“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 Valdemarans. 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.”
Ancar stared at him, eyes wide, but now it was with an unholy glee, and he drank in the words as a religious zealot would drink in holy writ. Falconsbane mentally congratulated himself. Ancar had known that he was valuable for what he knew. Now the boy knew he was valuable for his intelligence as well.
“Morale is no question when dealing with controlled troops,” he added, “but it will be for the Valdemarans. And that is a weapon, as well. Think of how their hearts will quail, when they see the enemy continuing to come, grinding the bodies of their own dead beneath uncaring boots. Think of how they will falter and fail—and finally, flee.”
“Yes!” Ancar shouted, crashing his fist down on the table and making his mages jump nervously. “That is precisely what we should do!” He began drawing an invisible diagram on the table with his finger, but only about half his mages bent to follow it. That was the half that Falconsbane needed to keep an eye on, the ones that might, possibly, prove dangerous. “We keep the mages in the rear, where they can be protected by the entire army—and we throw the mage-controlled troops at the border! That is the perfect use of our resources! And when Selenay—”
“No, my lord,” Falconsbane interrupted, quickly. The boy was obsessed with the Valdemaran Queen, and now was not the time to permit him to fall into that trap. “Do not make the mistake that has haunted you in the past. Ignore the monarc
h, ignore your personal enemies. You will have time enough and leisure enough to work your will on them when you have conquered their kingdom. Land, my lord. Concentrate only on taking land. Capturing and holding large pieces of Valdemar itself. Nothing else.”
“This will require a great deal of energy,” Hulda interjected. From the expression on her face, thoughtful, and now a little alarmed, Falconsbane judged that she had finally been shaken out of her complacency. She was thinking fast, and did not want to be left out of this, with Falconsbane taking credit not only for breaking the barrier, but for coming up with a battle plan as well. “But it will grant us a great deal more energy to replace it!” She turned a brilliant smile on Ancar, but one that was as bloodthirsty as it was broad. “Think of all of the troops, both ours and theirs, dying, and in their deaths, supplying a great crimson stream of blood-magic! Sacrifices, by the hundreds, thousands! We will get back twice the power we expend to control the troops. This is a brilliant plan—”
She smiled brightly at Falconsbane, a smile poisoned with malicious hatred. Falconsbane only raised his eyebrow a trifle.
“—and it is one that, properly managed, will gain us more than we could possibly lose even at the worst case.” She settled back in her chair, serene in her confidence that she had at least added her own direction to the flood tide.
But Falconsbane was not yet done.
“In addition, my lord,” he continued, seeming to watch only Ancar, but keeping a stealthy eye on Hulda as well, “I would like to add something else for your contemplation. There is another consideration entirely. You have an envoy from the Eastern Emperor here at your court.”
Hulda sat bolt upright and fixed him with a hard stare. Ancar nodded cautiously. Obviously he did not see where this was going.
Falconsbane held on to his patience. If this had been a child of his, he’d have had the youngling whipped for stupidity a hundred times over by now.
“You need to give this man information to send his master. You need it to be information of a certain kind. You must show him that you are a powerful ruler. By displaying this kind of—initiative—I think you will give this envoy a great deal to think on. By showing that you know the best way to use your resources, I think you will impress him with your ability to take advantage of any opportunity you are given.” He narrowed his eyes a little, and pointed a finger at Ancar. “But most of all, by displaying a ruthless hand toward your own troops, you will prove to him and to his master that you are not to be trifled with.”
Ancar smiled broadly, and Hulda’s face had become an unreadable mask.
What Falconsbane had suspected, Hulda had just confirmed, although he doubted that Ancar realized this. Hulda was either an ally of the envoy, or a spy of the Emperor. Whether this was an arrangement of long standing or a recent development, it did not matter. The interests of Hulda and that of the Empire were the same, and Ancar was a fool not to have seen it.
This would give him another source of friction between the two of them. Things were looking up.
“You show another side of your powers that I had not expected, Mornelithe Falconsbane,” the King replied, unable to keep the glee out of his voice. “And your reasoning is sound. I should have added you to my councillors long ago.”
He looked at Hulda. She kept her face as smooth and expressionless as a statue.
“Very sound,” Ancar repeated, with emphasis.
He stood up, and looked down at all of them. No one disagreed this time.
“So be it,” he said. “We are agreed on a strategy. I will issue the orders immediately. Fedris, Bryon, Willem, you will go with the first contingent of troops to control them. More will follow. Do not risk yourselves, but make certain you drain every bit of blood-magic energy that comes from their deaths.”
He looked around the table once again, and his smile did not fade. Nor did Falconsbane’s.
“You may leave,” King Ancar said, and the smile he wore was the mirror of Falconsbane’s.
Chapter Twelve
“So this is the Heartstone?”
Elspeth sneezed; the dust still in the air even after the room had been cleaned was thick enough to make her eyes water. Even Firesong’s bondbird looked dusty—and not at all pleased about it. “Our little gift from V—ah—You Know.” She was a little uneasy about mentioning her ancestor. You never knew who might be listening.
