Enchanter (Book 7) (26 page)

She filled me in about the local palace politics and what she faced.  I made a few unhelpful suggestions and at least one helpful one before I was able to enjoy my broth in the frosty air.  Anguin’s successful restoration would be a key political point, and having Pentandra on the spot was ideal.  But I was still worried.  The Brotherhood of the Rat had been active in Vorone a few years back, even in the palace itself.  And from what she had told me there were plenty of resentful and frightened foes within the palace walls who weren’t part of international criminal organizations.  I was worried, but I knew with Arborn around she was as protected as well as I could ask.

I was delighted with the restoration, though.  That had been a vital event in my plans.  If nothing else, it gave the Royal Family something other than me to think about, when they discovered the truth.  I only hoped that Anguin’s nascent court could manage to keep things together long enough to survive the inevitable challenges to his rule. 

I was on my second pipe and contemplating a trip to the guarderobe when Tyndal, of all people, contacted me.

Good morning, Master!
His too-cheery mental voice boomed into my head. 
Why don’t you come over to the great hall and have breakfast with us?

Tyndal!  You’re here?  When did you get in?

Long past midnight, last night.  We tried to make it back in time for Yule, but we ran into complications on the road.  We’ve got a lot to report, however, and there’s someone we want you to meet.

I’ll be right over,
I promised. 
Just let me complete my ablutions . . .

Alya was thrilled to hear that our boys were back, and if she hadn’t been nursing Almina she would have joined me.  When I got to the hall, nodded to the guards and greeted fifty sleepy folk who were either coming off shift or going on, I found Tyndal and Rondal brazenly eating porridge and biscuits at the high table . . . along with a young boy.

The lad was no more than ten or eleven, but he had sunken cheekbones that bespoke of malnutrition and hunger.  He had a thick shock of unruly black hair that kept getting into his eyes, and he kept looking around the bustling Great Hall with quiet fascination.  Gray eyes, and very intelligent. 

“Master!” Rondal said, rising respectfully.  Tyndal didn’t bother to get up.  “Thank you for joining us.  This young man is Ruderal.  He’s the one we went to southern Alshar to fetch.”

“Rescue, more like,” Tyndal snorted.  “The Brotherhood of the Rat has been keeping him a virtual slave.  Threatening his mother to force him to work for them.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Ruderal,” I said, trying to sound as calm, kind and reassuring as possible.  “I am Minalan, the baron of Sevendor.  You are safe, here, under my protection.  If there is anything you need, merely ask.”  I turned back to my former apprentices.  “So what is so special about the boy?”

“He sees . . . well, why don’t you give him a quick examination, and you tell us?” Rondal said, his eyes twinkling. 

I sighed.  He was challenging me, and I couldn’t not answer it.  I summoned my baculus from my ring and started to do a basic examination when the boy startled – not, as I’d thought, by the sudden appearance of the rod, but of what it was.

“Uli’s beard! What do you
have
in that thing?” he asked, pointing to the baculus.  “It’s . . . it wants to
find out!’

I smiled.  Now I remembered.  “Ah, you’re the lad who can . . .
see
enneagrams,” I recalled. 

“Oh, he can do much more than that,” assured Rondal.  “But that’s the beginning of his Talent.  He’s strong, Master.  He’s going to need training.”

“In everything but eating,’ Tyndal agreed.  “He’s mastered that art.”  The boy was reaching for another biscuit, and stopped until I caught his eye and nodded permission. 

He grew up in a sewer,
Tyndal informed me, mind-to-mind
.  Literally.  There’s a kind of camp at the mouth of the river, where all the sewage from the city flowed.  He and his mother were fishermen, or something, until the Brotherhood got ahold of him.  What there was to eat there was pretty poor, from what we can tell.  And not much of it.

“He can eat as much as he likes, here,” I promised. “Let’s get the lad filled out, rested up, and then we can evaluate his Talents appropriately.  Until then, why don’t you tell me about your adventures?”

They were pretty adventuresome, as it happened.  The boys had made the long journey to the rebellious region, quietly slipping over the frontier and making their way down to the heavily-populated south overland.  Once they arrived, after a few days of familiarizing themselves with the capital city, they began their search.  After a few weeks they figured out where the Brotherhood’s headquarters was located, and from there they discovered where Ruderal was being kept.

