Scaurus had heard fulsome flattery at the Videssian court, but nothing close to this sycophancy. “Who would want to be a king and have to put up with such tripe?” Gaius Philippus said in Latin.

  After a while Wulghash rolled his eyes and went back to questioning the Romans. Pushram’s paean of praise never slowed, even while he was recording Marcus’ answers. Trying to find some way to shut him up, the khagan took another piece of eggplant, wrinkled his lip, and said, “I have changed my mind. This is vile.”

  Pushram assumed a look of loathing with a speed that amazed Scaurus. He plucked the eggplant slice from Wulghash’s hand and threw it to the floor. “What a foul, noxious weed eggplant is!” he cried. “Not only is it of a bilious color, it brings no more nourishment to mankind than so much grass. Moreover, it makes me burp.”

  And he was off again, as ready to continue in that vein as to shower the vegetable with compliments. Marcus listened, open-mouthed. Wulghash gave Pushram a look that should have chilled any man’s marrow, but the secretary’s stream of abuse never faltered. “Enough!” Wulghash finally growled. “Were you not praising eggplant to the skies not two minutes ago, instead of cursing it?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Well?” The word hung in the air like doom.

  But Pushram was unruffled. “Well, what?” he said cheerfully. “I am your courtier, not the eggplant’s. I have to say what pleases you, not what pleases the eggplant.”

  “Get out!” Wulghash roared, but he was laughing. Pushram scurried away anyhow. The khagan shook his head. “Makurani,” he said, more to himself than to the Romans. “Sometimes they make me wish my grandfather had stayed on the steppe.”

  Marcus pointed to the plate of eggplant. “Yet you have taken on many Makuraner ways. If your grandfather was a nomad, he never would have cared for such a dish.”

  “My grandfather ate beetles, when he could catch them,” the khagan said, and then sighed. “Too many of my chiefs think any change from the old customs wrong simply because it is change. Some of the plains ways have their point. What sense does it make to lock away women? Are they not people, too? But on the whole we were barbarians then, and for all their oiliness and foolishness the Makurani have worked out many better ways of living—and of ruling—than we ever knew. Try and tell that to an old nomad who has no thoughts past his flocks, though. Try and make him listen, or obey.”

  For a moment Scaurus understood him perfectly; he had lived with that feeling of being trapped between two cultures ever since the legionaries came to Videssos.

  There was some sort of commotion outside the throne room. Marcus heard shouts of anger, then of fear. Nobles’ heads turned as they looked to see what was wrong. A couple of eunuchs trotted toward the door. Wulghash’s guards still stood impassive, but the tribune saw arm muscles bunch as hands tightened on sabers.

  “Let me by, or regret it evermore!” At the sound of that voice, Marcus and Gaius Philippus were both on their feet and reaching for their swords. Crying out in alarm, the nearest guardsmen broke freeze and sprang at them.

  “Stand!” Wulghash shouted, halting the Romans and his own soldiers alike. “What idiocy are you playing at?”

  Scaurus was saved the trouble of finding an answer. Back at the entrance to the throne room, the last palace servitors were retreating in dread. Avshar strode down the carpet toward the twin thrones. Despite the thick, soft wool, every bootfall echoed. The muffled thuds were the only sounds in the hall, growing ever louder as he drew close.

  No longer were the wizard-prince’s robes an immaculate white. They swirled in filthy, dusty tatters round him. As protocol demanded, he stopped just past the edge of the carpet; his head turned from one Roman to the other. “Well, well,” he said with horrible good humor, “what have we here?”

  He ignored Wulghash, who said sharply, “We have a servant who does not know his master, it seems. Did you forget the respect you owe me, or is this merely more of your natural rudeness?”

  Marcus looked at the khagan in surprised admiration. Wulghash showed none of the fear that paralyzed Avshar’s friend and foe alike, the fear whose full weight the tribune was feeling now.

  The wizard-prince stiffened angrily and gave Wulghash a long measure of his chilling stare, all the worse because his eyes were unseen. The khagan met it, something few men could have done. Fairly bursting with rage, Avshar bent in a bow whose very depth was an insult. “I pray your pardon, your Majesty,” he said, but his voice held no apology. He went on, “My surprise betrayed me—seeing these two rogues here, I thought me for a moment I was back in cursed Videssos again, at the damned Avtokrator’s court. Tell me, did you capture them in battle or were they taken spying?”

