The Sword of the South - eARC (57 page)

She hadn’t enjoyed his homily on dragon breeding, though she’d tried to hide her fury. But suppose…just suppose she planned to move into the cavern to be certain she and Wencit
did
meet face-to-face. Given the balance of strength, the cat-eyed wizard had expected her to stay as far from Wencit as possible, but what if she wanted to communicate with the wild wizard before they engaged? She was scarcely the cat-eyed wizard’s equal, but that didn’t mean it was impossible for her to have learned—or guessed—far more about his true plans than he thought she had. It was entirely possible she’d learned something valuable enough she might actually hope to betray him in a bargain for her own life. Wencit wasn’t known for extending forbearance to anyone who violated his precious Strictures, but there was always a first time for anything. And if Wulfra truly had discovered something significant about the cat-eyed wizard’s own identity or intentions, she might well decide it was worth seeing if it would turn her into the exception to Wencit’s policy of obliterating any dark wizard who drew herself to his attention. After all, she’d be no deader afterward if she discovered that she couldn’t convince him her information was worth her life, and under the circumstances, knowing she’d put a finger into his eye before she died would afford her a certain final pleasure.

The cat eyes danced with silent laughter as they returned to the sunbathing sorceress. Poor Wulfra was
so
predictable! It really was a pity, he thought, eyeing her appreciatively. He could have used a full partner with her beauty and deviousness, if only her power had matched her ambition or her beauty. But it didn’t, which relegated her to the role of bait.

It was such a shame. Still, it wouldn’t do to let her treachery succeed. He could kill her now, but that lacked subtlety and there was no way it could fail to make Wencit suspicious if he heard of it. Anyway, the poor dear was totally unaware of how he’d improved her spells in the cavern, or that
he
now controlled that particularly nasty piece of nastiness, not she. All he had to do was wait for the proper moment, and then—
poof!
—no more Wulfra…and possibly no more Wencit.

He rocked with mirth and blanked the crystal with a gesture.

* * *

Kenhodan followed the elusive sound to the edge of a small but steep-sided hollow and blinked in surprise as he realized the humming was coming from Wencit. Somehow, hummed drinking songs and scandalous ditties about barmaids with an aversion to clothing weren’t something he associated with the mighty practitioner of sorcery from all the ancient tales. But apparently he would’ve been wrong about that, and the eyes which had blinked narrowed as he stepped over the edge of the hollow, slid to its bottom, and came face-to-face with a Wencit who was grinning. Not
smiling
; grinning.

“What, if I may ask, is so amusing?” Kenhodan asked quietly as he slithered to a stop.

“I beg your pardon?” Wencit broke off humming to raise an eyebrow.

“I asked what’s amusing you so.”

“Oh. I was just considering the nature of black wizards.”

“That’s
funny?
”

“No, but it
is
amusing, sometimes.”

“Amusing, he says!” Kenhodan shook his head and slid enough further down to sit, leaning against the bank opposite Wencit while he eyed the wizard sourly. “All they’re trying to do is kill us and—assuming I’ve got this right from all your hints and forbodings—conquer Norfressa and enslave every single person living on it. If that’s amusing, gods preserve us from anything you’d find
hilarious!
”

“Their acts are seldom amusing,” Wencit conceded, reaching into his pack for his pipe, “but the way they make their plans really is rather humorous, in a black sort of way.”

“Would you like to explain that?”

“Why not?”

The wizard took his time as he filled his pipe, tamped the tobacco with his thumb, put away his tobacco pouch, and snapped his fingers. A flame kindled at the end of his index finger, and he applied it to the pipe, drew deeply as he coaxed the tobacco alight, and—finally—expelled a sigh of smoke before he banished the flame from his hand.

“Wizards,” he said at last, “are extremely predictable when they’re black or white. The shades of gray can tax the imagination, but the black and white are easy, because any wizard’s decisions reflect—or are shaped by, if you will—his basic orientation. The trick is to figure out what data your opponent has. If you know what he knows, it’s fairly simple to deduce roughly what he’ll do with that knowledge.”

“I can see that…I think. But what makes that so amusing just now?”

