Dragon Blood

12—WARDWICK

It took us two weeks to organize a meeting of most of the Shavig Council. Two weeks of lightening my purse to hire every laborer and idle farmer in the area to work on Hurog had given us three more usable rooms and seen the great hall finished to the extent that our meeting was unlikely to be interrupted by wandering horses.

My uncle's people worked hard as well. Some of them stayed in the keep, but most sheltered in the holding's farms so there would be room for the Council when they came, which they did, despite the snowstorm that preceded them. Shavigmen knew how to travel in winter.

The councilmen, mostly nobles with an odd wealthy farmer or guild master thrown in, all came bearing gifts for my new niece, but the carefully worded invitations had been carried by messengers instructed to tell the recipient of Kellen's escape and Jakoven's seizure of Iftahar—Beckram told me that they'd left only hours ahead of Jakoven's troops.

Though they knew that even to be at Hurog was likely to invite Jakoven's wrath, almost everyone came, and the few who didn't were ill or snowed in. We feasted and hunted and listened while Tosten provided bardic entertainment, and no one mentioned Kellen's escape or Jakoven's attempt to imprison me in the Asylum. Kellen and Rosem stayed secreted in my rooms, waiting for the most politic moment to present them to the Council.

On the evening of the second day, when the night's meal had been taken away, I stood on the dais (newly built along with most of the tables and benches in the hall) and waited for the after-dinner talk to quiet down. Everything—down to the clothing I wore—had been carefully orchestrated by my uncle.

I wore formal Shavig dress as had been out of fashion for a number of decades. Close-fit breeches, loose-sleeved shirt covered with a knee-length tunic split down the sides—all of several shades of brown. Over my left shoulder a Hurog-blue dragon crawled.

"My lords, tradesmen, farmers all, we've welcomed you to Hurog, and given thanks for the gifts you brought. It is time now to speak on more serious matters." I took a deep breath.

I'd protested that the speech Duraugh and Rosem had put together was too wordy. The original one would have taken me an hour to get through. Duraugh cut it down, but it was still long. I hoped they'd all stay awake through my speech to hear Kellen's.

"You all know the reasons why I have stayed here at Hurog these years past. You probably all know that Jakoven recently called me to Estian. He claimed I was incapable of ruling Hurog and intended that I should prove him right and open a way for him to claim Hurog for the Tallvenish crown."

I paused to let the growl of several of the nobles be heard. Hurog was Shavig, and belonged in Shavig hands, never should it be held by Flatlanders—things like that. I continued before the tide of indignation had a chance to fall.

"It didn't work out as he had planned," I said, and my voice carried over the other men talking in the room.

Colwick, one of the eastern Shavig holders and the only Shavig lord younger than I, laughed, jumped up from his seat, and said, "I was there. Jakoven sat waiting complacently for his men to bring a stupid lunatic in to display before the court. Ward came in dripping guards off him, leaving them lying about like plucked flowers. He bowed like a courtier and thanked the king for his hospitality." Colwick had something of a case of hero-worship for me; I think he listened to too many hero-songs as a young man.

The smile left his face. He looked around the room, then at me and said, "It was obvious that the king thought he was presenting an idiot before the court. Why was that? What did he do to you?"

The anger in his voice was hot. I pictured in my head what would have happened to Colwick if matters had proceeded as Jakoven had planned. I wondered how many other Shavig lords had been in that crowd, slated to become traitors and die.

I smiled sunnily and said, "Oh, the king has his methods, I'm sure. But I was trained by my father and I've had a lot of years of making people believe I'm something I'm not." Telling them the details would have made them pity me. Let them fill in what they would.

"So you decided to get a little of your own back, Pup?" suggested Orvidin from the back of the room. His voice was a soft thrum that penetrated the shadows of the hall, and everyone turned to him. The aging warrior leaned heavily on a cane. His snow white hair fell unbraided to his waist, a sharp contrast to the iron gray of his short beard. Orvidin was a contemporary of my grandfather's.

"So you took the king's brother home with you to worry Jakoven and lost Iftahar for your uncle," he said.

