The Assassin King

5

Gwydion Navarne was pacing the thick carpet outside the Great Hall, awaiting his turn to be called into the room. That this was his first council since becoming fully invested as duke on his seventeenth birthday a few months before weighed heavily on his mind as he strode up and down upon the heavy fibers woven into a tapestry that told the history of his family. With each step he unconsciously traced the lineage of the tuatha Navarne, from its Cymrian progenitor, a First-Generationer named Hague who had been Lord Gwylliam the Visionary’s best friend, to the ascendancy of his own late father. Stephen Navarne, who in his youth had been the best friend of Ashe, the current Lord Cymrian, Gwydion’s own namesake, godfather, and guardian. The rich colors of the plaited threads—forest-green and crimson, deep blue, royal purrple and gold—told a melancholy story that was fitting in its mood. Over and over as he walked in circles he silently repeated what he had seen in the harbors and outposts of Sorbold, the great nation of threatening mountains and windswept deserts to the south of Roland, struggling to keep the facts and figures straight in his mind. Seventy-five three-masted cutters, he thought to himself running down his list again in anticipation of the discussion that would sooner or later come about. Sixty three-masted schooners, at least four score heavy barges, all in the south-western port of Ghant, all in the course of one day’s time. All carrying slaves, thousands of them, perhaps the contents of ten or more entire villages, probably bound for the salt mines of Nicosi or the sweltering ironworks of Keltar. Gwydion had been unable to fully quell the racing of his heart since the moment he had witnessed the unloading of the human cargo a few weeks before. Compassion and outrage at the sight had quickly been joined by fear; a little sleepy harbor town teeming with soldiers and longshoremen, mountain guards and human chattel, had been enough to convince his companion that the war for which Sorbold was preparing would be greater in scope than anything the Known World had ever seen. Given that his companion at that moment had been Anborn ap Gwylliam, the Lord Marshal of the first Cymrian empire and perhaps the greatest military mind that had ever existed on the Middle Continent, Gwydion had been quickly and nauseatingly convinced, especially since Anborn had engineered the previous war to be described as such. The heavy carpet beneath his feet bulged up into a ridge from where he had unconsciously worn a groove. Gwydion smoothed it down with his feet, pushing the bump to the edges, arriving at the fringe at the same moment that the doors to the Great Hall banged open with urgency.

Standing in the door frame was his father’s long-trusted chamberlain, Gerald Owen, an elderly Cymrian who had served Gwydion’s father and grandfather, and perhaps a few ancestors before him. The old man stepped back in surprise, then opened the door wider for the young duke. “Finally,” Gwydion muttered as he entered the Hall. “I’ve been waiting a week to talk to him.”

“He’s aware of that, sir,” Gerald Owen said smoothly, closing the door behind him. “The Lord Cymrian needed to see that the Lady Cymrian and the baby were attended to before the meeting. She was in a grave state when she returned.” Gwydion stopped and turned back quickly. “And is she better now?” he asked anxiously. Rhapsody had adopted him and his sister Melisande four years before as honorary grandchildren, though in many ways she had been more like a second mother. “Will she be missing the council?”

“Yes, and no,” came a warm baritone voice from behind him. Gwydion looked over his shoulder to see his godfather standing in the center of the feeder hallway leading into the central meeting place of the keep. Ashe, as the Lord Cymrian was called by his intimates, was a man in possession of the blue eye color most often associated with Cymrian royal lineage, but whose face and body bore the lines of the mixed races of human and Lirin, with draconic vertical pupils scoring his eyes and copper-colored hair that appeared almost metallic in its sheen, signs of the wyrm blood that ran in his veins as well. “She has been tended to, and will be sitting in on the council meeting. We would be sorely lacking in wisdom were she not to attend.”

