The walls surrounding much of Kopeth had been laid open in the last great war and never restored. No garrison had been maintained there in decades, so Madia was surprised as they arrived, then quietly entered the city through a pathway on the western edge, to see soldiers walking the remaining gantries. She followed Frost, who claimed to know the place. He stayed in the narrow streets, moving through an old section of the city made up of the houses of laborers and beggars, thieves and whores. Western Kopeth lacked markets and tradesmen, places where the grand chamberlain's soldiers would be found.
Only once did Frost stop, gathering everyone into the shadows, including the two royal mounts and the mule, while he sent Olan and Delyav towards the city's center to reconnoiter. Upon their return they reported that Ferris' troops were present in great numbers, and the city's citizens seemed filled with unrest and fear.
"I expected this," Olan said. "Ferris has begun making Kopeth a northern stronghold. Since the first thaws, many men have been sent here, and more will come. He has claimed there is a need for a strong presence nearer the Jasnok-Bouren borders, to insure against possible raids and to discourage an outright invasion."
"This army's plan is not one of defense," Rosivok said. "They have no fortifications anywhere on the roads or around the city, and we saw no patrols as we approached."
"It seems our friends in Lencia have much to worry about," Frost said. "As I feared."
"Then my journey is all the more urgent," Madia said. "And its end. And this will help."
"Why is that?" Frost inquired, in a voice better suited for use with a child.
"People are unsure and unhappy," she said, ignoring his tone. "So they will likely be more willing to listen to another. Even . . . myself."
"Have you yet thought about a plan?" Frost asked her.
"Several," she said, surprised he had not asked the question already during the past two days on their journey from Kern. She assumed he might simply have no intention of sticking around long enough for it to matter, or that he had a plan of his own. Now she imagined he may have been waiting for her to offer the information all this time. Only she didn't exactly have a plan, beyond gathering information and allies, all she could of both, then choosing the best course of action after that.
"I would like to hear them all," Frost said.
"Now? Here in the streets? With soldiers only a stone's throw away? Surely it can wait."
"Now is just fine."
"My plans take into account all my knowledge of the castle's inner workings, and the many lessons learned at—"
"You are going to make it up as you go, aren't you?"
Madia glared at the wizard, unable to see his eyes in the shadows, hopeful he could see the fire in hers. She said nothing at first, then, too late, she realized that this was a mistake.
"I suspected as much," Frost remarked. "Very well, you will each do as I say." He turned to the others. "Rosivok, Sharryl, go with Olan and Delyav. As soon as you find a proper stable, sell the horses. Then go and gather what additional supplies we will need to carry us through. We will meet back here, before dusk, and go to buy our passage on the Saris River to Kamrit."
"No one appointed you lord," Madia said.
"Nor you," Frost replied, a tinge of ire in his voice.
"Passage should be easy," Delyav said. "There are many barges, for a price."
"But we must find just the right one," said Frost. He turned to Madia. "And you must come with me for now. I have a friend I would visit, and I want you to attend."
"We will stay with you," Rosivok insisted.
"Not in this. Madia will provide me with protection enough, and we are almost there, in any case. Now, each of you, abide my wishes!"
Rosivok and Sharryl nodded, silent, and turned to go. Olan and Delyav looked at Madia, seeking approval. She didn't know what else to do. She nodded, and they set off behind the two Subartans.
"Who are we going to see?" Madia asked.
Frost started off down the street without a reply. He went by only two houses, then stopped and knocked on a door. "One of the great living sorcerers," he said. "If indeed he is still alive."
The voice was not audible to Madia, but Frost seemed to hear it all right. He pushed the door open and let Madia in, then pulled it shut behind them.
Inside was the oldest human being Madia had ever seen. He wore robes that hung loosely from his round, hunched shoulders and covered all but his hands and head completely—a bald head of countless wrinkles, skin spotted and dark with age. And he was so thin, Madia thought, for a sorcerer! He sat in a chair by a hearth that held no flame just now, only the dim glow of old, dying embers. He was writing in a very large, page-worn book, and painstakingly completed a word before looking up.
