Grand Conspiracy (48 page)

No applicant who completed the month's screening was turned away. The brawny but dull could drive carts or cook bread, and do menial tasks in a war camp. The bright who were clumsy could keep tallies and scribe. The middle-rank competent trained at arms for two years and wore the badge of the Alliance garrison, assigned by company to bolster the ranks in those towns who paid tribute for the privilege of Lysaer s'Ilessid's defense.

The better, the brighter, were offered choice training as officers. They enrolled in the school for tactical warfare Lysaer had endowed at Etarra. Graduates served three years on campaign in the field with the Northern League of Headhunters, then entered paid service for tours of duty renewed by choice every decade.

Only the cream of each summer's muster earned the chance to swear for life service. Enrolled for seven demanding years of advance training, then seasoned in arduous field trials, these alone might vie for the right to wear the white surcoat and gold sunwheel of the Divine Prince's elite guard. Those who succeeded in winning that accolade were the bone and sinew of champions. They became the very mainstay of the Light, sworn by oath to fight and to die until the last shadow of sorcery was expunged from the land. Nor would their ranks be disbanded until the hour the Spinner of Darkness was cast down in final defeat.

The families of such chosen men were listed among the most fortunate. Their aging mothers, their fathers, their wives and young children became eligible for an Alliance pension; if misfortune struck, and their kin passed the Wheel, coin from Lysaer's coffers ensured that they never saw want.

While the raw blaze of sunrise dissolved the night mist off the broad plain spread under the high walls of Etarra, the sons of farmers and poor tradesmen flocked in from all quarters of the land to vie for the honor of armed service. Their earnest endeavors were not delegated to second-rate officers or lame veterans retired from the field. Lord Commander Sulfin Evend handpicked each year's roster of captains, and the Blessed Prince personally oversaw every facet of testing. While the morning fog thinned over the practice fields, he might be seen astride his cream war-horse. His white surcoat and diamonds shone, pure frost and light, through the trammeling haze of stirred grit as young candidates sparred and cracked through their drills with wooden weapons. Noontide, in the close, panting labor of tearing down field tents, while a company of archers pelted an assault
with blunted shafts, a man might glance sidewards and discover the comrade who sweated at his shoulder was none else than Divinity Incarnate.

Whether silted in dust, or mud-splashed from a squall line, or stripped of his surcoat and shirt, Lysaer's presence could not be mistaken. His pale, gold-shot hair and candid blue eyes were as distinctive as his sunwheel banner; the attentiveness he granted to each man's small needs uplifted morale and engendered spellbinding awe. His inherent majesty was not cast off with fine clothes or an absence of jeweled trappings. He had a quick laugh, and an incandescent smile, and a kindness through hardship that welded men's hearts in devotion. Where he passed, humor flourished. Though the hazards of each exercise were difficult enough to break hearts and strip tempers, even fell the stoutest man, body and spirit, no rough circumstance seemed to outstrip his ability to inspire hopeful applicants to renewed effort and dedication.

That gift of exalted leadership made Lysaer s'Ilessid a trial to locate on those days when he surrendered to impulse and joined ranks with his green recruits. His fine horse, his sunwheel banner, and his liveried retinue might often be found idle and dozing under some shade oak, or else soaked and morose in the rain. They might have left their divine charge with the scullions in the field kitchen or with some wagoneer hauling new spear shafts. A search of the quarter where his train was dismissed infallibly ended in failure. His Divine Grace's previous choice of close company would regretfully relate he had left and gone visiting someplace else.

‘Sulfin Evend dogs his heels,' offered the white charger's groom. The latest balked messenger had been dispatched in full panoply from Etarra by the Lord Governor's house steward. Overheated himself in the clogged, humid air, he took pity on the man's sweat-ringed livery and fresh flush. ‘Look for the crow's nephew. He'll be the one bearing sheathed steel, grimly watchful, while everyone else grunts and swears.'

Like others before him, this latest messenger must run the dusty gamut of the practice fields in a goose chase that might well exhaust the whole morning.

