At one wall of the room was a peculiar piece of padded furniture that resembled a narrow couch raised on end by means of a frame. It was tilted at a sharp angle and had rails at the side and a footrest to keep one from slipping off. Ullanoth arranged herself upon this and gripped the neck pendant tightly. Her mouth moved in soundless speech as she pronounced some elaborate spell, and even though Snudge could read lips, the words were incomprehensible to him.
He watched in awe. The small pendant in her hand blazed up like some miniature greenish lamp. Its nature was impossible to discern. The princess uttered a deep groan of pain. Her body seemed to shimmer, expand… and become two identical cloaked forms: a true body and a Sending, floating in mid-air beside the slanted couch. It was a rare magical talent, far beyond the abilities of the Brothers of Zeth, and Snudge knew of it only through reading occult books that he regularly borrowed—without permission—from the library of the Royal Alchymist back at Cala Palace.
The Sending drifted down until it stood upright, looking perfectly natural. The body on the couch, on the other hand, lay as motionless and pallid as a corpse. After glancing about the chamber, the Sending frowned as if it had forgotten something, then gestured at the tall candlestick with the faintly glowing object atop it. There was a brilliant emerald flash. The interior of Ullanoth’s tower vanished from Snudge’s oversight, as impenetrable to his scrying as it had always been before this night.
He knew, without knowing how, that the Sending was no longer inside the tower. It was flying on the wind directly toward him like some unseen wraith. But how had she managed to windwatch him when no one else could? He braced himself, too astounded even for terror, expecting her to materialize in front of him there on the roof.
Expecting quick death from a sorceress furious that he had spied on her…
But no. She had not been coming at him after all!
He smothered an oath as the Sending soared down into the great hall of Castle Vanguard and disappeared into the heavy shadows at the rear of the musicians’ gallery. An instant later Prince Conrig slipped out of the secret passage and began his scrutiny of the diners below him, not knowing Princess Ullanoth was there.
Snudge had windwatched her with Conrig twice before, when she came to Brent Lodge and conversed with the prince and Stergos. The boy had not realized then that her body was a magical simulacrum until she herself spoke casually of the miracle in her conversation with the brothers. After each visit, the double had returned to Fenguard, where it disappeared behind a shielding spell infinitely stronger than the puny sort Snudge himself was capable of spinning. He had never before been able to oversee the Mosslander princess in her home because of that spell.
With the subjects of his viewing now close by, Snudge watched with less effort as the prince was accosted by the cloaked woman. He read his master’s lips easily during the ensuing colloquy and wished he could know what the shrouded witch said about Vra-Stergos that caused the prince to blanch in dismay. But all too soon the Sending withdrew and returned to its gloomy castle above the Darkling Sands. There the familiar strong spell of couverture shut him out.
The second watching presence remained.
Its aim was more expertly focused than that of Ullanoth, less obvious to a searcher, and concentrated upon the solar chamber where the council of war was to take place. With the greatest caution, Snudge traced the thread of oversight backwards through the wind, only to discover that its source lay within Castle Vanguard itself—somewhere in the vicinity of the stables, directly across the inner ward from the repository tower.
It was impossible for him to oversee this scryer. To his astonishment, he was blocked by another sort of covering spell quite different from the shield at Fenguard, very compact and well-constructed, rendering the watcher invisible. But this was impossible! The person was windwatching, and no magical practitioner could perform more than one arcane task at a time—
“Deveron! Where are you?” It was the voice of Vra-Stergos, down in the accounts room.
Cursing under his breath, the boy thought for a split second to use his talent to hide. But his ability to conceal himself from normal folk and minor talents wouldn’t faze an ordained Brother of Zeth. Stergos would scry him out eventually and be all the more furious. Best to take his medicine.
He scrambled to his feet, left the roof, passed through the guardroom, and came down to stand sheepishly before the Doctor Arcanorum. The tall redheaded armiger Mero was there as well, with folded arms and an expression of malicious glee.
“There! I told you, my lord doctor. The knave picked the lock and went up to snoop in the guardroom, maybe thinking to steal something. He deserves a good whipping! Shall I—”
“Go down and join your mates,” Stergos told the young man with a grimace of distaste. “You, Deveron, come into my cubicle.”
