Magebane (60 page)

Mother Northwind heard the news of the boy's death from the servant who brought her breakfast—servants never had any qualms about gossiping with her, seeing her as just a harmless old lady from the countryside, a Healer, to be sure, which made her Mageborn, but so down to earth she might as well have been a Commoner.

When the servant had left, she sighed.
That poor boy
, she thought.
But I couldn't leave him alive to be punished by Falk. And at least I got word to the Cause about his family ; they're safely out of it and away from Falk's clutches, as well
.

Falk would have seen the deed through his magelink. He would even now be rushing back to the Palace with Brenna in tow. Everything had happened just as she'd told Brenna it would. The girl knew now that her only hope lay with Mother Northwind. Karl knew his part, as well, and Mother Northwind was confident he would play it.

Falk's Plan had come crashing down around his ears, and though he no doubt had some scheme already forming to salvage it by arranging a new attack on the King, another trip to the Cauldron, he would never get the chance—because Mother Northwind's Plan was still very much intact.

She smiled and helped herself to a second boiled egg from her breakfast tray.
Two days
, she thought.
Two days, and Brenna will be back in the Palace . . .

Davydd Verdsmitt, now permitted his own quarters, rather plainly furnished but far better than a cell, watched the attack on King Kravon as it transpired, through a magelink much like Lord Falk's own . . . except his did not depend on the life of the boy who killed himself. His was linked to an enchanted object, a gold ball that hung from the center of the canopy over the bed. Since a Common Cause sympathizer in the Royal household had placed that object there, he had spent far too many late nights watching what it showed him, watching the King entertain lovers, each panting, groaning encounter renewing his jealousy, renewing his rage at the man he had once loved who had denounced him.

Obviously my timing was bad
, he had thought in the earlier hours of the King's encounter with the boy who killed himself.
Kravon reverted to his natural appetites once he did his duty and produced an heir. Maybe if I had waited, he would have returned to me. . . .

But no. Kravon had burned that bridge early on, presenting himself publicly as a happily married man, renouncing Verdsmitt as a pitiable figure who thought he was in love with the King but whose love the King could not return. There could be no going back after that, no going back after Lord Athol had also denounced his son and apologized profusely and publicly for his “derangement.”

And, certainly, there had been no going back after Davydd had faked his death.

He had thought he was almost over it, six years later when Mother Northwind had come to his door, but when she had offered him the opportunity to do something about it, to strike back at the King and the MageLords, all his anger had flared up again . . . and it had never subsided since.

And so he watched, night after night, as the King took lovers, but never took lovers of his own. He had had two or three in the years immediately after the King's rejection, but that, too, had ended with Mother Northwind's visit.

The boy who had tried to slay the King at Falk's behest, then had slain himself at Mother Northwind's, had been the youngest boy Kravon had ever bedded, almost as young as Kravon himself had been when he and Davydd . . .

Verdsmitt shook his head. Those days were more than thirty years gone. And soon the King would be gone, too.

Verdsmitt was able to watch the servants dragging away the dead body and stripping the bed of its blood-soaked sheets and mattress. He was able to watch right up until they also pulled down the blood-spattered curtains . . . and his enchanted golden bauble with them.

He swore. Then he realized exactly what had just happened, and swore louder.

Mother Northwind is too rutting clever for her own good
, he thought savagely. His plan for killing the King, just like Falk's, had centered on the King's bed, the one location you could be certain he could be found at a particular time. His killing enchantments, like the enchanted bauble that had shown him what transpired there, were literally woven into the canopy; golden threads that that same Cause-linked servant had inserted after another Commoner servant had “accidentally” ripped a seam by stumbling against the cloth. But with the canopy gone . . .

So, too, was his weapon.

Falk's plan had failed, which meant Brenna would be returning to the Palace with Falk. Mother Northwind would be pulling strings, as she did so well, to get Brenna and Karl together. She would be counting on him to kill the King on cue . . . and he had just lost the ability to do so.

Verdsmitt's room was dark, now that the blue glow of the magelink had vanished. The fire had long since burned down to a few dimly glowing embers in the hearth, and his curtains were drawn.

But in his mind, Verdsmitt still saw images. He saw the boy, in his last night of life, pleasuring Kravon with hands and lips and body. He remembered when he and Kravon had had the same enjoyment of each other. He felt the old rage, burning even hotter, and then, suddenly, everything became very clear.

Kravon had to die. Not for Mother Northwind's plan, but for what he had done to Verdsmitt. Verdsmitt's tools for killing him had just been stripped away. But the King still had to die.

And now Verdsmitt understood how it could be done . . . how it should have been done all along. The solution hung in his mind, perfect in every detail: especially the one detail that now, in retrospect, Verdsmitt realized had been the flaw in his original scheme.

He had been operating under the assumption that he would strike from a distance. He had been operating under the assumption that it was important that he survive.

