Conqueror’s Moon (28 page)

She nodded, took a lace-edged handkerchief from her sleeve, and wiped her eyes. “I know, dear.”

“So you aren’t embittered toward me?” He held her at arm’s length, entreaty in his gaze.

“No, of course not. I understand what you had to do. You’re the Prince Heritor and soon you’ll be my king, and I’ll be your loyal subject until I die. But even more, I’ll love you because you’re my dear son. Whatever you do.”

He took a breath. “Mother, I need your help in a very delicate matter.”

“Only ask.” She had regained her composure and once again began to stroke the nursing cat.

“It’s a sad thing, regarding my lady Maudrayne. She begged me to let her travel to Tarn this winter with the shaman Ansel. But I can’t permit her to leave. Not while there’s danger of war with Didion. Maude was wildly angry when I refused her. She accused me of ridiculous acts of infidelity with Princess Ullanoth of Moss and threatened to run off on her own.”

“She’s very unhappy.” The queen’s voice held little sympathy for her daughter-in-law. “You know why.”

“Maude has her duty. And I would beseech you to help her know and appreciate it. And if she will not, then I ask your assistance in making certain that she does nothing foolish. I must go north very soon to help Beorbrook guard the frontier. When the snows fall and Great Pass closes, I’ll come back to Cala and devote the entire winter to mending our marriage. But Maude must be here when I return.”

The queen was thoughtful. “She’s a headstrong woman. Stern measures may be needed, but I’ll do my best to combine them with compassion. Rely on me.”

The prince said, with evident relief, “Tomorrow, Stergos will provide you with remedies against melancholia, if the princess’s health should require them. He’ll also make suggestions for her care, and Lady Sovanna will doubtless be eager so assist. I’m so glad I can depend on you, Mother.”

“Always,” Cataldise replied. She rose from her stool and took his hand. “And now you must be off. Tomorrow I’ll make arrangements for Maudrayne’s… well-being.”

They kissed, and Conrig left the sitting room. Lady Vandaya asked the queen whether she needed anything further, then retired when Cataldise shook her head. When the woman was gone, the queen went about the room snuffing candles before returning to gaze fondly at her cats. The three white kittens were nestled against their dam, fast asleep, but the venturesome little black male had tumbled out of the chair onto the carpet and was creeping feebly about.

She picked him up and held the soft, warm little body to her cheek. But he would not be caressed, and squirmed and squealed and scratched her hand with minute claws.

“Naughty boy!” the queen chided, and fetched him a smart tap on the head with her finger before giving him back to his mother.

seventeen

The knobby ring of moonstone named Weathermaker blazed green for five interminable heartbeats, and Beynor gritted his teeth to stifle his outcry as every nerve in his body reacted to its sorcery by bursting into searing flame. He endured it, tears pouring down his beardless face from eyes wide open, until the Great Stone paled and the agony receded and he let his breath escape in a long, broken sob.

Done. And the Diddlies damn well better be impressed!

It was mid-afternoon on the eve of his coronation. Low clouds the color of lead had hung over Royal Fenguard for the past four days, pissing oddly warm rain as though the Sky Father himself were registering his contempt for the patricidal new Conjure-King. Beynor stood looking out one of the windows of his bedchamber in the refurbished apartment that had once belonged to Linndal, dressed only in his undergarments and a light dressing gown. As he waited expectantly, his view of the Darkling Estuary cleared. The rain ceased, the clouds ripped apart, and the low-riding sun of subarctic Moss appeared over the Little Fen on the other side of the river. Although he was not in a position to see it, he had no doubt at all that the triple rainbow he’d requested now haloed Fenguard Castle, edifying those aboard the Didionite royal flagship and its escort of four fighting barques that were now creeping up the treacherous channel in the wake of the pilot-vessel.

“So let the theatricals commence,” the boy-king muttered, turning away. There was a more crucial matter to consider once again before he put on his fine clothes and went down to the throne room to welcome the arriving guests.

He went to a magnificent small table, cleverly fashioned of leviathan bones and slabs of amber, and sat down. On the table was the flat, velvet-lined platinum case that Rothbannon had made to hold his Seven Stones. Beynor carried it with him always. Only Fortress was not kept inside it, resting instead in a golden monstrance as it guarded his chambers. The Conjure-King opened the case, fitted Weathermaker into its nest, and spent some minutes considering the sigils, as he had done each day for the past week.

