Surrender to the Will of the Night (35 page)

Hecht examined the pages, considered the inlays on the medallion. “I see it. I can memorize this.”

“Good.”

“Just for fun, why don’t I send my messages in Church Brothen?”

Ignoring that, Delari said, “Be careful, Piper. You’ve never been as vulnerable as you’ll be the next few weeks.” Mainly because of the need to travel in small bands. “Heris has caught whiffs of several potentially unpleasant schemes.”

Heris said, “People you’ve never even met want to get you just because you’re you, Piper.”

“I’ll become caution itself. We’ll disguise ourselves and take a route that stays mostly in the Imperial territories. We’ll be all right once we get to the Remayne Pass.”

“Be wary of false friends. Serenity is wooing weather vanes like Germa fon Dreasser.”

“I know who I can’t let get behind me, Grandfather. And I’ll go armed with all the legal instruments the Penital can provide.”

“So va Still-Patter has developed an affection for you.”

Heris sneered. “He hopes Piper will help him achieve his own ambitions.”

“An understandable basis for an alliance.”

It was not yet light out. Hecht said, “Titus is outside. He’ll be getting impatient. I’d better get gone before Serenity finds me and has me dragged in. What’s his problem, anyway?”

Heris said, “He’s really worried about his falcons and firepowder. Ghort says he can only find a few falcons. Most of those are damaged. Serenity counted on having scores to use against Antieux.”

“He won’t let that go, will he?”

“Not as long as he lives.”

“I couldn’t help him with the falcons. I told him to take a closer look at his own people. There are always crooks around our homegrown Patriarchs. Plenty would sell military stores and equipment to line their own purses.”

Delari said, “I’ll start a rumor, give it a few days, then raise the question in the Collegium. We have the right to insist on an accounting of where the Church’s money is going. That will put him on the defensive.”

“Add a little pressure by insisting on being told where it’s coming from, too.”

“Anne of Menand?”

“She’s always in the mists somewhere, isn’t she?”

***

Fourteen riders left Brothe with Hecht and Consent, a larger party than Hecht wanted. His men would not let him travel with less protection.

Heris quickly developed a habit of turning up when nobody was looking, like her remote ancestor before her. She kept Hecht posted on wickednesses hatching inside Krois. As had been the case with Sublime V, Serenity had almost no idea what those around him were doing in his name. He might not want to know. He refused to hear what the Collegium had to say. He was almost completely fixated on next spring in the Connec.

“And what would be the plan for today?” Titus Consent asked, the fifth morning. He became more surly and suspicious daily. Hecht was too obviously shutting him out of the secrets.

“Your choice today, Titus. Either road will bring us to the Remayne Pass day after tomorrow.” They were crossing the rich farmlands of the Aco River floodplain, well east of the direct road from Brothe to the pass. Heeding Heris’s warnings, Hecht was directing his company out of harm’s way. He had not explained. Not in detail. “By now the villains will have decided to catch us at the mouth of the pass.”

“I won’t ask how you know. You wouldn’t give me a straight answer. But I am interested in why you’re determined to avoid these villains. There are sixteen of us. None of us virgins.”

“All right. I have a friend. A sorcerer. He watches them and keeps me informed. That’s all you need. I’ve avoided the fight because I don’t want it to reflect back on the Empress.” Which was true. Though mainly for show. He had no objection to renewed conflict between the Patriarch and Empire.

“Things are changing. And I’m not comfortable with some of that.”

Hecht shrugged. “We’ll get back to normal once we get to Alten Weinberg.” He hoped.

Consent remained sullen for hours, upset because he was not trusted. Which could lead to trouble someday. Though, intellectually, Titus had to see that trust was not the issue. What a man does not know he can never reveal, no matter what.

Consent came to Hecht later. “I know how we can deal with these people who worry you so much.”

“Tell me.”

“We have a thousand men on the move. Maybe more. Mostly behind us. Why don’t we just sit down and let them catch up? Your villains won’t take on a whole army, will they?” Consent had a hard time believing that Serenity, or his henchmen, would risk angering Empress Katrin by attacking Piper Hecht. But the former Captain-General was adamantly attached to the opposing view.

