Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic)

by Phoebe Matthews

  Nance began a chant that was going to last well past my ability to stand silently. Not bound to do so, I turned and circled the altar, swinging my arms and a lamp in empty gestures allowing me to move and stretch inside the weight of my robe. I hoped Ober, too, had passed a sleepless night and would soon decide to return to the comforts of her room.

  As I turned from the altar, I faced the archway entrance from the temple to Nance's rooms. The others stood with their backs to the opening, facing the altar. I bit my lip to hold back a cry of surprise.

  In the shadows, unnoticed by any of them, stood Tarvik. He stood with his feet apart, his hips forward and his shoulders back, in that slightly slouched stance I had seen when he faced an opponent on the day of the games, just before he drew his sword, lunged forward, and attacked. Lucky for somebody that his sword was back in his room, hanging on the wall. I would have raised a finger to my lips to warn him, but then I saw I didn't need to.

  His face was hard, his mouth tight with anger, his eyes narrowed. He aimed all his fury in his glare, staring through the temple gloom at the soft glow of red-gold hair that framed the pale face of Alakar.

  CHAPTER 15

  Ober's voice rose above Nance's chant. “Do you try to tell us the prince is now invisible? Do you mean you have not seen him and know nothing of where he may be?”

  “The Daughter of the Sun protects -” Nance began.

  “Stop! I do not care to hear that again. I have asked a direct question of you, Nance,” Ober cried.

  Gotta say, that brought out a dead silence.

  At the center of the room, directly beneath the hanging lamp, Nance stood with her arms outstretched, her hair and robes glittering in the flickering light of candle flames. Facing her were Ober, wrapped in fur, and Alakar, dressed in velvet, backed by a cluster of Ober's guards. Our own guards waited beyond the door in the courtyard, which was better all around. They would have fallen on their faces in terror to hear Ober shout at Kovat's priest in the presence of the altar.

  I was proud of Nance. She stood motionless and let the echoes of Ober's cry shock every listener.

  Although they did not belong to the temple of the Daughter, Ober's guards knew Erlan and his family, and therefore themselves, were under the rule of Kovat. They knew his faith. Ober might as well have shouted insults at Kovat himself.

  Softly Nance said, “Consort of the younger brother of mighty Kovat, do you question the knowledge I have been given by the Daughter of the Sun?”

  Ober hesitated. Tight lines pulled at her mouth and eyes. She said, “I do not question the wisdom of the Daughter. I question only of where the prince may be, driven as I am by my loyalty to our ruler and his son. If I speak improperly in the temple, the Daughter must be begged to forgive me. My concern is for our dear Tarvik.”

  Nance nodded but did not reply. I knew she was thinking through all the possible questions and answers we had discussed earlier. Apparently she couldn't remember anything that seemed to answer Ober's words. She began another long chant from the rituals.

  I turned to look again for Tarvik.

  He was gone.

  Joining Nance in front of the altar, I helped her move and swing about the candles and added my voice to her chanting. Her hands trembled. If her voice faltered, I'd have to cover. How long could we continue like that?

  A fist, or perhaps the hilt of a sword, banged on the outer door. Ober and her party swung around to face the noise. The doors flew open, their weight tearing at the hinges.

  In the center of the daylit opening stood Tarvik.

  I grabbed the candleholder from Nance before she dropped it. My voice hid her sudden silence.

  I cried out, “Your faithful servants thank you, kind Daughter, for the care and return of the son of Kovat.”

  The effort was wasted. No one paid any attention to Nance or me, not even Tarvik. He walked swiftly into the temple. Behind him followed the temple guards. Beyond them, in the open gateway to the courtyard, I could see a growing crowd of Tarvik's castle guards led by Artur.

  Tarvik stopped in front of Ober and planted his feet in that solid stance.

  In a voice as low and quiet as death, he said, “You will leave my city and take all of your people with you, Ober. I shall allow you to pack what is needed for your journey homeward, but you must be gone by sunset.”

  Ober rushed toward him with outstretched arms. The fury in his face stopped her.

