Will Power (20 page)

The forest ended quite suddenly two days later, and Phasdreille—the White City—was visible as soon as we stepped out of the trees. It was still a few miles off but it lay on lower ground and was spread out before us, gleaming pale and beautiful in the afternoon sun. We halted and looked at it, silent and hardly breathing. From here it looked sculpted out of alabaster, walled and towered like the citadel in a fairy tale. I had seen walled cities before but they always seemed so purposeful and strong. This place looked effortlessly unassailable, as imposing as Cresdon or Ironwall, but with a grace, an unearthly dignity that sparkled on its white stone and flashed off the glass in its windows like sunlight on a waterfall. It looked like a city such as might exist above
the clouds, ruled by a benign monarch whose daughters sent their suitors on quests for dragons and treasure . . . an impossible place.

“Now if we can’t get a decent piece of beef and some strong ale there,” I remarked, “there’s a problem.”

But my flippancy was strained and felt curiously inappropriate. Renthrette just stared off toward the white towers as if lost in a dream, or perhaps in a memory of childhood, when such places seemed plausible.

“It’s breathtaking,” she whispered. “Perfect.”

And, as my cynicism failed to kick in, I nodded.

We were there before sundown and the light had yellowed, turning the city to gold, which warmed and deepened as we reached a long, ornamented bridge. This spanned a wide moat filled by the Snowborne and it was broad and fair, supported on smooth arches with carved capitals and lined with marble balustrades. At its head was a gatehouse, with a pair of turrets filled with tall warriors with long, pale hair that rippled with their cloaks in the breeze.

“Who comes from Eventor?” called one of them.

“Renthrette and William from Stavis,” called my companion, who always rose to occasions like this, “friends to the fair folk and to Sorrail. We seek aid and bring news from the mountains.”

A door opened and three or four of them emerged.

“You have been looked for,” said one. “Sorrail has been here many days and is expecting you. Welcome to Phasdreille, the White City. Enter, before it grows dark, and seek him out in the house of the king. We will send word.”

The gates were framed with iron, burnished to a high shine, and paneled with a pale wood inlaid with brass, though whether this was decorative or defensive, I could not say. They opened easily, despite their great weight, and we walked our horses into the barbican and onto the twilit bridge without another word. Ahead of us, a rider cantered off across the bridge toward the gatehouse of the city, and we followed, gazing down to the river and up to the great, pale walls in an awed silence. At the far side we passed through another pair of imposing doors and entered the town.

Even with the onset of evening, the streets seemed bright and mythically fair, the city holding an air of serenity, as unlike the squalid bustle
I had been used to in Cresdon as could be imagined. There was no one else about, but the city felt cleansed rather than deserted. All was quiet and peaceful, as if the very walls were watching paternally over residents who were sleeping or gathered around their hearths with their families, watching as they had for centuries.

Sorrail met us at the entrance to the king’s palace. He was handsome and smiling, pleased to see us, but he stood atop the little flight of marble steps with formal reserve. With him was an entourage of some sort, men and women dressed in vivid silks and adorned with bracelets and necklaces in which shone precious stones. They hovered at his back, their eyes upon us.

“You are most welcome to Phasdreille, home of the fair folk,” said Sorrail in a rolling, modulated voice that was addressed to those at his back as well as to those in front of him. “And to the court of King Halmir, son of Velmir, you are welcome, too. Enter and feast with us. Let us find you new raiment fitting to this place, and then you can tell us your news. For as the diamond should be cut, polished, and set in gold to show off its quality, so should the doers of virtue be clad in wealth and beauty so that their worth shines forth.”

At this slightly odd remark, there was a smattering of applause from those clustered around him. Their smiles flexed and deepened.

“Er . . . thanks,” I said. “I could use a change and a bite to eat.”

There was a momentary pause, a series of fractional glances between them, and then more simpering smiles. If I didn’t know they were glad to see us, I’d say we were being condescended to. Sorrail bowed carefully at the waist, nonchalantly adding a little flourish of the hand that invited us in: very polished. He was barely recognizable as the ranger who had met us on the road.

Just as we were ascending the stairs, a distant trumpet call echoed through the air. Everyone paused and it was answered by another, closer this time.

“It seems,” said Sorrail, “that our horsemen have returned, and in triumph.”

