Ice Forged (The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga) (9 page)

Penhallow watched him with a look that made Connor wonder if the rumors were true that claimed the undead could read minds. “I have the feeling there’s a comment you’d like to make, but aren’t sure you should.”

Connor sighed. “It’s just that—I get the feeling King Merrill doesn’t like using mages in battle.”

Penhallow’s expression was resigned. “You’re correct. King
Merrill is, in many ways, a very good king. I have existed long enough to know, and seen many monarchs who were unworthy of their crowns. Merrill’s virtue, in this instance, is his undoing. He doesn’t consider it ‘sporting’ to use mages in battle unless there’s no other choice, and even then it’s distasteful to him.”

“Edgar of Meroven has no such hesitation, I gather?”

Penhallow nodded. “Edgar has no such hesitation about anything that he wants,” he said, and his voice mirrored his disdain. “I’ve heard quite a bit about Edgar through my sources and none of it is good.”

“Did your sources warn you of war?” Connor looked up sharply, not for the first time wondering whose side Penhallow was really on.

A faint smile touched Penhallow’s lips, but it did not reach his eyes. “Did you think you and Garnoc were my only sources? I haven’t survived for centuries without very good information.” He paused. “I received no warnings of war that I did not pass on to the king through my various connections. But what Merrill does not realize is just how far Edgar will go to get what he wants.”

“Is Edgar a madman?”

Voss laughed out loud. Penhallow’s brow furrowed. “You mean, does he bay at the moon? No,” Penhallow replied. “But he is quite without regard for what his ambitions cost others and utterly without feeling for the unfortunates who get in his way. Merrill doesn’t yet realize, I fear, that to Edgar, all of Donderath—and Tarrant—are in his way.”

“But what does Edgar covet so badly that Meroven doesn’t already have? Their seaports are as favorable, their farmland as good by all accounts, their climate as pleasant.”

“He doesn’t have it all. He doesn’t rule the Continent,” Voss answered in a voice that made his contempt clear.

Connor blanched. “And Vellanaj, are they party to his madness? If Edgar wants to rule the entire Continent, then surely he’ll turn on Vellanaj as soon as Donderath and Tarrant are swept aside, and the smaller states will be swallowed whole.”

Penhallow nodded. “Yes, he will. Either Vellanaj isn’t willing to see Edgar’s ambitions for what they are, or they’ve convinced themselves that they are so valuable that he’ll make an exception for them. They may be the last to be swallowed, but Edgar will want them as part of his empire sooner or later.”

“I’ve been beside Lord Garnoc at the War Council. Merrill’s reports are grim, casualties are high, but there’s been no suggestion that we were about to be overrun—especially with Tarrant entering the war on our side.”

“Merrill’s being fed lies by his generals,” Voss said, adding a creatively embellished curse for good measure. “They don’t have the balls to tell him the truth.”

Penhallow met Connor’s gaze. “Merrill is not hearing the whole truth from his commanders. The war goes badly for Donderath, worse than the generals wish to admit. Edgar has been assembling an army of conquest for a long time. He’ll sacrifice Vellanaj’s troops first, then send in wave after wave of his own. Merrill’s generals are only now seeing glimpses of Edgar’s true power, and they refuse to admit the meaning of what they see.”

“Where do the mages figure in this?”

Penhallow sat forward in his chair and watched the fire long enough that Connor was not sure he meant to answer. The firelight warmed the pallor of Penhallow’s skin, and the flickering of the flame tricked the eye to give the appearance that Penhallow’s chest rose and fell with breath. Connor’s gaze rose to the oil painting over the fireplace. Centuries had passed and Penhallow himself looked no different.

No
, Connor thought,
that wasn’t correct. There’s a sadness, a jadedness in his expression that the man in the portrait didn’t have. Not so surprising, if one survives several lifetimes of disappointment and sorrows.

“When Merrill was a young man, he fought in the war against Vellanaj. Merrill’s father, King Landor, had no compunction against using mages and neither did the king of Vellanaj.” Penhallow paused again and Connor wondered whether Penhallow had been a witness to that war.

“Neither side used their most powerful mages, but they made free use of lesser magic. Sheets of flame descending from the sky, incinerating everything in their path. Walls of water rising from placid lakes and rivers to sweep away armies and towns. Pestilence that had the opposing army coughing blood and writhing in pain in the few agonizing minutes before they died.” Penhallow’s voice grew quieter.

