George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

“We have a guest today,” said Vathré at his driest. His eyes might have flicked to Biantha, too briefly for her to tell for certain.

On cue, the guards led in a man who wore black and red and gold, stripped of his sword — she knew there had been a sword, by the uniform. The style of his clothing spoke of the demons’ realm, and the only one besides the emperor who dared appear in those colors was his champion. The emperor’s champion, her son.

A challenge? Biantha thought, clenching her hands so they would not shake. Has Marten come to challenge Vathré? But surely the emperor knew Evergard held different customs and would hardly surrender the Watchlands’ fate to a duel’s outcome.

Hopelessly, she studied the man who had so suddenly disrupted her memories of the child who hid flowers and leaves between the pages of her books, who climbed onto her desk to look out the window at the soldiers drilling. He had her pale hair, a face very like hers. His hands, relaxed at his sides, were also hers, though deadlier; Biantha knew of the training an emperor’s champion underwent and had little faith that the guards could stop him from killing Vathré if he wished. But Marten’s eyes belonged to a man Biantha had tried to forget, who had died attempting to keep her from leaving the palace with their child.

Silence descended upon the throne room. Vathré’s court noted the resemblance, though Marten had yet to spot his mother. He looked straight ahead at Evergard’s lord.

Vathré stood and drew the Blade Fidora from its sheath. It glimmered like crystal, like the first light of morning, like tears. The lords and ladies glanced at each other, but did not set whispers spinning through the room. Biantha, too, kept silent: a word spoken false in the unsheathed sword’s presence would cause it to weep or bleed; the magic had driven men and women mad, and no lord of Evergard used it lightly.

“I am trying to decide whether you are very thoughtless or very clever,” Vathré said softly. “Who are you and why are you here?”

“I was the sword at the emperor’s side,” he answered, “and that sword was nameless.” The pale-haired man closed his eyes, opened them. “My name is Marten. I came because the emperor has thousands of swords now, to do his bidding; and I no longer found that bidding to my taste.”

Vathré glanced down at the Blade Fidora. Its color remained clear and true. “An interesting time to change your loyalties — if, indeed, they’ve changed. You might have found a better way to leave than by showing up here in full uniform, scaring the guards out of their wits.”

“I left when the demons were… subduing a village,” Marten said flatly. “I don’t know the village’s name. I hardly had time to find more suitable attire, my lord, and on campaign one dresses in uniform as a matter of course. To do otherwise would have aroused suspicion.”

“And you weren’t afraid of being caught and killed on the spot?” one of the advisers demanded.

He shrugged. “I was taught three spells in my training. One allowed me to walk unharmed through the palace wards. One calls fire from blood. And the last lets me pass by like the dream of a ghost.”

Biantha glanced at the Blade Fidora and its unwavering light.

Lady Iastre coughed. “Forgive me if I’m less well-informed than I ought to be,” she said, “and slow to react as well — but you mentioned being ‘on campaign.’ Is this a common thing, that ‘the sword at the emperor’s side’ should be out in the field?”

Marten’s eyes moved toward the source of the voice, and so he caught sight of Biantha. He inhaled sharply. Biantha felt her face freeze, though she longed to smile at the stranger her son had become. Answer, she wished him. Say you’ve come to me after so many years—

Marten gathered himself and said, “I came to warn you, if nothing else; death is a price I have taken from many.” His voice shook, but he continued to face Vathré squarely. “The demon emperor has come, and your battles will be the harder for it.” Then the whispers began, and even Iastre cast troubled eyes toward Biantha; the light of the Blade Fidora reflected all the shades of fear, all the colors of despair, that were voiced. “Please,” Marten said, raising his voice but slightly, “let me help. My lord, I may be slow in learning that there is more to war than following orders. That there are people who die for their homes or their families—”

“Families,” Biantha repeated, tasting bitterness. So calm, his face, like polished metal. She felt Iastre’s hand on her arm and forced a smile.

The whispers had died down, and Marten faltered. “I know how the emperor thinks,” he said at last. “Let me help you there, my lord, or have me killed. Either way, you will have taken the emperor’s champion from him.”

So pale, his face, like Fidora’s light. Biantha caught her breath, waiting for Vathré to speak.

Lines of strain etched the lord’s face as he left the throne to stand before Marten. “Will you swear fealty to the Watchlands and their lord, then?”

Marten did not flinch. “Yes.”

Yes , echoed Biantha, doubt biting her heart. She had not known, when she first came to Evergard, what powers the Blade Fidora possessed. A magician-smith had died in its forging, that there might never again be a traitor like Lord Mière. Vathré had questioned Biantha, as he had just questioned Marten, and the first part of the sword’s virtue had been plain to her, a mirror of spoken minds.

Only later had Vathré told her the second part, that a false oath sworn upon the sword killed the oath-taker. Once an heir to Evergard had sworn guardianship to the Watchlands and their people and fallen dead. Once a weary soldier had woken Evergard’s lady three hours before dawn to confess a betrayal planned, and then committed suicide. Biantha had no desire to find her son the subject of another story, another song. How had Paienne felt, she wondered suddenly, when her father’s treachery became part of the Nightbreak War’s history?

Marten laid his hand upon the glass-clear blade. “I swear it.” Then, swallowing, he looked directly at Biantha.

She could not bring herself to trust him, even after the long years, when he wore a uniform like his father’s. This time, she did turn away.

“There’s something sinful,” said Iastre, fingers running round and round a captured draughts piece, “in sitting here playing a game when our world is falling apart.”

Biantha smiled uncertainly and considered her options. “If I stayed in my room and fretted about it all the time, I should go mad.” She nudged one of her pieces to a new square, musing on how the symmetry of the game — red on black, black on black — had soon been spoiled by their moves.

“I hear it was Marten’s planning that kept the demons from overrunning Silverbridge so far.”

She looked up and saw Iastre’s worried expression. “A good thing, I suppose — especially considering that the emperor now has a personal reason for wanting to humble the Watchlands.”

“Surely you don’t think he should have stayed in the emperor’s service,” Iastre protested.

Oh, but he did once, Biantha did not say. “It’s your move.”

A snort. “Don’t change the subject on me now. You fled the emperor’s palace too, if you’ll recall.”

“Too well,” she agreed. She had slept poorly the first few years at Evergard, hearing danger in the footfalls that passed by her door and dreaming of the emperor’s serpent-eyed scepter upon her own shoulder. “But I left in a time of peace, and as terrible a crime as I had committed, I was only a human mathemagician. Besides,”—and Biantha drew in a shaky breath—“they knew they had my son: punishment enough.”