Salamander

by David D. Friedman

  He tried to throw his perception north to the top of the pass, failed. For a moment, he was lost in a wilderness of snow and trees. He pulled back. Better, if slower, the way he knew, the road he had many times ridden. Up the road into the pass, mind moving faster than any rider. At the top of the pass, the head of the army. Within it a dozen mages, each linked to him by a line of light, their own power dimmed. He would deal with them, but first their work. His mind's vision scanned the mountain slope, searching for magery.

  Something was wrong; holding the vision in his mind was getting harder and harder, the picture shredding away at the edges into mist. The magery that filled him, still far more than his own, was less than it had been. He had spent too much of the pool. He needed to wait while it refilled sufficiently to let him finish his set task. Kieron let go the vision of pass and mountain. He knew that, when he wished, he could have it back. He opened his eyes.

  He was still standing in the same room, its stone floor marked up with chalk, the center of a star of mages. He drew in deep breaths of the cold air. Closed his eyes.

  The lines linking him to the mages in the north tower were gone, with them the two brighter lines of fire. Even as he watched, one of the other lines blinked out.

  "It didn't work."

  Mari looked up from the chessboard at the tone of the Prince's voice; Kir kept his eyes focused on the pieces. "The spell?"

  "The spell. I don't know what went wrong—everything seemed to be going fine, and nobody casting it got burned up this time. I think it may buy us a little time—I don't expect any enemy mages in the pass will be doing much for the next few hours. And I managed to destroy quite a lot of the Earls' supplies. But it was supposed to do a lot more than that, at least stop the magery thawing the pass. And with luck kill the mages controlling it. Perhaps if I had moved faster… but the spell ran out sooner than I expected."

  "What happens now?"

  "What happens now is that Eirick and his allies lay siege to the castle and the Forstings bring a real army over the pass to help them. Even if one of your father's messengers gets through—and with the North rising against us that's far from certain—it's going to take longer for the royal forces to get through the rebels, assuming they can, than we can expect to hold out. Especially with almost no mages.

  "Your friend Ellen has extraordinary abilities, as I discovered to my cost some time back. I am going to ask her if she can get you and Kir out and away to someplace safe—east to your father’s lands if she can manage it. If the keep falls, I expect the marcher lords and their allies will move on the capital."

  "And you?"

  "Will do my best to make myself a bad prophet. With magister Coelus to help, and good fortune, we might have a chance."

  "Father, look. The sky's burning."

  Kieron spun around. Two steps took him to the window; he undid the catch, swung the two sides in. The shutters were open already. The sky was red with reflected fire. The whole top of Fire Mountain was ablaze, a thin trickle of lava pouring down the side.

  Into the pass.

  * * *

  Durilil lay in bed, eyes closed, mind wrapped in fire, watching. The burning mountain was too far for unaided perception, even his, but to the Salamander all fires were one; merged in it, he could look out of the mountain at what he had done. There was a limit to how much a human mage could channel, but none for the Salamander during the hours it had poured its fire directly into the mountain's heart. The crust of rock that had roofed the Northfire was gone, the accumulation of decades melted away in days.

  The south end of the pass was filled with steam where lava pouring out of a crack in the mountain's side boiled off the snow and ice that still choked that end of the pass. The north end, already swept clean by magery, was clear. Someone on the Forsting side had kept his head; lines of troops were streaming north out of the pass in an orderly torrent, leaving behind piles of abandoned supplies. Where the slow advance of lava had reached the rear of the debris, a siege engine was burning.

  Between the burning engine and the rear of the retreating army, a man was sitting his horse, looking uphill towards the lava. Curious, the mage let the vision expand. Ten miles and more from where Durilil lay in the keep, and even he had his limits, but perhaps … .

