“This is one of the Lesser Artifacts,” Terrell breathed in wonder.
“Correct, Your Highness.” Fantillin coughed discreetly. “Though not so ‘lesser’. In addition to capturing intruders, it notifies the Inner Servants and the Palace Guard. Right now, bells are ringing in my office and that of your Guard Captain, though he knows to ignore them for now.”
Terrell nodded. “How do I release the butterfly?”
“You can cup it in your hands and pass it back to its keeper. The arrow may simply be grasped and handed back.”
Terrell did both. The spells stretched to cover him as he moved. Pushing his hands straight away from the Guardian’s glowing plane carried the butterfly and his hands out of the light. The woman servant deftly took the fluttering creature from him without touching the web and carried it off. The archer gravely accepted the return of his arrow the same way, bowed and left.
Terrell turned back to Pen, who waited with quivering intensity. His friend and bodyguard eagerly seized his offered hand and stepped inside the web with Terrell, keeping his other hand on Irreneetha’s hilt. Terrell sensed as well as saw the web draw back from the soulsword. It recognizes her, of course. When Pyrull bore her he lived here with my grandfather and then my mother. Pen craned his neck to look around the inside of the web, grinned a you did it! grin at Terrell, and stepped on through to the far side. One by one Terrell pulled the rest of his party through, Dona Seraphina, her husband Merritin, and Fantillin last of all.
“What about my personal servants?” He asked the majordomo, not wanting to be parted from their familiarity in all this strangeness.
“They are being reinitiated to the servant’s tunnel as we speak,” Fantillin explained. “They were all chosen from among the Inner Servants by your mother and went north with her. You have been enfolded in the care of the Royal Household from birth, Your Highness. We are delighted to finally welcome you home.”
Terrell limited his relief to a single nod and the word, “Good.”
The glowing web had faded away as soon as everyone passed through. Pen tested it by stepping back across without effect, then he examined the outer surface of the stone ring. “This thing is slick as grease on the outside,” he told Terrell. “I thought an assassin might be able to cling to the outer side, avoiding the faces, and swing around it to a window instead of going through it. But there’s nothing to hang on to.” He nodded approvingly.
Fantillin coughed discreetly. “The guardian’s power also covers the windows in the remainder of the bridge.”
Terrell smiled. “My ancestors had many generations to make their home secure.”
They made their way through a branching corridor lined with apartments for the royal healers, valets, and others. A stunningly beautiful courtyard garden held banks of flowers around ancient willow trees that trailed their branches over a pool big enough for swimming.
Terrell gazed around, enthralled but also slightly dismayed. ‘Enfolded,’ Fantillin said. I will have to take care that doesn’t become ‘caged.’ This palace-within-a-palace is uncomfortably like a beautiful prison.
At last they reached the double doors opening into the royal suite. Mirror-image embossed reliefs of a dragon graced each golden panel, tails coiled but front quarters reared up to strike. The two dragons’ eyes were rubies and emeralds, and they tracked him as he approached. He paused with one hand on each panel. The magic here tasted different.
“These are alive,” he said wonderingly.
“Indeed.” Fantillin looked pleased. “They are lesser spirits, summoned by a great Priestess among your ancestors and invited to dwell within the metal home prepared by her son, one of the greatest mages of his day. Only a member of the Royal House can persuade them.” He fell silent, watching expectantly.
This is a test, and he’s not going to tell me what to do.
He half closed his eyes and concentrated on the strange sensations emanating from the golden panels. Like Irreneetha, and yet not; he’d never received any sensation from Pen’s sword other than a cool distance, an almost palpable I-am-not-for-you message. These were . . . inviting.
There are personalities here. I think I could talk to them. He struggled to open his mind to the spirits in the metal. They were disturbingly vast, more alien than an ocean, and yet he had a sense of intimate presence like two tiny voices perched inside his ears. They spoke in a strange language and for long moments he grappled with it, comprehension hovering out of reach.
His Light surged inside him, flowed through his hands into the golden carvings. The dragons glowed, their eyes blazed. An affirmation like a mighty choir singing homage rang through him. Followed by a stepping-back sensation as the doors opened silently of their own accord.
