Cheers accompanied the procession every step along the main way of Caer MacDonald; many tossed silver coins or offered fine wine or ale, or plates heaped with food.
Oliver basked in the moment, even standing atop his pony’s back at one point, dipping a low bow, his great hat sweeping. Luthien tried to remain vigilant and stoic, but couldn’t contain his smile. At the front of the column, though, Siobhan and Shuglin paid the crowd little heed. These two exemplified the suffering of their respective races at the hands of Greensparrow. Shuglin’s folk, those who had been caught, had long been enslaved, working as craftsmen for the elite ruling and merchant classes until they outlived their usefulness, or gave their masters some excuse to send them to torturous labor in the mines. Siobhan’s folk had fared no better in the last two decades. Elves were not numerous in Avonsea—most had fled the isles for parts unknown many years before Greensparrow’s rise—but those who were caught during the rein of the evil king were given to wealthy homes as servants and concubines. Siobhan, with blood that was neither purely elven nor purely human, was on the lowest rung of all in Greensparrow’s racial hierarchy, and had spent many years in the service of a merchant tyrant who had beaten and raped her at will.
So these two were not smiling, and would not rejoice. For Luthien, victory had come when Eriador was declared free; for Shuglin and Siobhan, victory meant the head of Greensparrow, staked up high on a pole.
Nothing less.
King Brind’Amour met them in the plaza surrounding the Ministry. Purposefully, the king made his way past Siobhan and Shuglin, holding up his hand to indicate that they should wait to tell their tale. Down the line he went, his eyes locked on one man in particular, and he stopped when he came face-to-face with the prisoner.
Brind’Amour reached up and pulled the gag from the man’s mouth.
“He is a wizard,” Luthien warned.
“His name is Resmore,” Oliver added.
“One of Greensparrow’s dukes?” Brind’Amour asked the man, but Resmore merely “harrumphed” indignantly and lifted his fat face in defiance.
“He wore this,” Oliver explained, handing the expensive cap over to his king. “It was not so much a trick for me to take it from him.”
Luthien’s sour expression was not unexpected, and Oliver purposefully kept his gaze fixed on his king.
Brind’Amour took the hat and turned it in his hands, studying the emblem: a ship’s prow carved into the likeness of a rearing stallion, nostrils flared, eyes wild. “Newcastle,” the Eriadoran king said calmly. “You are Duke Resmore of Newcastle.”
“Friend of Greensparrow, who is king of all Avonsea!” a flustered Resmore replied.
“And king of Gascony, I am so sure,” Oliver added sarcastically.
“Not by treaty,” Brind’Amour reminded Resmore calmly, the old wizard smiling at the duke’s slip. “Our agreement proclaims Greensparrow as king of Avon and Brind’Amour as king of Eriador. Or is it that you deem the treaty immaterial?”
Resmore was sweating visibly now, realizing his error. “I only meant . . .” he stammered, and then he stopped. He took a deep breath to steady himself and lifted his chin proudly once more. “You have no right to hold me,” he declared.
“You were captured fairly,” Oliver remarked. “By me.”
“Unlawfully!” Resmore protested. “I was in the mountains, by all rights, in land neutral to our respective kingdoms!”
“You were on the Eriadoran side of the Iron Cross,” Brind’Amour reminded him. “Not twenty miles from Caer MacDonald.”
“I know of no provisions in our treaty that would prevent—” Resmore began.
“You were with the cyclopians,” Luthien promptly interrupted.
“Again, by word of the treaty—”
“Damn your treaty!” Luthien shouted, though Brind’Amour tried to calm him. “The one-eyes have been raiding our villages, murdering innocents, even children. At the prompting of your wretched king, I say!”
A hundred voices lifted in accord with the young Bedwyr’s proclamation, but Brind’Amour’s was not among them. Again the king of Eriador, skilled in matters politic, worked hard to quiet them all, fearing that a mob would form and his prisoners would be hanged before he could gather his evidence.
“Since when do one-eyes need the prompting of a human king to raid and pillage?” Resmore sarcastically asked.
