George Martin - The Way of the Wizard

Iastre shook her head and finally made her move. “He’s here now, and he may be our only hope.”

“That,” she said, “is what worries me.”

Even here, playing draughts, Biantha found no escape from Marten. She had spotted him once in the courtyard, sparring against Evergard’s best soldiers while a healer and several enchanters looked on, lest the former champion seek a life instead of a touch. At mealtimes in the great hall she took to eating at the far end of the high table; yet over the clinking glasses and silverware, the tense voices and rustling clothes, Biantha heard Marten and Vathré speaking easily with each other. Evergard’s lord trusted Marten — they all trusted Marten now, while she dared not.

Like a pendulum, her thoughts swung between her son and Paienne, her son and Lord Mière. Late at night, when she walked the battlements listening vainly for the footfalls of marching soldiers, feeling betrayal’s cold hand in every tremor of the wind, she remembered tales of the Nightbreak War. Biantha had never put much faith in the minstrels’ embellished ballads, but the poetry preyed upon her fears.

Working with fragments of history and the military reports that came in daily, she attempted to map past onto future, battle onto battle… betrayal onto betrayal. And failed, over and over. And cursed the Prophecy, staring at the worn and inscrutable pages, alone in her room. It was during one of those bouts that a familiar knocking startled her from her work.

Marten? thought Biantha involuntarily. But she had learned the rhythm of Vathré’s tread, and when she opened the door she knew who waited behind it. The twin edges of relief and disappointment cut her heart.

The gray-haired man looked her up and down, and scowled. “I thought you might be overworking yourself again.”

She essayed a smile, stepping aside so he could enter. “Overwork, my lord? Tell that to the soldiers who train, and fight, and die for it, or see their friends die for it. Tell that to the cook or the servants in the keep.”

“There are ways and ways of work, my dear.” He paced around the chamber, casting a curious eye over her bookcase and her cluttered desk, then rested a hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps I should come back later, when you’ve rested — and I do mean rest, not sitting in bed to read your books rather than sitting at your desk.”

Biantha craned her head back to glance at him. “At least tell me why you came.”

“Marten,” he said bluntly, releasing her shoulder.

She flinched.

“You’re hurting the boy,” Vathré said. “He’s been here quite a while and you haven’t said a word to him.”

She arched an eyebrow. “He’s not the boy I left behind, my lord.” Her voice nearly broke.

“I’m old enough to call you a girl, Lady Biantha. Don’t quibble. Even I can’t find cause to mistrust him, and the years have made me paranoid.”

“Oh?” She ran her fingers over her copy of the Prophecy, worn smooth by years of on-and-off study. By all accounts, Marten’s advice was sound — but the demons kept coming.

“I’m sending him to command at Silverbridge.” Vathré shook his head. “We’ve held out as long as we can, but it looks like our efforts have been no more than a delaying action. I haven’t told the council yet, but we’re going to have to withdraw to Aultgard.” He exhaled softly. “Marten will keep the demons occupied while the bulk of the army retreats.”

Biantha stared at him.

“The soldiers are coming to trust him, you know,” he remarked. “He’s perhaps the best tactician Evergard has seen in the past couple generations, and I want to see if that trust is justified.”

She closed her eyes and said, “A gamble, my lord. Wouldn’t you do better to put someone else in charge?”

Vathré ignored her question. “I thought you should know before I announce it.”

“Thank you, my lord.” Biantha paused, then added, “Do you know where Marten might be at the moment?”

He smiled sadly. “Haunting the battlements, hoping you will stop by.”

She bowed her head and, after he had left, went to search for her son. Biantha found him by the southern tower, a sword sheathed at his back. Even now it disconcerted her to see him in the dress of Evergard’s soldiers, as if her mind refused to surrender that first image of Marten standing before the court in red and black and gold.

“Mother,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back.

Slowly, reluctantly, she faced him. “I’m here.”

Moonlight pooled in his eyes and glittered in the tears that streaked his face. “I remember,” he said without accusation. “I was seven years old and you told me to pack. You were arguing with Father.”

Biantha nodded. Marten had nearly reached the age where he would have to begin training as either a magician or a soldier, or forfeit what little protection his parents’ status gave him. Over the years, as their son grew older, she spoke to her husband of leaving the demons’ empire to seek refuge in the Watchlands or the realms further east. He always treated her kindly, without ever turning an eye to the courtesans — demon and human both — who served those the emperor favored.

Yet Biantha had never forgotten her husband’s puzzlement, molting slowly into anger, that she should wish to leave a court that sheltered them, though it did nothing to shelter others. She could not reconcile herself to the demons’ casual cruelty: one of the emperor’s nieces sent, after an ill-advised duel, to redeem her honor by riding a horse to the mines of Sarmont and back, five days and back forcing a terrified beast to carry her. The pale-eyed assassin who had fallen from favor after killing the rebellious lady of Reis Keep, solely because he had left evidence of his work. Children drowned after a plague blinded them and clouded their wits. If anything, the demons were as cruel to each other as to the humans who lived among and below them, but Biantha had found less and less comfort in that knowledge.

“I stood in the doorway,” Marten went on, “trying to understand. Then Father was weeping—”

She had said to her husband, If you will not come, then I must go without you.

“—and he drew his sword against you.”

“And I killed him,” Biantha said, dry-mouthed. “I tried to get you to come with me, but you wouldn’t leave him. You started to cry. I had little time, and there were ever guards nearby, listening for anything amiss. So I went alone. It would have been my death to stay after murdering one of the emperor’s officers. In the end, the emperor’s trust meant more to him than you or I.”

“Please don’t leave me again,” Marten whispered. He stood straight-backed in the darkness, the hilt of the sword at his back peering over his shoulder like a sleepy eye, but his face was taut. “I am leaving for Silverbridge tomorrow.”

“Will you be at the forefront?”

“It would be unwise.” His mouth tightened for a moment. “I will be giving orders.”

“To kill.” And, perhaps, be killed, she wanted to say, but the words fluttered in her throat.

Marten met her gaze calmly. “It is war, Mother.”

“It is now,” she agreed, “but it wasn’t before. I know what it is to be the emperor’s champion. ‘The sword at the emperor’s side,’ you said. The others heard the words only; they have never lain awake and sleepless for memory of bloodstains on a pale rug, or because of the sudden, silenced cries at night. How many fell to your blade, Marten?”

“I came to follow you when I started losing count.” His eyes were dry, now, though Biantha saw the shapes of pain stirring behind them. “When the numbers started slipping out of my grasp.”