Well, if Forinel was dead, then the spell wouldn't have worked. Perhaps, just for once, Miron meant just what he said.
"If he could be located ..."
"Possibly," Miron said. "My mother, a few years ago, said she had made a search for anything of his that remained in the castle. A garment, a lock of hair – his baby teeth; anything that a good wizard might be able to use to help us find out if he still lived."
Translation: she scoured the castle, and had anything that might lead somebody to Forinel burned.
Walter had suspected as much, but it was nice to have some confirmation. And nicer to have further confirmation that Miron didn't know that Leria had Forinel's ring.
Well, then, let's see how good he is, on half a dozen levels.
Disdaining a helmet – Aiea had his vest with its hidden vial of healing draughts, just in case – he squared off against Miron.
Their practice swords crossed, and it didn't take more than a moment for Walter to realize that he was facing a better swordsman than Walter had ever been. Miron's blade moved like quicksilver, never quite where Walter thought it would be, and while in their first pass Miron didn't – quite – touch him, it was just a matter of the younger man playing with Walter.
It was just as well that they were just using practice swords.
Except, of course, for that strange hesitation. It was just a moment, just a hint of robbed time, but it was there whenever Miron did that particular high-line parry on retreat. A good swordsman – Jason Cullinane for certain,
Walter Slovotsky as well – could go right through that hesitation and into the heart.
With a real sword.
So: Walter Slovotsky had a real sword. He had planted it here, a sword with a slightly loose tip, not quite welded on properly, and while he was by no means a match for Miron, he could thrust right through his hesitation and into his heart.
Miron scored easily, with a touch on Walter's sword arm.
"Another point," Walter Slovotsky said, fiddling with the tip. "If you please."
"I am rather fatigued – "
"Another point, if you please," Walter repeated as he saluted, and advanced without waiting for Miron to return the salute. He was rushed, as this would be his only chance at Miron – yes, he had planted the sword, and his having loosened or perhaps removed the tip was the reason that he uncharacteristically kept his sword in constant motion.
A slight widening of Miron's eyes was his only reaction.
Their blades crossed, yet again, and Walter tried the high-line attack, just as he had done before, and just as he had seen Miron's sparring partner do before.
It would be simple. All he would have to do was renew the attack on the low line, and go right through Miron's hesitation and into his –
Miron parried the thrust smoothly, then ended the point with a solid touch on Walter Slovotsky's chest that stung.
Miron stepped back and dropped his own sword to the ground, his palms raised, fingers spread. "Enough, Walter Slovotsky, if you please," he said, panting more than he had to. "You're too good an opponent for me to take on when I'm so tired. Perhaps I can give you another match, some other time."
Walter Slovotsky nodded. "That would be nice," he said.
Miron smiled. "Oh – you might want to have that practice sword seen to? If my eye doesn't betray me, the tip seems a little loose."
"Really?"
Even Jason would have had to have seen it: the whole hesitation had just been a maneuver, a gambit, intending to trap Jason into a fight that he could not win, not when he was planning to exploit a weakness that wasn't there.
Was it Miron's intent to kill Jason in the fight? Or just use the misbehavior of the former heir apparent to the imperial throne as evidence of imperial betrayal, evidence that could only be washed away by the obvious concession?
Walter knew which way he would bet.
It was probably best to be underrated by an opponent, but perhaps there was some virtue in letting Miron know that he wasn't the only person around here capable of some subtlety. There was an argument to letting Miron think he had won more in winning this match than he had, and an argument in having him know that he had won less.
So Walter Slovotsky furrowed his brow, looked carefully at the thoroughly welded tip of the sword, and shook his head. "I think it's just fine," he said, and tossed it, hilt-first, to the younger man. "I don't know what would make you think it otherwise."
He walked back to where Aiea, Jason, and Toryn were waiting.
Jason nodded. "Point taken, Uncle Walter," he said, quietly.
Aiea looked up at him and shook her head.
