"Whatever your methods were, they seem to have been effective. We are very grateful to you, Karel."
The gray beard brushed the words away, though it was not hard to see that he was genuinely pleased by them. "Sheer good fortune was on our side as well. As to our investigation, I want to talk to Zoltan again. There are things about his account that still puzzle me a little."
"Oh?"
"Yes-certain details. And he's the oldest of the young ones in the cave; maybe the most levelheaded, though there perhaps his sister may have something of an edge. Not much that one can hope to learn from children in a situation like this. Apparently none of them even made an effort to look out of the cave mouth while the enemy was there."
"Shall I send a messenger to bring Zoltan here? He and his sister are still at High Manor."
"No great hurry. There are other avenues of investigation I must try first. I have a strong suspicion now of who was behind yesterday's atrocity." Karel paused for a deep breath. "Burslem."
Prince and Princess exchanged looks. Mark had the feeling that their tiredness had frozen them both into shells, leaving them unable to communicate freely with each other. And his own tiredness, at least, was not of the kind to be swept away by a night's sleep.
Mark said to the wizard: "Worse than we thought, then, perhaps?"
"Bad enough," said Karel. "Just how bad, I don't know. We can be sure that a man who once headed magical security operations for King Vilkata himself is a wizard of no mean capacity. And there's been no word of Burslem for eight years."
"Where is he now?" the Princess asked.
Her uncle signed that he did not know. "At least he doesn't have an army lurking on any of our frontiers. Those were ragtag bandits he recruited somehow for yesterday's adventure. Having spent much of the night with their corpses I can be sure of that much at least. I think he'll wait to see if we've caught on to the fact that he was behind them."
"And then?"
"And then he'll try something else, I suppose. Something nasty."
"What can we do?"
"I don't know. I see no way as yet in which we can retaliate effectively." And Karel shortly took his leave, saying that he had much to do.
Husband and wife, alone again on the balcony, embraced once more then walked back into the room where their older son still slept. On the walls of Adrian's room were paintings, here brave warriors chasing a dragon, there on the other wall a wizard in a conical hat creating a marvelous fruit tree out of nothing. The paintings had been done by the artist of the storybook, in those happy months before Adrian was born, created for small eyes that had never seen them yet.
Princess Kristin said in a weary voice: "His mouth is bruised as well, I suppose from Elinor trying to keep him quiet in the cave. I never saw a child who bruised so easily."
Mark said nothing. He stroked her hair.
Kristin said: "It's only great good fortune that any of the children are still alive, that that cave was there for them to hide in while Karel's elemental moved the river around outside. Otherwise who knows what might have happened to them?"
"I can imagine several things," said Mark, breaking a silence that threatened to grow awkwardly. "If Burslem is really the one behind it. And in the cave Adrian kept crying out, or trying to cry out, as Elinor told us. You realize it's quite possible that he almost killed them all, betraying that they were there."
His wife moved away from him a little and looked up at him. "You can't mean that what happened was somehow his fault."
"No. Not a fault. But already his blindness, his illness, begin to create problems not only for us, for you and me. Problems already for all Tasavalta."
"It is Burslem who creates problems for us all," the Princess said a little sharply. "I will confer with Karel again, of course, but I don't know what else we can do for Adrian. We have tried everything already. Are you going to make him feel guilty about being the way he is?"
"No," said Mark. "But if we have tried everything, then we must find something else to try. My son-our son-must grow into a man who is able to guard others. Not one who will forever need guardians himself."
"And if he cannot?"
"I am not convinced that he cannot."
Word of the Prince's intentions went out through the Palace within the hour, and within another hour was spreading throughout the city of Sarykam. Prince Consort Mark, determined on an all-out effort to find a cure for the blindness and the strange seizures that had afflicted his elder son since birth, was calling a council of his most trusted advisers. The council was to meet early on the following morning, which was the earliest feasible time for all of its members to come together.
CHAPTER 3
ON the morning appointed for the council, Ben of Purkinje was up even earlier than usual.
He was an enormous man, a pale beached whale rolling out from under the silken covers of his luxurious bed. The stout, carven frame supporting the mattress creaked with relief when his enormous weight was lifted from it. Comparatively little of that weight was fat.
Once on his feet he cast a quick glance back at the slight figure of his dark-haired wife and noted with a certain relief that she was still asleep. Then he padded into the marble bath adjoining the bedroom. Presently the sounds of water, flowing and splashing in great quantities, came into the bedroom; but they were not heard by the woman in the bed, who slept on.
The subtler sounds of her husband's return awoke her, though. Her eyes opened as Ben came back into the room, cast aside a towel that might have served as a ship's sail, and started to get dressed.
"I was up late," she greeted him, "with Beth. She was babbling about strange wizards and I don't know what. What happened is catching up to her. You can't expect it not to."
"How is she now?"
"Sleeping. I was up with her most of the night, while you slept like a log."
He granted, pulling on a garment.
"Why are you up so-? Oh, yes. That council meeting."
"That's right, I must be there."
Barbara rearranged herself in bed, grabbing pillows and stuffing them under her head so she could sit up and talk in greater comfort. "While you're there, I think there are a couple of things you ought to remind the Prince about."
"Ah."
"Yes. It was you who gave him the most valuable Sword of all, before he had any thought that he was to be a Prince. See if he remembers now who his friends were in the old days. See if he remembers that."
"He remembers it, I'm sure."
I shatter Swords and splinter spears
None stands to Shieldbreaker
My point's the fount of orphans' tears
My edge the widowmaker
The verse had in fact been running through Ben's head ever since he had awakened. The recent fighting had brought the Sword of Force to everyone's mind, it seemed. Now Ben whistled a snatch of tune to which he'd once heard someone try to set the Song of Swords, or a couple of verses of it anyway. When Ben was very young he had decided that he was going to be a minstrel. The dream had stayed with him stubbornly for years. By all the gods, how long ago and far away that seemed! He'd be thirty-five this year, or maybe next; he'd never been able to find out for sure exactly when he'd been born. Anyway, there'd be gray showing up in his hair soon enough.
"Yes, Shieldbreaker." Barbara was musing aloud, energizing herself for the day by discovering extra things to fret about, as if she, like everyone else, didn't have enough of them already. "I wonder if he does remember where he got it."
Ben grunted again.
Giving the Sword of Force to his old friend Mark hadn't really been any great act of sacrifice for him, or for Barbara either-or at least he had never thought of it that way. Eight years ago, on that last day in the war-torn city of Tashigang, Shieldbreaker had come into Ben's hands unexpectedly, and his first impulse had been simply to hide it somewhere. But his own house in the city had been in danger of total destruction, the tall structure so badly damaged on its lower levels following the fight with the god Vulcan that it was ready to collapse into a heap of rubble, rooftop gardens smashing down into servants' quarters, then the family rooms, then everything into the weapons shops that had occupied most of the ground floor.