Winds of Fury (26 page)

Falconsbane nodded, a tiny spark of respect kindling for the King. So he understood the power a religion could hold over an enemy? Mornelithe would never have credited him with that much insight. Perhaps there was more to the boy than the Adept had assumed. “Indeed,” he said in reply. “There is no more deadly an enemy than a religious fanatic. They are willing to die and desperate to take you with them.”

“Precisely,” Ancar sighed. “What is more, their priests have a magic that comes from their God that is quite a match for my own. When you add to all that the mountains that border their land—it is an impossible combination. Those mountains are so steep that there is no place to bring a conventional army through without suffering one ambush or trap after another.”

“Well, then, what about North?” Falconsbane asked, reasonably. And to his surprise, Ancar whitened.

“Do not even
mention
the North,” the King whispered, and glanced hastily from side to side, as if he feared being overheard. “There is something there that dwarfs even the power Karse commands. It is so great—believe me or not, as you will, but I have seen it with my own eyes—that it has created an invisible fence that
no one
can pass. I have found no mage that can breach it, and after the few who attempted it perished, not even Hulda is willing to try.”

Falconsbane raised his eyebrows involuntarily.
That
was something new! An invisible wall around a country? Who—or rather,
what
—could ever have produced something like that? What was the name of that land, anyway? Iften? Iftel?

But Ancar had already changed the subject.

“Most of all, I cannot go Eastward,” he continued, his voice resuming a normal volume, but taking on an edge of bitterness. “The Eastern Empire is large enough to swallow Hardorn and never notice; the Eastern mages are as good or better than any I can hire, and their armies are vast. . . and well-paid. And they are watching me. I know it.”

That frightened him; Falconsbane had no trouble at all in reading his fear, it was clear in the widening of his eyes, in the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders, in the rigidity of his posture.

“At the moment, they seem to feel that Hardorn is not worth the fight it would take to conquer it. They had a treaty with my father, which they have left in place, but the Emperor has not actually signed a treaty with my regime. Emperor Charliss has not even sent an envoy until very recently. I believe they are watching me, assessing me. But if I fail to take Valdemar, they will assume that I am weak enough to conquer.” He grimaced. “My father had treaties of mutual defense with Valdemar and Iftel to protect him. I do not have those. I had not thought I would need them.”

“Then do not attempt Valdemar a third time,” Falconsbane suggested mildly.

Ancar's jaw clenched. “If I do not, the result will be the same. The Emperor Charliss will assume I am too weak to try. They have sent their ambassador here, and an entourage with him, as if they were planning on signing the treaty soon, but they have not deceived me. These people are not here to make treaties, they are here to spy on me. There are spies all over Hardorn by now. I have found some—”

“I trust you left them in place,” Mornelithe said automatically.

He snorted. “Of course I did, I am not that big a fool. The best spy is the one you know! But I am also not so foolish as to think that I have found them all.” He rose and began pacing in front of the fire, still talking. “One of the reasons I am sure that I have been unable to attract mages of any great ability is that the Emperor can afford to pay them far more than I can offer. I am fairly certain that the mages
I
have are not creatures of his, but there is no way of telling if he has placed mages as spies in my court and outside of it. So long as they practiced their mage-craft secretly, how would
I
ever know what they were?”

Falconsbane refrained from pointing out that he had just told the boy how he would know, that disturbances in the energy-fields would tell him. Perhaps neither he nor his mages were sensitive to those fields. It was not unheard of, though such mages rarely rose above Master. Perhaps he was sensitive, but only when in trance. If so, that was the fault of his teacher.

Ancar abruptly turned and strode back to the window, standing with his back to Falconsbane and the room, staring at the rapidly-clearing clouds.

“This is something I had not seen before,” he said, as if to himself. “And I had not known that magic could wreck such inadvertent and accidental havoc. It would be an excellent weapon. . . .”

Falconsbane snorted softly. It had taken the boy long enough to figure that out.

“Men calling themselves ‘weather-wizards' have come to me, seeking employment,” he continued. “I had thought them little better than herb-witches and charm-makers. They didn't present themselves well enough for me to believe them. I shall have to go about collecting them now.”

“That would be wise,” Falconsbane said mildly, hiding his contempt.

Ancar turned again and walked back into the room, this time heading for the door, but paused halfway to that portal to gaze back at Falconsbane.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked.

Falconsbane was quite sure that if he asked for what he
really
wanted—his freedom—he would not get it. Ancar was not yet sure enough of him, or of himself. Rightly so. The moment he had that freedom, Falconsbane would squash the upstart like an insect.

But perhaps—perhaps it was time to ask for something else, something nearly as important.

“Send me someone you wish eliminated,” he said. “Permanently eliminated, I mean. Male or female, it does not matter.”

He halfway expected more questions—why he wanted such a captive, and what he expected to do with such a sacrificial victim when he had one. But Ancar's eyes narrowed; he smiled, slowly, and there was a dark and sardonic humor about the expression that told Falconsbane that Ancar didn't
care
why he wanted a victim. He nodded, slowly and deliberately. His eyes locked with Falconsbane's, and the Adept once again saw in Ancar's eyes a spirit kindred to his own.

Which made Ancar all the more dangerous. There was no room in the world for two like Falconsbane.

He left without another word, but no more than half a candlemark later, two guards arrived. Between them they held a battered, terrified man, so bound with chains he could scarcely move. When Falconsbane rose, one of them silently handed him the keys to the man's bindings.

