“Our mission is not to pillage the city,” Conrig declared. “It is to seize it and to force the capitulation of Achardus, his state officials, and the powerful Guild of Merchants. This I vow to do. This I will do with the aid of you stalwart northerners, who are familiar with mountain terrain and the battle tactics needed for a swift and stealthy assault against an unsuspecting foe. As for your material reward, it will be more than generous. I’ll not forget those whose bravery helped cement the Sovereignty of High Blenholme. This I also vow, on the head of Emperor Bazekoy the Great.”
Skellhaven’s thin lips stretched in a disagreeable smile. “A very impressive oath, Your Grace. Please don’t take me wrong. I’m a poor man, only concerned for the welfare of my followers. All too often the Crown has made fine promises to us and then…” He shrugged.
“I am not King Olmigon,” Conrig said. A few of them drew breath at his lack of respect, but he turned away from Hartrig Skellhaven and let his gaze sweep them all. “The time has come, my friends, for you to decide. Please say—beginning with you, dear Godfather—whether you will join me in an invasion of Didion.”
“I will come,” said Tanaby Vanguard, “along with one hundred of my knights and thanes.”
“And I with forty,” said Norval Swanwick. “Plus farriers, cooks, and leeches well able to fight.”
“Ramscrest pledges sixty mounted warriors and twenty sumpter-mules well provisioned.”
“The Virago of Marley will follow you with a force of eighty mounted men,” Zeandrise declared, “plus thirty stout pack-ponies and their armed drivers.”
“My festering leg precludes my personal participation,” said Conistone, “but I will send my four sons, ten knights of my household, twenty fighting thanes, and five farriers.”
The others chimed in their assent one by one, some charged with eagerness and others, like Skellhaven and Holmrangel, with an air of having been coerced, until the number of warriors pledged reached well over four hundred, with a wholly adequate supply train and remounts. The last to speak was Earl Marshal Parlian Beorbrook.
“Your Grace,” said he, “I am a cautious man, but not an ignorant one. I’ve read the Chronicle from beginning to end, the histories of more than a hundred Cathran rulers. But none of them, I think, will be the match of you if you can pull off this mad stunt. I pledge thirty knights, the same number of fighters mounted on sturdy coursers, and fifty mules loaded with goodly fodder for man and beast… and I pray I’ll live to hail you Sovereign of High Blenholme.”
The council of war surged up from their seats and cheered.
Conrig nodded in ironic acknowledgment of the backhanded compliment. “Your agreement to my proposal gladdens my heart, Earl Marshal.” He opened the ornate black velvet purse that hung from his belt. “I have here wafers of the most exquisitely flavored pyligosh, which I will share with you all as a token of our new fellowship.”
Almost solemnly, he handed out the rare small sweetmeats, each of which was wrapped in a green cloth square and tied with golden cord. “Please eat them now to symbolize our unified resolve—and then let’s see what manner of liquid cheer Duke Tanaby has set out for us. I, for one, am now in need of refreshment stronger than wine.”
The nobles sprang up from their stools and crowded toward the laden sideboard, leaving only Zeandrise Marley to stand before Conrig, holding her wrapped tidbit. She spoke in a voice that was almost inaudible.
“My prince, do you know why I am called the Virago?”
He smiled. “I was told that when your wealthy young husband died, and you were left childless, a certain uncouth mountain lord came a-wooing. You spurned him, and he returned with an army to press his suit. Whereupon—”
“I rallied the knights and thanes of my barony and whipped the britches off the whoreson. And I defeated another force led by my late husband’s saucy cousin, who tried to lay claim to my fiefdom through some trivial point of law. After that, Vanguard gave me the warrior’s belt with his own hand, and I’ve held Marley against all comers for the past twenty-two years. I’m a hard woman, Prince Heritor.”
Conrig bowed his head in acknowledgment, still smiling.
“And I think you’re a hard man.” She held up the green-wrapped sweetmeat. “What would have happened to those who opposed your invasion scheme? Would they have been given wafers wrapped in a different color of cloth—or with cord tied in a special knot?”
