Darwath 3 - The Armies Of Daylight (20 page)

It was barely the start of the day watch when Minalde returned to the Royal Sector, surrounded by her entourage.

In the Aisle, the Guards had thrown wide the gates again, and children had gone running out through the steamy dawn, to do their chores and race to the woods and cut evergreen boughs. Their singing floated back over the rucked snow and drifted faintly throughout the Keep itself. In two days it would be the Winter Feast.

But solstice cheer was hardly evident in the confusion of the lord Chancellor's quarters, and the traditional love and friendliness of the season were the farthest things from the rage-darkened countenance he showed his sister when she entered his audience hall with her train.

The opening of the doors had caught him in mid-gesticulation. He froze, mouth ajar, hand extended; all about the council table, eyes snapped to the dark doorway, now crowded with Maia's ragged guards and buckskinned Gettlesand rangers. In the split second of stopped time before the Chancellor swung around to face them, Rudy identified the others there. Vair was opulent in cut-velvet and pearls, but plain beside the emerald-green intricacies of Stiarth's gorgeous costume. Inquisitor Pinard, his white robes an advertisement of spiritual purity, stood beside the gory crimson costume of Bishop Govannin.

Alwir's face was engorged with rage; the finger that stabbed out at his sister was almost trembling with it. “You—” he began in a strangled voice, across which Govannin's dry, harsh tones cut like a knife.

“Be careful what you say, fool,” she warned, and Alwir, turning, seemed to realize that they were in the presence of the ears in service to the Emperor of the South. This checked the rashness of his first words, but there was murder in his eyes as Alde and the outland chiefs stepped into the council chamber.

Against the wealth and elegance of Alwir's power. Aide's supporters did not show up well. Under Bishop Maia's tattered scarlet episcopal cloak, he wore a faded panoply of scavenged rags, topped by a sweater knitted for him by one of the Penambran ladies. Tomec Tirkenson, in his fringed buckskin shirt and fleece moccasins, looked much like the barbarians he fought. Ingold, the best-dressed of the three, might have passed for anything from a genteel beggar to a street-corner harpist, but certainly not for the Archmage of the Wizards of the West. Among them, Alde seemed to blaze, like a slip of white flame in shadows.

When Alwir spoke again, his voice was calmer but no less deadly. “I suppose you have reasons which you believe to be valid, my sister,” he spat acidly, “for coming armed into my presence. But if we are to talk, it will not be in the company of these—bravos.”

“These bravos, my lord, are the commanders of your outland troops,” she returned, and her soft voice easily filled the council chamber.

His lip curled. “And what do military commanders have to do with statecraft and policy?”

“They die for it, my lord.”

There was momentary silence. Then Alwir's face softened, and he came around the table, his hands held out to take hers, his voice gentle and beautiful. “Aide—Minalde. There are always those who die, child; always those who must sacrifice to the good of all. You know this—none better than you.” He took her hands in a warm clasp, the soft modulations of his voice excluding all others around them, speaking for her ears only, as if they had been alone. “If every soldier were given his vote, no battles would ever be fought. That is why there must be leaders, my child. Without unquestioning unity, we are like a palsied man in a duel, with every limb flailing to no purpose. Sometimes one arm must take a cut so that the other can deliver a killing blow.”

He stood close to her. For a moment she looked up at him, once more his little sister, sheltered under the strength of his shadow.

Then she turned her wrists, not violently, but sharply, something Gil had taught her, breaking his hold before he could tighten it to draw her close. She stepped back from him, between her tall, ragged allies.

“Nevertheless, my lord, they are your subjects. The lives they put in your hands are the only ones they have. The least you owe their dignity is to invite their opinions and not hold secret councils to seek the advice of foreigners before you ask it of your own.”

Alwir's voice hardened, as if edged in metal. “Worthy as these lords are, my sister, they are the servants of one House who have fought the servants of another. Their bravery and sacrifice are not the less for being, perhaps, overzealous…”

Tirkenson's lynx eyes narrowed. “It's damn difficult not to get a little overzealous when you find your sister gone and your brother gutted and their kids speared through the belly with Alketch pikes.”

