He leaned there on the stone and let his selfness sink down into it, feeling the webwork of the mortar holding the huge blocks of stone together; and deeper still, feelng the way the stones pushed against one another, the transmission of stresses. He had done this with a mountain, not too long ago, but this was more difficult, possibly because the bridge was made by human beings, rather than grown by the Goddess: the scent of artifice clung about it. And so did that sense of consciousness. The bridge remembered the hands that chipped its stones out of a mountainside, that sank the cofferdams and set in its piers, that bound it with mortar and stained it with wine and blood when it was done—the builder’s blood, still remembered, a hot hurting splash. The bridge was surprised to have been hurt. Until then it had not been aware of having been—
And not much else to do since then,
Herewiss said.
But bear—
The bridge considered this a moment.
What else is there?
Yet for a moment it seemed to look back in time, toward moments of such strangeness or brightness that even a bridge would notice: a parade with banners and beaten drums, a garland left by a young boy over one of the bridge-posts as a present, and one afternoon when a young woman came and leaned over the other parapet of the bridge, looking northward toward the Sea, stroking the stone absently, smiling down at it once. Herewiss felt the darkness of her cloak, felt the light hidden in it, like the stars, and felt the bridge’s awe. It knew Who had grown its stones, and Who loved them, like everything else She had made.
I am on Her business,
Herewiss said.
Who isn’t? What’s needed?
The King is coming back,
Herewiss said.
He felt the stones almost tremble. Certainly the stresses of the bridge shifted against one another, for a moment.
Can even a thing made of rocks come to care about such a thing?
Herewiss thought—and found that it could. It was the earth that most needed a King or Queen, the one who would make it more than dead ground, but something that lived and brought forth fruit. Stone, it seemed, knew about that: knew what it couldn’t be, but what common dirt could. If stone were good, if it let the world work on it, it could aspire to be dirt some day, and alive: not this shadowy life, but something more—
The King’s enemies are coming as well,
Herewiss said.
The enemies will be coming from the city: the King and his people, from over the river.
This time the bridge really did tremble, and Herewiss hoped that the tremor wouldn’t transfer into the “real” world.
So—
Herewiss took a breath.
I think you must lie down for a little while.
He was ready for the fear that would follow such a statement, the resistance. There was a long pause...
…and the stone began to shake again, in real earnest this time, mortar cracking and every stress-pattern twisting out of shape.
BUT NOT RIGHT NOW!
Herewiss cried, clinging to its parapet.
Within a few seconds the bridge lay quiet under him again. Herewiss half-leaned, half-clung there a moment more, trying to sort out the terrible confusion of feelings running through it, of terror and acquiescence and sorrow for a long life suddenly about to be lost.
And we’ll put you back together again afterwards,
Herewiss said, stroking the stone.
For pity’s sake, don’t think we’d ask, otherwise!
They were quiet for a good while, together. Then Herewiss set his Fire deep into the structure of the bridge, bound it into the stone, and leaned on the parapet again.
That’ll do it, then. Until tonight...
So soon?
It was hard. Herewiss nodded.
The stone sighed. It was a sound he had heard before, the small ticking and relaxing sounds that a bridge made in the early evening, after a long day of sunlight.
I will bear this too.
There was nothing he could do but pat the stone of the parapet, the way one warrior reassures another of his company as they look over the hill to where the enemy waits the chance to kill them both. For a good while Herewiss leaned there before straightening up and making his way back down the span, to the door into the Hold.
*
Evening came, and Herewiss dressed himself for a banquet. Not the Brightwood livery, tonight: he was host for this party, not bound by protocol—and besides, his father was still teasing him about the gravy on his surcoat, no matter that Herewiss had gotten the stain out tracelessly. This one was dark green velvet, and over the tunic—his one concession to present style—he wore a heavy, broad-linked silver chain with one gem mounted sidewise in it, an oval dark cabochon sapphire as long as the first joint of his thumb. It was the one he had pried out of the chain of the Principality when he was nine, levering it out of its setting with a kitchen knife to find out whether it was real or paste. His father had given it to him as a present when he came of age, and had poked him and said, laughing, “Now you just leave the rest alone until it’s your turn!” Hose, and buskins in dark-green leather to match, and Khávrinen over his shoulder; that would do.
