication of the unusual bond that existed between the king and his subjects. Servants summoned by Urtarra led away their horses and mules. Others came forward to carry Dardash’s belongings into the astrologer’s suite, which was part of a high wing facing the sea, but he dismissed them and moved the well-trussed bundles in person.

  While thus engaged he noticed, in one corner of a small courtyard, a strange vehicle that consisted principally of a large wooden barrel mounted on four wheels. At the base of the barrel was an arrangement of cylinders and copper pipes from which projected a long T-shaped handle, and near the top, coiled like a snake, was a flexible leather tube, the seams of which were sealed with bitumen.

  “What is that device?” Dardash said, pointing out the object to Urtarra. “I’ve never seen its like before.”

  Urtarra looked amused. “You’ll see many of Marcurades’s inventions before you are here very long. He calls that particular one a fire engine.”

  “A fire engine? Is it a siege weapon?”

  “Quite the opposite,” Urtarra said, his amusement turning to outright laughter. “It’s for projecting water onto burning buildings.”

  “Oh? An unusual sport for a king.”

  “It’s more than a sport, my friend. Marcurades gets so obsessed with his various inventions that he spends half his time in the palace workshops. Sometimes, in his impatience to see the latest one completed, he throws off his robes and labors on it like a common artisan. I’ve seen him emer
ge from the smithy so covered with soot and sweat as to be almost unrecognizable.”

  “Doesn’t he know that such activities can be dangerous?”

  “Marcurades doesn’t care about…” Urtarra paused and scanned Dardash’s face. “What are you thinking?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Dardash almost smiled as his mind came to grips with the information he had just received. “Now, where can I bathe?”

  “Watch this,” Dardash said to Nirrineen as they stood together in the elaborate garden that formed a wide margin between the royal palace and the edge of the cliffs. It was a fresh morning, and the livening breeze coming in from the sea was ideally suited to Dardash’s purpose. In his right hand he had a cross made from two flat strips of hardwood, smoothly jointed at the center. He raised his hand and made to throw the cross off the edge of the cliff.

  “Don’t throw it away,” Nirrineen pleaded. She had no idea why Dardash had constructed the cross in the first place, but she had seen him spend the best part of a day carefully shaping the object, smoothly rounding some edges and sharpening others, and obviously she disliked the idea of his labor going to waste.

  “But I’ve grown weary of the thing,” Dardash said, laughing. He brought his hand down sharply, in an action like that of a man cracking a whip, and released the cross. It flew from his fingers at great speed, its arms flailing in the vertical plane, gradually curving downward toward the blue waters of the bay. Nirrineen began to protest, but her voice was stilled as the cross, tilting to one side, defied gravity by sailing upward again until it was higher than the point from which it had been launched. It appeared to come to rest in midair, hovering like a hawk, twinkling brightly in the sky. Nirrineen gave a small scream of mingled wonder and terror as she realized that the cross was actually returning. She threw herself into Dardash’s arms as the strange artifact fluttered back across the edge of the cliff and fell to earth a few paces away.

  “You didn’t tell me it was bewitched,” she accused, clinging to Dardash and staring down at the cross as though it were a live thing that might suddenly attack her.

  “There is no magic here,” he said, disengaging himself and picking up the cross, “even though I learned the secret from a very old book. Look at how I have shaped each piece of wood to resemble a gull’s wing. I’ve made you a little wooden bird, Nirrineen—a homing pigeon.”

  “It still seems like magic to me,” she said doubtfully. “I don’t think I like it.”

  “You soon shall. See how reluctant it is to leave you.” Dardash threw the cross out to sea again in the same manner and it repeated its astonishing circular flight, this time coming to rest even closer to its starting point. Nirrineen leaped out of its path, but now there was more excitement than apprehension in her eyes, and after the third throw she was able to bring herself to pick the cross up and hand it to Dardash.

  He went on throwing it, varying the speed and direction of its flight and making a game for both of them out of avoiding its whirling returns. In a short time a group of palace servants and minor officials, initially attracted by Nirrineen’s laughter, had gathered to watch the spectacle, Dardash continued tirelessly, apparently oblivious to the onlookers, but in fact paying careful attention to every detail of his surroundings, and he knew—simply by detecting a change in the general noise level—the exact moment at which his plan had succeeded. He turned and saw the knot of spectators part to make way for the approach of a handsome, slightly built young man whose bearing somehow managed to be both relaxed and imperious.

  This is a new kind of arrogance, Dardash thought. Here is a man who feels that he doesn’t even have to try to impress…

  The remainder of the thought was lost as he got his first direct look at the young King Marcurades and felt the ruler’s sheer psychic power wash over him. Dardash, as a dedicated magician, understood very well that there was more to his calling than the willingness and ability to memorize spells. On a number of occasions he had encountered men—often in ordinary walks of life—who had a strong potential for magic, but never before had he been confronted by a human being whose charisma was so overwhelming. Dardash suddenly found himself taken aback, humbled and confused, by the realization that he was in the company of a man who, had he been so inclined, could have effortlessly eclipsed him in his chosen profession.

