Osorkon’s eyes narrowed. “You mean to say that the Archimage could counter the magic of your two talismans?”
“My powers are now far beyond hers,” the sorcerer declared loftily. “But she could wreak great havoc on our plans by spiriting away the royal family or by some other unexpected action. We must strike with irresistible force while Antar and Anigel still have some hope of repelling our invasion, before the Archimage can convince her sister to flee.”
“That makes sense,” Osorkon admitted grudgingly.
“With their Ruwenda-based force having been diverted to Var, the Two Thrones are left with only about four thousand loyal fighting men … plus your own provincial army of three thousand. The total is sufficient to lure them into believing they have a chance against us.”
Osorkon burst into raucous laughter. “Until they discover that my followers have turned against them! The Var diversion was a brilliant piece of work, sorcerer—provided that the fun and games down south don’t end too soon.” His mirth subsided and he scowled. “As it is, we’ll likely have to invade Ruwenda all over again to tidy up.”
Orogastus smiled over the rim of his cup. “The returning Ruwendian loyalists will discover that another problem awaits them in the Misty Mire. The redoubtable Lady of the Eyes has taken it into her head to incite the Oddlings of Ruwenda to rebellion. All of them! Their objective will be to expel humanity from the country so the Oddlings can rule it themselves.”
The old soldier whistled. “Well, well! You have set the stewpot a-boiling, haven’t you? I suppose you intend to let the Oddlings and the Ruwendian loyalists slaughter each other.”
“The humans will certainly be disposed of quickly enough if this unseasonable weather continues. The aborigines have an overwhelming advantage in the Misty Mire during the Rains.”
Osorkon tipped the sorcerer a wink. “I suppose you’re responsible for the tempests and the earthquakes and all the rest of it, eh?”
Orogastus made a mendaciously modest gesture and refilled the Labornoki lord’s mug. “It is all part of my great plan.”
“How do we retake Ruwenda after the Oddlings win?” Osorkon asked. “We still need its natural resources—the ship timbers and minerals, especially.”
“It’s quite simple. All we need do is kill the Oddling leader—the Lady of the Eyes. Without her, the aboriginal host will disintegrate.”
“Haw! That’s right! You’ve thought of everything, wizard.” Osorkon paused long enough to devour several sausages. “You know, your proposal for an alliance came at a very opportune time. We lords of the western provinces of Labornok have chafed overlong under the insipid rule of the Two Thrones. Some kind of crisis was inevitable. All of my old comrades agreed that your scheme to kidnap Antar and the royal children at the Zinoran coronation was brilliant.”
“I am sorry about the death of your sister, Sharice.”
Osorkon shrugged. “She agreed to do her part readily enough. She was sick to death of that big blubbergut, Penapat, but afraid to divorce him for fear of losing the favor of the King and Queen. My first duty on assuming the kingship of Laboruwenda was to be the removal of my dear brother-in-law’s fat head.”
The sorcerer laughed. “You will still have that chance seven days from now, if all goes well. Tuzameni ships should be arriving in Frangine tomorrow with my magical equipment and my army. We will coordinate the invasion forces, then go south in the faster, more heavily armed pirate ships with my magical gale speeding us on. We will put you and your four friends secretly ashore at the port of Lakana, then hide until the appointed day in a great fogbank I will conjure up. You and your force will attack Derorguila by land, and we will invade simultaneously from the sea—”
“And crush Antar like a lingit between two bricks!”
The sorcerer lifted his mug of steaming ilisso in a satiric salute. “I foresee a quick and decisive victory.”
“It must be a fine thing to be able to read the future,” Osorkon remarked sardonically. Then a look of regret crossed his rough-hewn features. “A pity that Anigel caved in so soon and paid the ransom, though. With King Antar leading the loyalist troops, we’ll have a rougher go of it than without him. Even though the defenders are outnumbered, they’ll fight like fiends if Antar urges them on.”
