And finally she spies a small metal box on which is carved a crest of crossed blades athwart a field of wheat with a bird flying overhead.
An instant later the blue light fades, the magic dies away, and she is back in her forest sanctuary staring out at the sunlit sweep of the Elven Westland.
She stood where she was for a moment, still caught up in the swiftness of her journey, stunned by the abruptness of her return. She stared out across the plains west from her vantage point on the heights, knowing she must remember everything.
It was all a jumble of images, but she knew she had to sort those images out, had to place them in sequence and store them carefully.
She was attempting to do so when she sensed movement behind her.
She turned just as the five black-garbed figures came at her out of the trees. They carried iron bars and wooden cudgels, and there were too many of them. She would have been finished if she hadn’t still been holding the Elfstones. Her fear and desperation triggered their magic instantly. A fireball of blue light exploded from her clenched fist and hammered into her attackers, stopping them before they reached her, tossing them aside as if they weighed nothing.
She hesitated only an instant before bolting for freedom.
It was an instant too long.
They lay scattered about her in various stages of semi-consciousness, and she had thought to get past them before they could recover their wits. She ran hard, dodging bodies and limbs, but she missed noticing the man who had been farthest away from the blow dealt to the others. He was on his knees, crouched and ready as she sped past him. She was well within reach of the iron bar he gripped, and he swung hard at her as she fled, the bar connecting with her left leg. She went down screaming in pain, her shinbone broken, and he was on her instantly.
Sitting astride her chest, pressing the bar down hard against her throat so that she could not breathe, he whispered. “Give me the Elfstones. Quick now, or I’ll break your neck, too.”
Her air cut off, her body pinned, black spots obscuring her vision, she opened her fingers.
In the next instant, the man disappeared, his weight gone as he tumbled away. She gave out a gasp of relief, able to breathe again, and tried to see what was happening. A battle was being fought between her attackers and someone else. But there were bodies flying everywhere, and forest shadows were mixed with black-clad attackers. She could hear grunts and cries, the sounds of metal on metal and the sharp hiss of life suddenly cut short. Several of her attackers went sprawling anew, and this time they did not get up. Two—she thought them the last—fought in silent desperation against a newcomer. No one spoke. The battle was swift and brutal and final.
In seconds all of those who had sought to hurt her lay still, and Cymrian was kneeling next to her.
“You test my patience, Aphen.”
She struggled to rise, but he pushed her down. “Don’t do that. Your leg is broken and needs to be set.”
She nodded and lay back obediently. “Thanks for coming,” she whispered.
“I would have come sooner if I had known where you were.”
She nodded again. “I know. It was foolish not to tell you the truth. I’m sorry.”
“Just promise me you won’t lie to me again.”
“I promise.” She met his gaze and held it. “I do.”
He reached down and handed her the Elfstones. “I think it would be best if you kept these.”
She took the Stones from him, fumbled them into her pocket, and watched in silence as he began the work of splinting her leg.
15
THE TALL THIN MAN WITH THE FLAT-BLACK ROBES AND eyes to match strode through the halls of the Federation Council chambers at midday like a wraith through a graveyard. His passage was soundless, but it drew immediate attention. Men and women stepped aside for him, offering fawning words and submissive gestures. He gave them nods of recognition, small acknowledgments with a lifting of his hand and a ruffling of his sleeve, meaningless gestures, his face dispassionate, his expression unrevealing. He kept his body still as he walked so that it appeared as if he were gliding. He kept his head bowed so that it seemed as if he were in some sense as deferential to them as they were to him.
But he was nothing of what he appeared, neither deferential nor dispassionate. He saw those he passed not as colleagues or equals, certainly not as friends or fellow citizens. They were of little importance to him, there to serve his purposes, whatever those purposes might be, there to fulfill whatever wishes might need fulfilling.
Though he would never let them see this. How he used them and how they responded were acts seemingly unrelated, in which everything was achieved as if in the natural course of things, as predestined and inevitable as the rising and setting of the sun.
It had taken him a while to reach a point where he was able to accomplish this. He had toiled as a mere functionary in the beginning, quiet and obsequious, always in the background, always letting others claim credit for the successes he had fostered. Years passed before he was able to elevate himself to a Minister’s position, still a shadow among substantial men and women, still helping others without asking for their consideration, toiling in the warrens and hallways of the Council chambers and offices, one among many, but never one they noticed.
Until by the time they did, it was too late.
Though what would they do even if they knew the full extent of his duplicity? Demand he step down from the pinnacle of success he had achieved? Ask for an accounting? Seek his elimination?
All of these and more, he imagined. But they couldn’t quite see him the way he was, and he never gave them reason to think of him as anything but a safe compromise in a maelstrom of warring factions that constantly sought to devour one another. Each of them believed in all seriousness that he was the lesser evil.
They would learn eventually, perhaps, if they survived long enough.
