Herewiss thought about that as they came over the crest of the hill, and paused there.
The roadbuilders had no doubt counted on this sort of thing happening, for there were pausing-places built on both sides of the Road. Otherwise the usual hexagonal basalt blocks ran side-to-side down the hill in easy curves, not to make life difficult for wain-drivers or others with heavy or carefully balanced loads. Down there before them, on the far side of the Arlid valley and across the old Bridge, there lay Prydon among its townlands. Houses with roofs of tile or thatch lay clustered about the city walls, spreading far out into what had been the fields, and right across the bridge to the eastern side. Five hundred years of peace had made the need to huddle inside walls seem remote. Now, though, Herewiss thought with some pain, a lot of those snug-looking houses with their market gardens were going to have their roofs burnt off them. Unless some other solution could be found—
He put the thought aside for the moment and nudged Sunspark. They started down the hill. Prydon had four sets of walls. The inner, the oldest, had long since been torn down, but its outlines were still visible in the way the streets lay around the old town and the area where the old keep had been. The second, the one against which Lionhall on one side of the circle and Kynall on the other were built, had been cut through in numerous places, as had the third wall, built nearly as wide again as the diameter of the second. And then there was the fourth wall, latest built, in good condition—a more than adequate defense, easily two miles around, which could nonetheless be held by no more than a few hundred men.
Herewiss, examining that wall for the first time with an invader’s eye, swore inwardly at Freolger who had built it. Mad that king might have been, but paranoia had its uses. The river ran close to it, but not close enough to be of use for attack: stone buffers ran up from the banks there, the stones of them leaning outward and making climbing the riverward slope impossible. And the wall itself was too damned thick, and too tall. Siege engines would make fairly short work of them, although all but the heaviest catapult-shot would be wasted on the rest of the wall. After that, towers and ladders—
He swore again. Siege engines were not normally the kind of thing Herewiss thought about. I will not bring Lorn home to a ruin, he told himself. But at the same time, if they couldn’t achieve a substantive victory out on the open ground, it might well come to that after all...
They made their way down the hillside and onto the almost-level ground near the bridge. Even here the valley had not quite bottomed out; there was a long, straight, impressive sweep of black road to the bridge, and across it, to the gates in the white walls. The gates were blackstave wood bound with iron, each leaf thirty feet wide, each counterpoised to drop shut quickly if there was need. Damn you, Freolger, Herewiss thought again; then breathed out and stopped damning the poor crazy dead. There were other ways into Prydon, and other ways out. He knew where they were, and if he had to make new ones, he would find ways.
Houses began to crowd close to the Road as they rode nearer to the city. Chickens came out and scratched at the Road’s borders, or huddled down cheerfully in the dust and had dust-baths; cats sat on fences and gazed at the passersby, birds shouted territorial threats from roof-thatch on both sides. Young men and old women looked out through open windows, into the summer morning, bored by the sight of yet another pair of dusty travellers on their horses. Very nice horses, though, especially that big blood roan, look at the mane on him, you’d think it was on fire—
Herewiss smiled drily at the comments, spoken and unspoken, of the people leaning on their windowsills. He reached over his shoulder and drew Khávrinen, laying it across his lap as he rode. Moris edged away, eyeing the point of the sword. Khávrinen was burning blue as usual, but rather more emphatically than was normal.
The faces looking out the windows got surprised, and mouths opened and closed and opened, and eyes got wide.
Herewiss schooled his smile to stay small. There was no question that he found this enjoyable—the astonishment, even the discomfort, that other people felt on sight of him. But enjoying it too much was a danger. He knew quite well that pride was the great downfall of many a Rodmistress: and no surprise, since the Goddess’s intention was for Her whole world to recover the Power it had lost, and distraction from that cause—or attempts to keep the Power exclusive to a few—led inevitably straight to the Shadow and Its works.
All the same, it was hard to avoid feeling ever so slightly pleased to be someone so unexpected, such a shock—There was a straggly crowd stringing out behind them now, people from the townland-houses standing in the road and staring, or following, slowly, as they crossed the Bridge. A few minutes’ more riding brought them to the gates. Herewiss glanced at Moris as they came to them, and paused.
