Conqueror’s Moon (40 page)

Soon they’ll be back to feast again, she realized in despair. They gave and now they take. The balance is in the exchange, and to submit is to survive. I willingly endure this only for the sake of my great goal and not for his sake. Never for his sake. Never…

“Never!” she cried aloud, and at the sound of her own voice, Ullanoth woke.

The cracks between the closed shutters of the warehouse office showed a faint grey light; it had to be nearly dawn. She had more than slept the clock around. The only sounds were the creak of the cooling iron stove and wind sighing around the eaves of the building. For the moment she was free of the pain of Weathermaker’s empowerment—but still not without a certain nagging discomfort. Dazed from sleep (she had forgotten the dream), she was at a loss to understand what was wrong with her until her guts writhed insistently, reminding her that the Great Stone’s ordeal had its ignoble aspects. There was no helping it. Weak as she was, she’d have to go outside. With a muttered oath she emerged from her cocoon of warmth and began to draw on clothes, stockings, and boots. Then she took up Concealer and Interpenetrator and hung them about her neck.

Invisible, she passed through the locked and barred door that gave onto the quay and made her way very slowly to the necessarium overhanging the water at the end of the winesellers’ pier. No trading ships were docked there. With the near-cessation of normal commerce on account of the famine, this southernmost area of Mallburn Quay near the great river was virtually deserted. Even the stews and taverns were boarded up, and only a few small coaster vessels were tied at the adjacent slips and wharves belonging to other merchants. A lamptender with a ladder, accompanied by an armed guard, was extinguishing the tall streetlights along the waterfront one by one.

She took care of her body’s needs, then let her disinterested gaze roam about the big harbor. She’d never seen it at dawn, and its aspect was oddly unfamiliar. The tide was high and the sky to the east, above a fog bank at the mouth of Didion Bay, glowed a muddy crimson. Thanks to her magical labors of the day before, the air was only moderately chilly. In spite of the brisk breeze from the west, a thin mist blurred the scene, but the far shore where the shipyards and naval installations lay was distinct enough in the halflight. The uncanny dense fog generated by the spunkies had not yet reached the city, but it would surely do so by tomorrow.

The princess hobbled back toward her sanctuary, stopping frequently to rest, wishing she had thought to bring some sort of walking stick. Every step brought increasing pain in her legs, and her head had begun to throb, perhaps from lack of food. She would scratch up a simple meal of biscuit, dried meat, and wine, eat it in bed, then sleep again even though she knew she would suffer while dreaming. The debt must be paid, and as quickly as possible.

Behind the semicircular quay, the rising expanse of Mallburn Town revealed streetlights only in the privileged Golden Precinct. The rest was dark, having been abandoned at night to the lawless and the desperate. Holt Mallburn Palace, situated high on a parklike wooded hill a league inland, had its walls and battlements ablaze with firebaskets. She paused and automatically attempted to windwatch the palace’s inhabitants, but her unaided talent was now too diminished to penetrate the massive stone walls of the fortress. The Loophole sigil was no option for spying, either. In her present weakened state, the pain of its conjuring would probably render her senseless.

You pathetic thing! she thought. Wobbly as a newborn lamb, and about as dangerous! How can you hope to help Conrig take this huge city? All of the plans they had made earlier were rendered useless by her disability. The Cathran army was due to arrive in two days, but she would hardly have regained her full strength by then. Who would open the gate for Conrig at the great bridge on the River Malle? Who would admit his force to Holt Mallburn Palace itself?

Yesterday, bespeaking Stergos before empowering the new sigil, she had been optimistic. But she had badly underestimated the price Weathermaker would extract from her already weakened body.

I’m no good to him now! The thought came to her without volition as she leaned against the wall of the winesellers’ warehouse and stared blankly at the harbor. His invasion will fail through my fault. He’ll either die in battle or retreat to Cathra in defeat, and meanwhile the Royal Navy of Didion will sail south, link up with the Continental fleet, and—

Navy!

Comprehension hit her like a thunderbolt. She’d been too thickheaded to appreciate what her naked eyes had already shown her: the forty-odd warships that had been moored in the harbor and tied up at large piers on the northern end of the quay were no longer there. Conrig’s slim hope that his invading army might arrive in time to stop the fleet from moving against Cathra was dashed. The armada of Crown Prince Honigalus had sailed on the dawn tide with a fair wind to carry it out of the bay.

