“An Ard Rí, a High King. Who presides, but has only enough power to keep us from fighting each other and enforce a few clear rules. No costly standing armies to support, no armies of clerks telling everyone what to do, either.”
“How does that work?” Woburn said. “I like the bit about the clerks. If you knew the forms and regulations they’ve brought in this past year—and there were enough before . . .”
“The High King has only what the founding laws and the member realms give him, what they are willing to levy on themselves in money or troops. There will be a Meeting of delegates from each people, to oversee things, as well, and a High King’s court to decide disputes between them.”
Eddie Running Horse nodded. “Sounds OK. I’m not dead set on Boise being the capital of whatever but it
would
be nice not to have to worry so much about the neighbors.”
Woburn frowned. The talk flowed on late into the night. When she lay at last in her sleeping bag, Astrid cuddled her back up against Alleyne’s and stared at the fading banked embers, glowing like red stars in the deep velvet blackness of a moonless night.
That poor lady, held captive in Boise by a murdering usurper
, she thought.
Something
has
to be done about that. Eilir and I swore that oath to succor the defenseless . . .
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BEND
CAPITAL, CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION
MAY 5, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“S
o far, we haven’t donemuch thisyear,” General-President Thurston said.
They were using a third-floor chamber in a pre-Change building for the conference. It had glass walls on two sides, facing west and north; you could see the line of the—criminally inadequate—city wall along the bend of the Deschutes River that had given the city its name; he instinctively drew a mental picture of how it
should
have been done, the underground aqueduct to secure the water supply, the height of the wall, the wet moat and glacis. He knew that from there it followed two of the old roads in a right angle to the eastward, encompassing the old core of the city, and the visibility made his sense of frustration at the stalled campaign worse. The room also had the slightly dead feel that old buildings often did; you just couldn’t get the ventilation to work properly and frequently, as here, the windows didn’t open at all.
“We’re not accomplishing anything,” he said. “Not fast enough.”
Not since that . . . that whatever it was
. His mind shied away from remembering it, and he forced it back.
Something . . . something like a flash of light . . . something about the Sun . . . anyway, it’s put a crimp in your style.
The Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant smiled. Martin Thurston blinked. There was something . . .
wrong
about the smile. Sethaz was a middling man, middling height and coloring and features; very fit but otherwise unremarkable, save for the tuft of brown chin-beard and stubble-shaven head that the higher echelons of the Church Universal and Triumphant affected. A little older than Martin Thurston, in his early thirties, but young enough to be more or less a Changeling.
And there’s something
wrong
about him
.
“You sense higher things, the touch of the Ascended Masters. Yet you are still blind to them.”
As Martin stared, the ruler of Corwin went on, and the
wrongness
seemed to fade:
“We have taken Bend and all of central Oregon; and we have pushed the enemy out of the Palouse and confined their holdings along the middle Columbia to a narrow strip.”
Martin nodded jerkily.
And I need him and he needs me. Which is the best reason for cooperation there ever was. But we’re not taking any more castles by the . . . special means he had. That’s why Dad never tried to break the PPA; they had too many of the damned things by the time we were organized enough to think about it. Storming one castle is
expensive.
Fighting your way through country full of them is a nightmare, like dancing up to your knees in molasses
. “Yes,” he said aloud. “We have. Unfortunately, that means we’ve taken a lot of thinly populated rangeland. We won’t have mortally wounded the enemy until we cut them in half by cracking the line of the Columbia down to the sea, and we won’t have disposed of them until we’ve overrun the western valleys. And we’ve lost more men than they have.”
“We can afford it and they cannot.” Sethaz shrugged. “The lifestreams of the fallen will be welcomed by the Masters.”
There was a rattle in one corner of the room. He had a six-man squad from the Sixth Battalion here—just in case, and in full armor of hooped plates, with shield and
pilum
; tough young farmboys, smelling of sweat and leather and oiled metal. The rattle had been the men moving—not enough to notice, they were still rigidly braced—but enough to show their start of indignation. Martin Thurston was known to be a ruthless bastard, but he was also one who husbanded his men and hated to lose one without a measurable result.
Two centuries of infantry waited in the street outside. Sethaz might be an ally . . .
but I’m not crazy enough to actually
trust
him.
“My intelligence indicates the Midwestern states are making preparations for an attack,” the General-President said, tapping the files before him on the table. “We may not have as much time as we thought.”
“They are preparing for war,” Sethaz said equably. “But they are very far away. Also the Church Universal and Triumphant’s territories are between them and Boise.”
“And what about this Sword?” Martin asked.
Because that’s what scares me.
“Every rebel and guerrilla is talking about it—”
Sethaz screamed.
For a moment Thurston simply stood staring at him.
He’s gone mad
, he thought, and then they locked eyes. The eyes
drew
at him, a whirling vortex. He could feel bits and pieces of his mind
shredding
, flying away, sucked in by the spinning nothingness. He was floating, falling, drawn down, deeper and deeper and something
waited
for him at the bottom of the darkness. Not-being. Not-anything. Waiting to un-make.
Martin Thurston screamed in agony, and then in something far worse, that made him shriek on the same rising-falling note as the Prophet.
Did you think that you had bargained with Me?
a voice asked.
No, you deceived yourself. I have no need to buy men. They give themselves to Me.
