‘Well—’ The Emperor scratched one ear. ‘I don’t know, Morin. The situation out there isn’t too clear.’ He looked at his chamberlain. ‘Are you acquainted with General Varana?’
‘The Duke of Anadile? Of course, your Majesty. A thoroughly professional sort of fellow – solid, unassuming, extremely intelligent.’
‘He’s an old friend of the family,’ Ran Borune confided. ‘Ce’Nedra knows him and she would listen to his advice. Why don’t you go to him, Morin, and suggest that he might want to take a leave of absence – perhaps go to Algaria and have a look at things?’
‘I’m certain that he’d be overjoyed at the idea of a vacation,’ Lord Morin agreed. ‘Garrison life in the summertime can be very tedious.’
‘It’s just a suggestion,’ the Emperor stressed. ‘His presence in the war zone would have to be strictly unofficial.’
‘Naturally, your Majesty.’
‘And if he just happened to make a few suggestions – or even provide a bit of leadership, we certainly wouldn’t have any knowledge of it, would we? After all, what a private citizen does with his own time is his business, right?’
‘Absolutely, your Majesty.’
The Emperor grinned broadly. ‘And we’ll all stick to that story, won’t we, Morin?’
‘Like glue, your Majesty,’ Morin replied gravely.
The crown prince of Drasnia burped noisily in his mother’s ear, sighed, and promptly fell asleep on her shoulder. Queen Porenn smiled at him, tucked him back in his cradle, and turned again to the stringy-appearing man in nondescript clothing who sprawled in a nearby chair. The emaciated man was known only by the peculiar name ‘Javelin.’ Javelin was the chief of the Drasnian intelligence service and one of Porenn’s closest advisers.
‘Anyway,’ he continued his report, ‘the Tolnedran girl’s army is about two days’ march from the Stronghold. The engineers are moving along ahead of schedule with the hoists on top of the escarpment, and the Chereks are preparing to begin the portage from the east bank of the Aldur.’
‘Everything seems to be going according to plan, then,’ the queen said, resuming her seat at the polished table near the window.
‘There’s a bit of trouble in Arendia,’ Javelin noted. ‘The usual ambushes and bickerings – nothing really serious. Queen Layla’s got the Tolnedran, Bravor, so completely off-balance that he might as well not even be in Sendaria.’ He scratched at his long, pointed jaw. ‘There’s peculiar information coming out of Sthiss Tor. The Murgos are trying to negotiate something, but their emissaries keep dying. We’ll try to get somebody closer to Sadi to find out exactly what’s going on. Let’s see – what else? Oh, the Honeths have finally united behind one candidate – a pompous, arrogant jackass who’s offended just about everybody in Tol Honeth. They’ll try to buy the crown for him, but he’d be hopelessly incompetent as emperor. Even with all their money, it’s going to be difficult for them to put him on the throne. I guess that’s about all, your Highness.’
‘I’ve had a letter from Islena in Val Alorn,’ Queen Porenn told him.
‘Yes, your Highness,’ Javelin replied urbanely, ‘I know.’
‘Javelin, have you been reading my mail again?’ she demanded with a sudden flash of irritation.
‘Just trying to stay current with what’s going on in the world, Porenn.’
‘I’ve told you to stop that.’
‘You didn’t really expect me to do it, did you?’ He seemed actually surprised.
She laughed. ‘You’re impossible.’
‘Of course I am. I’m supposed to be.’
‘Can we get any help to Islena?’
‘I’ll put some people on it,’ he assured her. ‘We can probably work through Merel, the wife of the Earl of Trellheim. She’s starting to show some signs of maturity and she’s close to Islena.’
‘I think we’d better have a close look at our own intelligence service, too,’ Porenn suggested. ‘Let’s pin down everyone who might have any connections with the Bear-cult. The time might come when we’ll have to take steps.’
Javelin nodded his agreement.
There was a light tapping at the door.
‘Yes?’ Porenn answered.
The door opened and a servant thrust his head into the room. ‘Excuse me, your Highness,’ he said, ‘but there’s a Nadrak merchant here – a man named Yarblek. He says he wants to discuss the salmon run.’ The servant looked perplexed.
