Aris felt a cold wave wash him from head to foot. He had not known Luap had made a contract with elves and dwarves—what contract? The elven king continued.
"We revoke our permission; we lay a ban upon you. The patterns of power you enjoyed will no longer suffer your use. You must scour the evil from this land, or be forever mired in this hall."
"But what
is
it?" Luap asked, all in a rush. Then he took a long breath and said, more slowly, "My lords, I do not know what you mean. We do not yet know what the smoke portends; my people have gone to find out. We have waked no evil that I know of—"
"Then you are blind and deaf, mortal, and your pretensions of power all are lies! You were warned; you were told to beware your neighbors, to walk softly and keep watch: you have not. The very air stinks of evil; the rock tastes of it; the water; the trees wither in its blast—and you claim you do not see?"
"But then—if you revoke your permission—you want us to
leave
?"
The dwarf spoke. "Mortal, we could wish you had never been, save that that would be to walk with cursed Girtres Undoer. What you have done cannot be undone; it must be mended, if that be possible, by the one who broke the covenant. Thus we command, who have that right."
"But—how? What do you mean?" Aris could hear the tremor in Luap's voice, and smell the sweat that sudden fear brought out on him. He himself stood watchful, wondering.
The elf spoke again. "You are barred from the use of the patterns to make your way elsewhere, lest the evil you waked travel with you, and bring dishonor on the patterners. You are forbidden permission to live here, where you have polluted a holy place with evil; the living water and all green things will no longer do your bidding. You must fight free on the land's skin, cleansing it from the evil you waked, or die here—your deaths payment for what evil you have done."
Aris could not see Luap's face. His voice, when he spoke, was low and halting. "You—cannot condemn all these for my failure, if indeed I failed. Not all are guilty; we have children, young people. . . . Let them escape by the mage road; I will stay and fight. . . ."
"A people abide the judgment of their prince," the gnome said in a colorless voice. "If the prince errs, the people suffer: that is justice."
"But it's not
fair
!" Luap cried. "You have never told me the nature of this evil—I don't even know what I did, or did not do, or what it is you speak of!"
In the silence that followed that outburst, Aris heard running footsteps coming toward the hall. One of the youngest of the militia ran in, gasping, bearing a broken knife in his hand. Without ceremony, he said, "This is it! This is what the Rosemage found!" Luap turned his back on the kings, and reached out a hand.
"Let me see that." The young man held it out; Aris intercepted it as a strange, almost-forgotten smell tickled his nose. Luap scowled, but Aris brought the broken blade to his nose and sniffed.
"Iynisin," he said. Luap recoiled, snatching back his hand. Aris turned to the kings. "This is iynisin blood—is that the evil you meant? Are iynisin the evil, or the servants of it?"
The elvenking spoke. "You are right, mortal, in your surmise: that is iynisin blood, and they are now awake and powerful in this place, where once they had been banished and trapped in stone. Your prince paid no heed to our warnings; one by one he broke the terms of that agreement by which we gave permission, and used his magery in ways no mortal should. Now the evil has come upon you; now the pattern comes to its necessary end." For a moment, compassion moved across his face like a gleam of light between clouds. "We take no joy in the suffering of those innocents among you, but we cannot risk evil escaping from hence to ravage wide lands. Escape may be possible for some of you—but not by magery. Those roads are closed until another of your people comes by land."
"We have caravans every year," someone said.
The elf smiled without mirth. "They could not come up the trail from the great canyon against iynisin arrows; you have lost the upper valley. It will be long, even in our perception, before a Finthan walks into this hall."
The gnome spoke again. "I, the Lawmaster, witnessed this contract the day it began; I witness now that it was broken by Selamis Garamis-son, and that the lords of elves and dwarves declare it void and state the penalties openly. So it is, and so it shall be recorded." He took from among the pages an irregular cake of wax. "This was your seal, Selamis: it, like your word, is broken." He dropped it, stepped upon it, and ground it with his heel. Aris noticed that Luap had turned white as milk.
