Fydel waited impassively until the door shut. “You push her too much, Cerryl. With all her supporters, she could have your head tomorrow.”
“Perhaps. But would you want this position? Now, particularly?” The High Wizard looked down at the amulet, then turned and glanced out the window into the hot late-summer day, where the white-orange sun burned through the green-blue sky. Too bad you cannot remove her as you did Lyam and the others…but too many in the Guild know of your skills that way, and all would turn on you… now, anyway.
Fydel shook his head.
“Only the young bulls like Muerchal would want to be High Wizard.” Cerryl laughed and turned back to Fydel. “Mages like Disarj, Gorsuch-even Heralt and Lyasa-would have him turning in circles within days. Old and cautious as Kinowin and Redark are, either would be a far better High Wizard.”
“They don’t wish to be,” suggested Fydel. “It takes strength and skill, and cunning. You and Anya are the only ones left with such, save Gorsuch and Disarj, and both of them are rock lizards.” Fydel stood.
“You have your strengths,” Cerryl pointed out. “I would like you to consider being the fleet commander.”
“Me? If all is not well with the ships…”
“Anya will blame me, and then you.” Cerryl frowned, then added, “You have seen me. You know I do not lay my failures on others.”
The square-bearded mage shook his head. “You do not, but Anya would.”
“If you do not command, then she will seek someone like Muerchal or Zurchak-and then, should anything be amiss, she will blame you for not putting your expertise to work for the Guild.” Cerryl grinned lopsidedly. “After she blames me before the entire Guild for not insisting that you take the post.”
Fydel laughed. “Best I make preparations to go to Lydiar.” His face clouded, then cleared, and he nodded somberly. “By your leave?”
Cerryl nodded in return. As the door closed, Cerryl’s eyes went to the papers on the side of the desk, with the commission for Brental from Wertel, who, at Cerryl’s request, had found some buyers interested in quality-cut timbers and planks. You hope that it will help more than a little. Brental had been as good as his father to Cerryl when the High Wizard had been a sawmill boy there.
Can you repay them all? Probably not, but you have to try… just as you have to try to be the best High Wizard-knowing you can’t be.
CLXXVIII
I understand Cerryl has suggested that you command the fleet.“ Anya glanced across the table to Fydel, then at Cerryl. Her pale eyes avoided Leyladin. ”I thought I was directing the plan.“
“I have followed your plan, Anya.” Cerryl poured more water into his goblet and then into Leyladin’s.
Even as Leyladin took a sip of the chaos-cleaned water, the healer’s dark green eyes never left Anya.
“Then, you will direct the fleet, Fydel.” Anya smiled winningly. “I had wanted you, but I had hoped the High Wizard would let me tell you that.”
Cerryl kept his face impassive.
The wizard with the square-cut brown beard frowned, looking from the High Wizard to Anya. “You want me to go against that demon ship? It’s seaworthy now, and it moves faster than the other one.”
“It’s only one ship, and you’ll have a dozen well-armed war schooners,” Anya replied. “Besides, you don’t even have to land. Just use your skills to fire the town.”
“What if the… whatever he is… comes after us?”
“You sink his ship,” Cerryl said quietly. “I recall your once saying that would be possible were you in command. You’re the wizard in charge.”
“Fine. I’ll need some more assistants.”
“Pick whom you need. Except for Lyasa and Heralt-I need them to make sure the tariff coins keep flowing from the northlands. Let me know, though, and I’ll inform those you pick.”
Fydel pursed his lips, then inclined his head. “By your leave?” After Fydel had departed and the tower door had closed again, Cerryl massaged his forehead and looked out the window into the cold rain pelting Fairhaven. “Demon-damned rain, always gives me a headache.”
The redheaded woman sat, legs crossed, before the table. The circular mirror that lay upon the white oak was blank. She smiled, first at Leyladin, then at Cerryl.
“You really don’t care if we win, do you?” asked Cerryl. “What ever gave you that idea?”
“Everyone who supported you has been given a position on those fleets. At your request. That’s a page from Hartor’s book.”
“You’ve read a great deal of history. It makes you much more appealing.” Anya paused. “I did not select them all. Some you added.”
“That is true, but was that not what you wanted?” The High Wizard fingered the amulet once worn by a High Wizard named Hartor and more recently by Sterol. “If they win, they owe you-”
“They owe you, High Wizard.”
