"No, you have a right to ask, and it is a thing which must be done. Let us speak no more of it."

No one else could have spoken thus to the King of Hebrion, but Golophin had been one of Abeleyn's tutors when he had been a runny-nosed little miscreant, and the young prince had felt the back of the wizard's hand many times. Abeleyn's father, Bleyn the Pious, had believed in a stern upbringing laden with religious instruction, but Abeleyn had always hated the Inceptine tutors, dry men whose imagination was a thing of dust, a storehouse of past aphorisms and never-to-be-questioned rules. It was Golophin who had saved him, who had defused the incipient rebellion in the youngster and coaxed him into an appearance at least of dutiful submission. The wizard's closeness to the King's son had been one of the things which had protected him from the malice of the Inceptines when they had tried to rid the court of all vestiges of unorthodoxy and sorcery. The irony was that with the wizard's pupil at last on the throne, they had finally succeeded. Aekir's fall, Golophin thought with real bitterness, had been a G.o.dsend to them.

"Speaking of the east," Abeleyn said conversationally, "how are the Torunnans holding out?"

Golophin tapped his long pipe out delicately on the table. He preferred leaf imported from Ridawan flavoured with cinnamon. The smoking pile of ashes smelled like an essence of the east itself. Abeleyn wondered if there were a tinct of kobhang in the leaf, the mild euphoric that easterners chewed orsmoked to fight tiredness and clear their thinking. Golophin made patterns in the ashes with one long, white finger.

"I have been working the bird hard lately. He is tired, and when he is tired he begins to slip away from me, and I receive pictures of the stoop, the kill, blood and feathers drifting in the air. It is said that a tired or a despairing mage will sometimes let his self slip wholly into his familiar and become one with it, leaving his body an empty husk behind him. He glories thereafter in the animal emotions of the creature, and eventually forgets what he once was."

Golophin smiled thinly.

"My familiar sleeps on a withered tree not far from Ormann d.y.k.e. Today he has seen a hundred thousand people go by, dragging their feet through the mud towards the last Torunnan fortress before the mountains. They have left thousands on the road behind them, and on their flanks the Merduk light cavalry prowl like ghouls. Ormann d.y.k.e itself is in chaos. Half its defenders are taken up with dealing with the refugees, and the land to the west of the d.y.k.e resembles an enormous shanty town. The poor folk of Aekir can walk no more. Perhaps they will squat in the rain and await the outcome of another battle before they will have the strength to trek further west. But after Ormann d.y.k.e, where can they go?"

"You believe the d.y.k.e will fall," Abeleyn said.

"I believe the d.y.k.e will fall, but more importantly so do its defenders. They feel forsaken by G.o.d, and King Lofantyr of Torunna they believe has abandoned them. He has drawn off men of the garrison to defend the capital."

Abeleyn thumped a fist down on the table, making the beer jump in the flagons. "The d.a.m.ned fool! He should be concentrating all he has at the d.y.k.e."

"He is afraid he will lose all he has," Golophin said calmly. "There are less than eighteen thousand men left in the garrison, and the Knights Militant have been riding away to the west in large bodies for days. If Shahr Baraz finds more than twelve thousand manning the defences when he arrives I will be surprised.

And even leaving troops to garrison Aekir and their supply lines, the Merduk can still put a hundred thousand men before the d.y.k.e, probably more."

"How long do we have before the a.s.sault?" Abeleyn asked.

"More time than you might imagine. Sibastion Lejer's fighting rearguard badly mangled the Hraibadar, the shock-troops of Shahr Baraz's forces. He will wait for them to come up before launching a serious a.s.sault, and with the Western Road in a shambles and the weather showing no sign of changing, his transport will have difficulties moving with the troops. The River Searil is swollen. Once the Torunnans cut the bridges, the Merduks will have to force a river crossing under fire; but the Torunnans will not cut the bridges whilst there are refugees on the eastern bank. If I were the Khedive, I'd wait until the roads improved before I advanced. The refugees are still pouring west, so for the moment time is on his side.

That is not to say that his cavalry will not attack the d.y.k.e first, before the main body comes up, but the d.y.k.e will hold them for a little while. Its defenders are Torunnans, after all."

Abeleyn nodded absently. "I begin to see that Ormann d.y.k.e is not solely a Torunnan affair. Lofantyr needs troops, needs them desperately. But what do I have to give him, and how could they get there in time? An army would take five or six months to march to the d.y.k.e."

"By sea it might take five weeks, with fair winds or the aid of a weather-worker," Golophin said."By sea?" Abeleyn shook his head. "The navy has its hands full patrolling the Malacar Straits against the corsairs; and then there is Calmar to consider. A western armament sailing into the Levangore would have to contend with the Calmaric Sea-Merduks. They have been quiet since Azbakir, but they would not tolerate an incursion of that size. It would be Azbakir all over again, save we'd be fighting it with transports instead of war-carracks. No, Golophin, unless you can magically spirit a few thousand men halfway across the world there is nothing we can do about the d.y.k.e. Lofantyr will love hearing that when I meet him at the conclave. Already he thinks the other monarchies have abandoned Torunna."