“We can prove that this very band you were captured beside was among those participating in raids,” Brind’Amour said.
“Of which I know nothing,” Resmore replied coolly. “I have only been with them a few days, and they have not left the mountains in that time—until you illegally descended upon them. Who is the raider now?”
Brind’Amour’s blue eyes flared dangerously at that last remark. “Pretty words, Duke Resmore,” he said grimly. “But worthless, I assure you. Magic was used in the massacre known as Sougles’s Glen; its tracings can still be felt by those attuned to such powers.”
Brind’Amour’s not-so-subtle proclamation that he, too, was a wizard seemed to unnerve the man more than a little.
“Your role in the attacks can be proven,” Brind’Amour went on, “and a wizard’s neck is no more resistant to the rope than is a peasant’s.”
The mob exploded with screams for the man’s death, by hanging or burning, or whatever method could be quickly expedited. Many seemed ready to break ranks and beat the man. Brind’Amour would hear none of it, though. He motioned for Luthien and the others to take Resmore and the cyclopians into the Ministry, where they were put into separate dungeons. Resmore was assigned two personal guards, elves, who were quite sensitive to magic, who stood over the man continually, swords drawn and ready.
“We should thank you for your role in the capture,” Luthien remarked to Brind’Amour, walking the passageways along the smaller side rooms in the great structure beside Oliver and their king.
“Oh yes,” Oliver piped in. “A so-very-fine shot!”
Brind’Amour slowed enough to stare at his companions, his expression showing that he did not understand.
“In the mountains,” Luthien clarified. “When Resmore called in his demon.”
“You faced yet another hellish fiend?” Brind’Amour asked.
“Until your so-booming bolt of lightning,” Oliver replied. “On came the beast for Luthien—he would not approach my rapier blade, you see.”
“A’ta’arrefi, the demon was called,” Luthien interrupted, not willing to hear Oliver’s always-skewed perspective.
Still Brind’Amour seemed not to understand.
“He resembled a dog,” Luthien added, “though he walked upright, as a man.”
“And his tongue was forked,” Oliver added, and it took the halfling’s two companions a moment to decipher that last word, which Oliver’s thick Gascon accent made sound as though it was two separate words, “for-ked.” The halfling’s gesture helped in the translation, for he put two wiggling fingers up in front of his mouth.
Brind’Amour shrugged.
“Your lightning bolt,” Luthien insisted. “It could not have been mere chance!”
“Say it plainly, my boy,” the wizard begged.
“Resmore’s demon ran for us,” Luthien replied. “He was but five paces from me when the storm broke, a sting of lightning rushing down.”
“Boom!” Oliver yelled. “Right on the head.”
“And all that was left of A’ta’arrefi was his blackened tongue,” said Luthien.
“For-ked,” Oliver finished.
Brind’Amour rubbed his white beard briskly. He had no idea of what the two were talking about, for he hadn’t even been looking that way; Brind’Amour had been so engrossed with events in the east and south that he had no idea Luthien and Oliver had even gone into the mountains with Siobhan, let alone that they were facing a demon! Still, it seemed perfectly impossible to him that the lightning bolt was a natural accident. Luthien and Oliver were lucky indeed, but that was too far-fetched.
Obviously a wizard had been involved. Perhaps it was even Greensparrow himself, aiming for Luthien and hitting Resmore’s fiend by mistake. “Yes, of course,” was all that he said to the two. “A fine shot, that. Demons are easy targets, though; stand out among mortals like a giant among halflings.”
Luthien managed a weak smile, not convinced that Brind’Amour was speaking truthfully. The young Bedwyr had no other explanation, though, and so he let it go at that. If there was something amiss, magically speaking, then it would be Brind’Amour’s concern, and not his own.
“Come,” the wizard bade, moving down a side passage. “We have perhaps found the link between Greensparrow and the cyclopians, thus our treaty with Avon may be deemed void. Let us draw up the truce with King Asmund of Isenland and begin to lay our plans.”
“We will fight Greensparrow?” Luthien asked bluntly.
