by Andre Norton
What need, Marcala thought, did the Queen have of her, when obviously Ysa had spies in every corner. "Indeed," the younger woman said aloud. "We have been much in each other's company. When he is not out hunting, that is."
"Oh, I daresay you can persuade him to spend more time at home, if you want to."
"He has asked me to be a guest at Cragden Keep."
"That should prove to be a great incentive to pay close attention to matters close at home."
The Queen, Marcala noted, did not seem the least bit surprised at the information. Therefore, she must have known beforehand. "Then you will not object if I move into the guest quarters there?"
"Of course not. He is your kindred, after all, isn't he? With the passing of years, the connection has grown faint, but kindred is, nonetheless, kindred. And we must all hold dear those friends we have in these perilous times."
"As Your Majesty commands," Marcala said. She dipped a curtsy, eyes lowered.
What was it she sensed in the air? She had seen the Queen like this before, and it always meant that something was brewing—something not entirely beneficial to someone. Marcala hoped it was not she who was the target this time. She would not like to cross metaphoric swords with Ysa.
"And also, Cragden Keep is visible from my tower, situated as it is at the mouth of the valley. It is less than an hour's leisurely ride, supposing you would wish to come and visit with me." Ysa smiled, and Marcala had to keep herself from flinching. "If I had a long-vision glass, I could almost see into your window, I fancy."
Or you could send that creature you have in your thrall, Marcala thought. The one you thought hidden in the silk-lined basket. Only I knew. Yes, I knew.
Aloud, she said, "I will always be at Your Majesty's command."
Ysa smiled again. "Of course. I have no doubt. Now, come and help me. As you can see, I have been reading and there are books to be returned to the library at the Fane. It is not everyone I would entrust with such a task, for the books are old and fragile. Most of all, they are very valuable."
Marcala nodded. So the Queen had been meddling with magic again. One would think that Ysa had learned her lesson after that dreadful night when Marcala had been afraid the Queen had killed herself. She could still feel the power tingling through her hands where they had rested on the Queen's shoulders. And then, when
Ysa had fallen back into Marcala's arms—It was not wise to dabble in such matters. She began to pick up the books from a pile beside the Queen's chair, preparatory to putting them in a basket and returning them to their proper place. One book slipped from her hands and she bent to retrieve it.
By chance, it opened on a hand-colored illustration and, curious and intrigued,
Marcala turned a page or two. Then she stopped, astonished. "I recognize this!" she exclaimed.
"What is it, child?" the Queen asked. She held out one slender hand and Marcala gave her the book, pointing out what had caught her attention.
"This. It is very close to something I once saw Harous studying, in one of his books." Marcala glanced at the spine. "In fact, it was another copy of this one.
Anyway, this is the picture that caught his attention."
Both women looked at the page. On it, drawn with great skill, was depicted a brooch design. A circle, painted gold, around a golden flame arising from a blue vessel. There was no motto, though there was a place for one, nor any attribution as to whence the design had come.
"That is interesting," the Queen said. She closed the book and handed it back to
Marcala with every indication of having no interest in it at all. If she had been with anyone other than the Queen of Spies, the entire incident would surely have gone unremarked. But Marcala's very life depended on her being able to read the thoughts and moods and actions of those around her. Her skin prickled. This was surely part of what was passing in the Queen's mind. She was certain Ysa knew more about this design than she was willing to admit, not now, and especially not to Marcala.
Marcala resolved to unravel this mystery. For the moment, she was safe enough, able to avoid Florian now that she would be living in Harous's keep and under his protection. Away from the Queen's suspicious eye, she would have the opportunity for study, sooner or later. In the meantime, her outward manner was as docile as she knew how to show as she began to pack the borrowed books to return to the Fane.
Ashen raised her head cautiously. She discovered that her captors had dropped her some distance from Obern. She knew, if the men who had taken them did not, that they were all now easy prey for the Bog-folk. The raft was slow and clumsy, while the crude boats the Bog-folk used were surprisingly swift when propelled by a skilled boats-man.
Then, to her astonishment, Ashen saw the man with the mist over his head do something that had every appearance of lengthening the odds on their survival.
He picked up a bag, and using a rod tied to it, sucked up something from the interior. When he blew it out over the water behind them, Ashen saw that it was a powder. Raising her head a little higher, she watched the powder dissolve into an oily scum that lay on the surface of the water.
"Fire, Ehern," her captor said.
One of the men with him took a coal from a covered container and touched it to the scum. It immediately burst into flame. Anything following them would be halted, at least until the fire burnt itself out.
The Outlanders poled the raft away from the ruined city and down a side stream so well hidden with rank vegetation that Ashen had missed it entirely when she and Zazar had first come to the island. Here the water was disturbed, and the surface began to dapple with the frequent splashing of ominous things.
