Tre'valen nodded. :A good point.:
:Besides,: An'desha continued, :He is a blood-path mage. Ancar will have none about him who are not blood-path mages. These men—they are all men, but Hulda—are evil, foul, and the only reason they are not as foul as Falconsbane himself is because they have fewer years, less power, and less imagination. Witting sacrifice is one thing—:
:You have no argument from me, youngling,: Tre'valen said, hastily. :You are right; we cannot trust or foster blood-path mages. It would be obscene.:
An'desha wished he had some way to make notes of what he wished to tell the Avatars; he always had the feeling he was going to forget something important!
:There is only one other thing,: he said finally. :Falconsbane would never do anything to aid either Hulda or Ancar because he hates them both, so he is fostering the friction between them. I have been trying to make him think this is a good idea. Am I doing rightly?:
This time Tre'valen chuckled. :Anything you can do to bring confusion to this nest of kresh'ta will be welcome, youngling. You are doing rightly, indeed.:
The fire popped loudly, and Falconsbane stirred uneasily. He was about to wake.
:Farewell!: Dawnfire said hastily—
—and the Avatars were gone, in the space of an eyeblink.
An'desha withdrew as well, to watch and wait.
Falconsbane stirred as the fire popped again, sending a coal onto the hearth. He opened his eyes, and the coal glared at him from the hearthstone, a baleful fiery eye. He was vaguely aware that there had been something else that had disturbed his sleep but was unable to identify it.
With what had become a habit, he cursed his captor for the clumsy, too-restrictive spells that were making it harder and harder to think or react properly. If that idiot Ancar were only half the mage he thought he was—!
And as if the thought had summoned him, footsteps in the hall heralded Ancar's arrival.
As usual, he burst through the door with no warning and no consideration, as if Falconsbane, like the rooms themselves, was his own personal property. And as usual, he squinted against the perpetual darkness that Falconsbane cloaked himself and his apartment in, a darkness that Falconsbane enhanced with a touch of magery. If the little brat could not learn to announce himself, then Falconsbane would not make it easy for him to fling himself into the suite at will!
"Falconsbane?" Ancar said, peering around the room, and looking, as usual, for a form in one of the hearthside chairs. "Ah—there you are!"
Mornelithe sighed, as Ancar flung himself into the other chair. At least the child didn't have the nerve to order him to stand! "I am very fatigued, Majesty," he said, making no effort to mask the boredom in his voice. "What is it that you require of me this time? I fear that no matter what it is, I have little energy to spare for it."
In fact, he was lying; after disposing of a pair of Ancar's political prisoners, he was very nearly at full strength. Granted, he did seem to be sleeping a great deal, but that could be accounted for by the damages he had taken and the coercions he was under. Those things affected the mind and the body, and he did not wish to spare the energy needed to fight the coercions when he might use that same energy to break Ancar.
So far as pure mage-energy, rather than physical energy, was concerned, he felt confident that there was very little he couldn't do—if he had not been so hedged about with Ancar's controlling spells.
But he was certainly not going to tell Ancar that.
"I just received word from the border with Valdemar," Ancar blurted, in a state of high excitement. Falconsbane was taken aback by the level of that excitement, the tight anticipation in Ancar's voice. The youngster was as taut as a harpstring! "The barrier against magic is gone. I am calling a council of mages; how long until you to feel up to joining it?"
Gone? That unbreakable, stubborn barrier was gone? Falconsbane's interest stirred, in spite of himself, and his attempt to maintain a pose of indifference and exhaustion. "Not long, a matter of moments—" he began, cautiously, trying to collect his thoughts.
"Good. Come along, then. The walk will wake you up." Ancar sprang to his feet, and Falconsbane fought being pulled out of his chair. Not physically, but via magic, as the young King used his spells to attempt to make Mornelithe rise and follow him. Both the exercise of the coercions and Falconsbane's resistance were automatic. Like the response of a plant to light, or the strike of a snake at prey.