I must warn him!

She re-entered the warehouse and collapsed on her improvised bed, clawing at Concealer and Interpenetrator to get them away from her body, sparing herself that insignificant discomfort at least. But the consequences of the empowerment once again began to overwhelm her, even before she fell fully asleep. The stabbing in her belly, the dizziness, the crushing weakness, the irresistible compulsion to yield to unconsciousness and pay the Great Lights their due of pain…

I can’t! Not yet!

She fought with all her will to remain awake, demanding that her body obey. Focusing whatever mental strength remained to her on that single need, she cried out and felt her muscles convulse, then subside into a deadly languor—no longer hurting.

Oh, yes! Thank you, Mother!

Her breathing had become shallow and rapid. Fever burnt at her temples and flooded down her neck, engulfing her body, but she was awake. She reached for a nearby beaker of water. Her trembling hand upset the pottery container, causing it to tip and spill its precious contents onto the dirty wooden floor.

Very well, forget that. Concentrate on windspeaking the message! It would be impossible to reach Vra-Sulkorig in Cala Palace, so she must tell Stergos. First, visualize the countenance of the Doctor Arcanorum, target of the bespeaking—

Oh, Moon Mother, have mercy. I can’t see him.

Try as she might, she could not bring Stergos’s gentle round face to mind, much less the face of the other alchymist accompanying the army. Even her memory of Conrig was dimmed to nullity by her dazed brain. The realization sent a gush of stark terror through the pain-free lethargy that temporarily sheltered her.

Mother, what am I to do?

There was only one hope. She could attempt a general outcry on the wind. It was a form of bespeaking that might be overheard by any adept within range, more tenuous than directed communication, susceptible to blockage by dense matter such as solid rock. The brick wall of the warehouse would be relatively transparent to it, but not Holt Mallburn’s granite bastions, nor the keeps of the other Didionite castles within range. She must make the message brief yet unmistakable. The enemy would probably not overhear her, but if Conrig’s magickers had already crossed the massif of the Dextral Mountains at Breakneck Pass, there was a good chance at least one of them might understand.

I’ll put all the power I have left into the one cry, she decided. For now, it’s all I can do.

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The two Brothers of Zeth, relegated to the Cathran army’s rearguard to protect them from danger, were still in the bowl-shaped summit heath, shielded from the flimsy windcry by the intervening rocks. Prince Conrig, riding with Cloudfell and Catclaw so as to be in the fore of the assault, possessed too meager a talent to grasp the message. The only one who heard was Snudge—far ahead of the others, being guided by spunkies to Castle Redfern in the first light of dawn. That faintest of bespoken cries came to him:

Warships gone.

“Codders!” The boy hauled on Primmie’s reins, and the mule halted so abruptly that he nearly flew over its head.

The handful of dancing sparks that surrounded the mounted boy began to cheep and squeak like a nest of disturbed starlings. Unlike their ruler, they did not speak the language of humankind, although an adept could understand their windspeech readily enough.

“Oh, be still!” Snudge hissed at the tiny beings.

He closed his eyes, slumping in the saddle, and attempted to follow the strange cry back to its origin, but it was less a thread than an amorphous web, and might have come from anywhere. After that failure he tried to windsearch Didion Bay for a sight of the fleet, but the waters a few leagues east of the enemy capital city were heavily shrouded in a dense fog that was creeping toward the land. If the ships were out there, no ordinary windwatcher could see them.

He bespoke Stergos, who was dozing in his saddle alongside Vra-Doman Carmorton, waiting for his turn to take to the trail.

“My lord, wake up! Don’t disturb your companion. Wake up, I say, and respond to me stealthily in windspeech. It’s Snudge. I believe I’ve received a message from Princess Ullanoth!”

There was a silence on the wind, broken by an incoherent murmur that eventually resolved itself into a bespoken reply.

Snudge? What are you telling me?

“Lord Stergos, I heard a peculiar undirected message on the wind: Warships gone. I believe it can only have come from the princess. We know she is very weak after empowering her Weathermaker. Perhaps she could only transmit those two words, without aiming them at a specific person. I think she meant to tell us that the Didionite fleet has set sail for the south. You must alert the Royal Alchymist at Cala Palace. Say that you were the one who received the message: Warships gone. Let them make of it what they will.”

