“I won’t let you,” Binis said. “You have to take the sacks there and return.”
The sheer stupidity of it, her inability to see that she had no way to compel him, almost made him laugh. He thought of agreeing, and then not coming back, which might at least teach her something about the limits of her power, but in this place he could not lie to one of Gird’s people, not even one he was sure Gird himself would have knocked in the head. Gently, as if speaking to a dull child, he said “Binis, I am going and I am not coming back. You have food, two horses and a pony, and a clear trail. You’re a yeoman-marshal and it’s peacetime. You will be perfectly safe travelling alone, and there’s a grange not a day’s ride away. Now sit down and eat your supper.”
“You’re not going to do it,” she said. She moved over to block his way to the chamber. Luap felt again the anger he had felt at Gird—and she was no Gird; he lifted his fist, and she blinked but stood her ground. He could not hit her. He had sworn not to use magery in this land . . . but it was gentler. His power flowed out and around her like honey around an ant; she struggled, but could not move.
“Farewell, Binis,” he said, stepping past her. He moved quickly past her, into the chamber, and laid a hand on either sack as he called on his power.
Chapter Twenty-three
“What does the prince fear?” the black-cloaked lord asked his spy. “What does he love? These are the knots in which to bind him.” He had sent many spies, over the years, and learned many things he expected to use in the future. But he had not yet decided on the exact way to approach the prince and use him to destroy the others.
“He is a king’s bastard—not ever acknowledged,” the spy said. “And like all such he doubts both his father’s goodwill and the reality of his parentage. He fears ridicule—he fears disrespect—and he fears that he is not deserving of respect. He is beginning to fear age, as he sees those he respects dying or approaching death. He has a vision for his people, for this place, and he fears that as he ages he will lose control of them. That his vision will not survive.”
“And he loves?” The tone was contemptuous; they did not believe that “love” existed, but they knew others claimed to be moved so.
The spy shrugged. “Insofar as he can, he thinks he loves his people. He believes they need his protection and wisdom; he takes pride in serving them. He is sure he knows best, and wants them to agree that he does. He loves his own will, but no more than many. He has a vision of himself as a great leader.”
“Anything else?”
The spy smiled; he had been saving the best for last. “He was warned never to seek command, or take it; he was told he was unfit for it. Although he did not understand why he was considered unfit, he submitted to others. Now, having accepted the leadership here, he has broken an old oath. That is no consequence to us, but it bothers him: he will not let himself think of it, or admit that is what he has done.” Others laughed; such self-blindness offered easy access for their enchantments.
The leader’s brows rose. “Unfit for command? Not to our purpose. . . . I can scarcely imagine one I would rather see in his place. A bastard prince, a prince afraid of his own weakness, a prince afraid that age will erode his power, an oathbreaker . . . apt for our purposes, indeed! He should welcome our aid as eagerly as an overworked shepherd welcomes a well-trained sheepdog. So long as he does not see the wolf beneath the dog’s fur, we shall prosper as he does. Let him think on his losses, and fear more: let him grasp—and we shall have something for him to hold.”
Climbing up to the forested top of the mountain took longer than Luap would have expected. He was winded and sweaty when he finally made it over the rim and into the cool shade of the trees. It had been too long, he told himself, since he had climbed even as high as the terrace now below. The Rosemage looked almost as tired, but Seri and Aris were bubbling with energy.
“It’s easy walking from here,” Seri said. “And we marked our trail, the first time.”
Luap nodded, still out of breath, and turned to look behind him, out over the rim. Now he could see much that had been hidden from the level below, while whole clefts and canyons had disappeared—they might have been only surface cracks in the rock. Others showed more clearly; be thought he could see a narrow green valley up the main canyon and then southward. Gird should have seen this, he thought. Northward a great gray angular mountain loomed, very unlike the red rock around them. Eastward, the higher mountains were white; he could not tell if it was rock or snow.
“We haven’t explored all of this yet,” Aris said. “Only toward the west, and only part of that. But we’ve found so many things . . . trees like this in places, and in others low round trees hardly larger than bushes. Grassy meadows, even a little creek right up here on top of the mountain.”
“And game,” Seri said. “Tame enough to touch, some of these animals.”
“All right,” he said, smiling at the Rosemage. “Let’s see your marvels.”
The two led them along the southern edge of the trees, where Luap could see between the trunks a plateau with similar trees across the canyon. It was, as they’d promised, much easier walking than the canyon itself; they reached the low end before the sun had moved three handspans on its way.
On this end of the mountain, no intermediate terrace broke its sheer cliffs. Luap crept cautiously to the dropoff and found himself staring down into a well of blue air, still shadowed by the cliff. Perhaps a bowshot away, a stone tower rose to a lesser height, partly eroded from the cliff behind. Below the steepest slopes, the hollow was filled with trees.
When he looked west, he saw across a lower cliff a vast low plain, with mountains rising from it in the distance. “Is that where you thought you saw a caravan?” he asked.
“Not from here,” Aris said. “Come along this edge, now.” He led the way around a cove or bay of stone, toward another outlying point; it occurred to Luap that this end of the mountain had a shape rather like an outflung hand, fingers of stone defining angled coves between them.
“That’s what we thought.” Aris pointed back to the tower. “We called that one the Thumb.” The next prominence was farther away than it looked—everything in this country, Luap thought, was farther away than it looked—but from it he could look through a break in the western cliffs. “There’s a stream in there,” Aris said. “But it’s not the same one that’s in our canyon. It comes from the north, and cuts through to the west.”
Through the break, he could see a pale line, like a scratch, in the even tan of the distant plain. “That could be a trail, I suppose,” he said. “You saw something moving along it?”
“Yes. And if you look south—there—you can see what might be a town.”
Luap could see nothing but a jumble of shadows that might come from a pile of rocks or low buildings the color of the plain. Certainly it looked like no town he had ever seen—but nothing out here looked like anything he’d ever seen.
“There’s nothing green until the next mountains,” the Rosemage said. “What could they live on? Is it just bare rock?”
“I don’t know.” Seri flung out her hands. “But I think we could find a way out of here . . . look.” She leaned out and pointed. “If you come down the canyon to that lower fall, and then angle around the Thumb—that tower—and then up the slope that sticks out from this . . . then you’re close to the stream that goes out through that cliff. It’s rugged, but we could build a trail—”
“After we’ve made sure our cropland bears,” Luap said firmly. “We aren’t here to explore; we’re here to settle.”