Chapter 7: Treason

The Queen of Zarthan listened in silence to General Khoogra's report about the latest events in the south, while not looking at the man. She glanced at her husband, sitting a few feet away. He was staring raptly at the general, the opposite of his wife.

Such preliminary Council meetings had become customary; to help the King and his advisors prepare for the main meeting that would follow shortly. Of course, General Khoogra was the only man in the realm of Zarthan who didn't know that today's Council meeting was held over for two palm-widths. This time it was just the King and Queen, a little unusual, but then, it was their choice, was it not?

When the general finished, Elspeth thought Freidal looked amused. She wasn't amused, though. She was just barely able to hold herself still, fighting her desire to leap across the table and cut the man's throat.

Elspeth turned back to the general and smiled politely. "General Khoogra, could you please inform us as to the progress at the rifle factory in Baytown?"

The man bobbed his head. "Your highness, we are having technical problems making the steel according to the specifications that the High King sent us. It is my opinion that he has deliberately misled us."

"That would not be a very friendly act on the part of the High King, wouldn't you say, General? To mislead the King of Zarthan, a man he has treated with as an equal?" Elspeth offered.

General Khoogra shrugged. "Your Highness, there is no other explanation. We have tried the formula repeatedly without success. Even without that steel, the trigger mechanisms don't work as they should, using our best materials."

General Khoogra saw King Freidal wave at someone behind him and he turned slightly to see who it was.

Count Xitki Quillan stood in the door, with General Denethon next to him. "Sire, a word," Count Quillan said.

"Please, Count Quillan, General Khoogra was just finishing. He was telling us how the plans for rifles that the High King sent us don't work."

General Khoogra nodded somberly. "I can explain it in no other way, Count Quillan. The plans the High King sent us are defective."

"General," General Denethon said, a rifle appearing in his hands.

General Khoogra was startled, but he had no place to go, with the table behind him and an armed man in front of him. "Guards! Guards! Defend your King!" he called at the top of his lungs.

The guards didn't move or show any sign that he'd spoken.

"This is, General Khoogra," General Denethon went on, "a rifle made according to the pattern that the High King sent King Freidal -- made in a factory of Count Quillan's. According to you, the weapon doesn't work, the trigger mechanism fails and the steel is inferior."

General Denethon aimed directly at General Khoogra's head. "Would you like me to pull the trigger, General?"

The general looked around, taking in the guards who hadn't moved, a King who stared at him without expression and the usurper who aspired far higher than such as her should ever aspire, sitting quietly watching him like a flock of birds watching a lone worm.

"Pull it," Khoogra told Denethon. "I don't fear you."

Something hit his back, something that itched for a heartbeat. He didn't dare claw to relieve the itch.

"That, General Khoogra," the Queen of Zarthan spoke from behind him, "was a dart from an air gun. It's filled with sleepy juice. Too many of your sort kill themselves. When you wake up, why, we'll have a nice little chat."

Then the general did claw at his back, and when that didn't work, belatedly, he tried for his knife sheathed in his belt. His limbs were leaden, his vision was narrowing rapidly. He did manage to whirl and spit in the woman's direction before he collapsed soddenly to the floor.

The King of Zarthan gestured at one of his guards. "Tiki, see to General Khoogra. He is to be kept alive and treated reasonably until my lady or I wish to talk to him. Say, shortly after sunset."

The man bowed low. "As you command, my Lord!"

The guard gestured and four men appeared with a stretcher, loaded the general onto it and marched out of the King of Zarthan's Council Chamber.

"Count Quillan, General Denethon, attend us," Freidal commanded. "The rest of you, leave. Everyone."

Xitki Quillan walked a few feet and pulled a small bench away from the wall. Seeing that, General Denethon lent a hand and they placed it a few feet from the King and Queen of Zarthan.

After a second a young woman, Alros, sister to the King, walked from the shadows and sat down between Count Quillan and Denethon, without a word.

"I assume your rifle would have worked, Denethon," Freidal said sourly.

"Yes, my King. We have two hundred more just like it that also perform as the High King promised."

Freidal waved his hand. "Here, Denethon, I am Freidal, this is Lady Elspeth. Count Quillan, to be sure, and Denethon, your lady wife, Lady Alros."

"Of course, my King, it shall be as you wish."

"Oh for heaven's sake, Denethon," Elspeth interjected, "pretend! My husband wants to fool himself into thinking he's back in the field, fighting as a simple cavalry captain."

"Of course, Lady Elspeth!"

Count Quillan spoke up. "It isn't that I didn't trust General Denethon, it's more like I wanted to see for myself how stupid Khoogra thinks we are. My smiths have built several factories as well as two hundred rifles that work just fine from the High King's plans."

Freidal sighed heavily. "We will question General Khoogra most closely, but does anyone believe for an instant that anyone would trust such a transparent fool with more than the barest outlines of a plot?"

