They set off again, only this time with the ease of close companions. Hyam’s distrust of everything to do with the Long Hall was not erased. He simply no longer counted Trace as belonging to that group. The mage was right. He had never been more in need of allies.
When the trail widened and the main road came into view, Hyam asked, “What can you tell me of the nobles allied to House Oberon?”
“They are disgraced, one and all. Those who were not defeated in the wars against the new king.”
“What about your family?”
“Oh, they’re well enough. The clan’s fiefdom is too small and poor to be of notice. Besides that, my oldest brother is a ditherer. He has always found it easiest to postpone all decisions. For once, his inaction served the family well. The Oberons lost power before my brother answered the call to arms. He swore fealty to the new king and saw his holdings increase as a result. I keep in touch with my sister, who is wed to the former chief man-at-arms. A lovely lady with a fair hand at her letters.”
“How many Oberon allies survived the battles?”
“I have no idea.” Trace glanced down from the horse. He had been riding since they arrived at the forest’s verge. “Do you have a plan?”
“Maybe,” Hyam replied. “The tiniest fragments of one.”
They rode and walked and joined the flow. Master Trace slipped from the horse and waited while Hyam helped Joelle into the saddle. The dog was sufficient to keep other travelers well away.
The mage asked, “This sensing of the flow, it comes easy to you?”
“More than easy,” Hyam replied. “It feels natural.”
“Wonder upon wonder.” The mage tugged on his beard. “Those mages who can detect the power require much fasting and purges and trials. The practice is considered so difficult and so unprofitable, few accept the challenge. Why should anyone bother? It’s not like we’re going anywhere or establishing more Long Halls. After all, we possess all the surviving orbs.” He shook his head. “What utter buffoons we’ve been.”
“Which explains why your Long Hall was built on the wrong spot,” Hyam said.
“What?”
“There is a tiny rivulet of power beneath the settlement. A narrow creek.” Hyam could not suppress his grin. Nor did he try very hard. “And on the meadow’s other side, over where the forest begins, there is one of the strongest currents I have ever felt. That’s what I drew on when I captured your orb. And that is why I overpowered your mages.”
To his surprise, the old man cackled. “I hope you don’t feel any need to share this news with my fellow wizards.”
“Not particularly.”
“Oh, good. Let me.”
“You have a particularly nasty laugh, old man.”
The wizard cackled his reply.
The innkeeper was so relieved to see Hyam alive and safe that she actually wept a few tears. “Them nobles kept sniffing about, then they drifted off quiet-like. I was ever so afraid they’d caught up with your honor.”
“I’m here,” Hyam replied. “And I need your help.”
“Anything, your lordship. Long as it’s legal.” She revealed a surprisingly girlish smile. “And maybe even if it’s not.”
He waved Joelle and Trace over and introduced them as his trusted associates. “Whatever their request, whatever they need, I ask that you treat it as coming from me.”
“That’s certainly within my doing, good sir.” She glanced about. “But if you’ll excuse me for saying, these two won’t be enough to keep you safe.”
“I’m coming to that. But first I want to take over one entire wing of your good establishment.”
“That’s doable as well.” She gave a delicate hesitation. “Though the private wing holds five rooms on two floors.”
“I’ll take them. Strip two of beds and replace them with tables from your front room and some chairs. Next, and more importantly, do you have any connection with officers who once served in the company of disgraced houses?”
“You mean . . .”
“I’m after professional soldiers who have lost their postings and are looking for service. And I can pay.”
“You’ll trust men whose loyalty you can buy?” the mage asked.
“No,” Hyam replied. “I’ll trust soldiers who may never have another chance.”
There was no attempting to bar the banker’s door in Hyam’s face. This time, when he presented himself at the main portal, the financier himself scurried forward to usher him and his associates inside. He was mighty reluctant to discuss the matters at hand in the company of others. But this diminished when Hyam introduced the old man as his personal aide and secretary. When the banker’s gaze switched to Joelle, Hyam explained, “The Lady Joelle has been assigned as my attaché.”
The banker took in the purple cast to her eyes, and his aplomb vanished. “But . . . the Ashanta never travel.”
“That is all I will say on the matter,” Hyam replied. “Except that whatever these two ask of you, please treat it as coming from me personally.”
He looked from one to the other. “I shall need that in writing.”
“Give me parchment and quill and you’ll have it.”
When Hyam completed his task, the banker inspected the document, stowed it away, and declared, “I’ve received the most remarkable set of instructions. As has every other Ashanta financier in the realm, or so I’m led to believe.” He lifted a paper from his desk, adjusted his reading spectacles, and read, “‘Any and all requests for funds by the emissary Hyam shall be granted without delay or question. Any request for assistance will be treated in the same manner.’”