They arranged a daring escape, both for him and his mother, leaving an angry crew of Rats stunned and bleeding in the smoking ruins of their headquarters.  I was increasingly impressed with their tale as they detailed just how they had gone about the elaborate and intricate – and ridiculously destructive – mission.  My boys had grown up.  They were destroying things all by themselves, now.

“We left his mother in a cottage in the northern baronies of southern Alshar, well away from the coastal agents of the Brotherhood,” Tyndal assured.  “We paid her rent for two years in advance and left her enough to live off of for a while, under a different name.  She’s safe, now,” he emphasized for Ruderal’s benefit.  “But this lad needs to be trained.  He can do things with enneagrams I’ve never seen before.”

‘Stick around for a few weeks and you’ll see more than you can imagine,” I proposed.  “We’re doing some amazing work in enchantment, now.  I’d like each of you to construct a thaumaturgical baculus,” I suggested gesturing to my own, “like the rest of us.  We’re about to move on to more interesting enchantments, but there’s time for you each to catch up.”

“For a few weeks, perhaps,” Rondal agreed, reluctantly.  “We need the rest, honestly.  But then we’re headed back to Alshar, Master.  While we were rescuing the lad, we discovered intelligence that suggested that not only has the Brotherhood been working in secret with the gurvani, but they’ve successfully located Korbal, the Demon God.”

“Sorry about that,” Ruderal said, unexpectedly, with a guilty sigh.  “They
forced
me to find him.  They said they’d hurt my mother if I didn’t.  I didn’t want to, but . . .”

“We all must do what we must,” I said, as kindly as I could.  “The gods work in mysterious and not terribly efficient ways, sometimes.  Whatever role you played, you can continue on to your next one without guilt or shame.  We will deal with Korbal, in time,” I said, confidently, with absolutely no idea of how we would do that. 

“He isn’t awakened, yet, from what we could tell,” Rondal continued, “but the Brotherhood has safe houses and clandestine keeps and bandit hideouts all through the Land of Scars.  Whatever it is they found is likely at one of those.  But we know the gurvani are involved because we spoke to one of their emissaries.  Clever fellow.  Reminded me of Gurkarl.”

“He wasn’t that pleasant,” Tyndal disagreed, making a face.  “I still think you should have killed him.”

“You never know when an enemy is going to be useful,” Rondal countered.  “He wasn’t a direct threat, and he was clearly not going to interfere with what we were doing.  By letting him escape we have a contact within the gurvani, now.  You have to admit, he was quite polite.”

“A real gentleman, for a human-flesh eating scrug,” Tyndal agreed.  “And now the gurvani will know that
we
know that we know that they’re working together.  But you might be right,” he conceded.  “Grand strategy isn’t my strong suit.  I just hate leaving any of them alive.”

“We’ll discuss the particulars, later,” I agreed.  “But I’m curious why you want to go back?”

“Because we only destroyed one of the Brotherhood’s compounds,” Tyndal said, his nostrils flaring a bit, “and we’re not done yet.  We saw what the Brotherhood is doing in southern Alshar.  The barons might be rebelling, but the Brotherhood is who controls the docks, the harbor, the markets, and most of the commerce.  The barons look the other way and the Rats keep the common folk in line.  If we hurt them, we’ll hurt the rebellion.”

“Well this will hurt them without striking a blow: I got word from Pentandra this morning.  Duke Anguin has taken control of Vorone in his own name.  There is a properly invested, seated duke in Alshar again.”

“Yes!” Tyndal said, excitedly.  “The barons have been rebelling in the name of the ducal house.  That’s been convenient, since the ducal house hasn’t been around to contest it.  If the Orphan Duke is in control of the Wilderlands, then they won’t have a legal right to rebel!”

“That won’t stop them,” Rondal assured him.  “You saw how tenaciously the rebels clung to power.  Any whisper of allegiance to Castalshar or Rard gets punished by squads of ruffians supplied by the Brotherhood.  They’re not likely to surrender power to a royalist boy in a distant province.  Especially considering the allies they’ve gathered.”

