Part 17 (1/2)
He noticed that Sider, when not appearing to pay attention to the speakers, was watching him. Closely.
”Enough,” the King said finally, as the brothers Orullian repeated their argument for mobilization for what must have been the third or fourth time. ”I think you've said all that needs saying and I have heard enough to give thought to what is needed.
”Phryne, clean up and wait on me. Tasha and Tenerife, take the Troll to your home and keep watch on him until I decide what needs doing. Eat, drink, and bathe yourselves. Better take Panterra Qu, as well. Go.”
He gestured them up from their seats and ushered them out the doors into the hallway beyond, where Arik Sarn was sitting and the Home Guard were waiting to escort them out. No one said anything. They barely looked at one another. There was a shared feeling of uncertainty and dismay as they departed the building and emerged outside once more.
Panterra noticed that Sider Ament did not come with them.
OPARION AMARANTYNE WAITED until the others were gone, and then he took the Gray Man out of the reception chamber and down the halls of the palace to the small library that served as his private reception room. It was not entirely unexpected. The looks they had exchanged earlier had told Sider that the King would speak to him alone when the others were finished. They were not friends in the common sense, but had grown up in their valley world at the same time and were of a like age. They had been boys when Sider had become bearer of the last black staff and Oparion had been made King. The deaths of a mentor and a father had brought them together under awkward and difficult circ.u.mstances, which they had managed to surmount. An unconventional friends.h.i.+p had developed, one founded for the most part on mutual respect and a willingness to meet halfway. That friends.h.i.+p had lasted now for more than twenty years.
Even so, the Gray Man could not be certain what stance Oparion would take in this business.
When they reached the King's reception chamber, they took seats by a cold fireplace across from each other, sitting close in a wash of gray light that filtered through cracks in draped windows.
”I will tell you up front that I find this tale more than a little incredible,” the King began. ”But not so incredible that I don't believe it. Perhaps it is rather that I find it overwhelming. Five hundred years of safekeeping and now the protective walls are down. Without warning. Without apparent reason.”
”Not a reason we can discern, although the Seraphic will tell you it signals the return of the Hawk.”
The King made a dismissive gesture. ”It signals the end of an age. It signals the beginning of a fresh struggle.”
Sider nodded. ”That it does. What will you do?”
”In truth? I don't know.” The King leaned back in his chair. ”The boy's promise to the Drouj that he would arrange a meeting is worthless. Even if I could identify who our leaders are, I could never manage such a thing. Most of them barely speak to one another. We'll have to think of something else.”
”Agreed. The boy's promise was made under duress. Given the circ.u.mstances, he gave the best response he could manage.”
The King shook his head. ”Forgive me for asking, but is the threat from this Troll army as great as the boy thinks? Can we believe him?”
The Gray Man shrugged. ”The threat is real enough. I saw the army, measured its size. It's as Panterra Qu described. Still, it's hard to be sure what to believe. The boy is young, and he doesn't have the wisdom and experience to see things as clearly as I'd like. He sees too much with his heart. Losing the girl as he did makes his observations less than reliable. But he is no fool, either. On the face of things, what he's told us makes sense.”
”But you are not certain?”
”I'm not.”
”About the Troll?”
”Not only the Troll, but the whole of what's happened. The boy showed courage and quick thinking in making the Trolls think us much stronger and more united than we actually are. But he is still only a boy. He may be seeing things that aren't really there, reaching conclusions that he shouldn't. I don't know. I'll need to spend time with him to determine that. I'll have to leave the valley again, as well. But first I'll go south. I'll take the boy with me.”
”To the villages of Men?”
Sider nodded. ”I have an obligation to warn them. Whether they listen or not is another matter. But the pa.s.ses must be fortified and defended, no matter the outcome of this business with the Trolls. Others will follow, sooner or later. It is inevitable. I'll try to arrange for a defense of Declan Reach if you agree to send your Elves to Aphalion Pa.s.s. You had better fortify against an attack on your city, as well. Even if you can only manage to erect barriers on the ramp leading in, that will help. Send to the Lizards and Spiders, as well. Ask them to come join you. I don't think they would do so for Men, but they might for Elves.”
The King smirked. ”An irony that does not escape me.” He sighed. ”I will have to tell the High Council of this. Some will doubt the need for what you are asking.”
”I won't be the one asking. You will. They won't challenge you.”
”Of course they will. They challenge me on everything. I let them because tolerance is necessary when you are King. I might have thought otherwise when I was young, but no more. Sometimes it's like letting the fox into the henhouse.” He gave the Gray Man a look. ”Your task seems the harder of the two. How will you make anyone believe you? Few believe you now. Some don't even believe you exist.”