I nodded my head slowly. "I suppose you could say that Kellen's rescue had something to do with my uncle's loss—yes," I agreed. The tension in the room was taut enough to sing. "Or perhaps after several people had risked everything to help me, the only repayment they asked was to spirit Kellen out of the Asylum where he never should have been in the first place. When they asked this of me, I felt ashamed because I had never thought to demand his release before, even though I knew as well as you that he did not belong there."

Silence echoed in the room. How many of them had given thought to Kellen over the years? Kellen, who had been a quiet, good-natured boy, sentenced to life in a small, dark cell. Had they lied to convince themselves that the fit of illness that Jakoven used to justify his imprisonment of Kellen had been real?

When I felt they'd had time to feel such guilt as they would, I continued. "Both reasons for rescuing Kellen are true. But it is also true that I know Jakoven will not let me or mine hide in peace again. I no longer have the luxury of hiding here in Hurog and hoping the king will forget me again."

"Alizon's rebellion is doomed," I said. I let my gaze sweep across the room and saw agreement in some faces and repressed anger in others. "Or so I thought. But as it turns out, it has never been Alizon's rebellion—it is Kellen's."

I let the murmur of conversation swell for a beat or two, then continued. "So by helping Kellen out of that hellish place—" Someone smiled and I stopped.

"Don't any of you believe the fictions that Jakoven spouts about luxury and good treatment in the Asylum," I said. "I've been there and I wouldn't leave a dog I cared about in the 'gentle' keeping of the men who run the King's Asylum for Noble Embarrassments and Inconveniences."

I'd put too much feeling in it. I would rather have left them believing that all that Jakoven's wizards had done was question me while I played stupid.

I swallowed and continued on in deadly seriousness, my carefully memorized speech forgotten. "So as Orvidin has already speculated, it was entirely self-interest that led me to help Kellen and join in his rebellion. But I believe that it is a self-interest that all Shavigmen share."

I took my tankard off the table and let the sweet water pour down my throat. My uncle gave me a small smile of encouragement that would have been invisible to anyone farther away. I set the empty tankard down, and turned back, trying not to notice the way the sound of the metal tankard hitting the table echoed in the silence of the room.

They want to be convinced, my uncle had said. They'll listen as long as it takes you to do it.

"Let me tell you why it is imperative to your survival that you help us here," I said. "It is the reason that Jakoven will not let my family alone."

I took a deep breath and plunged on. "While I was in the Asylum, I saw Jakoven produce an artifact he found while renovating his castle at Estian: a staff head bearing a dragon with a black gem."

"Are you telling us you think Jakoven found Farsonsbane, Pup?" asked Orvidin.

"I'm telling what I saw," I said. "And I'll tell you that Jakoven told me he found Farsonsbane and I, a wizard, believed him."

"Even so," said someone else. He sat near the eastern Shavig group, but the room was shadowed and I couldn't tell for sure who it was that spoke. "There are no dragons left to activate it."

"Jakoven managed to get the Bane to do something with my blood while he held me," I said. "As soon as I left, he went after one of my half brothers—whom Garranon spirited here."

"You're claiming to be a dragon?" asked Orvidin incredulously, standing up again with such force that the bench he'd sat upon rocked back. "You don't expect us to believe that. I tell you, Pup, I came here ready to throw my support behind Kellen—but I will not abide following a man stupid enough to try to make me swallow a story about a mythological artifact and then compound it by seriously declaring that he bears the blood of dragons." He turned on his heel and gestured to his supporters, who rose noisily to follow him.

I'd hoped no one would draw attention to the reason my blood awakened the Bane. I had planned on spinning some connection between the Hurog name and the legend that the Bane drew its power from dragon's blood. But Orvidin was too quick. He gave me a choice of lying outright or spinning them a truth that was unbelievable—and I would not lie to the Shavig Council.

The role I'd been assigned this night had been a deliberate attempt to remind those here of our Shavig heritage. I'd come before them as Hurogmeten and not wizard. Duraugh's speech did not mention the Bane at all. As I talked, I'd come to believe that the Council had to know what it was they were facing. Too late I realized that the Hurog warrior I'd shown them was so prosaic it made it impossible for them to accept the Bane and dragons. Myths belong in the darkness, in wild woods, in mages dressed in fantastic garb—not to a too-large man dressed in plain clothes.

