1 The Outstretched Shadow.3 (44 page)

 Raids upon villages in the Wild Lands and the High Hills were simple enough to plan, but must be conducted with care, lest the Endarkened bring themselves to the attention of the Wildmages who lived there.

 Isolated wanderers, whether travelers, traders, or outlaws, could always find themselves lured away from safety, whether by one of the Endarkened in disguise, or by one of their human agents. That was simple enough, and always entertaining, but the numbers of slaves gained were far too few for the purposes of Endarkened magic.

 Slaves could certainly be bought outright, for not every land abhorred the concept of slavery—but again, the constant disappearance of slaves into the north might eventually attract unwelcome attention.

 And there was something so spiritless, so unsporting, about simply buying one's prey!

 She would have to consider the matter.

 Carefully.

 "—SO you see, my Queen, while it is not precisely a crisis, it is, perhaps, awkward," Cerbael said charmingly.

 Cerbael was Queen Savilla's Master of Revels, his business the orchestration of the public ceremonies and entertainments of the Endarkened Court. He was entertaining and inventive, and had never, in all his long centuries of service, first to her father, and then to her, sought any higher position. He was, as he had once told Savilla with as much honesty as any of their kind could summon, already king of the only realm he cared about, and no one could give him anything he wanted more than what she had already given him.

 She would destroy him if he ever failed to amuse her, of course. And he would turn on her if she withdrew her favor and support. But until that time, they trusted one another… in their fashion.

 "M'mn." Savilla stroked the head of the goblin at her feet and did not reply directly. Its bulging silver eyes were closed to slits in the dim light of the chamber, and its blue-grey skin glistened with gold'infused oil. Erlaon had given the creature to her as a present, and Savilla had decided to be amused at the obvious and clumsy attempt to court her patronage.

 One of her human servants approached the goblin too closely, and the little creature, startled, hissed and spat. Green venom spattered the slave's grub-pale skin, and the Brightworlder fell to the floor, writhing in agony. Moments later, its pale body stilled.

 "There," Savilla said in pleased tones. "That should solve a few of your problems, Cerbael." She put her hand on the goblin's collar to keep it from moving toward the corpse. Goblins were greedy creatures, always hungry, and Ixit was perfectly capable of eating the entire Brightworlder all by itself.

 Cerbael laughed appreciatively at his Queen's jest. "I do not think Filendek would be content with this for long—and it's hardly worth his greatest efforts, don't you think, Majesty?"

 "True," Savilla admitted with a fond smile. "We shall have to find him something worthy of his skill. Well?" she demanded of her other slaves, who cowered back, staring in horror at their fellow. "Will you clean this up? Or will you join it?"

 Her dressing-slaves scuttled to obey.

 After Queen Savilla had heard all Petitions of the Dressing Chamber—and acted upon those which it pleased her to act upon—she allowed her surviving slaves to dress her more formally, and went, as was her custom, for a walk in her gardens.

 Of course nothing grew here. Savilla would have been quite offended if it had. Elsewhere in the World Without Sun there were vast farms of strange pale fungus in their infinite varieties, tended by slaves and hosts of the Lesser Endarkened. There were soft writhing worms and lakes of glowing blind fish and tunneling insects for whom the kiss of the sun was fatal, all of which the Endarkened considered delicacies.

 But Savilla's garden was different.

 Here colored crystals had been coaxed from the ground by magic, in much the same way that flowers sprang from fields of rot and decay in the World Above. And within each crystal, Savilla had trapped some moment of agony of one of her special victims, so that she could cherish it always.

 She strolled along the twisting paths, brushing her fingers along the stones and wakening the stored memories into life with a touch of her magic.

