As he prepared to relate his most secret hope, Grateful Peace's heart began beating rapidly, as if he had been running up one of the tightly coiling spiral stairs that led to the Scriptorium.
"Now," he said, pleased that his tone remained calm and academic, "if we awakened the power of the foreign artifacts might not the force of foreign magic be used to reignite the magic in our native relics?"
"I begin to understand the magnitude of your hopes," Lady Melina said softly. "You hope for not only the awakening of the magic within these three artifacts, but through them the breaking of the seal placed upon New Kelvin by your Founders."
Peace nodded eagerly, all his composure lost in contemplation of that wondrous event.
"I imagine," he said confidingly, staring deeply into those understanding blue eyes, "that the effect would be like lighting a fire from an ember. An ember in itself is not very impressive—hardly more than a grayish lump covered with ash. However, when the ember is touched to tinder its hidden heat is released and the tinder bursts into brilliant flames. These flames leap from point to point, igniting every receptive element that they touch."
Lady Melina reached forth impulsively and grasped his hand.
"And you believe I have brought the ember, while New Kelvin is filled with tinder for the fire!"
Grateful Peace beamed at her, pleased to have discovered such a kindred spirit.
Peace knew that the Dragon Speaker was an advocate of the ember/tinder theory. Many members of the rising generation, however, scoffed at it. These belonged to what Grateful Peace termed the Defeatist Party—though they viewed themselves as progressives. At first they had been little more than a nuisance, but now with Hawk Haven and Bright Bay vowing to reunite and become a power to rival any in the area, the Defeatists were winning influence.
The Defeatists had many theories to explain the lack of magic among their people—the Founders' seal was irrevocable; the Founders had drained all the magic from the land in order to fuel their escape from the Burning Death; the former enchantments left by the Founders would work only for their creators.
They held that the New Kelvinese should forget the past and work on making fresh enchantments—rather than seeking to preserve and awaken the old. Some radical elements said the New Kelvinese should forget magic entirely, and concentrate on mundane technologies. Only this split over which tactic to pursue had kept them from becoming a power to rival the current Dragon Speaker.
"What you have told me," Lady Melina said, breaking into Peace's thoughts, "makes me eager to begin. Why does the Dragon Speaker delay?"
So intimate had been their discourse that Peace almost blurted out the truth. Only years of ingrained caution prevented him from doing so.
"Apheros is a busy man," he said a trace weakly. "Not knowing the precise date of your arrival, he could not schedule an opening. I am certain he will see you tomorrow."
Lady Melina smiled and pressed Peace's hand—which only then did he realize that she still held within her own. He smoothly extracted it and rose, wanting nothing more than to escape before she could ease the truth from him.
"I, too, have duties," he said with what he hoped was a courtly—rather than chill—smile. Best to keep her happy.
"Thank you for taking the time to call on me," Lady Melina replied, rising smoothly from her seat and moving with stately grace toward the door. "So that I might better serve the purposes of the Dragon Speaker, might you arrange for me to have some more books? I have exhausted those I brought with me."
"They will be in our language," he cautioned.
"I have been studying most dutifully," she said, "and have a copy of the dictionary the Merchant's Guild supplies to those who wish to trade in New Kelvin."
He felt warmed by her almost childlike eagerness.
"I will do what I can," he promised and, indeed, after making his excuses and returning to his office his first task was arranging to have a few basic works on sorcerous theory delivered to her room along with a more comprehensive dictionary. He even arranged for a servant to attend her, at least in limited matters of attire and grooming.
After all
, he justified to himself with a trace of uneasiness,
we brought her here to serve our purposes. What good do we do by keeping from her the tools she will need
?
The reasoning was quite sound. Peace wondered why he remained so uncomfortable.
T
he condition of the palms of his hands and the fabric of his breeches, rather than any clear memory, testified to Waln as to the nature of his escape from New Kelvin.
Dirt had been so thoroughly ground into both—and into his knees where the breeches had become unbuckled, leaving the fabric to ride up. One stocking remained gartered.
