Wind Rider's Oath wg-3

by David Weber

  “Because of who she is,” Kaeritha said quietly. “Not ’what’—not because she’s the daughter of a baron—but because of who she is … and who you raised her to be. You made her too strong if you wanted someone who would meekly submit to a life sentence as no more than a high-born broodmare to someone like this Blackhill. And you made her too loving to allow someone like him or Baron Cassan to use her as a weapon against you. Between you, you and Hanatha raised a young woman strong enough and loving enough to give up all of the rank and all of the privileges of her birth, to suffer the pain of ’running away’ from you and the even worse pain of knowing how much grief her decision would cause you. Not because she was foolish, or petulant, or spoiled—and certainly not because she was stupid. She did it because of how much she loves you both.”

  The father’s tears spilled freely now, and she stepped closer, reaching out to rest her hands on his shoulders.

  “What else could I do in the face of that much love, Tellian?” she asked very softly.

  “Nothing,” he whispered, and he bowed his head and his own right hand left the dagger hilt and rose to cover the hand on his left shoulder.

  He stood that way for long, endless moments. Then he inhaled deeply, squeezed her hand lightly, raised his head, and brushed the tears from his eyes.

  “I wish, from the bottom of my heart, that she hadn’t done this thing,” he said, his voice less ragged but still soft. “I would never have consented to her marriage to anyone she didn’t choose to marry, whatever the political cost. But I suppose she knew that, didn’t she?”

  “Yes, I think she did,” Kaeritha agreed with a slight, sad smile.

  “Yet as badly as I wish she hadn’t done it, I know why she did. And you’re right—whatever else it may have been, it wasn’t the decision of a weakling or a coward. And so, despite all the grief and the heartache this will cause me and Hanatha—and Leeana—I’m proud of her.”

  He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe his own words. But then he stopped shaking it, and nodded slowly instead.

  “I am proud of her,” he said.

  “And you should be,” Kaeritha replied simply.

  They gazed at one another for a few more seconds of silence, and then he nodded again, crisply this time, with an air of finality … and acceptance.

  “Tell her —” He paused, as if searching for exactly the right words. Then he shrugged, as if he’d suddenly realized the search wasn’t really difficult at all. “Tell her we love her. Tell her we understand why she’s done this. That if she changes her mind during this ’probationary period’ we will welcome her home and rejoice. But also tell her it is her decision, and that we will accept it—and continue to love her—whatever it may be in the end.”

  “I will,” she promised, inclining her head in a half-bow.

  “Thank you,” he said, and then surprised her with a wry but genuine chuckle. One of her eyebrows arched, and he snorted.

  “The last thing I expected for the last three days that I’d be doing when I finally caught up with you was thanking you, Dame Kaeritha. Champion of Tomanak or not, I had something a bit more drastic in mind!”

  “If I’d been in your position, Milord,” she told him with a crooked smile, “I’d have been thinking of something having to do with headsmen and chopping blocks.”

  “I won’t say the thought didn’t cross my mind,” he conceded, “although I’d probably have had a little difficulty explaining it to Bahzell and Brandark. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure that anything I was contemplating doing to you pales compared to what my armsmen think I ought to do. All of them are deeply devoted to Leeana, and some of them will never believe she ever would have thought of something like this without encouragement from someone. I suspect the someone they’re going to blame for it will be you. And some of my other retainers—and vassals—are going to see her decision as a disgrace and an insult to my house. When they do, they’re going to be looking for someone to blame for that, too.”

  “I anticipated something like that,” Kaeritha said dryly.

  “I’m sure you did, but the truth is that this isn’t going to do your reputation any good with most Sothoii,” he warned.

  “Champions of Tomanak frequently find themselves a bit unpopular, Milord,” she said. “On the other hand, as Bahzell has said a time or two, ’a champion is one as does what needs doing.’ “ She shrugged. “This needed doing.”

  “Perhaps it did,” he acknowledged. “But I hope one of the consequences won’t be to undermine whatever it is you’re here to do for Scale Balancer.”