“That is so thoughtful of you.” Cerryl inclined his head to Anya. “Humor me, if you please, and listen. You owe me that, at least.”
Anya smiled faintly, but only with her mouth.
“If we somehow destroy or humiliate this Black builder of magic ships, then all your supporters will be indebted. If this unknown Black proves as great as, say, Creslin, then no one is left to challenge you. And,” Cerryl added wryly, “like Hartor, no one will want this position for at least a decade, or until their memories grow somewhat fainter. You are rather astute, Anya dear.” He paused. “Of course, if they fail, but return, then I will follow Sterol.”
“Then why did you accept my proposition?” Anya asked.
“Why not? All life is a gamble. Besides, like Sterol, I suspect attacking Recluce is doomed to failure.”
“You admit that and yet are sending out those fleets?”
“I could be wrong.” Cerryl smiled.
“So you could.” Anya returned the smile, stood, and stepped around the table toward him, lips parted. She bent down and brushed his cheek.
Cerryl took the kiss, and the swirl of sandalwood scent and chaos, without wincing.
Anya glanced at Leyladin. “I trust you do not mind, healer. He has been most helpful.”
The White mage’s smile was broad and false.
“I am glad for you, Anya.” Leyladin’s eyes were cold, her voice level.
“You are such a coward, Cerryl.” The redhead stepped away.
“That is one way of putting it, and I admit it.” He laughed gently.
“If there were anyone else… anyone who could be High Wizard…”
“There isn’t.” Cerryl smiled as falsely as she had. “Not who needs you.”
“You must remember that, especially before the next full meeting of the Guild,” Anya said, overly sweetly, inclining her head briefly to Leyladin. “And you also, healer.”
Cerryl did not wipe his cheek until the door shut.
“I hate her. Did you have to let her do that?”
“Let her kiss me? No. I could turn her into ash and have half the Guild at my neck.”
“You’re stronger than all those left here.”
Cerryl nodded. “But I can’t fight them all, day after day. You know I’m working on it. If I let Anya humiliate me in private… well… there’s less chance she’ll expect what’s coming.”
“She’s planning more than a confrontation before the Guild,” predicted Leyladin. “There aren’t that many who will follow her. Not if you show your power.”
“Probably, but what is she planning? I’ve checked with the lancers and the lancer officers. The companies that were loyal to her were the ones I sent to the southern fleet. Every one of her four young mages- Muerchal, Zurchak, Aalkiron… and the other one… I can’t remember his name…”
“Giustyl,” Leyladin supplied.
“They’re with Fydel and the fleet. Broka is also her tool, but I can’t do much about him. Still, he’s about the only older one left here, except maybe Gyskas, and I can’t see what he sees in her…”
“Lust… sex.” The healer smiled. “Even High Wizards have been known to experience it.”
“Woman…”
“Well? Can you deny it?” Her smile grew broader. “No.” Cerryl frowned. “We’ll have to watch those two closely, but neither is that strong in chaos.”
“Treachery of some sort, then.” Leyladin frowned. “I think I’ll have some of Father’s trade guards watch the house at night.”
“That couldn’t hurt. Should we sleep here?”
“At the house, they can’t tell where you sleep. It’s order-spelled against most glasses now. Besides, if Broka and Gyskas are involved, are you any safer here?”
“Probably not.”
“You could remove her…” Leyladin suggested, tentatively. “That wouldn’t work well for the future. By now, everyone knows that I can remove people without anyone seeing anything. If Anya disappears, it all points to me. And I can’t hold on as High Wizard just by sheer force. Removing people without the support of the Guild… look what happened to Sterol at the end. No one even said a word. They were all relieved. I have to position Anya as totally unreasonable… and leave her without supporters.”
Leyladin raised her eyebrows. “If you look too much to the future, we may not have one.”
“I know. I know.” The longer you’re High Wizard, the worse it seems to get. No wonder Sterol was so arbitrary. Cerryl took a deep breath.
CLXXIX
Leyladin sat up in bed, then slipped in the darkness from under the quilt and coverlet to the window, where she peered through a crack in the shutter-out at the heavy fat snowflakes that followed the afternoon’s cold rain, leaving a thin coat of slushy snow on the bushes and the ground.
