With only a quartet of bodyguards at the far doors of the chamber, Ackal beckoned Tol to him.
“When will you leave?” he asked.
“Whenever Your Majesty requires.”
“Tomorrow morning then. Draw whatever supplies you need from imperial stores. Get a pony for Master Stumpwater, too,” Ackal said. “You’ll need a map of the high Thel.” Tol glanced at the array scattered across the table, but the emperor shook his head. “There are better charts in the library. I’ll send Lady Valaran to you. She knows the library better than the chief archivist.”
Tol tried to gauge the emperor’s purpose. Ackal IV provided the answer.
“You know how dangerous this mission will be, don’t you?” he said. “Mandes won’t be sitting on that mountain-top unprotected. He had considerable treasure, and none was found in his house after he fled. He’ll have hired guards, so you’ll be contending with swords as well as sorcery.”
Tol nodded. He had surmised as much on his own. The emperor said, “This may be the single most important deed you’ll ever do for your country, Tolandruth. No other man in the empire would have a hope of success.”
“Thank you, Majesty. I shall not fail.”
Ackal extended his hand. Surprised, Tol reached out uncertainly. Ackal’s hand was dry and feverishly hot.
“Go with the gods, my lord.”
Once Tol was gone, Ackal IV let his head loll against the wing of the great padded chair. So weary… he was so weary, yet he was filled with hope, too. If anyone, Tolandruth could do it. He was a great warrior, and a loyal Hade. His strength would carry the day against any foe-
The itching began again. All over his fingers and toes, the maddening sensation of tiny, spiked feet and glistening pincers began.
“Ants!”
Ackal IV clutched at his fingers, trying to scrape off insects only he could see. His feet burned with their bites. Drawing one leg up, he tore off the velvet slipper and flung it across the room. Already his pale feet were scored with long scratches, crusted with dried blood.
“Ants! Ants!” he gasped, clawing at his feet anew.
At the doors, the guards heard the emperor’s hoarse exclamations and witnessed his mad gyrations. They did nothing. They saw this spectacle less often nowadays, but when it came it was fiercer and wilder than before; anyway they had been warned not to interfere. Gold in their pockets assured their compliance. Prince Nazramin could be very generous when he chose.
Ackal’s voice rose to a shriek as the burning, stinging pain increased. “Can no one stop the ants?” he cried.
In this lonely struggle, the Emperor of Ergoth had no champion.
It took all afternoon and most of the evening for Tol and Valaran to find the best map of the Thel Mountains. According to the catalog, the particular map they needed had been made one hundred fifty years earlier by surveyors working for Empress Kanira, as part of her mad dream of building a road from Daltigoth to Hylo. However, finding the terse entry in the catalog was one thing; finding the actual map on the dusty, ill-maintained, seemingly endless shelves was quite another.
“Look at this!” Valaran said, drawing out an unusually large roll of parchment.
She was crouched at the foot of a tall shelf, surrounded by loose scrolls. Hair looped behind her ears, she’d hitched up the hem of her fine silk gown without hesitation to search among the dusty books on the bottommost shelves.
Sitting on the floor close by, and moving the four-flame oil lamp as she commanded, Tol watched her with frank affection. They were alone; the ancient librarian, an old friend of Valaran’s, had long since abandoned them to their quest and was snoring in his cubicle.
“I’ve heard of this!” she said, shaking the scroll excitedly. “Scholars claimed it was a myth, but here it is!”
“The map?”
“No, Kanira’s plan for a new capital city!”
They unrolled the heavy parchment. In fantastic detail, the vainglorious empress’s plans for her new capital were laid out. The city was circular and was to have been built at the end of Hylo Bay, approximately where Old Port was located. Kanira’s palace would have occupied a flat-topped artificial mountain in its center. The terraced mound would have been almost as big as the entire Inner City of Daltigoth now was.
“Merciful gods,” Tol breathed. “No wonder they deposed her!”
Valaran pointed. “Look here-a canal encircling the city’s outer wall, both banks paved with granite… twelve temples, evenly spaced around the circumference of the city… and the gardens! The gardens are tremendous, built on the terraced sides of the palace mountain!”
Tol sat back, shaking his head. “She was mad.”
“But what vision!”
Her profile, gilded by the warm lamplight, was vision enough for Tol. He never wanted to look away.
She felt his gaze, and a faint blush colored her cheeks.
“You know the dangers I’m facing, don’t you?” he said quietly.
Valaran concentrated on rolling up the large scroll. “All I know is that you are going away again,” she said ruefully. “You love danger more than-more than anything.”
“All the days since I returned, we’ve been so chaste,” Tol said, catching her wrist.
“I’ve told you. We’re not love-addled youths any longer.”
“No, we’re not, but I can’t go to my possible death like this, hollowed out and empty of you.” He tugged on her wrist, drawing her to him. She did not resist. “Will you let me go again, perhaps never to return, without a single embrace?”
“Can we stop at one?”
Tol fervently hoped not. He put his arm around her waist. Valaran touched her cheek to his.
Chapter 17
The next morning, after a whirlwind of preparations, Tol rode out with Early Stumpwater as his only companion. It was brilliantly cold, the sky clear as a dome of polished sapphire. All around them the land glittered under a heavy frost, every weed, every tree limb, and every sheaf of grain silvered with frozen dew. Tol was astride a tall black war-horse chosen from the imperial stables for his formidable strength and stamina, and in spite of the prickly temper that had earned him the nickname Tetchy. He led a pack horse laden with gear and provisions. Early was mounted on a white-maned sorrel pony he’d christened Longhound, after a dog, he’d ridden as a child.
After the fashion of his race, the kender’s name seemed a slippery issue. When, at the Inner City gate, guards asked his name for the daily log; he told them, “Early Thistledown.” A short time later, after regaling Tol with a wild tale about his adventures in the eastern lands beyond the Thel Mountains, the kender declared, “And that’s the true story of how I rescued the chief of the Karad-shu tribe, or my name isn’t Early Foxfire!”
Kiya was still asleep as Tol prepared to depart, after haranguing him late into the evening about risking this mission without her; he didn’t wake her. He left her a goodly purse of gold to live on in his absence, as well as two scrolls. The one sealed with red wax was a legal document, giving Kiya her freedom and absolving her of all obligations to him. Under Ergothian law a widow was liable for her spouse’s debts, monetary and social. It was not unheard of for a surviving wife to be forced into marriage with a man to whom her late husband owed money. Tol had no such debts, but he wanted to be certain Kiya would be unencumbered.
The second document was closed with white wax, as was customary with wills. Over the years Tol had amassed quite a fortune in war bounties and imperial largesse. In the will, drawn up by Felryn over a year ago while they were still fighting the Tarsans, he left everything to Miya, Kiya, and Egrin, and made bequests of gold to certain old comrades like Darpo. The millstone, listed among his possessions as “a decorative metal-and-glass artifact of ancient origin,” he left to Valaran. The night before he departed, he had revealed its power to her.