by Aaron Pogue
Lareth shook his head. "Not at all. If they were close, of course, they'd see the changing power. That...that we could not afford. They could follow it and step right through our walls. But until they arrive, we're free to come and go."
"Then that's two days," Caleb said.
We didn't ask the question. Caleb answered anyway. "They're outside Teelevon now. They're stopping anyone they find heading here and confiscating goods. We've got two days before they're camped outside our door."
"That isn't time enough," the wizard said. "Not to get everything we need. The feathers alone might take me hours."
"Forget your bed," Caleb growled. "We're talking about war."
Lareth sighed. "My point still stands. The crowd we had today could well supply our needs, but they are scattered all across the south Ardain. We'll need more time to send out gathering parties."
"Perhaps we can arrange that," I said. "Delay the king's men a little bit."
Caleb stepped closer. "I know of ways, but they all break your rules."
"No. No killing. But we could offer them a truce, request parlay."
Lareth tasted the words. "Request parlay? Yes, that could work."
Caleb shook his head. "It won't. Not with an Eagle in command. The way they're trained, a rebel gets none of the rights or honors reasonably afforded foreign foes. They wouldn't hesitate to cut you down under the flag of peace."
"The king's men? They would do that?" I asked.
He nodded.
I shook my head. "I'd expect that kind of thing from Brant, but not the king's elite guard."
Caleb only shrugged.
"It doesn't matter anyway," I said. "I never meant to meet with them; I just wanted to buy time. It might take, what, a day or two sending messages back and forth to arrange the meeting?"
Caleb raised his eyebrows. "I do suspect it would."
Lareth grinned his twisted grin. "Ooh, and if they planned some treachery they'd want to stay as close as possible to form. Might even ask another day to plan the strike."
"And by the time they realize I'm not coming to the meeting," I said, "we'll have the resources we need."
Caleb stood staring down at me for a long time. Then he shook his head. "That plan is cunning and twisted, and predicated on the treachery of other men."
"But will it work?" I asked.
"It should. I'm just surprised it came from you."
I hesitated, then smiled. "I have some fine examples to learn from." Lareth barked a laugh.
Caleb nodded somberly. "That you do, my lord. That you do, indeed."
I stayed up late that night, unable to ignore the rising threat. Caleb had found another risk I hadn't even entertained: spies among my flood of new retainers. It would be easy enough, he had said, to slip some in and let them wait, then open up the gates the day the king arrived.
We had no gates. Not yet. We had our plans, but while the enemy was still far off, we'd stationed guards beneath the arch and spent our attention on other things. I worried about the gates. I didn't worry much about the spies.
I waited 'til the dark of night, when most of the tower had fallen silent, then I sat within my room and closed my eyes. I reached out through the stones and spread my senses until I could feel every living thing in my domain.
Not many were asleep. Most among them burned with quiet worry. Some sat up and whispered rumors. Some played cards. And some were hard at work despite the hours. I looked in on my sentries, sharp and alert beneath the gateway arch, and for the first time they were feeling very small and vulnerable there. There were others on the walls, walking their patrols.
I found the civilians in their camp. Caleb had set them in the courtyard south of the tower, and something like a town had already sprung up. In tents and little lean-to sheds and under heavy-laden wagons, the workers slept. They had some fear—more brittle and jittery than that old familiar worry in the guards—but mostly they had trust that we could keep them safe.
My awareness drifted like a fog among the sleeping forms, and I felt their hearts until I saw betrayal. I found a carter with a dozen barrels full of alcohol and plans for arson in his heart. I opened the ground beneath him where he slept, swallowed him up in its warm embrace, and left him air enough to sleep 'til dawn. I'd go with guards to dig him up tomorrow morning.
And there were more. Nearly a dozen men in all, and three of them among my own battalions, long embedded with the wizard's rebels. I might have found the black betrayal in the hearts if I had looked before, but I had never thought to look. Now I bound them like the rest, beneath the floor where they were sleeping.
