* * *
Sharina squatted to eat, the point of her shoulder braced against Cashel beside her. The fire had sunk to winking coals. The wood had aged on the damp ground, rotting to punk that burned sullenly rather than with a clean, hot flame; it had been good enough for the porridge and bacon, but it burned away too quickly to keep the hearth warm on a winter night.
"Lerdoc, Count of Blaise, has begun wearing a diadem in public," Garric said as he daubed up porridge on the willow spoon Sharina had trimmed while her brother was cooking. "He hasn't formally changed his title to king; he's probably wondering what I'm going to do. I'm wondering too."
He grinned. Garric sounded tired but he wasn't as bitterly worn as he'd seemed every time Sharina saw him during the past two weeks.
"Lerdoc may be hoping that his diadem will convince the Earl of Sandrakkan to take an overt step," Liane said. Cashel had upturned a large pot as a seat for her; Liane had never learned to squat, and she probably wasn't used to sitting crosslegged on the ground for any length of time either.
"And he may be right about that," Garric agreed. "Earl Wildulf has called a muster of the Sandrakkan militia for the twentieth of next month. Our agents think he's checking to see how many of his nobles show up with their troops before he decides whether to proclaim himself King Wildulf the First. That's what his granduncle did... the year before he died at the Stone Wall."
Sharina liked the porridge, though the flavor had surprised her. This was the first time since she'd arrived in Valles that she'd had a meal like what most of the people here ate. It was subtly different from what she was used to. The meal, leeks and chives were the same as she'd used in Barca's Hamlet more times than she could remember, but the cheese Cashel had stirred in came from goat's milk instead of ewe's.
"Carus faced the same sort of problems when he was crowned King of the Isles," Garric went on with a wry smile. "Usurpers, rebels, secessions—on Haft and all over the Isles. Carus met his problems with a sword in his hand and an army none of them could equal... until the day a wizard sank him and his army to the bottom of the sea."
Tenoctris watched Garric with sharp attention. Earlier in the evening she'd gone to a corner of the long building to work a spell. Sharina had seen red wizardlight flickering between the old woman's cupped palms, but she hadn't asked the purpose or the result.
"I don't have an army that good," Garric said. "Besides, I don't particularly want to wind up drowned."
He smiled again, though Liane beside him winced at the words. Since Garric began wearing the medal of King Carus, he'd gained a sense of black humor. He'd once told Sharina that you needed laughter on a battlefield worse than you did anywhere else, so you'd better be able to laugh at what you found there.
"I've thought of taking the army to Sandrakkan, then Blaise," Garric went on musingly. "Not attacking Wildulf and Lerdoc, just arriving on their doorsteps with enough strength to make them think again about declaring their islands independent."
"That may work while your troops are on Sandrakkan," Liane said. From her tone, she and Garric had held this discussion in the past. "But when they leave for Blaise, what happens then? And what happens here in Ornifal?"
"I'm going to have to do something soon," Garric said with a flash of irritation. "If not that, what?"
"Send ambassadors," Sharina said. Everyone looked at her in surprise. "Instead of taking your army."
Sharina had mulled the plan ever since Garric described his problem. Her solution fit. The empty round of Sharina's days had driven her to distraction, but it was that frustration which gave her the key to Garric's greater difficulties.
"We have envoys in Erdin and Piscine already, Sharina," Garric said. "And Wildulf and Lerdoc have envoys in Valles as well."
"Ready to fund anyone on Ornifal with courage enough to rebel," Liane added with an edge in her voice. "We're watching them carefully."
"No," Sharina said. "You've sent professional diplomats, petty nobles who've spent their lives learning to say safe things in a smooth manner."
Garric nodded. He was cleaning grease from his dagger with a wad of cattail pith, and he had the sharpening stone from his belt pouch ready to touch up the weapon's point.
"What you should do is send someone to Earl Wildulf that he'll listen to because he knows the person is one of the most important people in your court," Sharina explained. "Send Tadai or Royhas."
