by Glen Cook
Nepanthe was in her forties. A lot of hard years lay behind her, yet her long raven hair showed only traces of grey. Her figure wasn’t the wisp it had been at nineteen, but neither had lumpiness conquered all. Her face did not record all the tragedies that had dogged her life. Only her eyes betrayed the melancholy caged within.
Those eyes were old, sad windows, aged by sorrow and pain the way glass is purpled by the endless assault of the sun. They said they would never sparkle again. They would believe in no good fortune, for luck and happiness were but pitfalls and taunts cast in one’s face by a malign fate. She had lost her zest for life. She was marking time, waiting for the big sleep, and knew it would be an age arriving. Her husband, the arch-sorcerer Varthlokkur, had learned to hold Death at bay. He was over four centuries old.
“Come on,” he said in his gentle, coaxing voice. “What is it?”
“Varth… I just don’t like this place. It brings back so much that I want to forget. I can’t help it… Vorgreberg is accursed. Nothing good ever happens here.” She met his stare. A shadow of fear brushed her face.
“I won’t stay a minute longer than I need to.”
“Bragi will keep you…” She ground her teeth on words too harsh for the situation, “Why did you come?” She heard the whine in her voice and was disgusted with herself.
He accepted the question at face value. “I don’t know. We’ll find out in a few minutes. But Bragi wouldn’t have called me if it wasn’t important.”
That wing of fear stroked her face again. “Important to whom? Varth, don’t let him get you involved. He’s accursed too.” She had begged and begged her first husband, just like this, and he hadn’t listened. And so he had died, and left her alone….
Varthlokkur smiled. “I wouldn’t call him accursed. Things just happen around him.”
“I would. They’re bad things. Killing things. Varth… I don’t want the baby born here. I lost two brothers, a husband, and my son here. I couldn’t stand it if….”
His thin fingers teased through her hair. She stared at the floor. His arms slid around her and he held her a moment. “There’ll be no more of that. No more pain. I promise.” And, “We won’t stay long. Come on. Buck up. You’ll get to see a lot of old friends.”
“All right.” She tried to smile. It felt like a death grimace tearing at her face. “I’ll be brave.” I’m good at being brave, she thought. I’ve spent my whole life bravely bearing up. Then she snorted. I’m also a little long on self-pity.
Varthlokkur drew ahead again. She watched him walk. His tall, lean frame was more rigidly erect than usual. His shoulders did not dip or bob but glided in a constant, unyielding relationship to the floor. He was all tensed up. Something was gnawing him too. King Bragi’s summons worried him more than he would admit.
Gods! Don’t let this be the start of another of those horrible things that devour everything I love. He’s all I have left.
What could it be? Shinsan again? The peace had lasted three years now. The Great Eastern Wars seemed to be over. The Dread Empire appeared to be appeased.
The memories began yammering in the shadowed reaches of her mind, besieging her in earnest. She battled them till tears came. The recollections would not be driven back into their tombs. Too many dear ones had gone into the darkness before her. Too many memorial ghosts haunted her. She had nothing left. Nothing but this man, whom she could not wholly love or trust. This man and the life developing within her.
Her own life she held of little consequence. A wasteland lay behind her. The future looked as barren. She would live for the child, as she had lived for her son before.
Varthlokkur paused a few steps short of a smartly uniformed Palace Guard. Impatience peeped through his customarily neutral expression. He sensed the past rising inside her. He always knew, and always belittled her preoccupation.
She screwed up her courage and asked the question that irritated him most. “Varth, are you sure that Ethrian is gone? Isn’t there any chance at all? I just don’t feel like he’s dead.” Someday his answer might satisfy her.
His jaw tightened. He glanced at the Guard, controlled himself. “No, dear, I don’t think so. I would’ve found him by now.” He whirled, stamped to the door the Guard protected. The soldier snapped it open, clicked his heels as the wizard passed. He nodded amiably to Nepanthe.
She responded with a distracted nod. Was he someone she should remember? But she had known so many soldiers. How could she recall just one?
And then she was inside, bumping against the faces of her past like a swimmer bumping about in cold water crowded with chunks of ice. She did not know which way to dodge, which memory she most wanted to evade.