Madia saw his eyes then, barely visible in the dim wavering light from a cluster of candles on the table nearby. Eyes that might be older still, Madia thought; eyes she could not easily focus on, like shadows near dusk—though, from all Madia could tell, the old man was nearly blind. She followed Frost to the table and sat with him. The other man turned toward them, a complex effort, it seemed, which took a long moment.
"To answer you," the old wizard said, a low, hushed voice that rasped and growled and barely functioned, "I am still alive, but I am nothing so great anymore."
"While I am getting better all the time," Frost replied.
"As you always do."
"No one troubles you here?" Frost asked.
"Not to speak of. The neighbors value me. I am the wise old man of this place, and these people are forever desperate for advice and healing potions. They care for me well enough, and I for them."
"Are you well?"
Madia thought this an odd question, since, at such an age, simply to be among the living at all was extraordinary. But then she saw the look in Frost's eye, and the way the other man looked back. The question went beyond health—a question of spirit, a question of wizards.
"I could use a hundred or so of your pounds," the old man said, tipping his head and squinting at Frost from several angles. "I cannot eat quite as I used to."
"Pity," Frost said, and shook his head. "I cannot imagine."
"What is your name?" Madia asked, realizing Frost had failed to introduce anyone.
"What is yours?" the old sorcerer asked.
She had been through this before. "Madia."
"Ah, yes, of course, the princess," he said.
Madia looked at him. "Of course?"
"There are soldiers everywhere," Frost said. "What do you know of this?"
"I miss your father's hand," he told Madia. "He was not such a man as your grandfather, but as good a man as any I've known since. A fine king. I await your time."
"Then her time is certain?" Frost asked, eyes growing suddenly narrow.
"What time?" Madia began, growing frustrated at her inability to keep squarely in the conversation.
The old man sat completely still for several moments. "I have seen it in the flames," he said at length.
"What flames?" Madia insisted.
"Yet nothing is certain," the older wizard continued. "When Kelren was still a young prince, I was court wizard to Hual for a time. At the old king's request, I spent many months building warding spells for the boy, laying them one on top of the other. Disease, violence, most anything that can kill a man before his time. I cannot imagine how he could have fallen ill enough to die."
"There are always surprises, my friend," Frost counseled the old man. "Always things unforeseen. The odds are never perfect, I'm afraid. What of this Other?"
"He does not belong to this world," the old one replied, then he began to turn again, slowly working his stiff, feeble body around away from Frost. "Come, look for yourself."
Frost rose and stood beside the old man, staring into the hearth. A fire burned there now, rising somehow from the nearly spent coals, small but bright. Frost put out his hands as if to warm them, and the flames grew up blue and white and smokeless, leaving almost no orange at all. Both men seemed to ponder the hearth intently. Madia eased nearer and peered into the fire. The flames rose and crackled and vanished, and rose again. She saw nothing else there.
Abruptly the old man wheezed and slumped back in his chair, one stiff, gnarled hand to his chest. The flames went out at once. Frost turned and leaned to the other wizard, put his hands on the other's chest, and began to recite a whispered phrase Madia could not pick out. In a moment the old wizard got his breath back, then some of his posture. Frost stood back, rubbing his hands together; the act was tentative, as if the hands hurt. He glanced at Madia then, a troubled look in his eyes, the closest thing to fear Madia had yet seen there. The old wizard, for all the trouble, looked notably better than he had to begin with.
"Your visit is a timely one," the old man said in a moment, relaxing now, breathing well. Frost briefly nodded.
Madia wondered which one of them the old man had meant.
"It was enough," the older wizard said finally. "I have never seen the like."
"Nor I," Frost agreed. Madia decided they had changed topics again.
"What did you see?" she urged.
