The Element of Fire - Martha Wells (best android ereader .txt) 📗

Galen Dubell. But it was Grandier she was staring at.

She looked at Grandier with a kind of growing incredulous fury, a combination of wounded pride at being fooled and all-too-human betrayal. The sorcerer looked back at her, and his eyes held all of Dubell’s intelligence and wit and the gentle humor he employed on those who pleased him. He said, “No, it wasn’t your fault.”

The fury flared and ignited and she took a step toward him. But Grandier’s hand came out of his robes and he tossed something at her. It wasn’t a deadly flash of sorcerous light. It was a handful of iron filings.

Iron wouldn’t harm Kade as much as it did other fay, but it would interfere with her ability to do magic. Even as Thomas started forward Kade leapt back to avoid the filings and Grandier pushed past her and out the door. As he crossed the threshold, the candles and the fire were extinguished with a hiss as if all had been doused with water, plunging the room into shadow.

Thomas banged into the heavy table that had somehow moved into his way, shoved it aside, and ran out into the hall.

Grandier was halfway to the outside door, Kade running after him. The few lamps that were lit extinguished as the sorcerer passed them. Thomas shouted for the guards in the hall to follow him, but in the confusion and darkness he couldn’t tell if any heard.

Thomas caught up with Kade in the entry hall and together they slammed out the door and into the frozen mud and cold of the court. The clouds had opened up again and the moonlight was stark white, the wind a tearing force, and Grandier was nowhere to be seen.

Kade spun around, trying to look in every direction at once. Thomas did a quick circuit of the court, but found nothing.

“Damn it, where is he?” he muttered. Grandier, loose in the confusion of the palace…

As he reached Kade’s side again, she looked up and said, “Oh, no.”

Thomas followed her gaze. A shadow had appeared and now grew on the moon’s narrow face, becoming larger and larger. It was a blot of greater darkness dropping toward them out of the night.

She said, “He’s opened the wards.”

Without having to discuss it they both went for the nearest shelter, the lee side of the wellhouse. They were too far from the Guard House, from the entrance of any building. The winged fay plunged toward the ground, then seemed to hover above the courtyard, as insubstantial as a shadow.

The wellhouse’s door was on the far side, Thomas knew. They could edge around to it if they were lucky, if the fay beast was half-blind.

Thomas started to slide along the wall and Kade grabbed his arm and whispered, “Don’t move.” He hesitated, thinking, Does she know what she’s doing? Then he noticed the quality of the light change as the moon’s sparkle on the ground around them became almost palpable, and remembered Kade’s ability to eavesdrop without being seen, and that one of her fay powers was supposed to be illusion.

The creature that touched ground lightly in the courtyard was a living shadow, the moonlight seeming to bend away from it. In the jumble of dark shapes that composed it, Thomas could see only a snakelike motion and the pointed delicate razor-outline of a claw held at an unlikely angle.

Kade was whispering, “Moonlight, shadow, moonlight, shadow…”

Thomas thought, Thank God we’re downwind. Then he saw Grandier, walking toward the bizarre thing. A moment later the creature was aloft, soaring upward at an incredible speed.

Kade slid down the wall to sit in the mud.

The illusion around them dissipated into tiny sparkling droplets of light that fell to the ground like beads of dew and disappeared. Fayre glamour, Thomas realized. He said, “Very good,” and gave Kade a hand up.

Kade swayed a bit as she stood, not bothering to brush the mud and dirt off her dress. She shook her head frustratedly and ran a hand through her hair. “He let the wards move back into place, after he was past them. Why did he do that?”

Thomas assumed it was a rhetorical question. At least, he had no idea how to answer. The door to the Guard House swung open and torchlight poured into the court. There were shouts from the direction of the Albon Tower. The timing was too good. He wondered if Grandier had cast another spell besides the one to extinguish the candles, a spell to create confusion and keep everyone else inside.

Then Kade demanded, “What did he do with Galen?”

She was looking up at him, those clear gray eyes angry and beginning to be afraid. Not having read the priest’s document, she would not have understood that part of the conversation. He said, “Galen’s dead.”

*

“Mother, this seems like cowardice,” Roland said. He stood huddled in a heavy fur cloak, attended by Renier and two servants, all dressed for hard riding in frigid weather. The other knights charged with guarding him paced about warily, a short distance away. It was barely dawn, and the sky was a solid gray roof, low and threatening. A half hour ago the wind had died and the snow had begun to fall.

Ravenna pulled her hood up over her tightly braided hair and adjusted her gloves. “No, dear, it seems like survival.” She turned to Elaine, who stood quietly at her elbow. “Wrap your scarf more carefully, child; this cold could ruin your skin.”

Thomas folded his arms and tried not to show his frustration; it was just like Roland to balk at the eleventh hour. Staying in the palace, at Grandier’s mercy, was impossible.