  “Neither,” Wulghash said, but his eyes slid to the Romans. He asked Avshar, “How is it you claim to have met a couple of no-account mercenaries at the Videssian court? What were they doing there, guard duty?” He still did not sound as if he believed the wizard-prince.

  “No-account mercenaries? Guard duty?” Avshar threw back his head and laughed, a horrid sound that sent the nobles closest to him scrambling back in dismay. Its echoes came back cold and spectral from the high-arched roof; a nightjar perched near the top of the throne room wall woke to terror and flapped away. “Is that what they told you?” Avshar laughed again, then gave a colored but largely accurate account of Scaurus’ career in Videssos, finishing, “And this other one, the short one, is his chief henchman.”

  “Bugger yourself,” Gaius Philippus said. He stood balanced on the balls of his feet, ready to throw himself at Avshar.

  Wulghash ignored the senior centurion. “Is this true?” he asked Marcus in a voice like iron.

  Avshar hissed, a serpent on the point of striking. “Have a care what thou dost, Wulghash. Thou couldst yet try me too far, seeking the word of this miscreant espier to weigh it against mine own.”

  “Be thou still. I act as I list, with or without thy let.” The khagan was as fluent as Avshar in the archaic Videssian dialect the wizard-prince often used. Maybe, Marcus thought, Avshar had taught it to him.

  Wulghash asked the tribune again, “Is what he says true?”

  “Most of it,” Scaurus sighed. With Avshar standing there to give him away, what use in lying?

  Avshar laughed once more, this time in triumph. “From his own mouth he stands convicted. Give them over to me, Wulghash. The debt I owe them is larger and older than yours. I pledge you, the insult they offered with their base falsehoods shall be requited—oh, yes, a thousand times over.” He was all but purring in anticipation. At his gesture, the palace guards edged forward, expecting the khagan’s order to seize the Romans.

  Wulghash stopped them. “I have told you once, wizard—aye, and times enough before this—that I command here, yet always you seem to forget. Whatever story these men told, before they said a word to me they saved my minister’s life. I have made them my friends.”

  “And so?” Avshar’s whisper crawled with menace.

  “A favor for a favor. I give them back their lives in exchange for Tabari’s.” Wulghash turned to Scaurus and Gaius Philippus. “Get your horses. You may leave. No one will pursue you, I vow. I have called you my friends and I do not go back on my word—but you should have trusted me in full. I am no longer happy with you, friends or not. Go on; get out.”

  Hardly daring believe his ears, Marcus searched the khagan’s face. It was stormy with disappointed anger, but he read no deceit. As Wulghash had said of himself, he was as determined in friendship as he was in enmity. “You are a man of honor,” the tribune said softly.

  “You do well to remind me, for I am tempted to forget.” Wulghash waved brusquely for them to be gone.

  “Thou dung-headed fool!” Avshar roared before the Romans could move. They froze again; any exit would take them straight past the wizard-prince.

  But Avshar had nearly forgotten them in his rage. He screamed abuse at the khagan: “Thou dolt, thou clodpoll, thou idiot puling mousling with fantasies of manhood! Reeking filthy louse-bearded barbarous bastard son of a camel turd, thinkest thou to gainsay me? These sneaking spies are mine; get thee down on thy wormish belly and grovel in thanksgiving that I do not serve thee worse than them for thine insolence!”

  White about the lips, Wulghash snapped an order in the Yezda tongue to his guards. They drew their weapons and advanced on the wizard-prince.

  “Thou’lt not find it so simple to be shut of me as that,” Avshar sneered. “Am I as stupid as thyself, to take no precautions against thy childish thoughts of treachery?” He spoke a single word, in Videssian or some darker speech, the trigger to a spell long prepared against this time. The khagan’s guards came to a ragged halt. All at once they were looking at Avshar with the devotion a lap dog gives its mistress. “How now, O clever booby?” he chuckled.

  Wulghash, though, was wise in the ways of Makuran for reasons stronger than antiquarianism. He knew why the Makuraner kings of old had ordained that men seeking audience with them should halt at a certain spot. His hand darted to a spring cunningly concealed in the arm of his throne. A six-foot slab of stone fell away beneath Avshar’s feet.

