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Ossdonc’s host left Backford with all North Banking summer-rich before them. Larks darted up from the golden fields like cinders against the hot sky; cows swished their tails in ash heaps of lazy shade. But once the army had trampled through the verdant land, only the distant hills remained lush, and even those were marred by plumes of smoke where villages and farms had slumbered peacefully until the Keeadini found them.
Reiffen and Avender traveled apart from the main column as much as possible, but they couldn’t completely escape its devastation. More than once they found themselves picking their way through smoking fields and bone-strewn yards. On the third day after leaving Backford they came to a farm where an ox lay in the duck pond, its black blood thickening the mud. Dogs shredded chickens outside a blazing barn. While Reiffen’s small escort of northern soldiers led their horses to the pond, Reiffen himself rode into the middle of the crowd of Keeadini surrounding the farmhouse door. The tribesmen, though inclined to shove back as the horse pushed in among them, gave way sullenly when they recognized the rider.
Inside the cottage Avender and Reiffen found themselves in a low, crowded room. Tribesmen jammed the space between thatched roof and dirt floor. Hard laughter filled the dimness, the smell of blood and men overpowering the normal odors of hearth and straw.
Reiffen raised his arms.
“Open high to sun and sky!”
As if they had been pushed, Avender and the Keeadini staggered back against the walls. The roof blew off the top of the cottage, straw swirling. Light and air replaced the gloom.
“Much better,” said Reiffen, advancing to the middle of the room.
The chief of the war band pushed forward. Red lightning branded his cheeks in jagged streaks; a pair of rippling black lines dressed his forehead. Behind him the farmwife cowered in front of the hearth, arms wrapped around her small daughter. It was a moment before Avender spied her husband’s body where it had been kicked into a corner.
“This is ours,” claimed the leader, recovering his dignity despite the sudden removal of the roof.
Reiffen answered in the man’s own tongue. The chief scowled; his war party grumbled from the edges of the room. Reiffen’s voice turned peremptory. Jerking his head for his men to follow, the chief stalked out the door.
The farmwife shrank farther back against the wall as Reiffen came close, her daughter’s face buried in her shawl.
“Softly.” Reiffen raised his hands in peace. “I will not hurt you.”
Avender had heard no rhyme, but the woman calmed all the same. Her shoulders settled; the wildness in her eyes dimmed.
“Tell me,” Reiffen asked, “why did you linger?”
“It’s all is ours,” the woman replied. Dirt and tears streaked her face. “Tug thought none ‘ud notice, hidden up here in the hills.”
“The Keeadini can find an ant in the prairie, if that is what they seek. Do not look there.”
Reiffen caught the woman’s gaze with his hand as she turned toward her husband’s body. Gently he brought her eyes back to his own.
“Do you have anywhere you can go?” he asked.
The woman shook her head.
“No family?”
“West and north. We can’t go there.”
“You cannot stay here, either. I will not be able to protect you when I leave. You must go south. Prince Gerrit approaches from that direction. The Keeadini will not venture that way without the Wizard.”
At the mention of the Wizard, fear poured back into the woman’s eyes. She clutched her daughter tightly.
“Don’t worry,” Reiffen soothed. “The Black One is not coming this way. If you go south you will be safe. I will give you what protection I can, but you must leave.”
Reaching into the cold hearth, he pulled out a handful of ashes. Tossed into the air above the woman’s head, they fell across her shoulders, glittering like shattered sunlight.
“Dust of forest, twig, and tree,
Cloak this woman.
Let none see.”
Avender expected the farmwife to turn into a tree or, at the very least, a thorny rosebush, but nothing happened.
“Go.” Reiffen waved toward the back of the cottage. “Speak to no one who isn’t a friend.”
The woman led her daughter out the broken door into the garden.
“That’s a horrible trick.” Avender waited for the Keeadini to grab her. “Why not just murder her yourself?”
“They won’t see her,” said Reiffen.
Woman and child disappeared into the trees without the Keeadini noticing them at all.
“You saw me cast the spell,” Reiffen explained. “That’s why you could still see her. As for the Keeadini, as long as she doesn’t blunder into them, they won’t notice her. Full invisibility would have scared her half to death.”
“You’re really letting her go?”
“Yes.”
Avender shook his head. “You sack Backford, burn every village and farm you pass, then turn around and let some farmwife you don’t even know go free?”
“Ossdonc sacked Backford, Avender, not I. Do not confuse me with Ossdonc. He and I have different ends entirely.”