 —Here, the moment when one of her pet Darkmages had torn the horn from a living unicorn. No Endarkened could touch the creature without dying, and so the beast had thought itself safe enough, but it was not safe from Savilla's Darkmage. How it had begged, pleaded, reasoned with the man, telling him what his own eventual fate would be! But all in vain…

 —Here, the Darkmage's own death, when Savilla had grown tired of him. How she had enjoyed taunting him, reminding him of how he had killed the unicorn, reminding him that everything it had told him had been true, that he could have saved himself had he only listened to it instead of killing it…

 It was so perfect, placing these two stones next to each other, so that they could stand in rebuke to one another for all Eternity, though the minds and souls and deaths that had gone to make them were long expended, gone to fuel her magic.

 Which reminded Savilla, once more, of her problem.

 She seated herself on a bench cunningly wrought of human bones— some of the younger members of the Court made quite a hobby out of crafting things of what the Endarkened's victims left behind, and some of their pieces were quite artful—and devoted herself to considering the problem.

 Problems, really. A ruler had so many problems to deal with, and not one of them could be neglected. Even the tiniest, the most seemingly inconsequential problem, could be the tear in the wing that made it useless in flight.

 There must be a way to solve so many minor problems at once. Even Filendek's problems must not be slighted—Cerbael had been quite right to bring them to her attention, for the chief cook was an artist, and his complaints would be seen as setting a certain tone for the entire Court.

 Filendek was quite beside himself at the emptiness of the larders, and the lack of delicacies to set upon Savilla's table. No faun, no selkie, no naiad, and the stocks of human and Centaur—in the cold-larders and in the fattening pens—were (so he said) dangerously low. As for unicorn, it had been a long time since that flesh had graced one of the Royal banquets, and no one at the Endarkened Court had tasted Elven flesh since the last War.

 It was sad, really, to see the simple elegancies of life dwindle away even as you watched. But let her plans go as she would have them, and all would be well again, the Court returned to the height of its glory. Their larders would be full, and they would have no need to conceal themselves from the notice of Wildmages, lest their plans be discovered before the proper time.

 But until that moment came there was much to do.

 She thought back over her morning's reports. Their campaign against the Elves was going well, so now it was time to cause Armethalieh to do something foolish. Her agents there assured her that the Arch-Mage had been ever more unreasonable since his son had turned Wildmage and been Banished… perhaps there was something in that she could use to solve her own small difficulties, for as the Arch-Mage went, so went the City.

 Savilla smiled, and set the thought aside to ripen.

 "WHAT do you suppose, my love, I would do if you betrayed me?" Savilla said to her son.

 She smiled lazily as she felt Prince Zyperis's body tense against hers, then relax with an effort.

 "I would never betray you, my mother, my Queen, my love," Zyperis protested. He kissed her shoulder.

 She chuckled throatily. "Of course. But only suppose."

 The two of them were quite alone in Queen Savilla's private retiring chambers, sprawled upon a circular couch of saffron-dyed silk. The spicy scent of the fabric, heated by their recent exertions, filled the chamber, and the Prince's wings were spread over both of them like a perfumed cloak.

 "You would destroy me," Zyperis said. His tone was uncertain, as if he were not quite certain this was the answer she wanted. Good. Uncertainty was the beginning of submission… and of wisdom.

 "But what if you were beyond my reach?" Savilla said playfully, reaching up to stroke his back with her gilded talons. "What if you had escaped me? What then?"

 "Then, dearest Mother, you would track me down, no matter where I had fled, and crush me utterly, no matter what you had to do." From the faint note of relief in Zyperis's voice, he had decided this must be a game. "Nor would you stop until you had done so. And for that reason, I would never flee… nor betray you."

 No, my son, you would not flee. Nor would you betray me unless you were certain you could win all in one throw of the counters, and render me powerless, Savilla thought with a faint spark of pride. Her son had greatness within him, and for that very reason, she must watch him carefully.

 "The Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon's son has betrayed him… and fled," Savilla said.

 "And does the human Mage pursue?" Zyperis asked with lazy interest.

