“ I would not. He will come here.”
Lord Mustor took an involuntary step backwards, fear now obvious in his face. Vaelin could tell the situation dwarfed him, he was being tested and found wanting. “Highness…” he stammered. “My father… it is not right…”
The King let out a long sigh of exasperation. “Lord Mustor, I fought two wars against your grandfather and found him an enemy of considerable courage and cunning. I never liked him but I did respect him greatly and I feel he would be grateful he is no longer here to see his grandson gabble like the whoring drunkard he is when his fief stands on the brink of war.”
The King raised a hand to beckon Captain Smolen over. “Lord Mustor will be our guest in the palace until further notice,” the King told him. “Please escort him to suitable quarters and ensure he is untroubled by unwanted visitors.”
“ You know my father will not come here,” Lord Mustor stated flatly. “He will not be put to the question. Imprison me here if you must but it will make no difference. A man doesn’t place his favoured son in the hands of his enemy.”
The King paused, regarding the Cumbraelin lord with a narrow gaze. Surprised you, Vaelin realised. Didn’t think he had the stomach to speak up.
“ We’ll see what your father does,” the King said. He nodded to Captain Smolen and Lord Mustor was led from the room, two guards following close behind.
The King turned to one of his scribes. “Draft a letter to the Fief Lord of Cumbrael commanding his presence here within three weeks.” He pushed his chair back and got to his feet. “This meeting is over. Aspect Arlyn, Brother Vaelin, please join me in my rooms.”
Everything in the King’s quarters gave an overwhelming impression of order, from the angle of the finely woven carpets on the tiled marble floor to the papers on the large oaken desk. Vaelin found nothing to compare to the cramped, hidden room of books and scrolls he had been led to eight months before. That was where he worked, he realised. This is where he wants people to think he works.
“ Sit, please brothers,” the King gestured at two chairs as he settled behind his desk. “I can send for refreshment if you wish.”
“ We are content, Highness,” Aspect Arlyn replied in a neutral tone. He remained standing, obliging Vaelin to follow suit.
The King’s gaze lingered on the Aspect for a moment before he turned to Vaelin, his lips forming a smile beneath his beard. “Note the tone, my boy. No respect but no defiance either. You’d do well to learn it. I suspect your Aspect is angry with me. Why can that be I wonder?”
Vaelin looked at the Aspect who stood expressionless, offering no reply.
“ Well?” the King pressed. “Tell me, brother. What could have aroused the anger of your Aspect?”
“ I cannot speak for my Aspect, Highness. The Aspect speaks for me.”
The King snorted a laugh and smacked his palm on the desk. “You hear it, Arlyn? His mother’s voice. Clear as a bell. Don’t you find it chilling at times?”
Aspect Arlyn’s tone was unchanged. “No, Highness.”
“ No.” The King shook his head, chuckling slightly and reaching for a wine decanter on his desk. “No, I don’t suppose you do.” He poured himself a glass of wine and settled back into his chair. “Your Aspect,” he told Vaelin, “is angry because he believes I have set the Realm on the road to war. He believes, with some justification I might add, that the Fief Lord of Cumbrael will happily let me hack his drunken son’s head from his shoulders before setting foot outside his own borders. This in turn will force me to send the Realm Guard into his fief to root him out. Battles and bloodshed will result, towns and cities will burn, many will die. Despite his vocation as a warrior, and therefore a practitioner of death in all its many forms, the Aspect believes this to be a regrettable action. And yet he will not tell me so. It has always been his way.”
Silence reigned as the two men matched stares and Vaelin experienced a sudden revelation: They hate each other. The King and the Aspect of the Sixth Order detest the sight of one another.
“ Tell me, brother,” the King went on, addressing Vaelin but keeping his eyes on the Aspect. “What do you think the Fief Lord will do when he hears I have taken his son and commanded his presence?”
“ I do not know the man, Highness…”
“ He’s not a complicated fellow, Vaelin. Reckon it out. I daresay you’ve enough of your mother’s wit for that.”
Vaelin found himself disliking the way the King’s tongue twisted around the mention of his mother but forced out a reply “He will be… angry. He will see your action as a threat. He will be put on guard, gathering his forces and watching his borders.”
“ Good. What else will he do?”
“ It seems he has but two choices, to follow your command or ignore it and face war.”
“ Wrong, he has a third choice. He can attack. With all his might. Do you think he will do that?”
“ I doubt Cumbrael would have the strength to face the Realm Guard, Highness.”
“ And you would be correct. Cumbrael has no actual army beyond a few hundred guardsmen loyal to the Fief Lord. What it does have is thousands of peasant bowmen it can call upon in time of need. A formidable force, having ridden through an arrow storm or two in my time, I would know. But no cavalry, no heavy infantry. No chance, in fact, of attacking Asrael or matching the Realm Guard in open field. The Fief Lord of Cumbrael is far from being an admirable character but he does have enough of his father’s brains to heed a reminder of his weakness.”
The King smiled again, turning away from the Aspect and waving a hand in placation. “Oh don’t worry Arlyn. In a fortnight or so the Fief Lord will send his messenger with a suitably grovelling apology for not attending in person and a plausible, if not very convincing, explanation for the letters, probably attached to a chest full of gold. I will be persuaded by my wise and peace-loving son to withdraw my command and release the drunkard. Thereafter, I doubt the Fief Lord will be giving any more letters of free passage to denier fanatics. More importantly he’ll have remembered his place in this Realm.”
“ Am I to take it, Highness,” the Aspect said, “that you are convinced the Fief Lord is the author of the letters?”
“ Convinced? No. But it seems likely. The man may not be a fanatic like the fools Brother Vaelin dispatched in the Martishe but he does have a weakness for his god. Probably fretting over his place in the Eternal Fields now he’s passed his fiftieth year. In any case, whether he wrote the letters or not makes little difference, the problem lies in the mere fact of their existence. Once they came to light I had little choice but to act. At least this way the Fief Lord will feel a debt to my son when he ascends the throne.”
The King quickly downed the rest of his wine and rose from his desk. “Enough state-craft, I have other business with you brothers. Come.” He beckoned them into a smaller adjoining room no less ornately decorated, but in place of paintings or tapestries the walls were adorned with swords, a hundred or more gleaming blades. A few were of the Asraelin pattern but there were many others the style of which Vaelin had never seen. Great two handed broad swords nearly six feet in length. Sickle-like sabres with blades that curved almost in a semi-circle. Long needle like rapiers with no edge and bowl shaped guards. Swords with blades fashioned of gold or silver despite the fact that such metals were too soft to ever make useful weapons.
“ Pretty aren’t they?” the King commented. “Been collecting them for years. Some are gifts, some are the spoils of war, some I bought simply because I liked the look of them. Every so often I give one away,” he turned to Vaelin, smiling again, “to a young man like you, brother.”
Vaelin experienced a sudden resurgence of the unease that had gripped him during his first meeting with the King. The unsettling knowledge that he was a small part of a larger unseen design. The wrongness, what Nersus Sil Nin had called the blood-song, was singing faintly at the back of his mind. If he gives me a sword…