She relaxed and sat back a little into the familiar bulk of her Council seat. So this is just Council business after all. If the others hadn't looked so serious, she'd have chuckled at herself. See, Elspeth, the world doesn't revolve around you!
Selenay rose when the others had settled themselves. "This messenger arrived from the Eastern Border earlier this afternoon, from Shallan, one of Herald-Captain Kerowyn's lieutenants. She had ordered this messenger to come to me, first, before reporting to his Captain." Elspeth stifled a smile. there's one in the eye for anyone who still wonders where Kero's loyalties lie. Or the Skybolts'. for that matter.
"Since the Circle was in session, and since I understood that his message was fairly urgent, I had him brought here. After hearing what his message was, I decided to call an emergency Council meeting." She nodded at the messenger as she sat down. "Herald Selwin, the floor is yours.
The messenger cleared his throat-though not self-consciously, Elspeth noted-and stood. "I think most of you know that the Eastern Border is considered a sensitive enough area for messengers to be posted at garrisons full time. My current post is the town garrisoned by Kerowyn's Skybolts. Now, what you probably don't know is that the Skybolts have-with the Queen's knowledge and permission-been engaging in some-ah-covert activities." He flushed a little, and Elspeth raised a surprised eyebrow. Some of the other Councilors muttered a little, and one of them stood up; Lady Kester, speaker for the West. "Just what do you mean by 'covert' activities?" she asked sharply, looking a great deal like a horse who is about to refuse a jump.
"Well-" Herald Selwin glanced at the Queen, who shook her head imperceptibly. "Some of them-I can't talk about. I'm sure you'll understandthe Queen and the Consort both know every move, but it's very much a situation where the fewer who know, the better."
"I trust the situation that brought you here is something you can talk about," the woman said dryly.
"Uh-yes, of course." Selwin quickly regained his aplomb. "We've been smuggling; people and information out of Hardorn, and-uhsupplies in. One of the people we just smuggled out was not just one of Ancar's farmers who has been pressed too far; this was an escaping prisoner."
We? Huh, that means Selwin's involved, too. He's not just a messenger.
Elspeth glanced around the table; from the looks of speculation, she suspected that this had not come entirely as a surprise.
"This wasn't an ordinary prisoner, either," Selwin continued. "He had been one of the under-secretaries in Ancar's officer corps." This time murmurs of surprise met the statement. "He held the same position under Ancar's father, and the reason he was never replaced, like so many were, is that he is so ordinary as to be invisible. He says-and we've Truth-Spelled him, so we believe him-that he didn't know what was going on until recently." Elspeth was very skeptical of that statement, until Selwin finished describing the former prisoner. Then she could believe it. Lieutenant Rojer Klinseinem was exactly the kind of focused, obsessive individual their own Seneschal and Lord Marshal prayed to see come into their secretarial corps. His life was in his accounting books; he never left his office except to eat and sleep, and he truly never thought about what those figures he toted up daily meant.
Until Ancar's excesses among his people began to affect even him. He found officers and court officials he had known all his life vanishing without a trace. He discovered friends, neighbors, even children in the street avoiding him when he wore his uniform. Then he noted some odd discrepancies in his accounts. One of his duties was to take care of the prison accounts. The number of prisoners in the cells had gone up, substantially, but the amount of money allotted for their maintenance had not increased in the corresponding amounts. Furthermore, the names of those imprisoned changed, sometimes weekly. For all his shortsightedness, he was an ethical man, and all these things worried him, so he decided to investigate them himself, an investigation that led him eventually to the prisons and the barracks rooms, then the king's own dungeons.
What he discovered horrified him. Then one of the king's sorcerers caught him.
He'd had the sense to keep his mouth shut about most of what he'd learned, and because he was so completely ordinary, with no record of ever thinking for himself, he was actually put under house arrest until he could be questioned by someone they called the
"Truth-finder General." He didn't wait to discover who or what that was; he got out a back window, stole a horse, and fled toward Valdemar.
He remembered the old days, the days of friendship with Valdemar and its Queen, and he was no longer inclined to believe the official stories about the cause of the hostilities between Valdemar and Hardorn. He fled toward a hoped-for sanctuary with the hounds on his heels.
"I won't go into all the details," Selwin said, "You can question him yourself when we bring him here. Right now he's not up to much traveling."
Elspeth nodded, grimly. Nothing Rojer said would surprise her, not after some of Kero's stories-and not after what had happened to Talia.
"What's important at the moment is that he learned where the prisoners were vanishing to. They're being used as sacrifices in blood-rites-and there are more of them dying every week. Ancar is bringing in mages, lots of mages, and those he is not buying outright or coercing, he's making alliances with. Rojer says that Ancar's long-range plans include another major war with Valdemar, and this one is going to include those mages as a major part, rather than in a support capacity.
The one that caught him boasts that not even a god would be able to hold defenses against all the mages Ancar is gathering." Now the muttering around the Council table grew louder, and there were distinct undertones of alarm.
"That's not all," Selwin said, over the voices. The Councilors quieted, and some looked at him with real fear in their eyes. "Right after we got Rojer out, there was an attack on the Skybolts' garrison town. A magical attack, and it got across the Border. Past the protections."
"Why?" asked the Lord Patriarch-Father Ricard, who had replaced elderly Father Aldon. At the same time, the Lord Marshal asked "How?"
"Why should be fairly obvious," Prince Daren said, the first time he'd spoken since the meeting began. "They knew we had Rojer, and they felt what he had to tell us was important enough to try to silence him.
Selwin nodded. "Precisely, Your Highness," he replied. "As for 'how," I presume the mage managed to overcome the Border-protections somehow. I saw the attack. At first, I thought it was some kind of mist, and I didn't think it looked all that dangerous. But Lieutenant Shallan said the Skybolts had seen this sort of thing before, and got us all evacuated; she said they had something to take care of it, but it would only work at a distance. The 'mist' turned out to be a swarm of tiny insects, no bigger than gnats, but poisonous enough to drop a man. And they were guided, there's no doubt of that. They came out of a kind of hole in the sky." He shook his head. "I really can't properly describe it. But the hole appeared near the outskirts of town, inside the Valdemar Border."
These insects," the Seneschal asked, "are they gone now?"