“I saw her. Saw her and studied her. I think she’s itching for a fight. I think that’s why she came here, to perfect her methods. I think she’d welcome such a test.”
“At random, yes,” he said. “Just for the hell of it, or to prove her theories. But not for you, Cal me boy. Not for you.”
“H her test is Zeis Keep?”
He stood there, dumbstruck at the idea. Finally he said, “You don’t want to take the easy way out, do you? Zeis isn’t a small, weak nothing of a Keep—it’s one of the big ones. Important enough to be designated a shuttle landing point, which is why all the bigwigs pass through there. And you’ve got Artur fighting defense on his home ground. Remember the geography of that place?”
“I remember,” I told him. “Still, it has to be Zeis. I think Dr. Pohn is the one individual object of her hatred that would tempt her, don’t you? And from the point of view of location, it’s close enough for her without a lot of logistical problems.”
He considered the proposal. “She might buy it,” he admitted, “but are you sure you can take her? Once she fights for Zeis and wins, if she can take it, do you think she’s going to hand the place over to you?”
“I don’t know,” I responded honestly. “I don’t even know if I can take Boss Tiel. I’ve never even met him. But I think I have to try.”
“I think you do,” Bronz concluded, more to himself than to me. “I don’t know. I’ll send out some feelers to Sumiko and see if shell buy it, or at least agree to talk about it. And I think I can reach Duke Klisorn, at least. Talk him into letting you try.”
“But what about Marek Kreegan? Will he stay out of it? After all, he’s the man who put the price on my head to begin with.”
“Oh, I’m sure Kreegan will keep hands off,” Father Bronz told me confidently. “He’ll want to see just what you can do at this stage, in order to evaluate the true threat to himself and his own power. But if we talk Sumiko into this, and if you or she beats Tiel, and if you can beat her, then you will have to worry about Kreegan. You sure you want to start this? That’s a lot of ifs, and once you start, you aren’t going to be able to stop. You’ll be the initiator, and responsible.”
“You think I’m nuts, don’t you?” I asked him. “You think I should just settle down here and read all the books and raise a family and say to hell with it, don’t you?”
“/ didn’t say that,” Bronz replied in a tone that implied exactly that.
“I can’t,” I told him. “I’m just not made that way.”
“We’ll see.” Father Bronz sighed deeply. “I’ll start the wheels in motion. May God have mercy on your soul.”
Chapter Twenty
Council of War
It all came together so easily and quickly that I was almost suspicious about it.
The witch’s village seemed to have changed not at all from the last time I’d been there, although now I was far more sensitized to the entire Warden environment and everything looked a little new and different I felt a mild, discomforting dizziness that I couldn’t really put my finger on. Father Bronz explained to me that he’d felt it from the first visit, an after-effect of the process by which Sumiko O’Higgins stayed hidden from the outside world.
“They take turns,” he told me. “One of them at Master grade and a coven of twelve others, all satiated with Sumiko’s juice, standing ever vigilant. Nothing short of a planetary satellite photo would be able to see what’s down here, and even that doesn’t seem to work—the place is well camouflaged from the air, and a couple of distorting inversion layers add to the effect. That’s why she chose the place.”
She’d been confident that Artur would not be able to return and find it after his defeat, and she’d been right. Basically, it was a message sent by that particular guardian pack of thirteen to all around simply not to notice the place. It was neither invisibility nor any form of telepathy, but it was a formidable mental barrier all the same.
From what Father Bronz was able to tell me, O’Higgins seemed more than delighted with the idea. She said something about needing a “test piece” anyway. Furthermore, she held particular grudges against Zeis Keep not only because Dr. Pohn was there but also because Artur had killed two of her witches in the attack.
But even though she had replaced the two dead ones, there was still a strong numerical problem in going against Zeis. Many of her procedures were far more effective defensively than offensively, since techniques such as the circle, which I’d seen in operation, and the “mind clouding” were not really much use to a mobile, advancing force. They would be able to take out some of Artur’s forces, but not all; in close quarters her pawns, even amplified slightly, would be no match for Artur’s trained and experienced Supervisors and Masters. Their strength was a group strength. Artur now knew this, having been bloodied, and would take measures to counter it. With perhaps a thousand witches Sumiko was invulnerable, but with a hundred and sixty-nine she needed support.
Again it was Father Bronz, showing a most interesting bent for Machiavellian political manoeuvring, to the rescue. At our final meeting were not only the priest, the witches, and myself but also three strange women wearing colorful, flowing garb. Except for their manners and dress they looked rather ordinary, with common backgrounds of the civilized worlds in their features. Nonetheless, the immediate impression was that these were no ordinary inhabitants of Lilith, not even Masters. They were… something else.
As we sat around eating small, tasty pastries and drinking mild local wine, Father Bronz made the introductions. First Sumiko, then me; then he turned to the three strange women.
“May I introduce Boss Rognival of Lakk Keep,” he said, pointing to the most overdressed of the women, “and her administrative assistant, the Lady Tona, and her sergeant-at-arms, the Lady Kysil.”
Although they were all fighting for their own interests rather than for mine, I never really felt so left out of an operation that would decide my future as I did at this one. I stared at the three women in curiosity not only as to what they were doing here but also because I’d never seen a knight before. Except for the slight fur trim and a small jewel on a headband of some kind, she didn’t look so superhuman. I had to admit, though, that the Warden power burned and shone a little brighter inside her. The map in my head clicked in again, and I saw that Lakk Keep was a very small one several kilometers due west of Zeis—across that formidable-looking swamp.
“Let’s get down to business,” Rognival said sharply, her tone tough and crisp. “We are going to attack and take Zeis Keep. The witch here has her own reasons and some old grudges to settle; the young man over there has ambition, and I—well, let’s just say that Lakk is a very small Keep almost surrounded by a pretty lousy swamp. It wasn’t always that way. I used to have four kilometers square of choice vai cropland on what is now the Zeis side of the swamp. Tiel and Altai took it as well as the pawns that worked it from me over nine years ago, reducing me to the island of Lakk, which though it has several melon orchards and some snark pastureland, is hardly self-sufficient. I became, in effect, Tiel’s vassal, and I’ve hated him for it. Until now, though, I’ve had insufficient forces to attack across the swamp, and I no longer have the clout necessary to get allies. You’re my chance to get back my land, my self-sufficiency, and my self-respect.”