Chapter 4
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ESC HIS FATHERS BIER OUT THE EASTERN GATE IN THE hour before suomasso bar Satled his horse to an easy walk and allowed his mind to drift for the first time in forty-eight intensely stressful hours.The road was quiet. Normally it would have been clogged at this hour with people returning to the distrada before curfew locked the city gates. Normally sundown cleared the streets of Astibar of all save the patrolling Barbadian meraries and those reckless enough to defy them in search of women or wine or other diversions of the dark.
This was not a normal time, however. Tonight and for the wo nights there would be no curfew in Astibar. With the grapes gathered and the distradas harvest a triumphant ohe Festival of Vines would see singing and dang and things wilder than those ireets for all three nights. For these three nights in the year Astibar tried to pretend it was sensuous, det Senzio. No Duke in the old days—and not even dour Alberiow—had been foolish enough to rouse the people unnecessarily by denying them this a release from the sober round of the year.
Tomasso glanced back at his city. The setting sun was red among thin clouds behind the temple- domes and the towers, bathing Astibar in an eerily beautiful glow. A breeze had e up and there was a bite to it. Tomasso thought about putting on his gloves and decided against it: he would have had to remove some of his rings and he quite liked the look of his gems in this elusive, transitory light. Autumn was very definitely upon them, with the Ember Days approag fast. It would not be long, a matter of days, before the first frost touched those last few precious grapes that had bee on chosen vio bee—if all fell rightly—the icy clear blue wihat was the pride of Astibar.
Behind him the eight servants plodded stolidly along the road, bearing the bier and the simple coffin—bare wood save for the Ducal crest above—of Tomassos father. Oher side of them the two vigil-keepers rode in grim silence. Which was not surprising, giveure of their errand and the plex, many-geioned hatreds that twisted between those two men.
Those three men, Tomasso corrected himself. It was three, if one chose to t the dead man who had so carefully planned all of this, down to the detail of who should ride on which side of his bier, who before and who behind. Not to mentioher more surprisiail of exactly which two lords of the province of Astibar should be asked to be his escorts to the hunting lodge for the night-long vigil and from there to the Sandreni Crypt at dawn. Or, to>.</a> put the matter rather more to the point, the real point: which two lords could and should be entrusted with what they were to learn during the vigil in the forest that night.
At that thought Tomasso felt a nudge of apprehension within his rib cage. He quelled it, as he had taught himself to do over the years— unbelievable how many years—of discussing such matters with his father.
But now Sandre was dead and he was ag alone, and the night they had labored towards was almost upon them with this crimson waning of light. Tomasso, two years past his fortieth naming day khat were he not careful he could easily feel like a child again.
The twelve-year-old child he had been, for example, when Sandre, Duke of Astibar, had found him naked iraw of the stables with the sixteen-year-old son of the chief groom.
His lover had beeed of course, though discreetly, to keep the matter quiet. Tomasso had been whipped by his father for three days running, the lash meticulously redisc the closing wounds each m. His mother had been forbidden to e to him. No one had e to him.
One of his fathers very few mistakes, Tomasso reflected, thinking back thirty years in autumn twilight. From those three days he knew he could date his own particular taste for the whip in love- making. It was one of what he liked to call his felicities.
Though Sandre had never punished him that way again. Nor in any other direct manner. When it became clear—past the point of nursing any hope of discretion that Tomassos preferences were, to put it mildly, not going to be ged or subdued, the Duke simply ceased to aowledge the existence of his middle son.
For more than ten years they went on that way, Saiently trying to train Gianno to succeed him, and spending scarcely less time with young Taeri—making it clear to everyohat his you son was in lio his eldest. For over a decade Tomasso simply did within the walls of the Sandreni Palace.
Though he most certainly did elsewhere in Astibar and in a number of the other provinces as well.
For reasons that were agly clear to him now, Tomasso had set out through the course of those years to eclipse the memories of all the dissolute nobility that Astibar still told shocked tales about, even though some of them had been dead four hundred years.
He supposed that he had, to a certain degree, succeeded.
Certainly the "raid" oemple of Morian that Ember Night in spring so long ago was likely to linger a while yet as the nadir or the paradigm (all came down—or up—to perspective, as hed been fond of saying then) of sacrilegious debauchery.
The raid hadnt had any impa his relationship with the Duke. There was ionship to impact upon ever sihat m iraw when Sandre had returned from his ride a destined hour too soon. He and his father simply trived not to speak to or even aowledge each other, whether at family dinners or formal state funs. If Tomasso learned somethihought Sandre should know— which was often enough, given the circles in which he moved and the iger of their times—he told his mother at one of their weekly breakfasts together and she made sure his father heard. Tomasso also knew she made equally sure Sandre was aware of the source of the tidings. Not that it mattered, really.
She had died, drinking poisoned wi for her husband, in the final year of the Dukes reign, still w, to the last m of her life, towards a reciliatioween Sandre and their middle child.
Greater romantics than were either the father or the son might have allowed themselves to think that, as the Sandreni family pulled tightly together in the bloody, retaliatory aftermath of that poisoning, she had achieved her wistful hope by dying.
Both me was not so.
In fact, it was only the ing of Alberico from the Empire of Barbadior, with his will-sapping sorcery and the brutal efficy of his quering meraries, that brought Tomasso and Sao a certain very late-night talk during the Dukes sed year of exile. It was Albericos invasion and one further thing: the moal, irredeemable, inescapable stupidity of Gianno dAstibar bar Saitular heir to the shattered fortunes of their family.
And to these two things there had slowly been added a third bitter truth for the proud, exiled Duke. It had gradually beore and more obvious, past all denial, that whatever of his own character and gifts had been maed in the geion, whatever of his subtlety and perception, his ability to cloak his thoughts and dis the minds of others, whatever of such skills he had passed on to his sons, had gone, all of it, to the middle child. To Tomasso.
Who liked boys, and would leave no heir himself, nor ever a o be spoke aloh pride, in Astibar or anywhere else in the Palm.
In the deepest inlace where he performed the plex act of dealing with his feelings for his father, Tomasso had always aowledged—even back then, and very certainly now on this last evening road Sandre would travel—that one of the truest measures of the Dukes stature as a ruler of men had emerged on that winter night so long ago. The night he broke a decades stony silend spoke to his
middle son and made him his fidant.
His sole fidant in the painfully cautious eighteen-year quest to drive Alberid his sorcery and his meraries from Astibar and the Eastern Palm. A quest that had bee an obsession for both of them, even as Tomassos publiner became more and more etrid decayed, his void gait a parody—a self-parody, in fact— of the ming, lisping lover of boys.
It lanned, all of it, in late-night talks with his father on their estate outside the city walls.
Sandres parallel role had been to settle visibly and loudly into impotent, brooding, Triad-cursing exile, marked by querulous, blustering hunts and too much drinking of his own wine.
Tomasso had never seen his father actually drunk, and he never used his own fluting voice when they were alo night.
Eight years ago they had tried an assassination. A chef, traceable only to the ziano family, had been placed in a try inn in Ferraut he provincial border with Astibar. For over half a year idle gossip in Astibar had touted that inn as a place of growing distin. No one remembered, afterwards, where the talk had begun: Tomasso knew very well how useful it was to plant casual rumors of this sort among his friends iemples. The priests of Morian, in particular, were legendary for their appetites.
