"She is an obstacle," agreed the dark one. "But such obstacles can be overcome."
Blackstone glowered, his eyebrows meeting in a bushy ridge of darkness over his eyes. He stared, as if his gaze would penetrate that cloth enclosing the serenely hooded figure. "What do you mean?" he asked carefully.
"You couldn't have arranged the situation better had you planned it. Of course, no harm can be offered the girl-not while she is your guest. But has she not herself foresworn your hospitality tonight?"
"Indeed." The earl continued to study the cloaked figure.
"In fact, you tell me she declined your offer of a protective escort-guards to keep her safe against such threats as lurk in the hills."
"Aye-and those threats are real, but they do not materialize at my beck and call. And I cannot risk sending some of my own men, however well disguised. What we speak of is treason against the family of a very mighty High King. The loyalty of even my most trusted sergeants would be strained by such a task."
"There is another way." Now the hooded man leaned forward, clasping his hands over his knees. They extended from the sleeves of his robe, and Blackstone saw that they were slender and frail, almost womanly. The blue of veins showed through the pale skin.
"Continue," said the earl quietly.
"You remember, I am certain, the choice portions of iron and steel I have claimed from you these past years?"
"Aye. . and gold aplenty, too!"
The stranger laughed mirthlessly. "Even gold. All of these are materials that have enabled me to complete a task."
"What task is this?"
"There is a thing I have made-an iron golem. It is completed, hidden in a cave in the hills not far from here-and not far from the Moonwell."
"What is it? What can it do?"
"It is a mighty creature, more powerful than a dozen giants. It is immune to weapons and capable of killing with a single blast of steaming breath. But more than this, it is capped with the horned helmet of the northmen. It will be taken, by whoever sees it, as a great icon of the raiders, sent to inflict harm upon the Ffolk."
Blackstone scowled more fiercely than ever. "Why should I seek war with the northmen? My manor sits astride the border with Gnarhelm. We would be the first to feel the scourge of battle!"
The deep hood shook slowly back and forth. "There need not be war, but there will be suspicion. If the golem continues its rampage, perhaps destroying one of your own mine shacks, that suspicion will fall away from you. The princess will be an unfortunate casualty to an arcane threat, that is all."
"Can this. . creature accomplish this task tonight?"
"It is not a creature. It is a thing, created by myself!" snapped the visitor somewhat peevishly. "And, yes-within two hours of my leaving you, it can reach the Moonwell."
Blackstone sat back and looked upward, uncomfortable. He contemplated doing a thing he recognized as monstrous treachery. Though he had always been ambitious, he had come to his position honestly-by an accident of birth, true, but nonetheless the earldom of Blackstone was rightly his.
Now, with the failure of crop after crop of the Ffolk's harvest, the wealth of his holdings had made him foremost in influence among the king's advisers. This position was his, regardless of the activities of tonight.
Yet deep within himself, the Earl of Fairheight admitted that he wanted more … much, much more. This princess of Callidyrr, a mere babe, would stand in the path of his ambition, and his anger seethed.
And, the truth be known, Blackstone worried more about escaping the blame for his treason than he did about any moral qualms of his action. This concern was mollified by the promises and the plans made by the hooded visitor whose name the earl had never learned. Yet always before, the man's counsel had proved profitable. Had he not been the one who had first encouraged him to begin the excavations in Granite Ridge?
"Very well," he grunted, in the end reaching the decision that had been inevitable. "Go now and awaken your golem."
"This is the place," suggested the one-eyed pirate called Kaffa.
"Right you are," agreed Larth, for the isolated coastal farmstead matched up perfectly with the map given to the two outlaws by the nameless cleric.
Indeed, a brief search revealed Kaffa's longship, concealed amid a dense coastal thicket. A sail was carefully furled alongside the mast, and the ship was provisioned with food and water for a long voyage, as well as an assortment of fine steel weapons.
"As soon as the tide's high, we can put out to sea," muttered the grizzled, one-eyed northman with a snap of his fingers. He pointed to the prow of the sleek-hulled vessel. "Aye, and look: She's got a right proper name, at that!"
