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  "In addition," Charliss continued smoothly, "this land of Valdemar is overrun with refugees from all the conflict within Hardorn and from the wretched situation before Ancar perished. Valdemar could decide to aid the Hardornens in some material way, and that would cause us further trouble. We know that they have somehow allied themselves with those fanatics in Karse, and that presents us with one long front if we choose to fight them. Valdemar itself is a damned peculiar place...."

  "It has always been difficult to insinuate agents into Valdemar," Tremane offered, with the proper diffidence. Charliss wondered whether he spoke from personal experience or simply the knowledge he had gleaned from keeping an eye on Charliss' own agents.

  From beyond the closed doors of the Throne Room came the soft murmur of the courtiers who were waiting for the doors to open for them and Court to begin. Let them wait—and let them see just whose business had kept them waiting. They would know then, without any formal announcements, just who had become the Emperor's current favorite. The little maneuverings and shifts in power would begin from that very moment, like the shifts in current when a new boulder rolls into a stream.

  "Quite." Charliss frowned. "In fact, that Hulda creature was once one of my freelance agents in the Valdemar capital. I was rather dubious about using her again, despite her abilities, until I realized just how cursed difficult it is to work in Valdemar. As it was, her progress there was minimal. Most unsatisfactory. She was never able to insinuate herself any higher than a mere court servant's position, and she had more than one agenda and more than one employer at the time."

  The corner of Tremane's mouth twitched again, but this time it was downward. Charliss knew why—Tremane never knowingly worked with someone who served more masters than he.

  "Why did you trust her in Hardorn, then?" the Grand Duke asked in a neutral tone.

  "I never trusted her," Charliss corrected him, allowing a hint of cold disapproval to tinge his own voice. "I trust no agents, particularly not those who are as ambitious as this one was. I merely made sure that this time she had no other employers, and that her personal agenda was not incompatible with mine. And when it appeared that she was slipping her leash, I sent an envoy to Ancar's court to remind her who her master was. And to eliminate her if she elected to ignore the warning he represented. That was why I sent a mage, an Adept her equal, with none of her vices."

  "Your pardon," Tremane replied, bowing slightly. "I should have known. But—about Valdemar?"

  Charliss permitted his icy expression to thaw. "Valdemar is peculiar, as I said. Until recently, they've had next to no magic at all, and what they had was only mind-magic. There was a barrier there, according to my agents, a barrier that made it impossible for a practicing mage to remain within the borders for very long."

  "But how did Hulda—" Tremane began, then smiled. "Of course. While she was there, she must have refrained from using her powers. A difficult thing for a mage—use of magic often becomes a habit too ingrained to break."

  Charliss blinked slowly in satisfaction. Tremane was no fool; he saw immediately the solution and the difficulty of implementing it. "Precisely," he replied. "On both counts. And that was why I continued to use her. In business matters, the woman's self-discipline was remarkable. As for Valdemar—though they have begun again to use magic as we know it, the place is no less peculiar than before, and many of the mages they seem to have invited into their borders are from no land that my operatives recognize! Well, that is all in the past; what we need to deal with is the current situation. And that, Grand Duke Tremane, is where you come in."

  Tremane simply waited, as any good and perfectly trained servant, for his master to continue. But his eyes narrowed just a trifle, and Charliss knew that his mind was working furiously. A current of breeze stirred the tapestries behind him, but the flames of the candles on the many-branched candelabras, protected in their glass shades, did not even waver.

  "Your Duchy borders Hardorn; you will therefore be familiar with the area," Charliss stated, his tone and expression allowing no room for dissension. "The situation in Hardorn grows increasingly unstable by the moment. I require a personal commander of my own in place there—someone who has incentive, personal incentive, to see that the situation is dealt with expeditiously."

  "Personal incentive, my Emperor?" Tremane replied.

  Charliss crossed his legs and leaned forward, ignoring the pain in his hip joints. "I am giving you a unique opportunity to prove, not only to me, but to your rivals and your potential underlings, that you are the only truly worthy candidate for the Wolf Crown. I intend to put you in command of the Imperial forces in Hardorn. You will be answerable only to me. You will prove yourself worthy by dealing with this situation and bringing it to a successful conclusion."

  Tremane's hands trembled, and Charliss noted that he had turned just a little pale. How long would it take for word to spread of Tremane's new position? Probably less than an hour. "What of Valdemar, my Emperor?" he asked, his voice steady, even if his hands were not.

  "What of Valdemar?" Charliss repeated. "Well, I don't expect you to conquer it as well. It will be enough to bring Hardorn under our banner. However, if during that process you discover a way to insinuate an agent into Valdemar, all the better. If you take your conquests past the Hardorn border and actually into Valdemar, better still. I simply warn you of Valdemar because it is a strange place and I cannot predict how it will measure this situation nor what it will do. Valdemar can wait; Hardorn is what concerns me now. We must conquer it, now that we have begun, or our other client states will see that we have failed and may become difficult to deal with in our perceived moment of weakness."