"Plotters make mistakes, Sire," General Denethon told him. "Not always, but now and then. We have to be aware of that and seek such failures and then be ready to exploit them."

Count Quillan met Freidal's eye and Freidal nodded. Count Quillan spoke softly. "My people pride themselves on their removal from the intrigues of the court in Baytown. More than once those of the foul God Styphon sent men among us and found warm welcomes... very warm welcomes when we kindled fireseed under their feet when we could learn nothing further from them. But, as loyal as my people are, there were always some who listened."

Freidal nodded. "It will grieve me greatly to know for sure that Tiki is bent, instead of merely suspecting it."

"Worse, Sire," Alros spoke for the first time. "Unless he overtly betrays himself, you still won't know for sure."

"Sister mine, you of all those here, know how little I wish to stand on formality with those I trust and love."

"As I would have wished, brother. Except after our father died I made every man who entered my presence press his nose in the dirt every other step. Twice men said no; the first one I had shot, the second needed only the reminder," Alros told her older brother. "I took no pleasure in it, I swear. I loathed it. But it was that or..."

Or those men would never have taken orders from a sixteen-year-old orphan girl. Alros had acted swiftly to find and kill those who murdered their father... and in passing, pressed a lot of noses into the dirt. It had taken one example and one threat of a repeat to get them there and keep them there.

Elspeth sighed. "Look, we all have different points of view. For me, it's Frei, Al, Deni and Count Quillan. You all do what you want."

Freidal chuckled. "Count Quillan, eh?"

"Of course. Of all of you, he's the only one who's figured me out."

Freidal turned to his mentor and friend. "Xitki? You've figured out my wife? And you haven't told me?"

Quillan smiled. "Sire, your wife is a strong woman."

"And that's it?" Freidal asked.

"It's quite enough," Alros said pertly. "Count Quillan -- how do you see me?"

"A strong-willed young woman, who has come into her own."

Denethon cracked up, laughing. "You can say that again!"

"None of this addresses the problems of the crown," Freidal reminded them.

"Actually, Sire, it does," Xitki said, contradicting his King.

"We here in this room trust each other implicitly. We have found, to our chagrin and regret, that our enemy, the man we sought to throw down, the High King of Hostigos, is a man we can trust and it's those who should be loyal to us who can't be trusted. We must be cautious of even those we once thought of as most loyal. This is a terrible thing, where even long service and long trust doesn't suffice. It is, Freidal, the legacy of Styphon."

"Styphon? They're gone, discredited!"

"Gone, yes. Discredited, yes. But you were the one who spoke about legacy here and the legacy I'm talking about is the one that has been the bane of all the Kings and Princes in the land since we first arrived on these shores. That legacy is the ease of treason, aimed at individual aggrandizement, with little or no regard to what that treason will mean to the people or to the kingdom. Where men, and aye, women, value their honor so little that they will sell it for less than a squadron of cavalry."

"What do you recommend, then?" Freidal asked.

"Tomorrow, unless General Khoogra's confederates are stupid beyond belief, we shoot him from the guns of South Fort. Then we take stock.

"We've long thought the plots were directed by Styphon. Except Styphon is gone and they died entirely too easily and above all, badly, for my taste," Quillan told his King.

"Their leaders were in the main temple here in Baytown. Alros' troops surrounded it, and in the fighting it caught fire and burned down. None escaped.

"The plots of the new king in Tenosh are simple and straightforward. Much more so than what we are seeing here. I am concerned that perhaps we erred: that there were plotters behind Styphon; plotters who seek to enslave us all. And that by ending Styphon, we made them drop but one arrow from their quiver."

"Styphon was a front for something else?" Freidal asked, frowning. It wasn't the first time he'd heard that idea, but it still seemed impossible.

"Not a knowing one," Quillan told his King. "But a front nonetheless."

"That's a scary thought," Elspeth mused. She looked around the room, to check that indeed no one else was present. "You've all heard stories, no doubt, how I and my friends came here?"

"In a magic wagon," Denethon said, "pulled by invisible horses, armored by mysterious magic. You came from the Winter Lands, as did the High King."

"And we've said over and over again, that we came from near Mogdai village, in the lands claimed by the Ruthani," Elspeth told them. "No invisible horses, no magic armor.

"I tell you true, now. I speak the words of Lord Tuck, in their most secret. I speak the words of the High King in his most secret of secrets.

"Vile sorcerers brought us to this place," Elspeth told them.

"I've heard that," Count Quillan told her. "A terrible thing!"

"You have no idea, Count, none. One heartbeat we were about our innocent pursuits and then we were here. We were forever severed from our family and friends, stranded in a land where none of us spoke the language, where none of us understood your customs... and none of us understood why people were trying to kill us.