  She stood in front of him, her hands raised, and attempted to smile. “We were to winter here until the return of my husband and your father!”

  Tarvik glared at her but said nothing.

  Ober continued, “What will our ruler think on his return if we leave without his permission?”

  His thoughts crossed his scowling face as he decided what to say. He spoke in a flat tone that covered anger he could barely control.

  “Will you remain to explain to Kovat that Alakar came to my room last night and mixed for me with her own hands a drink? Shall I keep for him the locket she wears so he may see within it the traces of the powder she added to my drink?”

  Ober reached out to him with both hands, as she smiled and tilted her head and gazed at him from the corners of her half-closed eyes.

  Her voice was all sugar. “It was no more than a love potion. Is it so wrong for my daughter to desire to win your love and wish to speed the plans for your marriage?”

  Tarvik said softly, “A strange love potion, Ober, that puts a man into a sleep from which he cannot wake. It was my fortune that my father warned me of you before he left, and my fortune that the Daughter of the Sun protected me.”

  Her body went rigid.

  Alakar cried out, “Kovat warned you?”

  Ober glared at her daughter and Alakar covered her face with her hands as though she expected to be struck.

  Tarvik spun away from them both and hurried out of the temple. His guards remained at the gate.

  Ober's glare turned on Nance and me.

  Okay, so now she knew why Kovat had sought me out. All her suspicion, hatred and wish for revenge were there to see. And her fear. She did not know how we had managed to save Tarvik. Easy to see she was afraid to touch me, not knowing what magic I had. Even Nance couldn't come up with a chant to match the situation.

  We watched silently as Ober and her party left the temple.

  When they were gone, Nance whispered, “She was so angry she almost broke her own spell.”

  Knowing Nance half-believed the tales of sorcerers who controlled monsters, I said, “What a pity, I had hoped Ober would conjure up a hairy beast with leather wings.”

  “Or turn into one. Some say the sorcerers are the lifedrainers.”

  The long night's vigil, to mention nothing of being manhandled by the deathwalker, plus hauling around Tarvik's dead weight, had done me in. I would be glad to see Ober, Alakar and their guards leave, but all I really wanted to do was shed my temple robes and collapse on my bed of sheepskins.

  In the late afternoon we watched through a crack in the outer gate as the procession wound slowly down the hill toward Erlan's lands. They followed the valley road until they rounded the hill's base and moved out of our sight. Ober and Alakar sat proudly on their horses, spines stiff, heads high. They wore heavy cloaks lined with fur and their woven scarves were wrapped around their heads and pulled forward to hide their faces. Their escort of guards walked in front and in back of them. At the rear, Ober's servants led several smaller horses loaded with bundles.

  “Hmm, I do regret that no request was sent to the temple to provide an escort. We would have been so thrilled to comply,” Nance said and giggled.

  “Weird. Nobody asked about the deathwalker. Maybe they think he stayed behind to spy.”

  Nance and I ate our evening meal. While she stirred our fire in the courtyard I slid open the bolt on the gate. Then we settled down on a pile of sheepskins and leaned back against a stone bench, our bare feet outstretched to the flames. The smoke drifted in the c
hill air and blended with the late autumn smell of dry grass.

  We both knew we waited for Tarvik. He wouldn't stay put in the castle surrounded only by guards and slaves, not now. He wouldn't consider them suitable listeners and he'd want to know what had happened while he was passed out.

  When the guard at last knocked on the gate, Nance didn't waste breath asking who was there. She shouted, “Enter, Tarvik.”

  He closed the gate behind himself before joining us. He was wrapped in fur and wore heavy boots that looked like sheepskin with the skin side out, very warm. The boy's wardrobe never ceased to impress me. Gee, I hadn't even seen a closet in his room, so where did he keep the stuff? Maybe Artur did double duty as a butler and delivered his outfits from a walk-in closet down the hall. I wanted to ask him but maybe now wasn't the time.

  Sitting down on the ground near us, he stared into the flames.