All their appetites.
A full year from the time they had set things in motion, Alberico of Barbadior had halted on his way back from the Triad Games— exactly as Sandre had said he would—to take his midday meal at a well- reputed inn in Ferraut he Astibar border.
By the time the su down at the end of that bright late-summer day every person in that inn— servants, masters, stable-boys, chefs, children and patrons—had had their backs, legs, arms and wrists broken and their hands cut off, before being bound, living, upon hastily erected Barbadian sky-wheels to die.
The inn was razed to the ground. Taxes in the province of Ferraut were doubled for the wo years, and for a year in Astibar, Tregea aando. During the course of the following six months every living member of the ziano family was found, seized, publicly tortured and burned in the Grand Square of Astibar with their severed hands stuffed in their mouths so that the screaming might not trouble Alberico or his advisers in their offices of state above the square.
In this fashion had Sandre and Tomasso discovered that sorcerers ot, in fact, be poisoned.
For the six years they had dohing but talk at night in the manor-house among the vineyards and gather what knowledge they could of Alberiself as to the east in Barbadior, where the Emperor was said to be growing older and more infirm with each passing year.
Tomasso began issioning and colleg walking sticks with heads carved in the shape of the male ans of sex. It was rumored that hed had some of his young friends model for the carvers. Sandre hunted. Gianno, the heir, solidated a burgeoniation as a genial, unplicated seducer of women and breeder of childreimate and illegitimate. The younger Sandreni were allowed to maintain modest homes iy as part of Albericos overall policy to be as discreet a ruler as possible—except when danger or civil uhreatened him.
At which time children might die on sky-wheels. The Sandreni Pala Astibar remained very promily shuttered, empty and dusty. A useful, potent symbol of the fall of those who might resist the Tyrant. The superstitious claimed to see ghostly lights flickering there at night, especially on a blue-moon night, or on the spring or autumn Ember Nights when the dead were known to walk abroad.
Then one evening in the try Sandre had told Tomasso, without warning or preamble, that he proposed to die on the eve of the Festival of Viwo autumns hence. He proceeded to he two lords who were to be his vigil-keepers, and why. That same night he and Tomasso decided that it was time to tell Taeri, the you son, what was afoot. He was brave, not stupid, and might be necessary for certain things. They also agreed that Gianno had somehow sired one likely son, albeit illegitimate, and
that Herado—twenty-one by then and showing encing signs of spirit and ambition—was their best hope of having the younger geion share in the u Sandre hoped to create just after the time of his dying.
It wasnt, in fact, a question of who in the family could be trusted: family was, after all, family. The issue ould be useful and it was a mark of how dimihe Sandreni had bee that only two names came readily to mind.
It had been airely dispassionate versation, Tomasso remembered, leading his fathers bier southeast between the darkening trees that flahe path. Their versations had always been like that; this one had been no different. Afterwards though, he had been uo fall asleep, the date of the Festival two years away branded into his brain. The date when his father, so precise in his planning, so judicious, had decided he would die so as to give Tomasso a ce tain, a different way.
The date that had e now and gone, carrying with it the soul of Sandre dAstibar to wherever the souls of such me. Tomasso made a wardiure to avert evil at that thought. Behind him he heard the steward order the servants to light torches. It grew colder as the darkness fell. Overhead a thin band of high clouds was tinted a somber shade of purple by the last upward-angled rays of light. The sun itself was gone, down behind the trees. Tomasso thought of souls, his fathers and his own. He shivered.
The white moon, Vidomni, rose, and then, not long after, came blue Ilarion to chase her hopelessly across the sky. Both moons were nearly full. The procession could have dohout torches in fact, sht was the twinned moonlight, but torchlight suited the task and his mood, and so Tomasso let them burn as the pany cut off the road onto the familiar winding path through the Sandreni Woods, to e at length to the simple hunting lodge his father had loved.
The servants laid the bier orestles waiting in the ter of the large front room. dles were lit and the two fires built up at opposite ends of the room. Food, they had set up earlier that day. It was quickly uncovered on the long sideboard along with the wihe windows were opeo air the and admit the breeze.
At a nod from Tomasso the steward led the servants away. They would go on to the manor further east aurn at daybreak. At vigils end.
And so they were left alone, finally. Tomasso and the lords Nievole and Scalvaia, so carefully chosen two years before.
"Wine, my lords?" Tomasso asked. "We will have three others joining us very shortly.”
He said it, deliberately, in his natural voice, dropping the artificial, fluting tohat was his trademark in Astibar. He leased to see both of them he fact immediately, their glances sharpening as they turo him.
"Who else?" growled bearded Nievole who had hated Sandre all his life. He made no ent on Tomassos voior hid Scalvaia. Such questions gave too much away, and these were men long skilled in giving away very little indeed.
"My brother Taeri and nephew Herado—one of Giannos by-blows, and much the cleverest." He spoke casually, unc two bottles of Sandreni red reserve as he spoke. He poured and hahem each a glass, waiting to see who would break the small silence his father had said would follow. Scalvaia would ask, Sandre had said.
"Who is the third?" Lord Scalvaia asked softly.
Inwardly Tomasso saluted his dead father. Then, twirling his own glass gently by the stem to release the wines bouquet, he said, "I dont know. My father did not name him. He he two of you to e here, and the three of us and said there would be a sixth at our cil tonight.”
That word too had been carefully chosen.
"cil?" elegant Scalvaia echoed. "It appears that I have been misinformed. I was naively of the
impression that this was a vigil." Nievoles dark eyes glowered above his beard. Both men stared at Tomasso.
"A little more than that," said Taeri as he ehe room, Herado behind him.
Tomasso leased to see them both dressed with appropriate sobriety, and to hat, for all the suavely flippant timing of Taeris entrance, his expression rofoundly serious.
"You will know my brother," Tomasso murmured, moving to pour twlasses for the new arrivals. "You may not have met Herado, Giannos son.”
The boy bowed a silent, as roper. Tomasso carried the drinks over to h<samp>?</samp>is brother and nephew.
The stillness lasted a moment lohen Scalvaia sank down into a chair, stretg his bad leg out in front of him. He lifted his e and poi at Tomasso. The tip did not waver.
"I asked you a question," he said coldly, in the famous, beautiful voice. "Why do you call this a cil, Tomasso bar Sandre? Why have we been brought here under false pretenses?”
Tomasso stopped playing with his wihey had e to the moment at last. He looked from Scalvaia over to burly Nievole.
"The two of you," he said soberly, "were sidered by my father to be the last lords of any real power left in Astibar. Two winters past he decided—and informed me—that he inteo die on the eve of this Festival. At a time when Alberico would not be able to refuse him full rites of burial—which rites include a vigil such as this. At a time when you would both be in Astibar, which would allow me to name you his vigil-keepers.”
He paused in the measured, deliberate recitation a his glance linger on each of them. "My father did this so that we might e together without suspi, or interruption, or risk of beied, to set in motioain plans for the overthrow of Alberico who rules in Astibar.”
He was watg closely, but Sandre had chosen well. her of the two men to whom he spoke betrayed surprise or dismay by so much as a flicker of a muscle.
Slowly Scalvaia lowered his e and laid it down oable by his chair. The stick was of onyx and machial, Tomasso found himself notig. Strange how the mind worked at moments such as this.
