“I wish you fortune in it, great sir. But we haven’t seen another man pass here since spring. And I wish I could open the gate, but it’s sealed and locked and we ain’t trusted with the key. That comes with the harvesters next time the Bright Mother’s full, so anybody’d have to build a winch to get a horse across, unless you come back then. That’s how chary the Queen is of her resin, sir: she don’t want none of us selling access to the crop.”
Harric appreciated the guardsman’s savvy. A quaver in his voice showed he was sincerely pissing himself with fear, but he also kept his head enough to maintain a difficult balance of deference and innocence so as to appear cooperative, which might mean he’d survive the ordeal.
“Open this postern, then,” Bannus croaked.
“I wants to, sirs. On my life I do. But my queen’s a harsh mistress. That iron door is locked as fast as the gate, I tell you. Living here’s like living in a prison: all locked and nowhere to go.”
“You dog of a man. I will tear your guts from your belly and feed Gygon your liver.”
“I hope not, great sir. But if you’re hungry, might be we could send some vittles across the wall. Not what you’d call fine fare, a’course, but you say the word and I will, only I can’t open no doors.”
Silence then, but for the roar of the falls beyond. Then the men on the wall ducked, and the familiar pop of spitfires sounded. A pair of fiery tails streaked above and arced into the rocks across the canyon, where resin wads made torches of bushes.
Harsh laughter from beyond as more spitfires popped and fire sprayed across the roof tiles of the cote and in several pigeon loops. The slate was impervious, but the timbers within caught fire, and soon the flames blazed in the loops like the fires of a furnace.
A man cried out inside. A blackheart flew from a lower loop. Spitfires sent streaks of fire across the bird’s zigzagging path. More of the fiery comets sprayed along the parapets, sending the two men ducking and crawling.
Bannus’s laughter rang above the noise. “There is no priest here, only dogs. But I shall return with men enough to scale your puny walls. And then we shall see about keys. Talbus! Make camp here on the road. Make certain no one leaves.”
A knight in orange armor responded by saluting, fist to chest, then shouted orders to make camp at the foot of a massive pillar of rock at the far end of the turnabout.
On the cliff above the turnabout, Harric saw movement.
Brolli pointed to the spot before Harric could indicate it. “You see it, yes? It is a guardsman. He creeps along a ledge above Bannus’s position.”
Harric shielded his eyes from the growing glare of the fires and attempted to scrutinize the dark face of the cliff. After a moment, he picked out a small figure creeping across the sheer face above Bannus’s position. A guard from the fort. The ledge he traversed originated somewhere behind the wall and slanted up across the cliff high above the roundabout. The man crouched a dozen fathoms above his enemies—if he dropped a pebble it might plink off Bannus’s helmet—but the ledge on which he stood spanned no wider than a stout man’s shoulders, so he was completely exposed if anyone chanced to look up.
As Harric watched, the guard halted midway across the cliff and stood frozen against the cliff. Harric soon realized why: though the darkness had kept him invisible to that point, the tower conflagration now illumined his position with increasing brightness. His shadow had begun to darken and dance across the cliff before him; he froze lest his movement betray him and his enemies feather him with arrows.
The fires also illumined the man’s destination above the far end of the roundabout. There the ledge disappeared into a vertical crack in the cliff that had formed when a massive tower of rock split away from the rest to lean drunkenly over the roundabout. The tower was as big as the fort itself, but leaned so severely it seemed a finger’s nudge could topple it.
“Is that another trail around the mountain?” Brolli whispered. “Another path we have missed? Maybe he thinks to escape on it.”
Harric shook his head. “I think they cut that path to get behind that pillar of rock. See how the ledge disappears into the crack behind it? I’ll bet they’ve packed that gap with blasting resin as a failsafe against attack. If that guard can reach it, Bannus is in for quite a surprise.”
The Kwendi’s eyes widened. “That is good!”
“It will be, if he can get there without being noticed. I bet he wishes he and his comrades had thought to build a cover wall along the ledge.”