The other drooped around his boot top. The seat of his trousers was stiff with grime. The nature of the dirt fascinated him. Sandy grit had left its mark beneath his skin, tiny black dots like amateur tattooing. There were smears of clay interspersed with sour fecal-smelling material, even small bits of chaff. From these—and smatterings of memory—he deduced that he had hidden in many an unsavory hole while making his way back to the White Water River.
Once there he had stowed away in the covered cargo section on one of the ferryboats—he remembered that in detail, including the way his stomach had growled and surged bile up his throat when he dared not pry open one of the crates holding cheeses a few inches from his nose.
He had dropped overboard when the ferryboat had been dragged onto rollers on the gravel strand at Plum Orchard—no one wanted to unload cargo in the mixture of sleet and rain that began when the ferry was halfway across, but they hadn't trusted the vessel to the unpredictable waters.
Doubtless the ugly weather had been the best friend Waln could have asked for, but at the time he had cursed the icy water that soaked him seemingly to the very core of his soul. He'd broken into a warehouse near the edge of town. It was mostly empty, thus unguarded.
Amid the relics stored within he had found a partial case of water-spoiled dried meat, a wedge of elderly cheese, and a partial barrel of sour wine. With rainwater gathered in an old bottle and the bottom of a metal box for a cook pot, he made himself a banquet. There was wood enough to burn from old packing cases and crates. At least the foul weather without meant that he did not need to worry about anyone spotting what smoke eddied out through the warehouse roof.
Though he ached for respite, Waln left before dawn the next morning. His fever had burned from him, but he could feel it lurking, waiting for an excuse to return. He hiked overland, clinging to the banks of the White Water for guidance and because something deep within him took comfort from the presence of living water.
Sometimes his fever must have returned because for long stretches he was accompanied by phantoms. Once his mother came and walked with him, mincing her way over the sand and gravel in too-tight shoes. Waln asked her who his father was. She only laughed and vanished.
From a shack along the riverbanks Waln stole a heavy old coat and an oilcloth hat with a floppy brim. From the line outside a farmhouse he stole a pair of long workman's trousers and a smock. He regartered his stocking with a bit of string and carried those provisions he scrounged in a square of fabric bundled on the end of a stick.
His reflection, when he glimpsed it in a quiet pool at the edge of the river, was so unlike the robust Baron Endbrook that he doubted his pursuers—even if they should glimpse him across the breadth of the White Water—would know him. Bent with weariness, limping in boots never meant for so much walking, he was incarnated as the man Walnut the whore's son would have become had he never escaped to sea—a thief and beggar, weary, wounded, and alone.
Oddly, Waln's hatred did not center itself on the queen who had sent him on this mission, nor upon the woman who had betrayed him. It rooted in something he had trusted as he had never trusted either queen or lady—in the two items he had taken from Lady Melina as guarantee of her fidelity: a necklace of sparkling gemstones and a little girl with red-gold hair.
With this hatred to fire his heart, Waln tramped on long after darkness had fallen. The wisdom of both thief and bully kept him from stealing a horse, though he passed many set out to pasture when the days were fair—as the weather turned soon after his escape, as if regretting the discomfort it had caused him.
A bit of clothing or a few eggs or a chunk of bacon from a smokehouse might not be missed; if it was, it was not likely to be pursued. A horse, however, especially one strong enough to carry a man of his size, would be missed. Horse thieves were usually dealt with on the spot.
So Waln kept his stealing small, the hours of his walking long. The river proved a true guide and late one night the clear cold air carried on it the salt tang of the sea.
In order that he be able to retrieve Citrine Shield when he returned from New Kelvin, Waln had been taught the land way to Smuggler's Light. As Princess Lovella's campaign long years ago had proven, Smuggler's Light could be reached by land, but only with great care.
Happily, Waln had assumed that he would be coming to the swamp directly from New Kelvin, so the landmarks he had been given were visible as soon as the swamp was in sight. A tall cypress with a boulder at its base marked the beginning of the trail. This was apparent as soon as dawn pinked the sky, but Waln waited until daylight shone clear and bright to venture further.
