The Door into Sunset (30 page)

There was no dissembling with such directness. Herewiss said nothing.

“So off goes your friend, flying about the Kingdoms and making my job more difficult,” Cillmod said, in a tone more aggrieved than angry. “If he shows his face here, it’s only to steal my money—”

“
Your
money?”

“The money that I was supposed to be using to buy seed and food from Darthen, and to feed my people, and the army standing to protect them!”

That thought had occurred to Herewiss in the middle of one uncomfortable night—that Lorn’s raid on the treasuries at Osta had itself triggered the Arlene mercenaries’ raids on Darthene land
. It would seem to some a clever ploy to force Darthen to move against Cillmod,
Herewiss thought
. Not that it was, of course. I only wish that Lorn could actually think that far ahead....

But in any case, some people here at court certainly were glad enough to be given excuse enough to attack the Darthenes at Bluepeak
. It still takes two to make a fight....
“Leaving armies out of it,” Herewiss said, “it’s not money that feeds people. It’s the royal magics.”

“We have not been entirely unsuccessful at that.”

“We,” Herewiss said. “The royal magics are no plural business... save when two rulers wed.”

“Once, perhaps. But armies, once bought, have to be fed as well: and they have an annoying tendency to take what they like when they see it close to hand.”

“You’re going to tell me now that the raid on the Darthene granaries was the army’s doing, not yours. That you didn’t order it. Or sanction it.”

Cillmod looked at Herewiss. “I did not order it,” he said, “but who would believe that? And I had no choice but to sanction it, afterwards, otherwise the army would have unseated me. Arlen with a non-king, but one with some slight experience, is just managing to struggle along. Arlen without some scion of royal blood would fail in three seasons.” Cillmod shook his head. “And the army cares too little about the issue, or about anything but their own stomachs. Too many of them are from out of country—Steldenes and such, who hold the royal magics to be a myth, a legend outlived. Others—” He glanced at Herewiss with an odd expression. “They would not have your friend instead, you know. He has an old name of cowardice among them, and they could never accept him. But there are rumors of another child of his blood, or Ferrant’s, somewhere in the land, in hiding. One that could be brought here, and hand-raised by a regent to rule to order. Their order.”

Herewiss held himself utterly still, face and mind; and Khávrinen abruptly flamed searing blue, as something struck at it, and him, from outside. Not Cillmod, but another mind, here in the palace, eavesdropping, and now reaching out to strike with awful precision at the truth of something it wanted to know. The bolt was held away from him by the Fire caging Herewiss’s thoughts, but not by much. There was terrible force behind it, and the force transmitted itself straight into Herewiss through the protective structure of his Fire and knocked the breath out of him, as if someone had punched him hard in the gut.

Or so it would do in a moment, for he was busy reacting.
Now then,
Herewiss thought, and in his mind he swiftly reached out and grasped the weapon that had struck him. It had felt, still felt, like a spear trying to punch through mail. As a spear he treated it, then, grabbed it under the head with hands mailed in Fire, moved sidewise out of its path, and yanked, hard, pulling the one who wielded it off balance and toward him, close enough to see faces and come to grips. What he held twisted in his hands, like a spear made of lightning, burning and writhing and trying to get away. Herewiss hung on grimly, pulling. He got a better grip on the shaft of sorcery that had struck at him, and pulled it closer, dragging the internal balance of the spell out of its worker’s control and closer to ruin.

He recognized the structure of it through the burning and the strain. What he held was the probe end, the weapon end, of a spell meant to drag some one fact from his mind and then burn away the fact itself and the path of the spell as well, leaving no trace.
As if such a thing would work against the Fire—
But that was the problem. It
had
almost worked. There was horrible strength behind the thrust of the spell, anchoring it, now trying to pull it out of Herewiss’s grip before he could work his will on it. And it was succeeding—

Oh no you don’t—!
His old studies in sorcery, crude art that it was compared with the Fire, now stood him in good stead. That particular spell structure was always at its weakest just below the point of its furthest extent, the imbalance in the out-stroke coming of the sorcerer’s concentration being wholly focused on the striking point of it. Herewiss set his Fire deep into the structure of the spelling, choosing to see it as woodgrain, as the neck of the spearshaft. He watched the Fire sink into it, saw the “wood” glow blue and begin to bend, heard the groan of its resistance. Then, in one quick motion, he snapped it—

All the force bound into the spell rebounded catastrophically, like a snapped bowstring, into the mind of its worker. The silent, anguished scream that followed gave Herewiss just a breath’s worth of time to be angrily satisfied: then he was too busy controlling the sick feeling in his own gut, the reaction to having been hit with the spellweapon in the first place. His vision cleared enough to remind him that he had a body, and that he must grip his cup and not drop it.