Brolli grunted. “They start one, I think.” He pointed to the first ten paces or so of the ledge where it emerged above the fort wall. In the growing light, even Harric could see a stub wall of stacked rocks providing cover to that portion of the path. Brolli made a critical tsk. “They not finish it. But look! He tries.”
The man had begun to slide along the cliff with one hand against the cliff. As the flames of the tower grew taller, his shadow rippled across the cliff face, and Brolli made a little sigh of dismay. “He should lie and wait for the fire to die.”
As if on cue, a cry rang out among Bannus’s men.
The guardsman sprinted for the cover of the crack.
“Shoot him!” Bannus roared.
Crossbows thrummed. Bolts cracked against the stone around the running guardsman. One caught him in the leg, and he fell to his hands and knees. Before he could rise, another caught him in the ribs and buried itself to the feathers. He fell from the ledge, out of view.
Murmurs of dismay from the men on the parapets.
“Reload!” a knight cried. “Watch that ledge! Spitfires, get some light up there!”
A spitfire popped, then another, sending brilliant resin streaks across the night to splash white fire on the ledge.
“They never reach it now,” Brolli said. “That is shame.”
*
Harric and Brolli crept back along the cliff road, hugging the shadows when possible. When out of view of the burning tower, they jogged until they found Willard and Caris with the horses.
“What news?” Willard asked.
Brolli related the incident. When he finished, Willard seemed already unconscious, slumped forward against the front cantle of his saddle. “You know this Jamus?” Brolli asked. “He is the same that come to Gallows Ferry with Bannus?”
Willard opened one weary eye. “His grandsire joined me…in the Cleansing. Switched sides and saved his hide. Too shrewd by half. Jamus too. The Queen trusts him.”
“It seems our ruse at the gate succeeds, old man,” said Brolli. “Bannus turns about.”
Willard closed his eyes and sighed. “Gods leave that guardsman for his boldness. He’s likely trembling now, with no recollection of it at all.”
The Kwendi’s eyes glimmered in the moonlight. “I thought of it too. Your curse.”
Willard grunted. “This time it favors us well.”
“And Harric does nothing with magic there,” Brolli added. “In fact, he is good Arkendian. Sends pigeons from the cote and finds keys.”
Caris looked back over her shoulder at Harric, and then the Kwendi, as if she were uncertain whether Brolli were deceived or deceiving.
“Sent birds?” Willard’s eyes opened. “That’s it, boy. That’s what makes us strong.”
*
Harric followed on foot, now last in line behind Willard. The old knight’s hypocrisy galled him. On the one hand Willard reviled the use of magic, citing the Third Law. On the other he turned a blind eye if he benefited.
The case of the yoab was a clear emergency, as worthy of that blind eye as the situation at the pass had been. And yet Willard barely batted an eye at Brolli’s reliance on spellcraft. If they’d put their minds to it, could they not have found an Arkendian way past the gatehouse? Harric himself could have devised a sleeping drug from some of the roots in the region. Wouldn’t that have resulted in the desired outcome of making them stronger? And didn’t this reliance on magic therefore make them softer and weaker?
H
e studied the old knight as if he could read an answer in his posture. Willard slumped forward, and Harric realized with a shock that he looked as bad as any wounded man he’d ever seen in saddle. He might topple at any moment.
Harric called for a halt, and limped up beside Molly. Brolli joined him, and found Willard unresponsive. They coaxed the old man to drink some water, then Caris bound him between the fore and aft cantles with a spare lead line.
“That won’t hold him, but it might slow his fall.” Her strong hands put finishing touches on the knots.
When they started moving again, Harric’s anger at him passed, replaced by worry. The old knight was farther gone than he’d let on.
And perhaps it wasn’t hypocrisy but necessity. In cases of great import—such as when the Queen’s safety was at stake—perhaps survival trumped the Third Law.
Now there was a thought. He laid a hand on the witch-stone thumping his chest with each stride. If that were true, wouldn’t the knight’s reasoning justify the magic of invisibility in emergency service of the Queen? And didn’t the Queen live in a constant state of emergency?