Avender followed Reiffen out of the cottage, wondering about what had just happened, and what Reiffen’s ends might be if they really were different from Ossdonc’s. He was learning this new Reiffen was much harder to understand than the old.
In camp that night, as red flames danced behind him in the village he had set ablaze at dusk, the Black Wizard tossed a half-gnawed hoof into the fire and called for a song.
A harper jumped to his feet. “Something light and amusing, my lord?”
“Yes. With blood.” The Wizard emptied a barrel of Southy down his gullet, but the wine had no more effect on him than lemonade.
The minstrel plucked his harp.
“The rivers ride along the rocks,
The seas slide over stone,
The winds weave wild among the flocks
And blades still batter bone...”
Reiffen nudged his companion. “Let’s sleep somewhere else tonight,” he said.
The song faded as he and Avender moved off into the darkness. Despite the fires of the Keeadini dotting the nearby countryside like sparks kindling a dried-up plain, they found an empty beechwood. The din of the army was muffled by distance and trees. Reiffen’s guard posted themselves unseen in the darkness.
“How’s your wound?” With a touch of his finger, Reiffen started a warm blaze in the kindling at their feet.
“There’s a scar along the rib,” said Avender, “but that’s about it. I don’t even feel it anymore.”
Pulling his knife from his belt, he made several short, chopping strokes through the air, stretching the muscles in his chest. Reiffen hadn’t insisted he take his daily dose of medicine and magic that morning, which left Avender wondering if it would now be possible for him to slay his old friend. Perhaps he would try that night, only there was this new matter of Reiffen saving the farmwife and her daughter to consider.
“What was that you said today about Prince Gerrit coming up from the south?” he asked as he put the knife away.
Reiffen pushed a blazing branch deeper into the fire. “The prince is gathering the flower of Banking to meet us. It’s why we’re in such a rush.”
“They’re marching north?”
“Some are. The main force is coming by galley. If we reach Rundel before they do, we’ll catch them coming ashore and drive them back into the river.”
“Why would you attack your ally?”
“My ally?”
“Redburr and I saw you,” said Avender. “That night you visited your uncle in Malmoret.”
“Did you? Then I guess pretending there’s going to be a battle in Rundel isn’t necessary with you.”
“Redburr always assumed Gerrit would turn traitor.”
“Who else did you tell?”
“No one.” Avender felt himself wishing Reiffen were a bit more discomfited by his news. “Redburr said that to move without proof might cause a rebellion at the wrong time.”
“Wise in great matters is our Redburr, however foolish he might be in small.” Reiffen held Avender’s eyes with his own. “But some might say Brannis is the rebel.”
Avender didn’t look away. “That was before you joined the Three.”
“Let me show you something.”
Reiffen retrieved a small, unframed mirror from his cloak. Its gleaming surface caught the yellow glint of the fire and swirled with reflected smoke as he slowly passed his palm across the glass. Or at least Avender thought it was smoke until the cloud writhed and disappeared. In its place another image emerged, a picture from far away. Avender saw a sitting room filled with rich furniture and rugs that reminded him of Prince Gerrit’s palace in Malmoret.
“Mother? Are you there?” asked Reiffen.
Avender watched the glass.
“I am here, Reiffen. Where are you?”
Giserre’s worried face followed her voice into the mirror.
“In Banking, Mother.”
“Is there fighting?”
“Not right now. There was fighting, in Backford, but that is finished. Now we are three days march from Rundel.”
“Rundel? I had a friend from Rundel when I was a child. Baron Rundel’s second daughter, Renore. I suppose she is married and long gone by now.”
“Let us hope so.” Reiffen tilted the mirror toward Avender. “Look whom I found in Backford.”
“Avender!” Giserre’s face opened in pleasant surprise. She didn’t look as if she had aged a day since leaving Valing. “I am so glad Reiffen has found you. I shall sleep much better, now I know you are there to keep an eye on him.”
“I shall do what I can, my lady.” Avender nodded stiffly, not wishing to insult Giserre by telling her what he really thought of her son.
Reiffen twisted the small glass back toward himself. “You should know, he did try to kill me, mother. He may not be the best person to watch over me.”
“You appear to have forgiven him. So shall I.”
Giserre leaned forward and to the side, looking for Avender around the edge of the mirror. Reiffen shifted the glass back toward his friend.
“It is difficult to understand at first, Avender,” she said. “I had a hard time accepting the change as well. My own son, cooperating with the Three? I assure you, everything would be much worse had he not.”
