Iya surprised him with a soft touch on his cheek. “You mustn’t ever think that, child.”
4
It amused Niryn greatly to watch Orun fume and fret over Prince Tobin’s absence. He’d suspected from the start that the Lord Chancellor had engineered the guardianship for himself, hoping to cement his connection to the royal family through Tobin. If the child had been a girl, no doubt he’d even have gone so far as to ask for a betrothal. He was powerful, it was true, and his oily loyalty to the king’s mother had gained him both wealth and status; Erius might have considered such a match.
Instead, here was this skinny, skittish little boy, heir to the richest estates in the land, and Orun held the purse strings. Niryn’s own hold on the king was secure enough, but it irked him to see such a plum fall into the lap of the most odious man in Ero. So he bided his time and kept spies in the house to see if Orun would trip himself up. Orun’s penchant for young boys was no secret, though he’d wisely limited himself to servants and whores who could be counted on not to tattle. But if he should forget himself with Tobin? Well, that would certainly be a bit of luck. The wizard had even considered helping the matter along.
It was all moot anyway, though. Anytime the king chose—and here Niryn did have some influence—Erius could with impunity seize Tobin’s estates, his lands, and treasuries. Tobin was young and virtually friendless among the nobles; with his parents dead, such a child was not worth anyone’s loyalty.
If Ariani’s daughter had lived, rather than this sprat, it would have been a different matter. As the plagues and droughts worsened and the peasants turned to Illior, it had not been terribly difficult to make the king see that any female of the blood posed a threat to his line. If the Illiorans had their way, any one of these pretenders could claim to be a “daughter of Thelátimos” and raise an army against him. The solution was the usual time-honored one.
Niryn had made a near-fatal error, however, when he pointed out obliquely that the king’s sister, Ariani, posed the greatest threat of all. Erius had very nearly ordered Niryn’s execution; that had been the first time Niryn used magic against the king.
The incident passed and Niryn was glad when it became apparent that the king’s forbearance did not extend to his sister’s children. They’d both taken it as an auspicious sign when Ariani’s daughter was stillborn. Later, the princess’ descent into madness had done Niryn’s work for him. Not even the most fanatical Illiorans would want another mad queen on the throne. No one would back Ariani, or her demon-cursed son.
Yet that still left others. A girl, any girl, who could claim even tangentially to be a “daughter of Thelátimos” might find that the Prophecy of Afra had not been forgotten, no matter how many priests and wizards the king burned. It was a fact Niryn counted on.
No one had noticed when Niryn began paying monthly visits to Hear. He dressed as a wealthy merchant and added a spell to fuddle the minds of any who might recognize him. In this way he’d come and gone as he pleased all these years. Who would dare spy on the leader of the Harriers?
Riding into the market town that misty winter afternoon, he reveled as always in his anonymity. It was poulterers’ day, and the crowing, quacking, and honking of the birds in their pens echoed loudly inside the walled marketplace. Niryn smiled to himself as he guided his mount through the crowd. Who among them guessed that the horseman they jostled or muttered at or smiled upon had the power to end their lives with a word?
Leaving the markets behind, he rode up the hill to the most affluent neighborhood and the fine stone house he owned there. A young page answered, and Vena, the half-blind old nurse, met him in the hall.
“She’s been fretting at her window since morning, Master,” she scolded, taking his cloak.
“Is that him?” a girl called from upstairs.
“Yes, Nalia, my dear, it’s me!” Niryn replied.
Nalia hurried down the stairs and kissed him on both cheeks. “You’re a whole day late, you know!”
Niryn kissed her back, then held her at arm’s length to admire her. A year older than Prince Korin, she had her kinsman’s black hair and eyes, but none of his handsome looks. She was a homely girl, made homelier by a weak chin and the irregular pink birthmark that ran like spilled wine down her left cheek and shoulder. It made her shy, and she shunned society of any sort. This had served him well, making it a simple matter to keep her hidden away in this remote backwater town.
Her mother, a second cousin to the king on the matrilineal side, had been even uglier, but somehow managed to find a husband and whelp a pair of girls. Her good fortune had been Niryn’s. He’d seen to the murders himself, stopping the father’s heart as he opened the door to the wizard and killing the mother in the birthing bed. That had been in the early days of Erius’ massacres, when Niryn still saw to such things personally.
Nalia’s twin had been a pretty little thing, untouched by the unkind fate that had marred her mother and sister. She would have grown up a beauty, and beauty was hard to hide. Or control.
Niryn had meant to kill all of them, but as he’d lifted the second squalling infant from her dead mother’s side he’d had the vision—the one that had guided his every action since. From that moment on, he knew he was no longer merely the king’s coursing hound, but the master of Skala’s future.
Other wizards glimpsed her in their own visions, and some of the Illioran priests, too. Preying on the king’s fears for Korin, Niryn had wrested the power and the means to crush others before they could see clearly and reveal his sweet, tractable little Nalia. No one but he must bring this future queen forward when the time was right. No one but he must control her when she reached the throne.
He controlled Erius, but knew he would never be able to control headstrong young Korin. The boy had too much of his mother’s blood in him and no hint of madness. He would rule long, while plague and ill fortune grew on the land until Skala gave way to her enemies like a rotten beam.
Mad Agnalain and her brood had tainted the crown; no one would argue that. His Nalia could trace her lineage back to Thelátimos on both sides. Niryn could prove it, when the time came. He, and only he, would restore the Sword of Ghërilain to a woman’s hand when the Lightbearer gave the sign. In the meantime, she had grown up safely anonymous, unknown even to herself. She knew only that she was an orphan, and Niryn was her kindly benefactor and guardian. Allowed no other male companions, she doted on him and missed him terribly when he was away—as she believed—attending to his shipping business in the capital.
“It’s very cruel of you to make me wait so long,” she said, still chiding, though he saw the flush rising in her unblemished cheek as she drew him by the hand to his chair in the sitting room. Settling happily on his lap, she kissed him again and gave his beard a playful tug.
Despite her disfigured face, she’d grown into a shapely young woman. Niryn circled her slender waist with one arm and ran a hand lovingly over the generous swell of her breasts as he kissed her. At night in their unlit bedchamber, she was as beautiful as any mistress he’d ever taken, and the most abjectly devoted.
Let Orun have his little stick figure prince for now. Without Duke Rhius’ power behind him—and Niryn had helped that demise along, too—the son of Ariani was just another male usurper to the throne, and a cursed one at that. He’d be easy enough to deal with when the time came.
5
A warm wind from the south ended Tobin’s exile in early Cinrin. Midwinter rains melted the drifts like sugar loaves. The snow forts crumbled and their army of snowmen lay like scattered pockmarked corpses, felled by the plague of mild weather.
Two days later a royal courier arrived with a letter from Korin and another sharp summons from Lord Orun.