“Agreed,” said Gwydion, looking askance at the empty room. “But where is she? To that end, where is everyone? I saw Anborn come in earlier, and Achmed and Grunthor both a moment ago—where did they go?” His eyes fell upon the metal walking machine, abandoned in the corner of the room, a marvel of engineering provided by Anborn’s brother, the Sea Mage Edwyn Griffyth, to help the lame Lord Marshal regain the ability to walk upright. “What is going on here, Ashe?” Outside the enormous windows of the Great Hall an icy wind howled, drowning the silence, buffeting the glass until it rattled. The Lord Cymrian eyed him seriously, then turned and walked over to a heavy wall tapestry depicting the voyage of the Cymrian fleets from the lost island of Serendair. He drew the drape aside and pressed his hand into the stone of the wall; darkness appeared as a hidden passageway opened. “Do you remember this place?” he asked. Gwydion’s throat felt suddenly dry. “Yes,” he said. “Gerald Owen hid Melly and me there during the slaughter at the Winter Carnival four years ago.” Ashe nodded. “It’s not a perfect place to meet in secret, but being underground and away from the wind, and any ears that might be listening, it’s the best we can do for now.” The vertical pupils of his cerulean blue eyes caught the light from the windows and contracted visibly; Gwydion wondered if the change was from more than the light. “Make haste, Gwydion; we are about to convene the most dire discussion undertaken in the history of the continent.” The young duke nodded and stepped into the dark passageway, followed a moment later by the Lord Cymrian, who closed the doorway as he entered, plunging them both into empty blackness. A moment later he felt a crackle in the air around him, and the earthen walls of the dark passageway began to glow with a warmth that held no real light, but rather the radiance of heat. The dim illumination gave Gwydion enough vision to make out the rough-hewn stairs that twisted down into the blackness below, where he knew a small room was concealed, little more than a root cellar, behind a rock wall. The Lord Cymrian chuckled. “Thank you, Aria,” he called into the darkness below. “My pleasure, Sam,” came Rhapsody’s voice in return. “Mind your step, Gwydion.”