There were only six of the original moonstones left now. Concealer was gone for good. The Southwater Salka delegated by his monstrous friends to retrieve Iscannon’s stolen sigil had windspoken him a vivid description of the fiasco in Cala Bay. It had shaken Beynor’s mercurial self-confidence almost as much as Ullanoth’s effortless escape from his trap.

So the High Shaman of Tarn and a wild-talented stable lad, sworn to the Cathran prince, had worked together to foil him… How could such a catastrophe have happened?

Even worse, thanks to the meddling Tarnian magicker, that bloody boy now owned a living sigil! The preternatural sensibilities of Gawnn the Salka had clearly perceived the empowered Concealer hanging about the young wight’s neck, covered by a bag of thin leather. As for the magical book, is seemed all too likely that the shaman had taken it.

What was he to do?

Or was doing nothing the safest option?

Damn Ullanoth! And damn Ansel and the boy Deveron!

“I’ll get back what’s mine,” Beynor vowed, “and send Deveron Austrey and Red Ansel Pikan to the Hell of Lights if it’s my last living act! And Ulla as well— but only after I’ve inflicted my own particular revenge upon her.”

But there was no time for plotting retaliation now. The ship carrying the royal family of Didion and its entourage of high-ranking nobles was due to drop anchor in less than an hour, having been borne 450 leagues northward from Holt Mallburn in less than two days by Weathermaker’s uncanny winds. Inviting the barbarians to his coronation had been a grandiose (and perhaps incautious) gesture. However, it was one Beynor felt was necessary in order to validate his authority as Conjure-King and a man fully mature, worthy to treat with other monarchs as an equal.

Putting tumbledown Royal Fenguard in shape to receive important guests in just a week had proved to be a daunting proposition, but most of the work had been accomplished with fair success. Grand Master Ridcanndal and Lady Zimroth were still hard at work marshaling the resources of the Glaumerie Guild down by the waterfront and along the parade route leading to the castle’s towngate. The type of illusory magic the Guild excelled in would readily deceive the eyes of the visitors, making the unprepossessing little city seem in good repair and smartening up the appearance of its shabby inhabitants.

The Guild’s sleight-of-mind was also capable of restoring Castle Fenguard’s exterior, public rooms, and furnishings to a semblance of their ancient splendor. But sleeping accommodations for the Didionites had to be authentically magnificent and comfortable, and their food and drink as well. It was devilishly difficult to conjure a good night’s rest for guests using musty old beds that were actually lumpy, hard, and home to the occasional bloodsucking bug, and counting upon glamour to satisfy the appetite and thirst of highborn diners was an even more dubious proposition. The Mossland national dish of swampfitch stew flavored with mat-fungus and wild leeks, while nourishing, could hardly be transmogrified into a lavish banquet, nor would the castle’s stock of spruce beer, sour bilberry wine, and bulrush-tuber spirits impress hard-drinking King Achardus and his tosspot sons.

So Beynor had commanded his wealthier subjects to loan him swansdown comforters, plump pillows, and linen that was clean and flea-free, along with bedroom rugs and fine tester hangings. Those who possessed elegant dinnerware and napery had to contribute it to the castle for the duration of the royal visit. The Conjure-King also insisted, under pain of hexing, that the local aristocracy present him with their stocks of wax candles, sugar, wheat flour, butter, and imported liquor. The lords and ladies themselves were instructed to come to court in their richest apparel; and their older children, suitably attired, were recruited to take the place of the slovenly servitors who usually waited upon the castle-dwellers. The Conjure-Duke of Salkbane, who employed a famous cook, had been ordered to bring him along to Fenguard, together with all his kitchen staff and his store of rare spices. The Countess of Sandport lent her cherished portative wind-organ and an ensemble of musicians to enhance the dignity of the feast of welcome and the coronation ceremony itself, while the gleemen of Lord Mosstor would provide earthier entertainment during the reception and grand banquet scheduled to wind up the celebration tomorrow.

