Jim looked around. ‘Another drink?’
No one objected, so the servants filled their goblets, and they partook of a particularly good wine, but the mood in the room could hardly be called festive.
Jim waved for the servants to depart. When they had gone, he said, ‘Ty knows what I’m about to share with you three.’ He glanced from face to face. ‘I am a loyal servant of the Crown, but I also work with the Conclave of Shadows, and you’d never heard of them until Ruffio told you of them for a reason. What I know, what I’m telling you, is because my loyalty, and yours at the moment, must extend beyond the borders of our nation. I tell you this because I trust the woman in charge of Roldem’s intelligence apparatus more at this moment than half the nobles in our Congress of Lords. I trust a few Keshians as well. But mostly I trust the dedication of the Conclave to the preservation of our entire world.
‘The recent conflict with Kesh was pointless.’
Martin seemed to be on the verge of speaking, but thought better of it.
‘It’s easy to get caught up in events without considering real causes. Kesh and the Kingdom had been at peace for a very long time, since a misguided adventure when they sought to take control of Krondor after the invasion of the Emerald Queen’s army. Since then there’s been the usual poking around in the Vale of Dreams and the occasional ship battle when one captain got a little too ambitious. But today we have half the Keshian army spread out along the Far Coast and mustered along their northern border to protect against a Kingdom retaliation; the Kingdom army either here on Rillanon protecting this very palace, or in Salador, or mustered in the Fields of Albalyn; most of the Kingdom fleet surrounding this island; the Keshian fleet at the bottom of the ocean; and Roldem’s fleet in a defensive position around their island. What do you think that means?’
Martin said, ‘That we went through a pointless exercise?’
Jim nodded. ‘Yes. What else?’
It was Brendan who answered. ‘No one is where they’re supposed to be.’
‘Exactly.’
Hal said, ‘So if another threat materializes, no one is in the correct position to deal with it.’
Martin calculated, then said, ‘The West.’
Jim nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘I need to get back to Crydee!’ said Hal.
‘No,’ said Jim. ‘You need to stay here until my grandfather tells you to go somewhere else. Most likely to Prince Edward.’ He looked at Martin and Brendan. ‘You must return to Ylith and explain to the Keshian commander that he’s in the way and you need to go poking around. My intelligence tells me you’ve got a reasonable chance to have him agree for the right bribe – he is Keshian, after all, as long as you only go with a small patrol. If he doesn’t, you need to find a clever way to get around his objections without starting another war out there. Sneaking past his line should prove little trouble to a couple of bright lads like you.
‘But you need to get into the Far Coast, north of the garrisons at Carse and Tulan, so my best guess is somewhere near the taredhel and that city they’re building, perhaps near the dwarves.’
‘Who?’ asked Brendan. ‘Besides Keshian Dog Soldiers and elves and dwarves, who would be there?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Jim. ‘That’s what I need your brother and you to find out.’
The brothers spent a long night with Jim Dasher discussing as much of the political situation with Great Kesh as could be extrapolated from what Martin and Brendan had seen during the defence of the city and after. They matched what they had seen with reports from the West that had reached the king’s court, which in this case meant Jim Dasher’s personal attention.
The long and short of it was that it was a mess. Kesh had withdrawn to the ancient borders of Bosania, so a few miles of road to the west of the City of Ylith were open to the crest of the foothills of the Grey Towers Mountains, as well as the southwest highway, leading to the Free Cities which were still currently occupied by Kesh.
By the time they were finished examining all their options and what needed to be done, the sun was rising in the east. Martin was convinced Jim Dasher was perhaps the cleverest man he had ever met, or at least the most cunning. And Martin was also convinced that Jim was correct: the entire war with Kesh and the plot behind it was designed to put both the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh at a military disadvantage in the Far West.
