Sorcerer's Moon (52 page)

'Perhaps more astutely than the Supreme Warrior,' the Judge said under his breath.

They debated the matter for a long time, but in the end Kalawnn was forced to agree that no other person could do a better job. And he was, after all, the custodian of the Stone of Stones as well. It was fitting that he take on responsibility for Destroyer and Gateway if Ugusawnn were disabled or killed.

'Very well,' he said at last. ‘I will agree. This means, however, that the Warrior will be forced to carry me to the scene of action.'

'Gateway is capable of transporting two Salka,' the Judge said.

'Just barely,' the Conservator added. 'But we have no -'

I
have done it!
The Supreme Warrior's triumphant wind-voice rang in their minds.
The Great Stone is active and bonded to me. The presiding Light said he was gratified by our ingenuity in creating a new sigil of such delicacy and elegance.

'Congratulations
!' the three bespoke him in heartfelt relief.
'Will you wait for us to join you before transporting yourself to Demon Seat?'

Why bother? I'll go at once, taking a byssus-silk net to carry the rocks. When I finish sorting them, I'll bring the load to you in the audience chamber. How long can it take? I'll certainly be back in time for supper. Tell the cook I want dolphin in red dulse sauce and pickled tunnyfish!

* * *

But the Supreme Warrior returned long before that.

It was less than half an hour later that he materialized abruptly on the dais, sprawled like a giant sack of blubber
across his golden couch, moaning in agony and disappointment. His slick dark hide was roughened and blotched with chilblains, crystals of ice rimmed his discolored mouth and swollen eyelids, and the tips of his tentacular digits were ominously pale. His net was empty. The Subtle Gateway sigil hung safely about his neck, however, alive and glowing.

'Denizens of the Black Abyss!' the Conservator exclaimed. 'What happened?'

'Snow,' Ugusawnn responded in a faint rasp. 'The entire cursed mountaintop . . . shrouded in hardened snow and thick white ice.'

'Ahroo!' keened the Judge and the Conservator.

'The high altitude,' Kalawnn said. 'Alas, we never took that into consideration. Up there, not all the precipitation fell as rain.'

'Snow . . . not deep,' the Warrior whispered. 'Sunny there, but cold as hell and the ice . . . all the chunks of moonstone stuck together tighter than coral cementing lava blocks. Even exerting my talent to the utmost. . . spending all my bodily strength ... I couldn't loosen a single piece. As fast as I melted a bit of ice, the wind and cold froze it solid again. Ahrooo!. . . Must pay the debt now.' His eyes closed and he fell silent.

'Summon the healers,' the Conservator of Wisdom said to Kalawnn. And to the First Judge: 'Fetch the spell of abolition. I wish to familiarize myself with it.'

* * *

The rain slackened after the earl marshal's party had been traveling for several hours. As Deveron and Induna crested a long rise in the land, leaving forested country behind them, they got their first clear view of the Army of the Sovereignty as it traveled along the winding Boar Road. The sound of thousands of hoofbeats filled the air with muted thunder, making normal conversation difficult.

Using windspeech, Induna exclaimed, 'What an awesome sight!'

A vast quadruple column of cloaked and armored riders, many with sodden pennons hanging limply from lances, stretched for leagues across the rolling heath as far as the naked eye could see. With all civilian traffic temporarily suspended, the cavalcade of warriors took up nearly the entire width of the road. Narrow lanes on the left and right flanks had been left clear to accommodate faster riders -dispatch carriers and the retinues of the leaders. It was in one of these that Earl Marshal Parlian, Prince Dyfrig, and their general staff were perforce trotting along single-file, until they reached the broader thoroughfare of the Wold Road at the Castlemont Junction.

Deveron bespoke a response to his wife. 'Even without the Didionites, the armies of Cathra and Tarn and the first supply train number over twenty-six thousand men, half of them afoot. Didion's force of eleven-thousand-odd and the second supply train will start out in three days. Since they are not as disciplined in close marching, it was thought best to postpone their departure until the forces of Cathra and Tarn were well on their way.'

'Overseeing only a part of the great encampment around Boarsden Town,' Induna said, 'I never appreciated how many men and horses had gathered together. How will they find shelter along the way?'