"The Vulture" read Larth. "She'll carry you to some ripe carrion, I'll bet!"
Kaffa gestured to the mast, where a triple-bolted image of lightning, made of steel, was fastened. "And here's our proof against sorcery," he noted, well pleased.
Already the coastal towns of Callidyrr seemed to beckon the piratical captain, offering the promise of plunder and other amusing diversions to the unscrupulous captain and his crew. The ship was long and sleek, easily capable of carrying a seventy-man complement.
"And here," added Larth, a few minutes later. "This will outfit a steadfast company of knights." He had discovered the barn where the unnamed cleric had collected armor and weapons, as well as horses, for Larth's thirty-man company. Heading north, Larth knew, they would soon enter the kingdom of Gnarhelm, and there they would act out their part as invaders from the south.
"The guy gave me the spooks," admitted Kaffa, reflecting on the robed priest who had collected them, given them their orders, and then paid them. "But he's got his organization down pat. He had everything here we could possibly need!"
"Aye," agreed Larth. "And not poor horseflesh, either." The veteran rider had just completed an inspection of his war-horses. "These steeds would do a king's guard proud!"
"All right, then!" Kaffa chortled. "We'll sail with the dawn to make war on the Ffolk!"
"And we ride at the same time to invade the north!" added Larth with a grin.
Then the two men bellowed their laughter, delighted, as if they had just made a great joke.
From the Log of Sinioth:
It is with a feeling approaching disbelief that I speak the command words. Breathlessly I await the results, watching. And then it moves! It rises!
It is the child of five years' labor, but now the child looms high over the parent. Like a gargantuan of destruction, it leaves this lair-this sheltered cave where I have so carefully crafted it over this half decade-and marches into the night.
Go now, mighty slave, and do the bidding of your master! Stalk your royal prey beside the once-sacred pool. There you shall slake your thirst-and there will Talos begin his climb to ultimate mastery!
7
A Golem of Iron
"Gather the tribes!"
"War-there must be war!"
The cries of hatred and rage resounded through the lodge of King Svenyird Olafsson as the northmen decried the treacherous attack on the island of their kin. None questioned the perpetrators as other than the Ffolk.
Finally, however, the king raised a hand. The rumbling in the great, smoke-filled lodge died away as these savage seamen waited to hear what their monarch would say.
"Know you all, as do I-for most of our history, the Ffolk have been our implacable enemies. In the wars between us, quarter has not been asked nor given. I myself earned my first battle scars in raids against the west coast of Alaron!"
A chorus of assenting cries, muttered in unison, echoed the king's words.
"But for these past two decades, there has been no war between northman and Ffolk. Their king seemed to my father an honorable man." All knew it had been King Olaf himself who had represented Gnarhelm in the treaty talks with the new High King within a year after Tristan had assumed the mantle of rulership over his people.
"And King Kendrick still reigns, and reigns well. What cause sh
ould he have now to break this accord-an accord which he labored so hard, together with my kinsman Grunnarch the Red, King of Norland, to bring about?"
No man could supply a satisfactory answer.
"But the proof!" cried one.
"A talisman of the Ffolk, found at the scene of butchery!" Brandon, son of King Svenyird, shouted his own accusation. "There is no other explanation!"
"Ah, my son. As always, you are ready to lead my men to war. This is as it should be. But first you must gain the blessings of old men such as myself, and I am not yet prepared to concede that the High King of Moonshae has done us wrong."
"But would you have us absorb the hurts like old women?" Brandon demanded, angry.
"Do not forget yourself in your rage," his father admonished, and the strapping war leader bowed his head in apology.
"Forgive me, sire."
"You are forgiven. But this matter needs debate and investigation, not unproven accusations and wild plans for vengeance."
"But how?" Another gray-bearded veteran, known as Knaff the Elder, now shouted his objection. "What more proof can we gain? Do we ask our enemies for explanation?"
