Enchanters' End Game

  Torvik’s use of such terminology had made the queen wince. She had not been entirely sure that the blunt, grizzled forester had been speaking figuratively.

  And now it had been done. Torvik and his huntsmen had moved quietly through the dark streets of Val Alorn for the entire night, gathering up the sleeping members of the Bear-cult, marching them in groups to the harbor and then locking them in the holds of waiting ships. Because of their years of experience, the hunters had been very thorough in rounding up their quarry. By morning, the only members of the Bear-cult left in the city were the High Priest of Belar and the dozen or so underpriests lodged in the temple.

  Queen Islena sat, pale and trembling, on the throne of Cherek. She wore her purple gown and her gold crown. In her hand she held a scepter. The scepter had a comforting weight to it and could possibly be used as a weapon in an emergency. The queen was positive that an emergency was about to descend on her.

  ‘This is all your fault, Merel,’ she bitterly accused her blond friend. ‘If you’d just left things alone, we wouldn’t be in this mess.’

  ‘We’d be in a worse one,’ Merel replied coldly. ‘Pull yourself together, Islena. It’s done now, and you can’t undo it.’

  ‘Grodeg terrifies me,’ Islena blurted.

  ‘He won’t be armed. He won’t be able to hurt you.’

  ‘I’m only a woman,’ Islena quailed. ‘He’ll roar at me in that awful voice of his, and I’ll go absolutely to pieces.’

  ‘Stop being such a coward, Islena,’ Merel snapped. ‘Your timidity’s brought Cherek right to the edge of disaster. Every time Grodeg’s raised his voice to you, you’ve given him anything he wanted – just because you’re afraid of harsh talk. Are you a child? Does noise frighten you that much?’

  ‘You forget yourself, Merel,’ Islena flared suddenly. ‘I am queen, after all.’

  ‘Then by all the Gods, be queen! Stop behaving like a silly, frightened serving girl. Sit up straight on your throne as if you had some iron in your backbone – and pinch your cheeks. You’re as pale as a bedsheet.’ Merel’s face hardened. ‘Listen to me, Islena,’ she said. ‘If you give even one hint that you’re starting to weaken, I’ll have Torvik run his spear into Grodeg right here in the throne room.’

  ‘You wouldn’t!’ Islena gasped. ‘You can’t kill a priest.’

  ‘He’s a man – just like any other man,’ Merel declared harshly. ‘If you stick a spear in his belly, he’ll die.’

  ‘Not even Anheg would dare to do that.’

  ‘I’m not Anheg.’

  ‘You’ll be cursed!’

  ‘I’m not afraid of curses.’

  Torvik came into the throne room, a broad-bladed boarspear held negligently in one big hand. ‘He’s coming,’ he announced laconically.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ Islena quavered.

  ‘Stop that!’ Merel snapped.

  Grodeg was livid with rage as he strode into the throne room. His white robe was rumpled as if he had thrown it on hastily, and his white hair and beard were uncombed. ‘I will speak with the queen alone!’ he thundered as he approached across the rush-strewn floor.

  ‘That is the queen’s decision to make, not yours, my Lord High Priest,’ Merel advised him in a flinty voice.

  ‘Does the wife of the Earl of Trellheim speak for the throne?’ Grodeg demanded of Islena.

  Islena faltered, then saw Torvik standing directly behind the tall priest. The boarspear in his hand was no longer so negligently grasped. ‘Calm yourself, revered Grodeg,’ the queen said, quite suddenly convinced that the life of the infuriated priest hinged not only on her words but even on her tone of voice. At the tiniest quaver, Merel would give the signal, and Torvik would sink that broad, sharp blade into Grodeg’s back with about as much emotion as he showed about swatting a fly.

  ‘I want to see you alone,’ Grodeg repeated stubbornly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’ he roared incredulously.

  ‘You heard me, Grodeg,’ she told him. ‘And stop shouting at me. My hearing is quite good.’

  He gaped at her, then quickly recovered. ‘Why have all my friends been arrested?’ he demanded.

  ‘They were not arrested, my Lord High Priest,’ the queen replied. ‘They have all volunteered to join my husband’s fleet.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ he snorted.

  ‘I think you’d better choose your words a bit more carefully, Grodeg,’ Merel told him. ‘The queen’s patience with your impertinence is wearing thin.’