Fantillin’s face split in the first unguarded smile Terrell had seen from the man. “Very good, Your Highness! Welcome home.”
In the beautiful sitting room beyond the dragon doors, three even-more-beautiful women rose from couches and bowed. Terrell gazed at them in confusion. “Are these the Inner Servants you mentioned?”
Fantillin beamed. “No, Your Highness. They are your concubines.”
Terrell’s jaw dropped as he stared. “I didn’t know you would be so beautiful,” he said to the three, receiving smiles in reward. “What are your names?”
“Rose,” declared the one on the left, who wore a brilliant pink gown and had rose blossoms in the knotted crown of her piled hair.
“Wren,” sang the next, clothed in saffron silk and sable with an avalanche of brown curls across her shoulders.
“Mist,” whispered the third, clad in shimmering white, her chestnut hair a sweeping fall caught by a single golden comb studded with emeralds and rubies.
“I meant your full names,” Terrell explained. “Who are your families?”
“You are not permitted to know that,” Dona Seraphina interrupted. “The Hierarchy judges it unwise for the King to develop a close affection for any concubine. Your love must be saved for the wife that you will someday marry. Therefore, the three names, Rose, Wren, and Mist.”
Terrell stared at her. “What? But that’s . . . Dona, are you telling me that this is the Hierarch’s policy?”
“No, it is that of the Hierarchy. All of us.” She stared into his eyes without flinching. “We have argued this through and through, Terrell, all the seventh-ranks of the Hierarchy assembled in conclave, and we are of one mind. The realm is too fragile to survive a repeat of the Bastard Wars. You must not sire any children out of wedlock. The survival of Silbar in the years ahead will depend upon clear and unarguable bloodlines. It has been Seen.”
Terrell’s objections foundered on that final word. “Seen? By the Seeress of the Mountain?”
“No, thanks be to Umana and Haroun! If it had been her vision, there would be no escape. No, this came from a lesser seer, and is a possible future, not an inescapable one. The Hierarchy cannot and will not disregard the danger.” She finished fiercely. “You must not sire any bastards!”
“Dona—” he protested, then stopped with an effort and held his tongue. This is not the time or place to argue.
But he looked at the three and his desire awoke. This . . . may be a problem.
CHAPTER 16: CHISAAD AND TERRELL
Be calm, Chisaad told himself sternly. Do not give your ambition away through carelessness.
He waited in the anteroom before the Hill Door and wrestled with his own impatience. Another delay in his meticulous search for that performer.
No. This meeting with the Prince is a crucial step I must take toward my goal, not a distraction. I must know if the Stone Throne will accept him as a member of the Royal House, as it did me. If it rejects him, which it may well, one problem is solved, and I can concentrate on the rest of the Twenty.
A bustle down the corridor announced the Prince’s arrival. Baron Penghar and his sword were with the youth. Chisaad disciplined his thoughts and bowed low.
* * *
Terrell found
himself wishing Irreneetha hadn’t chosen Pen. The three concubines had roiled his thoughts as much as his loins, possibly more, and he badly wanted to talk to his old friend about it. But Pen was no longer someone with whom he could share those feelings.
They’re all so beautiful, and I can bed any of them any time I wish. His desire stirred at the thought of the coming night. But I can’t learn their real names? Uneasiness countered his ardor. I’m going to have to sort this out. But not right now.
“Acting Royal Wizard Chisaad,” he greeted the waiting man. “Shimoor has spoken about you favorably. I take it you will be my guide to the Hill of Sight?”
Chisaad affirmed that and gestured to the Hill Door. The waiting guards opened both huge bronze leaves.
It’s more of a gate, Terrell thought as he strode through, passing more guards outside the door. He found himself on a little stone plaza pinched between the Palace and the grassy mass of the Hill. To left and right the plaza narrowed into paved paths that curved around the vast cone and out of sight. Straight ahead a flight of stairs climbed arrow-straight up the slope, the marble treads wide enough for six men to ascend side by side. His eyes followed them up to the distant flash of white at the top. A thrill ran down his spine at this glimpse of the Stone Throne. The most powerful artifact in Silbar.
