Garric hadn't been blindfolded, but the lanterns on the arched gateway were only orange sparks as Royhas' coach pulled into the enclosure. They must have been just extinguished.
The coach pulled around the back of a mansion and halted. The two guards who'd ridden as postillions threw open the vehicle's left door.
Lord Royhas was opposite Garric, facing the rear of the compartment; the remaining guards sat on the outside of both benches. The nobleman's hand, a pale blur, flicked toward the opening. "Quickly," he said to Garric. "And don't make any noise."
Garric's hands were still bound, but he didn't need King Carus' insight to know that Royhas didn't plan to have him killed. Not just yet, at any rate. He stepped down without comment and followed the guards into the house.
A servant opened the door but hid behind it as the passengers from the carriage entered. Garric saw only a vast stone bulk as his guides bustled him inside. Royhas and the others were close behind.
The corridor was unlighted, but a candle glimmered through an open doorway at the end. The floor creaked underfoot like the puncheon floors of his father's inn. The walls were paneled to waist height and frescoed above that, though in this illumination they were differences in shading rather than pictures.
Or again, maybe he was mistaking water stains for art. He grinned.
The chamber was intended as a winter dining room, but the broad windows along the south wall were now covered by heavy velvet. Not drapes, Garric realized: the fabric had been tacked to the casements so that no one could possibly look in, nor would any gleam of light escape.
Royhas was taking no chances anyway. Only a single wax taper was lighted in a wall sconce holding nine.
The table and twelve chairs were of a dark wood Garric didn't recognize, but from growing up in an inn he could appreciate the amount of rubbing required to bring out this luster. A man wearing an outfit of mauve silk—sober to look at, but it must have cost the price of a good horse—waited inside the door with his hands crossed over his plump belly. From his combination of obsequiousness and wealth he was of the better class of servants, probably the majordomo.
The guards led Garric inside, then turned to face their master. Garric looked over his shoulder.
Royhas said, "Loose him," to the guards. He spoke with a tinge of irritation as though it was their fault Garric was still bound. One of the men tugged at the cord. The knot slipped open immediately, though Garric's surreptitious twisting during the coach ride hadn't gained him so much as a hair of slack.
"Maurunus," the nobleman said to the servant, "some other gentlemen will be arriving shortly. Show them here when they arrive."
Garric kneaded his wrists. The soft cord hadn't chafed his skin, but his fingers tingled as blood returned to their tips. Though the guards watched him with expressions of bland innocence, they were tautly ready to hurl themselves on Garric if he suddenly attacked their master.
"Lord Waldron arrived a few moments ago, sir," the major domo said. He nodded toward the chamber's other door. "I put him in the buttery since I didn't think you'd want him waiting in the main hall. Shall I—"
"Sister take the man!" Royhas snarled, the first honest emotion Garric had seen him offer. "Is he a wizard himself, then? The courier must have met him on the way here."
Maurunus waited with a look of polite attention, his hands still folded. He didn't speak.
Royhas shook his head in exasperation. "Wait for the turn of a glass, then send him through," he said. "I'll speak with my guest here in private."
The servant bowed and went out the other door. His steps were so small and quick that he seemed to be gliding.
"Leave us," Royhas said with a curt gesture to the pair of guards who'd preceded Garric into the chamber. A slight tension at the corners of their mouths was their only sign of protest.
"And shut the door, you fools!" the nobleman shouted at their backs. The second man had swung the panel to the jamb but hadn't fully closed it.
"Well, Master Garric," Royhas said with a smile Garric would have known was false even without watching Royhas deal with those who served him. "I suppose you're wondering why I've brought you here."
"I suppose," Garric said, "that you're hoping to use me as a willing puppet in a plot against King Valence."
He smiled without warmth at the startled nobleman.
Garric had met men like Royhas before, in the borough and more often among the drovers and their guards at the Sheep Fair. Fellows like that ran roughshod over everybody who didn't push them back—hard. Garric had learned early that he felt better after a fight than he did after backing down to somebody.
What had been true in Barca's Hamlet was true here in Valles. Royhas could have Garric killed out of hand—but if he'd been willing to do that, Garric would be buried in the grounds of the ancient palace. Garric had nothing to gain by cringing and a good deal to lose, including his self-respect.