“Death is no dishonor, ma’am.”
“Some would disagree with that,” said a new voice.
Giserre twisted her mirror until a second face appeared behind her own. Avender recognized the bard at once.
“Apparently you turned out to be a better swimmer than I thought,” he said, his eyes twinkling.
Reiffen turned the mirror back to his own face before Avender could think of a reply. “Everything is well in the fortress?”
Mindrell shrugged. “The place is empty, but that’s not such a bad thing, given the manners of those who’ve gone. Your mother and Spit have less to do, now the slaves have fewer folks around to be cruel to them.”
The glass shifted back to Giserre. “It has been quiet,” she agreed. “I have not seen Fornoch since you left. I must confess, it will be a great pleasure to finally leave this dreary place and see Banking again after so many years. Half my life has passed since I last saw Malmoret.”
“Soon, Mother. We meet Gerrit in three days. Unless Brannis has amassed an army of Bryddin, it will all be over quickly.”
“Take care, my son. My heart is with you.”
“And mine with you, Mother.”
Smoke swirled again as Reiffen brushed his fingertips across the mirror. The curling currents faded, replaced by reflections of the night.
“Mindrell?” demanded Avender, as dismayed by Reiffen’s and Giserre’s apparent acceptance of the bard as by anything else he had seen in the last few days.
“He guards my mother well.”
“How can you trust him?”
“Would you rather I had called upon you to perform the task?”
Avender had no answer to that. He would have guarded Giserre with his life, but he doubted his life would have lasted long in Ussene. Perhaps the bard was better suited for that particular chore.
Later, when the fire had broken up into orange crumbs and darkness fogged the trees, Avender fingered his knife. If the magic really had worn off, it would be easy to kill Reiffen now. No guard was close enough to stop him. But talking to Giserre had made him think twice about murdering his old friend. Giserre had said once she would kill her son herself if it ever came to that. Only it had, and she hadn’t. There had to be a reason Giserre had stayed her hand: she hadn’t appeared to be under any spells. Maybe his best course was to wait and discover that reason, however much he might prefer to do something now.
In three more days they reached the river. Ossdonc halted his army around the burned-out shell of a once fine farm. Lifting a dead heifer by its hind legs the way a man might hold a slaughtered lamb, he called Reiffen to his side.
“Perhaps I shall raid Rundel Keep tonight,” he said. His teeth gleamed between his black Wizard’s eyes and his collar.
“I would rather you not,” Reiffen answered. “I wish a country to rule, not an ash heap. You promised Usseis I would have my chance with my uncle.”
“So you shall.” Blood from the heifer’s neck sprayed Reiffen’s and Avender’s trousers as Ossdonc waved his arms magnanimously. “Though my own pleasure be diminished by your success, I shall permit your attempt. But remember, lordling. If you fail, I will have my sport.”
“You will get your sport at Rimwich,” Reiffen replied. “And revenge for your defeat twenty-one years ago. But not here. The barons are our allies. Fornoch and I have assured ourselves of that.”
The Wizard dismissed them with another wave; Reiffen led Avender off to a high bluff above the Great River. West Wayland rose on the far side in a series of forested hills above a broad bend where small boats tacked across the water like gliding birds. To the south, the bluff pulled back from the water in half a league of meadows and farms. Rundel stood on a stretch of high ground at the far end, a score of galleys moored like islands in the current offshore. Hundreds of tents marked the fields beyond the walls on the other side of the town, from the dirty gray tarps of the poorest knights to the large orange and black pavilion at the center of the encampment.
Reiffen scanned the dull brown river in both directions. “My uncle’s scouts will tell him we’re here soon enough, but nightfall is no time for what I have in mind. Tomorrow morning at first light, you and I shall ride down to meet him.”
“What about the Keeadini?” asked Avender. “How are you going to call them off once you’ve made your peace with the barons?”
“The Keeadini will be taken care of once matters between Brannis and myself are decided. In the meantime, their presence will help ensure the barons don’t go back on their word. I admit, too many honest farmers and villagers will lose their homes, but, as long as they stay in the towns, they’ll be safe. Barns can be rebuilt.”
Before dawn they led their horses down a steep path through the woods. Reiffen’s face showed hard and pale as stone in the gray light filtering through the branches, his mouth drawn tightly closed. Thick mist rolled in to hide them from the town as the sun rose, the smell of the river heavy in the cloud.
