“Looks like barracks,” ventured Demyst. “Rows and rows of’em.”
To the north of the area with the barracks were fenced enclosures filled with horses. Smoke rose from more than a score of chimneys. Farther to the east, beyond the streams, were rows of huts, and beyond them was a raw slash in the stony escarpment and a long and wide pit. Lines of tiny figures snaked in and around the pit.
“That’s the quarry, one of them,” Kharl said.
“Like a town …″ murmured Erdyl.
“More like a fort, with the quarries there.” Demyst frowned. “They don′t need a fort to guard the quarries.”
“The fort’s not for that. It’s to train armsmen.”
“For a war against the Lord South?”
Kharl didn’t want to answer that. Lord South was certainly what Egen wanted people to think, but the fort was far closer to Brysta than to Surien. As he studied the valley, Kharl could sense at least two white wizards, perhaps three. Two of them were strong, perhaps not so strong as the strongest he had faced in Austra, but not to be taken lightly.
After a moment, he turned in the saddle and looked at the undercaptain. “We’ve seen what we need to see. We can head back.”
“Just … head back, ser?” asked Erdyl.
“You want us to charge an entire fort and all those armsmen?” asked Kharl. “Some of them are Hamorian, and the others are Nordlan. We’re not at war.” Not yet, anyway, he thought.
He eased the chestnut back though the woodlot. At the north side, he checked the road and the meadows, but both were clear. The holder still labored on the irrigation ditch. The man did not even look up as Kharl and the others rode back to the gray stone road and turned back north.
As Kharl rode back northward, his eyes and senses concentrating on discovering Egen’s lancers before they spotted his small group, questions twisted through his thoughts. The gray stone road extended at least twenty kays south of Brysta, but how far did it go? One of the histories said that the forces of Fenardre the Great had been able to complete a kay of stone road a day. If Egen′s forces had been working on the road for even half a year, and could do half as much, he might have already completed over a hundred kays. That still left close to a hundred more before the road reached the border of the south quadrant-unless the road-building had been going on in secret much longer. How long had it been going on? Was the refused consorting just an excuse? Were the Hamorians helping Egenwith the road so that they could use it once they took over the South and West Quadrants of Nordla? Couldn’t Egen see what they had in mind? Or did he think he could outwit them? More important, could Kharl do anything? What? How? When?
Kharl rubbed his forehead. For the moment, they needed to get off the road and find somewhere to spend the night. He doubted he would sleep well. He hoped he could sleep some.
LXXI
Kharl and his small group did not manage to get back to the envoy’s residence in Brysta until close to dark on eightday. Kharl had avoided Peachill on the way back, not wanting to face it as a reminder that he had failed Warrl as well.
While they had been able to find shelter in one of the abandoned cots on sevenday night, time after time, all through eightday, they had been forced to leave the road and hide, to avoid being seen by armed road patrols, far more than they had seen on their way southward. Kharl hoped that was because of the disappearance of the one road patrol, and not because some armed action was about to begin.
After the evening meal, most welcome after two days of bread and cheese and dried meat, Kharl, Demyst, and Erdyl sat in the library.
“What do you think of the road?” Kharl looked at his secretary.
“I have never seen one so fine,” Erdyl admitted. “We traveled more than twenty kays, perhaps thirty, and it must continue for at least another ten.” He paused. “But, ser … I do not see the need. There were no large towns. According to the maps, Surien is more than five hundred kays to the south.”
Closer to six hundred, Kharl thought. “So why are the Nordlans building such a high road? Is that your question?”
“The Nordlans and the Hamorians,” suggested Demyst. “Hamor likes good roads.”
“They make it easier to control a land,” added Erdyl. “They maketransport easier. If we had a good road from Norbruel to Bruel … Ghardyl was always saying that we could see another hundred golds a year.”
“So Hamor is fanning the conflict between Lord West and Lord South to get Lord West to build the road?” Demyst set his goblet on the table, tilting his head slightly.
“They might even be paying for part of it.” Kharl thought that the Hamorians were going farther than that. He would not have been surprised if they were even supporting Egen in a bid to unseat his father-and his brothers. That way, Egen would at the very least owe Hamor, and if his bid failed, Nordla would be weakened and racked with conflict. Either way, it would be far easier for the emperor to begin the conquest of all of Nordla than it would have been otherwise.
“What can you do, ser?” asked Erdyl.
That was indeed the question. What could he do?
“I’ll have to think about that,” he finally replied. “It’s been a long eightday. ″
Later, he sat in the study, with but the single desk lamp lit, his eyes fixed on nothing, his thoughts spinning through his skull.
What should he do? Envoys were just supposed to report, weren′t they? To let Hagen and Ghrant know what was happening? But he had no way to send a report, and by the time he could, the West Quadrant would be a battlefield-or a fiefdom of Hamor.
He didn’t know for certain that Egen was going to replace his father, or when that might happen. Nor did he know what the Hamorians would do … or when. He didn’t think that it would be that long. At the least, he needed to be ready, to plan what he could do.
Deliberately, he took out a sheet of paper and a markstick, slowly sketching out a rough map of Brysta, and the surrounding area. If Egen held the harbor and the south, then the only way to leave the city was by the east road-really the southeast road-to Eolya. The north road to Sagana turned into little more than a dirt trail after a half score of kays, and there were no roads worthy of the name to the northeast or due east. That suggested that any movement of lancers or white wizards along the ring road from the south might indicate the beginning of whatever might happen.
He leaned back, trying to recall the road.
After a time, he folded his crude map, uncertain that he had accomplished anything.
Then there was Jeka. According to Erdyl, she was still with Gharan. What should he do there? He hadn’t been able to do anything for Jenevra and Charee, and they were dead. He’d tried to talk Arthal out of leaving, but his older son had been far too stubborn-like his father. He’d been too late to save Warrl, and Warrl had asked the very least of him.
He put his head in his hands. Why Warrl? He’d been only a child. He couldn’t have hurt Egen. He was too gentle to have hurt anyone.
After a time, Kharl lifted his head. He had to look ahead. He couldn’t undo what was done. What could he do for Jeka? Or Gharan? Did he have to do anything immediately?
LXXII
As he rose from the breakfast table on oneday, Kharl turned to Erdyl. “I’ll be going out. I want to take another tour along Crafters’ Lane.”
“Do you want me to come?” The secretary scrambled to his feet. “I’ll only be a moment.”
“No. Not this time. Demyst will come with me. You’d said that the assistant to the Sarronnese envoy …″