The Sword and the Flame (36 page)

Silently the visitors embraced their hosts and stepped from the warm, firelit room into the cool summer night ablaze with myriad stars. They hastened to their beds, too full of private thoughts to speak, but feeling each one closer to the other, conjoined with a strength of love and purpose that held them secure. And though they might be forced to ride through the darkness of evil days ahead, none doubted the light that had been promised at their destination.

“Toli? Are you asleep?” asked Prince Gerin. The boy slid closer to the man's huddled form beside him.

“No,” replied Toli, rolling over. “What is it?”

“I heard something; someone is coming.”

“I heard it as well. It is the guard again, making sure we are still here and have not vanished through the cracks in the wall.”

“They have been watching us closely this day, and the last—closer than before. Why?”

“They have sprung a trap, I believe. They do not want anything to happen to us until they know if they have caught anything or not.”

“But what do they want?”

“Revenge. Nimrood tried to steal the throne once before, and—”

Before Toli could finish, there came a scrape at the door and it creaked open. Flickering light from a torch thrust in through the crack illumined the room. Toli rolled to his feet. “What is it now?” he asked as the visitor entered the cell.

“Resting comfortably, my pets?”

“Nimrood!” said Toli darkly. “So you have slithered in to taunt your prisoners?”

“Oh my, no! I have come to tell you just how high a price I have set on your worthless heads. The ransom letter has been sent and received. The king has no choice but to comply.”

“What have you done, snake?”

“Merely suggested that I would be willing to free my captives in exchange for a certain object of value to the king.” Nimrood paused and laughed wickedly. “Ha! An object soon to be of little value to the king!”

“What are you talking about?” Toli took a step forward.

“Stay where you are!” Nimrood shouted. Then, in a calmer voice, “That is better. What object?” He shrugged, the torch throwing his black shadow huge against the walls. “I see no point in keeping it from you. His sword—that is the object I will have.”

“The Shining One!” gasped Prince Gerin, who had come to stand at Toli's side.

“Yes, I believe that is what they call it. A fine weapon I am told, though I have never seen it myself.”

“No!” cried Gerin. “The king cannot give up the Shining One!”

“We shall see,” Nimrood chuckled. “We shall see.”

“The prince is right. The Dragon King will never surrender the Zhaligkeer. It would mean humbling the throne, and he will not do that.”

“Pity,” sniffed Nimrood. “But perhaps he will see it differently. What is a throne worth? The life of his only son and heir, and that of his closest friend as well?”

“I see,” replied Toli coolly. “You would force the choice. But you are forgetting that a king is a king first and a man second. He must do what is best for his realm.”

“In any event, the choice should prove interesting. And we will soon have the opportunity of finding out.”

“How soon?”

“Five days' time. At midday five days hence you will be led to the temple courtyard and bound. If the king does not bring this enchanted sword of his, you will be killed on the altar of Ariel. Oh, the gods do not require human sacrifices these days, I know. But this time I think the high priest will insist. What will the courageous King Quentin do with the blood of your deaths on his hands? How will he live with himself, I wonder?” Nimrood stepped back a pace and lifted the torch high. “And now you will wonder, too!”

Toli stood as one made of stone, fists clenched at his sides, muscles rigid, and watched the old sorcerer disappear. The cell door closed, the bolt scraped in the lock, and the room was dark and quiet once more. They heard Nimrood chuckling to himself as he stalked back along the corridor to his foul nest.

“Is it true?” asked Gerin when the wizard's cackling could no longer be heard. His voice trembled as he spoke.

“Yes,” said Toli, wrapping an arm around the boy and pulling him close. “I am afraid it is true. He might have come here to taunt us with it, but I think not. The old vulture wants us to share the poison of fear between us; he hopes that this knowledge will fester in us like a belly wound. But we must not let it. We must not give up hope for a moment.”

“I am afraid, Toli. What will happen to us?”

“I cannot say, young master. It is out of our hands now.”

42

A
dull, gray-white dawn broke over Pelgrin, bringing mist from the turbid, muddy waters of the Sipleth River. On the riverbanks, at a place where the ground rose to form the rocky crag of a bluff over-looking an expanse of gray water, stood Ameron Castle. Below the castle the Sipleth flattened and widened as it curled around the bluff in its stony bed, giving Lord Ameronis a natural barrier on two sides; the for-est, wild and thick in that part of Mensandor, protected him from the front, an approach made difficult for any attackers by rough terrain and a rising slope.

Theido and Ronsard leaned heavily on the pommels of their saddles and surveyed the fortress in the fitful light of the new day. “It is rockier than I remember it,” said Ronsard, “and better fortified.”

“We will take up our positions there and there,” indicated Theido with a sweep of his arm, “just out of bowshot. A man like Ameronis will be prepared for battle at any time, so we must not delude ourselves that we will catch him napping.”

“There is one thing we may do before they know we are here—send the sappers to scout a location for a mine beneath the walls.”

“Order it at once, and send archers with them in case the castle awakes and offers battle.”