"A mystery," Frost said, sitting down again. "This Lord Ferris does not seem to appear in the normal course of things, the flow of earth-time and earth-destiny. He is an intrusion of some sort, a tear in the fabric of the natural tapestry. His presence makes the future much less certain than it should be."
"He is not who he claims to be," the old man added. "That is certain."
Madia shook her head. "Then who is he?" she asked, struggling with it now.
"How should I know?" Frost replied.
Madia shook her head some more.
"You too were in the flames," the old man said.
"Yes," Frost remarked. "As I believed she would be. Which is only sensible, and one reason, after all, that I accompany her."
"Because you think I am supposed to go to Kamrit, and Lord Ferris is not supposed to be there?" Madia asked, trying harder.
"Of course."
Madia sat considering a moment. She had never expected destiny, luck, or the Greater Gods to be on her side before, and she rather liked the idea.
"Does this mean you are definitely going to help me?"
The old man raised one trembling hand and placed it on Frost's arm, then waited until Frost looked at him. "She has no chance alone," he said. "You saw as I did."
"I know." Frost took a deep breath, then slowly let it out. "But while they are likely not substantial, the risks involved are unknown, and I—" He stopped himself, a different look on his face, worry, perhaps, or frustration, though Madia couldn't be sure. "We are between a full moon and a new moon," he said, clearing his throat, forging ahead. "Not the time to—"
"You are not still enamored of superstitions, are you?" the other man asked, glaring at Frost and raising his voice much more than Madia had thought possible. "Still throwing salt over your shoulder and carrying a bent coin? Or those damned stones you keep? I thought I'd cured you of all that nonsense ages ago!"
"A bent coin?" Frost asked with interest. "What of them?"
"By the Greater Gods!"
Frost glanced at Madia and she saw a look of embarrassment, though she could hardly believe it.
"In truth," Frost said, "I merely take into consideration the timeworn lessons and observances of the many cultures I have encountered in my—"
"And you still aren't willing to take chances, either, are you? Always a character flaw with you, Frost. 'Never risk everything,' you used to say, even though to get up in the morning is to do so! The great and pompous Frost, judge and jury and diviner of all men in all lands, especially if the price is right, but let your personal cost estimates grow too great, or let some unfortunate peasant's black kitten cross you once, and you are as hard to find as bread among beggars!"
"This is a side of you I've not seen yet," Madia declared, considering him carefully now. He seemed to mind the scrutiny.
"I see no fault in applying common sense to any situation," Frost insisted. "I can do no one any good if I fall prey to harm!"
"You are doing no one any good now. How have you pledged yourself to this young woman?"
"I am here. And if, in the course of events, I see that there is a fair need for—"
"If!" the old man barked. "Always you say 'if'! You are still in your prime, Frost, strong and fat as an autumn bear, and you saw what was in the flames, yet you cannot say what you intend? Are you waiting for a rabbit's foot to find you, perhaps? From a rabbit more courageous than you, preferably?"
"He intends to help me," Madia said, finding Frost looking at her again with an unreadable expression. "I have felt it ever since we met on the streets of Kern."
The old wizard nodded slowly to her, a half-smile. "And how is that?" he asked.
"I—that is—I just know a little something about men, I guess," she replied. "I can just tell."
The old man only hummed.
"I did not come to engage in arguments," Frost said.
"Perhaps not, my friend," the other said. "Then again, perhaps you did just that?"
Frost sat quietly a while, looking into the old wizard's eyes. Both men seemed wrapped in some deepening spiritual embrace that Madia could not fathom.
"Perhaps," Frost said at last. "But . . . there is more."
Then the older man slowly closed his eyes and slumped down slightly in his chair, motionless, looking for all the world as if he had died. Barely, Madia could see his chest rise and fall.
"Does he have a name?" Madia asked after a time, a whisper in Frost's ear.
"Yes."
Madia waited. There was nothing more. "What is it?" she asked.
"I don't know, but these days he is called Aphan."
"What?" the old man said suddenly, eyes slightly open again.
"There is talk of the Demon Blade," Frost said, as though their conversation had gone uninterrupted. "They say it rests in Golemesk."
