“You are not a priest of Quenesti Pah. Who do you serve?”
Vedvedsica smiled and stepped farther into the small room. Sithas automatically backed away, maintaining the distance between them. “Your Highness is an elf of great erudition and education. You know the unfairness of Silvanesti law, which only allows the worship of…”
“Who do you serve?” Sithas repeated sharply.
The gray-robed elf dropped his reticence. “My master is Gilean, the Gray Voyager.”
Sithas tossed the broken end of his sword on the table. His concern was eased. Gilean was a god of Neutrality, not Evil. His worship was not officially recognized in Silvanost, but it wasn’t actively suppressed either.
“My father has consulted with you?” he asked skeptically.
“Frequently.” Vedvedsica’s face took on a crafty expression, as if he were privy to things even the speaker’s heir did not know.
“If you can cure my father, why did you come to me?” wondered Sithas.
“The speaker is an old, noble prince. Today he is ill. Someday, when he is gone, you will be speaker. I wish to continue my relationship with House Royal,” he said, picking his words carefully.
Anger colored Sithas’s face. He snatched up the broken sword and held the squared-off edge to the sorcerer’s throat. His relationship with House Royal indeed! Vedvedsica held his ground, though he tilted his round head away from the blade.
“You speak treason,” Sithas said coldly. “You insult me and my family. I will see you in chains in the lowest reaches of the palace dungeons, gray cleric!”
Vedvedsica’s pale gray eyes bored into Sithas’s furious face. “You wish to have your twin brother home, do you not?” the cleric asked insinuatingly.
The broken sword remained at Vedvedsica’s throat, but Sithas’s interest was piqued. He frowned.
The sorcerer sensed his hesitation. “I can find him, great prince.” Stated Vedvedsica firmly. “I can help you.”
Sithas remembered the terrible feelings that had swept over him when he’d first grasped the vibrating sword. So much pain and rage. Wherever Kith was, he was in definite trouble.
“How would you do it?” asked the prince, almost too faintly to be heard.
“A simple act,” noted the cleric. His gaze flickered down to the blade.
“I’ll not break the law. No invocations to Gilean.” Said the prince harshly,
“Of course not, Highness. You yourself will do all that needs to be done.”
Sithas bade him explain, but Vedvedsica’s eyes traveled once more to the blade at his throat. “If you please, Highness—?” Sithas swung the weapon away. The sorcerer swallowed audibly, then continued. “There is in all of us who share the blood of Astarin the ability to reach out to the ones we love, across great distances, and summon them to us.”
“I know of what you speak,” said Sithas. “But the Call has been forbidden to Kith-Kanan. I cannot break the speaker’s edict.”
“Ah,” said the sorcerer with a wry smile. “But the speaker has need of my services to heal his fever. Perhaps I can strike a bargain!”
Sithas was growing weary of this fellow’s impudence. Striking bargains with the speaker indeed! But if there was the slightest hope of getting Kith back—and healing his father—
Vedvedsica remained silent, sensing his best hope lay in letting Sithas come to a decision of his own accord.
“What must I do to call Kith-Kanan home?” Sithas asked finally.
“If you have some object that is strongly identified with your brother, that will help your concentration. It can be a focus for your thoughts.”
After a long, tense silence, Sithas spoke. “I will take you to my father,” he said. He brought the broken sword up once more to the cleric’s throat. “But if anything you have told me is false, I shall turn you over to the Clerical Court Council for trial as a charlatan. You know what they do to illicit sorcerers?” Vedvedsica waved a hand casually. “Very well. Come!”
As Sithas opened the door, Vedvedsica caught his arm. The prince stared furiously at the cleric’s hand until Vedvedsica deigned to remove it. “I cannot walk the halls of the palace in plain sight, great prince,” the cleric said mysteriously. “Discretion is necessary for someone like myself.” He took a small bottle from his sash and pulled the cork. An acrid smell flooded the small room. “If you will allow me to use this unguent. When warmed by the skin, it creates a fog of uncertainty around those who wear it. No one we pass will be certain they see or hear us.”
Sithas felt he had no choice. Vedvedsica applied the reddish oil to his fingers and traced a magic sigil on Sithas’s forehead. He did the same to himself. The unguent left a burning sensation on Sithas’s skin. He had an intense desire to wipe the poisonous-smelling stuff off, but as the gray-clad cleric displayed no discomfort, the prince mastered the impulse.
“Follow me,” advised Vedvedsica. At least that’s what Sithas thought he said. The words came to his ear distantly, waveringly, as if the cleric spoke from the bottom of a well.
They ascended the steps, passing a trio of handmaids on the way. The elf girls’ forms were indistinct to Sithas, though the background of stair and wall was solid and clear. The maids’ eyes flickered over the prince and his companion, but no recognition showed on their faces. They continued on down the stair. The “fog of uncertainty” was working just as the cleric had claimed.
On the penultimate floor of the tower, they paused before the doors to the speaker’s private rooms. Servants stood outside, idle. They paid no heed to the prince or the cleric.
“Strange,” mused Sithas, words falling from his lips like drops of cold water. His own voice sounded muffled. “Why are they not inside with the speaker?”
He opened the door and hurried in. “Father?” he called. Sithas passed through the antechamber, with Vedvedsica close behind. After a glance around the room, he saw his father’s crumpled form lying on the stone floor by the window. He shouted for assistance.
“They cannot hear you.” Vedvedsica said, wafting into Sithas’s line of sight. Desperately the prince knelt and lifted his father. How light he felt, the great elf who ruled the elven nation! As Sithas placed his father on the bed, Sithel’s eyes fluttered open. His face was dazed.
“Kith? Is that you?” he asked in a strange, faraway voice.
“No, Father, it’s Sithas,” said the elf prince, stricken with anguish.
“You’re a good boy, Kith…but a willful fool. Why did you bare a weapon in the tower? You know it’s a sacred place.”
Sithas turned to the waiting Vedvedsica. “Take the spell off us!” he demanded fiercely. The cleric bowed and dampened a cloth at a wash basin, then wiped the prince’s forehead clean. Immediately, it seemed, the fog vanished from his senses. Just seconds later the cleric materialized, seemingly out of nowhere.
Swiftly Vedvedsica took some dried herbs from his shoulder pouch and crushed them into a pewter goblet that stood on a table near the speaker’s bed. Concerned, Sithas watched him work. The cleric next soaked the crushed dry leaves in crimson nectar, swirled the goblet to mix the ingredients, and held out the goblet to the prince.
“Let him drink this,” he said with confidence. “It will clear his head.”
Sithas held the goblet to his father’s lips. No sooner had the first red drops passed Sithel’s mouth, than his eyes lost their rheumy haze. Tightly he gripped Sithas’s wrist.
“Son, what is this?” He looked beyond Sithas and espied the sorcerer. Sharply he said, “Why are you here? I did not send for you!”
“But you did, great speaker.” Vedvedsica bowed deeply from the waist. “Your fevered mind called to me for help some hours ago. I came.”
“Do you know him, Father?” Sithas asked.
“All too well.” Sithel sank back on his pillows, so the prince set the goblet aside. “I’m sorry you had to meet him under such circumstances, son. I might have warned you.”