by Julian May
Snudge and the four young armigers serving the prince’s Companions and the alchymist also slept in the accounts room, but they were obliged to remain below for most of their waking hours, waiting on the nobles or the prince.
This evening, Snudge and the other boys finished clearing the table after the Companions’ supper, gobbled their own, and put the soiled platters and leftovers outside the door for the castle staff to dispose of. Count Tayman, a genial Westleyman of two-and-twenty, challenged the other Companions to a session of picture-dice and called upon two of the armigers to serve them that evening while they gamed.
“Saundar and Belamil will play lute and flageolet,” he said, “and keep us well-supplied with refreshments. Mero, Gavlok and Deveron may take their ease after turning down the beds and laying out fresh garb for tomorrow.”
“Yes, my lord,” the boys chorused. The lucky ones darted off among the bookshelves to open up the beds of the noblemen, which had mattresses of doubled bearskin, silken sheets, and pillows stuffed with eiderdown.
“I’ll fix the alchymist’s bed while you take your ease at the fire, Gavlok,” Snudge volunteered after they had finished, looking for an excuse to go upstairs. “Maybe I’ll take a nap before His Grace returns and has need of me.”
Stergos’s quiet, studious squire gave him a grateful smile. “I thank you, Deveron.”
“You’re such a kind fellow, stable boy,” sneered Mero, who served Count Feribor Blackhorse. “Be damned sure we’ll tell Prince Conrig you’re lazing away in the sack if you’re not down here on the spot when he returns.”
The armiger was a burly redheaded youth who had just turned nineteen, nearly as tall as his formidable master. But where Blackhorse was so slyly sadistic that you might pass off his cruelties as unintentioned, Mero was a flagrant bully who used his position to terrorize the pages and servitors back at Brent Lodge, the prince’s hunting residence, where they had lived for the past month. Mero was usually more circumspect with the armigers of the other Heart Companions and with Gavlok, the bookish lad who served the Doctor Arcanorum, confining himself to verbal assaults. When Conrig had unaccountably chosen Deveron Austrey, his young footman, rather than a nobly born youth as bodyservant on the secret mission to Castle Vanguard, Mero was incensed, as though the presence of a commoner—even one who could read, write, and reckon—in the royal party were a personal affront. He had been imprudent enough to complain to Count Feribor. The blackened eye he received for his pains was now a muddy yellowish-green. With fine illogic, Mero had sworn to revenge himself on the upstart footman, but a suitable opportunity had not yet presented itself.
Snudge hurried up the iron staircase to the accounts room. He’d have to act quickly on the roof; the alchymist would not be attending the council of war and might return to the tower at any moment. Rummaging in his pack, he found a small roll of cloth containing short lengths of wire of varying thicknesses, cunningly bent, tools he well knew the use of.
The door leading to the guardroom stair was locked, but a brief fiddle with one of the wires caused it to snap open. Snudge bounded up the steps and dashed through an armory crowded with compact defense engines—mangons and ballistas and catapults—along with wicker baskets of rocks, vires, and other missiles, stacked braziers, buckets of charcoal, cauldrons of solidified pitch, and crates of spherical iron bombshells packed with tarnblaze, having lengths of tarry cord protruding through their nozzles. The door opening onto the roof was only latched.
Outside, he saw the sun descending behind jagged black peaks while the snow-covered slopes of Demon Seat glowed pink with lavender shadows. The air was dead calm. Smoke from the castle chimneys and from buildings in the town beyond the outer ward and the curtain wall rose straight in blue-white columns. The first spunkies, like infinitesimal earthbound stars, began to sparkle in a patch of marshy waste ground below the castle’s knoll. He heard a dog bark. Someone down in the inner ward cursed a squealing horse. The shrill laughter of women came from the covered colonnade around the castle spring.
Snudge clapped hands over his ears, shut his eyes, and let the wind bear him away.
And immediately found watchers. Not one, but two!
Then came the difficult part. He felt himself sinking to his knees, finally flopping prone as the strength drained from his body and empowered his mind. He followed the thread of the first watcher, whose windsign he recognized too well, for hundreds of leagues northward.
