“Open the gate,” I repeated, shouting at the first officer I saw. “Who’s in charge here?”
He looked around, unsure, then pointed to a turret where a man in brilliant armor stood beside a white and gold banner: King Halmir, son of Velmir, lord of Phasdreille. I had almost forgotten him, and now I found myself wondering how he would adapt to what had just happened in the library. Would he fight to the death for all that the city and court had been, or would he wake up like the others had done as from a strange and consuming dream. He turned to peer at me, since I was the only thing moving and making noise on the otherwise silent battlements, and his armor flashed in the sun. He was about fifty yards away, but his visor was up and I could see his face. It was blank, perhaps confused.
“Open the gate,” I shouted. “Give the order.”
He watched me for a second, then seemed to glance sideways, as if waiting for some counselor to offer advice. Not finding one, he looked back to me and-without great conviction, but clearly, unmistakably-nodded his assent. Almost immediately, the grinding mechanism of the gates began to creak into action, and I ran back down to where the others were assembling.
The guards on the walls continued to watch, impassive and not making a sound. Some had set down their weapons and leaned out over the ramparts to get a better view, but no one was speaking or moving.
It was utterly surreal. The massive doors groaned their way open, and I found myself gazing out across the bridge to where a great Stehnite army stood as silent and still as the defenders of Phasdreille. Then, at last, there was movement: The army began to shift to let a figure pass with slow and silent purpose through the ranks of Stehnite warriors in their outlandish armor and masked helms, onto the bridge, and into the city. It was a man, sitting astride a great black bear, and behind him came the chieftains of the Stehnite Council, but it wasn’t until he was at the gates themselves that I realized that the bear-rider was Mithos.
SCENE XXI Aftermath
“And that, Rose, is how I won the war,” I concluded.
Orgos gave a single howl of laughter.
“What?” I protested, injured. “It’s true.”
“Kind of,” laughed Orgos. “In a Hawthorne-esque fashion.”
“Hawthorne-esque?” I exclaimed. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know what it means,” said Orgos.
“I’m pretty sure I know what it means,” said Toth, smiling, “so I know you do.”
“Come on, Rose,” I said to Lisha’s former informant, now stripped of her courtly makeup, “let’s go somewhere where we are appreciated.”
Orgos roared again and poured himself another beer.
It was good beer, rich and dark and sweet, and we were drinking it in the palace in Phasdreille, something I wouldn’t have believed possible a few weeks before. But things had changed in the White City. The beer, the books, and many other things but, most importantly, the faces. The Stehnites had reentered their ancient city and the pale invaders had left or surrendered. Memory slowly came back to them, and some refused to believe what those memories brought, but most quickly abandoned any claim to the lands they had so recently conquered. Lisha and Mithos negotiated a settlement between King Halmir and the Stehnite chieftains in which areas of the city were preserved for the Arak Drül community, though the nature of their housing and employment was still under consideration. Resentments lingered on both sides, and twice in the last week there had been incidents of fighting between the rival factions, but a bipartisan force had been established to police such incidents, and casualties had been minimal. Things would improve in time, we hoped. How much time, it was impossible to say. In my darker moments I was sure that a real settlement would take generations and squabbling might erupt into open war again before then, but things seemed to be progressing as well as could be expected.
Garnet was not so sure. He had, I suppose, surrendered to the hatred more than any of us, but he had also been the one to reverse his position most drastically. It took me a while to realize that what resentment lingered in his mind was directed not at those he had considered goblins, but at the fair soldiers and courtiers who had ridden with him and who had taken him in, in more ways than one.
“They are liars,” he said simply, on the one occasion I persuaded him to talk about it. “Just like you said.”
“Were liars,” I corrected him. “That was in the past, when they were under some kind of controlling influence. Now they’re different. Most of them.”
“Maybe,” he said.
“And that’s why you attacked that. . whatever it was, their soul?”
He shrugged, as if unsure, or unwilling to talk about it.
“It never occurred to me that any of us could attack him physically like that,” I said. “I was racking my brains to think of some brilliant way to undermine the heart of a culture, and while I’m standing there anxiously philosophizing, you just drew your axe and smacked him one.”
“Maybe I’m just a shallower person than you, Will,” he said. “Less complex.”
“I didn’t mean it as a criticism,” I stammered, blushing.
“I didn’t take it as one,” he said. “I never particularly valued complexity. Sometimes it seems paralyzing.”
Ironic, really. The simplemindedness that had made him believe everything that the Arak Drül had stood for had also made him the only one capable of destroying them. I considered this for a while, but couldn’t turn it into a useful lesson to take away. Perhaps it served to remind me merely of the extent to which all of us-Lisha, Renthrette, Garnet, Mithos, Orgos, and myself-depended on each other. Perhaps it meant nothing, and any attempt on my part to read significance from it was no better than Sorrail reading the signs of evil in the perceived deformity of a Stehnite. Perhaps it was just a warning, a reminder that when things look too good to be true, you can bet there’s something nasty and dangerous underneath, just waiting for a moment to leap out and expose your stupidity by tearing your limbs off. I don’t know.
Whatever control the “soul” in the library had exerted, not everyone had needed it. The Pale Claw cabal melted away, but within hours of the surrender it became clear that they had not simply thrown down their weapons with the rest. They had left, quiet and close to powerless, but with an unsettling deliberation. Where they were now, no one knew for sure, but there had been reports of attacks on Stehnite hunting parties in the mountains, and the newly formed city council had started compiling a list of the Arak Drül’s key courtiers, generals, and politicians who could not be accounted for. The Pale Claw had needed no hooded sorcerer to make them hate goblins, and I suspected that Phasdreille had not heard the last of them. Whether some of those still in the city were only masking their true feelings about the present détente, and how close to the throne the Pale Claw’s influence had spread, no one knew. As tidy as the end to the war had been, there were loose ends, though how far they would trail into the future, I could not begin to speculate.
I returned to the attentive Rose and my excellent beer, but our little chat was disturbed almost immediately by a knock at the door. It was Renthrette.
“We need you in the banquet hall, Will,” she said, her eyes falling on Rose. “Now.”
I scowled at her and tried to look imploring. “Right now?”
“Right now,” she answered, still looking Rose up and down unabashedly.
I sighed and muttered a promise to Rose that I would be back soon.
“I’m not sure you’ll keep that promise,” said Renthrette as we closed the door behind us.
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”