03 The Armies of Daylight d-3, page 15
part #3 of Darwath Series
But once it was formulated, the notion took hold of him, like a nagging itch. The tiny green crystal that he'd found in one of the labs downstairs seemed to wink at him in the darkness from the crude shelves that housed all of his few possessions. His fingers twitched to touch it, his mind to see.
Knock it off ! he commanded himself. It's none of your goddam business what's keeping her. You have no claim on that lady - it's you who's going to be deserting her. That's a kid's trick, like driving by your girlfriend's house to see
whose car is parked out front. If she decided not to come, she doesn't need you peeping on her.
Miserable with self-hate and frozen feet, he padded across the room, his blanket wrapped around his shoulders. A spark of witchlight brightened into being over his head as he took the greenish crystal from its place. Its facets glinted with tiny explosions of light as he angled it and stared deep into the heart of the jewel.
The candles in Aide's room were all but guttered. Wax dripped in thick, white columns down over the shoulders of the little bronze knights that upbore them and ran in creamy pools on the gleaming inlay of the polished table. The dying light flickered over the white brocade of her gown, danced in the jewels still knotted in her half-unraveled ceremonial coiffure, and winked on the little heap of rings and earrings that lay piled at her elbow. She had been in Council, he thought, and remembered that the first thing she did when she returned from such official functions was to strip off her jewelry and let down her hair.
He could not see her face, for she was asleep, with her head on the table and her face hidden in her arms.
A sheet of paper-the torn-out flyleaf of one of her books-lay beside her, and something was written on it in large, scrawly runes. Rudy had by this time mastered enough of the written language of the Wathe to spell out the message laboriously:
RUDY, HELP, PLEASE COME.
Her door was locked. The cloaking-spell that hid him from the two red-clad troopers at the end of the corridor would be useless if he called out loudly enough to wake her.
He laid his hands on the door. Closing his eyes, he felt for the mechanism of the lock with his mind in a technique that Ingold had shown him. The mechanics were crude and decadent, put in during the bad times, when the state of the lock-making art was low; working the wards with his mind was less difficult than forcing them to operate against the rust that choked them.
He pushed the door ajar and slid silently through.
As he pushed it to behind him, Tir stood up in his cradle, his plump, pink hands grasping the carved footboard for support. He called out gaily, " 'Udy!"
With a startled little cry, Alde raised her head, her hair swinging down over her face in an asymmetrical tangle of braids and gems. Then she gasped, "Rudy!" in a voice choked with tears.
She half- rose, and he crushed her in his arms. Her face had hardly more color in it than her gown, except for the swollen redness of her eyes. He tasted the tears that salted her lips; she was shivering with sobs as she pressed frantically into his embrace. "I thought you'd never come."
"I almost didn't, babe... What's the matter? Why's the door locked? What's happening?"
Her voice sank to a desperate whisper. "Rudy, Alwir's going to betroth me to the son of the Emperor of Alketch."
He blinked at her for a moment, not taking it in. "He's what?" he asked, not certain that he'd heard correctly. And then, as rage swept him with fever heat, he cried, " He's what ?" But he remembered where he was, and his shout was no more than a violent whisper. "He can't do that!"
"The Inquisitor told me," she went on in a low, stifled voice, "after the Council was over-oh, long after! I think the others had gone on with the talks after I left. I-I went to Alwir... He said the treaty had already been signed-that it would be announced the night after the Winter Feast, and I would marry by proxy and be sent south with Stiarth and an escort when the army leaves for Gae. Then he locked me in..."
Rudy's long acquaintance with the brotherhood of the road had given him considerable powers of self-expression. He wondered how he could possibly have been so naive as to trust Alwir's word. The lengthy tirade upon the Chancellor's ancestry, personal habits, and probable destiny that rose to his lips was partially aimed at his own stupidity as well. But he had been a wizard too long to think that such commentary would do other than waste time.
Instead, he said, "But they can't bring Tir up in Alketch!"
"They're not going to!" she whispered frantically. "Tir's going to stay here to rule the northern realms, with Alwir as the Regent." She pressed her forehead to his shoulder. "Rudy, what are we going to do?"