  “You must be Urtarra’s new assistant,” Marcurades said in light and pleasant tones. “I trust that you are enjoying your stay in Bhitsala.”

  Dardash bowed. “I’m enjoying it very much, sire; it is my privilege to serve Your Highness.” To himself he said: Can it, despite Urtarra’s visions, be right to kill such a man?

  “I am sorry we could not meet sooner, but the demands on my time are myriad.” Marcurades paused and glanced at Nirrineen. “However, I suspect you are in little need of consolation.”

  Nirrineen smiled and lowered her gaze in a way that, to Dardash’s heightened sensibilities, had nothing to do with modesty. The bitch, he thought, appalled at the strength of his emotion. The bitch is ready to give herself to him, right here and now.

  “I couldn’t help observing that you cast more than horoscopes,” Marcurades said, nodding at the cross that lay on the grass nearby. “That scrap of wood appears to have magical power, but—as I am no believer in hocus-pocus—I surmise it has qualities of form which are not immediately apparent.”

  “Indeed, sire.” Dardash retrieved the cross and, with murder in his heart, began to explain what he knew of the aerodynamic principles that made the circular flights possible. Now that his attitude toward Marcurades had crystallized, the fact that the king addressed him as an equal and chose to wear unadorned linen garments were further evidence of an incredible arrogance, of an overweening pride. It was not difficult to understand how such attributes could decay into a terrible and dangerous insanity, gradually corrupting the young king until he had become a monster the world could well do without.

  “As soon as the cross ceases to spin, it falls to the ground,” Dardash said. “That shows that it is the fleet movement of these arms through the air which somehow makes the cross as light as thistledown. I have often thought that if a man could build a large cross, perhaps a score of paces from end to end, with arms shaped just so—and if he could devise some means for making it spin rapidly—why, then he could fly like an eagle, soar above all the lands and peoples of this earth.”

  Dardash paused and eyed the king, choosing his exact moment. “Of course, such a contrivance is impossible.”

  Marcurades’s face was rapt, glowing. “I disagree, Dardash—I think one could be constructed.”

  “But the weight of the arms—”

  “It would be folly to use solid wood for that purpose,” Marcurades cut in, his voice growing more fervent. “No, I see light frameworks covered with wooden veneers, or skins, or—better still—silk. Yes, silk!”

  Dardash shook his head. “No man, not even the mightiest wrestler, could spin the arms fast enough.”

  “Like all stargazers, you are lacking in knowledge of what can be done with earthly substances like copper and water…and fire,” Marcurades replied, beginning to pace in circles. “I can produce the power of ten men, of a horse, within a small compass. The main problem is to make that power subservient to my wishes. It has to be channeled, and…and…” Marcurades raised one finger, traced an invisible line vertically and then, his eyes abstracted disks of white light, began to move his hand in horizontal circles.

  “From this…to this,” he murmured, communing with himself. “There must be a way.”

  “I don’t understand, sire,” Dardash said, disguising the exultation that pounded within him. “What are you—?”

  “You’ll see, stargazer.” Marcurades turned back to the palace. “I think I’m going to surprise you.”

  “And I think I’m going to surprise you,” Dardash said under his breath as he watched Marcurades stride away. Well satisfied with his morning’s work, Dardash glanced at Nirrineen and
felt a flicker of cold displeasure as he saw she was gazing at the figure of the departing king with a peculiar intensity.

  The sooner my task here is complete, he thought irritably, the better I’ll like it.

  Urtarra’s private apartment was a lavishly appointed room, the walls of which were hung with deep-blue tapestries embroidered with astrological emblems. He had apologized to Dardash for the ostentation of its furnishings and trappings, explaining that as he was not truly an astrologer it was necessary for him to put on a bold and convincing show for the benefit of all other residents at the palace. Now he was squatting comfortably on his bed, looking much as he had done the first time Dardash had seen him—plump, oily, deceptively soft.

  “I suppose I must congratulate you,” he said reflectively. “Going aloft in a flying machine is one of the most dangerous things imaginable, and if you bring about the king’s death without the use of magic, your triumph has to be considered all the greater. 1 won’t withhold your reward.”

  “Don’t even think of trying,” Dardash advised. “Besides, you have missed the whole point of my discourse: I will have to use magic. A great deal of magic.”

  “But if it is simply a matter of waiting until Marcurades and his machine fall from the sky, I don’t see—”

  “What you don’t see is that the machine will not be capable of leaving the ground,” Dardash interrupted, amazed that a man of Urtarra’s experience could display such naiveté about the natural world. “Not without my assistance, anyway. Man, like all other animals, belongs to the ground, and there is no contrivance—no ingenious combination of levers and springs and feathers—which can raise him out of his natural element.

  “Note that I said natural element, because it is the essence of magic that it defies nature. I intend to cast a spell over whatever machine Marcurades builds, and with the power of my magic that machine will bear him upward, higher and higher into the realm of the gods, and then—when I judge the moment aright—the gods will become angry at the invasion of their domain by a mere mortal, and—”