Then he abandoned his struggle, and permitted the King to force his reluctant body to obey. After all, what was the point? He wasted more energy in fighting than he could really afford, and there was no telling when Ancar might send him another prisoner. At the moment Ancar was so wrought up by the news from the border that he wasn't paying a great deal of attention to anything else anyway. Falconsbane wasn't going to make a point of resisting if the King didn't even notice what he was doing.
As they left Mornelithe's rooms, three pairs of guards that had been waiting on either side of the door fell in behind them. The Adept raised a purely mental eyebrow at that. Evidently either Ancar feared attack in his own halls, or else he was not taking any chances on Falconsbane's willingness to come to this "council" of his.
Interesting, in either case. Could it be that he sensed his own coercions weakening, and now was ensuring his captive's compliance with more physical and tangible means?
Ancar led the way out of the guest quarters and down a staircase into a series of dark, stone-faced halls in a direction Falconsbane had never taken. There were no servants about, but several times Falconsbane thought he smelled the scent of cooking food wafting down from above. It must be nearly dinner time, then, and not as late as he had thought.
Finally, Ancar stopped and stood aside while one of his guards opened a perfectly ordinary wooden door, revealing a room that was not ordinary at all.
It was swathed from ceiling to floor in curtains of red satin, and the only furniture in it was a single, large table, with a thronelike chair at one end (currently empty) and several more well-padded chairs on the other three sides. One of those chairs, the one at the throne's right hand, stood empty.
Hulda, looking extremely alert, impeccably and modestly gowned, and without any trace of the sullen sensuality she normally displayed, sat to the throne's immediate left. Her violet eyes fastened on Ancar and Falconsbane, and her lips tightened slightly. More people—all male, mostly the same age as Ancar, and presumably some of his best mages—occupied the other chairs. Most of them Falconsbane recognized; others he had never seen before. All of them wore the same expression of baffled and puzzled excitement, mixed, in varying degrees, with apprehension.
Ancar went straight to the throne and sat down, leaving Falconsbane to make his own way to the sole remaining seat and take it. He did so, taking his time, cloaking his displeasure in immense dignity, wondering if that right-hand seat had been left vacant at Ancar's orders, or not, and what it might mean that it had been left unoccupied. Was it simply that no one else wished to be that close to Ancar, or was Ancar giving a silent but unmistakable sign of Falconsbane's status among the mages by ordering it to stand empty until the Adept arrived?
Ample illumination came from mage-lights hovering above the table; a frivolous display by Falconsbane's reckoning, but there were a few of Ancar's mages who were fairly useless, and could easily be spared to maintain them. It did eliminate the need for servants to come in and tend candles or lanterns, and if this chamber was used for magical purposes, it was best that only a few people ever had access to it. Ancar waited until Falconsbane had taken his seat, and complete silence fell across the table. There was not so much as a whisper.
He did not stand, but he held all eyes. He waited a moment longer, while the silence thickened, and then broke it.
"I have heard from my mages in the West. The barrier that prevents magic from passing the border with Valdemar is down," he said, his voice tense with excitement and anticipation. "It appears to be gone completely. My mage
s at the border assure me that we can attack at will."
From the stunned looks on the faces of every other mage, including Hulda, Falconsbane concluded that he was the only one besides Ancar to whom this did not come as a revelation. There was a moment more of silence, then all of them tried to speak at once. Hulda was the only one that maintained a semblance of calm; the rest gestured, shouted, even leapt to their feet in an effort to be heard.
The cacophony was deafening, and Falconsbane gave up on trying to understand a single word. Ancar watched all of his mages striving for his attention, each one doing anything short of murder in order to have his say, and the King's face wore a tiny smile of satisfaction. He was enjoying this; enjoying both the fact that the barrier was down and his will would no longer be thwarted, and enjoying being the center of attention.
Then he held up his hand, and the clamor stopped as suddenly as it had started. His smile broadened, and Falconsbane suppressed a flicker of contempt. Pathetic puppy—He pointed at Hulda, who alone had not contributed to the clamor. She frowned at him, presumably at being designated to speak with such casual disregard for her importance. But that didn't prevent her from speaking up immediately.