“There’s something out there,” she whispered.
Cerryl climbed out of the silken sheets, wearing but a loose nightshirt, still groggy. He’d barely gotten to sleep, and deep as his sleep had been, it had not been restful. He shook his head, throbbing from the storm. Despite the pounding in his skull, he could sense something beyond, not exactly chaos, not exactly order.
“A lot of iron… I can feel that,” she added in an even lower voice.
“Iron… weapons.” Cerryl blinked and rubbed his forehead.
Thurummmm… thurrummm… The thunder of the snow shower rumbled across Fairhaven and through Cerryl’s skull as he pulled back the inside shutters and fumbled open the window.
Had there been a muffled yell… a clank of some sort?
Through the heavy flakes of snow, the intermittent glow of the single outside house lamp glinted off dark iron. Figures in dark leathers slipped along the shadows by the wall, and a heavy pounding came from the front of the house.
“Cerryl… there must be rwoscore armsmen out there, and…”
And someone mustering chaos. Concentrating was hard, with his sleep-befogged mind and headache. You have to concentrate… you have to… “I know… there’s a pair of mages-I don’t know whom, though.”
“He’s at the window there!” hissed a high male voice.
Cerryl frowned. Despite the headache he began to muster chaos, as much as he could.
Whhhstt! A firebolt flared toward the window, curving away and splatting against the bricks of the wall.
Cerryl swallowed. He hadn’t even sensed the chaos. Leyladin’s shields had diverted it while he’d been fumbling, trying to create a larger chaos focus through the ground and storm.
Leyladin touched his hand lightly, letting her dark order support him, adding to his shields, actually shielding him as he worked. “Go on… You can do it.”
Can you? You have to. Ignoring the two sets of pounding-a heavy hammer against a door and storm-chaos and conflict within his skull- Cerryl struggled to raise the chaos he needed.
Whhhstt! Another chaos bolt flamed toward the window, and again Leyladin diverted it.
Cerryl could feel the strain she was under, trying to deal with chaos and his impossibly slow reactions. His eyes burned, and each of the armsmen in dark leathers seemed to have split into two armsmen.
The ground rumbled, once, twice, and he smiled grimly as the chaos he had called forth infused the area around the house.
Ssssssss! Orange-white flame seared upward through the ground, and steam hissed into being, wreathing the factor’s dwelling. Curtains of black-shot white chaos fire played around the walls and wavered across the ground. Gouts of steam flashed into the dark night air.
“Aeeeüi!…” The screams of men being chaos-roasted filled the night, and the ugly unseen reddish white chaos of death rolled across the ground, swirling against the bricks of the dwelling.
Whhhssst! Whssst! Two more firebolts flashed toward them, and this time Cerryl diverted them, his senses on the two figures that stood, seemingly impossibly, amid the chaos storm that filled the night.
Whhhsst!
The High Wizard straightened, taking a slow breath, and focused a narrower beam of chaos.
The first figure flared like a white candle struck by molten iron. The second turned but did not take three steps before another white candle flared in the darkness.
Cerryl bent forward, his hands on the wooden sill.
Leyladin’s fingers trembled on Cerryl’s forearm, then tightened.
“Finish it…”
Cerryl closed his eyes to shut out the painful double images and concentrated on widening the swath of chaos to include those armsmen already retreating, even those trying to scramble over the stone walls.
Sssssssss.‘
The muscles in his arms and thighs tightened, almost cramping into knots. Outside, the ground steamed, so much that the air felt like a hot and damp summer night, shot through with an occasional brief gust of chill wind.
Leyladin tugged gently at Cerryl’s arm. “There’s no one out there, but the front entry…”
The healer at his side, Cerryl walked heavily but quickly toward the front door, holding some fragments of chaos ready.
A leathered figure leaped across the tiles of the front Hall-almost reaching Cerryl before a golden light lance burned through his chest. Cerryl and Leyladin jumped back as the dull thud and clunk of covered plate mail echoed through the dwelling.
Both glanced around.
“I don’t see anyone else,” she whispered.
Squinting through double images and eyes that stabbed pain, Cerryl swept the hall and foyer with sight and senses but could see no one. They eased toward the open front door and the lamp that spilled faint light across the still-steaming ground.