their quest and was snoring in his cubicle.
“I’ve heard of this!” she said, shaking the scroll excitedly. “Scholars claimed it was a myth, but here it is!”
“The map?”
“No, Kanira’s plan for a new capital city!”
They unrolled the heavy parchment. In fantastic detail, the vainglorious empress’s plans for her new capital were laid out. The city was circular and was to have been built at the end of Hylo Bay, approximately where Old Port was located. Kanira’s palace would have occupied a flat-topped artificial mountain in its center. The terraced mound would have been almost as big as the entire Inner City of Daltigoth now was.
“Merciful gods,” Tol breathed. “No wonder they deposed her!”
Valaran pointed. “Look here-a canal encircling the city’s outer wall, both banks paved with granite… twelve temples, evenly spaced around the circumference of the city… and the gardens! The gardens are tremendous, built on the terraced sides of the palace mountain!”
Tol sat back, shaking his head. “She was mad.”
“But what vision!”
Her profile, gilded by the warm lamplight, was vision enough for Tol. He never wanted to look away.
She felt his gaze, and a faint blush colored her cheeks.
“You know the dangers I’m facing, don’t you?” he said quietly.
Valaran concentrated on rolling up the large scroll. “All I know is that you are going away again,” she said ruefully. “You love danger more than-more than anything.”
“All the days since I returned, we’ve been so chaste,” Tol said, catching her wrist.
“I’ve told you. We’re not love-addled youths any longer.”
“No, we’re not, but I can’t go to my possible death like this, hollowed out and empty of you.” He tugged on her wrist, drawing her to him. She did not resist. “Will you let me go again, perhaps never to return, without a single embrace?”
“Can we stop at one?”
Tol fervently hoped not. He put his arm around her waist. Valaran touched her cheek to his.
Chapter 17
The next morning, after a whirlwind of preparations, Tol rode out with Early Stumpwater as his only companion. It was brilliantly cold, the sky clear as a dome of polished sapphire. All around them the land glittered under a heavy frost, every weed, every tree limb, and every sheaf of grain silvered with frozen dew. Tol was astride a tall black war-horse chosen from the imperial stables for his formidable strength and stamina, and in spite of the prickly temper that had earned him the nickname Tetchy. He led a pack horse laden with gear and provisions. Early was mounted on a white-maned sorrel pony he’d christened Longhound, after a dog, he’d ridden as a child.
After the fashion of his race, the kender’s name seemed a slippery issue. When, at the Inner City gate, guards asked his name for the daily log; he told them, “Early Thistledown.” A short time later, after regaling Tol with a wild tale about his adventures in the eastern lands beyond the Thel Mountains, the kender declared, “And that’s the true story of how I rescued the chief of the Karad-shu tribe, or my name isn’t Early Foxfire!”
Kiya was still asleep as Tol prepared to depart, after haranguing him late into the evening about risking this mission without her; he didn’t wake her. He left her a goodly purse of gold to live on in his absence, as well as two scrolls. The one sealed with red wax was a legal document, giving Kiya her freedom and absolving her of all obligations to him. Under Ergothian law a widow was liable for her spouse’s debts, monetary and social. It was not unheard of for a surviving wife to be forced into marriage with a man to whom her late husband owed money. Tol had no such debts, but he wanted to be certain Kiya would be unencumbered.
The second document was closed with white wax, as was customary with wills. Over the years Tol had amassed quite a fortune in war bounties and imperial largesse. In the will, drawn up by Felryn over a year ago while they were still fighting the Tarsans, he left everything to Miya, Kiya, and Egrin, and made bequests of gold to certain old comrades like Darpo. The millstone, listed among his possessions as “a decorative metal-and-glass artifact of ancient origin,” he left to Valaran. The night before he departed, he had revealed its power to her.
“This is the means by which you’ve always escaped enchantments?” she’d said, staring at the trinket resting in her palm. “It looks like a brooch, and a rather dull one at that!”
He took it back. “Yoralyn told me many lives could be lost if word of its existence got out.”
“She’s right.” Valaran the historian put a hand to her chin, thinking hard. “Pakin Zan himself once owned a nullstone. He sacked the city of Ulladu on the western coast to obtain it from its owner, the priest Gomian.”
“Ulladu? I’ve never heard of it.”
“That’s because Pakin Zan razed it to the ground. Sixty hordes breeched the defenses. Those inhabitants not slain in the battle-men and women, young and old-were forced to sift the wreckage of their city with sieves until Gomian’s treasure was found, then they were executed. Burned alive, if I recall correctly.”
Once again, he was struck by the calmness with which she could relate the most horrific information. He didn’t know if this was due to her scholarly detachment or to her upbringing in the imperial palace, where plots, assassinations, and massacres were common occurrences. Perhaps it was a little of both.
“What became of Pakin Zan’s nullstone?” he asked.
She looped a stray strand of hair behind her left ear, and for a moment was again the bookish girl hiding in an alcove, reading dusty tomes.
“A rook stole it from him.”
As Pakin Zan lay on his deathbed in the palace, a large Mack rook had flown in a window and plucked the millstone from the dying emperor’s neck. Onlookers could only watch helplessly; Pakin Zan’s strictest edict decreed death to anyone who touched his amulet. The rook flew away with the ancient artifact, never to be seen again.
Some authorities, Valaran said, held the bird was simply attracted by the shiny metal. Others believed the rook was the familiar of a sorcerer or rogue spellcaster, perhaps even the Silvanesti mage Vedvedsica himself. In the intervening twelve decades, no millstones had surfaced. Until Tol’s.
Tol gripped her hands tightly and stared into her green eyes. “You will keep this secret?”
She did not wince or shrink away. “I have forgotten it already,” she replied calmly.
As he and Early clopped through the frozen farmland in the cold light of morning, Tol was melancholy. Departing without saying good-bye to Kiya had left him with an odd, unfinished feeling. Through strange turns of fate, she was the only companion of his youth still with him. Miya was married and soon would bear Elicarno’s child. Egrin ruled in the emperor’s name back in Juramona. Darpo scoured the seas in command of the imperial fleet. And so many of his other brothers in arms were dead-Narren, Felryn, Frez-
For the first time in his life, Tol felt old. Though wrapped in fur, his knees ached and old wounds pained him. The deep stab wound in his side, courtesy of his one-time friend Crake, was particularly troublesome when the air was this chilly. More than that, he felt lonely. He’d survived so many of his friends, and so many enemies, too. Surprising how much a fellow could miss his enemies.
“-until the whole house collapsed!”
Tol’s wandering attention returned. “What?”
“That’s how I became chief food taster for King Lucklyn. Weren’t you listening?” Early said, a little exasperated. Tufts of hair, stiff as broomstraw, protruded from his fur hood, framing his face with an orange fringe.
“Remarkable,” Tol replied, though he’d heard none of the tale. “How fares Lucklyn’s queen, Casberry? I met her once.”
He’d made the acquaintance of the wizened kender queen when he and his men had gone to Hylo to find XimXim. Upon learning they had vanquished the monster, Queen Casberry fined Tol for hunting out of season.
“Oh, Cas is gone.”
