Master of the Cauldron (25 page)

“It's not for honor's sake, Cashel,” Mab said. “I'm afraid most of the citizens couldn't tell you the names of the Heroes, even though their images walk the parapet every night. But if the people of Ronn have forgotten the Heroes, their enemies have not. Every time the Made Men marched against the city, one Hero or the next drove them back with slaughter that left the bare ground red. Even a hundred and fifty years haven't been enough to erase the terror of Valeri sweeping almost to the heart of the king's power.”

Two figures of light stepped through the archway, seemingly arm in arm. Cashel could see that the elbow of the figure on the inside actually passed through the jamb of dark crystal. They were taller than real men, though perhaps not quite as tall as the image of Valeri had been. One had fair hair and the other was a dark brunette, but apart from that they were as like as the two eyes of an owl.

“Minon and Menon,” Mab said, as the phantasms of light walked past. “Few cities have had a champion as great as either of them, and in Ronn they were both together till the day Minon carried his brother down to the cavern and the sleep they now share.”

One of the images carried a broad-bladed halberd. The other wore a long, straight sword and carried a shield broad enough to cover two: the blazon on its face was a double-headed eagle. They were turned toward one another, and their smiling lips moved as though they were talking.

“The king created the Made Men,” Mab said, “and he rules them—to a point. But not all his threats and promises have been enough to convince his creatures to attack again while the Heroes walk the parapet of Ronn.”

“But they aren't real,” Cashel said, nodding as the twins passed on at the pace of the wizard walking beside their images. “They can't defend the city.”

“They're semblances,” Mab said, “but their semblance alone is enough to protect Ronn so long as memory of real slaughter remains; as it does.”

Two Councillors, a young woman and a boy of scarcely Cashel's age, came through the doorway. They chanted; the boy's voice was nervously high and loud enough that Cashel heard the word
sabaoth
. As they beat the air together with their athames, a lanky, rawboned figure appeared. It was so tall that it had to duck to clear the high arch.

“That's Virdin,” said Mab, “as he was when he was a youth. No minion of the king nor
all
the minions of the king could stand against him during the long life before he went to the cavern.”

Cashel had noticed without giving particular thought to the matter that the citizens of Ronn kept some distance from the parapet. The wizards and the figures they controlled passed outside of them. It was with surprise, then, that he saw a group of stooping men come up an outside staircase and place themselves directly in the path the image of Virdin must take. Two carried between them what looked like a large oval mirror.

“Mab?” said Cashel, bracing his legs for better support and spreading his hands into a fighting grip on his quarterstaff. “What're those fellows doing? There, by the—”

“Citizens of Ronn!” Mab shouted. “The Made Men are attacking!”

At the sound of her cry, four of the newcomers drew curved swords. They were pale as soured milk, and the pupils of their eyes were empty.

The other two turned, holding the mirror between them. Face on, Cashel saw a hideously misshapen man reflected in the mirror's surface. Beyond him was a sea of creatures like the few who'd climbed the walls, manlike but not men.

“Citizens of Ronn!” Mab said. “The Made Men are here, and they bring their wizard-king with them! Rally for your lives!”

The figure on the mirror's surface raised an athame of human rib; his albino creatures scuttled toward Cashel with their swords raised.

At least I'm warmed up,
Cashel thought, but the truth was it never took him long to get moving in a fight. With the smile that thought brought to his lips, he stepped into the Made Men with his staff spinning.

Four swordsmen who knew what they were doing—any four veterans in the royal army, say—could've cut him to collops in their initial rush. Two who were really skilled could do the same, men like Chalcus or like Garric when his warrior ancestor was in charge. But these Made Men—well, they were willing to fight, which put them one up on the Sons of the Heroes, but there wasn't much to choose between those boys and these fungus-white creatures for skill.

Curved swords lent themselves to wide, flashy flourishes, which the Made Men did a lot of. Cashel chose, feinted toward the pair in the middle, and brought the quarterstaff out of its spin in a thrust at the creature on the left end. The iron butt cap crushed the Made Man's forehead.

Instead of flying backward from the force of the blow, the Made Man spasmed to the side. Its sword, held in a literal death grip, clinked and sparked on the plaza.

The two young Councillors lost the rhythm of their chant and cried out in surprise. The male threw himself in front of his partner, holding his long ivory wand as a club. The image of Virdin stepped halfway through the mirror, then faded like a lump of salt dropped into water.

The Made Man beside Cashel's first victim had flinched away from the feint. Though still off-balance, it slashed sidewise at Cashel. He stepped back, recovering his quarterstaff in a widdershins arc. The blood-smeared butt cap rapped the back of the Made Man's head.

Though not as spectacular as the first stroke, it was equally effective. The creature sprawled with its skull dished in, across the path of its two fellows as they rushed Cashel together. They fell.

Cashel put his left foot on the sword hand of the nearer of the pair that'd tripped, pinning it hopelessly against the hard surface. While the one his weight held mewed and squirmed like a broken-backed snake, Cashel stabbed like he was flounder gigging, breaking the neck of the farther
Made Man. A moment later Cashel's fourth judicious stroke
did
break the back of the creature he stood on.