"Boggarts," the man called Ehern commented. "More fire, sir?"
"Yes. Give them a stiff dose of it."
Ehern took the pouch and the rod from the man with the misted head and applied the powder to the water. Even with the fire roaring so close that it lapped at the very stern of the raft, the men poling had a hard fight of it to make their way through the mass of underwater monsters. To add to the confusion, over the noise of the fire and the cries of men and dying boggarts, Ashen could hear the sound of drums. She thought they were coming from the direction in which they were heading.
"Good thing this shortcut isn't any longer," Raise said. He was at the steering pole. "Here's the river. Now we've but to cross it and we're almost home."
"Aye, the powder is nearly spent," Ehern said. He held up the pouch, and from where she lay, Ashen could tell that its contents were indeed sadly depleted.
"Trouble ahead," the leader said. "Look sharp. They're just Bog- runners, but have a care for those we have on board."
Then the raft grated against mud, and before the Outlanders could gain the shore, the Bog-folk were upon them. Ashen's world dissolved into cries and grunts and the clash of the Outlanders' superior weapons against shell-tipped spears, punctuated by the thud of Bog clubs against Outlander armor. Now and then a splash, sometimes accompanied by a scream, marked the fall of someone into the river, where more boggarts, emboldened and scenting blood in the water, came swarming out from the stream they had just navigated their way through.
Twice Ashen was almost trampled, and she heard Obern grunt as somebody stumbled over him. Fire crackled again— the last of the powder, Ashen surmised—and men screamed in agony.
Then the battle was over. The remaining Bog-warriors scrambled for their boats and escaped before they could catch fire, still shouting and brandishing those weapons that remained to them. One hurled a spear that lodged in the deck of the raft, between where Ashen and Obern lay trussed like waterfowl. An Outlander wrenched it free and flung it back at the enemy with a curse. Another scream told Ashen that it had found its target.
"We mark you, Outlanders!" The threat sounded from the murk, and Ashen thought she recognized Joal's voice. "And Outlander demon- whelp, too! We mark you well.
You be not done with Bog, not at all."
Another company of Outlanders came throug
h the brush. They were armed with more of the bent sticks that hurled other sticks, and they used these weapons to provide covering protection so the people on the raft could disembark. The misty-headed man noticed Ashen staring.
"They are called bows," he said, "and the projectiles are called arrows."
"I could have told you that," Obern said.
The man made a gesture, and two of his followers seized Obern. He grunted as blows fell upon him, but otherwise was silent.
The man removed a shining metal band from his head, and Ashen could see an oval of light on it that faded even as she watched. With the light's disappearance, the mist surrounding the man's head vanished. The thought that this man was even more handsome, more attractive, than Obern crowded into her mind unbidden.
"I am Count Harous of Cragden, a nobleman of Rendel," he said courteously to
Ashen, "and the one who has saved you."
A number of rash retorts rose to Ashen's lips—she didn't need saving, she would not be saved by a murderer in any case, and she had not asked for help—but prudently she didn't give voice to any of them. "I am Ashen," she said.
Harous seemed startled for an instant. "Then my surmise was correct," he said, almost to himself. He bowed. "I have reclaimed a prize indeed from the mysteries of the Bog. A new life awaits you, lady. I am humbly grateful that it was I who was chosen to bring it to you."
At this, her temper flared despite her best efforts. "You chose to invade my home? You chose to snare me and my companion like wild animals?"
"I am not your enemy, Lady Ashen," Harous said. "In time, you may come to realize that. All that I have done, I have done for your betterment. Please believe that."
"If you are not my enemy," Ashen said, trying to keep her voice from trembling,
"then why did you kill the servant of my Protector?"
"Who? Was someone killed?"
"I saw it. An old woman, crippled. A man such as you, clad in mist, killed her with his fist."
"I do not make war on women, not even on Bog women."
"Nevertheless, I saw it," Ashen said stubbornly.
"There are others besides me who have the ability to go clad in mist. Ask Zazar.
I tell you, lady, I am not your enemy."
The mention of Zazar's name startled Ashen. This must be one of the several
Outlanders who had sought Zazar's skills, and what he said could very well be true. She forced herself to use a more reasonable tone. "Then why am I still bound? And my companion with me?"
"That is quickly mended." Harous made a gesture, and two of his men stepped forward to release Ashen and Ob-ern from their bonds.
For a moment, she was afraid that despite his broken arm, Obern would try to fight and that Harous's men would succeed in killing him as two terrible falls had not. She looked at him, eyes narrowed, and shook her head. But he was obviously intelligent enough to be able to assess the odds against him. He stood quietly, massaging his wrists where the ropes had bitten, waiting for what came next.
This turned out to be horses—another animal of which Ashen had heard but never seen, let alone touched. She and Obern were lifted into the saddles on these great, fearsome beasts, and they set off toward a place, Harous told her, known as Cragden Keep.
