“Go to your beds now,” Conrig told them. “All will be well.” He turned to the collection of nobles and the two alchymists standing behind him at the central fire. “Lady Zea, my lords, you should also retire… Vra-Doman, I have brief need of the tent you and my brother will occupy tonight. Please remain here for a few minutes while I confer in it with Vra-Stergos.”
“Certainly, Your Grace,” said the long-faced magicker, heaving a put-upon sigh. “I’ll just say my night prayers—if I can recall them after that unsettling exhibition. Spunkies! Saint Zeth preserve us!”
Conrig took his brother’s arm and guided him to the small canvas pavilion, on the way passing Snudge and the other armigers. “You there, Deveron! Come with me and the doctor. I have an errand for you.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
There was scarcely room inside the tent for the two bedrolls already laid out. Conrig sat on one and gestured for Stergos to take the other. Snudge crouched between them at the closed doorflap. “Scry the area to be sure that no one comes near,” the prince ordered, and the boy nodded. Then Conrig told Stergos, “Please attempt to bespeak Princess Ullanoth.”
The alchymist closed his eyes and remained motionless for many minutes. Then he whispered, “She is silent. It was to be expected. The woman is doubtless totally prostrate with the effort of empowering her third Great Stone.”
Snudge gasped at the appalling news. “Prostrate? Not even able to wind-speak us?”
“It’s what we feared might happen,” said the prince grimly. He explained to the boy how the Conjure-Princess had used her Weathermaker to foil the onset of the deadly cold, even though she was already weakened by bringing the Loophole stone to life. “So it’s obvious we can expect no help from her silencing the wind-voices at Redfern Castle or opening its gates to our troops. We must devise an alternative plan.”
“You want me to do it,” Snudge said, without surprise.
“Your talent for hiding was good enough to deceive Vra-Kilian’s novices and the Royal Guard at Cala Palace. It’s unlikely that powerful adepts will be stationed at a minor fort such as Redfern… Of course, the enemy windvoices cannot merely be captured and bound.”
Stergos gave an involuntary cry of dismay. “Con—he’s only a boy!”
Snudge’s voice was remote. “I understand, Your Grace. They must be absolutely prevented from using their talent.”
The prince said, “You are a man, Deveron, not a child, as both of us know, and must do a man’s hard duty. The windvoices are not warriors, but neither are they innocent bystanders in this war. They must be silenced.”
Snudge said nothing.
“Do you think you can get inside the castle?” Stergos asked anxiously.
“I’ve just thought of a scheme that might work, my lord. And with luck, hardly any of our people need know that it was not Princess Ullanoth who quelled the windvoices and opened the castle gate.” He hesitated. “Will she have recovered by the time we reach Holt Mallburn?”
“God only knows. Tell us your plan for Redfern.”
The boy did, omitting only the way he intended to deal with the castle’s magickers, knowing the prince would say him nay. “I’ll have to work out some details. But I’m a harmless-looking young fellow, and if I can be certain of offering an irresistible bribe—”
“See Duke Tanaby tomorrow morning before you leave,” Conrig said. “Tell him I said to give you anything you want.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.” Snudge opened the tent flap. “I’ll try to get some sleep now, if I can… And to think I was bored nearly to death just this afternoon!” He disappeared.
The Doctor Arcanorum could no longer hold back his indignation. “Con, he’s only sixteen! He slew the spy Iscannon in self-defense, but you’ve just ordered him to kill unarmed men in cold blood.”
“Pray to Saint Zeth for him,” the prince said without emotion, climbing to his feet. “Pray also for Ullanoth. If she doesn’t recover promptly, we may be forced to call upon poor Snudge for even more crucial assistance. Just think about it, Gossy! The Emperor Bazekoy said that my hope for Sovereignty depends upon the help of a dying king. Is it any more preposterous for the key factor to be a wild-talented stable boy?… I bid you good night.”
With that, Conrig pushed out of the little tent and went towards the central fire to tell Vra-Doman that he could retire.