I was nearly done, exhausted from the search and thinking maybe I might even get some sleep, but then I noticed someone slinking through the halls. It was a girl, wrapped up in black to hide her in the night. There'd been no women in the camps that Lareth brought, but some had come in with the farmers from the fields and quite a few among the caravan of tradesmen. She had been one of them. She had hidden among them, and I had never seen her face.
I didn't need to now. I knew her instantly. I almost called Caleb to go and deal with her. Perhaps I should have. I watched her sneak along the outer stairs up to the second floor, then turn my way. We had no lights within that passage yet, but there were guards. A patrol headed her way even then, another coming down the stairs would block her in. She would be caught, and we had not yet well prepared my men for harboring civilians. They might not treat her kindly when they caught her stalking.
The first patrol spun around, alarmed, when they heard me coming at a run, but I sprinted past. I took the corner, caught her in my arms, then pulled us both together through the wall into a room that hadn't yet been cleared. It was little larger than the closet where I slept, and mostly full of dirt and fallen stone, but high upon the outer wall a fissure wider than my hand let in some light. I used the trick Seriphenes had taught me, bound the moonlight in the air and magnified it until we could see, and then at last I let her go.
She didn't step away. She knotted her fingers in the fabric of my shirt and pushed up on her toes to kiss me. She tasted sweet and warm. Like hope. Like home. She made me ache. She made me smile. She made me be the one to break the kiss.
I stepped away and met her eyes. "You should not have come here."
"I thought that was our plan."
I laughed, shocked at the absurdity of it. "That was before. Everything has changed."
"No," she said, stepping slowly closer. Her eyes were bright, her voice was steady. "Nothing's changed. You've always been a hero. You've always been about to die. And I have always wanted to be with you."
"It isn't safe," I said. "They're coming. The king, and all his men. Twenty thousand men. And wizards."
"I know," she said. "They're camped around my town. They are supposed to be our friends, and yet they do as much to hurt us as the rebels ever did."
I swallowed hard and looked away. "I'm sorry, Isabelle. I didn't mean to bring them here."
She touched my face. "You didn't bring them here. Timmon did. One way or another, this is on him. I hear you've saved a lot of lives by gathering these men."
"I will save many more than that before I'm done. But I have enemies much worse than that sad king, and they will come here, too."
"Then let them come," she said. "I'll fight them at the gates, or I will cower in this room. Whatever you ask of me. But let me stay."
"I can't."
"Daven...." She trailed off, then turned her face. The moonlight shone upon her cheek. "I slipped away that night. I waited for you here. Themm came to suggest that I go home. Father came to demand it of me. I didn't leave until the food was gone. The water was gone. And even then I waited, hoping every minute you'd arrive."
"I'm sorry, Isabelle. I couldn't come. I was...a prisoner."
"They say you lived with dragons," she said, measuring me with her eyes. "Some people say you are one, wearing human skin as a disguise. They say a lot of things about you."
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"I wish...I could have come to you," I said, fighting for stern authority and falling short. "I wish I could let you stay—"
She shook head. "You can. Please, let me stay."
"They know your name. You're not some peasant farmer seeking refuge. If word should reach the king that you are here—"
"He'll what? Come through those walls to get me?"
"He could bring great harm to your father."
"He won't. The man's as stubborn in his loyalty as in his rage. But even if he did...we all make sacrifices."
"But it's your family," I said. "You have a home. Don't throw that all away to be with me."
She smiled, soft and sad.
I shook my head. "No. You'd make an enemy of the king if he found out."
"Already true," she said. "How do you think these people found your tower? It's hardly on the maps, and Timmon's men have held the northern roads for days."
"You led them here?"
"I spread the word. I knew you had many men with swords, and you would forget you needed men with hammers and needles and thread." She smiled at me. "And they were already flocking to your name. I helped them find a way around the Guard."
