west with spies and provocateurs. No activity from affairs of state down to smuggling along the coast escaped his notice, and he had been supreme in the Bitter Sea.
Or so he had thought until Amed Dabu Asam had tried to kill him. His most trusted agent in Kesh, one of his most trusted anywhere, and now he was a man Jim would take great delight in seeing dead.
With Amed compromised, Jim assumed his entire ring of spies west of Land’s End must be untrustworthy. Even if he was to survive all this … if the Kingdom was to survive all this, not one man in Kesh could be trusted.
From what he had been able to discover on his own coupled with what his grandfather had told him, Jim could assume only about a third of his agents were still in place and trustworthy.
He realized palace servants and minor Kingdom officials passing by were taking notice of him. If he was going to dither, he might as well do it while going somewhere. He knew a place near the merchants’ quarters where he could both dine and arrange for certain agents to find him. He turned towards the grand entrance and the outer gates of the palace.
It had been nearly a year since he had been in Rillanon, and while his grandfather’s loyal agents had most of the city under observation, it was clear there was what, as Kaseem Abu Hazara-Khan — his opposite number in Kesh — had observed, ‘another player’ in the game. If Lady Franciezka Sorboz’s spy ring in Roldem had been compromised, and Jim’s in the Kingdom crippled, Kaseem’s had been utterly destroyed. When last Jim had seen him he had been a hunted man. No doubt he was secreted away somewhere until he could safely resurface or give up any hope of continuing in service to the Empire. If the latter and he could safely reach his people in the Jal-Pur desert, he might live to old age as a nameless tribesman. Jim considered that last option very problematical given how far Kaseem had to travel to reach the safety of his family’s camp.
Jim reached the steps leading down into the palace courtyard and made straight for the small personal entrance, the size of an ordinary door set into the large, ornate iron gate that guarded the entrance to the palace grounds. The large gates, opened to admit detachments of horse and large carriages, was closed as a rule, but now he was surprised to find the small gate also barred and two guards posted before it.
‘Sir?’ one challenged him as he approached.
‘I’m James Jameson, the Duke’s grandson. I thought I’d get out in the city and stretch my legs a bit.’
The guard nodded. ‘Well enough, sir. If you can show us your pass.’
‘Pass?’ Jim’s face darkened. ‘Since when does a member of the royal court need a pass to enter and leave the palace grounds?’
‘Since the order was posted this morning, sir. You need a pass signed by the Viceroy’s office.’
‘Viceroy?’
‘You’ve not heard, sir?’ said the guard in affable tones. ‘Why, this very morning the King named his friend Sir William Alcorn Viceroy, to help him run things until the old duke, I mean your grandfather, is back on his feet. Orders came down with the changing of the guard; no one in or out without the Viceroy’s approval.’
Pushing aside his sense of outrage, Jim forced a smile. ‘That must be it, then. I came in late last night, exhausted, and slept in until meeting with my grandfather. I’ll go at once to Sir William’s office and see to the matter. Carry on.’ Jim turned and marched back towards the palace steps.
There was only one possible reason for the new requirement for a pass: Sir William had decided to limit the comings and goings of those in the royal household, including the Duke’s staff. Had his grandfather been fit, Jim had no doubt that pass requirement would not have lasted more than a half-day, but his grandfather was soundly sleeping after being forced to imbibe a sleeping draught by the royal chirurgeon.
Jim knew it would be suspicious if he didn’t put in an appearance at Sir William’s office, but he didn’t feel the need to go straight away. He had a half-dozen ways to leave the palace whenever he wished, and no doubt Sir William knew about two or three of them.
First he needed to find Anne and send her on a little errand — and then make a quick check on his grandfather. And he desperately needed to get something to eat. He was starving, having not eaten for nearly three days. If they hadn’t cleared the tray out of his room, he’d eat whatever was there, no matter how cold, dried out, or stale it might be.
His frustration gave way to a rare flight of fancy. His tasks would have been so much easier if he’d had a magician on his staff, someone like Magnus who could just transport him to one place or another. That returned Jim to thinking about his last visit to Sorcerer’s Isle and he wondered how Pug was getting on with uncovering his own personal nest of traitors.
As he climbed the wide steps into the palace that thought sent a new chill down Jim’s back: should Pug’s problems turn out to be as grave as his own, the consequences of what he faced was probably far more dire than the situation here. For if Jim failed in his tasks, his King and the conDoin dynasty might fall, perhaps even the Kingdom of the Isles in its entirety, but should Pug fail …
Jim shoved aside the thought. He didn’t want to contemplate what might happen to this entire world if Pug should fail.
Pug sat quietly, his face an unreadable mask as he listened to the debate taking place on the floor of the Academy Council. A strange sense of deja vu struck him for a brief moment: the Academy was becoming more like the Assembly of Magicians on Kelewan where he had trained.
Currently there appeared to be four groups represented among the members, groups that had formed around the teachings of three men, each reflecting a different philosophy, and a fourth, uncommitted, faction. Pug realized that of those in attendance, he was the only person who had actually known those three men. Two of them had been his students, Korsh and Watoom, two very talented magicians of Keshian ancestry. The third faction had been influenced by his close friend for years, Nakor. He wondered what his old friend might think of what had become of the Academy were he alive to see it.
A tall, slender magician named Natiba stood and addressed the twenty members of the council. ‘The Wand of Watoom has met in caucus and we have weighed the warning carried to us by Pug.’ He bowed slightly in Pug’s direction.
As founder of the Academy on Stardock Island, land once ceded him by the Crown of the Kingdom of the Isles, Pug was viewed with veneration but since he had renounced his loyalty to the Kingdom and given Stardock and the Academy autonomy, he was also viewed with some suspicion, an unspoken concern he might some day choose to attempt to reclaim the school of magicians and the town of Stardock.
Pug appeared ageless, looking much as he had for the last century and more, with his dark hair and beard. He was slender and short, but had a wiry strength, an aura of toughness and resilience. He might be the single most powerful magician on this world — though he considered his son Magnus might soon surpass him, if he had not already — but he had begun life as an orphan kitchen-boy in far-off Crydee Keep and had endured four years as a slave on the Tsurani home world of Kelewan. He was no lifelong academic.
Pug had seen death and destruction on a scale unimaginable to nearly every other magic-user in attendance and considered this current debate trivial, pointless, and a waste of time. Yet he endured it, because he honoured his pledge and would let events take their natural course.
The Wand of Watoom was one of the two Keshian-dominated factions in the Academy, the other being the Hands of Korsh. Watoom had been a Keshian, but not a Trueblood, like Korsh had been. The difference between those friends had evolved two groups, who were both conservative by nature. The Wand was by far the more cautious and reactive of the two, keeping themselves focused on internal matters almost to the exclusion of the outside world. The Hands of Korsh was still conservative in its outlook, but was more inclined to take active part in events beyond the Island of Stardock.
The third faction called themselves the Blue Riders in honour of one of Nakor’s more colourful affectations: a grand blue robe that had been a gift to him from the Empress of Kesh. That and a beautiful black stallion he had ridden like a madman until it died. The Blue Riders believed there was no magic, and that anyone could learn ‘tricks’, so they were constantly at odds with the other two factions. They were far more progressive and believed in an active, ongoing engagement with the outside world.
As usual the Hands were the swing faction, standing between the Riders and the Wand, with the uncommitted members likely to bring matters to a resolution. The topic being debated was the warning Pug had just delivered to the Council regarding the demon incursion into Midkemia and the possible threat posed from them and the forces behind the demons, the Dread.
The debate had been taking the better part of a day, and for Pug it had been tedium piled upon