The guards backed out, closing the door behind them.

Falconsbane smiled.

And took his time.

C
hilling rain poured from a leaden sky, a continuous sheet of gray from horizon to horizon. Elspeth silently thanked the far-away
hertasi
for the waterproof coats they had made, and tied her hood a little tighter. They rode right into the teeth of the wind; there was little in the way of lightning and thunder, but the wind and sheeting rain more than made up for that lack. The poor gryphons, shrouded in improvised raincapes made from old tents, would have been soaked to the skin if they had not been able to shield themselves from the worst of it with a bit of magic. The rest of them, however, chose to deal with the elements rather than advertise their presence on the road any further. Admittedly, that was less of a hardship for the Tayledras, Elspeth, Skif, and Nyara, with their coats supplied by the clever fingers of the
hertasi.
She felt very sorry for Cavil, Shion, and Lisha, whose standard-issue raincloaks were nowhere near as waterproof as
hertasi-
made garments.

Still, rain found its way in through every opening, sending unexpected trickles of chill down arms and backs, and exposed legs and faces got the full brunt of the weather. “I may have been more miserable a time or two in my life, but if so, I don't remember it,” Skif said to Elspeth.

Nyara grimaced, showing sharp teeth, and nodded agreement. “I do not care to think of spending weeks riding through this,” she said. “It must be bad for the hooved ones, yes? And does not cold and wet like this make people ill?”

On the other side of her, Cavil leaned over the neck of his Companion to add his own commentary.

“Now you see what we've been dealing with, off and on, for the past six months or so!” he shouted over the drumming rain, sniffing and rubbing his nose. “The—ah—lady is right; every village is suffering colds or fevers. I
hope
that we manage to ride out of the storm soon, but I am not going to wager on it. You can't predict anything anymore!”

Elspeth glanced back at Firesong, who was huddled in his waterproof cape, his firebird inside his hood, just as Vree was inside Darkwind's.
:Isn't there anything you can do about this?:
she asked him.
:Can't you send the rain away, or something? I thought about doing it, but since I've never done it before, I'm afraid to try.:

:Rightly,:
he replied. :
Weather-work done on mage-disturbance storms after the fact is a touchy business. For that matter, weather-work is always a touchy business. I do not know enough about this land, the countryside hereabouts, to make an informed decision. You do not yet have the skill. We do not know what is safe to do with this storm. Anything either of us do to change the weather-patterns could only mean making a worse disaster than this. Ask your friend if this is going to cause severe enough crop damage to cause shortages later.:

“Is this bad enough to cause measurable crop damage?” she shouted back to Cavil. He squinted up at the sky for a moment, as if taking its measure, then shook his head. “It won't ruin the grazing, and the hay isn't ripening yet,” he replied. “Most people around here are raising beef cattle, milch cows, and sheep, not crops. If this were farther south—” He shook his head. “We've been lucky; storms have been violent, but they haven't caused any major crop damage yet.”

Yet.
The word hung in the air, as ominous as the lowering clouds.

:Then we do nothing,:
Firesong said firmly.
:There is no point in meddling and making a bad situation worse! We can endure some rough weather; the worst we will suffer is a wetting and a chill. When I have an opportunity to meet with those who have records of normal weather patterns,
then
I will help reestablish those patterns.:
He sighed.
:I fear I was only too prophetic when I said there was a great deal of work ahead of me.:

Elspeth shrugged and grimaced slightly, but she could certainly see his point. There was only one benefit the foul weather was bestowing. Cavil could not insist on leaving the gryphons or the Tayledras behind on the excuse that they couldn't keep up with the Companions. He'd said something of the sort just before they left the Ashkevron manor, but his own Companion had told him tartly that no one was going to go racing to Haven in a downpour. In weather like this, even the Companions could not make very good time.

Darkwind and Nyara rode on horses borrowed from Lord Ashkevron, at that worthy's insistence. Those horses were what the Lord had referred to as “mudders;” sturdy beasts that could keep up a good pace all day through the worst weather. They were fairly ugly beasts; jug-headed, big-boned, as muscular as oxen, with rough, hairy hides that never could be curried into a shine. But those heavy bones and dense muscles pulled them right through the mire, and their dun-brown coats didn't show mud as badly as Firesong's white
dyheli
or the Companions—all of which were smeared and splattered up to their bellies.

Well, we hardly make a good show, but that's not such a bad thing
, she reflected, shoving a strand of wet hair back under the hood of her cloak.
No one even thinks twice about making a State Visit out of us when they see us
. . . .

In fact, the three times they had stopped overnight so far, their hosts had been so concerned by their appearance that they had simply hurried them into warm beds, and had meals sent up to their rooms. They had been able to avoid State nonsense altogether.

Elspeth had just discovered something about herself, something she had learned after a mere twelve candlemarks in Cavil, Shion, and Lisha's presence. Her tolerance for courtly politics had deteriorated to the point of nonexistence after her stay with k'Sheyna. She just didn't want to hear about it. No gossip, no suppositions, none of it.

At some point during her musing, Skif and Nyara had dropped back as well, leaving her in the lead. Well, that hardly mattered. No one was going to get lost on a perfectly straight road.

Gwena sighed, her sides heaving under Elspeth's legs.
:I will be mortally glad to get to a warm, dry stable,:
she said.
:The Vales spoiled me.: