by Terry Brooks
“I didn’t give it. I don’t need to. You own me body and soul, Mistress. You already know that.”
She smiled, the teeth behind her lips as sharp as those of her cat.
“I know men aren’t to be trusted,” she said quietly, moving away.
Drust would have appreciated knowing who had orchestrated his death. He would have liked the symmetry of it, had he been able to look at it objectively. He had been so anxious to rid himself of Edinja that he had overlooked the obvious when he found himself the recipient of those threatening notes. When the possible doesn’t fit, one must take a closer look at the impossible. Certain that Edinja was dead, it had not occurred to him to wonder why no one had been able to verify her death. He had even accepted Stoon’s story about the disappearance of the body—that it quite likely had been spirited away by family members, a common practice among magic users. Seeing her poisoned right in front of him had been sufficient proof, and he had never even considered the possibility that she had arranged all this for his benefit, in order to catch him off guard and finish him.
Stoon had made certain it all went as planned. He and Edinja had become lovers and accomplices several months before, not long after Stoon had decided that things were not working out with Drust as he had expected. The “permanent position” he had accepted was leading nowhere. Drust was ambitious and clever, but he was not well positioned in the hierarchy of Federation families and there was a limit to how far one could rise when personal circumstances were unfavorable. Stoon had seen the need for a different alliance if he were to improve his situation—something he was always looking to do. He had been looking around already when he met Edinja.
The meeting had been carefully planned, though not by him. It was she who had approached him as he was coming back to his quarters late one night; she stepped out from the shadows, cloaked and hooded, to confront him. How she had found him in the first place was a mystery, but the reason she had done so was never in doubt. She asked him if she could come in, she told him what she had in mind for him as they sat drinking cups of ale, and then she asked him to take her to his bed. He let it happen; she was eager and he was curious. It occurred to him that she might be lying, that she might have another purpose in doing this, but he saw no harm in taking the time to find out what it was.
He began seeing her regularly after that, but always on her terms and always making certain they would not be discovered. He realized she was a good match for him, and soon enough curiosity turned to attraction and attraction to infatuation. She wanted him to become her assassin; she wanted him to leave Drust Chazhul. She made it clear that he would never improve himself with Drust, no matter the promises made or the heights the other might strive to achieve. None of it would last; in the end, Drust would go the way of other overreaching, ambitious amateurs. She intended to see that this happened. It would be wise of him to join her in this effort. Didn’t he find the idea attractive?
Eventually, he agreed to join her. The decision to be rid of Drust Chazhul was made the moment he did. Stoon might not have agreed to the arrangement had he not been so certain that Drust had overstepped himself and that his demise, however it came about, was imminent in any event. Allying himself with Edinja Orle made perfect sense. She was a member of a powerful family of magic wielders and politicians. She, herself, was an extremely talented sorceress. She was beautiful and smart, and she wanted him. The benefits were obvious. In the beginning, there had been no specific timetable for eliminating either Drust or Federation Commander Lehan Arodian. Once Edinja had faked her own death, Stoon had simply waited for the right opportunity to dispatch the other two. Arodian’s killing had been simple; Drust was looking to eliminate the commander and had been more than willing to help achieve that end. Killing Drust after the debacle at Paranor had been inspired by Stoon’s realization that there would never be a better time. The Prime Minister had led his soldiers into a disastrous engagement, and the fury and hatred he had called down upon himself as a result assured that no one would question too closely what had happened when he didn’t return.
Of course, Stoon understood the danger inherent in the game he was playing. Edinja had been quick to resurface and lay claim to the position of Prime Minister once Drust was out of the way, explaining how she had gone into hiding to save her life and convincing by various means the members of the Coalition Council that she was the logical choice. Many, it might be pointed out, knew of the tower in which she lived and the rumors of what happened to those who disappeared within because they had incurred her disfavor. The salient point, so far as Drust was concerned, was that once she was named to the office, he became dispensable. At any point thereafter, Edinja might decide she would be better off rid of him. But Stoon was drawn to the riskiness of the relationship, and he trusted his instincts to warn him when it was time to quit playing the game. His instincts exceeded those of most and had saved him before on repeated occasions. He had no reason to think they wouldn’t save him again.
“What have you come to tell me?” Edinja asked, bringing him out of his reverie. She was standing across the room, looking out the window.
He caught sight of Cinla now, stretched out beneath the sill, eyes bright lanterns of green in the shadows. The moor cat was staring at him, gaze fixed and steady.
He forced himself to look away. “Aphenglow Elessedil has left Arborlon and is flying west toward the Breakline, possibly in search of the Ard Rhys, but perhaps for another reason.”
“Another reason?”
“Before she left this last time, she flew back to Paranor and apparently went into the Keep. The birds you set on watch after we withdrew brought word only hours ago; she was seen on the south wall, inside the Keep.” He paused. “Those birds. How do you get them to report to me like that?”
