A Path to Coldness of Heart Read online

  “Remote and remoter.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Liakopulos is dead. Probably murdered by the Itaskians. As for Michael, I don’t honestly believe he survived, either. But if he did he isn’t going to help us.”

  Sherilee and Kristen glared. Haas thought that unfair. Such lovelies deserved to have nothing weightier than fashion on their minds.

  Yet another way Kavelin distorted the natural order. Kavelin boasted strong women who made remarkable things happen.

  ...

  Dane, Duke of Greyfells, want-to-be lord of Kavelin, paced before a fireplace. His newly acquired headquarters was large, old, and draughty. It overlooked Damhorst, a key town on the east-west trade route through Kavelin. The castle was the ancestral home of the Breitbarth barons. Claimants to that title had been eliminated.

  Greyfells had taken the castle by stealth. He and his adventurers now enjoyed shelter, warmth, and security but seldom dared go out in bands of fewer than a dozen.

  The locals were mainly Wesson, ethnic cousins of the Itaskians. Politically, though, they favored the line of King Bragi through his first wife.

  Greyfells favored a succession through Ragnarson’s latest wife, his cousin Inger.

  Dane of Greyfells was not happy. He had come to Kavelin expecting to put the kingdom in his pocket before winter. But winter was here, ferociously, and he was still far from Vorgreberg, hurrying the family decline toward destitution. His troops were melting away, mainly through desertion. Replacements, when he could find any, were untrained, unskilled, and belonged in cells rather than under arms.

  His personal attendant announced, “Gales is here, Lordship.”

  “About damned time. He was due yesterday.”

  “He had trouble getting through. He’s wounded. So are those of his escort who survived.”

  Though in a foul temper Greyfells did not yield to the unreason that, too often, left him unable to concede that events could, on occasion, disdain his wishes. He said only, “Clean him up, then bring him in.” He did not like dirty people. He loathed the sight of old blood.

  “As you will, Your Lordship.”

  The family sorcerer showed up.

  “Babeltausque?”

  “May I join you, Your Lordship?”

  Dane scowled. Fat people were another dislike. Greyfells further disliked Babeltausque because he was expensive to maintain. He was the best paid of any Greyfells retainer, and the least useful, lately.

  The Duke was convinced that Babeltausque was a coward and that he knew things he would not share with his employer.

  Greyfells was incapable of understanding that he was what the sorcerer feared. Babeltausque withheld information he thought might spark the kind of rage that might lead to him getting hurt.

  Greyfells asked, “You have a reason?”

  “To collect information. I have trouble working in the dark.”

  “You don’t work at all.”

  “To work I must be given tasks. Plausible, possible tasks. Not pie in the sky, wishful thinking tasks.” Babeltausque had found his courage today. “Bridge builders are constrained by the limits of their materials. A sorcerer is constrained by the limits of the Power.”

  “Varthlokkur never seemed limited.”

  “Only from outside. He was. He is. He makes what he does look easy because he’s ancient and far more talented than me.”

  Greyfells grumbled but did not send the sorcerer away. Babeltausque found a shadow and settled. He resented the Duke’s attitude but understood it. He was just a house sorcerer, under contract. He lacked a grasp of the Power sufficient to make it as an independent. He could help heal scrapes and bruises. He could retard meat spoilage. He read the tarot imperfectly and the stars the same. His divinations were reliable out to about three hours. He did read character well, usually recognized lies, and could anticipate danger’s approach, particularly when that included him.

  His most valuable talent was the ability to remain calm and bland of expression in the face of fear or provocation. He used that talent frequently. Greyfells was an ambitious beast blessed with cunning and a complete lack of scruples—typical of his line. He was neither the worst nor the best duke that Babeltausque had known. He was mediocre in most ways. He stood out because of his rages.

  Those assured Dane’s early demise, probably as soon as someone believed he had a chance to get away with it.

  Babeltausque’s most important chore was to protect the Duke from his own family, which was not that difficult out here.

