The dynast flushed in anger at the mockery. Pons tensed. The prince glanced up from his building.
“Insolence!” Kleitus glowered. “You refuse to answer?”
“It’s not a question of refusing, Sire. I’ve taken a vow, an oath. I could no more tell you how my magic works than”—Haplo’s eyes flicked to the dynast, returned coolly to the game—“than you could tell me how your magic raises the dead.”
The dynast sat back in his chair, turning a game piece over and over in his hand. Pons relaxed, emitting a long breath, unconscious, until now, that he’d been holding it in.
“Well, well,” said Kleitus at last. “Chancellor, you are delaying the game. His Highness has almost completed his wall and even the novice, here, is ahead of you.”
“I beg your pardon, Sire,” said Pons humbly, knowing and understanding his role in this charade.
“This palace is old, isn’t it?” said Haplo, studying the room.
Pons, affecting to be absorbed in building his wall, eyed the man from beneath lowered lids. The question had an idle, making-polite-conversation sound to it, but this wasn’t the type of man who engaged in mindless chatter. What was he after? The chancellor, watching carefully, saw Haplo’s gaze stray to several partially obliterated rune markings on the walls.
Kleitus took it on himself to respond. “The old part of the palace was built out of a natural formation, a cavern within a cavern, one might say. It stands on one of the highest points of elevation in Kairn Necros. The rooms on the upper levels once provided a quite magnificent view of the Fire Sea, or so we’re led to believe by ancient report. That was, of course, before the sea withdrew.” He paused to take a drink of liquor, glanced at his chancellor.
“The palace was originally a fortress,” Pons obediently picked up the thread of the story, “and there is evidence that a vast number of people passed through here at one time, undoubtedly on their way to the more habitable upper regions.”
The prince frowned. His hand jerked, he knocked several pieces off his partially completed wall.
“As you may have surmised,” Pons continued, “this room is in one of the older parts of the palace. Although, of course, we’ve made considerable modern improvements. The royal family’s living quarters are located back here; the air’s purer, don’t you agree? Official chambers and halls and ballrooms are to the front, near where you entered.”
“Seems a confusing sort of place,” Haplo pursued. “More like a bee’s hive than a palace.”
“Bee’s hive?” asked the dynast, raising an eyebrow and stifling a yawn. “I’m not familiar with that term.”
Haplo shrugged. “What I mean is, a fellow could get himself lost in here without too much trouble.”
“One learns one’s way around,” said the dynast, amused. “However, if you would truly be interested in seeing a place in which it is easy to lose oneself, we could show you the catacombs.”
“Or, as we know them, the dungeons,” the chancellor inserted, with a snigger.
“Pay attention to your wall, Pons, or we shall be here all night.”
“Yes, Sire.”
Nothing more was said. The walls were completed. Pons noted that Haplo, who maintained that he had never played, constructed his wall with perfect accuracy, although many beginning players found the markings on the bones confusing. It was almost, the chancellor thought, as if the runes said something to him they said to no one else.
“Excuse me, my dear sir,” said Pons fussily, leaning over to whisper to Haplo. “I believe you’ve made a mistake. That particular rune doesn’t belong up on the battlements, where you’ve put it, but down below.”
“Properly placed, it goes there,” said Haplo in his quiet voice.
“He’s right, Pons,” said Kleitus.
“Is he really, Sire?” The chancellor was flustered, laughed at himself. “I—I must have it wrong, then. I’ve never been very good at this game. I confess that all the bones look alike. These markings mean nothing to me,”
“They mean nothing to any of us, Chancellor,” said the dynast severely. “At least they didn’t, up until now.” A glance at Haplo. “You have to memorize them, Pons. I’ve told you that before.”
“Yes, Your Majesty. It’s good of Your Majesty to have such patience with me.”
“Your bid, Your Highness,” said Kleitus to the prince.
Edmund stirred restlessly in his chair. “One red hexagon.”
The dynast shook his head. “I’m afraid, Your Highness, that a red hexagon is an improper opening bid.”
The prince sprang to his feet. “Your Majesty, I have been arrested, beaten, insulted. If I had been alone, without a responsibility for others, I would have rebelled against such treatment that is not due from one Sartan to another, let alone from one king to another! But I am a prince. I hold the lives of others in my keeping. And I cannot concentrate on a ... a game”—he waved a hand contemptuously at the board—“when my people are suffering from cold and starvation!”
“Your people attacked an innocent village—”
“We did not attack, Sire!” Edmund was rapidly losing control.
“We wanted to buy food, wine. We intended to pay for it, but the people attacked us before we had a chance to say a word! Strange, now that I think of it. It was as if they’d been led to believe we would attack them!”
The dynast cast a look at Haplo, to see if he had anything to add.
Haplo toyed with a rune-bone, appeared bored.
“A perfectly natural precaution,” said the dynast, returning his attention to the prince. “Our scouts sight a large force of armed barbarians, moving toward our city, coming from the outland. What would have been your assumption?”
“Barbarians!” Edmund went white to the lips. “Barbarians! We are no more barbarians than ... than this fop of a chancellor is a barbarian! Our civilization is older than yours, one of the first established following the Sundering! Our beautiful city, open to the air, makes this one look like the stinking rat’s warren that it is!”
“And yet I believe you’ve come to beg to be allowed to live inside this ‘stinking rat’s warren,’” said Kleitus, leaning back and looking languidly at the prince through slit eyelids.
The prince’s livid face suffused with a red, feverish flush. “I have not come to beg! Work! We will work to earn our keep! All we ask is shelter from the killing rain and food to feed our children. Our dead and our living, too, if you want, will work in your fields, serve in your army. We will”—Edmund swallowed, as though forcing down the bitter stalagma—“we will acknowledge you as our liege lord .. .”
“How good of you,” murmured the dynast.
Edmund heard the sarcasm. His hands closed over the back of the chair, the fingers punching holes through the strong kairn grass in the desperate need to control his raging anger. “I wasn’t going to say this. You have driven me to it.”
Haplo stirred at this juncture. It seemed he might have interrupted, but he apparently thought better of it, relapsed into his former state of impassive observer.
“You owe us this! You destroyed my people’s homes! You leeched our water, you stole our heat and used it for your own. You made our beautiful lush land a barren and frozen desert! You killed our children, our elderly, our sick and infirm! I have maintained to my people that you brought this disaster on us through ignorance, that you knew nothing of our existence in Kairn Telest. We didn’t come in retribution. We didn’t come in revenge, although we could have. We came to ask our brethren to right the wrong they inadvertently committed. I will keep on telling them this, although I know, now, that it is a lie.”
Edmund left his place behind his chair. His fingers bled, the sharp prongs of the splintered kairn grass had driven through the flesh. He didn’t seem to notice. Moving around the table, he bent gracefully to one knee and spread his hands.
“Take my people in. Your Majesty, and I give you my word of honor that I will keep my knowledge of the truth from them. Take my people in and I will work with them, side by side. Take my people in, Sire, and I will bend my knees to you, as you require.” Although in my heart, I despise you.