It was a large suite with white walls and dark oak wainscoting. A desk like the one she’d seen in Damon’s study was in the center of the room, with several low bookcases and cabinets in easy reach. She could see a wooden tub through an open door to one side—the location of the overly zealous broom’s labors, she assumed—plus a bedchamber through another open door. A tall leaded-glass window let in sunlight and stood across from what was probably the door to the suite. That door was barred. Merry could sense strong wards on it as well.
Three tall, narrow tapestries were hanging on the wall behind her. One showed a high waterfall descending past cliffs marked with bands of red and brown and gold. Its colors reminded her of Melyncárreg. The second showed a night sky with hundreds of tiny stars formed from crossed silver threads and one large star made from thousands of crystals sewn in a five-pointed pattern. The big star twinkled in the light streaming in the window. The third tapestry was more domestic. It showed a small family sharing a meal at a table by a fireplace. A boy on the edge of manhood was reading a book while the rest of the family ate dinner. The mother in the tapestry was trying to slide a plate of meat and bread toward her son.
Merry smiled, wondering if the third tapestry depicted a happy time in Damon’s own life, or if he’d just seen it and decided to buy it. From her position, she and Damon must have stepped through the first tapestry, which made sense. She’d have to ask Damon about a waterfall at Melyncárreg when she got the chance, which wouldn’t be soon.
“Come along,” said Damon as he removed the bar on the suite’s door and busied himself removing wards. Merry stood behind him, far enough away so she wouldn’t distract him from his work. The animated fog-cloud moved along the ceiling to hover over her head. When Merry looked up at it, the cloud turned dark and triggered small, silent cracks of lightning along its lower surface.
While Damon’s attention was elsewhere, Merry extended the fingers on her right hand and used five rods of tight light to move the cloud back to the far side of the ceiling. She didn’t want to risk another attack. She also didn’t understand why Damon would use a cloud to dust—wind would just move the dust from one place to another, not permanently remove it like a dust cloth. Perhaps he’d created the cloud when he was young and foolish as well? she mused. I wonder who he was in love with?
Soon, the door opened and Damon led Merry out into a wide deserted corridor.
“We’re in the royal palace in Brendinas,” he said. “There will be guards in the halls—more as we approach the King’s rooms—so stay close to me and don’t say anything. I didn’t want you along, but you’re here and your father will hold me responsible for your safety.”
“Are you and my father friends?”
“Yes,” said Damon.
The man’s curt answers could be infuriating. Merry realized how uncharacteristic it had been of Damon for him to talk about himself earlier. Perhaps she could encourage him to talk more over the next few days by asking leading questions?
When they turned the corner in a corridor they saw a pair of guards in royal livery. They wore helmets, carried swords and snapped into a defensive posture when they saw Damon and Merry.
One of them looked familiar—it was Gruffyd. He stood stiffly at attention and didn’t give any indication he’d recognized Merry, even though she knew he must have.
“What business do you have before the king?” asked the guard who looked marginally more experienced—a tall woman with brown hair to her shoulders.
“That’s no concern of yours,” said Damon. “I am the master mage of the kingdom and I wish to speak to the king on matters of state.”
The guard who’d challenged them muttered something that sounded like this is above my pay grade and bowed.
“I will need to consult my superiors,” she said.
Gruffyd remained on duty while the other guard opened the door, went in, and closed it behind her.
Merry winked at Gruffyd and stuck her tongue out at him, but he didn’t react, though she thought she saw a twinkle in his eyes. She invoked her listening spell, so she could follow what the absent guard said to her superior.
“An old man and a girl are outside,” she heard the guard say. “He says he’s the master mage and didn’t give her name. I thought that Doethan fellow was Master Mage.”
“No, he’s Senior Mage and only Acting Master Mage. Wizards can be sticklers about getting their titles right.”
One corner of Merry’s mouth turned up. So were guardsman and nobles—most especially nobles. She remembered once before his wander year when Salder addressed an earl the way you’d address a baron. It took him more than a year to live it down.