"Oh!" gasped Cashel in delight. "Oh, Sharina!"
"By the Shepherd, Sharina," Garric said softly, "that might work. Not an open threat, but somebody they'd have to listen to."
He looked toward Liane. "I'll send Tadai," he said, asking the girl for confirmation rather than permission. "I can spare him better—though I wish he and Royhas could work together."
"He'll take your orders to go?" Ilna asked with the detached curiosity that was so much a part of her personality.
"In this?" Garric said. "Yes. Tadai knows that something has to change quickly for the kingdom to survive. He can't back down to Royhas—"
"Won't," Liane said.
Garric shrugged. "Can't, won't, it's the same thing. Tadai will take an honorable way out of the tangle he and Royhas have gotten themselves into if one's offered. I'll make him ambassador to Erdin with full powers to negotiate Sandrakkan's status within the kingdom—that's a royal position, and he'll take it."
Garric stood and stepped to the threshold to look out into the night. He sheathed his long dagger without needing to check where the point was in relation to the mouth of the scabbard. "Also, Tadai will go because he knows that I'll have to remove him from the council if he doesn't. One way or the other, he'll go."
Garric's voice was as detached as Ilna's, and it had an underlying hardness that surprised Sharina. She remembered her brother in Barca's Hamlet, whistling a cheery tune at any time his lips weren't smiling. They weren't in Barca's Hamlet any more....
"And send me to Blaise, Garric," Sharina said, feeling a shiver as the words came out. She didn't regret them, though. "Send the Lady Sharina, your sister."
Cashel alone didn't react to what Sharina had said. His arm was steady as an oak trunk, supporting her shoulder as Cashel had always supported her.
Sharina turned and hugged him. "Cashel, I'm sorry," she said. "I should have talked to you about this before I said anything, but I just worked it out now."
Cashel smiled faintly. Either he was blushing or the firelight had painted a flush on his cheek. "That's all right, Sharina," he said. "I don't mind Valles, but it's not a place I'll mind leaving, either. I'm here because you're here."
Garric cleared his throat. "Ah, Sharina?" he said. "Is there some reason you want to go to Blaise? Because Pitre bor-Perial might make an even more satisfactory ambassador than Tadai. Except that I don't need to get rid of Pitre, of course."
"I'm going out of my mind, doing what I am here," she replied bluntly. She stood; Cashel rose beside her so that they looked like a willow growing at the side of a boulder. "Every day I see people who want something they can't have. If there were a prayer of them getting what they're petitioning for, they'd be seen by somebody with real authority."
"It's an import—" Garric began.
"Yes it is," Sharina said, cutting across her brother's objection. "It's an important job, but it's a job that King Valence himself can do better. Isn't that true?"
Garric pursed his lips. Liane, still seated, said, "Not better, no, but he can do it. Valence—rightly—trusts Lord Royhas, and he'll allow the chancellor to guide what he says."
Liane's eyes narrowed slightly as she looked at Sharina. "You know, a task that brought the king into contact with his citizens might well be good for his state of mind. As well as for the kingdom."
"As you just said, Garric," Sharina said, "going to the count at Piscine with full power to negotiate is a real job. I don't want to leave you—"
She looked around the gathering. "Any of you," she went on; Cashel smiled with placid assurance. "But if we're to save the Isles from chaos, there are more important jobs for me to be doing than listening to a deputation from the Bridge District about the noises they hear in the night."
"All right," Garric said with kingly decisiveness again. He'd listened, been convinced, and was acting promptly on his decision instead of tramping back and forth over the same ground. "We'll meet with Royhas tomorrow to decide exactly what to offer Blaise. But you'll have full powers to make whatever arrangement seems best when you've viewed the situation."
He smiled oddly. "But it's funny that you should mention the Bridge District. I was dreaming about a bridge when you all waked me. A bridge, and a man named Ansalem...."