Two men in their late twenties were nearest her, their heads together as if their conversation portended conspiracy. Michael Trebilcock and Aral Dantice were their names. Once they had trailed her across half a continent in a noble, vain attempt to free her from the minions of the Dread Empire. Such quixotic youths they had been. “Aral. Michael. How lovely to see you again.” The romance had fled the two, she saw. They were starry-eyed boys no longer. They had the hard eyes of men who had seen too much. The war changed us all, Nepanthe thought.
Dantice was short, wide, dark of hair. He looked as though he belonged behind a pitchfork in a stable. He responded with a delighted smile and effusive greeting.
His companion was taller, slimmer, bone-pale, and more reserved. His eyes were cold and remote. Rumor said he had become Kavelin’s chief spy. Nepanthe’s brother Valther had held that post till his death at the battle of Palmisano. She searched Michael’s face.
She saw not one spark of humor there. The man was all business these days, all self-confidence, competence, and lack of acquaintance with fear. Exactly the kind of man Bragi would choose….
“Darling, you look marvelous!” A woman surrounded her in a swarm of arms. “A little peaked, maybe, but pregnancy becomes you.”
Nepanthe returned the hug absently. “You’re looking well yourself, Mist.” Mist, who had been her brother’s wife, a sorceress he had lured forth from the east and converted to the western cause.
“Pooh! I’m an old hag.”
Aral Dantice chuckled. “The ladies I know should be so ugly.”
And Varthlokkur, with an arm around Trebilcock’s shoulder, snorted. “You’ve added false modesty to your sins, Princess?”
Mist stepped back. “Plain Chatelaine now, I’m afraid. The King sent me to Fortress Maisak. You see what I’m worth when there’s no fighting?”
“It is the most important castle in the kingdom.”
Nepanthe stared at this woman whom her brother had worshipped, who had borne his children, who had been ruler of the Dread Empire before Valther entered her life. She never seemed quite real. More a fairy tale princess than one of the age’s most savage and powerful wielders of magic.
Aral put Nepanthe’s thoughts into words by observing, “She hasn’t changed a bit. Still the most beautiful and dangerous woman alive.”
Mist blushed.
How did she manage that? Nepanthe wondered. Aral had said nothing but the truth. Mist knew that. And she was no simpering little courtesan. She was centuries old, honed sharp and tempered hard by the intrigue and struggle for survival round the pinnacles of Dread Empire power. Her blush had to be contrived.
“How are your children?” Nepanthe asked.
“Growing up too fast. Every time I see them they’re two inches taller. I’ll tell them you’re here. They’ll be excited. You were always their favorite.”
A gloomy, quiet man chewing the stem of an empty pipe shook Varthlokkur’s hand. He greeted Nepanthe with a nod and a mumbled, “Nice to see you again.”
“Hello, Cham. Business any better?”
Cham Mundwiller, commercial magnate, was a longtime supporter of the King. “Not really. There’s only so much I can do while the Gap is closed.” He wandered away, became engrossed in the coats of arms gracing the far wall.
Nepanthe turned to a younger man in military dress. “Gjerdrum. How are you? You look glum.”
Aral said, “He’s sore as a hornet’s sting. His knighthood and appointment as commander of the army have gone to his head.”
Sir Gjerdrum scowled. “That’s not true. It’s just that I’ve got other things to do. Colonel Abaca or General Liakopulos could have sat in on this for me.”
Nepanthe noted the Colonel and General among the two dozen or so people she knew only by sight.
Sir Gjerdrum kissed her hand while clicking his heels. They had developed an innocent flirtation when he was younger and less world-wise. He played their old game half-hearted court with a weak suggestion. “Let me treat you to dinner after the little one comes.”
Nepanthe raised an eyebrow. What had become of the indefatigably cheerful Gjerdrum of years gone by? Had he been crushed between the millstones of duty? Or was this just a mood?
She glanced around the room. Her friends had all aged, had all grown tired of their responsibilities. Nothing dulls the enthusiasm like the inability to make visible progress, she thought.