"Do you know," said bluff Nievole from by the larger fire, "do you know that this thought had actually crossed my mind when I tried to hazard why your Triad-cursed father—ah, five me, old habits die hard—" His smile was wolfish, rather than apologetid it did not reach his narrowed eyes. "—Why Duke Sandre would name me to hold vigil for him. He must have known how many times I tried to hasten these m rites along in the days when he ruled.”
Tomasso smiled iurn, just as thinly. "He was certain you would wonder," he said politely to the man he was almost sure had paid for the cup of wihat had killed his mother. "He was also quite certain you would agree to e, being one of the last of a dying breed in Astibar. Indeed, in the whole of the Palm.”
Bearded Nievole raised his glass. "You flatter well, bar Sandre. And I must say I do prefer your voice as it is now, without all the dips and flutters and wristy things that normally go with it.”
Scalvaia looked amused. Taeri laughed aloud. Herado was carefully watchful. Tomasso liked him very much: though not, as hed had to assure his father in one diverting versation, in his own particular fashion.
"I prefer this voice as well," he said to the two lords. "You will both have been dedug in the last few minutes, being who and what you are, why I have ducted certain aspey life iain well-known ways. There are advao being seen as aimlessly degee.”
"There are," Scalvaia agreed blandly, "if you have a purpose that is served by such a misception.
You named a name a moment ago, and intimated we might all be rendered happier in our hearts were the
bearer of that name dead one. We will leave aside for the moment ossibilities might follow such a dramatic eventuality.”
His gaze was quite unreadable; Tomasso had been war would be. He said nothing. Taeri shifted uneasily but blessedly kept quiet, as instructed. He walked over and took one of the other chairs on the far side of the bier.
Scalvaia went on, "We ot be unaware that by saying what you have said you have put yourselves pletely in our hands, or so it might initially appear. At the same time, I do surmise that were we, in fact, to rise and begin to ride back towards Astibar carrying word of treachery we would join your father among the dead before we left these woods.”
It was casually stated—a minor fact to be firmed before moving on to more important issues.
Tomasso shook his head. "Hardly," he lied. "You do us honor by your presend are entirely free to leave. Indeed, we will escort you if you wish, for the path is deceptive in darkness. My father did suggest that I might wish to point out that although you could readily have us wristed ah-wheeled after torture, it is exceedingly likely, approag a certainty, that Alberico would then see pelling cause to do the same to both of you, for having been sidered likely aplices of ours. You will remember what happeo the ziano after that unfortunate i in Ferraut some years ago?”
There was a smoothly graceful silence aowledging all of this.
It was broken by Nievole. "That was Sandres doing, wasnt it?" he growled from by his fire. "Not the ziano at all!”
"It was our doing," Tomasso agreed calmly. "We learned a great deal, I must say.”
"So," Scalvaia murmured drily, "did the ziano. Your father always hated Fabro bar zian.”
"They could not have been said to be on the best of terms," Tomasso said blandly. "Though I must say that if you focus on that aspect of things I fear you might miss the point.”
"The point you prefer us to take," Nievole amended pointedly.
Uedly, Scalvaia came to Tomassos aid. "Not fair, my lord," he said to Nievole. "If we accept anything as true in this room and these times it is that Sandres hatred and his desire had moved beyond old wars and rivalries. His target was Alberico.”
His icy blue eyes held Neivoles for a long moment, and finally the bigger man nodded. Scalvaia shifted in his chair wing at a pain in his afflicted leg.
"Very well," he said to Tomasso. "You have now told us why we are here and have made clear your fathers purpose and your own. For my own part I will make a fession. I will fess, in the spirit of truth that a death vigil should inspire, that being ruled by a coarse, vicious, overbearing minor lord from Barbadis little joy to my aged heart. I am with you. If you have a plan I would like to hear it. On my oath and honor I will keep faith with the Sandreni in this.”
Tomasso shivered at the invocation of the a words. "Your oath and honor are sureties beyond measure," he said, a it.
"They are indeed, bar Sandre," said Nievole, taking a heavy step forward from the fire. "And I will dare to say that the word of the Nievolene has never been valued at lesser . The dearest wish of my heart is for the Barbadian to lie dead and cut to pieces—Triad willing, by my own blade. I too am with you—by my oath and honor.”
"Such terribly splendid words!" said an amused voice from the window opposite the door.
Five faces, four white with shod the bearded one flushing red, whipped around. The speaker stood outside the open window, elbows resting on the ledge, in his hands. He eyed them with a mild scrutiny, his face shadowed by the wood of the window frame.
"I have never yet," he said, "known gallant phrases from however august a lio succeed in ousting a tyrant. In the Palm or anywhere else." With an eical motion he hoisted himself upwards,
swung his feet into the room and sat fortably perched on the ledge. "Oher hand," he added, "agreeing on a cause does make a starting point, I will cede that much.”
"You are the sixth of whom my father spoke?" Tomasso asked warily.
The man did look familiar now that he was in the light. He was dressed for the forest not the city, in two shades of grey with a black sheepski over his shirt, and breeches tucked into worn black riding boots. There was a k his belt, without or.
"I heard you mention that," the fellow said. "I actually hope Im not, because if I am the implications are uling, to say the least. The fact is, I never spoke to your father in my life. If he knew of my activities and somehow expected me to find out about this meeting and be here . . . well, I would be somewhat flattered by his fide rather more disturbed that he would have known so much about me. Oher hand," he said for a sed time, "it is Sandre dAstibar were talking about, and I do seem to make six here, dont I?" He bowed, without any visible irony, towards the bier on its trestles.
"You are, then, also in league against Alberico?" Nievoles eyes were watchful.
"I am not," said the man in the window quite bluntly. "Alberieans nothing to me. Except as a tool. A wedge to open a door of my own.”
"And what is it lies behind that door?" Scalvaia asked from deep in his armchair.
But in that moment Tomasso remembered.
"I know you!" he said abruptly. "I saw you this m. You are the Tregean shepherd who played the pipes in the m rites!" Taeri snapped his fingers as the reition came home to him as well.
"I played the pipes, yes," the man on the window-ledge said, quite unruffled. "But I am not a shepherd nor frea. It has suited my purposes to play a role, many different roles, in fact, freat many years. Tomasso bar Sandre ought to appreciate that." He grinned.
Tomasso did not return the smile. "Perhaps then, uhe circumstances, you might favor us by saying who you really are." He said it as politely as the situation seemed to warrant. "My father might have known but we do not.”
"Nor, Im afraid, shall you learn just yet," the other said. He paused. "Though I will say that were I to swear a vow of my own on the honor of my family it would carry a weight that would eclipse both such oaths sworonight.”
It was matter-of-factly said, which made the arrogance greater, not less.
To forestall Nievoles predictable burst of aomasso said quickly, "You will not deny us some information surely, even if you choose to shield your name. You said Alberico is a tool for you. A tool for what, Alessan not-ea?" He leased to find that he remembered the name Menico di Ferraut had mentioned yesterday. "What is your own purpose? What brings you to this lodge?”
The others face, lean and curiously hollowed with cheekbones in sharp relief, grew still, almost masklike. And into the waiting silehat ensued he said: "I want Brandin. I want Brandin of Ygrath dead more than I want my souls immortality beyond the last portal of Morian.”