I stared at her. "How...how long have you known? How could you arrange that all so fast?"
"Daven, I've been listening. Don't you remember how I fell in love with you? I get rumors of you the way other girls receive love letters."
"I can't believe these rumors. How can word have spread so fast?"
She didn't answer right away. She shook her head with a mysterious little smile. Then she shrugged. "Troubled times set men speaking. As I said, most of the rumors are nonsense. But I knew enough of you to find the truth. Father wouldn't believe it until one of his farmers said he'd seen you in the soybeans."
She took a short step back and pointed an accusing finger. "But speaking of love letters, I passed the campsite coming here. It's gone. I think you found my note. I think you could have come to me."
I looked away. "I wanted to. I wanted to see you so much. But even more than that, I wanted to keep you safe."
"And now you can do both," she said.
I set my jaw. I took a breath to speak my word as law. She just watched, her eyes so bright, and in the end I reached out and took her hand.
"You are amazing, Isabelle."
She grinned and turned her head. "I know. And I will make a wondrous queen."
I held her there, and for a while we talked beneath the moonlight. Then at last she looked around and shook with a little shiver in the cold night air. I took her hand and caught her eye.
"We should find you somewhere to stay."
She glanced uncertainly at the wall I'd dragged her through before and shrank away. "Is there another way?"
I could have folded back the earth to make a way. I could have cleared the rubble from the room to find the door that once had been. Instead I licked my lips and dropped my eyes. "There is a way, if you will let me. If you can trust me."
"Of course I can," she said. She poured herself against me, and I wrapped an arm tight around her waist. Then I closed my eyes and scanned around my tower. We'd cleared the third floor now, and places on the fourth nearest the outer stairs. But I preferred the tower's heart. I looked along the central spiral.
The third floor held a suite of rooms connected by inner doorways, lit with Lareth's spells and clean and empty. I caught my breath and wrapped my will around the glow of her lifeblood so close to mine. Then I...reached. I stretched and tugged, and pulled our lives along the threads of earth until we stood within that room instead.
I opened my eyes and found her staring at me, lips parted, eyes wide. A word from me was enough to raise the lights, and Isabelle stepped away. She turned in place, looking out over a room at least as large as hers within the Eliade manor.
"It wants for furnishings," I said, "but we have craftsmen now, so we'll be able—"
"Did you just move us with your mind?"
I nodded. "We're near the center of the tower now. Maybe thirty paces down the hall, and one floor up."
"I didn't feel a thing," she said. "That's remarkable!"
I smiled at her. "It's something fairly new."
"It's wonderful. Let's go to Teelevon! Now. You can use it on the army there, and send them all away."
My smile faded as I shook my head. "I can't. I cannot force a will that isn't mine. If you hadn't wanted to come with me, if you hadn't trusted me, you'd still be down there in that room."
"Oh." She blinked, disappointed, then forced a smile. "But still, it's good."
I laughed at that. "It's good. It gives us hope. It's something even the Masters of the Academy have never seen. No one even knows it can be done."
Her smile rallied at that, then she came close to me again. She looked up in my eyes and bit her lip and cocked her head. "Is there somewhere you could go to fetch me blankets? The night is cold."
"It will not take a heartbeat."
"Good," she said. "And will you stay with me tonight? To keep me safe?"
"I don't recall you trembling at the dark."
She smiled, and it lit a fire in my veins. "You've been too long away."
"Then not a heartbeat more," I said. I took her with me to the little closet where I'd stayed. We took the blankets and the pillow and the scrap of tear-stained parchment from the floor, and those were all my lordly possessions. Then we went back upstairs, and I hung fire in the empty doorways so she might feel safe. Nothing disturbed us all night long.
At dawn I raised the traitors from their graves and sent them back to Timmon with notes pinned to their shirts. I begged his army for a truce, and the moment they were gone I let Lareth send my men throughout the land to bring in stores against a siege.