"Perhaps he is right," the mage said sharply. "There were seven great Kingdoms after the Fimbrian Hegemony ended; now the Merduks have reduced it to five. Will you sit in Abrusio until their elephants come tramping over the Hebros?"

"What would you have me do, teacher?"

Golophin paused, looking suddenly weary. "Teachers do not always know the answers."

"Nor do kings." Abeleyn set his brown fingers atop the old mage's lean wrist and smiled.

Golophin laughed. "What a jest it is to sit and try to put the world to rights. The earth was a flawed place ere man arrived to skew it further; we shall never set it straight upon its foundations. Only G.o.d can do that, or the 'Lord of Victories'," as the Merduks call Him."

"We will do our best, nonetheless," Abeleyn said.

"Now, my King, you are beginning to sound like your father."

"G.o.d forbid that I should ever sound like that sanctimonious, cold-eyed old warhorse."

"Do not be so hard on his memory. He loved you in his own way, and everything he did was for the good of his people. I do not believe he ever committed one act which could be attributed to personal motives."

"That much is certainly true," Abeleyn said tartly.

"Were he Torunna's king, sire, I'll guarantee you that Aekir would be standing and the Merduks would be breaking their heads against its walls as they have done for the past sixty years. And the Knights Militant would be there in number also, instead of carrying out purges up and down the continent. It is hard to argue with a man of perfect convictions."

"That I know."

"John Mogen was such a man, but he was too abrasive. He inspired either love or hate, and alienated those who should have been his allies in Aekir's defence. A king must appear to be as solid as a stone in his beliefs, lad, but he must bend like a willow when the gale blows."

"And bend invisibly," Abeleyn pointed out.

"Even so. There is a vast difference between blinkered intolerance and the ability to compromise without being seen to compromise."

"Ironic, Golophin, isn't it, that the best soldiers in the world, the Torunnans, are ruled by a king who has never seen battle, a young man who knows nothing of war?"

"The old monarchs are gone or going, sire. There is you, Lofantyr, King Mark of Astarac and Skarpathinof Finnmark-young men only a few years on the throne. The older kings who remember the earlier struggles with the Merduk are on their way out. The fate of Normannia rests on the shoulders of a new generation. I pray they will prove equal to the burden."

"Thank you for your confidence, Golophin," the King said dryly.

"You have it, sire, insofar as any man can have it. But I worry. The Ramusians have stood off the Merduk threat so long because they were united, strong, and of one faith. Now the holy men of the west seem intent on splitting each kingdom apart in the search for-what? Piety or earthly authority? I cannot yet say, but it worries me. Perhaps it is time there was a change. Perhaps Macrobius' downfall and the loss of Aekir is a new beginning-or the beginning of the end. I am no seer; I do not know."

Abeleyn stared into the cloudy heart of his beer. The tavern around them was quiet. There were a few murmuring knots of men in the corners, and the landlord stood at the bar smoking a short, foul-smelling pipe and whittling a piece of wood. Only Abeleyn's bodyguards, across the dim room, were looking about them, ever alert for the safety of their king.

"I need something, Golophin," Abeleyn said in a low voice. "Some morsel to take with me to the Conclave of Kings, some means of raising hope."

"And of staving off requests for troops," Golophin told him.

"That too. But I cannot think of anything."

"You just spoke of the Torunnans, sire, and how they were the best soldiers in the world. That was not always true."

"I don't follow you."

"Think, lad. Who once held all of Normannia in their fist? Whose tercios marched from the sh.o.r.es of the Western Ocean to the black heights of the Jafrar in the east? The Fimbrians, whose hegemony lasted two hundred years before they tore themselves apart in their endless civil wars. The Fimbrians, whose hands built Aekir and laid the foundations of Ormann d.y.k.e, who broke the power of the Cimbric tribes and founded the Kingdom of Torunna itself."

"What about them?"

"They are still there, aren't they? They have not disappeared."

"They have shut themselves off in their electorates for this past century and more, endlessly quarrelling amongst themselves. They are no longer interested in empire, or in any events east of the Malvennor Mountains."

"They have fine armies, though. There is something you can take to your meeting of kings, Abeleyn. The west needs troops? There are untold tens of thousands of them in Fimbria contributing nothing to the defence of the continent."

"The Five Kingdoms distrust Fimbria; men have long memories. I am not sure even Torunna would welcome Fimbrian troops on its soil, despite the urgency of its needs-and even if we could persuade the Fimbrians to send them. They are an isolationist power, Golophin. They are not even sending a representative to the conclave."

Golophin leaned back from the table and flapped a hand in exasperation. "So be it then. Let the men of the west keep their fears and prejudices. They will no doubt still possess them when the hordes ofAhrimuz have cast the shadow of their scimitars over all the Ramusian kingdoms."

Abeleyn scowled, feeling as though he were the pupil again and Golophin the teacher who had just received the wrong answer.

"All right then, blast you! I'll see what can be done. It can do no harm, after all. I'll send envoys to the four Fimbrian Electorates, and I'll bring the whole thing up at the conclave. Much good it will do me."

