Ruler of the Realm

Seventy-six

Hamearis Lucina, the Duke of Burgundy, projected a bluff, down-to-earth demeanour, but he had a romantic streak that showed in his taste in architecture. His keep was a Gothic nightmare, full of gloomy towers and turrets, pointed arches, flying buttresses and a host of gargoyle guards poised to spring down on the unwelcome. The whole structure clung to the edge of a remote, lonely cliff, constantly buffeted by the breakers of an angry sea.

Since a lifetime of military campaigns had collected loot aplenty, alongside several interesting scars, Hamearis could well afford the weather spells he needed to enhance the eerie atmosphere. Where others sought the sunshine, his lavish outlay brought perpetual fogs and rains, with frequent thunderstorms and howling winds.

It all meant his keep was the least visited of all the Great Houses… and the perfect place to hide a military secret.

Hairstreak’s black ouklo followed the cliff road, jerking erratically in the grip of the prevailing wind. His feeling of unease had nothing to do with the storm outside. The Faeries of the Night were united again. The war was under way. Burgundy was a staunch ally once more. In theory everything was going exactly as he’d planned and, with the element of surprise, victory was all but guaranteed.

Yet for all that, he had a feeling in his gut that the situation was somehow slipping away from him. It was a feeling that had been with him since the young Analogue boy had killed his vampire and disappeared with Blue. How had he managed that? There were aspects of the situation Hairstreak didn’t understand; and what you didn’t understand you couldn’t control.

The ouklo pulled into the keep’s cobbled courtyard – Hamearis kept horses because a horse had once saved his life and he’d been superstitious about the stupid creatures ever since. Hairstreak waited until his guards arrived to surround the carriage before getting out. He pulled his cloak around him and ran through the freezing rain to the great entrance door where Burgundy was already waiting for him.

‘Darkness’ sake, Hamearis, don’t you ever switch off this bloody weather?’ He threw his sodden cloak to a footman.

Hamearis looked at him in genuine surprise, then said, ‘Know what, Blackie – I hardly notice it any more.’ He placed a friendly hand on Hairstreak’s shoulder. ‘Come in and we’ll dry you off at the fire with a hot toddy before we get down to business. If you send your guards to the kitchens, the girls will entertain them. Last time I looked they had an ordle stew in the cauldron.’

Hairstreak ran his fingers through his hair and scowled when they came away wet. ‘I’d as soon we went straight to the tower.’

Hamearis shrugged. ‘As you wish.’

The tower was a remnant of the original keep. Some experts believed it dated to the time of the original Purple Palace. It certainly featured the same cyclopean stonework, on a larger scale by far than anything a modern spell could handle. Hairstreak always thought of it as one of those structures that would stand for ever, resisting everything that men and time could throw at it. He sometimes found himself wondering about the forgotten culture that built it. What sort of faerie had they been?

Small ones by the look of it. The only entrance to the tower was through a tiny oak door that gave access to a narrow spiral staircase. He wasn’t a particularly tall man himself, but even he found it cramped. Hamearis, who’d gone ahead, had to bend almost double and turn sideways. But at least it kept them safe from attack. An army would have to tackle those steps one man at a time.

He was sweating and his hair had steamed dry by the time they reached the turret room. Despite his discomfort, Hairstreak felt a tingle of anticipation. This was the real nerve centre of the Nighter attack. And what a contrast to the Situation Room beneath the Purple Palace.

Once, years ago, Apatura Iris, the late lamented Purple Emperor, had taken him to see the Situation Room in a misguided attempt at intimidation. Such scurry. Such bustle. So many people… soldiers on guard, women in uniform, messengers with bits of paper, aides to aides and aides to the aides of aides. There were three Generals, who looked old even then, and God alone knows how many wizards. There were viewing globes – scores of them – and cabinets full of elemental engineers. There were signallers and code-breakers, winter-makers and spell-breakers. There was a running armament tally. (What a mistake it had been to let him have sight of that!) There was a strategy table. There were seventeen communications consoles. All this and not even a war on. What folly! What incredible folly, exactly the sort of brute-force overkill the Faeries of the Light had always favoured.

How different to the turret room.

It was pleasingly spartan. It was pleasingly empty. There were no guards on the door to constitute a security hazard, no staff to listen in on every decision. None were needed, none were wanted. None could have gained access – the spirit guardians set along that exhausting staircase would strip the meat from the bones of anyone who set foot on it, excepting only Hamearis and himself. Thus Nighter secrets were kept to the Nighters.

But the real joy of the turret room was its equipment. The messengers, the communications consoles, the view globes, the signallers, the code-breakers, the spell-breakers and all the other fractured nonsense were replaced by a single sphere of polished crystal set in an amethyst bowl. Just two spell-driven pieces and they took the place of everything – and everybody – you might find in the Lighters’ Situation Room.

The entire war effort of the Faeries of the Night could be controlled, absolutely, by a single man.

Hairstreak pulled up a chair and sat down, placing his hands, palm downwards, on the mount of the amethyst bowl. The moment contact was made, the crystal sphere began to glow, the bowl itself began to hum.

‘Access granted,’ murmured the bowl in a soft, feminine voice.

Hairstreak glanced up at Hamearis and smiled. The access setting, geared to his personal vibration, was his ultimate security. What political manoeuvring that had taken. But the agreement was in place now. Hairstreak and only Hairstreak could control their forces. Oh, he could delegate, of course – and had delegated to Hamearis and one or two other trusted underlings – but only for a limited time and with the option of his own remote override. He licked his lips and savoured the delicious taste of power.

