“As he should,” declared Relyn.
“But dead men pay no taxes, and now the ruler must tax the others more heavily to pay the soldiers because there are fewer men to tax. And he will need more soldiers because people will be even more unhappy. More soldiers require even more taxes, and that makes people even less happy. Do you see where that leads?”
“But …” Relyn looked up at Nylan.
“Control is not what it seems, young Relyn. If you kill a man, you make an enemy out of his family. How many enemies can a ruler afford? Do you see the marshal eating better food than her guards?”
“No.”
“Does she wear jewels or great trappings of wealth?”
“No.”
“Will her guards follow her anywhere?”
“I think they would.”
Nylan smiled. “Think it over.” He walked down the steps, wondering why he had bothered. What he had said would certainly have upset anyone in Relyn’s position, and the young noble was probably very upset. But what good had it done? His head throbbed slightly. Why? Because what he’d said wasn’t quite true? Ryba did have one thing the others didn’t-power. It might be power out of necessity, but it was power. Nylan shook his head. He couldn’t even present provoking thoughts that might be misleading without getting a headache, or so it seemed.
Nylan rubbed his forehead as he walked down the steps past the great room, empty except for Ayrlyn, gently strumming the lutar-probably refining or working on another song. He paused for a moment, watching the redhead struggle with a chord or a phrase, but she did not look his way.
He turned toward the south door, where chill windsseeped through the cracks, and a fine layer of snow covered the stones behind the door, shifting with each gust that buffeted the tower.
Nylan resumed his descent, thinking about the cradle he was crafting. But Dyliess would need somewhere to sleep, and a cradle made sense.
LI
FROM THE INNER corner of the room wells the warmth of a well-banked fire, though Terek still wears a heavy white woolen vest over his robes. The white wizard’s face is red with strain, but Sillek ignores the wizard’s effort and studies the image in the glass on the table.
In the center of the swirling white mists is a dark tower, rising out of the snows. A beaten path runs uphill from the tower toward a canyon in the base of the higher western slopes. Thin spirals of smoke rise from the twin chimneys in the pyramidal roof of the black tower.
A pair of figures in black coats walk briskly uphill, their breath leaving a thick trail of white. The snow on each side of the path rises above the heads of either.
The flat of the snow before the tower is crossed with sets of flat tracks, ski tracks that spread in all directions, with some circling back to the short causeway before the tower. A second packed-snow trail leads to the ridge separating the tower from the forest below, and a pair of horses drag a tree trunk up the ridge. Beside them walks a figure bearing a pack.
“It looks normal,” observed Sillek.
“Have you seen enough, ser?” asks Terek.
“I think so.”
The wizard relaxes, and the mists collapse, leaving a blank glass. “It’s too normal, ser. That snow is over theirheads, and there must be three cubits more packed underfoot. The air is so cold that their very breath falls like snow itself, and they walk to check their mounts-those are stables up in that canyon. Could your armsmen do that?”
“Not for long.” Sillek turns to the wizard. “What is your meaning, Ser Wizard?”
“They are evil angels, ser. They must be destroyed, or they will destroy us. No one else could walk the Roof of the World without freezing into ice.”
Sillek nods without agreeing. “Thank you, Ser Wizard. If you discover anything new, please let me know.”
“Will you destroy them, ser?”
“Ser Terek, as you pointed out, we can do nothing until the snows melt, and it becomes warm enough for normal men on the Roof of the World.”
“Yes, Lord Sillek.”
“Then we will see what we can do.” Sillek nods once more as he leaves the warm quarters of the wizard. His face is impassive as he walks the long corridor and climbs another flight of stairs.
The guard opens the door to his quarters, and he closes it, stepping quietly past the sitting room to the bedchamber where Zeldyan sits in a chair, knitting a small blanket.
She smiles and stands, setting aside her work. “You look glum, Sillek.”
The Lord of Lornth hugs his consort, feeling the beginning of a gentle rounding of her figure against him. “How are you doing?”
“Fine. I can feel him kick.” Zeldyan smiles as they separate.
“How can you? You’re not that far along.”
“I can. It’s gentle, but he does kick.”
“You always call the child ‘him.’”
“That’s because he is, and we’ll call him-”
“Hush. That’s bad luck, to name a child before he’s born.”
“As you say.” Zeldyan grins. “Why were you so displeased?”
“I had asked Terek to scree the Roof of the World. Mymother has again pressed the issue. Now Terek is pressing me to attack the Roof of the World. No one else but evil angels could survive that cold.” Sillek shrugs. “No one else built a huge stone tower with hearths up there, either, but he says that those women must be destroyed, that they’re too evil to live.”
“Are they?”
“What do you think?” he counters, glancing back toward the closed doors.
“They’re probably no more evil than anyone else. They come from somewhere else, and they have nowhere else to go.” Zeldyan smiles momentarily before continuing. “Like those who have nowhere else to go, they will fight to the last to keep what they have. That will make them very dangerous.”
“It already has,” he points out, looking toward the window and across the light blanket of snow that has already begun to melt, even though the clouds have blocked the winter sun.
“You have already committed to undertake the expedition to Rulyarth.” Zeldyan points out. “Though we must say nothing publicly.”
“And so I will. If I am successful, though, the wizards, the believers, and everyone else will be pushing me …”
“And your mother,” Zeldyan adds gently.
“I know.” He sighs. “Rulers are always ruled by everyone else’s expectations.”
Zeldyan steps close to him and takes his face in her gentle hands. “Even I have expectations, love.” Her lips brush his.
“Yours I can handle,” he whispers and returns the kiss.
LII
DESPITE THE HEAVY woolen blanket that covered the thin thermal blanket and the crude but heavy woolen nightshirt he wore, Nylan was cold. A thin layer of crystals from his own breath scattered off the blanket as he sat up. The room was dark, with only the hint of gray seeping through the thoroughly frosted single armaglass window, although Nylan knew, alerted by the sounds drifting up the steps from the great room, that it was late enough. Another storm had descended upon the Roof of the World, with yet more snow.
As if to punctuate his conclusion, the wind provided a low howl, and the window casements rattled. A few fine flakes sifted around the iced-over shutters as Nylan sat on the edge of the couch and stared at the peg holding clothes he knew would feel like ice against his skin.
“Don’t take the covers,” said Ryba. “It is cold up here.”
“Another furnace day.”
“It’s been a furnace day every day for the last eight-day, and we’re running through wood all too fast. Fierral’s coughing out her lungs because she spent too much time in the cold. Istril’s not that much better, and I worry because she’s pregnant.”
“Ayrlyn helped them both.”
“There’s a limit to what she can do, though.”
“Just like there are limits on the way you seem to be able to see pieces of the future,” Nylan pointed out.
Ryba sat up on the couch and swirled the covers around her. “I hate feeling this awkward.”