No military action of any kind could quickly be mounted should a threat arise in the Duchy of Crydee or the Free Cities, or the Grey Towers Mountains. It might take days, or even weeks, for news of any outbreak of trouble in the west to reach Prince Edward on the Fields of Albalyn, and if he instantly dispatched some of the western lords’ commands to answer, it would be weeks before they reached any site of trouble. And that was dependent on being able to spare men with the possibility of a military confrontation with Prince Oliver looming. By sunrise, Jim and the brothers were convinced the Far Coast and the Western Realm were as defenceless as a day-old kitten.
Martin was a student of history and it didn’t take him more than an hour of looking at suggested Keshian deployment in the Far Coast and Free Cities to come to the same conclusion as Jim. The safest location from any counterattacks from the combined armies of the Kingdom of the Isles and the Empire of Great Kesh that wasn’t on the bottom of some ocean or one of the moons, was in the centre of the Grey Towers Mountains; very close to the site of the original Tsurani rift into Midkemia.
As the cock crowed in the distance, the three looked at the now-empty carafe of coffee and wordlessly exchanged the shared opinion that they had reached a conclusion. ‘The Grey Towers,’ said Martin. ‘Neither Kesh nor the Kingdom nor the Free Cities can answer the kind of threat the Tsurani posed when they arrived …’
‘Where the Star Elves are building their city,’ continued Brendan.
Jim rose. ‘Well, the sun’s up and we’ve beaten this topic to death. It’s time to move and I think we’d best be getting on with it. It’s still before dawn in Krondor so you—’ he indicated Martin and Brendan, ‘—can still be leaving there at sunrise, once we get you there.’ To Hal he said, ‘You need some rest. You’re going to have to withstand a lot of charm, guile, and bald-faced lies before we’re done, but I’ll be at your side most of the time and your best course of action is to nod and say you’ll consider what’s been suggested. Edward’s enemies are not all on the field under arms. There are a lot of poisoned tongues still in the palace.’
Hal embraced his brothers and bade them a safe journey.
Jim took Martin and Brendan with him through a palace that was never truly asleep, as servants scurried to ensure that every resident’s needs were met before dawn.
Reaching Jim’s personal quarters, they entered a tidy office adjacent to his sleeping room and he quickly set about penning a travel document. He signed it with a flourish, poured wax and applied a seal to it.
‘Isn’t that the duke’s signet?’ asked Brendan.
‘It’s a twin,’ said Jim. ‘My grandfather gave it to me to reduce his own need to sign things; he finds it annoying.’
‘And did you just sign his name?’ said Martin.
‘Of course,’ said Jim as if this was quite normal. ‘Wait here.’
A short time later, he returned with a woman of middle years, with greying dark hair, and a no-nonsense demeanour. ‘This is Gretchen. She will take you where you need to go.’
Before Martin or Brendan could speak, Gretchen reached out and seized their wrists and suddenly they were in a different room. ‘Krondor,’ she said, and vanished.
Apparently the comings and goings of magicians in what was revealed as Jim Dasher’s private suite in Krondor were commonplace enough that the palace guards did not react when two men unexpectedly walked out of a room that had been empty only moments before.
The brothers had been in Krondor only twice before: a leisurely visit to Prince Edward’s court when Martin had been small (Brendan had still been a baby), and
their hurried visit on the way to Rillanon just weeks before.
‘What now?’ said Brendan.
Martin shrugged. ‘Find someone in charge, I suppose.’
It took the better part of an hour to find the acting city commander, a man named Falston Jennings, hastily elevated from the rank of prince’s squire to baronet of the court, so that he could lawfully be considered a noble. He was obviously in over his head and anxious to see if what he said made sense to the brothers from Crydee, especially as they had introduced themselves as ‘Princes Martin and Brendan, the late king’s cousins’.
They had endured Jennings’s near-babbling conversation over as informal a break fast meal as the palace had likely seen in a century, for many of the key servants had travelled east with Prince Edward, attending his baggage-train and pavilion to ensure his comfort on the journey to Rillanon.