'The warriors and their knight-commanders will bivouac in tents along the wayside at nightfall. But our party and that of the Sovereign and Sealord Sernin - which should be coming up directly behind us - are more fortunate. We'll all sleep under the roof of Rockyford Station tonight, and tomorrow we lodge at Elderwold Fortress. But beyond that, for the foreseeable future, we'll camp out. It'll be a dreary affair, love, if this unseasonable weather continues.'

'I can bear it.' She said nothing for some time. Then: 'Have you tried to windsearch Princess Maude yet?'

‘I made a stab at it shortly after we left Boarsden. All I'm certain of thus far is that she's not anywhere between here and Castlemont. I'll try again shortly.'

Conrig rode in a state of total distraction. The enormity of what he had done had finally sunk in, but instead of feeling any sense of guilt or sorrow, he knew only a petulant bewilderment and a sense of betrayal. Gossy was gone! The wise older brother who'd both pricked his conscience and counseled his uncertainties was no longer at his side. There was no one left to whom he might confide his deepest secrets.

He had convinced himself that Stergos's death was an unfortunate necessity. The welfare of the Sovereignty had depended upon it. The alchymist would never have agreed to let him use the Destroyer sigil against the Salka, even though it was the only weapon that could guarantee victory.

Why couldn't his brother have trusted him? Why had Gossy seemed to go willingly to his own doom?

From time to time as he rode, the High King lifted his hand in listless acknowledgment of scattered cheers from the sides of the road. Knots of civilian travelers stood or sat there, some with horses or mules or even wagons pulled up into the muddy verge. All had been forced to move aside and wait until the military passed by. The luckier ones who had heeded the warning of the advance scouts had found refuge in the local hamlets, while the laggards were stranded in the open with only cloaks to fend off the cold drizzle.

Their misery was irrelevant to Conrig Ironcrown. He was only concerned with his own.

Hunched in the saddle, his unseeing eyes and slack features concealed by his hood, and his mount led on a long rein by
Induna, Deveron Austrey soared the uncanny wind on the wings of his talent, searching.

He finally found his quarry in mid-afternoon. She was in a good hiding place and seemed settled in for a long wait. With a sigh he opened his eyes and uncovered his face.

'I have her, Duna,' he bespoke his wife. I'll take my reins now. Pass the word to Prince Dyfrig that I'm moving up to talk to him in a few minutes, as soon as I pull my wits together.'

* * *

Maudrayne Northkeep waited calmly for the long hours to pass. She had learned patience in a hard school. Her letter to Dyfrig had not told the whole truth about her confinement at Gentian Fell.

During the early weeks of captivity at the hunting lodge, when the truth of her predicament sank in at last, she became restless as a caged leopard. She rejected all of Lord Catclaw's blandishments, snapped and swore at the guards and servants, indulged herself with crying jags, refused food, and demanded quantities of ardent spirits to achieve the oblivion she craved. She neglected her body's care, turning herself into a repulsive harridan, and spent hours planning ways to end her life and thus wreak the ultimate revenge upon the man she hated.

As his fantasy of forbidden love turned to an ugly fiasco, the Lord Constable in desperation sought out the former maidservant of his prisoner, who had been left behind in the Tarnian capital city of Donorvale. Rusgann was not abducted or coerced. She willingly agreed to join her former mistress in exile and do what she could to help her.

Ignoring the screaming tirades and wild mood swings of ilie princess, the tall homely woman urged only one thing cil Maudrayne: Think of Dyfrig. With dogged persistence Rusgann pronounced the same phrase again and again. And
finally, Maude listened. Worn down by her friend's relentless love, she broke free of the shell of rage and humiliation that truly imprisoned her. Maude's fierce pride bowed to Rusgann's wisdom. She changed.

For Dyfrig's sake, she curtailed her surliness and fits of anger. For his sake she learned to smile again, to laugh, to make friendly conversation, to ask after the wellbeing of the lodge staff and treat them kindly. She thought of Dyfrig as she accompanied herself on the lute, permitted Rusgann to dress her hair and array her in pretty gowns, collected plants for her herbarium and wrote down salient facts about them. She thought of Dyfrig as she reared a peregrine eyas left abandoned in its nest and trained the powerful bird to hunt from her wrist as she and Tinnis Catclaw rode out on the mountainside.