Ronsard swung himself wearily down from his mount and walked back into the fringe of trees where the army waited. He talked to several knights who would act as field commanders and gave them their orders. Theido, too, dismounted and paced along the perimeter of the wood, studying the lay of the land and the situation of the castle upon it. While he looked on, a score of men dressed in rough hide clothing came running out of the forest toward the castle, carrying long, pointed rods in their hands. Behind them came bowmen with longbows and quivers of arrows on their backs.

When they reached the very feet of the towering curtains, the men split off into groups of two or three and began probing the ground and examining the stone all around the outside walls, jamming their rods into the ground, or thrusting them into cracks and seams in the stone at the foot of the outer curtains.

After a while Ronsard came up to stand beside Theido as he watched the activity of the sappers. “It will likely take some time. I suggest we both get some sleep if we can, before Ameronis awakes and dis-covers that he is besieged. I have already given the orders to the troops.”

Theido rubbed his eyes with his fists and turned to his friend. “My heart is not in this fight, this raising sword against one of our own, even if it is Ameronis. He is still a lord of the realm.”

Ronsard shrugged. “He ceased being a lord of Mensandor when he willfully defied his king. He is a renegade and must be dealt with. Treason is no little thing.”

“I do not disagree. I only wish there was some other way.”

“Every moment he abides within, holding the king's sword, he holds the king's heir in his hands.”

“I wonder if he knows that.”

“Would it make a difference to him, do you think?”

“Perhaps not. But I will see that he is informed as soon as possible. That, at least, will make him think twice before he forces this issue further.”

Ronsard frowned. “He will not bend. Ameronis is too proud and has waited too long. The siege will begin, and let us pray that it is a short one. We do not have much time.”

With that the two turned and went back to attend to the establishment of the camp, and to find themselves a place to stretch out for some much-needed sleep.

In Ameron Castle, Lord Ameronis and his friends slept in their high soft beds beneath fine linen in rooms hung with exquisite tapestries embroidered in silk. Ameronis was accustomed to the very best things and styled himself a king, so hot did the flame of ambition burn in him.

Now he slept soundly in his broad bed, dreaming the day was close at hand when he would ascend the Dragon Throne in the Hall of the Dragon King. It was a vision long cherished and nourished in his heart, and soon he would see its fulfillment—now that he possessed the storied Zhaligkeer. The sword itself lay in a locked casket at the foot of his bed; he did not trust even his own armorer to keep it for him, but wanted it near him at all times.

On the wall walk outside the lord's tower window men ran shouting, their footsteps slapping the stone flagging. Their cries stirred Ameronis from his dreams of kingly glory and he awoke. “Chamberlain!” he cried, and his call was answered at once by a slight, weasel-eyed man with brown, rotten teeth.

“My lord?” the servant said, thrusting his head in through the doorway.

“By Zoar, what is going on? How is a man to sleep with such a clatter? I have guests in my house, and will not have them awakened.”

“Some disturbance outside the castle, my lord. Its nature has not yet been determined.”

“Blazes! I will see to it myself!”With that Ameronis threw back the coverlet and strode out on the bartizan and mounted a flight of steps to the battlements. The lord's chamber was in the foremost west tower and overlooked the gate and the approach from the forest.

It took him only an instant, once the sleep had been rubbed from his eyes, to ascertain the cause of the disturbance that had roused him from his bed. “By all the gods of heaven and earth!” he cried. “We are besieged!”

At that moment a young knight, who was Ameronis's commander, approached. “My lord, we are besieged.”

“I can see that! How many are there?”

“We have not had time to count. I have just come from fortifying the gates. One of the watchmen sounded the alarm only minutes ago at the southern battlement. Sappers, my lord, are looking for a weakness to exploit.”

“King's men?”

“They wore no badges, my lord. Nor have I seen any.”

“Very well. Rain arrows down on their foolish heads. That will teach them to come sniffing like dogs around these walls!”

“Bowmen have been ordered, my lord. But the sappers ran off as soon as they arrived at the battlements.”

Ameronis turned and gazed out toward the wood where the Dragon King's army waited. “So,” he murmured to himself, “it begins already.” Then he barked an order over his shoulder to the young knight. “Post archers, and inform me at once if they show themselves again.”

“Yes, my lord.” The commander dipped his head, and Ameronis strode from the wall walk on bare feet, back down the steps and across the bartizan to his chamber. There he dressed hastily, throwing on his padded tunic in the event he would be required to don his armor before the day was out. Then he hurried to the armory to order the disposition of the weapons; from there he went to the warder to inquire into the castle's pro-visions: food, water, grain, and fodder for the horses; next he went to the gates to personally oversee the reinforcement of their immense timbers with wedges and crossbeams.

All this Lord Ameronis did without fluster or anxiety, but as one well accustomed to war and its preparation. In truth, he had been waiting for this day all his life. If he went about his business with the clear-eyed dispassion of a battle-tried veteran, it was because he, like his father, was a man whose ambition for the throne schooled him well in the use of power and its attainment.

He would be king, he vowed, or die trying.