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"Because you are of the Blood. Because you are the Candidate."
Haroun frowned. "Candidate? For what?"
"For the Invisible Crown."
Each answer left Haroun more baffled. "Why are you hiding out here? This is the least explored part of Hammad al Nakir." The inquisitiveness and skepticism he had acquired from Radetic kept him from accepting the old man's answers. "You'd better tell me a story, old man. A good one. This is all crap and wasted time. I should be heading for the border."
The old man looked surprised and disappointed. "I am the son of Ethrian of Ilkazar, the wise man who predicted the Fall. He was unable to avert that disaster. During the destruction of the Imperial City, hoping to revivify the Empire one day, he smuggled myself and the symbols of Imperial power through the besiegers' lines. He sent me here under a compulsion to await the coming of a suitable Imperial heir. Someone Fate would bring here. Someone of the Blood. I am to test him, and, if he is worthy, to invest him with the Imperial power. My father meant to join me, but he was killed. I've been trapped here for four centuries. Never before has a candidate come."
The story dovetailed with known history and old legend. But when, his head swimming with visions of armies rallying to his Imperial standard, Haroun asked specific questions and received only evasions in reply, his credulity faded. "Get serious, old-timer. You're dodging like a hare chased by a fe
The old man reddened. He cursed, and stalked out of the room.
Imp-Child giggled, winked at Haroun, followed.
Haroun stared at the bronze mirror, watching Nassef follow an endless trail. He wanted to go down, collect Bragi and move on. Instead, he fell asleep.
The old man returned that night. "Come with me," he said. Puzzled, Haroun followed him to the tower's parapet, which was spectral in the moonlight. He watched distant manshapes doggedly pursue a circular trail.
A milky globe rested atop a tripod standing at the parapet's center. It glowed softly. "Look into this," the old man said.
Haroun looked. And saw the past. He watched his father, brother, uncle and King Aboud die brave deaths. Aboud fought like the lion he had been as a young man. He watched his mother and sisters die. He watched the confrontation between Ahmed and Nassef. He could not turn away, though each second was an eternity of torture. Something compelled him to study Nassef in action.
The scene changed. He recognized the desert near the ruins of Ilkazar. A horde of horsemen milled nearby.
"Those are Royalists," the old man said. "They began gathering when news spread from Al Rhemish." Flick. A change of time. "Earlier today. These are El Murid's men, commanded by Karim and el-Kader, who on their own initiative followed Nassef and the Disciple."
The enemy spied the Royalist host. They charged. The Royalists scattered like chaff before the wind. In minutes there remained no foundation upon which the Royalist cause could be rebuilt. Haroun sighed. The arrangements his father and Megelin had made, for camps beyond the border, would have to serve to rally the cause.
Haroun divined a bleak future. Exile. Warfare. The constant threat of the Harish kill dagger.
The old man crooned over the globe and showed him what it might be like. Endless flight and fear. Frequent despair. He shuddered at the prospects.
Then the old man said, "But that need not be." Flick, flick, flick. "Here. Here. Here. We can reach back. A moment of blindness. A strayed swordstroke. A captain's horse stumbling at an inopportune moment. Little things can shift the course of history."
"You can do that?"
"If you wish." The battle before the ruins reappeared. "Here. An order misinterpreted."
"That's too easy," Haroun muttered, though he was not sure why. "But tempting." Was it something Megelin had taught him? "What's the price?" There would be a price. Nothing was free. The more desirable it became, the crueler the cost. It would be more bitter than the price he had paid already.
A childhood memory surfaced. At four he had broken a glass mirror belonging to his mother. His father had had it imported from Hellin Daimiel. He had spent a fortune acquiring it. Haroun's whispered plea to the unseen, then, had been, "Please, make it didn't happen."
In a way, that was what magic was all about. Putting off payments by taking the apparently free route, the characterless route, the easy way. But there were traps and ambushes along that track, cu
Ahmed had tried the easy way. Ahmed was dead and dishonored. Generations would curse his name.
The old man did not answer his question. Haroun stared him in the eye. "No. The past is done and dead. Let it lie." But it hurt to say that.
The old man smiled. Haroun thought the smile guileful, as though the man had gotten the answer he wanted.
"Nor will I change the present," Haroun said. "I'll make my own future, for good or ill."
"Excellent. Then on to the tests."
"Tests?"
"Of course. I told you the Candidate must be tested. For courage, for wisdom, for... You'll understand in time. My father was determined that there be no more kings like the Golmune Emperors. Come with me."
Haroun wondered what the old man's real stake was. His story became increasingly unconvincing. He seemed, deliberately, to be fostering the fragile, probably futile dream of a Royalist return. And certainly was pushing the fantasy of a resurrected Empire. That insanity could be left to El Murid.
Several levels down, Imp-Child lighted candles and stoked up a fire. The old man settled himself on a worn chalcedony throne. Haroun faced him across a dusty table. Atop the table lay three purple pillows. On those rested a bronze sword, a robe of ermine and, to the eye, nothing. But something heavy had crushed the third pillow deeply. The sword was green with verdigris. The ermine had been the home of generations of moths.
"We begin," the old man said. "Take up the sword."
Puzzled, Haroun grasped the worn hilt.
"This is the sword Ashkerion, forged by Fallentin the Smith, which bought the victory celebrated at Sebil el Selib. The man who bears this blade needs fear no enemy. It defends against all attack. It's always victorious."
Though Haroun had heard of the sword Ashkerion, there was no proof it had existed. He recalled that Fallentin was said to have cast the blade into the sea after securing the throne. He had feared it, for it had developed a will of its own. He thought it might deliver itself into the hands of an enemy.
Haroun let go. "No. Ashkerion had a treacherous reputation. And a man could grow too dependent on a weapon like that. He could grow too arrogant in his power." He envisioned Megelin nodding. Megelin would say something like that.
"Pretty speech," Imp-Child grumbled.
The old man was startled. "You reject the sword? But you have to take it."
"No."
"Take the robe, then. Take up the robe and the authority it represents."
Haroun remained unconvinced that this man had waited four hundred years to crown a new emperor. He suspected motives unrelated to those proclaimed. He could not fathom what they might be, though.
Would it hurt to humor the fellow? That might lead him nearer the truth.
He slung the ratty ermine across his shoulders.
Imp-Child squealed delightedly. "It didn't turn to dust! He is the One."
The old man was less exuberant. "The Crown, then," he said. "The Invisible Crown that will fit none but the One. The Crown so heavy only a man determined to fulfill its obligations can lift it. Take it up, Haroun."
Haroun lingered over the third pillow, intimidated by the old man's statement. Finally, he reacted. His fingers touched something his eyes denied. He tried lifting it. It yielded only slightly, slipping sideways. Its weight was astonishing.