"I never claimed to be a dragon," I said, my voice still audible even over the clatter. "Only a Hurog."

But it wasn't my voice that stopped Orvidin. Out of the flickering shadows left by the torchlights, a dragon coalesced in the large walkway that ran from the lord's dais where I sat to the outside doors on the far side of the great hallway.

I glanced at the table where Oreg had been, and sure enough, he was gone.

The lavender scales looked purple in the dim light and the dark violet on his muzzle matched the black on his wings. He lifted onto his hind legs until his head rose to the braced vaulting in the ceiling: I winced a little, hoping he didn't knock any of the stonework loose. His wings spread, knocking tables and their occupants carelessly aside. Slowly, he set his forefeet onto the ground. He sat motionless for a moment, then stretched his head forward until his muzzle was only inches from Orvidin's face.

"Don't you know your own language?" asked Oreg softly. He'd let an ancient accent fill his voice so no one but I, who'd heard him speak like that before, would know it was he. "Hurog means dragon—did you think that was chance?"

Some of the people in the room began moving closer to Oreg. I watched their faces carefully, but no one made a move to draw sword or knife. Before Oreg drew my attention back to him, I caught a glimpse of the narrow face of Charva, who had the distinction of holding the northernmost keep in Shavig. That he was a very capable wizard might have had something to do with his ability to hold lands where no one else had. The northern reaches of Shavig were infested with a number of interesting creatures who dined on humans when they could. On his face I saw an expression of awe that reminded me of how I felt the first time I saw Oreg take on his dragon shape.

"I am an ancient of my kind," said Oreg. I don't know if he was telling the truth or not. I'm not certain how long dragons live—or if Oreg even considered himself more dragon than human. But it sounded impressive. "I was here when the family Hurog was born of the unhappy marriage of dragon and human blood, before the fall of the Empire," he said.

He let the quiet build and raised his head, sweeping his gaze over the Shavigmen who occupied my hall. When he spoke, his voice was even softer than it had been, but there wasn't a person there who could not hear him. "I was here when the Empire of Man covered the land from western sea to eastern, from the northern mountains to southern glaciers, while wizards wielded powers that you consider legend. I was here when Farson brought his Bane to humankind and the Empire was destroyed. I witnessed the few humans who remained living in scattered, hidden populations that had lost the trappings of civilization and were little more than animals fighting to survive."

In the fire-lit darkness of the hall, some of the beauty of his coloring was muted, but nothing lessened the impact of what he was, of what he said. His body had to coil upon itself to fit in the space between Orvidin and the doorway. Abruptly he folded his wings in, hiding their lighter, reflective undersides and leaving the impression that darkness had descended upon the hall in the darker scales of his body.

"Once again I smell the foul magic emanating from the Farsonsbane. And I tell you to beware." While he spoke, his scales had darkened gradually until it was hard to see him. When he uttered the last words, the shadow that was the dragon dissipated slowly into the scintillating light of the torches.

"How do we know that this is not just an illusion?" asked Orvidin—but there was a reluctance in his voice as he turned back toward me that told me he wished with all his heart to believe there had been a dragon here. His voice firmed as he said to the room at large, "Ward's a mage."

"Does it matter?" said Kellen, stepping out of the passageway where he'd been waiting for his cue—which I hadn't managed to get to yet. "You all know what my brother is. In your hearts you know that he must be stopped. It is only that the need is more urgent than you know."

"May I present to you, Shavigmen all, Kellen Tallven, late of the King's Asylum," I said.

He bowed shallowly to me and after he had straightened, I stepped off the dais and dropped to my knees before him. This was important, my uncle explained to me in private. The biggest problem was not to get the Shavigmen to rebel, but to get them to support Kellen instead of me. Yet another reason for my plain clothes—I had the sinking feeling that Oreg hadn't helped in that area at all.

Kellen was fitted in the richest fabrics we could scavenge, mostly velvet and fine wool. The green and gray of his house colors looked good on him, and the past few weeks, spent largely outdoors, had lessened the pallor of prison. He looked just as a king should, and he carried himself the same way.

