by John Dalmas
«It is,» Vulkan said. «It is part of ylvin history, and another like myself has known them directly if not extensively. Apparently they have discovered a means of crossing the Ocean Sea.»
By that time they could see the town wall of Teklapori, a near-blackness in the gray of dusk.
«We shall soon see,» Vulkan said, «what the king of Tekalos thinks of this.»
Macurdy nodded grimly. He was not enthused at the prospect of confronting voitik sorceries.
13 Evenings in a Palace
They traveled steadily the rest of the day, skipping Gormin Town. It was twilight when they reached Teklapori, whose gates had been closed at sunset. They bypassed it, too. Macurdy's business was a mile to the south, at the palace.
The last half mile was paved with flagstones, on which Piglet's shod hooves clopped loudly. Vulkan had cloaked himself, and could not be seen, heard, nor smelled. Macurdy, however, needed to be seen and heard to be let in. He recalled the difficulty he'd had the last time he'd arrived unexpected in the night.
Though the guards on the tower must have heard Piglet's shod hooves, no one called a challenge. And now Macurdy discovered something added since his last visit: a bronze bell resembling a large cowbell hung from a bracket beside the spy gate. Leaning in the saddle, he shook the bell noisily, at the same time bellowing: "Halloo! Let me in!"
Someone called back from the forty-foot tower: "Who is it?"
"Macurdy, come to see the king!"
Macurdy had expected disbelief, but after a long moment the voice answered, "Just a minute." It took more like four or five, but finally someone shone a target lantern through the "eye" in the narrow "spy's gate," its yellow beam finding Macurdy's face. In another half minute, the grinding of windlass and chain signaled the raising of the portcullis within the wall. Then the narrow gate opened and a guard stepped out, the lantern in his hand for a closer look. Another guard stood in the opening, crossbow wound and raised.
The guard with the lantern was middle-aged and thick-waisted, but gave an impression of tough competence. "Brog'r love me!" he swore. "It is! It's you! And you've not changed a whit! Not in all them years!" He turned, shouting more loudly than needed. "It's him! The marshal! He's come back!" Then he turned to Macurdy again. "Come in! Come in! I seen you when I was with Wollerda in the revolution. And later, in the Marches, I seen you different times, including at Ternass. So they rousted me out of my bunk, to be sure you weren't no impostor."
Gesticulating as he talked, the man led them through a ten-foot-long, tunnel-like passage through the wall. Vulkan followed closely, still unperceived.
When they'd emerged, the officer of the watch was waiting to check Macurdy personally, though he'd never seen him before. Cautiously semi-satisfied, he sent a mounted courier galloping ahead to announce the visitor, and with four mounted guardsmen, escorted Macurdy personally to the royal residence.
The king's houseguards had been alerted, and half a dozen waited respectfully at the entry. There Macurdy dismounted. Almost at once, Wollerda came out.
It took Macurdy a moment to recognize him—the king had passed his sixtieth birthday and grown somewhat heavier—but Wollerda recognized his visitor instantly. "Macurdy!" he said. They hugged, then Wollerda stepped back to arms' length. "You haven't changed a bit that I can see. God but it's good to have you here!" He hugged him again. "Well! Come in! Come in!"
So far Macurdy had merely grinned broadly. Now he spoke. "Just a minute. I've got a friend to introduce. He's wearing a concealment spell, otherwise folks might have got all upset." Macurdy stepped to one side. "Pavo, meet Vulkan."
With that, Pavo Wollerda, warrior-scholar, ex-revolutionary leader, king of Tekalos, found himself facing something he'd heard of all his life. A bugbear he'd learned to fear as a child, had only half believed in since, and had never thought to see. The small fierce eyes were almost on a level with his own, gleaming red in the torchlight. The heavy yellow tusks were something out of nightmare. Reflexively the king stepped back, while his guardsmen's hands went to their swords.