"We should be careful," she said, looking cool, intelligent, and businesslike. "We should test the waters first, many, many times, before we even make any plans to attack, much less mount an actual attack. We don't know how or why this happened, but in my opinion, this is very likely to be a trap. Every weakness we have seen in the past has proved to be a trap, and if the pattern holds, this will be as well. The Valdemarans are treacherous and tricky, and this could be just one more trick in a long history of such things. It would be only too easy for them to lure us across their border, then close the jaws of such a trap on us." She shrugged. "They've done so often enough, and they've eaten away at our strength while losing little of their own."
Falconsbane smiled, but only to himself, at the idea of Hulda calling anyone "treacherous and tricky." Then again, it took a traitor to recognize one.
"Precisely!" the mage Pires Nieth cried out before Ancar could designate another to speak. He jumped to his feet, his disheveled hair and beard standing out from his face, making him look like an animal suddenly awakened from a long winter's sleep. "Hulda is right! That was exactly what I wished to say! This requires extreme caution; the Valdemarans have tricked us before by pretending to know nothing of magic, yet turning it on our own troops, and—"
The clamor broke out again, but from what Falconsbane could make out, the consensus was that all of the mages were for caution. Interesting, since from what he had observed, the mages were usually divided on any given subject except when Ancar had previously expressed his own opinion. And from the faint frown on Ancar's face, this did not suit his intentions at all. But there were also signs of hesitation there. Falconsbane guessed that this was an old argument, and that it was one those in favor of caution generally won.
As they babbled on, each one more vehement than the last in urging restraint, Falconsbane analyzed his observations and began to formulate a plan. One thing in particular surprised him, and that was the reaction of Ancar's mages. Apparently, whatever had brought this "barrier" down, it was none of their doing. And what truly amazed him was that none of them had the audacity or the brains to claim that it was!
Well, if they would not, Falconsbane would make up for their lack of will and wit. This was another opportunity to impress on Ancar what he could do—and imply he might be able to accomplish far more, if given a free hand. Perhaps this time Ancar might be impressed enough to actually do something.
He let the other mages talk themselves into a standstill, while Ancar's frown deepened, until they began to notice his patent disapproval of their advice. The voices faded, and finally died altogether, leaving an ominous silence. Not even the curtains moved.
Into this silence, Falconsbane dropped his words, cool stones into a waiting pool.
"I am pleased to learn that my tireless efforts upon King Ancar's behalf have not gone unrewarded," he said casually, as if it were of little matter to him. "The cost to me in fatigue has been inconvenient."
There. Now he had a plausible explanation for spending so much time asleep in his rooms, as well as riveting Ancar's attention and gratitude—such as it was—on him. And he had just established himself, not only as Ancar's foreign ally, but as a more potent mage than any in this group. Given the combination of events and the fact that he could now, easily, take on anything covert Hulda would dare to try against him—if she did dare—he felt fairly secure against the woman's machinations.
Ancar's head snapped around, and the King stared into his eyes, dumbfounded. Clearly, this was the very last thing he had expected from his tame Adept.
"You broke the barrier?" he blurted. "But—you said nothing of this!"
"You woke me from a sound sleep, Majesty," Falconsbane said smoothly. "I am hardly at my best when half awake. I have labored long and hard in your aid, and I am simply pleased to learn that those labors have borne fruit. It seemed to me that there was no reason to raise your hopes by telling you what I was attempting, when the barrier was at such a great physical distance and I was laboring under so very many handicaps. I never promise what I cannot deliver."
That, in light of the many wonders he had heard Ancar's other mages promise and fail to perform, was a direct slap at most of them. As they gaped at him, he continued, "I dare say that there is no reason to be overly cautious in the light of this development, since it was our doing and not some plot of the Valdemaran. I will be able to do far more for you when I am under less constraint, of course...."
He hoped then that Ancar would say or do something, but his rivals in magic were not about to accept his claims tamely.