"Yes," Aphan replied. "And so it does."
Aphan drifted. Frost waited until his focus returned, then asked, "Ramins still holds the Blade?"
"This came to me a few weeks ago." Aphan turned and slowly pointed a finger to a place not far to one side of the hearth. Frost rose and walked to the spot, and collected a short wooden staff made of white birch. He then examined the engravings on it. "It bears the feel of Ramins," he said.
"He has died," Aphan declared. "I am sure of it. And before he could fulfill his vow, I believe. The peasants who came to me with that said they found the body in the fields in Bouren, at the edge of Golemesk. He must have been carried there so that he would be found. The leshys, I think. But some of what they say is strange."
Frost came back and set the staff on top of the table. "How so?" he asked.
"I am also told that Ramins was even thinner than I, nothing but bones, as if his magic alone was all that had kept him alive. But how he could have summoned the power to utilize the Blade, or withstood its force if need be, I cannot imagine. One assumes he never did. Perhaps that is how he died—although, so close by, I would have sensed the use of the Blade's unique magic. I'm sure of it. But those secrets, like many others, must have died with him."
"Then the leshys must have the Blade. They have a keen sense for such things."
Aphan nodded. "They will have taken it deep into their realm."
Frost made a face, like someone tasting spoiled meat. "The barrows," he remarked.
"Most certainly."
"It is safe enough, then. The leshys can make little use of it, and not even an army of fools would be fool enough to enter the barrows after it."
"What barrows?" Madia asked. "What place is that?"
"Tell her," Aphan said, slumping again, though trying to keep his eyes open.
"A great battle took place there, long ago," Frost began, sitting back. "An army led by a Holan conqueror mage known as Tiesh was cornered and destroyed there in the time before your grandfather, the time of the Holan Empire. By then the empire had control in name only, and Tiesh took advantage of this to further his own holdings. Those who resisted his rule were killed. Hundreds died, until a small army of men and mages found Tiesh and his army camped along a shallow bog inside Golemesk. They surprised Tiesh and destroyed them all, then they bound Tiesh's spirit and those of his men to the bog, and buried the dead in barrow mounds, as was the custom.
"But over time, the spirit of Tiesh freed itself, then gradually set about conjuring the spirits of the other dead back into their remains, and the barrow-wights have since each fashioned their own doors, so that they can come and go as they please."
"They leave the swamp?"
"No," Aphan said. "They cannot leave the bog and cannot leave their barrows in strong daylight."
Madia considered a moment. "Then couldn't someone ride in during the day, try to find this Blade, and get back out again before dark?"
"The bog rests near the center of the swamp now," old Aphan explained. "Golemesk is nearly double the size it was in those days. It would take several days journey through leshy lands to reach the central bogs, even on horseback, and the Holan barrows lie mostly submerged, so they are difficult to find. There are no paths that the leshy have not dismantled, and no one who ventures there has ever returned."
"Truly a bad omen, dear Aphan, as even you must agree," Frost said. He turned to Madia before the old man could reply. "Little daylight reaches that part of Golemesk, in any case," he said, "except where the water lies deep enough to drown the ancient trees. Even if the barrow-wights were not a threat, there are shadows enough so that the leshy can attack at any time, and do."
Madia leaned toward Aphan, lowering her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Could a sorcerer, like Frost, say, get to the barrows, and back out again?"
"Doubtful," Frost said. Madia ignored him and kept to Aphan, who looked up, eyeing both of them. Finally Aphan shrugged. "Very hard to say," he said.
"Aphan can call a council of wizards," Frost remarked. "They will reveal the name of the Blade's next intended guardian and seek him out. That one will in turn lead a party of sufficiently talented sorcerers and assistants to retrieve the Demon Blade."
"What if they can't find that person?" Madia wondered.
"Then a new council will be held, and another will be chosen."
"I would have gone alone, into the swamp, in my prime," Aphan said, working his face into a dim smile.