  “As far as that goes, Milord,” she said thoughtfully, “it’s occurred to me that helping Leeana get here in the first place may have been a part of what I’m supposed to do. I’m not sure why it should have been, but it feels right, and I’ve learned it’s best to trust my feelings in cases like this.”

  Tellian didn’t look as if he found the thought that any god, much less the War God, should want one of his champions to help his only child run away to the war maids particularly encouraging. If so, she didn’t blame him a bit … and at least he was courteous enough not to put his feelings into words.

  “At any rate,” she continued, “I will be most happy to deliver your message—all of your message—to Leeana.”

  “Thank you,” he repeated, and the corners of his eyes crinkled with an edge of genuine humor as he looked around Yalith’s office. “And now, I suppose, we ought to invite the Mayor back into her own office. It would be only courteous to reassure her that we haven’t been carving one another up in here, after all!”

  Chapter Twenty

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” the richly dressed nobleman asked sardonically as soon as the servant who had ushered Varnaythus into his study departed, closing the door silently behind him.

  “I was merely in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by and compare notes with you, Milord Triahm,” the wizard-priest said smoothly. He walked across to one of the comfortable chairs which faced the other man’s desk and arched his eyebrows as he rested one hand atop the chair back. His host nodded brusque permission, and he seated himself, then leaned back and crossed his legs.

  “It’s possible things will be coming to a head sooner than we’d anticipated,” he continued. “And a new wrinkle has been added—one I thought you should know about. I’m not certain how much effect it will have on your own concerns here in Lorham, but the possibilities it suggests are at least … intriguing.”

  “Indeed?”

  The other man ignored his own chair and crossed to prop a shoulder against the frame of the window behind his desk, half-turning his back on his guest. He gazed out through the glass at the gathering dusk. Thalar Keep, the ancestral seat of the Pickaxes of Lorham, loomed against the darkening sky, dominating the view, and his mouth tightened ever so slightly. Varnaythus couldn’t see his expression with his face turned away towards the window, but he read the other man’s emotions clearly in the tight set of his shoulders.

  “Indeed,” the nondescript wizard confirmed. “Unless my sources are much less reliable than usual, a new war maid will be arriving in Kalatha sometime soon.”

  “How marvelous,” the nobleman growled, then made a spitting sound. “And just why should the arrival of one more unnatural bitch concern me?”

  “Ah, but this particular unnatural bitch is Lady Leeana Bowmaster,” Varnaythus purred.

  For a second or two, Triahm seemed not to have heard him at all. Then he whipped around from the window, his eyes wide with disbelief.

  “You’re joking!”

  “Not in the least, Milord,” Varnaythus said calmly. “It’s remotely possible my information is in error,” actually, he knew it wasn’t; he’d been tracking Leeana in his gramerhain for the last several days and witnessed her arrival in Kalatha the day before, “but I have every reason to believe it’s accurate. If she hasn’t arrived in Kalatha already, it’s only a matter of a day or so before she do
es.”

  “Well, well, well,” the other man murmured. He moved away from the window and lowered himself slowly into his own chair, never taking his eyes from Varnaythus’ face. “That does present some possibilities, doesn’t it?”

  “I believe you might reasonably say that, Milord,” Varnaythus replied in the voice of a tomcat with cream-clotted whiskers.

  “Tellian’s always been overly soft where those bitches are concerned,” Triahm growled. “Probably because his idiot of an ancestor provided them with the initial foothold to begin their pollution of the Kingdom. Personally, that connection would have been enough to make me feel ashamed, not turn me into some sort of lap cat for them. Maybe this humiliation will finally open his eyes!”

  “It’s certainly possible,” Varnaythus agreed. For his part, he’d always found Triahm’s blindly bigoted, unthinking hatred for the war maids and all they stood for as stupid as it was useful. He doubted that a man like Tellian would ever fall prey to its like, however.

