Mercedes Lackey - Winds Of Fury

In short, the Queen and her nearest and dearest seemed to have some kind of charmed existence. They prevailed against all odds, as if the very gods were on their side. Their success mocked Ancar and all his ambitions, and without a doubt, it all maddened him past bearing.

So Falconsbane thought.

Until Ancar finally spoke, and proved to him that in this one respect, he had underestimated the young King.

"I must expand," he said, slowly, his flush cooling. "I am using up the resources of Hardorn at a rapid rate. I need gold to pay my mages, grain to feed my armies, a hundred things that simply must be brought in from outside. I cannot go South - perhaps you will not believe me, but the Karsites are the fiercest fighters you could ever imagine in your wildest nightmares. They are religious, you see. They believe that if they die in the defense of their land, they rise straight to the feet of their God...and if they take any of the enemies of their God with them, they rise to his right hand."

Falconsbane nodded, a tiny spark of respect kindling for the King. So he understood the power a religion could hold over an enemy? Mornelithe would never have credited him with that much insight. Perhaps there was more to the boy than the Adept had assumed. "Indeed," he said in reply. "There is no more deadly an enemy than a religious fanatic. They are willing to die and desperate to take you with them."

"Precisely," Ancar sighed. "What is more, their priests have a magic that comes from their God that is quite a match for my own. When you add to all that the mountains that border their land - it is an impossible combination. Those mountains are so steep that there is no place to bring a conventional army through without suffering one ambush or trap after another."

"Well, then, what about North?" Falconsbane asked, reasonably. And to his surprise, Ancar whitened.

"Do not even mention the North," the King whispered, and glanced hastily from side to side, as if he feared being overheard. "There is something there that dwarfs even the power Karse commands. It is so great - believe me or not, as you will, but I have seen it with my own eyes - that it has created an invisible fence that no one can pass. I have found no mage that can breach it, and after the few who attempted it perished, not even Hulda is willing to try."

Falconsbane raised his eyebrows involuntarily. That was something new! An invisible wall around a country? Who - or rather, what - could ever have produced something like that? What was the name of that land, anyway? Iften? Iftel?

But Ancar had already changed the subject.

"Most of all, I cannot go Eastward," he continued, his voice resuming a normal volume, but taking on an edge of bitterness. "The Eastern Empire is large enough to swallow Hardorn and never notice; the Eastern mages are as good or better than any I can hire, and their armies are vast...and well-paid. And they are watching me. I know it."

That frightened him; Falconsbane had no trouble at all in reading his fear, it was clear in the widening of his eyes, in the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders, in the rigidity of his posture.

"At the moment, they seem to feel that Hardorn is not worth the fight it would take to conquer it. They had a treaty with my father, which they have left in place, but the Emperor has not actually signed a treaty with my regime. Emperor Charliss has not even sent an envoy until very recently. I believe they are watching me, assessing me. But if I fail to take Valdemar, they will assume that I am weak enough to conquer." He grimaced. "My father had treaties of mutual defense with Valdemar and Iftel to protect him. I do not have those. I had not thought I would need them."

"Then do not attempt Valdemar a third time," Falconsbane suggested mildly.

Ancar's jaw clenched. "If I do not, the result will be the same. The Emperor Charliss will assume I am too weak to try. They have sent their ambassador here, and an entourage with him, as if they were planning on signing the treaty soon, but they have not deceived me. These people are not here to make treaties, they are here to spy on me. There are spies all over Hardorn by now. I have found some - "

"I trust you left them in place," Mornelithe said automatically.

He snorted. "Of course I did, I am not that big a fool. The best spy is the one you know! But I am also not so foolish as to think that I have found them all." He rose and began pacing in front of the fire, still talking. "One of the reasons I am sure that I have been unable to attract mages of any great ability is that the Emperor can afford to pay them far more than I can offer. I am fairly certain that the mages I have are not creatures of his, but there is no way of telling if he has placed mages as spies in my court and outside of it. So long as they practiced their mage-craft secretly, how would I ever know what they were?"

Falconsbane refrained from pointing out that he had just told the boy how he would know, that disturbances in the energy-fields would tell him. Perhaps neither he nor his mages were sensitive to those fields. It was not unheard of, though such mages rarely rose above Master. Perhaps he was sensitive, but only when in trance. If so, that was the fault of his teacher.

Ancar abruptly turned and strode back to the window, standing with his back to Falconsbane and the room, staring at the rapidly-clearing clouds.

"This is something I had not seen before," he said, as if to himself. "And I had not known that magic could wreck such inadvertent and accidental havoc. It would be an excellent weapon...."

Falconsbane snorted softly. It had taken the boy long enough to figure that out.

"Men calling themselves 'weather-wizards' have come to me, seeking employment," he continued. "I had thought them little better than herb-witches and charm-makers. They didn't present themselves well enough for me to believe them. I shall have to go about collecting them now."

"That would be wise," Falconsbane said mildly, hiding his contempt.

Ancar turned again and walked back into the room, this time heading for the door, but paused halfway to that portal to gaze back at Falconsbane.

"Is there anything else you need?" he asked.

Falconsbane was quite sure that if he asked for what he really wanted - his freedom - he would not get it. Ancar was not yet sure enough of him, or of himself. Rightly so. The moment he had that freedom, Falconsbane would squash the upstart like an insect.

But perhaps - perhaps it was time to ask for something else, something nearly as important.

"Send me someone you wish eliminated," he said. "Permanently eliminated, I mean. Male or female, it does not matter."

He halfway expected more questions - why he wanted such a captive, and what he expected to do with such a sacrificial victim when he had one. But Ancar's eyes narrowed; he smiled, slowly, and there was a dark and sardonic humor about the expression that told Falconsbane that Ancar didn't care why he wanted a victim. He nodded, slowly and deliberately. His eyes locked with Falconsbane's, and the Adept once again saw in Ancar's eyes a spirit kindred to his own.

Which made Ancar all the more dangerous. There was no room in the world for two like Falconsbane.

He left without another word, but no more than half a candlemark later, two guards arrived. Between them they held a battered, terrified man, so bound with chains he could scarcely move. When Falconsbane rose, one of them silently handed him the keys to the man's bindings.

The guards backed out, closing the door behind them.

Falconsbane smiled.

And took his time.

Shilling rain poured from a leaden sky, a continuous sheet of gray from horizon to horizon. Elspeth silently thanked the far-away hertasi for the waterproof coats they had made, and tied her hood a little tighter. They rode right into the teeth of the wind; there was little in the way of lightning and thunder, but the wind and sheeting rain more than made up for that lack. The poor gryphons, shrouded in improvised raincapes made from old tents, would have been soaked to the skin if they had not been able to shield themselves from the worst of it with a bit of magic. The rest of them, however, chose to deal with the elements rather than advertise their presence on the road any further. Admittedly, that was less of a hardship for the Tayledras, Elspeth, Skif, and Nyara, with their coats supplied by the clever fingers of the hertasi. She felt very sorry for Cavil, Shion, and Lisha, whose standard-issue raincloaks were nowhere near as waterproof as hertasi-made garments.