“Indeed, and although I assume You Know made it, I truly have no idea how this one was made in the first place,” Firesong replied ruefully. He appeared to feel the same as she did about saying Vanyel’s name out loud. “I seem to be saying that a great deal lately.”
The firebird tipped its head sideways, giving him an odd look. He laughed a little, and Elspeth grinned a little, despite the undercurrent of unease she had felt since she got up this morning. “Well, now you have some idea of how much there is that you don’t know,” she told him, with mockery in her voice. “You can start feeling like the rest of us mortals. Trust me, you’ll get used to it.”
She turned her attention back to the large globe of crystal on the table in front of her, rubbing her nose to make it stop itching. It didn’t work, and she sneezed again.
This Heartstone did not look much like the one she had seen in k’Sheyna Vale. That had been a tall, tooth-shaped piece of rough stone set in the center of an open glade, alive with power, but with a cracked and crazed surface and a definite feeling of wrongness about it. Not a neatly spherical piece of crystal the size of her head, swirled with hints of color, sitting in the middle of a stone table.
In fact, this room did not look much out of the ordinary at all. It was a direct copy of one on the ground floor of the Palace, one that was probably right above it, if Elspeth had reckoned her distances and angles right. Or maybe—no, probably, this room had to be much older—that room was a copy of this one. Why copy it? Perhaps to throw off enemies who were looking for it; this, if she had understood Vanyel correctly, was the physical link to the Web of power that bound all Heralds and all Companions together. Or perhaps the room had been copied because of the magic-prohibition; something like it was needed, but people kept “forgetting” this room existed. Certainly the servants had been surprised to discover a door behind the paintings stacked against it, despite the fact that the door was clearly visible in bright lantern light.
The room itself was not very large; just barely big enough for the round table in the middle and the padded benches around it. The table itself would seat four comfortably, and eight if they were very good friends. A single lantern suspended above the center of that table gave all the light that there was, and that wasn’t much; it had been designed to leave the room in a state of twilight, even when the wick was set at its brightest. And in the middle of the table, a globe of pure crystal sat in isolated splendor. Just exactly the same as the room upstairs.
But that was where the similarities with the other room ended. That one was used often for FarSeers, when they needed to exercise their Gift in an atmosphere of undisturbed quiet so that they could concentrate. The crystal globe in the center of the table was used to help them focus that concentration, and it could be picked up and moved, although with difficulty. The globe was very heavy, and the center of the table had a depression carved into it so that the globe could not be moved by accident. That sphere of crystal was disturbed often enough that there were a few chips in it, from times when it had rolled off the table and fallen onto the floor. When there were too many chips, someone would take it to one of the jewelers to have it polished smooth again.
The table here was stone, not wood, as were the benches. A lot of the dust had come from cushions that had disintegrated, cushions that Firesong had already replaced. It would take an earthquake that leveled Haven to get this globe of crystal to move, and Elspeth was not certain even that would do it. The globe was fused somehow into the stone surface of the table, and the stone pillar supporting the table fused with the stone of the floor.
Fireson
g assured her that the stone of the floor at that point was fused with the very bedrock the Palace rested on. This arrangement was quite literally a single piece of rock now, and even if the Palace was demolished, that pillar of stone would probably still stand.
No, she decided, it would take more than a mere earthquake or human clumsiness to move this crystal stone!
“No one in my knowledge has ever created a Heartstone like this one,” Firesong told her. “Normally, we simply choose an appropriate outcropping in our Vales—one that goes down to bedrock—and make it into the Heartstone. I don’t know of anyone who has ever fused several disparate pieces of stone with the bedrock.” The firebird jumped off his shoulder to the table, and stalked over to the crystal globe to examine it with immense dignity from all sides. It even pecked the surface once or twice, but Elspeth did not for a moment assume it was being “birdlike.” A bird’s eyes saw the world very differently than a human’s, and it was entirely possible that Firesong’s bondbird was examining the crystal for his bondmate.
The stone itself glowed, very faintly, even to normal sight. The servants had seen that, and commented about it, as they were lighting the lamp. Interestingly, the glow didn’t alarm them as Elspeth had assumed it would. There was something very welcoming about this room, very comfortable. One immediately felt at ease, calm, and ready to work.
The visible glow was dim, but to anyone with Mage-Sight, the stone pulsed with power, brightening and dimming with a steady rhythm that Elspeth could only liken to a heartbeat, though one much slower than any human’s. Little chasings of sparkles danced across it from time to time.
The other way this room differed was not only in age, but in feeling. Aside from the atmosphere of welcome, there was also an atmosphere of detachment and isolation. Outside sounds were muffled in the room above this one, so that the ringing of the Collegium bells could only be heard faintly. In this chamber, they could not be heard at all. Once the door closed, the Palace seemed to fall away, and as she stood here, the very silence took on a presence, as if every other human being was hundreds of leagues away.
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