"Our former enemies!" barked King Svenyird. "I remind you all that most of the warriors in this council today were but beardless youths when our last war with the Ffolk reached its conclusion."
"What, then?" cried another warrior, hulking Wultha, who, like Knaff and the king, was old enough to remember those wars. Wultha's nose, broken in battle, was flattened across his face. "Surely we must do something."
"Indeed we shall. It is my intent to send an ambassador to Callidyrr, one who knows the ways of war in the event of treachery. He will take a party of men but approach the throne of the High King in peace. He will present our evidence and demand an accounting."
"But it may be a trap!" shouted Knaff. "You could be sending your man to his death!"
"I will make no command. The warlord I name shall be free to accept or decline. If he accepts, he shall know the risk, though I venture it would take more than a simple ambush to place the noose of death around his neck."
"Who? Name the man!" The questions, the cries came pouring forth from the mass of northmen.
Brandon knew the answer, and he stood as his father's old eyes came to rest-with tenderness and pride, the young man thought-on the face of his son.
"Brandon Olafsson, Prince of Gnarhelm, will you accept my commission as ambassador and journey in peace to the palace in Callidyrr, there to call upon the High King in such manner as we have discussed?"
The young warrior's pulse pounded, and his face flushed with pride. "I will hasten to do as you command, sire. If the Ffolk be honorable, I shall return in peace." He paused, bowing, before he continued with the words that he knew that warriors among his people wanted him to speak.
"But if there be treachery among them, I shall make them regret their betrayal tenfold, a hundredfold, even if it means that I must shed the blood of the High King himself!"
The king sat back in his fur-lined chair, an expression of satisfaction on his gray-bearded face. Brandon's own mind soared, inflamed and encouraged by the accolades ringing from the throats of his countrymen.
Alicia stirred restlessly beneath the heavy bearskin that served as her bedroll. Finally she abandoned all thought of sleep, rising to pace about their small camp. She, Keane, and Tavish had made a sleeping place in a flat clearing among the boulders a hundred feet from the shore of the dead Moonwell.
Now, as the moth is drawn to the light, she felt herself compelled to approach that once-sacred water.
Why had she wished so strongly to sleep here tonight? The question nagged at her, for she had no idea as to the answer-and yet it had been a very compelling desire indeed. Her two companions had seemed to sense this, for both of them seemed more relaxed and comfortable here than they had been when surrounded by the hospitality of Blackstone's hearth and table.
She looked at the water, wondering if she saw a trace of its phosphorescent glow. Her mother had told her that, in Robyn's youth, all of the Moonwells had glowed in darkness with a soft white light widely taken as proof of the benign presence of the goddess. It saddened her now to look at this brackish pond, clearly outlined before her in its circular frame of the boulder-lined shore.
But why could she see it at all? The night was inky dark around her. Heavy overcast covered the clouds, totally obscuring the moon that somehow she knew waned into its third quarter. That, too, seemed odd. She hadn't seen the moon in weeks, perhaps months, yet within her mind, she had a very clear picture of the exact stage of its phase.
Alicia approached the pond, her feet stepping surely past unseen rocks, until she found a large boulder near the water's edge that would serve as a comfortable seat. She looked upon the Moonwell with a sense of wonder. It did glow, very softly.
Lost in meditation, she didn't hear movement behind her. Suddenly she gasped in alarm.
"I didn't mean to startle you," Keane said, almost whispering, "but the night is so still I didn't wish to break the silence."
Alicia moved, making room for him on the rock. "Can you see it?" she asked, indicating the well.
"Yes."
"Is it a miracle?" she asked wonderingly.
Keane laughed, very softly. "There are things in the earth-ores, and minerals-that will emit such a glow when they are properly mixed. The effect has been known to occur in nature. That, I believe, is what we see here."
"An accident of nature? Or perhaps the workings of the goddess."
"Would that it were," he said. "But if the mightiest druids in the land haven't felt her presence in two decades, I doubt that a warrior princess would come upon that discovery here, in the midst of a dark night." Nevertheless, even as he spoke, Keane's voice sounded less sure.