There were guards there, of course; but Herewiss could never remember there having been so many. They were wearing the black and white of Arlene regulars, the White Lion badge embroidered small on their jerkins. Some of them were looking bored, and some looked panicked, and some just quietly wary. Herewiss nodded to the closest of them, and said, “Gentlemen, perhaps you would direct me and my friend to the Darthene Embassy. We’re expected.”
Naturally he knew perfectly well where the Embassy was, but it seemed polite to ask, to acknowledge their presence and give them something to do. There was some milling and staring among the guards. Then one of them, one of the ones with the bored faces, edged out of a group of others and walked toward Herewiss.
“And what’s your business there?” he said. His voice was bored too, but the swagger in his gait said that, Fire or no Fire, he wasn’t impressed by this pampered-looking city boy. It was insolence, of course, and frightened insolence at that, in the face of the WhiteCloak. He reached up as he spoke to take Sunspark by the headstall.
A second later he snatched back a burnt hand, and just as well; Sunspark’s head lashed out, its teeth snapped and missed—just. “Gently,” Herewiss said. “Sir, my name is Herewiss s’Hearn. The Queen of Darthen has sent me. That would be business enough, I would think. Considering that you see my token.”
“Darthen—” the guard said, and looked like he was trying to work up enough spit to make a more emphatic comment. But his eyes, fixed on Khávrinen, betrayed him. Even if they had not, with Khávrinen in his hands and the Fire flowing, Herewiss could hear the man’s heart hammering as if it was his own, and could just catch the thought: Damn, it’s true, the rumor’s true!
“Of course it is,” Sunspark said, and every one of the watching guards jumped in surprise. “So show us our way, manling, or get out of it!”
The guard chose the latter option, rather hurriedly. “Gentlemen,” Herewiss said again, nodding to them, and nudged Sunspark. With Moris behind, they ambled through the gates. Moris’s horse shied and started picking its way with care around places where Sunspark’s hooves had fallen, and the paving-stones were smoking, or molten.
Now that was unnecessary, Herewiss said inwardly.
You are too gentle with these people, Sunspark said, just as silently. They mean you ill, and Freelorn through you. Why don’t you make it plain to them what will happen if they try anything? It snorted. And if you won’t, I will.
Herewiss made no answer to that for the moment. He was looking around him at the old familiar buildings along the main road that led into the city from the east gate. The problem wasn’t the usual estrangement of time, that makes old familiar places look unfamiliar, or just smaller. Everything was in its right place: the streets that opened off this one, the tall stone-faced buildings lining the way. This had been a merchants’ quarter once, full of the houses of former greengrocers and silkmongers who had become wealthy and built small tasteful mansions on the road that led eastward to their major markets. But the houses, which had been stately once, now had a grim defensive look about them. Shutters, Herewiss thought, looking around: when did they ever have such a thing?
And the people in the streets— They were not the usual
mixture of cheerful and annoyed and bland faces. There was a lot more annoyance, and also a look on all sorts of faces that Herewiss saw, an expression as shuttered as the windows: not so much bland but blank, as if the wearers were nervous about letting out any genuine look that might indicate some kind of opinion. People wearing this look, or non-look, glanced at Herewiss and then hurriedly away, as if he was something that might get them in trouble.
Moris had come up next to him, looking uneasy. He was being favored with the same look, simply because he was riding with Herewiss. But he had other things on his mind. “This place looks terrible,” he said.
Herewiss nodded. “I agree. How do you see it, though?”
Moris looked over at one of the mansion houses they were passing. Its cobbled yard was full of wind-tossed trash, and the windows were all shuttered blind. “That,” he said. “Too many houses here look like that. Where is everybody? And where are all the people?” Moris gestured with his chin at the street. “This time of day, these streets should be full. Especially this far over by the market. Dinnertime—” He paused to watch in mild confusion as a child staring at them from a sidestreet was hurriedly pulled back into the shadows and hustled away. Moris’s face set itself in lines of dismay. “It feels all wrong,” he said softly. “I don’t like this. This was home, once. But not any more—”
Herewiss nodded again in somber agreement. “Something’s missing,” he said. “You know what.”