He stepped closer to her, and for an instant something flickered in his handsome face. She stood her ground and his ambiguous expression was transformed into a broad grin. He unwrapped his own wafer and bit into it with evident enjoyment. “Absolutely delicious. And much more efficacious against noxious substances than drinking-cups with amethyst talismans. That’s just a silly superstition, as any alchymist can tell you. You may ask my brother Stergos, if you doubt me.”
Her eyes widened. “So it was the wine.”
“Which I partook of, along with the rest of you. The effects of the subtle poison would not be obvious for at least two days, when the unfortunate nay-sayers were well on their journey home. Thus no suspicion would fall upon me or Tanaby Vanguard—who, by the way, knew nothing about my precautionary measures. Earlier, I pressed him to take prisoner anyone who opposed my plan, but he wouldn’t agree to it. My godfather is too trusting and chivalrous. But then, he doesn’t aspire to be the Sovereign of High Blenholme.”
“And such a one must be ruthless?”
“Very.” He rested both hands on her shoulders in a gesture that might have passed for affection. “Are you going to tell the others what I did?”
Her worn face remained calm. “No… I won’t tell them. But I think it would bode well for our future comradeship—and the Sovereignty—if you did.”
They stared at each other without speaking. Then he took her arm and led her gently toward the waiting table of drinks where the others were gathered. “I’ll think about it, my lady. And you won’t forget to eat your wafer, will you?”
three
Snudge had sensed the mysterious overseeing presence, too, while carving the joint of roast beef that had been sent to the repository tower for the evening meal of the Heart Companions. Unlike his royal master and the Doctor Arcanorum, he knew he’d probably be able to trace and perhaps even identify the watcher if he could just get to the tower roof and do his search under the open sky.
The apartment where the prince’s party had been secreted took up the third and fourth floors of the tower. The third floor, holding the castle’s extensive library, was the most attractive, having tall windows and a wide hearth with wood blazing cheerfully, and numbers of cushioned chairs and benches in an open area surrounded by rows of stacks. Conrig and his three closest friends among the Heart Companions—Feribor Blackhorse, Tayman Owlstane, and Sividian Langford—had turned it into their common room during the two days preceding the council of war, while they kept their presence secret from most of the other castle inhabitants. The prince had the chief scribe’s office for a bedchamber, and the three young counts slept on cots laid out between the shelves. They used the big central table for eating and drinking and playing at board-games and dice.
The fourth storey of the tower, just beneath the now-untenanted guardroom that had a door opening onto the roof, was normally used by the duke’s controller of accounts, and for document storage. It was low-ceilinged and crowded with coffers of parchment and racks of tax-rolls. Vra-Stergos elected to spend most of his time in a partitioned nook up there, where he had privacy for his arcane studies.
Snudge and the four young armigers serving the prince’s Companions and the alchymist also slept in the accounts room, but they were obliged to remain below for most of their waking hours, waiting on the nobles or the prince.
This evening, Snudge and the other boys finished clearing the table after the Companions’ supper, gobbled their own, and put the soiled platters and leftovers outside the door for the castle staff to dispose of. Count Tayman, a genial Westleyman of two-and-twenty, challenged the other Companions to a session of picture-dice and called upon two of the armigers to serve them that evening while they gamed.
“Saundar and Belamil will play lute and flageolet,” he said, “and keep us well-supplied with refreshments. Mero, Gavlok and Deveron may take their ease after turning down the beds and laying out fresh garb for tomorrow.”
“Yes, my lord,” the boys chorused. The lucky ones darted off among the bookshelves to open up the beds of the noblemen, which had mattresses of doubled bearskin, silken sheets, and pillows stuffed with eiderdown.
“I’ll fix the alchymist’s bed while you take your ease at the fire, Gavlok,” Snudge volunteered after they had finished, looking for an excuse to go upstairs. “Maybe I’ll take a nap before His Grace returns and has need of me.”
Stergos’s quiet, studious squire gave him a grateful smile. “I thank you, Deveron.”
“You’re such a kind fellow, stable boy,” sneered Mero, who served Count Feribor Blackhorse. “Be damned sure we’ll tell Prince Conrig you’re lazing away in the sack if you’re not down here on the spot when he returns.”
