“They cannot go back to Fintha by the mageroad, but some, if we are careful, might make it overland with a returning caravan. Some might go to Xhim.”
A growing murmur of dismay. The older mageborn knew they would not be welcome in Fintha, not as long as the present Marshal-General ruled. None of them wanted to face the long journey to strange and unknown lands.
“There must be another way!” Instantly several other voices echoed the first man. “Have you even tried the mageroad?” asked another. “Why should we believe elves?”
“It won’t,” Aris said. “Can’t you feel the difference?”
“I’m going to try,” said the man. Luap started to stand, but said nothing as the man walked quickly to the dais, stepped onto it, and closed his eyes. Then the man fell, as if someone had hit him hard; he made no sound but lay crumpled on the dais. Aris went to him quickly, felt for his pulse, and looked back at the others.
“He’s dead.” Someone screamed.
“Silence!” Luap rarely raised his voice; now it rose above the scream and commanded them all. Aris wondered how much of his royal magery went into it; he felt his own throat close, refusing speech. “I will confer with the Rosemage, with Aris, and with Seri,” Luap said. “You will await my decision. Go now.”
Luap dressed for the conference with care. If he looked slovenly, they might panic; his people—any people, he reminded himself—relied more on appearances than they might think. White and silver gray, to remind them of his power, touches of rich blue to comfort any who still worried about Gird’s view of things. He combed his dark hair—still unfrosted—and congratulated himself on his decision to preserve his youthful vigor. They would need a strong man, not an aged one, to bring them safely through this crisis. Most of them seemed not to notice, but if anyone did—if anyone, in a panic, mentioned it, he could point out that it was proof of his great power. It could not be as hopeless as the elves had said; nothing was hopeless. He had survived too many things in his life to believe that, and his experience mocked the despair he had felt earlier. What a fool he had been, to let those things upset him.
It bothered him that he could not quite think what to do, what solution might come, but he was sure he would in time. He might even find a solution the elves had not thought of. They so hated their once-relatives that they had refused to admit the problem . . . if they had only told him, from the beginning, like any honest person would, all this could have been avoided.
He found the beginning of the meeting tedious. The Rosemage gave her report not once but a dozen times, answering the same questions over and over. Each head of a family had to express shock, dismay, worry. Somehow they managed to entangle old grievances in the present emergency, dragging in all sorts of irrelevancies. Why could they not see that there was no time for this? He quit listening, and began trying to plan some effective action. The next caravan would arrive in the spring; they must get control of the upper valley by the time it was due. They could not fight successfully in winter . . . his eyes narrowed, as he tried to think where in the upper valley a small force could shelter for the winter, to be sure the iynisin stayed away once evicted.
“What will it take to recapture the upper valley?” he asked in the next pause. He hoped that would get their attention and force them to think about the real problem, not who made what minor decision a decade before.
Everyone stared; the Rosemage looked as angry as he’d seen her in years.
“Were you listening?” she asked. He let his brows rise; he stifled the urge to say no one had said anything worth listening to, and let her rattle on. They were too unsettled yet, he decided, as the Rosemage and Seri refused to consider going to the Khartazh; they were still full of complaint, unreasonable, unready to think their way through to answers. When Keris Porchai insisted on testing the mageroad himself (Porchai, who had been slower to learn its use in the first place than most of the mageborn) Luap let him go; when he died, that was the perfect excuse to end the meeting. He would take his few chosen assistants and see if he could knock sense into them in privacy. He would need all of them, and they must quit acting as if he were a halfwit.
He used his power on them, as he rarely did, for the sheer pleasure of seeing it work: one word, and he could silence them all, even Aris. They obeyed, as they had to, leaving in a rush. He wondered if they knew how lucky they were, to have had a gentle, unambitious prince. Until now. Now only his ambition could save them; he would have no more time to be gentle. He led those he had named to his office, and turned with what he intended as a calming smile.
Instead, he faced rebellion. Hardly had he begun to explain what he thought of doing, when the Rosemage flashed out at him.
“You have not aged: surely you know this.”
“Of course,” he said smoothly. “It served its purpose. . . .”
“You used the royal magery for yourself!” The Rosemage glowed, as full of light as a fire, as the sun. “What might have held that evil away from the entire settlement, you used to spare your own years—”
“I held the evil I knew or suspected away from here by using it so, by seeming ageless: have you forgotten how that convinced the king’s ambassador? You are the one who reminded everyone how dangerous the Khartazh empire is. This evil I knew nothing about.”
“And you stole that power from Aris—”
“No.” Luap shook his head. “My own magery served well enough. I would not have taken aught from him.”
“But you did,” Seri said. “Did you not realize that he has less healing power now than a hand of years ago?” Her voice conveyed utter certainty.
“It cannot be.” Luap’s face sagged; he felt as if all his years had come upon him at once. “I would not have done such a thing. It’s impossible.”
Seri shook her head. “It is not impossible, and it is the only explanation we have. Aris’s power has waned, year by year, as you did not age. Let the Rosemage test your power, and she will find the flavor of his. Perhaps you did not know. . . .”
“You had no healing magery of your own,” the Rosemage reminded him. “How, then, have you remained hale and strong so long? You must realize that the healing magery and control of age are closely allied.” Her voice shook; she was, Luap realized, very near tears. “It may be too late, but you must release your magery to its proper purpose.”
“It is too late,” Luap said, looking at his fingers. “The elves say that, and I believe them: they make unsteady allies, but they do not lie, and they know more than we of the iynisin.” He attempted a smile. “I have not even seen one.”
“I have,” Seri said. He had not known that. Her blunt face, weathered from years in the brilliant sun and dry wind, had lost the bright promise of its youth, but nothing could dim her eyes. Now, as she looked past him into the memory where that iynisin had been, he felt a pang that was almost guilt. She should have stayed in Fintha with Raheli; he should even have allowed Aris to stay, if necessary. She was Gird’s child as much as any of his blood; she belonged there, and she might die here, because of his selfishness. If, indeed, he had been drawing on Aris’s power. He still could not believe that.
“Let me see,” the Rosemage pled, her long hands reaching for his. He seemed to see her doubled, the beautiful woman she had been when he first met her, overlaid by the woman she had become. When had her hair gone silver? When had those lines marred the clarity of her cheek and jaw? An insidious hum along his bones urged him to ignore all that: what did it matter, after all, if one woman aged? He could lay an illusion over anything unpleasant. The important thing, surely, was his reign, his kingdom, his power.