by Roland Green
“Without my knowing?”
“When you were asleep. Rynthala—Lady Rynthala—I—well, I thank you for all you have done for Amrisha. It has been—more than generous, with all the rest you have had to do.”
He was standing closer than he ever had, and she was more aware of him than before. He was tall for an elf, able to look her in the eyes, and as graceful in his own way as Darin, for all his elven slenderness.
“It is a poor gift, but all I can offer now,” he went on. He reached into his belt pouch and drew out a silvery collar. It looked to be dyed leather, until Rynthala touched it and realized it was a gorget of exquisitely fine elven mail. Running her fingers over it, she realized that the point of a needle, let alone a blade, would be hard put to find a way through it.
“You must think very well of my poor work, which was mostly done by others,” Rynthala said before she realized it sounded ungracious. “Do you wish to put it on me?” she said, then realized that sounded flirtatious.
Belot meanwhile stepped behind her, laid the gorget around her neck (a stiff neck, her father had once told her), and fastened the catches. The links were so fine that it felt like a caress. She half expected that the next thing she felt would be a caress.
Instead, she looked about, to see Belot leading Amrisha toward the stable. She almost ran after him. If he had been Sir Darin, and had stood that close and given her such a gift, she would have. Except that she would have been in his arms long before now.
Marvelous. She could draw responses she did not want from Belot, and not draw them from Darin, when she did want them. Or did she really want a man who did not seem to want her, instead of an elf who did?
Too young for war, and now she felt too young for love—or at least for both at the same time. Both had come at their own convenience, rather than hers.
She turned toward her quarters. Behind her, Amrisha whickered. To Rynthala, it sounded almost as if the pegasus was laughing at her.
With Amrisha healed enough to fly, the citadel of Belkuthas now had its own aerial scout. Belot made at least one flight every second day, trying to stay high enough to be out of arrow range and low enough to see clearly what lay below.
“Of course, spells can strike at any height without warning,” he said. “I doubt Tarothin could endure one of the scouting flights, however.”
He said this to Lauthin, with Pirvan present. The high judge had yet to apologize to the Belkuthans, but he seemed to expect the knight to forgive and forget. Pirvan vowed Lauthin would be surprised one day, but only after the fighting was done.
“Then by all means do not put him in danger,” Lauthin said. “The honor of the Silvanesti demands holding Belkuthas.”
After Lauthin departed, Belot and Pirvan looked at each other. The pegasus rider tossed up his hands in a gesture that made Pirvan want to smile, except that the elf was still prickly with everyone except Rynthala.
“I would like to think that means he has summoned aid,” Belot said quietly.
“Can he?” Pirvan’s knowledge of Silvanesti law and statecraft was more limited than he wished.
“As a high judge, he can summon any number of fighting elves to observe. He cannot order them to fight without the approval of two other high judges. But there would likely be that many or more if any good number of elves came north.”
“Will they?” Pirvan knew he must sound like a child begging for his naming-day treat a month early. Belot actually smiled at the knight.
“I can fly to the south and see if any are coming,” Belot said. “My eyes can spy out what Lauthin’s lips may not reveal. And do not ask whether I shall do it, for I will, or why I do it, because I will not tell you.”
He strode off, the cloak he had come to affect flowing dramatically behind him.
Pirvan rejoiced in Belot’s turning useful and Lauthin’s turning almost civilized. He hoped that in return for his aid, Belot would not make a claim on Rynthala that would offend her, her parents—or Darin.
Belot found no elven hosts advancing, but that proved little. The Silvanesti were masters of woodscraft, and five thousand of them could hide under a canopy of trees and not be seen by even a fellow elf. Belot had landed twice, but in the north, elven settlements were few and far between.
“They are also mostly old warriors or rangers, sworn to the king and the high judges and as clannish as the Kagonesti,” Belot said. “They would not tell a strange elf descending from the sky the price of hazelnut bread if they doubted his right to know it.”
