“But not the matter of defense, and it is on this issue that we make our appeal. Surely you would be so kind as to bear the message.”
“Your Grace knows that I cannot.”
“And why is that, General?”
“The King seems to be missing from court, Your Grace. On an extended holiday, I have heard it said.” The sarcasm in his voice was, I had to admit, delicious. Even Rard chuckled politely.
“But if the defense of the Duchy is my responsibility, and I owe my loyalty and allegiance to His Mysteriously Absent Majesty, then does he not also owe me protection, justice, and guidance? That is, after all, what I swear to my own vassals.”
“So it would seem, Your Grace,” Hartarian said, his eyes fixed on the Duke.
“Then I demand that you discover the whereabouts of this missing monarch, and relay my message to him, as a representative of the Royal Crown. Either do that, or yield on this fiction that you serve at the pleasure of anyone but me and my brother Dukes.”
“That is the practical reality, Your Grace,” the General agreed, his voice tight.
“And if I should, say, as an emergency measure, lift the control of the Bans on Magic from the Censorate within my Duchy?” There was a hiss of breath from the crowd. “To further the defense of the realm and its people?”
“Such a course would be madness, Your Grace,” Hartarian said, flatly. “It would be chaos.”
“Really? And on what basis do you make that judgment, Hartarian?”
“On the basis of my knowledge of man’s nature, Your Grace. On the basis of a lifetime of experience beating back the pretenders and the scoundrels from my honorable profession – and those who seek to use those powers against the best interest of the people and the land.”
“So you have no exact knowledge that chaos would ensue if I lifted the Bans? Just a . . . an educated guess?”
“It is a very good guess, Your Grace.”
“Perhaps. It could be an excellent guess, for all I know Hartarian. But the fact is, it is still a guess, and it still can be – and probably is – wrong.”
“Your Grace is of course entitled to your opinion.”
“I am. How good of you to recognize. And in this case, I would say my opinion counts for quite a lot more than yours does it not? In practical terms?”
“That could be said,” agreed Hartarian. “Though I am not without resources for enforcing my commission.”
“You have thirty Censors, a few score warmagi, and a hired host of mercenaries,” Rard said, flatly, “operating out of a crumbling old Imperial castle that no one else wanted. The fact is, the Court Magi have been doing the bulk of your regulation for you. I’m sure your men are very busy chasing down soothsayers and hedgewitches and foot wizards, galore. And for that great and illustrious service, we thank you. But Castal shall have no need of your services after today, as we shall be assuming control of enforcement of reasonable rules on magic within the borders of our realm. An emergency measure only, I assure you.”
“Your Grace cannot do that!” Hartarian spat.
“His Grace can do what he damn well pleases,” Her Grace said, sharply, “and I’ll remind our Royal guest that he is still a guest in this hall.”
“And may I ask what your brother Dukes will do when they hear about this . . . this . . . this repudiation of sacred law?”
“It isn’t sacred law, it’s a Royal edict,” dismissed Rard. “And of my brother Dukes, let’s examine the four of them, shall we? Alshar is split in twain and hemorrhaging to death on my borders, my brother-in-law hiding in a wooden castle with a few thousand scared peasants around him while his realm crumbles. Then there is my brother in Remere, who is far, far more concerned with the increased trade opportunities through our occupation of Farise than he is any minor disagreement among Houses on matters of magical policy. Merwin is far more concerned about the East Island pirates, who have taken in those Farisi pirates who escaped our grasp in Farise and now sport with the Sea Folk. Vore, of course, is far more concerned about the barbarians of the steppes, the constant insurrections of the Valley People, and of course their continuing contention of the sea lanes with both the Merwini and the pirates. Why should they have a care about what I do to protect my realm?”
“Your Grace is speaking treason,” Hartarian hissed.
“His Grace is incapable of speaking treason, by definition,” Grendine retorted. “You forget yourself, sir!”
“I do not,” Hartarian said, slowly. “The Censorate was established by the King. By the King’s hand alone can it be dissolved. You may throw us out of Castal, but we will not leave, Your Grace. Indeed, we will dog the heels of your renegade magi until they are once more brought to bear. If they do not destroy you, first.”