  On the other hand, Tellian was a Sothoii, and now that his daughter had succeeded in reaching the war maids before he overtook her, it was at least possible he would react exactly as Triahm anticipated. Which, after all, was one of the reasons Varnaythus had decided against attempting to intercept and assassinate the girl. Kaeritha’s presence was the other reason, he admitted frankly to himself. Champions of Tomanak were hard to kill, even—or especially—by arcane means. Still, he’d felt sufficiently confident of managing it to have justified the risk of a few proxies, at least.

  But however badly her death might have hurt and weakened her parents, the Dark Gods would weaken the kingdom far more seriously if their servants could set the Lord Warden of the West Riding openly against the war maids. Even if Tellian managed to avoid that particular trap, having his only child run away to become a despised war maid was going to cost him dearly in political support from the more conservative members of the Royal Council. Not to mention all of the delicious possibilities for destabilizing the war maids’ charter when the question of the Balthar succession was thrown into the mix.

  The wizard-priest rubbed mental hands together in gleeful contemplation of the possibilities, but he kept his expression composed and attentive.

  “Even if it doesn’t,” Triahm went on, thinking aloud and unaware of his guest’s own thoughts, “this is bound to have a major impact. It’s going to drag Tellian right into the middle of Trisu’s little difficulties.” He smiled nastily. “It should be interesting to see which way that pushes my dear, irritating cousin.”

  “If Tellian does end up at odds with the war maids himself, it’s likely to embolden Trisu considerably,” Varnaythus pointed out. “I imagine he’ll become even more persistent in pressing his claims if he thinks Tellian will openly support him. And I’d be surprised if those claims didn’t harden and become more extensive, as well.”

  “But even if Tellian is gutless enough to swallow the shame, the fact that his precious daughter has seen fit to join one side of the dispute will compel him to be very careful about his own position,” Triahm said. “If he supports the war maids, he’ll be accused of favoritism.”

  “Perhaps so,” Varnaythus said. “On the other hand, if he openly supports Trisu, at least some people will accuse him of doing so because he’s angry with the war maids and wants to punish them.”

  “Either outcome could be useful to us,” Triahm observed, beginning to play with a crystal paperweight from his desk. “His neutrality has worked against us from the start. It throws everything back to the local level and prevents Trisu from acting decisively.”

  “He won’t be able to remain neutral very much longer, whatever happens with his daughter,” Varnaythus assured him. “Unless I very much miss my guess, the tension on both sides is rapidly approaching the critical level.”

  He considered informing Triahm of who had become Leeana’s escort to Kalatha, and decided—again—that warning him of the incipient arrival of a champion of Tomanak in Lorham wouldn’t exactly fill him with confidence.

  “When it does, it’s going to lead to open conflict between Trisu and Kalatha, probably with Quaysar going up in flames at the same time,” he said instead, and his smile was even nastier than Triahm’s had been. “Once it comes to outright warfare, Tellian’s going to be forced to take a position, whether he wants to or not, or be accused of ignoring his responsibility to enforce the King’s peace. Under the circumstances, I don’t believe he’ll have very much choice other than to back his own vassal, Trisu, against Kalatha.”

  “Only, of course, it won’t be Trisu, will it?” An ugly light danced in Triahm’s gray eyes, and Varnaythus carefully hid a smile of triumph. The man was so predictable it was pathetic.

  “Not if our plans succeed, Milord,” he agreed.

  “And they will succeed,” Triahm said flatly, and gave Varnaythus an ominous glance. “Your man is already in position, is he not?”

  “Have no fear, Milord,” Varnaythus said smoothly. “My agent—” if Triahm wanted to assume that Varnaythus’ assassin (well, Salgahn’s, if the wizard-priest wanted to be accurate) was a man, that was fine with him “— is ready to strike when the moment is right. But that moment won’t come until we can provoke the proper level of violence between your cousin and Kalatha and be sure suspicion is directed where we want it to go.”

  “Understood, understood,” Triahm said in an irritated tone, waving one hand dismissively. “Of course the timing is critical. But once he’s gone, and the blame for his death is laid in the proper quarter, there will be no suspicions of me when I assume the titles which ought to have been mine. And it will give me the excuse I need to burn that cancer at Kalatha out of the flesh of Lorham once and for all!”