“Let me get a look at him,” said the guard’s superior. “There’s a portrait of Master Mage Ealdamon in one of the upper halls. I’ll see if this man looks anything like him.”
“He just showed up at our door,” said the guard. “We didn’t have any word from other guards about him entering the palace. Maybe it is him? Isn’t there supposed to be a suite for the Master Mage not far from here?”
“There is, but I’ve never seen it. The door to it is always barred,” said the senior guard. “Return to your post. I’ll handle things now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Merry put a serious look on her face as the first guard and her superior stepped out. The tall woman resumed her post while her superior—who turned out to be a somewhat older, medium-sized man with big shoulders—examined Damon. The old mage evidently resembled his portrait, because Damon and Merry were escorted into the next room, which Damon whispered was an antechamber to the royal study.
Half a dozen guards, some with swords, some with polearms, were arrayed around the room’s inner door. There were several straight-backed wooden chairs against the walls, along with several more-comfortable-looking chairs with arms and cushions in a corner.
“Wait for me here,” said Damon, waving toward the comfortable chairs. After that gesture he made a circular motion with his right hand and the door to the king’s study flew open. The guards in the antechamber froze. A dozen trumpets blared a fanfare and Damon strode into the king’s study like a victorious general with small bolts of lightning sparking around his head. The door slammed shut behind him. A bar fell and a lock turned.
Merry was impressed. The trumpets were a variation on the warding spell with barking dogs and crossbow bolts Doethan had taught her as one of her first spells. Transparent constructs of solidified sound sufficed for opening and closing the door and surprise was all that was needed to freeze the guards long enough for Damon to act. It was good stagecraft, but only basic wizardry.
“Don’t bother trying to open the door,” she told the guards. “It’s barred, locked and warded.”
The guard with big shoulders opened his mouth, but decided she wasn’t someone who could help. Another guard looked at Merry, her eyes obviously asking what had just happened.
“Don’t worry,” said Merry. “He really is the Master Mage of Dâron. Be glad he didn’t decide to turn you all into frogs.”
She didn’t think that sort of transformation spell was possible, even with the most advanced wizardry, but it was an effective threat. The guards milled around near the door to the corridor and whispered. Merry could hear what they were saying—it was the usual covering your butt nonsense her father kept trying to stop his tenants from practicing. When her da had caught Merry doing something she shouldn’t, she made a point of being straightforward about admitting it, at least after that first dressing down she’d received for lying when she was six.
Merry picked the padded chair facing out from the corner and sat to wait for Damon. There was no telling how long he’d be with the young king. Perhaps he’d knock some sense into King Dârio. From everything she’d heard, Dârio needed it. I wonder if there’s such a thing as a wisdom potion, she considered. Perhaps that’s more along the lines of what a hedge wizard could whip up?
There was a knock at the outer door. Gr
uffyd stuck his head inside and gestured to the broad-shouldered guard, who Merry heard say, “Send her in.” A tall woman dressed in dark-blue robes with her face concealed in a dark-blue hood entered and slowly walked over to stand in front of Merry. She seemed sad somehow, as if carrying a secret sorrow. Merry sensed something of wizardry about her.
“The queen would like to speak to you,” came the woman’s voice from inside her dark hood.
There was only one queen in Dâron. Carys, the Old Queen, King Dâroth the XXIV’s wife. Some said she’d been the true ruler of the kingdom at the end of her husband’s reign, before he died of a broken heart two years ago when Crown Prince Dâri, his grandson and heir, had died.
Young King Dârio, the Old King’s great-grandson, was next in line and had been crowned at sixteen.
“I’m sorry, I can’t," said Merry. "My friend asked me to wait for him here.”
“The guards will tell Ealdamon where to find you,” said the woman in dark-blue robes, “and the queen was most insistent.”
Merry stood and followed the old woman out of the antechamber. If it was a matter of disobeying Damon or the queen, she knew which course was wiser.
