The Towers Of the Sunset (36 page)

CRESLIN’S ARM AND shoulder bum, not with the flame of suns, but with the heat of well-banked coals. When he tries to open his eyes, miniature fires flicker across the dark ceiling. A cool cloth is pressed over his forehead, and the fires retreat.

He dozes, and sees that the room is darker when he again awakes.

A shadowy Figure steps toward him. “Ser?”

“… think I’m here…”

“The healer said you should drink this.”

A cup is placed before his lips, and he sips. Lifting his head sends a wave of heat through his right shoulder and down his arm. He forces himself to keep on sipping until some of the liquid spills out of his mouth and the cup is withdrawn.

He sinks back on the pillow, trying to puzzle out where he is. The room is small, and the guard who presented the cup is female. So he must be in the newer keep section of the Westwind guards.

A small lamp, its wick low, hangs from a bracket on the stone wall just beside the open door, where a pair of guards stand. Outside, the sky is the purple of twilight, and the dampness of rain fills the air. The thunder is distant, as if coming in over the northern sea.

He dozes, but not for long. When he wakes, Lydya has returned, and the sound of the rain continues.

“Megaera?”

“Better than you, but she’s at the Black Holding. The distance helps some, although the link is too strong for her to escape it, no matter where you are.”

Creslin lies motionless for a time on the narrow bed. Lydya offers him the cup.

“Uggghh. That’s bitter…”

“You need it.”

“… drinking it. Don’t have to like it.”

When she withdraws the cup, he sinks back, but not into sleep.

“I didn’t handle this one very well,” he mutters, low enough that the guards by the doorway cannot hear.

Her lips quirk. “Since you’re both considered great heroes, I doubt that anyone will question your judgment at this point. They just look at the sky.”

“What happened?”

“You saw it all. After you destroyed the Hamorian ships, and the guards and troopers mopped up the stragglers, there wasn’t much left.”

“How many guards, troopers, did we lose?”

“Despite all the blood and arrows, less than a score.”

Creslin shakes his head, and bright stars flash in front of his eyes. A score is far too many to have lost. If only he had been watching the seas, many of those deaths could have been avoided.

“You cannot redo the past.”

“… hard not to think about that.” Creslin tries to moisten too-dry lips. He wants to shake his head again but remembers the dizziness, and the stars in his eyes. “Stupid… so stupid…”

“What? Being human? Or trying to do everything yourself?” For the first time, the healer’s voice is tart. “You can’t do it all. Neither of you can, even together. Megaera’s almost as bad as you are. But you can think about that later. In the meantime, take another sip of this.”

He complies, then lets his head fall back on the pillows. “How is she?” Lydya never really answered his question.

“She took several gashes, but no arrows. She also had to fight the shock of your wound.”

“Damning my weak guts… the whole way…”he murmurs as he drifts back into the darkness of sleep.

He wakes with the light, and Westwind guards still remain posted outside his doorway. He no longer sees stars or fires when he moves his head, and his shoulder is only fevered rather than fired. The dressing has been changed.

He tries to moisten dry and cracked lips. Finally he croaks, “Anything to drink around here?”

“Yes, sir. The healer left something for you.” The slender guard, no more than just past junior training, carries the mug to the narrow bed. The contents are not quite as vile as swamp water or as salty as the sea, but the bitterness makes raw ale taste like fine wine by comparison.

“Uggghhh…” He swallows it all, slowly, holding the mug as the dark-haired young guard retreats, an opaque expression on her face.

Whatever the potion is, it helps, for in time he can sit up. The rain continues, although the skies are not so dark as before. After a while he leans back and dozes once more.

When he wakes, before he can speak, another guard, gray-haired, is offering him more of Lydya’s concoction. He drinks. It still tastes worse than sour swamp water. “How long has it been?”

“Since the battle? Four days, more or less.”

Creslin wonders how Megaera is faring and if the Black Holding is even habitable in the continual rain. Gingerly, he moves the fingers of his right hand. The motion sends a twinge to his shoulder, and he purses his lips. If only he had thought ahead; one more Westwind blade hadn’t really been needed on the pier. If anything, he had probably just been in the way. Yet how could he have stood back and let others fight for him?