Hyam had no idea what was expected, so he simply said, “Excellent.”
The banker dropped the paper. “I suppose you realize this will make you the wealthiest individual in the realm. If that’s what you want.”
It wasn’t, but Hyam knew the man counted money as a measure of a man’s worth. “How much gold do you hold here?”
“Quite a lot, actually.” The words were accompanied by a hint of mocking humor. Clearly the financier felt a faint disdain for this rough-hewn lad with his two associates in peasant garb. None of whom had any idea of money. “How much do you need?”
“I’ll take two purses now. And either I or one of my associates will be by shortly for more. Now please shut the door.” When the banker had done so, Hyam said, “Tell me everything you can about this new king.”
Late spring rains set in that night and washed over them for the next three days. Hyam welcomed the rain like a farmer, knowing the season’s uncommon heat had parched the earth, even in a land as well-watered as this. He stood for hours in the inn’s gateway, sheltered beneath the stone arch. These were the first easy moments he had known since traveling to the Long Hall. It left him feeling almost guilty.
The innkeeper proved a strong and capable ally. The message he gave her was sent out quietly through the city, passed from one trusted friend to another. While they waited, Hyam ordered a tailor to fit them all out in a noble’s idea of traveling garb. All their outfits were to be trimmed in violet and bear the Ashanta seal sewn onto the breast.
Hyam asked Trace to continue instructing Joelle in the mage’s arts. “Our survival might depend upon it,” he declared. There was a moment’s silence, then to his relief both agreed.
They took their meals in the room they had turned into Hyam’s office. A fire burned in the grate, and their isolation was a comfort. Over dinner that night, Trace said, “It wouldn’t hurt for you to train some yourself, lad.”
He had a hundred reasons for declining, most especially how he reveled in these few quiet hours. And said so.
But Trace was insistent. “There are any number of reasons why you should heed my advice. Spells are shaped around a certain form, and the first aim of each is to keep the mage alive. The orb carries sufficient force to burn a wizard to a crisp. Your actions are astonishing because you do what has not been done before.”
“And survived,” Hyam pointed out.
“But for how long? And to what point? Would it not be better to understand the structure behind shaping spells?”
Hyam disliked this invasion into his idle moment, but he said, “All right.”
The next morning, Trace started them on simple exercises used to train young wizards. For Hyam it was as senseless a task as watching the rain, but he did not mind, especially after Joelle lit up with unbridled delight at her every success. All that day she continually bathed them with her joy.
Twice the orb’s power faded to a dull hue, so Hyam walked away from the inn, along the riverbank to where he detected an underground current. Any onlookers would have merely seen a traveler out walking his wolfhound and tossing stones into the River Havering’s rain-dappled waters. The satchel Hyam carried was made bulky by the blanket he’d wrapped about the orb so that none of its gleam might be detected.
On the third night he dreamed of his mother. Not as she was in those final hard months, when all her attention was focused upon the unseen door. He dreamed of how she had been during his childhood. Calm and intent upon each chore in turn. A mage in her own way at the loom. Turning threads she dyed herself into fields of magical beasts that almost danced off the cloth, and often did in his mind. She was never one to scold, not even when he deserved it, which was often, for as a boy he had loved nothing more than testing his own limits.
The dream revealed her working upon the last of her tapestries. Only in this night, the horse cantered with rippling muscles across a field turned violet by the orb’s light. Hyam wore what he now recognized as the emissary’s garb. The orb rested atop a tall wooden lance, one fashioned so that it gripped the globe in a tight wooden fist.
His mother stopped in her work and turned to him, and said his name. Hyam. And in that single utterance he was returned to the joy he had known every time he had stepped through their cottage door. Knowing that here was a place where he would always belong.
Though he woke to sunlight and birdsong beyond his bedroom’s open window, Hyam rose with a deep bitterness in his heart. It was not enough that he searched for an enemy whose name he did not know. He had been stripped of home and heritage. The fact that he belonged nowhere weighed on him like an open wound.
Their sleeping chambers were on the wing’s upper floor and thus somewhat protected. The two larger rooms downstairs had been turned into offices. As Hyam descended the stairs, he glanced down the hall that connected them to the inn’s main chamber and saw it was filled with men and weapons and chatter.
Trace greeted him with, “Your news has reached interested ears. The question remains—are these the ones we need?”
“I want you to interview them first. Only send those to me who you feel are trustworthy.”
The old man nodded. “I can do that.”
“Where is Joelle?”