‘Let’s see how our attack is going,’ he said aloud. ‘Sit down, Hamearis, dear fellow – this will take a while.’

The system, linked to the thoughts behind his words, delivered a chair for Hamearis on the other side of the globe and expanded an aerial view of the Yammeth caverns within the globe itself.

It was incredible how much had been done in the short time since he’d inspected the place personally. The vast caverns were packed full now with munitions: crates of concentrated foodstuffs, weaponry, cases of spells, stacked bottles of trapped lightning, lead-lined containers of imps, djinn and other military elementals, engineering equipment, advanced bivouac gear. And beyond it all the patiently waiting troops in their city of tents pitched in neat rows on the cavern floor.

Well, they wouldn’t have to wait long. The front line was already pushing forward. These reinforcements would join it at the crucial time. Nothing could stop the Nighters now.

‘You know they have spy eyes in the caverns,’ Hamearis remarked. ‘Seven by our last count.’

‘Seven, is it?’ That was three more than when he’d personally inspected. Old Cardui’s people were getting better. ‘All neutralised, I take it?’

‘As subtly as you ordered, Blackie.’ Hamearis grinned. ‘Our magic boys crafted an evolving illusion – nicest one I’ve ever seen. They knew we were making preparations, all right, but slowly and largely defensive. They had absolutely no idea about our real level of readiness.’ The grin broadened to a smile. ‘Or our offensive capacity.’

‘Nicely done,’ Hairstreak murmured. ‘Let’s see what the opposition is doing,’ he told the amethyst bowl.

‘Connecting…’ said the bowl.

The crystal globe flared briefly, then presented a scene of the Situation Room itself. Hairstreak felt a glow of pride. The idiots had assumed their Situation Room was impregnable because of the quartz-loaded granite that surrounded it. No spell could penetrate quartz – everyone knew that. And Cardui’s people combed the place hourly for smuggled spy eyes. Such foolishness. Someone had remarked to him just the other day that Generals always seemed to fight the last war, not the current one. It was certainly true here. The Faeries of the Light took precautions against anything that had been used against them in the past and never once, in their arrogance, imagined their enemy could develop new approaches to be used in the present.

Hairstreak bent forward. His stealth spy eye showed the Situation Room was busy, but then the Situation Room was always busy so far as he could see. Even when peace reigned supreme, it crawled with activity. But all three Generals were there, as they had to be when they were on a war footing. He concentrated and the globe took him closer to what he wanted to see; and there it was, view globe within view globe. The Lighter troops were engaged and they were losing!

Hairstreak leaned back in his chair. Nothing worried him in what he’d seen. He didn’t underestimate the Faeries of the Light. It would be a hard fight but he was certain he could win it. And victory would bring spoils beyond imagining. Victory would give him the Realm.

‘Shall we sample our new toy?’ he asked Hamearis cheerfully. ‘Fully operational, I presume?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Hamearis confirmed. ‘Has been for almost a day.’

Hairstreak murmured a codeword. At once the scene changed in the crystal globe. He was looking down on an area of forest, the same area where he had once built himself a mansion. The place was in ruins now, razed to the ground, with the forest itself already closing in to conceal the remains, like some giant animal healing a wound. But though there was nothing much to see any more, that scarcely mattered. The area was purely a reference point, of no strategic importance. As a reference point, it allowed him to explore…

Everywhere!

He was finding it difficult to contain his excitement. The technology was not as flashy as the surveillance system around his home – no illusion of flying, no sensation of movement: just a three-dimensional image within the crystal globe – but its extent was breathtaking. Until now, surveillance had always been limited by things like the placement of spy eyes or the establishment of area markers. But this device… this device gave him the Realm! What was he thinking? This device gave him the world!

It was as good as he’d dreamed it would be. With a thought, the scene pulled back from the area of his old mansion and suddenly he could see the entire forest. Then the plain surrounding it. Then the mountains beyond and the coastline and the sea. If he’d wished, he could have examined the curvature of the planet. In a godlike vision he could have watched its stately journey round the central sun. But godlike or not, that vision was of little practical importance. He conjured an aerial view of the Lighter capital, followed the river beyond the Loman Bridge and hung for a moment above the Imperial Island.

Then he swooped down to enter the Purple Palace. It was incredible. There were no limitations. He could actually see inside the Purple Palace. He could examine corridor after corridor, room after room. No secret in the Realm was safe from him any more. Grinning with delight he watched a kitchen cook drop vegetables into a pot.

What a joy this was going to be when the war was over. He could spy on every enemy, keep record of every subject. He could foil plots before they began, ensure total, absolute obedience from everyone, for ever. This incredible device had placed more power in his hands than any Emperor had ever enjoyed in the entire history of the faerie. Ah, what a time he would have when the war was over.

And before then, how easy it would be to win. This was the ultimate tactical weapon. No enemy troop movement could be hidden from him. There would be no enemy decision to which he was not privy. He could oversee whole battles, place his own forces with unparalleled accuracy. He could craft his victory like an artist.

Hairstreak called up picture after picture in a manic travelogue that took him far beyond the Realm to Haleklind and Borderland and Feltwell Spur and Graphium and Wallach and then back to the Realm itself, where he examined the southern provinces and Yammeth City and the great grain-growing fields to the west, and the swathe of heavy industries and transportation yards to the north and beyond, then eastward from Yammeth Cretch to the desert wastes of -

He froze the picture with a thought and leaned forward. ‘What’s that, Burgundy?’ he asked, his heart suddenly pounding.