“If we sank to a discussion of every personal grievance that ever existed between the men of Alketch and ourselves, my lord Tirkenson, we would sit in this miserable fortress until we all starved or were devoured by the Dark,” the Chancellor flashed haughtily. “And if we continue to be interrupted by these—friends—whom you have chosen to bring with you into my Councils, my sister, we might just as well abandon discussion here and now. If you will seek the company of these ruffians whose blind prejudices would prevent the union of the Houses which they serve—”

“I will not marry the heir of Alketch!”

“You sang a different tune last night,” he reminded her softly.

“I was prisoner last night!”

Alwir's upper lip seemed to lengthen, his mouth hardening into a single dark line. “Things have changed in the Realm, Minalde, since you sat on the water terraces of Gae and fanned yourself with peacock plumes. We need the alliance with Alketch. They alone can help us reconquer the Realm from the Dark; they alone can help us rebuild it; they alone have not been scourged with this plague that has washed like a tide of death and ruination across the lands of Darwath. We have suffered, and without their aid we will continue to suffer. We can no longer afford the kind of warlike pride that once kept us from uniting in a single federation for the good of all humankind.”

Aide flinched from this accusation of vanity and luxury— not an unlikely one, either, Rudy thought, since the kid was married at sixteen. But her voice was unwavering as she replied, “I will not leave my son, nor will I permit the heir of Darwath to be brought up in a foreign court.”

“Not even one that is safe from the Dark?”

Aide swallowed; Rudy could see the struggle in her face.

Alwir must have noticed Tir's absence and known its meaning—that she would not put both of them into his power again. But this was a low blow, Rudy thought. Offhand, he couldn't think of anyone, including himself, whom Alde wouldn't kill to protect her child.

Her voice was unsteady as she said, “I would rather he shared his people's dangers than grow up a stranger to them.”

“Don't be a fool,” Alwir snapped roughly. “You'd kill the child for the sake of your silly pride?”

Tears flooded her eyes. She started to stammer a reply, but Ingold laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“For a northern-bred boy, like the legal heir to the Realm of Darwath and the last scion of the House of Dare, it is possible that the warmer climate of the court of the Emperor of Alketch might itself prove unhealthy,” the wizard said, his deep, slow voice almost, but not quite, laying emphasis on certain words. “A fever or a change of food, perhaps, might carry him off as surely as the Dark Ones, against whom this fortress and the presence of men loyal to his interests would in some measure protect him.”

It took Rudy a moment to unravel the implications of the seemingly innocuous words, but Alde gasped and turned pale. Alwir's brow grew thunderous with anger.

“You dare . . .” he rasped.

With a grinding clatter of his thrust-back chair, Vair na Chandros jerked to his feet. “Are you hinting that aught would happen to the child under the Emperor's care, you devil?”

Stiarth reached up to catch Vair's sleeve and pulled him down once more. The Ambassador's eyes glinted with light, cynical amusement. “In what danger could the Emperor's stepgrandson stand?” he inquired silkily. He looked across the table at Aide, his fine, slender hands echoing, in graceful gestures, the music of his voice. "In time, my lady, you might find yourself the most revered woman in the West of the World, you know. You would be the mother of the rulers of both Darwath and Alketch—the Golden Mother, in fact, of a union of humankind that stretches from the ice in the north to the impenetrable cataracts of the southern wall.

Your love, your motherhood, would unite what has never been united in all the days of the world."

He tossed the sparkling vision of it to her, like a sugarplum cast to a child. But the child did not grasp for it. In a clear, glass-hard voice, she said, “I have been chided for my pride once already, my lord. I cannot see myself with an elder son upon one throne and a younger upon another.”

Not if that younger son's Imperial Grandpa has anything to do with the preparation of Number One Son's baby food, Rudy thought bitterly. And leaving him at the Keep for Alwir to raise might just as easily amount to the same thing. The anger that surged through him was not for Alde alone or for himself, banished to the slow death of emptiness and grief. He felt a flash of anger for the child he had grown to love, robbed of birthright and mother and life.

The despair at his banishment turned to rage, rage that he would be unable to protect his own. And if the Inquisition's come to the Keep, Ingold may not be able to stick around to protect the little rug-rat, either. Looking up, he saw Alwir's eyes upon him, and what was in them seemed to slice into his flesh like a dagger of ice.