“How are you doing?”

Creslin’s eyes focus on Hyel as the tall man slouches into the room.

“About as well as…” He breaks off the confession. There is no sense in publicly confessing stupidity. Lydya has hinted as much. “…as anyone who takes an arrow in the shoulder deserves, I guess. Sorry to leave you and Shierra to clean up the mess.”

Hyel grins ruefully. “It has been interesting. I didn’t really believe you until I saw those guards fight.” He shakes his head. “The men who are left think you’re an angel returned-”

“That’s a bit much.”

Hyel shakes his head. “No, it’s not. They watched you kill half a dozen men and call in storms that destroyed eleven ships, and the storms still rage. And the co-regent… she fired one ship and a score of Hamorian marines. She even killed some with her own blade.”

Creslin wants to change the subject. “What about the survivors? Were there any?”

“Shierra and I decided, subject to your approval, ser, to use them on stonework and farming until they can be ransomed, at least once the rain stops. There aren’t many- perhaps a score and a half, most of them from the ship you drove onto the beach. But splitting them up into smaller groups makes sense. Klerris managed to get enough glass made to put windows in your rooms in the Black Holding. Once the weather clears, we want to finish the rest of the building and all of the guest houses. Then the inn.” Hyel grins shyly. “I think we will have a few visitors from here on in.”

“I suppose so. You’d better see if you can get Shierra or one of the senior guards to offer blade-training to your troopers.”

“Well… with the rain… I mean… it’s something we can do in the main room… a little. We’ve already started… after they saw-”

The silver-haired man represses a grin. “Shierra’s probably much better at instruction.”

“She says that you’re one of the few Westwind master- blades, but no one was ever allowed to tell you so.” The lanky man’s voice drops almost to a whisper. “Ser, is it true that you escaped a White Wizard’s road camp?”

Creslin is beginning to feel tired again and leans back into the pillows. “Yes, but I had help.”

“Still… no wonder they wanted you prisoner.”

Creslin looks out the narrow window. Is the sky lighter? He hopes so.

Hyel straightens. “I think it’s time to go.”

Creslin turns his head at the other’s tone, understanding the meaning in it as he sees the flash of red in the doorway. “We’ll talk more later.”

Hyel grins, then lets his face become respectful as he turns. “Good evening, Regent Megaera.” He inclines his head.

“Good evening, Hyel. You can certainly stay.”

Creslin savors the sound of her slightly husky voice, glad for the moment that she is there.

“Thanking you, Regent, but there are duty rosters to be checked.”

“Well, go ahead and check them.” Megaera perches carefully on the stool near the foot of the bed. Her eyes are unreadable in the dimness of the twilight. “It’s about time you woke up.”

“Guess I overdid everything.”

… overdid?…

Her eyes flicker toward the window. “Including the storms. No one has ever seen so much rain, and Klerris says that it’s likely to go on for a few more days.”

Creslin shrugs. “Oooo…” His shoulder indicates that the gesture was unwise. “I wasn’t thinking about having to stop them at the time. I was more worried about not letting any of the Hamorians escape.”

She smiles. “Most of them don’t want to go back.”

Creslin wills himself not to move, realizing that she will feel the pain as well as he. “Why not?”

“Do you know what the emperor does to failed soldiers?”

“Oh.‘

“And besides, they figure they’re safe here.”

Creslin snorts. “Until the White Wizards dream up something else. Or Hamor does.”

“They won’t. Not so long as you live, great Storm Wizard. Who wants to lose a whole fleet or an army for a mostly worthless giant desert isle?”

“It won’t be worthless before long.”

“It’s not now, best-betrothed.” She sits silently on the stool as the night descends.

The two guards have stepped out into the corridor, and the door has been closed, although Creslin cannot say exactly when. The rain continues to fall, but not in the pelting fury that he sensed earlier.

“What are we going to do?” she finally asks.

“Can’t we learn to… live… with each other?”

“You? Me?” She laughs, hard and cold. “When I must preserve you, when I cannot stop knowing how you feel…”

… still changes nothing…

“Do we have any choice?” he asks.

Megaera does not answer, although she sits across from him on the stool until he can no longer remain awake.