"The catamite's lapdog is here," Kasai told Snolli sourly. "He wants to know about that treaty."
Snolli looked up from the pile of records he had been going through and tried to work out what Kasai was saying. He hazarded a guess. "By that, I take it you mean Prince Florian's translator."
"None other."
"Bid him—no, ask him, very politely, to come in." He smiled a trifle wanly. "At least I have a place for him to sit now." He indicated several chairs of varying degrees of crudity that surrounded an equally rustic table.
The men of Rendel must have been waiting just outside the door. Dakin and four men entered almost before Kasai had had time to notify them of how the High
Chief of New Void eagerly awaited them.
"Chieftain!" Dakin said. "How good it is to see you again."
"It is good to see you as well."
Snolli indicated that the small company of men should seat themselves at the table. He gestured for wine to be brought and noted how they struggled to hide their dismay at the indifferent quality, and that Dakin succeeded while those with him failed.
"Thank you," Dakin said. "Your hospitality is gratefully accepted. Shall we begin our discussion without all the pretty, time-consuming formalities?"
"I have never had much time for those," Snolli said. "I greatly prefer to talk man to man."
"So, Chieftain, man to man, have you decided to sign the treaty with the
Prince?"
"I beg the Prince's indulgence. The time of mourning for my son is not yet past.
Let us but accomplish this and I will ride with a few of my men to your city, and there—"
"It is better done here, Chieftain."
Snolli looked at Dakin thoughtfully. So, he said to himself. This is something that must be kept secret, here at the far end of the Kingdom. This man is under orders about something the Prince does not want his mother to find out about.
"Then leave one of your men here as my honored guest and I will send him as messenger as soon as the time arrives when we shall make pact with your people and your Prince," Snolli said. "If you are concerned about him, take one of my men with you when you go, as surety for his safety."
Dakin stared at Snolli for a long moment, and then nodded. "I will stay," he said. "None of my companions know your language very well."
Snolli nodded in turn, aware that he was accepting a spy into his midst. "And for us, I will send Harvas. He is a wave-reader whose ship is no more. He will be glad to have something to do."
And also, Snolli thought, he will make as good a spy as you, Dakin, or perhaps better. Understanding each other perfectly, the new "guest" at New Void Keep and the High Chief clasped each other's forearms in the grasp of friendship.
"Only, let me inform my men and take a few belongings from my saddlebags."
Thus Dakin confirmed that this had been at least a contingency plan all along.
Inwardly, Snolli smiled. These people thought themselves much cleverer than they were. He wondered if they were taken in by the Sea- Rovers' rough clothing and sometimes questionable manners, supposing by such outward signs that the people themselves were not worthy of any great effort when it came to deceiving them.
Well, they would learn better. Snolli resolved to take a good, hard look at that treaty at the first opportunity. There might be traps laid in it.
"I am sorry you had such a long ride for nothing," he said as he and the
Rendelians left the keep by way of the northeast gate. There their mounts waited, along with an armed escort.
"I only do my Prince's bidding," Dakin said. Then he issued orders to the waiting men. One of them led out a pack animal—laden with the "saddlebags" Dakin had referred to earlier, Snolli noted.
He gestured to one of his own men to take the animal to the stables. "Put those bags in the new guest apartment in the west tower," he said. The man departed promptly.
Then Dakin gave a few instructions of his own. Snolli could understand enough to know that he was telling the men to ride swiftly to Rendelsham and report to
Prince Florian. The lieutenant in charge touched the rim of his helmet in salute, and then the troop mounted and started off, back down the road whence they had come.
"Now I will leave you to get settled while I take care of some business I was about when you arrived," Snolli told Dakin.
"As you command," Dakin replied. He bowed and without protest, followed after his belongings.
Snolli issued a few orders and then went in search of Kasai.
"We must be certain of what has become of Obern." he told the Spirit Drummer. "I must know. I want to see with my own eyes."
"First, let me use the Inner Sight," Kasai said. He began whisp
ering his fingers across the surface of his drum and then slipped easily into the trance. "He lives. He goes into danger. The woman who saved him is still with him."
"Where? At the place Obern was last seen?" Snolli asked carefully, so as not to disturb the spell.
"To the north of that place."
"Can you guide us there?"
"Yes." As if he sensed the Chieftain's urgency, Kasai came out of his trance as quickly as he had entered it. Perhaps he had entered only deep enough to learn what was needed. "If we nde now, we might sight them before they have gone so far that it is not safe for us to follow."
"The horses are already waiting."
Snolli and Kasai and the four fighters with them cut quickly across the land toward the west, so as not to tread on the heels of the Rendelians they had sent back toward the capital city. When they reached the barrier river, Snolli recognized that it was somewhat to the north of the place where they had been earlier.