"Vulkan and I are traveling together," Macurdy went on. "He's my friend and advisor. And smart as the stories say, but not near as ferocious. Not normally. Matter of fact, he's safer to be around than lots of dogs, unless someone gets crosswise of him, I suppose."
Wollerda stared, then thoughts entered his mind in the form of a pseudo voice, deep and resonant. «My function is not violence.»
The guards' nerves had eased a bit—their knees and backs had straightened—but their hands remained near their sword hilts. The king turned in awe to his old comrade-in-arms. "Macurdy, I've known for years you were a man of power. But to have a traveling companion like that? No man in Yuulith is your match!"
Grinning, Macurdy shook his head. "I'm not much more of a magician now than when I left. Which isn't all that much. I'm older and more experienced, and smarter I hope. But whether I'm smart enough, time will tell.
"Ask us in and we'll tell you what we know. But I expect we'll learn more from you than you will from us."
Wollerda nodded toward Vulkan. "He goes in with us?"
"Unless you'd rather talk out here. I expect Liiset will want to meet him, too."
They went in then, the king leading, several guardsmen bringing up the rear. Briefly Wollerda wondered if Vulkan was housebroken. But intelligent as the giant boar seemed to be, and a wizard to boot, that seemed unlikely to be a problem.
The royal apartment was on the second floor. When they went in, Queen Liiset met them with no sign of shock, or even surprise, at Vulkan's presence. Macurdy decided she'd been watching out a window.
"Curtis!" she said smiling and took his hand for a moment. She was the first person to call him that since he'd left Farside. "Introduce me to your companion," she added, turning her gaze to Vulkan.
Vulkan introduced himself. «I am Vulkan. I have learned much about the Sisterhood in recent centuries, but you are the first of them whom I have addressed personally.»
When Wollerda learned that his visitors hadn't eaten, he ordered a meal sent for Macurdy. Vulkan said he'd wait till later, and that a lamb would be about right.
After eating, Macurdy described briefly his past seventeen years on Farside. He'd intended to mention the voitar in Bavaria, then didn't. He did mention Vulkan's premonition about a threat from across the Ocean Sea, but didn't elaborate. The time for that, it seemed to him, was if and when the threat materialized. Or perhaps if pushed to it by questions.
"What I'd like to hear about," he went on, "is how things are going in Tekalos, and with the Sisterhood."
Wollerda had been everything King Gurtho had not. He'd striven for justice, and taken care not to offend his subjects needlessly. There hadn't been a tax uprising since his coronation, partly because taxes were now set by fixed rates. And partly because, over time, a count, three reeves and five bailiffs had been found guilty of flagrant abuse of office, mostly for tax offenses. After a tour of the kingdom in chains, they'd made the acquaintance of the royal executioner, and the heads had decorated poles outside their official residences. This not only gratified the population at large. It was also an ever-present reminder to those who succeeded them in office, and a warning to officials elsewhere. For their heads were left on the poles till long after they were bleached skulls.
"Those are the only brutalities I've committed in office," Wollerda finished, "but I have no doubt Brog'r forgives me."
Early on he'd established militia training for all youth, somewhat after the Ozian system, and reduced the standing army. County forces too had been reduced, and put on a reserve basis to reduce taxes. Their annual field training now was done on a military reservation, to avoid trampling farmers' fields—a long-standing source of damage and resentment. Aside from the king, only counts retained military forces at all. Reeves and bailiffs replaced theirs with police, which were fewer in number, and regulated by law rather than whim.
Shamans had been legalized. "Most of them," Woll
erda added, "aren't very effective. But the poorer of them soon find business sparse, and profit slight from the puny fees they can get. But even the completely bogus sometimes effect cures by belief."
Macurdy turned to Liiset, who looked as young and beautiful as ever. She was a member of Varia's clone, and the resemblance was uncanny, even with their differences in aura. "And what's the state of the Sisterhood?" he asked.