  "And if I succeed in bringing Hardorn into the Empire?" Tremane persisted.

  "Then you will be confirmed in the succession, and I will begin the process of the formal training," Charliss told him. "And at the end of ten years, I will retire, and you will have Throne, Crown, and Empire."

  Tremane's eyes lit, and his lips twitched into a tight, excited smile. Then he sobered. "If I do not succeed, however, I assume I shall resume nothing more than the rule of my Duchy."

  Charliss examined his immaculately groomed hands, gazing into the topaz eyes of the wolf's-head ring he wore, a ring whose wolf mask had been cast from the same molds as the central wolf of the Wolf Crown. The eyes gazed steadily at him, and as he often did, Charliss fancied he saw a hint of life in them. Hunger. An avidity, not that of the starving beast, but of the prosperous and powerful.

  "There is no shortage of suitable candidates for the Throne," he replied casually, tilting the ring for a better view into the burning yellow eyes. "If you should happen to survive your failure, I would advise you to retire directly to your Duchy. The next candidate that I would consider if you failed would be Baron Melles."

  Baron Melles was a so-called "court Baron," a man with a title but no lands to match. He didn't need land; he had power, power in abundance, for he was an Adept and his magics had brought him more wealth than many landed nobles had. His coffers bulged with his accumulated wealth, but he wanted more, and his bloodlines and ambition were likely to give him more.

  He also happened to be of the political party directly opposite that of Tremane's. Tremane's parents had held their lands for generations; Melles was the son of merchants. Melles was, not so incidentally, one of Tremane's few enemies, one of the few candidates to the succession who did not underestimate the Baron. There was a personal animosity between them that Charliss did not quite understand, and he often wondered if the two had somehow contracted a very private feud that had little or nothing to do with their respective positions and ambitions.

  Melles would be only too pleased to find Tremane a failure and himself the new successor. This meant, among other things, that if Tremane happened to survive his failure to conquer Hardorn, he probably would not survive the coronation of his rival, and he might not even survive the confirmation of Melles as successor. Melles was the most ruthless
of all the candidates, and both Charliss and Tremane were quite well aware that he was a powerful enough Adept to be able to commit any number of murders-by-magic, and make them all appear to be accidents.

  He was also clever enough not to do anything of the sort, since his political rivals would be looking for and defending against exactly that sort of attack. Melles was fully wealthy enough to buy any number of covert killers, and probably would. He was too clever not to consolidate his position by eliminating enough rivals that those remaining were intimidated.

  That was, after all, one of the realities of life in the Empire; lead, follow, and barricade yourself against assassins.

  And the first in line for elimination would be Tremane—if Melles were named successor.

  Charliss knew this. So did Tremane. It made the situation all the more piquant.

  Interestingly enough, if Tremane succeeded and attained the coveted prize, it was not likely that he would remove Melles. Nor would he dispose of any of the other candidates. Rather, he would either win them over to his side or find some other way to neutralize them—perhaps by finding something else, creating some other problem for them, that required all their attention.

  Charliss had used both ploys in the past, and on the whole, he preferred subtlety to assassination. Still, there had been equally successful Emperors in the past who ruled by the knife and the garrote. Difficult times demanded difficult solutions, and one of those times could be upon them.

  The entire situation gave Charliss a faint echo of the thrill he had felt back at the beginning of his own reign, when he first realized he truly did have the power of life and death over his underlings and could manipulate their lives as easily as the puppeteer manipulated his dolls. It was amusing to present Tremane with a gift of a sword—with a needle-studded, poisoned grip. It was doubly amusing to know that Melles, at least, would recognize this test for what it was, and would be watching Tremane just as avidly from a distance, perhaps sending in his own agents to try and undermine his rival, and attempting to consolidate his own position here at court.

  The jockeying and scrabbling was about to begin. It should produce hours of fascination.

  Charliss watched Tremane closely, following the ghosts, the shadows of expressions as he thought all this through and came to the same conclusions. There was no chance that he would refuse the appointment, of course. Firstly, Tremane was a perfectly adequate military commander. Secondly, refusing this appointment would be the same as being defeated;

  Melles would have the reward of becoming successor, and Tremane's life would be in danger.

  It took very little time for Tremane to add all the factors together to come to the conclusions that Charliss had already thought out. He bowed quickly.

  "I cannot tell my Emperor how incredibly flattered I am by his trust in me," he said smoothly. "I can only hope that I will prove worthy of that trust."

  Charliss said nothing; only nodded in acknowledgment.

  "And I am answerable only to you, my Emperor? Not to any other, military or civilian?" Tremane continued quickly.

  "Have I not said as much?" Charliss waved a hand. "I am certain you will need all the time you have between now and tomorrow morning, Grand Duke. Packing and preparations will probably occupy you for the rest of the day. I will have one of the Court Mages open the Portal for you to the Hardornen front just after you break your fast tomorrow morning."

  "Sir." Tremane made the full formal bow this time; he knew a dismissal even when it was not phrased as one. Charliss was very pleased with his demeanor, especially given the short notice and the shorter time in which to make ready for his departure. There were no attempts to argue, no excuses, no plaints that there was not enough time.