 He moved away from Savilla and off the edge of the bed. Getting to his feet, he walked over to a small jeweled table where a wine service stood waiting. He poured two jeweled golden cups full and brought them back to the bed, handing one to her and waiting until she drank.

 "The human Mage does not pursue," Savilla corrected him gently. "The human Mage acted in accordance with the finest instincts of fatherhood— he condemned his son to death—but the Outlaw Hunt could not pursue the Mageborn boy beyond the boundaries of the City lands."

 Savilla did not know whether or not Lycaelon Tavadon knew what had happened to his Outlaw Hunt and his errant son, but her sources of information were far finer than Armethalieh's, and she did. The young Wildmage had lured a unicorn, and between them they had destroyed all the stone Hounds that the City had sent to kill him and escaped into the Wild Lands beyond the City borders.

 What would Lycaelon Tavadon do if he knew?

 He would want to pursue the boy, of course.

 But the High Magick, by the terms of its initial creation, simply would not work outside the borders of the lands claimed by the City.

 If Lycaelon Tavadon wanted to be able to chase down his Outlaw son with High Magick, he was going to have to get the High Council of Armethalieh to extend the borders of the lands the City claimed.

 And doing that would drive hundreds—no, thousands—of fresh victims right into the Endarkened nets, solving all their problems at once.

 Savilla sipped at her wine.

 "As a mother myself, I feel for Lycaelon Tavadon. I know he would want to know where his son is, and what he is doing. Of course he has spies in the High Hills, but I'm afraid they're not quite as efficient as they could be.

 "Do you love me?" she asked suddenly.

 "As I love power and pain," Prince Zyperis said huskily, his voice thick with renewed desire.

 "Good," Queen Savilla said. "Now. Here's what I want you to do…"

 GAREN Miq was a tinker and a peddler—a mender of small odds and ends, and seller of this and that—whose route took him all the way to the border, through every small farming villages there was. His favorite stops, of course, were the lowland villages that made a fruitful apron around the Golden City, and he always tried to make sure that his last stop before winter set in was Nerendale, where the trading post was, for Garen didn't like to travel during winter, and always picked a likely village to spend the months of cold and wet somewhere dry and warm. Nerendale was said to be as close as you could get to living in the Golden City herself—didn't it have an actual Mage living there full-time, after all?

 But if Garen played his cards right, he wouldn't have to just wonder about what it was like to live in Armethalieh. He'd live out the rest of his days there—as a real, Talisman-wearing citizen, with hot water in his house, fires that never went out, a roof that didn't leak, and all the other wonders of the City of a Thousand Bells, his, free for the asking.

 If he only served the Arch-Mage loyally and well.

 Garen Miq was a seller of oddments, but he was also a spy. For many years he had served the Arch-Mage Lycaelon Tavadon in that capacity, wandering through the hills and villages and reporting any information that he thought the Arch-Mage should know—of heresy, of Otherfolk within the City lands, of unrest or dissatisfaction with the wise and just rule of the Mages.

 He never saw the Arch-Mage personally, of course. Oh, no. That wouldn't be right. Garen Miq had never even been within the walls of the Golden City. Not yet. The man who had come to him many years before—a member of the Arch-Mage's personal staff, of course, wearing the grey robes of a High Mage and carrying the staff of authority—had told him that citizenship would be his reward after long years of faithful service, and given him the means by which he could make his reports— a small ball of golden glass, barely the size of a ripe apricot.

 "Only speak into this ball, and it will be as if I —or the Arch-Mage himself— hear your words, Garen Miq. So speak wisely and carefully," the Mage had said.

 It was Garen Miq's greatest treasure, proof that he was more than he seemed, and he guarded it carefully.

 TONIGHT he was drinking in an inn in a village called Delfier's Rest, at the westernmost edge of the forest. It was a wild, uncouth place, as so many near the border were; people were careless with the Law here, and Garen had seen Other Races here in the past.