  But the wizard-prince did not drop into the pit below. An abrupt pass let him bestride the empty air like polished marble. Wulghash’s nobles moaned; some covered their faces. The khagan’s guards—no, Avshar’s now—smiled at the new proof of their master’s might. Those smiles made Scaurus shudder. Only the soldiers’ lips moved. Their eyes stayed bright and blank.

  “This farce wearies me,” Avshar said. “Let there be an end to it. Look now, Wulghash, on the power thou hadst thought to oppose.” Still standing easily on nothing, the wizard-prince threw back the mantlings that always veiled his face.

  Even Gaius Philippus, calloused by more than half a lifetime of hard soldiering, could not hold back a groan. His cry was lost in the chorus of horror that swelled and swelled as Avshar turned toward the nobility of Yezd.

  Two thoughts raced across Scaurus’ mind. The first was that he had gone mad. He wished it were true. And the second was of the myth of Aurora’s lover Tithonus. The goddess had begged immortality for him from Jupiter, but forgot to ask that he not grow old.

  In his decrepitude, Tithonus had been turned by Jove into a grasshopper. No god had shown Avshar such kindness. Staring—he could not help but stare—the tribune tried to guess how many years had rolled over the sorcerer. He gave up; as well try to reckon how many goldpieces had gone into Phos’ High Temple. Imagining such age would have been enough to make the skin prickle into gooseflesh. Seeing it, and seeing it combined with Avshar’s undoubted vigor, was infinitely worse.

  “Well?” Avshar said into vast silence. “I own eight and a half centuries. Eight hundred years have passed since I learned in the ruins of Skopentzana where true power lay. Which of you puny mayfly men will stand against me now?” There was no answer; there could be no answer. Smiling a lich’s smile, the wizard-prince gestured to the guardsmen he had ensorceled. “I rule here. Kill me that lump of offal fouling my throne.”

  He spoke Videssian, but they understood. They surged toward Wulghash, sabers clenched in their fists.

  The khagan was perhaps the only man in the room not paralyzed by dismay. He did not need Avshar’s unmasking to know what had served him. No small wizard himself, he had divined that long ago. In his ambition he thought to use the other to exalt himself, to ride to greatness on Avshar’s back. For all that arrogance, though, he always remembered tool and user might one day be reversed. And so he pressed another stud mounted on his throne. A hidden doorway swung open behind it. He darted into the tunnel it had concealed.

  Avshar howled in fury; the door was secret even to him. “After him, you bunglers,” he screamed to the guards, though the blunder had not been theirs.

  Pushram sprang up and grappled with the leading guardsman. He was scrawny and carried nothing more deadly than a stylus, but he bought his master a few seconds with his life.

  His sacrifice jerked the Romans from their daze. They both seemed to have the same thought at once—better to die fighting than in Avshar’s clutches. They tore their swords free and hurled themselves at the wizard-prince’s soldiers.

  Avshar understood immediately. “Take them alive!” he shouted. “Their end shall not be as easy as they wish.”

  Sword in hand, a Makuraner noble dashed toward the thrones, rushing to the Romans’ aid and to the defense of the khagan. Avshar cursed and moved his guantleted hands in savage passes. The nobleman crashed to the floor, writhing in torment. “More?” the wizard asked. There were none.

  By weight of numbers, the guards forced Scaurus and Gaius Philippus away from the doorway down which Wulghash had vanished. Several rushed after the khagan. The tribune laid about him desperately, but a cleverly aimed slash caught his sword just above the hilt. It flew from his numbed fingers. Knowing how little good it would do, he snatched out his dagger and stabbed at the nearest guardsman. He felt the blade bite and heard a grunt of pain.

  Avshar’s order hampered his men, who took losses because of it and passed up several sure killing strokes. The Romans battled ferociously, trying to make their foes finish them. Then a guardsman sent his fist clubbing down on the back of Marcus’ neck. The tribune toppled. He did not see the Yezda swarm over Gaius Philippus and finally bring him down.

  An echoing shout from the secret tunnel’s opening returned Scaurus to blurry consciousness. Someone screamed, then silence fell once more. A couple of minutes later, a broad-shouldered guard, staggering under the weight, came out of the doorway with a corpse on his back. It wore royal robes. Marcus had a glimpse of fleshy nose, square-cut gray beard, eyes gone set and staring—no way now to see if intelligence had been there.