There was a silence again, broken only by the crackle of the autumn fires owo hearths. It seemed to Tomasso as if the chill of winter had e into the room with that speech.
Then: "Such terribly splendid words!" murmured Scalvaia lazily, shattering the mood. He drew a shout of laughter from Nievole and Taeri, both. Scalvaia himself did not smile.
The man on the window-ledge aowledged the thrust with the briefest nod of his head. He said, "This is not, my lord, a subject about which I permit frivolity. If we are to work together it will be necessary for you to remember that.”
"You, I am forced to say, are an overly proud young man," replied Scalvaia sharply. "It might be
appropriate for you to remember to whom you speak.”
The other visibly bit back his first retort. "Pride is a family failing," he said finally. "I have not escaped it, Im afraid. But I am indeed mindful of who you are. And the Sandreni and my lord Nievole. It is why I am here. I have made it my busio be aware of dissidehroughout the Palm for many years. At times I have enced it, discreetly. This evening marks the first instan which I have yself to a gathering such as this.”
"But you have already told us that Alberico is nothing to you." Tomasso inwardly cursed his father for not havier prepared him for this very peculiar sixth figure.
"Nothing in himself," the other corrected. "Will you allow me?" Without waiting for a reply he lifted himself down from the ledge and walked over to the wine.
"Please," said Tomasso, belatedly.
The man poured himself a generous glass of the vintage red. He drai, and poured another. Only then did he turn back to address the five of them. Herados eyes, watg him, were enormous.
"Two facts," the man called Alessan said crisply. "Learn them if you are serious about freedom in the Palm. One: if you oust or slay Alberico you will have Brandin upon you within three months. Two: if Brandin is ousted or slain Alberico will rule this peninsula within that same period of time.”
He stopped. His eyes—grey, Tomasso notiow—moved from oo the other of them, challenging. No one spoke. Scalvaia toyed with the handle of his e.
"These two things must be uood," the stranger went on in the same tone. "her I in my own pursuit, nor you in yours, afford to lose sight of them. They are the core truths of the Palm in our time. The two sorcerers from overseas are their own balance of power and the only balance of power in the peninsula right now, however different things might have beeeen years ago. Today only the power of one keeps the magic of the other from being wielded as it was when they quered us. If we take them then we must take them both—or make them bring down each other.”
"How?" Taeri asked, too eagerly.
The lean fader the prematurely silvering dark hair turo him and smiled briefly. "Patieaeri bar Sandre. I have a number of things yet to tell you about carelessness before deg if our paths are to join. And I say this with infinite respect for the dead man who seems—remarkably enough—to have drawn us here. Im afraid yoing to have to agree to submit yourselves to my guidance or we do nothing together at all.”
"The Scalvaiane have submitted themselves willingly to nothing and no one in living memory or recorded history," that vulpine lord said, the texture of velvet in his voice. "I am not readily of a mind to bee the first to do so.”
"Would you prefer," the other said, "to have your plans and your life and the long glory of your line snuffed out like dles on the Ember Days because of sheer sloppiness in your preparations?”
"You had better explain yourself," Tomasso said icily.
"I io. Who was it who chose a double-moon night at double mooo meet?" Alessaed, his voice suddenly cutting like a blade. "Why are no rear guards posted along the forest path to warn you if someone approaches—as I just did? Why were no servants left here this afternoon to guard this ? Have you even the fai awareness of how dead the five of you would be—severed hands stuffed into your throats—were I not who I am?”
"My father . . . Sandre . . . said that Alberico would not have us followed," Tomasso stammered furiously. "He was absolutely certain of that.”
"And he is likely to have been absolutely right. But you ot let your focus be so narrow. Your father—I am sorry to have to say it —was aloh his obsession for too long. He was too i upon Alberico. It shows ihing you have dohese past two days. What of the idly curious or the
greedy? The petty informer who might decide to follow you just to see what happened here? Just to have a story to tell iavern tomorrow? Did you—or your father—give even half a thought to such things?
Or to those who might have learned where you plao e and arrao be here before you?”
There was a hostile silence. A log on the smaller fire settled with a crad a shower of sparks.
Herado jumped involuntarily at the sound.
"Will it i you to know," the man called Alessa on, mently, "that my people have been guarding the approaches to this since you arrived? Or that Ive had someone in here since mid- afternoon keeping an eye on the servants setting up, and who might follow them?”
"What?" Taeri exclaimed. "In here! In our hunting lodge!”
"For your prote and my own," the other man said, finishing his sed glass of wine. He glanced upwards to the shadows of the half-loft above, where the extra pallets were stored.
"I think that should do it, my friend," he called, pitg his voice to carry. "Youve earned a glass of wier so long dry-throated among the dust. You may as well e down now, Devin.”
It had actually been very easy.
Menico, purse jingling with more mohan he had ever earned from a single performan his life, had graciously passed their cert at the wine-merts house over to Bur di Corte.<mark></mark> Bur, who he work, leased; the wine-mert, angry at first, was quickly mollified upon learning what Menicos hitherto unfinal-ized tariff would now have been iermath of the sensation theyd caused that m.
So, in the event, Devin and the rest of the pany had been given the rest of the day and evening off. Menico ted out for everyone an immediate bonus of five astins and benevolently waved them away to the various delights of the Festival. He didnt even offer his usual warniure.
Already, just past noon, there were wiands on every er, more tha the busier squares.
Each vineyard in Astibar province, and even some from farther afield in Ferraut or Senzio, ha?d its vintages from previous years available as harbingers of what this years grapes would offer. Merts looking to buy in quantity were sampling judiciously, early revelers rather less so.
Fruit vendors were also in abundance, with figs and melons and the enormous grapes of the season displayed beside vast wheels of white cheeses frea or bricks of red ones from northerando.
Over by the market the din was deafening as the people of the city and its distrada vassed the s of this years iti tradesmen. Overhead the banners of the noble houses and of the larger wies flapped brightly iumn breeze as Devin strode purposefully towards what hed just been told was the most fashionable khav room in Astibar.
There were bes to fame. He was reized at the doorway, his arrival excitedly announced, and in a matter of moments he found himself at the dark wooden bar of The Paelion nursing a mug of hot khav laced with flambardion—no awkward questions asked about anyones age, thank you very much.
It was the work of half an hour to find out what he o know about Sandre dAstibar. His questions seemed entirely natural, ing from the tenor who had just sung the Dukes funeral lament.
Devin learned about Sandres long rule, his feuds, his bitter exile, and his sad dee in the last few years into a blustering, drunken hunter of small game, a wraith pared to what he once had been.
In that last text, rather more specifically, Devin asked about where the Duke had liked to hunt.
They told him. They told him where his favorite hunting lodge had been. He ged the subject to wine.
It was easy. He was a hero of the hour and The Paelion liked heroes, for an hour. They let him go eventually: he pleaded an artists strained sensitivity after the ms endeavors. With the be of hindsight he now attached a deal more importahan he had at the time to glimpsing Alessan di Tregea at a booth full of painters and poets. They were laughing about some wager iain verses of dolehat had not yet arrived from Chiara. He and Alessan had saluted each other in an elaborately showy, performers fashion that delighted the packed room.
Back at the inn, Devin had fended off the most ardent of the group who had walked him home a upstairs alone. He had waited in his room, chafing, for an hour to be sure the last of them had gone.