“Watching black wizards in action, and they don’t come a lot blacker than Wulfra. They’re all convinced they’re vastly more subtle than any white wizard, and she and her allies are no exceptions to that rule.” He chuckled and blew a jet of smoke against the dimming sky. “I suppose they think that way because we always keep our promises, which is the main reason white wizards tend to be unwilling to
make
promises very often. On the other hand, it also accounts for the reasons we can trust our allies, but your typical black wizard will never truly understand that, because he equates cunning with treachery. He thinks you can’t be
really
cunning unless you’re planning to betray—or at least allowing for the virtual certainty of being betrayed
by
—others. It’s really rather sad, but every black wizard seems to be convinced deep inside that he personally
invented
treachery…or perfected it, at least.”

“And you find that amusing?”

“Certainly I do! Think of all the Carnadosans, every one of them scheming to betray the others and simultaneously spending half his energies simply guarding himself against counter treachery. Think of what they might achieve if only they trusted one another enough to really work together! Isn’t it amusing for them to cripple themselves trying to be ‘cunning’?”

“I suppose so,” Kenhodan admitted.

“It’s useful, too. They despise us for our honesty, but they don’t appreciate that honesty’s what lets us find those reliable allies of hours. And they can’t seem to grasp that we understand their viewpoint and include it in our own calculations. We’re such bluff, unimaginative sorts that they never suspect we might use their own treachery against them.”

“How?” Kenhodan asked curiously.

“One way’s to make it seem profitable for them to discard an ally for a temporary advantage. Another is to deny them information—or, even better, to feed them carefully
chosen
information. That’s risky, but sometimes it actually makes it possible to dictate their strategy without their ever realizing what you’ve done.”

“I suppose that
is
useful,” Kenhodan mused. “But treachery—even in an enemy—makes me uneasy. Treachery caused the Fall, after all.”

“No,” Wencit said softly, his amusement suddenly fled. “No, treachery wasn’t the root of the Fall…or not the only one, anyway. The
real
cause was complacency.”

Kenhodan’s eyebrows arched, and the wizard shrugged. It was a weary gesture, that of a man tired and worn but far from defeated, and he leaned back against the bank beside Kenhodan with a grim expression.

“You see, Kenhodan, the Strictures were never any sort of eternal natural law, and Ottovar and Gwynytha had no moral ‘right’ to create them in the first place. They did it without really consulting the other wizards of Kontovar at all, purely by virtue of their own power. Ultimately, creating them made their authority stronger, because their subjects knew only the Strictures stood between them and black sorcery, which is one reason the Ottovaran Empire lasted so long. And it’s true that the Strictures were built on their determination to protect others. Yet it’s also true that the Strictures were always artificial—an eye in a hurricane, but one which could endure only so long as it was
made
to endure, and that was something their descendants could forget only at their own peril, because not everyone
wanted
it to endure.

“In a very real sense, Ottovar and Gwynytha put every wizard into chains. They were right to do it, but denying someone the right to use his own abilities to their fullest, in the way that seems best to him, generates a terrible resentment. That’s true for any ability, but it’s even more true for wizards, because there’s a power, a passion like a fever, for those who can touch the art. It’s a
compulsion
, and not every wizard feels compelled to use his abilities for good. Even at the height of their empire, there were wizards who would have liked to be what we call ‘black’ and saw no reason—other than Ottovar and Gwynytha’s brute power—why they shouldn’t be exactly that.

“Ottovar and Gwynytha knew it, of course, which is why Ottovar gave Hahnal the Crown of Ottovar. His own ability to create the Strictures in the first place had stemmed from the fact that he was both wizard and warrior—and a wild wizard at that, which meant he was very long-lived. His heirs were much longer-lived than most humans, but they weren’t all going to be wizards, and he knew it. So he gave them the Crown, the major function of which was to detect black wizardry. When a black act was committed, the wearer of the Crown sensed it immediately and knew where it had occurred. Then Ottovar deeded the Council of Ottovar the Isle of Rūm as a center for study and teaching of the art, decreed that any wizard must be trained, vetted by a board of his peers, and licensed before he was permitted to practice the art at all. And then he required the Council to punish black sorcery with death under the direction of the Emperor.