But the best way to strike, the best way to kill the King, would be up close and personal, and his own survival, he suddenly realized, was not only unnecessary, it wasn't even something he desired.

The King would know, in that last moment, Verdsmitt thought, who was killing him, and why.

Decision made, Verdsmitt took off his clothes in the dark, climbed into his empty bed, and slept a deep, untroubled sleep.

AS THE AIRSHIP APPROACHED the top of the Barrier from the east, Anton wished more fervently than ever that the Professor was still alive.

The burner was roaring, a blue flame ten feet long reaching up into the envelope; the propeller was a blur, spinning at top speed as it had been for the last half hour while Anton watched the needle of the fuel gauge almost visibly declining. They had been climbing steadily almost since they left the Palace, and yet still the wall of cloud that marked the Anomaly rose higher than they had yet reached.

The wind streaming over the Anomaly from the west formed a layer of tattered cloud above them. If it had been at all a windy day it would have been impossible, Anton thought; they would have had to return to the Palace and try again some other time. But the chattering propeller could still give them headway against today's light breeze, and though fuel was low, they weren't out of it yet, and so they continued to rise. Now the gray wall of the Barrier was so close Anton thought he could have had a good chance of hitting it with a rock, if he'd had one close enough to throw, and he could feel the chill of it.

He watched the streaming cloud marking the very top of the Barrier coming closer and closer above them. They would hit a strong headwind at that level, he knew, and if it threw them too far to the east, they might run out of fuel for the engine before they were able to regain the ground lost.

“Gotta dump ballast,” he muttered. “Pop through that, get to the quieter air above it.”

He glanced at Spurl, the Mageborn guard who had accompanied him. He'd hoped the man might at least take instruction as they flew, but Spurl had spent the whole journey cowering in the bottom of the gondola, unwilling to even look over the side. He sat there now, eyes closed, moaning, rocking back and forth.

I wish Brenna were with me
, Anton thought again. Though she had no experience in flying an airship, at least she had shown herself to have a cool head.

But Brenna was back at the Palace, and Anton was heading the other way.

The ragged gray clouds streaming over the Barrier were close above them. The envelope would enter them within minutes, and almost certainly they would be thrown back when that happened. He had to act now.

He scrambled over the legs of the guard. He didn't want to repeat what he had done when he and Brenna were fleeing the manor and release all the ballast at once; if he did, they might find themselves so high they'd not only be gasping for air, they'd pass out and could even asphyxiate before the airship dipped back into thicker air.

But releasing too little would be almost as disastrous.

He hesitated, then decided to follow the simplest course. There were four rows of sandbags on each side of the gondola. He released two buckles on each side, letting half the ballast fall.

Instantly the airship surged upward. Within seconds the envelope was inside the streaming layer of cloud, and as Anton had feared, they were pushed away from the Barrier despite the propeller's best efforts; but they were rising so rapidly that they were through that layer of cloud and wind within half a minute, and above it the air was much calmer. Almost at once they began to regain their lost ground.

Anton anxiously watched the fuel gauge. It seemed he could almost see it dropping toward empty . . . but now they were over the Barrier itself. He could look straight down at that enormous wall of fog, and then suddenly he was looking down at the land outside the Barrier, terrain very much the same but completely uncultivated, wild prairie with grass so tall that even after three months of snow the fields were more brown than white.

Anton cut the burner. They wanted to descend now, not climb, and they quickly began to do so as the cold air sucked heat from the envelope. He searched the ground below them anxiously. His navigation had been iffy at best, and he wasn't entirely sure where they had crossed the Anomaly. But he hoped . . .

Ah! There, a smudge of smoke near the horizon, a dark stain on the snow-covered prairie. Elkbone, the town he and the Professor had left what seemed like a lifetime ago, though in fact it had been less than two weeks. He looked at Spurl, and smirked. The hand-picked minion who was supposed to enforce Anton's deliverance of Falk's reassuring lies to the poor deluded Commoners on this side of the Barrier was currently throwing up his guts over the side of the gondola.

Welcome to my world
, Anton thought.
Let's see what survives of MageLord arrogance when the gentlemen of the press descend on us with flashbulbs popping
.

Anton had every reason to believe they would still be there. It hadn't been all that long, really, and since no railpath ran from Elkbone to Wavehaven, travel in winter was fraught with danger. Most of the reporters who had covered the launch had traveled here before the snow fell in the same caravan as he, the Professor, and the airship. They would be unlikely to go back until the weather warmed in spring.

They could send their words and images, though, thanks to the electromissive lines that had been strung along the road that would someday be a railpath, and that meant that whatever was said here would, before nightfall, be making news in Wavehaven. Two or three weeks later, when ships reached Hexton Down across the ocean, the President of the Union Republic would know of it. What he would do about it was out of Anton's hands.