Having ged into a dark-brown tunid breeches, he put on a cap to hide his hair and a woolen overshirt against the ing chill of evening. Then he made his way unnoticed through the now teeming crowds ireets over to the eastern gate of the city.
And out, among several empty wagons, goods all sold, being ridden back to the distrada by sober, prudent farmers who preferred to reload aurn in the m instead of celebrating all night in town spending what theyd just earned.
Devin hitched a ride on a cart part of the way, iserating with the driver oaxes and the poor rates being paid that year for lambs wool. Eventually he jumped off, feigning youthful exuberand ran a mile or so along the road to the east.
At one point he saw, with a grin nition, a temple of Adaon on the right. Just past it, as promised, was the delicately rendered image of a ship on the roadside gate of a modest try house.
Rovigos home—what Devin could see of it, set well back from the road among cypress and olive trees— looked fortable and cared for.
A day ago, a different person, he would have stopped. But something had happeo him that m within the dusty spaces of the Sandreni Palace. He kept going.
A half mile further on he found what he was looking for. He made sure he was alone and then quickly cut to his right, south into the woods, away from the main road that led to the east coast and Ardin town on the sea.
It was quiet in the forest and cooler where the branches and the many-colored leaves dappled the sunlight. There ath winding through the trees and Devin began to follow it, towards the hunting lodge of the Sandreni. From here on he redoubled his caution. On the road he was simply a walker iumn tryside; here he was a trespasser with no excuse at all for being where he was.
Unless pride and the strange, dreamlike events of the m just past could be called adequate excuses. Devin rather doubted it. At the same time, it remaio be seeher he or a certain manipulative red-headed personage was going to dictate the shape and flow of this day and those to e.
If she were uhe impression that he was so easy to dupe—a helpless, youthful slave to his passions, blinded and deafeo anything else by the so-gracious offer of her body— well it was for this afternoon and this evening to shorong an arrogant girl could be.
What else the evening might reveal, Devin didnt know; he hadnt allowed himself to slow down long enough to sider the question.
There was no ohere when he came to the lodge, though he lay silently among the trees for a long time to be certain. The front door was ed but Marra had been very good with such devices and had taught him a thing or two. He picked the lock with the buckle of his belt, went inside, opened a window, and climbed out to relock the . Then he slipped ba through the window, closed it, and took a look around.
There was little option, really. The two bedchambers at the back would be dangerous and not very useful if he wao hear. Devin balanced himself on the broad arm of a heavy wooden chair and, jumping, mao make it up to the half-loft on his sed attempt.
Nursing a shin bruised in the process he took a pillow from one of the pallets stored up there and proceeded to wedge himself into the remotest, darkest er he could find, behind two beds and the stuffed head of an antlered corbin stag. By lying on his left side, eye to a k in the floorboards, he had an almost plete view of the room below.
He tried to guide himself towards a mood of calm and patience. Unfortunately, he soon became irrationally scious of the fact that the glassy eye of the corbin was glitteringly fixed upon him. Uhe circumsta made him nervous. Eventually he got up, turhe chestnut head to one side and
settled in to his hiding-place again.
And right about then, as the grimly purposeful activities of the day gave way to a time when he could do nothing but wait, Devin began to be afraid.
He was under no real illusions: he was a dead man if they found him here. The secred tension in Tomasso bar Sandres words and mahat m made that clear enough. Even without what Catriana had done in her own effort to overhear those words, and then to prevent him from doing so. For the first time Devin began to plate where the rash momentum of his wounded pride had carried him.
When the servants came half an hour later to prepare the room they gave him some very bad moments. Bad enough, in fact, to make him briefly wish that he was bae in Asoli guiding a plow behind a pair of stolid water buffaloes. They were fine creatures, water buffaloes, patient, unplaining.
They plowed fields for you, and their milk made cheese. There was even something to be said for the predictable grey skies of Asoli in autumn and the equally predictable people. None of their girls, for example, were as irritatingly superior as Catriana dAstibar who had got him into this. Nor would any Asolini servant, Devin was quite certain, ever have volunteered, as oriad-blighted fool below was doing even now, t doallet from the half-loft in case one of the vigil-keeping lords should grow weary.
"Goch, dont be more of a fool than you absolutely must be!" the steward snapped officiously in reply. "They are here to keep a waking watch all night—a pallet in the room is an insult to them both. Be grateful you arent depe on your brain to feed your belly, Goch!”
Devin fervently seded the ses of the insult and wished the steward a long and lucrative existence. For the tenth time sihe Sandreni servants had ehe lower room he cursed Catriana, and for the tweime, himself. The ratio seemed abht.
Finally the servants left; heading back for Astibar to bear the Dukes body here. The stewards instrus were painstakingly explicit. With idiots like Goch around, Devin thought spitefully, they had to be.
From where he lay, Devin could see the daylight gradually waning towards dusk. He found himself softly humming his old cradle song. He made himself stop.
His mind turned back to the m. To the long walk through empty, dusty rooms of the palace. To the hidden closet at the end. The sudden silken feel of Catriana when her gown had drifted above her hips.
He made himself stop that too.
It grew steadily darker. The first owl called, not far away. Devin had grown up in the try; it was a familiar sound. He heard some forest animal rooting in the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. On a while a gusting of the wind would set the leaves to rustling.
Then, abruptly, there came a shining of white light through <bdi></bdi>one of the drawn window curtains and Devihat Vidomni was high enough to look down upon this clearing amid the tall trees of the wood, which meant that blue Ilarion would be rising even now. Which meant it would not be very much longer.
It wasnt. There was a wavering of torchlight and the sound of voices. The lock ked, rattled, and the door swung open. The steward led i men carrying a bier. Eye glued to his cra the floor, breathing shallowly, Devin saw them lay it down. Tomasso came in with the two lords whose names and lineage Devin had learned in The Paelion.
The servants uncovered and laid out the food and then they left, Goch stumbling ohreshold and banging his shoulder pleasingly on the doorpost. The steward, last to go, shrugged a discreet apology, bowed, and closed the door behind him.
"Wine, my lords?" said Tomasso dAstibar in the voice Devin had heard from the secret closet. "We will have three others joining us very shortly.”
And from then on they had said what they said and Devin heard what he heard, and so gradually became aware of the magnitude of what he had stumbled upon, the peril he was in.
Then Alessan appeared at the window opposite the door.
Devin couldnt, in fact, see that window but he khe voice immediately and it was with disbelief b on stupefa that he heard Menicos recruit of a fht ago deny being frea at all and then name Brandin, King of Ygrath as the everlasting target of his souls hate.
Rash, Deviainly was, and he would not have dehat he carried more than his own due share of impulsive foolishness, but he had not ever beehan quick, or clever. In Asoli, small boys had to be.
So by the time Alessan named him, and invited him to e down, Devins rag mind had put two more pieces of the puzzle together and he adroitly took the path offered him.
"All quiet, since mid-afternoon," he called out, extrig himself from his er and stepping past the corbins ao the edge of the half-loft. "Only the servants were here, but they didnt do much of a job when they ed the door—the lock was easy to pick. Two thieves and the Emperor of Barbadior could have been up here without seeing each other or anyone down there being the wiser.”