"Gentlemen," he said, touching my shoulder and signaling me to rise. "You have before you a story of which legends will be made. But as with all such legends, there is a core that is as basic as right and wrong."

I stood up and stepped behind him, noticing that Orvidin had bent down to pick something up from the floor. I saw it glint in the uncertain light and thought it was his knife, dropped when Oreg had made his sudden appearance.

"My brother has no care for his kingdom. He collects tithes that are supposed to go to his armies, that he might defend the kingdoms. Where were those armies when the Vorsag attacked Oranstone? What has he done to help the nobles recover after they fought the Vorsag off themselves? Has he allowed the Oranstone nobles to return to their lands? Haverness holes up in Callis because if he returns to Estian—as by the king's law he was supposed to—he knows he will fall afoul of the king's assassins. Why? Because he saved Oranstone when the king would not and made my brother look foolish in the bargain. Haverness's Hundred will be remembered in the history of our people long after our grandchildren are telling the story to their grandchildren. And my brother cannot tolerate that."

The land tugged at my attention, like a small feather of magic running up my spine. A person had crossed onto Hurog land, a person ill-touched. I sent my magic out for a closer look and knew that it was a lone foot-traveler. The ill-magic he bore was small—he would not cause much harm, if any. As long as he passed through Hurog, I wouldn't trouble him.

Kellen gathered his audience in the palm of his hand and I turned my attention back to him.

"My brother," continued Kellen, "has failed in his duties and I must oppose him—as Aethervon warned him would happen a decade ago. He has chosen to walk dark paths, and so I must stand in opposition to him. Ward of Hurog stands behind me, who of you will do likewise?"

It wasn't just the words he spoke, but the way he said them. At his last words, men stood and fell to their knees. Until only an old man stood alone in the hall. Orvidin walked up the center aisle until he was only a few feet from Kellen. I saw Rosem's hand twitch surreptitiously toward his sword.

"I don't know you," said Orvidin, his voice thick with some emotion. "But I know this pup, here." He threw a jerky gesture toward me. "And I know that what you say of Jakoven is true. And I know that this" — he held up the glittering thing he'd picked up off the floor, which was not a knife after all, and I saw tears slip slowly down the worn skin of his face—"this scale is no illusion. If there are dragons in Hurog, I will follow the Blue as Shavigmen have done as long as there has been a Shavig. And if the Hurogmeten follows your banner, I can do nothing else."

The drama of the moment couldn't last, of course. But it seemed to satisfy everyone. All of Shavig, as represented by the men under my roof, would support Kellen's bid to take his brother's throne whether in the cause of right, in search of a place in legend, or just to have a reason for a good battle.

The kitchen produced more food, mostly small cakes and sweet bread, and the servants brought in ale. Tosten took a seat before the fire and spent a while spinning music. With his usual good instincts, he avoided legendary tales and stuck to romance and war. We all needed a good dose of the normalcy a few sobbing tunes about dying lovers and soldiers could provide.

My uncle Duraugh set about charming and cementing the details as he drifted from one small group of Shavigmen to the next with Kellen by his side. Beckram clapped me on the shoulder in congratulation and then slipped away to tell Ciarra and Tychis what had happened.

When I'd first sent Tychis to be Ciarra's errand boy, he had been less than enthusiastic. But Ciarra had a touch with fragile spirits, and he was now her loyal slave—as were most of the other male Hurogs, including Oreg.

Hurog's dragon slipped back into the room in human form sometime after we'd all sworn to Kellen's cause. I hadn't seen him do it, so I hoped that no one else had either. I needed Oreg beside me, but I didn't want anyone exploiting what he was. What help he chose to give was enough.

Tisala stayed beside me. As I had noticed once before, she was as at home in feminine frippery as in hunting leathers. The dress she wore was one that Oreg had made her—I recognized the embroidery style. Oreg liked to embroider bright-colored animals on sleeves or shoulders. The making of clothes was a hobby of his, and he shared the results with only a few of us. The colorful tigers that ran up the black silk sleeves suited her, fierce and strong. The dress clung to her curves and celebrated the strength of her body, but I was too smart to tell her so.