“I tried to hold off his release, but there were problems. I had a nasty confrontation with Queen Regent Ganondri, and after her timely demise the Goblin Kinglet became unexpectedly stubborn about keeping Antar imprisoned. Ledo is a good friend of mine, but he is a very chivalrous youth, and I could not dissuade him from accepting the ransom immediately when Anigel offered it the second time. However, my having her talisman as well as Kadiya’s should more than balance the scale in our favor. We will confront Antar’s defenders with magic as well as armed might. His force will be outnumbered more than three to one when we attack Derorguila. With luck, we will win out in a single day.”
Lord Osorkon was lost in thought as he licked the sweet cheese off a slice of nutcake. “Queen Ganondri … that she-devil! A good thing we won’t have her to contend with anymore. Her meeting with the fatal shareek was the talk of the waterfront when we arrived. I trust that the Goblin Kinglet otherwise dances as you pull the strings?”
“I can deal with Ledo,” Orogastus asserted.
“I certainly hope so.” The Labornoki lord used his tongue to clean his sticky fingers. “It would be a calamity if his pirates got out of control after the victory and began rampaging among the other port cities where my own supporters live. Let the Raktumians loot Derorguila and then return home, and my people will be content. Just remember, wizard: Our bargain does not include turning my future kingdom into a ravaged, burnt-over wasteland!”
“That will never happen,” the sorcerer declared. “I swear it by the Dark Powers and by the sacred Star that empowers my two talismans.”
Orogastus now rose, waved his hand, and made the food and drink disappear. As an afterthought, he eradicated the dirt from his white robe, and then tucked the precious little red book into its pocket. “I have finished my work here. My magic shows me that Prime Minister Jorot, his admirals, and your stouthearted friends are engaged in a nasty wrangle over who is to have looting rights to Derorguila Palace. Rearm yourself and we will go together to negotiate a cease-fire. Then perhaps we can begin our real council of war.”
23
Haramis found her sister Kadiya paddling down the flood-swollen Upper Mutar, accompanied by her faithful companions Jagun and Lummomu-Ko and a second canoe full of Wyvilo. When the Archimage materialized in the boat between the Lady of the Eyes and Jagun and calmly erected a magical umbrella against the pouring rain, Kadiya stared at her sister in speechless chagrin.
“I know what you plan to do,” Haramis said, “and I have come to dissuade you.”
“What do you mean?” Kadiya’s gaze faltered.
“The Teacher at the Place of Knowledge has told me about your new scheme. It is a piece of incredible folly—to say nothing of showing a base disloyalty to our sister, Anigel. You must abandon it.”
“My plan is not folly,” Kadiya exclaimed. “What do you know of the relations between humanity and the Folk? You have hidden away studying sorcery while disaster after disaster has afflicted our poor Peninsula! You did nothing to help me save my talisman from Orogastus. You did nothing to prevent that idiot Anigel from paying her ransom to him! And now you presume to meddle in my affairs!”
“I come to you out of loving concern—”
“Go away! Nothing you can say will prevent me from doing what I must do. The only way you will stop me is by killing me!”
Little Jagun, who knew nothing of Kadiya’s scheme, cried out to her: “Farseer, do not speak so to the White Lady!”
She turned on him like a gradolik deprived of its prey. “Be silent! This is a matter between my sister and me!”
“But it is not,” the Archimage said, a great sadness suffusing her face. “It affects Jagun’s people, and Lumm
omu’s, and all of the other Folk as well. I am their protector and guardian—”
“They have elected me their leader, not you!” Kadiya said. “Have I not the right to put my proposal to them so that they may judge it—and me—and make a free decision?”
Taken aback, Haramis was silent.
“You know I have the right!” Kadiya cried in triumph. “And you have no way of forcing your will upon the Folk, for they are free souls and not your chattels. So leave us!”
“Only let me explain to you—”
“Archimage, go away,” Kadiya said, in a voice low and dangerous, “unless you are prepared to use violence to compel my attention.”
Haramis bowed her head. “Very well. I can see it is impossible to reason with you now. But I shall return.”
She vanished, and the rain pelted down upon the two canoes more intensely than before.
“Farseer, what have you done?” Jagun moaned. “You should have at least listened to what the White Lady had to say.”