“Well, it’s good to know that at least she is well enough to make use of her fire lore and to still order me around like a child,” Gwydion murmured to his godfather as they slowly descended the stairs into the gloom. “ ‘Sam’—I’ve never asked you this—why does she call you that, anyway?” The Lord Cymrian smiled but said nothing, following the turning staircase down into the subterranean repository. Gwydion shuddered involuntarily at the memory of being thirteen in this place, left in charge of his five-year-old sister and a handful of sobbing children he did not know, waiting to hear if any of their parents survived the assault of the soldiers of Sorbold on the winter carnival where they had all been celebrating a few moments before. His father had lived; Gwydion tried to blot out the memory of the sounds that had risen from those whose parents had not been so fortunate. At the bottom of the stairs in the darkness Rhapsody was waiting for them; Gwydion thought perhaps heat had caught in her golden hair, making it shine even in the lightless gloom, but a moment later recalled that her title as the bearer of Daystar Clarion, the ancient sword of elemental ether and fire, was Iliachenva’ar, translated from the old tongue as meaning one who brought light into a dark place, or from one. His “grandmother” certainly had that ability; seeing her now, even in the gloom after all her months of absence, somehow gave the dank air a sudden freshness of hope. Or perhaps, rather than Rhapsody herself, it was the presence of the tiny sleeping infant that she cradled in her arms. Ashe rested his hand on her waist and brushed a kiss on her cheek. “You didn’t wish to remain within?” he asked. “I didn’t like the way Achmed and Grunthor were looking at Meridion,” she replied mildly, drawing the baby closer. “They kept dropping broad hints about missing breakfast.” Ashe smiled slightly and opened the stone door hidden within the rough granite wall. An almost blinding light spilled into the dark stairway from the room beyond. Crouched within it around a small wooden table on which a large parchment scroll was lying were the two Firbolg, Achmed and Grunthor; Anborn, looking testy as he usually did; and a Lirin man Gwydion recognized after a moment as Rial, Rhapsody’s viceroy in the forest of Tyrian where she reigned as their titular queen. Rial’s presence made Gwydion’s hands tremble unconsciously; if the Lirin elder statesman had traveled all the way from the sacred forest to he southwest of Roland, the scent of blood in the air must be unmistakable. “Hurry up and get inside, all of you,” Anborn growled. Ashe stepped aside to allow Rhapsody to enter first; Rial rose and bowed respectfully as she entered, but the other three men remained seated, Anborn because he had no other choice, and the Firbolg because they had no intention of doing otherwise. As she passed into the small hidden room Gwydion leaned discreetly toward Ashe and murmured in his ear. “How did Anborn get down here without the walking machine or a litter?” Ashe cleared his throat to cover his reply. “He allowed the only other Kinsman who was able to carry him,” he replied under his breath. Gwydion nodded and bowed to Grunthor, knowing that it was to him Ashe referred. The order of the Kinsmen was sacred to soldiers, a brotherhood deeper than that of blood, achieved over a lifetime of soldiering or a great deed of self-sacrifice, chosen by the wind itself. Rhapsody, Grunthor, and Anborn were the only Kinsmen Gwydion knew of in the world, though his “grandmother” had assured him there were others. The Lord Cymrian pulled the stone door shut behind him. In the light of the lanterns Gwydion caught a better look at his face, and those around him. In spite of the appearance of calm, there was a tightness about Rhapsody’s lips, a floridity to Anborn’s face, a tenseness in Ashe’s shoulders which belied that calm. Gwydion shuddered; he had believed his own news would be the most painful to share with the council. Clearly he was not alone in bringing bad tidings. A humming beneath the table caught his attention, and Gwydion looked down. There on the floor was a partial hexagonal ring of swords, laid tip to tip, hilt to hilt. He recognized three of them immediately. The first was Daystar Clarion. Flames licked up its blade, and after a few seconds Gwydion realized it was the weapon that was providing the light in the room rather than the lanterns. It was crossed with a battered, nameless blade he had seen many times before in the hand of Anborn, a weapon Gwydion had received numerous sparring blows from in the course of his training with the Lord Marshal. Seeing it now, its tip against the historic blade, made him wince from the memory. Daystar Clarion’s hilt abutted that of a Lirin longsword with a redwood handle; Gwydion knew this must be the weapon of Rial, the Lirin viceroy, whose duty was the protection of the forest of Tyrian. Gwydion had seen up close some of the Lirin defenses, and knew that however humble the blade appeared, when wielded in union with the tens of thousands identical to it, this sword was part of one of the greatest and most secret military machines on the continent. The hilt of Anborn’s sword abutted that of another legendary blade, Kirsdarke, the weapon of elemental water that his godfather carried, a bastard sword that was inscribed with gleaming blue runes on the blade and hilt. The sword appeared to be fashioned of silver steel as it lay on the floor, but in the hand of its bearer, known in the ancient tongue as the Kirsdarkenvar, the blade took on the appearance of living water and froth that ran in waves from the tang to the tip. It was crossed with a strange weapon, something Grunthor had once shown him called a triatine, which Gwydion knew from his history lessons had only been used more than a millennium before on the lost island of Serendair and nowhere else in the Known World. Between Grunthor’s weapon and Rial’s was an empty space. Gwydion could feel the eyes of the others in the room on his back. Unconsciously his hand went to the hilt of the sword in the scabbard at his own side. The import of the space that had been left for his weapon was