Somehow, in a way that was a mystery to him, she had trained ravens not only to keep watch for her but also to report what they had seen by a form of communication that projected images into the mind. It was magic, of course, but magic of a sort he had never before encountered. Edinja was the possessor of many such skills, and it only served to strengthen his belief that abandoning Drust Chazhul had been the correct choice.
She shook her head dismissively. “I just do. Now finish what you were saying.”
He backed off at once. “On returning, she resupplied her vessel, bid good-bye to her sister, and flew off with her bodyguard. Just the two of them. So perhaps she searches for the Ard Rhys, but perhaps she found something at Paranor that sent her west. We can’t know.”
Edinja smiled. “Not right away, we can’t. But perhaps soon. Our source in Arborlon has nothing more to add?”
“I received a message about the Elessedil girl’s return and subsequent departure. Nothing more. She seems to have spoken to no one about why she either went back to Paranor or later flew west.”
“Her sister will know,” Edinja said softly.
Stoon hesitated. “Do you wish me to find out?”
“What interests me is the reason behind the Ard Rhys’s departure and the nature of her destination. There is something important happening.”
She walked over to stand beside him. She was small, but it always seemed she was the larger and stronger of the two when he was in her presence. He had never felt that way with Drust Chazhul.
“I want to know the moment any of the Druids return or are sighted in any part of the Four Lands. I want to find them and I want to track them. Send more of my birds to search them out. Send word to my creature in Arborlon. I want to know what is going on. All of it.”
“I will see that it is done, Mistress.” He paused. “Do you wish to have Paranor occupied now? Perhaps the protective wards have been removed.”
She reached out and stroked his cheek gently. Then she sat down across from him. “Do you know why I wanted Drust Chazhul dead? Not because he was Prime Minister when I should have been. Nor because he was any real threat to my ambitions—certainly no more than Arodian was. I could ha
ve killed them anytime and gotten what I wanted. No, it was because Drust was so determined to put an end to the use of magic in the Four Lands.”
She got up again, crossed the room, poured wine into goblets, and returned, handing one to him. She smiled as he hesitated in accepting. “It is only wine, Stoon.”
He took it from her, and she sat. “Drust believed that magic had run its course and that once again science had become a viable alternative. He ignored history and common sense, believing that the advent of the Great Wars and the destruction of the Old World were things of the past and that the future should not be shaped by what had happened several thousand years ago. The discovery of diapson crystals and the inventions that were generated as a result led him to embrace this theory. Magic seemed dangerous to him. He perceived it as a threat—not only to himself because he had no use for it, but to the larger world as well, because its power rested in the hands of a few, and that could never change. Magic wasn’t an object that anyone could master and command. It was genetic and therefore elitist. It could be studied and learned or it could be acquired by chance and sometimes diligence, but never possessed by more than a few.”
“He hated magic’s unpredictability, as well,” Stoon added. He sipped at his wine and found it satisfactory. “He didn’t trust it.”
“He didn’t understand it. He preferred science because it could be contained and manipulated by everyone who had access to it. He could see its source; he could hold it in his hands. This isn’t so with magic, which is ephemeral and intuitive—even when you hold a talisman. In any case, he was determined to stamp it out, in spite of what he suggested to me in our final meeting. He thought to placate me and later would have betrayed me. Had he been allowed, he would have advanced science to the position it occupied in the world before the advent of the Great Wars. He would have relegated magic to the pages of ancient history.”
She shook her head. “Magic is the foundation of the Orle family and the source of what keeps the Four Lands in balance, whatever anyone else might say or think. Men and women like Drust Chazhul would manipulate and deceive their way to power that is beyond them. They would gain their positions and then squander their opportunities. When Drust became Prime Minister, all he could think to do was to strengthen his hold on his office. He gave no thought to how he might use the chance he had been given productively. He simply decided magic was bad and science was good, and that he would seize control of the one and stamp out the other.”
Stoon finished his wine and set the goblet on a small table at his elbow. “He was obsessed with making certain no one would challenge his grip on the Prime Minister’s office.”
She sniffed. “It was a grip he would never have been able to hold, even had he lived. But here is my point. I align more closely with the Druids of Paranor than with the politicians of Arishaig and the Federation. I am kindred to the Druid order in my history and in my worldview. They would not accept this, but it is so. We seek the same ends. What separates us is their unwillingness to use their magic to take control of the Four Lands. It isn’t that I am suggesting they need to do this to gain further power; I am suggesting they need to do more to make the Four Lands safe from predators. Once a central government is established, there are better uses to which magic could be put than in fighting the constant civil wars that have raged since the time of the First Druid Order.”
“And you would be the one to make this happen?” he asked.
“Of course. Who better? I am well positioned for it. I command the strongest government in the Four Lands. I have the means and influence to bring the others into line. As Prime Minister, acting on behalf of the whole of the Southland people, I can make anything I wish come to pass.”
“So you have a plan?”
“I have a plan. But it does not involve seizing Paranor and tearing down its walls. It does not involve engaging in a war with the Druids and eventually with the Elves, who at some point will ally themselves. It means taking a different approach.”