He paused to suck air through his open mouth, wheezing like a foundered horse. While the fight lasted—all the few seconds that the fight lasted—he'd seen nothing but the four swordsmen coming at him, moving in discrete intervals of time. Now everything expanded back to normal and speeded up again.

Age had so wizened the man in the mirror that even standing he was doubled over like a frog. He pointed his curved athame at Mab as his lips twisted over words of power. No sound passed the surface of the mirror, but spears of red and blue wizardlight stabbed out—

To meet the shield Mab's hands wove in the air before her. The bolts blasted upward, spreading and fading to a dim pastel fog above which the stars faded.

Cashel sized up the situation. He spun his quarterstaff before him, then stepped onto the quivering body of one of the creatures he'd slain.

The surviving Made Men dropped the mirror and tried to draw their swords. Cashel crushed the chest of the nearer, flinging its body over the parapet.

“Remiel!”
Mab shouted.
“Nemiel!”

The mirror fell flat to the ground. All but a sliver of Cashel's mind was focused on his staff and the way the remaining Made Man was trying to duck. That small part expected the mirror to shatter when it hit. Instead the plate bounced upright. For an instant the king at its heart looked squarely at Cashel rather than at Mab. The king's eyes were glowing blacknesses brighter than the hottest forge, and his athame pointed.

“Lemiel!”
said Mab.

The mirror disintegrated, falling as dust instead of breaking into visible pieces. The last of the Made Men leaped for the stairs up which it had come. Cashel stepped through the shimmering ruin and struck the creature. His quarterstaff broke its hips rather than its chest as he'd intended, but the weight of the blow hurled it well out from the side of Ronn. Cashel wasn't sure how far below the ground was, but it was surely miles rather than furlongs.

The fight was over. Cashel sank to his knees, gasping and blowing. He'd have fallen on his face if he hadn't planted his staff straight up and down to support his sagging torso.

Behind him Mab cried in a voice of despair, “The king's now proved
to his creatures that the Heroes walking the walls of Ronn are phantasms. They'll attack soon, perhaps in a matter of days!”

Cashel's vision blurred momentarily. Colors faded to shades of gray, then slowly steadied and returned to their soft pastel hues.

“Lord Ardane and Lady Thaida!” Mab said. Her voice had become firm and imperative. The wailing despair of a moment ago had faded into the past. “Summon your fellow Councillors and call an emergency Assembly at once. The king and his creatures are coming. If Ronn isn't ready to receive them, may the Gods have mercy on the city and her residents; for be assured, the king will have none!”

 

“It's been months since I've seen the palace,” Sharina said, as an usher led her, Waldron, and—just behind in a sedan chair—Tenoctris through the walled compound that encircled a sprawling collection of buildings on the northern edge of Valles. “It's completely different now.”

They were approaching the Chancellery, the largest single structure in the compound. It'd been reroofed with tiles whose red hadn't had time to soften in the sun, and the grounds in front had been cleaned to display the mosaic pavement underlying what Sharina remembered as an expanse of sod and leaf litter. She'd never have imagined it—

“A waste of money better spent on the army, I'd say,” Waldron muttered. He glanced at the pair of workmen repairing a corner of the mosaic, rebuilding with new tesserae the picture of a fox leaping at a quail. “A waste of men who could be holding spears, too.”

Sharina smiled. The landscaping had run riot during the last decade of Valence the Third's reign, and many of the separate bungalows had fallen into ruin. The effort being expended on reversing the decay since Garric became regent was a paradigm for the even greater efforts the new administration was making to recover the kingdom's unity.

“People can't really comprehend the changes in something as large as the Kingdom of the Isles,” she said. “They can see the changes here in the palace, though, and they're changes for the better. It's worth the money, milord.”

Chancellor Royhas stood at the main entrance alone. There were guards for the building, but Royhas didn't presume to meet Princess Sharina and Lord Waldron with a retinue when they'd arrived without one.

Royhas was the quietly competent man who'd led the conspiracy that made Garric regent when the king's mind gave way under the threats facing him. He'd acted for the sake of the Isles, certainly; and in his own interest, because Royhas and all the members of the royal court faced death if the kingdom tottered to total collapse. But he'd acted for the sake of Valence the Third as well, saving his friend the king from the certain destruction to which his own inability to act doomed him.

Today Royhas looked worn. His cheeks sagged, and his eyes had dark circles. While he hadn't made a fetish of physical fitness the way Waldron did, he'd struck Sharina as remarkably healthy-looking for a man whose duties didn't involve physical exercise. Strain had robbed him of that.

“I don't know what wind brought you here at this moment, your highness,” Royhas said, bowing to Sharina, “but it was a fair one. And you, milord—”

He clasped arms with Waldron, who'd winced at mention of their passage to Ornifal.