  “It's no good acting cross,” Nance said. “I suppose you feel very important now that you have ordered Ober and Alakar out of your city, but you are not Kovat. Although your guards are undoubtedly amazed by you, Stargazer and I still think of you as a pampered, stupid boy and a dead weight to carry.”

  Tarvik frowned, started to rise, then settled back down and drew his furs tighter around himself.

  Nance added, “You must stop drinking anything anyone hands you. And you must eat less. If you get any heavier, we cannot possibly save you next time.”

  “Why did you save me this time?” he asked, still not looking at us.

  “As for that, I prefer you to rule the city than be ruled by Ober. How did you know about Alakar's locket?”

  Tarvik watched the fire to avoid meeting our stares. “Alakar came to my room and said she wished to speak alone with me. She has never done that before. I was surprised but I had no reason to refuse her.”

  “No, no, that would be beyond rude,” Nance chided.

  “And why should I be rude to Alakar? She was courteous to me, which is more than I receive from you. And so she entered and we spoke.”

  “Of what did you speak?”

  He glared at Nance. “That is not for your knowing. It was nothing, just, um, talk. She said she would prepare my evening drink. I was on the far side of the room beneath a lamp looking at a finger ring she had handed me. She said the ring was her gift to me. She said it had belonged to Erlan and asked if I knew what the markings on it meant. But I could not see the markings in the shadows and I looked up to tell her so.

  “That is when I saw her open her locket and shake powder into my cup.”

  “You saw her add powder but you drank it?” I asked.

  “Some of the women, umm, I know they still believe in love potions. I thought she had got something like that. Those powders are harmless.”

  “But why would you drink it at all, no matter what you thought it was? Tarvik, I warned you about Ober. Did you think I was joking?”

  “This wasn't Ober, it was Alakar. A love potion could not hurt me. And Alakar was promised to me.”

  Nance giggled and cried out, “Oh, I see! Do you not understand, Stargazer? Tarvik thought he would drink the harmless love potion and then throw himself at the beautiful Alakar and let the silly girl think it was her own potion that had roused his passion. She could only blame herself.”

  I thought in another moment Tarvik might throw himself at Nance, with passion, all right, but not the kind she meant.

  To change subjects, I hoped, I said, “But where was your guard Artur?”

  “He has a family. I gave him the night free to visit them.”

  “No fun being alone with Alakar if Artur is watching,” Nance teased.

  Tarvik growled at her and I said quickly, “When did you figure out Alakar had tricked you?”

  He glared at Nance, then turned to me. “I knew last night. Soon after I drank, the room grew larger, then smaller around me. I could see Alakar watching me. Inside I turned to nothing. My strength left me and I could not stand. I fell into a corner and even then she watched and did not reach out a hand to help me. When I woke in the temple I knew Alakar had drugged me and in some way you and Nance had saved me.”

  As there were parts of the previous night I preferred not to explain, such as how I had spied on the women from the secret passageway where I was not supposed to be, and saw Ober mix the powders, I spoke quickly. If my words left him with the idea that my knowledge of Ober came from my magic star circles, that shouldn't backfire.

  “Ober's stars show evil, Tarvik. That's why I had to talk to the magician. He told me Ober knew how to mix poisons. Nance and I came to warn you, but we were too late. So we had to trade the magician his freedom for a potion to save you.”

  In one circling of the sun, Tarvik had been poisoned by his promised love, woke in a forbidden chamber of the temple, cast out his uncle's family, and learned Nance and I had set free the captive magician. As I hoped, it was so much information he didn't go back to pick out the gaps in my explanation, didn't even ask how I learned about Ober's treachery or how Nance and I entered his room to find him. How we managed to carry him to the temple, or even how we managed to get the magician out of prison, all that stuff went unquestioned.

  Instead he went straight to what hurt and asked, “Why should Alakar wish to poison me? Am I so terrible? Did she think it pleasanter to murder me than to wed me?”

  Poor baby, what a blow to his ego.

  I said, “The magician said it was probably a potion to make you sleep for several days. I don't think she wanted to kill you.”