  Iolen took a last look at the road home; no magery, whether from the Forsting guild or the College, would open it again until the mountain subsided. It would go hard on the loyal earls, but there was nothing he could do beyond persuading the Einvald to offer refuge to those who escaped the failed rising. Fredrik, still vigorous, might make it even in winter over the high pass that his castle guarded, but he had little hope for Eirick. As to his own position, whatever had gone wrong had been the failure of Forsting magery, not of his part in the plan.

  That would do him little good if he chose to remain where he was until the lava reached him. He reluctantly turned his horse about and started after the tail of the army which should have put him on the throne his father had lost. As the road emerged from the crease between Fire Mountain and its eastern neighbor the left side dropped away. Iolen held his horse hard to the road's right.

  Just in front of him, a stand of dried grass burst into flame; he wondered how the volcano had reached so far. The horse shied left; he snatched at the reins too late.

  Chapter 26

  Duchess Gianna took a final look over the scene, nodded to the servants to open the doors. The dining room in the residence was smaller than the Keep's great hall—also more comfortable and, with fires blazing on both hearths, warmer. A much more suitable site for her purposes. Later in the evening Castellan Bertil would carry the news to the Keep; between them they had made suitable arrangements for celebration by the garrison.

  Gianna watched Mari and Prince Kieron come in, not quite hand in hand. Certainly a daughter to be proud of. The one skill that mattered in the long run was that of choosing friends wisely and winning their love. If she was not very much mistaken, the triumph about to be announced was as much Mari's work as hers.

  Looking down the table, she noticed that Mari had put Kir next to her, beyond him her friend Ellen. A delightful if odd young lady, but a puzzle; Ellen spoke freely of her mother but had never mentioned her father. The obvious explanation felt in this case unconvincing. Gianna liked puzzles.

  Morgen came in with Bertil; Gianna waved them to their seats, took her own, the Prince on her right hand. Circumstances had delayed her plans a little, but between the incompetence of the enemy mages and the diplomacy of her husband the difficulties had and would be dealt with. And a little peril, jointly shared and overcome, was not a bad start for a life together.

  The guests all seated, she caught her husband's eye; the Duke rose, the table fell silent. "Before we begin our dinner, I have two announcements to make. The first is that, in Lord Bertil's judgment, the Keep is now safe. The Forsting invasion was ended when Fire Mountain erupted into the pass. The rising is not yet over, but the Earls have agreed to send one of their people to hear what we have to say and I have good hopes that we can offer them terms they will accept."

  He paused a moment; the silence held. "My second announcement is that His Royal Highness Prince Kieron has made an offer of marriage to my daughter the Lady Mariel, which offer she has accepted. They plan to wed in early summer, when Mari will have completed her studies. The wedding will be held in the capital; everyone present is of course invited to attend."

  The dinner over, congratulations given and received, Gianna drew her daughter aside. "Now that the preliminaries are done with, we can leave what is left of the revolt to your father and your betrothed while we take care of the serious business of planning a wedding that will have the whole capital talking. I have a small surprise for you."

  Mari gave her a curious glance, followed her to the door to one of the side rooms.

  "A wedding, a royal wedding, requires jewelry. Spectacular jewelry. Accordingly, I have provided us with …"

  She opened the d
oor. "A jeweler. Your favorite jeweler and, as of the pieces he made after you introduced him to me, mine as well."

  Master Dur looked up from the table. Gianna noted, to her surprise, that he was looking not at Mari but through the door. Turning, she saw Ellen looking in from the near side of the dining room with an astonished expression on her face. Of course; she too would know the jeweler, and be as surprised as Mari that he was here, not a hundred miles away in Southdale. Gianna nodded politely at her daughter's friend, closed the door, and turned back to the table with its stack of sketches, two burning candles, and a small bowl filled with glints of brilliant color.

  Ellen watched the door close and turned back to the table where Coelus was deep in discussion with one of the mages from the garrison. When it ended she caught his eye, nodded towards the door into the hall; he followed her. Without speaking, she led him to the hall's end, through an open door into an empty room. "Master Dur is here."