But he stopped short at the sight of Munlow Ramscrest. The stout count stood there in the golden murk, flanked by two of his knights, holding a large, sagging bundle in his powerful arms. Conrig realized that it was a body wrapped in a military cloak. “What’s happened?” he demanded.
“It’s Sir Ruabon, my youngest knight,” Ramscrest said, “a brave lad with an over-ready tongue. These two friends of his found him when they went to make water behind yonder crags. Uncover his face, my prince.”
For a moment, Conrig was frozen with apprehension. Then he lifted the flap of leather. The burly knight’s countenance was shrunken and stretched tight over his skull. He looked like a wasted invalid, nearly fleshless and as pale as clay.
Ramscrest said, “There is no mark on his body. Yet he’s little more than skin and bones.”
“God grant him peace.” The prince met the older man’s eyes. “We know who must have committed this savage deed. What would you have me do, Munlow?”
“Only we four know of this,” Ramscrest replied. “Poor Ruabon was a fool to insult the spunkies, yet did not deserve to die like this. But I can’t condemn our great enterprise to failure on his behalf… most especially since there is no way of taking vengeance on the wee shites who murdered him. The lad’s death is part of the fortunes of war. We’ll bury him quietly ‘neath a cairn and carry on. We can do naught else.” He fixed Conrig with an adamant eye. “However, Princess Ullanoth must admonish her uncanny minions to make certain this doesn’t happen again. Please see to it, Your Grace.”
“My brother Stergos will windspeak her in the morning and transmit my command. As for Ruabon Lifton, his family will share equally in the reward given to all by my Sovereignty. We’ll bring home his ashes when our army returns to Cathra victorious.”
Ramscrest only grunted.
“I have good news that you may spread among the men,” the prince added. “Within an hour or so, this cursed cold should be completely gone. Ullanoth is conjuring it away at this very moment. Nothing should impede us in our march to Redfern Castle.”
“More bloody magic!” the mountain lord growled. He bared his teeth in a snarl of frustration, then spat out an oath. “Why can’t we fight this war like honest warriors?”
“Because we’d lose,” the prince told him. “Come. I’ll help you bury Ruabon, and then we must try to sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ullanoth dreamed of them. They were enormous: so bright, so terrible, so eager to engulf her suffering self. Her anguish fed them in some arcane fashion, and they drank of her for hours on end and then let her go, laughing at her relief, dancing off into the night sky, shrinking, vanishing. Leaving only stars above her and that marvelous freedom from excruciating pain.
Still dreaming, she lay on a flat rock at the water’s edge, dressed in a thin sendal shift, not daring to breathe, knowing that the respite couldn’t last, exposed as she was to the icy Boreal wind that swept in from the sea. She felt gooseflesh rise and her teeth begin to chatter, and fought not to inhale for that meant surrender. But a terrible shudder suddenly racked her, forcing her to fill her lungs with air so frigid that the tender membranes kindled with agony. As though this were some perverse signal, the rest of her body started to afflict her all over again: the pounding head, the aching muscles, the fierce gnawing in her belly.
Soon they’ll be back to feast again, she realized in despair. They gave and now they take. The balance is in the exchange, and to submit is to survive. I willingly endure this only for the sake of my great goal and not for his sake. Never for his sake. Never…
“Never!” she cried aloud, and at the
sound of her own voice, Ullanoth woke.
The cracks between the closed shutters of the warehouse office showed a faint grey light; it had to be nearly dawn. She had more than slept the clock around. The only sounds were the creak of the cooling iron stove and wind sighing around the eaves of the building. For the moment she was free of the pain of Weathermaker’s empowerment—but still not without a certain nagging discomfort. Dazed from sleep (she had forgotten the dream), she was at a loss to understand what was wrong with her until her guts writhed insistently, reminding her that the Great Stone’s ordeal had its ignoble aspects. There was no helping it. Weak as she was, she’d have to go outside. With a muttered oath she emerged from her cocoon of warmth and began to draw on clothes, stockings, and boots. Then she took up Concealer and Interpenetrator and hung them about her neck.
