Conversation ended completely, but the troll problem remained.
Warlock Lith’rian had flagrantly violated the Protocol by loosing his dragons to block the army on Nefer Moor; someone was using subtle sorcery to block it in the Mosweeps. Emshandar had refused to let Shandie return by sea, so perhaps he put credence in the persistent rumors of a Nordland fleet shipwrecked on the coast of Zark. Jotnar were the prerogative of the warden of the north. Of course shipwreck was uncertain evidence of sorcery, but it was all beginning to add up.
Shandie would dearly like to know what game the Four were playing at the moment. His grandfather was the only mundane who might have information on that, and sometimes he did not hear from the wardens for years at a time, or so he claimed. To inherit the throne at a time when the Council of Four was squabbling . . .
Ylo had been eating at an incredible rate. He stopped suddenly, with his bowl still half full. “I’m stuffed!”
Glancing at the others, Shandie saw an amusement he could never quite share. He was a prude, he supposed. “I don’t expect any of us will be done here for at least fifteen minutes.”
“You will excuse me, then?” Ylo was on his feet and away into the crowd at once.
“He can’t possibly!” Umpily said, rolling his eyes.
“Of course he can!” Acopulo snapped. “He set it up. He told the innkeeper that the legate would settle for one room if a woman was provided. The innkeeper would assume that the legate himself . . . There they go now, up the stairs!” He sounded as outraged as the sort of fussy old priest he so much resembled.
“I meant fifteen minutes not possibly!” the fat man muttered. He sighed wistfully. “Can he?”
“Easily. Ylo is my organizer,” Shandie said firmly. “If he couldn’t organize that, I should think less of him, as it obviously matters so much to him.” However much he personally disapproved of the signifer’s promiscuity, he would not tolerate bickering within the group.
“Lechery will be his downfall!” the political advisor said snappily.
“Not unless I want it to be!”
Acopulo muttered a sulky apology and went on with his meal. He had the arrogance of a philosopher. Being convinced he could think better than everybody else, he wanted to do everybody else’s thinking for them. Given the chance, he would guide Shandie to remake the world according to Acopulo’s designs.
Shandie knew that. He never lacked for willing helpers, but he liked to know their motives.
To Umpily, power was knowledge and knowledge power. He lacked the will to use it. Power used was power spentannounce an appointment, for example, and you made one friend and a dozen enemies. Unlike Acopulo, Umpily had no reformist agenda. Curiosity satisfied was enough. The fat man was a true imp, now busily finishing Ylo’s meal.
Hardgraa was motivated by old-fashioned loyalty and honor and patriotism, very unimpish.
And Ylo? Ylo was motivated by Ylo and only Ylo. Shandie had seen that on the first day, when the lad reeled into his tent, exhausted and out of his mind with battle shock. Offered a chance to escape the living death of the ranks, anyone would have grabbed it without question. But even then Ylo had begun dreaming of his own advancement.
Shandie had thought to use him more or less as a signal that he disapproved of injustice. Out of interest, he had scratched and seen the glint of valuable metal. So he had scratched harder and uncovered a huge capacity for work and a superb attention to detail. If Ylo had been proving his worth to clear his family name, then he had succeeded beyond question. He would continue to serve Shandie loyally as long as Shandie would advance him—which was a traditional impish arrangement that worked both ways. It just seemed unfortunate that so likable and talented a man should be so narrow. Ylo cared only for Ylo, as the buxom Ootha was no doubt now discovering.
And Shandie? What motivated him? His love for Eshiala, of course, but what else? Pride in his inheritance, yes. A dedication to honest, fair government and justice. A sense of duty. A hatred of war . . . what a dull list! But then he was a dull man, he supposed.
Thunder seemed to shake the building. The roar of voices faded briefly, frightened horses shrilled in the stable. Gradually the racket picked up again.
“Moonrise?” Acopulo muttered hopefully. “We shan’t see our horses’ manes before dawn.”
“It’s only a storm,” Shandie said. “It’ll pass.”
“Prince Emshandar!” a new voice said and he reached for his sword.
It was a woman—Shandie relaxed slightly. She faced him, standing directly behind Umpily. She was enveloped in a dark garment, one hem draped over her head as a hood, and in that gloom nothing showed of her face but a glint of eyes. One bare arm protruded, its hand holding the cloak closed at her neck. Her other hand was inside, clasping the cloth tight below the elbow. The visible arm was old and bony, the skin loose and wrinkled from wrist to elbow. Her fingers were long and knotted with age, yet she stood erect and proud within her shroud of homespun. It seemed to be dry, which was uncanny on such a night. He could tell nothing of what lay within—she might have been clothed in rich silks or utterly naked.
Conversation buzzed on all around him. Acopulo and Umpily continued eating unaware, and that had to be sorcery.
“You have the advantage of me, ma’am.”
“My name would mean nothing to you. Have you heard of Wold Hall?” Her voice was creaky with age and heavily accented, but he could not place it.
Unheeding, Acopulo finished his sparrow-pecking and pushed his bowl over to Umpily, who began shoveling its contents into his mouth as enthusiastically as a pig at a trough. Shandie’s skin crawled with a sense of the occult. Who? The witch of the west was a troll. This woman was no troll.
“You are rash to exert your powers around me, ma’am.”
“I do not fear the wardens.” Her tone implied that she feared something else. “I asked if you knew of Wold Hall?”
“The name is familiar.”
“There is a preflecting pool there. It is old and will not work by day, but it should give good counsel in moonlight.”
He thought her eyes were elvish—large and slanted—but they did not flicker with the opal fires. The skin of her arm and hand was the same leather-brown shade as his own, not the gold of an elf’s. He could not identify her race and that was bothersome.
Halfbreeds always favored one parent over the other, yet she was nothing he could identify.
Already she was turning away, as if her task was done. “Wait!” he said. “Tell me more.”
“Place one foot in the pool,” that curiously alien croak said. ”Right foot to see what you should seek; left to see what you must shun.”
“I believe my duty is to avoid sorcery, ma’am,” he said suspiciously. Could this be some devious scheme to disqualify him from the succession?
“A foreseeing would not contravene that obligation. There are precedents.”
“May I ask your purpose in telling me this?”
She looked back at him with those strangely angled eyes glinting out of the dark. “Ask not the price of gifts, Prince Emshandar. Times are troubled. I . . . Just say I am applying a random factor in the hope of diverting certain events that seem to be well-nigh inevitable. I may not do more.” She seemed to shiver. “Is this the millennium business again?”
She sighed. “Truly. Now I must go. These are sad times, your Highness, and like to become sadder.”
“Tell me more!”
She shook her head within the cowl. “I may have already transgressed the Gods’ interdict.”
Again she seemed about to leave. He leaped up and reached overhead to twist the lantern, flashing a faint beam into her hood. He caught a glimpse of a face as ancient as war, deeply lined with age and pain. He sensed suffering. Her pupils were a pale shade and large. Her nose was wide, like a faun’s. Elvish, yet not elvish. Sadness and pity.
She turned quickly away into the crowd and was gone, although he was not sure how, or where. He sat down, perplexed. “Ugh!” Umpily said, picking something out of his bowl. “What beast did this come from?”
In the wavering gloom, Acopulo peered at the object with scholarly interest. ”It appears to be the jawbone of a hippogryph.”
“Hippogryphs don’t have jawbones!”
“It was delicious anyway,” Ylo said, resuming his seat. His wolfskin was draped over one shoulder. His hair was tousled; he was pink and breathless. “Oh! I didn’t think I had eaten quite so much.” He glanced reproachfully at Umpily.