not lost on him. He had attended many of Ashe’s councils before as the heir to the duchy of Navarne, but now he was being included for another reason, as the bearer of an elemental sword. Only five such weapons had ever been forged, and as far as anyone knew, only three now existed. All of which were present in the room. Gwydion Navarne glanced nervously over at Achmed, who was watching him, his mismatched eyes intent, his all but lip-less mouth twisted in the hint of a smile. Gwydion thought back to the day, not that long ago, when the Bolg king had presented him with the sword. This is an ancient weapon, the elemental sword of air known as Tysterisk. Though you cannot see its tang or shaft, be well advised that the blade is there, comprised of pure and unforgiving wind. It is as sharp as any forged of metal, and far more deadly. Its strength flows through its bearer; until a short time ago it was in the hands of the creature that took Rhapsody hostage, part man, part demon, now dead, or so it seems at least. In that time it was tainted with the dark fire of the F’dor, but now it has been cleansed in the wind at the top of Grivven Peak, the tallest of the western Teeth. I claimed it after the battle that ended the life of its former bearer, but that was only because I wanted to give it to you myself. Both Ashe and I agree that you should have it—probably the only thing we have ever agreed on, come to think of it. Anborn coughed impatiently. Quickly Gwydion drew forth the air sword from its scabbard. Tysterisk, when not being used in combat, appeared as little more than a hilt carved with swirling symbols that seemed to move and dance when in his hand. In the humming presence of the other two elemental weapons the slightest outline of a blade could now be seen. The young duke hastily placed it on the floor, its hilt abutting Grunthor’s triatine, its ephemeral blade crossed with Rial’s solid one, completing the circle. Anborn gestured to the chair beside him, and Gwydion took a seat, noting that the swords beneath the table had been arranged with common weapons interposed between each of the elemental ones. He recognized the wisdom of keeping the immense power of those swords separated, but also recalled something else Achmed had told him when the king had presented him with Tysterisk. I haven’t done anything to be worthy of such a weapon, Gwydion had said haltingly. The Bolg king had snorted with contempt. That’s a fallacy long perpetuated by self-important fools. You cannot be “worthy” of a weapon before you begin to use. It’s in the use of it that your worthiness is assessed. It is an elemental sword—no one is worthy of it. In truth weapons of this kind of ancient power do choose their bearers, and make them, in a way. Gwydion watched as Rhapsody bent down, still cradling her infant son, and brought her hand to rest over the circle of swords. She was a good example of what the Bolg king had said, Gwydion knew. While he had been told little of Rhapsody’s life, one detail she had shared with him was that she was of humble birth, the youngest child of a farming family. Her transformation into the Lady Cymrian, and Lirin queen, might have been attributable to many things, but certainly she would not have become the warrior that she was known to be without the aid of Daystar Clarion. Perhaps he would have a chance to prove himself more than just a boy duke as well. His musings were shattered as she began to sing, a soft note from the back of her throat that resonated at the same pitch as the hum of the elemental weapons. Gwydion listened, enchanted, as she began to weave the swords’ names, along with words he didn’t understand, into her song. Though he knew little of music, and nothing of the Lirin science of Naming, he thought he recognized a change in the musical vibration of each sword, until the three of them, along with Rhapsody’s voice, were making a perfect chord. When the music seemed to be holding steady, Rhapsody took Daystar Clarion by the hilt. As her hand made contact, the fiery blade leapt to life, its flames roaring in brilliant col-ors that stung Gwydion’s eyes. Maintaining her song, she passed the sword over the ring of weapons, as if picking up invisible threads. A circle of sparkling light appeared, hovering below the table, then expanded as she waved it away to the earthen ceil-ing of the hidden room, where it remained, pulsating and still ringing with the chord, as she put her weapon back in the hexagonal ring. It continued to hum, softer, back to its original monotonal pitch, as she ceased her wordless song and fell silent. She listened for a moment, then nodded to herself, smiled at her husband, and prepared to be seated. Ashe held Rhapsody’s chair for her as she settled in with the baby, then took his seat at the table. He unrolled the large scroll, revealing a map of the continent that highlighted in green the lands of the Cymrian Alliance, comprised of Tyrian. the southwestern coastal Lirin realm, the six central provinces of Roland, as well as the Firbolg mountains known as the Teeth at the easternmost border. The northwestern forest of Gwynwood and the small city-state of Sepulvarta, both religious strongholds of the continent’s two major sects, were depicted in white but dotted in green, indicating their allegiance to the Alliance as well as their independence. Sepulvarta, sometimes called the City of Reason, was the seat of the Patriarch, the head of the church known generally as the Patrician faith, while Gwynwood was the holy forest of the Filids, nature priests who tended to the Great White Tree of earth. As Lord Cymrian, Ashe was the titular head of both sects, but only ceremonially; he had continued to recognize the independence of both orders upon the formation of the Cymrian Alliance, sponsoring discussions between the two sects that had been adversaries during most of the fourteen centuries since the Cymrian refugees first came to the Wyrmlands. “Thank you for your forbearance,” Ashe said. “I know that each of you brings terrible news, as do I. I have asked you to retain it in silence before sharing it, so that the impact of your words will be as pure and accurate as possible.”