* * *
"Ansalem?" Tenoctris said, her face lifting slightly. She'd listened to the earlier discussion, but it seemed to Garric that she'd suddenly become intensely alert. "Ansalem the Wise, do you mean?"
Garric nodded, feeling his mouth go dry. "That's what he said his name was," he agreed. "He said the city where I dreamed I was seeing him was Klestis. And I think—"
He coughed to clear his throat.
"—that he's a wizard."
Tenoctris nodded and opened her mouth to speak. Before she could, a rush of memory flooded Garric: not his memories, but those of King Carus opening like a window within Garric's mind.
Ships and boats formed a double line in the harbor Garric had viewed from Ansalem's chamber. Bunting hung from their masts and stays, and on their decks people cheered and waved pennons as the trireme bearing Carus, King of the Isles, passed between the lines.
"I went to Klestis on an embassy, lad," Carus said. "That was in the fall before the summer when I drowned. I thought if I came alone and talked to Ansalem myself, I could convince him to help me. 'Help the kingdom' is what I said, and maybe that's what it was; but back then I was a little too quick to think whatever I wanted was what the kingdom needed."
The boulevards which Garric had dreamed in ruins were lined with joyous citizens in striped garments. Sunlight on the buildings' metal facades threw a dazzling splendor over the city, brighter even than the sea surrounding a ship becalmed at midday.
Carus marched with the twenty Marines from his ship. The remainder of the trireme's complement, the two dozen sailors who handled the rigging when the vessel was under sail and the hundred and seventy oarsmen, remained at the harborside.
The Marines were in embroidered tunics rather than armor, but even as a guard of honor they wore their swords. They were the only armed men visible; perhaps the only armed men in all Klestis.
"Ansalem had made Klestis great by his wizardry," Carus said. "His people worked for their livings, but they lived a hundred times better than they could have any place but in his city. Buildings rose overnight, and the streets were clean every morning."
Instead of climbing the circular stair tower, Carus and his guards approached the entrance to the palace itself. Young girls in pastel frocks blocked the door alcove, giggling and tossing flower petals at the score of armed men. The door behind them remained closed.
"A great wizard, Ansalem," Carus said grimly, "and a great ruler, although he didn't have any formal title beyond Citizen of Klestis. And he absolutely refused to have anything to do with violence."
An older man in a tunic of wool bleached white—sober garb for Klestis—stepped out of the bevy of girls, bowed respectfully to Carus, and spoke in the king's ear as the Marines glowered.
Carus nodded curtly and unbuckled the long double tongues of his swordbelt. The grizzled captain of his guards protested with increasing vehemence. Carus looked at him with a face of iron and snapped one word. The captain and the other Marines stiffened.
Carus offered his belt and sword to the palace official—who jerked back as though the king had thrust a viper at him. Carus handed the weapon instead to his captain.
The door opened and the girls backed to either side, still giggling. The old official bowed Carus into the palace.
"I could have built a fleet of two hundred warships with the value of the orichalc sheathing one single building in Klestis," Carus said musingly. "And for the tin that covered another one I could have paid the crews for a year. I hated the very thought of wizards, but I'd have pretended I didn't know the city's wealth came from wizardry if I could've gotten my hands on it."
The entrance hall of the palace was windowless, but ribbons of pale light twisted in the air about the high arches. The coffered ceiling was decorated with scenes from rural festivals, peasants who danced and cheered friends competing in races, wrestling, and throwing the stone.
The memory—Garric's memory now—made his eyes sting with tears for the world he'd left forever. But life in Barca's Hamlet hadn't all been feasts and balmy days; and without Garric and his friends to protect them, there'd be little enough joy for any of the folk of the Isles before long.
Seven wizards wearing robes embroidered with signs in the Old Script awaited Carus in the vaulted hall. No servants or ordinary officials were present. The wizards' leader was epicene and completely bald, though Garric guessed he was a young man... if indeed he were a man rather than a sexless neuter.