“Allies?” I asked curious.  Rondal always had a keener eye for detail than Tyndal. 

“The gurvani aren’t the only ones who have thrown in with the rebels,” he explained.  “All of the disaffected Censors from Alshar and Castal who didn’t go to Merwyn went to Alshar.  They’ve been strongly supporting the rebel government.  Black and white cloaks, reign of magical terror, the whole bit.  Only they’ve dug out their own witchstones from storage.  At least three or four.”

“Don’t they know the Censorate regrouped in Merwyn?”

“News of that arrived while we were there,” agreed Rondal.  “They rejected the authority of the east.  They are rigorously enforcing the old regime.  With witchstones,” he added, gravely.  “Not a good place to operate openly as a mage.”

“They’re not the only ones,” agreed Tyndal.  “The entire Farisian Navy has removed to southern Alshar.  The pirate fleet that was dispossessed during the war has taken refuge under the auspices of the rebels, and they’ve stepped up their raids on shipping around the Farisian Straights.  A hundred and forty ships, as well as the three hundred odd ships of the Alshari Navy.”

“That’s a lot of military power,” I nodded.  “All of our enemies working together, each with a really good reason to hate our guts.  I can see why you’re concerned.”

“Aren’t you, Master?” Rondal blurted out. 

“Yes, I am,” I agreed, calmly.  “This is extremely valuable intelligence, there is no doubt.  And you’ve brought me someone extremely interesting,” I said, nodding to Ruderal, who was still eating.  “But it was your assessment of the situation that I desired.  And you have yet to learn that we are now colleagues, professionally speaking.  Call me Minalan,” I insisted.  “You’ve both earned that.

“But I am, indeed, concerned.  I trust you covered your tracks?” I asked, wondering if they had thought about that.

“As well as we could,” nodded Rondal.  “There were three humans who knew us from our encounter in the Land of Scars, when they abducted the Kasari.  All three are dead, now,” he said, with sense of satisfied resolution that bordered on the macabre. 

“The gurvani knows,” Tyndal reminded, ruefully. 

“Somehow I don’t think he’s going to see the Brotherhood as stalwart allies as he once supposed, after what we did,” Rondal pointed out.  “He barely escaped with his life.  But few others knew we were magi, or who we were.  None who would speak to authority about it,” he amended.

“When we return, we’ll go in disguise,” Tyndal volunteered.  “We’re working on an elaborate plan to put a metaphorical chicken bone of the metaphorical throat of the Rat.  We made some interesting allies while we were there – including a shadowmage involved in a nascent resistance movement.  But it’s going to take a delicate touch, some intricate planning, and a few custom-made enchanted items to work, I think.  And not before spring.”

“Why spring?”

“That’s when the Farisian Corsairs depart, along with about half of the ducal fleet.  Raiding season,” Rondal explained.  “They’re going to challenge the royal blockade.  But while they’re gone, so will most of the garrisons.”

“Insurrection weather,” Rondal grinned, quietly.  “The time will be ripe.  We just need a few little things . . . and perhaps Lorcus.  Is he around?”

“I have him deployed, watching . . . someone,” I said, not wanting to get into the Isily situation with them.  “But what he’s doing isn’t urgent.  I can loan him to you for a few weeks, if he’s willing.  But boys . . . remember, this can’t be tied back to the Arcane Orders.  Not right now.  Don’t mistake me – I support what you’re doing, and I’ll help.  But you need to be cautious,” I warned.

“Apart from leaving a hundred-foot ruin in the middle of the docks, we were very discreet,” Tyndal assured.

“It was a very understated ruin,” Rondal agreed.

“You barely noticed,” Ruderal agreed, his mouth full of biscuit.

They seemed so sincere, it seemed a shame to doubt them.

“After breakfast take him over to Boval Hall,” I instructed.  “Give him into Rollo’s care.  He’s taken charge of those Wilderlands orphans we rescued this summer, and he’s . . . it’s done them all good.  I’ll send Dranus around in a day or so to give him a thorough examination.  Tell Rollo it’s at my expense, he should bill the castle.  I’m sure Sire Cei won’t mind the additional ward. There’s room for one more at his table, I think.”