  The tradition of elevating oneself over the corpse of one’s father, brother, or uncle had not been much honored of late. Only outsiders had laid the Greyfells Dukes low with any verve the past three decades. But the possibility survived in Dane’s imagination.

  If this Duke met an early end the House of Greyfells might collapse. There were no relatives suited to replace him.

  Enemies in Itaskia must be busy as worker ants trying to make that happen while Greyfells was away. Returning deserters would tell encouraging tales of Dane’s incompetence, which explained why he grew ever more testy. Every day of triumph delayed out here was a day when the family lost ground at home.

  Colonel Gales entered. He wore clean clothing that did not fit. His hair was stringy wet from an unwanted bath. His face was red from a rough shave. His right arm was in a sling. He limped.

  Greyfells, of course, first noted that he needed a haircut.

  The Colonel bowed.

  The Duke said, “I hear you had some trouble.”

  “We got ambushed by Marena Dimura. They knew who we were and had our itinerary.”

  “But you fought through.” Stating the obvious.

  “They didn’t press the matter. They hit us, hurt us, failed to kill me in the first rush, started getting hurt themselves, so they faded away. I didn’t chase them. We were all hurt and they would’ve led us into a secondary ambush.”

  Greyfells grunted. He was not pleased but he understood. That was everyday life in Kavelin.

  Gales said, “Abaca is content to wear us down a man at a time.”

  “Too true. Josiah, I’m starting to think I miscalculated when I decided to do this.”

  “Don’t feel badly, Lordship. This kingdom ends up making everyone over into a pessimist, whether you love it or hate it.”

  The man in shadow studied Duke and soldier. Gales enjoyed remarkable freedoms. He and Greyfells had known each other since childhood. Still, the Duke looked like he wanted to hurt somebody. He controlled the beast within. “Tell me why I’m still out here, Josiah. Why am I not enjoying a cozy fire inside Castle Krief?”

  “I can put no kinder face on it than to tell you that Inger wants it this way. She doesn’t trust you. She’s determined not to let you in till she knows you won’t steal her throne.”

  The watcher thought that would waken the beast for sure.

  The Duke did puff up and turn red but controlled himself again. He managed better with Gales than with anyone else. “I can see that from both the Kavelin disease and family familiarity angles. What she’s been through since we got her to marry Ragnarson has made her leery of everyone.”

  Especially family, the sorcerer reflected.

  “There lies the matter’s heart, Lord. We talk frequently. Lately, she has been concerned less with Wesson resistance or Colonel Abaca than about your intentions. You mention the Kavelin disease. I think she’s caught it. She believes it’s possible to come to terms with her local enemies. She has started hinting that she wants me to find a way to get you to go home.”

  “Really?” Surprised. Greyfells could not imagine a female cousin defying him.

  “Really. She doesn’t know my true loyalties. She thinks I’ll support her in anything because of an obligation between me and her father. She is inclined toward sentimental thinking.”

  “I see.” Sounding less than convinced of Gales’s faith. But he had to be paranoid. People were out to get him.

  Gales sai
d, “Inger has no friends and few sympathizers. She has no one to count on in the narrow passage. She’s alone except for Fulk.”

  Greyfells stopped pacing. He placed himself at parade rest, back to the fire. “It doesn’t matter a whit who controls her son, does it?”

  “No, Lord. Fulk is King. Confirmed by the Thing and the Estates. I’ve been thinking…”

  “I think I know, Josiah. My cousin is in grave danger. This kingdom is renown for its intrigues. Her family should put her under our protection for her own sake.”

  “Exactly, Your Lordship!”

  Babeltausque smelled a king-size load of what, technically, was called bullshit. But which man had tipped the cart?

  Gales stayed the evening and night, mostly heads together with the Duke.

  Babeltausque suspected that success at gaining Vorgreberg and Castle Krief would mean less than Greyfells hoped. His writ would extend no farther than he could see from the capital’s wall. And that might be problematic.

  Other forces were at work.

  †

  CHAPTER TWO

  1016–1017 AFE:

  MOUNTAINS FAR

  Fangdred bestrode one of the highest peaks in the Dragon’s Teeth. Who built the castle was a mystery, as was how the engineering had been achieved. Fangdred had been there for countless centuries.

