Falk stood very still. Mother Northwind examined the boy to be certain he would do as he promised, he thought… and instead twisted him so that he failed. It made perfect sense of what he had just witnessed-but no sense at all in so many other ways.
But she wants the Barrier down! he thought. She brought Brenna to me and put Karl in the Palace. She’s worked as long as I have to make this happen, so why wreck everything now?
I’ll be sure to ask her, just before I kill her, he thought savagely.
“Why are you telling me this?” he demanded. “If Mother Northwind is the one who warned you, why are you betraying her to me now? You must know what I will do to her when I return to the Palace. You could be lying. You could just be trying to sow discord between us, thinking that might save your life.”
“Then who told me I was your intended sacrifice?” Brenna shouted back. “I’m telling you the truth. And I’m telling it to you because I hate her as much as I hate you. That witch is a monster, a worse monster than you. I hope you kill her!”
“If what you’ve told me is true, you can rest assured that I will,” Falk said. He stepped closer to her. “But that will not help you. I hold no ill will toward you and I have made your life as comfortable as I could. But you are the key to the Plan I have worked toward for twenty years. I promise you that when the time comes, I will kill you cleanly and quickly, but you will die. There is no other way.”
Brenna only glared at him.
Falk nodded to the guard, standing close at hand. “Put her back into the carriage,” he said. “We’re returning to the Palace.” He turned to Anniska, who had not moved but had a slightly stunned expression. “You’ll be coming to the Palace, too,” he said. “I want you close at hand for when we try again.”
“But, my lord, my own duties in Berriton-”
“Can go to the bottom of the Cauldron! Don’t argue with me, Anniska. Don’t… ever… argue with me. You will do what I tell you, or you will have no duties in Berriton or anywhere else ever again, and I will find another for this task. Do you understand?”
Anniska’s face, even in the ruddy glow of the Cauldron, turned noticeably paler. “I understand.”
“Let’s go.” Falk turned and stalked into the tower and down the stairs to where the magecarriage waited. Robinton took one look at him and, knowing better than to speak, scrambled into his seat. As everyone else climbed aboard and the carriage started rolling away from the Cauldron, Falk stared straight ahead and thought black thoughts, thoughts that whirled through his mind like carrion crows above a battlefield, waiting to feed.
Mother Northwind would very soon learn what happened to a tool that broke in the hand of its user… and the very big difference between the hard magic he wielded, and the soft she had used for him-and now, fatally, against him.
News of the scandalous suicide of a boy in King Kravon’s bed spread through the Palace like wildfire. Teran heard it first, in the guard barracks, and hurried back to Karl’s quarters, relieving the night watch, then rushing in to wake Karl and tell him the news.
You couldn’t keep something like that secret, not with servants having to clean up the blood, not with a body to dispose of, and especially not with Falk absent, Karl thought, staring out the window of his bedroom at the dark expanse of the lake. Had he been there, he might have succeeded in keeping the most salacious details, if not secret, at least obfuscated, turning the tale of a naked boy slitting his throat while in bed with the King to perhaps a deranged servant killing himself while the King slept alone. But with Falk gone north on his yearly inspection trip to the Cauldron, there was no one to hide anything.
And the impact of it?
None, Karl thought. The King was the King not because of any great abilities to lead, or any wonderful personal qualities, but simply because he held the Keys. Whatever he wanted to do, whatever whim he wanted to indulge, he could… and this might be the most titillating, but certainly not the first, example of that.
What kind of system is it that puts a wanton hedonist on the throne? Karl thought angrily. By what right does he rule?
Especially, by what right does he rule the Commoners? Commoners like me, he reminded himself. Why should they… we… be subject to a man like that, simply because we have no magic-and, for the most part, want nothing to do with it?
There must be a thousand men better suited to rule than King Kravon, Karl thought. Shouldn’t there be some way of finding one of those men to lead?
Seditious thoughts, but thoughts, he realized now, that had been slowly working their way to the surface for a long time, ever since he was old enough to realize what kind of a man his putative father was, ever since he was old enough to realize what kind of a man he could choose to be when the power of the Kingship came to him… ever since he had begun to realize just how different life was for the Commoners who lived outside-not just outside the Lesser Barrier, but outside the webs of power and privilege woven by the Mageborn, and especially the Twelve. On every visit to the Commons, even though he had been carefully sequestered from the nastier parts of the city, he had promised himself that he would build on the goodwill he was attempting to engender, that when he was King, things would be different.
Now he would never be King. But if Mother Northwind had told him the truth, he had far more power than he would have as King. He could actually unravel the Mageborn-spun web in which the Commoners were trapped like flies in a spider’s larder, rip it apart like a cobweb in a gale and scatter it forever, never to be woven again.
Just hours before, he still hadn’t been sure. But now, thinking of the dead Commoner boy in the King’s bed, all the boys and girls and men and women who had suffered and bled and died at the capricious whims of MageLords and Mageborn, he was sure.
If he really were the Magebane, if he really could bring down the magical Barriers that protected Palace and Kingdom, and the insubstantial but even greater barriers that separated Commoners and Mageborn, he would do it…
… and pray to the SkyMage, if He existed, that whatever came after would be better than what had come before.
Mother Northwind heard the news of the boy’s death from the servant who brought her breakfast-servants never had any qualms about gossiping with her, seeing her as just a harmless old lady from the countryside, a Healer, to be sure, which made her Mageborn, but so down to earth she might as well have been a Commoner.
When the servant had left, she sighed. That poor boy, she thought. But I couldn’t leave him alive to be punished by Falk. And at least I got word to the Cause about his family; they’re safely out of it and away from Falk’s clutches, as well.
Falk would have seen the deed through his magelink. He would even now be rushing back to the Palace with Brenna in tow. Everything had happened just as she’d told Brenna it would. The girl knew now that her only hope lay with Mother Northwind. Karl knew his part, as well, and Mother Northwind was confident he would play it.
Falk’s Plan had come crashing down around his ears, and though he no doubt had some scheme already forming to salvage it by arranging a new attack on the King, another trip to the Cauldron, he would never get the chance-because Mother Northwind’s Plan was still very much intact.
She smiled and helped herself to a second boiled egg from her breakfast tray. Two days, she thought. Two days, and Brenna will be back in the Palace…
… and the reign of the MageLords will end.
Davydd Verdsmitt, now permitted his own quarters, rather plainly furnished but far better than a cell, watched the attack on King Kravon as it transpired, through a magelink much like Lord Falk’s own
… except his did not depend on the life of the boy who killed himself. His was linked to an enchanted object, a gold ball that hung from the center of the canopy over the bed. Since a Common Cause sympathizer in the Royal household had placed that object there, he had spent far too many late nights watching what it showed him, watching the King entertain lovers, each panting, groaning encounter renewing his jealousy, renewing his rage at the man he had once loved who had denounced him.