They gloried in his latest victory, chanting his name as though it were an incantation. It sounded like a great sea swell crashing against rocks. The rhythmic pulse of a hundred thousand hearts and voices, laced with pounding drums.

His guards brought him the chieftain of the defeated. The man dropped to his knees, in supplication and terror.

‘Get up,’ the warlord said, speaking softly, ‘I have no need of idolatry.’

The captive met a gaze that seemed all-knowing. ‘You’ve brought us to waste. Where else should I be but on my knees?’

‘Your people fought well. Do not abase yourself.’

The chieftain slowly rose. ‘We posed no threat to you. Why make war on us?’

‘What other option did you leave? Had you united with me this could have been averted.’

‘My people want no truck with devilry.’

The warlord laughed, not unkindly. ‘You think me evil?’

‘Look about you.’ The chieftain swept an arm to take in the violated landscape, his ruined fiefdom. ‘Isn’t this bad enough to count?’

‘No. This is restraint.’

‘You consider yourself a

benign

conqueror?’

‘I don’t consider myself a conqueror at all. I’ve come to set you free.’

It was the chieftain’s turn to laugh, cynically, and notwithstanding his plight.

Zerreiss smiled, easily and in good nature. ‘So, how are we to proceed?’

‘With my death,’ the chieftain replied, his chest swelling.

‘You can join me yet. Many have.’

‘I expect no mercy.’

‘Your bravery does you credit. But why throw away your life? I offer pardon for you, your family and kinsmen. For your people. You have only to swear fealty to me.’

‘And live in shame?’

‘You would be part of a great enterprise. What shame is there in that?’

‘A great madness, more like.’

For an instant, the warlord’s eyes were stone. ‘Look at my army. See how many different bloods it holds. They do not think of themselves as subject.’

‘But why are you building this massive force? What goal do you have beyond subjugating your neighbours?’

‘I told you. Liberation.’

If the chieftain hoped for clarity he was disappointed. The warlord’s expression was enigmatic. ‘They say you’re wise beyond your years,’ the chieftain said, ‘and your skills as a general can’t be doubted. Yet you pursue some grand scheme whose aim you do not state.’

‘You need only know that what I bring cannot be resisted.’

‘I must be more simple-minded than I thought. All you say is a riddle to me.’

‘Rally to my banner and everything will fall into place.’

‘I can see one thing already; that you push ever south. Soon you’ll be in the domain of others not so easily overcome. Then you’ll meet powers greater than your own, Zerreiss.’

‘We’ll see.’ The warlord was unperturbed. ‘But you still have to decide. Should my army be fire-raisers or firefighters? Are you with me or -?

Wait.

’ He closed his eyes and tilted his head, as though interrupted by a sound only he could hear. ‘It comes,’ he mouthed.

‘What?’ The prisoner looked around at the warlord’s retinue. They resembled a carved tableau, frozen mid-task. Listening. The army below had also fallen still, and silent. Although well accustomed to the northern climate, the chieftain shivered.

‘Let your decision rest on this,’ Zerreiss told him.

The chieftain could feel it now. A bass sensation in his bones; a sound too low to be audible. The distinct impression of events about to collide. He gazed stupefied at the warlord. ‘Who…

what

are you?’

‘I am Doubt, made flesh,’ Zerreiss proclaimed.

And the Earth began to shake.

The royal palace in Merakasa was a vast bubble of tranquillity in an ocean of foaming disorder.

Away from the city’s glamoured chaos, inside the palace’s innermost walls, another world turned. Paths wound gently through sumptuous grounds which were thick with trees. The colour of every bloom delighted the eye. But no birds ever sang there.

Nearer the palace itself, the pastoral met acres of white marbled courtyard. Here there were arbours, arches, and benches no one ever sat on. Where grass ended and flagstones began the tradition of marking subterranean power channels was respected. Coloured lines, unerringly straight, homed in from all compass points. A spider’s web of red, black, peach, blue and a dozen other shades, all kept freshly tinted.

The vivid stripes continued inside the palace itself, running the length of corridors and under walls, cutting across the floors of rooms. They intersected deep in the palace’s heart, in the

sanctum sanctorum

which only Gath Tampoor’s ruling dynasty had ever entered. A massive vaulted chamber, ringed by impossibly tall pillars, lit by radiances whose source could not be seen. Quietly opulent in its decoration, sparely but tastefully furnished, it was perfumed by rare essences smouldering in iron braziers.

Entering from every direction, the lines gave up their rectilinear courses, curved, intermingled and flowed into an enormous circle upon the floor. Their colours blended too, and became glistening silver. Within the circle, and linked to it, shimmered the burnished emblem of Gath Tampoor: the pyramidal teeth of a stylised sunburst, enclosing a magnificent dragon. Permanently glamoured, the coiled, scaly beast belched sheets of orange flame.

One of the dragon’s great eyes was a hollow cavity. A smooth-sided pit large enough to comfortably drop a stagecoach into. The content of all the channels fed the pool at its bottom. Magic’s chariot, quicksilver with the consistency of honey, coursed and blended there. The pool’s shining surface, agitated as the liquid ebbed and fluxed, would often settle and take on the properties of what might best be described as a window. A window that showed images from a myriad elsewheres.

Not that most people would recognise the images as such, or indeed the window.

A small group clustered around the eye. One of them held the most powerful position in the empire. The others had blood ties to her. They dressed in spectacularly expensive glamoured raiment, and several were accompanied by chimera companions. These were beautiful or repulsive in the extreme, as dictated by taste.

Empress Bethmilno XXV was very old. Though assuming she was senile could prove fatal. She wore thick white face powder. Her lips were a scarlet wound, her eyes and lashes heavily lead blackened. Artificially dark, her hair was piled up and lanced with long silver pins. Her garb was light-coloured and delicately glamoured, so that its continuously shifting display of patterns changed subtly.

The group studied the recess, seemingly untroubled by the intense cold it gave off.

‘There!’ the Empress exclaimed, pointing to a stir of shadows in the quicksilver. ‘And again, there.’

‘Does it have the same source, Grandmother?’ a young man asked.

‘Yes, the barbarous lands. Though not so far north this time.’

‘These disturbances in the grid grow stronger and more frequent,’ an older man remarked. ‘It beggars belief that one human being could have such an effect.’

‘Yet it appears so,’ Bethmilno said, ‘for all that he’s an ignorant savage.’

‘Is there any precedent?’

‘None.’

‘This should have been nipped in the bud,’ another grumbled. ‘It’s past time this upstart was dealt with.’

The Empress viewed him sternly. ‘You can’t honestly believe the warlord could endanger us in any way. When has any threat from the people ever done that? To interpret this as some kind of hazard to the imperium would be to take it too seriously.’ She paused, and added, ‘We have not come this far, however, by being incautious. And there are considerations beyond the problems a single warlord may bring us.’

‘Rintarah,’ the grandchild supplied dutifully.

The Empress smiled indulgently. A sight which, to an outsider, might appear grotesque. ‘I could wish others were as focused on realities as you, my dear. It should never be forgotten who the true enemy is.’ She looked to them all. ‘Rintarah. Of course.