Cillmod had gone on talking, noticing nothing until Khávrinen burnt up blinding blue. “Folly, of course. Such children have a way of not surviving: opposing forces begin to struggle for them, and—” He glanced in surprise from the sword, now beginning to dim down, to Herewiss’s face. “My lord Herewiss, are you not well?”

Herewiss was resisting the desperate desire to gasp for air. One gasp got out despite everything he could do. Then he smiled wanly and said, “Someone tried to poison me earlier. Nothing serious.”

This had nothing to do with his present discomfort, of course, but it was the truth, if a misdirecting one. Cillmod looked shocked.
“Here?”
And then his face settled into an chilly nonexpression that Herewiss knew, with another disturbing pang, from having seen Lorn wear it. Rage. “Who would dare—!”

Herewiss had his breath back now. “I shouldn’t like to deprive you of the chance to find out for yourself,” he said, gently, but with angry irony of his own. “The blow missed, sir. Poison is a poor tool to use on someone with the Fire.”

He said nothing of the other blow that had just glanced off him, busying himself for the moment with weaving the unseen mail of his Fire more tightly around him.
Our Rian was most interested in what I might be thinking. And possibly was hearing leakage: I must be careful. But why—
Surely he, and everyone else who might be interested, knew that Lorn’s daughter was long dead.
But --

Herewiss stopped that thought before it could progress any further.
I am going to have to guard myself most carefully. These attacks are going to continue in strength and subtlety until Rian is certain of where my own strengths lie.
And that worried him. It would be pleasant to think he could misdirect those assessments. But he had had more than enough trouble just keeping this single attack from burning part of his mind away.
Where is he getting such power?!
Herewiss thought
. Mere sorcery should have hardly any effect on a Fire-fueled wreaking—

Herewiss looked away from Cillmod for a moment, toward the terrace windows. He dearly wanted to get a glimpse of Rian, if he was even in the room. Surely he would have left, being about to work a sorcery like that; no one had the concentration to move about, talk, make sense, while dealing with the fueling and launching of such a magic
. And the backlash alone would drop him like an axe in the skull,
Herewiss thought with grim satisfaction.
Not something that one would want the whole Arlene court to see.

Cillmod followed his glance. “They will be wondering what we’re up to,” he said. “I suppose we should go in. But my lord—”

“Herewiss will do,” he said, much to his own surprise.

“Herewiss, then. Your poisoner was none of my doing.”

“I believe you,” Herewiss said.
Though for what reason, the Goddess only knows: I have none. None but one that makes me distrust myself—

Cillmod nodded and made his way back into the hall.

Herewiss followed at a respectable distance, nodding courtesy to those who watched him come. He looked casually around the room, and got the shock that he had been half-expecting. Rian, there, over by the curtains to the left side of the throne, in conversation with several Arlene courtiers: unconcerned, laughing. Herewiss caught a side view of him and saw the man’s erect stance, his complexion, not even slightly pale; flushed a bit, in fact, as if with wine.

He is immune to backlash.

Impossible!

Goddess help us all—

It was growing late, and he had too much to think about. Andaethen was making her way around the room, in the process of making her good-nights. Herewiss went to join her, then paused a moment as he watched Cillmod head for the Throne, and stop.

Sunspark was there, committing lazy and unconcerned treason. It lay draped over the Throne, smoking gently, but (Herewiss noticed with relief) not singeing the cushions. Its chin was propped on the Throne’s arm, and its tail hung over the other one, twitching ever so gently as it gazed across the room at the courtiers who were staring at it.

Herewiss decided to play the part it had offered him. “Sunspark,” he said, “heel.”

