Wings of Wrath (48 page)

Heads around the table turned toward her.

“You asked me about spellcasting,” she said. “
That
was nearly impossible. But witchery performed elsewhere was unaffected, at least as far as my experience went.”

“Explain this to me,” Ullar said. “Assume that I do not know your art at all, and make it simple.”

She didn't really want to elaborate, but there was no way to back out of it now. “I had shapechanged before entering the area in question,” she said, a hint of defiance in her voice. Would the Magisters wonder why a mere witch was performing such a costly move? Would it make them question what she really was? “I had no trouble maintaining that form as I approached the Wrath.” She shivered inwardly, remembering how that experiment had ended. “Changing back within the affected region almost cost me my life. Spells I tried later were all unstable. Perhaps it is the art of binding and shaping power that is affected there. Perhaps a human spirit subjected to the Wrath cannot manage the concentration required. But spells that were crafted elsewhere seemed to hold true, even when we were standing before the Spear itself.”
And remained true afterward
, she thought with satisfaction.
Your own Magisters still cannot break through them
.

For a moment Ullar stared at her, digesting that information. Then he turned to Lazaroth.

The Magister nodded, anticipating his thoughts. “Send me your scouts. I will give them wings.” He glanced at Kamala, his dark eyes narrowing. “May the gods prove you right,
witch
.” He spoke the last word as though it tasted vile on his tongue. “Otherwise we may lose some good men.”

“Enough,” the Lord Protector said. He offered a nod of appreciation to Kamala. “Your testimony is appreciated.” Then he turned his attention to Ullar again. “Even with sorcery to guard our ‘chosen one,' this is a risky venture. We have no way of knowing what safeguards already exist in that place to detect such invasion. Perhaps even sorceries established long ago, before the Wrath began to falter.”

“Aye,” Ullar agreed. “We will have to distract the enemy.”

With a calloused hand the constable indicated the border between Kierdwyn and Alkali. “Let us bring war to Alkali. Armed men prepared to fight, gathered along the border, who honestly believe they are about to attack in force. That way any sorcery focused upon them will get the proper message. Here, and here also—” He indicated several points along the border. “—we will gather our forces and focus such reconnaissance spells upon the enemy as a real war would require. That should keep their Magister busy enough. Meanwhile, if we can get the High Kingdom to join forces with us, threatening a two-pronged attack, that will double the deception. . . .” He raised an eyebrow as he looked at Gwynofar. “Your Majesty?”

To her surprise, Gwynofar found herself falling easily into the mindset of war; a lifetime of marriage to Danton Aurelius had prepared her for such things. “Salvator might agree to such a feint if he were convinced of the need, but I am not sure he could get an army here in the time frame required. The distance is great, and he will not allow the use of sorcery to shorten it.”

“Not an unreasonable stand, for once,” Ramirus said. “Sorcerous transportation is risky at best, and must be managed one man at a time, or something very close to that. Some will be lost along the way; that is inevitable.” He looked at Ullar. “An acceptable cost in war, but perhaps less so when one is merely dealing with the illusion of war.”

The constable grunted. “I see I did not make myself clear. This will be a ‘real' war to everyone but us. Not even my generals will know the truth.” He looked at Stevan. “Anything less would make us vulnerable to the enemy's divination.”

The Lord Protector nodded. “Quite correct.”

Evaine turned to Gwynofar. “Will you speak to your son? Convince him of the need for this?”

She sighed. “I will do my best. But he is Aurelius, and therefore stubborn. Do not make plans that depend upon his compromising his beliefs.” She paused. “We do have several garrisons in our northern provinces. It might be possible to position them as you require within a reasonable time frame. Not as many troops as an all-out war would require, but perhaps as an auxiliary to your own efforts it would be convincing enough.”

Ullar nodded. “Good. The goal is to threaten enough of the border that Alkali's attention is focused there and its defensive forces spread thin. With luck, if Anukyat believes that he is safely out of the line of fire, he may even send down some of his own Guardians to help out.”

“While we do what, exactly?” the Lady Protector asked. “I wish to be clear on this.”

Ullar scowled. “Hard to answer that precisely, until my scouts report. But if this tower can be scaled from the outside, I'm thinking it might be a lesser battle to try to sneak our ‘chosen one' into place than to bring this relic to us.” He looked to the two rulers. “With your approval of course, Your Lordships.”

For a moment the room was so silent Kamala could hear herself breathing. Then, with a soft rustle of silk, the Lady Protector turned to face her husband. Her face was pale, her hand trembling where it lay on the table; clearly the conversation had unsettled her. For a long moment they just looked at one another, communing as couples do who have lived together for so long that they no longer need words to communicate.

Finally Stevan turned back to Ullar. “We will hear what your scouts have to say,” he declared, “and then we will decide. In the meantime, let it be known among your men that Kierdwyn is going to war. One way or another, that is the truth of it.”

“Yes, Your Lordship. Immediately.”

“I assume you will provide a well-layered plan so that anyone using arcane powers to investigate this matter will find enough secrets and diversions to keep him busy.”

“Plots within plots,” Ullar promised him.

“Excellent.” the Lord Protector turned to Rommel once more. “You and your colleagues must find us someone who can play the role of this ‘chosen one,' with all dispatch. Someone whom the prophecy—and the gods—will favor. Nothing can be decided until we know who that is, and what he is capable of.”

Rommel bowed his head. “Understood, my liege.”