Drust Chazhul would teach them.
Really, he had been teaching them all along. They just hadn’t been paying attention, save for a handful, and most of those were gone.
Ten days ago the former Prime Minister, a man neither old nor weak, had succumbed to an illness of such virulent purpose that it killed him within twenty-four hours. Its origins were a mystery to everyone but his eventual successor and his accomplice, and the intense struggle over his succession distracted those who might have looked into the matter more closely.
Everything had gone according to plans conceived well in advance of the need for them. Drust Chazhul made a show of refusing the nomination when his name was finally put forth to break the deadlock between the two candidates who were openly campaigning for the job. Satisfactory neither to each other nor to each other’s followers, the two found themselves bypassed in favor of a man who barely colored in enough space in the political landscape to merit recognition and who, upon being nominated, insisted repeatedly that others were better qualified and more experienced.
In spite of heated objections from both real candidates, the non-candidate was elected and the new Prime Minister sworn in.
It had taken some doing to get the job done, to be sure. He had lobbied long and hard for the votes it required, all without seeming to do anything but offer advice and consolation to those who were openly hungry for the position, all without seeming to have any interest in the post. Some believed him an acceptable alternative to choices they could not tolerate. Some believed him ineffectual enough that they could manipulate him into serving their own purposes. Both were misguided.
What remained for Drust Chazhul was to solidify his hold on the position without seeming to do so. What would go furthest toward accomplishing this was the elimination of any serious competition.
It had been easy enough with the old Prime Minister, who suspected nothing. It might prove harder with the two who had lost the position they coveted and were more likely to want to change that.
But there were other fish to fry, so to speak, and his attention at the moment w
as occupied with something completely unrelated to threats from defeated rivals. They would not be too quick to want to act; neither of them yet suspected the role he had played in eliminating the old Prime Minister and in helping to discredit them. They would find out once they dug deep enough into the web of his machinations, but that would not happen overnight. By the time they knew enough to be worried, it would be too late.
Down the corridors he passed, lost in his private thoughts, to all outward appearances a man beset by the weight of his new responsibilities and given over to addressing the work that must be done. He was on his way to his private chambers—formerly those of the old Prime Minister—his work completed for the day, a good night’s rest the reward that waited.
“Sleep well, Prime Minister,” one fellow member of the Council called to him in passing.
“Well done, today,” said another.
He nodded in response, giving nothing away, no reply offered. He turned down the west wing of the building, a private space now reserved for him alone. Guards flanked the entry and, farther ahead, the doors to his sleeping chamber. They straightened and came to attention as he passed, a response he secretly enjoyed. Puppets pulled erect by invisible strings that he alone wielded. Such fun.
Yet he understood, too, that his power had been bestowed with the sure and comforting knowledge that as a compromise choice for Prime Minister he could be easily removed. The history for such abrupt changes in Federation leadership was lengthy and colorful. No one much worried about it happening again. No one was immune to change, after all.
And so he was already planning how to avoid what had claimed so many before him, intent on being the exception.
He opened the doors to his private chambers and went inside, pausing in the entryway to see if Stoon had arrived yet. He had. Sitting in a chair well back in the shadows by the curtained windows, Stoon’s sharp eyes glittered in the faint light cast by the candles on the fireplace. Drust closed the doors behind him and locked them.
“Been waiting long for me?”
The assassin shrugged. “I don’t mind waiting. I do a lot of it.”
Drust walked over to the windows and peeked through the curtains at the courtyard and surrounding buildings, checking lighted windows and darkened doorways. It was a habit he had never been able to quit, the need to reassure himself of his own safety as automatic to him as breathing.
Satisfied, he sat down in the chair across from the assassin and poured a glass of wine from the decanter. Stoon had already helped himself.
“To our success,” he toasted. They drank, a sip only. Neither man used spirits for anything more than token pleasure. “What have you found out about the Druids?”
Stoon considered. “Not as much as I would like. Our spies cannot get close to Paranor’s walls, let alone think about getting inside. They watch from the air in flits and from more distant stationary points. What we know for certain comes mostly from Arborlon. The Druid granddaughter of the King was there for more than a year searching the Elven histories for references to missing magic. She found something, and arrangements were made to determine what it was. They failed. Spectacularly. She proved more capable than the man I chose. When I pressed the matter with more than two, an Elven Hunter who had signed on as her protector intervened. He was even more capable. We lost everyone and gained nothing. Except that in this last attack, the young woman’s leg was broken.”
Drust Chazhul found himself growing impatient. “Are we getting to the good parts of this narrative anytime soon?”
“Patience, Prime Minister. I am merely setting the stage.” Stoon was calm, unruffled by the rebuke. He knew Drust too well to be offended or troubled by anything the other said.