“Merrill saw how quickly magic could destroy and how vast its potential was for destruction, and I think he decided that the damage mortal soldiers inflicted was bad enough, without the help of mages.”

“But if Edgar is willing to use his mages, his strongest mages—”

Penhallow nodded. “Merrill will have no choice. I’ve watched the war play out over the last few years hoping that my fears would not be realized, but I believe Edgar intended this outcome from the start.”

Connor felt a knot of fear settle into his stomach. “If the magic Merrill witnessed wasn’t what the strongest mages are capable of doing…” He let his sentence trail off, and found himself hoping Penhallow would correct him.

Penhallow’s gaze did not leave the crackling flames in the fire. Voss answered. “Edgar’s been ‘collecting’ mages for his
service for some time now. Merrill hasn’t. That means any mage with ambition—and without scruples—finds his way to Edgar.”

Connor cleared his throat uncomfortably. “If mages are capable of such destruction, why hasn’t it happened more often?”

“It has happened before,” Penhallow said quietly. “Several times. The ashes of the empires that nurtured such ambition lie buried with their dead beneath our feet and across the lands of the Far Shores. Search your memory for the tales you’ve taken for legends. Have you never heard the stories about the ‘wars of the gods’?”

Connor frowned. “Yes, of course.”

“How the rivers ran red with blood and the land swallowed men and animals and the corpses of the dead were so poisoned that even the flies and the vultures died from eating them?”

A growing coldness stole through Connor, a chill that the fire could not warm. “Yes, I’ve heard.”

“How many times have the gods remade this world? What do the legends say?”

Connor felt his heartbeat begin to quicken as the old tales became far too real. “Four times, the surface of the world was scoured clean by the sword of the gods, creating it anew for the remnant who were worthy.”

Penhallow’s glance was cynical. “I don’t pretend to know what the gods do with their time, but neither the scouring nor the remaking was their work. Nor was the ‘whole world’ affected as the bards would tell you, just large enough swaths of territory that it seemed like the whole world to the wretches that survived.” Connor saw an unfathomable sadness in Penhallow’s eyes.

“And were you among those survivors?”

Penhallow regarded him for a moment without speaking.
“Once. On a far continent, beyond the West horizon. I ‘survived’ because I was already dead, though magic of that strength takes a toll even on us Elders, on all creatures who sustain their existence beyond the fringe of the mortal world.”

Connor swallowed hard. “Was it as the bards tell? I always thought perhaps they embellished—”

Penhallow’s gaze silenced him. “The bards did not tell half the horror. They dared not, or no one could hear the stories without despair. In a few candlemarks, I have seen a thriving empire leveled, most of its inhabitants killed. And while the bards sing of war, they say nothing of what happened afterward, of the madness and the starvation, of men living like animals and acting worse than beasts.”

“Isn’t there some way to warn Merrill? We can’t permit Edgar to create that kind of catastrophe.”

“Don’t you think I’ve tried?” Penhallow’s voice was raw. “We Elders have made sure that information reached the king, information he was not receiving from his generals. We dared not approach him directly. Merrill doesn’t hunt us, but his forbearance is more from oversight than by design. We couldn’t reveal ourselves, but our emissaries were well placed.”

“And he refused to listen?”

Voss made a dismissive gesture. “The king hears what he wants to hear,” he muttered.

“He trusts too much in the word of his generals,” Penhallow replied. “His generals fear for their reputations. All great tragedies turn on small emotions—pride, greed, and an inability to see a harsh truth until it’s too late.”

In Penhallow’s voice Connor heard anger, frustration, and resignation. The last, a concession to the inevitable, chilled him further. “Is there nothing we can do?”

Penhallow nodded to Voss. Voss crossed to the shelves that
were built into the walls on either side of the fireplace and stood on tiptoe to take down a chest that he unlocked with a key that hung from a cord around his neck. He withdrew a velvet-wrapped object from the chest and carefully laid back the wrapping to reveal an obsidian disk. The disk had several small decorative holes cut through its thin surface, and as Voss handed the disk to Connor, the fine carving on the disk’s mirrorlike surface caught the light in a design Connor could not identify.