I presented Isabelle to Caleb and the wizard, and perhaps Caleb frowned. Perhaps the wizard leered. But neither spoke a word against her, and before breakfast was done she'd won their respect. She knew this land. She told Caleb where and how the king would come, and told Lareth where to go to find abandoned stores of wood and grains.
She knew the locals who had come to seek protection, too, and she told us whom to ask for beds and whom for clothes, which smith among them made the finest locks, and which we shouldn't trust to make our blades. I led her out to the south courtyard where our craftsmen gathered, and she drew curtsies of respect and polite greetings. In the end I left her plotting with the tailors and a promise we would meet again for lunch.
But I had work to do 'til then. My men who weren't with Lareth worked the walls, laying stones and building stairs. My civilians pitched in, too, if they were strong enough and free. By mid-morning we had over two hundred extra men and women helping carry stones.
There were those who had come out of fear of the dragons, and there were locals simply loyal to my name. There were steadfast Ardain landholders displeased with the long stay of the king's forces here. There were those who'd come from little more than curiosity. But as they watched the soldiers work, as they listened to the stories in the camp, they all pitched in. They should have run, the more they learned about what we expected here. Instead they offered more and more, of sweat and blood and goods they'd left behind.
Lareth went off with them, opening portals all across the plains as he had promised, and he brought back loads of food and steel and furniture and anything else that struck him as useful. Including men. Families that hadn't braved the long journey to join the caravan came darting through an easy portal and sometimes left behind a sky flecked with the distant shapes of dragons. In one day Lareth was able to fill our stores to bursting and swell the numbers of civilians in our camp to match the size of the army. I only shook my head, unbelieving, and bent back to the task at hand.
The rest at night was short and swift, and dawn came far too early to herald another day of heavy labor. More portals brought back more resources and more men, but I could not spare Lareth even to gather all that had been offered. As the workers placed st
one on stone, I walked back and forth along the line, binding the stones together more perfectly than any mortar could have done. But the king would bring his wizards, and no matter how I burned up the energy of lives sworn to me, I only worked reality. I made more perfect stone, but it was only stone. I needed wizardry to thwart the Masters' power.
So by the second day I turned my wizard to that task, and he walked back and forth along the walls, binding them until the silk-smooth stone shimmered slightly with his strange green fire. He promised it would hold. It would defy the wizards' workings long enough, at least, for me to crush their summoned power.
They sent no messenger that day to take our offer. Perhaps they'd guessed our plan, or perhaps they didn't think they'd need the treachery. Still, the army didn't come. My civilians built a gate from planks of wood. They built it on the ground, laid out flat, and stacked up planks in layers eighteen inches thick. I came at sunset, still aglow with unspent fire, and bound the heavy door as I had done the walls. I raised it into place, one solid piece no battering ram could shake.
Then Lareth bound the living energy and cast a working on the door so it would lower only at my command or Caleb's but rise at a word from any of my soldiers. It was as good as any drawbridge, and I toyed with the idea of carving a moat as well, but I had burned too much already. I didn't dare exhaust my men with war so close.
But in the morning there was still no sign of soldiers. I sent out messengers while I still could, civilian riders to invite back everyone within a half day's walk to come take refuge in our walls. A siege was coming, and I had seen what that could do to the lands for miles around. The farmers remembered, too, and the few still out in the countryside came flocking to join us.
As the afternoon wore on and we grew tired of waiting, I let the wizard go back out gathering again. I sat with Caleb, planning, until Isabelle brought news from the south courtyard. She'd found us cooks to keep the soldiers fed and chosen weaponsmiths and armorers. She'd found an architect to plan the craftsmen's stalls and set a dozen carpenters to work.
In no more than a week, we'd raised a legend out of ruin. We had an army and a town. There were wells, and there would be beds. We had everything needed to get by. We sat at a proper table in the great hall and shared a quiet dinner with Caleb, then went to watch my hunters at their training until dusk. We went to bed with no more work to do.