“The Five Hundred Steps,” Chisaad stated, and Terrell could hear the reverential capitals in the man’s voice. “I see that you are impatient to ascend, Your Highness, so I ask only that you wait for me on the ninth landing, before you reach the top. There are important explanations that you must hear before you approach the Stone Throne.”
Terrell nodded eagerly and launched himself up the steps, Pen at his back. I climbed the Warburg in one go. I can handle this.
Their legs strengthened by years of war training, he and Pen breezed through the first landing and charged on up the second flight. By the time they had put a hundred steps behind them, Terrell’s eagerness had barely begun to ebb. The second landing gave a broad view of acres of Palace roof. The towers of the Gray Fort and the sentries on them were below him now. Terrell barely glanced at the watchers and charged on, putting the third and fourth flights behind him before he paused on the fourth landing. His lungs weren’t working quite as hard as they had on the Warburg’s stair. The air is thicker here. But his legs had remembered the difference between climbing and riding or fighting. Pen had kept up with him, but they were both breathing strongly now.
“Next flight,” he told Pen, and they charged up another fifty steps to the fifth landing.
“Two hundred and fifty steps,” Pen panted, standing with his legs braced a little apart and his head back to suck in air while he studied the remaining route. “Half way. What did we climb on the Warburg?”
“Two hundred forty-two,” Terrell panted back, glancing over the city. The Palace spread its maze below, the royal quarters looming as a blocky island on its north edge.
“Perhaps we should wait for the wizard, My Lord?”
“On the ninth landing.” Terrell attacked the stairs again.
The cone of the hill grew narrower, but the stairs stayed the same width. The landings too remained the same size, each big enough for half a dozen sedan chairs. Terrell toiled up the eighth and ninth flight by sheer stubbornness, his calves burning and lungs heaving. He wavered on the ninth landing before deciding that leaning on the balustrade would not be undignified. Besides, the view amazed him. He sucked in air while he stared.
The Palace lay like an intricate toy below, the Gray Fort a blockier one next to it, and the government buildings of the Middle Court seemed only a handspan farther away. Beyond them the city unrolled like a bejeweled map. Terrell mentally labeled what he saw from his memory of the parchment map that he had studied every night since crossing the Storm Pass.
Pen had paid attention to parts of it; he pointed across the Palace to the city’s hulking South Gate, which birthed the coastal road that ran to Rovigo and the other cities of the south coast and eventually to distant Cape Woe. “Is that the Clerk’s Quarter there between your government buildings and the gate? I remember Pyrull told me most of your judges, their clerks, and the Treasury workers live there.” He frowned. “They don’t seem to be guarded by much; anybody could walk from the Bazaar right into that neighborhood.”
“The city’s not like Gwythford Castle, with every wing walled off from every other one and guards between each,” Terrell answered. “People live more mixed together here. I think Wizard Chisaad lives among the clerks, and two of the judges I’ll inherit from grandfather live in the Cliffside neighborhood.” He pointed to the more orderly spread of houses lying to the east of the South Gate, on a plateau where the southern edge of the city fell into the sea.
“I thought that must be full of priestesses.” Pen waved at the rows of houses spotted with palm and fig trees. The tidy Cliffside neighborhood arced behind the golden dome of the Mother Temple and the ordered religious buildings that nestled close to it.
“And merchants and mages and people who work for merchants and mages and for the Temple and Collegium and Hospital and the rest of the Hierarch’s domain,” Terrell nodded. Half of Aretzo lay on that broad promontory thrust into the sea, sheer on the south and gently sloped on the north and northeast.
“What’s that palace out there on the east end?” Pen demanded. “Is that one of yours?”
“In a sense. That’s the Admiralty Palace, from whence my ship commanders operate Silbar’s Navy. I think the Navy Yard is mostly hidden behind it, in the corner of the harbor that we can’t see.” Terrell paused to admire the walls and towers of the long breakwater enclosing the placid harbor. Even for a boy who had grown up in Gwythford Castle, Aretzo’s harbor fortifications were awe-inspiring.