“I do not yet know,” Brind’Amour replied. “I must speak with our prisoners, and with the ambassador from Gascony. There is much to do before any final decisions can be made.”
Of course there was, Luthien realized, but the young Bedwyr held faith then that he would not be battling against his brother. Greensparrow’s treacherous hand had been revealed in full; Resmore was all the proof they needed. Visions of sailing the fleet up the Stratton into Carlisle beside the Huegoth longships danced in Luthien’s mind.
It was not an unpleasant fantasy.
Brind’Amour entered the dimly lit room solemnly, wearing his rich blue wizard robes. Candles burned softly from pedestals in each of the room’s corners. In the center was a small round table and a single stool.
Brind’Amour took his place on the stool. With trembling hands, he reached up and removed the cloth draped over the single object on the table, his crystal ball. It was with trepidation and nervous excitement that the wizard began his incantation. Brind’Amour didn’t believe that Greensparrow had launched a bolt for Luthien that had accidentally destroyed Resmore’s familiar demon. In lieu of that, the old wizard could think of only one explanation for Luthien’s incredible tale: one of his fellows from the ancient brotherhood of wizards had awakened and joined in the effort. What else might explain the lightning bolt?
The wizard fell into his trance, sent his sight through the ball, into the mountains, across the width and breadth of Eriador, then across the borders of time itself.
“Brind’Amour?”
The question came from far away, but was insistent.
“Brind’Amour?”
“Serendie?” the old wizard asked, thinking he had at last found one of his fellows, a jolly chap who had been among his closest of friends.
“Luthien,” came the distant reply.
Brind’Amour searched his memory, trying to remember which wizard went by that vaguely familiar name. He felt a touch on his shoulder, and then was shaken.
Brind’Amour came out of his trance to find that he was in his divining room at the Ministry, with Luthien and Oliver standing beside him. He yawned and stretched, thoroughly drained from his night’s work.
“What time?” he asked.
“The cock has crowed,” Oliver remarked, “has eaten his morning meal, put a smile on the beaks of a few hen-types, and is probably settled for his afternoon nap!”
“We wondered where you were,” Luthien explained.
“So where were you?” Oliver asked.
Brind’Amour snorted at the halfling’s perceptive question. He had been physically in this room—all the night and half the day it would seem—but in truth, he had visited many places. A frown creased his face as he considered those journeys now. The last of them, to the isle of Dulsen-Berra, central of the Five Sentinels, haunted him. The vision the crystal ball had given him was somewhere back in time, though how long ago he could not tell. He saw cyclopians scaling the rocky hills of the island. Then he saw their guide: a man he recognized, though he was not as fat and thick-jowled as he was now, a man Brind’Amour now held captive in the dungeons of this very building!
In the vision, Resmore carried an unusual object, a forked rod, a divining stick. So-called “witches” of the more remote villages of Avonsea, and all across wild Baranduine, used such an object to find water. Normally a divining rod was a form of the very least magic, but this time, Resmore’s rod had been truly enchanted. Guided by it, Resmore and his one-eyed cronies had found a secret glen and the blocked entrance to a cave. Several wards exploded, killing more than a few cyclopians, but there were more than enough of the brutes to complete the task. Soon enough, the cave mouth was opened and the brutes rushed in. They returned to Resmore in the grassy glen, dragging a stiff body behind them. It was Duparte, dear Duparte, another of Brind’Amour’s closest friends, who had helped Brind’Amour in the construction of the Ministry and had taught so many Eriadoran fisherfolk the ways of the dangerous dorsal whales.
All the long night Brind’Amour had suffered such scenes of murder as his fellows were routed from their places of magical sleep. All the long night he had seen Resmore and Greensparrow, Morkney and Paragor, and one other wizard he did not know, flush out his helpless, sleeping fellows and destroy them.
Brind’Amour shuddered visibly, and Luthien put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“They are all dead, I fear,” Brind’Amour said quietly.
“Who?” Oliver asked, looking around nervously.