Her eyes met his mildly. "Let me call Omara," she replied. "I get reports by courier, and make occasional trips to the Cloister, but she is Sarkia's executive officer."
"Omara is here?" Even as he spoke, Macurdy realized his response was giving away his feelings for the healer. But his aura would too, and Liiset wouldn't miss it.
"For a week," she answered. "She arrived this Three-Day, to initiate our children in the next stage of magicks and healing. She's considerably more advanced than I. And more fully informed of Sisterhood affairs. She'll be pleased to see you."
In minutes, Omara arrived from her quarters, smelling of fragrant soap. "My apologies," Liiset said, "if we interrupted you in your bath."
"I was done with it," Omara answered, with the calm that Macurdy remembered. "I was preparing to meditate." She turned, her gaze absorbing him. "Hello, Macurdy," she said, "it is very nice to see you again." He wondered how much she read in him. With her powerful talent and broad experience, surely she saw more deeply than Liiset or himself when she looked at an aura.
Only then did she give her attention to Vulkan. As hugely conspicuous and out of place as he was in the royal drawing room, she had not been distracted by him. "I was informed you were here," she continued. "I am Omara, as you have deduced, but I do not know your name."
«I—am Vulkan.»
Macurdy wondered if the others had caught how impressed the great boar was. "We're traveling together," Macurdy said. "I think of him as my tutor."
Liiset broke in. "Curtis asked how things stood in the Sisterhood. You may have information I lack."
Omara took a chair unbidden, as someone treated by the royal couple as a peer. "Why don't you begin," Omara said. "I can expand on it later, if appropriate."
Liiset nodded. "As I indicated, Sarkia still lives. Once decline sets in, it is rare for death to hold off as long as a dozen years. Nine or ten is typical. With Sarkia it's been eighteen, thanks to Omara's powers and her own strong will. She still has not chosen a successor, though she'd like to, and most of us feel serious concern over what might happen if she dies without naming one.
"In that case Idri would probably be the new dynast. She no longer hides her desire and intention, though she knows she's unpopular with the Sisterhood. She's spent most of her life making enemies. I'm one of the few she likes and treats with respect, and one of still fewer who feel affinity for her. But I recognize her unfitness to rule."
Frowning, Macurdy broke in. "Then who supports her? Even if Sarkia decreed her to be the new dynast..."
"The Tigers. The Tigers support her."
Macurdy frowned. "The Tigers?"
Liiset nodded. "Sarkia gave Idri authority over the breeding and training of Tigers. That was back when you were still here, on campaign in the Marches, actually. Before Sarkia began her decline. Idri had failed at every other command assignment she'd had. I suppose Sarkia hoped this might be one she could manage. At first it was a secondary responsibility, but Idri turned it into her principal one. She quickly began building their numbers as rapidly as she could, while seducing, politicking—conquering so to speak—key Tiger commanders. And saying the right things to make herself popular with the entire corps.
"Their numbers did not—could not—increase rapidly, of course. It takes the better part of twenty years to mature and train a Tiger, and fewer than one in three of us are suitable mother stock for them. Fewer than one in ten are prime mother stock. So from the very start, Idri used her influence to shorten the resting periods between litters by prime mothers. Which increased not only the number of Tiger births, but the number of potential prime mothers born. And of the other suitable mother stock, she convinced Sarkia to increase the number of Tiger breedings. Which wasn't popular with Sisters, of course, but very popular with Tigers.
"Today there are hardly any more fully trained Tigers than when she took command of them. "But there are far more Tiger youth in training. And this year will produce the largest number of completions ever, fully trained and ready. Next year, completions will be higher again. And so on."
Macurdy interrupted. "What does the King in Silver Mountain think of all these Tiger companies within the boundaries of his kingdom?" The king was Sarkia's landlord, the Cloister existing on land he'd leased to the Sisterhood. To Macurdy it had always seemed an odd arrangement, considering the reputation of the dwarves in general, and certainly of the King in Silver Mountain.