She was not unique, then. The same despair-inducing nemesis breathed down the necks of all her friends. “Where’s the King?” she asked. She and Varthlokkur hadn’t seen Bragi yet, though they had reached Vorgreberg the previous afternoon.
“I don’t know,” Gjerdrum mumbled. “You’d think he’d be on time, wouldn’t you? After calling us here… He dragged me in all the way from Karlsbad.”
Varthlokkur moved to the room’s huge fireplace and stared into the prancing flames. He looked troubled. Nepanthe joined him. She wondered why he was so moody lately.
The gathering fell under a pall. Only Michael and Aral remained immune. They chattered like best friends who hadn’t seen one another for years.
Mist took a seat near the head of the huge table which filled half the room. Nepanthe studied her. Exile had made of a once savage conspirator a quiet, gentle woman. A knitting bag lay open before her. A small, two-headed, four-armed demon manipulated her needles at an incredible pace. Its legs dangled off the table’s side. Occasionally one head would curse the other for making it drop a stitch. Mist would shush gently.
The door opened. A splendidly attired young officer entered. Nepanthe remembered him as Dahl Haas, the son of a mercenary who had followed King Bragi into Kavelin during the civil war. For an instant she wondered if Dahl had had babies who would follow Bragi in their turn.
“Stand by,” Haas said. “He’s on his way.”
Nepanthe moved nearer the door. The King pushed through. His gaze met hers. He winced slightly, then enfolded her in a gentle, uncertain hug. “How are you?” he asked. And, “I’m sorry I couldn’t see you last night. This wart of a kingdom don’t give me time to catch my breath. Hello, Varthlokkur.”
King Bragi was a tall, powerfully built man. He wore the scars of nearly three decades of soldiering. Nepanthe noted grey in the shag at his temples. Time was gnawing at him too.
He whispered, “I’ll try to put on a private supper tonight. You’ll want to see Fulk.” Fulk was his six-month-old son, whom she had never seen.
“How is Inger?”
He gave her an odd look. Her tone must have betrayed her thoughts. She could not get used to his having remarried. His first wife, Elana, who had died during the war, had been her best friend. “Fine. Full of pepper. And Fulk is just like his mother.” He moved away, shaking hands, exchanging greetings. Finally finished, he said, “I hope this thing hasn’t gotten anybody fired up… I see it hasn’t. Just a roll call, anyway, so to speak. I won’t really need you for a few days yet. For now, let me just say that we’ve had word from Derel.”
He explained that his personal secretary, Derel Prataxis, was in Throyes, east of the Mountains of M’Hand, negotiating with Lord Hsung, the commander of Shinsan’s army of occupation there. In the three years since the cessation of hostilities not one trade caravan had crossed the mountains. The easterners had kept the one commercially viable pass, the Savernake Gap, locked up tight. Now Prataxis reported a dramatic shift in attitude. He expected the negotiations to be brief and their outcome to be favorable.
The discussion was prosaic and dull, and Nepanthe didn’t pay much attention till the King asked Sir Gjerdrum for his guess as to why Shinsan would suddenly alter its policy.
“Hsung over there is a hard-liner,” the King said. “He wouldn’t do anything that would help Kavelin more than it would his own team.”
Gjerdrum flashed his scowl. “Maybe the legions are up to strength again. Maybe they want the pass open so they can run spies through.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mist countered. “They have the Power. Anyway, if they did have to have an agent physically present, they’d send him in over the smugglers’ trails.” Her glance flicked to Aral Dantice. “He’d set up a transfer portal so he could bring in any help he needed.”
“All right,” Bragi said. “Then you give me a reason that does make sense.”
“I can’t.”
Nepanthe became aware of a subtle tension in the room. There were under-currents here sensed only by a few.
King Bragi stared into infinity. “Why do I feel like you’re not telling me everything? Can’t you guess out loud?”
Mist stared at her knitting. The imp’s needles became silvery blurs. “I don’t feel Lord Ko Feng anymore. There may have been a coup.” Cautiously, she admitted, “A few old supporters got in touch last summer. They thought there was something in the wind.”