Martin left that meal with a jumble of facts he could barely make sense of, let alone organize into coherent intelligence. Brendan had been amused by the entire course of events, but of the three brothers he was the one most easily amused.
From what they could get from Jennings’s ramble, Kesh had withdrawn her ships to a point behind an imaginary line extending from a point halfway between Land’s End and Durbin in the south to the border between the Free Cities and the Kingdom, in the north. Kingdom ships were given free passage up to Sarth, but no captain dared sail farther north as the island kingdom of Queg had declared a state of emergency – a pretext for them to board and seize any ship that sailed ‘too close’ to their imagined ‘sphere of influence’, which at the moment meant from their beach to ankle-deep water on the Kingdom shore north of Sarth.
The Free Cities were essentially Keshian garrisons at the moment, and no ship had arrived from there since the truce had been declared. Also, no Free Cities ship in Krondor or Port Vykor was willing to attempt a run home, as their captains had no idea what to expect from their new masters. In sum, three fleets choked the waterways of the Bitter Sea, all ready for a fight at a moment’s notice, so Martin’s only recourse had been horseback.
After their hasty meal, Jennings led Martin and Brendan to the marshalling yard, where a patrol of Krondorian regulars waited. ‘Sergeant Oaks,’ said Jennings, ‘this is Prince Martin, the late king’s cousin.’
Oaks nodded a greeting and then Martin said, ‘My brother Brendan.’
‘Highness,’ said Oaks in greeting.
‘I think it better to have some proven soldiers rather than a pretty palace guard,’ said Jennings. ‘Sergeant, the princes need an escort to Ylith. Please see they arrive there without difficulties.’ He beat a hasty retreat, obviously relieved to see the brothers depart.
‘Without difficulties?’ said Oaks in neutral tones.
‘I think he means alive,’ said Brendan with a grin.
Oaks returned the smile. ‘We’ll do our best, Highness.’ He turned to his company of riders and shouted, ‘Mount up!’
The twenty soldiers of Oaks’s patrol mounted in orderly fashion, obviously a battle-trained company.
‘Well,’ said Brendan. ‘At least we don’t have to walk.’
‘There is that,’ said Martin. He signalled for the sergeant to lead the company out of the palace yard in Krondor and toward the northern gate, which would put them on the King’s Highway to Ylith.
• CHAPTER THREE •
Journey I
PUG TUMBLED ACROSS THE GROUND.
Quickly coming to his feet, he stood ready to answer any threat that might be awaiting him. The passage through the vortex had been a new experience, something that was almost welcome, given his age.
It had been like sliding through a tunnel that was slippery but not wet, with cascading lights and colours on all sides. He had been neither warm nor cold. If anything, there had been an absence of tactile sensation. Time also seemed suspended, so he couldn’t judge if he had been moving through the vortex for seconds, minutes, or hours.
He shook his head to clear it and glanced around. He was in what appeared to be an alpine forest, at the edge of a meadow. Above him, the sides of a mountain reared up, so he judged he was at the highest point of foothills he would likely traverse without magic. Looking beyond the meadow, he made out a range of mountains receding away. He glanced at the position of the sun in the sky and judged that was south.
He attempted a minor spell to see what conditions he would encounter and discovered the energy state was still not quite what he would expect as ‘normal’ on Midkemia. He was somewhere else and apparently alone. He closed his eyes and attempted to reach out to the demon Child, in her Miranda form, and Magnus, as he had always been able to contact his wife and son that way.
Silence.
He waited in case they might be longer in reaching this planet than he had been. Nothing occurred for long moments until Pug was certain within himself he was alone, his companions elsewhere, perhaps even on different worlds.
He took a deep breath, gauged the downhill slope and began walking.
He made his way slowly down to the floor of the meadow. By any measure this was one of the most peaceful and lovely spots he had visited in a very long time. The air was not quite still, a breath of something not quite a breeze stirred the leaves in the trees and birds called out infrequently. A distant crack, perhaps a tree branch falling, was followed soon after by a bellowing challenge as some animal, perhaps something stag-like, demanded others honour his territory.