He said it as coolly as he could. Then he lowered himself, with a deliberately showy flip, to the ground. He registered the looks on the faces of five of the men there—all of whom most certainly reized him—but his tration, and his satisfa, lay in the brief smile of approval he received from Alessan.
For the moment his apprehension was gone, replaced by somethiirely different. Alessan had claimed him, given him legitimacy here. He was clearly lio the man who was trollis in the room. And the events were on a scale that spahe Palm. Devin had to fight hard to trol his growiement.
Tomasso went over to the sideboard and smoothly poured a glass of wine for him. Devin was impressed with the posure of the man. He was also aware, from the exaggerated courtesy and the undeniable sparkle in bar Sandres atuated eyes, that although the fluting voice might be faked, Tomasso, iain matters and propensities, was still very much what he was said to be. Devin accepted the glass, careful not to let their fiouch.
"I wonder now," drawled Lord Scalvaia in his magnifit voice, "are we to be treated to a recital here while we pass il? There does seem to be a quantity of musis here tonight.”
Devin said nothing, but following Alessans example did not smile.
"Shall I name you a provincial grower of grapes, my lord?" There was real anger in Alessans voice.
"And call Nievole a grain-farmer from the southwestern distrada? What we do outside these walls has little to do with why we are here, save in two ways only.”
He held up a long finger. "One: as musis we have an excuse to cross bad forth across the Palm, which offers advantages I need not belabor." A sed finger shot up beside the first. "Two: music trains the mind, like mathematics, ic, to precision of detail. The sort of prey lords, that would have precluded the carelesshat has marked tonight. If Sandre dAstibar were alive I would discuss it with him, and I might defer to his experiend his long striving.”
He paused, looking from oo another of them, then said, much more softly: "I might, but I might not. It is a vauhat one, o be sung. As matters stand I only say again that if we are to work together I must ask you to accept my lead.”
He spoke this last directly to Scalvaia who still lounged, elegant and expressionless, in his deep chair.
It was Nievole who answered, though, blunt and direct.
"I am not in the habit of delaying my judgment of men. I think you mean what you say and that you are more versed ihings than we are. I accept. I will follow your lead. With a single dition.”
"Which is?”
"That you tell us your name.”
Devin, watg with rapacious iy, anxious not to miss a word or a nuance, saw Alessans eyes close for an instant, as if to hold baething that might otherwise have shown through them. The others waited through the short silence.
Then Alessan shook his head. "It is a fair dition, my lord. Uhe circumsta is entirely fair. I only pray you will not hold me to it though. It is a grief—I ot tell you how much of a grief it is—but I am uo accede.”
For the first time he appeared to be reag for words, choosing them carefully. "Names are power, as you know. As the two tyrant-sorcerers from overseas most certainly know. And as I have been made to know iterest ways there are. My lord, you will learn my name in the moment of our triumph if it es, and not before. I will say that this is imposed upo is not a choice freely made. You may call me Alessan, which is on enough here in the Palm and happens to be truly the name my mave me. Will you be gracious enough to let that suffiy lord, or must we now part ways?”
The last question was asked in a to of the arrogahat had ihe mans bearing and speech from the moment of his arrival.
Just as Devins earlier fear had given way to excitement, so now did excitement surreo something else, something he could not yet identify. He stared at Alessan. The man seemed youhan before, somehow—uo prevent this almost naked showing of his need.
Nievole cleared his throat loudly, as if to dispel an aura, a resonance of something that seemed to have ehe room like the mingled light of the two moons outside. Another owl hooted from the clearing. Nievole opened his mouth to reply to Alessan.
They never knew what he would have said, or Scalvaia.
Afterwards, on nights when sleep eluded him ached one or both moons sweep the sky or ted the stars in Eannas Diadem in a moonless dark, Devin would let his clear memory of that moment carry him back, trying—for reasons he would have found difficult to explain—to imagine what the two lords would have done or said had all their briefly tangled fate lines run differently from that lodge.
He could guess, analyze, play out sarios in his mind, but he would never know. It was a night-time truth that became a queer, private sorrow for him amid all that came after. A symbol, a displat ret. A reminder of what it was to be mortal and so doomed to tread one road only and that one only once, until Morian called the soul away and Eannas lights were lost. We ever truly know the path we have not walked.
The paths that each of the men in that lodge were to walk, through their own private portals to endings near or far were laid down by the owl that cried a sed time, very clearly, just as Nievole began to speak.
Alessan flung up his hand. "Trouble!" he said sharply. Then: "Baerd?”
The door banged open. Devin saw a large man, his very long, pale-yellow hair held back by a leather band across his brow. There was another leather thong about his throat. He wore a vest and leggings cut in the fashion of the southern highlands. His eyes, even by firelight, gleamed a dazzling blue. He carried a drawn sword.
Which unishable by death this close to Astibar.
"Lets go!" the man said urgently. "You and the boy. The others belohe you son and the grandson have easy explanations. Get rid of the extra glasses.”
"What is it?" Tomasso dAstibar asked quickly, his eyes wide.
"Twenty horsemen on the forest path. tinue yil and be as calm as you —we wont be
far away. Well return after. Alessan, e on!”
The tone of his voice pulled Devin halfway to the door. Alessan was lingering though, his eyes for some reason locked on those of Tomasso, and that look, what was exged in it, became another one of the things that Devin never fot, or fully uood.
For a long moment—a very long moment, it seemed to Devin, with twenty horsemen riding through the forest and a drawn sword in the room—no one spoke. Then: "It seems we will have to tihis extremely iing discussion at a later hour," Tomasso bar Sandre murmured, with genuinely impressive posure. "Will you take a last glass before you go, in my fathers name?”
Alessan smiled then, a full, open smile. He shook his head though. "I hope to have a ce to do so later," he said. "I will drink to your father gladly, but I have a habit I dont think even you satisfy iime we have.”
Tomassos mouth quirked wryly. "Ive satisfied a number of habits in my day. Do tell me yours.”
The reply was quiet, Devin had to strain to hear.
"My third glass of a night is blue," Alessan said. "The third glass I drink is always of blue wine. In memory of something lost. Lest on any single night I fet what it is I am alive to do.”
"Not forever lost, I hope," said Tomasso, equally softly.
"Not forever, I have sworn, upon my soul and my fathers soul wherever it has gone.”
"Then there will be blue wine whe we drink after tonight," said Tomasso, "if it is at all in my power to provide it. And I will drink it with you to our fathers souls.”
"Alessan!" she yellow-haired man named Baerd, "In Adaons name, I said twenty horsemen!
Will you e?”
"I will," said Alessan. He hurled his wineglass and Devins through the window into the darkness. "Triad guard you all," he said to the five in the room. Then he and Devin followed Baerd into the moonlit shadows of the clearing.
With Devin in the middle they ran swiftly around to the side of the farthest from the path that led to the main road. They didnt go far. His pulse pounding furiously, Devin dropped to the ground wheher two men did so. Peering cautiously out from under a cluster of dark-green serrano bushes they could see the lodge. Firelight showed through the open windows.
A moment later Devi lurched like a ship caught by a wave across its bows, as a twig cracked just behind him.
"Twenty-two riders," a voice said. The speaker dropped ly to the ground on Baerds other side.
"The one in the middle of them is hooded.”
Devin looked over. And by the mingled light of the two moons saw Catriana dAstibar.
"Hooded?" Alessaed, on a sharply takeh. "You are certain?”
