“How quickly can you heal them, at least so they can ride again?” asked Ruan when they had settled the wounded men as comfortably as possible on the grass. “Without, that is, doing serious damage to yourself.”
“In a day or two—with Faolein’s help. The skill will be mine, of course, but he can lend me some of his strength.” Indeed, he had already done so, or she would never have been able to walk out of the wood.
“And I can do nothing to assist you?”
“You can spend the time bringing back our horses,” she said, sinking down into the grass. “My father says that none of them have gone very far, but they’ve scattered east and west.”
28
Day after day, there was rioting in Apharos. Though guards from the temple and the palace arrived each time to quell the disturbance in an orgy of bloodshed, the riots continued. Nothing like this had happened in all the years of Ouriána’s reign. Even now, the rioters did not appear to act in any spirit of rebellion but because a madness, a panic, swept through the streets.
A plague of hallucinations had the city in its grip, and most of the island. Fishermen reported that they had seen sea serpents sporting in the shallow coastal waters. In the inland towns, bells were said to peal out with iron voices many times a day—bells, which had been stripped from the fanes and shrines of the Old Religion and melted long ago. In Apharos itself, beggars declared they had seen temple guards briefly transformed into knights of a vanished chivalric order, and acolytes into votaries of the Seven Fates. The mass hysteria spread and spread, and there seemed to be no way to stop it—short of capturing and killing the man Ouriána held responsible.
After a week during which matters grew steadily worse, two of her priests found the Empress pacing like a lioness in the shady palace gardens. It was not, perhaps, the most auspicious location. The sun came there rarely, yet by some means or another her gardeners were able to nurture the growth of plants like nightshade, henbane, and sow’s-tongue, as well as some so poisonous that it was necessary to wear gloves and masks while harvesting the leaves to avoid being blasted by them.
“There remains some question,” said Vitré, after he had been obliged to report no success in finding the man, “whether the astrologer—mage—whatever he may be—actually causes these prodigies, or merely attracts them.”
“Or,” added the red-robed figure who had come with him, the furiádh Scioleann, “whether the magician is drawn to them. Occasionally, they do appear to precede him.”
Her breath came out in a long hiss. “And no one has been able to learn who he truly is—or how or why he contrived to live here in such complete obscurity for so many years?”
Vitré flinched. There was that in her face that might have killed a more timorous man with a single look.
“That very point, your seers and magicians surmise, is the heart of the matter. Was it all a clever disguise, or have forces already at work restored him to…whoever and whatever he was before?”
The priest hesitated, gathering his courage before offering what might or might not have been welcome news. “A name has been suggested.”
“And that name is?” Her voice throbbed with emotions barely held in check.
“Several of our older citizens have said they recognize him as one of the emissaries from Leal who attended your father’s coronation. Indeed, he seems to be seeking out individuals who were attached to the court during that era, and asking them questions. And because the movements of the other two wizards have been accounted for all during the years since, that would leave—”
“Éireamhóine.” Her teeth clenched so hard, Vitré was almost certain he could hear them rattle. “Who should have been dead these twenty years!”
Scioleann cleared his throat once, twice, as if preparing to speak—and then refrained. Again it fell to Vitré. “It is not absolutely certain that the man we are seeking is he. If Camhóinhann were here, I think the matter could be quickly settled.”
Her restless movements had taken her from one end of the gardens to the other. Now she whirled around and started back. “I do not need Camhóinhann. Now that the name has come to my attention, it will take very little time to learn the truth. And if it is Éireamhóine I will crush him!”
Struggling to keep up with her, Vitré spoke swiftly to make amends. “Naturally I never thought otherwise. I only meant that if the High Priest were here you would not be inconvenienced—”
“There will be no inconvenience. He has caused me so much annoyance already, I look forward with pleasure to the prospect. By tomorrow morning, he will be dead.”
“If that is your will,” said the priest, “there can be no doubt of it.”
But late that evening, when her little hunchbacked chancellor opened the door to the chamber where he kept all his records and interviewed his spies, he found her waiting for him there, white-faced and trembling with fury.
“He is not dead,” she said. “This upstart magician has defied all my spells. Those who thought they recognized him were mistaken. Am I to be served only by fools and incompetents?”
“But perhaps there was no mistake,” said Noz, fingering his white beard. “Perhaps—”
“No,” she replied fiercely. “Not on my own island—not if I had his true name—he could never turn my spells.”
“I was about to say, he may no longer be on Phaörax. He was last seen two days ago, and many ships have departed since then. If we send men to all the ports to ask questions, we may learn where he has gone.”
She glared at him with her cat-green eyes. “And in the meantime he may pass out of easy reach. No. I will sink every galley and sailing ship on the ocean within a two-day voyage. That way we can be certain.”
“But your own ships—” the hunchback protested.
“Must unfortunately be sacrificed,” she said briskly. “I will not be thwarted in this. The wizard will die, and these annoyances will end.”
Noz limped across the room on his crooked legs, a deep frown furrowing his brow. It had not, after all, been absolutely proven whether the transformation from mountebank to magician had precipitated any of these troubling occurrences—or was merely another result. Nor could he be easy with the notion of sinking so many Pharaxion ships.
Yet he had sense enough to recognize when it was impossible to reason with her. He had known her too long to be mistaken about that.
Her decision made, Ouriána wasted little time ascending to the isolated rooftop where she sometimes worked her spells. Elemental magic, most particularly on the scale that she planned, was best worked in the open air. The last time she had attempted such a spell-casting indoors, the results had very nearly been disastrous. But she had been younger then, and was wiser now.
She had delayed only so long as it took to send some of her most trusted servants on before her with the apparatus of magic. By the time she arrived, they had already arranged everything according to her instructions, then made a silent departure. Of all the nine towers, this was the only one with a flat roof, or stairs that offered access. An ancestor of hers with lesser gifts had commanded that it be built so. It offered an unobstructed view of the night sky.
Overhead, wheels, spirals, vortexes of stars spun in the black vault of night. Even the plodding ordinary stars in their fixed constellations seemed to shine with extraordinary brilliance. And while the moon was slender and still very young, she knew that its light would be sufficient. The omens could not be more favorable.
Why look to the sky for portents? said her other self. You drive the stars. By your least deeds they are influenced. Even after so many years, a delicious thrill passed through her at the thought.