"It's a damned waste of time!"
Zharvak's booming voice shook the polished wood panelling in the small dressing chamber. Like many of the rooms, offices and chambers in Skarnelm's royal palace, it was windowless, carved as it was in the interior of the great mountain, Kressgir.
The room reeked of age from the heavy, intricately carved wooden bench, the ceramic washstand, the glass clock with the paint peeling off its face, to the oil lanterns attached to the walls two centuries ago when the lighting panels in the ceiling had stopped working.
The Master of the Robes, polishing Zharvak's already gleaming pauldrons, hesitated and looked towards Vester, the emperor's Master of Ceremonies, tall, lean, hawk-faced and dressed entirely in black, who stood near the door. Vester motioned for it to continue.
Casting anxious glances at the exit - the door opposite the one that led into the throne room - the Master of the Robes, an eight-limbed pirch, dabbed its polishing cloth at Zharvak's breastplate.
"Damned priests!" growled the emperor. "Nothing but glorified tea-leaf readers! Why do I have to go through this sham every month?" He was tall for a skeeple - his species - and cut an imposing figure with his broad shoulders and muscular arms swelled by red and gold armour. His helm, bearing the flared wings of the House of Skarnelm, artfully set off his dark eyes under massive, beetling brows. Gold leaf adorned the blunt, bony horn thrusting from the centre of his face. The yellow metal contrasted with the thick, black beard that concealed the lower part of his face. His short, powerful legs were made longer by the addition of thick soles to his armoured boots.
With one pair of arms, the Master of the Robes brushed away invisible specks of dust from the glyph painted and embossed on the breastplate of Zharvak's cuirass. At the same time, its other pair of arms polished his helm.
And every month we have this conversation, thought Vester. Cretin. No sense of style and the attention span of a gnat.
Fortunately, the thick door at Vester's back kept Zharvak's voice from penetrating to the throne room where nobles, dignitaries, courtiers and ambassadors were gathering for the day's proceedings.
"If I may say so, my lord, Panslatch is a seer of some distinction. As I recall, it was he who warned of the Temtooig uprising. A warning which gave you ample time to reinforce your presence in that region thereby forestalling the unpleasantness which would have otherwise arisen," said Vester. He gauged his tone precisely: deferential but without sounding meek, acutely aware he was dangerously close to overstepping his role.
Zharvak chuckled. "It was pretty damned unpleasant for those ringleaders though, eh? Nothing like a public execution to settle the masses."
"Quite so, my lord," replied Vester.
"Still, I don't see why Panslatch has to do all that mumbo-jumbo nonsense. Why can't he just tell me what I need to know without capering about like a damned slunkie?"
Vester suppressed the urge to raise his eyebrows. Coming from Zharvak, accusing the High Priest of attention-seeking was more than a little rich. "It adds to the sense of occasion, my lord. People expect it of him."
The Master of the Robes looked at the clock, then quietly shuffled around on its four legs to face Zharvak. It made a small throat-clearing noise. "The hour is upon us, my lord," it said.
"What? Oh, it's time to go in. Why don't you just say that instead of... whatever it was you just said?"
The Master of the Robes kept its head lowered and said nothing, well aware the previous incumbent to his position was still being treated for multiple injuries gained from Zharvak's notion that it had been too plain talking.
Vester cast an eye over Zharvak's gaudy appearance, wondering, not for the first time, what sort of mind the emperor had that would make him think appearing before his nobles clad in full armour was a good idea. Rather than projecting the image he desired - aggressive and warlike - it made him look ridiculous. Especially seeing as the armour wasn't made of rare and hideously expensive steel, but cheap fibres and resin polished to look like metal. Zharvak believed this to be a state secret, but during his coronation, there had been a couple of nobles present who had made the mistake of openly sneering. Both had had time for only a swiftly passing regret before their lifeless bodies had been dragged from the court while their new emperor wiped their blood from his sword.
Finesse. That was what Zharvak lacked. Vester cursed inwardly, nodded to the Master of the Robes, then swivelled around and swung open the door to the throne room.
The loud reverberation of a gong stilled the hubbub of voices as Zharvak stepped through the door. Vester stayed close behind the emperor so he could observe the assembled court members getting to their feet and take note of those who rose disrespectfully slowly.