Over the past few weeks she'd been pleasant and helpful, but any hint of passion sent her scurrying away. So I didn't tell her that I loved the way the firelight touched her hair, or that I dreamed of her naked in my bed. But I thought it a lot, and made certain she knew it. I'd learned from my sister, who'd been mute until a few years ago, that there were other ways than speech to convey information.

"Impressive," said Garranon quietly on my other side.

"What?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Dragons and legends … It would have been difficult for any man not to want to fight beside a dragon."

"I'd have rather kept him secret," I said. "But if Orvidin had walked out, we'd have lost most of the rest. However, it was Kellen who took them and made them his."

Garranon gave me an odd smile. "Ah, yes. They are Kellen's men. As long as you are—" he broke off as magic flared wildly, and I drew my short ceremonial sword in reflex to the attack on Hurog. It was the sword that cut off Garranon's words, not the magic, for the gates that were torn apart were on the curtain wall, too far away to hear.

The crowd, most of whom felt nothing at all, looked at me and fell silent—I think they thought I was going to attack Garranon. Even Tosten stilled the strings of his harp.

"Away from the door," I said. When I opened my senses to Hurog, I knew the curtain gates were wide open, and the bars that held them closed were splintered.

The man my Hurog magic had warned me of earlier was even now approaching the keep while the guardsmen on duty tried to reclose the gates. Magic, Stala'd told them, was best dealt with by mages, not soldiers. They were to stay at their post and let Oreg and me deal with it.

I could detect no sign of the power that had opened the outer gates of the walls surrounding the keep, nothing but the residue of ill-magic and the remnants of the spell that had thrown open the outer defenses.

I felt the man touch the keep doors lightly, and they sprang away from his skin as if they had been hit with a battering ram. They hit the walls hard, knocking dust from the stones. If anyone had been standing next to the door, they would have been crushed.

I could see the man quite clearly as he stepped into the room. I don't know what I expected, Jade Eyes, or Arten, or even one of the lesser court wizards—not Jakoven, surely. But it was none of them.

Instead I saw a man, neither large nor short, clad in rags and boots that were more hole than leather. The air that blew in was chill, but he seemed not to feel the cold. He walked hunched over and he moved strangely: not loose-limbed like a drunkard, nor with the clumsiness of exhaustion, but near to both. His skin, where it showed through the rags, was mottled dark with bruises, frostbite, or maybe dirt; but the dark patches seemed to grow as he drew closer. For he looked neither right nor left as he shuffled down the aisle toward me.

I didn't recognize him.

"Can I help you?" I said at the same time Garranon pushed around me and took several steps forward.

"Valsilva? What are you doing here?"

Once Garranon used his name, I could see that the shuffling figure was indeed Jakoven's stable master, but so changed from the jolly man I'd met that he could have been a different species. Abruptly I remembered dreaming of Jakoven calling for the stable master who had let Garranon ride out of the castle with my brother.

I caught Garranon's shoulder when he would have continued forward. "Wait," I said. "There's something wrong."

Other people started feeling the wrongness, too. The space around the stable master grew larger as he continued up the walkway toward Garranon and me. Something fell from his hand and rolled into a brightly lit area so I could see clearly it was a finger. Someone swore.

I pulled Garranon back a few steps.

"Valsilva? What do you want?" asked Garranon.

It stopped where it was, close enough for me to see its face clearly. The dark spots weren't dirt or even bruises, but rotting flesh, the smell of which began to seep from the body into the air of the hall. I heard someone gag.

"Garranon," it said clearly.

Garranon's shoulder stiffened further under my hand because he heard it, too. I don't know that I would have recognized the voice of the king's stable master, but I would recognize the voice it now used anywhere.

"Jakoven," Garranon replied steadily.

I caught sight of Tisala, someone's sword in her hand (she hadn't been wearing one), stalking around behind the thing. Her sword looked more useful than the ceremonial short sword I held.

The body of the stable master shook its head dolefully, and as I watched, the rot began to spread across its left cheek. "Twenty years, Garranon. I gave you twenty years and you betray me."