Chapter 13
Merry
Queen Carys didn’t have a formal audience chamber. Instead, she had a warm, well-lit sitting room filled with comfortable furniture. Its walls were painted a soothing Dâron blue and covered with stenciled silver stars. Three well-padded chairs were positioned in a bay formed by a trio of tall windows. Dark-blue velvet curtains flocked with more silver stars marked off an area to one side—a servant’s alcove, perhaps. The Queen sat with her back to the center window, a beam of sunlight turning the white hair wreathing her face into a nimbus of soft gold.
As Merry was escorted into the old queen’s presence, it was clear that she wasn’t as tall as she’d been in the royal portrait Merry had seen on a tour of Tyford’s smaller royal palace. The queen no longer had her commanding stature, but she wasn’t less for it. She seemed concentrated somehow, distilled down to her essence, rather than reduced in any way. When the old queen smiled, Merry curtsied and bowed.
“One or the other would be fine, dear,” said Queen Carys. “Though I understand that you might be nervous. I don’t bite—or at least not my friends.”
“Your Majesty,” said Merry, bowing again and giving a second quick curtsy with a twinkle in her eye.
“I think I’m going to like you, Meredith,” said the queen. “You have your father’s sense of humor. Please sit down.”
The woman in dark-blue robes and hood guided Merry to a chair across from Carys. Merry looked at the queen, received a confirming nod, and sat down. Her chair was very soft, almost like being hugged. The other woman sat in the remaining chair, a few inches to the right and behind Queen Carys. The three of them were alone in the room.
The woman gestured and Merry felt a transparent sphere of solidified sound form around them, preventing eavesdropping.
I knew she was a wizard, thought Merry.
“Why do you think you’re here?” asked the queen once the sphere was in place.
Merry liked her directness. It reminded her of Fercha. She considered for a moment, then answered.
“To tell you what Damon has been doing.”
The queen looked over at the woman in dark-blue robes.
“I told you she’d be quick.”
The woman in dark-blue robes nodded and the queen turned back to Merry.
“Astrí says little…” said Queen Carys.
“…but hears much,” the woman in dark robes completed with a bored tone. “Forgive me, Your Majesty, but there’s no need to feed Merry phrases that make me seem strange and ominous, much as you like to play up your personal wizard’s mystique. It’s bad enough you make me wear these hot robes.”
“You know why they’re necessary,” said the queen. “Go ahead, take them off for the present. I don’t see Meredith as the sort to gossip.”
“But that’s exactly what you’re asking me to do about Damon,” said Merry, laughing. “I’m glad to tell you what I can. You are the queen, after all and must have the kingdom’s best interests at heart.”
Merry stood to help Astrí remove her robes and hood. The other woman was wearing a soft, pale-blue linen shirt that reached her knees beneath them. Astrí’s mouth silently moved to say, “Thank you.” Merry nodded.
Astrí was older than Merry had assumed—a grandmother, rather than someone her mother’s age. Her hair was short and gray with only a few hints of red. She had a wise, wrinkled face that fit well with her voice and manner. A rich blue light radiated from what must be her magestone, hidden just below the collar of her shirt.
Merry smiled at Astrí. The other woman looked familiar, but Merry couldn’t figure out why. It will come to me, she thought.
The two returned to their seats and the queen resumed their conversation.
“Don’t be so trusting and assume anyone royal has the kingdom’s best interests at heart—especially if you ever speak with Princess Gwýnnett.”
“King Dârio’s mother, you mean?”
“Correct,” said Astrí. “She’s been trying to kill Carys for half a decade.”
Merry’s raised an eyebrow, glad her father had decided to leave court before she’d been born if casual attempts at murder were commonplace.
“I’m glad she hasn’t been successful, Your Majesty,” said Merry.
