Phenvel I, also called Phenvel the Fat, had done much better; no wars were fought during his twenty-one years on the throne.
The idea of the balancing policy was beginning to fade, though, as the kings of Semma forgot how precarious their position actually was; Phenvel II, Phenvel the Warrior, fought Ophkar for seven years of his seventeen. Admittedly, he won, the only time Semma ever single-handedly defeated Ophkar, but seven years of war could not have been pleasant. Many stories of the horrors of that Third Ophkar-Semma War were still told.
And the resulting weakness was largely responsible for Ksinallion’s victory over Semma in the Third Ksinallion-Semma War, during the reign of Rayel III. He earned the name Rayel the Patient by waiting eleven years, carefully building up his forces and waiting until the time was right, before he launched his counterattack and won the Fourth Ksinallion-Semma War.
Even that victory was probably a mistake; it laid the groundwork for the disastrous defeat Rayel IV suffered in 5150, in the Fifth Ksinallion-Semma War. Only Ophkar’s threat to come in on Semma’s side had prevented Ksinallion from annexing Semma outright.
That was Rayel the Tall; he was followed by Rayel V, Rayel the Handsome, whose death brought about the negotiated peace at the end of the Sixth Ksinallion-Semma War, establishing the present borders. That had also been the Sixth Ophkar-Ksinallion War.
Tendel III had been called Tendel the Diplomat because he managed to talk his way out of war several times in his twenty-four year reign; he was an expert at playing Ophkar and Ksinallion off against each other, even bringing in their other neighbors: Skaia, Thanoria, Enmurinon, Kalithon, even little Nushasia, far to the north, at Ksinallion’s farthest extreme. None of those bordered on Semma, but the threat of a two-front war was surprisingly effective. Ophkar had no desire to fight Skaia or Enmurinon; Ksinallion preferred peace with Kalithon and Nushasia; and Thanoria served as a threat to both.
But then Tendel III died, in 5199, and his son Phenvel III came to the throne.
Lar hesitated to characterize his sovereign unfavorably, but from his mutterings about inbreeding and “other interests” it was plain to Sterren that the merchant considered the king an idiot.
Fortunately, Phenvel III had retained the services of a few people who were not idiots, notably Sterren, Seventh Warlord, and Sterren, Eighth Warlord. Father and son had kept up the policies of Tendel III, using diplomacy, threats, saboteurs, and whatever else was necessary to keep peace.
King Phenvel had made this difficult, with his arbitrary insults directed at both his larger neighbors. When Prince Elken of Ophkar asked for the hand of Princess Ashassa the Younger, Phenvel had instead sent her to Prince Tabar of Kalithon. When King Corinal II of Ksinallion offered a treaty on trade routes, Phenvel had first ignored it, then sent an envoy to Ophkar asking if they cared to make a better offer. When a secret envoy came from Ophkar to discuss the possibility of war with Ksinallion, Phenvel publicly announced the whole affair; when Ophkar reacted with protests and Ksinallion offered an alliance, Phenvel had dismissed the whole thing as a foolish joke.
There had been other incidents, as well, and now, for the first time in three hundred years, Ophkar and Ksinallion had arranged an alliance against Semma, considering Phenvel III a mutual foe.
While they lived, the warlords had prevented such an alliance, but with the death of the Eighth Warlord, all the elaborate network of checks and treaties had collapsed. Enmurinon and Kalithon and Thanoria and Nushasia and Skaia were no longer involved; despite the web of inter-marriages that had allied them to Semma, they all refused to make any further promises. Phenvel’s mother had come from Enmurinon, his wife from Thanoria; a daughter was a princess in Kalithon, and an aunt had been queen in Nushasia. Still, Semma was on its own. Phenvel had somehow offended every single one of his foreign relatives.
Sterren’s spirits sank steadily as he listened to all this.
“Why aren’t the Ophkaritic and Ksinallionese armies already here?” he asked.
Lar sighed and explained that the only reason the armies of Ophkar and Ksinallion had not yet invaded was that they were still settling how the booty and conquered territory were to be divided. Lar and his like, he employed several people himself, and was fairly sure that old Sterren, Eighth Warlord, had some others in his own employ, had done their best to delay these negotiations, bringing up potential difficulties, picking at nits, losing messages, and so forth, and had managed to hold things off this long. The coming winter rains would presumably provide another short breathing space, but in the spring both armies would surely march.
And it was Sterren’s job, as warlord, to hold them off indefinitely, or if possible to defeat them outright.
“How am I supposed to do that?” Sterren demanded.
Lar shrugged. “I wish I knew,” he replied, “I really do.”
CHAPTER 10
As usual, the off-duty soldiers were playing dice in a corner of the barracks. Sterren sighed at the sight.
His dismay was partly due to the fact that despite his best attempts at speech making, his repeated talks about how important it was that Semma’s chosen defenders do all they could to get themselves ready to fight had obviously had no effect on how his men spent their leisure time.
It was also due, however, to the knowledge that he didn’t dare join the game. Since arriving in Semma, his once-notorious luck at dice had deserted him completely.
He had been embarrassed to discover that without that edge, he was actually a very poor gambler. Whenever he played, he lost steadily.
At least he now knew, beyond question, that he had indeed picked up a trace of warlockry in his brief apprenticeship; nothing else could explain how he had flourished for so long back in Ethshar. Wizards and witches had been unable to detect any magic in use, but wizards and witches knew nothing about warlockry.
It was slightly odd, perhaps, that he’d never been caught by a warlock, but maybe warlocks took pity on him, or chose to protect one of their own, no matter how feeble his talents.
And his talent had to be warlockry, because no other form of magic was so dependent on location. He knew that much. Wizardry and witchcraft and sorcery and theurgy and demonology and herbalism and all the others worked equally well almost everywhere, or so he had heard, though there were those who complained that so much wizardry had been used in the city of Ethshar of the Spices that its residue fouled the air and weakened subsequent spells.
Warlockry, though, a warlock’s power depended on how close he was to the mysterious Source of the Power that all warlocks drew on.
Nobody knew exactly where the Source was, or what it was, because nobody who went to find it ever came back, but every warlock knew that it was somewhere in the hills of Aldagmor, near the border between the Baronies of Sardiron and the Hegemony of Ethshar. It supposedly called to warlocks who grew strong enough to hear it and lured them away, and since all warlocks improved with practice, that meant most of them heard it, sooner or later, and if they stayed within range they were eventually drawn away to Aldagmor. This was referred to as the Calling, and it was invariably accompanied by weird, frightening dreams and other strangeness, and it was something that warlocks did not talk about to outsiders; it frightened them, and admitting that warlocks were afraid of anything was not in the best interests of the art. Sterren only knew about it because his former master had explained it, in lurid detail, in trying to discourage him from his apprenticeship.