“You’ve been especially dour for that past few days.”
Kwestor turned his head to acknowledge the prince’s comment but said nothing.
“That’s uncommon even for you. What’s wrong?”
“How long do you have?” the ranger asked sardonically. He kicked a stone from the packed dirt road, which eventually would take them to Greatbridge.
“Kwestor,” Donald warned, “You know what I mean.”
“Yes, in fact I do.”
Three uneventful days had passed since their encounter with the Reverend Crasse. They had gone by numerous farms and orchards and through large expanses containing little but native woods and grasslands since. The harvest rapidly progressed toward completion, and the leaves of the trees continued their slow transmutation from luscious green to the reds, browns, and yellows of autumn in response to the relatively early arrival of the seasonal chill. As they traveled, Kwestor attempted to piece together various bits of information to complete a jigsaw puzzle he could not be certain existed. If it did, he thought he might have a good idea of the general subject, but he did not quite see the full picture just yet. They were still at least four days from Greatbridge, and he hoped to have it all figured out by the time they got there.
“The war isn’t a mistake,” he said, summarizing his thinking and presenting the conclusion up front. “Someone is trying to make it happen.”
“You think my father is intentionally trying to start a war with Gotrox?” The prince’s voice suggested both shock and disbelief.
“I didn’t say that. I said someone is.”
They paused a moment to allow Muce to retrieve his backpack from where it just fell. Since he broke the strap during the prince’s ill-conceived rescue attempt back at the Reverend Crasse’s religious revival meeting, he had found it difficult to carry his belongings, dropping them two or three times a day.
“Think about it,” the ranger continued. “If you wanted to start a war, how would you do it?”
“I suppose I’d just assemble an army and invade.”
“And if you didn’t have an army?”
“I’m not sure I follow you.”
“What if the person who wanted to start the war wasn’t the ruler of a country and had no troops of his own.”
“Well, I guess he’d have to convince someone who did have… You think someone is using the legend of the Warden to manipulate my father.” He said it as a statement, not a question.
“I think that’s a part of it.”
“So what does the Reverend Crasse’s traveling church have to do with it all? I know you think it’s also somehow involved.”
“The person or people trying to start this war are probably financing the good Reverend’s little road show as well. They’re hoping to gain popular support by taking advantage of the common people’s ignorance and biases. An unpopular war is hard to initiate and sustain. Trying to make it popular before it starts is a good investment for them, and, sadly, isn’t all that difficult to do.”
“You’re imagining conspiracies.”
“True. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“Well, I suppose it’s possible. But a war with Gotrox? Why would anyone want to—?”
“I don’t know.”
“Who would—?”
“I don’t know that either, but I have some suspicions. If we knew either who or why, though, I think the other would be obvious.”
Donald shook his head in denial. “No, that’s not possible. My father is not so easily convinced.”
“He’s mobilizing his troops.”
“Yes, but he thinks the Warden threat is real.”
“Why do you suppose he does?”
“Well, I imagine he has gotten reports about it. I mean, we’ve heard the rumors. He must have, too.”
“I never got the impression the king is the type to take actions solely based upon a rumor, especially such an extraordinary rumor.”
Donald seemed to consider for a moment. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that before. For the most part, he’s not very receptive to anything involving magic. He must have some other information we don’t—something supporting the conclusion that Gotrox is planning an invasion. You know, now that I think about it, it’s possible I’ve been wrong. Not about the Warden. I’m pretty sure that it’s, well, actually, I’m not sure what it is, but I doubt very much that it could be used as any kind of weapon against Westgrove. What I mean is that I may have been wrong jumping to the conclusion that Gotrox has no hostile intentions. Maybe the Gotroxians really are trying to start a war, and the Warden is only a smokescreen or a decoy or something. Actually, maybe we’re supposed to find out the Warden threat is a hoax so we won’t suspect they really are planning something until it’s too late.”
“Now who’s imagining conspiracies?” At least he’s trying to think something through, thought Kwestor. He’s definitely learning.
“I suppose that is a bit too complicated,” Donald admitted. “What do you think, Muce?”
“What? Oh. I think I should have bought a new backpack back in Barter’s Forge when I had my shoes repaired,” he answered.
Apparently he had mentally classified the conversation between Kwestor and Donald as not something he could do anything about, not overly interesting, and not about potatoes or anything else remotely edible. He was obviously paying little attention to it.
“The stitching on this one must have been really worn.”
Kwestor interrupted before the young notso could evolve his reply into another irrelevant tale about his childhood or his family.
“Human behavior can be very convoluted, Your Highness. It’s a result of the natural deviousness of the human mind, but I do think your scenario is very unlikely. For one thing, it’s a bit elaborate for the Gotroxians. They tend to be more direct. Rude, actually. It’s one of their more admirable traits.”
“But…,” the prince began, possibly having a hard time contemplating his father being taken in by anything. “No,” he finally concluded. “You have to be wrong. The mobilization is just a precaution my father is taking because he heard those rumors about the Warden. It’s just that he’s probably heard them from more than one source, and he’s not taking any chances. Once we tell him they’re unfounded, he’ll call it off. It’s all just a mistake, and I still think fate has brought me, I mean us, to reveal it to him.”
“Fate, again?”
“Well, you have to admit, it was a very unlikely sequence of events that brought us to even learn about all of this, let alone investigate the Warden. Take Muce’s shoes, for example. How do you explain finding an ancient scroll about the Warden in Muce’s shoes?”
“That was just a bit of bad luck.”
“It could have been fate.”
“In my experience, fate is a word people use to assign meaning to random chance, an excuse to do something they know they shouldn’t, or not do something they know they should. You can believe it’s fate if it makes you feel better. It doesn’t me. In fact, I find the very concept rather disturbing. But, before you get too comfortable believing in your own destiny and position of prominence in the universal plan, I just want to remind you that someone started those rumors, and you should ask yourself why.”