His voice resonated inside the hovering circle of light, the sound remaining trapped within it. The Lord Cymrian reached into his pocket, removed a coin minted with his own aspect and tossed it on the earthen floor outside the protective spinning light. It landed without sound; satisfied, he continued his address. “We know we are facing war—what is at question is the scale of it, and who is allied against us. Each of us holds a piece of that answer, and it is critical that we have as much of the puzzle as we can know before we put our defenses in place. We must ascertain whether what is coming is a war of conquest, driven by the greed of men, or if it is something far darker, more ancient, which has always loomed in the distance. Rhapsody, Namer that she is, has the power to not only record the words for posterity, but to help derive additional meaning from them once they are laid out for her. She has canted a circle of protection to keep our words secret from any ear that could hear them, hiding us all from any eye that could see within our council chamber. She will now remain silent, concentrating on each of our stories. I will speak first.” He turned slightly toward Anborn. “My father, your brother Llauron, is dead, Uncle,” he said softly, his voice emotionless. “Worse, he has Ended, forsaking all of his draconic lore as the Progenitor did, in a final act of protection of Rhapsody and our child, his grandson.” He waited, allowing the import of his words to sink in. Anborn stared at him for the span of seventy heartbeats. “The shield of the world is compromised,” he said finally. “This is grave news indeed.” Gwydion Navarne blinked but said nothing. It never failed to amaze him how passionlessly the members of the royal Cymrian dynasty were able to absorb tidings about the deaths of their family members, especially given the history of a thousand years or more that they shared. It might have caused him to believe that as humans with dragon blood, or wyrmkin, they were incapable of emotion, except that he himself had witnessed their desolation in the loss of others. He had seen firsthand the grief of Ashe when Rhapsody was missing or away, and the agony Anborn underwent following the death of his man-at-arms and friend, Shrike, a lowly soldier. It was a puzzle he not only could not decipher, but one whose very pieces were invisible to him. Then again, he mused, maybe it was more a matter of the deceptions they had perpetrated on each other over the centuries. Both Ashe and Llauron had been forced, or chosen, to feign their own deaths, to remain hidden from the sight of the living world for years. Perhaps this lack of loss was the price of that. “Additionally, I was unable to find my great-grandmother, Elynsynos, who would most certainly have been there if she were able,” Ashe continued. He looked askance at Rhapsody, whose eyes glistened with tears, but whose face remained stoic otherwise. “My own ability to discern her presence is limited to a range of approximately five miles, but there is such a patent lack of ethereal energy in the air, such a loss of lore from the forest ground, that I fear the worst.” Anborn’s face whitened noticeably. Gwydion felt the air in the room become suddenly drier, more caustic. “Gods,” he whispered. “If that be true, then with her death and that of Llauron, the Great White Tree is now unguarded, and the lands that once were her domain—most of the western continent, even unto Tyrian in the south—are no longer under draconic protection.” His hand shook slightly as he traced the area. “For all that humans do not even discern that wyrms protect the very ground on which they walk, the loss of both of them will leave a good deal of the Alliance vulnerable, should there be F’dor about.”