The scene seemed hazy, as though obscured by thin gauze, since he viewed it at such a great distance; but the details were clear enough. Snudge seemed to soar over flats of black quicksand exposed at low tide toward a ramshackle castle nestled between crags above a misty estuary. The place was Royal Fenguard, seat of the rulers of Moss. This time there was no blocking cover-spell at the terminus of the trace, as had invariably been the case when he attempted to spy on her previously. Invisible as the wind, he seemed to pass through the bubbly glass of an illuminated window in the tall south tower.
And saw her: Ullanoth sha Linndal, daughter of the Conjure-King, only eighteen years of age but having the imposing presence of one much older. She was standing motionless in the middle of a room crowded with books, alchemical apparatus, and arcane objects of unknown function. On one side of her stood a tall candlestick, but the indistinct object it held was not a candle, although it glowed weakly.
The sorceress wore a flowing gown of leaf-green satin, the skirt and sleeve drapes gold-embroidered in an elaborate pattern of bulrushes. Her long unbound hair, almost luminous in the candlelight, was a strange pale hue—silvery with the kind of faint rosy undertone found in the lining of certain seashells. The narrow face had prominent cheekbones, an elegant long nose, and milk-white skin. Her eyelids were closed to enhance her oversight of Castle Vanguard, their thick dark lashes resting upon her cheeks.
After a time her thread of watching snapped and she opened her eyes. They were large as a doe’s and at first appeared to be green, but almost immediately their color changed as the sea does in late evening, becoming slate-grey, and then turning to an uncanny black. She smiled and refreshed herself with a drink from a golden cup, then took down a long cloak of midnight blue that hung from a wall peg. Donning it, she pulled its hood closely over her bright hair. Finally, she pulled something from the bosom of her gown—a small pendant on a chain that shone with the same faint radiance as the object on the candlestick.
At one wall of the room was a peculiar piece of padded furniture that resembled a narrow couch raised on end by means of a frame. It was tilted at a sharp angle and had rails at the side and a footrest to keep one from slipping off. Ullanoth arranged herself upon this and gripped the neck pendant tightly. Her mouth moved in soundless speech as she pronounced some elaborate spell, and even though Snudge could read lips, the words were incomprehensible to him.
He watched in awe. The small pendant in her hand blazed up like some miniature greenish lamp. Its nature was impossible to discern. The princess uttered a deep groan of pain. Her body seemed to shimmer, expand… and become two identical cloaked forms: a true body and a Sending, floating in mid-air beside the slanted couch. It was a rare magical talent, far beyond the abilities of the Brothers of Zeth, and Snudge knew of it only through reading occult books that he regularly borrowed—without permission—from the library of the Royal Alchymist back at Cala Palace.
The Sending drifted down until it stood upright, looking perfectly natural. The body on the couch, on the other hand, lay as motionless and pallid as a corpse. After glancing about the chamber, the Sending frowned as if it had forgotten something, then gestured at the tall candlestick with the faintly glowing object atop it. There was a brilliant emerald flash. The interior of Ullanoth’s tower vanished from Snudge’s oversight, as impenetrable to his scrying as it had always been before this night.
He knew, without knowing how, that the Sending was no longer inside the tower. It was flying on the wind directly toward him like some unseen wraith. But how ha
d she managed to windwatch him when no one else could? He braced himself, too astounded even for terror, expecting her to materialize in front of him there on the roof.
Expecting quick death from a sorceress furious that he had spied on her…
But no. She had not been coming at him after all!
He smothered an oath as the Sending soared down into the great hall of Castle Vanguard and disappeared into the heavy shadows at the rear of the musicians’ gallery. An instant later Prince Conrig slipped out of the secret passage and began his scrutiny of the diners below him, not knowing Princess Ullanoth was there.
Snudge had windwatched her with Conrig twice before, when she came to Brent Lodge and conversed with the prince and Stergos. The boy had not realized then that her body was a magical simulacrum until she herself spoke casually of the miracle in her conversation with the brothers. After each visit, the double had returned to Fenguard, where it disappeared behind a shielding spell infinitely stronger than the puny sort Snudge himself was capable of spinning. He had never before been able to oversee the Mosslander princess in her home because of that spell.