Damn good question , he thought, with a feeling akin to panic creeping through his heart. What could they do? The Keep was the last sanctuary from the Dark, and there was nowhere in the Keep that Alwir would not have absolute power over them. If her brother repudiated Alde and took Tir from her, she would lose what slender independence she had. Of course, then the heir of Alketch wouldn't marry her... or would he? Rudy cudgeled his fumbling brain to think and found only confusion and ignorance, his train of thought circling back on itself, like a man lost in a snowstorm.
What good would it do to escape ? he wondered. Wherever we go in the Keep, we're Alwir's prisoners. And besides, where in the Keep can we go ?
As he asked the question, the answer became immediately obvious to him.
He bent his head and kissed the frightened, upturned face. "Get your cloak, sweetheart," he said grimly. "I don't know what we're going to do, but Ingold sure as hell will."
Despite the lateness of the hour, Ingold was awake when they reached his alcove, seated in his carved chair with a moth-eaten bearskin blanket pulled around his shoulders, staring into the few coals that remained on his hearth fire. Both his white hair and the blankets on his narrow cot in the shadows at the back of the room were rumpled from unquiet sleep, and the litter of scholarship- parchments, books, those unfathomable charts of dates and food prices Gil was compiling-strewed the desk and the floor about his feet. But by the look of them, they had given the wizard no respite from the thoughts that had driven sleep from him. He appeared to have been sitting, staring silently into the fire, for some time.
He looked up as they entered, his glance going from Rudy's face to Minalde's, and his brow darkened when he saw the wrapped bundle of quilted velvet blankets that Alde bore in her arms. "What is it?" he asked quietly. "What's happened?"
Succinctly and profanely, Rudy informed him. While he did so, the wizard got to his feet, magelight brightening over his head as he handed Alde into his own chair by the fire and took Tir to lay upon the bed. Tir promptly started working to unravel himself and go exploring.
While Rudy was speaking, Alde sat, shivering a little under the bearskin that Ingold had drawn up around her shoulders, her eyes downcast, half-hidden among the fallen coils of her hair. Only when he finished did she look up. Her eyes were dry; the fear that had been in them as she'd guided Rudy, masked by the protection of his cloaking-spells, through the frowsty and smoke-stinking back corridors of the Keep to reach the Corps complex in secret was gone. It had been replaced by the look Rudy had seen in her eyes the night she'd submitted to the spell of gnodyrr, one of determination to do what must be done.
She asked softly, "Ingold... if Alwir agreed to this-this marriage-behind my back, what else might he have agreed to?"
The old man looked down at her consideringly, leaning his wide shoulders against the rounded clay and rubble wall of the chimney, the firelight mottling his robe ocher and rust. "I can think of several things," he replied. "Bishop Maia told me of an earlier attempt to gain control of the Penambra Delta. And there have always, of course, been quarrels over the Gettlesand border."
Her iris- colored eyes seemed to grow darker with bitter and helpless anger; her slender fingers shook as they locked together in the harsh fur. She whispered, "He has gone too far."
Standing half-forgotten in the dim circle of the firelight, Rudy had the sudden impression of having wandered into realms beyond his ken, into politics, power, and matters far above his own troubles and loves. Beside this greater issue, his love for this dark-haired girl seemed suddenly a small thing. Perhaps, he realized, it had always been.
Ingold folded his arms. "How far are you willing to go?"
"How far can I go?" she countered in a taut voice. "Whatever is said, I am still his prisoner, whether in my rooms or here. He'll find a way to bend me to his will..."
"Shall he?" the old man inquired mildly. "The fact that he locked you up as soon as you found out tells me that he wasn't as sure of that as you seem to be. He clearly planned to announce it as a fait accompli ... If we can speak to him before he does so, we have a chance to change him."
