But as the sun rose higher and the day grew hotter, things began to mutate again. Maelor blinked and one of the female penitents became a rope dancer in gaudy satins and velvets; across the way, a one-legged blackbird perched on the fortune-tellers’ tentpole transformed into the phoenix of legend, brilliantly feathered and wreathed in gorgeous flames.
The old man wrinkled his narrow brow. If this went on much longer, anything might happen: dung change to gold or cobbles to carbuncles; a wretched old mountebank be translated into a genuine magician. And with that thought, just for a moment, the old fire tingled in his veins. Runes and charms rioted in his brain; patterns, symbols, strictures, spells to chain the elements and calm the raging winds, all these were his. A name—possibly his own, lost these two decades—struggled to take shape in his mind.
Then the bells in the New Temple began their midday clamor, and the bright, entrancing images rapidly faded. The knowledge went out of him like a smothered flame. He was only Maelor the mad astrologer again: a dirty, hapless, bewildered old man, sitting in the dust of the market, hoping to earn a handful of coppers by juggling balls or performing a trick or two.
Yet a faint memory of power still surged in his blood, and all that long day he carried off his illusions with remarkable panache. He conjured butterflies and flowers out of the air. The balls that he tossed glittered like silver moons and golden suns. He even stole fire from a fire-eater and swallowed it down, scarcely singeing his beard in the process.
Finally, drunk on those dregs of power, he made a pageant for the people in the square, a story acted out by phantoms he crafted out of light and shade, color and air.
It was an epic tale of knights and maidens, kings, queens, and princes, in the great city of Apharos long ago. They had been noble and courageous, those lords and ladies of another age, and after Ceir Eldig in Alluinn foremost in learning in all the Empire lands. They loved bright colors, rich fabrics, strong wines, and all things beautiful and finely crafted. They were impulsive, magnanimous, high-handed; they could be dangerous when provoked. But if their virtue was no greater than their pride, at least it was no less, and none of their faults were mean or petty ones.
Then Maelor went on to tell of the lesser folk who lived in that long-ago city—common by birth but extraordinary in their attainments. They had been wizards, scholars, and alchemists, merchants, craftsmen, soldiers, and poets. They fought wars; they built great ships and sailed in them to all the lands of the known world; when they sinned they sinned largely, then regretted and made their amends afterward with much the same fervor. And if their aspirations had been larger than their hearts, at least their hearts had been large enough to aspire so nobly. When he had finished, there was not a man or a woman in the marketplace he had not moved to tears, not one in whom he had failed to awaken a hunger for past glories.
And it was his most successful day ever. When he left the market in the late afternoon, his pockets jingled with so many small coins that he should have been a target for every footpad and pickpocket in the Under-City, had they only known.
But unknown to Maelor himself, reports of his afternoon conjuring would begin to reach the temple in another day or two, and his name inevitably come to the attention of the Empress.
7
All things were well ordered and well founded at the Heldenhof. Wooden floors had been polished to a sheen like water, walls were bright with murals and woven hangings; there was a wholesome smell of beeswax, of stillrooms, and of rose leaves set out in open jars to keep the air sweet.
Yet Sindérian could not help noticing, as a pair of aged manservants led her and her companions through dim, cool rooms and up two and a half flights of stairs, that the palace was strangely quiet. She thought she could hear muffled voices and footsteps coming from other chambers—and once the click, clack, thump of a loom, faint with distance—but they met no one along the way except for an ancient harper. It was emptier here, perhaps, than it had been in happier times.
As they climbed, the broad wooden staircase grew narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper. At last the servants brought them into a sunny room at the top of the house and left them there alone. Sindérian felt a sharp twinge of disappointment. Had she really expected the King would be there? Clearly, they were meant to wait in this room until he granted them an audience.
She studied her surroundings. Wide casement windows, thrown open to catch the breezes, flooded the room with northern sunlight and brought with it the sounds of stable-yards and mews, the fresh scent of gardens. There were two small tables cluttered with maps and sheets of parchment, a rug of woven grasses, and some elaborately carved oak chairs and benches; these were the only furnishings.
Walking over to one of the windows, she gazed down on a rambling landscape of shingled roofs. Far below, pigeons were feeding in a stone-flagged courtyard. Directly opposite her window, a lightning rod with green glass globes swung back and forth in the light breeze; otherwise there was nothing else on the same level. That last half-flight of stairs had brought them up to the highest room in the palace. It came to her then that this might be a place where King Ristil conducted the private business of governing his kingdom, far from prying ears.
Yet, there was no telling how long it would be before the King arrived. Maddeningly, Prince Ruan declined to take a seat (which kept Aell standing, too), but Faolein perched on a rack of antlers over the door, and Sindérian defiantly chose one of the chairs and sat down to wait.
Hours later she was still waiting. She divided her attention between watching the Prince pace the floor with an increasingly violent and restless motion, and keeping her eye on a stream of sand trickling through an hourglass up on the mantelpiece. Already, she had risen from her seat twice to turn the glass over and start the sand moving again.
“After all,” she said, throwing herself back down in the chair a third time, and making a mighty but ineffective effort to mask her own impatience, “if it were not for an amazing stroke of luck we might still be waiting outside the palace. Here, we know that King Ristil will see us eventually.”
Ruan’s only reply was a motion of the shoulders; whether he intended to convey something by this action or was merely fidgeting she was unable to decide.
An hour ago, one of the guards from the bridge had turned up briefly and whisked Aell away to some barracks or mess hall in order to feed him. Sindérian fervently wished that it had been otherwise, not because she grudged the man-at-arms his meal, but because she thought, on the whole, he would have made a more peaceful companion than the Prince.
“At least,” she ventured once more, “any shred of doubt we had that Winloki and Guenloie are one and the same has van—” She broke off abruptly when brisk steps sounded outside, and a lean, big-boned, fair-haired man entered the room, closing the door behind him.
He wore a plain golden circlet and a heavy golden chain; his garments were of good cloth, neither rich nor splendid; but there was a certain authority in his bearing and manner that left no room for doubt: finally, they were in the presence of the King.
Sindérian sprang from her chair and sank down into a curtsy. Prince Ruan’s bow was not very deep, just saved from insolence by its grace and elegance. It had been a long time, maybe, since he had gone down on one knee for anyone less exalted than his own grandfather. Faolein only ruffled up his feathers, staring at King Ristil with his round, yellow eyes.