"On such a dangerous mission?" Frost asked him, winking. "How ever did you live so long?"
Aphan worked his face into a tight grin. "Luck!" he said.
Silence fell about the table. Madia sat thinking over all she had heard and all she still wanted to say. "Who else knows the secrets of the Blade?" she asked, mostly of Aphan.
"Only Ramins did," Aphan said solemnly. "And no one is quite sure of that."
"But he's dead."
Both men nodded.
"We will be leaving now," Frost said, rising again. "We must join our companions. Is there anything that you need?"
"No," Aphan said. "But tell me, as a favor to these old ears, where is it you intend to go?"
"He is going to help win Ariman back, of course," Madia said, then grinned as Frost looked at her.
Frost shrugged. "I am going south, toward Neleva," he said. Then he shrugged again. "Through Kamrit."
Aphan closed his eyes again. Frost turned to go, and Madia slowly followed him out. She said good-bye at the door, but Aphan was sound asleep.
"We are very different, you know," she told Frost as they entered the street, squinting at the harsh light of day. She walked up the street beside him. "Aphan said you never like to take risks."
"A fool's approach."
"You may be right, for I have never lived any other way," Madia said.
"We would both do well to consider where that has gotten you, I think," he said.
Madia started a hot reply, then realized she could not. Not yet, anyway. She followed him in silence.
"We have a boat," Rosivok announced, standing alone and greeting them as they neared the river. "Sharryl and the soldiers are aboard."
"Do you trust the boatman?" Frost asked.
"Well enough. He is a simple man, young and poor and with a wife and children. Loyalty to Lord Ferris does not run deep among the boatman, and wages are few. Some have been to Kamrit already this spring. They talk, and others listen. The river tolls are great, and penalties severe. The stories are mostly bad. He took our coins quickly enough, and will not want to give them back."
"Well, then," Frost answered, "take us there."
Madia went with them, past the last houses at the edge of town, then past a stable and a small inn. A group of men, five in all, stood about in front of the stables, their conversation kept low. Soldiers, Madia thought at first, though she wasn't certain why, since they wore no colors or armor. Then she noticed the battle swords they each wore, and their dress, much alike, styled linens and leathers—free men all.
The other four grew silent as one of them spoke, the way the peasants had been silent when the lord's hayward brought a message. The speaker seemed much too lean to be wearing the only two-handed sword in the lot. He stopped talking and looked up as Madia and the others passed, watching them, squinting to see in the fading light of early evening. Watching me, Madia thought, though she could not be sure.
But then the stables were out of sight and the river was just ahead. She kept checking as they walked, looking back over her shoulder, but no one followed. In a moment they reached the river's edge and headed aboard the boat.
The girl was not familiar, but Grear knew the man and the two strange warriors that walked with him; it had been years ago, somewhere in Achien or Lagoreth, he thought, beyond the Spartooths, but he remembered the fat wizard's arrogant face quite well—and his name, Frost, owing to his supposed prowess with a deadly kind of aging spell. The wizard had been known in the region for stopping a plague of locusts by making a heavy rain turn to ice as it touched the fields where the swarms had landed. The locusts had not only died, but had been used as meal and compost.
But he was known to be unpredictable, apparently depending on whatever framed his mood, even after an agreement had been made and fees met. Grear had thought to hire the wizard himself at the time, a precaution in the killing of a local noble who himself had hired a formidable mage—alas, a noble whose lady seemed to place great value on a swift, unconditional end to the man's life. Finally Grear had done the job with just his own men, and had lost most of them, he recalled, to a dizziness spell that forced them to keep their backs against the castle walls to prevent them from falling to the floor.
He watched the group wander out of sight, kept staring at the empty street after that.
"What's wrong?" one of the others asked after a time.
"Those merchants in the square yesterday," Grear said. "Do you recall the story they told?"
"The fight in Kern?" the other asked.
Grear nodded. "Fifteen of the king's soldiers killed," he added, thinking out loud. "And three of them turned old and white where they stood by a very fat mage."
