“Where is Taknapotin?” Greensparrow asked, the question Deanna had feared all along.
Deanna put on a perplexed look. “Where should the fiend be?” she replied.
“I want to know.”
“In Hell, I would suppose,” Deanna answered. “Where Taknapotin belongs.” Greensparrow didn’t believe any of her explanation, Deanna realized by his sour expression. He was indeed closely tied to the fiend he had given to her, as she had suspected. Now the king had her backed into a corner because he could not contact his demonic spy.
Deanna silently congratulated herself on the power of her dismissal of Taknapotin. Her enchantment and the breaking of the crown had apparently blasted the fiend from the world and put him beyond even Greensparrow’s considerable reach.
Unless the king was bluffing, Deanna suddenly feared. Unless Taknapotin was sitting in Greensparrow’s throne room, out of view, sharing a diabolical joke with the merciless king of Avon.
Deanna understood that her fears showed clearly on her face. She quickly composed herself and used that involuntary expression to her benefit.
“I have not been able to contact him since . . . since Selna . . .”
Greensparrow’s eyes widened—too much, Deanna realized, for the name of Selna had struck him profoundly, confirming to the duchess that her handmaid was indeed yet another of Greensparrow’s spies.
“. . . since Selna broke my crown,” Deanna lied. “I fear that Taknapotin took offense, for the demon has been beyond my call—”
“Broke your crown?” Greensparrow interrupted, speaking each word slowly and evenly.
For a moment, Deanna expected the man to fly into a fit of rage, but he composed himself and relaxed in his chair, settling comfortably.
He is angry about Selna and the crown, Deanna told herself, but he is relieved, for he believes the lie, and now thinks that I am still his willing puppet.
“The crown was indeed a link between you and your demon,” Greensparrow confirmed.
And between you and my demon, Deanna silently responded.
“I enchanted it those years ago, when first you came into your power,” Greensparrow said.
When you murdered my family, came Deanna’s angry thoughts.
“I will find another way back to Taknapotin,” the king offered. “Or to another fiend, equally malicious.”
Deanna wanted to divert him from that course, but she realized that she would be walking dangerous ground. “I will not wait,” she said. “I can destroy Brind’Amour without Taknapotin, for I have my brother wizards and their fiends at my call.”
“You must not fail in this!” Greensparrow said suddenly, forcefully, coming forward in the throne, so close to his mirror that his appearance became distorted, his pointy nose and cheeks looming larger and more ominous. “It will all dissolve when Brind’Amour is dead. Eriador’s armies will fall into disarray that we might destroy them one by one.”
“Brind’Amour will die within the week,” Deanna promised, and she feared that she might be correct.
A wave of Greensparrow’s hand broke the contact then, to Deanna’s ultimate relief.
Back in Carlisle’s throne room, the king motioned for the two huge and ugly one-eyed cyclopians holding the enchanted mirror to be gone, then turned to Duke Cresis. DeJulienne, returned from Caer MacDonald, stood beside the brute, twitching nervously. He had been the bearer of ill tidings, after all, not an enviable position in Greensparrow’s court!
Greensparrow’s laugh put the ambassador at ease; even militant Cresis seemed to relax somewhat.
“You do not trust her?” Cresis reasoned.
“Deanna?” Greensparrow answered lightly. “Harmless Deanna?” Another burst of laughter followed, and deJulienne chimed in, but stopped and cleared his throat nervously when Greensparrow sat up abruptly, his face going stern. “Deanna Wellworth is too filled with guilt to be a threat,” Greensparrow explained. “And rightly so. To turn against me, she must explore her own past, wherein she will discover the truth.”
Cresis was nodding at every word, deJulienne noticed, and he realized that the brutish duke of Carlisle had obviously heard all of this before. DeJulienne had not, though, and he was perplexed as to what his king might be hinting.
“Deanna was my link to the throne,” Greensparrow said bluntly, looking deJulienne right in the eye. “She unwittingly betrayed her own family, giving me personal items from each of them.”
DeJulienne started to ask the obvious question, but stopped short, realizing that if what Greensparrow was hinting at was the truth of Avon’s past, then his king was a usurper and murderer.
“All that I feared from Deanna was the loss of Taknapotin,” Greensparrow explained, looking back to Cresis. “But if that fool handmaid broke the crown, then I understand why I have not been able to make contact, a situation that should be easily rectified.”
“What of the coming war?” Cresis asked. “The Eriadorans will soon march, and sail.”
“Fear Eriador?” Greensparrow scoffed. “The ragtag farmers and fisherfolk?”
“Who won the last war,” deJulienne reminded, and he regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, as soon as he saw the dangerous scowl cross Greensparrow’s hawkish features.
“Only because of my absence!” the king roared angrily. Greensparrow sat trembling, his bony knuckles turning white as he clasped the edges of his throne.
“Indeed, my mighty King,” deJulienne said with a submissive bow, but it was too late for the man.
Greensparrow snapped a fist into the air, then extended his long fingers. Beams of light, a rainbow of hues, shot out from each of them, joining and swirling into one white column, roughly the length and breadth of a sword blade.
The king sliced his arm down, the magical blade following.
DeJulienne’s left arm fell to the floor, severed at the shoulder.
The man howled. “My King!” he gasped, clutching at the spurting blood.
With a growl, Greensparrow brought his hand in a straight-across cut down low.
Off came deJulienne’s left leg and the man toppled to the floor, his lifeblood gushing out from the garish wounds. He tried to call out again, but only managed a gurgle. He did lift his remaining arm in a feeble attempt to block the next strike.
It was taken off at the elbow.
“My absence was the cause of our defeat,” Greensparrow said to Cresis, ignoring the squirming, shivering man on the floor. “That, and the incompetence of those I left in charge!
“And because of Gascony,” Greensparrow reasoned. “The Gascons thought a free Eriador would profit them greatly; little did they realize the importance of Carlisle’s protection from Huegoths and other such troubles.
“This time,” Greensparrow went on, coming right out of his seat and pointing a finger to the air, “this time, the Gascons understand the truth of pitiful Eriador and will not ask that we make peace.” The king gingerly stepped over the now-dead deJulienne. He noticed Cresis then, noting particularly the worried look on the ugly face of his duke.
“This is exactly what we wanted!” Greensparrow yelled, and howled with laughter. “We prodded Eriador and foolish Brind’Amour declared war.”
Cresis relaxed somewhat, remembering that this was indeed the outcome that he and Greensparrow had plotted when they had sent the cyclopian tribes into raiding actions against Eriador and DunDarrow.
“They have perhaps fifty of our ships remaining,” Greensparrow went on, accounting for the twenty the Huegoths had reportedly sent to the bottom. “The mere fact that so many of our fine warships were lost to those savages only confirms that the Eriadoran fisherfolk can hardly sail the great galleons.” Greensparrow flashed Cresis a wild, maniacal look. “Yet we have more than a hundred, crewed by experienced sailors and cyclopian warriors. Half the Eriadoran fleet will soon enter the Straits of Mann. I have a like number of warships waiting to scuttle them.”