"She's a sorceress!" Stringfellow cried. "She's got the people bewitched, I tell you. She even has them believing that monstrous orc who travels with her is a paladin!"
"She's done much to restore commerce to the roads of Tethyr," Korun said, "and it's all bypassing Zazesspur. At this rate, the people of Tethyr, to say nothing of Zazesspur, will soon begin to wonder what they need us for. Clearly this can't go on." "What do wish me to do about it?" Hardisty asked mildly.
"You're the man who would be king, Faneuil," Lady Korun said. "You tell us." "Very well," Hardisty said crisply. "She shall be dealt with. Enough?"
"And who will do the dealing?" Stringfellow asked. Hardisty grinned. "Why, I should say-none less than the lord of Zazesspur."
"You ask much," Baron Zam said.
"He will deliver much," Armenides said serenely. "He is touched with destiny."
"He'd best be," said Zam.
"Our Malhalvadon grows importunate," Armenides said when the councilors had gone. "Perhaps it's time he gave way to one of the Brothers Hedgeblossom. Or both. Surely the council has other bits of deadwood that want pruning."
"You surprise me, Father. The Hedgeblossoms are our staunch foes. They seek to overturn everything we've worked for."
Armenides smiled. "Why, isn't that all the more reason to bring them on the council? In every time and every clime, there's nothing scarcer than a rebel who stays avid to cast down power once he shares it›" Hardisty thought about this. Like many things Armenides told him, it sounded bizarre at first, until his mind began to fit itself around the concept. "What of the other council members? Some of them might object to raising up such firebrands."
The priest spread his hands. "Then they are obstructers and unworthy of the positions they hold. Retribution has a way of seeking such out." Here was a different Armenides than the eversmiling figure the public knew, but one in truth no less benevolent. The common ruck might not understand, but Hardisty did.
He had done things he was uneasy about. Some even gave him nightmares. But he knew the truth of what Armenides taught: when one served Good, to hold back from using any tool available was dereliction to the point of affirmative evil. Just as one must sometimes spank a child less it race heedless into the path of an oncoming carriage and be trampled, so sometimes apparently cruel measures were in truth grandmotherly kindness.
"You must keep pressure on the council to crown you king as soon as possible, my lord," the cleric said. "The One Below has great patience, but even that wears thin. And we have much need of him yet if we are to bring your visions to fruition."
Baron Hardisty shuddered, as he always did at mention of the hidden partner in their great enterprise. Politics made strange bedfellows: just look at that stiff-necked old tower of rectitude Hembreon and that rogue Anakul. The way the two voted in council, you'd think they sat next to one another in temple.
Him Below could be… handled. Armenides assured him of it.
"First I've got to settle this matter of the Countess Morninggold," Hardisty said. "Despite what I told our friends, I really don't know how."
He shook his head. "I suppose it's too late to give her her wretched caravan back." Perhaps the greatest of Zaranda Star's many impertinences was that she was running Star Protective Service as a profit-making venture, and it was returning handsome profit indeed, from what his spies reported.
The cleric shrugged. "Raise an army and crush her."
"That might not be easy."
"Good my lord! However they may style themselves, her followers are naught but peasants playing at soldiers. You're a proven war leader, and command real soldiers."
Hardisty went to his chair and sat. "War's an expensive game, Father. And here's the cursed thing about it: You can never know who will win."
He shrugged. "Zaranda Star's a seasoned commander, too, and we wont do well to underestimate her. Oh, if s not that I doubt we'd prevail against her and her rabble. But each a victory could prove costly. If we weaken ourselves too much in crushing her, we might find others stepping forward to challenge us-Ithmong, to name one."
Armenides nodded. "Very well, my son." He smiled benignly. "Fortunate it is that we have… other assets."
"You mean you have other assets."
"Indeed."
Then pray, make use of them. Oh, and when you go, could you send for the girl who was assisting me before, Duke Hembreon's daughter? With all due respect for your All-Friends, Father, I find most of them pretty dull fish, though helpful as can be. She, on the other hand, is quite vivacious."
"An air of gravity is concomitant with a certain stage in studying the mysteries of Ao All-Father," Armenides said. "Young Tatrina has not yet attained that stage; that's all."
"Well, thank goodness for that Good afternoon, Father."
When Armenides arrived at his quarters on the palace's uppermost floor, the columnar doorposts- which were magic things, and alive, a fact quite unknown to the palace's builders-did not voice their shrill, tormented warning of intrusion. Reassured, the cleric entered.
The magically warded chambers were redolent with steamy, welcoming smells of cooking. They were simply and sparsely furnished. On a shelf sat the brazen head. Its eyes and mouth abruptly lit with yellow fire.
"Report! Report!" it demanded in a voice Zaranda Star would have recognized, though not as coming from it. It was a whisper, dry as wind over long-dead leaves.
"There's little enough to report," Armenides said. "I urged him to get tough with the council about recognizing him as lord of the city. He seems of a mind to. Beyond that, it's business as usual."
"Not enough! He is weak."
"He is weak in ways that serve us. Likewise is he mighty in rationalization."
"He must become king soon. Only then can the transformation take place."
"I assure you no one is more eager to see Baron Hardisty made king than Baron Hardisty."
"And the girl? What of the girl? Why do you not bring her to me?"
"Sweet Tatrina? She's more useful as she is, another golden cord binding him to me. He's quite infatuated with her."
"All the more reason to make sure of her."
"Come, now, we've been over this before. She can scarce beguile him if she starts acting like a zombie. And she's eager enough to do anything I ask, not that I've requested anything too controversial." He chuckled. "It's for the love of Ao, after all."
"You had best be right."
"I am. Now: attend. Trouble not the sleep of Zazesspur tonight. I have a message I need sent over some distance. It will take concentration, even for you."
"Do not command me! I command! Do not dare command me!"
"Forgive me, О mighty L'yafv-Afvonn, I beseech thee. I abase myself, I grovel, I truckle, I'm lower than dirt. Now will you please just do it?"
"What do you want?"
The cleric explained briefly. When he finished, the fire went out of the head's eyes and mouth. Both closed.
After a moment the bronze eyelids opened. "You can't imagine how vexing that is," the head said in its customary voice, "serving as mouthpiece for that thing in the cellar."
"I don't care to try," the priest said.
"Why don't you just listen to me? I can reveal unto you secrets-awful, indescribable secrets. All I ask-"
Armenides silenced it with a hand wave. "Little that is awful and indescribable," he said, "is secret from me."