The Towers Of the Sunset (28 page)

“THE STORMS WERE unusually severe, Jenred, even for winter in the gulf.”

“Severe enough to sink three schooners and leave the Duke’s sloop untouched?” asks the High Wizard sardonically.

“Klerris was on board the sloop,” offers another voice.

“What about the other healer?”

“And I suppose a pair of master healers could suddenly learn to build storms that severe?” Jenred’s voice has become louder. “Don’t give me another excuse, like ‘the White bitch helped him.’ She’s there only because she has no choice.”

The chamber becomes silent.

Finally a voice from the last row speaks, tiredly. “You’ve disagreed with everyone. What do you suggest?”

Jenred smiles, a cold, white smile. “Nothing.”

“What-”

“Let the Duke get away with this?”

“The Legend-holders will…”

The High Wizard Waits quietly until the tumult subsides. “Let us consider the situation. After a generation of hard work, subterfuge, and treachery, the Blacks within
Fairhaven and Candar have raised a worthy champion. That champion has fled to a huge and worthless isle off Candar. He is tied to a White witch, and he wants little to do with the continent. He also owes something to the Duke of Montgren.

“From his isle, Creslin could clearly destroy any fleet sent against him. He can also protect the Duke’s two ships and a few others, but no more. He has no gold, or not much, and few allegiances.

“We leave the Duke’s ships alone, and any few ships that Creslin might purchase or build. We sink any others from Candar that approach Reduce. In the meantime, we can always encourage the eastern continents to attack. It would cost us very little, and it would keep Reduce busy. At the same time, we will finish the great highway and consolidate White rule. After a while, Creslin will die, and Reduce will wither away.”

“But the Blacks will flock to Reduce,” protests another member of the White Council.

“What about Nordla and Hamor?”

“So? How will the Blacks get there? It will take years, and they will be weaker, and we will be the stronger.” Jenred snorts. “As for the Nordlans and Hamorians, the only reason they would help Creslin would be for gold or goods, and he has no gold, and the isle produces no goods of note… even assuming that he had enough people to gather them.”

“What about the western kingdoms?”

“Have they helped their supposed ally, the Duke? Will they send troops to Reduce?”

“The
Marshall will have to send some.”

“Fine. She cannot afford more than a small detachment.

Nor can the Tyrant. That just makes them weaker, since we have no interest in taking that wasteland anyway.“ Jenred smiles. ”Think about it, friends. Think long about it.“

ALONE IN THE single-room cot, after Joris’s quick apology for its inadequacy and equally quick departure with Klerris, who is insisting on looking at another nearby empty cot, Creslin turns toward Megaera.

“You’re nothing but a demon-driven killer,” she says.

Creslin steps back.

“Don’t worry, Creslin. I dare not hurt you, not unless I want to die, and that’s the last thing I want. I wouldn’t give sister dear the pleasure. Nor my dear cousin. And I certainly wouldn’t wish to disgrace my best-betrothed husband.”

“What-”

“Of course you don’t understand. You were born in the Legend, and you don’t understand. That’s because you’re a man. Give a man great power and he does great wrong. Sword and storm. So you killed that poor man. He couldn’t have touched you.”

“You’re wrong.”

“You provoked him so that you could kill him. Do you deny that?”

“No. But you’re wrong.”

“Do tell me, best-betrothed. Tell me how you are different from other men. Lie like every man.”

Creslin sighs.

“Do we now have sighs of regret? Or of exasperation?”

“Are you going to listen, or is your mind made up?”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Megaera!” Creslin rolls her name off his tongue, and the sound booms like thunder, yet echoes like lightning. “This is a prison garrison. Every man in that keep has killed at least one person. Not in battle, but in cold blood. The Duke took the salvageable men back to defend Montgren. Zarlen would have kept up his provocation until I killed him or he killed me. You’re right. I did challenge him. I did it in plain sight so that every other guard understands that attacking me or lusting for you is death.” Creslin’s eyes are like the ice of the Roof of the World.

“I am from Westwind, and I am of Westwind. And I do believe in the Legend. But I do kill. As little as possible, strange as it seems. The Legend of Ryba does not forbid violence or death, only senseless violence and death. You seem to have forgotten the difference. You also seem to forget that I also die, in a way, whenever someone dies in a storm I have created. In that way, I’m selfish. If Zarlen had forced me to use the winds against him, I would die again, and I’ve felt enough deaths.”

Megaera’s eyes remain bright, and dust streaks her cheeks. “Dead is still dead.”