Queen Porenn straightened in her chair. ‘Send him in,’ she ordered, ‘at once.’
Chapter Nine
The speeches were over. The orations that had caused Princess Ce’Nedra such agony had done their work, and she found herself less and less in the center of things. At first the days opened before her full of glorious freedom. The dreadful anxiety that had filled her at the prospect of addressing vast crowds of men two or three times a day was gone now. Her nervous exhaustion disappeared, and she no longer awoke in the middle of the night trembling and terrified. For almost an entire week she reveled in it, luxuriated in it. Then, of course, she became dreadfully bored.
The army she had gathered in Arendia and northern Tolnedra moved like a great sea in the foothills of Ulgoland. The Mimbrate knights, their armor glittering in the bright sunlight and their long, streaming, many-colored pennons snapping in the breeze, moved at the forefront of the host, and behind them, spreading out across the rolling green hills, marched the solid mass of Ce’Nedra’s infantry, Sendars, Asturians, Rivans, and a few Chereks. And there, solidly in the center, forming the very core, marched the gleaming ranks of the legions of Imperial Tolnedra, their crimson standards aloft and the white plumes on their helmets waving in time to their measured steps. It was very stirring for the first few days to ride at the head of the enormous force, moving at her command toward the east, but the novelty of it all soon wore thin.
Princess Ce’Nedra’s gradual drift away from the center of command was largely her own fault. The decisions now had to do more often than not with logistics – tedious little details concerning bivouac areas and field-kitchens – and Ce’Nedra found discussions of such matters tiresome. Those details, however, dictated the snail’s pace of her army.
Quite suddenly, to everyone’s astonishment, King Fulrach of Sendaria became the absolute commander of the host. It was he who decided how far they would march each day, when they would rest and where they would set up each night’s encampment. His authority derived directly from the fact that the supply wagons were his. Quite early during the march down through northern Arendia, the dumpy-looking Sendarian monarch had taken one look at the rather sketchy plans the Alorn kings had drawn up for feeding the troops, had shaken his head in disapproval, and then had taken charge of that aspect of the campaign himself. Sendaria was a land of farms, and her storehouses bulged. Moreover, at certain seasons, every road and lane in Sendaria crawled with wagons. With an almost casual efficiency, King Fulrach issued a few orders, and soon whole caravans of heavily laden wagons moved down through Arendia to Tolnedra and then turned eastward to follow the army. The pace of the army was dictated by those creaking supply wagons.
They were only a few days into the Ulgo foothills when the full weight of King Fulrach’s authority became clear.
‘Fulrach,’ King Rhodar of Drasnia objected when the King of the Sendars called a halt for yet another rest period, ‘if we don’t move any faster than this, it will take us all summer to get to the eastern escarpment.’
‘You’re exaggerating, Rhodar,’ King Fulrach replied mildly. ‘We’re making pretty good time. The supply wagons are heavy, and the wagon horses have to be rested every hour.’
‘This is impossible,’ Rhodar declared. ‘I’m going to pick up the pace.’
‘That’s up to you, of course.’ The brown-bearded Sendar shrugged, coolly eyeing Rhodar’s vast paunch. ‘But if you exhaust my wagon horses today, you won’t eat tomorrow.’
And that ended that.
The going in the steep passes of Ulgoland was e
ven slower. Ce’Nedra entered that land of thick forests and rocky crags with apprehension. She vividly remembered the flight with Grul the Eldrak and the attacks of the Algroths and the Hrulgin that had so terrified her that previous winter. There were few meetings with the monsters that lurked in the Ulgo mountains, however. The army was so large that even the fiercest creatures avoided it. Mandorallen, the Baron of Vo Mandor, rather regretfully reported only brief sightings.
‘Mayhap if I were to ride a day’s march in advance of our main force, I might find opportunity to engage some of the more frolicsome beasts,’ he mused aloud one evening, staring thoughtfully into the fire.
‘You never get enough, do you?’ Barak asked him pointedly.
‘Never mind, Mandorallen,’ Polgara told the great knight. ‘The creatures aren’t hurting us, and the Gorim of Ulgo would be happier if we didn’t bother them.’
Mandorallen sighed.
‘Is he always like that?’ King Anheg asked Barak curiously.
