Glen Cook - A Path to Coldness of Heart

The man in shadow studied Duke and soldier. Gales enjoyed remarkable freedoms. He and Greyfel s had known each other since childhood. Stil , the Duke looked like he wanted to hurt somebody. He control ed the beast within.

“Tel me why I’m stil out here, Josiah. Why am I not enjoying a cozy fire inside Castle Krief?”

“I can put no kinder face on it than to tel you that Inger wants it this way. She doesn’t trust you. She’s determined not to let you in til she knows you won’t steal her throne.” The watcher thought that would waken the beast for sure.

The Duke did puff up and turn red but control ed himself again. He managed better with Gales than with anyone else. “I can see that from both the Kavelin disease and family familiarity angles. What she’s been through since we got her to marry Ragnarson has made her leery of everyone.”

Especial y family, the sorcerer reflected.

“There lies the matter’s heart, Lord. We talk frequently.

Lately, she has been concerned less with Wesson resistance or Colonel Abaca than about your intentions.

You mention the Kavelin disease. I think she’s caught it.

She believes it’s possible to come to terms with her local enemies. She has started hinting that she wants me to find a way to get you to go home.”

“Real y?” Surprised. Greyfel s could not imagine a female cousin defying him.

“Real y. She doesn’t know my true loyalties. She thinks I’l support her in anything because of an obligation between me and her father. She is inclined toward sentimental thinking.”

“I see.” Sounding less than convinced of Gales’s faith. But he had to be paranoid. People were out to get him.

Gales said, “Inger has no friends and few sympathizers.

She has no one to count on in the narrow passage. She’s alone except for Fulk.”

Greyfel s stopped pacing. He placed himself at parade rest, back to the fire. “It doesn’t matter a whit who controls her son, does it?”

“No, Lord. Fulk is King. Confirmed by the Thing and the Estates. I’ve been thinking…”

“I think I know, Josiah. My cousin is in grave danger. This kingdom is renown for its intrigues. Her family should put her under our protection for her own sake.”

“Exactly, Your Lordship!”

Babeltausque smel ed a king-size load of what, technical y, was cal ed bul shit. But which man had tipped the cart?

Gales stayed the evening and night, mostly heads together with the Duke.

Babeltausque suspected that success at gaining Vorgreberg and Castle Krief would mean less than Greyfel s hoped. His writ would extend no farther than he could see from the capital’s wal . And that might be problematic.

Other forces were at work.

Fangdred bestrode one of the highest peaks in the Dragon’s Teeth. Who built the castle was a mystery, as was how the engineering had been achieved. Fangdred had been there for countless centuries. Its current population was miniscule and included several mummies.

Many of the living would not, strictly appraised, easily pass for sane. The sorcerer had worn many names, including Empire Destroyer, but, commonly, was cal ed Varthlokkur. He employed his arts to spy on the wider world while he wrestled the demands of love, honor, and pride.

He observed careful y, painful y aware that mortals were subject to manipulation by puppet masters unseen and driven by imperatives that might not make sense even to them.

He spent hours every day looking for puppeteers, with little success. He was able to track factions in Kavelin, where everyone acted on best guesses while guessing wrong. His successes elsewhere were less clear. The lords of the Dread Empire were wary. Getting anywhere near the Empress was problematic. What he did see might be staged for his eyes.

He did manage one triumph beyond the Pil ars of Ivory. He stumbled across a man he had thought long dead, a fugitive who had escaped from Lioantung during its destruction by the Deliverer. That man was headed home, now.

The wizard did what he dared as the man’s guardian angel. Varthlokkur’s mad pride had done irreparable harm during the business of the Deliverer. He had yet to understand what had driven him to such stubborn excess.

His excuse had been his fear of losing his wife, but common sense saw that battle won wel beforehand.

On the other hand, that fool Ragnarson had been just as stubborn… “Damn it!” His blood was rising for no sane reason.

He could not back down. He could not admit that he had been wrong. Yet he had cost Kavelin dearly. Protecting Haroun during his long journey west was slight recompense but it might pay off in time to come.

Haroun carried his own guilt burden.

Varthlokkur’s wife let herself into his Wind Tower work chamber, unannounced and uninvited. She found him focused on his monstrous creation, Radeachar the Unborn, that he used to ferret out secrets and to terrify vil ains.

Nepanthe was pale of skin and dark of hair, brooding and shy. Sorcery kept her looking young, as it did her husband.

Varthlokkur appeared to be in his early thirties but was centuries older. He considered Nepanthe the most perfect woman ever to live. She was his great weakness and absolute blind spot. His love was fierce. That psychosis had so tormented him that he had let it shape today’s shattered world.

Nepanthe said nothing. She watched Varthlokkur spy here, send Radeachar there, then enter the blazing construct of the Winterstorm. His manipulation of bril iant floating symbols shaped changes far away. Snow might melt early and raise waters enough so an army patrol would not discover the fugitive from Lioantung. An icy gust might assail the camp of some of the Itaskians trying to take over in Kavelin, starting fires. An agent of Queen Inger might be about to stumble onto the loot from Kavelin’s treasury when something stirring in a sudden darkness so terrified him that he would never go near that pond again. An avalanche might block the route of an il -advised winter raid by Colonel Abaca’s Marena Dimura partisans. A bridge col apse beyond the northern frontier might abort an equal y il -

advised winter incursion from Volstokin.

He watched Hammad al Nakir less determinedly. There the daughter of the Disciple, Yasmid, pursued a sporadic, fratricidal civil war against her son Megelin while her father sank ever deeper into a permanent opium dream. There was a special need to watch the son. Megelin’s key al y was the dark sorcerer Magden Norath, who might be as powerful as the Empire Destroyer himself. No one knew what moved Norath. He created monsters that were almost impossible to destroy, for no more obvious reason than a lust for destruction.

Norath was weak now, though. He had become the principal target of El Murid’s suicide kil er cult, the Harish.

He thwarted every attack but only after it got close enough to hurt him. Damage was accumulating.

Varthlokkur turned to something of no interest. Nepanthe moved on to the shrunken stasis globe where once the Princes Thaumaturge of the Dread Empire had been trapped, then had murdered one another. Why had Varthlokkur kept that in this diminished form? Why had he not ground the princes to dust, then burnt the dust? Would that be impossible? Could be. It had taken the Star Rider’s power to capture them.

She had been there, but that was al she could remember clearly— other than that it had been a terrible night. She feared that she had done something she dared not remember.

She shied away. Those days were gone. Horrible times, they had been fol owed by more horrible times. It had taken many ugly seasons to bring her here, to a remote place and a life with a man she respected deeply but did not love, nursing her insane son by her first husband and raising an eerie daughter by the second.