Rard considered the big man in the checkered cloak for a moment. “I will tell you what, General. I will send both you and the Spellmonger into Alshar to fight the goblins who invade that land. If the Spellmonger and his witchstones cannot staunch the flow of blood from Alshar, and you and your Censorate have a better effect, then I will yield to you and give you every man you need to see your mandate fulfilled.
“However, if the Spellmonger is successful, and he and his warmagi can save the better part of Alshar from conquest, then it will be my duty as Duke to ensure the continued successful defense of the realm by relaxing the Bans on Magic.”
“You do not have the authority, Your Grace,” Hartarian said, scornfully. “You will still be a rebel prince of a renegade province, not a Duke of the blood defending his fief.”
“Quite right,” Rard said, nodding. “In that case, if the Spellmonger is successful in prosecuting this defense of Alshar, then I will have no choice save to crown myself King of Castal. Then I’ll have all the authority I need to overturn the Bans. And do a great many other things, besides.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight:
At The Court Of Alshar
Vorone, Late Summer
Vorone was once a humble fishing village that grew up on the banks of the Andal river, about a hundred years after the founding of the Five Duchies. As the Narasi settlers pushed north and west and began harvesting the vast forests of northern Alshar, the lumber camps and military camps needed protein, and the fish in the Andal were (back then, apparently) absolutely huge. Twenty-pound canteyes, trout by the thousands, greenfins sixty inches long, meaty and popping with fat. The surrounding hills were magnificent for hunting, too, and soon Vorone was doing as much business in trapping and game as it was fishing.
The lord of the land built a small, ramshackle wooden motte-and-bailey and a fine palisade of timber on a slight rise in a bend of the river. His eldest son answered the call of the victorious side in one of the Alshari dynastic disputes and was elevated to Baronet, and then to Baron when he sent two of his own sons to die in another conflict in the south. The remaining son was sent to the court in the south to be educated and transformed into a civilized and chivalrous knight – not an illiterate barbarian warlord like his father. While at court he befriended a young princeling named Farguin, who, much to his astonishment, was presented the coronet by his uncle the Lord Marshal, after a series of accidents and illness befell the royal family.
The second Baron of Vorone, Simir the Gallant, retired to his ancestral estate after his father’s death, and the following year invited his friend – the new, youthful Duke of Alshar – to come up for hunting and fishing on his way back from a state visit to the new Summer Palace in Castal, Wilderhall, where he was to sign a treaty. The Duke, ambitious to not only improve his realm (perpetually the smallest and poorest of the Five Duchies, especially after the Gilmorans left for Castal) but to challenge Castal on its own terms, enjoyed himself so much in the Wilderland fief that he decided to copy the magnificence of Wilderhall and build his own damn summer palace. He gave his friend Simir the barony to the south and he began re-designing the entire village to suit his needs.
After twenty years of constant building and investment, using the
finest artisans in the realm and the most elegant materials, the Summer Palace at Vorone became one of the finest manors in the Duchies, in a rustic, woodsy, Wilderland sort of way. The palace sits where the old fortress used to, and countless loads of wood, stone, and dirt had been used to extend the modest hill until it dominated the entire valley in undeniable magnificence.
Like Wilderhall, the palace became a favorite place for the Dukes and Duchesses of Alshar to get away from the hazards of court in the south. Considering how most of them seemed to get there, I could see why. It’s dangerous being an Alshari Duke or his heir.
And like Wilderhall, if you wanted to influence the Duke you had to be at Vorone in the summer. So an entire industry of shops, inns, hostels, whorehouses and other entertainments grew up to give the visiting nobility a place to spend their money and impress their noble friends. Shops sprouted to service these genteel services, temples were founded to give the guilty and the hopeful someplace to spend their money, and the town of Vorone grew and grew.
