Polite pleasantries were exchanged, everyone mouthing words learned by rote, none of them thinking about what they said. Thus “How nice to see you again” and “It’s been far too long” and “Thank you for the sweet baby gift” died away swiftly. Especially when the baby was mentioned. Anne turned deathly white and sank down in a chair. Iridal clasped her hands together tightly, looked down, unseeing, at her fingers. Stephen coughed, cleared his throat, and frowned at the stranger in the room, trying to recall where he’d seen the man.
“Well, what is it, Trian?” the king demanded. “Why have you summoned us here? I assume it has nothing to do with Fitzwarren,” he added with heavy irony, his gaze shifting to the Lady Iridal, for though she lived near the palace, she rarely ventured to visit, well aware that she brought back unwelcome and painful memories to this couple, as they revived such memories in her.
“Will it please Your Majesty to take a seat?” asked Trian. No one in the room could sit down unless the king sat first.
Stephen frowned, then threw himself into a chair. “Get on with it.”
“Half a moment, if you please, Your Majesty,” said Trian. He raised his hands, fluttered his fingers in the air, and imitated the sound of a piping of birds.
“There. Now we may speak safely.”
Anyone listening outside the door, outside the circle of the spell, would overhear only what sounded like twittering bird calls. Those within the compass of the spell itself could hear and understand each other perfectly. Trian cast a deprecating glance at the Lady Iridal. A mysteriarch, she ranked Seventh House, while Trian could attain no higher than Three. Iridal could have changed them all to singing birds, if she’d desired.
Iridal smiled reassuringly. “Very well done, Magicka,” she said. Trian flushed in pleasure, not immune to praise for his art. He had serious business at hand, though, and moved to it swiftly.
He laid a hand on the arm of the stranger, who had risen when his king entered, then resumed his seat near the wizard’s desk. Stephen had been staring at the stranger as if he knew him, but could not place from where.
“I see Your Majesty recognizes this man. He has changed much in appearance. Slavery does that. He is Peter Hamish of Pitrin’s Exile, once royal footman.”
“By the ancestors! You’re right!” stated Stephen, banging his hand on the arm of the chair. “You went for a squire to my lord Gwenned, didn’t you, Peter?”
“That I did, sire,” said the man, smiling broadly, his face red with pleasure at the king’s remembrance. “I was with him at the Battle of Tom’s Peak. The elves had us surrounded. My lord was struck down, and I was made prisoner. It wasn’t my lord’s fault, sire. The elves come upon us unexpected—”
“Yes, Peter, His Majesty is fully aware of the truth of the matter,” interposed Trian smoothly. “If you could proceed on to the rest of your story. Don’t be nervous. Tell it to Their Majesties and the Lady Iridal as you told it to me.”
Trian saw the man cast a longing glance at the empty glass near his hand. The wizard immediately filled it with wine. Peter made a thankful grab for it, then, realizing he was drinking in the presence of his king, paused with the glass halfway to his mouth.
“Please, go ahead,” said Stephen kindly. “You’ve obviously been through a terrible ordeal.”
“Wine is good for strengthening the blood,” added Anne, outwardly composed, inwardly quaking.
Peter swallowed a grateful gulp, sending the sweet wine to join another glassful, given him by the wizard, already strengthening the blood.
“I was took prisoner, sire. The elves made most of the others oarsmen in those devil dragonships of theirs. But somehow or other they found out I’d once served in the royal household. They hauls me off and asks me all sorts of questions about you, sire. They beat me till the whites of my ribs showed, Your Majesty, but I never told them fiends nothin’.”
“I commend your bravery,” said Stephen gravely, knowing full well that Peter had probably poured out his soul at the first touch of the lash, just as he’d told the elves he was a member of the royal household to save himself from the galleys.
“When it was clear to them fiends that they couldn’t get nothin’ from me, Your Majesty, they set me up in their own royal castle, what they calls the ‘Imp-er-non.’” Peter was obviously proud of his ability to speak elven. “I figured they wanted me to show ’em how things should be done in a royal household, but they only set me to scrubbin’ floors and talkin’ to other prisoners.”
“What other—” Stephen began, but Trian shook his head, and the king fell silent.
“Please tell His Majesty about the latest prisoner you saw in the elven palace.”
“He warn’t no prisoner,” Peter objected, on his fourth glass of wine. “More like an honored guest, he was. The elves are treating him real good, sire. You needn’t be worried.”
“Tell us who it was you saw,” urged Trian gently.
“Your son, sire,” said Peter, growing a bit maudlin. “Prince Bane. I’m happy to bring you news that he is alive. He spoke to me. I woulda brought him along, when me and the others was plannin’ to escape, but he said he was too well guarded. He’d only hinder us. A true little hero, your son, sire.
“He gave that there to me.” The footman pointed to an object lying on Trian’s desk. “Said I was to bring it to his mother. She’d know, then, that it was him as sent it. He made it for her.”
Peter raised the glass in an unsteady hand. Tears came to his eyes. “A toast to His Highness and to Your Majesties.”
Peter’s bleary attention was focused on the wine in his hand, as much as his attention could focus on anything by now. Thus he missed the fact that the joy fill news of Bane’s return caused Stephen to go rigid, as if struck by a poleax. Anne stared at the man in horror, sagged in her chair, her face ashen. Lady Iridal’s eyes flamed with sudden hope.
“Thank you, Peter, that will be all for now,” said Trian. He took hold of Peter’s arm, hoisted the man from his chair, led him—bowing and staggering—past king and queen and mysteriarch.
“I’ll see to it that he has no memory of this, Your Majesty,” Trian promised in a low voice. “Oh, may I suggest that Your Majesties do not drink the wine.” He left the room with Peter, shutting the door behind them.
The wizard was gone a long time. His Majesty’s guards did not accompany the king to the wizard’s study, but took up positions at a discreet distance, about thirty paces away, at the far end of the hall. Trian accompanied Peter down the hall, relinquished the inebriated footman to the guards, with orders that the man be taken somewhere to sleep off his intoxication. Such was the effect of the wizard’s sweet wine mat when the befuddled Peter awoke, he would have no memory of having ever been in the Imp-er-non.
By the time Trian returned to his study, he found that the shock of the news had worn off somewhat, though the alarm was, if anything, more intense.
“Can this be true?” Stephen demanded. The king had risen to his feet and was pacing the study. “How can we trust this great idiot?”
“Simply because he is a great idiot, sire,” said Trian, standing, his hands folded before him, his manner deliberately calm and tranquil. “This is one reason I wanted you to hear his story from the man himself. He is certainly not clever enough to have made up such a tale. I have questioned him most extensively and am satisfied that he is not lying. And then there is this.” Trian lifted the object from his desk, the object mat Peter had brought—a present from Bane to his mother. Trian held it out, not to Anne, but to Iridal.
She stared at it, blood mounting her cheeks, then draining, to leave her more pale than before. The object was a hawk feather, decorated with beads, suspended from a leather thong. Innocent in appearance, the gift was such as a child might make under the instructions of his nursemaid, to please any mother’s fond heart. But this feather necklace had been made by a child of magic, son of mysteriarchs. The feather was an amulet and through it, the child could communicate with the mother. His true mother. Iridal reached out a trembling hand, took the feather, and held it tight.