“—you're even more welcome. Did you bring the whole army? There've been terrible developments. My dispatches won't have had time to reach Erdin, but—”

“We know about the imposter Valgard,” Waldron said. He'd allowed the Chancellor's greeting, but he remained stiffly unbending to discourage further intimacy. The army commander generally didn't like either civilians or nobles from the mercantile families of Valles, and he didn't like Royhas as an individual. “And I know about my cousin Bolor's involvement. As for the army, I'm here with sufficient troops for the purpose; you needn't trouble yourself on that matter.”

Royhas stepped back. He gave Waldron a smile of wry amusement that brought the familiar glow of health back to his face. “Milord,” he said, “it's still a pleasure to see you. But please, won't you all join me in my private office, where we can discuss the details?”

He bowed again to Sharina, said, “If I may precede you, your highness?” and, without really waiting for an answer, led his guests through the central hall. It was lined with batteries of low-ranking clerks reading out names and numbers as they copied them into ledgers. The noise reminded Sharina of feeding chickens at the kitchen door of her father's inn: a thin, purposeless babble that vanished even as it was spoken.

A light well in the center of the room provided illumination during
daylight. On this fine day, the roof transoms of bull's-eye glass set in lead frames were swung back. To the sides of the central hall were the offices of senior clerks. Every door was open so that the officials within could catch a glimpse of Princess Sharina.

If they'd seen me two years ago in Barca's Hamlet,
Sharina thought,
they wouldn't have paid me any more notice than they would the table.
And that was very likely true, but it didn't mean there was anything wrong with the officials' behavior—at either time. You couldn't understand anything apart from its surroundings.

The buildings in the palace compound sprawled rather than rising as they'd have had to do in the heart of the city. Royhas' office was on the upper of the two floors running the width of the back. Its pillared loggia overlooked an enclosed garden set off from the rest of the grounds so that the Chancellor could entertain ranking visitors among flowers and statuary if he chose.

Sharina helped Tenoctris to a place on the loggia, then seated herself beside the older woman. The chairs had frames of bronze filigree with wicker cushions, artistic and comfortable but unlikely to be harmed if a storm blew up before the servants got them inside. They were arranged in an arc so that those seated could see one another while looking out onto the garden.

It was a civilized and peaceful setting in which to hold tense discussions. Sharina noted again that Royhas was a very intelligent man in addition to being wealthy and wellborn.

Royhas took the end chair to the left. “I'm glad you know about the situation,” he said bluntly, “because I knew almost nothing about it until ten days ago. There were rumors that another son of Valence Stronghand was returning to take the throne—silly nonsense, but widespread. Reports came from the city markets and in from outlying districts as well. Then real trouble started. Royal officials in the north were set upon—beaten and driven out. Even a few imprisoned I gather.”

“‘Royal officials,'” Waldron repeated. “You mean tax gatherers.”

Royhas looked at him with a determinedly blank expression. “Yes,” he said. “Officials who collect the taxes out of which the royal army is paid, if you like. That was rebellion or next to it. In the eastern districts it's approaching anarchy—bandits, really. The gangs have gathered every bad man in the island as well as a lot of farm laborers who decided burning the squire's fields was better fun than stacking his ricks in the hot sun.
Some of the bands are supposed to be large—several hundred apiece, though I doubt there's anything like that number of armed men in them.”

“What about the army?” Waldron demanded. “You have four regiments. What have they accomplished?”

“Nothing,” said Royhas. “Because I haven't dared use them.”

He raised his hand to silence the retort on the tip of Waldron's tongue. “Not because I didn't trust the troops, milord,” he said, “but because I didn't trust myself to lead them. And before you ask—I didn't trust any of the regimental commanders to lead the force in my place. As a matter of fact, I don't trust Lord Titer's loyalty, nor do I—”

He leaned toward the army commander to add emphasis without raising his voice.

“—trust Lord Olinus' ability to find his ass with both hands. I'm very glad to see
you
, milord, however many troops you've brought with you.”

Lord Waldron relaxed abruptly and barked a laugh. “Well, to tell the truth,” he said, “when I was deciding who'd go with me to settle the rebellion in the west and who'd stay in Valles where nothing was going to happen, I may have left the garrison here a little short of brilliance. I ask your pardon for that, milord, but I'll try to correct it now.”

Servants hovered at the back of the room with trays and pitchers, but Royhas hadn't ordered them forward, so they had no choice but to wait. He glanced over his shoulder, making sure the servants were still out of earshot, and said, “Whereas I assure you, milord, that the financial staff accompanying Prince Garric
is
skilled to the point of brilliance. That's because Lord Tadai is quite as capable of running the Chancellery as I am—and he'd be trying to do just that if he were in Valles, which praise the Lady he is not. But I understand the choice you faced; and as you say, you're here to deal with the problem now.”

Lord Waldron rose. “All right, Royhas,” he said. “I think we understand each other. I'll call a military council and put some spine into the garrison, then we'll see about this Valgard. And if Titer's the problem you think he is, I'll sort him out myself!”

He bowed curtly to the seated Chancellor and started toward the door. Only then did he remember that Sharina was the highest-ranking person in the room—and save for Valence, pottering about somewhere in the palace, the highest-ranking person on Ornifal. Waldron clacked his boots to a halt and stood stiff as a pikestaff.