The Lord Governor's pampered servant trudged off, resigned. He edged past the boys set sparring with quarterstaves, and narrowly missed getting brained. He peered at each face on the archers' lines, inciting oaths and a rash of wild volleys.
The lance captain cursed him for getting underfoot. When he paused to scrape manure from his quilted velvet shoe, someone's loose mount all but kicked him. Smeared with grass stains from crossing a drain ditch where other men assembled footbridges out of twine and hacked branches, he collided with a hurrying lackey, who thrust a tray of new-risen dough into his unwilling hands.

‘Hold this.' The bald cook turned his rump and bent over a field oven. Words emerged, muffled, haranguing the brainless recruit who had forgotten to remove the preceding batch of baked bread. The spoiled loaves were dragged out, black and smoking as bricks, to some outspoken bystander's hoots of laughter.

Relieved of the tray, the disgruntled messenger picked his way across the packed, dusty ground where boys sparred with oak sticks to a swordmaster's bellowed instruction. He ran the gamut unscathed and reached the far side. Paused, panting, in the shadow of a siege engine, he had scarcely recovered his wind when a yelling, half-naked troop of men sprang out of the grass. Brandishing billets wound with lint soaked in oil, they commenced a determined exercise in demolition by fire.

Where the ground sloped into a dry gully, the servant blundered into an armed ambush of shouting men who wore camouflage paint like barbarians. These carried javelins and short bows, and through rank, tangled beards, smelled as though they had not seen a bath for a sevenday.

Prince Lysaer was beyond the next rise, immersed to the chest in a trout basin where a stream splashed out of the high peaks of the Mathorns and swirled on its mad, jagged course toward the river bottom. He was soaked. Dripping hair fronded his magnificent build, while he called helpful advice to a boy who chased a flip-flopping fish through the lush summer weeds on the bank.

‘Grit your fingers with sand, or else pounce with a shirt. That one? Very well,
there's
my man. That way the slick devil can't slide through your grasp.' His amiable encouragement dissolved to laughter for the fact that the garment snatched up for netting was his own. ‘Never mind. A few scales won't matter. The embroidery should acquire a fascinating glitter. The sensation might become the new rage in fashion for the pedigree rakes in the city.'

Too timid to intervene, the city messenger neglected to recall Sulfin Evend's guarding presence until a hand grasped his shoulder
from behind, the bite of mailed fingers demanding. ‘You came bearing word for his Divine Grace?'

The house servant startled half out of his skin. ‘My Lord Governor begs leave for an audience,' he blurted, as intimidated by the Alliance Lord Commander's ice eyes as by the sight of the Blessed Prince, who emerged dripping from the stream, his poised self-command lent intimidating force by his state of unabashed nakedness.

While Sulfin Evend's snapped questions probed the nature of the errand, Lysaer's seamless good nature just as meticulously attended loose ends. The panting trout in his shirt was released back to freedom, then the boy recruit dispatched at a run to his drill sergeant. The gold-sewn linen shirt saw further abuse as a towel, then lay discarded over the flat muscle of the Divine Prince's shoulder.

‘Something's wanted?' He bent and retrieved his immaculate white tunic and trunk hose from the grass.

‘Etarra's Lord Governor Supreme has asked to receive you,' Sulfin Evend filled in. His restless hands stayed too well married to weapon hilts for him to volunteer for service as dresser, even when haste might be called for: Etarra's aged despot was failing. ‘Something to do with a sealed city document.'

‘I presume Morfett wants to announce the ratified agreement concerning his imminent succession.' Lysaer tied off his points, tossed his head to clear the running beads of water from his hair, then bent his grave gaze on the red-faced palace servant. ‘I'll seek audience directly. Make sure the water boy gives you a dipper. Then ask at the cook's camp for a ride in the next wagon sent inbound through the town walls.'

Morfett, Mayor of Etarra, Defender of Trade, and Lord Governor Supreme of the Northern Reaches languished, dying, in silk sheets, a heavyset man of short stature and liver-spotted skin, and a complexion tinged jonquil with jaundice. The daytime bedchamber where he conducted the affairs of his last will and testament was built of marble and lozenged glass tile. Noon sunlight strained through the awnings shading the wide-open casements. What minimal breeze wafted through wore the flint-earth smell of baked brick.

The sluggish air inside reeked of medicine and stale sweat, embedded in the costly musk of incense and attar of roses. A servant with a peacock tail mounted in ebony, lapis lazuli, and
gold fanned the supine figure on the bed. To one side, a plate of nibbled melon rinds drew flies, and a tattooed half-breed physician from Atchaz mixed philters in a row of blown glass vials.