“Aye,” Lummomu said, and his dismayed Wyvilo companions murmured their agreement.
“I know what she would say,” Kadiya retorted. “But her speaking would gain her nothing. There was no point in my listening to her.”
“But she is the White Lady …” Jagun protested.
“And I am the Lady of the Eyes!” Kadiya smote the trefoil upon her breast. Above it dangled her amber amulet with its blood red trillium. “Unless you would all abandon me and go your own way, do not vex me further! Only paddle so that we may reach our goal by nightfall.”
The time had finally come.
The Archimage sat alone in her study, in the Tower on Mount Brom that had once been his home and now was her own. A snowstorm of unspeakable violence roared outside, but she never noticed. She went to her favorite chair by the fireplace (that hearth where the two of them had sat together and first come to know one another) and lifted her talisman, gazing into the empty circle. The drop of trillium-amber held in the midst of the three wings at its top shone with a steady golden light, and the three-petaled tiny Flower within was black … black.
Now, she thought, I have a true need to look upon him and listen to him. I must determine what his plans are and what danger he poses to my sister Anigel’s Kingdom of the Two Thrones and to the rest of the world. Talisman, will you permit me to scry him without loss of my soul? My love for him remains. I cannot help it. I know there is danger in the very Sight of him, but I would be derelict in my duty if I did not look. And so I will.
She said: “Show me Orogastus.”
And he was there, striding with heedless confidence along the surging deck of a great Raktumian warship that raced headlong through mountainous seas. His white hair streamed in the wind and his wet robes were plastered to his tall, magnificently muscled body. His face had changed little, except for being more deeply lined, from the way she remembered it. His lips were thin but finely cut, his cheekbones high, his eyes a pale glacial blue beneath snowy brows. He was clean-shaven and wore an expression of exhilaration, as if he partook of the energy of the gale. He had neither of the purloined talismans about him.
Pausing outside the entrance to the trireme’s towering sterncastle, he gripped the ship’s rail and looked out over the heaving waters. He smiled …
Haramis caught her breath. In some way—a way that had nothing to do with the Black Trillium or the Three-Winged Circle—she knew what he was thinking. Not of the conquest of the world or the triumph of the Society of the Star. Not of the Dark Powers or even of the Sceptre of Power that he coveted.
He was thinking of her.
Her heart turned over within her breast and she felt a near-uncontrollable desire to burst into tears. And then to call out to him across the leagues, to bespeak his name and thrill to his answer, to go to him, to touch him …
Within the wings of her talisman, the tiny Flower seemed to throb like a beating heart. It was still the color of velvet night, but in another moment it would change—
“No! No no no!” She sobbed aloud and flung the talisman from her. It swung on its platinum chain, the vision within the circle extinguished.
She sat for a long time, only praying. Then, charged with fresh resolution, she took a deep breath and said again:
“Show me Orogastus.”
He was in a sumptuous stateroom, his clothing completely dry and his hair well groomed, engaged in earnest conversation with his three acolytes. The little minion dressed in black held the curiously wrought coronet called the Three-Headed Monster. The henchman in yellow carried the dark, dull-edged sword lacking a point that was named the Three-Lobed Burning Eye.
“—must keep the King and Queen under close surveillance night and day,” the sorcerer was saying. “And you, my Yellow Voice, must oversee the machinations of the Lady of the Eyes. As for you, my Purple Voice—”
Coldly, Haramis settled down to listen.
Kadiya had chosen the Uisgu settlement of Dezaras, deep in the Thorny Hell, as the place to reveal her plan to make all of Ruwenda an aboriginal homeland. Her old friend Nessak, whose life she had saved at the time of the talisman-quest, was still First of the House and Speaker of the Law there; and it was from Dezaras that the original Call had gone out twelve years earlier, rallying the Uisgu and Nyssomu Folk to Kadiya’s side for the great battle against King Voltrik that had accomplished the liberation of Ruwenda.