Sider Ament smiled. ”That's a problem. But we'll need help from everyone if we are to survive. Prejudice and animosity will have to give way to expediency and common sense. A banding together of all the Races will be necessary. The Trolls are merely our first test in what I can only think of as a collision between two very different worlds. We have to prepare ourselves before it's too late. Maybe I can make the councils of Men see as much.”
”Maybe. Maybe not.” The King c.o.c.ked a questioning eyebrow. ”What about our visitor. What do you suggest I do with him?”
”What you have already done. Give him over to the care of the Orullians. Let them spend time together. Perhaps the brothers will learn something useful. But watch him, too. Just to be certain we haven't made a mistake by bringing him here. I won't be gone more than two weeks, time enough to return for the meeting with Taureq Siq.”
”That's being optimistic. You won't begin to reach all the southern villages before you have to come back.”
Sider shrugged. ”Can't be helped. I'll try to arrange for others to act as messengers in my place. It's the best I can do.”
The King rose. ”Rest here tonight, then, and leave in the morning. You won't be much good to anyone if you're exhausted, and you look it now.” He sighed. ”I have to have a talk with my impetuous daughter about the difference between the keeping and breaking of promises.”
The Gray Man nodded, rising with him. ”Allow me one more question. We face great dangers in reemerging from our safehold, High Lord. Some of these may hark back to the time of the Great Wars. Some may possess magic. Once, the Elves had use of magic, too. Is there none at hand now that you can call upon? Do you know nothing of the whereabouts of the blue Elfstones?”
There was a tense moment of silence as the King faced him, his features tightening. ”Nothing,” he said quietly. ”The Elfstones were left in the hands of the Belloruus family, even after the Amarantynes became rulers of the Elves. As far as I know, that never changed. No one has heard anything of the Elfstones for years. Not since the Belloruusian line failed and the Amarantynes became rulers.”
”But you married into the family, didn't you? Was your wife told anything about what happened to the Elfstones?”
”Not that she ever made known to me. By the time of our marriage, the Elfstones had long since gone missing. There was no reason to speak of them, no reason that anyone should bother.”
Sider s.h.i.+fted his rangy frame as if to get a better view of things. ”Is it possible the Stones could be found now, that whoever has them might consider producing them, when the need for their magic is so great?”
Oparion Amarantyne held his gaze a moment longer before turning away. ”Anything is possible. It would be up to whoever took them to give them back.” He gestured abruptly. ”You had better rest now. You have much to do in the days ahead. I wish you luck.”
The Gray Man knew better than to say anything more, even though he would have liked to. The matter of the missing Elfstones was troubling, but not as much so as the King's strange disinterest in their whereabouts. As if he couldn't care less; as if he couldn't be bothered. Such magic should not be dismissed so casually. Sider promised himself he would discover why Oparion Amarantyne seemed so willing to do so.
Later, when there was time.
Shouldering his black staff, he set the matter aside and followed the King from the room.
TWENTY.
IT IS THREE YEARS SINCE THE OLD MAN WITH THE black staff appeared to him, a harbinger of a future that would change his life. The boy is mostly a man by now, though not yet twenty, grown tall and broad-shouldered, strong in body and self-confident. He has left his family and the farm to go with the old man, to study what the other would teach him, to be mentored in the usage of the magic of the black staff and in the ways of the larger world. He has left the girl he once thought he would never leave, but even now she s.h.i.+nes in his memory with the clarity and brightness of crystalline dew in sunlight.
He thinks that this will never change. He will discover to his sadness and regret that he is right.
Sometimes he wants to go to her, to see her once more if only momentarily, to measure how she is and what her life is like. He does not do this, of course. Only once does he suggest this to the old man, in a moment of weakness that betrays him. The old man neither denies nor permits; he simply asks him to reconsider. Reason takes hold, and an awareness of consequence stills his eagerness. What would a visit accomplish other than to reaffirm what he already knows he has lost? Quickly enough, he abandons the idea.
He thinks often, however, of their last meeting and the way they left things as he said good-bye to her.
”I wish it could be different,” he tells her, a trite and inadequate attempt at demonstrating regret he cannot begin to express.
”It could be different, Sider,” she responds. ”You need only make it so. No one has a claim on your life. No one but yourself. This is your decision, and it has not been forced on you. But once you make it, do so without regret or apology. Do so with commitment and determination.”
”I love you,” he manages, the words like sand in his mouth.
She smiles sadly, leans in and kisses him. She touches his cheek. She says nothing. Then she turns and walks away and does not look back.