“So, they do need an army,” I said. “That answers one main question and lots of smaller ones.”
“And your next question is something about how I am going to convince them to help us stand against the Young Mage.”
I ignored the wind and listened to her.
She said, “I suspect the king of Landor has his own spies and is aware of the deaths of the rulers of Kondor, Kaon, and Trager. I’ll tell him about Dire if he does not already know. And that his kingdom will be the next to fall, no matter what happens in Dire.”
“How do you know that?”
She smiled weakly. “Geography. If you look at a map, Dire sits alone in the north. There is nothing above it but Whitelands, nothing to either side that is not already under the control of the Young Mage, and that is the key to the entire story. The only direction the Young Mage can expand is into Fairbanks, which will quickly fall, then Landor.”
“There is nothing left to conquer to the north, east or west. So, he must go south?”
“No. I’m sorry my mind is rambling. The key is one word: young. The Young Mage. It is not so much that he controls magic, but that he is young and ambitious. He will not stop with all he has. He had the ambition of youth. He will look for new lands to rule. Landor and Fairbanks are but ripples in the stream. He’d flow over and around them to reach kingdoms to the south.”
“How many kingdoms are there?” I asked with more than a touch of awe in my voice.
She paused, then leaned closer as if about to share a secret. “I asked that same question years ago. The exact same one. My father had sent me to the West Keep of Crestfallen to spend three full days with the Records-Keeper.”
“I remember that. He was a dour old man who never answered a question without asking one. Kendra and I thought you were in trouble and being punished. You acted like it when you returned.”
“Because of what I learned, not because I was in trouble. The Records-Keeper has three floors of the West Keep all to himself. Floor to ceiling books, scrolls, maps, and records. Letters from one king to another. Journals of explorers. Details of wars won and lost centuries ago, so long the names of the places have all changed. And more.”
“You found something there?”
“The maps. Stacks of them. Hundreds. The Records-Keeper and I started with one of Dire. Alongside it, we put what must have been Kaon, and below that Trager and Kondor. We spread them out on the floor and put them together like a giant puzzle.”
And Fairbanks and Landor,” I added.
“Yes. And below them Malawi, the wealthy kingdoms of Myra and Hesham. And others more to the south, east, and west. We started at the north end of the third floor and continued halfway to the south wall. You know how big the West Keep is, so you can imagine the giant map we made.”
I pictured it in my mind and couldn’t help but ask, “Dire was a tiny corner near the wall?”
“I would bet we managed to fit a hundred kingdoms together and kept finding more.”
As much as that astonished me, another fact crowded it aside. “After ruling Kaon, he brought the armies of each kingdom under his rule. He did it with Kondor and Trager. He defeats a kingdom and absorbs the army into his.”
Elizabeth said, “More than that. He appoints his trusted generals and promotes from loyal men to become generals of the other armies. When he took Trager, he sent a small army there to enforce his rule, while relocating all of Trager’s troops to Kaon where they were mixed in with other of his units, so they had no loyalty to their homeland. He’s done the same each time, so his army swells with the capture of each new kingdom.”
“With those three armies, and those of Dire, Fairbanks, and Landor, he will take their men for his own army. He’ll have an army five times the size of any single kingdom,” I said, understanding for the first time. “That is the just the start . . .”
“Just the start,” she agreed glumly.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Princess Elizabeth said that combining the armies and fighting men of six kingdoms was just the start of the Young Mage’s ambitions. After taking Fairbanks and Landor, and of course Dire, a map said he needed to keep only a few troops at home. The rest of his army of troops mixed from several kingdoms could march south.
No army of any kingdom could stand in his way.
I left her at the rail and sat beside Kendra, hoping to hear a more cheerful conversation. She snapped at me, “The damn dragon still refuses to move. She is not eating. When I tell her to do something, she shuts her mind and ignores me.”
It sounded like she was talking about me when I got stubborn and not a dragon sitting on a mountain peak several days travel away. On the other hand, I also know how it feels to lose the little magic I controlled, and now that she had tasted the ability to direct a dragon, losing it must be painful and worrisome. Will the dragon ever do what she wants again? Why had it changed?
I let the question flow in my mind, like a stick traveling a muddy river. It twisted and turned, never moving as fast as the water, and in danger of getting hung up on an obstruction at any time.
Will was still sitting with Captain at the tiller. I looked at Anna. She sat with her knees pulled up to her chin. I said, “I’m sorry I have not spent much time with you.”
“I can’t figure out how Emma fooled me for so long.”
That was an unexpected response to my greeting. “You have no memory before the day we found you?”
“None. Well, that’s if you discount the false memories of Emma.”
I gave it some thought. It trailed back to the Young Mage again. I said, “I think the Young Mage found you somewhere. Took you from your family, bought you at a slave auction, or stole you from where you lived. Whatever. He kept you in Kaon, near him, no telling for how long. He probably observed your every action so he could duplicate them with the fantasy image of Emma. The two of you probably lived with him, as sisters, long before he sent you to us.”
“That’s why she was able to fool all of us?” Anna asked.
“I think so,” I said. “It also means he had the plans for a long time, maybe years. He didn’t know of me and my sister, so he didn’t do it to use against us. What it tells me, is that if he went to those lengths to be prepared for the chance to use Emma, he has others of the same sort.”
“Girls?”
“No, I meant plans. He’s a thinker. A planner. He looks ahead and sees what might help him in a month or year. For that reason, I believe he is more dangerous than any of us thought.”
“Meaning?” Anna asked, interested or simply wanting to talk.
“If Landor is his next target to conquer, and he’s a planner like I believe, what is waiting for us there? What has he already put into place?” I asked.
Anna said, “We need to talk to Elizabeth.”
“We will. Now, to keep your mind busy, give me the sounds of the first two letters and what do they look like?” Her mood instantly changed to one of glee and she did as asked. I said, “Here’s the third.”
I gave it to her, sounded out the hard and soft sounds and told her to give it a while to have all three memorized perfectly, and I’d give her another. She sat and wrote all three letters in the air, grunted the sounds, and seemed completely happy.