“And it worked. In fact, it worked too well.”

“Where did they go wrong?” Kenhodan frowned in perplexity. “How could something like that work ‘too well’?”

“Easily, I’m afraid. The Crown was too successful, you see. Everyone knew it detected dark wizards before they wreaked major harm—even the Council knew that, and relied upon it for warning rather than developing other means of detection, until the realm’s security against black sorcery depended entirely upon the Crown.

“But the Crown had other powers. No device can scry a continent without producing side effects, and one of the Crown’s was that it gave the Emperor the ability to sense the very thoughts of those about him. In fact, unless he had an extremely powerful and well-trained personality, he couldn’t
not
read them. Worse, everyone knew that whenever the Emperor wore the Crown he was reading their thoughts, whether he wanted to or not.”

Wencit shook his head in the dusk.

“No one wants his thoughts known, no matter by whom. The most honest man has some memory he wishes kept secret, and who should blame him? There’s a reason the magi are carefully trained and sworn to avoid exactly that sort of intrusion, and the ability of any mage ever born to
intentionally
invade another’s thoughts pales into insignificance beside what the Crown did
un
intentionally on the head of anyone not strong enough and sufficiently well-trained in that strength to avoid it.

“During the first few centuries, that caused little trouble, because the memory of unchecked wizardry made the intrusion bearable, if not palatable. But time passed, memory and experience receded, and people who’d grown to adulthood under the Gryphon Throne’s protection and the rule of the Strictures gradually felt less threatened. It was understandable enough that, under those circumstances, they’d become increasingly uneasy at having their secrets known, and the situation grew worse as Ottovar and Gwynytha’s blood thinned and the Ottovarans produced fewer rulers with the inherent talent or strength to control the effect.

“The inevitable happened, and it’s not really fair to blame the Ottovarans. I suppose it’s true they forgot the dangers their House had sworn itself to stand against, but they were scarcely alone in that. Eventually, as the centuries passed with no resurgence of the Wizard Wars, they decided they owed their subjects mental privacy and wore the Crown less and less often. Finally, they adopted the practice of reserving it solely for state occasions.

“And that was the beginning of disaster. As the Crown was worn less often, chances to violate the Strictures became more common and a handful of really evil practitioners sprang up. And they’d learned. They formed the Council of Carnadosa to match the Council of Ottovar, to train and discipline their own ranks, but where the Council of Ottovar limited the art to protect non-wizards, the Carnadosans enshrined the unlimited use of the art for the benefit of the minority who could command it.

“And the Council of Ottovar failed to detect them. The Council knew—
knew
—the Crown protected the entire Empire, even when that was no longer true. Yet it was
almost
true, for as long as the Crown was worn even occasionally, no dark act could be too blatant, lest it occur while the Crown happened to be on the Emperor’s head.”

Wencit paused to relight his pipe and sighed heavily.

“But great evil grows from small evils, Kenhodan, and the Carnadosans grew gradually stronger in secret. The Strictures chained them, but they worked and studied, planning for the day that would no longer be true. And finally they found a way to make that day come.”

His voice had become very soft, sad, his earlier amusement vanished.

“Emperor Cleres was a strong ruler, Kenhodan, and he suspected what was happening. He wore the Crown more often than it had been worn in the last two reigns combined, and he started the Council of Ottovar doing what complacency had stopped it from doing long since: perfecting
other
means of detecting black sorcery. But he was too late. The Carnadosans had gathered too much power and forged an alliance that was unholy in every sense of the word—one which combined every faction which hated the imperial authority: dark wizards, those who worshiped the Dark Gods, and—always—the powerful who cherished ambitions for still greater power. Three of the greatest nobles of the Ottovaran Empire defied the Emperor and rejected the Strictures, and civil war began in Kontovar.”

Kenhodan watched the wizard’s face in the gathering dusk and saw the anguish on his features. His wildfire eyes were wrung with pain, and he looked down into the glowing bowl of his pipe as if it were a gramerhain.