  "Master Dur. You mean …"

  She held up a hand; he fell silent. They were not the only people in the Keep who could see, or hear, through walls. "Master Dur, the old jeweler from Southdale. I think Her Grace brought him as a surprise for Mari; I expect they are in there now planning out jewels for the wedding."

  "I see." He paused a moment, considering how best to put the question. "The eruption was great good fortune; do you have any more ideas as to how it happened? It must have been due in some way to the channeling spells; it is too great a coincidence otherwise that it should occur just when it did. But I cannot figure out how. One would have thought …"

  "That the spells would draw fire out of the mountain, making an eruption less likely, not more. I do not see any mechanism in magery by which the spells could cause the eruption, but I agree that there must be some connection."

  Their eyes met; he nodded, spoke. "Perhaps, when Mari and Her Grace are done for the moment with their consultations, you can find Master Dur. If he left the village after we did, he may have news from home."

  "And I would like to see what he is planning for Mari, if it isn't all a deep secret. He was in the room next to where we dined; perhaps we can catch him on his way out."

  * * *

  Anders looked about the room. Mari was seated at one end of the table. Next to her sat a tall stranger, well dressed, and next to him Duke Morgen. Morgen motioned him to a chair. "I asked to have you taken to the tower roof so that you could view the eruption for yourself. As you can see, it is still in progress. I think I can say with some confidence that no Forsting army will be using Northpass in the next few weeks, probably not for considerably longer than that. Do you agree?"

  Anders hesitated, nodded reluctant assent.

  "There are, of course, other passes. But they are still choked with snow, and the mages I have consulted doubt that the spells that used the mountain's fire to melt Northpass could clear places so distant, even if the Forsting mages had not lost control over their own creation and brought out more fire than they had any use for. And even in summer Northpass is the only pass in the range low enough and wide enough to let through an army and its supplies.

  "It will not be easy for Earl Eirick and his allies to take this keep without Forsting support. Lacking Forsting mages and Forsting engines you will have to either storm the walls at the cost of many lives, with no certainty of success, or siege it—and we are better supplied for siege than you are. Frederik’s treachery has deprived us of many of the mages stationed here for the keep's defense. But, by good fortune, my lady daughter's friend Elinor and her teacher Magister Coelus are guesting with us. They are both, as you may be aware, accomplished mages.

  "I sent messengers as soon as we discovered the pass was being cleared. If one got through, you will be facing a royal army within weeks—sooner, if His Majesty has received word of your rising from another source, and such secrets are hard to keep. The men of the Northern Marches, the liegemen of Eirick and Frederik and the rest, are brave and accomplished soldiers. But with the whole rest of the kingdom against them they cannot long prevail. You know that and they know that—it is, after all, the reason you chose to call in the Forstings in support of your rising.

  "If you continue to fight, by the time it ends the holds of Eirick, his allies and his liegemen, your father among them, will be destroyed, and many will die."

  Anders looked up with a fierce expression. "Not all of them ours."

  "Not all of them yours—which will make things still less pleasant when the fighting is over. There will be new feuds between lords that supported Eirick and lords that support the King. And the more of our people are killed the more reason His Majesty, who did very little against the lords who supported Prince Josep against him, will have to wonder how prudent mercy to the defeated would be this time.

  "When this is over, the Marches will still be part of the kingdom. Every soldier killed, Marcher or loyal, weakens us when next the Forstings move against us. Not all who will be killed will be yours—but all, on both sides, will be ours."

  "Your Grace's point is?" Anders' voice was steady.

  "My point is that I want to end this now, on terms, before any more people die."

  There was a long silence before Anders spoke again. "I will carry any message you give me back to my liege lord. But whatever terms you offer, he will ask me what authority you have to offer them. What assurance do we have if we agree to your terms that His Majesty will honor your side of the agreement? Your Grace is high in His Majesty's council, as all men know. But what authority have you to make promises that will bind His Majesty?"