She was probably right: he shouldn't have given anything away. Miron was dangerous enough – and so was Tyrnael. But Miron was good enough to tempt Walter Slovotsky into the weakness of showing where his strength lay.
Had that been the purpose of this all along? Did Miron play a deep enough game that his little maneuver with the hesitation was intended to see if he could get Walter to reveal Walter's own ability to look through something that subtle?
Shit, shit, shit. The fact that Walter was even considering such wheels within wheels within wheels was the sign of a bad situation getting worse. That was the trouble with layering subtlety on shade on nuance – it would be easy to be so busy reaching for a fine distinction that you would be wide open for a simple club across the head.
It was a politician's trap, and Walter Slovotsky had, willy-nilly, become a politician.
It had happened to St. Thomas More, after all, too caught up in fine distinctions of what silence could mean to notice that the game was rigged or to realize that the only thing that stood between him and the executioner's axe was the Channel.
Hurry up, you folks, he thought. This one's not just slippery, he's smart. Too smart.
But what if Forinel couldn't be persuaded to come back? What if they couldn't even find him? Well, they had the ring.
And if he was alive . . . what if he couldn't be persuaded to come back?
That was easy. It wasn't accidental that Walter Slovotsky had sent Pirojil and Kethol: they would drag Forinel back by the scruff of his neck if they needed to.
They needed him badly.
It needn't be for long, after all. If Miron was no longer the heir apparent to the barony, that made him far more expendable, and maybe he could even be expended.
Hurry up, guys. We need him, and now.
Chapter 22
Therranj
The elven city spread out below them, although Erenor could see only a small part of it, and he was sure he could feel only a small part more.
Still, it raised the sort of question that Pirojil would probably like to think about: was it a city embedded in a forest, or a forest embedded in a city?
Tall, thin spires, sparkling like diamonds in the morning sunlight, reached up above the leafy canopy that concealed Therranj below, but they looked, well, more grown than built, as though they were crystalline frameworks that had grown up along with the ancient trees. A single road led from the forest only a short way, until it vanished into the grasslands, where a herd of antelope grazed, heedless of the dragon cruising far above. These days, in these times, cougars were more of a threat, and humans far more so.
They wouldn't have been so heedless before, not while Kethol was busy vomiting, over the side, Erenor thought, unable to smile about that anymore. He tried to keep a sense of humor about others' problems, but it was hard to maintain a proper detachment over gagging sounds.
Ellegon banked into a slow, wide turn.
Beyond the far ridge of hills was the Home settlement, what the Therranji called the Vale of Varnath. It was a noisy place, filled with sounds of laughing children and working engines, and while those sounds were far too distant, a smudge of smoke on the horizon spoke of something belching smoke up into the air. A different sort of magic, this engineering thing, and Erenor wasn't sure he approved of it.
Here, though, it was quie
t – save for the rushing of air – and the only smell at this height was a distant reek of humus from the forest.
He closed his eyes to filter out the rest of the world, leaving him with only his inner sight.
Powerful fires glowed below, some in familiar colors – a flaming doran threatening in one place; a cool owgre, darker but more sallow than the green of the trees over there; a lush, patterned digovi far away – others in shades and hues that he had never seen before, with inner or outer vision. Erenor sensed other fires, somewhere, powerful enough to hide not only their location, but their nature, and that made him feel for a moment like he did during sword practice with Kethol: clumsy, useless, beyond hope.
Elves.
It was a mistake to see them as the tall counterpart of the Moderate People, or perhaps it was a mistake to see the Moderate People as being as simple as they appeared to be, as well. It wasn't just a matter of power, but of much more subtle difference, as though what you saw and felt – even with your inner sight – of elves was only part of what they were, as though the rest was embedded in Faerie itself.
Maybe it was like a worm felt as it lay next to another worm. Yes, you could see one end of it, and you could see that the other end stretched out into the distance. Perhaps it was as long as you were, just differently positioned. Or perhaps it was much longer, and you were only equipped to see part of it. Or maybe it was infinitely long.
