In those few words Kelis recognized the speaker's voice.
"I know," Shen said, as if she heard such greetings regularly. "Did the stones send you to tell me so?"
"The stones?" The prostrate man sounded confused for a moment, but then his voice picked up with the rhythms of practiced formality. "The Santoth called you, and you came. That is a blessing. Come with me, Princess. I will take you to them. They have much to tell you."
Before he knew it, the man's name whispered through Kelis's lips. "Leeka Alain?"
The man raised his head, turned, and looked at Kelis. For a moment Kelis thought himself mistaken. The man's face was nothing like the craggy one he remembered on the general. And then it was. And a moment later it was not. His features appeared as fixed and solid as anybody else's, but his face contained more than a single man's features. It was ancient and cracked and eroded with the wear of ages, and yet it was also a face of clear green eyes and a once-broken nose and lips that glistened with moisture when his tongue wet them.
"They don't call me that here," the man said, "but that was my name before."
C HAPTER
The breakneck speed at which the league clipper careened into Acacia's main harbor would have been reckless even in the light of day. At night, it was madness. But league pilots were nothing if not adept at all things nautical, and the officer at the helm of the Rayfin carved a wild course through the anchored vessels, passed the trading floats. He hooked the vessel around the inner watchtower and dropped sails only when momentum alone was more than enough to place it skimming along a fortunately unoccupied section of league-owned pier. He shouted for the messenger to disembark before they had even halted. The man did not need the encouragement. He leaped from a height and ran with all the haste he had been ordered to show.
A scant ten minutes later, Sire Dagon sat bleary eyed, wearing a robe loosely wrapped about his gaunt frame. Mist so clouded his head that his servants had to carry him-against his muted protests-and prop him up in his chair. Even sitting there, with the bay windows thrown open to a chill breeze and lamps on high, he as yet floated on the chorus of angelic voices he conducted during his mist dreams. His head swirled with song, his body light as a silken puppet and able to dance in midair, only now being tugged back down to earth. Blinking, he asked the messenger what could possibly merit the interruption at such a delicate hour.
"I came in haste," the man said.
"So I gather," Sire Dagon said, cocking his head back in a manner that for some reason helped him see middle-distance objects more clearly. The man spoke with clipped Ishtat Inspectorate tones, a fact that registered a spike in the leagueman's attention. Ishtats were so highly trained that rarely were they charged with tasks as menial as delivering a message. "What I don't yet know is why, but I trust you are about to tell me. Who sent you?"
"The League Council."
"Why did they not send a messenger bird from Thrain?"
"The news I carry was deemed too grave to be put in care of a pigeon."
"In care of a pigeon?" Sire Dagon found that amusing. Images of officer pigeons with military bearing, cooing orders to a small legion of birds, dancing up from the ground with the aid of the music yet pulsing in his veins…
"Sire, you need to listen."
Quite impertinently, the messenger shouted for Sire Dagon's servants. He demanded they bring a sobering concoction to match the leagueman's mist distillation. He needed him back completely, and immediately, he said. He must have said a few other very convincing things as well, because before Dagon could stop it his manservant stuffed an invigorating pill up one of his nostrils. Not pleasant but effective. Within a minute he was more awake than he wished, the burning itch in his nose and at the back of his throat making sure of it.
"Forgive me, Sire," the messenger said, bowing to him now that his orders had been heeded. "I was commanded that I waste not a minute in delivering my message. But you have to be able to hear it and understand it, too. This message is from the Council, without dissent. I wear on my neck this collar, secured with a truth knot that confirms my words are truth."
The man stepped forward, bent, and opened his shirt collar so that Dagon could study the thin rope tied about his neck. Sire Dagon yanked at it, pulling it close. To an untrained eye the knot that closed the circle looked like the confusion a child might create, but in its loops and bunches was an intricacy that was very practiced, indeed. And there could be no mistaking its authenticity. The messenger had been sent by the League Council.
Sire Dagon motioned for the man to step away. Regaining his dignity, he said, "I am listening."
And so he sat hearing about the horror that had emerged from Sire Neen's mistakes. In the space of few moments everything changed. All their hopes, their plans, all of it would have to wait. Instead, he would have to compose lies faster than ever before. He would have to win the queen's trust, for they would need her armies in the war that was coming.
A few hours later Sire Dagon traversed the terraces and stairways that would lead him to the queen, a messenger himself now. She would not be easy to gain an audience with. Sire Dagon knew the things she had recently occupied herself with. Apparently, she had managed to capture Barad the Lesser. What a stir this had caused among the nobles! All the work of some agent of hers, one Delivegu, a lucky man, and now one officially acknowledged at court. Word of the capture had spread among the common folk, so that whatever benefit there was in it was not immediately obvious. Indeed, a rumor spread that she had mutilated Barad. Cut out his eyes and shoved stones in their places. Still others said she cursed him through sorcery. It was the sort of mad talk that might have sparked the man's rebellion into life, but Corinn had finally ordered the distribution of a new wine. In so doing, she belatedly fulfilled the league's wishes, but that was so often the case. She had also politely but firmly sent King Grae back to his homeland. The leaguemen were not entirely sure what to make of that, but there was something of interest beneath the surface of it surely. With all this happening, Corinn had every right to consider herself tied up in a web of complications. How very simple such things would seem to her by the end of this day!
Just outside the queen's quarters, Sire Dagon stood with his arms outstretched as a Marah searched him for hidden daggers. He tried to keep his gaze forward, his face wrinkled with annoyed tolerance. The last thing he wanted to do was look at any of the Numrek, two of whom stood watching. But his eyes had wills of their own. They flicked over long enough to confirm-damn it-that the guards on either side of the door were looking at him. Was there anything to be read in their craggy features? He was not sure. Stupid! Control yourself, he thought. Without showing it, he breathed deep and slow, steadying himself. Leaguemen controlled their emotions, not the other way around. Before he was waved through, he even resorted to the silent counting regime he had been taught as a boy, arithmetic exercises that he conducted in the back of his mind and that helped render his face expressionless.
"All right," the Marah said, "you may enter. Forgive the formality, sire." He stood to the side and motioned toward the corridor.
Sire Dagon gave him a look meant to indicate that he knew very well where he was going. It is what he would have done in normal circumstances. Again, though, his eyes chose to disobey him. Tremulous, they slid to the side as he passed and, yes, the Numrek to his left was watching him! No mistaking it. The beast had been observing him with more than casual interest.