  "None. That is why I have asked His Highness Prince Kieron, who also was guesting here, to join us."

  The tall stranger who had been sitting by Mari stood, pushing back his chair, the noise loud in the silent room. "After consulting with His Grace, I am prepared to offer the following terms on behalf of my brother. Earls Eirick and Fredrik, as leaders of the rebellion, are to be permitted to go into exile, succeeded in each case by one of their sons acceptable to His Majesty. Any damage done to property held by those loyal to His Majesty to be repaired at the cost of those responsible. Any deaths of those in service to His Majesty or those loyal to him to be compensated according to the customary schedules of the northern marches. Those terms met, all remaining rebels willing to swear allegiance to His Majesty directly or through their own lords are to have a free pardon."

  "Your Highness's terms are generous. There remains one question the lords I serve will certainly put to me, and so I must put to you: What reason have we to believe that what was spoken here will be remembered after we have laid down our arms? I cannot speak of my own knowledge to the rights and wrongs of the past. But Your Highness played a role in the conflicts at the Old King's death that was not highly regarded in this part of the kingdom."

  The Prince thought a moment before replying: "I will, of course, put the terms agreed to in writing, signed and sealed. Beyond that, and so far as your own knowledge is concerned, you are I think acquainted with the Lady Mariel, daughter to His Grace. You may if you wish take private council with her as to what my word is worth. It is a matter on which she may be prepared to offer an opinion. Three days ago she accepted my offer of marriage and is now my betrothed."

  * * *

  "Can we trust him? It is my neck, and the necks of my kin, at stake."

  Mari thought a moment before answering. "I think so. I would not have agreed to marry Kieron if I did not think he was, on the whole, an honest man. He is, as Ellen puts it, too used to having his own way. But among us—I, Ellen, and your fellow rebels—we may have convinced him over the past year that having his own way is not something he can always rely on. I do not think he has it in him to first promise you all pardons, then massacre you after you lay down your arms.

  "Further, I think I can myself provide at least a partial guarantee. Kieron has spent the past six months and more courting me, with reasons both political and personal. We do not plan to marry until this summer, w
hen I will be done with my studies. If between now and then I discover that he has committed such treachery, and made me the instrument of it, he will have to find himself a different bride, and I have no doubt he knows it. For sufficient reason he would pay that price. Kieron feels deeply his obligation to his brother and the kingdom. But he would not pay it willingly.

  "More important still, I have discussed affairs of the kingdom at length with His Highness and my father. Both have long regarded the disaffection of the northern marches as a serious weakness to the kingdom. By getting rid of the leaders of the insurrection and replacing Eirick with his son Eskil while dealing generously with the rest, they can help mend that weakness. Killing the rebels or forfeiting their holdings after promising pardon would open new wounds that would take a long time to heal. I think you may rely upon His Highness's honesty. I am confident you may rely on his sense."

  Mari paused for a moment before continuing. "One more thing. I know that you, and those you follow, rose for Lord Iolen, that you believed in the justice of his cause and claim. Ellen says Iolen is dead. When Fire Mountain erupted he was in the pass and his horse took him over the edge. She did not say how she knew, and I did not ask. But Ellen is, in my experience, truthful to a fault, and I have no doubt that it is true."

  Epilogue

  Coming to Northkeep, they had been four: Mari, Ellen, Coelus, and one of the Duke's retainers. Returning there were three. Or perhaps, considering the contents of the case on the seat next to Master Dur and the warmth of the carriage, again four. The road was a good one, the coach well sprung; the Duchess did her best to provide for the comfort of her guests. Ellen, half asleep with her head resting on her companion's shoulder, tried to feel her way into the case to its contents, but the blocking spells were tightly woven, too strong even for her. Her father, seated across from them, was speaking softly to Magister Coelus; she kept her eyes shut, listened to their voices over the rumble of the wheels.