Harric smiled. Possibilities glittered in his imagination. To serve the Queen as a courtier spy with the power of invisibility in his pocket. It had been such a thrill to slip into that dovecote on a true quest for the Queen; how much more so to slip past alert guards with true invisibility…like the Jack of Souls, the wild card, who tips a strong hand to certain victory. Even Willard would have to admit that magic was a potent tool for the Queen.
Voices whispered at the edge of consciousness—the witch-stone, Harric imagined, calling to him. The sound no longer frightened him, as it had when he thought it came from madness. Back in the dovecote, the stone had tried to help him, to warn him of danger. How then, could that be evil?
Nebecci. Bellana. Tryst.
He’d take it out that night, as soon as he could get away from the others, and speak the words to the spell. After that, even Brolli wouldn’t see him.
Our Court is infected with the disease of “tolerance.” Would our fathers’ fathers welcome Ibergs to our shores? Would they bargain with the magicks of the Kwendi? Beware, Arkendia! For today if one shows proper fear of magick in the Court, he is mocked, thought a lack-wit, old-fashioned. Hear me, Arkendia! Shun this tolerance! Return to the strength of our fathers!
—From “Virtue Undermined,” banned pamphlet, late reign of Chasia
26
The Witch
By the time the Mad Moon set, the soft gray light of dawn was enough to reveal the path along the river’s course. The walls of the canyon became less sheer, and the roads that had been cut into its walls gave way to a dirt path along the water’s edge. The trail led them along a wooded lake into a bowl of rocky peaks. In the middle of the lake was a bare grave island, with crude monuments erected by timbermen or trappers. At the foot of the lake stood a tall, crooked stone like an old man’s thumb. They stopped there for a brief rest, during which Brolli dubbed the aged stone “Willard’s Finger.”
“See what yours looks like after seven lives of battle,” Willard growled.
“The lake I name Willard’s Tub. May you live to make a soak in it.”
Beyond the lake, the mule track climbed a saddle of granite between peaks to descend into the adjoining watershed. A young forest of spoke-limb and ash trees greeted them on the other side, crowding the path with exuberant growth and limiting visibility to sixty paces. Ancient blackened stumps stood like rotten teeth amidst the riot of green, testament of fire in years past.
Caris stopped at the foot of a log bridge where a painted sign stood pegged to a post.
Royal Fire-Cone Range
Open Flame Forbidden Beyond This Point!
NO SPITFIRES
NO ADMITTANCE WITHOUT
ROYAL WARRANT
Turn Back
ON PAIN OF DEATH
By Order of
Her Majesty’s Fire-Cone Prelate
Sir Tilate Patche
“Let’s see how well you read, boy,” Willard mumbled. “What’s it say?” When Harric finished reading it aloud, Willard nodded. “We’re getting close, then.”
Caris pointed to the green-mantled ridge toward which they climbed. “When we reach the crest of that ridge, we’ll get our first view of the fire-cones.”
Similar signs dotted the mule track all the way to the ridge, each freshly painted and free of obstructing foliage, as if maintained by industrious sprites.
Though green from a distance, the ridge was bare and rocky, which allowed a brief but expansive view east over another forested valley to a yet higher ridge beyond, on whose loftiest spur stood a kingly stand of fire-cones. The golden spires soared into the sky like a many-towered castle in a ballad, and from their midst rose the black spike of the thunder-rod, half again as tall.
“That’s the lightning-stealer I told you about, Brolli,” Caris said. “Abellia’s tower is below it.”
Though the trunks of the fire-cones obscured much of the tower, the thunder-rod appeared to rise from its top like the mast of the ship, its giddy height made fast with a multitude of stays slanting down to the forest. To Harric the stays looked like the ribbons of a gigantic maypole, but he knew they were cables of steel.
“And that shine,” said Willard, pointing vaguely. “That shine in the top branches, that’s the resin cones. Her Majesty’s most valuable crop.”
“Magnificent,” said Brolli, peering through his daylids. “Fire-cone do not grow on our side of the Godswall. Your toolers are clever indeed, to steal the lightning and take the cones.”