“Still sleeping, I expect. We practiced with your orb into the wee hours.”
“Why are you awake, then?”
“Elders require less sleep. Or perhaps it is that sleep comes more reluctantly.” He smiled through his beard. “She is a thrilling lass to instruct. She laps it up like a kitten would fresh cream.”
“It is good of you to teach her.”
Trace shrugged. “It is a squire’s duty to serve.”
“Despite the Long Hall code?”
“My one remaining oath is that which I swore to you.” His eyes showed a guileless humor. “Of course, the fact that she is lovely as the dawn doesn’t hurt.”
“Go and wake her. Ask if she will assist in these interviews. I want all who join with us to recognize her authority.”
By noontime fourteen former officers had been chosen and assembled in his study. Another forty male foot soldiers patrolled around the inn or erected tents in the forecourt.
Joining the male officers in his study were six women, hard-faced and formed into a tight unit by the window. Their leader was a former captain named Meda, a handsome woman in her late twenties or early thirties with a suspicious, knowing gaze. The senior officer among the men was a former colonel named Adler. He lounged with counterfeit ease by the opposite wall. He was older than most, with a savage cast to his features and a scar that clipped off the top of his left ear and ran above his eye and disappeared into his hairline.
Hyam’s first act was to loose the knot on a heavy leather purse and upend the contents on his table. The gold florins glinted in the light and in the assembled warriors’ gazes. Their clothes were tattered, their features gnawed by hardship and hunger.
He then unfurled the royal charter and anchored it with two candlesticks. “This decree is a thousand years old. It assigns me, the appointed emissary of the Ashanta, the rights and powers of a knight of the realm. The seal at its base is that of the Oberons, and the original charter was signed by the first king to bear that name. Some say that with the ending of the Oberons’ reign, the decree no longer holds power. Any who agree with this should now leave.”
No one moved.
“Let us be perfectly clear. The new king is not my enemy. I will not have these ranks become a haven for rehashing old quarrels or fighting old battles. Our enemy is real, he is out there, and I need your help in taking him down.”
The leader of the women demanded, “Who is he?”
“I have no idea. Nor do I know where he is.”
The one known as Adler said, “If it wasn’t for the pile of gold there, I’d say you were the closest I’ve come to a crazy person.”
“The enemy is real,” Hyam repeated. “Answer me one question. Who among you participated in the battle that brought down the Oberons?”
“That’s easy enough,” Meda replied. “None of us.”
“Not a single solitary soldier survived that encounter,” Adler agreed. “Not a camp follower, not a squire, not a blacksmith, not a healer. Every member of the army and its supply train were wiped out.”
“How long did the battle last?”
“No one knows,” Meda replied. “I led my liege’s forces on a hard march and still arrived at the battlefield after it was over and the Oberon king had surrendered.”
“The king perished with his troops,” Adler pointed out.
“Not him. The nephew, Bayard. The one who sued for peace.” To Hyam, Meda went on, “I’ll never forget that day, climbing the ridge and seeing there before me a sea of black ash and wasted bodies.”
“That’s where I saw you before,” Adler said. “You were with House Rideau.”
“I was. And you?”
“Count Grafton.”
“A good man, by all accounts. How is he faring?”
“Not well. The taxes, the oppression.” Adler shrugged. “We are here. That says it all.”
Hyam asked, “What if I were to tell you that it was not the army of Ravi your king that defeated the Oberon forces?”
The room had been quiet before. Now it was clenched in the alert stillness of warriors who had known the closeness of death.
He went on, “What if I said that the forbidden forces of magic were once again released into this realm?”
“There have been rumors,” Adler allowed.
“The rumors,” Hyam said, “are true.”
“If that’s so, what do you want us for?” Meda gestured toward her group. “I’ll not have my troops become your sacrificial lamb.”
“Let him speak first,” Adler suggested. “We can walk away after.”
Hyam described his encounter with the prince’s forces on the Ashanta field, the crimson rider, the Ashanta’s response.
There was a lingering silence, then Meda said, “My question still stands.”
“I do not expect you to go up against the crimson one,” Hyam replied. “That’s my job.”
“Who are you?”
“The Ashanta’s appointed emissary,” Adler replied. “He’s already told you that.”
“So their power of battle is assigned to him?”
“If it wasn’t, he’d be a fool to go after a crimson mage.” Adler revealed a warrior’s grin, steel and teeth and no humor at all. “And I’m beginning to think the lad here is no fool.”
“I need two things from you,” Hyam went on. “First, I need scouts to locate this mage. And second, I want to draw together a force of trained soldiers to take on whoever accompanies him.”