More useful was another flight, to the north. On this scouting foray, Belot sighted a wagon train with an armed escort. He returned, reported its position, guided some of Tharash’s ground scouts to it, and returned with their message.
Upon hearing the message, Pirvan immediately called a council of war.
“The Istarian commander Carolius Migmar comes against us with three thousand fighters. They are more skilled than any we have faced, and a thousand of those still lurk around Belkuthas. Migmar also brings the fittings and men of a siege train. Give him a few days in the forests about Belkuthas, and we will face siege engines of the best Istarian kind. This plainly puts a new face on our battle. We do not know yet if we have help coming.”
“ ’Fore anybody says yea or nay to fighting on, I’ll say this,” Nuor of the Black Chisel put in. “I think we can have some help from the Lintelmakers and their friends. They fostered Krythis and Tulia, even if maybe they only think them pets.”
Krythis and Tulia tried to glare at the dwarf, then broke up in laughter. It was the merriest sound that Pirvan had heard in some while.
The only one who did not join the laughter was Sir Lewin. This was the first council of war on which he had been permitted to sit. It had taken until now for Pirvan to persuade the others to offer Sir Lewin’s honor that last accolade, and he had done everything save threaten to surrender the castle to move some of the rest of the council.
“But they’ll need to be formally appealed to if they’re to send enough dwarves by the underground ways, and soon enough.”
“Amrisha can carry two,” Belot said. “She will need a rest at the far end of the flight, but she can do it.”
“I rejoice,” Krythis said. “Sir Pirvan, with your permission, I shall pen the appeal. I had hoped our courage would outlast our enemies’ folly, but if this cannot be, we must ask, beg if need be, for aid.
“Belot may not be the right messenger, so—” His eyes searched the room, rested briefly and fondly on Rynthala while Pirvan sweated within his tunic, then nodded to the dwarf himself.
“Nuor. It’s a good idea, and you’re a good one to carry it out.”
“Me? I can’t fly!”
“Have no fear, Nuor. Amrisha will do all the flying for us,” Belot said.
“But—I mean—if I fall off—”
“You won’t,” Belot said. “Trust me.”
“I’ve no head for heights.”
Pirvan realized that Nuor must be really uneasy about the flight, or he would hardly have shown such naked fear in Sir Lewin’s presence. The knight vowed that if Sir Lewin so much as twitched an eyebrow, he would be put out of doors.
At last, Nuor heaved a gusty sigh. “Can I have a good drink of dwarf-spirits before I go?” he asked.
“You can have any we have left,” Pirvan said.
“Just don’t drink so much that you’ve no thirst when we land,” Belot said. “Or when we have the victory feast.”
As much as he tried, Pirvan remembered very little of the rest of the council. It was as if everyone was trying to remember only Belot’s cheerful admonition to the dwarf and forget how many pitfalls lay on the road to that feast.
He did remember that Sir Lewin’s face bore a strange, set expression as he left afterward. He also remembered asking himself whether it would be questioning the honor of the other knight to ask how he was faring under his burden of a divided mind.
Chapter 17
It was a spell kno
wn to only a few wizards in the history of high sorcery. It was one that still fewer renegades had actually performed.
Yet in spite of this, Wilthur found it admirably simple to put another shape on a man in Belkuthas and a few new thoughts in his mind. After having spent much of his years trying to balance white, red, and black spells within his mind and magic, almost anything else was simple.
Still, Wilthur the Brown would admit in the privacy of his camp quarters that the man himself might unwittingly be making the work easier.
A spell divided among the three aspects of magic had, it seemed likely, a natural affinity for a mind divided more ways than its possessor had fingers and toes.
Wilthur cast another handful of redwort pickled in honey vinegar into the charcoal of the brazier, and the smoke rose thicker. Outside, the scent escaped on the breeze, and men made gestures of aversion. They also held their noses or, if they had no work close by, tried to find a place upwind of the tent.
Within Belkuthas, Tarothin muttered uneasily in his sleep, without waking.