THE SMALL ROOM on the top floor is brightly lit by four mirror-backed, white-brass lamps. Outside the narrow casement windows, the rain continues to fall, as it has for the past eight-days.

“If this keeps up much longer, there won’t be a crop left to save anywhere in
East Candar, Jenred,” complains the heavy White Wizard. “And the Hamorian envoy has protested that you used wizardry to trick him into reporting Creslin’s theft of the Westwind treasures.”

“They don’t really believe that, do they?”

“I don’t think the emperor of Hamor is exactly pleased with the total loss of twelve ships.” Hartor shifts uneasily in the chair, and his eyes flicker toward the half-ajar doorway. “Oh, well. It was worth a try,” notes the thin man in white, lifting his head as if to sense something in the air. He frowns, looking again at the rain outside. “Creslin is strong. I have to grant him that.”

“Strong! That’s like saying the winters in Westwind are cold.”

“So…” rejoins Jenred, still puzzled, still looking for something-for an odor or for a whispered word he cannot make out. “It doesn’t affect us. He’s not leaving Reduce, and he certainly gives Hamor something else to worry about.”

“Jenred,” Hartor says slowly, “why couldn’t you just have left Creslin alone? Let him wander through
Fairhaven untouched? He would have wandered off somewhere and settled down, perhaps taught as a Black.”

“It wasn’t possible.”

“I thought it was. So did the council.”

“Thought what?” The thin wizard’s eyes swivel from the rain to the doorway and back again.

‘That you were still after Werlynn, the only man who ever escaped you. Hatred makes for bad policy, Jenred. We can’t keep on making decisions based on hatred.“

Jenred struggles to his feet but topples as the black sleep closes around him.

Hartor takes a deep breath and bends over the sleeping form, removing the amulet and chain of office. He looks from the former High Wizard to the dark clouds and the rain. Then he eases the amulet and the golden links into place around his own neck as the White guards enter with the chains of cold iron.

CRESLIN STANDS ON the hillside east of Land’s End, overlooking the
Eastern
Ocean
. Below, the waves ebb and foam around the beached hull of the Hamorian ship.

Megaera is somewhere away from the shore. He has a sense of walls surrounding her-possibly the keep’s. His eyes drift back to the hull, the sole remnant of the Hamorian raiders. Then he shakes his head ruefully, and with a soft laugh, he turns, walking briskly toward Klerris and Lydya’s cot.

Lydya is there. Klerris is not. Lydya escorts him to the newly built covered porch and motions to a wooden chair. She perches on the half-wall, her face solemn. “How are you?”

“All right so far. Megaera’s still spending nights at the keep.”

“Did you expect anything less?”

“I could hope.”

Lydya’s eyes are level with his. “That’s not why you’re here.”

“No. I want Klerris to build a ship. Rebuild one, actually.”

“He might like that. He’s enjoyed the building projects a great deal more than he’s enjoyed the plants. What are you planning on rebuilding? Fishing boats?”

“The Hamorian war schooner on the eastern beach.”

“Can it be done?”

Creslin shrugs. “I certainly hope so. We need our own ships. When you think about the markup on goods-”

“That’s a big job.”

“We could use the prisoners for it. Some of them might even want to crew it.”

“Crew what?” interrupts another voice. Klerris stands in the recently created doorway leading from the main room of the cot.

Creslin repeats his idea. As he does so, Lydya slips back into the cot, leaving the two men alone on the porch.

“I don’t know,” muses Klerris.

“We have to,” insists Creslin. “I’ll talk to Hyel and Shierra about using the prisoners for it. Besides, the boat is sitting on sand, not on rock. I think that we could dig around it enough to right it.” His eyes flicker over the mage’s shoulder as he sees Lydya leave the cot and turn downhill, toward the inn and a cot where Megaera and a small crew labors over the glassmaking.

Klerris smiles. “Someday… someday you may undertake something that absolutely cannot be done.”

“I already have.” Creslin pauses. “Megaera. But I have to keep on as if things will work out.”

“Did you tell Lydya that?”

“No.”

“You should have.”

“Why?”

Klerris shakes his head. “Never mind. Are you going to talk to Hyel now?”

“Why not?”

“I’ll come with you. That way, he’ll believe we’re both crazy.”