  “So it will, Milord,” Varnaythus agreed. “So it will.”

  * * *

  “He truly is an idiot, isn’t he?”

  “Triahm?” a soft, throaty contralto said from behind Varnaythus. The contralto’s owner laughed. “Are you only just now realizing that?”

  “Scarcely, Dahlaha,” Varnaythus said dryly. It was his turn to gaze out of a window over the night-darkened streets of Thalar. It was a much nicer window than the one in Triahm’s office, although Triahm had paid for both of them.

  The wizard-priest craned his neck, gazing up past the luxurious mansion’s overhanging eaves at a night sky the color of darkest cobalt and full of stars. There was no moon tonight, which was probably a good sign, he told himself. Then he turned away from the stars and back to business.

  His hostess, reclining on the chaise longue across the table from him, was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen. He admitted that candidly, yet her beauty didn’t really appeal to him. He could appreciate and admire her sleek, golden hair and huge blue eyes, the impeccable bone structure of her graceful, oval face and high cheekbones, and the svelte lines of the richly curved figure which hovered just this side of overripeness. But the pouting mouth that whispered passion to other men whispered to him of corruption.

  There was something too perfect about Dahlaha Farrier’s sensual beauty. Not even Varnaythus could be certain, but he strongly suspected that her natural appearance had been significantly improved upon. Unfortunately, improving the packaging had made no difference to what lived inside it, which was hardly surprising. Women who turned to Dahlaha’s chosen deity were already corrupt, with a soul-deep twistedness, because only a woman who was could endure Her service. Priestesses like Dahlaha could count upon being gifted with eye-catching physical beauty, if they did not already possess it, but no amount of enhanced beauty was going to change that inner distortion.

  Varnaythus enjoyed the pleasures of the flesh as much or more than the next man, and he had no inherent objection to corruption. But there was a hunger to Dahlaha’s corruption—one as dark as Jerghar’s lust for blood, although it yearned for something quite different. Varnaythus had no illusions about what would ultimately happen to any man who surrendered himself to Dahlah
a’s power.

  “Of course I’ve always known Triahm is a fool,” the wizard-priest continued, settling himself into the more conventional chair he preferred to the chaise longues Dahlaha favored. No doubt so that she could display her indisputable charms to best advantage. “If he weren’t a fool, he wouldn’t be the tool we need. And if stupidity and ambition didn’t blind him to everything but what he wants, he might ask himself a few awkward questions about just where and how you were able to find him ’hirelings’ with our capabilities. But despite all that, it genuinely annoys me to find myself helping an idiot like that supplant someone who at least has a working brain.”

  “What’s this? The conspirator as philosopher?” Dahlaha laughed again. “Or is it just a case of pragmatic necessity offending your innate sense of artistry?”

  “The latter, probably,” Varnaythus said. He leaned forward and snagged another apple from the table. It was from the previous fall’s harvest, and its skin was wrinkled, but its taste remained pleasantly sweet.

  “Say what you will about Cassan,” he continued as he chewed, “the man is at least competent within the limits of what he knows is going on. And he has two or three people working for him who are very good at what they do—like Darnas Warshoe.” He shook his head and took another bite of apple. “Warshoe’s good enough that I actually had to hunt him down and arrange for him to stumble over ’Cathman the Peddler.’ “

  “Oh?” Dahlaha laughed. “Are you still using that old faker as an alias?”

  “It works,” Varnaythus replied with a grin. “And even though he’s considered a harmless old crank, he does manage to find a few charms and protective amulets that actually work. Fortunately for us, Cassan’s one real weakness is an absolute phobia about magi reading his mind.” The wizard-priest shrugged. “It’s silly of him, of course, but it inspired him to send Warshoe to Cathman for amulets to prevent it as soon as Warshoe reported that Cathman was in Toramos. Amulets of my own design, of course. And the beauty of it is that Cassan insists that all of his closest henchmen wear them at all times, to keep magi from picking their brains, so now I can keep track of all of them without even needing my gramerhain. Which is probably a good thing, given how busy Cassan keeps them—especially Warshoe.”