  Nance added, “Ober believed Stargazer's powers could protect you. I think what she really wanted was time to get rid of Stargazer. Then when you woke, she would wed you to Alakar and take over the rule of the city.”

  “Take the city from me? I would not allow that!”

  “You watched Alakar put a potion in your cup and then you drank it,” Nance said, smiling sweetly at him. “Anyone else would only have pretended to drink, clever cousin.”

  “I should have banished you with Alakar,” he sputtered. “Besides, what you say cannot be so. How could Ober plan to rule when she knows my father will return by springtime?”

  I wondered about that, too. Plus I'd had a vision of Kovat in some strange place, unconscious or dead. No point telling Tarvik about that. Still, I had a few questions. “Would Erlan turn against his brother?”

  Nance sucked in her breath.

  Tarvik stared at me, eyes wide. “He could not! Kovat is a far greater warrior than Erlan!”

  “Erlan won't need to fight if he has Ober's poisons.”

  Tarvik jumped to his feet and stood over me. I resigned myself to being grabbed by the arm and dragged somewhere. Instead, he only shook his fists in the air and shouted, “You lie, Stargazer! Your circles and your stars lie, also!”

  “The stars don't say Erlan wants to kill Kovat. They only show Ober has a whole lot of wicked in her. I don't know what's coming.”

  He paced at the edge of the fire glow, where his pale hair caught the light. He wouldn't look at us or speak to us. Even Nance didn't want to taunt him now. If I was right, and Erlan poisoned Kovat, Ober's banishment had gained us a month or two longer to live, no more. We all knew Tarvik's guards were no match for Erlan's army. If Erlan wanted to capture the city, its only defense was a small number of faithful temple and castle guards.

  Unable to find a reply, Tarvik stopped his pacing and ran out of the courtyard.

  “He will not sleep tonight,” Nance said.

  “No.”

  “But I will. Erlan or no, I would have to stick my fingers in my eyes to keep them open. And if I judge my cousin rightly, he will be pounding on our gate again at daybreak.”

  Nance was wrong. Tarvik didn't wait for daybreak. A short time after she went to her room to sleep, while I stirred the last embers of our fire and tried to figure out what to do, Tarvik returned. He spoke as though he had never left, without greeting or explanation.

  As soon as I closed the gat
e behind him, he said, “Tomorrow you must draw your circles and find a way for me to save my city.”

  “Me? Why do you think I can do that?”

  “You drew your circles and knew what Ober planned and how to save me, did you not?”

  “The magician knew how to save you, Tarvik.”

  “Yes, but you knew to seek the magician. There. And you were right. You will look again and your stars will show you what I must do,” he insisted, frowning at me.

  “Okay, I'll look, but I can't promise to find an answer.”

  His agitation rose. “My father knew your powers were greater than the powers of Thunder or Ober. I know he was right about you. If your stars tell me how to save my city, I will reward you with more than gifts. I will build you a castle and you will have your own guards and slaves.”

  I was too surprised to reply. He pivoted on his heel and marched back out of the courtyard. As I pushed the gate closed, I saw his guard waiting for him. Artur, who always acted as though I was invisible, gave me a quick smile, completely unnerving me.

  A castle, power, and my own army of quaking servants and all I needed to do was figure out a way to defeat Erlan's army. Otherwise, we would all very probably be dead.

  This nightmare just didn't want to stop.

  CHAPTER 16

  With a flaming stick from the fire I burned a circle into Nance's largest wooden table.

  “Scream away, child,” I muttered as I worked. “If I paint my circle, you forget and wash it away. If I mark it in the courtyard soil, you forget and run through it, rubbing it out. Order the servants to build you another table. This one is mine.”

  “But it belongs to the temple! It is sacred!”

  As I had already told her what I had to do, I didn't bother to argue. The difficulty of my assignment helped shut out the noise of her complaints, until she gave up scolding and wandered off to clean her temple lamps.

  Next to the circle I burned rows of straight lines I could use to set up new charts. Couldn't believe it myself, that I was trying to chart stars from their remembered placements last summer, without the aid of an ephemeris or even the simplest of writing materials.