“I know. But I’m tired of reacting. If I had thought things through, half of the destruction I’ve caused with my creative and orderly powers would not have happened. This time I could see the whole chain of deaths-revenge, lust, and anger-stretched out.” His eyes rake hers. “And I didn’t notice you doing much to discourage that attention.”

“You still don’t understand. Not me, not women, and not life.”

“I’m getting the horses. I expect you to be here when I get back.”

“Where else could I go, O best-betrothed?”

He steps outside; she watches.

“Where else could I go, O best-betrothed?” The words ring in his ears as he closes the battered door behind him. Where else can either of them go?

“Are you all right?” asks Klerris, who stands outside an even more dilapidated stone cot less than twenty cubits away.

Creslin shakes his head, then looks down toward the pier and the breakwater, toward the
Griffin and the horses he must reclaim.

The older wizard smiles wryly and crosses the sandy, stony ground that separates them. “After all the years, I still can’t claim to understand Lydya.”

“All the years…” muses Creslin. “All the years…” His eyes shift from the harbor below to Klerris. “Is Lydya as old as you are?”

Klerris gives a sheepish smile that makes him seem momentarily boyish. “Well, she has a bit better control of internal order than I do. She’s… somewhat older.”

Creslin lets his senses drift around the man, but the words ring true, and Klerris stands calmly waiting with the unvarying solidness that Creslin has come to associate with order. “Besides live forever and heal people, what else can you do?”

Klerris purses his lips. “Except for weather control-and very few, if any, of us can match your raw power-order magic is mostly limited to healing and strengthening things. There are some illusions we can create that don’t involve chaos, like disappearing. We can put people to sleep without hurting them, unless they fall. And we’re generally good with plants.”

“Plants?”

Klerris points to a scraggly blue flower that droops from a thorn vine twining from half a dozen heaped rocks a cubit or so from Creslin’s right foot. “Watch closely. It’s not really obvious, but…”

A certain sense of power flows from Klerris toward the tiny blue flower… and slowly, at the deliberate pace of drops falling from a roof corner to a rain barrel long after the storm, the petals firm, the stem strengthens, and the color brightens.

“Now, Lydya and Marin, they can actually take a pearapple seedling and make it so the fruit will be sweeter or tarter, larger or smaller.” He shrugs. “But most people aren’t interested in growing plants or miracles that take years for the results to show.”

“I suppose not. Magic is supposed to create instant results.”

Klerris grins, boyishly again. “Magic itself is quick. It’s the results that take time to become obvious. And unlike the skills of our friends, the White Wizards, our skills create results that are rather hard to undo.”

Creslin can sense Megaera staring through the narrow window. Freigr walks down the dusty hillside road, and both horses are now tethered on the pier.

“I’ll have to think about that.” Creslin takes a deep breath. “In the meantime, I need to reclaim some horses. I think the good captain wants off Reduce.”

THE CENTER OF the white-misted mirror displays a black keep upon a black cliff. The black walls shimmer, as if they are not quite real.

Before the mirror, the High Wizard’s lips move, but his words are not audible. Then he frowns, and only the ceiling reflects in the silver of the mirror. He walks toward the single narrow window in the stone wall.

Thrap!

“Come in.”

Hartor edges through the door to the small chamber. “You heard?”

“Bah. I felt it. Who couldn’t? The whole world screamed. I didn’t want to bring it up in council.” The High Wizard gestures to the chair closest to the door, then eases himself into a straight-backed seat.

Hartor sits down and looks at the blank mirror. “Do you have something in mind?” Jenred nods slowly, his lips turning in an expression of disgust. “Yes. Leaving him alone.”

“You were the one who claimed-”

“It doesn’t matter what I claimed. I was wrong about his powers. But I wasn’t wrong about his inclinations.”

“So how do we deal with him?”

“Let the envoy from Hamor know that Creslin has on the island the treasures of Heaven, stolen from Westwind. Let the Westwind spies know that Hamor is thinking of attacking Reduce.”

“Oh. Will it work?”

“Use a Compulsion on the Hamorians. No one will check there. They don’t believe in magic.”

“Any special images?”

“You might try the idea of the lances of winter. You know, from the Legend.”

“Did they ever really exist?”

“Who knows?” Jenred shrugs.

“They’d certainly like something like that. So they might be bold enough to attack
Land’s End. The
Marshall might send a few troops, and anything she sends there won’t come back.”

“Can you be sure of that?”

Jenred nods. “Creslin’s just the type that people follow.”