‘You have absolutely no idea,’ Barak replied.
The slow march through Ulgoland, regardless of how much it chafed Rhodar, Brand, and Anheg, did, however, conserve the strength of the army, and they came down onto the plains of Algaria in surprisingly good shape.
‘We’ll go on to the Algarian Stronghold,’ King Rhodar decided as the army poured down out of the last pass and fanned out across the rolling grasslands. ‘We need to regroup a bit, and I don’t see any point in moving to the base of the escarpment until the engineers are ready for us. Besides, I’d prefer not to announce the size of our army to any Thull who happens to glance down from the top of the cliff.’
And so, in easy stages, the army marched across Algaria, trampling a mile-wide swath through the tall grass. Vast herds of cattle paused briefly in their grazing to watch with mild-eyed astonishment as the horde marched by, then returned to their feeding under the protective watch of mounted Algar clansmen.
The encampment that was set up around the towering Stronghold in south central Algaria stretched for miles, and the watch fires at night seemed almost a reflection of the stars. Once she was comfortably quartered in the Stronghold, Princess Ce’Nedra found herself even more removed from the day-to-day command of her troops. Her hours seemed filled with tedium. This is not to say that she did not receive reports. A rigorous schedule of training was instituted, in part because large portions of the army were not professional soldiers, but primarily to avoid the idleness that led to discipline problems. Each morning, Colonel Brendig, the sober-faced Sendarian baronet who seemed utterly devoid of humor, reported the progress of the previous day’s training with excruciating thoroughness, along with all sorts of other tedious little details – most of which Ce’Nedra found extremely distasteful.
One morning after Brendig had respectfully withdrawn, Ce’Nedra finally exploded. ‘If he mentions the word “sanitation” one more time, I think I’ll scream,’ she declared to Adara and Polgara. The princess was pacing up and down, flinging her arms in the air in exasperation.
‘It is fairly important in an army of this size, Ce’Nedra,’ Adara calmly pointed out.
‘But does he have to talk about it all the time? It’s a disgusting subject.’
Polgara, who had been patiently teaching the little blond waif, Errand, how to lace up his boots, looked up, assessed Ce’Nedra’s mood in a single glance, and then made a suggestion. ‘Why don’t you young ladies take some horses and go for a ride? A bit of fresh air and exercise seems definitely to be in order.’
It took only a short while for them to find the blond Mimbrate girl, Ariana. They knew exactly where to look. It took a bit longer, however, to wrench her away from her rapt contemplation of Lelldorin of Wildantor. Lelldorin, with the aid of his cousin Torasin, was struggling to teach a group of Arendish serfs the basics of archery. Torasin, a fiery young Asturian patriot, had joined the army late. There had been, Ce’Nedra gathered, some unpleasantness between the two young men, but the prospect of war and glory had finally been too much for Torasin to resist. He had overtaken the army in the western foothills of Ulgoland, mounted on a horse half-dead from hard riding. His reconciliation with Lelldorin had been emotional, and now the two were closer than ever. Ariana, however, watched only Lelldorin. Her eyes glowed as she gazed at him with an adoration so totally mindless that it was frightening.
The three girls, dressed in soft leather Algar riding clothes, cantered out through the encampment in bright midmorning sunlight, followed inevitably by Olban, youngest son of the Rivan Warder, and a detachment of guards. Ce’Nedra did not know exactly what to make of Olban. Since a hidden Murgo had made an attempt on her life in the Arendish forest, the young Rivan had appointed himself the chief of her personal bodyguards, and absolutely nothing could move him to abandon that duty. For some reason, he seemed almost grateful for the opportunity to serve, and Ce’Nedra was glumly certain that only physical force could make him stop.
It was a warm, cloudless day, and the blue sky stretched over the incredible expanse of the Algarian plain, where tall grass bent before a vagrant breeze. Once they were out of sight of the encampment, Ce’Nedra’s spirits rose enormously. She rode the white horse King Cho-Hag had given her, a patient, even-tempered animal she had named Noble. Noble was probably not a good name for him, since he was a lazy horse. A great part of his placidity arose from the fact that his new owner was so tiny that she had virtually no weight. Moreover, in an excess of affection, Ce’Nedra babied him outrageously, slipping apples and bits of sweets to him whenever possible. As a result of his light exercise and rich diet, Noble was developing a noticeable portliness.