Oh, Blessed Zeth. This is dreadful! I’d better press to the front of the column and tell the prince and see what he thinks. He hoped we might reach Holt Mallburn in time to stop the fleet—

“My lord, no offense. Stop waffling! Tell His Grace later if you must, but pass on the information to Vra-Sulkorig at Cala without delay. Is that clear?”

The reply was surprisingly meek. Quite clear, my boy. Thank God you were able to receive it… You know, I’m praying for the success of your own mission.

“Thank you, my lord.”

Ialsopray—Imean—oh, Deveron! Are you certain that your scheme will enable you to accomplish your task without shedding the blood of Redfern’s wind adepts?

“As I told you, with luck—and with the special goods I packed on my mule— I’ll manage.”

I know my brother charged you with a warrior’s duty, but he’s a ruthless man and you’re—ah, you’re—

“I’m Conrig’s liege man. Farewell, Doctor. If you do speak to His Grace, tell him he can depend on me.”

Snudge opened his eyes to the ghostly mountainside and thumped Primmie gently in the ribs. Obediently, the loaded mule continued downslope on rag-wrapped hooves. It was an intelligent beast for all its bad temper, and it had quickly learned to follow the parade of five glowing specks that wafted just ahead of it, floating a foot or so above the ground.

==========

Queen Cataldise opened the door to the king’s bedchamber when she heard the gentle scratching. “Vra-Sulkorig. It’s rather early. Has something important happened?”

The Acting Royal Alchymist’s face lit up at the sound of notes being plucked expertly from a lute. “His Grace is awake, then?” The time was shortly after dawn.

The queen sighed. “Revising his Deathsong again. He slept poorly last night and did not wish to waste the time. I’ve also had very little sleep. What do you want?”

“I do have significant news, Your Grace.”

The lute music stopped. “Well, come and tell me about it, man!” growled the king.

Sulkorig approached the enormous bed. The ailing monarch was propped up on a pile of pillows, holding the stringed instrument. His lap table held parchment and writing materials, and he was surrounded by ranks of lighted candelabra on silver-gilt stands.

“Lord Stergos has received a two-word windspoken message: Warships gone. He believes it came from Princess Ullanoth in the Didionite capital city, but cannot be sure. The lady herself is supposedly in ill health after accomplishing some notable feat of magic. The Doctor Arcanorum believes we must take the message very seriously and presume that the war fleet of Crown Prince Honigalus has set sail from Holt Mallburn and intends to attack Cala.”

Olmigon nodded slowly. He began to retune one of the lute strings, picking at it in a finicky fashion. “Did you have our own Brothers scry up Didion way?”

“Your Grace, the distance is too far, even for our most talented windwatchers working in unison. If the winds are favorable to them, the enemy ships might reach the vicinity of the Vigilant Isles in four to five days.” The alchymist tactfully accommodated the king’s failing memory. “Didion’s fleet strength, as you know, is around forty men o‘ war, with at least eighteen triple-tier barques carrying up to sixty guns apiece and more than twenty two-decker frigates with twenty-six guns or more. All of the heavy warships might not have sailed, of course.”

Olmigon finished his tuning and strummed an ominous minor chord. “What about the damned Continentals?”

“Teams of adepts riding small sloops have been plying the Dolphin Channel, keeping watch twenty-four hours a day, as closely as their powers allow. So far, there seems to be no suspicious movement of ships from ports in Stippen or Foraile.”

“And the Tarnian mercenaries?”

Sulkorig’s grave expression brightened. “There, at least, we have good tidings. I didn’t wish to disturb your rest unnecessarily, but late last night we were bespoken by the shaman of Sealord Yons Stormchild. Our grain ships have made port, and he has ordered twenty well-armed frigates, carrying extra supplies of tarnblaze, to sail south on the dawn tide.”

“Thank God! ”cried Cataldise.

Olmigon glowered. “You should have come and told me—whatever the hour.”

“Of course, Your Grace. From now on, it will be done.” The wizard’s eyes slid reproachfully toward those of the queen, who looked innocent. On her orders, the king had remained undisturbed.