Perhaps it was something that a simple hedge wizard, even one with a fairly advanced specialty in and skill at illusion, was never going to understand.
*Check the ring,* Ellegon's mental voice commanded.
*Are we still going in the same direction, or have we passed over where he is?*
Lady Leria had kept the ring hidden on her – exactly where, Erenor could only enjoy speculating, and thought that he had better not do so aloud, all things considered – until this morning, when Ellegon and Erenor had prevailed upon her to give it to him.
He was probably the right choice. Pirojil and Kethol were simultaneously both too suspicious and too trusting of magic. Enchanted rings had a legendary way of disappearing when you needed them, so this one was trusted to two separate thongs – both tied to the ring, not merely looped through it – each knotted separately around Erenor's neck, so that the thongs would have to be not merely lifted over his head, but untied or cut in order to remove it.
It still left enough play for Erenor to hold the warm golden ring in the palm of his hand – why did a piece of gold seem to hold more warmth than its size and weight justified? – and while wizards were legendarily clumsy, Erenor was no legend, and his fingers could as easily feel a slight tug in one direction or another as they could prevent tugging on a purse while the slim blade concealed between index and middle finger of his other hand sliced the bottom out of that purse.
There was the slightest of pulls to the left, to the east to – nowhere. Nowhere? That couldn't be. The spell had been put on the ring by
Henrad, and even Erenor could see that the wizard's flame burned hot and deep, a blazing redor that would probably consume Henrad's sanity, eventually, if not much more.
Nowhere?
Another circle, please.
His pulse raced, and he tried to slow it, and calm himself.
There had to be a reasonable explanation. If they were directly over Forinel, well, that would explain it. The pull would be down, and with the way the dragon bumped up and down with every pulse of a wingbeat, it would be difficult even for hands as sensitive as Erenor's to feel the added weight, and compare that with what it had been but moments before.
*Hang on. I'm going to climb, and then glide.*
Erenor had never quite figured out how Ellegon could pull his huge bulk into the sky faster than his beating wings would justify, but it probably wasn't important, or at least not to Erenor.
*Wizards are supposed to be curious.*
Well, I am curious. Just not about everything, all the time. I'm fond of women, but that doesn't mean that every time I meet one I feel the immediate need to unbutton my trousers, either.
Ellegon eased the climb into a shallow glide. Far below, the forest slid by beneath, until they were once again over the grasslands, and the ring was tugging back, toward Therranj.
But...
But they were leagues to the south of where they'd left the forest – either that, or the herd of antelope had skittered north further and faster than any such beast could run.
And it still pulled, just north of east, as though ...
*This is not good.*
Back to where the ring stopped working?
The dragon's head was strained forward, into the wind, but it felt in Erenor's mind like Ellegon nodded. *There was a plaza... *
Erenor nodded.
Chapter 23
Ti'een the Messenger
His leather wings beating fast enough to make a deafening buzz, the dragon landed with a more than usually hard thump.
*Be thankful it wasn't harder,* Ellegon said. *I'm trying my best.*
"I am." Really, I am.
Kethol was thankful, just not very thankful. He was very thankful that he wasn't flying, at least not at the moment. It was all he could do to keep his fingers from shaking as he disengaged the harness and quickly made his way down the dragon's side in order to be able to be the one to help Leria down to the ground.
The dragon had landed on a circular stone plaza, a dunam or so of unpolished marble surrounding a fountain in its center. The tall, vine-wrapped, huge-boled trees that lined the edge of the plaza shielded them from any direct sunlight, as well as most of the breeze that had flattened the plains grasses. Even so, as a stream of water shot up high into the air before splashing down into the high-rimmed bowl of the fountain, a fine mist was dispersed into the air, alternately cooling and ignoring Kethol, as the whims of the changing winds led it.