  ‘Impertinence?’ he exclaimed. ‘How dare you speak that way to me?’ He drew himself up and fixed a stern eye on the queen. ‘I insist upon a private audience,’ he told her in a thunderous voice.

  The voice which had always cowed her before quite suddenly irritated Islena. She was trying to save this idiot’s life, and he kept shouting at her. ‘My Lord Grodeg,’ she said with an unaccustomed hint of steel in her voice, ‘if you bellow at me one more time, I’ll have you muzzled.’

  His eyes widened in amazement.

  ‘We have nothing to discuss in private, my Lord,’ the queen continued. ‘All that remains is for you to receive your instructions – which you will follow to the letter. It is our decree that you will proceed directly to the harbor, where you will board the ship which is waiting to transport you to Algaria. There you will join the forces of Cherek in the campaign against the Angaraks.’

  ‘I refuse!’ Grodeg retorted.

  ‘Think carefully, my Lord Grodeg,’ Merel purred. ‘The queen has given you a royal command. Refusal could be considered treason.’

  ‘I am the High Priest of Belar,’ Grodeg ground out between clenched teeth, obviously having great difficulty in modulating his voice. ‘You wouldn’t dare ship me off like some peasant conscript.’

  ‘I wonder if the High Priest of Belar might like to make a small wager on that,’ Torvik said with deceptive mildness. He set the butt of his spear on the floor, took a stone from the pouch at his belt and began to hone the already razor-sharp blade. The steely sound had an obviously chilling effect on Grodeg.

  ‘You will go to the harbor now, Grodeg,’ Islena told him, ‘and you will get on that ship. If you do not, you will go to the dungeon, where you will keep the rats company until my husband returns. Those are your choices; join Anheg or join the rats. Decide quickly. You’re starting to bore me, and quite frankly, I’m sick of the sight of you.’

  Queen Porenn of Drasnia was in the nursery, ostensibly feeding her infant son. Out of respect for the queen’s person, she was unspied upon while she was nursing. Porenn, however, was not alone. Javelin, the bone-thin chief of Drasnian intelligence, was with her. For the sake of appearance, Javelin was dressed in a serving maid’s gown and cap, and he looked surprisingly feminine in the disguise he wore with no apparent trace of self-consciousness.

  ‘Are there really that many cultists in the intelligence service?’ the queen asked, a little dismayed.

  Javelin sat with his back politely turned. ‘I’m afraid so, your Highness. We should have been more alert, but we had other things on our minds.’

  Porenn thought about it for a moment, unconsciously rocking her suckling baby. ‘Islena’s moving already, isn’t she?’ she asked.

  ‘That’s the word I received this morning,’ Javelin replied. ‘Grodeg’s on his way to the mouth of the Aldur River already, and the queen’s men are moving out into the countryside, rounding up every member of the cult as they go.’

  ‘Will it in any way hamper our operations to jerk that many people out of Boktor?’

  ‘We can manage, your Highness,’ Javelin assured her. ‘We might have to speed up the graduation of the current class at the academy and finish their training on the job, but we’ll manage.’

  ‘Very well then, Javelin,’ Porenn decided. ‘Ship them all out. Get every cult member out of Boktor, and separate them. I want them sent to the most miserable duty posts you can devise, and I don’t want any of them within fifty leagues of any other one. T
here will be no excuses, no sudden illnesses, and no resignations. Give each of them something to do, and then make him do it. I want every Bear-cultist who’s crept into the intelligence service out of Boktor by nightfall.’

  ‘It will be my pleasure, Porenn,’ Javelin said. ‘Oh, incidentally, that Nadrak merchant, Yarblek, is back from Yar Nadrak, and he wants to talk to you about the salmon runs again. He seems to have this obsessive interest in fish.’

  Chapter Twelve

  The raising of the Cherek fleet to the top of the eastern escarpment took a full two weeks, and King Rhodar chafed visibly at the pace of the operation.

  ‘You knew this was going to take time, Rhodar,’ Ce’Nedra said to him as he fumed and sweated, pacing back and forth with frequent dark looks at the towering cliff face. ‘Why are you so upset?’