Her shadow swooped across the broken plaster of the wall as she rose with restless abruptness to her feet. "Do we?" she demanded shakily. The jewels flashed, still caught in the dark knots of her hair. "He has proclaimed he will have an alliance with Alketch, and from that position he will not back down. For that alliance he would sacrifice everything-me, the Keep, his very soul." She turned restlessly, her white gown burnished with honey and flame. Her face in the flickering shadows looked suddenly aged by the grimness of her expression, its beauty tempered by the underlying strength of wrath.
Rudy found himself thinking how much she had changed from being the dead King's frightened child-widow; or perhaps it was simply that she had become what she had never before had the chance to be. Long ago, on the journey down from Karst, she had spoken of a ruler's responsibility to the people, and he had not understood at the time what that meant. It was possible, he thought, that she had not, either.
Ingold shifted his shoulders against the chimney breast, regarding her from beneath half-shut eyelids. "These things that you speak of," he said quietly, "- another's life, the safety of the Keep, the integrity of the soul-are matters of great import to you, my lady. But to my lord Alwir, I suspect that such things yield precedence to power and personal comfort-and those, perhaps, he will not be so willing to endanger, even for the sake of an alliance with Alketch."
She was silent for a long moment, struggling with the unexpected hurt she felt at those words. For all that's gone down , Rudy thought, seeing the sudden hotness that flooded her eyes, he's still her brother; she has loved him and depended on him all her life. That's a helluva thing to know for truth about someone you used to care for .
Then she sniffled and wiped her cheeks with defiant fingers. In a small, carefully balanced voice, she said, "I don't see how we could be in a position to endanger either of those things, Ingold-or anything else for that matter, except yourself and Rudy for sheltering me. I-I suppose I could go back and try to talk with him..."
"Would you believe anything that he assured you?" the wizard inquired.
She was silent, but the mauve-stained lids of her eyes fell.
Ingold turned and fielded Tir just before the baby Prince managed to crawl out the door into the wider world of the dark common room. After setting Tir back on the bed, he bent to take up his sword belt, which lay on the floor. Then he turned to hunt for his boots, his bare feet soundless on the uncarpeted stone of the floor.
"Why should he bother to assure me of anything?" Alde asked after a moment. "Maybe I am, as Gil says, the legal ruler of the Keep, but it is Alwir who holds the power here. I know it. It is only that I never had call to feel it before now. I have no power. Only friends."
Ingold turned back to her, slinging on his heavy mantle and drawing the dark hood over his rough, white hair. His shadow loomed over them, huge and batlike against the stone walls. "Never underestimate our friends, Minalde," he said gently. "In risking your life to visit Maia and the Penambrans and pleading their cause to your brother when he refused to admit them to the Keep, you made a friend; in standing against your brother in his dealings with Alketch, if for no other reason, you made others. And it so happens," he added, retrieving the wandering Prince from under the bed and wrapping him once more in his offensive swaddlings, "that Tomec Tirkenson and his rangers are staying on the fourth and fifth levels, with Maia's Penambrans. You know the backways of the Keep better than I do, my child. Would you be able to guide us unseen to the fourth level?"
It was barely the start of the day watch when Minalde returned to the Royal Sector, surrounded by her entourage.
In the Aisle, the Guards had thrown wide the gates again, and children had gone running out through the steamy dawn, to do their chores and race to the woods and cut evergreen boughs. Their singing floated back over the rucked snow and drifted faintly throughout the Keep itself. In two days it would be the Winter Feast.
But solstice cheer was hardly evident in the confusion of the lord Chancellor's quarters, and the traditional love and friendliness of the season were the farthest things from the rage-darkened countenance he showed his sister when she entered his audience hall with her train.
The opening of the doors had caught him in mid-gesticulation. He froze, mouth ajar, hand extended; all about the council table, eyes snapped to the dark doorway, now crowded with Maia's ragged guards and buckskinned Gettlesand rangers. In the split second of stopped time before the Chancellor swung around to face them, Rudy identified the others there. Vair was opulent in cut-velvet and pearls, but plain beside the emerald-green intricacies of Stiarth's gorgeous costume. Inquisitor Pinard, his white robes an advertisement of spiritual purity, stood beside the gory crimson costume of Bishop Govannin.