Pulling himself to his full height, Zharvak walked with a measured pace to the throne and seated himself. Vester took his place in the row of flunkeys standing behind the throne's dais, smarting once again at the loss of his coveted place at the emperor's right.
"Welcome, my loyal subjects," boomed the emperor.
"Hail! Zharvak!"
Vester thought the response sounded slightly less enthusiastic than was proper and, more to keep his hand in than a desire to do anything helpful, made a mental note to start a rumour that a purge of dissidents was imminent.
Zharvak waved a gauntleted hand, and the nobles sat down. Each species represented in the gathering was seated in its own section, with those nearest the throne being the most important.
Several paces before the dais, in the front row, were the skeeple nobility from whose ranks Zharvak had ascended. Next, on the left of the central aisle, were the sleamarians with Lord Lungwil sitting stiffly at their centre. To the right were the garflungs. Lord Ranthar sat on the aisle seat, his three eyes glaring at the floor. Behind them, in descending order of importance, were Glaskwall's other ruling species: ponnomies, muppins, dwinkles and dentharians.
Zharvak had seen to it that the seating in each section was uncomfortably hard and slightly too small for the species for which they were intended, a ploy of which Vester did not approve. It was too crude, too obvious.
When he had enjoyed a more powerful position than the one he currently held, he had been far more subtle in his approach. It was emotional manipulation that kept the ruling nobles - and the population at large - divided and unsettled.
He had named his methods of manipulation The Four Tiers.
Tier One had been to use his position in court, his closeness to the old emperor, Peskahr, to good effect. At social gatherings, at chance meetings in the corridors of power or at high level conclaves, his muted expression of disdain or dismay at the right moment would tip the balance in the direction he wanted.
Tier Two had involved the spreading of carefully targeted rumours. The various political factions could be kept nicely at one another's throats by feeding them contrary information.
At Tier Three, he brought the more serious tools of veiled threats and blackmail into play. This was often extremely effective, especially if followed by an unsettling tier two rumour.
Rarely had he needed to resort to the direct action of Tier Four.
But times had changed and now it would be dangerous to be seen taking any action at all, never mind direct action. Zharvak had reduced him from effective ruler to underling in a way which had left him reeling.
But not for long. His innate sense of self preservation had seen to it that he started plotting Zharvak's downfall as soon as he'd recovered his senses. He kept himself abreast of current affairs and closely watched the nobles as they jockeyed for power under their new emperor. Because of his demotion he could not advise Zharvak openly on matters of state, but it was unthinkable that he, Vester, the real power in the land, should be relegated, humbled, reduced to a servant with no say. It was his right to rule! One day he would return to his former glory and Zharvak would be sorry. But he had to be careful. Zharvak would execute him without a moment's thought if he suspected his Master of Ceremonies had ideas above his station.
But when the time came to topple Zharvak, it would be him, Vester, who would make it happen. To this end, he had adopted a number of discreet methods to influence Zharvak and to remove any competition from the nobility.
One of the more gratifying techniques he had developed was to co-opt the soothsaying ceremonies conducted by the High Priest, Panslatch. On more than one occasion, he had blackmailed the High Priest into revealing dissidents or signs of rebellion to the emperor. That the rebellions were actually fake and despite the protestations of innocence from the so-called dissidents, Zharvak always reacted with gratifying predictability, executing the dissidents without trial or ordering his elite troops, the skalpriss, to eliminate those involved in the rebellions.
If his influence over the emperor was somewhat tangential, his manipulation of the palace guard was more direct. In an extremely satisfying move, he had recently persuaded many officers to believe his demotion was a ruse to prompt secretly rebellious nobles into relaxing their guard. By exploiting the fear and paranoia endemic in Skarnelm's military, he had established himself in their minds as still being in power. The fact that those above them denied such a ruse existed only confirmed their belief the conspiracy was true.
Vester brought his mind back to the present. Today's proceedings would be an example of his masterful ability to influence Zharvak while simultaneously unsettling anyone with something to hide. Panslatch would "see" a great uprising forming in an area some distance from Skarnelm - an area, as only he and a certain pair of courtiers knew, where a village from Earth had recently arrived - and Zharvak would, predictably, send the skalpriss to quell the supposed insurrection. The skalpriss would react with typical mindless ferocity and destroy the recent arrivals' village and, with a little prompting, any strange contraptions they should happen across.