  ‘Because the ships are right out in the open, Ce’Nedra,’ he replied testily. ‘There’s no way to hide them or disguise them while they’re being raised. Those ships are the key to our whole campaign, and if somebody on the other side starts putting a few things together, we might have to meet all of Angarak instead of just the Thulls.’

  ‘You worry too much,’ she told him. ‘Cho-Hag and Korodullin are burning everything in sight up there. ‘Zakath and Taur Urgas have other things to think about beside what we’re hauling up the cliff.’

  ‘It must be wonderful to be so unconcerned about things,’ he said sarcastically.

  ‘Be nice, Rhodar,’ she said.

  General Varana, still scrupulously dressed in his Tolnedran mantle, limped toward them with that studiously diffident expression that indicated he was about to make another suggestion.

  ‘Varana,’ King Rhodar burst out irritably, ‘why don’t you put on your uniform?’

  ‘Because I’m not really officially here, your Majesty,’ the general replied calmly. ‘Tolnedra is neutral in this affair, you’ll recall.’

  ‘That’s a fiction, and we all know it.’

  ‘A necessary one, however. The Emperor is still holding diplomatic channels open to Taur Urgas and ‘Zakath. Those discussions would deteriorate if someone saw a Tolnedran general swaggering around in full uniform.’ He paused briefly. ‘Would a small suggestion offend your Majesty?’ he asked.

  ‘That all depends on the suggestion,’ Rhodar retorted. Then he made a face and apologized. ‘I’m sorry, Varana. This delay’s making me bad-tempered. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘I think you might want to give some thought to moving your command operations up to the top about now. You’ll want things running smoothly by the time the bulk of your infantry arrives, and it usually takes a couple of days to iron out the wrinkles when you set things up.’

  King Rhodar stared at a Cherek ship being hoisted ponderously up the cliff face. ‘I’m not going to ride up on one of those, Varana,’ he declared flatly.

  ‘It’s absolutely safe, your Majesty,’ Varana assured him. ‘I’ve made the trip myself several times. Even Lady Polgara went up that way just this morning.’

  ‘Polgara could fly down if something went wrong,’ Rhodar said. ‘I don’t have her advantages. Can you imagine the size of the hole I’d make in the ground if I fell that far?’

  ‘The alternative is extremely strenuous, your Majesty. There are several ravines running down from the top. They’ve been leveled out a bit so that the horses can go up, but they’re still very steep.’

  ‘A little sweating won’t hurt me.’

  Varana shrugged. ‘As your Majesty wishes.’

  ‘I’ll keep you company, Rhodar,’ Ce’Nedra offered brightly.

  He gave her a suspicious look.

  ‘I don’t really trust machines either,’ she confessed. ‘I’ll go change clothes, and then we can start.’

  ‘You want to do it today?’ His voice was plaintive.

  ‘Why put it off?’

  ‘I can think of a dozen reasons.’

  The term ‘very steep’ turned out to be a gross understatement. ‘Precipitous’ might have been more accurate. The incline made riding horses out of the question, but ropes had been strung along the steeper stretches to aid in the climb. Ce’Nedra, dressed in one of her short Dryad tunics, scampered hand over hand up the ropes with the agility of a squirrel. King Rhodar’s pace, however, was much slower.

  ‘Please stop groaning, Rhodar,’ she told him after they had climbed for an hour or so. ‘You sound like a sick cow.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair, Ce’Nedra,’ he wheezed, stopping to mop his streaming face.

  ‘I never promised to be fair,’ she retorted with an impish grin. ‘Come along, we still have a long way to go.’ And she flitted up another fifty yards or so.

  ‘Don’t you think you’re a little underdressed?’ he puffed disapprovingly, staring up at her. ‘Proper ladies don’t show off so much leg.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my legs?’

  ‘They’re bare – that’s what’s wrong with them.’

  ‘Don’t be such a prig. I’m comfortable. That’s all that matters. Are you coming or not?’

  Rhodar groaned again. ‘Isn’t it almost time for lunch?’

  ‘We just had lunch.’

  ‘Did we? I’d forgotten already.’

  ‘You always seem to forget your last meal – usually before the crumbs have been brushed away.’

  ‘That’s the nature of a fat man, Ce’Nedra.’ He sighed. ‘The last meal is history. It’s the next one that’s important.’ The stared mournfully up the brutal trail ahead and groaned again.