"I'm not a traitor!" Royhas said. He'd thought he was dealing with an ignorant peasant—and because he was a nobleman, he didn't realize that a shepherd had more experience than civilized folk about how members of a group jockey for position. Rams or men, it was all the same at the most basic level.
The medallion of King Carus was a warm presence on Garric's chest. Cashel would have known what was happening just as Garric did. Because Garric drew on the memories of his ancient ancestor, though, he also understood how to deal with this particular form of dominance behavior.
He raised an eyebrow as though he were amused by a child denying the obvious.
"Listen, boy—" Royhas said.
"You'd best bring your flunkies back before you next call me 'boy,' Lord Royhas!" Garric said in a voice that made the candle flame quiver. In a quieter tone he went on, "Alternatively, you can treat me as the scion of kings and the man on whom your plot depends. In that case we'll get along better."
He didn't know how much of that was Garric or-Reise and how much came from Carus, but he did feel the king's personality bellowing with laughter deep in his mind. The guards had taken Garric's sword belt away, but he hooked his thumbs behind his hipbones and splayed his elbows out, grinning at the amazed nobleman.
Royhas was a solidly built man, but he was neither as big nor as young as Garric, and he wasn't as strong by a half. For a moment his face was contorted with anger; then he considered what Garric had said rather than just the fact that a peasant had talked back to him.
In a careful voice Royhas said, "We're all under a degree of strain, Master Garric. My associates and myself are as loyal as any men to King Valence. It's quite obvious that Valence is unable to respond to the threat posed by the queen, however, so we've been forced to consider other courses of action for the sake of the kingdom. And for Valence too, I shouldn't wonder."
"Go on," Garric said. Royhas must originally have planned to tell him to agree with whatever Royhas said during the meeting of conspirators and otherwise to keep his mouth shut. Still, if Maurunus had turned over a sand glass the size of those Garric had seen used on shipboard to judge speed against a drag line, there was still a little time to talk.
Royhas grimaced in frustration. He'd been knocked off his line, and he wasn't any happier than a young ram whose fellow had spilled him on the meadow.
Garric smiled. Of course, most years all the young rams were slaughtered come fall. That was something a shepherd understood too.
Royhas probably thought Garric was laughing at him, but he swallowed his anger and said, "The queen is sending her own minions to take over important positions in the city. Gate guards, the customs assessors in the port. The chancellor's office, even. There's always somebody willing to do a monster's dirty work if the money's good enough."
Garric cleared his throat. Carus' agreement with the last statement was such a fierce, angry surge that for a moment it took Garric's breath away.
"She can't be buying everybody's support," Garric said as soon as he could. A thought that wasn't entirely his own floated into his consciousness. "Or do the common people support her?"
"Nobody supports the queen!" Royhas said. "She's a demon in all truth, a wizard and worse. Mobs stone her officials, but that just makes it worse. Whatever the reason, riots mean shops are looted and people are mugged because they looked like they had the price of a drink in their purse."
Someone tapped softly at the door by which the majordomo had left. Royhas looked up and started to speak. Garric raised a hand to forestall him and said, "My friends? They're to be brought to me immediately."
Royhas scowled. "I don't even know if they've been found," he said. "You were our real concern."
"When you find my friends Liane and Tenoctris," Garric said, "they're to be treated like the noblewomen they are. Because you're a gentleman, Lord Royhas, I'm not concerned that you'd think of using them as hostages to compel my acquiescence in your plans—but because some of your co-conspirators may not be gentlemen, please make it clear to all concerned that I would fly into a berserk rage if anything of the sort were to happen. I doubt that any number of guards could prevent me from killing the culprit."
Royhas flashed Garric a smile of some amusement. "I'm not in the habit of taking hostages from peasants, young man," he said. "Perhaps things are different on Haft."
Garric laughed aloud. He wasn't hysterical, but the release of tension was greater than the tension itself had seemed a moment before. "No, Lord Royhas," he said. "Things aren't different: Haft peasants are just as capable of overvaluing themselves as the highest nobles on Ornifal are."
He nodded to the door. "We should let them in," he said. "So long as you oppose the queen, we should be able to get along between ourselves."