“And is your—natural grief—so much,” the Chancellor continued, his jeweled gaze moving from Rudy's face to Aide's, “that you cannot by any means overcome your understandable aversion to replacing your dead lord so quickly in your bed, my sister…”

Aide's expression did not change, but her chin came up.

“… especially when so much is at stake?”

There was a deadly silence.

For perhaps the time that it might take to draw and release three long breaths, they waited—for Alwir to speak, for Alde to break, for Rudy to give them both away. But as Alwir drew in breath to speak, Ingold stepped into that fraught hush with uncanny timing and every appearance of unconcern.

“In that regard my lady's choice is her own, as you know by Church law. It has been the ruling of every Church Council that has ever convened that no marriage entered into under coercion or force is valid. Indeed, I believe that many years ago my lady Govannin herself fought—successfully—such coercion by her family to make her wed instead of enter the Church. Is that not correct, my lady?”

Govannin's black slits of eyes gleamed as she turned her head. “It is, my lord wizard.”

“And the same Councils have ruled,” Ingold continued in that mild, scholarly tone, “that the act of love itself, as long as it is between parties of full age and responsibility, is always lawful, be it between the same sex or opposite, mageborn or not, faithful, heathen, or excommunicate, as long as the rights of contract or person are not violated. There is a certain amount of controversy over this ruling, but is that not, at base, the law?”

Govannin's dry, bitter voice sounded stiff. “It is.”

Rudy had enough sense left to stifle his gasp of outrage at the lie Alwir had told him. Then a heat went through him, a raging misery. He had no doubt that Alwir would banish him anyway—the Chancellor held too much power over his sister and could hurt her too much if Rudy stayed. But he now saw the full extent of what would happen after he was gone.

Alwir was pale, his nostrils two black, flared slashes, bracketed by the ugly lines graven around his mouth. “It is the law, my lady Govannin,” he grated, “but the opinions and good will of the people are another law entirely. For a Queen to—disregard the good of the Keep—” Rudy let his breath out in a shaky sigh. “—would certainly risk creating a scandal. And scandal, as we know, can be extremely expensive.”

He loomed over them like a cloud, black and lambent with evil; the rage seemed to burn out of him like thunder heat. Before the threat of his power, Alde looked suddenly very small and young, and Ingold seemed old and ragged.

Except for his eyes; they were bright and fierce under their white brows and met Alwir's unafraid.

“Prohibitively expensive, in fact,” the wizard said. “For who knows which way the die will fall, my lord?” Like a fencer disengaging, he turned his deceptively mild gaze to Stiarth and inquired, “Would your lord the Emperor press his demand for this term of alliance at the risk of losing the alliance itself?”

“I cannot in truth…” the Imperial Nephew began deprecatingly.

Alwir rasped, “Nothing will make me forgo the alliance!”

“For indeed,” Ingold continued, as if the Chancellor had not spoken, “if there is a conflict and a schism in the Keep, who knows who would hold the power afterward?”

The Chancellor gasped, taken for one instant utterly off balance, as if he could not conceive another coming to power in the Keep. Then his black brows dived over his nose, his face clotting with rage. “And who speaks of that, pray?” He would have reached out and shaken the old man, had not Ingold without apparent effort turned aside Alwir's grasping hand with his staff.

“No one, of course,” the wizard replied, widening his eyes at Alwir in surprise. “But surely my lord the Emperor knows that in times of trouble many things may come about.”

“Indeed he does.” Stiarth got to his feet and salaamed gracefully in the direction of Alwir, Ingold, and Minalde. “Had I known that the match was so repugnant to my lady, I would have hesitated to trample her sensibilities by even the suggestion, nor, I am sure, would our gracious lord the Emperor. It is true that, having heard tales of her loveliness and gentle breeding, he earnestly desires such a union; indeed, the federation of our two Realms has long been a scheme close to his heart.”

A voice from the back of the Gettlesand rangers muttered, “I bet it has.”

“I am desolated to have been the fomenter of such difficulties. My lord—my lady—I await your convenience.” He bowed again; in a whispering cloud of layered silken capes, he turned and minced from the room.