  ‘This was all your idea,’ she heartlessly reminded him.

  The sun was low in the west when they reached the top. As King Rhodar collapsed, Princess Ce’Nedra looked around curiously. The fortifications which had been erected along the top of the escarpment were extensive and quite imposing. The walls were of earth and stone and were perhaps thirty feet high. Through an open gate the princess saw a series of other, lower walls, each fronted by a ditch bristling with sharpened stakes and thorny brambles. At various points along the main wall rose imposing blockhouses, and within the walls were neat rows of huts for the soldiers.

  The forts swarmed with men, and their various activities raised an almost perpetual cloud of dust. A party of Algar clansmen, smoke-stained and mounted on spent-looking horses, rode slowly in through the gate; and a few moments later, a contingent of gleaming Mimbrate knights, pennons snapping from their lances and the great hoofs of their chargers clattering on the stony ground, rode out in search of yet another town to destroy.

  The huge hoists at the edge of the escarpment creaked and groaned under the weight of the Cherek ships being raised from the plain below; some distance away, within the fortified walls, the growing fleet sat awaiting the final portage to the headwaters of the upper River Mardu, some fifty leagues distant.

  Polgara, accompanied by Durnik and the towering Barak, approached to greet the princess and the prostrate King of Drasnia.

  ‘How was the climb?’ Barak inquired.

  ‘Ghastly,’ Rhodar wheezed. ‘Does anybody have anything to eat? I think I’ve melted off about ten pounds.’

  ‘It doesn’t show,’ Barak told him.

  ‘That sort of exertion isn’t really good for you, Rhodar,’ Polgara told the gasping monarch. ‘Why were you so stubborn about it?’

  ‘Because I have an absolute horror of heights,’ Rhodar replied. ‘I’d climb ten times as far to avoid being hauled up that cliff by those contraptions. The idea of all that empty air under me makes my flesh creep.’

  Barak grinned. ‘That’s a lot of creeping.’

  ‘Will somebody please give me something to eat?’ Rhodar asked in an anguished tone of voice.

  ‘A bit of cold chicken?’ Durnik offered solicitously, handing him a well-browned chicken leg.

  ‘Where did you ever find a chicken?’ Rhodar exclaimed, eagerly seizing the leg.

  ‘The Thulls brought some with them,’ Durnik told him.

  ‘Thulls?’ Ce’Nedr
a gasped. ‘What are Thulls doing here?’

  ‘Surrendering,’ Durnik replied. ‘Whole villages of them have been showing up for the past week or so. They walk up to the edge of the ditches along the front of the fortifications and sit down and wait to be captured. They’re very patient about it. Sometimes it’s a day or so before anybody has the time to go out and capture them, but they don’t seem to mind.’

  ‘Why do they want to be captured?’ Ce’Nedra asked him.

  ‘There aren’t any Grolims here,’ Durnik explained. ‘No altars to Torak and no sacrificial knives. The Thulls seem to feel that getting away from that sort of thing is worth the inconvenience of being captured. We take them in and put them to work on the fortifications. They’re good workers, if you give them the proper supervision.’

  ‘Is that entirely safe?’ Rhodar asked around a mouthful of chicken. ‘There might be spies among them.’

  Durnik nodded. ‘We know,’ he said, ‘but the spies are usually Grolims. A Thull doesn’t have the mental equipment to be a spy, so the Grolims have to do it themselves.’

  Rhodar lowered his chicken leg in astonishment. ‘You’re letting Grolims inside the fortifications?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s nothing all that serious,’ Durnik told him. ‘The Thulls know who the Grolims are, and we let them deal with the problem. They usually take them a mile or so along the escarpment and then throw them off. At first they wanted to do it right here, but some of their elders pointed out that it might not be polite to drop Grolims down on top of the men working below, so they take them some place where they won’t bother anybody when they fall. A very considerate people, the Thulls. One could almost get to like them.’

  ‘You’ve sunburned your nose, Ce’Nedra,’ Polgara told the little princess. ‘Didn’t you think of wearing a hat?’

  ‘Hats give me a headache.’ Ce’Nedra shrugged. ‘A little sunburn won’t hurt me.’

  ‘You have an appearance to maintain, dear,’ Polgara pointed out. ‘You’re not going to look very queenly with your nose peeling.’