  Its current population was miniscule and included several mummies. Many of the living would not, strictly appraised, easily pass for sane.

  The sorcerer had worn many names, including Empire Destroyer, but, commonly, was called Varthlokkur. He employed his arts to spy on the wider world while he wrestled the demands of love, honor, and pride. He observed carefully, painfully aware that mortals were subject to manipulation by puppet masters unseen and driven by imperatives that might not make sense even to them.

  He spent hours every day looking for puppeteers, with little success.

  He was able to track factions in Kavelin, where everyone acted on best guesses while guessing wrong. His successes elsewhere were less clear. The lords of the Dread Empire were wary. Getting anywhere near the Empress was problematic. What he did see might be staged for his eyes.

  He did manage one triumph beyond the Pillars of Ivory. He stumbled across a man he had thought long dead, a fugitive who had escaped from Lioantung during its destruction by the Deliverer. That man was headed home, now.

  The wizard did what he dared as the man’s guardian angel.

  Varthlokkur’s mad pride had done irreparable harm during the business of the Deliverer. He had yet to understand what had driven him to such stubborn excess. His excuse had been his fear of losing his wife, but common sense saw that battle won well beforehand.

  On the other hand, that fool Ragnarson had been just as stubborn… “Damn it!” His blood was rising for no sane reason.

  He could not back down. He could not admit that he had been wrong. Yet he had cost Kavelin dearly. Protecting Haroun during his long journey west was slight recompense but it might pay off in time to come.

  Haroun carried his own guilt burden.

  Varthlokkur’s wife let herself into his Wind Tower work chamber, unannounced and uninvited. She found him focused on his monstrous creation, Radeachar the Unborn, that he used to ferret out secrets and to terrify villains.

  Nepanthe was pale of skin and dark of hair, brooding and shy. Sorcery kept her looking young, as it did her husband. Varthlokkur appeared to be in his early thirties but was centuries older. He considered Nepanthe the most perfect woman ever to live. She was his great weakness and absolute blind spot. His love was fierce. That psychosis had so tormented him that he had let it shape today’s shattered world.

  Nepanthe said nothing. She watched Varthlokkur spy here, send Radeachar there, then enter the blazing construct of the Winterstorm. His manipulation of brilliant floating symbols shaped changes far away. Snow might melt early and raise waters enough so an army patrol would not discover the fugitive from Lioantung. An icy gust might assail the camp of some of the Itaskians trying to take over in Kavelin, starting fires. An agent of Queen Inger might be about to stumble onto the loot from Kavelin’s treasury when something stirring in a sudden darkness so terrified him that he would never go near that pond again. An avalanche might block the route of an ill-advised winter raid by Colonel Abaca’s Marena Dimura partisans. A bridge collapse beyond the northern frontier might abort an equally ill-advised winter incursion from Volstokin.

  He watched Hammad al Nakir less determinedly. There the daughter of the Disciple, Yasmid, pursued a sporadic, fratricidal civil war against her son Megelin while her father sank ever deeper into a permanent opium dream. There was a special need to watch the son. Megelin’s key ally was the dark sorcerer Magden Norath, who might be as powerful as the Empire Destroyer himself. No one knew what moved Norath. He created monsters that were almost impossible to destroy, for no more obvious reason than a lust for destruction.

  Norath was weak now, though. He had become the principal target of El Murid’s suicide killer cult, the Harish. He thwarted every attack but only after it got close enough to hurt him. Damage was accumulating.

  Varthlokkur turned to something of no interest. Nepanthe moved on to the shrunken stasis globe where once the Princes Thaumaturge of the Dread Empire had been trapped, then had murdered one another. Why had Varthlokkur kept that in this diminished form? Why had he not ground the princes to dust, then burnt the dust? Would that be impossible? Could be. It had taken the Star Rider’s power to capture them.

  She had been there, but that was all she could remember clearly—other than that it had been a terrible night. She feared that she had done something she dared not remember.