Some of the villagers would be killed - a lot of them if they put up any resistance - but that was a price he was willing to pay.
With the humans taken care of, he would move in on Ranthar and Lungwil and use his influence with the palace guard to have the courtiers quietly executed before they came to the attention of Zharvak's inquisitors. Hulger would have to be killed too. He would be an untidy remnant who might reveal a tiny bit too much under the encouragement of red-hot pincers. Vester's eyebrow twitched. But with those inconvenient beings out of the way he would have removed the threat of a certain Interstitial Travel Device falling into the wrong hands - which were anyone's hands as far as he was concerned.
He would also gain Bakalwe's equipment, which was currently in the possession of Ranthar and Lungwil. He would persuade his tame technician - the one who had developed the pink cushion - to learn everything about said equipment and teach him how to operate it.
Vester allowed himself a thin smile, sending shivers down the spines (or carapaces) of the more nervous of the lords who happened to be looking at him at the time.
Idly he wondered what Hulger had done with the dead human. Better give him specific instructions. It wouldn't do for the hairy brute to toss the corpse into the sea, only to have it float into the harbour and provoke unwanted curiosity.
The use of the cushion to compromise the human's interrogation had been a calculated risk. He had been assured by the perspiring technician who he had coerced into assisting him, that the circuitry was undetectable. But it didn't appear that the scheming courtiers suspected foul play. They blamed one another and Hulger for not preparing the equipment properly.
He made another mental note to check that Hulger had destroyed the cushion as instructed. It was vital there was not the tiniest chance his interference could be traced back to him.
The rustling and squirming, as the lords tried to get comfortable on their too-small seats, died away and Vester nodded to the squat, brightly clad muppin standing on an ornate plinth to one side of the dais.
In a cascade of wobbling chins, the Master of the Voice seemed to split in half as he opened his cavernous mouth and proclaimed in rich, deep tones, "Zharvak, Absolute Ruler of the Known World, King of Glaskwall, Champion of Kresspit, Knight of the order of Spirk and Emperor of Pnebbit commands your attention."
With a dramatic flourish the Master of the Voice waved a stubby arm, indicating that the personage seated upon the throne was none other than the aforementioned Zharvak, Absolute Ruler, etcetera.
"Noble lords," said Zharvak with, Vester was pleased to see, a stifled yawn. "Send forth your supplicants."
This was the part Zharvak hated the most. Before ascending the throne his listening skills had lain dormant, undisturbed by all but the most persistent of people. These often found out, to their regret, that Zharvak leaned towards the philosophy that anyone who spent more than a few seconds speaking to him was probably asking for money. Clearly, they needed to be persuaded from that path by a fist between the eyes.
Early in his role as emperor, Zharvak had grudgingly learned that assuming the mantle of power meant he was required to be a little less physical if relations with neighbouring lands were to be maintained at a level somewhat more comfortable than open warfare. At the start of Zharvak's rule not a few ambassadors, nursing bruised faces, had to be diplomatically persuaded not to return with an army bearing lots of sharp, pointy objects.
For today's proceedings, from the hundreds of applications made by the lords, a mere six had been picked to be put before Zharvak. The applications had ranged from requests for funds to bolster military outposts to blessings on forthcoming marriages and any number of other things in-between. Vester had informed the selection committee that Zharvak had a headache and suggested that in order not to tax the emperor's patience, only the most banal should to be put forward today.
Gone were the days when supplicants had presented their petitions themselves. Nowadays they were represented by professionals who hired themselves to whoever would pay them to approach the throne and beg their case.
The tall double doors at the end of the hall swung open and the representatives of the six supplicants filed through. Facing the throne, they bowed as gracefully as their angular bodies allowed, then stepped down the aisle along the long mauve carpet that ended at the dais.
The representatives were a motley assortment of salagunni, a species renowned for physical cowardice and lack of scruples. It was said a salagunn would sell their children - or any other family member for that matter - their neighbour's belongings and even their souls - their neighbour's souls, that is - if it meant a profit and no harm to themselves. Five were dressed in sombre shades of grey. The sixth had added a plum coloured waistcoat, edged with yellow to his ensemble. Their clothing hung from them like empty sacks on coat hangers, swaying with slow deliberation as they walked and jostled one another in their restrained efforts to be first at the throne.