Trebilcock snorted. “Something in the wind? Crap! Ko Feng got his butt thrown out. They stripped his titles, his honors, and his immortality. They as much as accused him of treason because he kept his army intact instead of trying to finish us off at Palmisano. A corps commander named Kuo Wen-chin replaced him. Anybody who had anything to do with the Pracchia got swept out along with Feng. All reassigned to Northern and Eastern Armies. What amounts to internal exile. Ko Feng vanished completely. None of the new bunch were involved in the Great Eastern Wars.” Trebilcock’s glance flicked from Aral Dantice to Mist, as if daring contradiction.
Michael is a strange one, Nepanthe thought. Dantice and Gjerdrum are his best friends, and they say he’s weird. Only Varthlokkur seems to understand him.
She wasn’t sure what her husband saw in the younger man. She did know he liked Michael, and found him intriguing.
The King asked, “Mist?”
“Michael’s connections are better than mine.”
Bragi made a slight gesture. Nepanthe caught it. She watched Michael respond with a tiny shrug. The King said, “Varthlokkur, don’t you have anything to contribute?”
“I haven’t been watching Shinsan. I’ve been busy.”
Nepanthe stared at the tabletop and blushed. She had mixed feelings about her pregnancy. Excitement and eagerness and way too much worry. She was too old… But she had to try, to replace the son she had lost during the war….
“But…” she started, then shut up. It was entirely her husband’s business if he wanted his east-watching kept mum. Still, why should he lie?
Varthlokkur said, “I could send the Unborn, of course.”
“No. That would just provoke them.” Bragi eyed the group. “My best friends. My advisers and boon companions. Why are you such a moody bunch today? Nobody wants to talk, eh? All right. Be that way. So. That’s it. Check your contacts, people. I want to know what’s happening over east. Those people won’t hurt us again. Not while I have any say.”
His tone startled Nepanthe. She took a closer look. Yes. There were tears in his eyes. He had an almost fanatic love for Kavelin.
For a moment she envied him. Would that she had something with as much meaning for her.
The ambitions of eastern princes had cost them both. Him his brother. Several of his children. His first wife, who had been her best friend. His best friend, who had been her first husband, Mocker. And whom he had been compelled to kill himself, becaus
e poor tangle-witted Mocker had been convinced he had to make a choice between Bragi and his son…. “Damn!” she spat, and slammed a fist against the tabletop.
Everyone turned. She winced. Softly, she apologized. She didn’t explain.
It was not just the past which compelled her now. Something about this nonevent of a meeting argued portent, cried out about bad times coming. The restless armies of the night were stirring. An ill fate was marshalling fresh forces. Dark clouds gnawed the horizon. The air had begun to crackle with foreboding.
King Bragi was crossing a courtyard, headed for the stables, when he spied Varthlokkur pacing the east ramparts. The wizard was engrossed in the distance. The King altered course.
He approached the wizard from behind, settled himself between two merlons. “Care to talk about it?”
Varthlokkur spun. His response so startled the King, he nearly flung himself backward off the wall. Varthlokkur seized one flailing hand. “Don’t sneak around like that.”
“Like what? Who was sneaking? I walked up and sat down. What the hell is wrong with you?”
The wizard grumbled, “Nothing concrete. Not yet. Something in the east. Without the stink of Shinsan. But I could be wrong.”
“Any tie-in with Hsung’s change of heart?”
“The world consists of patterns. Mostly, we misread them. In Hsung’s case, though, he really wants peace. The question is why.”
“You didn’t say that before.”
“Nepanthe.”
“Think I missed something there.”
“The years have robbed her of too much. Her brothers. Mocker and Ethrian. Even Elana. I don’t want to crucify her on a false hope.”
“You’re not making a lot of sense.”
“It’s Ethrian. He might be alive.”
“What? Where?” This was staggering news. His godson alive? He owed that boy an incalculable debt.
“Easy,” the wizard said. “I don’t know anything for sure. It’s a touch of a feeling I get lately. Something one hell of a long way off that has his aura. It’s like catching one sniff of fresh bread while you’re walking down the street, then trying to find the baker. The only resource I haven’t tried is the Unborn. I won’t unless there’s another overpowering excuse to send him that way anyway.”