“Where is he?” Niavin of Seresh asked.
“He is coming. He had to go slowly.”
“Why?” It was Diarmuid. He had stopped his feline pacing at the edges of the hall and come forward.
“Wait,” was all the Dwarf replied.
Gorlaes was about to remonstrate, but someone else came in first.
“No,” said Aileron. “For all the love I bear him, I will not wait on this. There is, in truth, little to discuss.”
Kim Ford, in that room as the newest, the only, Seer of Brennin, watched him stride to stand by Gorlaes.
And a step above him, directly before the throne. He will always be like this, she thought. There is only the force of him.
And with force, cold, unyielding force, Aileron looked over them all and spoke again. “In time of council Loren’s wisdom will be sorely needed, but this is not a time of council, whatever you may have thought.”
Diarmuid was no longer pacing. He had moved, at Aileron’s first words, to stand directly in front of his brother, an unruffled contrast to Aileron’s coiled intensity.
“I came here,” said Aileron dan Ailell flatly, “for the Crown, and to lead us into war. The Throne is mine”—he was looking directly at his brother—“and I will kill for it, or die for it before we leave this hall.”
The rigid silence that followed this was broken a moment later by the jarring sound of one man clapping.
“Elegantly put, my dear,” said Diarmuid as he continued to applaud. “So utterly succinct.” Then he lowered his hands. The sons of Ailell faced each other as if alone in the vast hall.
“Mockery,” said Aileron softly, “is easy. It was ever your retreat. Understand me, though, brother. This, for once, is no idle sport. I want your fealty this hour, in this place, or there are six archers in the musicians’ gallery who will kill you if I raise my hand.”
“No!” Kim exclaimed, shocked out of silence.
“This is preposterous!” Teyrnon shouted at the same time, striding forward. “I forbid—”
“You cannot forbid me!” Aileron rode over him. “Rakoth is free. What lies ahead is too large for me to trifle with.”
Diarmuid had cocked his head quizzically to one side, as if considering an abstract proposition. Then he spoke, his voice so soft they had to strain to hear. “You would truly do this thing?”
“I would,” Aileron replied. With no hesitation at all.
“Truly?” Diarmuid asked a second time.
“All I have to do is raise my arm,” Aileron said. “And I will if I must. Believe it.”
Diarmuid shook his head slowly back and forth; he sighed heavily. Then:
“Coll,” he said, and pitched it to carry.
“My lord Prince.” The big man’s voice boomed instantly from overhead. From the musicians’ gallery.
Diarmuid lifted his head, his expression tranquil, almost indifferent. “Report.”
“He did do it, my lord.” Coil’s voice was thick with anger. He moved forward to the railing. “He really did. There were seven men up here. Say the word and I will slay him now.”
Diarmuid smiled. “That,” he said, “is reassuring.” Then he turned back to Aileron.and his eyes were no longer so aloof. The older brother had changed, too; he seemed to have uncoiled himself into readiness. And he broke the silence.
“I sent six,” Aileron said. “Who is the seventh?”
They were all scrambling to grasp the import of this when the seventh leaped from the gallery overhead.
It was a long jump, but the dark figure was lithe and, landing, rolled instantly and was up. Five feet from Diarmuid with a dagger back to throw.
Only Aileron moved in time. With the unleashed reflexes of a pure fighter, he grabbed for the first thing that came to hand. As the assassin’s dagger went back, Aileron flung the heavy object hard across the space between. It hit the intruder square in the back; the flung blade was sent awry, just awry. Enough so as not to pierce the heart it was intended for.
Diarmuid had not even moved. He stood, swaying a little, with a peculiar half-smile on his face and a jeweled dagger deep in his left shoulder. He had time, Kim saw, to murmur something very low, indistinguishable, as if to himself, before all the swords were out and the assassin was ringed by steel. Ceredur of North Keep drew back his blade to kill.
“Hold swords!” Diarmuid ordered sharply. “Hold!” Ceredur slowly lowered his weapon. The only sound in the whole great room was made by the object Aileron had flung, rolling in diminishing circles on the mosaic-inlaid floor.
It happened to be the Oak Crown of Brennin.
Diarmuid, with a frightening glint of hilarity in his face, bent to pick it up. He bore it, his footsteps echoing, to the long table in the center of the room. Setting it down, he unstoppered a decanter, using one hand only. They all watched as he poured himself a drink, quite deliberately. Then he carried his glass slowly back towards them all.
“It is my pleasure,” said Diarmuid dan Ailell, Prince of Brennin, “to propose a toast.” The wide mouth smiled. There was blood dripping from his arm. “Will you all drink with me,” he said, raising high the glass, “to the Dark Rose of Cathal?”
And walking forward, he lifted his other arm, with obvious pain, and removed the cap and pins she wore, so that Sharra’s dark hair tumbled free.
Having Devorsh killed had been a mistake, for two reasons. First, it gave her father far too much leverage in his campaign to foist one of the lords on her. The lordlings. Leverage he had already begun to use.
Secondly, he was the wrong man.
By the time Rangat sent up its fiery hand—visible even in Cathal, though the Mountain itself was not—her own explosion of rage had metamorphosed into something else. Something quite as deadly, or even more so, since it was sheathed within exquisitely simulated repentance.
She had agreed that she would walk the next morning with Evien of Lagos in the gardens, and then receive two other men in the afternoon; she had been agreeing to everything.
But when the red moon rose that night, she bound up her hair, knowing her father very, very well, and in the strangely hued darkness and the haste of departure, she joined the embassy to Paras Derval.
It was easy. Too easy, a part of her thought as they rode to Cynan; discipline was shockingly lax among the troops of the Garden Country. Still, it served her purpose now, as had the Mountain and the moon.
For whatever the larger cataclysms might mean, whatever chaos lay before them all, Sharra had her own matter to deal with first, and the falcon is a hunting bird.
At Cynan there was pandemonium. When they finally tracked down the harbor-master, he flashed a code of lights across the delta to Seresh and was quickly answered. He took them across himself, horses and all, on a wide river barge. From the familiarity of the greetings exchanged on the other side of Saeren, it was clear that rumors of quite improper intercourse between the river fortresses were true. It was increasingly evident how certain letters had gotten into Cathal.
There had been rumblings of thunder in the north as they rode to Cynan, but as they came ashore in Seresh in the dark hours before dawn, all was still and the red moon hung low over the sea, sailing in and out of scudding clouds. All about her flowed the apprehensive murmurings of war, mingled with a desperate relief among the men of Brennin at the rain that was softly falling. There had been a drought, she gathered.
Shalhassan’s emissaries accepted, with some relief, an invitation from the garrison commander at Seresh to stay for what remained of the night. The Duke, they learned, was in Paras Derval already, and something else they learned: Ailell was dead. This morning. Word had come at sundown. There would be a funeral and then a coronation on the morrow.