Firesong looked supremely content. Elspeth reached for Darkwind’s hand under the table, only to find his seeking hers. They exchanged a quick squeeze as Vree, with a very self-satisfied gurgle, returned across the table and leapt back up to Darkwind’s shoulder.
“Once you get into Hardorn, you’ll have to make it up as you go along,” Kero said. “But the way I’ll get you across I think can be pretty simple. The bastard can’t watch the whole border, but drop a lot of what he thinks are Heralds in one place, and you bet he’ll watch that spot pretty closely! So I’ll turn out a bunch of the Skybolts in fake Whites—send them someplace that looks as if it might be strategic, and you cross wherever else you want. Put what looks like a million Heralds anywhere , and Ancar will be certain something is up. Hell, I might just give him something—”
Now she began to laugh, wearily, but after a moment, Elspeth realized it was not out of hysteria.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Oh, just something that occurred to me I’ll get one of the Blues to build me some kind of complicated war engine out of broken bits, something that can’t possibly work but looks impressive enough to take out a city wall with one blow. I’ll have my pseudo-Heralds escort that to his fortification, and let him take it. He’ll spend forever trying to figure the thing out!” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, as the others began to chuckle. “Oh, gods, it is such a good thing for the world that we’re honest!”
“Speak for yourself!” Firesong replied, with mock-indignation. “I intend to persuade as much coin from the pockets of the unsuspecting as possible!”
The firebird only snorted and resumed its preening.
Falconsbane sipped at a goblet of fine spiced wine and sat back in his chair with a wonderful feeling of pure content. Or, at least, as content as he could be while he was still someone else’s captive. Everything was proceeding as it should, and completely in accordance with his plans.
His strategies on the border had succeeded so well that Ancar had sent him several more prisoners to dispose of, by way of reward. He had managed to determine that it was not the coercive spells that were keeping him from access to the local nodes and ley-lines, but a set of complicated keying spells that led back to—surprise!—Hulda. And those spells were keeping Ancar away, too, without a doubt. The only real power that Ancar would be able to touch, other than that derived from the death of underlings, would be through Hulda now. The keying spells would even make it difficult for Falconsbane to access those nodes were he not under coercions.
That made him all the more determined to rid himself of the bitch. He certainly didn’t need her, and her overblown and overripe charms had long since lost any attraction for him; her promiscuity was appalling. She could have offered him the key; she had not. Therefore, she had no plans to share her power with anyone.
This put Ancar’s inability to access power outside himself in another light altogether. If Hulda had locked that power away from him, he might not be altogether incompetent after all.
She was playing some kind of deep game, that one. Falconsbane was not going to play it, either by her rules or anyone else’s.
A slight tap on the door signaled another small triumph. That was Ancar, and Falconsbane had finally convinced him to announce himself before he came barging into Mornelithe’s suite. Respect; the boy needed to learn respect, and he might even be worth saving and making into an underling when all this was over.
Meanwhile, the bitch needed to learn a little lesson, too.
“Enter,” he said aloud, and Ancar’s ever-present escort opened the door silently. Two of the guards entered first, followed by the King, who joined Falconsbane beside his fire. The guards took their positions, one on either side of the door; Falconsbane found their presence rather amusing. Evidently the boy took no chances; he protected himself physically even in the presence of someone he—relatively—trusted. What did he do when he took a wench to his bed? Drug her so that he knew she was harmless? Feh, he was so unappealing, that was probably the only way he would get a bedmate.
Ancar poured himself a cup of wine from the pitcher on the hearth. For all that he took no chances, he was prone to acting very foolishly. Falconsbane was a mage; he could have changed the content of that wine without having any access to poisons. Or didn’t Ancar know that was possible?
Falconsbane waited for him to speak first, since it was obvious from the King’s manner that nothing urgent had brought him here. But from Ancar’s faint frown, something displeased him enough to make him seek Mornelithe’s counsel.
Finally, the young King spoke. “I have tried to take power from those lines of energy you spoke about, which seem to be the same thing that Hulda called ley-lines. Something has blocked me from them.” His frown deepened. “Although I could never use the nodes you spoke of because they were too powerful for me, I have been able to touch those lines in the past. But now I cannot, and I do not know why.”
So, access to the ley-lines had been keyed very recently. Perhaps when Hulda realized that Ancar had attempted a Gate. She knew he was experimenting and had chosen this way to place a limit on what he could do.
“It is none of my doing,” he pointed out. “But I had noted this myself; I, too, have been blocked. It is one of the reasons why I can do so little to help you, other than offer advice. I think, however,” he added slyly, “that if you would trace the spells that keep you at a distance to their origin, you would find it to be Hulda.”
Ancar sat upright. “Oh?” he replied, too casually. “Are you very certain of that?”
Falconsbane only shrugged. “You may see for yourself, Majesty. You certainly have the Mage-Sight to do so. There is nothing preventing you from tracing magic back to its originator.”
Ancar sank back into the embrace of the chair, his frown deepening. “She overreaches herself,” he muttered to himself. Mornelithe guessed that he had not meant to speak that aloud.