FREE REPUBLIC OF RICHLAND
SHERIFFRY OF READSTOWN (FORMERLY SOUTHWESTERN WISCONSIN)
MAY 10, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“Not as nervous as you were last time,
meleth nín
,” Mary Vogeler teased gently. “Even though it’s just the two of us for now, instead of the great band.”
“
Herves
, last time I wasn’t sure whether big brother Ed was going to greet me like the prodigal son or kick me out like the proverbial polecat,” Ingolf said, taking a deep breath of the clean moist air as the earth exhaled last night’s rain. “Also we weren’t married yet. It’s calmed me down a lot and given me a more optimistic outlook on life.”
And last time I’ d been away for ten years. Now it’s only months, and two of those . . . just went missing in an instant while we were on Nantucket. But I haven’t been feeling homesick quite as hard either, and that’s the truth. It’s as if something inside has let go. Mary and I will have our own place someday, and in the meantime we’re each other’s home.
“Anyway, we’re just going up to see about those troops.”
It was spring instead of late autumn this time, too; the same season when he’d originally stormed out as a young man to begin his wandering years as a paid soldier and salvager.
Mary grinned. “
Anyway
, Rudi’s giving you a last chance at a visit home while everyone else is stuck at the muddy junction of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi rivers, waiting for the barges. That’s why he didn’t ride with us, too. He wants you to have some time with your family before he arrives.”
It may well be the last time you can be here
, went unspoken between them.
Crossing the continent isn’t something that many men have done once, let alone two or three times.
They followed the dirt track north from a hamlet named Craw-ford, with forested ridges on either side crowding closer to the winding Kickapoo or opening out into a wider view. Mostly they traveled at an easy trot, the fastest pace a good horse could keep up for any distance. Every few miles they slowed to an ambling walk for ten or twenty minutes; that combination gave an average speed close to a man running. It didn’t even make conversation too difficult, if you were used to it and traveled side by side. Right now the traffic was light enough for that, only an occasional buckboard or someone on foot pulling a handcart or in the saddle or a bicyclist now and then lurching along on a solid-tire makeshift.
“What I’m really worried about is Rudi,” Ingolf said.
“I think we’d better get used to calling him Artos,” Mary said; but she said it without the usual smile in her voice.
“Yah, OK, I’m worried about His Majesty Artos the First, High King of Montival, our liege-lord,” Ingolf said. “Also my friend and brother-in-law Rudi Mackenzie. I’m worried about both of him.”
“Why? He’s coping very well. Look at the way he remembered you’ll possibly never have a chance to visit Readstown again.”
“That’s the problem,” Ingolf said; talking crystallized his thought, giving it form. “You’d need a general staff to do a lot of the stuff he’s doing
all by himself
. Yah, he was always an impressive guy, but some of this . . . remembering every name in that pissant village at the mouth of the Wisconsin River? All the ones he heard
once
when we were through it for
one day
last year? I was born not two days’ ride from it and
I
don’t! You notice how he doesn’t make
mistakes
anymore?”
“He never did make many.”
“Now he never forgets anything, not even his spare bowstring. He never has to stop and figure things out anymore!”
Mary was subdued; when she spoke it was slowly.
“I asked him . . . I asked him a while ago if he wasn’t making decisions too quickly. He said there just wasn’t any point in pretending he had a choice. What did he
mean
? Is the Sword . . . is it taking him over?”
Ingolf shook his head; it was hard even to talk about this, as if there weren’t the right words in the language.
“It’s spooky, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t give you that creepy feeling the Cutters do. I think . . . this is just blue-sky . . . I think the Sword is too
smart
. Or makes him too smart.”
“How can you be too smart?”
“If you
knew
, if you really
knew
what would happen when you made a decision . . . would you have any freedom left at all? There would be only one thing you
could
do.”
“Oh,” she said, and shivered. “I guess it’s like the Elven-Rings; good, basically, but perilous to any but the strongest bearer.”
For a moment he felt impatience that she was dragging the Histories into things again. Then he shrugged mentally. In fact—
“That’s actually a good comparison . . . what Doc Pham, our doctor in Readstown—God, how could anyone know so many books?—he used to tutor me sometimes as well . . . what he used to call a
metaphor
.”
She nodded; he knew without resenting it that she had a lot more book learning than he did, even if much of it was bizarre.
Though I’m better at lifting heavy weights . . . That’s me: strong like an ox, sharp like a watermelon.
“Metaphors help you understand the world,” she said. “Otherwise . . . otherwise it’s just a mass of
things
without pattern. It doesn’t mean anything. But you’ve got to be careful with them. They can make you see patterns that aren’t there.”
“Yah. Only the Sword seems to be a, a
metaphor
that’s actually
there
. Not just a way to sling words together; it’s a physical
object
you can touch, so the story is telling us instead of the other way ’round. Damn und hell, but that’s scary.”
Mary shivered, and he knew exactly how she felt.
“It’s like the old legends about Gods becoming men, or animals talking. I mean, they’re wonderful as stories and they show you the way things are underneath, but if you actually
met
one it would . . . would sort of
break
things. Not deliberately, not because it was bad and wanted to do that, but just by being too real for us.”
Ingolf smiled grimly. He reached over and touched her eye patch with the thick calloused fingers of his right hand, very gently:
“We’ve both met men like that before. Only they were
bad
, as well as scary, if you know what I mean.”