In time Maudrayne even submitted to his embrace, fulfilling their original bargain. But as the constable lay with her she thought not of her lost child but of his father Conrig. When, at the finish of lovemaking, Tinnis Catclaw slept exhausted in the bed beside her, Maude wept silent tears -not from shame but from knowing that her body would not allow her to repudiate her first love. Seeing Conrig with her mind's eye, imagining his touch, she could endure anything.

How I hate him! she would think. Why can't I forget him?

In return for her complaisance, Catclaw had one of his minions installed in Beorbrook Hold, so that regular reports of Prince Dyfrig's progress might be forwarded to her. At long intervals there were even portrait sketches of the growing boy, rendered secretly by some itinerant artist.

So Maude learned patience and tranquility, and planned for the day when she would tell her son the truth about himself. And about her. And about his natural father . . .

Sitting by the side of Rocky Brook, secure beneath a tiny brush-masked shelter of dark oilskin that she had rigged from
the branches of saplings with bits of cord, the princess watched the walled compound of Rockyford Way Station some two hundred ells distant. She had seen the arrival of the royal party and even recognized Conrig by the splendor of his black-and-gold panoply. She had not laid eyes on him for twenty years, but her breath faltered and her blood quickened involuntarily at the thought of his nearness. Furious at her betraying flesh, she tore her gaze away from the glittering figure and tried to search out Dyfrig in the throng pouring into the station courtyard. She found the Beorbrook guidon, but those who rode beneath it were so numerous and distant that it was impossible to tell one cloaked man from another as they dismounted and entered the main hostel building after the long day's ride.

She thought of her friend Rusgann. Where was she resting tonight? Had she reached Dyfrig safely and passed on the letter? Was it possible that she might even have accompanied the prince to Rockyford? What a happy reunion it would be if the three of them were together again!

Now the day was ending and the rain had stopped. The smell of woodsmoke and roasting meat was borne to Maudrayne's hiding place, causing her to sigh with yearning as she chewed a heel of rye bread and a knob of hard cheese. She wore her heavy coat of mail, her helmet, and the surcoat of a Beorbrook household knight. Her swordbelt with its varg blade and dagger lay close at hand, ready to be donned. When it was full dark, she'd think how to get inside the station.

A few advance companies of warriors and a single wagon train had crossed the brook after sundown and continued on toward Elderwold. But the main body of the army halted lor the night along the roadsides on the opposite side of the water. As the broken clouds turned to purple and gold open lires begin to spring up, illuminating serried ranks of small
canvas tents, the occasional knightly pavilion, and rows of picketed horses. Soon she could see thousands of them, extending back along the road to the south like a river of orange stars.

And the troops were not only encamped along the road, but also in the moorlands immediately surrounding the walled Rockyford compound. Hundreds of armed men were bedding down just outside the place. She heard a sergeant bellow orders to a night patrol.

Her heart sank. How in the world would she ever reach Dyfrig? She'd been a fool to think she could slip into the fortified hostel where the ranking leaders of the Sovereignty were staying. The situation was impossible. There was nothing to do but make herself comfortable, eat a bit more food, go to sleep, and stay hidden until the army moved on, leaving her behind. When it was safe, she could buy another horse at the station and make her way to Lake of Shadows -

What was that?

The soft, regular splashing noises were faint but her ears were extremely sharp. Someone was walking through the shallow brook. The increasing volume of the sounds seemed to indicate that the person was coming directly toward her hiding place. A dislodged rock rattled against another. Even though the daylight was nearly gone, she had a clear view of the water.

No one was out there. No animal, no man.

Feeling the hairs creep at the back of her neck, she reached for her shortbow and nocked an arrow.

'Please don't, Princess Maude. I won't harm you.'

She stifled a cry of surprise. The voice was close by, somewhere on the near bank of the stream. She hissed, 'Who are you? Where are you? You won't take me without a fight!'

'Do you remember the Royal Intelligencer?' the invisible
man said. 'The wild-talented young knight who rescued you and your son from the stronghold on the Desolation Coast sixteen years ago and transported you to your Uncle Sernin's palace with magic? . . . I'm he: Deveron Austrey, once known as Snudge, outlawed by High King Conrig - but a faithful friend to your son, Prince Dyfrig Beorbrook, who has sent me to fetch you.'