Invisible, she passed through the locked and barred door that gave onto the quay and made her way very slowly to the necessarium overhanging the water at the end of the winesellers’ pier. No trading ships were docked there. With the near-cessation of normal commerce on account of the famine, this southernmost area of Mallburn Quay near the great river was virtually deserted. Even the stews and taverns were boarded up, and only a few small coaster vessels were tied at the adjacent slips and wharves belonging to other merchants. A lamptender with a ladder, accompanied by an armed guard, was extinguishing the tall streetlights along the waterfront one by one.
She took care of her body’s needs, then let her disinterested gaze roam about the big harbor. She’d never seen it at dawn, and its aspect was oddly unfamiliar. The tide was high and the sky to the east, above a fog bank at the mouth of Didion Bay, glowed a muddy crimson. Thanks to her magical labors of the day before, the air was only moderately chilly. In spite of the brisk breeze from the west, a thin mist blurred the scene, but the far shore where the shipyards and naval installations lay was distinct enough in the half-light. The uncanny dense fog generated by the spunkies had not yet reached the city, but it would surely do so by tomorrow.
The princess hobbled back toward her sanctuary, stopping frequently to rest, wishing she had thought to bring some sort of walking stick. Every step brought increasing pain in her legs, and her head had begun to throb, perhaps from lack of food. She would scratch up a simple meal of biscuit, dried meat, and wine, eat it in bed, then sleep again even though she knew she would suffer while dreaming. The debt must be paid, and as quickly as possible.
Behind the semicircular quay, the rising expanse of Mallburn Town revealed streetlights only in the privileged Golden Precinct. The rest was dark, having been abandoned at night to the lawless and the desperate. Holt Mallburn Palace, situated high on a parklike wooded hill a league inland, had its walls and battlements ablaze with fire-baskets. She paused and automatically attempted to wind-watch the palace’s inhabitants, but her unaided talent was now too diminished to penetrate the massive stone walls of the fortress. The Loophole sigil was no option for spying, either. In her present weakened state, the pain of its conjuring would probably render her senseless.
You pathetic thing! she thought. Wobbly as a newborn lamb, and about as dangerous! How can you hope to help Conrig take this huge city? All of the plans they had made earlier were rendered useless by her disability. The Cathran army was due to arrive in two days, but she would hardly have regained her full strength by then. Who would open the gate for Conrig at the great bridge on the River Malle? Who would admit his force to Holt Mallburn Palace itself?
Yesterday, bespeaking Stergos before empowering the new sigil, she had been optimistic. But she had badly underestimated the price Weathermaker would extract from her already weakened body.
I’m no good to him now! The thought came to her without volition as she leaned against the wall of the winesellers’ warehouse and stared blankly at the harbor. His invasion will fail through my fault. He’ll either die in battle or retreat to Cathra in defeat, and meanwhile the Royal Navy of Didion will sail south, link up with the Continental fleet, and—
Navy!
Comprehension hit her like a thunderbolt. She’d been too thickheaded to appreciate what her naked eyes had already shown her: the forty-odd warships that had been moored in the harbor and tied up at large piers on the northern end of the quay were no longer there. Conrig’s slim hope that his invading army might arrive in time to stop the fleet from moving against Cathra was dashed. The armada of Crown Prince Honigalus had sailed on the dawn tide with a fair wind to carry it out of the bay.
I must warn him!
She re-entered the warehouse and collapsed on her improvised bed, clawing at Concealer and Interpenetrator to get them away from her body, sparing herself that insignificant discomfort at least. But the consequences of the empowerment once again began to overwhelm her, even before she fell fully asleep. The stabbing in her belly, the dizziness, the crushing weakness, the irresistible compulsion to yield to unconsciousness and pay the Great Lights their due of pain…
I can’t! Not yet!
She fought with all her will to remain awake, demanding that her body obey. Focusing whatever mental strength remained to her on that single need, she cried out and felt her muscles convulse, then subside into a deadly languor—no longer hurting.
Oh, yes! Thank you, Mother!
Her breathing had become shallow and rapid. Fever burnt at her temples and flooded down her neck, engulfing her body, but she was awake. She reached for a nearby beaker of water. Her trembling hand upset the pottery container, causing it to tip and spill its precious contents onto the dirty wooden floor.