"That's my boy," Golophin said, knowing how much that phrase irritated the King. "But there is one thing you might remember when dealing with the Fimbrians, sire."

"Yes?"

"Do not be proud. They h.o.a.rd memories of empire, even if they say they no longer hanker after it. You must make yourself into a supplicant, no matter if it galls your pride."

"I must be a willow, eh, bending in the wind?"

Golophin grinned. "Exactly-but not, of course, seen to be bending. You are a king, after all."

They clinked flagons like men sealing a bargain or toasting a birth. The King drank deeply, and then pinched foam from his upper lip.

"There is one last thing tonight, something near to your heart, perhaps."

Golophin c.o.c.ked an eyebrow.

"The list. The list we drew up of those of your own kind who might be saved from the pyre." The King did not meet the old wizard's eyes as he spoke. He seemed oddly abashed. "Murad tells me he will be ready to sail within two sennights. He takes a demi-tercio with him, fifty Hebrian arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler men. Counting the crews, that leaves s.p.a.ce for some hundred and forty pa.s.sengers."

"Less than we had hoped," Golophin said tersely.

"I know, but he is convinced he will need the soldiers once landfall is made."

"To deal with the wild natives he may meet, or with the pa.s.sengers he must travel with?"

Abeleyn shrugged helplessly. "I have hamstrung his scheme enough as it is, Golophin. If I prune away at it any further he may throw it all up, and then we are back where we started. A man like Murad needs some kind of incentive."

"The viceroyship of a new colony."

"Yes. He has few superst.i.tious prejudices against the Dweomer-folk. He should treat them fairly. They could be said to be the backbone of his ambitions."

"And your ambitions, sire. How do the Dweomer-folk fit into those?"

The King coloured. "Let us say that Murad's expedition eases my conscience and-"

"So many fewer innocents consigned to the flames."

"I do not relish being interrupted, Golophin, not even by you."

The old mage bowed in his seat."As you have said, it is a means of putting these folk beyond the reach of the Church, but you know also that there are other motives involved."

"As always."

"If there is a Western Continent, it must be claimed by Hebrion-must be. We are the westernmost seafaring power in the world. It is our right to expand in that direction whilst Gabrion and Astarac look to the Levangore for trade and influence. Think of it, Golophin. A new world, an empty world free of monopolies or corsairs. A virgin continent waiting for us."

"And if the continent is not virgin?"

"What do you mean?"

"What if this fabled western land is inhabited?"

"I cannot imagine that it is, or at least that they have a civilization comparable to ours. And I am certain that they will not possess gunpowder. That is something we ourselves have had for only a century and a half."

"So Murad will slaughter his way to a Hebrian hegemony on the sh.o.r.es of this primitive land, and the sorcerers who are his cargo will be the living artillery which backs him up?"

"Yes. It was the only way, Golophin. The colonists must be hardy, talented, able to defend themselves.

What better way to ensure that they survive than to make every one a sorcerer, a herbalist, a weather-worker, or even a true thaumaturgist?"

Or a shifter, Golophin thought to himself, remembering Bardolin's new ward. But he said nothing of that.

"A king's motives are never simple," he intoned at last. "I should have remembered that."

"I do my best with what G.o.d sees fit to give me."

"G.o.d, and Murad of Galiapeno. I would you had found another man to lead this expedition. He has a face I do not like. There is murder written in it and as for the ambition of which you spoke I do not think even he has yet plumbed the depths of it."

"It was his discovery, his idea. I could not take it away from him without making an enemy."

"Then tie him to you. Make sure he knows how long the arm of the Hebrian crown can be."

"You are beginning to sound like an old woman, Golophin."

"Maybe I am, but there is wisdom in the words of old women too, you know."

Abeleyn grinned, looking boyish in the dim tavern light.

"Come, will you not return to the court and a.s.sume your rightful place?"

"What, crouching behind your throne and whispering in your ear?"

It was the popular Inceptine image of the King's wizardly advisor.

"No, sire," Golophin went on. "It is too early yet. Let us see how the Synod goes, and this conclave of yours. I have a feeling, like the ache in an old wound before a storm. I think the worst is yet to come; andnot all of it is drawing in from the east."

"You were ever free with prophecies of doom, despite the fact that you are no seer," Abeleyn said. His good humour had thinned. The boy had disappeared. It was a man who stood up and held out a strong hand to the old mage. "I must go. Tongues wag in the court. They think I have a woman down near the waterfront."

"An old woman?" Golophin asked, with one eye closed.

"A friend, Golophin. Even kings need those."

"Kings most of all, my lord."

T HE night was as close as ever. Abeleyn and his bodyguards strolled up the street as nonchalantly as if they were three night-watchmen. The closed carriage was in a courtyard at the top, the horses standing stock-still, patient as graven images. The bodyguards clambered up behind whilst Abeleyn let himself inside.

There was a scratch of steel, a shower of sparks, then a glow. As the candle lantern took the flame, the interior of the curtained coach flickered with glowing gold. The carriage lurched into motion, the hooves of the horses clicking on the cobbles.

"Well met, my lord," the lady Jemilla said, her white face olive-coloured in the swaying candlelight.