"Apparently it's not a problem," Liiset said. "In fact he doubled the lease holding about the time you went back to Farside.
"The increase in Tigers and Tiger young puts stress on the Sisterhood though. Our trade has to support them along with the rest of us. Fortunately Tigers are shorter lived. Which they resent of course. Not one has ever survived to a normal decline. Normally some vital organ, usually the heart, burns out after forty or fifty years, and they die more or less quickly.
"Idri wants us to hire out Tigers as mercenary units. But Sarkia is smart enough to see the temptations and problems that would lead to, so three years ago she drastically reduced the breeding intensity. Meanwhile we have to support the offspring of fifteen years of intensive breeding. And in eight years we'll have double the present number fully trained and ready."
Liiset looked knowingly at Macurdy. "You see what Idri has in mind, of course."
Macurdy nodded. Sarkia could hardly survive much longer. Any day could see her dead, naturally or otherwise. Then Idri would declare herself dynast, and intensify Tiger breeding again. She'd rent out Tiger companies, undertake alliances with ambitious kings, then try to take over the Rude Lands. And if she got away with that...
He looked at Omara. "What do you think of all this? What are her chances?"
As always, Omara replied calmly and concisely. "For becoming dynast? It approaches certainty. Unless Sarkia appoints someone else—someone formidable—to replace her, and then resigns. Overall, the Guards still outnumber the Tigers, and they too are excellent fighting men. Some Guard clones are equal to Tigers in most respects; your own two sons by Varia are examples. But all in all, Guards companies fall short of Tiger companies as fighting units. How short is not clear, but few guardsmen match Tigers in strength, speed, or endurance. The Tiger advantage in tactical and personal skills is less clear, but they do nothing but train. Guard units have numerous other duties."
"And," Liiset broke in, "our Guard units are dispersed. We have a platoon at every embassy in the Rude Lands, the Marches, and the ylvin empires. And a squad or more at each Outland craftworks, where there's not an embassy at hand."
Embassies even in the empires! Macurdy was impressed. Probably, he thought, Cyncaidh had had a hand in that.
"That comes to nearly two cohorts," Liiset went on. "But only three companies are kept at the Cloister, not nearly enough to discourage a takeover by Idri.
"It's doubtful that Idri can go far with her ambitions, which I'm sure include conquests. But what she can do is create a shambles among the kingdoms and destroy the Sisterhood."
Macurdy nodded. Perhaps self-destruction was the destiny of the Sisterhood, but it would be a tragedy to see peace destroyed in the Rude Lands.
The Sisterhood, Liiset continued, had changed in other respects as well. Sarkia had married Sisters to every royal house in the Rude Lands—to the king or crown prince or both—with the single exception of Kormehr. Two had even married into royal families in the Marches. Those Sisters bore their children to foreign kings, children raised and trained at home. Thus the loyalty of the Outland queens to the Sisterhood was diluted.
The Sisters serving i
n Outland embassies and craftworks also came to look at the world and the Sisterhood with different eyes and minds than those remaining in the Cloister. To reduce this, for years Sarkia had rotated staff members every year or two. Only the ambassadors themselves had longer tenures. But she'd decided the returnees corrupted those who'd never been away, so now she mostly left them in place. She called them home mainly for breeding, and while in the Cloister, they lived apart.
"We've become a Sisterhood divided," Liiset finished. "There is now an Outland Sisterhood, and a larger Cloister Sisterhood. The latter tending to resent the former, but somewhat contaminated by them."
She gestured. "Omara is an exception. That Sarkia trusts her absolutely, I do not doubt. And despite Omara's role in keeping her alive, she sends her out for three or four weeks at a time, to investigate or handle Outland situations. Of the Outland queens, I seem to be the most trusted. Ironically enough, this is probably because Idri and I get along."