But Falconsbane chose to take the comment as meant for his ears. “Then give her a lesson to put her properly in her place,” he said quietly. “Which of you rules here? Will you let her block you from the use of power that is rightfully yours? The coercive spells you have placed upon me have certainly worked well enough. Set them on her! Let her cool for a time in your prison cells. Let her see the rewards of thwarting you. Tame the bitch to your hand and muzzle her that she not bite you.”
Ancar’s jaw clenched and his hands tightened around the goblet. “I do not know that those spells will hold her,” he admitted, reluctantly. “She is at her full strength. You were weak when I set them upon you.”
Falconsbane laughed aloud, startling him so that his hands jerked, and a few drops of wine splashed out of the goblet. “Majesty, the woman is a bitch in heat when she sees a handsome young man! Lay a trap for her, then bait it with one such, and you will have her at a moment of weakness as great as mine! Only choose your bait wisely, so that he will exhaust her before you spring it.”
Ancar brushed absently at the droplets of red on his black velvet tunic, and considered that for a moment. “It might work,” he replied thoughtfully. “It might at that.”
“If it does not, what have you lost?” Falconsbane countered. “You are something near to a Master mage, and that should suffice that you can set those spells subtly enough that she does not notice them until she tries to act against your interest. Such things are either tough or brittle. If they do not hold, they will break. Few can trace a broken spell if she even notices that the attempt was made to coerce her. If they do hold, then you will have her.”
Ancar smiled at him over the edge of the goblet. “You are a good counselor, Mornelithe Falconsbane, and a clever mage. That is why I do not lift the spells on you, and do not intend to until I have learned all that you can teach me.”
That came as something of a shock to Falconsbane, although he hid his reaction under a smooth expression. He had not given the boy credit for that much cleverness.
He
would be more careful in the future.
Ancar left Falconsbane’s chambers with a feeling of accomplishment. So, that was why he had been denied the power he needed lately! The traces that led back to Hulda were easy enough to see when you looked for them—exactly as Falconsbane claimed. He had not thought she would dare to be so blatant in her attempts to keep a leash on him.
The Adept was right. It was time to teach her a lesson; time to put the leash on her.
And he knew exactly the bait for the trap. Hulda was tiring of her mule driver (in no small part because she was using him to exhaustion), but Ancar had anticipated that and had found a replacement a week ago.
This one, a slave—Ancar regretted that his tastes ran to women, and had set his agent to looking for a female counterpart to him—was altogether a remarkable specimen. The agent claimed he had been bred and schooled, like a warhorse, for the private chamber of a lady of wealth from Ceejay. She had met with an accident—quite remarkably, it was a real accident—and the agent had acquired the slave from the innkeeper to whom her lodgingmonies were owed. It was then that he had discovered the young man’s talents, when he found the boy in bed with his wife. . . .
He was, fortunately for Ancar, a man of phegmatic temper and a man with his eye on the main chance. He had realized at once that this was an incident of little import. His marriage was one of convenience. The boy was a slave—whom would he tell? And who would believe him if he did speak? The woman would not dare to speak, for she would be the one disgraced if she did. The merchant’s reputation was safe enough, provided he rid his household of the boy and sent him far, far away. All he needed to do would be to find a buyer—and he knew he had one in Ancar.
He persuaded his wife that she would not be punished and received such a remarkable tale of the lad’s skill, training, and prowess, that he had sent a messenger to the King straight away. Ancar had bought the boy immediately, sight unseen, on the basis of that report, and had set him to work on one of the chambermaids, spying on the two to see if the reports were true.
They were more than true, and Ancar had come very close to envying that fortunate chambermaid. When the lad was through with her, she literally could not move, and she slept for an entire day.
Since then, the boy had been schooled as a page and kept strictly celibate. Reports had him frantic to exercise his craft. He should be quite ready to please Hulda now.
Ancar put the plan in motion, beginning by ordering roughly half of Hulda’s staff replaced that very hour, and slipping the boy in with the replacements. The rest would follow, for the slave had been conditioned that any female he called “mistress” must be pleased. Hulda would not be able to resist his fresh, innocent fairness, especially in contrast to her swarthy muleteer. She would set out to seduce him, and by the time she realized that the seduction was the other way around, she would be enjoying herself so much she would not think to look any further than the pleasures of the moment.
Ancar waited until his spies told him that Hulda had retired, and not alone. He reckoned that four candlemarks would be enough to give them together, and timed his spells accordingly. Her chamber was guarded against combative magics, but not against this. Then again, she had never dreamed he would be audacious enough to use controlling spells against her.
The spells fell into place, softly as falling snow. Ancar waited a candlemark or two more, then moved in with his escort of guards.
No one tried to stop him; the guards at her doors were all his. But he did not come bursting into her chambers—no, he had the doors opened slowly, carefully, so as not to startle the boy.
After all, he might have use for such a talent some other time.
The boy awakened instantly, and looked up from the wild disarray of the bedclothes, his long blond hair falling charmingly over one sleepy, frightened blue eye. Ancar put his finger to his lips, then motioned to the boy to take himself out of the room.