That tail twitched once or twice more, thoughtfully, as the languid, burning eyes slid sidewise to regard him. Then Sunspark stood up in the throne, and arched its back, and yawned, cavernously. Every fang burned white. When the yawn was done, it stretched fore and aft like a cat by a hearth, and worked naughtily with its claws for a moment on the arm of the throne. Threads of smoke went up into the still air where those white-hot sickles scorched the wood, then hid themselves demurely in the huge paws again. Sunspark stepped down from the Throne and paced over to him, its tail lashing gently.

‘
Heel’,
indeed,
it said.
I will get you for this, some day.

You started it, loved.

As Andaethen joined him, Herewiss watched Cillmod take the Throne again, and brush, rather bemused, at the ash on its arm. He looked over at Herewiss, and surprisingly, smiled—not a dissembling expression, not hostile: genuine amusement.

Ah, heaven,
he thought regretfully.
Why can’t things be simple?
Herewiss bowed to Cillmod, rather more deeply than he had at first. Then he turned, sparing no one else a glance, and followed Andaethen out.

The rain is my blood, and the Earth my flesh, and the stones my bones, and the wind my breath: my thoughts are my own, but let them turn to Her.

—
Regaliorum
, 4

A tenday after Herewiss’s hand-kissing, he sat in his room at the embassy scratching with quill on parchment, trying to draw a map. “Trying” was the operative term, for it was one of life’s ironies that not all the Fire in the Goddess’s world could make a person a better draftsman than he had been to start with. Herewiss looked at the blot he had just made, right across the route of the Kings’ Road about a mile away from Prydon, and running up the slopes of Vintners’ Rise. He sighed and reached for the scraping-knife.

From behind him came the sound of a throat being cleared. He leaned back in the chair, almost too far, but Andaethen put a hand on his shoulder and braced him. She looked down at the map. “Looks like chicken-scratchings,” she said, “but not much worse than the last one, I suppose.”

“Thank you so much, madam. You fill me with encouragement.”

She smiled and looked at what he had drawn. The map showed the ground immediately around Prydon city and for about five miles eastward, with special attention paid to the various hills and rises that might interest an army heading in that direction. There were a few small oblongs drawn on it, meant to indicate the present positions of Arlene troops; one north of the city, two south. “He hasn’t committed himself any more clearly than that, I’m afraid,” Herewiss said. “Not yet, anyway.”

“Which ‘he’ are we talking about? Cillmod? Rian?”

“No,” Herewiss said. “Meveld, the Commander-general.” He was one of the many mercenaries who had been bought in, and it was Herewiss’s unhappy opinion that Cillmod had really gotten good value when he bought him.

Andaethen scratched idly at a stray ink-spot on one side of the parchment. “Why two groups to the south and only one to the north, I wonder?”

“Hard to say, this early on. Possibly that second group of troops will be moved somewhere else shortly. Seems likely, as it’s mostly cavalry—they’re no good over there among the hills and the wetlands.” Herewiss leaned back again. “A lot of the mercenaries the Arlenes bought have been stabled out across the country, and have to be recalled... that’s still going on. But by next tenday we should have a much better idea of the kinds and numbers of their strength, and where to start putting our own. And the tenday after that, we’re almost on top of the First of Autumn.”

Andaethen nodded. “Will you be speaking to herself tonight?”

“In a while.”

“Then read her this, if you would,” she said, “and tell her I should have more news on that matter in five days or so.”

“Very well.”

“Then have a good night, after you’ve done your business. By the way, the night of your dinner for the court is set. Four days from now.”

She went out. Herewiss looked at his map for a moment, then pushed it aside and got up. For a moment he just stretched, trying to get the crick out of his back: unsuccessfully, as usual. He had not been comfortable lately, either physically or spiritually. Increasingly, since his handkissing, he had the sense of Arlen, and of Prydon in particular, not as either a city or country, but as a web, with one huge, patient, silent, smiling spider sitting at the heart of it, feeling every shake, every breath of wind that stirred the strands. And he stood obviously at the end of one of the larger strands, poking it, plucking it, trying to produce some reaction by his quiet visits to the disaffected. There had been no reaction.