Moris breathed out, not saying anything.
They passed another streetcorner, and just around it saw the mounted guards, watching them go by. Herewiss nodded cordially enough to them in passing. One of them wheeled his horse and was off in a hurry, up a back street that Herewiss knew led in the general direction of Kynall.
Herewiss leaned back casually in the saddle. “Checking out a wild story from the gates,” he said. “Now they know it’s true.” He sighed and reached up to sheath Khávrinen again, and his heart turned over in him at the thought of what Lorn was going to feel when he came home to this at last. Even if he only returns to the city after we’ve freed it, it’s still going to be crippled. A long time, this healing is going to take—
Wordlessly he turned Sunspark off the road into the city’s heart, heading for the northeastern side of the second wall, against which Kynall was built. Lionhall was diametrically across the city from it, against the southwestern side, around the curve of the wall. Along that wall’s curve were strung Prydon’s official buildings, the Arlene ministries, and the various embassies and guildhalls. The Darthene embassy was quite close to Kynall, as befitted its status as Arlen’s major ally, the land and lordship without whose company Arlen considered itself incomplete. Well, former major ally, Herewiss thought, and found himself looking up the curve at Kynall’s towers and thinking they were too close for comfort. They had never been so when he and his father were guests here when he was young, and Kynall was just Freelorn’s house.
And here were the white marble pillars he remembered, marking the entrance to the Darthene Embassy’s courtyard. They had been smooth and round once, with their graceful floral capitals. Now there were cracks in them, as if they had been hit with things; and there were dull grayish spots on them and the walls stretching from either side of them, as if pillars and walls had been scrawled on, and only ineffectively cleaned. Herewiss shook his head and rode into the courtyard, looking up at the shuttered windows with foreboding.
Under the shadow of the great pillared portico, the central door opened and a woman came out, dressed in a long tabard of midnight blue over a finely pleated white shift. In a clatter of hooves, Moris rode past Herewiss laughing. “Dati!” he said, almost in a shout: the first loud sound, or happy one, Herewiss thought he had heard all that afternoon. He laughed to himself as Moris’s horse Goatface was abruptly left turning in small confused circles, his reins trailing, while Moris ran across the worn white paving to hug the woman on the stairway. Andaethen d’Telha tai-Palaiher was the Ambassador; a tall, heavy-boned woman, with shaggy curly hair framing a broad face, and green eyes with a slight slant to them, like a cat’s. She was also Moris’s second cousin, and his foster-sister—it was his family that she had been sent to live with, as children of noble houses in both countries often were, to make sure that city people become no more citified than necessary, and country people no more countrified.
At the moment, the precaution seemed superflous. “Look at you,” Andaethen was scolding, but with laughter in her voice, “you’re a wraith! You’re a wreck! What have they been feeding you? That miserable trail food again, straw and dried meat, I bet—”
“Dati,” Moris said, half-strangling on his own laughter, “I needed to lose some weight! Leave it alone!”
“This is all your fault,” said Andaethen to Herewiss as he came up from behind. “You with your skulking about in the open countryside like a felon, afraid to set foot on the Road where my poor coz could have got him a decent cooked meal once in a while—”
Herewiss was slightly surprised that she knew anything about their route... but then the Darthene Ambassador might be expected to have her own sources of information. “Madam,” he said, smiling slightly, “I did no better than he did in that regard. And I wasn’t even trying to lose weight.”
“Don’t think I don’t remember your methods, Hearn’s son,” she said, mock-scolding as she let go of Moris at last. “Like father, like son, and bottomless pits, the both of you. You’ll have your dinner soon enough. Come you in and shift your clothing first; you both look like you’ve been rolling in the muckheap.”