Royhas took his position behind the chair at the head of the table and motioned Garric to stand on his immediate right. "Enter!" he said.
Maurunus opened the door, but he stayed outside when the four cowled figures who'd been waiting in the hallway pushed past. The last of them slammed the door behind him, then searched for a bolt. There wasn't one.
"I don't lock myself in to dinner, Sourous," Royhas said tartly. "If you like, we could meet in the old slave pen in the subcellar."
"There's no need for names!" Sourous said. He was a surprisingly young man with delicate features, from what Garric could see. Unlike the others, Sourous hadn't thrown back his cowl when the door closed.
"There's every need for names," Garric said. "Mine is Garric or-Reise of Haft, and I'm a direct descendant of Carus—the last real King of the Isles."
The words weren't his own, though they rang with bell-like clarity from his lips. Carus was speaking through him, but he was speaking the words Garric would have used if he'd had the experience to choose them.
"So you say," said the first man to enter the room. He had chiseled features and the thick wrists of a swordsman. Though about sixty and the oldest of the five conspirators, he looked extraordinarily fit.
"So the wizard Silyon said, Waldron," Royhas snapped. "I don't trust that Dalopo savage any more than you do; but since he was right about Master Garric's appearance, I think we have to assume he knew something about the gentleman's provenance as well."
There was no love lost between these two men. Garric supposed that was an advantage, since he could stand as the keystone between their competing pressures, but he didn't imagine it would make his coming tasks more pleasant.
The plump man in green pulled out a chair and sat. "If we fight among
ourselves," he said, "the queen won't have to waste effort hanging us, will she?"
He spoke with a wheeze. To Garric he seemed more peevish than frightened.
Royhas smiled tightly and nodded to the seated man, "Lord Tadai bor-Tithain," he said, "and—"
He gestured to the last man, a haggard fellow who looked as though a cancer were eating his bowels.
"—Lord Pitre bor-Piamonas. You've met Waldron and Sourous already, Master Garric."
"We'll all hang," Sourous muttered. "Or worse, who knows what that she-demon will do to us? What if one of her fire wraiths appears here right now?"
"What happens if the sun goes out right now?" Waldron said without trying to hide his disgust. He shook his head. "Your father and I had our differences, Sourous, but at least I never doubted that I had a man to deal with!"
Tadai wheezed with laughter. "What did I say?" he remarked to the air. "We should hire ourselves out as buffoons for the Feast of the Lady's Veil."
"I was explaining to our friend from Haft," Royhas said, rechanneling the discussion with a skill that Garric could appreciate, "that the danger isn't simply from the queen's hirelings. When she wants to replace the proper officials with her own men, she sends a phantasm with them."
"They can't do any real harm," Waldron said in irritation. "They're uncanny, I grant, but nothing that should make a brave man leave his place."
"Perhaps King Valence should hire only men with the courage of a bor-Walliman to collect his port dues," Sourous said, his face turned toward the wall. Waldron's hand twitched in the direction of his sword hilt, then checked. The motion was so slight that Garric wouldn't have noticed it without his ancestor reading the tiny cues.
"What do you mean by a phantasm?" Garric said, doing his part to keep the conspiracy from flying apart in mutual insults. If King Valence wanted his life—and there was no reason to doubt Royhas' claim—these men were the best chance Garric and his friends had of surviving for more than the next few hours. "Ghosts?"
Tadai glanced up with the first real interest he'd given anything except his perfect, almond-shaped fingernails. "Demons, I would rather say," he said, "but only in appearance. As Waldron notes, they don't do anything except look ugly. I might say the same about my wife ... and unlike my Trinka, the queen's little friends don't bring a dowry of ten thousand acres."
"People who've faced them say the phantasms remind them of things," Royhas said. He flashed the bitter ghost of a smile. "They don't say what memories are involved, but one can make some assumptions from the fact the witnesses refuse to discuss them. I have more sympathy for those who don't choose to resist the queen's hirelings than Waldron does."
"And there's the fire wraiths," Pitre muttered. He'd taken a spherical limewood puzzle from his purse and was rotating it between his hands. "They're not harmless!"
"Fagh!" Waldron said. "How many times have they been seen? Four times? Five? In almost a year!"
