It was an odd thing to ask a doomed man. Feir expected Garuwashi to spit in Solon’s face. But Garuwashi stood. “Let there be peace between us,” he said, and took Solon’s hand.
Standing right next to them, his own bulk blocking most of the table from seeing what transpired, Feir saw sudden confusion in Lantano Garuwashi’s eyes. He withdrew his hand from Solon’s clasp with one finger still pressed against his palm, concealing something. Then he rested that hand on Ceur’caelestos’s pommel. With a tiny sound, something clicked home, and Feir understood. Gods! “The greatest red gives dragon’s heart and head.” Feir had thought it meant the greatest red ruby, and it did, but it also meant the greatest red mage: Solon.
Garuwashi whipped the sword out of its scabbard and slammed it on the table.
A perfect ruby redder than ruby-red burned in the pommel, and it swam with deep magic, though Feir hadn’t imbued it with any weaves. The mistarille blade had patterns like a folded steel blade, but its patterns glittered like diamonds, sparkling and then transparent, letting a man see all the way through the blade into the heart of its magic. As they watched, every diamond-like ripple faded to a purer translucence like a slow shockwave as the twin dragons breathed fire. The fire blossomed in a thick bar from hilt all the way to the point of the sword. The heat of it warmed Feir’s face.
Feir had created something beyond himself. He was a great smith, but he wasn’t this good. Awed, Feir turned to Solon. The new King Tofusin grinned at him.
“Call me fraud or call me king,” Lantano Garuwashi said, and if there was a trembling of wonder in his voice, no one noticed it through their own.
Hideo Mitsurugi’s jaw was slack. “Lantano Garuwashi, I declare you—”
“My lord!” the court mage interrupted.
Mitsurugi acquiesced. “My ancestors have looked forward to this day for centuries. We’ve wanted it and feared it. Perhaps the regents most of all. Frauds have been attempted, so the Regent’s sword carries a test. I beg your pardon, doen-Lantano, but it is my duty.” He drew his ruby-encrusted blade and gave the pommel a sharp twist. It clicked and he pulled half of the hilt off. Inside was a thin scroll woven with preservation magics. Mitsurugi read it, his lips moving as he puzzled out the old language.
“Lantano Garuwashi, banish the fires from the blade.”
Garuwashi took the blade and the fires died. How did he know how to do that?
“I need a candle,” Mitsurugi said, and someone slid one down the table to him. He picked it up and brought it toward the blade.
Terror seized Feir’s breath. Mitsurugi brought the candle to the very spot Feir had hidden his vanity, his own smithmark. The crossed war hammers practically leapt out of the metal.
Mitsurugi sighed.
Feir’s heart stopped.
Mitsurugi said, “Down to Oren Razin’s crossed war hammers, it’s real. This blade is Ceur’caelestos. Lantano Garuwashi, you are the lost King of Ceura. The sa’ceurai stand at your word.”
Real. Not a forgery. The very things that made it different from Curoch were what convinced the Regent that Feir’s blade was real. Feir’s limbs felt weak. He had a single moment to think, how embarrassing, I can’t possibly pass—
Then he passed out.
89
After Feir collapsed—and what was that about? Ariel wondered—the odious Overlord of the Lae’knaught, Julus Rotans, finally won his way through the waiting sa’ceurai and made it into the tent. Hideo Mitsurugi wanted to go immediately and announce that Ceura had found its king, but Logan had asked him to wait. Ariel still didn’t know why.
Julus Rotans was in his late forties, his figure still trim and military and his features pure Alitaeran. He wore a white tabard emblazoned with a sun and a white cloak with twelve gold chevrons. Sister Ariel couldn’t make out any other details: the man emanated such a deep aura of ill health she almost gagged. He didn’t remove his gauntlets as he sat, and mercifully there were no open sores on his face, but Julus Rotans was a leper. Worse, his strain of leprosy was the simplest kind to Heal. Even Sister Ariel could do it—but it would take magic.
“So, everyone’s here already,” Julus Rotans said. “I see. No need to include the Lae’knaught in the planning, huh? Just throw us at the thickest part of the enemy, and whether we live or die, you win.”
Logan Gyre didn’t look perturbed. “Overlord, I have wronged you,” he said. “Your representatives told me it was unfair and unwise—actually, I think the word was ‘stupid’—for me to assume direct control over your men. Forgive me. I was worried they would betray me. That was unworthy of me, and it was indeed stupid.”
The overlord’s eyes narrowed, wary. Everyone else watched carefully.
“Today, due to the terrain, your men didn’t fight, but tomorrow, we will rely on you. Your losses may be significant. You have our only heavy cavalry, and you will indeed hold the center. There have been …ugly rumors that your men wish to withdraw and let ‘all these wytches’ kill each other.” Logan sighed. “I know you feel compelled to be here, Overlord Rotans, so I wish to drop the compulsion now. And I do so hereby: Overlord, I freely grant you the fifteen-year lease to the Cenarian lands for your use. I hereby release you from fielding an army and putting them at my service.”
“What?” the overlord asked. He wasn’t the only one incredulous at the table. Without the Lae’knaught’s five thousand, the armies would be seriously weakened.
Logan held up one finger, and the overlord sat up, sure this was the teeth of the trap. “I only ask that if you wish to withdraw from this fight, that you declare your intentions immediately so that we may know how much of an army we will have.”
Overlord Rotans licked his lips. “That’s all?” It was too fair a request for him to protest. Logan didn’t want the Lae’knaught fielding the army and then melting away at the first Khalidoran charge. He still looked puzzled, so he hadn’t seen the teeth of Logan’s offer yet, and the damn fool was about to speak. He was going to accept the offer if Ariel didn’t do something.
“I’m only a woman,” Sister Ariel said, “but it seems to me that such cowardice will make recruitment a challenge in a few countries. Let’s see. Cenaria, of course, will feel betrayed. Ceura too. Oh, and I doubt the praetor would be impressed, so definitely Alitaera—that’s a tough one to lose. Waeddryn and Modai may still send recruits; pity they’re so small.”
“And their people so historically reluctant to die for the light of reason,” Praetor Marcus said with some satisfaction.
“And this is such a bad time to have trouble with recruitment,” Sister Ariel said.
“Why’s that?” Marcus asked, playing along.
“Some superstition in Ezra’s Wood recently slew five thousand Lae’knaught.”
Marcus whistled. “That’s some superstition.”
“You’re vile, all of you. You’re the friends of darkness,” Overlord Rotans said.
“There’s the crux,” King Solonariwan Tofusin said. “You see, friends, the Lae’knaught have no country; they have only ideas. If they abandon us, they can survive the allegations of betrayal and cowardice; what will cut them is hypocrisy. They can betray us, what they can’t betray is their principles. Today we faced perhaps a hundred meisters, but this Godking Wanhope brought two thousand. Where were the rest?”
“Do you actually know the answer to that question?” Lantano Garuwashi asked.
“We passed a town called Reigukhas on our way up the river,” Solon said. “It was dead. From the magic still in the air, hundreds—perhaps thousands—of meisters worked for at least twelve hours raising krul. Those krul then devoured the city’s inhabitants. Tomorrow we will face actual, real creatures of darkness, Overlord. I’d estimate their numbers to be in excess of twenty thousand.”