“You did. Weren’t they the ones who caused Sillek’s death?” asked Nylan.
“And if they are not satisfied, they will cause ours,” suggested the regent.
The redhead unrolled the scroll. As he watched her read, Nylan could see the darkness in her eyes, and the circles beneath them. She finished and handed the scroll to Nylan.
Nylan read the dispatch quickly, his mind catching the seemingly temperate phrases that hinted at more, far more.
…holders have requested that the Regent Fornal seek a speedy return of the mines or another alternative that does not require levies needed for the forthcoming harvest…
…the Lady Ellindyja and the Lady Erenthla have both reported that a number of young women have fled to the Westhorns…and their consorts and holders petition the regency council…feel that such problems cannot be ignored because of one set of mines in distant southern Lornth…
…Suthyan traders, led by Lygon of Bleyans, are increasing the prices of iron stocks….
Nylan rolled the scroll back up and handed it to the regent. Fornal had translated Zeldyan’s-the hand was feminine-seemingly temperate phrases accurately enough, if with his own twists.
“So, angels? Has your magely journey revealed some answer that I may provide to my men? Or my coregents? Or the holders of Lornth?” Fornal finished the last of the bottle and stared at Nylan. “I know that you have done much, yet that is not enough. As harvest nears, the clamor for the return of the levies will grow, and so will the numbers of white lancers. The holders will claim that our fight has been worthless and without honor. Can you offer me any hope?”
“Perhaps,” said Nylan. Did Fornal really think they could just come up with an easy magical solution? Or was he as frustrated as the two angels? “In the morning, we’ll tell you how we’ll destroy all the Cyadorans in Lornth.”
Fornal rose with a sweeping bow. “I look forward to that. You do not know how I look forward to that.” With the precise steps of a man who had drunk too much and knew it, he walked slowly, carefully, to his room, closing the door behind him.
“You were right,” Ayrlyn said tiredly.
“I was?”
“About people not being interested in balance, or even their long-term self-interest.”
“Fornal can’t find an answer, and he knows it. So he’s shifting all the responsibility to us.”
“Isn’t that human nature?” Ayrlyn looked at the candle and the sooty glass mantle. “I won’t clean it.”
“No one asked you to. I cleaned it the last time.”
“Nylan, we aren’t keeping score.”
“Sorry.” He wiped his forehead once more.
“You said we’d have a plan. What do we do? Burn up more Cyadoran mounts, and get everyone even angrier?”
Nylan shook his head. “We have to get something in the grenades that clings and will burn through timbers.” He paused. “I don’t know. More wax, animal fats? I’m an engineer, not a chemist.”
“It would have to burn hotter,” said Ayrlyn. “Much hotter.”
“More experiments…and we’ll need something that will act as an oxidizer.” Nylan took a deep breath. “Just so the horse-lovers of Candar won’t be too offended.”
“That’s not the only reason, and you know it.”
“No,” he admitted. “We need to upgrade what we’ve got distilled and improve it enough to make a larger mess out of the Cyadoran base, and the barracks and the soldiers. That way, it might just be enough to push them out of Lornth.”
She winced.
“I know.” And he did. They could burn the entire base, and it wouldn’t solve the problem.
“For now. It might buy time. They might retreat back to Syadtar or wherever in Cyador,” the redhead ventured, “but they’ll be back with an army that will make what we faced on the Roof of the World look small.”
“And they’ll gather enough force to burn all of Lornth to a crisp?”
She nodded.
“Well…that would stop all the holders from complaining and believing that they can just negotiate some sort of agreement with Cyador and that life will go on and they can still abuse their women and have their limited honorable battles-”
“Nylan…in a way, they’re right. At least about the honorable battles. So long as they just fought each other, it provided a rough balance…”
He saw where she was going, and nodded. “Except that Cyador has its own ideas about social balance, and so does Ryba.”
“And Sillek and Zeldyan have been caught in the middle. And so are we,” she added.
“Do we really want to make this worse? By blowing up or firing the Cyadoran base?” Nylan blew out the candle. The flickers and the shadows were harder on his eyes than the darkness. He wondered how much dissolving candle wax into the distillate would help…and what else was handy that they could add to that demon’s mix.
“I’d rather run back to the grove and hide,” Ayrlyn confessed. “But that won’t work. Not for long.”
Not for very long at all.
Whose thought was it? Did it matter?
They turned toward their room, steps slow and deliberate in the dark.
C
Triendar concentrated on the glass in the middle of the polished white stone table. As droplets of perspiration popped out on his forehead, the white mists swirled across the glass.
Finally, they wreathed an image, and the wizard swallowed. “This is for younger wizards…gets harder these days.”
As the traders had said, a black stone tower reared against the mighty western peaks, and the plumes of smoke from the chimneys bore witness to its inhabitants. So did the stone roads that linked an outbuilding with smoke from its square chimney, and a stone bridge. A line of unfinished low walls on the west side of the black tower testified to the growth of the angel holding.
“It is small,” said Lephi, almost dismissively.
“Small, yes,” Triendar reflected, letting the image fade from the glass. “But it continues to grow. It did not exist three years ago. A year ago, they defeated two armies. And your lancer officers are suffering great losses to the barbarians who could not have touched them a year ago.”
“Barbarian armies, of less than a corps of the Mirror Lancers,” pointed out the Protector of the Steps to Paradise, Seer of the Rational Stars.
“Exactly,” answered the slim, white-haired wizard. “Your lancers, you say, have counted no more than fivescore barbarians-if that. You have lost more than tenscore lancers, and more than that in fine mounts, supply trains, and an entire shipment of copper ingots. What has changed? Have the barbarians changed?”
“How could barbarians change? They never have.” Lephi stood and turned toward the open archway that framed the west balcony. The shipworks lay beyond, out of sight.
“Then they should not be able to defeat the Mirror Lancers.”
“You and Themphi, with your words and logic.”
Triendar lifted his shoulders, then dropped them. “What would you have me say? That Majer Piataphi is handily defeating the Lornians? That the dark angels do not exist? That the Accursed Forest is not threatening to reclaim all of the east of Cyador?”
“Enough. What would you have me do? Throw my hands into the air and cower under the malachite throne and say I can do nothing? Am I to let all Candar pour into Cyad and destroy civilization? No, that will not be!”
Triendar rubbed his smooth-shaven chin.
“Well? You can tell your emperor what not to do. Tell me what actions will best preserve Cyador.”
“Over time, Mightiness, nothing will preserve Cyador.” Triendar smiled ironically. “For now…I would let the Accursed Forest grow as it will, and bring your might against the barbarians and their angel allies. From the days of the Rational Stars have the angels foreshadowed turmoil and trouble. Even the Accursed Forest can grow but a few kays a year, while a barbarian army can take far more than that.”
“That is what I said. You rejected my words.”
“That was as a mage. You asked what I would do were I you.”