His desert tribe parentage had instilled the rites of Mother Dark along with rare knowledge of herb lore, for the tiny man grabbed his ring of bone amulets and fled, muttering dialect, as Lysaer s'Ilessid crossed the threshold.

Strong sun had dried the stream water from his hair. Through the steep ride to reach the pass commanded by the city's stolid watch keeps, the blond ends had curled in wind-combed tangles over the superb carriage of his shoulders. If he had taken no pause for grooming, a servant had rushed him into fresh hose and a fine, pleated shirt, with yoked collar and cuffs worked in gold wire and faceted beadwork. At each move, the ornamentation caught light; the needle-fine scatter of reflections danced and flitted across the heavy, oiled gloom of the state palace's furnishings.

‘How may my gifts serve your city?' Lysaer asked as he stopped at the foot of the bed.

The Lord Governor opened pouched eyes, the corneas milk hazed and unfocused. ‘Blessed Prince.' His cracked lips parted, more grimace than smile. ‘You came.'

Knowledge of imminent death weighed his tone. He bore no resentment, but took settled comfort in the miraculous proof of divine intervention: Prince Lysaer had not aged throughout the twenty-eight years he had known him. Still vital, still strong, here stood the same man who had reknit the backbone of Etarra's defense through the mangling losses meted out by the Shadow Master on the banks of Tal Quorin.

‘I have two last bequests,' wheezed Morfett. ‘The city council has already set their seal of approval to one of them.' He gave an impatient jerk of the chin, the gesture all but buried in folds of flaccid flesh. ‘Come nearer. Examine the writ for yourself.'

Small points of illumination flitted like ghost mayflies as Lysaer stepped forward and opened the hasp of the document chest at the bedside.

‘The scroll has black cord and ribbons of silver and scarlet,' said Morfett. ‘You should find it resting on top.'

Lysaer drew out the weighty parchment, sealed with the nine sigils of Etarra's city guilds and the massive wax imprint of the Lord Governor's blazon, its knotted closure unbroken. ‘My Lord Governor? I hold the document.'

‘Break it open. Read. It concerns you.' The dying man on the
bed sank back in stained pillows, the dome of his forehead dewed shiny with overripe sweat. ‘I spent my last breath and will overriding the arguments against a ratification.'

Lysaer cracked the seal. A faint nimbus seemed to emanate from the wisped gold of his hair as the parchment unrolled. At the top, the twined cipher of Etarra's city council was handpainted in vermilion and gilt; beneath that, the heavy, ornamental script framed two brief lines, appended by rank upon rank of sprawled signatures. Its grant appointed Lysaer s'Ilessid, old blood prince of Tysan, the sanctioned right to be named as a candidate for election to Etarra's ruling office of lord governor supreme.

‘You don't ask why,' the aged incumbent wheezed, his suffering eyes shut amid the propped morass of pillows.

The flicked light off exquisite bead embroidery stirred and stilled as Lysaer raised his head. His resonant voice filled the lofty chamber with assurance through the whispered rhythm of the peacock fan in the hands of the servant. ‘I would leave you your dignity.' His sure, sun-browned hands stayed unhurried as he rolled up the parchment and looped its dangling ribbons over the split seams of the seals.

‘Shrewd man.' The Lord Governor repeated his death's-head smile. ‘I see I won't need to remind you that the office lasts for life. But first you have to manage to win the common vote. Fail me in that, and the curse of my last breath will lie on you.'

Not to be drawn by barbs masked in banter, Lysaer placed the scroll on the bed.

‘You'd wait for my liver to fail, first? Very well.' The Lord Governor reopened irascible eyes. ‘I am afraid. The Master of Shadow has made himself scarce, and your guilds at Avenor have lost their edge in pursuit of their trade. Too few of your guard there survived Dier Kenton Vale to remind them of the perils still at large. Here at Etarra, we haven't forgotten Tal Quorin, but those who witnessed the devastations there and at Minderl Bay are aging. I'm a suspicious man. I believe the Spinner of Darkness will return to sow evil on an unsuspecting, new generation. If so, the next decades are critical. Preventive measures must be sealed into place before my peer councilmen step down for their retirement.'