  Avshar’s terrible grin grew wide. “Well done,” he said. “Thou’lt be a captain for this day’s work. What end did he make?”

  As usual, the sorcerer spoke in Videssian, but the guardsman had no trouble with it. He answered in his own tongue. Avshar grimaced impatiently. “What care I that your stupid comrade fell? Incompetence punishes itself, as always. Here, give the body to these others to fling on the midden; hie yourself off to the officers’ chambers, to deck yourself with something finer than those rags you wear.”

  The soldier said something that sounded like a protest of unworthiness. Avshar made his harsh voice as genial as he could, answering, “Nay, thou hast earned it. Hyazdat, Gandutav, take him along and fit him out.” Pounding the trooper on the back, the two guards officers led him away.

  More guardsmen carried off the corpse that had won him his promotion. Save for those still grasping the tribune and Gaius Philippus, only a couple were left in the throne room.

  Avshar did not need them. By himself he cowed the nobility of Yezd, bold haughty Makurani and fierce Yezda alike. Men stared at their shoes, at each other, at the walls, anything to keep from meeting his eyes. He snarled at them. They went to their knees and then to their bellies in proskynesis before him. Some, mostly Makurani, performed the prostration with grace, others were slow and clumsy. But all knelt.

  “And thou,” Avshar said to Marcus. “I have heard thou wouldst not bend the knee before the Avtokrators. I am greater than they, for I am at once priest and lord, patriarch and Emperor. They shall know my power, and my god’s—as shalt thou.”

  He gave the tribune no chance to refuse; at his command, the guards cast Scaurus at his feet. His boot, still smelling of lathered horse, ground cruelly into the Roman’s shoulder. He suddenly asked, “What didst thou with the head of Mavrikios Gavras, when I gave it thee?”

  “Buried it,” Marcus answered, too startled not to respond.

  “A pity; now when I take Thorisin’s, the set will remain broken. Perhaps thine shall serve in its stead. Such decisions should not be frivolously made, but then I now enjoy the leisure to choose among the interesting possibilities.”

  Avshar strode over to the tribune’s sword, which still lay where it had fallen. The wizard-prince stooped to pick up the prize, but paused before his hand closed on the hilt—that blade had shown itself dangerous to his spells too many times for him to be easy about touching it. But he did not stay baffled long. He pointed to a noble. “Tabari, come you forward.”

  “Aye, my lord,” the man the Romans had rescued said eagerly. He prostrated himself before the wizard. His face to the floor, he went on, “I am privileged to see you raised at last to your proper estate. Your followers here have waited long for this day.”

  “As have I,” Avshar said. “As have I.” The pain behind Marcus’ eyes was not the only thing to sicken him now. Bad enough to have saved a Yezda minister. To have preserved one of Avshar’s creatures and fallen into the wizard-prince’s hand because of it mortified him past bearing.

  He hardly noticed when two of the ensorceled guards hauled him to his feet. Another pair did the same with Gaius Philippus, who had also been cast down. The senior centurion struggled in their grasp, but could not break free.

  Avshar was saying, “Carry this piece of rusty iron down to my workroom in the dungeons. As minister of justice, you doubtless know them well enough to find the place without difficulty.”

  Tabari’s laugh was not pleasant, except to Avshar. “Oh, indeed, my lord.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I thought as much. And while you are about it, guide the guards holding these wretches”—a thumb jabbed toward the Romans—“to the block of cells adjacent. Perhaps the blade will yield up its secrets to me when housed in their flesh.”

  “What a pleasant prospect,” Tabari said, killing any lingering hope Scaurus had for the permanence of his gratitude. Tabari gestured to the tribune’s captors. They dragged him away. He heard Gaius Philippus, still swearing, forced along behind him.

  Avshar’s voice pursued them: “Enjoy this respite while you may, for you shall have none other, ever again.”

  Tabari waved the guards down a narrow spiral ramp cut into the living rock just outside the throne room. As they descended into the bowels of the palace, a woman’s shriek rang out far above. Atossa, Marcus thought dully, must have come into the court. The scream was abruptly silenced.