There was a faction inside Krois that was as stubbornly anti-Imperial as the Anti-Patriarchal faction in Alten Weinberg was stubborn. It had not gotten much voice under the last three Patriarchs. But the new one was not paying attention. The new one had obsessions in another direction.

“You’re right, Titus. Why not just show them so many spears that they’ll just run away?”

***

Hecht entered the Remayne Pass accompanied by key staff, three hundred veterans, and armed with an up-to-the-moment scouting report from Heris.

There were people up ahead. Their intentions were not friendly.

Drago Prosek had found a dozen falcons somewhere. Hecht had not checked their inventory numbers. Prosek put them out front. Random blasts of creek pebbles thrown up the brushy slope flushed the ambushers. Who would have tried nothing against such numbers, anyway. There were scarcely two dozen of them.

Prosek brought prisoners. “Shall I have them put to the question, Commander?” As Hecht had no official title those who dealt with him direct called him whatever came to mind.

“To what end?”

“It might be instructive to find out who hired them.”

“I already know. You’ll be happier being ignorant.”

“You think?”

Titus Consent shook his head slowly. “Silly-ass discussion.”

Hecht said, “You prisoners. Two of you were with us during the Connecten Crusade. So you know where you stand. Remind your friends. And keep it in mind when Mr. Consent talks to you.”

Consent wasted no time. He asked questions. The prisoners answered. They had nothing illuminating to say. They had been recruited by a Race Buchels. Buchels had paid well, half up front.

There was no trace of Buchels. He had gone missing as soon as the smoke from Drago Prosek’s falcons rolled over his position.

Most of the prisoners thought Buchels had worked for somebody in the Collegium. A few picked Anne of Menand. And one liked those nobles in the Grail Empire who did not want the Empress getting any stronger.

Hecht told his inner circle, “Buchels works for one of Serenity’s associates. An idiot who decided to do his boss a favor and eliminate the nuisance Serenity is always grumbling about. An idiot who can’t look past the moment far enough to see that he could start a war with the Empire.”

Heris said the fool’s name was Fearoé Durgandini. She thought that was funny. Durgandini meant “woman of bad smells” in one of the languages she spoke. This Durgandini was the illegitimate son of a Doneto cousin. He was determined to make his mark handling Serenity’s unpleasant chores. Heris suspected that Durgandini operated under deniable orders.

Titus Consent observed, “It doesn’t matter in the end. We’ll go where we have to go. Whoever gets in the way will get trampled.”

There were no more human intercessions. The road was busy now that no monster lurked in the high Jagos. And the season was late. Travelers were trying to get through before weather got in the way. The Night took no more than a normally malicious interest. After a few small punishments it pretended indifference.

***

“Bayard va Still-Patter offered the use of his house, gave me letters to prove it, and I don’t intend to be shy about taking advantage,” Hecht declared as he neared Alten Weinberg. To va Still-Patter retainers sent by the Ambassador’s father to discourage the hiresword interloper from taking advantage of the son’s generosity. “I won’t let my men steal whatever they overlooked last time.”

He faked a light, playful mood. He did not look forward to the incessant politics plaguing every center of power. He was exhausted. Though the threats had been minimal the mountains left him wanting nothing more than to disappear and recuperate.

The pass had been colder than ever for the time of year. And, though the Night itself had shown little interest, someone had sent numerous noxious minor Instrumentalities to make him miserable, presumably in hopes he would turn back.

Heris had been no help.

He had not yet had time to pull off his boots, once inside Bayard va Still-Patter’s, when the invitations and petitions started. He told Rivademar Vircondelet, “You’ve been here a week. You’re rested up and familiar with the local situation. This crap is on you. Anybody wants an audience, tell them to go through the Empress. I work for her. If it’s the Empress, though, say I’m too sick.” Hecht did not strictly lie about being sick.

“Won’t be the Empress, boss. She’s out in the sticks doing what they call a progress. Which sounds like just showing herself off so people know she really exists. At their expense, of course. I hear Johannes started it so he could save on what it cost to run the court. Anyway, we’ll actually have a few weeks where the load stays kind of light.”