Very well, forget that. Concentrate on windspeaking the message! It would be impossible to reach Vra-Sulkorig in Cala Palace, so she must tell Stergos. First, visualize the countenance of the Doctor Arcanorum, target of the bespeaking—
Oh, Moon Mother, have mercy. I can’t see him.
Try as she might, she could not bring Stergos’s gentle round face to mind, much less the face of the other alchymist accompanying the army. Even her memory of Conrig was dimmed to nullity by her dazed brain. The realization sent a gush of stark terror through the pain-free lethargy that temporarily sheltered her.
Mother, what am I to do?
There was only one hope. She could attempt a general outcry on the wind. It was a form of bespeaking that might be overheard by any adept within range, more tenuous than directed communication, susceptible to blockage by dense matter such as solid rock. The brick wall of the warehouse would be relatively transparent to it, but not Holt Mallburn’s granite bastions, nor the keeps of the other Didionite castles within range. She must make the message brief yet unmistakable. The enemy would probably not overhear her, but if Conrig’s magickers had already crossed the massif of the Dextral Mountains at Breakneck Pass, there was a good chance at least one of them might understand.
I’ll put all the power I have left into the one cry, she decided. For now, it’s all I can do.
The two Brothers of Zeth, relegated to the Cathran army’s rearguard to protect them from danger, were still in the bowl-shaped summit heath, shielded from the flimsy windcry by the intervening rocks. Prince Conrig, riding with Cloudfell and Catclaw so as to be in the fore of the assault, possessed too meager a talent to grasp the message. The only one who heard was Snudge—far ahead of the others, being guided by spunkies to Castle Redfern in the first light of dawn. That faintest of bespoken cries came to him:
Warships gone.
“Codders!” The boy hauled on Primmie’s reins, and the mule halted so abruptly that he nearly flew over its head.
The handful of dancing sparks that surrounded the mounted boy began to cheep and squeak like a nest of disturbed starlings. Unlike their ruler, they did not speak the language of humankind, although an adept could understand their windspeech readily enough.
“Oh, be still!” Snudge hissed at the tiny beings.
He closed his eyes, slumping in the saddle, and attempted to follow the strange cry back to its origin, but it was less a threa
d than an amorphous web, and might have come from anywhere. After that failure he tried to windsearch Didion Bay for a sight of the fleet, but the waters a few leagues east of the enemy capital city were heavily shrouded in a dense fog that was creeping toward the land. If the ships were out there, no ordinary windwatcher could see them.
He bespoke Stergos, who was dozing in his saddle alongside Vra-Doman Carmorton, waiting for his turn to take to the trail.
“My lord, wake up! Don’t disturb your companion. Wake up, I say, and respond to me stealthily in windspeech. It’s Snudge. I believe I’ve received a message from Princess Ullanoth!”
There was a silence on the wind, broken by an incoherent murmur that eventually resolved itself into a bespoken reply.
Snudge? What are you telling me?
“Lord Stergos, I heard a peculiar undirected message on the wind: Warships gone. I believe it can only have come from the princess. We know she is very weak after empowering her Weathermaker. Perhaps she could only transmit those two words, without aiming them at a specific person. I think she meant to tell us that the Didionite fleet has set sail for the south. You must alert the Royal Alchymist at Cala Palace. Say that you were the one who received the message: Warships gone. Let them make of it what they will.”
Oh, Blessed Zeth. This is dreadful! I’d better press to the front of the column and tell the prince and see what he thinks. He hoped we might reach Holt Mallburn in time to stop the fleet—
“My lord, no offense. Stop waffling! Tell His Grace later if you must, but pass on the information to Vra-Sulkorig at Cala without delay. Is that clear?”
The reply was surprisingly meek. Quite clear, my boy. Thank God you were able to receive it… You know, I’m praying for the success of your own mission.
“Thank you, my lord.”
Ialsopray—Imean—oh, Deveron! Are you certain that your scheme will enable you to accomplish your task without shedding the blood of Redfern’s wind adepts?
“As I told you, with luck—and with the special goods I packed on my mule— I’ll manage.”