“Doesn’t that mean he’ll be a danger?”

“No. Not to us. In a generation or two, they’ll damn us for being short-sighted, but we can’t afford to lose any more wizards and allies. So do what you can with Hamor. You might even let the Nordlans know first.”

CLICK…

The redheaded woman glances up, pausing briefly from her exercise routine, and extends her senses beyond the room into the morning air.

A chipmunk has dislodged a pebble and is skittering under the stone that serves as the doorstep to the cot. She smiles as her senses follow the hurrying rodent. Then the smile fades. “Back to work, Megaera. Back to work. He isn’t the only one who can be as tough as green oak,” she mutters to herself.

Sweat streaks down her flushed face, and her muscles burn, but she continues until she can no longer force her body into the proper patterns. Then she straightens and begins to take deep breaths, walking slowly around the narrow space she has created by shoving the heavy table and the chairs into a corner.

In a few moments she is to meet with Klerris for her lessons in the basic theory that her co-regent appears to spurn.

As she cools after having rearranged the cot again, she wets a worn towel with water from a pitcher and dabs herself into a more presentable state. “… really need to learn Klerris’s tricks for removing dirt and grime from myself, not just from clothes…” she murmurs.

Then she combs her hair and uses two combs to hold her tresses away from her face, adjusts her faded gray work trousers and shirt, and steps out of the cot. She pauses.

Something, someone, waits around the corner of the small structure.

Fire? She shakes her head, then quickly lifts the heavy black stone that serves as a doorstop. She senses the lustful anticipation of the man who, knife in hand, waits for her to step on the path that will carry her past the corner of the cot toward the keep. Her stomach turns in response to his cold hatred.

Megaera eases forward, the small boulder held high, noting with her mind where the man stands. Finally she scuffs her foot and whistles softly, oh so softly, and casts an image on the path where he expects her to be.

A bearded figure lurches forward, grasping- She brings the rock down with all of her strength and steps back.

Megaera looks at the semiconscious man who struggles to rise, to grasp the knife, the lust-hate still welling up within him. Deliberately she kicks the knife clear and again hoists the heavy rock. This time her aim is more accurate, and the bearded figure lies sprawled motionless on the clay. The thorough combination of human evil and chaos that writhes within the man-even though he is unconscious, dying-beats at her.

She swallows, forcing the bile back down her throat, but she does not hesitate. Creslin has taught her the value of swiftness, taught her well, and she reaches for the knife.

Should she take his manhood as well? That would be too gruesome… and also just plain disgusting. Instead, she slits his throat, easily, for the knife is sharp indeed, and he would have died from the fractured skull in any case. Healing was out of the question, at least for someone like the now-dead trooper.

After replacing the doorstop and thrusting the knife in her belt, she drags the body the few dozen paces to the keep. Then she checks her hair and garments to make sure that she appears more composed than she feels.

Thrap! Thrap!

Joris steps out, followed by Creslin and Hyel.

“What-”

“Light!”

Of the three, Creslin alone says nothing and just looks at her, his green eyes as blank as the heavy swells of the sea.

Her eyes fix Hyel, and she wills them to burn. “I don’t appreciate your troopers attempting rape. I trust I won’t be required to take care of your failures in discipline again. Next time I won’t be kind enough to use cold steel.” At her last statement, her stomach twists and she wants to damn Creslin for betraying her with his squeamish order.

Instead, she ignores his faint smile, though she would like to lash out at him for understanding what is happening to her.

She watches Hyel, keeping him pinned with her eyes until he looks down, even though he stands a head taller.

“Yes, Regent…” the guard captain finally whispers.

“I leave the body and other disciplinary arrangements to you. Good day.” She forces a cheerful smile and is gratified by the pallor on the faces of Hyel and Joris.

Creslin, still silent, seems to give a nod of approval, and she wants to strike him with every trail of chaos fire that she can seize. What is he turning her into? Why doesn’t he understand? Will he ever understand? Knowing that he will not, she turns with careful and measured steps toward the more dilapidated cot downhill, which Klerris has begun to clean and otherwise restore.

She lets her senses gather while trying to ignore the mutters behind her.

“… skull’s caved in, and his throat’s cut.”

“… must have hands like steel.”

“… how you live with her-”

“No, she permits me to live with her.”

Creslin’s cool comment, true as it is, chills her. Cannot he see what he has done to her? Done to the powers for which she has sacrificed so much for so long in order to learn? She tightens her lips and maintains her even steps toward the cot, ignoring the burning in her eyes and the tightness of her stomach.