“The ancient brotherhood,” the old wizard replied—and he truly seemed old at that moment! “Only I, who spent so long enacting magical wards against intrusion, seem to have escaped the treachery of Greensparrow.”
“You witnessed all of their deaths?” Luthien asked incredulously, looking at the crystal ball. By Brind’Amour’s tales, many, many wizards had gone into the magical slumber those centuries before.
“Not all.”
“Why did you look?” Oliver asked.
“Your tale of the encounter with Resmore,” Brind’Amour replied.
“You did not send the lightning,” Luthien reasoned. “Thus you believed that one of your brothers had awakened, and had come to our aid.”
“But that is not the case,” Brind’Amour said.
“You said you did not find them all,” Oliver reminded.
“But none are awake; of that I am almost certain,” Brind’Amour replied. “If any of them were, my divining would have revealed them, or at least a hint of them.”
“But if you did not send the lightning . . .” Luthien began.
Brind’Amour only shrugged, having no explanation.
The old wizard sighed and leaned back in his chair. “We erred, my friends,” he said. “And badly.”
“Not I,” Oliver argued.
“The ancient brotherhood?” Luthien asked, pausing only to shake his head at Oliver’s unending self-importance.
“We thought the land safe and in good hands,” Brind’Amour explained. “The time of magic was fast fading, and thus we faded away, went into our slumber to conserve what remained of our powers until the world needed us once more.
“We all went into that sleep,” the wizard went on, his voice barely above a whisper, “except for Greensparrow, it seems, who was but a minor wizard, a man of no consequence. Even the great dragons had been destroyed, or bottled up, as I and my fellows had done to Balthazar.”
Luthien and Oliver shuddered at the mention of that name, a dragon they knew all too well!
“I lost my staff in Balthazar’s cave,” the wizard continued, turning to regard Luthien. “But I didn’t think I would ever need it again—until after I awoke to find the land in the darkness of Greensparrow.”
“This much we knew,” Luthien said. “But if Greensparrow had been such a minor wizard, then how did he rise?”
“What a great error,” Brind’Amour said to himself. “We thought magic on the wane, and so it was, by our standards of the art. But Greensparrow found another way. He allied with demons, tapped powers that should have been left alone, to rebuild a source of magical power. We should ha
ve foreseen this, and warded against it before our time of slumber.”
“I do so agree!” Oliver chimed in, but then he lowered his gaze as Luthien’s scowl found him.
“You should have seen me!” Brind’Amour said suddenly, his face flashing with the vigor of a long past youth. “Oh, my powers were so much greater then! I could use the art all the day, sleep well that night, then use it again all the next day.” A cloud seemed to pass over his aged features. “But now, I am not so strong. Greensparrow and his cohorts find most of their strength through demonic aid, a source I cannot, and will not, tap.”
“You destroyed Duke Paragor,” Luthien reminded.
Brind’Amour snorted, but managed a weak smile. “True,” he admitted. “And Morkney is dead, and Duke Resmore, his demon somehow taken from him, is but a minor wizard, and no more a threat.” Again he looked to Luthien, his face truly grim. “But these are but cohorts of Greensparrow, who is of the ancient brotherhood. These dukes, and the duchess of Mannington, are mortals, and not of my brotherhood. Minor tricksters empowered by Greensparrow.”
Luthien saw that his old friend needed his strength at that moment. “When Greensparrow is dead,” he declared, “you, Brind’Amour, king of Eriador, will be the most powerful wizard in all the world.”
Oliver clapped his hands, but Brind’Amour only replied quietly, “Something I never desired.”
“Leave us,” Brind’Amour instructed as he entered the dungeon cell below the Ministry. The small room was smoky, lighted by a single torch that burned in an unremarkable wall sconce beside the door.
The two elvish guards looked nervously to each other, and to the prisoner, but they would not disobey their king. With curt bows, they exited, though they stubbornly took up positions just outside the cell’s small door.
Brind’Amour closed that door, eyeing Resmore all the while. The miserable duke sat in the middle of the floor, hands bound behind his back and shackled by a tight chain to his ankles. He was also gagged and blindfolded.