Sirbones was not asleep—healing a dwarf who had slipped descending the cellar stairs. Even dwarven bones could crack if they struck stone hard enough, and Sirbones knew the dwarf had to be not only healed by tomorrow but ready to fight within days. This required a healing spell of such potency that, for Sirbones, everything beyond himself and the dwarf might as well not have existed.
A third man was asleep when the spell began, but soon afterward awoke and dressed. He did not look in the mirror as he went out, although he was (at least by daylight) careful of his appearance. It would have unsettled his mind to see his ensorcelled self in the mirror, and his mind was already uneasy. Sir Lewin of Trenfar would probably not have cared to wander about the castle wearing the aspect of Belot the elven pegasus-rider.
At least not at first. By the time he reached Rynthala’s quarters, the spell had sunk far enough within him that he would not readily doubt anything that happened—or hold back because of it.
Rynthala had undressed for bed and was pulling on her night robe when the knock came. Her father coming back? She hoped Krythis had nothing more to say to her; he had begun to look like a corpse.
She wished the ill-omened thought out of her mind and prayed briefly to Mishakal to heal or at least order her thoughts and her father’s body and spirit. The knock came again. She drew the night robe down to her knees and went to open the door.
Belot stood there. His hands hung empty at his sides, and his face was blank with—what? Surprise that she had opened her door?
She could not let him think so ill of her as that. “Come in, Belot. It is late, but I will not keep you standing in the hall. How fares Amrisha?”
Belot said nothing, but stepped forward. He closed the door behind him.
Rynthala felt less easy. The blank look was still on Belot’s face. Even when he had been hostile, his thin face had been wonderfully mobile.
Had he been drinking, to gain courage to come to her as he had? That promised ill. But again, it also spoke ill of her.
She bent down, to pull a stool over to him. He also bent down, so that their foreheads bumped together.
She laughed. Then the laughter died on her lips, as he took a firm grip on her night robe with one hand and clamped the other even more firmly over her mouth.
The sound of ripping cloth and Rynthala’s cry came together. But it was only a mewling cry; Belot’s hand was as hard as iron, and not much weaker.
High Judge Lauthinaradalas was approaching Rynthala’s door when he heard her cry out. He was no judge of the sounds from the throats of near-humans, but it did not sound to him like a cry of passion.
Even if Rynthala was wanton—and this was hard to believe, in a chamber next to her parents, who were as chaste in their conduct as clerics of Paladine … even if she was, he still had the duty he had sworn to earlier this day. He would go to her and apologize for his conduct, as both common elf and high judge.
It would be easiest to speak to her. Although the quickest to anger of those who must forgive him, and the likeliest to break his head, she would also be the quickest to calm herself. Then she could intercede for him.
For now, it sounded as though somebody needed to intercede for her. Lauthin gripped his staff and pushed hard on the door, with both hand and staff.
Being unlocked, the door flew open. Lauthin halted, appalled at what he saw within. Rynthala was bent over backward in the grip of Belot, who had a hand over her mouth and was holding her arms behind her back with the other. Where had such strength come from?
Lust and madness, it seemed. Rynthala’s eyes were wide, with fury rather than fear or desire, and she wore only the rags of her night robe.
Then Belot moved. He struck Rynthala on the jaw and in the stomach. She collapsed on the bed, gasping for breath, her lip bleeding. As he whirled, a knife sprouted from his hand.
The next moment, it was sprouting from Lauthin’s chest.
The elven lord also fell backward with the force of the blow. He was on the floor, looking up, by the time Belot snatched the dagger free, then thrust again, lower down.
By then, the first wound was starting to hurt. It would hurt a great deal, if he lived long enough. With two such wounds, he did not fear that danger.
But where had Belot gained such strength? He was fighting like a trained warrior, which he certainly was not. Also, Lauthin had never to his memory seen such a long knife in Belot’s possession.
This is not Belot—Lauthin held that thought, because it meant that one of his own people was not so vile and treacherous.
That was his last thought, before his mind became unable to hold any thoughts at all.
As blackness took him, Rynthala regained the breath to scream.