And with no more words, they vanished. Luap stared around him; his eyes seemed sunken in his head. Those who had rushed to the great hall stared back, but no one dared speak. Aris moved forward. "Let the prince have his peace," he said. "Go to your homes and prepare for whatever comes; gather what food you have, what you can carry—"
Murmuring more and more loudly, casting looks back, they went, at first slowly and then all in a rush. Luap stood alone in the midst of the great hall, silent and motionless. Aris looked at him, then shook himself. They didn't have time now—he had to find Seri and await the Rosemage's return.
"What will it take to recapture the upper valley?" asked Luap. It was after the turn of the night; the air tasted bitter and stale. Aris wasn't sure if that was the lurking evil, or simple exhaustion. They had been in conference for a long time, Luap and all the older inhabitants, with explanations and non-explanations flying back and forth.
"Were you listening?" the Rosemage said, her voice edged like steel. "We cannot take the upper valley with the forces we have, not if we bring everyone in from the western valleys, not if we ask aid from the Khartazh. Which, by the way, I would never recommend."
"Why not?" Luap had laid his hands palm to palm, a gesture that meant he was withholding blame for the moment only.
"Luap, the king could not hold these canyons before we came; he could not do it now. We are his friends so long as we are useful, and we have been useful because we drove out the brigands that preyed on the caravans. Even if he would help, and could help, his price would be more than I want to pay."
"We have gold," Luap said.
"It is not gold he will want, but lives. Which of our people will you send into slavery?"
"Nonsense." Luap slapped the table. "We have gold; we have other wealth. We are not poor wanderers—"
"Strength is your heritage," Seri said suddenly. All heads turned toward her; Aris stared. "Arranha told Father Gird that, remember? Your people believe that the strong take, and prove their strength by taking. If you lack the strength to protect your own, what does that make you?"
The mageborn went white to the lips; silence held the room. Seri looked around, meeting each gaze with her own challenge.
"What the lady has said, and what the Khartazh king will see, is that you—we—are no longer a strong ally, to be respected. If we cannot hold these canyons, we come out of them suppliants, beggars, no matter what wealth we bring with us. Can we stand against the Khartazh on open ground? No: and so that wealth can be taken as easily as you once took the land from the people of Fintha and Tsaia. The Autumn Rose does not trust the king of the Khartazh, nor do I."
"But some are already living there; some have married into families—"
Seri shrugged. "It may be they will fare no worse than other foreigners who settle in his realm—but they will no longer be favored foreigners, when this citadel falls. We must hope for mercy; we cannot demand justice."
"Then what do you suggest?"
"We must try to send word to Fin Panir and stop the caravans: perhaps one can get through, by following the main stream out its gorge. That route is passable, though difficult. We must use what magery we have to seal off the upper valley—and the upper end of the main canyon—and hope that gives us time for the children and those who cannot fight to make their way elsewhere."
"But where? If we cannot go back to Fintha—and you will not seek aid of the Khartazh—where else can they go?"
"They cannot go back to Fintha by the mageroad, but some, if we are careful, might make it overland with a returning caravan. Some might go to Xhim."
A growing murmur of dismay. The older mageborn knew they would not be welcome in Fintha, not as long as the present Marshal-General ruled. None of them wanted to face the long journey to strange and unknown lands.
"There must be another way!" Instantly several other voices echoed the first man. "Have you even
tried
the mageroad?" asked another. "Why should we believe elves?"
"It won't," Aris said. "Can't you feel the difference?"
"I'm going to try," said the man. Luap started to stand, but said nothing as the man walked quickly to the dais, stepped onto it, and closed his eyes. Then the man fell, as if someone had hit him hard; he made no sound but lay crumpled on the dais. Aris went to him quickly, felt for his pulse, and looked back at the others.
"He's dead." Someone screamed.
"Silence!"
Luap rarely raised his voice; now it rose above the scream and commanded them all. Aris wondered how much of his royal magery went into it; he felt his own throat close, refusing speech. "I will confer with the Rosemage, with Aris, and with Seri," Luap said. "You will await my decision. Go now."