The nearby timbering, lead mining in Tudry, and iron from the Mindens added to the industry there, and while most of the nasty bits were placed in an oxbow safely downriver (and downwind), the workers, smiths, timberjacks and miners (not to mention the merchants who bought and sold) all used Vorone as a place to spend some of their profits before they went back to work. Vorone’s market is one of the finest in the Duchies, actually.
Two hundred years after its settlement, Vorone is a stately and distinguished address. It doesn’t even get that bad in the winter here, thanks to some helpfully occluding hills in the west. If it snows more than six times, it’s considered a “hard winter”, whereas my one winter in Boval, where it snowed once every day for nine days, was considered mild. It’s a really pretty, really pleasant place to spend time – and money. I’d come through Vorone a couple of times, and always found the food delicious (although the days of twenty-inch greenfins was long gone), the whores pretty and cheerful, and the wine excellent. If you could afford it, Vorone was a lovely place to spend a decadent summer holiday.
But it was never designed to be a military fortification, and there was no way it could ever seriously serve as one.
As a Ducal property, none of the neighboring lords would dare start a private war with Vorone. Therefore there was never a compelling reason to build large-scale fortifications, and as a result the town had just a large wooden palisade around the perimeter of the business and temple districts and a stout-looking, un-crenelated stone wall around the Ducal palace district. There are guards, but they’re there to keep out thieves and assassins, not goblin hordes. There was an army camp at the north end of town large enough for three companies, but the camp was more defensible than the town was. If Lenguin persisted in his inaction, then this whole pretty place would become a pleasure palace . . . for goblins.
So it was with a heavy heart that I rode at the head of fifty men of Rogo Redshaft’s company, along with Hamlan and the minstrel, Jannik. Because I could see why Lenguin didn’t want to leave this pleasure palace. It was a thing of architectural beauty crafted to complement its beautiful natural surroundings. It’s gorgeous, and leaving it to go off to war had to seem like the stupidest thing in the world.
But it had to be done, and for three days Mavone and Isily had tried their mightiest to influence the court to see it done. With no luck.
Mavone tried to explain it to me, telepathically, but the situation was just too complicated. Apparently compared to Alshar’s court, Castal’s was a model of staid decorum and civilized behavior. While the Duchess and the Nobles of Castal were locked in a low-key feud, the parties in contention at Vorone were literally at each others’ throats. Duels were not uncommon, assassination was commonplace, and treachery was practiced with gay abandon. The Rat Crew probably felt right at home.
So I decided that the best thing to do would be to go appeal to His Grace myself. Maybe it was a dumb move, but it was frustrating watching the troops at Tudry scramble to deploy and know that the rightful Defender of the Realm was sitting on his fat ass in a pleasure palace, watching (I’m not lying) the third jousting tournament in as many weeks . . . to determine just who would command his army.
I knew I was walking into a pit of snakes. I was prepared for that. Pentandra and I had been talking telepathically every night, going through strategies to get to the Duke, eliminate those forces who would pull him from his duty, and then convince him to do that duty. The Duke, you recall, who had a reputation for sudden fits of temper. The Duke who was guesting agents of the Censorate in his palace. The Duke who was generally antithetical toward magi in the best of times, and who was certainly not used to them running rampant through his realm, taking over towns in his name and actually winning battles that he wasn’t fighting.
If I could pull this off, it wouldn’t be magic. It would be a miracle.
Mavone and Isily had taken quarters at a crowded inn called the Blushing Mermaid. It was a pretty pathetic excuse for an inn for Vorone, which meant it was more that twice as nice as the inn I lived at in Tudry. Mavone had procured the last few rooms at great cost for me and my party, though the Nirodi archers had to bivouac in one of the freshly-harvested wheat fields near the river. The Nirodi didn’t mind – they had a chance to indulge themselves with the finest whores and wines in the northlands, while the rest of their company was scouting the dreary fields of the Timberwatch. They weren’t complaining.
Mavone met me at the stables of the inn when we arrived and escorted us quietly upstairs, where he had a meal laid out for us. He also had procured an invitation to the Palace the following morning.
“How did you do that?” I asked, surprised. I figured I’d have to stand in line and deal with some third castellan’s assistant before I even got in the door.
