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“You well may wonder from which power is drawn this source of this magic-and I tell you,” said Divort one morning, after smoting a weregoat with lightning blast. “It is you.”
“Me?” I said, looking down with distaste at the scorpion tail that writhed poisonously from the beast.
“Aye! Your puissance grows! Unmanacled from the drink that sapped you, and with your chi stoppered up and not serving women, you are a factory of power. I salute you, sir.”
In truth, for all of that, I still felt a want, and wondered aloud if I might try drinking women and rogering ale. Divort’s laugh was so hearty, and he slapped my back in comradeship, I hadn’t the heart to tell him I was not jesting.
Oh, I could bog down this tale for a space with tales of the cat-dragons, the gnarl-critters, the brouga-brougas we fought. Alas, our donkeys were caputured and eaten alive by a cyclops, whom we managed to prevent from eating us by dint of a vast expenditure of Divort’s magic fire.
Two weeks of travel! Two whole weeks, and our supplies were gone, so we lived on any creatures Divort could cook and on melted snow.
And when I saw that we had to scale a snowy mount for the last leg, I nearly lost faith. But it was Divort’s jokes and good cheer that goaded me onward despite myself. That, and my own dreams and fantasies, considering what I would do with this vast power that awaited me. To think, no longer to take orders, but to give them! To think, no longer to be forced to work for my keep, but to rest if I liked, wander if I liked-to kick the behinds of vassals, if I liked.
At the crest of the hill, there in afternoon glow, at an elevation higher above sea level than I had ever yet attained, I saw the turrets and towers of a diamond city, awash in gold and sapphire.
Divort gri
“Aye, Whiteviper. Our goal is near. There, my new brother, is our goal, finally-The OverEye.”
Ah, yes, and a beauteous city it was too, OverEye.
A dazzling sheen arose from its stone walls to its lofty spires, coruscating with glinting color. Prisms echoed spectra of ocher, brilliantine, and topaz in a most aesthetic ma
I said as much to Divort.
“Aye, that is the reputation of OverEye,” he said beneath his breath, also caught up in the majesty and the grandeur of the place. “It is said to be caught at a juncture of worlds, like the central sphere of an infinite bubble cluster-and through its walls seep images of those worlds.” He nodded. “Aye, and portals there be.” He sighed and gri
The implication of his words sank in, underscored by the otherworldly nature of that which I beheld.
“The power that can be ours,” I whispered. “I believe I had limitations on it before now.”
“Indeed,” said Divort. “I advise you, this place will outstrip imagination!” He clamped a hand on my shoulder. He winked. “But come, brother. It’s time for acts of gods!”
We made our way down to the city, pausing at a gaily babbling brook to wash and primp, that our visages might not be so ragged and dirty.
From his pack, Divort took out fresh clothing, which he bade me wear. After shedding my rags for these fine, fresh breeches, and a starched white jerkin and tunic, I indeed felt like a king, or overlord, and my haughty spirits rose up accordingly.
There were no guards as such at the gates of OverEye, but rather a sign in a language hat I could not decipher.
“What does it say?” I asked.
“Why, I do believe it says, ‘Gods Needed’ Whiteviper!” said Divort, chortling. “In truth, I ca
There were peoples of various sorts moving through the clean and orderly cobblestoned streets of the city, but in the main the men of OverEye seemed much shorter than ourselves, runty little fellows, uniform and bland of feature. The women, though, oddly were taller than I’d generally observed women to be before, and beautiful beyond measure, each in her own unique ma
My mouth began to salivate. Over the beer or over the women I did not know.
At first we were roundly ignored. It was almost as though the citizens did not see us. Divort did not seem to be bothered at all by this. From his pack, he drew out a stool and he sat on it, paging through an old, musty tome. I sat down on the curb beside him after tethering my mule, feeling entirely too sober and entirely too celibate.
Divort clamped the book shut with finality.
“Just sit there and do not move, Whiteviper. No matter what happens, do not move, and soon we will be Overlords.”
“Perhaps,” I suggested, “I should sit over there at yon tavern, beside those tankards.”
“Temptation does not suit you,” he admonished. “No no, you’ve had patience yea these weeks, have patience for a few more minutes.”
Thus saying, he set up a stand, from which he performed feats of magic. By this time I, of course, was wondering how Divort expected these people of OverEye to be diverted by a bit of fire and thaumaturgy when they had but to peer through the multitude of lenses into other worlds to see far more wondrous marvels.
Yet, from the outset of the performance, I saw that these tricks were different. Divort began by pulling off his cap and extolling the people to observe; from the hat, he pulled out a rabbit. It scampered off beneath their legs. Then Divort produced a pitcher filled with milk and poured this milk into a rolled up bit of paper. He then crumbled the paper, which was as dry as the desert.
By then, a large crowd of the OverEye folk had gathered, all agog, and from the fire in Divort’s eye, I saw he was about to produce his piece de resistance. From his back pocket came a pack of playing cards.
Ah! I thought. Cards, and wished he had produced them by our campfires, so that I might have fleeced him of some more of his gold.
The people of OverEye surrounding us gasped. These cards struck some sort of resonance with them. All eyes were on Divort, who proceeded to perform all kinds of tricks with these cards, acquiring help from members of the audience. By the end of half an hour of simple card tricks and bout of applause after bout of applause, Divort bowed, and bade me stand up and take a spot beside him.
“This is my dear brother, Whiteviper. I am Divort. We have come to fill the positions of prophecy. We are the new Overlords!”
A moment of awed silence swept over the audience. Then a man cheered, and a woman swooned for joy. Soon the approval was unanimous. A man wearing a velvet cape and mauve pantaloons stepped out and bowed, to us, “My Lord, I am Artmus Pedercaster. I am provost of this sector and thus have the supreme honor of ushering you to our mayor. Will you accompany me, O Great Gods, Long Foretold?”
“That was easy as falling off a log,” I said from the corner of my mouth during the celebratory parade to the mayoral mansion.
“Thank you, Whiteviper. Your visage was the most vital part. And your chi imbued my magic with its glamour.”
Well, I wasn’t going to argue with him. The promise of becoming Overlord, after all, promised also a hot di