Willard gazed dully across the valley, face haggard.
“We’ll get you there by sunset, sir,” said Caris.
Willard swallowed. “I admit, that tower looks mighty welcome.”
“Drink,” Brolli said, handing him a limp water skin.
“I should warn you about Mudruffle, Abellia’s servant,” Caris said as Willard drank.
Willard paused to breathe, as if raising the skin sapped his strength. He looked at Caris. “Who?”
Caris hesitated. “Well, Abellia is a little eccentric, of course…but Mudruffle. He’s actually strange.” She watched Willard as if the news might overtax him. “He’s made of clay, I think,” she added. “Abellia made him.”
Harric’s interest piqued. Willard stared, uncomprehending.
“You mean a magical creature?” said the Kwendi. “Like a shadow or trysting servant?”
“No, no, no—I mean, yes, but… You see, I was afraid of him at first, but he’s very sweet and kind, and he would never do magic on you if you didn’t want it. He is very respectful. Abellia made him, I think, out of sticks and clay.” Caris halted and watched their reactions.
Sir Willard raised an eyebrow. Harric expected the old knight to explode, but he merely nodded. “Seen such…in the Iberg capital. Harmless. Servants for cooking.” Willard closed his eyes again and rocked forward in the saddle as if he might faint. Brolli retrieved the water skin before Willard dropped it.
One gray eye opened and found Brolli. “This witch…Abellia. Your…first Iberg?”
“I see some on gallows. We kill one in Gallows Ferry, yes?”
Willard grunted. “Never so many here. Come for your…magic.”
Brolli nodded. “They are a magic-using people, yes?”
“But you…you bottle it. In witch-silver…yes?” Willard’s eyelids closed. He breathed heavily through a slack mouth, as if the effort of speaking might cause him to faint.
Brolli gave Harric a look of concern.
“I can explain,” Harric said. “The Ibergs never figured out how to use witch-silver. They’ve been seeking it for ages, with no luck. So they want to learn it from you.”
Brolli smiled. “I hear so. And she may to ask me for it; is that your meaning, old man?” Willard nodded. “It is not to trouble,” said Brolli. “I never to know how we make it. I only use it. So I cannot to tell her.”
*
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Upon reaching the far side of the valley, the mule track climbed the escarpment beneath the fire-cones, and the trees blazed orange in late evening light. Within a couple bowshots of the trees, the mountainside leveled to form a peaceful meadow with a chattering brook. The trail took them along the brook and above the meadow into a terraced garden.
Harric stopped his horse and stared. Many of the plants around him, which seemed merely healthy from a distance, turned out to be astoundingly huge and lush. Bean stocks grew like trees, grappling each other toward the sky; cabbages squatted like rockfalls of green and purple boulders. And the entire place had been manicured in a kind of weedless precision.
Caris saw the look on his face and laughed.
“Mudruffle has a bit of a green thumb,” Caris said.
“Green thumb?” Willard snorted. “Whole arm must be green.”
Harric glanced at the old knight. Willard seemed to find a second wind as they neared the promised destination—much like the horses, who responded to Rag’s eager whinnies by increasing their paces.
The track wound up the rocky spine of ridge in a series of switchbacks amid the fire-cone trunks and the sweet smell of resin. Like the garden below, the grove was meticulously kept: lower branches had been pruned to reduce fire danger, the tinder-like needles that collected beneath had been swept up to expose rock-grappling roots, and not a cone lay uncollected.
Once they gained the top, Harric spied the warden’s tower, and a pulse of excitement thrilled through him. This near, he could pick out the lanky rod of iron running up the timber mast; he could also see how the timbers of the mast itself had been lashed together with bands and bolts as thick as his wrist. Nearby, several cable stays swooped down to find anchor in the bedrock.
Caris halted their approach when only a bowshot from the tower. “We should leave the horses here.”
Brolli stirred from his blankets. He lifted the daylids to his forehead, and gazed about with sleepy golden eyes. “Ah.” He yawned. “We’re here. Scat, cat.”
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