“I found out some very interesting information about the Nightcaptain of the Ducal Guards, for one thing,” Isily said, sweetly, as she buttered a roll. “That and some help from the Skyfather, and we were able to get you an audience with the Court Mage, Master Thinradel of Vladenar. He doesn’t know exactly who you are, yet, but he’s granted you an hour’s audience. And don’t ask how much it cost – Pentandra said the Order would cover it.”
“We will,” I agreed, immediately, and then was forced to wonder just how the Order had any money or how it would get any. Oh, well, there was still some gold left in the campaign chests. I thought.
“We think the two biggest players in the court are the ones who are now stalling Lenguin’s action,” Isily continued. “That would be the Duchess Enora, and Baron, Jenerard, Lord of the Coasts.”
“I thought the Lord Marshal, whatshisname, Count Marcandine, was the biggest player?” I asked, as I sank my teeth into a rabbit pie.
“He was,” Isily said. “Until you liberated Tudry. Which he publically praised you for in front of the whole court, and then begged His Grace to make a similarly bold move.”
“I never considered the proper defense of the realm a ‘bold move’,” I confessed. The wine was an exquisite compliment to the pie.
“Well, His Grace didn’t either – he called it the desperate and opportunistic tactics of a foreign-born usurper, improperly using His Grace’s authority.”
“Ouch. That doesn’t bode well. What about the Duchess?”
“She wants an end to all of this goblin silliness and head back south before it gets cold,” Isily answered, her voice dripping with contempt. “She’s a complete tyrant to her ladies-in-waiting and maids, and she thinks that she’s the only one with the sense to run the Duchy. When in actuality she doesn’t have the sense to run a brothel. Every time a courtier tries to encourage His Grace to deploy the troops, she comes up with some excuse why he shouldn’t, and he listens. The man has the spine of a floathog.”
“And that’s what she saw the Lord Marshal as doing, when he praised you, so she convinced the Duke that he insulted her, and the Duke sent him to ‘drill the troops’. Marcandine has been out at the camp ever
since, sulking.”
“What about Viscountess Threanas?” I asked, finishing off the pie. The crust wasn’t spectacular, but the baker knew his craft. “The Duke’s banker? How does she fit? Does she support an expedition, or does she want to head south?”
“She was in the Duchess’ party, for a while,” admitted Isily. “But then the reports started coming in from the occupied territories, and she started to get very alarmed by just how much of Alshar the Dead God swallowed up already. Then the landless Baron of Horane arrived with a small group of men-at-arms, survivors of that first big battle. He and Threanas were childhood friends or old lovers or something, I haven’t been able to find out exactly what yet, but she listened to him. After that, she was cautiously in the pro-campaign side. Which pissed off Her Grace, which is why Threanas has been sent south.”
“Damn,” I sighed. “Is there any other player we can count on for help?”
“There is Sir Daranal, the head of the Ducal Palace Guard,” reminded Mavone. “He is decidedly the head of the intelligence service, or at least the Duke’s liaison. Good man, I’ve spoken with him thrice. Sharp. He didn’t commit to anything – that could be the end of you in Vorone – but he did hint that he’d prefer to see the army go fight, instead of linger here getting drunk and fighting each other. He may have the Duke’s ear, but after what happened with Threanas and Marcandine, he’s being quite laconic about policy matters. He won’t act unless his boss or the Duke commands it. That doesn’t mean he’s stupid, just loyal. There are worse qualities in the head of the palace guard.”
“And what is the Lord Rat doing?”
“Acting like he’s the Duke,” grumbled Mavone. “The man is a lout, untidy and mean as a rat. But he’s as obsequious as . . . well, as a courtier. And as vicious as a goblin. He doesn’t want the Duke anywhere near a battlefield, nor the armies marching, because that would put him out of his influence when he’s trying to get the Duke to invest in a new fleet, because, and I quote, ‘Alshar can get along fine without the north – we did for a hundred and fifty years, after all.’
The Spellmonger Series: Book 02 - Warmage Page 51