"Tell me," he said, after a brief pause, "why was it so important to you that we remain out here tonight?"
"I don't kno-yes, I do. It was this water, the Moonwell. I looked upon it and I didn't want to leave."
"You've seen Moonwells before. Isn't the one in the moors beyond Callidyrr a favorite picnic spot of yours? Have you ever felt such a thing before?"
"Never." Alicia was certain of the answer. The compulsion that had drawn her here was unique in her experience. She sensed that Keane looked at her strangely. "Do I puzzle you, O wise tutor?" she asked, laughing softly. "Well, I puzzle myself as well!"
"Indeed, Princess." The man's voice was strangely hesitant, in a way she had never noticed before.
With a shocking realization, Alicia felt an abrupt awareness of Keane as a man, here beside her in this place of serenity. She liked that feeling but was vaguely frightened by it as well. Disturbed, she lowered her eyes, afraid of what he might see there even in the dark.
And yet the emotion she felt most strongly was a small inkling of delight, of a sweet discovery that came unexpectedly into her life. He did not seem so old now. Indeed, of what real significance were the eight years between them?
At the same time, Alicia realized that she genuinely cared for this man more than any other person outside her family. She trusted him, and his presence made her happy.
Did he think the same thoughts?
Keane stiffened suddenly. "What's that?"
Alicia, her mind wandering, looked at the tutor in annoyance. "What do you mean? What's what?"
Offending her still further, he placed a hand to her mouth to gently silence her. She knocked his arm aside, ready to object, when she heard the noise, too.
"It's coming closer," Keane whispered.
They heard a heavy clank, like a knight in plate mail walking across the rocky ground. Yet the noise was too deep, too resonant to come from plate mail. It was a metal thing that must have been much larger. Like the crash of a great gong, the sound rang through the darkness with vibrancy and power.
"There!" Keane sprang to his feet, staring into the darkness.
Alicia gasped, for she saw something moving along the shore on
the other side of the pool. The faint glow cast the object in a soft shade of green, and she saw that it was huge-and it moved, though with an artificial kind of gait, like a poorly controlled puppet.
"A giant!" she gasped.
"Illuminatus mio!" barked the tutor. He raised a hand, gesturing to the ground before the looming figure's feet.
A cool wash of brilliance erupted, as if the rocks themselves became crystal lanterns housing wicks of bright, steady flame. The shore, the camp, the well, even the walls of the small valley, stood sharply etched in light. In the midst of it all, the two humans could only stare in shock at the apparition that towered some fifteen feet into the air.
"It's not a giant!" Keane gasped, appalled. "It's metal-a thing made by man!"
Alicia couldn't comprehend a power that could make and animate something so supremely horrifying. The object had the vague outlines of a man, walking upon two legs, with a pair of massive arms swinging at its sides. Atop its metal shoulders rested a round head, with bolted plates forming the grotesque caricature of a mouth and eyes.
A great horned helm capped its iron visage, a helm such as Alicia had seen on some of the northmen warriors who came regularly to Callidyrr. The monstrous thing looked like a giant clad in head-to-foot plate mail, though it moved with a jerking, mechanical efficiency that resembled no living thing.
A huge leg stretched forward, kicking one of the cedars into splinters. The other swung, knocking a boulder out of the way, shattering another rock from the weight of its monstrous step. Huge strides carried the clanking object around the shore of the pond straight toward them.
Desperately Alicia looked toward Keane. He gazed at the monstrosity in stupefied horror, his mouth open. The woman felt for her sword. She had left it beside the saddle up at the camp. She almost laughed aloud at the picture in her mind-her small form bashing the steel blade against this unfeeling colossus until the edge was dented and dull. Suddenly giddy, the princess knew that it was fear that consumed her, threatening to overcome her capacity for reason. The giant loomed overhead, sightless eyes staring past her. She saw the gaping slash of its mouth, the dull red of some internal heat reflecting there.
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