The granite wall atop the harbor’s breakwater stood a good thirty feet above the high tide line and stretched north and west again for more than a mile, forming a vast arc pierced by three openings through which ships came and went. His magesight showed him the busy sorceries of the Harbor Wizards as they guided ships in and out; even from up here the wealth of magic in use could nearly blind him. He dropped his magesight and relied on his mundane eyes, which might be more easily fooled but were less uncomfortable.
Pen frowned. “What is that ungodly mess between the harbor and the Bazaar? It’s bigger than any of the cities we passed through on our way here, all by itself! Compared to the neatness of Cliffside, it looks like those streets were laid out by a demented cow trying to find her pasture. Even Fiori made more sense than that.”
“That’s the Old City; the original part of Aretzo.” Terrell studied the untidy clutter of roofs, domes, spires, towers, tenements, and other buildings rolling up the slope from the half-sunken Sump to Oldgate. The Red Street lay tucked between the Old City and the Gray Fort. But something pricked at his mind, he couldn’t quite bring it into focus.
Terrell called up his magesight again and narrowed his eyes, trying to look beneath the tumultuous surface spells of the tens of thousands of mages and priestesses. More spellcasting went on in Aretzo than he’d seen in every other place on this trip put together. Abruptly he succeeded, and immediately gasped. “Pen. Do you see that magic?”
“See which magic, My Lord?” Pen shook his head in perplexity, leaning his weight on one booted foot propped on the balustrade as he clutched Irreneetha’s hilt and stared. “The whole city’s rife with it, I can barely separate one piece from another.”
“There’s an enormous glowing oval underlying the city, it’s bigger than the city itself. It runs out under the harbor too, and north under the slaughterhouses and marshes.” He squinted, looked directly down at the grassy slope under his dangling feet. “The Hill also has one under it, though not nearly as big. They almost touch. No, they do touch, under the Palace.”
“What you are seeing,” Chisaad panted as he toiled up the ninth flight of steps, “Is the Hill Node and the Aretzo Node. The latter underlies the City and is one of th
e largest Nodes in the known world, Your Highness, as you no doubt have been told. The Hill of Sight enables you to view both at the same time and still tell them apart.”
Terrell’s busy mind abruptly assembled scraps of rote knowledge into a whole. “This is the key to my line’s rule over Silbar, isn’t it? Control of the Hill Node gives control of the city’s Node too.”
“More precisely, Your Highness, it gives powerful influence, not absolute control.” The wizard tried a smile on his face that fit badly, discarded it in favor of several quick gasps for breath, and continued. “Bear the distinction in mind. Though the Hill is significantly smaller, its controlling spells have been devised by your ancestors to be operated by one man, from one place.” He waved a hand at the remaining flight of stairs and looked at the stone treads with visible disfavor. “The Aretzo Node is not so simple. It lacks the sort of geographic focus that the cone of the Hill provides and is much too wide to be controlled from any single point. Any user of magic can tap into it, and if all were allowed to do so without limit they would soon overdraw it, and local spellcasting would be hobbled. Therefore the Kings working through the Hill Node have imposed limits on how much draw they allow from any given mage or priestess.”
“The Aretzo Compact.” Terrell nodded. “Shimoor told me how it works, though he didn’t go into the why part much.” Guiltily he thought, or my attention wandered to riding horses that day, and I didn’t listen. He looked at the slope below his feet and frowned. “I don’t understand how you can call the Hill Node small, it’s at least twice the size of the one under Gwythford Castle.”
“Certainly the Hill Node is only small compared to its neighbor,” the Wizard agreed. “Though tightly circumscribed—it is no wider than the Hill itself—it is very deep. Definitely the deepest Node in Silbar, possibly the deepest in the known world. And the deeper into our world a Node extends—”
“The more power may be drawn from it.” Terrell interrupted, feeling his skin prickle as awe swept through him. Deepest in the known world! He pushed himself back to his feet. The Stone Throne waited close ahead and he could feel the power of the Hill narrowing to a point under it. “What do I need to do?”
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