When Mero was gone, clearly disappointed at not being able to witness Snudge’s punishment, Stergos said, “Sit there, then tell me truthfully what you were about.” The partially walled recess had a small window, through which the fading crimson sky was visible. A clerk’s desk had been appropriated by the alchymist for his own books, and he now seated himself at it and gestured for the boy to take a stool.
Snudge had no intention of lying. “My lord, I was exercising my talent. Out on the roof.”
“I knew it! Oh, Deveron, you gave your word you wouldn’t spy on the council of war—”
“Nor did 1.1 perceived a windwatcher and felt it was my duty to trace the person. I was successful. It was Lady Ullanoth, and she fashioned a magical duplicate of herself and engaged Prince Conrig here in the castle.”
“Blessed Zeth!” Unlike the inexperienced boy, who knew little of magical technicalities and would never have willingly betrayed the prince’s secret, the Doctor Arcanorum was well aware that a Sending could come only to one who was talented. Stergos had harbored suspicions about his brother ever since Conrig and he were accosted—apparently for the first time—by Ullanoth’s double at Brent Lodge. “Did you… do your lip-reading trick?”
“As well as I could, my lord.”
“Tell me!” When the boy hesitated, Stergos added, “You must. The prince trusts this witch, but I don’t. We may have to protect him from her. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Snudge nodded. Ullanoth made him uneasy, too, and not only because of her magic. Her beauty would inflame a marble statue, and Snudge was not made of stone.
“His Grace was in the musicians’ gallery looking down on the duke and the others. Ullanoth wore a hooded cloak that concealed her features, so I couldn’t tell what she might be saying. At first, Prince Conrig seemed to be hearing good news from her. He was pleased. Then his mood changed to concern, and he asked her if she could break some spell and discover what they were doing.”
“They?” Stergos repeated.
“I have no idea who he meant. Ullanoth replied in some manner that disturbed the prince mightily. He said, ‘Must you invoke those dire creatures? Isn’t there any other kind of sorcery that’ll serve our purposes?’”
Stergos drew in a sharp breath. “The Beaconfolk! God help us, I tried to warn him that she might use them to implement this scheme. But he would hear nothing against her… What else did you hear, lad?”
Snudge told how Conrig had asked if he should tell the council of war how Ullanoth helped formulate the Edict of Sovereignty, and how he had also said that it would be awkward to explain their friendship to Duke Tanaby and the earl marshal, since the two of them had never truly met face-to-face.
“And then came the most puzzling thing. His Grace and the lady spoke of you, my lord.” Snudge hesitated. “The prince said, ‘My brother will never tell a lie, even for me.’ The lady spoke. Then the prince said, ‘He is my brother. I love him.’ And his words seemed weighted with anger and fear.”
“Damn her!” the doctor whispered, knowing what Ullanoth must have told Conrig. His face twisted like one in pain. “Is there more?”
“Only that His Grace said he would do what was best. Then the Sending left him… and so I went in search of the second watcher.”
“A second—!”
“Aye, my lord. And one who is apparently far more adept than the lady, for he can perform two magidal actions at once. He’s hiding somewhere within the castle stables, well-covered by some superior spell so that I was unable to locate him precisely, much less identify him. He watches the council of war.”
Stergos uttered a moan. “Oh, God. Oh, God. And I perceived nothing. Nothing! What are we going to do?”
“If I may suggest—”
“What?” The doctor’s dismay turned to alarm as the boy explained.
“Let me go down through the ‘tween-wall passages and see if I can find this fellow. Perhaps he’s visible to the naked eye, even though windsight can’t scry him. He may be a wild talent… just like me! He must be someone in the entourage of one of the lords, for you know the duke didn’t allow any casual travelers or other strangers to enter the castle during this secret gathering. Since he’s in the stables, he may be disguised as a horse lackey. If he is visible, he could pretend to be drunk or sleeping and no one would suspect what he was doing.”
“If he should discover you—” Stergos broke off fearfully. “He must be a talent of great power, Deveron, to exert two magical functions at the same time. Even Ullanoth gave some hint to me of her watching, although I couldn’t be sure of her. But not this unknown—working his sorcery practically on top of us! If he’s spying on the council, he must be a mortal enemy of our prince. He might not hesitate to kill you.”