"Once has always been enough, hasn't it?" Tadai said, looking up from his nails again with an expression of polite inquiry. "For the victim, at least; which seems to me good reason why there've been so few victims. The five of us have certainly chosen to conceal our opposition to the queen."
Garric glanced at Royhas. Royhas nodded and said, "They—or that, there's never been more than one fire wraith seen at a time—appear near someone who's been opposing the queen in a particularly open fashion. The first was a gang boss named Erengo who was raising a mob to attack the queen's mansion. I dare say he expected to get particularly rich from the loot, once a few hundred cattle from the slums had broken down the defenses."
Pitre tittered. "He should have hired himself to the queen instead," he said. "His sort's where she gets most of her servants."
"Erengo may have come to that conclusion in his last moments," Royhas said grimly. "He hadn't made any secret about his plans, though he'd intended to be some distance from the actual event. A thing like a fiery lizard on its hind legs appeared out of the air. His bodyguards attacked it with no effect—"
"No useful effect," Tadai said sardonically. "I gather it made quite a colorful display."
Waldron looked down at the seated man with a cold expression and a tightness in his sword arm. Tadai folded his hands in his lap, pursing his lips slightly.
Garric guessed it would take a great deal of irritation before Waldron lost his temper enough to physically attack a co-conspirator. It was a silly risk to take for no purpose, though, and this business already involved risk aplenty.
"The fire wraith put its arms around Erengo's neck," Royhas continued. "It burned him to a blob of greasy ash. Then the wraith vanished again."
"The common herd would follow King Valence if he'd just lead them!" Pitre said, hunched over his puzzle. His fingers were recombining the separated pieces into a sphere. "Everyone hates the queen, even the scum who work for her."
"And Silyon could protect King Valence!" Sourous said, sounding like a child in his eagerness to believe what he hoped was true. "After all, the queen would have disposed of him if he weren't protected, wouldn't she?"
Tenoctris might be able to answer that question. Garric couldn't, but he knew that there were fights that you avoided as long as possible even if you thought you could win them. That might be why the queen hadn't attacked Valence directly—and it was even more likely that Valence feared that was why the queen had held back.
"My colleagues and I are loyal subjects of King Valence," Royhas said with a tinge of irony. "We've been forced to consider alternative ways to preserve the kingdom—"
Through Garric's mind ran the thought Their part of the kingdom. He grinned wryly.
"—and when Valence told me to dispose of the would-be usurper I'd find in the grounds of the Tyrants' palace, the possibility of a way forward occurred to us."
"So you claim to be Countess Tera's heir, boy?" Tadai asked. He was no more supercilious to Garric than he was to his fellow nobles; but Garric wasn't one of Tadai's fellow nobles.
Garric placed his left hand flat on the table and leaned onto it, bringing his face closer to Tadai's. "I'm a free citizen of Haft, fat man," he said pleasantly. "And my lineage goes back to Carus, though the place where you'd find the proof of that isn't one you'd return from—even if you could get there."
In Garric's memory, a black throne rose from a black plain into a black sky: the Throne of Malkar, the source of all evil and of universal power. Lorcan, the first King of the Isles, had hidden the throne where only his descendants could find it ... as Garric had found it, in a nightmare whose illusions were real enough to kill the soul.
Tadai said nothing. He drew a handkerchief of green and black silk from his left sleeve and wiped his forehead. His hair was so fair that in brighter light he would seem to be bald.
Pitre flung down the bits of his puzzle. "Where did he come from?" he said to Royhas. "May the Lady shield me! This isn't the bumpkin from a sheep walk you told us you were bringing!"
"He's the man Valence told me to watch for!" Royhas said. "The name was right, the age was right. We've never doubted Silyon was a powerful wizard, have we? He was right!"
"I think..." said Tadai. He carefully folded the handkerchief away as everyone watched him.
"I think Valence was right to fear that this youth could usurp his throne—with the right backing," he continued. Tadai's tone was still light, but the mockery was gone. "And I think we were right, gentlemen—"
He looked around the taut faces of his fellows.
"—to believe that he could rouse the populace against the queen in a directed fashion, as Valence will not."