  Tremane rose from the bow, backing out of the room with his eyes lowered properly. Charliss could not find fault with his posture or the signals his body gave; his demeanor was perfect.

  The great doors opened and closed behind him. Alone once again in the Throne Room, Emperor Charliss, ruler of the largest single domain in the world, leaned to one side and chuckled into the cavernous chamber.

  This would be the most enjoyable little playlet of his entire reign, and it came at the very end, when he had thought he had long since exploited the entertainment value of watching his courtiers scramble about for the tidbits he tossed them. But here was a juicy treat indeed, and the scramble would be vastly amusing.

  Charliss was pleased. Entertainment on this scale was hard to come by!

  Two

  Steam curled up from the water as An'desha gingerly lowered himself into the soaking-pool of Firesong's miniature Vale. A Vale in the heart of Valdemar—no larger than a single Gathering-tent. I would not have believed that such a thing was possible, much less that it could be done with so little magic—yet here it is.

  It was amazing how much could be created without the use of any magic at all. Most of this enchanted little garden had been put together by ordinary folk, using nonmagical materials. There were only two exceptions; the huge windows, and the hot pools. The windows were not the tiny, many-paned things with their thick, bubbly glass, that An'desha had seen in all of the Palace buildings, which would not have done at all for the purpose. These eight windows, two to each side of the room, went from floor to ceiling in a single flawless triangular piece. Each had been made magically by Firesong, of the same substance used by the Hawkbrothers for the windows in their tree-perching ekeles. He had also created a magical source for the hot water for the pools. The rest, this garden that bloomed in the dead of winter, and the pseudo-ekele above it, was all built by ordinary folk, mainly due to Firesong taking shameless advantage of the Queen of Valdemar's gratitude and generosity.

  Firesong felt that if he must remain here as the Tayledras envoy to primitive Valdemar, then by the Goddess, he would have the civilized amenities of a Vale!

  Valdemar. An'desha had never heard of this land until a year ago. As a child and even a young man among the Clans, he had not heard of much beyond the Walls—indeed, the only places beyond the Walls he had learned of as a youngster were the Pelagiris Forest and the trade-city of Kata'shin'a'in. The Shin'a'in as a general rule cared very little for the world beyond the Plains; only Tale'sedrin of all the Clans had any measure of Outland and outClan blood.

  In some Clans—such as An'desha's—such foreign breeding was occasionally considered a minor disgrace—not a disgrace for the child, but for the Shin'a'in parent. "Could he not draw to him a single woman of the Plains?" would come the whispers, or "Was she so unpleasant that no Shin'a'in man cared to partner her?" So it had been for An'desha, child of such an alliance—and perhaps that was why his own Clan had never so much as mentioned the lands outside the Dhorisha Plains. Perhaps they had feared that talking about the lands Outside would excite an un-Shin'a'in wanderlust in him, a yearning for far places and strange climes.

  Well, I found both—without really wanting either.

  The blood-path Adept who had flamboyantly named himself Mornelithe Falconsbane had never heard of Valdemar, either, until the two white-clad strangers from that land had come into the territory of Clan k'Sheyna of the Hawkbrothers.

  An'desha had been a silent, frightened passenger in his own body, which Falconsbane had usurped by magic and trickery. With the Adept possessing him, he had learned just who those strangers were and something of their land. He'd had no choice in the matter, since he was a hidden fugitive within the body that Falconsbane had stolen years ago.

  He should have died; that was what always happened before, when Falconsbane took a body. But he hadn't; perhaps the reason was that he had fled, rather than trying to resist the interloper.

  A prisoner in my own body.... He closed his eyes and sank a measure deeper into the hot water. So odd.... the memories of those years of hiding, when he had no control over the actions of his own body, seemed more solid and real than this moment, when the body he had been born into was once again his.

  An'desha's had been o
nly the last in a long series of bodies Falconsbane had appropriated as his own. All that was required, or so it seemed, was for the victim to be gifted with mage ability and to have been a descendant of a mage called Ma'ar. If those remote memories were to be trusted, Ma'ar had lost his first life—or body, depending on your point of view—in the Mage Wars of so long ago it made An'desha dizzy to think about the passage of years between that moment and this.

  He slipped down to his chin into the hot water, and closed his eyes tighter, letting the steam rise around his face. His face now, and not the half-feline face of Mornelithe Falconsbane. His own body, too, for the most part, though it was more muscular now than it had been when Falconsbane helped himself to it and tried to destroy the original owner. Falconsbane had made a hobby of body sculpting, trying out changes on his daughter before adopting them himself. He had indulged in some extensive modifications to An'desha's body, changes An'desha had been certain he would have to endure even after Falconsbane had been driven out and destroyed.

  But his own actions, risking real soul-death to rid the world of Falconsbane, had earned him more than just his freedom. Not only had he regained his body, most of the modifications had vanished when the Avatars of the Goddess "cured" him of what had been done to him.