Ashe nodded, his jaw clenched. Then he turned to Achmed and Grunthor. “Tell us, please, what you experienced in the forest of Gwynwood. Rhapsody was too ill to talk about it on the way home in the carriage.” The Bolg king’s mismatched eyes gleamed in the flickering light. “Well, I suppose if you are counting the number of dragons left in the world and bemoaning the loss of those two, you can gain cheer from this,” he said archly. “One we had thought dead is actually alive—your bloody grandmother, Ashe.”

The Lord Cymrian’s face went rigid, and the draconic pupils in his eyes expanded. “Anwyn?” he asked in a choked voice. “Anwyn is alive?” He looked from the Bolg king to Grunthor, who remained at attention, as he always did in Achmed’s presence, then finally to his own wife. “How can that be? The three of you killed her, locked her in a grave of scorched earth within the Moot before the eyes of almost everyone in this room. The sword Daystar Clarion took her from the skies with a flash of starfire that ignited the grass all around for miles—how can this be?”

“Bloody dragons,” Grunthor muttered. “Once is never enough with ’em; ya gotta kill ’em at least twice, maybe more.”

“If anyone should know that it would be you, Ashe,” said Achmed. “I’ve been trying with you for the last four years, and yet here you are.” The air around him bristled, and Gwydion Navarne winced involuntarily. He knew the Bolg king’s words were black humor. but there was enough truth in them to set off the dragon in Ashe’s blood, and possibly Anborn’s as well. “Careful then, Achmed, lest your reputation as a renowned assassin be seen as mere puffery,” Ashe said calmly, smoothing out the map. “Where did you see her?” The Bolg king lowered the veils that traditionally shielded his hideous face from both the gaze of the world and the vibrations of ordinary life that irritated the sensitive nerve endings and traceries of veins that scored his skin, hallmarks of his Dhracian heritage. “She chased Rhapsody, your brat, and me through a good deal of the forest outside of Elynsynos’s lair,” he said. “The last I saw of her was at the place where your father’s ossified carcass now stands.” Rhapsody glanced at him reproachfully but did not speak, still concentrating on the accounts. “She was alive when he interposed himself between you, enveloped you?” Ashe asked, his jaw rigid but his eyes clear, “When he Ended, with the three of you inside him?” The Bolg king exhaled. “She took a shot from my cwellan, a bladed disk of cold-fired rysin-steel that expands jaggedly in heat I think I hit her in the chest area or midsection—it’s hard to tell on a dragon. That disk should continue to expand for a while, ripping into the muscle and sinew, until it finally shatters, whereupon the pieces should make their way to the heart. Those disks are called dragonkillers. Ironic—your own grandfather, her hated husband Gwylliam, was the one who produced the design for the manufacturing process four hundred or so years ago before Anwyn had him assassinated. Seems he was bent on finding a weapon that could rip apart dragons as well.” His eyes went to Anborn. “Your parents were charming people. Family dinners in your house must have been joyous.”

“Why do you think each of us had a personal food taster?” Anborn replied testily. “Shall we return to the matter at hand?”

“She was after Rhapsody,” Achmed said. “She seemed obsessed, and unaware, of everything else around her. She did not threaten me, or call out after anyone else—she screamed Rhapsody’s name over and over again, using the wind, the rumbling of the earth, anything she could draw power from, to threaten her.”

“Sorry Oi didn’t come sooner,” Grunthor muttered, his polished tusks protruding from behind bulbous lips. “Oi’d ’ave made ’er scream somethin’ else.” Rhapsody glanced at him and smiled slightly; the Sergeant smiled in return, understanding the unspoken thanks in her eyes.

“It’s difficult to know whether or not she died of those wounds,” Ashe said, studying the map. “Like Anborn, and myself, and any other of Elynsynos’s descendants, she is not a true dragon but wyrmkin; if she were true wyrm, she woud never have been able or willing to try to kill my father, or Meridion. No true wyrm would ever kill another, not even in a dispute over territory, which is their greatest point of contention. She has none of the compunction and none of the collective conscience of her mother’s race—and therefore she will stop at nothing to vent her hatred. If she survived you cwellan shot, she will continue to appear randomly, whenever she is least expected, until she gets what she wants—and it appears what she wants is to kill you, Rhapsody.” The Lady Cymrian nodded, still concentrating on the re-port. “I suspect that she will ultimately die of the wound, Achmed said. “There is no person to whom she can turn to have the shards removed, so sooner or later they will rend her enough inside to cause her to bleed to death—one of my all time favorite aspects of those disks. I suspect Rhapsody has little to fear in the long term.”

“Whether she does or not, dear as you are to me, m’lady, I fear that’s the least of our concerns,” Anborn said. “While An-wyn may pose a threat by the sheer chaos of her actions and intent, it is unlikely that she is allied with any of our enemies. If the Bolg king has finished his report, we should move on to what is looming on our borders.” Rhapsody nodded again silently, still listening intently. “Indeed,” said Rial; the leathery skin of his face darkened as he spoke. “I came, uninvited, to bring you the winter report, m’lady. The southern and western border watchers have compiled very disturbing information that points to a massive buildup of Sorbold military presence at the outskirts of our lands, particularly of the elite soldiers of their mountain guard. Never have we seen mountain guard along any of our borders; this be disturbing enough, but that news be coupled with an increase of blood sport in the arenas of Jakar, which abuts our southeastern border.

“ ’Tis true that Sorbold has always allowed the practice of gladiatorial arena fighting, though it was discouraged, at least officially, by the late Dowager Empress. But now that this new emperor, Talquist, be awaiting the end of his regency year, the human traffic through our lands to the arenas has swollen like a river in spring. The crowds making their way to Jakar’sid be enormous and violent, drank with spirits and bloodlust. The forest fringe has been set alight several times, and the border guards have engaged in the repelling of quite a few raids, seemingly incited without reason, just from the ugliness that is building to the south. Additionally, the guardians of our western coastline have noted a substantial increase in ships sailing north.”