Garric's legs were wobbly, but it was probably because of Carus that he chose to pull out the chair in front of him and sit. They had to break the tension. This last exchange had sent the nobles' minds spinning in more directions than there were men in the room.
"Talk to me like a peasant from Haft who doesn't know anything about the queen and why King Valence married her," Garric said calmly. He gestured the others to seats with an assurance that made him marvel—but they all obeyed, even Royhas, whose house it was. "But I can start by saying that I have no designs on the throne of the Isles so long as Valence is on it."
He grinned. "I'm a loyal citizen too, albeit Valence seems to have been misinformed on the matter."
Garric's grammar and diction were as good as those of any man in the Isles. Reise had seen to that, with a fierce determination that no paid schoolmaster could have matched. Still, his voice had a lilt that would always set him apart from the clipped accents of Ornifal or a Sandrakkan burr. That was as surely a mark of Haft today as it had been in the time of King Carus.
"The princess Azalais was the daughter of the King of Sirimat," Pitre said. Garric had expected Tadai or Royhas to take up the story. "Valence had just fought the Earl of Sandrakkan for the throne—"
"For the title," Waldron spat. "It could have been a real throne if he'd been a real man."
Pitre's eyes surveyed the floor during the interruption, looking for the pieces of his puzzle. The bits of pale wood were hopelessly concealed among the black and white tesserae of the mosaic.
Waldron grimaced. "Go on," he said to Pitre. To Garric he added, "Pitre was there."
"Valence and I were great friends at one time," Pitre said softly, toward the stones of the flooring. He continued, "He needed to marry because unless there was a clear succession there was a certainty of more trouble from men who were positioning themselves for the future. Rather than a wife from one of the great houses of Ornifal—"
"Which would have made all the other nobles his enemies," Tadai said. Garric already understood that, from reading history and from Carus' own vivid recollections.
"—Valence accepted the offer from Sirimat, quite outside the struggles for power over the past millennium," Pitre continued. "Azalais brought an enormous dowry, and she was strikingly beautiful besides."
A pale smile flickered over Pitre's lips. "Not that her beauty was a matter of great concern," he said. "Nor that Valence saw much more of it than any other wedding guest did, as matters worked out. Certainly there are no offspring."
"She was a wizard," Waldron said. "She used wizardry to get Valence to marry her."
Pitre shrugged. "Perhaps," he said, "but not all bad decisions come from wizard's work. At the time some of us thought it was quite a brilliant way out of the tangle of Ornifal nobles struggling for advantage."
"My niece—" Waldron said. He stopped when he saw the broad, hard grin Royhas was giving him. Sourous tittered nervously. Waldron slammed the edge of his fist into the wall, shaking the candle.
Garric nodded to show that he understood what he'd been told. "The first task is to remove the queen's people from the government of Valles," he said. He smiled faintly and went on, "I don't see how that can be done without me winding up the way Erengo did, but as tired as I am I'm doing well to see the table."
He patted it. The smooth wood felt good beneath his fingers.
"One of my friends will have some ideas," he said. "Both of them, I shouldn't wonder."
Liane had lived in Valles as a wealthy outsider. Her experience might provide insights that the conspirators missed simply by being too close to the problem.
"We have a plan—" Royhas said.
Garric stood, feeling his head spin at the sudden movement. He needed food, and he particularly needed sleep.
"Not now," he said. "I want to be able to go over matters with a clear head and with my companions present to advise me. It may be that planning you've done in my absence will have to be modified now that you've met me in person."
Now that you know I'm not going to get burned alive by a fire wraith if there's another way to defeat evil, he thought but did not add.
"Kings die, just as other men," whispered a voice in Garric's weary mind. "And sometimes a king dies that his people may live."
Garric smiled, though the nobles facing him wouldn't have understood the reason. Wouldn't have agreed either, he guessed.
The conspirators looked at one another. Royhas nodded curtly and said, "Yes, all right. I'll have Maurunus put you in my private suite on the top floor. And your companions, if they've turned up."
Pitre bent and picked up a piece of his puzzle, then placed it on the black wood of the table with an unfathomable expression. "Call us when you're prepared to act," he said to Royhas.
"With a real leader instead of Valence," Waldron said harshly, "the Kingdom of the Isles could be very different. We could return to a Golden Age as it was during the Old Kingdom."