The leader nodded to the king instead of bowing. He turned and led Carus to a staircase hidden behind a pillar carved from a block of chalcedony in three interwoven strands like a fig tree braided for decoration. The other wizards, four men and two women, followed silently like pages bearing a lady's flowing train.
"No one's ever called me a coward," Carus said simply. "But I'd rather have carried as many spiders in my hands than gone anywhere in the company of those seven."
The staircase kinked back on itself a dozen times on its way to the roof of the building. The treads and railing were of myrrhine. Bands of light shimmered through the stone, illuminating crystals of blue and purple as well as white calcite inclusions bigger than a man's fist. The soft stone gleamed, its polish unaffected by the feet of those who had passed this way.
At the top of the stairs was the shallow anteroom of the audience chamber where Garric had met Ansalem in his dream. A cadaverous doorkeeper sat there on a stool, holding a two-year-old boy on his lap. He rose as Carus and the wizards entered, shifting the smiling boy to the floor beside him. Hanging from a chain around the doorkeeper's neck was a hollow disk with the flares of the sun's corona on its outer edge.
The man was easily seven feet tall. He was thin, but his limbs had the knobbed muscularity of a goat's. Though the doorkeeper didn't carry a weapon, Garric wouldn't have wanted to wrestle him; even Cashel might have frowned at the thought.
The doorkeeper eyed Carus with a depth of understanding that nobody else in this enclave of peace had demonstrated since the king arrived. The leader of the seven snapped a curt order. The doorkeeper ignored him. He stepped back against the panel and called a question through the grilled viewport. The answer must have been affirmative, because he slipped the bolt and pulled the panel open.
The little boy stood upright by clinging to the wall with both hands. He beamed at the king.
Carus entered the audience chamber alone. In the doorway he stopped and bowed to the keeper.
"His name was Castigan," Carus said. "I asked later. When I met Castigan I knew that Ansalem wasn't a complete fool, however peaceful he might be for choice."
The audience chamber was as Garric remembered it from his dream, though the bookcases were filled and even overfilled. Many of the pigeonholes held two rolls, or even three if they were slim ones. Additional codices were stuffed atop the ranks of those shelved normally.
Ansalem too was the same cheerful soul Garric had met. He stepped forward and clasped Carus' arm. The cushioned travertine bier was the only seat within the chamber. Ansalem led his guest to it and sat beside him hospitably, continuing to hold Carus' hand.
"Have you ever tried to talk to somebody sitting alongside you instead of facing?" Carus said. "It feels all wrong. It sounds silly, but I'd have been less uncomfortable if he'd held a dagger to my throat the whole time. Not that I was going to convince that wizard to help me, no matter how we held the discussion."
A membrane of thin, hard fabric had been drawn over the exterior of the alabaster screen, protecting the chamber from weather and the sun's harshest rays. The pierced symbols stood out white against the creamy texture of the stone.
In the tall niche facing the bier stood the mummy of a creature with scaly skin and a long reptilian jaw. Age-browned bandages bound the mummy's arms across its chest, and beads of amber replaced its sunken eyes. They watched Carus and his host with a cold yellow luster, not malevolent but clearly inhuman.
"Ansalem was as friendly as anyone could ask," Carus recalled. "It was like talking to a three-year-old, though. He'd listen to me, but he completely ignored all my arguments about why he had to help me hold the Isles together. I was furious. He agreed that I was King of the Isles, but he didn't care about that any more than he did about the name of a bird from Shengy. Both things interested him, but they didn't really matter."
Carus jerked his hand away from the plump wizard and got up abruptly. He stalked to the door, his fists knotted. King Carus had been an intimate guest in Garric's mind for the months since Garric began wearing the coronation medal. He'd seen the king laughing in the midst of slaughter and facing dangers to soul as well as body. Never had he imagined Carus in the kind of frustrated rage that Garric saw him now.