*Hmmm.. . ,* Ellegon ducked his saurian head and sipped at the water in the fountain. *Quite good. Where does the rest of the water go? – this tastes of a spring, and ah... I see.*
The dragon curled himself around the fountain, like a cat around a ball. *I don't see how I can do much of anything except wait here,* he said, *unless you want me burning down the whole forest to make a path, and I think that might get us talked about, even if I could do it. It would take a while.*
The trees... you couldn't see the tops of them, not from here; canopies of leaves made it difficult to see any farther than where limbs branched out, some as low as a manheight or two in the air. Ancient scars, most partly covered by the thick vines that twisted up the sides of the trees, told of long-trimmed branches near ground level, and an occasional wide, flat arc of bark-clad root made him wonder if the roots went even deeper below the ground than the branches went above it.
There were only hints of anything beyond the plaza: three cobbled paths that bent quickly around one of the leafy giants, disappearing into the forest; a few shiny crystalline edges peeking through the leaves.
But the forest was alive. Something small rustled through the vines around the base of the nearest tree, and while Kethol couldn't see any birds, the throaty warble of a yellow thrush called out from high above, answered – or, at least, so it sounded – by the braying of a jackdaw.'
He sniffed the air. Off in the distance, there was the vaguest reek of skunk – pleasant, at the distance – and that seemed to cover any other smell, save for the pleasant, musky background of rotting humus on the forest floor.
"Which way?" he asked, as he turned to Erenor.
The wizard shrugged. "I don't know."
Kethol took a step toward him. "You didn't lose – " He stopped himself as Erenor produced the ring from inside his tunic, still tied to both thongs.
"No, I didn't lose it," Erenor said, grinning. He dangled the ring by its thong, held between thumb and forefinger.
"No, I didn't lose it." The ring simply hung there. "It's just stopped working, or, at least, it seems to have just stopped wo
rking."
Kethol looked down. That meant that Forinel was buried under this plaza, as the ring –
"No, no, no," Erenor said, "if that was the case, it would have drawn us here, not merely have stopped doing anything. And were he dead – which he isn't, Lady Leria, I am willing to bet much on that – I find it a strange coincidence that he would have died just as we were flying over the plains, toward Therranj."
"Then what do you attribute it to?" a new voice asked, from behind him, high and reedy.
Kethol spun, his hand going to the hilt of his sword, stopping the motion when Pirojil covered Kethol's hand with his own.
"Be still," Pirojil said.
An elf stood in front of him, easily a head taller than Kethol himself was. Tall, his almost preposterously slim form more mocked than disguised by the gray cloak that he held loosely closed in front of him with one hand. His ears certainly came to a point under the shock of white hair that concealed them, and his chin was sharp, and pointed, as well.
It was impossible to tell his age, not even on an if-onlyhe-had-been-a-human basis. While his hair was white, it was the gleaming white of fresh snow, not a graying of age, and the skin of his face had neither the glow of youth nor the thinness of aging to it.
"Erenor, wizard, former student of the late, lamented Descobar, greets you," Erenor said, formally, his hands clasped in front of him in a bow.
"Ah." The elf smiled. "If you wish to know my name, why not merely ask? It's not a secret, and unless I miss my guess entirely, you're not master of sufficient dominatives or instigators to do any sort of naming spell under favorable circumstances, much less here, much less now." The elf ducked his head, fractionally: a bow, yes, but one to an inferior. "I am Ti'een," he said. "No real wizard, nor one with any pretensions to such. I'm known as Ti'een the Messenger, and I bring you a message from Lord Forinel – "
"Forinel? He's well?"
Kethol found himself hating the breathlessness in Leria's voice.
“– if," the elf said, looking at Leria with visible distaste, something more than mere irritation, "if I may be permitted to speak without interruption. Lord Forinel says: 'We shall arrive shortly, having been delayed by illness. Please wait.' "
Not Quite Scaramouche Page 24