“He won’t realize I’m a danger to him. Not if I just seek him out and give him a casual glance. Just another housecarl without an adept bone in my body.”
“It might work,” Stergos said grudgingly. It was a sore point to him that Snudge’s wild talent was imperceptible to the anointed of his Mystic Order, to say nothing of the fact that the boy was capable of identifying even the smallest modicum of talent in others.
“Shall I go, then? I won’t get lost. I’ve already explored most of the passages on this side of the ward. I did it last night, while you were all asleep. I even made a dark lantern for myself out of an old pewter tankard and a candle.”
Stergos sighed. “I might have known… Very well. Do your best to find out who the villain is, or who he pretends to be. Be quick about it and don’t take any dangerous chances. His Grace and I will decide what to do about him.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“If only I could watch over you…”
But that was impossible. Even though Stergos, like most of the Zeth Brethren, had the ability to scry over short distances, Snudge’s wild talent protected him from any sort of magical surveillance, a fact that particularly delighted Prince Conrig at the same time that it dismayed his brother.
“I’ll take great care, my lord. Don’t worry about me.”
“Oh, all right,” the doctor grumped. “But if you get into serious trouble, bespeak me at once and I’ll do my best to help you.”
“Of course, my lord.” He bobbed his head and slipped out of the cubicle, leaving Stergos full of misgivings but at a loss to know what else to do.
four
The boy made his way to the area where the armigers had laid their straw-stuffed palliasses. He rummaged in his pack for a moment, then hurried to the opposite side of the tower. Three document presses stood there. The left-hand one had a few ancient crocks of dried-out ink on its lower shelf. Snudge pushed them aside so he could creep in and touch a small stud at the rear of the cabinet, causing a low door to slide soundlessly open. When he was safe inside in the dark he paused for a moment, then struck fire with his talent, lighting the wick of the candle inside his lantern.
It was cleverly made. A fat waxen stub was affixed to the wall of the tankard. Tiny vent holes poked into the base kept the flame burning when the tankard’s hinged lid was shut. If the lid was more or less held open by a thumb, a beam shone out. The only problem with the thing was that a section of the handle tended to get uncomfortably hot after a while; he’d wrapped it with a strip of leather, but he still had to watch how he gripped it.
Snudge crept down the constricted spiral stairway and paused for a moment to look through a peephole into the library. The three Companions were dicing and drinking. Count Sividian cursed his luck while the two younger lords cackled and jeered. The four armigers were out of eyeshot. Snudge prayed that none of them had discovered the library’s own door into the secret passage, and continued down.
He had a fair distance to go. Castle Vanguard was an enormous place, almost oblong in shape, with a tower at each corner and two more sited midway along the extensive northern and southern wings. The repository tower lay across the ward from the kitchen tower, which overlooked the stable area as well as the brewing and baking buildings. In order to reach the stables unseen, he’d have to traverse half the castle’s perimeter, moving through the south wing past the great hall and the southwest tower, then beyond the solar, the west gatehouse, and the chapel, into the northwest tower. From there he would enter the massive north wing, in which the kitchen tower was emplaced. When he emerged at the base of that tower, he’d be forced to abandon the safety of the secret passages and make his way openly to the stables. He was unable to use his talent to hide and simultaneously follow the watcher’s trace.
He set out, moving quickly enough through the familiar passages, treading in his own dusty footprints (and those of Stergos and the prince), pausing only for a moment to peep into the solar, where he was amazed to see his royal master pouring wine like a pageboy. Then he came into places he had never been, and several times made wrong turnings. There were no more footprints now save those of the rats. He heard rustling noises now and again, but never caught sight of the creatures.
Inside the gatehouse wall he abruptly came to a dead end in a nook with small unglazed loopholes, full of spiderwebs and bird droppings. The only egress led outside onto a parapet where machicolations fronted the west barbican, above the top of the massive main gate. He cracked the door open and peered cautiously out, then withdrew with a curse. He dared not risk it. It was still bright twilight. Both the northwest and southwest towers were manned by guards, and one or more of the men would be certain to see him crossing. He couldn’t muddle the minds of several people well enough to hide himself unless it was full dark. But if he waited until then, the council of war might come to an end and the windwatcher cut off his surveillance.