At the bottom of the bluff they swung into their saddles. Reiffen handed a large white handkerchief to a soldier, who tied it to the tip of his sword and raised it as a pennant. Though the mist began to thin as soon as they rode into the fields, they were well in among the farmhouses before the first dogs sniffed them out and began to bark. Farmers raised the alarm. A goodwife hurried back to her cottage, hens scattering like tenpins. Along the town wall, night-dull sentries stiffened and peered forward. The Banking army came to life.
Reiffen halted at the entrance to the camp. A line of pikes faced him, a double hedgerow of long thorns. Beyond the spears several officers waited quietly on horseback to hear what the parley had to say. The colored plumes of the officer’s Houses curved gently above their helms in the still morning air: Walking and Ankley, Illie and Far Mouthing. Avender’s horse whinnied and pawed the ground.
“My name is Reiffen.” Reiffen’s voice rang clear across the early morning. “I am your proper king. Giserre is my mother, Ablen my father. Enneria was my grandmother, sister to King Onallai who was father to Queen Loellin. Through Enneria’s father, King Alani, lies my claim to the throne of Malmoret.
“My uncle in Rimwich can lay no such title to the Banking throne. He is Wayland born and knows nothing of our land. Not for him the vineyards of Ankley and the granaries of Emess. Eddstone Harbor is a fishing village to Far Mouthing’s great port, and Rimwich a cold stone castle compared to the grace and beauty of Malmoret, greatest city in the world. For twelve years Brannis allowed me, his kin, to languish in Valing. When I was taken by the Three, he did nothing to rescue me. He laughed at my mother, his nephew’s wife, when she asked for aid.
“Despite him, I have returned. My army camps upon the ridge above, but I come alone, as is my right. With me I bring as well great power learned from the Three, who have taught me their arts, not to conquer, but to lead. Arts that will fill our land with knowledge and wealth, fattening our wisdom and our purses. Your king should have your blood running through his veins. I am that king.
“What say you to my claim?”
Silence greeted Reiffen’s speech. It wasn’t for pikemen to resolve such questions. A sergeant barked an order: slowly the martial hedgerow thinned as soldiers shuffled to either side. Through the gap that appeared an officer in shining silver plate rode a white war horse, orange and black plumes in his helm. His armor gleamed so brightly Avender was forced to slit his eyes to see the three crossed swords upon his shield, but it wasn’t the armor that caught Avender’s attention. Sheathed along the flank of Prince Gerrit’s stallion was a long, heavy sword, kin to the stone blade Baron Backford had been given by the Dwarves.
Halting before Reiffen, Prince Gerrit removed his helm. Behind him waited a line of equally resplendent barons.
“Welcome, Reiffen,” said the prince. The incline of his head suggested graciousness but not submission. “If that is truly who you are.”
“I have anticipated your doubt, and have brought one whose word you may believe.”
Reiffen turned toward Avender. Gerrit followed his nephew’s gesture, but it took Avender a moment to understand why the prince was pretending not to recognize Reiffen. They had never met during the years Reiffen had spent in Valing, and to know one another now would be to admit they had met secretly since.
“My friend is older than when last you met,” said Reiffen. “Perhaps you remember him.”
“The Hero of the Stoneways,” replied the prince. “I know him well. He has guested in my house. Sir Avender, do you ride willingly with Reiffen and his Wizard?”
“Not willingly, Prince Gerrit. I was taken at Backford.”
“Were you? By Ossdonc himself, no doubt.”
“By a pair of plain soldiers, my lord. They wounded me dearly, but Reiffen healed my hurt.”
“Then you vouch this is, indeed, Prince Reiffen?”
“I do.”
“And how do I know you are not under some magic of the Three?”
“You don’t. I don’t know myself. But he seems like Reiffen to me.”
“You lack the look of one ensorceled, Sir Avender. And your companion does have the look of my sister about him.” Gerrit laid his right hand on the weapon at his side and looked back at Reiffen.
“Do you know this sword?” he asked.
“It is a sword of heartstone,” Reiffen answered.
“Know then, Prince, that I come to you not in weakness, but in strength. This is no frontier uhlan I lead, but the King’s own horse from Malmoret, and all the gathered power of the southern and western barons as well. We do not fear Ossdonc, especially not with this weapon in my hand.”
“You should always fear Ossdonc, Uncle.”
“Respect, perhaps. But never fear.”
Reaching forward, Gerrit drew the sword. His arm strained with the weight until he could grip it with both hands. As he lifted the blade upright, the cold stone gleamed dull beside the shining brilliance of his armor.