Alwir's face was engorged with rage; the finger that stabbed out at his sister was almost trembling with it. "You-" he began in a strangled voice, across which Govannin's dry, harsh tones cut like a knife.
"Be careful what you say, fool," she warned, and Alwir, turning, seemed to realize that they were in the presence of the ears in service to the Emperor of the South. This checked the rashness of his first words, but there was murder in his eyes as Alde and the outland chiefs stepped into the council chamber.
Against the wealth and elegance of Alwir's power. Aide's supporters did not show up well. Under Bishop Maia's tattered scarlet episcopal cloak, he wore a faded panoply of scavenged rags, topped by a sweater knitted for him by one of the Penambran ladies. Tomec Tirkenson, in his fringed buckskin shirt and fleece moccasins, looked much like the barbarians he fought. Ingold, the best-dressed of the three, might have passed for anything from a genteel beggar to a street-corner harpist, but certainly not for the Archmage of the Wizards of the West. Among them, Alde seemed to blaze, like a slip of white flame in shadows.
When Alwir spoke again, his voice was calmer but no less deadly. "I suppose you have reasons which you believe to be valid, my sister," he spat acidly, "for coming armed into my presence. But if we are to talk, it will not be in the company of these-bravos."
"These bravos, my lord, are the commanders of your outland troops," she returned, and her soft voice easily filled the council chamber.
His lip curled. "And what do military commanders have to do with statecraft and policy?"
"They die for it, my lord."
There was momentary silence. Then Alwir's face softened, and he came around the table, his hands held out to take hers, his voice gentle and beautiful. "Aide- Minalde. There are always those who die, child; always those who must sacrifice to the good of all. You know this-none better than you." He took her hands in a warm clasp, the soft modulations of his voice excluding all others around them, speaking for her ears only, as if they had been alone. "If every soldier were given his vote, no battles would ever be fought. That is why there must be leaders, my child. Without unquestioning unity, we are like a palsied man in a duel, with every limb flailing to no purpose. Sometimes one arm must take a cut so that the other can deliver a killing blow."
He stood close to her. For a moment she looked up at him, once more his little sister, sheltered under the strength of his shadow.
Then she turned her wrists, not violently, but sharply, something Gil had taught her, breaking his hold before he could tighten it to draw her close. She stepped back from him, between her tall, ragged allies.
"Nevertheless, my lord, they are your subjects. The lives they put in your hands are the only ones they have. The least you owe their dignity is to invite their opinions and not hold secret councils to seek the advice of foreigners before you ask it of your own."
Alwir's voice hardened, as if edged in metal. "Worthy as these lords are, my sister, they are the servants of one House who have fought the servants of another. Their bravery and sacrifice are not the less for being, perhaps, overzealous..."
Tirkenson's lynx eyes narrowed. "It's damn difficult not to get a little overzealous when you find your sister gone and your brother gutted and their kids speared through the belly with Alketch pikes."
"If we sank to a discussion of every personal grievance that ever existed between the men of Alketch and ourselves, my lord Tirkenson, we would sit in this miserable fortress until we all starved or were devoured by the Dark," the Chancellor flashed haughtily. "And if we continue to be interrupted by these- friends-whom you have chosen to bring with you into my Councils, my sister, we might just as well abandon discussion here and now. If you will seek the company of these ruffians whose blind prejudices would prevent the union of the Houses which they serve-"
" I will not marry the heir of Alketch !"
"You sang a different tune last night," he reminded her softly.
"I was prisoner last night!"
Alwir's upper lip seemed to lengthen, his mouth hardening into a single dark line. "Things have changed in the Realm, Minalde, since you sat on the water terraces of Gae and fanned yourself with peacock plumes. We need the alliance with Alketch. They alone can help us reconquer the Realm from the Dark; they alone can help us rebuild it; they alone have not been scourged with this plague that has washed like a tide of death and ruination across the lands of Darwath. We have suffered, and without their aid we will continue to suffer. We can no longer afford the kind of warlike pride that once kept us from uniting in a single federation for the good of all humankind."