“Treven Lowrey was able to get his hands on this and bring it to me. I brought it to Penhallow,” Voss said. “I’ve got Lowrey out looking for anything else that relates to this damned disk, but for now, this is what we’ve got. Take this to Garnoc. Remind him of an astrologer named Nadoren, a man who was in King Landor’s service many years ago. When Landor was very old, Nadoren left court suddenly, under suspicious circumstances. It was rumored that he had stolen from the king’s library. He disappeared and took with him several important maps that were never found.”

Connor frowned. “What can that possibly have to do with the war? And what’s so important about this pendant?”

Penhallow shifted in his chair, taking up the story. “The pendant is a key to a series of maps created several hundred years ago by a very powerful mage named Valtyr. Valtyr had traveled throughout the world, beyond the Continent and the Far Shores, to Edgeland and to lands our ships have only just begun to rediscover. Everywhere Valtyr traveled, he made maps of the places of power, places regarded as sacred or cursed, places where magic was strongest—or null. When Valtyr died, the maps fell into diverse hands. No one is quite sure how many there were, but at least four were known to be in the possession of King Landor.”

“Until Nadoren stole them.”

Voss nodded. “When Nadoren disappeared, so did three of the maps. It was thought that one of Landor’s mages might have been studying the other map, or that it was stored separately and Nadoren didn’t have the time to find it. Needless to say, once Nadoren made off with the others, the remaining map was more closely safeguarded.” He grimaced. “That’s why I’ve got Treven out looking for more information, but it’s dicey. We’re not the only ones interested in these things.”

Connor looked to Penhallow. “Someone else knows?”

Penhallow gave a shrug. “So we suspect. You’ve heard Garnoc speak of Pentreath Reese?”

Connor nodded. He didn’t add that whenever Garnoc had spoken of Reese, what was said hadn’t been good. “I’ve heard.”

“Reese and I have… bad blood between us,” Penhallow said. “Reese is obsessed with the histories of the thirteen original lords of Donderath, the Lords of the Blood. Why he’s interested, we’re not yet sure. But I’ve found it wise to be suspect of anything Reese pursues.”

“Reese works through Lord Pollard,” Voss added. “Vedran Pollard. Name ring a bell?”

Connor nodded. Garnoc held Pollard in nearly as low regard as he did Reese. Voss chuckled. “Don’t be so discreet. I know for a fact Garnoc hates Pollard. With good reason. Pollard is slime. Conscripted his liege men to serve in his place at the front, while Pollard stays behind to do Reese’s dirty work.” He paused, glancing at Penhallow, who gave a nod for him to continue.

“We think Pollard—and therefore, Reese—is behind robberies at the university library, and he might have had something to do with attacks on some of the scholars. We don’t know exactly what he’s up to, but we think it’s got something
to do with that,” he said, nodding toward the disk in Connor’s hand.

“The pendant?” Connor asked. Voss nodded.

Penhallow smiled, but it was an unpleasant expression that showed the tips of his long eyeteeth. “Nadoren knew about the maps, but not about the pendant key. Valtyr was a very clever man. His maps included coded information that can only be deciphered with the key. Nadoren was a simpleton, for all that he could read the stars. He was convinced, they say, that the maps hid a treasure. But Valtyr’s only treasure was knowledge. And knowledge is what is needed.”

Penhallow’s long fingers stroked the smooth surface of the pendant’s velvet case as he spoke. “The map that Nadoren didn’t steal was of Donderath. I believe it is secured in the king’s library. If Edgar unleashes his mages against us, Merrill needs to know where the places of power are located, because the effects will be worse there. Magic shouldn’t be able to hurt the null places—it’s where I’d send as many refugees as possible.”

“Refugees,” Connor repeated, his head spinning.

“Let’s say the odds of survival will be higher in the null places,” Voss answered.

“Is that where you’ll be?” Connor’s fear made his question sound like an accusation. He drew back as soon as he had said it. Neither Lanyon Penhallow nor Traher Voss were men he wanted to anger. To his relief, they ignored the slight.

“Quillarth Castle is a place of power. Many castles, forts, and even manor houses were built on places of strong magic, as well as temples and shrines. My advice would be to evacuate the castle and the city around it. Send people close to the null places, and away from the shrines.”

“If Meroven breaks through the army’s line and begins attacks inside Donderath, people are most likely to flee to
temples and shrines to beg the mercy of the gods,” Connor said in a hushed voice.