'My lord king,' Dalamar said, stepping a little forward.
Tellin's words died, the eyes of the august turned toward the servant who should have kept his place and remained silent. Dalamar smiled at each, a small, cool gesture of acknowledgment.
'My lord king,' he said, as though the silence had been what he was waiting for. 'Lord Tellin has been good enough to use his name to get for me a thing my own name or station would not have availed. But now that I am here, and you are here, I will say this: I know that the war does not go well, and I know that the Highlord is bringing forces in from Goodlund and Balifor to augment her army.'
'Silence!' Ylle Savath snapped. The light of the wall torches ran in her silvery hair. Shadows made her chin seem sharp, her patrician nose like the beak of an eagle. 'Servitor, you have overstepped your bounds.' She looked at the king and Lord Garan. 'He should be removed.'
Lord Garan stepped forward, his face flushed with the same anger that had made Lady Ylle's cheeks go pale. The impertinence of servants was not to be borne, and the presumption of this one who came prating about things of which he had no understanding-!
'I will remove him, my lord king.'
Tellin moved, as though to object, but another was before him. Lorac laid a hand on Lord Garan's arm, a firm grip.
'No.' Torches flared and sighed in their brackets, the light of their flames ran laughing in the jewels embedded in the wall. Lorac shook his head. A troubled look passed across his face, like a shadow running. 'The boy doesn't lie, does he, Garan? He is having no groundless fantasy?'
The Head of House Protector scowled. Garan glared at Dalamar, but he did not deny what Speaker Lorac said.
'Now,' said the king to Dalamar, 'you have presumed to tell us what we already know. Tell us why you have come to speak the obvious.'
'I do not come to speak the obvious, my lord king. I come to speak of a way to turn the tide of this war in our favor. I have a plan, and I think you will appreciate it when you hear it.'
'A plan?' Lady Ylle snorted disbelief. 'Now we are taking advice on battle tactics from temple servants? Really, Lorac, how much more of your time do you have to waste?'
As much as I please, said the king's haughty glance. Aloud he said, 'Patience, my lady. You and I have lived long enough to know that good news comes out of strange quarters. Lord Tellin is spending fistfuls of the goodwill that his family name earns him. No doubt he feels he spends it in a good cause. That says something in the servant's favor. Let us hear what these two have come to say. And'-he looked at Tellin, white in the face, and at Dalamar, who stood straight and tall and still didn't flinch from his king's scrutiny-'let us do so in a more comfortable place.'
Lorac turned, looking at none of them, obliging all to follow as he led them into an alcove off the main chamber, a small room redly lit by hearth and torch.
'Are you mad?' Tellin whispered to Dalamar as they followed the king and his counselors. 'Speaking that way to the king himself?'
'No,' Dalamar murmured. 'Quite sane, my lord. And as you will note'-he smiled-'we are here where we need to be.'
All around the private chamber of the Speaker, candles glowed, orange pillars scented with barberry, green scented with pine, and white scented with the oils of winter-blooming jasmine. The colors of the candles and their delicate perfumes acted as heralds to the changing season. Tiny points of light danced in a breeze coming through the slivers of space between windows and sills. Shadows jumped and light leaped, drawing the eye round the little room. A wide, tall hearth dominated the south wall, the mantle filled with candles. Before it ranged large, comfortably cushioned chairs.
Wordlessly, the Speaker gestured his guests to chairs and assumed his own nearest the fire without waiting to see how they sorted themselves out. They did not do so easily, for no one could quite reckon where in the arrangement a servant must sit. In the end, and not unhappy with it, Dalamar did not sit at all. He stood behind Lord Tellin's chair and gained for himself a commanding view of all those gathered.
'Children,' said the king, 'tell me now what you have come to say.'
Dalamar glanced at Tellin, as a matter of form, and when the cleric gestured, he said, 'My king, it is plain to even the humblest member of my House that the courage of Lord Garan's Wildrunners will not likely stand against the greater numbers of Phair Caron's army.'
In the silence following his words, he heard the Speaker's breath hitch, just a little.
Lord Garan hissed a curse. 'How dare you say that, mageling?'
Dalamar ignored the insulting tone of Garan's voice and the offensive diminutive. He looked to the king and spoke only to him. 'I dare say it, my king, because what I say is true. It might not be convenient that this truth is noticed by a servitor, or that a servitor has considered it and reckoned a way around it, but not the less, what I say is true.'
'You have a quick tongue, Dalamar Argent.' Lorac leaned forward, looking at Dalamar narrowly over the steeple of his fingers. 'A quick tongue, and you would do well to use it now to tell me what plan you have made.'
Fire snapped in the hearth, and ashes fell slithering into the fire bed. Dalamar's mouth went suddenly dry, and the words of an old saying came mocking to mind: Who leaps, leaps best when he knows where he will land. Of course, who doesn't leap at all, knowing or unknowing, gets to stand at the edge of the precipice until he must turn back with nothing earned but the failure to act.
Unacceptable.
'I would strike at the Highlord from behind, my king, and-'
Lord Garan's laughter snapped out, stinging. 'You'd do that, eh? Haven't you heard that all the northern lands from Khur to Nordmaar are occupied by Phair Caron's army?'
'I've heard,' Dalamar murmured, his eyes low, a small smile playing around his lips. He looked up again, assuming an expression of innocent frankness that fooled the Head of House Protector not at all. 'No doubt you've heard, my lord, that there is a mage or two in the kingdom with skills that might facilitate my idea? Illusions skillfully cast will make our forces advancing from the south seem invisible to the eyes of the Highlord's army, while at the same time other illusions will make it seem they are being attacked from the north.' He smiled, a chill twitch of his lips. 'At which time, they'll turn to fight what isn't there, while the Wildrunners surround and attack them… from behind.'
Ylle Savath, until then silent, lifted a hand, with the simple gesture capturing the attention of all. 'My lord king,' she said, 'it might be well to remind this servitor that illusions are not the province of White magic. They are the province of Red magic. Here,' she said, turning a glance upon Dalamar that was cold as winter and as dangerous, 'here we practice constructive magic.'
'And yet,' Dalamar replied in his mildest tone, 'it seems to me that we had better learn to construct some illusions, my lady.'
Ylle Savath's eyes glinted sharp as knives. 'If you are suggesting we practice any magic other than Solinari's, you come perilously close to blasphemy, Dalamar Argent.'
Blasphemy.
The word hung in the stillness of the room. It seemed the flames in the hearth whispered it, once and again. At last Lorac stood, his face expressionless and masked by shadows.
'Young mage,' he said, inclining his head in the only bow a king need make, that of courtesy to one of his people. 'Young cleric, you have my leave to return to your homes. May E'li bless you on your way.'
He lifted a hand and dropped it again. The flames in the hearth fell. The torches dimmed. Thus did the elf- king, the highest of all mages in his land, signal that there would be no more conversation here tonight, on this subject or any other.
Cardinals sang their chipping songs in the hedges of the Garden of Astarin. Late-goers, they were the last songbirds to sleep, the heralds of nightingales. The light of half-moons shone down, red and silver on the path away from the Tower of the Stars. Dalamar's blood sang brave songs, as it did when he was preparing to work magic. He had stood before the king, before Heads of Households, and he had laid out a bold plan, one he knew could work.
