Mercedes Lackey: Winds Of Fury

I could have tolerated all of this if she had only done what she had promised. Out-thinking her was a challenge then....

She had pledged him before he took the throne that he would soon be an Adept to rival her; she swore he would have power beyond his wildest dreams, power enough to level mountains if he chose. She swore that she would teach him everything she knew.

But the power never materialized, and the training she gave him never went beyond the level of Master. She had never taught him how to use all the powers he could Sense, and all the training she had given him until that moment had made it impossible for him to touch them. Or at least he had not been able to touch them during the time that she had been his only teacher.

He had encountered this reluctance on Hulda's part to give him any more real teaching two years ago, shortly after he had turned Master. He had been certain at that moment that the powers of an Adept were almost in his grasp, that it would only be a matter of a little more training.

That was when the excuses began. Hulda suspended his regular training sessions, telling him that he was beyond such things. That had made him elated, briefly - until he realized that there was no way other than regular training to achieve his long-sought goal. And when he began to seek her out, asking for more teaching, she was always busy....

And at first, her excuses had seemed plausible. After so many defeats from the west, they were taking no chances. Hulda had mustered a cadre of mages of relatively low power to watch the border for any weaknesses in the force that protected Valdemar from magic. She needed to organize these people, to make certain that the coercion spells upon them were powerful enough to keep them at their work no matter what temptations and opportunities to defect were placed before them. But after weeks of such excuses, they began to wear thin.

After a few months, he took matters into his own hands.

He had been collecting mages since his first, ill-fated attempt to take the Valdemaran throne. Now he began doing more than collecting them and placing them under his coercion spells; now he began finding out, in a systematic sweep through his mage-corps, just what they knew.

He had been collecting and recruiting every kind and type of mage that showed even the faintest traces of power - from hill-shaman to mages of no known School. By aggressively pursuing a course of forced-learning, he had picked up every bit of knowledge, however seemingly inconsequential, from any of his "recruits" that had teachings he had not gotten. He had also been collecting every scrap of written information about magic that he could lay his hands on; every grimoire, every mage's personal notebook, every history of ancient times, and anything concerning magic to be had from within the Empire. Much of it had been useful. Some of it, he was certain, Hulda herself did not share. But none of it brought him the prize he was trying to reach -

At least, not to his knowledge. As he understood it, only an Adept could use the power of "nodes," those meeting places of the lines of power that he could use. Every attempt he had made so far had resulted in failure. He was still not an Adept, and he had no idea how far he was from that goal.

He had been trying to find an Adept to teach him, with no luck. Of course, Adepts could be avoiding Hardorn; everything he had ever heard or read indicated that the kind of Adept willing to teach him would also be the kind unwilling to share power, and that was precisely the problem he had with Hulda. Hulda might be warning them off, somehow. It would not surprise him much to discover that she had been working against him, preventing him from locating an Adept so that he would always be her inferior.

But she had underestimated him, and his willingness to tolerate a position as ruler in name only. There could be only one Ruler of Hardorn, and it would not be Hulda.

A servant appeared at the door, waiting silently for him to notice her existence. He admired the woman for a moment - not for her own looks, but for the new livery he had ordered. Scarlet and gold: the scarlet of blood, the gold of the wealth he intended to grasp. The livery matched his new device, now blazoned above his throne, replacing the insipid oak tree of his father. A winged serpent in gold, upon a field of blood-red, poised to strike.

Hulda should have taken note of that new device, and thought about what it meant.

Hulda thought that she had him under control, but she had not counted on the more mundane methods of dealing with an enemy. He had placed spies among her servants, loyal only to him, their loyalty ensured not by spells, but by fear. He had chosen these people carefully, finding those for whom death would be preferable to losing someone - or something. For some, it was a family member or a lover that they would die to protect. For others, it was a secret. And for a few, it was a possession that made life worth living. Such passion meant control - and such control could not be revealed by magical means.

These servants followed Hulda's every move, and let him know when she was so deeply engrossed in some activity that he would be able to act without her guessing what he was up to. She was not infallible - for instance, she did not possess a spell that he had read about, one that permitted the caster to see into the past. Whatever he did while she was occupied, she would not know about. She also did not possess the mind-magic that enabled one to read the thoughts of others. Well, neither did he, but that was of little matter at the moment. What was important was that she could not detect his control of her servants from their thoughts. So as long as she did not torture their secrets from them, he would always know where she was and what she was doing.

She might have servants of the same sort watching him; in fact, he had planned on it. His propensity for taking young, barely post-pubescent girls was well known - as was their regrettable tendency to not survive such encounters. He still enjoyed such pleasures, but as often as not, the girl was incidental to something magical he wished to achieve. There was great power in a painful death - something about a life being ended prematurely released incredible power. He did not think Hulda knew that he knew this; after all, his preferences had been well established long before he learned of the power these acts released. So he would wait until Hulda was occupied, then select one of the little lambs in his private herd and repair to his own chambers for an enjoyable and profitable candlemark or two.

His hand-picked servants watched Hulda, and guarded his secrets against her.

The woman waiting for him to acknowledge her, for instance, was Hulda's personal maid, and privy to her comings and goings. She was common enough to attract no notice; middle-aged, neither plain nor pretty, neither fat nor thin. And well-trained; she would not have slipped away, she would have waited for Hulda to dismiss her - and yet, at the same time, she would have arranged to be so attentive that Hulda would not dismiss her unless the mage wanted privacy. What a shame she wasn't younger.

He raised his eyes and nodded. The servant crossed the floor silently, her eyes lowered, and prostrated herself at the foot of the throne.

"Speak," he said quietly.

"Hulda has retired to her chamber in the company of the muleteer I told you of, Majesty," the servant replied, in a voice carefully pitched so as not to carry beyond the immediate vicinity. He had not chosen this chamber as a place to sit and brood without thought; it was impossible to be spied upon effectively here, and impossible to be overheard, given the acoustics of the place. It had been built to enable a semi-private audience in the midst of a crowded court. Such clever design gave him true privacy without making it obvious.