Through Wolf's Eyes (53 page)

"As you wish, sir."

"We will both be hounded by questions. I, for one,
shall tell my people we are still feeling out what the other wants and
needs. You may tell yours whatever you wish."

"I believe you have spoken the simple truth, Uncle."

"One last thing."

"Yes?"

The king studied his gnarled fingers. "I am unwilling
to contract too freely with young lives as was done in my father's day.
Within my kingdom, perhaps, but across the borders is a different
matter. I suggest we hold another gathering—a dance perhaps—so I can
see how everyone behaves."

Allister could hardly believe what he was hearing. A
dance? At such a critical time? King Tedric read something of his
expression.

"You forget, good Nephew. I have named my heir. My meeting with you is simply to see if I will change my mind.
If we are to make monumental decisions, let us not make them in haste."

Allister bowed. "I agree."

On that accord they departed. Messages would be sent
back and forth arranging the next meeting and the ball to be held some
days hence, as soon as arrangements could be made. Followed closely by
his men, Allister descended the Toll House stairs and departed.

He was so busy composing how he would reply to
various questions from the Bright Bay contingent that he did not notice
the anxious concern with which the generals of Stone-hold watched him
pass.

P
RINCE NEWELL SHIELD INITIALLY
had been more than a little put out at being kept from the king's
conference with Allister Seagleam. Surely he hadn't come all this way
to be balked at the door! Somewhat mollified when he learned that
everyone was being refused, he decided to put his morning to good use.

The two generals from Stonehold had come to last
night's reception already edgy and Newell had taken it upon himself to
make them more so. That there had been two of them had caused him some
difficulty at first, but there had been no avoiding that situation.

Stonehold assigned all posts in pairs, a parallel to
their governmental system. One of the pair was drawn from stock
originally from the Old Country of Alkyab. The other was a scion of the
Old Country of Tavetch. When the Plague Years had begun, Alkyab and
Tavetch had been among the first countries to abandon their colonies.
Faced with powerful neighbors, all still receiving support from their
founding countries, their colonists had banded together.

Perhaps if physically they hadn't looked so different, the two cultures would have merged, but the people
were
different.
The
people of Tavetch were tall, heavily built, massive people with a
tendency toward blue or green eyes and fair hair. The people of Alkyab
were small, even petite. Their skin was the yellow-tan of old ivory,
their eyes dark and slanting, their hair jetty dark.

Their religious customs differed as well. The
fair-haired Tavetch worshipped a sun deity possessed of three aspects
who, according to their legends, was wed to a lunar goddess whose face
changed each day as the face of the moon changed. The stars were the
children of these deities and danced messages regarding their parents'
wishes for humanity in elaborate patterns on the night sky.

The Alkyab were, as the descendants of Gildcrest saw
things, far less superstitious. They, too, understood that one's
ancestors were one's liaisons with the complicated and incomprehensible
forces that ruled destiny and fortune. True, the Alkyab built temples
to their ancestors (rather than the descendants of Gildcrest's less
ostentatious family shrines) and governed marriages by a complex system
having to do with figuring degrees of relationships. These differences
were an acceptable eccentricity given that the Alkyab's ancestors had
come from lands unknown and so the Alkyab were the ones with whom
Newell Shield felt more comfortable.

Therefore, at the reception Prince Newell had made
his first overtures to little General Yuci, a skilled horseman and
commander of cavalry. Yuci had been arguing with Earl Kestrel about the
merits of various methods of training horses to withstand the noise and
chaos of battle when Newell came up. Yuci was several strong glasses of
wine past what his slim frame could bear and Earl Kestrel had seemed
sincerely grateful at being rescued.

Under the guise of finding the general somewhere in
which to sober up a bit, Newell had steered Yuci to a quiet corner and
proceeded to alter his perception of events.

"Of course," Newell had begun blithely, "King Tedric
is delighted to meet Allister Seagleam. He despises all his other
nieces and nephews, never could get on with his brother and sister, you
know."

Later, seeing Elise Archer laughing at a joke made by one
of
the guild representatives, Newell commented: "She seems terribly
innocent, doesn't she? She grew up around the royal castle and there
isn't a secret she doesn't know or an intrigue to which she isn't
privy."

When Lady Blysse drifted from the party to watch the
river, Newell represented the young woman's adolescent boredom as the
sullen silence of a cruel and calculating mind. He dropped rumors about
her upbringing among wolves, hinted that the creature who usually
trailed her with such fidelity was an evil familiar spirit.

So he went, telling a tale on this one, sharing a
confidence about that one. He spared his sister Melina's family a
little, wanting to seem a loyal soul, but still managed to dredge up
the rumors about Melina's use of magic.

By the end of his chat with Yuci, Newell was well
pleased. Nothing he had said about anyone had been precisely untrue—or
had at least been within the realm of common gossip. He knew, however,
that hearing it from his lips—from the lips of a prince of Hawk
Haven—would give even the most outrageous tales credence. Eventually
General Grimsel had joined them and Newell had experienced the pleasure
of hearing his slander repeated and amplified.

Yes, last night's game had been a good one, a
delightful way to pass a portion of the reception. Today, however,
refused a place at his monarch's side, Newell had something more
serious in mind. If last night he had set the logs on the fire, today
he planned to add the kindling.

At Newell's request, the Stonehold generals agreed to
meet the prince at a nice little tavern on the Bright Bay side of the
river, near where one of the regular ferries docked. They arranged for
a private dining room and refreshments. Newell—as he saw it—took
responsibility for the entertainment.