Grooms came out and led Moris’s horse and Sunspark away. Herewiss and Moris followed Andaethen in through the great brass door, which a doorward in the midnight-blue Darthene livery shut behind them. The downstairs entry hall was much as Herewiss remembered it; a high, cool, empty space, walled in the pale Darthene marble, with tall glass-paned windows opening on left and right into the walled gardens behind the second wall at the rear of the courtyard. Herewiss looked up at the windows as they passed them, heading for the central staircase, and saw that one pane high up in the right-hand window was missing, replaced with oiled paper.
Andaethen saw his look. “Ah yes,” she said, “we had a stone through that last week. Not exactly affectionate times in Prydon, these.”
Herewiss pulled a wry look. “Unfortunately—”
“Save it for after dinner,” Andaethen said. And was that a warning look in her eye? “It’s dull work, talking before food.”
Moris glanced at Herewiss and smiled slightly. Andaethen’s reputation as ambassador to Arlen was a sound one; she was known as a dry, careful representative of her land’s interests, smoothtongued and detached. She also had a reputation for employing the best cooks in town and setting a good table—and not slighting it herself once it was set.
“Up here,” said Andaethen, and led them up the stairs, leftward, then turning right into a long high-ceilinged corridor, done in grey marble this time, the Ruwist kind from southern Darthen near the Bluepeaks. The building itself was shaped like an au-rune, the cross-stroke being the street-side wing and the front hall and rooms above it; the other two strokes ran up to the old wall, holding garden and courtyard between them. “Will a suite do for you?” she said to Herewiss and Moris. “Two bedrooms with a connecting room. Baths are down at the end of the hall.”
Herewiss glanced at Moris, saw his nod. “That’ll do well,” he said. “You’ll have us fetched for dinner, then?”
“Nothing so formal,” Andaethen said, “not tonight, anyway. Later this tenday, we’ll have one after your kissing-of-hands.” Her expression as she opened the door of a room on the garden side was neutral. For the moment, Herewiss held his so as well. It was a king’s hand one kissed on presenting diplomatic credentials, but there was no king in Arlen—and Herewiss was unsure whether even the necessities of diplomacy, and his mission here, could make him kiss Cillmod’s hand.
“This should do you,” said An
daethen cheerfully. “Your things will be brought up shortly. Once you’re bathed and rested, just come down when you feel ready. We keep a collation ready all the time, this time of year. Traditions, after all.” She looked sour at that, as if there was something she wanted to add, but was restraining herself. “Later, gentlemen,” Andaethen said, and was off again.
This time of year, Herewiss thought as they went into the suite’s shared room, glancing around at the walls and floors of grey marble, the thick dark carpets, the quietly sumptuous divans and hangings. It was getting on toward the beginnings of harvest, now, and in the Two Lands that meant that country households kept a feasting table ready all the time to thank the Goddess, through their visitors, for the year’s bounty. But this year the bounty was going to be much less than usual, even in Darthen, and he suspected that was much on Andaethen’s mind.
“This is lovely,” Moris said, going over to the window and looking out. There was an iron-railed terrace outside it that looked down on the garden. Herewiss joined Moris there and gazed down. There were paths laid out below, and flowerbeds filled with old wide-blown fragrant roses and tall skyspike and heartbell and such, along with flat dense beds of sweet-smelling violet star and emethtë. Cluttered, dense, friendly, it was a cottage garden smuggled into the city, with even a few fruit trees over by the old wall, seventy or a hundred years from the looks of them—apples, pears, even a gnarled old kilce brought far north from its usual habitations in the Bluepeaks.
Herewiss sighed, feeling abruptly at rest, and strange to be so after so much traveling. “Do you need to sleep a while?” he said.
“I need food,” Moris said, and headed off to one of the doors that opened from the left and right of the sitting room. “But a bath first.”
“That’s for me as well,” Herewiss said, and looked into the other room. “Dear Goddess,” he said, “look at the size of that bed.” And he made a small wry face as he thought, Though the one who would appreciate it most isn’t here. Ah, Lorn...