attempts.
Could it sense something that he did not? Though unlikely, the chance should not be ignored. Sil y to force something dangerous.
Could someone have converted the tower into a deathtrap?
Improbable, but improbable death had stalked him a thousand times. Death had her eye on him now, and was sharpening her claws, he was sure.
It was the season to indulge in a psychotic level of caution.
He brought the winged horse to earth near the pool. The donkeys stil carried their travel packs, the horses their saddles. The kil er had become too entranced to take care.
He did not ease their burdens himself, though it would have taken but a moment to have the Windmjirnerhorn deliver fodder and grooms of a golem kind. The idea never occurred.
Obviously, the kil er had been taken by the tower. No mystery, that.
A conjured haunting, crocheted from true, wicked ghosts captured and constrained to carry out targeted missions, could endure indefinitely. Numerous such infested the world, many this same devil’s handiwork, abandoned in place once he finished using them.
The old being looked at that ruin, then at his mount. Not a long walk but a walk nevertheless. So much easier just to drop in from above.
Easier. But a stubborn beast made the walk a must. Was there a real threat? Come to think, the original setup made its victim circle the tower several times before the entrance revealed itself. Was the animal just being difficult? Why start at this late date?
He walked. His patience did not last. After one circuit, with his soles and legs aching, he settled onto a boulder and fingered valves on the Windmjirnerhorn while trying to think how best to avoid further exercise.
He spied the dark gap of the entrance, groaned. So. He had to go on in like a regular victim.
He got up. He limped. He ached. How much longer must he endure before his parole final y came through?
Chapter Twenty-Seven:
'I didn’t get much sleep last night,” Ragnarson announced. “My own fault. I wanted to catch up on the real story around here.” He sat at the same table he had used for smal conferences before he went out east. Inger used it for her own meetings. This morning’s gathering was the biggest there since soon after Ragnarson’s disappearance. The Queen and her main henchmen were present. So were Aral Dantice, Michael Trebilcock, Ozora Mundwil er, and Kristen Gjerdrumsdottir. The tension was less than expected despite Bragi’s prior assertion that the meeting would continue til he was satisfied that their conflicts had been resolved.
He tipped a thumb at a corner. Fulk and the younger Bragi were playing with blocks brought in by Babeltausque’s girlfriend. The children had no trouble getting along—though Carrie al owed them no opportunity to test anyone’s patience.
The newcomers had no interest in the girlfriend. She was furniture, easy to look at but otherwise just there. The Queen’s faction, though, considered her an amazement.
Carrie Depar was much more than an opportunistic baby hooker. Babeltausque enjoyed their reluctant admiration for his pretty.
There was, however, almost a clang of meeting steel when he crossed gazes with Michael Trebilcock.
Trebilcock felt Babeltausque’s attraction to Haida Heltkler.
He did not want Haida abused any more than she had been already.
There was quiet lethality in looks Josiah Gales laid on Michael Trebilcock, too. Gales knew the likely source of the maladies he suffered because of his captivity.
Similar looks ran Aral’s way from Babeltausque. He was sure that the men who tried to kil him had been sent by Dantice—if not that ironhearted old Mundwil er woman, whose accent, when she spoke at al , exactly matched that of the would-be kil ers.
Kristen and Inger, too, often exchanged less than loving looks. Ragnarson knew he had to keep al those conflicts subdued. He dared show neither favoritism nor tolerance.
Like that kid wrangling the boys. She tolerated nothing. She had paddled Fulk for launching a sulk, crushing it before it became a tantrum. Fulk had been stunned. Usual y he got away with everything because he was sickly.
“So I’m tired,” Ragnarson said. “With me that means impatient and cranky, too, so let’s see if we can’t get through this and start looking toward tomorrow. By which I mean Kavelin’s tomorrow, not yours or mine or the literal morning after.”
None of these people, nor anyone in town for the Thingmeet, had yet chal enged his right to strol in and take over—though as yet he had garnered not one royal honorific.
“This may be faint praise, Inger,” he said. “But I think you did as wel as you could once you worked up the gumption to arrest Dane. I hear of no harm done since then.” People stirred uncomfortably. Ozora Mundwil er had a thought but chose to reserve it.
“Kristen, you slipping away after Colonel Abaca passed looks like the best thing you could have done, too. You being away and Inger arresting the Duke let the Marena Dimura back off and just posture while they took advantage of the summer.”
There had been a change, down in the bedrock of Ragnarson’s soul, more profound than he knew. It had quickened when he stepped through the barrier separating the hidden temple from the kingdom that had conquered his heart so long ago.
His rage at what Kavelin had cost him had evaporated. He was indifferent to the chance that the cannibal state would keep feeding on his heart and soul. “I hear talk about a Kavelin disease. I’m a true sufferer. And it infected you al once the Duke was out of the way. Not so?” Babeltausque said, “The catalyst was a child named Phyletia Plens. None of us ever met Phyletia but her death touched us way more than the Duke’s removal did. It gave us a whole new perspective, maybe because it was inconsequential in a strategic or statistical sense. It shouldn’t have influenced us. Children die. But sometimes something is so ugly that it grabs you by the throat and won’t let go. It jerks you around til your whole life looks different.”
Inger, Josiah Gales, and Nathan Wolf bobbed their heads in agreement, Wolf and Inger slightly red.
Ragnarson conceded, “That was one of the darker situations I ever heard of, and I saw some pretty disgusting stuff when I was young.”
“What wormed into us wasn’t just the crime’s ugliness but the triviality of what drove that priest.” The sorcerer stumbled, his throat tightening. Ragnarson caught the subtle encouragement the Depar girl flashed him as wel as the suspicion implicit in the arch of Michael’s eyebrows. Babeltausque’s secret reputation might not quite fit the actuality but, clearly, even the sorcerer himself feared that it could.
Ragnarson said, “The year is almost over. I want its conflicts and bad feelings put behind. I want us to put our heads together and come up with something we can take to the Thing.”
Ozora Mundwil er grumbled, “And quickly. Delegates already think the Thingmeet is just a device Inger can use to get some money coming into Vorgreberg.”
Ragnarson nodded. “My mother said that no good deed goes unpunished. For sure no good deed is seen that way by everybody. You can be a saint who is cal ed a saint of al saints by the saints themselves and somebody wil be convinced that you’re up to no good.”
“That would be a somebody who can’t live with himself.” Josiah Gales, looking like he had fal en asleep, chin on his chest, added, “Those with wicked hearts make their claims to divert attention from the reek of evil coming off of them.” Silence fol owed. Everyone eyed the Colonel. Ragnarson figured he was paraphrasing somebody. Gales did not go on, nor did he give credit.
