Robert Hughes - The Wizard in Waiting

“Right. Sister, too…”

“But… if they were brigands… no wonder you turned out as you did.”

“What do you mean by that?” Tibb snarled, starting to get up.

“Don’t upset her, Tibb,” Pinter suggested, as he got shakily to his feet. “She’ll bang your head against that wall most unpleasant ”

“I mean, they must have taught you it was right, or you ”

“Listen to me, my Lady! I know right from wrong, for sure. Right’s what helps me, wrong’s what don’t,1*

“But don’t you see? That’s so far from the real difference between right and wrong that I… I wonder… if you’d ever be able to understand…”

Tibb snorted. “Maybe not. But I know this. As a cutthroat, I kill a man in an alley. As a Queen, you’ll order a war and kill a thousand.

As a cutthroat, I’ll steal all the gold a man can carry in his saddlebag. As a Queen, you can make a single proclamation of a new tax and rob a thousand peasants of their life savings. Now, my Lady. You tell me what’s the right and wrong of that!”

“Ah, Tibb,” Pinter mumbled in his friend’s ear, “we’re supposed to be training this girl to take the throne, not talking her out of trying.

If our master ”

“Well, someone has to rule!” Bronwynn blurted out. “Someone has to make decisions for the good of the whole nation.”

“Fine,” Tibb said, hitching his pants. “Let them do it. But don’t try to convince me that their right and wrong is any different from mine.”

“Tibb,” Pinter whispered, “would you please shut your mouth before this girl decides not to ”

“Why?” Bronwynn interrupted. “He’s just telling the truth.” She struggled to her feet, sliding her back up the wall of the cliff, and brushed between the two of them on her way to find a private place to think.

“Now you Ve done it!” Pinter snarled. “Admon Faye gives us a chance to join him, and you kick it away!”

“What did I do?” Tibb asked, confused. “You just talked her out of playing her role in the master’s plan,” Pinter roared, and he, too, stalked away.

“I did?” Tibb asked. “Now wait a minute, Pinter,” he called, stomping after his friend and grabbing him by the shoulder. “You tell me how I did that.”

“You called her a cutthroat!” Pinter snapped. “No one wants to be called a cutthroat.”

“But that’s what we are,” Tibb pleaded. “That’s what you are, maybe,”

Pinter replied archly. Tm an outlaw.”

“But what’s the difference?” Tibb begged. Pinter paused and looked back at him disdainfully. “If you don’t know, I’m sure I couldn’t explain it to you.” Shouting in the northern mouth of Dragonsgate cut short their debate. They looked at one another in surprise, then bolted toward the noise. Pinter’s longer legs carried him to the site of the confrontation well before his comrade, and he was full of news when Tibb came puffing up behind him. “What is it?” Tibb shouted.

“What’s going on?”

“Some pale believers,” Pinter smirked. “Some of that Prophet’s band.

Look.” Pinter pointed, and Tibb watched as slavers dragged one blue-clad initiate after another off of their horses. The missionaries didn’t resist, yielding passively to this brutal treatment.

“Always was easy to bag a dragonfaither,” Tibb snickered.

“These aren’t dragonfaithers,” Pinter corrected him, “though I’m not surprised you can’t tell the difference. They’re members of that new heresy.”

“I know that,” said an annoyed Tibb. “You think I’ve lived this last year with my eyes closed?”

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

Admon Faye’s companions were experts at fast-binding new victims. It took only moments for them to tie the entire group of Lamathians, which Tibb estimated as at least a score.

“What will we do with ’em?” Tibb asked. “Kill ’em here? Sell ’em in the south?”

“No. These fellows say we’ll skin them and send them home as an example. Say, the Princess is a Chaon! Maybe watching a few Lamathians getting skinned would get her blood boiling to be Queen again! Let’s go!”

Tahli-Damen lay on his back, staring into space. The wounds that Flayh’s alter-shape had inflicted on his leg had proved to be more spectacular than substantial. He was walking without any difficulty.

But Wayleeth had noticed that a strange dread had settled over him. He refused to be cheered by anything she said.

“Tahli-Damen,” she called from the doorway. “The man who’s been watching Flayh’s castle has brought you a report ”

“Flayh’s castle!” Tahli-Damen blurted, as if the words themselves touched a raw nerve within him. “I set no watch on Flayh’s castle!”

“I know that,” Wayleeth answered patiently. “I did.”

“Why did you do that!” he demanded. “Didn’t I tell you? That man is a power shaper He hurls balls of fire! He he he changes his shape at will! Look at my leg!” The young merchant frantically waved his leg in the air and pointed to it

“I know all about your leg, my love,” Wayleeth answered him evenly.

“I’m the one who has bathed and dressed it, remember?”

“Of course,” he mumbled, and be rolled over, turning his back on her, as well as the strange powers that suddenly threatened him anew.

“I set that watch because I know that’s what you would do if you were being yourself.”

Tahli-Damen rolled back to face her. “If I were being myself.

Wayleeth, look at me! I am being myself and myself is terrified.”

“You’re going to let a little dog bite prevent you from seizing your rightful place on the Council of Elders?”

“Oh, Wayleeth,” he moaned, covering his ears.

To prevent you from seizing one of those precious pyramids you’ve talked so much about?” Tahli-Damen swung himself off the bed and limped toward the door. “Where are you going?”

“I told you before, I’m frightened and I don’t want to talk anymore about Flayh!”

“Flayh’s gone.”

Tahli-Damen stopped and looked back at her. “What?”

“He left a day and a half ago for the High City, for powers know whatever reason. What’s important is that while he’s off to visit the sloth-King, he’s left guess who in , charge of his castle?”

Tahli-Damen raised his eyebrows incredulously. “You mean Pezi?”

Wayleeth giggled. “Old barrel-bottom himself!”

The young merchant dashed to a closet and grabbed his cloak, shouting,

“Dispatch a bird to Jagd at once and give him the news!”

“Where are you going?” Wayleeth smiled knowingly.

“I’ve got to plan a visit to our new local lord of Ognadzu!”

“What’s happened to me?” Bronwynn whispered to her reflection. She gazed into a little pool, fed by the melting snow that trickled off the mountain. This pass was bare of the trees Bronwynn loved, and she had despaired of finding any private place where she could think. This quiet pool, at the base of the cliff opposite the dragon’s old lair, wasn’t really beautiful, but it was the nearest thing to beauty she could find.

Bronwynn was amazed at herself. Only a few short months before she had bid good-bye to Rosha in this very pass she could see the exact spot from where she sat and had ridden away with Lord Joss, expecting to recapture her throne by sundown. So naive, so trusting. It was good she had learned something of the world.

But was it right? Tibb had struck a soft spot within her. Until she’d met Pelmen, her own attitudes toward moral evil had been the same as those of these outlaws perhaps even worse. Her father Talith had exercised his power with the same savage expertise as Tibb wielded his knife well, probably more skillfully than poor Tibb and he’d taught Bronwynn to do the same.