Book 3 - All Darkness Met Read Free Page A

him to assume his father's throne."
    Wu bowed.
    Once Wu departed, that secret door opened. "Excellent," said the bent old man. "Everything is going perfectly. I congratulate you. You're invaluable to the Pracchia. We'll call you to meet the others soon."
    Chin's hidden eyes narrowed. His Nine-mask, arrogantly, merely reversed his Tervola mask. The others wore masks meant to conceal identities. Chin was mocking everyone....
    Again the old man departed wearing a small, secretive smile.
    Tam was nine when Shinsan invaded Han Chin. It was a brief little war, though bloody. A handful of sorcerer's apprentices guided legionnaires to the hiding places of the natives, who quickly died.
    The man in the woods didn't understand.
    For four years Tran had watched and waited. Now he moved. He seized Tam and fled to the cave where he lived with Lang.
    The soldiers came next morning.
    Tran wept. "It isn't fair," he whispered. "It just isn't fair." He prepared to die fighting.
    A thin man in black, wearing a golden locust mask, entered the circle of soldiers. "This one?" He indicated Tam.
    "Yes, Lord Wu."
    Wu faced Tam, knelt. "Greetings, Lord." He used words meaning Lord of Lords. O Shing. It would become a title. "My Prince."
    Tran, Lang, Tam stared. What insanity was this?
    "Who are the others?" Wu asked, rising.
    "The child of the woman, Lord. They believe themselves brothers. The other calls himself Tran. One of the forest people. The woman's lover. He protected the boy the best he could the past four years. A good and faithful man."
    "Do him honor, then. Place him at O Shing's side." Again that Lord of Lords, so sudden and confusing.
    Tran didn't relax.
    Wu asked him, "You know me?"
    "No."
    "I am Wu, of the Tervola. Lord of Liaontung and Yan-lin Kuo, and now of Han Chin. My legion is the Seventeenth. The
    Council has directed me to recover the son of the Dragon Prince."
    Tran remained silent. He didn't trust himself. Tarn looked from one man to the other.
    "The boy with the handicaps. He's the child of Nu Li Hsi. The woman kidnapped him the day of his birth. Those who came before.... They were emissaries of his father."
    Tran said nothing, though he knew the woman's tale.
    Wu was impatient with resistance. "Disarm him," he ordered. "Bring him along."
    The soldiers did it in an instant, then took the three to Wu's citadel at Liaontung.

TWO: Mocker
    These things sometimes begin subtly. For Mocker it started when a dream came true.
    Dream would become nightmare before week's end.
    He had an invitation to Castle Krief. He. Mocker. The fat little brown man whose family lived in abject poverty in a Vorgreberg slum, who, himself, scrabbled for pennies on the fringes of the law. The invitation had so delighted him that he actually had swallowed his pride and allowed his friend the Marshall to loan him money.
    He arrived at the Palace gate grinning from one plump brown ear to the other, his invitation clutched in one hand, his wife in the other.
    "Self, am convinced old friend Bear gone soft behind eyes, absolute," he told Nepanthe. "Inviting worst of worse, self. Not so, wife of same, certitude. Hai! Maybeso, high places lonely. Pacificity like cancer, eating silent, sapping manhood. Calls in old friend of former time, hoping rejuvenation of spirit."
    He had been all mouth since the invitation had come, though, briefly, he had been suicidally down. The Marshall of all Kavelin inviting somebody like him to the Victory Day celebrations? A mockery. It was some cruel joke....
    "Quit bubbling and bouncing," his wife murmured. "Want them to think you're some drunken street rowdy?"
    "Heart's Desire. Doe's Eyes. Is truth, absolute. Am same. Have wounds to prove same. Scars. Count them...."
    She laughed. And thought, I'll give Bragi a hug that'll break his ribs.
    It seemed ages since they had been this happy, an eon since laughter had tickled her tonsils and burst past her lips against any ability to control.
    Fate hadn't been kind to them. Nothing