The slave slipped out of the bed so quietly that he did not even stir the sheets. He did not even stop to gather up his garments; one of the guardsmen, flushing a little, stopped him long enough to hand him a robe before he escaped back to the servants’ quarters. Ancar made a mental note to reward the man; a naked page skittering through the halls might cause some awkward comment. Quick thinking deserved a reward.
Ancar motioned to his guards to take up positions around the bed. Then he cleared his throat noisily.
Hulda reacted much faster than he had expected her to. She came up out of the bed like an enraged animal, fully attack-ready, her face a mask of pure anger.
“You!” she spat, seeing Ancar standing at the foot of her bed. “How dare you!” And she lashed out at him with her magic, as she would at a disobedient brat that needed a severe correction.
Tried to, that is. Ancar’s controlling spells stopped her in mid-strike.
He had expected her to be dumbfounded, perhaps to make another attempt. He had never thought she would go from “correction” into an all-out attempt at attack.
He stepped back a pace as he felt his spells shuddering under the impact of her attempt to break them—break through them, and break him. One look at her expression told him that she knew—
Knew that her control of him was over. Knew that he now intended to make an obedient servant of her. He was now the enemy, and she would destroy him if she could.
And in that moment, he realized just how tenuous his hold over her was. Suddenly, he was overcome with terror. She could, at any moment, break loose from his control. And when she did—she would go straight for his throat.
He was no match for her.
“Take her!” he shouted at the guards. They did not hesitate—and one of them had been around mages long enough not to give her any chance to turn her spells on him. The moment that Ancar snapped out the order, the man seized a rug from the floor and flung it over Hulda’s head, following it by flinging himself on her and the rug together. She had a fraction of a breath to be enveloped, realize she was trapped, and start to fight free. By then, he was on the bed, and coolly rapped her on the head with the pommel of his dagger. She collapsed in a heap; he gathered her up, rug and all, bound the entire package with a series of sashes and bedcurtain cords he snatched up from around him. He got to his feet, picked her up, and laid her at Ancar’s feet, and then stood back, presenting the “package” as a well-trained hunting dog presented his master with a duck.
Ancar grinned. “Well done!” he applauded, noting that the man was the same one who had given the page a robe. He would have to see the man was rewarded well. Perhaps with the page?
Well, that would have to wait. It was not safe to leave Hulda anywhere in the palace proper; the place was rife with her power-objects. But there was one place that would be perfectly safe.
And perfectly ironic.
Long ago, he and she had worked together to make one particular cell completely magic-proof. It had held the Herald Talia for a short time, and Ancar and Hulda both had been determined that once they recaptured the woman, she would become a return visitor to that cell, this time with no means of escape. The cell was so well shielded that not even mind-magic could escape it. The shields were a perfect mirror surface on the inside and would reflect any magic cast right back into the teeth of the caster.
And since Hulda had not been able to follow through on her promise to give him Talia, it was only fitting that she herself should test her handiwork. The irony was that although she herself had set the shields, from the inside she would not be able to take them down. Delightful.
He signed to the guard who had captured Hulda to pick her up again, and noted with approval that the man took the precaution of administering another carefully calculated rap to Hulda’s skull before picking her up. He was taking no chances—and Hulda would have a terrible headache when she woke.
The page was standing just inside the door to the pages’ quarters as they passed, still wrapped in “Hulda’s fine silk robe, but with his long blond hair no
w neatly tied back, and his fair young face flushed. The guard carrying Hulda looked at him briefly and flushed, but it was not a blush of embarrassment. Ancar suppressed a smile of amusement.
Yes, he would certainly reward the man with the page. One night with the boy, and the guard would probably die for his lord out of purest gratitude.
With one guard leading, and the man with the Hulda-bundle following, he led the way down into the dungeons.
On the way, he ordered some servants’ livery to be brought along. He would leave nothing to chance, allow nothing from her chambers to enter the cell. If she wished to remain naked rather than clothe herself as his servant, that was her choice. If she chose to clothe herself—well, perhaps the lesson would be taken. If he could only control her, she could still be a useful tool. . . .
Almost as useful as Mornelithe Falconsbane.
Falconsbane did not move from the chair when Ancar left. He was fairly certain the boy was going to take his advice. He was also fairly certain the boy would succeed.
Temporarily.
Hulda was a powerful Adept. The boy had never actually fought any mage head-to-head, much less an Adept, before this moment. When she recovered her strength, she would be perfectly capable of breaking anything that held her and quite ready to kill the one that had ordered her humiliation.
It might take a great deal of time—but she would do so, eventually, and she would devote every waking moment to the task. Hadn’t Falconsbane? And Hulda would not be hindered by physical weakness or unfamiliar surroundings.
The only question in Falconsbane’s mind was whether or not Ancar would succeed in killing her before she broke free of his control entirely.
The situation was perfect. He sipped his wine, and smiled.
One way or another, whether Ancar won or lost—he would be free, and both Hulda and Ancar would die. If Hulda killed Ancar, the coercions would go with him, and Hulda would be weak enough to destroy.
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