He doubted that Grimsel and Yuci saw their meeting in
exactly that light. Doubtless they were nervous at meeting with a
prince of a nation that was not on the best of terms—if not openly at
war—with their own.

Had he not found their presence so useful, Newell might have even felt sorry for them. The generals' simple tour
abroad
to train Bright Bay's army and to command the mercenaries that
augmented that same army had mutated into a political crisis.

Newell imagined how they must have felt when Queen
Gustin IV commanded her army to accompany Duke Allister to Good
Crossing. Even if they had wanted to demur—and they would have found
that difficult—there would have been pressure from Stonehold that they
be on the spot to learn everything as it unfolded.

After greeting his hosts and inquiring after their
welfare, Newell jumped right to the reason he had called this meeting,
judging that he could hardly string their nerves any tighter without
fueling an explosion of some sort.

"Thank you both, Generals, for making the time to see me."

General Grimsel, a tall woman, built in every way on
the heroic scale, with eyes of transparent blue, returned his greeting
with some terseness. Her own infantry idolized her for her past deeds.
The Bright Bay troops she had trained were less happy with her, seeing
through her surface heartiness to her basic dislike of them, realizing
that she saw them as aliens, rather than allies.

Cavalry commander Yuci, neat and trim despite the previous night's binge, was more polite.

"We always have time to learn things that may be of
interest to Stonehold. That is what you said in your note this early
morning, isn't it? You said you had something to tell us that would be
of interest to Stonehold."

Newell nodded. "I did and I do."

"Pray," Grimsel said, pouring herself a mug of summer ale from the pitcher set in the center of the table, "tell us."

Newell bobbed his head again. Then in the slightly
breathless tones of a storyteller who wasn't certain of his audience he
began:

"Well, you know the true reason for the split between
Bright Bay and Hawk Haven, don't you? I mean, it wasn't just a natural
outgrowth of the years of unrest following the Plague."

"No?" Grimsel said, her tones bored.

"No," Newell replied, still eager. "There had been
any number of factional squabbles from the time the last Old Country
nobles left—people fighting to establish holds or to keep what had been
given them or just for the right to loot what had been left behind.

"Out of these, three figures—Zorana Shield, Clive
Elk-wood, and Gustin Sailor—had risen to the fore. While they were
working together it seemed pretty certain that all of Gildcrest's
colonial lands would be reunited under a single government. Then things
split down the middle and we ended up with two kingdoms."

General Grimsel frowned a sturdy frown, no longer
precisely bored but clearly puzzled as to what bearing this discourse
on factionalism over a hundred years past could have on current events.

"I had heard," Grimsel said, "that is, we were
told—that there was a differences of opinion in how the campaigns
should be conducted. In the end, some chose to follow Gustin Sailor,
some to follow Zorana Shield. So two kingdoms were born rather than
one."

"That," Newell gave an approving smile, "is the story
in all our history books. It is completely true but omits a rather
interesting point."

"I had also heard," General Yuci added with a
slightly embarrassed cough, "that Queen Zorana—Zorana Shield then—had
excited the love of both Gustin Sailor and Clive Elkwood. She favored
Elkwood and in a fit of pique, Gustin Sailor went his own way and took
his followers with him."

"That," Newell said, trying to sound as if he were
amused but politely concealing that amusement, "is the story told in
all our romantic ballads. The truth is darker, more dangerous, and more
believable."

"Oh?" asked General Grimsel, refilling her mug from the pitcher in what she clearly thought was a casual gesture.

"I learned the true story only because I was wed to a
member of the royal family," Newell said, playing the generals before
setting the hook. "No one but members of the royal family are ever told
the story by order of Zorana herself. My late wife, the Princess
Lovella, knowing that I
would rule alongside her
one day, confided the tale to me. She was very concerned about how I
would take it, for she believed that hearing this tale was what had
unmanned her brother, Crown Prince Chalmer, leading to his untimely
death."

"What was this secret?" General Grimsel pressed, anxious now lest Newell say nothing more.

Prince Newell dropped his voice and looked uneasy.
"I'm not certain I should tell you this, but I'm hoping that if you
know the truth, perhaps you will recognize how important it is that
Bright Bay and Hawk Haven not be rejoined."

General Yuci's dark eyes glittered with what might have been intensity but what Newell feared was laughter.

"Perhaps you have your own advancement in mind, Prince Newell? Very well, I can understand such motives. Tell on."

"And quickly," Grimsel added.

Newell feigned a mixture of anger and embarrassment— a man caught intriguing but unwilling to back out.

"The real reason that Gustin Sailor split from his
associates," he said, "was that Zorana Shield and Clive Elkwood
believed firmly that everything that stank of Old World sorcery should
be destroyed. We all know how the rulers kept knowledge of the higher
orders of magic from the colonists."

The two generals nodded, willing to let him digress
now that he was on the point. Such restrictive policies had been fairly
universal, for the power of high magic was what had permitted the Old
Countries to dominate the residents of their colonies.

Newell continued, "And we all know that most of them took their magical materials home when they left."

Again nods.

"That didn't always happen." Newell saw the generals
exchange surprised glances. "According to the tale King Tedric told
Princess Lovella, one day some years after the departure of the Old
Country rulers of Gildcrest, Zorana Shield chanced upon an isolated
vacation retreat in the foothills of the Iron Mountains where the
residents had succumbed to the Plague. Danger of contagion was long
past, but the illness must have come upon the residents suddenly for
none of their
magical trinkets had been destroyed or sent away."