“That’s good. That’s real good. It’ll give me a chance to recover.”

He did not like being sick. He could not recall the last time he was really sick.

Titus told him exactly, when he arose, recovered but weak, three days later. Titus had consulted his personal journals. But it did not matter, other than to illuminate the fact that people pushed old seasons of pain out of mind.

“What’s on the schedule?” Hecht asked.

“It’s really piled up while you were loafing, boss. Everyone wants a piece, now that you’re here. Both of them.”

“What?”

“Almost everybody who is anybody is out making progress with the Empress. The elder va Still-Patter is not here to aggravate us only because his gout is so bad he can’t get out of bed.”

“Again, then. That’s real good. I want you all to learn everything about this city while you have the chance. Now. Let’s put me to bed.”

18. Cape Tondur: Andoray

A supernatural wind blew south southwest along the coast of Andoray. Little of the power from beneath the sea made it inshore, where scores of ravenous Instrumentalities prowled the brink of the forever ice, eager for any taste of power, dodging or preying on one another.

For all but the greatest a moment of inattention meant certain destruction.

The most terrible doom was the vast white toad squatting atop a promontory of ice that thrust miles out into the sea. That ice creaked forward a yard or two every day. And lifted vertically several feet. Or more, if the Windwalker caught a lucky gust of power. Or if some desperately hungry lesser Instrumentality strayed within range of the Windwalker’s lightning tongue.

There were human worshippers attendant upon the Windwalker, initially. Cold and starvation took most. Their frozen remains lay scattered around the great toad. Most resembled the Seatt peoples of the northernmost north of ancient times.

Not all the Windwalker’s Chosen elected to perish beside their god. One family took advantage of a distraction on the god’s part to flee into the Ormo Strait aboard a boat found caught in a crust of newly formed surface ice. These fugitives were the first Chosen to shake the mad god’s control. His strength was limited and his attention rigidly fixed elsewhere.

Kharoulke the Windwalker had no room in his divine consciousness for anything but hunger: for the power out there, and for revenge on those filthy come-lately divines who had driven his generation into a terrible captivity.

Middle-world time rolled past swiftly. Those who had known the Windwalker elsewhere did not mourn his absence.

Kharoulke sat at the end of the ice, five hundred feet above the frigid indigo waters of the Andorayan Sea. Only a few miles now separated him from the gateway to the Realm of the Gods. He could see through that. The waters beyond were subtly different. He saw but could not reach. A mighty and dark god he was but he had almost no power left. He could not collect enough more. He might not get there in time to sabotage the restoration of his most hated enemies.

Can a god know despair? Particularly a god who knew what it meant to be imprisoned for millennia?

Maybe not. But certainly something very like despair, which had built in the understanding that Instrumentalities of the Night were not armed with a sense of time like the one so critical to those ephemeral mortals who shaped the gods.

There was no longer any guard on Kharoulke’s back but the dread of him. Among the scattered, frozen Chosen, now miles behind, there were, as well, several Krepnights, the Elect. They had not had the strength to survive the frozen dreams of the god who had imagined them, either.

Something flickered into existence behind the great white toad, was gone in an instant. The same shimmering disturbance came and went a dozen times before the cold and hungry god realized that something not of the Night was very active back where he was not watching.

Kharoulke the Windwalker began to turn. He began to change his form.

Thunder spoke, sharp and businesslike.

A thousand invisibly fast iron and silver needles pierced the god, driving deep into his being. The agony was like nothing he had ever known. It raped away all reason.

Kharoulke continued to change, growing taller and more manlike. The pain worsened. Those needles were barbed. Movement made them cut their ways forward, deeper into the divine flesh. Till they were expelled or absorbed they would continue the hurt and would sap Kharoulke’s little remaining power.

In ragged-ass volley a dozen kegs of firepowder spent their chemical energy, not against the Windwalker but against the ice on which he had begun to shift his bulk.

The Instrumentality made one move too many. A crack zigged and zagged from one explosion site to the next, dashing east to west across the promontory. The ice groaned, grumbled, roared.