He strode to the door, the first to leave as he had been the first to arrive. Garric had noticed that Waldron said "a real leader" instead of "a real king."
Through the waves of fatigue filling Garric's mind, a voice murmured, "The Golden Age they dream of looked a lot like this one when I was living in it; and it'll take some work to keep this age from going the same way mine did. But we'll manage."
Ilna supposed she must have been unconscious. She came awake prickling as though someone had filled her skin with live coals. It took a moment for her to realize that the buzzing she heard wasn't the sound of blood in her ears but rather Scaled Men chanting. Their voices rasped like those of mating toads, harsh and insistent.
Ilna could see again, though her head throbbed and slow ripples drifted across the field of her vision. The pain brought on nausea. She fought down the surge of vomit, but it burned the back of her throat before it subsided.
The six Scaled Men squatted in a circle on the afterdeck. In their midst was a small pot buried in a tray of sand. It was the sort of simple brazier used on shipboard to keep live coals without risk to the vessel. They'd brought it out of the small aftercabin where the tray was normally pinned between frames.
The ship rocked in a sluggish current. The yard was raised with the sail furled about it. Ilna couldn't see over the gunwale, but an owl calling in the darkness indicated they were still within the river's winding course.
A Scaled Man wearing a headband of red and green silk pinched powder from an alabaster jar and threw it onto the fire. Purple smoke rose, as luminous as the throbbing afterimages caused by looking directly at the sun.
The creature added more powder as his fellows chanted. Though the powder came from the same container, the second plume was as orange as a fire's heart.
The Scaled Men chanted louder. Rising to their feet and joining hands, they began a grotesque step-dance circling the brazier.
Instead of dissipating, the plumes wove together like breeding serpents. The colored elements remained distinct in the merged column. It rotated sunwise, opposite to the dancers' motion.
The column began to swell, losing definition. The vessel shuddered. Ilna thought they must have gone aground, but she could tell by the motion of stars against the ship's mast that they were still moving. Her flesh tingled, much as it had in the moment when she'd regained consciousness.
Thin smoke enveloped the ship. Ilna sneezed at the dry, astringent odor, but it wasn't anything she would have described as unpleasant.
In the glowing mist the Scaled Men continued to circle, raising and lowering their arms as they stepped to the rhythm of their chanting. Ilna could still see a few bright stars above her.
The ship yawed. The motion had a greasy feel, like stepping on a flagstone coated with black ice. Ilna thought they were capsizing. She tried to sit up, but her wrists and ankles were tied behind her back. She managed to twist to where she could see through a scuttle, though nothing was visible except the haze.
A wave of distortion shimmered through the sky. Something cold as a knifeblade touched Ilna's marrow, then vanished before she could tense for the scream she would never have uttered.
The fog was gone. The hull rocked gently. The cloudless sky had an odd twilight appearance. None of the many stars were in constellations that Ilna recognized.
Muttering among themselves, the Scaled Men loosed the sail with a rattle of blocks. They worked expertly, sailors in all truth as well as in their manner of dress.
Ilna didn't feel a wind. Another pair shook out the small triangular sail on the foremast. It too expanded in the unfelt breeze.
The sea was faintly phosphorescent. The light had color, but it was so pale that not even Ilna's trained senses could be certain whether she saw green or yellow.
Spikes of rock stuck out of the calm sea. Some towered hundreds of feet in the air; others were little more than fangs, black exclamations against the luminous water. The tallest were flat-topped and looked like the metal nails which saw only occasional use in Barca's Hamlet, where wooden tenons served their place.
The ship got under way with a smooth motion that the gusty turbulence of a normal breeze could never impart. Froth curled around the cutwater, drawing eddies in the patch of surface Ilna could see through the scuttle.
The Scaled Man at the steering oar began to sing. His voice was the same shrill toad-croak as the chanting had been. The words weren't meant for any human throat.
The ship slid onward, carrying Ilna through the twilight. She was tied too tightly for her fingers to find purchase on the ropes, but by slacking and tensing individual muscles she was able to affect the knots minusculely.
Everything had a pattern. Eventually Ilna would find the pattern that would free her. What would happen then depended on circumstances, but the image in her mind involved six nooses slowly tightening.