David Drake - Master of the Cauldron

Garric nodded. "All right," he said. "But there's something none of are talking about. Even you, Tenoctris."

The old wizard sat beside Sharina, her satchel of paraphernalia placed discreetly on the ground under the table where others wouldn't have to look at it. She gave Garric a quick grin.

"That's Hani, the wizard who's with Valgard," Garric continued. "If Valgard came from nowhere, then it seems as likely to me that he's Hani's pawn rather than the other way around. And much as I respect your abilities, Lord Waldron, they don't include wizardry."

"And may the Lady grant that they never do!" Waldron said in gruff honesty. "I figure a wizard's throat cuts as easily as a decent man's, though, and I've got the sword to do it!"

"Very possibly," Garric said. "But Tenoctris? I'd very much appreciate it if you would accompany Lord Waldron and Sharina. It's not that I don't want you here-and I may very well want your help, I know that. But I'll have the whole royal army, while on Ornifal-"

He didn't try to finish the thought, just shrugged. He didn't know what words he could've used. Images of numberless disasters kept whirling through his mind like flakes in a snowstorm.

Tenoctris nodded agreement. "Yes," she said. "I can be only one place at a time, of course. I just wish-"

She stopping, beaming with the familiar, transfiguring smile that took decades off her apparent age.

"I wish I had greater powers," Tenoctris said, "but I'll use what I have for the sake of the kingdom, and for Good-which must be real, since Evil so obviously is. And we'll hope that's enough."

Garric rose to his feet. "Well, friends and fellow soldiers," he said. "Nobody can ask for more than the best we can give. Lord Waldron, you have matters to attend, I'm sure. Sharina and Tenoctris will inform you of their baggage requirements when you consider transportation. Lord Zettin, provide whatever Lord Waldron requests. Inform me after the fact, if you will, but you have my approval already."

"Of course, your highness," Zettin said, glancing toward the aides waiting outside the ring of Blood Eagles who were ensuring privacy.

"As for the rest of us," Garric concluded, "I see the barge coming back from Erdin already. I doubt Earl Wildulf would be quite so prompt if he'd decided on war, so we'd best consider the procedure for crowning a loyal vassal. It's something I got very little practice at-"

He grinned broadly, light-headed to have resolved the question of how to deal with events on Ornifal.

"-when I was living in Barca's Hamlet."

Everybody laughed-even Lord Waldron, who burst out with a gust of laughter after he finally understood he'd really heard what he thought he had.

Garric watched t leaving, helped by his sister. They'd have Cashel with them, of course. That was the next best thing to having a whole army…

Cashel stepped from the sunlit hillside onto the parapet of a huge palace in the minutes before sunrise. The haze of light that precedes the sun had already turned the eastern sky into liquid crystal bright enough to hide the stars. The hard, smooth surface beneath Cashel's feet was just as translucently pure as the air above.

"Oh!" he said, as much in delight as wonder. He'd poised his quarterstaff at a slant before him as he stepped through the portal, ready for whatever danger might be waiting. He shifted it to his side but held the ferrule a trifle above the ground. He didn't suppose the iron would mark the gleaming surface, but it still seemed wrong to be rough with something so beautiful.

Mab was beside him. He hadn't heard or felt her appear. She'd been with him on Volita and she was with him still; it didn't seem to matter that they weren't in the same place as before.

"This is Ronn," she said, looking around with the gentle smile of a person seeing familiar wonders through the enthusiastic eyes of a stranger to them. "You can think of it as a city, if you like, or as a palace; but all the thousands of citizens live in the same splendor as their ruler."

Cashel looked at her again. Shewas Mab, he was sure of that, but "Lady, your hair is dark now," he said. "And you're younger, and you're, well, fuller."

The woman shrugged dismissively. "Yes," she said, "and very likely I'll change my tunics and sandals at some point as well. Does this concern you?"

Cashel blushed in embarrassment. "I'm sorry, lady," he said. In truth, her clothes and the jewel-bright paint on her nails were the only parts of Mab's appearance that weren't subtly different from the woman he'd met on Volita. "I don't normally poke into other people's business. I won't do it again."

Mab smiled. Cashel turned his attention back to his surroundings where he wasn't so apt to make a fool of himself. He hadn't been prying, just surprised; but when you asked folks about how they looked, youwere being personal whether you thought about it that way or not.

There was any number of people around, more than he'd guessed at first because he could see for such a long distance. He was standing near the southeast corner of a broad, curving terrace. It stretched for farther than Cashel could be sure of. To the west, across the ship-filled harbor far below, lights twinkled on the other end of the crescent.

Because the plaza was so broad, the people got lost in it until you really thought about how many there were. Cashel didn't suppose he'd seen so many folks in one place except when Garric was mustering his army. There were too many to see them all, really, even if the sun'd been fully up.

"It's like being up on a mountain, mistress," he said. "And it's very beautiful."

"Ronn was built to be beautiful," Mab said with a nod of agreement. "And it was a mountain, before the city was built. The foundations are carved into the rock to support these crystal levels reaching into the sky."

Cashel glanced at those standing close by, showing polite interest but being careful not to stare. People stood in pairs and small groups; occasionally one would be alone. They were waiting for something, though they didn't seem to be tense.

They were an army in numbers, but nothing could be more peaceful than the folk themselves. Almost all wore a loose flowing robe, thin as the finest silk, over an opaque, richly embroidered garment that covered them from feet to neckline as tight as a stocking. The women's fingernails were painted like Mab's, blue on one hand and red on the other, though nobody else's seemed to have the same inner shine as hers.

The people who weren't dressed in that fashion were probably foreigners like Cashel, though he guessed they'd come from the ships in the harbor instead of stepping out of the air. There were more different kinds than he could've counted on both hands, ranging from small, dark men in wrappers of patterned cotton to a pair of hulking, red-haired fellows who wore furs. Those two were taller than Cashel-taller than Garric, even. They gave him the same kind of appraising looks that he offered them.

"Ah, did wizards build the city, mistress?" Cashel asked, rubbing the pavement with his bare toe to see if he could feel any sort of join between blocks. It was as slick as polished metal, all one piece and not even roughened by the feet that'd walked it over who knew how many years?

"One wizard did," Mab said, turning toward Cashel. Her voice was calm, but there was something more in her eyes. "He built Ronn, and he ruled as the King for a thousand years."

She gestured with her left arm and continued, "The plain from Ronn to the northern hills-"

Cashel could see the hills she meant in the far distance, an irregular darkness rising on the horizon. From where he stood on the southern edge of the broad terrace, the lowlands between city and hills was out of sight.

"-was planted in crops to feed the city's population and worked by the Made Men whom he'd created as he created Ronn. For a thousand years, till a thousand years ago."