Winter had stripped the deciduous trees of their leaves, but the swamp was home as well to thick growths of long-needled pines that seemed all the more dense amid the skeletons of trees and vines. Despite the chill wind that whipped at the baron, the footing remained marshy beneath his boots, the taint of salt and the warmer temperatures here to the east of New Kelvin having kept frost from the ground.
Tying a bundle containing a flitch of bacon to his belt, he converted his stick to a walking staff, testing before each step. The Isles had their share of swamp and marsh, so Waln was familiar with the tricks it could play: mudholes without apparent bottom, sand spread lightly over water, hummocks that rocked or sank when you jumped on them.
In addition to watching his footing, Waln kept alert for the trail markers. None of these were as crude as a blazoned tree or a cairn of rocks. The smugglers preferred more subtle signs. Two bird's nests in the crotch of a dead scrub oak marked one turning, a sapling "chance bent" along the ground made a long pointer. By these and other signs, Waln made his way.
He had just realized that the fiat grey in the near distance was dressed stone overgrown with vines when a voice spoke to him from above:
"Name yourself and your business."
"Rain riders," Waln said, "seeking shelter from the storm."
"Come along, Baron Endbrook," the voice said. "We had not looked for you so soon and garbed so fashionably."
There was dry laughter beneath the words, holding within it mockery and menace. With a sudden seizing of his heart,
Waln Endbrook wondered if he had come to a refuge or to yet another betrayal.
W
inter thunder was rumbling among the upper peaks of the mountains on the day that Grateful Peace escorted Lady Melina Shield to her first meeting with the Dragon Speaker.
Peace was an educated man—few Illuminators were not, given the range and variety of texts they encountered from their youngest days at the desk. Even so, he felt his bowels chill at the distant rumble. His parents had controlled their large, unruly brood with a variety of threats regarding the wizard-spawned horrors that dwelt in the vast reaches of the Sword of Kelvin Mountains, and whenever he heard winter thunder he was once again a very small child.
Lady Melina did not appear to hear the distant rumbles. Bright, alert, and, as far as the thaumaturge could tell, not a bit nervous, she walked with quick and eager steps toward the Speaker's Tower.
She looked quite nice in a gown of autumn gold velvet trimmed in black. That she chose to wear the colors of House Gyrfalcon said something, Grateful Peace knew. He wondered what. Was she reminding them of her noble birth and status? Was she asserting her continued alliance to her homeland? Or was the choice simply habit, what she was accustomed to wearing for matters of state?
Even after they had climbed the long spiral stair—Apheros had ruled against revealing to her the secret of the lift—Lady Melina had lost little of her energy. Grateful Peace found himself admiring her despite himself. The New Kelvinese capital city was set high in the Sword of Kelvin Mountains and strong men had found themselves reduced to short, panting breaths until their hearts and lungs adjusted to the altitude.
When the herald announced them, the Dragon Speaker rose with stately majesty to greet them. In his robes of office, Apheros was a towering figure, magnificent in scarlet silk trimmed with gold. His long-jawed face was painted black but for a hint of crimson rimming each eye and silver, bat-winged dragons sparkling on each cheek.
A gold dragon clung to the top of his head, claws digging into the Dragon Speaker's scalp so that a thin trickle of blood oozed from beneath them. The dragon's eyes glittered so realistically that the reptile seemed alive and watchful. Any moment, it seemed, the dragon might bend its sinuous neck and whisper secrets into the Speaker's ear.
Grateful Peace knew something of the artistry that went into creating this effect. Apheros
was
a tall man, but the shoes he wore hidden beneath the hem of his robe were what gave him that unreal height. His face paint was not purely black, but included a subtle shading of greens and browns that sharply defined his features despite the apparent monotone.
The gold dragon was, of course, not alive. It was an heirloom of the Founders' days, set onto a skullcap shaped anew with each Speaker to precisely fit that Speaker's head.
Peace wished he could have known the face artist who had thought to add the blood coming from beneath the dragon's claws. It added a certain horrid realism. Indeed, he knew otherwise quite sturdy thaumaturges who admitted not liking to look directly at the Dragon Speaker when he was in full formal garb because of this single touch. They claimed the damp-seeming trails of blood made them queasy.