“North?” demanded Anborn. “Gwydion and I saw a mass-ing of them in the south—speak up, lad, report.” Gwydion cleared his throat. “In the harbor of Ghant, Anborn and I witnessed seventy-five three-masted cutters, sixty three-masted schooners, and at least four score heavy barges arrive and unload in port, all in the course of one day. That rivals the traffic of Port Fallon in Avonderre, the busiest seaport in Roland.”

“And dwarfs that of Port Tallono, Tyrian’s largest,” added Rial. “Not even Argaut, half a world away, traffics that many ships daily. Only Kesel Tai on the island of Gaematria has greater sea trade than that,” said Ashe, indicating the solitary land mass in the midst of the Wide Central Sea to the west “Or at least they did; the Sea Mages have been limiting their contact with the outside world of late. The shipbuilding schedule is dramatically behind, the vessels I’ve ordered are arriving a few weeks late consistently. Has Edwyn Griffyth indicated why to you, Uncle?” Anborn snorted contemptuously. “As if my brother communicates anything to me, and as if I would be interested in anything he says. Over the centuries the Sea Mages have been less and less interested in commerce with the outside world preferring to pass their days in the folderol of magical research, invention, and the science of tidal studies, or some such rot. They have been fairly useless for centuries now; they were famously absent in the Great War, and have been ever less interested in our plight ever since.” His azure eyes gleamed as a thought occurred, and he turned to Achmed “Except for that idiot ambassador my brother sent with the walking machine last autumn; he seemed quite intent on contacting you.” The Bolg king’s forbidding countenance soured even more “Oh, he did, rest assured,” he said. “I let him live in spite of it That’s your fault again, Rhapsody.” The Lady Cymrian kissed her new son’s downy blond hair ignoring him, maintaining her silence. “The ships were laden with human cargo,” Gwydion continued. “Slaves, or would-be slaves, it seemed, captives from entire villages, being transported in wagons like chattel. Men, women, children; the distribution seemed very efficient. They were split up at the docks and dispatched in many different directions.”

“So Sorbold has been building up its internal capabilitie for war, its army and naval forces, at an extreme rate in less than a year,” Ashe said, noting his uncle’s rising anger at the discussion of the slavery. “Anborn has always had his suspicions, but how did the speed of this escape our notice? Talquist isn’t even emperor yet; he chose to take only the title of regent for a year. All the ambassadorial meetings between the Alliance and the new Sorbold diplomatic mission have been cordial. There have been no hostilities in the time since the death of the Dowager Empress. There have been no raids that I have heard of in Roland, Tyrian, or the Nonaligned States except for the drunken thuggery during times of blood sport you just mentioned, Rial— and certainly none where captives were taken. And had there suddenly been orders for more ships by the crown of Sorbold placed in Manosse or Gaematria, surely the harbormasters and the Sea Mages would have alerted me.”

“One would hope so, given that Manosse is one of your late mother’s holdings, and Gaematria is a member of the Alliance,” agreed Anborn. “So where are these ships and slaves coming from?” As the words left Ashe’s mouth, he sat up suddenly as if shot by an arrow in the back. Gerald Owen is coming down the stairs,” he said softly. “I gave specific orders not to be disturbed.” Gwydion Navarne felt an old fear well up inside him, a dusty and atrophied panic left over from the slaughter at the Winter Carnival, causing the saliva in his mouth to taste of metal and cinders. His guardian’s dragonsense, set off by the action in the Great Hall above, left a cracking dryness in the dank air. Ashe rose and strode out of the glittering circle to the hid-den door. He opened it and stepped into the dark antechamber beneath the rough-hewn staircase, “What is it, Owen?” he demanded. The old man’s reply was soft. “A visitor is here to see you, m’lord,” he said. “This man knew you were meeting; he instructed me to beg an audience of you—when asked his name, he said merely that you and he had traveled the road as strangers and companions four year ago on the way to the Cymrian Council.” The Lord Cymrian stood silent for a moment, then looked back into the lamplit chamber where his councilors were waiting. “Perhaps the answers to some of these questions have just arrived,” he said. He turned back to Gerald Owen. “Send him down.”