"Until I came home."
"Yes, whereupon she tried to manipulate you into serving as her assassin. Without suggesting it directly, of course. She knew you almost certainly wouldn't succeed, but even if I killed you, the realm would be the weaker for it, and perhaps she imagined that the ensuing commotion would provide her an opportunity to escape with whatever secrets she'd discovered.
"Unfortunately," Orchtrien continued, "her dupe succumbed to her blandishments as usual, but didn't behave precisely as she'd expected. You too went digging for secrets, in a place where she herself would never have dared to intrude. Now she's carried all that lore away, and I'll have to put off marching against the reds to recover it."
"Majesty," Rhespen said, "if what you're saying is true-"
"Of course it's true! Why would I bother lying to a creature in your situation?"
"Then I've wronged you, my benefactor, my liege lord, in thought and deed, and I beg for the chance to atone. Let me help retrieve the books."
"Traitors," Orchtrien said, "don't get second chances."
He jammed the gag back into Rhespen's mouth.
After Orchtrien's departure, Rhespen lay struggling to disbelieve the dragon's assertions. He couldn't. They made too much sense.
Winterflower had made him her pawn, led him into treason and stripped him of his honor and everything else he possessed, then abandoned him as soon as it became expedient. The shame and humiliation of it were unbearable.
But he had to not only endure but transcend them.
Otherwise, he'd rot and suffer in his cell until the king's servants either killed him there or led him forth to the scaffold.
That might happen anyway, because Orchtrien had every right to think him helpless. But in point of fact, Rhespen had long ago bound himself to his staff. The link was what enabled him to call the rod into his hands.
He'd always spoken a word of command to facilitate the process. His captors no doubt assumed it was a necessity, and it was entirely possible they were right. Rhespen hoped, however, that if he exerted all his willpower, and simply articulated the word in his thoughts, it might suffice.
He made the attempt repeatedly, while spasms wracked his guts, and shame, fury, and dread gnawed at his concentration. For what seemed a long while, nothing happened. Then the cool, rounded rod materialized in his left hand.
Its sudden appearance startled him, and for an instant, he was terrified that he'd fumble and drop it, whereupon the clang would summon a guard, or else he'd lack the mystical strength to draw it back into his grasp a second time, even though it was just a pace or two away. He gripped it with all his meager strength and succeeded in holding on to it.
In addition to the temporary spells he stored in it based on his anticipation of his needs, the rod possessed a few permanent virtues. One was the power that had unlocked the door to Winterflower's suite. He invoked the same attribute, and his shackles flew open. So did the buckle securing the gag.
He stood up. The dungeon spun, pain stabbed through his belly, and he had to clutch at the rack to keep from falling. He whispered his charm of renewed vitality. It steadied him and blunted the agony, but he was still weak. Truly potent healing magic was the province of the gods and their priests, and thus beyond the reach of even the ablest wizard.
Such being the case, he was in no shape for a fight, or even to cast spells of any complexity. Fortunately, he still had several enchantments of stealth and disguise stored in his staff, where he'd placed them in case he needed them to sneak into Winterflower's apartments.
He veiled himself in invisibility. Then, employing his staff as if it were a crutch, he hobbled up the stairs, unlocked the door at the top with a touch of his prop, and passed on into the dank, torchlit corridor beyond.
Working on the reasonable assumption that Winterflower had fled back to her kin and the rest of the rebels, Orchtrien had marched his army into the forest where they dwelled, only to find their treetop towns and fortresses deserted. The Count of Duskmere had led his allies to some hidden stronghold deeper in the wood, and if the king wished to retrieve his stolen secrets, he had no choice but to pursue and attempt to track his enemies down.
As the trees and brush grew thicker, and the way more difficult, the royal army had to stop more and more often to rest and regroup. Whenever it did, Rhespen, cloaked in the image of a human spearman, slipped away by himself. His comrades thought nothing of it. They'd grown used to what they took to be his odd and solitary disposition.
The reality, of course, was otherwise. He needed solitude to perform his divinations. It would hardly do for the other warriors to catch him engaging in occult ritual.
With the tip of his staff, which now appeared to be a common lance, he scratched a mystical figure in the loam then stared at the round empty space at the center. It was a window, through which he hoped to glimpse the objects of his search. But nothing appeared, and when it became apparent that nothing would, his mouth tightened in frustration.
After carrying the copybooks away from Orchtrien's keep, he'd placed a ward on the forbidden texts that would warn him if anyone else found and touched them.
Winterflower, or one of her fellow rebels, had discharged the enchantment while Rhespen lay insensible in the dungeon. But he'd hoped that a trace of the link connecting the volumes to himself remained, and that the connection might enable him to scry for them where even the dragon monarch had failed.
But evidently not. He rubbed out the magical figure with the toe of his boot, looked up, and discovered a raven, head cocked, beady eyes bright, perched on a branch above his head. He caught his breath.
Anticipating that his divinations might fail, he'd convinced some of his friends among the birds to scout for him. The most difficult part had been making them understand that they needed to keep their distance until such time as they actually made a discovery. He couldn't let his fellow soldiers observe him conversing with ravens, either.
"What is it, Thorn?" he asked. After so many years of practice, the croaks and chirps were fairly easy.
"What do you think?" the raven snapped. "I found them!"
In his excitement, Rhespen nearly asked where, but caught himself in time. Thorn wouldn't be able to tell him, because he had no conception of the units of measurement elves and humans used, and Rhespen lacked any familiarity with the landmarks in this portion of the forest.
He glanced around, making sure once again that no one watched, then whispered an incantation, brandished a talisman, and dwindled into a creature virtually identical to the black bird overhead.
He beat his wings, rose into the air, and rasped, "Show
As it turned out, the rebel stronghold was nearby. But it was well hidden, and Rhespen suspected that without the aid of sorcery and flying scouts, the royal army could blunder about for a long while before discovering it.
It was a crude place compared to the settlements the elves had abandoned. Their former habitations were works of art, conceived for beauty as much as utility, constructed with painstaking care, and polished and perfected through the centuries. In contrast, it was plain that they'd fashioned their new treetop bastions in haste, and that concealment and defense had been their sole considerations.
Wearing his true body, and a shroud of invisibility, once more, Rhespen scrutinized the fortress, forming an impression of the general layout, then inscribed another scrying pentacle in the dirt. Because he was so close to the copybooks, a vision appeared where none had manifested before.