Luap dressed for the conference with care. If he looked slovenly, they might panic; his people—any people, he reminded himself—relied more on appearances than they might think. White and silver gray, to remind them of his power, touches of rich blue to comfort any who still worried about Gird's view of things. He combed his dark hair—still unfrosted—and congratulated himself on his decision to preserve his youthful vigor. They would need a strong man, not an aged one, to bring them safely through this crisis. Most of them seemed not to notice, but if anyone did—if anyone, in a panic, mentioned it, he could point out that it was proof of his great power. It could not be as hopeless as the elves had said; nothing was hopeless. He had survived too many things in his life to believe that, and his experience mocked the despair he had felt earlier. What a fool he had been, to let those things upset him.
It bothered him that he could not quite think what to do, what solution might come, but he was sure he would in time. He might even find a solution the elves had not thought of. They so hated their once-relatives that they had refused to admit the problem . . . if they had only
told
him, from the beginning, like any honest person would, all this could have been avoided.
He found the beginning of the meeting tedious. The Rosemage gave her report not once but a dozen times, answering the same questions over and over. Each head of a family had to express shock, dismay, worry. Somehow they managed to entangle old grievances in the present emergency, dragging in all sorts of irrelevancies. Why could they not see that there was no time for this? He quit listening, and began trying to plan some effective action. The next caravan would arrive in the spring; they must get control of the upper valley by the time it was due. They could not fight successfully in winter . . . his eyes narrowed, as he tried to think where in the upper valley a small force could shelter for the winter, to be sure the iynisin stayed away once evicted.
"What will it take to recapture the upper valley?" he asked in the next pause. He hoped that would get their attention and force them to think about the real problem, not who made what minor decision a decade before.
Everyone stared; the Rosemage looked as angry as he'd seen her in years.
"Were you listening?" she asked. He let his brows rise; he stifled the urge to say no one had said anything worth listening to, and let her rattle on. They were too unsettled yet, he decided, as the Rosemage and Seri refused to consider going to the Khartazh; they were still full of complaint, unreasonable, unready to think their way through to answers. When Keris Porchai insisted on testing the mageroad himself (Porchai, who had been slower to learn its use in the first place than most of the mageborn) Luap let him go; when he died, that was the perfect excuse to end the meeting. He would take his few chosen assistants and see if he could knock sense into them in privacy. He would need all of them, and they must quit acting as if he were a halfwit.
He used his power on them, as he rarely did, for the sheer pleasure of seeing it work: one word, and he could silence them all, even Aris. They obeyed, as they had to, leaving in a rush. He wondered if they knew how lucky they were, to have had a gentle, unambitious prince. Until now. Now only his ambition could save them; he would have no more time to be gentle. He led those he had named to his office, and turned with what he intended as a calming smile.
Instead, he faced rebellion. Hardly had he begun to explain what he thought of doing, when the Rosemage flashed out at him.
"You have not aged: surely you know this."
"Of course," he said smoothly. "It served its purpose. . . ."
"You used the royal magery for yourself!" The Rosemage glowed, as full of light as a fire, as the sun. "What might have held that evil away from the entire settlement, you used to spare your own years—"
"I held the evil I knew or suspected away from here
by
using it so, by seeming ageless: have you forgotten how that convinced the king's ambassador? You are the one who reminded everyone how dangerous the Khartazh empire is.
This
evil I knew nothing about."
"And you stole that power from Aris—"
"No." Luap shook his head. "My own magery served well enough. I would not have taken aught from him."
"But you did," Seri said. "Did you not realize that he has less healing power now than a hand of years ago?" Her voice conveyed utter certainty.
"It cannot be." Luap's face sagged; he felt as if all his years had come upon him at once. "I would not have done such a thing. It's impossible."
Seri shook her head. "It is not impossible, and it is the only explanation we have. Aris's power has waned, year by year, as you did not age. Let the Rosemage test your power, and she will find the flavor of his. Perhaps you did not know. . . ."