Tonight there was none of the dimness he remembered from his last visit to the banquet hall. All the torchieres were ablaze, eight of them on each side of the room. The tables were set out along the sides of the room, with great branched candlesticks on them, and the sunset came in through the great windows flung open; cool air and a breath from the rose gardens flowed in too, mingling with the waft of aromatics from the braziers, and the tangle of savors from the food. Herewiss walked around once, while they were setting up, and had his hands slapped once or twice by Andaethen’s possessive cooks as they laid out the roast geese and the boned smoked beef. He didn’t dare do anything but stare at the centerpiece, a huge game pie four feet high, in the shape of a sailing galleon, with gilt pastry sails and the Eagle banner, done in sugar plate, flying from the foremast.
Andaethen was wandering around supervising languidly, in a drift of smoke-colored silk gauze over a tight-bodiced dark grey gown. “Going mate-catching tonight, are we?” Herewiss said as he came up to her, admiring the view of her bodice.
Andaethen laughed at him. “It’s as well sometimes to be a distraction,” she said. “Wouldn’t you say?”
Herewiss merely smiled as she wandered off again. Andaethen knew that he had something planned for later that evening, but Herewiss had chosen not to give her details, and Andaethen agreed with his reasons. The Queen knew—that was enough. That morning Andaethen had shown him her own map, rather better drawn than his, that showed Eftgan’s nearest levies, some six thousand men and women in all, leaving the Kings’ Road just west of Awyn, and cutting north and south into the townlands of Adjaveyn and Lorbit. Any force trying to meet and engage them, at this point, would itself be divided and easier to deal with; and there were no Arlene forces close enough to try it, due to Herewiss’s work at the fords.
There were more levies coming still, from down south in Darthen: but Herewiss had looked with most interest at the first group. They had left their homes earliest, and come the furthest, those thirty-five hundred in the northward-pushing group. They were the Brightwood levies, and his father led them. Others of his family, various aunts and cousins, marched or rode with them, along with many of his neighbors from the Woodward. But it was that lean, balding figure that he thought of most—not exactly the picture of chivalry, or of a great lord either, in his patched-together armor and plain surcoat. But Hearn would let no one else carry the Phoenix banner, and he was good at keeping hold of it. “Old Ironass,” his people had called him for a long time now. Herewiss remembered the first time he had called his father that himself, at age seven, and the discovery that that part of him was not made of iron yet. He smiled again at the memory, and at the realization of how much he missed his father...
The guests were starting to arrive. Herewiss went to the doors of the banqueting hall to greet them: prominent Darthenes living in the city, Arlenes of the Four Hundred with members of their families, and merchants and traders visiting from elsewhere. Herewiss had left the guest list to Andaethen, knowing she would have her own agenda for this dinner. His job was to smile and make conversation: he was an excuse, he knew, to allow Andaethen, and through her the Queen, to assess the mental and political state of the Arlenes on the eve of war. If he should happen to overhear something interesting, either in someone’s words or their thoughts, that would be useful as well.
And when the Great Bridge abruptly fell down into the Arlid, Herewiss would be there conversing with the guests, obviously nowhere near the scene of the crime. It might fool no one who knew anything about the Fire; but it might also give Cillmod pause, that a man could fuel such a wreaking and still sip his wine and chat with the guests unimpaired. Rian, Herewiss thought, will be shown not to be the only one who can pull off such a trick. And as for the man himself—
He put that thought aside for the moment, and bowed to Sowan. “You’re welcome,” he said; “the wines are over on the right.” Sowan looked at Herewiss, went pale, said a few hurried words of conventional greeting, and almost bolted past him. Herewiss smiled.
Cillmod arrived, without any flourish of trumpets or other sign, since this was not a state occasion. Various of his ministers of state were about him, with members of their families: and Herewiss particularly noted Rian at the back of the group, looking jovial and relaxed.
How does the man do it,
he thought in disgusted wonder, knowing perfectly well that that quiet presence had been dogging his every move, the past week, leaning against everything he did with the Fire to test the strength of it, the amount of energy being put forth, the permanence of Herewiss’s barriers.
Well, later for him.
