“Please do not bother,” said the Queen. “You have all done so much for us already.”
“It is no trouble.” Morwenna dismissed Bria’s comment with a whisk of her hand. “I only regret that I have not had the pleasure of spending more time with your little ones. They are charming! You must bring them back soon, and Quentin too. He has been too long away.”
“He would agree with you, I know.” Bria took Morwenna’s hands as Jollen came up to stand behind his wife. “Pray for him. Please… pray for him, and for my son.”
“You may trust in it that we will,” answered Jollen. “Our prayers have not ceased since you came to us. Yes, until we hear that all is well with you once more we will remain in prayer.” He paused and regarded the women with a long, appraising gaze. “But be encouraged,” he said abruptly. “Your task here, the reason for your coming, has been fulfilled, and the Most High is pleased to give you his blessing. You have been faithful to your hearts, and even now the things which he has promised are coming to pass. Go, so that you may witness them grow, know that he is ever true to those who follow him.”
Silently the visitors embraced their hosts and stepped from the warm, firelit room into the cool summer night ablaze with myriad stars. They hastened to their beds, too full of private thoughts to speak, but feeling each one closer to the other, conjoined with a strength of love and purpose that held them secure. And though they might be forced to ride through the darkness of evil days ahead, none doubted the light which had been promised at their destination.
“Toli? Are you asleep?” asked Prince Gerin. The boy slid closer to the man’s huddled form beside him.
“No,” replied Toli, rolling over. “What is it?”
“I heard something; someone is coming.”
“I heard it as well. It is the guard again, making sure we are still here and have not vanished through the cracks in the wall.”
“They have been watching us closely this day, and the last-closer than before. Why?”
“They have sprung the trap, I believe. They do not want anything to happen to us until they know if they have caught anything or not.”
“But what do they want?”
“Revenge. Nimrood tried to steal the throne once before, and-”
Before Toli could finish, there came a scrape at the door and its crack illuminated the room. Toli rolled to his feet. “What is it now?” he asked as the visitor entered the cell, asked as the visitor entered the cell.
“Resting comfortably, my pets?”
“Nimrood!” said Toli darkly. “So you have slithered in to taunt your prisoners?”
“Oh, my, no! I have come to tell you just how high a price I have set on your worthless heads. The ransom letter has been sent and received. The King has no choice but to comply.”
“What have you done, snake?”
“Merely suggested that I would be willing to free my captives in exchange for a certain object of value to the King.” Nimrood paused and laughed wickedly, “Ha! An object soon to be of little value to the King!”
“What are you talking about?” Toli stepped closer.
“Stay where you are!” Nimrood shouted. Then, in a calmer voice, “That is better. What object?” He shrugged, the torch throwing his black shadow huge against the walls. “I see no point in keeping it from you. His sword-that is the object I will have.”
“The Shining One!” gasped Prince Gerin, who had come to stand at Toli’s side.
“Yes, I believe that is what they call it. A fine weapon I am told, though I have never seen it myself.”
“No!” cried Gerin. “The King cannot give up the Shining One!”
“We shall see,” Nimrood chuckled. “We shall see.”
“The Prince is right. The Dragon King will never surrender the Zhaligkeer. It would mean humbling the throne, and he will not do that.”
“Pity,” sniffed Nimrood. “But perhaps he will see it differently. What is a throne worth? The life of his only son and heir, and that of his closest friend as well?”
“I see,” replied Toli coolly. “You would force the choice. But you are forgetting that a King is King first and a man second. He must do what is best for his realm.”
“In any event, the choice should prove interesting. And we will soon have the opportunity of finding out.”
“How soon?”
“Five days time. At midday five days hence you will be led to the temple courtyard and bound. If the King does not bring this enchanted sword of his, you will be killed on the altar of Ariel. Oh, the gods do not require human sacrifices these days, I know. But this time I think the High Priest will insist. What will the courageous King Quentin do with the blood of your deaths on his hands? How will he live with himself, I wonder?” Nimrood stepped back a pace and lifted the torch high. “And now you will wonder, too!”
Toli stood as one made of stone, fists clenched at his sides, muscles rigid, and watched the old sorcerer disappear. The cell door closed, the bolt scraped in the lock, and the room was dark and quiet once more. They heard Nimrood chuckling to himself as he stalked back along the corridor to his foul nest.
“Is it true?” asked Gerin when the wizard’s cackling could no longer be heard. His voice trembled as he spoke.
“Yes,” said Toli, wrapping an arm around the boy and pulling him close. “I am afraid it is true. He might have come here to taunt us with it, but I think not. The old vulture wants us to share the poison of fear between us; he hopes that this knowledge will fester in us like a belly wound. But we must not let it. We must not give up hope for a moment.”
“I am afraid, Toli. What will happen to us?”
“I cannot say, young master. It is out of our hands now.”
FORTY-TWO
A DULL, gray-white dawn broke over Pelgrin, bringing mist from the turbid, muddy waters of the Sipleth River. On the river-banks, at a place where the ground rose to form the rocky crag of a bluff overlooking an expanse of gray water, stood Ameron Castle. Below the castle the Sipleth flattened and widened as it curled around the bluff in its stony bed, giving Lord Ameronis a natural barrier on two sides; the forest, wild and thick in that part of Mensandor, protected him on a third side. This left the only clear approach from the front, an approach made difficult for any attackers by rough terrain and a rising slope.
Theido and Ronsard leaned heavily on the pommels of their saddles and surveyed the fortress in the fitful light of the new day. “It is rockier than I remember it,” said Ronsard, “and better fortified.”
“We will take up our positions there and there,” indicated Theido with a sweep of his arm, “just out of bowshot. A man like Ameronis will be prepared for battle at any time, so we must not delude ourselves that we will catch him napping.”
“There is one thing we may do before they know we are here-send the sappers to scout a location for a mine beneath the walls.”
“Order it at once, and send archers with them in case the castle awakes and offers battle.”
Ronsard swung himself wearily down from his mount and walked back into the fringe of trees where the army waited. He talked to several knights who would act as field commanders and gave them their orders. Theido, too, dismounted and paced along the perimeter of the wood, studying the lay of the land and the situation of the castle upon it. While he looked on, a score of men dressed in rough hide clothing came running out of the forest toward the castle carrying long pointed rods in their hands. Behind them came bowmen with longbows and quivers of arrows on their backs.
When they reached the very feet of the towering curtains, the men split off into groups of two or three and began probing the ground and examining the stone all around the outside walls, jamming their rods into the ground, or thrusting them into cracks and seams in the stone at the foot of the outer curtains.