Again all the other mages began talking at once, pointing out that there was no way of knowing for certain that it had been Falconsbane who had broken the barrier, each of them eager to discredit him. Mornelithe himself simply ignored their noise, smiling slightly, and steepling his hands in front of his face. It was better not to try to refute them. If he looked as if he did not care, Ancar was more likely to believe he really had worked this little miracle.
Or, as one of his long-ago teachers once said, "Tell a big enough lie, and everyone will believe it simply because it is too audacious not to be the truth."
Finally, Ancar brought it all to a halt by raising his hands for quiet.
Silence fell over the table, immediate and absolute. Ancar had his mages firmly under his thumb, that much was certain.
"It does not matter if Mornelithe Falconsbane proves to you that he broke the barrier or not," Ancar said sternly. "It does not even matter to you if I assume that he did.
Nothing among the lot of you has changed. The essential fact is that all of you have worked in vain to take it down. Now, it is down. And I intend to do something to take advantage of that fact!"
At that, every one of the mages at the table, except for Hulda, looked both chastised and as if he wished he was somewhere else.
And given Ancar's record in the past, perhaps they had reason to wish just that. He had lost more than one of his higher-ranking mages to the Valdemarans during the last two attempts to take their border. Right now, they were probably recalling that and wondering what they could do to keep them from being singled out to "test" whether or not that barrier was really gone. None of them had any wish to risk his precious skin against the Valdemarans. All of them would welcome some idea that would save them from that fate. They licked dry lips and glanced nervously about, and it was fairly obvious that they were unused to really thinking for themselves, or coming up with plans on the spur of the moment.
Once again, it was Falconsbane who broke the thickening and apprehensive silence. This should earn him the gratitude, and at least the temporary support, of every man at this table. Yes, and the woman, too, if she could see a way to profit by it.
"My lord," he said, addressing Ancar directly and ignoring
everyone else, "do the lives of common folk in your foot-troops mean anything to you? Are they valuable? Have you any shortage of conscripts? Can you swell your ranks again if they die by the company?"
Ancar stared at him as if he had been speaking Tayledras or Shin'a'in; completely without understanding. Perhaps the concept of valuing the lives of fighters was foreign to him. It would have been foreign to Falconsbane as well, except that he had been in a situation or two where the troops he had were all he would get. At that point, by definition, those lives had value. But finally, Ancar answered.
"Of course not," the King said impatiently, as if only a fool would ask such a question. "I have an endless supply of peasant boys from women who whelp them like puppies. I have mage-controlled troops, and it does not matter if they are real fighters, boys, or graybeards. They will obey and fight as I please, and there are always plenty of peasants from the same source to conscript when they fall."
He did not mention that he had tried armed force before, and failed. Instead, he was giving Falconsbane the compliment of assuming the Adept must have a different plan than the one that had failed.
Falconsbane smiled. "Ah, good," he replied, genially. "That is, on occasion, a concern. If there happens to be a shortage of fighters, or there is no way to make reliable fighters of peasantry, then one must be careful of how the troops are disposed. But in your case—there is your answer. If the lives of troops are meaningless, my lord, then spend them."
Ancar shook his head. "Spend them?" he repeated, baffled.
Falconsbane leaned forward over the table, underscoring his intensity with his posture, and the nearest of the mages drew back a little before the avid hunger in his eyes. "Use them, my lord. What does it matter if this is a trap? Throw lives at a weak point until you seize it! Their controlling spells will hold past the border now, you have no need to fear that they will no longer obey you once you cross it. So throw them at the border, at one spot, in numbers too great for the Valdemarans to counter." His smile broadened. "I would venture to say that the Valdemarans have a witless concern over the loss of their fighters. That can be used against them, and it is a potent weapon in your arsenal. Throw your troops at the border, march them over the top of their own dead. Take a position, hold it, fortify it, and use it to take another position. Take land, my lord, and eat into their side as a canker-worm eats a rosebud. Ignore losses, ignore other targets. Take land, and cut Valdemar in half. If lives do not matter, then use them up to your advantage."
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