She did not offer to explain what that approach was, and Stoon knew better than to ask. He simply nodded in casual agreement. “So I am not to go back into Paranor?”
She rose from where she was sitting, reached out and pulled him to his feet, and then pressed herself against him. “The wards might be down, but the Druids would never leave anything valuable lying around unprotected. Try to take anything out of Paranor and you will pay a price for your arrogance. Besides, going back into Paranor at this point will undermine everything I hope to accomplish. The order will associate all that has happened so far with Drust Chazhul. I hope to leave it that way. His time has come and gone, and I will do my best to make it clear that his actions were not mine. I wish to disassociate myself—and the Federation, as well, if it is at all possible—from everything he did. Am I clear about this, Stoon?”
He felt her fingers working at the buttons of his tunic. “You could not be more clear, Mistress.”
She slid her hands inside his clothing and ran them up and down his chest. “You can stop calling me Mistress now,” she said. “Think of something a little less formal, will you?”
Then she took him to her bed.
When the assassin departed her chambers some hours later, the first rays of sunrise were just beginning to show on the eastern horizon, the light silvery and muted. Stoon returned the same way he had come, alone and unseen, his mind on fire with memories of his time with her. Edinja was like no one he had ever been with, and he did not want their relationship to end. Even knowing that one day it would—that she would have it no other way and he would not be able to prevent it—he did not want it to happen. So he would make the most of it while it lasted, and he would not give himself cause to look back on this time with even the smallest of regrets.
For now, he had other business to attend to. He must send word to their spy in Arborlon. He must dispatch Edinja’s birds to seek out the Druid and her Elven protector. It would be their assignment to find the pair and then to track them to wherever they might be going, all the while sending messages back to him.
Messages he could carry to Edinja.
Messages of sufficient import that she would allow him to come to her and be with her as he had this night.
Stoon was a practical man with few vices and dependable instincts. But he was not perfect; he was not without weaknesses. He knew that she was one. But he also knew that for all her talk about serving a higher purpose and seeking a peaceful unification of the Four Lands, she was every bit as bloodthirsty as her former rivals. Why else had she allied herself with him? Why else had she been so keen to dispatch both Arodian and Drust Chazhul?
He slowed outside the walls of the compound, checking to make certain he had not been seen. Then he began navigating a complex network of alleyways that would take him to his quarters nearby. It was best, she had told him early on, if they were never seen together, not even by chance. It would increase his effectiveness and diminish the chances of them being connected even in the smallest of ways.
It would make their clandestine meetings just that much sweeter, she had insisted. Didn’t he agree?
Oh, yes, he agreed.
His thoughts drifted. He had come a long way since his days as the son of a blacksmith. His father had been a big, strong man with a mean temper and a penchant for taking out his anger on his son. Stoon had been badly beaten on more occasions than he cared to remember, frequently for no reason other than his father’s mood. The beatings had continued right up until the moment he took a hammer to his father’s head while he lay passed out after a bout of drinking. Then he dragged the body to the river in the dead of night and sank it with weights. A street boy after that, he had allied himself with an assassins’ guild and learned the trade well enough that eventually he was smarter and more skillful than any of them and had set out on his own.
Years of practicing his chosen trade had provided him with distance from his childhood and safety from any who might try to mistreat him e
ver again. It had provided him with everything that had led to his meeting with Drust Chazhul and now Edinja Orle.
His future seemed assured.
But there was a nagging concern, one that had been with him since the ill-fated assault on Paranor. Aphenglow Elessedil. He had almost caught up to her in the courtyard between the Outer and Inner walls of the Keep, but had he done so he would be as dead as Drust Chazhul. He knew that as surely as he knew he must face her again. There was a certainty to it he could not shake. She should have been his; she should have gone the way of all the others he had dispatched. Yet she had turned on him, and it was only by the slimmest of margins that he had managed to escape her. A step here, a turn there, a bit of smoke and ash, a momentary distraction—almost any of these could have changed the outcome of their meeting.
Now he would have her tracked along with the other Druids, and while he did not fear the Druids as an order or even their formidable magic, he did fear her. He could not help himself. The fear had attached itself to him and would not release its grip.
• • •
Deep within the Fangs, the new day crept like a predator from out of the eastern horizon. On the precipice where they had made their stand the previous night, Railing Ohmsford was sitting with Mirai Leah, looking out over the clusters of dead attackers to the dark and silent sweep of the forest wilderness. Nothing moved in the shadows of the jungle of rocks and trees below. No sounds broke the silence. The last attack had ended more than six hours earlier with the arrival of the Rover Austrum aboard his armored flit. The dead lay where they had fallen, and what was left of the defenders huddled together in hollow-eyed anticipation of what might happen next.
“They’ll come again,” Mirai said, as if reading his mind. She was ragged and covered in blood and dust and might have been a stranger for all that he recognized of her.
“Why did you let him kiss you like that?” he asked.
He had kept the question to himself all night, even though he could barely contain it. It ate at him in a way that was unbearable. Now it was out there, released just like that.