The armiger was a burly redheaded youth who had just turned nineteen, nearly as tall as his formidable master. But where Blackhorse was so slyly sadistic that you might pass off his cruelties as unintentioned, Mero was a flagrant bully who used his position to terrorize the pages and servitors back at Brent Lodge, the prince’s hunting residence, where they had lived for the past month. Mero was usually more circumspect with the armigers of the other Heart Companions and with Gavlok, the bookish lad who served the Doctor Arcanorum, confining himself to verbal assaults. When Conrig had unaccountably chosen Deveron Austrey, his young footman, rather than a nobly born youth as bodyservant on the secret mission to Castle Vanguard, Mero was incensed, as though the presence of a commoner—even one who could read, write, and reckon—in the royal party were a personal affront. He had been imprudent enough to complain to Count Feribor. The blackened eye he received for his pains was now a muddy yellowish-green. With fine illogic, Mero had sworn to revenge himself on the upstart footman, but a suitable opportunity had not yet presented itself.
==========
Snudge hurried up the iron staircase to the accounts room. He’d have to act quickly on the roof; the alchymist would not be attending the council of war and might return to the tower at any moment. Rummaging in his pack, he found a small roll of cloth containing short lengths of wire of varying thicknesses, cunningly bent, tools he well knew the use of.
The door leading to the guardroom stair was locked, but a brief fiddle with one of the wires caused it to snap open. Snudge bounded up the steps and dashed through an armory crowded with compact defense engines—mangons and ballistas and catapults—along with wicker baskets of rocks, vires, and other missiles, stacked braziers, buckets of charcoal, cauldrons of solidified pitch, and crates of spherical iron bombshells packed with tarnblaze, having lengths of tarry cord protruding through their nozzles. The door opening onto the roof was only latched.
Outside, he saw the sun descending behind jagged black peaks while the snow-covered slopes of Demon Seat glowed pink with lavender shadows. The air was dead calm. Smoke from the castle chimneys and from buildings in the town beyond the outer ward and the curtain wall rose straight in blue-white columns. The first spunkies, like infinitesimal earthbound stars, began to sparkle in a patch of marshy waste ground below the castle’s knoll. He heard a dog bark. Someone down in the inner ward cursed a squealing horse. The shrill laughter of women came from the covered colonnade around the castle spring.
Snudge clapped hands over his ears, shut his eyes, and let the wind bear him away.
And immediately found watchers. Not one, but two!
Then came the difficult part. He felt himself sinking to his knees, finally flopping prone as the strength drained from his body and empowered his mind. He followed the thread of the first watcher, whose windsign he recognized too well, for hundreds of leagues northward.
The scene seemed hazy, as though obscured by thin gauze, since he viewed it at such a great distance; but the details were clear enough. Snudge seemed to soar over flats of black quicksand exposed at low tide toward a ramshackle castle nestled between crags above a misty estuary. The place was Royal Fenguard, seat of the rulers of Moss. This time there was no blocking cover-spell at the terminus of the trace, as had invariably been the case when he attempted to spy on her previously. Invisible as the wind, he seemed to pass through the bubbly glass of an illuminated window in the tall south tower.
And saw her: Ullanoth sha Linndal, daughter of the Conjure-King, only eighteen years of age but having the imposing presence of one much older. She was standing motionless in the middle of a room crowded with books, alchemical apparatus, and arcane objects of unknown function. On one side of her stood a tall candlestick, but the indistinct object it held was not a candle, although it glowed weakly.
The sorceress wore a flowing gown of leaf-green satin, the skirt and sleeve drapes gold-embroidered in an elaborate pattern of bulrushes. Her long unbound hair, almost luminous in the candlelight, was a strange pale hue—silvery with the kind of faint rosy undertone found in the lining of certain seashells. The narrow face had prominent cheekbones, an elegant long nose, and milk-white skin. Her eyelids were closed to enhance her oversight of Castle Vanguard, their thick dark lashes resting upon her cheeks.
After a time her thread of watching snapped and she opened her eyes. They were large as a doe’s and at first appeared to be green, but almost immediately their color changed as the sea does in late evening, becoming slate-grey, and then turning to an uncanny black. She smiled and refreshed herself with a drink from a golden cup, then took down a long cloak of midnight blue that hung from a wall peg. Donning it, she pulled its hood closely over her bright hair. Finally, she pulled something from the bosom of her gown—a small pendant on a chain that shone with the same faint radiance as the object on the candlestick.