They stood in the court below the Albon Tower, an island of relative calm amid the bustle of preparations for the evacuation. Under his cloak Renier wore a gold-embossed gorget and back-and breastplates as many of the Albon knights did. Thomas and most of the other guards preferred the heavy leather buff coats which offered almost as much protection as the awkward armor pieces and allowed more freedom of movement. In the dim morning light servants ran past, coaches and wagons were being loaded, horses saddled or harnessed, all in apprehensive haste. Nothing had been said about last night’s confrontation in the Albon Tower, and nothing would be said, unless Roland was an utter fool. Which is not entirety out of the realm of possibility, Thomas thought.

“I’m not deserting my court,” the King muttered stubbornly.

“Roland,” Ravenna said with a sigh. “You are the court, the crown, and the throne. This place has only symbolic value; you can rule just as well from Portier or the Granges. But only if you’re alive.”

The King looked away, a little mollified. “I dislike having them say we ran, that’s all.” He hesitated a long moment, and Thomas silently contemplated the gray sky and braced himself to let Ravenna handle the next objection. But Roland said, “Is it really true about Dr. Dubell?”

Panic and rumor had spread through the crowded halls, and Thomas had spent most of the night trying to quell it. Ravenna’s eyes went hard and she said, “Yes, it is true.” The news had not sat easily with her; she had hated the thought that she could be deceived along with everyone else.

Roland bit his lip, not meeting her eyes, then nodded. “I see.” He turned abruptly and went back toward the tower, the snow crunching under his boots, his servants and knights trailing him. Renier shook his head and followed.

Ravenna smiled ruefully. “A pretty speech I gave about symbolic value, don’t you think? One might imagine I believed it.” She eyed Thomas with mild annoyance. “I’m still angry with you. I didn’t enjoy being coerced into this, but you’ve got your way, and I suppose that’s the height of male ambition.”

“That’s amusing coming from you,” Thomas said without rancor. They had been through this all last night, when he had finally persuaded her to accept his plan for the retreat.

“Perhaps.” She watched him a moment, a flicker of something other than cool control in her eyes. “For all your faults, I trust you’ll come out of this alive.” She started across the court without waiting for a reply.

Though he needed to be elsewhere now, Thomas found himself pausing to watch her. Occasionally he was surprised anew by the idea that someone so frail could also be so strong.

“Captain.”

He looked up. Denzil stood only a few steps away, dressed in heavy brocades and a fur-trimmed cloak, snow collecting in his hair. Ravenna and Roland’s presence in this section of the court had for the moment cleared it, and the servants loading wagons near the Guard House were making enough noise to cover their voices. Though, undoubtedly, eyes watched them from most of the surrounding windows. Thomas said, “Are you sure you don’t want to save this performance until you have a better audience?”

The Duke acknowledged that with a smile, but said, “At times your impatience with Roland is ill concealed. From your manner one would be tempted to think you despise your King.”

“I don’t despise him, I pity him. He actually loves you.”

“Of course he does.” Denzil’s smile widened, and for the first time Thomas felt he was being allowed to see the man’s real face, the truth behind the sham he put on for Roland, for the court. The petulance, the pretense of shallow vanity, were gone, replaced by intelligence and an amused contempt for those the mask had fooled. “And it was well done, wasn’t it?”

“It furthers your purpose.”

“Whatever that is.” Denzil paced a few steps. “I can say anything I want to him, do anything I want to him, cause him to do whatever I want” — he looked up, his blue eyes mocking — “I can tell you about it with perfect impunity. And I have made him love me for it.”

Thomas looked away, seeing and not seeing the wounded being helped into a wagon near the door of the tower. He felt stupidly, irrationally angry for Roland’s sake. Why? You’d think I’d know better than to give a damn about the feelings of a boy-king who spits on me. He was as block-headed as Renier, who actually believed in his oath of knighthood. But he said, “And what a conquest it was. A boy whose father taught him to take abuse. Undoubtedly he believes he deserves you.”

“Perhaps he does. Weakness is its own reward.”

Denzil was just as crippled as Roland, but in his own way, with his hate turned outward instead of festering within. But Denzil’s intelligent enough to see it. Probably he does see it. And probably revels in it. Thomas said slowly, “You are a piece of work.”

“Yes, but it’s my own work,” Denzil answered easily, sounding pleased. “And I’ve gotten nearly everything I’ve ever wanted.”

And now you’re getting a reaction from me, something else you’ve always wanted. Thomas put a little bored doubt in his voice and said, “Have you?”

“Nearly everything. I wanted you, once, before I realized how much it would have harmed my cause with Roland.”

Still watching the wagons, and inwardly a little amused, Thomas said dryly, “How flattering.”

“My pride demanded it, because I could sense how you hated me.”

A flurry of wind tore through the court, scattering snow around their boots.

Thomas searched for the words that would deal the deepest wound, and after a moment he said, “I know. I found your motives transparent.” He looked back at Denzil, and was rewarded by the ill-concealed anger in those cold blue eyes.

“Words,” the Duke said softly. “Ravenna is growing old, Thomas. Take care that when she