"Of course I am," said Catriana. "Why? What does it mean?”
"Eanna be gracious to us all," Alessan murmured, not answering.
"I wouldnt be ting on it now," the man named Baerd said grimly. "I think we should leave this place. They will search.”
For a moment Alessan looked as if he would demur, but just then they heard a jingling of many riders from the path oher side of the lodge.
Without another word spoken the four of them rose and silently moved away.
"This evening," murmured Scalvaia, "grows more eventful by the moment.”
Tomasso was grateful for the elegant lords equanimity. It helped steady his own nerves. He looked
over at his brother; Taeri seemed all right. Herado was white-faced, however. Tomasso wi the boy.
"Have another drink, nephew. You look infinitely prettier with color in your cheeks. There is nothing to fear. We are here doily what ermission to be doing.”
They heard the horses. Herado went over to the sideboard, filled a glass and drai at a gulp. Just as he put the goblet down the door crashed loudly open, banging into the wall beside it, and four enormous, fully-armed Barbadian soldiers strode in, making the lodge seem suddenly small.
"Gentlemen!" Tomasso fluted expertly, wringing his hands. "What is it? What brings you here, to interrupt a vigil?" He was careful to souulant, not angry.
The meraries didnt even deign to look at him, let alone reply. Two of them quickly went to check the bedrooms and a third seized the ladder and ran up it to examihe half-loft where the young singer had been hiding. Other soldiers, Tomassistered apprehensively, were taking up positions outside each of the windows. There was a great deal of side among the horses, and a fusion of torches.
Tomasso abruptly stamped his foot in frustration. "What is the meaning of this?" he shrilled as the soldiers tio ignore him. "Tell me! I shall protest directly to your lord. We have Albericos express permission to duct this vigil and the burial tomorrow. I have it in writing under his seal!" He addressed the Barbadian captain standing by the door.
Again it was as if he hadnt even spoken so pletely did they disregard him. Four more soldiers came in and spread out to the edges of the room, their expressions blank and dangerous.
"This is intolerable!" Tomasso whined, staying in character, his hands writhing about each other. "I shall ride immediately to Alber-ico! I shall demand that you all be shipped straight back to your wretched hovels in Barbadior!”
"That will not be necessary," said a burly, hooded figure in the doorway.
He stepped forward and threw back the hood. "You may make your childish demand of me right here," said Alberico of Barbadior, Tyrant of Astibar, Tregea, Ferraut aando.
Tomassos hands flew to his throat even as he dropped to his khe others, too, k immediately, even old Scalvaia with his game leg. A black mind-cloak of numbihreateo desd over Tomasso, trammeling all speed thought.
"My lord," he stammered, "I did not ... I could ... we could not know!”
Alberico was silent, gazing blankly down upon him. Tomasso fought to master his terror and bewilderment. "You are most wele here," he bleated, rising carefully, "most wele, most honored lord. You do us too much honor with your prese my fathers rites.”
"I do," said Alberico bluntly. Tomasso received the full weight of a heavy scrutiny from the small eyes, close-set and unblinking deep in the folds of the sorcerers large face. Albericos bald skull gleamed in the firelight. He drew his hands from the pockets of his robe. "I would have wine," he demanded, gesturing with a meaty palm.
"But of course, of course.”
Tomasso stumbled to obey, intimidated as always by the sheer, bulky physicality of Alberid his Barbadians. They hated him, he knew, and all his kind, over and above everything else these querors felt about the people of the Eastern Palm whose world they now ruled. Whenever he faced Alberiasso was overwhelmingly scious that the Tyrant could crack his bones with bare hands and not think twice about having done so.
It was not a f line of thought. Oeen years of carefully schooling his body to shield his mi his hands steady as they carried a full glass ceremoniously over to Alberico. The soldiers eyed his every movement. Nievole was back by the larger fire, Taeri and Herado together by the small one. Scalvaia stood, braced upon his e, beside the chair in which hed been sitting.
It was time, Tomasso judged, to sound more fident, less guilty. "You will five me, my lord, for my ill judged words to your soldiers. Not knowing you were here I could only guess they were ag in ignorance of your wishes.”
"My wishes ge," Alberico said in his heavy, unging voice. "They are likely to know of those ges before you, bar San-dre.”
"Of course, my lord. But of course. They—”
"I wanted," said Alberico of Barbadior, "to look upon the coffin of your father. To look, and to laugh." He showed no trace of an ination toward amusement. Tomassos blood felt suddenly i his veins.
Alberico stepped past him and stood massively over the remains of the Duke. "This," he said flatly, "is the body of a vain, wretched, fatuous old man who decreed the hour of his owh to no purpose.
No purpose at all. Is it not amusing?”
He did laugh then—three short, harsh barks of sound that were more truly frightening than anything Tomasso had ever heard in his life. How had he known?
"Will you not laugh with me? You three Sandreni? Nievole? My poor, crippled, impotent Lord Scalvaia? Is it not diverting to think how all of you have been brought here and doomed by senile foolishness? By an old man who lived too long to uand how the labyrinthiwistings of his own time could be so easily smashed through with a fist today.”
His ched hand crashed heavily down on the wooden coffin lid, splintering the carved Sandreni arms. With a faint sound of distress Scalvaia sank bato his chair.
"My lord," Tomasso gulped, gesticulating. "What you possibly mean? What are you—”
He got no further than that. Wheeling savagely Alberico slapped him meatily across the face with an open hand. Tomasso staggered backwards, blood spattering from his ripped mouth.
"You will use your natural voice, son of a fool," the sorcerer said, the words more terrifying because spoken in the same flat tone as before. "Will it at least amuse you to know how easy this was? To learn how long Heradianno has beeing to me?" And with those words the night came down.
The full black cloak of anguish and raw terror Tomasso had been fighting desperately to hold back.
Oh, my father, he thought, stri to his soul that it should have been by family that they were now undone. By family. Family!
Several things happehen in aremely short span of time.
"My lord!" Herado cried out in high-pitched dismay. "You promised! You said they would not know!
You told me—”
It was all he said. It is difficult to expostulate with a dagger embedded in your throat.
"The Sandreni deal with the scrapings of dirt uheir own fingernails," said his uaeri, who had drawn the blade from the back of his boot. Even as he spoke, Taeri pulled his dagger free of Herado and smoothly, part of one tinuous motion, sheathed it in his ow.
"One less Sandreni for your sky-wheels, Barbadian!" he taunted, gasping. "Triad send a plague to eat the flesh from your bones." He dropped to his knees. His hands were on the dagger haft; blood illing over them. His eyes sought Tomassos. "Farewell, brother," he whispered. "Morian grant our shadows know each other in her Halls.”
Something was ched around Tomassos heart, squeezing and squeezing, as he watched his brother die. Two of the guards, traio ward a very different sort of blow at their lord, stepped forward and flipped Taeri over on his back with the toes of their boots.
"Fools!" spat Alberico, visibly upset for the first time. "I needed him alive. I wanted both of them alive!" The soldiers bla the fury written in his features.
Then the focus of the room went elsewhere entirely.
With an animal roar of mingled rage and pain Nievole dAstibar, a very big man himself, linked his two hands like a hammer or the head of a mad swung them full into the face of the soldier o him. The blow smashed bones like splintering wood. Blood spurted as the man screamed and crumpled heavily back against the coffin.