Krythis was sitting on the bed, wondering if he had the strength to even wash his face and hands before retiring, when Rynthala screamed.
His daughter’s scream gave him the strength to leap from the bed, snatch his sword from the peg by the door and his dagger from under the pillow, and run out into the corridor.
Tulia had been sound asleep, but she was only moments behind him.
In the corridor, they discovered their daughter’s door locked from within. Meanwhile, the screams continued—more rage than pain, and no fear whatever, Krythis told himself firmly—proving that Rynthala was very much alive and fighting.
Unfortunately, she was also fighting on the far side of that locked door. Krythis slashed at it with his sword, which only nicked the edge of one of the door’s iron bands and did not even relieve his rage.
What might have happened if Rynthala’s screams had not roused everyone in the family quarters could never be known. Several guards ran up, elven and human, as well as one dwarf wearing a loincloth and carrying an axe.
The dwarf had just taken his first swing at the door when Grimsoar One-Eye appeared. He carried an even bigger axe than the dwarf. With a nod to the other axe-men, he took his swing.
Then the two axes were biting into the oak at a rate that made Krythis stand back to avoid being hit by flying splinters. He would be no use to Rynthala until the door was down, and from the sounds within, she was still fighting. The gods willing, the men chopping through the door would distract the attacker and give Rynthala a chance to strike him down even before her kin entered—
The door flew inward, the lock chopped completely free of the wood. Krythis shouldered his way through the last standing planks, ripping skin from his limbs and shoulders as he did.
Rynthala lay on the bed, trying in every way she could to injure the man atop her. He seemed unharmed, however—and Krythis would not have withheld his blow even if the man had been dead on the floor at his feet.
His dagger plunged thrice into the man’s lower back. Then he gripped the man’s tunic to pull him off the bed. As Krythis heaved, Rynthala snatched up her pillow dagger and drove it into the man’s chest.
He crashed to the floor, and Rynthala stood up unstead
ily. For a moment she wore nothing save the man’s blood; then she wrapped a blanket around herself and sat down, shaking.
Krythis sat beside her, and took almost as much comfort as he gave when she put her head on his shoulder. If she had recoiled at his touch—
“He tried, Father. But he either would not or could not. He certainly did not.”
“Even if Belot only tried—” Krythis said. He could not find words. He wanted to spit on Belot’s corpse.
“Father. That is not Belot.”
Krythis looked. “Impossible. He must have thought you—”
“You are not thinking, Father. Look at that dagger. Belot never carried one like it. And he was strong. Strong as a trained warrior—strong as a knight—oh, Paladine!”
Krythis wanted to say more, thinking of Sir Darin made mad by lust or, more likely, magic. Either would drive between him and Sir Pirvan a wedge that only Paladine could remove.
“Rynthala! Lord Lauthin!”
Belot stood in the doorway.
But Belot was dead on the floor, after attacking Rynthala and—yes, Lord Lauthin lay dead in a corner of the room. Three stab wounds in his chest and stomach—
If Belot is standing in the doorway, wondered Krythis, then who is lying dead on the floor?
No, not quite dead. Improbably but truly, the man was still breathing. This would not last for long, but any illusion spell bound upon him would not depart until he died—or until it was removed by a wizard.
“Summon Tarothin,” Krythis said. Someone vanished. Krythis hoped the eager messenger was a fast runner and not afraid of the wrath of a weary wizard freshly awakened.
“Send for Sirbones,” Krythis went on. “Turn out all the fighters—everyone—guard all the gates and tunnel mouths. Double the wall watch, and—Rynthala!”
Rynthala had stepped forward, and taken Belot in her arms.
“Rynthala, what are you doing?” Krythis exclaimed. “Even if Belot—”
“Oh, hush, my lord,” Tulia said, prodding him in his bare buttocks with her dagger. She would have sounded light-hearted, but for the quaver in her voice. “If Belot is innocent, Rynthala can do as she pleases with him.… Your pardon, daughter, that was not what I meant to say—”