In the company of her two friends, and trailed by the watchful young Olban, the princess, mounted on her stout white horse, rode out across the grassland, exulting in the sense of freedom their ride brought to her.
They reined in at the base of a long, sloping hill to rest their mounts. Noble, puffing like a bellows, cast a reproachful look over his shoulder at his tiny mistress, but she heartlessly ignored his unspoken complaint. ‘It’s an absolutely wonderful day for a ride,’ she exclaimed enthusiastically.
Ariana sighed.
Ce’Nedra laughed at her. ‘Oh, come now, it’s not as if Lelldorin were going someplace, Ariana, and it’s good for men to miss us a little once in a while.’
Ariana smiled rather wanly, then sighed again.
‘Perhaps it’s not as good for us to miss them, however,’ Adara murmured without any trace of a smile.
‘What is that lovely fragrance?’ Ce’Nedra asked suddenly.
Adara lifted her porcelain face to sniff at the light breeze, then suddenly looked around as if trying to pinpoint their exact location. ‘Come with me,’ she said with an uncharacteristic note of command in her voice, and she led them around the base of the hill to the far side. About halfway up the grassy slope there was a patch of low, dark green bushes covered with pale lavender flowers. There had been that morning a hatch of blue butterflies, and the winged creatures hovered in an ecstatic cloud over the flowers. Without pausing, Adara pressed her mount up the slope and swung down from her saddle. There with a low cry she knelt almost reverently, gathering the bushes in her arms as if embracing them.
When Ce’Nedra drew closer, she was amazed to see tears welling up in her gentle friend’s gray eyes, although Adara was actually smiling. ‘Whatever is wrong, Adara?’ she asked.
‘They’re my flowers,’ Adara replied in a vibrant voice. ‘I didn’t realize that they’d grow and spread this way.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Garion created this flower last winter – just for me. There was only one – just one. I saw it come into existence right there in his hand. I’d forgotten it until just now. Look how far it’s spread in just one season.’
Ce’Nedra felt a sudden pang of jealousy. Garion had never created a flower for her. She bent and pulled one of the lavender blooms from a bush, tugging perhaps just a bit harder than necessary. �
�It’s lopsided,’ she sniffed, looking at the flower critically. Then she bit her lip, wishing she hadn’t said that.
Adara gave her a quick look of protest.
‘I’m only teasing, Adara,’ Ce’Nedra said quickly with a false little laugh. In spite of herself, still wanting to find something else wrong with the flower, she bent her face to the small, crooked blossom in her hand. Its fragrance seemed to erase all of her cares and to lift her spirits tremendously.
Ariana had also dismounted, and she too was breathing in the gentle odor of the flowers, although there was a slight frown on her face. ‘Might I gather some few of thy blossoms, Lady Adara?’ she inquired. ‘Methinks they have some strange property concealed within their blushing petals that may be of some interest to Lady Polgara – some healing agent too subtle for my limited familiarity with unguents and aromatic herbs to discern.’
Rather predictably, Ce’Nedra, having gone one way, suddenly reversed herself. ‘Marvelous!’ she exclaimed, clapping her hands with delight. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your flower turned out to be a great medicine, Adara? Some miraculous cure? We could call it “Adara’s rose,” and sick men would bless your name forever.’
‘It doesn’t exactly look like a rose, Ce’Nedra,’ Adara pointed out.
‘Nonsense,’ Ce’Nedra brushed the distinction aside. ‘I’m supposed to be a queen, after all, so if I say it’s a rose, then it’s a rose, and that’s that. We’ll take the flowers back to Lady Polgara at once.’ She turned back to her tubby horse, who was lazily regarding the flowers as if wondering whether or not to eat a few of them. ‘Come, Noble,’ the princess said to him with extravagant overstatement. ‘We’ll gallop back to the Stronghold.’
Noble winced visibly at the word ‘gallop.’
Polgara examined the flowers carefully, but, to the disappointment of the princess and her friends, she would not commit herself immediately concerning their medicinal value. A bit subdued, the little princess returned quietly to her quarters and her duties.
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