With the subjects of his viewing now close by, Snudge watched with less effort as the prince was accosted by the cloaked woman. He read his master’s lips easily during the ensuing colloquy and wished he could know what the shrouded witch said about Vra-Stergos that caused the prince to blanch in dismay. But all too soon the Sending withdrew and returned to its gloomy castle above the Darkling Sands. There the familiar strong spell of couverture shut him out.
The second watching presence remained.
Its aim was more expertly focused than that of Ullanoth, less obvious to a searcher, and concentrated upon the solar chamber where the council of war was to take place. With the greatest caution, Snudge traced the thread of oversight backwards through the wind, only to discover that its source lay within Castle Vanguard itself—somewhere in the vicinity of the stables, directly across the inner ward from the repository tower.
It was impossible for him to oversee this scryer. To his astonishment, he was blocked by another sort of covering spell quite different from the shield at Fenguard, very compact and well-constructed, rendering the watcher invisible. But this was impossible! The person was windwatching, and no magical practitioner could perform more than one arcane task at a time—
“Deveron! Where are you?” It was the voice of Vra-Stergos, down in the accounts room.
Cursing under his breath, the boy thought for a split second to use his talent to hide. But his ability to conceal himself from normal folk and minor talents wouldn’t faze an ordained Brother of Zeth. Stergos would scry him out eventually and be all the more furious. Best to take his medicine.
He scrambled to his feet, left the roof, passed through the guardroom, and came down to stand sheepishly before the Doctor Arcanorum. The tall redheaded armiger Mero was there as well, with folded arms and an expression of malicious glee.
“There! I told you, my lord doctor. The knave picked the lock and went up to snoop in the guardroom, maybe thinking to steal something. He deserves a good whipping! Shall I—”
“Go down and join your mates,” Stergos told the young man with a grimace of distaste. “You, Deveron, come into my cubicle.”
When Mero was gone, clearly disappointed at not being able to witness Snudge’s punishment, Stergos said, “Sit there, then tell me truthfully what you were about.” The partially walled recess had a small window, through which the fading crimson sky was visible. A clerk’s desk had been appropriated by the alchymist for his own books, and he now seated himself at it and gestured for the boy to take a stool.
Snudge had no intention of lying. “My lord, I was exercising my talent. Out on the roof.”
“I knew it! Oh, Deveron, you gave your word you wouldn’t spy on the council of war—”
“Nor did 1.1 perceived a windwatcher and felt it was my duty to trace the person. I was successful. It was Lady Ullanoth, and she fashioned a magical duplicate of herself and engaged Prince Conrig here in the castle.”
“Blessed Zeth!” Unlike the inexperienced boy, who knew little of magical technicalities and would never have willingly betrayed the prince’s secret, the Doctor Arcanorum was well aware that a Sending could come only to one who was talented. Stergos had harbored suspicions about his brother ever since Conrig and he were accosted—apparently for the first time—by Ullanoth’s double at Brent Lodge. “Did you… do your lip-reading trick?”
“As well as I could, my lord.”
“Tell me!” When the boy hesitated, Stergos added, “You must. The prince trusts this witch, but I don’t. We may have to protect him from her. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
Snudge nodded. Ullanoth made him uneasy, too, and not only because of her magic. Her beauty would inflame a marble statue, and Snudge was not made of stone.
“His Grace was in the musicians’ gallery looking down on the duke and the others. Ullanoth wore a hooded cloak that concealed her features, so I couldn’t tell what she might be saying. At first, Prince Conrig seemed to be hearing good news from her. He was pleased. Then his mood changed to concern, and he asked her if she could break some spell and discover what they were doing.”
“They?” Stergos repeated.
“I have no idea who he meant. Ullanoth replied in some manner that disturbed the prince mightily. He said, ‘Must you invoke those dire creatures? Isn’t there any other kind of sorcery that’ll serve our purposes?’”