Still r, Nievole grappled for his victims sword.
He actually had it out and was turning to do battle when four arrows took him ihroat and chest.
His face went dully slack for an instant, then his eyes widened and his mouth relaxed into a macabre smile of triumph as he slipped to the floor.
And then, just then, with all eyes on fallen Nievole, Lord Scalvaia did the ohing no one had dared to do. Slumped deep in his chair, so motiohey had almost fotten him, the aged patri raised his e with a steady hand, poi straight at Albericos face, and squeezed the spring catch hidden in the handle.
Sorcerers ot, indeed, be poisoned—a minor protective art, ohat most of them master in their youth. Oher hand, they most certainly be slain, by arrow or blade, or any of the other instruments of violeh—which is why such things were forbidden within a decreed radius of wherever Alberiight be.
There is also a well-known truth about men and their gods— whether of the Triad in the Palm, or the varying pantheon worshiped in Barbadior, whether of moddess or dying and reviving god or lord of wheeling stars or single awesome Power above all of these in some rumored prime world far off amid the drifts of space.
It is the simple truth that mortal man ot uand why the gods shape events as they do. Why some men and wome off in fullest flower while others live to dwio shadows of themselves. Why virtue must sometimes be trampled and evil flourish amid the beauty of a try garden. Why ce, sheer random ce, plays su overwhelming role in the running of the life lines and the fate lines of men.
It was ce that saved Alberico of Barbadior then, in a moment that had his name half spelled-out for death. His guards were i upon the fallen men and oaut, bleeding form of Tomasso. No one had spared a glance for the crippled lord in his chair.
It was only the fact—mercilessly random—that that evenings Captain of the Guard happeo have moved into the on Scalvaias side of the room that ged the course of history in the Peninsula of the Palm and beyond. By things so agly small are lives measured and marred.
Alberico, turning in a white rage to snap an order at his captain, saw the e e up and Scalvaias finger jerk upon the handle. Had he been fag straight ahead or turning the other way he would have died of a sharpened projectile bursting into his brain.
It was toward Scalvaia that he turhough, and he was the mightiest wielder of magic, save one, in the Palm in that hour. Even so, what he did—the only sihing he could do—took all the power he had and very nearly more than he could and. There was no time for the spoken spell, the fog gesture. The bolt that was his ending had already been loosed.
Alberico released his hold upon his body.
Watg in terror and disbelief, Tomasso saw the lethal bolt whip through a blurred oozing of matter and air where Albericos head had been. The bolt smashed harmlessly into the wall above a window.
And in that same stilla of time, knowing that an instant later would be an instant too late—that his body could be unknit forever, his soul, her living nor dead, left to howl impotently in the waste that lay in ambush for those who dared essay such magic—Alberimohe lis of his form baself.
It was a hing.
He had a droop to his right eyelid from that day on, and his physical strength was never again what it had been. When he was tired, ever after, his right foot would have a tendency to splay outward as if retrag the strange release of that momentary magic. He would limp then, much as Scalvaia had done.
Through eyes that fought to focus properly, Alberico of Barbadior saw Scalvaias silver-maned head fly across the room to bounce, with a siing sound, on the rush-strewn floor—decapitated by the belated sword of the Captain of the Guard. The deadly e, crafted of stones aals Alberico did nnize, clattered loudly to the ground. The air seemed thid viscous to the sorcerer, unnaturally dense. He was scious of a loose, rattling sound to his breathing and a spasmodic trembling at the back of his knees.
It was another momeched in the rigid, stunned silence of the other men in the room, before he trusted himself to even try to speak.
"You are dung," he said, thickly, coarsely, to the ashen captain. "You are less than that. You are filth and crawling slime. You will kill yourself. Now!" He spoke as if there were sliding soil clogging and spilling from his mouth. With an effort he swallowed his saliva.
Ferociously straining to make his eyes work properly he watched as the blurry form of his captain bowed jerkily and, reversing his sword, severed his own jugular with a swift, jagged slash. Alberico felt a froth e foaming and boiling through his mind. He fought to will ao a palsied tremor in his left hand. He could not.
There were a great many dead men in the room and he very nearly had been one of them. He didnt eveirely feel as if he lived —his body seemed to have reassembled itself in not quite the same way as before. He rubbed with weak fingers at the drooping eyelid. He felt ill, nauseous. The air was hard to breathe. He o be outside, away from this suddenly stifling lodge of his enemies.
Nothing had e to pass as hed expected. There was only one single eleme of his inal design for the evening. Ohing that might yet offer a kind of pleasure, that might redeem a little of what had gone so desperately awry.
He turned, slowly, to look at Sandres son. At the lover of boys. He dragged his mouth upwards into a smile, unaware of how hideous he looked.
&qu him," he said thickly to his soldiers. "Bind him and bring him. There are things we do with this one before we allow him to die. Things appropriate to what he was.”
His vision was still not w properly, but he saw one of his meraries smile. Tomasso bar Sandre closed his eyes. There was blood on his fad clothing. There would be more before they were done.
Alberico put up his hood and limped from the room. Behind him the soldiers lifted up the body of the dead captain and supported the man whose face had been broken by Nievole.
They had to help the Tyrant mount his horse, which he found humiliating, but he began to feel better during the torchlit ride back to Astibar. He was utterly devoid of magic though. Even through the dulled sensations of his altered, reassembled body he could feel the void where his power should be. It would be at least two weeks, probably more, before it all came back. If it all came back. What he had done in the flashing of that instant in the lodge had drained more from him than any aagic ever had in his life.
He was alive though, and he had just shattered the three most dangerous families left in the Eastern Palm. Even more, he had the middle Sandreni son here now as evidence, public proof of the spiracy for the days to e. The pervert who was said to relish pain. Alberico allowed himself a tiny smile within the recesses of his hood.
It was all going to be done by law, and openly, as had been his practice almost from the day hed taken power here. No u born of arbitrary exercise of might would be permitted to rear its dangerous head. They might hate him, of course they would hate him, but not oizen of his four provinces
would be able to doubt the justice or deny the legitimacy of his respoo this Sandreni plot.
Or miss the point of how prehehat response was about to be.
With the prudent caution that was the truest wellspring of his character, Alberico of Barbadian thinking through his as of the hours and days. The high gods of the Empire khis far peninsula lace of stant danger and ern g, but the gods, who were not blind, could see that he knew how to give it what was needful. And it was growing more and more possible that the Emperors advisers bae, who were no more sightless than the gods, would see the same things.
And the Emperor was old.
Alberico withdrew his thoughts from these familiar, too seductive els. He made himself focus oail agaiail was everything in matters such as this. The steps of his planning clicked into place like beads on a djarra string as he rode. Drily, precisely, he assembled the orders he would give. The only ands that caused him an inward flicker of emotiohe ones ing Tomasso bar Sahese, at least, did not have to be made publid they would not be. Only the fession and its revealiails o be known outside his palace walls. Whatever took pla certain rooms underground could be extremely private indeed. He surprised himself a little with the anticipation he felt.
At one point he remembered that hed wahe hunting lodge torched when they left. Smoothly he adjusted his thinking on that. Let the lesser Sandreni and their servants find the dead when they came at dawhem wonder and fear. The doubt would only last a little while.
Then he would cause everything to be made extremely clear.
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