His tone was low, amused rather than exuberant, as if he’d just heard that a friend had won a few coins at dice. The ripple through the entourage matched his own contented swagger. I shot Renthrette a bewildered glance. Her eyes were narrowed, confused, even surprised, but further speculation was abandoned as the drumming of horse
hooves swelled to a deafening pitch. The courtyard before the palace filled with fifty or sixty blond riders, caped with white, fluttering cloaks and armed with silver-tipped lances. As another smattering of polite applause broke out from the assembly of the steps, I saw one of the riders who was not uniformed as the others. His helm was full and great horns grew menacingly from each side. He bore a heavy axe, a round, crimson shield, and sat astride a great white charger. His face was pale, almost white, and his hair, when he removed the great and terrifying helm, was short and brownish. He glanced toward us and his eyes shone green as emeralds.

“Garnet!” I exclaimed. Renthrette was already running toward her brother, who swung himself to earth easily, smiling. There they embraced as the unit’s captain ascended the stairs and bowed to Sorrail. I left them to their reports and hurried after Renthrette.

“Hell’s teeth,” I exclaimed, laughing aloud. “I never thought I’d be this pleased to see you!”

“Likewise,” he grinned over his sister’s shoulder. He extended his strong, thin hand and I clasped it briefly.

“I had heard you were around,” he said, “but we’ve had no news since you set out to rescue Orgos and Mithos.”

“How long have you been here?” asked Renthrette.

“Almost as long as you have, I think. I laid low in the Hide for a couple of days and then took a horse and whatever I could carry and came after you. When I got to the Black Horse I found you had already gone on ahead, but some ambassador chap said he could lead me to you if I served as his escort for a few miles. I’m not sure what happened next. I think I fell asleep in the saddle or something, I don’t know. It doesn’t really make any sense, but when I woke I was in sight of this place and there was no sign of the ambassador. I’ve been here ever since and, after Sorrail brought news of the rest of the party, I’ve been riding with the armies of Phasdreille against goblin encampments this side of the river.”

“Any sign of Lisha?” Renthrette asked.

“None,” said Garnet. “I don’t really know where we are, let alone where she might be. Until Sorrail arrived, I thought I was by myself. Still,” he added with a smile at the horsemen around him, “there are worse places to be. I mean, I missed you all and everything, but this place . . . It’s just so, I don’t know,
right
. It’s like I should have been
born here, or something. God, Renthrette, you are going to love it here. You’ll never want to leave.”

This last remark troubled me. Don’t get me wrong: You couldn’t fault the city. It gleamed with nobility and courage and light and truth and, well,
fairness
in every sense. In other words, it made concrete all that Garnet and Renthrette lived for. Here they were no longer the principled few struggling against a dark, self-interested, and vicious world. Here they were part of the majority and could be vicious on its behalf. Nor, I had to admit, could I really fault Sorrail. He was everything he had first seemed to be, and if Renthrette looked at him as the best thing since cold steel, I could hardly blame her. I had been a little confused by his odd, courtly greeting to us earlier and by the perfectly decked out little band that had been hanging on his exquisitely tailored coattails, but I suppose that was just the way things worked here. No, nothing had really shaken my faith in the place or its people but Garnet’s rapturous enthusiasm for them.

You see, Garnet is about the worst judge of pretty much anything that I have ever come across. He couldn’t tell a pint of stout from a cream sherry, and if he ever swore that someone was a great fellow, said fellow would probably slip something lethal in your pint (or sherry) before the night was out. This isn’t just sour grapes on my part. Garnet and I have not always seen eye to eye, I confess, but he can be very useful to have around. If you need someone hacked to pieces, he’s your man. Tell him that the friendly stranger across the room made a lewd remark about his sister, hand him an axe, then sit back and watch the fun. But analyze something and come to a shrewd conclusion? When camels write poetry.

Garnet is a terrible reader. I don’t mean he couldn’t pick up a menu and spot the salad; in fact, like his sister, he could wade through the most complex legal documents and figure out their details with alarming rigor and clearheadedness. What he couldn’t do was read
between
the lines. Just like Renthrette, who had told me that the apparition in the forest hadn’t
meant
anything, Garnet took things at face value. Neither of them looked too closely or asked too many questions, since that took valuable time away from getting their weapons bloody. They would leave this place and its rosy hue uncriticized because it offered such a neat solution to all their ethical problems. Here goodness was built in
the stone of the city and the flesh of its people; across the river was evil. Their mission was clear.

Too clear for a charlatan, actor, dramatist, cheat, and liar like me to swallow without at least looking more closely at the label.

But what really burned me up was that they seemed to be right.