Stergos drew in a sharp breath. “The Beaconfolk! God help us, I tried to warn him that she might use them to implement this scheme. But he would hear nothing against her… What else did you hear, lad?”
Snudge told how Conrig had asked if he should tell the council of war how Ullanoth helped formulate the Edict of Sovereignty, and how he had also said that it would be awkward to explain their friendship to Duke Tanaby and the earl marshal, since the two of them had never truly met face-to-face.
“And then came the most puzzling thing. His Grace and the lady spoke of you, my lord.” Snudge hesitated. “The prince said, ‘My brother will never tell a lie, even for me.’ The lady spoke. Then the prince said, ‘He is my brother. I love him.’ And his words seemed weighted with anger and fear.”
“Damn her!” the doctor whispered, knowing what Ullanoth must have told Conrig. His face twisted like one in pain. “Is there more?”
“Only that His Grace said he would do what was best. Then the Sending left him… and so I went in search of the second watcher.”
“A second—!”
“Aye, my lord. And one who is apparently far more adept than the lady, for he can perform two magidal actions at once. He’s hiding somewhere within the castle stables, well-covered by some superior spell so that I was unable to locate him precisely, much less identify him. He watches the council of war.”
Stergos uttered a moan. “Oh, God. Oh, God. And I perceived nothing. Nothing! What are we going to do?”
“If I may suggest—”
“What?” The doctor’s dismay turned to alarm as the boy explained.
“Let me go down through the ‘tween-wall passages and see if I can find this fellow. Perhaps he’s visible to the naked eye, even though windsight can’t scry him. He may be a wild talent… just like me! He must be someone in the entourage of one of the lords, for you know the duke didn’t allow any casual travelers or other strangers to enter the castle during this secret gathering. Since he’s in the stables, he may be disguised as a horse lackey. If he is visible, he could pretend to be drunk or sleeping and no one would suspect what he was doing.”
“If he should discover you—” Stergos broke off fearfully. “He must be a talent of great power, Deveron, to exert two magical functions at the same time. Even Ullanoth gave some hint to me of her watching, although I couldn’t be sure of her. But not this unknown—working his sorcery practically on top of us! If he’s spying on the council, he must be a mortal enemy of our prince. He migh
t not hesitate to kill you.”
“He won’t realize I’m a danger to him. Not if I just seek him out and give him a casual glance. Just another housecarl without an adept bone in my body.”
“It might work,” Stergos said grudgingly. It was a sore point to him that Snudge’s wild talent was imperceptible to the anointed of his Mystic Order, to say nothing of the fact that the boy was capable of identifying even the smallest modicum of talent in others.
“Shall I go, then? I won’t get lost. I’ve already explored most of the passages on this side of the ward. I did it last night, while you were all asleep. I even made a dark lantern for myself out of an old pewter tankard and a candle.”
Stergos sighed. “I might have known… Very well. Do your best to find out who the villain is, or who he pretends to be. Be quick about it and don’t take any dangerous chances. His Grace and I will decide what to do about him.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“If only I could watch over you…”
But that was impossible. Even though Stergos, like most of the Zeth Brethren, had the ability to scry over short distances, Snudge’s wild talent protected him from any sort of magical surveillance, a fact that particularly delighted Prince Conrig at the same time that it dismayed his brother.
“I’ll take great care, my lord. Don’t worry about me.”
“Oh, all right,” the doctor grumped. “But if you get into serious trouble, bespeak me at once and I’ll do my best to help you.”
“Of course, my lord.” He bobbed his head and slipped out of the cubicle, leaving Stergos full of misgivings but at a loss to know what else to do.
Chapter Four
The boy made his way to the area where the armigers had laid their straw-stuffed palliasses. He rummaged in his pack for a moment, then hurried to the opposite side of the tower. Three document presses stood there. The left-hand one had a few ancient crocks of dried-out ink on its lower shelf. Snudge pushed them aside so he could creep in and touch a small stud at the rear of the cabinet, causing a low door to slide soundlessly open. When he was safe inside in the dark he paused for a moment, then struck fire with his talent, lighting the wick of the candle inside his lantern.