Pug took a deep breath. A hint of fragrance told him that flowers were blooming. Wherever he was, it was surely spring.
He chose not to use his magic to transport himself to the other side of the meadow, preferring to wring whatever peace he could from this moment. He knew that conflict was only a matter of time and this tiny bit of tranquillity might be his last.
As he walked across the meadow, he saw a tiny tendril of smoke rising from the trees below. Reaching the edge of the meadow, he found a steep downslope leading to a flatter terrain a hundred feet down. What looked like a game trail presented itself nearby and he followed that down to what looked to be an old cart path. He followed that in the general direction of the smoke until another, smaller clearing appeared, and when he saw the source of the smoke he stopped.
The cottage was identical to the one his mentor, Kulgan, occupied in the woods near Castle Crydee, when he wanted to be alone to contemplate, study, or just enjoy a little solitude with his companion Meecham.
Pug found strong emotions rising, for he was certain that this was another accommodation to his senses, that the structure he observed was somewhat like the cottage he remembered, and that these woods were somewhat like the Green Heart and Forest of Crydee, but that his mind was allowed to manipulate them a little to put him more at ease.
Part of Pug’s mind was captivated by the subtle, nuanced quality to this type of magic, and again he realized that the magic of conjuration and illusion were two areas of magic he had always intended to study more, but never seemed to find the time for it.
He closed his eyes for a moment, used an old calming of the mind exercise he’d learned as a Tsurani Great One, used his skills to dispel illusions, then opened his eyes.
Nothing had changed.
He chuckled. Apparently the mind wants what it wants; no matter how much you think you’re controlling it, it’s controlling you. He knew he’d put that in a lesson to young magicians some years before, but had thought he was beyond that. He reminded himself ruefully of the last time he had blindly assumed he knew what he was doing, when he had attacked the demon Jakan and almost died as a result.
That memory triggered the one following, where he had been forced to make a choice by Lims-Kragma, the Goddess of Death, that he would suffer through the deaths of everyone he loved as a price for returning to the land of the living and ending the threat from the Emerald Queen’s invading army.
His mood no longer lifted by the pastoral beauty around him, he gave in to a moment of pique and willed himself
to the threshold of the cottage. Raising his hand, he knocked three times.
A familiar voice he had not heard in ages, but recognized instantly said, ‘Come in.’
Pug could hardly believe his senses as he pushed open the door and immediately recognized the pungent aroma of tabac, a particular blend of mountain-grown aromatic from the foothills of Kesh. A portly figure in a grey homespun robe sat before a table upon which rested an open book. Blue eyes seemed to twinkle above a thick grey beard. ‘Well, you haven’t changed much in all these years, have you, Pug?’
‘Kulgan,’ Pug whispered. Something told him this was no magic likeness before him, no creature of the mind fashioned to resemble someone he trusted, but somehow his old teacher, dead for more than a century, returned to this little cottage in the woods which so resembled where they had first met.
Emotions long absent rushed up within Pug and his eyes welled up. A lifetime of the impossible had not prepared him for this, seeing again his first master, the man who had taken an orphaned kitchen boy and begun the education which had evolved Pug into the most powerful practitioner of magic on two worlds.
Smiling, the old man rose and indicated a pot of water on an iron hook overhanging the fireplace. ‘Fetch that while I get us some tea.’ As he moved away, he added, ‘We have a great deal to discuss, my old friend, and I’m sorry to say, little time in which to discuss it.’
Pug stood rooted for a moment as he struggled with the urge to rush and embrace his boyhood teacher, or start asking questions. Then he smiled, nodded, and just did as he had been asked.
Kulgan chuckled as he put the tea to steep. ‘I take it you are as surprised as I am,’ he began, glancing over his shoulder at his former pupil.
‘A great deal has occurred since …’
‘I died,’ supplied Kulgan. ‘Yes, exactly how long has it been?’
‘Over a century,’ said Pug.
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