Protocol stipulated they approach slowly, but since the first to reach the dais would also be the first to speak, his request would be the most likely one to be granted. Zharvak was notorious for his short attention span.
The mauve carpet was too narrow for more than three to walk abreast and the salagunni were forced to crowd together in their struggle to keep to a decorous speed, appear unruffled and yet be at the front of the pack. Each carried a cane with a sharpened tip wielded surreptitiously to keep one another at bay or to trip each other. The result was an undignified scuffle that began at the back of the hall and finished at the foot of the throne.
Upon reaching the dais, the salagunni bowed low, the one at the front keeping a wary eye for frustrated jabs from the sharp end of a rival's cane. Casting a quick look at Zharvak, he stretched his mouth into a smile, ignoring the glares of hatred from his fellows, and launched into his speech.
"Oh mighty emperor, hear my plea," he began. "The most noble and highly regarded Baron Nicket, a most trusted and loyal subject..."
Vester was pleased to see Zharvak's head droop forward.
"... naturally Baron Nicket, being of impeccable credentials, seeks to retain what is rightfully his. In order to prevent his northern estates falling into the grasping hands of his deceased mistress' family, he seeks to..."
Zharvak's shoulders sagged and Vester became aware of a low droning, barely at the edge of perception. Several of the assembled lords were already asleep, and several more heads were nodding as the droning continued. With a nearly imperceptible blur, the speaking representative's cane flashed behind him. The gaudily waistcoated salagunni directly to his rear stiffened and the droning ended abruptly in a strangled yelp.
Without missing a beat, the representative continued his pitch. Heads came up around the hall, eyes blinking away the sleep. Zharvak stirred, coughed and sat up straight, his armour creaking.
"...and so, your Imperial Majesty, on behalf of Baron Nicket I most humbly await your decision."
"Eh? What? Thieving bastard!" said Zharvak, who hadn't heard more than the first few words before he had fallen asleep. "Your gods-be-damned baron won't get a penny out of me."
"I beg your pardon, sire, " said the supplicant, a little flustered. "The baron does not ask for money. He merely asks for you to overrule the decision taken by the Conclavatorial Court regarding the petition made by his deceased mistress' family."
"Baron Nicket, eh? Isn't he that bloody fool who was so eager to gallop his new mistress she was able to make him sign a contract before she'd let him anywhere near her? He should have checked it before bumping her off, eh?"
The representative's eyes blinked rapidly. "With respect, your Highness, I -"
"Petition refused," interrupted Zharvak.
"Thank you. Your Imperial Majesty is most wise." The representative bowed low, concealing his disappointment behind a professional mask of neutrality, and backed away from the royal presence.
The remaining salagunni shuffled and jostled one another for prime position as Zharvak leaned forward and said, "Who's next?"
A cane stabbed the leg of the foremost salagunn and sent him crumpling to his knees. Swiftly the colourfully clad one stepped around him.
"I am, your Imperial Majesty," he said, bowing low with a gracious sweep of his long arms.
"Get on with it," said Zharvak. "It had better be good."
"Thank you. Most gracious of you Sire." He assumed an oratorical pose, his hands dramatically sweeping across his body.
"I stand before you naked of deceit, subterfuge or artifice," he said. "My sleeves are empty. And yet..."
With a flourish he produced a large, blue dappled egg which seemed to spring from his fingertips. An appreciative murmur came from the court. The salagunn acknowledged his audience with a tight, satisfied smile.
"Like an egg, an idea can be simple but full of potential," he continued. "And like an egg, it can grow into a thing of marvel." His fingers flexed and the egg burst. Tiny shards of shell sprayed out in a cloud and a small, white karachoid flapped towards the ceiling, its four wings a frantic blur.
A scatter of applause ran around the assembly, and the colourful salagunn bowed.
He drew a deep breath and, with a flourish of his arms, said, "The proposal I am about to present is-"
"Eggs don't grow," interrupted Zharvak.
"Your Majesty...?"