Several of Grear's men nodded. Grear rubbed at the stubble on his chin, then he pointed to two of his men. "Follow them that went by just now; see if they go to hire a boat downriver."
Both men acknowledged him and set out at a brisk pace, disappearing around the corner.
"What are we up to?" one of the remaining men asked.
If Frost was headed toward Kamrit, Grear reasoned, he had either been hired by Kaafk, or by Kaafk's enemies—though if the stories from Kern were true, Frost was no ally of the crown. Which was valuable information, Grear decided, either way.
"We're trying to get a bit richer," Grear explained, then he told them what he knew. He found the others eager to listen.
"He is one of Grear's men," Kaafk said, standing as near to Lord Ferris as the great arms of the throne—made larger of late at the grand chamberlain's direction—would allow. He spoke as quietly as possible, so that the others assembled in the court would not hear. The soldier in question stood ten paces behind.
"And what is the trouble?" Lord Ferris asked.
"He says Grear recognized a man, one in a group of travelers buying downriver passage from Kopeth. A rogue mage who is known in other lands by the name of Frost. He makes the journey with two of your own men-at-arms, and three more unknown warriors. Grear believes the soldiers may be traitors, and may have hired the mage to aid them in some way."
"In what way?"
"How should I know?" Kaafk put both hands out, palms up. "A plot of some kind, perhaps, against you!"
"Do you believe this is possible?" Ferris asked, apparently unshaken.
Kaafk looked carefully at the soldier standing behind him, the crude armor he wore, the fine battle sword. Grear and his men had been a wise purchase, Kaafk thought, an investment that was already paying off. The good Lord Ferris would do well to take lessons from Kaafk.
"Many things are possible, lord. But I have met with Grear enough to know that he would not pass on such information unless, in his own mind, he thought there was good cause. Unless he thought it was . . . valuable."
"You," Lord Ferris said, speaking to the soldier. "Tell Grear I want these people followed and closely watched. If he learns more, I'll want to hear. It is possible the northern vassals have hired someone to help cause mischief, and some of our guard as well. And they may have friends in Kamrit itself, people we will want to know about. I have tried to leave alone as many of Andarys' knights as possible, but I may have been too lenient with them."
"There is more," Kaafk began, waiting to bring it up, recalling how thoroughly aggravated Ferris had become upon first hearing the news of that embarrassing, unfortunate defeat in the square at Kern. The grand chamberlain was not entirely sane, Kaafk was convinced of that, but he was almost entirely reliable in certain other respects.
There was something especially disquieting, now and again, about the man, however, in his manner, his answers at times, his questions—but it hadn't seemed to matter in the course of larger events. Probably, Kaafk thought, it never would. "Grear has found people from Kopeth who say this Frost and the others came on the north road from Kern just two days after the battle there. Frost, it seems, has a reputation for his aging spells. Three of your dead guardsmen in Kern were found—"
"I remember."
Ferris sat silently awhile, and Kaafk noticed it again, the strange look, the eyes. Perhaps a spell that this Frost had created was having some effect. Or Ferris might be some sort of wizard himself and had simply never shown his hand. Kaafk sighed quietly and put these thoughts aside. The possibilities were nearly endless, enough to make worrying over them too great a task, especially when it didn't seem important.
"Also inform Grear," Lord Ferris said suddenly, jogging Kaafk from his thoughts, "that I would like Frost and the others intercepted and questioned before they arrive at Kamrit. If they are the ones who killed the guards in Kern, I'll want Grear to kill them. If they object to the questioning, he may kill them anyway. I would prefer to have the men-at-arms brought in alive if possible, for trial, but Grear may use his best judgment. We will pay him for each head, in any case."
"Very well," the soldier said.
"You may go as well," Ferris told Kaafk, using a satisfied tone. Kaafk felt reasonably good himself. He turned and motioned the soldier to one side and out, then he bowed to the lord and swept himself away.