But his heart was running harder than usual, and the feeling of excitement down in the pit of his stomach was getting more pronounced.
Not much later....
“Sir,” Herewiss said, and bowed to Cillmod, just so low as to be polite, and no more.
“Prince,” Cillmod said, giving Herewiss his proper title, as Herewiss would not give him the one he claimed. But he smiled. “Thank you for the invitation.”
The courtesy was rather hollow. Cillmod knew perfectly well why he was here, and would have been within his rights to refuse, or plead other business... like the marshalling of an army. But other minds and hands were managing that business: Herewiss noticed that Meveld, the Commander-general, was nowhere to be seen, nor were Daik and Ilwin, his deputy commanders. Herewiss’s guess was that the three of them and their horses were either waist-deep in Arlid, at Daharba or Anish, cursing their reluctant mercenary forces into crossing: or else already over on the far side, lashing the troops on ahead to get at least some of them far enough down the Kings’ Road to keep the Darthenes from coming straight and unopposed to the Arlid, and forcing an engagement there.
Herewiss smiled back, knowing that all this was on Cillmod’s mind as well. He looked slightly drawn, like a man who has been having sleepless nights. But that look on him, as on Lorn, had a sharpness to it that made him seem marginally more dangerous. Herewiss said, “It seemed the only way to obtain your company, sir. Unfortunately, my duties here have kept me busy.”
“So I’ve heard,” Cillmod said. “More of that later, I’m sure. Meanwhile let me go make my guest’s duty to the lady Andaethen.”
Herewiss bowed again, that precise bow, and watched him go. The resemblance to Lorn was really rather unnerving: and his unwilling liking for the man kept getting between Herewiss and his knowledge of what was going to have to happen to him after this war was over. Exile, at best. He hoped Cillmod commanded enough loyalty among his private troops to take a few of them with him into exile, if he survived that long: for there would be enough people out in the world who would find it opportune to kill him if they found him—if only to curry favor with the Throne, and the man who would then be sitting in it.
“And this is Prince Herewiss,” said the kindly voice from behind him. Herewiss turned to see Rian in his tasteful clothes, a rich tunic of dark-saffron colored sendal this time. A tall handsome woman leaned on his arm, smiling at Herewiss from under black brows: and her hair was an astonishment, a sheer sleek fall of black a cubit and a half long over her deep blue gown, and bound with a light filigree fillet of silver flowers about her brows. “Prince, the lady Olaiste, my wife.”
“Madam,” Herewiss said, and bowed deep. She looked at him out of cheerful eyes, an expression of cool wonder filling them as she got a look at Khávrinen.
“Your highness,” she said. “I heard the stories, but I didn’t quite believe them. I do now. You’ve got a marvel there!”
“Not ‘highness’ yet, madam,” Herewiss said. “It’ll be awhile yet, I hope, before I wear the prince-regnant’s title. ‘Sir’, if anything. But my name will do.”
“It’s all burning,” said another voice from behind Herewiss, “but it’s not eating the scabbard or anything.”
“Paka, don’t be rude,” Olaiste said, in a voice more loving than chiding: and Rian said, “You little monster, come out in front of the host to be greeted properly!” Both their voices were full of barely-controlled laughter.
A child came slipping around Herewiss’s left side, and peered up at him. She was about nine years old, and had her mother’s hair, though in a curly cloud, and her father’s unnervingly light eyes, and she stared at Herewiss. “Now Pakelnë,” Olaiste said, “make your duty to the Prince like a good girl.”
“It looks like fire, all right,” she said, “but I put my finger in it, and it wasn’t hot.”
“I felt you do that, my lady,” Herewiss said. “It generally doesn’t burn unless I ask it, or else if I’m working hard at something and it gets hot accidentally.”
“Oh. And there’s the kitty. Nice kitty,” Pakelnë said, and calmly reached out in front of him to begin stroking Sunspark.
Herewiss’s eyes widened, but he had no time to move before Sunspark, having appeared silently from behind him, pushed its huge hunting-cat’s head under the small hand. It purred like a thunderstorm being tickled under the chin, but all the while its eyes were on Rian, and its eyes were fire: hungry, deadly, and impersonal. Rian had the good sense to look nervous.