“Prince Reiffen, I offer you this sword, a gift of the Bryddin to our house. As my liege lord, this honor is properly yours. I offer as well my fealty, and acknowledge in you the true king of Banking.”
A few of the soldiers gasped, but none said a word of censure. Reiffen accepted the sword, his arms bending under its weight. Gerrit turned to the soldiers behind him and cried, “Hail Reiffen, king of Banking!”
Spears rose in salute. A shout rose from the ranks. Their allegiance was completed without a drop of blood. The barons echoed the soldiers’ shout with one of their own. Avender decided, at least for the barons, it had all been planned. How else to explain so many of them up so early in the morning, their armor polished? Reiffen and Gerrit had left nothing to chance. Avender didn’t know whether to admire his friend’s thoroughness, or curse his cold-bloodedness. Now all that was left to stand against him was Rimwich and King Brannis.
A herald was sent to Rundel to proclaim the advent of the true king, while Gerrit led Reiffen, his escort, and the barons back to his pavilion. Those who had not been part of the plan dressed hastily in their tents, astonishment on their faces at the sight of northern soldiers in the camp. Avender recognized Baron Sevral among them, his stern face chafing in displeasure.
Food and drink were laid out in Prince Gerrit’s tent, fruit and bread and flagons of wine on tables between the chairs. A pair of sleek greyhounds rose to greet their master, their tails whipping at his touch.
“You have appeared more quickly than anticipated.” The prince offered his nephew a choice of upholstered seats, the backs of which were embroidered with scenes of hunting dogs and their masters.
“We marched quickly and lightly.” Reiffen declined to sit, but accepted a glass of wine. “However, I am afraid we left our mark on the land.”
Gerrit pursed his lips. “Regrettable, but necessary. I would have preferred to meet you at the border, to avoid such bloodshed.”
“As would I. But there is only so much I can do with Ossdonc. Before we cross the river, you might send one of your best captains to harry the Keeadini back into the Waste, or they will burn everything.”
The late arrivals pressed around the tent. Some were like Baron Backford, stiff as pokers and staunch as hounds; others seemed more like chimney smoke, willing to be guided by the wind. All stood aside as Sevral, his chin quivering indignantly, came face to face with Gerrit.
“What is the meaning of this?” the baron demanded. “Prince Gerrit, have you lost your mind?”
“Not at all, Sevral.” The prince sipped from his cup and met the baron’s reproof with condescension. “I would think you, among us all, would leap at the chance to welcome the true king. You have ever been a champion of justice.”
Baron Sevral straightened at this challenge to his own strict sense of right and wrong, and looked the prince in the eye. “I have sworn an oath to Brannis, Your Highness. We all have, otherwise we would be wasting in the Rimwich dungeons or cowering in the Toes. It is not fit we break our oaths without first allowing the king to state his case.”
“We all know what Brannis’s case is,” scoffed Gerrit.
“Brannis has no case.” Reiffen swept Baron Sevral’s objections aside. “Either join us, or remain here as our prisoner. I have no intention of pleading my suit before my Wayland uncle.”
Baron Sevral straightened his back another inch. “Then I am your prisoner, sirs. I cannot condone oath-breaking. But I warn you both, our very way of life shall turn to dust if you insist on this course. Honor is all that separates us from brutes.”
“Very well, baron. If that is your choice.”
As Reiffen turned away to set his wine glass on the nearest table, one of the northern guards stepped forward. Before his master could stop him, the guard drew his sword and slashed the baron’s head from his shoulders. His strange, black blade swallowed both sunshine and blood as it struck.
Booming laughter followed. The tent flaps cracked in a sudden wind. Like a swiftly filling wineskin, the guard swelled up to a Wizard’s full size, his head grazing the canvas at the top of the tent.
“Did you really think I was going to let you attend this meeting unaccompanied, Your Majesty?” Ossdonc roared. His bottomless black eyes bored hungrily around the room.
For the first time Avender saw Reiffen flinch before the Wizard. His old friend’s jaw clenched and his eyes flashed. Avender prepared himself for a burst of temper like the ones he had seen so often when he and Reiffen were boys, but somehow Reiffen held himself in. Evidently not all the changes he had undergone in Ussene had been for the worse.
“That was not necessary,” said Reiffen, his eyes still angry.
“Oh, but it was, Your Majesty.” Ossdonc grinned broadly, reminding Avender of how Mindrell had once mocked Reiffen in exactly the same way. “If I may contradict your uncle, fear is the order of the day in Banking now. Respect is done with entirely.”