The common folk of the city and its environs had also been coerced into doing their share. Each merchant had a quota of foodstuffs or other needful commodities, to be donated gratis to the Crown. Every family was tithed a quantity of seal oil for the festive illumination of Fenguard’s exterior, along with a barrow of peat for its fireplaces. Girls gathered sweet-smelling bog herbs and made posies to freshen the castle’s stale air. They picked bouquets of late wildflowers to decorate the feasting boards and wove green garlands to drape the coaches that would carry the guests from the waterfront to the castle. Boys were put to work sweeping the streets, pulling weeds, and covering the worst of the midden-heaps with sand. Each townswoman had to relinquish a single shift or its equivalent in decent thin cloth, this to be dyed green or gold, then cut up and stitched into banners to adorn the parade route and the castle’s gates and battlements. Their menfolk went into the marshes to hunt late-season wildfowl and venison. Well-to-do householders were assessed two stone of cheese, sausage, smoked salmon, jerked meat, or pickled fish. Those who skimped or shirked could expect a punitive visit from the king’s warlocks, who had orders to empty the guilty family’s larder.

Now the preparations were all but complete, and only two problems remained for Beynor to solve. The most pressing one was Ullanoth.

Since her escape from his warlock-knights in the throne room, she had apparently barricaded herself in her apartments, secure behind the spell of her guardian sigil. He might have concluded that his sister had fled, abandoning her Fortress to put him off—except that for the past two evenings, just as he and his coterie sat down to dine, a portion of the best food and drink vanished from the high table. The trick might also be only a parting jest of Ulla’s, designed to infuriate him long after she’d left the castle; but such a tame piece of mischief hardly seemed appropriate to the enormity of her humiliation at his hands. She was still here. He was convinced of it. And somehow, he had to find a way to make certain she did not make a shambles of his great day tomorrow—to say nothing of the days that followed. Ullanoth and her sigils were a mortal menace to his reign, one that must be dealt with immediately.

He had no idea how many stones she possessed nor what their capabilities were. Sigils, whether dead or alive, could not be scried. Ridcanndal and Zimroth had scoffed at the rumor that Queen Taspiroth’s spirit had gifted Ullanoth with a full dozen of the things. The notion was ridiculous, they said. If the princess owned powerful sigils, would she not have used them already? Perhaps she had found a few lesser stones left by Salka in some forgotten place, but such things were capable only of minor magic, as were the moonstone amulets worn by some of the Salka leaders. Hadn’t Conjure-King Linndal himself been assured by the shamans of the Dawntide Isles that all of their Great Stones save the three given to Rothbannon had been carried away from the lands ceded to humanity? The two Glaumerie Guild officials told the young king that it was virtually impossible for Ullanoth to have sigils capable of high sorcery.

But Beynor wasn’t so sure. The Dawntide Salka had been ignorant of Darasilo’s trove of ancient stones, hidden away for centuries by the Royal Alchymists of Cathra, so the monsters were hardly all-knowing. And even though his sister was a clever bitch, she could not have made an ally of a man such as Conrig Wincantor by going to him empty-handed. Chances were that at least one of her sigils was a Great Stone, capable of doing him considerable harm.

A secondary but still vexing dilemma confronting the young king involved an appropriate demonstration of thaumaturgical power to impress the barbarian visitors. No mere conjuration of rainbows, fabulous beasts, costumed dancers, or phantom jousters would do. Only a truly unforgettable spectacle would overawe the notoriously cynical Didionites.

There was one sure way to solve both problems: by empowering one of his two remaining Great Stones, even if it meant enduring atrocious pain throughout his coronation, which should have been the most joyous moment of his life, and on many days thereafter. If the activation of Weathermaker was any criterion, he could expect the worst suffering while he slept, and the Coldlight Army invaded his dreams to extract the price for their favors. Awake, he would be physically debilitated but the pain would be less severe. He could do it. He’d already done it once…

Using Weathermaker for the first time, he had created a mighty stream of wind that had permanently diverted the Wolf’s Breath away from the southern, settled part of Moss. His father and the Glaumerie Guild had been mightily impressed; but the activation of the stone and the subsequent conjuration of the wind had left Beynor half-dead for eight days. He had no intention of ever again attempting weather-sorcery on such a grand scale—not even to fulfill his boast to Didion.

The two Great Stones yet to be empowered rested in the case next to Weathermaker. Their names were Destroyer and Unknown Potency. No Guild wizard had ever fathomed the capabilities of the Unknown, which not even Rothbannon had dared to use. Salka legend called it the mightiest tool of sorcery ever vouchsafed by the Lights to lowlier beings. Only one sigil of that name had ever been fashioned by the monsters. The Salka still reviled the shaman who had cravenly turned it over to a human because none of their own wizards possessed the audacity to empower it.