"You said the egg can grow. Eggs don't grow. It's the thing inside the egg that grows."
"It was merely an illustration to demonstrate that ideas can start small and get bigger as more people become involved, Majesty," said the representative, eager to return to his pitch, away from the rather uncomfortable direction the conversation had taken.
"Why didn't you just bloody well say so instead of talking rubbish? One more mention of eggs and you'll be finding out they don't feature much on the menu in the dungeons."
"Thank you, your Highness. I.. um... that is to say... I..." Sweat beaded the salagunn's forehead. "...um, it's like this: Lord Anctar has conceived a plan to, um... It's a very sound plan of course and he would like it brought to your attention, of course. And he would like you, of course, to invest in it and..."
Zharvak's eyes were like stones. "There are worse places than the dungeons. If you say 'of course' again you'll find out what they are."
"Oh, I, er, can assure you, of co..." The salagunn stuttered to a stop. His eyes bulged with horror and he made a few strangled noises as his mind and voice wrestled with each other.
"Enough! Get out all of you!" shouted Zharvak.
The representatives gaped in disbelief and shrank back from the emperor.
Zharvak turned to Vester. "What's next?"
The emperor was in a thoroughly bad mood. Everything was proceeding according to plan. With Zharvak in a foul temper he was more likely than ever to react with violent countermeasures, sending out the skalpriss to put down the unrest Panslatch would "see" fomenting in the area now occupied by the recently arrived humans.
"It is a seeing by the High Priest, your Highness."
"Humph," snorted Zharvak. "All right, let's get it over with."
The salagunni were still retreating towards the doorway, walking backwards so as to keep facing the throne as demanded by protocol. The colourfully dressed one was eyeing his fellows nervously, while they looked at him with undisguised loathing. There was an unseemly scramble as soon as they all passed through the doorway, with the colourful one making an early break to escape his wrathful fellows. The guards closed the doors.
The muted squeals in the corridor outside the court faded away and a few seconds later the doors swung open again, admitting a procession of sombrely clad clergy.
Five tall, black-robed fractanian priests, each carrying a gold staff topped by a long, curling black silk flag, entered first. Stepping in unison and walking on their rear two legs, their middle pair tucked neatly against their bodies and all but hidden by the folds in their robes, the priests kept their eyes fixed firmly to the front.
Following them were four scarlet-robed neophytes, one at each corner of a large, shallow box, about six feet long by four feet wide, covered in a gilded canopy which they bore with stoic ease despite its obvious weight.
Behind them came Panslatch.
The High Priest was a groap, a fact which surprised many. Groaps were long-lived, ponderously built, and were amongst the more unloved of the inhabitants of Hollow. It wasn't so much their ugliness, though some said no other species came close for sheer repulsiveness, or the gracelessness of their bulbous bodies and twig-like appendages, but the unnerving exudations dripping from the many orifices covering their skin. The High Priest's vestments were more akin to fishing nets than robes, filled as they were with holes to clear the discharge weeping from his skin openings.
A swarm of small, eight-legged ceptacs scurried underneath him, catching the drips in delicate porcelain bowls strapped to their backs.
The five black-robed priests fanned out and took up positions in a semi-circle at the end of the shallow box which had been placed on the floor in front of Zharvak. With ritual grace, the four neophytes plucked away the canopy, revealing that the box was filled with sand, its surface lightly raked into whorled patterns.
Panslatch stood at the end opposite Zharvak. After a few moments to let the tension build, he began chanting, his thin arms raised to invoke Bluter, the foremost deity of the Offarian Church.
The five priests joined in, intoning in a counter beat to the one Panslatch continued to roll out in his harsh, dry voice. As the chant reached a climax, the High Priest's arm shot forward and threw a handful of pebbles into the tray.
Where the pebbles struck, fountains of sand exploded into the air. And hung there. Frozen at the apogee of their flight.
In the sudden intense silence, the audience leaned forward as the High Priest circled the divining box examining the shapes in the air made by the suspended grains of sand.
Panslatch had hurled five pebbles into the tray, but even the most raw member of the assembled lords could see that something was not quite right. Four dents in the sand where pebbles had struck each had a motionless cloud of sand particles suspended above it.
But the air above the fifth was empty.