I watched its eyes carefully. It saw only Garranon. I doubted if Jakoven even knew where his creature was.

"Yes," agreed Garranon.

The thing began shuffling forward again, saying, "See what happens to those who betray me? See what you have done to this man?"

Before it could touch Garranon, I threw up a shield of magic. After seeing the trick with the door, I shouldn't have been taken by surprise at what happened—though in my defense, watching the accelerated rotting of the stable master was distracting me.

The pulse of magic that hit my shield was stronger than anything Oreg had ever hit me with. Red sparks flew up and ignited small fires on the great timbers that arched three stories over our heads. Tankards of alcohol burst into flame around us, lighting the hall as if it were daylight.

I cried out with the flash of pain it caused and lost hold on my spell. But Tisala ran the creature through with her sword and knocked it off balance, so it stopped short of Garranon. Instead, it stumbled to its knees and gasped in pain.

She'd struck right through the spine, but it began pulling itself toward Garranon anyway. Tisala jerked her sword free for another try, but stopped when it began speaking again.

"I'm all right," it said in another voice that must have been the stable master's own. "I'm just very hungry. I'll eat and be just fine." As it talked, great clumps of hair fell off with bits of scalp still clinging to it.

I tugged Garranon back onto the dais because he stood frozen in horror or guilt. I could feel that breaking my shield changed something, with the creature. The magic that held it wasn't quite as focused. It stopped to eat a crust of bread that lay in its path. Crumbs fell like snowflakes out the sides of its face where the muscles of the jaw had rotted away. If I lived to see this finished, I'd have other things to dream of than the Asylum.

"Stay back," commanded Oreg from the far side of the room, near the open doorway, and the men who'd drawn their weapons as Tisala attacked halted where they were. "If you touch it, your flesh may well rot way as quickly as his is. Let Ward and me deal with it."

"What is it?" I asked Oreg, but it was Orvidin who answered, his face gray and drawn.

"A golem," he said, spitting on the floor to ward off evil spirits, a habit that leads the Oranstonians to call us Shavig barbarians. "I haven't seen one of these since my father offended the Acholynn in Avinhelle, and I hoped to never see another."

"Perhaps," said Oreg, who'd circled the thing and took his place beside me, staring all the while at the remains of the stable master, which finally finished the food on the floor and started to slither forward with legs dragging behind it.

"Garranon?" The thing sounded bewildered, but its advance was steady, if slow. "The king said I shouldn't have let you go. Did I do wrong?"

Tisala lifted her sword again, but Oreg waved her off.

"Fire, Ward. Not the kind you use to light the kitchen fire, but what you did at Silver Fells."

What I'd done at Silver Fells was to call down Siphern, God of Justice, to carry away the souls of the villagers slaughtered by the Vorsag. Not something I'd repeated often enough to know how to do it at a moment's notice.

I tried calling the god as I flung my magic at the stable master. Flames leapt off the animated corpse as if it had been doused in brandy, but I knew that nothing had answered my call.

Alight with the fire eating away at the flesh that remained on the skeleton, the creature hesitated. It shook its head and muttered—this time in a broken whisper. "Hungry," it said.

Tisala stepped in and thrust her sword past the flames and through the blackened head where it slid through the temple and into the eye and stuck there. It was a metal-handled sword and she had to let go as my magic-fueled flames shot up it as if it were a branch of wood.

The golem shifted away from Garranon for the first time. It looked right at Tisala with its good eye.

"Hungry," it said.

"Jakoven's lost control of it," said Oreg, adding his fire to mine, but it continued after Tisala. Tisala backed down the aisle way, keeping her face toward the thing. The golem, far from being affected by the sword sticking out of its skull or our fire, moved faster until Tisala was trotting backward as Oreg and I followed.

The crowd of Shavig nobles swirled in tension, barely held in check by Oreg's command. I caught a glimpse of Rosem's firm wrestling grip holding Kellen back, and I blessed him for it. All that was needed was for Jakoven's plaything to run amok amongst all the Shavig nobles. There was none—except maybe Charva, the wizard, who even stood a chance against it.