On the pedestal which Garric had seen empty in his dream was a fossilized ammonite. Its coiled shell had been replaced by crystals of marcasite, which gleamed a sulfurous bronze color in the sunlight filtering through the screen. The creature had not been a large example of its kind: the coil was no more than a foot in diameter, while Garric had seen examples which were the size of a house.
There was a psychic depth to this fossil, however; it was a pit into the fiery heart of evil. Carus had walked by the thing unnoticed when he entered the chamber. As he stamped out in fury he almost collided with the pedestal. He recoiled, then hammered the shell with the bottom of his fist.
The ammonite didn't move. Carus pushed at the door; it was barred from the outside. Only when the doorkeeper had looked through again did he open it to release the king.
"Don't hit things because you're angry, lad," Carus said in a tone of mild reminiscence. "My arm was numb for a week after that piece of foolishness. Because of what the thing was, of course; stone wouldn't have hurt me like that."
The vivid recollections faded, returning Garric to the present instant before his friends were aware that he'd left them. In the back of his mind, he heard King Carus mutter, "Wizardry!"
"Ansalem was a wizard of my time," Tenoctris was saying. "I'd never met anyone like him, then or since."
"You did meet him, though?" Garric said. He was dizzy with the onrush of memory he'd just absorbed. Carus, attentive at the back of his mind, was a pillar supporting Garric while time and space fused into present reality.
"I'd heard of him as a great scholar and wizard," Tenoctris said with a nod. "He ruled Klestis, on the south coast of Cordin. He let others use his library if they liked, so I visited Klestis."
She smiled and toyed with a lock of her short gray hair. "I visited when I managed to raise the passage money from where I was living on Blaise, that is. I wsan't a powerful enough wizard to command great sums, nor a good enough showman to earn my living by tricks."
"But you understand things, Tenoctris," Liane said.
"Yes," the old wizard agreed, "and wisdom by itself is a good way to starve. Which is all right—I didn't need very much, you see, a modest amount of food and books to continue my studies. It just took me longer to visit Ansalem than it otherwise would have."
She smiled again, looking decades younger than she had a moment before. "And since I left again almost immediately, I had even less need of money than I'd expected."
"What did Ansalem do to you?" Cashel asked. He hunched slightly forward, a motion that wouldn't have meant anything to people who didn't know him as well as the friends now present did.
Sharina had been sheltering against Cashel's strength; now she put her hand on his shoulder to settle him. Insults rolled from Cashel like water from a rock, but nobody mistreated Cashel's friends twice in his presence.
"I don't think Ansalem could hurt anyone or anything," Tenoctris said. She spoke calmly, as though she were unaware of the storm her previous comment had set to rumbling in Cashel's heart. "He had a truly childlike innocence. It must have been the source of his power. He was a little vain—but only a little, considering his power. And occasionally petulant as well, but never enough to do real harm."
Tenoctris lowered her eyes, smiling at the memory but shaking her head in wonder as well. "I called Ansalem 'childlike'," she went on. "But he was a true scholar as well. My equal, I think."
Her lips pursed. "Perhaps my equal," she qualified, grinning at herself for the implied boast.
Garric and the others grinned back. Pride was the most human of emotions. Tenoctris was always quick to note that she wasn't a powerful wizard; but though her knowledge and skill were those of a jeweler rather than a blacksmith, she'd accomplished a great deal worth being proud of.
"Ansalem had gathered books from all over the Isles," Tenoctris continued. "Works on all subjects, not just wizardry. And I think he must have searched time as well as space, because there were things in his collection that couldn't have survived even hours without a wizard's art to preserve them, let alone the ages since they were written. There was a poem written in the scales from butterfly wings mounted on a spiderweb...."
"An incantation?" Sharina asked.
"Just a poem," Tenoctris said, shaking her head again in wonder at a world that included the things she had seen. "An epitaph, I suppose. 'The pious child I nurtured grew to save me from the foe's fury. When peaceful death claimed me, he raised my mound on this green hill.'"