Knarros looked at it unmoved, except that the golden light glittered in his great dark eyes. “A mere mage could do that,” he rumbled. “There’s more, if you are a Magid.”
“You mean,” I said, “you want the whole ceremony?”
“I do,” he grated.
It seemed a bit excessive to me. I have never met the mage, mere or not, who could summon Infinity correctly, but then my experience is not as wide as many, and Knarros did have an important charge to relinquish. I sighed, beckoned Infinity to stand over my head, and went slowly and carefully through the ritual I had last performed when Stan sponsored me to the Upper Room. I had to concentrate. I had not done this for nearly three years. And I was distracted by the caustic rasping of the deified bush and, too, by my own growing feeling that this was not only excessive and slightly ridiculous, but wrong in some way. Something was wrong, didn’t fit, didn’t quite add up.
Knarros simply stood and watched. The only sign of life he gave was a slight irritable shifting of the off rear foot, until I finished and bowed. Then he gave another of his curt nods. “I accept you as a Magid,” he rumbled. “What is it you want?”
I ground my teeth and politely went through my request for the second time: the Imperial heirs, their names, dates of birth and proofs of identity, and the same for the children on the world codenamed Babylon.
“I have all this,” he said. Then he quenched my relief by adding, “But you have been slightly misinformed. The true heir is a human female, the Emperor’s eldest daughter. She is not yet here.”
“When will she arrive then?” I said.
“At sunset,” said Knarros. He and I both looked north-westwards across the bush. The sky there was red-gold in streaks with the merest fiery slice of Thalangia’s sun showing. “The Empress will be here any moment now,” Knarros said. “If you wait here, I will go and fetch you the proofs you require.”
“Thank you,” I said, and thought, And about time too!
Knarros turned about, battering more sparks from the stones of the yard, and set off downhill towards a building at the back of the enclosure. He did not hurry himself. I had plenty of time to realise that my bundle of protection-spell was lying in his way and probably impenetrable. I should have left it. But I was sick of all this hanging about. I slipped across to it, got the heap of it on my shoulders, and gave it another upwards heave so that Knarros could pass underneath it. Then I gave it a sort of heaving throw that sent it away downwards and across the roof of the building he was making for. I had a notion that the bush-deity tried to prevent me doing all this, but I was irritated enough to ignore that. And as I heaved the bundle to my shoulders the first time, I could have sworn something hit the bundle hard – hard enough to make me stagger. I assumed it must have been a stone spurting from under Knarros’s hoof and I ignored this too. I also ignored Knarros’s command to wait where I was – all out of pure, cussed irritation, I may say. Instead, I went back over the top of the hill, past the altar and on down towards the gate, intending to ask the boys there who they had actually been told to wait for.
I never got there. A few steps past the altar, I heard a dullish crack-boom from behind me. I turned and ran back that way, past the threshing bush and downhill to the building where Knarros had gone. My feet made a frantic noise on the stones of the yard. Stones clacked together and made blue sparks in the twilight. I could not think what the crack-boom had been, except that it had sounded horribly like blasting in a quarry, and I know I was quite surprised to see the building still standing there unharmed. My thought, I suppose – if I did think – was that I had removed the protection spell just as Dakros had run out of patience and opened fire.
It was a bigger, slightly better building than the others, with a wide, high doorway to accommodate a centaur. I dashed inside it, into virtual darkness, and nearly fell over something stretched across the doorway. My fingers touched harsh warm hair as I tried to save myself. That sent me leaping backwards, to collide with the side of the doorway, where I stood just long enough to smell smoke and tepid butcher’s shop. At that, I raised light – another of my less secure skills – and when the candle flame finally rose high enough on my palm to show the stone space inside, I gagged at the sight of Knarros lying on the floor, with one leg that had broke
n as he fell doubled under him. He was no longer granite. He no longer had much of his face and was still pumping out steaming red blood from his neck. But centaurs do that, because of having two hearts. He was most definitely dead. One large grey hand clutched the revolver he had shot himself with. At the back of the room was the primitive-looking wall-safe where presumably the information I needed was still locked.
As I stared at the safe, with the twirl of light trembling on my hand, its thick door slowly swung open. I could see it was empty. I looked down at what was left of Knarros again. He used a revolver! I thought stupidly. It seemed to take an age for me to put the facts together. Actually I think it was one of those times when things only seem slow.
“Jesus!” I said. I dashed out through the doorway, hauling the flame-gun out of my pocket as I went – an Empire gun with a wide barrel to direct a beam and not a bullet – and fired as soon as I was outside, into the air, once, twice, three times. Then I went pelting round the base of the yard, following the circle of the wall, hoping and hoping I was not too late. Halfway round, I was joined by the young centaur Kris, who rushed out of another wide-doored building demanding to know what was wrong.
He looked to be about fifteen. It was always possible he had shot Knarros, but I didn’t believe he could have done it with a weapon from Earth. “Did you hear anyone run past?” I gasped at him as I ran.
He came alongside me at an easy trot. “Not this side,” he said. “But I heard people running on the other side of the yard.”
“Oh hell!” I groaned. “Are you sure it wasn’t me?”
“No, I heard you running down the back at the same time,” he said. “Please, what’s happened?”
“Someone shot your uncle,” I panted. “Knarros was your uncle, wasn’t he?”
“I’m sister’s son to him, yes,” he said. “But what… How…?”
“No breath,” I gasped, and ran grimly. Not for worlds was I going to send him on to the gate on his own. And I new I was right as I pelted into sight of it. Beyond the sparks his feet and mine were kicking up in the half-dark, I could see the dark gap in the wall where the gate was now standing open. Low down against the darkness were two small light-coloured lumps. “Too – bloody – late!” I panted. I slid up in a spray of blue sparks and turned the nearest lump over. The elder boy. His pigtail wrapped stickily into the big open gash across his throat as I turned him. The pool of blood under him squelched and stank faintly. He was still warm. I left the other pathetic little lump to lie and rounded on the young centaur. “Someone came through this gate,” I said, “someone you know, and they told you to keep out of the way, didn’t they?”
His hands were clasped under his mouth. His hooves trampled. There was still light enough to see the tears pouring down his face. “Yes, but,” he said. “Yes – but—”
“But nothing,” I said. “Who was it? Who?”
His tail slashed. He looked down at the small corpses and back at me. The tears ran across his mouth. “I – I can’t say,” he said. “I really can’t say!” Then, while I was still thinking that all the things Stan had told me about centaur loyalty were entirely true, he hurdled the two small heaped-up bodies and vanished out through the gate in a wild thudding of hooves.
I ran again, round to the other side of the yard this time, until I came to the house the girls had gone into. It was dark inside and seemed empty. I crashed through its door, raising light as I went. There was one miserable little room in there with three narrow beds in it. The corpse of the youngest girl was curled up in the space between them, and a long stream of her blood made shiny puddles in the uneven floor. I looked down at the poor kid and swore. At the sound, to my acute astonishment, one of the older girls put her head out from under the nearest bed. The second emerged from under another.
“Who did this?” I said to them. “Did you see?”
They stared at me, almost like animals. Probably it was shock. And as we all stared, light slanted into the room and there was a strong thudding drone. Leave this to Lady Alexandra! I thought with huge relief and dashed outside again. A small hover was just landing in the yard. To my extreme pleasure it came down right on top of that unpleasant bush. It could have been an accident, but my bet was that the pilot worshipped a different deity. Other hovers were rising up into the yard from all round. Dakros jumped down across the altar stone and ran to meet me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to him. I seemed to have gone shrill and hoarse with the horror of it all. “God, I’m sorry! The only survivors are two girls in a state of shock.”