The mage smiled. "It is dweomer, Lord, the stuff of all magic. Yet this object can be recharged merely by attaching it to the weathercock when a thunderstorm rages."

The baron gestured airily with a hand. "Whatever." He turned back to Zaranda, began to caress her cheek. "You know, this has interesting possibilities-"

A scream interrupted him. Zaranda could not move as much as her eyeballs, but she could focus vision past her captor, to the window where the mage had raised his sphere once again. He was surrounded by a swarm of tiny, indistinct things that seemed to shimmer with a faint light of their own. He beat at them, frantically, then began to slap at his face and robe, shrieking louder and louder, until he stumbled and fell back against the window.

Whoever installed the window had not worked up to the exacting standards of Tethyrian artisanship. It gave way at once. Window and mage fell out into the night, the latter trailing a thin dwindling scream.

The spell broke. Zaranda drove a knee into the baron's crotch. He bent over with a gasp and staggered back, but recovered almost instantly, and swung his axe horizontally.

Zaranda leaned away, going to one knee. Her free hand found a wolfskin. The axehead whistled by, a finger's width from her face. She flung the pelt over the baron's head and shoulders and stabbed her glowing blade right through it.

Again. And again.

At last, when for some time the only cries sounding within the chamber had been her own and the voices coming through the now-vacant window, she stopped and turned. Chenowyn stood in the doorway, face so pale her skin looked like a sheet of parchment and her freckles like drops of paint.

She flew forward to catch Zaranda in a wild embrace. "You disobeyed," Zaranda said, hugging her tight. Then, to her own astonishment, she burst into tears.

Despite the horror of seeing friends die and suffering magic attacks they were powerless to prevent, the young warriors were exultant. Even the wounded laughed and joined in the singing as the townsfolk car-ried them to the village on improvised litters.

That would pass, Zaranda knew. When the hot rush of victory died away, the despair that came after would be as hard for some to bear as the pain of sword cuts and spear thrusts. With the help of Farlorn's gold-glib tongue, Zaranda would help them through that ordeal as best she could.

When the time came. But meantime, after the wounded were taken off and the castle secured, in that breathless hour before dawn, Farlorn came to her, in an apartment she had chosen to take sorely needed rest.

And it seemed to Zaranda Star the most natural thing in the world to go into his arms, and surrender herself to the hunger that had been growing in her for long, weary months.

Ten volunteers died in the fight for the castle, including Osbard's daughter Fiora, blasted by a lightning bolt. Many more were wounded. So brutal was the battle that Goldie, released from the stables, forbore to complain about the indignities Farlorn had heaped upon her in the course of their masquerade.

But whatever the cost, they had won. And once the news of what had transpired reached Masamont, the villagers streamed forth to take up the casualties, bind their wounds, and bear them gently off to their own beds, where the local clerics could see to healing them.

What the wondrous rechargeable magic artifact Whimberton had used to such deadly effect was, Zaranda never learned. It had shattered on a paving stone beside its wielder.

Part III

The Whisperer in Darkness

22

"We are troubled," the halfling in the maroon and purple gown piped.

Sitting in a simple chair in his eight-sided chamber at the top of the Palace of Governance, Baron Faneuil Hardisty turned away from a design sketch for his coronation robe and regarded his trio of visitors. They stood in a ray of spring sunlight that slanted from the skylight to graze the tabletop on which the baron's model city stood.

Malhalvadon Stringfellow, the only halfling currently seated on the city council, hopped impatiently from one bare black-furred foot to the other. Baron Zam stood unmoving in his robes of blue and gray. He was tall, astringent, bloodless, with a wisp of iron-gray hair surrounding the dome of his skull. His slit eyes, narrow nose, and pinched mouth were situated on a face that came to a severe point at the chin. Korun, the lone councilwoman, wore a slashed green-velvet doublet over a yellow blouse and orange hose, her hair blonde and short, her eyes green, and her pert-nosed face handsome. She wore her peaked yellow cap at a rakish angle, pheasant feather aslant, and held arms akimbo, as if impatient but amused. The sunlight, ungallant, brought forth the parchment dryness of her skin; she was not so young as she liked to present herself.

Baron Hardisty sighed and handed the sketchbook to his attendant Tatrina, daughter of Duke Hembreon. He had many All-Friends waiting upon him these days, courtesy of Armenides, who stood behind his right shoulder and beamed like an indulgent tutelary spirit. Tatrina made a curtsy and withdrew. Armenides's hazel eyes followed her until she was out of sight around the columned doorjamb.

Koran and Zam likewise watched her go, with much different expressions. Each had a son in the All-Friends. Neither felt entirely at ease with that, but they were reluctant to mention it in Armenides's presence.

"What troubles you, noble Stringfellow?" Hardisty asked with that great apparent sincerity that served him so well.

The halfling bobbed, tousled his curly dark hair, rubbed his snub nose with a thumb. "It's these Star Protective people," he declared. "They're a threat to our plan to restore order to Tethyr."

"Meaning," Lady Korun said in a mockingly vibrant contralto, "that they interfere with the bandit chieftains who kick back a share of their plunder to you and call it 'taxes.'"

"No such thing!" the halfling fluted. "Besides, I'm not the only one."

"Let us say we all feel the pinch," said Zam, and pinched was a fair description of his voice. "Her impertinence becomes alarming. Her private army grows in leaps and bounds, and just today we received word that she has been welcomed by the city council of Ithmong, having escorted a great caravan thence from Myratma. The first to pass that way since the monarchy fell."

"She's a sorceress!" Stringfellow cried. "She's got the people bewitched, I tell you. She even has them believing that monstrous orc who travels with her is a paladin!"

"She's done much to restore commerce to the roads of Tethyr," Korun said, "and it's all bypassing Zazesspur. At this rate, the people of Tethyr, to say nothing of Zazesspur, will soon begin to wonder what they need us for. Clearly this can't go on." "What do wish me to do about it?" Hardisty asked mildly.

"You're the man who would be king, Faneuil," Lady Korun said. "You tell us." "Very well," Hardisty said crisply. "She shall be dealt with. Enough?"

"And who will do the dealing?" Stringfellow asked. Hardisty grinned. "Why, I should say-none less than the lord of Zazesspur."

"You ask much," Baron Zam said.

"He will deliver much," Armenides said serenely. "He is touched with destiny."

"He'd best be," said Zam.

"Our Malhalvadon grows importunate," Armenides said when the councilors had gone. "Perhaps it's time he gave way to one of the Brothers Hedgeblossom. Or both. Surely the council has other bits of deadwood that want pruning."

"You surprise me, Father. The Hedgeblossoms are our staunch foes. They seek to overturn everything we've worked for."

Armenides smiled. "Why, isn't that all the more reason to bring them on the council? In every time and every clime, there's nothing scarcer than a rebel who stays avid to cast down power once he shares it›" Hardisty thought about this. Like many things Armenides told him, it sounded bizarre at first, until his mind began to fit itself around the concept. "What of the other council members? Some of them might object to raising up such firebrands."