On most of the trip downriver from the Place of Knowledge, Kadiya had been silent and pensive, saying nothing to Jagun or the others of her conversation with the Teacher or the terrible news about Anigel’s talisman. In spite of the unsettling visit of the Archimage, the unveiling of Kadiya’s new and drastic intention when they reached Dezaras was as much a surprise to her escort party as it was to Nessak and the Uisgu villagers.
Kadiya set forth her war-plan with fervid eloquence, citing the many injustices of the past and emphasizing that conditions for an easy victory were at hand, most especially if the Skritek joined their cause. Her strategy called for attacks only upon the human armed forces. Human civilians were to remain unharmed. Laboruwendian troops returning from Var would be confronted at the natural barrier of Tass Falls and driven back down the river. In Ruwenda itself, the Citadel and the other centers of human habitation would be surrounded and besieged. Cut off from supplies, isolated by the unnatural Rains, the trapped humans would have no choice but to surrender without bloodshed. When they had all been expelled from Ruwenda, the Queen’s Mireway leading from the Citadel to the Labornok border would be destroyed utterly, and the isolated plateau of the Misty Mire would become a haven for the Folk alone, a nation that they themselves would rule.
She, the Lady of the Eyes, vowed that she would negotiate a treaty to that effect. And if it was the will of the aborigines, she would also represent the interests of the Folk in all future dealings with humanity.
As a climax, Kadiya told them the amazing statement made secretly to her by the sorcerer Orogastus. He had promised with formidable oaths that the Misty Mire would belong to the Folk for all time once the human settlers had been driven away.
The aborigines did not react to Kadiya’s plan with the enthusiasm she had expected. Instead, they listened with faces that were either stunned or frankly horrified. The call to arms by the Lady of the Eyes shocked them deeply, for peace had been almost universal in the Misty Mire since the accession of Antar and Anigel and their Union of the Two Thrones. Only the fractious Glismak of the Tassaleyo Forest and the Skritek, whose bloodthirstiness not even the Archimage or Kadiya could wholly inhibit, had broken the peace during the past twelve years. But now the Lady of the Eyes herself was calling for a war against humanity!
Nessak of Dezaras listened to Kadiya’s long, impassioned discourse with unreadable features. When it was finished, the Speaker of the Law agreed to send out the proposal in a telepathic Call to all Uisgu. And because her people were much more powerful bespeakers than Jagun or Lummomu-Ko, Nessak also agreed that certain elders of
the village would Call the leaders of the Nyssomu and Wyvilo tribes and solicit their decisions. She promised to contact the Glismak also. However, no matter how much Kadiya urged her, Nessak refused to transmit the war-proposal to the Skritek. If the Lady of the Eyes wished to involve the savage Drowners in her plan, she would have to deal with them herself, at a later time.
Kadiya bowed to the aboriginal leader’s resolve, whereupon Nessak, Jagun, Lummomu, and the others withdrew. Kadiya was left to wait alone in the austere guest hut where the meeting had taken place.
She waited for five days.
The rain was incessant and heavy, and the hut a damp and cheerless place for a human. With the Upper Mutar running over its banks in the Thorny Hell because of the unseasonal weather, there was no dry land at all in the village of Dezaras. Its fifty or so small grass houses on stilts were islands in a swollen brown lake. Wicker canoes with empty harnesses for the rimorik pullers were moored to each Uisgu dwelling save for the hut where Kadiya waited. The two big dugouts belonging to her Wyvilo escort were tied up at the house belonging to Nessak and her family.
From time to time food was brought to Kadiya, but the person bringing it would give no news of what the Folk had decided. Finally night fell on the fifth day, and with the darkness a thick mist settled in. As she had done on the previous nights, Kadiya went to the open door from time to time to see if anyone was coming. But she saw only fuzzy lights marking the nearest huts, and heard only the unending patter of the raindrops, together with subdued insect and animal noises.
“They must agree to fight for a land of their own!” Kadiya said to herself. “They must!” And she closed her eyes and offered a silent and desperate prayer … only at the end of it, she found her right hand straying willy-nilly to the scabbard hanging at her belt, seeking the magical affirmation of the talisman that had once hung there.