Orvidin, who'd managed to get one of the decorative pole arms off the wall, pushed through the crowd and shoved the pike under the crawling stable master and flipped it on its back. It twisted around as quickly as a snake and began to stalk Orvidin.

"Gods," muttered Garranon beside me—I'd thought he'd stayed sensibly behind on the dais.

"Valsilva," Garranon called, trying to attract the creature's attention.

Floor coverings smoldered near the burning monster. A spilled mug of ale poured fire like water down the side of a table.

"Ward, that's not working!" snapped Oreg though his magic poured through me to aid my efforts.

I called out to Siphern and reached—Hurog, not Siphern answered my call.

Power flooded into me and had not I immediately sent it away it would have reduced me to ash the way it consumed the poor thing that had once been a man. Still frantically dumping the magic I doused the fires in the hall.

"Oreg!" I called and, bless him, he saw what was happening. His hands closed over my shoulders and he began to absorb the magic I had no good place left to send.

The power stopped as quickly as it had come, leaving my limbs as weak as water. The smell of rotting flesh was gone, leaving only a sour smoky smell and a strange quiet that Orvidin broke.

"Siphern bless him," he said, leaning on the old pike. He spat on the floor again. "I knew Valsilva."

"Jakoven sent him all the way from Estian," said Oreg. "To give a message to Garranon—and kill him if possible. A punishment for saving Ward's brother."

Kellen pushed forward looking angry and ruffled, followed by Rosem, who had seen to it that Hurog's hope of salvation had not thrown himself onto the first of Jakoven's monsters. I owed Rosem.

Garranon looked at the ashes that were left on the floor and swallowed hard. "He was a good man," he said, then turned on his heel and left the room.

The anger left Kellen's face as swiftly as a slate wiped by a cloth. "I'll go talk to him," he said. "He might listen to me. Ward, talk with your wizard and be ready to tell me what just happened before we, any of us, seek our beds tonight."

Kellen followed Garranon and I silently wished him luck.

Oreg released my shoulders with an absent pat and said, "I don't need to consult—I know what this is."

"Golem," I said. "But why didn't a normal fire kill it?"

"Not a golem," said Oreg. "At first I thought so, too, but it breathed—did you notice? A golem is, by definition, nonliving. It was a geas."

"A geas that could cause a man to walk all the way from Estian and cast aside barred doors in the process?" said Charva the wizard. He sounded tired and I realized that some of the power Oreg had fed me had been Charva's. "He sounded like Jakoven. Geas doesn't provide for that."

Oreg smiled, "If you'll excuse me for disagreeing with you—I'll tell you that geas can do all of this, if there is sufficient power behind the spell. And right now, Jakoven has sufficient power to lay waste to cities if he chooses."

So Jakoven has managed to activate the Bane, I thought, chills shaking down my spine.

"So you say," said Porshall, a western landholder I didn't know well. He seldom came to Councils, as his lands were in disputed territory and he needed to protect them. "I say that the timing of this attack was interesting."

"Are you accusing my nephew of this?" said Duraugh with icy politeness.

Porshall held his hands out as if to forestall offense. "I merely observe that as your nephew has so clearly demonstrated, he is a wizard. And that, if any Shavigman here was harboring thoughts of supporting Jakoven, this demonstration would cement their support of Kellen."

Orvidin, still playing with his pike, let out a bellow of laughter before saying, "Only someone who didn't know Ward could even think that. Half the problem we've had with the pup in the Council is that he's too honest … No, that's not quite the word." He narrowed his eyes at me. "Too honorable. He'll lie if it furthers his aim, but his aim, and his means, never lie in foul waters. He might create an illusion of a dragon, but you'd not catch this pup hurting an innocent man."

Porshall abruptly shook his head. "I still say—"

"Enough," said Charva. "This was no magic of Ward's. Those of you without magic will have to take my word that Ward's magic has an unmistakable signature—and this was done by someone else. Jakoven is the most likely source." The wizard looked around the room. "I'd pay attention to this, all of you. If we don't stop Jakoven, the stable master's fate might be kinder than anything we face."