“So am I,” said the queen, who grinned at Merry, showing a sparkle in her aged eyes. “Try to keep the use of my title to once every ten minutes, my dear—when we’re alone, that is. You have permission to call me Carys in such circumstances.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
The queen laughed like someone used to laughing.
“I sense Doethan’s influence as well as Derry’s, don’t you?” said Astrí, leaning close to Carys and smiling.
“Clearly,” said the queen. “She will pick up even more bad habits from Fercha.”
“That’s a certainty,” said Astrí.
“By the way,” said Queen Carys, “don’t taste any food brought to my chamber until Astrí has inspected it magically. At least one meal a day contains some poison that has to be neutralized.”
“That’s terrible!” said Merry. Who would want to poison Carys, the beloved old queen? Princess Gwýnnett, apparently.
“Things are different in the capital than they are in the Rhuthro valley,” said Astrí. “Princess Gwýnnett has little interest in the well-being of the kingdom and quite a lot in the well-being of Princess Gwýnnett.”
“I’ve known a few like her,” said Merry.
“The late crown prince, my grandson and Dârio’s father, was wrapped around Gwýnnett’s finger,” said Queen Carys. “So long as she gave him plenty of time for hunting and practicing skill at arms, he was happy. She was even good at making sure he kept to his schedule of royal duties, reviewing troops, inspecting fortifications, dedicating bridges, and such.”
“Don’t tell me she tried to poison him?”
“I won’t,” said the queen. “Because as far as Astrí and I can tell, she didn’t. He was too useful to her, since she could pull his strings and rule in all but name, once my husband died.”
“The crown prince died of a clot formed by a blow from a wooden practice sword just above his right knee,” said Astrí. “Doethan and I examined his body and confirmed it. It flowed to his lungs and killed him. That’s not the sort of thing Gwýnnett could have arranged.”
“I see,” said Merry, though she was taking in so much new information she wasn’t sure that she did.
Doethan’s ring for contacting Eynon began to vibrate on her finger but she didn’t do anything about it. It would be inappropriate during a royal audience. She’d reach out to Eynon as soon as she was free. She put the hand with the ring in her lap and covered it with her other hand.
“Enough about Gwýnnett,” said Queen Carys. “Back to Ealdamon.”
&nb
sp; “He asked me to call him Damon,” Merry noted.
“That’s just so he can see the look of surprise on people’s faces when they realize he’s the Master Mage of Dâron,” said Astrí, shaking her head, but smiling.
“I don’t know him well, and not for very long,” said Merry. “I first met him early this morning when Fercha and I flew to the Coombe to stop Verro and wizards from Tamloch trying to steal green magestones from a quarry.”
“We know about that,” said the queen.
“Then we gated to an inn in Riyas and met people in Damon’s network who are spying on King Túathal and Verro.”
“Verro is Túathal’s younger brother, if Fercha hasn’t told you that already,” said Astrí. “How’s Salder?”
“Doing well,” said Merry before she realized what she’d said. The other women smiled at her, so she kept talking. “He seems to be a natural spy.”
“Of course,” said the queen. “And he’ll make a good baron.”
Merry realized another major plus to having her older brother alive—and now understood why her father was willing to introduce her to Doethan and let her study wizardry instead of insisting she had to take over the barony in the future.
“We learned that King Túathal paid King Bjarni of Bifurland to send five hundred dragonships up the Brenavon to sack Brendinas. They should be here in a couple of days.”
Astrí nodded. “We know about that, too—and they’re more like a day away, maybe less.”
Merry could feel her face get warmer as Queen Carys and Astrí’s interrogation continued.
“Do you know about the treaty with the Eagle People and the legions marching here from Nova Eboracum?”
“Two of them, I believe,” said the queen.
“And sixty purple wizards,” added Astrí.
Merry stood up and paced. She was feeling like the conversation was making her brain turn upside down and sideways. She wished she could talk to Eynon. He’d help her get her thoughts in order with an innocent question.
The Congruent Wizard (The Congruent Mage Series Book 2) Page 9