“When the King’s granddaughter returned to Paranor with news of her discovery,” he continued, “the Ard Rhys apparently woke from the Druid Sleep to determine what should be done about it. After sending the King’s granddaughter back to Arborlon, she and the other Druids went out from Paranor to various places in the Four Lands in search of certain men and women. We don’t know why. Whatever their purpose, it appears to be of no small importance; presumably, it has something to do with what was found in the Elven histories.”
“But we don’t know what that purpose is or who these people are?”
“Not yet.”
“You can find this out?”
“I am in the process of doing so. But it will take time. No one must suspect our interest in this, the Druids especially.”
Drust nodded. There would be no mistakes, no unplanned surprises, and no inconvenient witnesses to anything Stoon was planning. There never had been, not from day one of their unusual relationship, and he didn’t expect that to change now.
Drust had met Stoon when the former was still a clerk serving a junior Minister. He was a man with few prospects but possessed of a sharp mind and a deceptively innocent appearance. In those early days, Drust used to frequent the taverns and alehouses in the seedier parts of Arishaig, expanding the number and variety of his relationships in an effort to find allies who might help him gain a foothold on the slippery ladder of advancement. Most of his co-workers in the ministries would never have gone to the places he went, and what few did went for the more obvious reasons and not to make friends. But Drust knew that advancement did not happen in politics if you simply sat back and waited for your luck to change. You made your own luck in this business, and sometimes it required you to associate with people who possessed skills and experience that you lacked.
Among those he met in the course of his nighttime outings was Stoon. A mutual acquaintance introduced them, although he had already heard Stoon’s name mentioned and knew of his reputation as an assassin of extraordinary talent. Few knew much else about him. He preferred to keep a low profile and never speak of what he did, finding and choosing assignments that pleased him through word of mouth. Drust, understanding the rules of this relationship from the beginning, never asked Stoon about his work. He spoke instead about his own ambitions and plans, passionate and determined, demonstrating that his friendship might be worth something.
All the while, Stoon listened, sometimes smiled, seldom spoke, and never volunteered anything.
Eventually, Drust managed to gain an appointment as a junior Minister. His office—military debts and accounting—was so obscure and his duties so nebulous that he was left to run things as he chose. He made the most of this by befriending various officers in the Federation Army and Airship Command, and in the end won the support of a handful of important allies and an appointment to a ministry with a higher profile. His reputation within the Coalition Council as a man who lacked ambition but could get things done grew accordingly, and suddenly he was being sought out by other Ministers and asked for his opinions. His support became worth something and he gave it judiciously, never asking for anything in return.
Shortly after Drust was appointed as Minister of the Treasury, Stoon suggested they celebrate by meeting for a drink. As they sat in a quiet corner of a tavern he favored, the assassin said something completely unexpected.
“I’ve been thinking I might like to secure a permanent position rather than continue to freelance.” He gazed around the tavern as if searching for prospects. “If you were to offer me such a position, I believe I would accept it.”
Drust hesitated, not at all sure where this was going. Such an arrangement had never been mentioned before. “A permanent position? Why would you suddenly want that?”
Stoon shrugged. “We’re just talking here. But if you were to offer, I would probably accept.”
Drust shook his head. “I don’t know that I’m ready for that just yet. One day soon, I think I will be. But for now, I am still trying to find secure footing with the Council.”
“A worthy goal. One I am sure you will attain.” He paused. “Unless someone more powerful than you decides you are becoming a nuisance that needs to be removed.”
Drust felt a chill run up his spine, and it took
everything he had to keep from showing it. “What are you suggesting? Whom are we talking about?”
Stoon shrugged. “As I said, we’re just talking here. But you might want to reconsider my offer. Things happen. What if you don’t hire me now and someone else does? All things considered, I would prefer to work for you. You should think on that. But not for too long.” He paused again. “Failure to act in a timely manner can be fatal.”
Drust Chazhul saw at once what he was getting at and hired Stoon that very night. Within a week, another Minister, one who was rumored to be coveting the position of Minister of the Treasury, met with an unexpected accident that claimed his life.
Since then, Drust and Stoon had cemented their partnership, working together behind the scenes to advance the former’s career to the point that he was now Prime Minister and the most important person in the Federation government. It was Stoon who arranged for the position to become available when everyone else expected the serving Prime Minister to hold office for many more years. It was Stoon who found ways to eliminate any obstacles that Drust encountered, smoothing the way, opening the path, always being granted a voice in the decision making and a substantial share in the rewards. Stoon would never become a Minister of the Coalition Council himself; allying himself with Drust was the next best thing. What he lacked in prestige he made up for in coin and comfort.
And Drust was very careful to make certain that Stoon understood how highly he was valued. He supplied the assassin whatever he wanted in the way of possessions. He provided him access to his private chambers through secret passageways that had been shared by Ministers and their favorites in other times. As long as he did so without being seen, Stoon was allowed to come and go as he pleased. He was little more than a shadow to those with whom Drust worked, and that was the way they both preferred it.