  She shied away. Those days were gone. Horrible times, they had been followed by more horrible times. It had taken many ugly seasons to bring her here, to a remote place and a life with a man she respected deeply but did not love, nursing her insane son by her first husband and raising an eerie daughter by the second.

  Nepanthe drifted round the Winterstorm, as ever wonderstruck. Once Varthlokkur had filled her hair with those glowing symbols… Another memory she did not want to relive.

  She turned to her husband. They had been at odds for months because he had been so determined to shield her from the pain of learning that her son Ethrian had become a monster. He had been that insecure.

  Enough! She teetered at the brink of a slide into a hell that existed only in the bleak realms of What If? and Might Have Been. This was now. Now was here. They two had to act as one. Innumerable divinations were iron about that.

  Varthlokkur left the Winterstorm. He was exhausted. He took a seat. Nepanthe moved in close, to support him with the warmth of her presence.

  In a whisper, he said, “Every day I drive myself to the verge of collapse, trying to hold back the night. But I don’t do any good.”

  “Let it go. Turn away. Focus on us and the children. The fire will burn itself out without you.”

  “Am I resisting the tide of destiny? Are my efforts pointless?”

  “It may take everything you have just to raise Ethrian and Smyrena to be marginally sane adults.”

  Varthlokkur nodded. The children were in his thoughts always. All four, not just Nepanthe’s babes. “I wish. But bad things happened. Some were my fault. I can’t help trying to make that right.”

  Nepanthe did not argue. There was no changing his mind, be his choices good, evil, or just stubbornly unreasonable. And it was true that he had unleashed some of the darkness stalking the world today.

  She asked, “What’s the situation now?”

  “They’ve moved Bragi to Throyes. He’ll never break out, now, and even I couldn’t get him away from this place.”

  “And Haroun?”

  “One day at a time. Still headed home. Still sheltered by the fact that nobody knows he’s alive.”

  “And you’re helping.”

  “Not so he’ll notice. He’s hard. He’s convinced that he can go anywhere an
y time because he’s a master shaghûn now.”

  Today’s Haroun resembled Varthlokkur at a similar age. Prolonged observation left the wizard feeling an eerie déjà vu.

  Haroun had no boundaries. He could kill or be cruel without thought, remorse, or regret. He did terrible things to people who got in his way and lost not a minute of sleep. He would do the same on behalf of his friends. Or to his friends if they became silhouetted against his destination.

  Varthlokkur did not sleep much anymore, not because of demands on his time. There were long stretches when his body felt no need. But there were other times, for a week or two, when he would sleep twelve hours a day. At present he needed only the occasional nap.

  Of late, in his manic stretches, he had begun using Radeachar to probe the mysteries surrounding its creation. The key points were known. In a mad, complex scheme involving the Captal of Savernake, Yo Hsi, the Demon Prince of the Dread Empire, had impregnated the barely old enough Queen Fiana with seed specially prepared in Shinsan. Though the truth had surfaced only recently, Old Meddler had had a hand in it, too. The scheme had collapsed. Fiana bore a daughter instead of the devil the conspirators wanted. So they switched that daughter for their own child, at the time unaware of the girl’s sex.

  Years later, following the death of her husband, the King, Fiana enjoyed a liaison with Bragi Ragnarson. She became pregnant. That had to be concealed for political reasons.

  Fiana died in childbed, birthing the thing the conspirators had planted in her womb years before. Some twist in time had transposed her pregnancies. Varthlokkur suspected the Star Rider.

  The horror within Fiana was too large for her birth canal. Her belly had been opened. The monster passed into Varthlokkur’s control and became his terrible familiar, Radeachar.

  All that was known to a few survivors of all the war and wickedness since, including, possibly, the dark wight creeping westward through the Dread Empire, sometimes in stages of only yards a day.

  Recently, while trying to winkle out anything more about how the Unborn had come to be, Varthlokkur had stumbled across an ugly truth. There had been a day when the King Without a Throne thought it necessary to dispose of a prince named Gaia-Lange, and then a little princess, convinced as he had been that they were instruments of the Dread Empire.