“Your Lordship.” It was Lazaroth. “Transportation is a difficult and time-consuming task for any sorcerer, especially when large numbers of men are involved. I am sure my colleague Ramirus will be happy to assist in this matter, for what else could his presence at this meeting be meant to communicate?” The dark eyes sparkled maliciously.

“Even so, I would respectfully suggest that we bring in at least one more Magister to assist us. Given how quickly we may need to move your troops.”

“Indeed. Have you someone in mind who can be trusted with our secrets? And who would be willing to serve?”

Lazaroth's smile was a cold thing. “Magister Colivar is said to know more about the Souleaters than any other man alive. I am sure he would be willing to trade his sorcery for a chance to be front and center in such a historic campaign.”

It said much for Ramirus' self-control that his expression remained impassive. Kamala could sense a black fury raging inside him; whatever dark and malevolent chess game he and Lazaroth were playing, Ramirus had just lost control of the board. But the terms of that game were nothing he could admit to any morati, and so he simply nodded stiffly, acknowledging the move.

“Very well,” the Lord Protector said. “I leave it to you to contact him, Lazaroth.” He looked around the table. “Is there anything else that requires discussion?” When no one answered in the affirmative he took his wife's hand in his, and the two of them rose. Chairs scraped back as their guests stood respectfully, several bowing their heads in obeisance. Rhys stood also, with Kamala by his side, but he held his head high. Perhaps it was meant as an act of defiance. Or perhaps it was a comment upon what he thought of the plan that had been presented thus far. Or perhaps . . . perhaps he was simply too exhausted by all that he had seen and done in the past few weeks to care anymore.

Kamala was hard pressed to decide which possibility bothered her more.

The memorial path was long and twisting and flanked by a forest of blue pines so dense that only the most enterprising beams of sunlight could ever hope to make it to the ground. Nearly every trunk had been carved into one shape or another; some of the trees were so ancient that they had long ago given up trying to sprout branches to cover over the mutilations, while a few younger ones still had fresh scars from their spring pruning. The summer air was heavy with the pungent perfume of the trees, underscored by the moist scent of lichens and the fertile decay of fallen needles: the scent of memories.

Moving from tree to tree, Gwynofar ran her hands along the bark-shrouded features, trying to assign names to all the faces. In her childhood she had known them all and had prided herself on being able to recite them. How clear the faces had seemed to her back then! Now, after many years' absence, she was struck by how muted the carvings had become. The trees kept struggling to swallow up the sculptures as their trunks grew thicker. Her parents kept a sculptor on hand for the trees that needed attention, but in a memorial forest this large it was hard to keep up.

Even so, it was like walking through a forest of ghosts. As if she could hear her ancestors whispering all around her as she followed the winding path to its end.

Finally there was only a single tree that stood alone, positioned atop a hill which had been stripped of all other brush. It was an ancient thing, with long, needle-heavy boughs that spread out from the summit like a vast blue parasol. Tradition said that this tree had been old even before the Great War began and supposedly the spirits of all the men who had been killed by the Souleaters in that war took shelter beneath its branches. Its trunk had been carved in the shape of a man but not merely with a disembodied face as was the usual custom. This ancestor appeared to be emerging from the wood even as one watched, sword drawn, gazing outward fiercely as if to search out the enemy wherever it might be hiding. Gwynofar found the great tree both eerie and fascinating and when she was younger she had come here often just to stare at it, as if daring it to move while she was watching. Thus far it had not done so.

Thus was Liam, the first Protector of Kierdwyn, memorialized.

Beside the tree stood Evaine Kierdwyn. She waited as her daughter came up the hill, watching her pass from shadow to sunlight and then into shadow once more as she approached the great pine. The Lady Protector held a scroll case of simple leather in her hands, neither labeled nor adorned, and her fingers played restlessly about the edge of the cap as she waited. She looked nervous, which struck Gwynofar as odd. Evaine Kierdwyn was adept at masking her feelings and rarely looked anything but calm.

Walking up to her, Gwynofar embraced her warmly. That seemed odd as well. It was as if there were some secret, unnamed tension in her mother's body. Something not yet acknowledged, but very wrong.

“I am so glad you could come,” Evaine said.

Gwynofar smiled in what she hoped would be a reassuring manner. “It's not as if I have much else to do, Mother. Since you and Father both insist on treating me as a guest and not as family.”

A faint smile played across the Lady Protector's face. “Would you rather be kneading bread in the kitchen?”

“No.” She laughed softly. “But if you offered me a chance to go rummaging among dusty scrolls in the library, in search of forgotten lore, I might not turn you down.”

“Ah.” A strange, haunting sadness entered Evaine's eyes. “Ancient scrolls sometimes teach us things we don't want to know.” Her fingers tightened around the leather case. “Would you read each last one that you found, knowing that to be the case? Or shy away from those that might be troubling?”

Gwynofar hesitated. She sensed that her mother wanted to discuss something very private—why else would she have asked to meet with her out here, so far from any witnesses?—but didn't know how to start. And without some clue as to what it was all about, Gwynofar was unable to help her. “I would read them, if I could. And expect to be troubled. What was it my tutor used to say? ‘Knowledge is a double-edged sword, and the hand that grasps it too eagerly may pay for his eagerness in blood.' ”

Her mother turned away from her. Gwynofar watched her for a moment, noting the subtle trembling of her shoulders. Gently, she put a hand on her arm. Despite the warmth of the air surrounding them, the Lady Protector's flesh felt chill beneath her sleeve.

“What is it, Mother?” She whispered the words. “Please tell me.”