"Yes, you've learned that we react harshly to that. I've killed a man with my bare hands. First I hurt him, and then I gave him grace. You all know how I arrived: pregnant. My homeland isn't paradise, any more than the lands of Zarthan or the High King are.

Elspeth waved around them. "There is a group of people, King Kalvan and Lord Tuck figure, who can move from place to place, time to time. For every decision anyone makes, imagine what would happen if the opposite choice was made, or if it was delayed a day, or advanced a day. Imagine a world where that was the decision you made, instead of the action you actually took. In some worlds the decision works, in others it fails. All possible combinations.

"And these people can move from one of these worlds to another with the ease of one of us walking into the next room.

"The people who brought us here must not want people like us to know that there are those among us who aren't from our world. If they are human, though, if they have any of the traits of the rest of us, they will seek to dominate, take advantage and, above all, rule. All this behind the scenes, as plotters and connivers.

"These people are unspeakably evil, to come amongst us in this fashion. To tear people from their homes, from their families... even from their fates, as these people seem to do.

"Lord Tuck says that we have to be alert that they might attack us. Because we have knowledge that they cannot afford to have broadcast."

The group was silent, trying to digest that.

Denethon stirred. "Sire, Lady Elspeth, I am under compulsion to speak."

"Compulsion?" Freidal asked, his hand on his pistol.

"Yes, Lord. I swear, that while the words aren't mine, they represent what I was told. Even though I speak them, they aren't mine."

He looked both frustrated and angry. "Before the High King ordered me returned, I had an interview with General Verkan. Please, I beg of you, the words I have to speak aren't my own. I have no choice, none!"

He paused, and then his voice deepened and changed. "My name is Verkan. One of you knows my voice. I suspect others of you will hear it later.

"I am a policeman, tasked to protect a secret, a secret that you all now know. According to our laws, you are now subject to immediate execution.

"Except none of you sought our secret, none of you desired to know it, and unless I'm sorely mistaken, have serious and immediate concerns of your own that dwarf any possible concerns that such as I might bring to the table."

Denethon was breathing hard and was looking terribly distressed. But still words continued to come from his lips.

"You know my people's greatest secret. This I promise you: tell our secret outside of this group and we will kill you. All of you. Keep our secret, I beg you.

"You have no reason to trust me and mine.

"But if you don't, you doom yourselves and those who follow you.

"For the most part, we watch; that's our job. It is our enemies who seek to interfere in such times and places as yours. Our enemies are abroad in numbers we've not seen before. Defend yourselves, don't talk about what and why and against whom you are defending."

Denethon promptly bent double and threw up.

Alros knelt next to him, speaking softly to him, stroking his brow.

Count Quillan was the first to speak. "I wish he'd left us a sign or signal, as to who we could trust."

"I don't think that's possible," Elspeth told him. "Not to be sure."

She chuckled, then. "I know what we can do!"

"What is that, lady wife?" Freidal asked.

"Why, someone in Denethon's entourage has to be one of them. If we catch a plotter we're not sure about, why, we tell Denethon's people, one at a time. Eventually we'll figure out who's the contact. In the meantime, they'll take care of our security problems."

"And if these 'problems' don't vanish?" Alros asked.

"Why, then we know those problems are ours and that we need to redouble our efforts!"

"You're trusting them to tell us the truth," Freidal told Elspeth.

Elspeth shrugged. "Yes. At some point in time, we'll learn the truth of it. Although we should be careful, as our enemies might try to play us for fools."

Freidal looked at Denethon, who was gray and shaken. "They can compel us to do their will, against ours. They don't need to play us for anything, they can just reach out and take what they want."

"Sire..." Denethon's voice was weak.

They all looked at him. "Freidal, it is hard to say what that felt like. I listened to the instructions and I had the ability to say no."

"But you spoke anyway," Alros said, confused.

"I could see and hear the words in my mind, Alros. I knew what they were. They had to be said, don't you see? There's more, more that I didn't say. I could have, if I wanted. I could do it now. It's a private message for Lady Elspeth.

"Well, spill it," Elspeth told him. "Feel free to speak right up."

Denethon shook his head. "It wouldn't be proper, Lady Elspeth. This is truly meant for your ears only."

"And I'm serious. Tell me, tell all of us what the message is."

Denethon shrugged, and his voice changed once again. "Lady Elspeth, you understand that there are various levels of technology. Were you to speak of radio to these people, they would think you were talking about communing with the spirits. Talk about landing a man on the moon, and having him walk around there -- these people wouldn't understand, yet your people were within a very few moons of that when you left and the event is now in the past of those you knew.

"Our technology is vastly different as well as vastly greater than yours. One of the things we understand quite well is what happens to the soul when the body dies. We can follow it to its next body; we can free it from the memory constraints that would normally protect it. You call this reincarnation.

"We understand it, we can control it, to a degree. Lady Elspeth, the soul that took possession of your son at his birth is a monster greater than you can imagine. Kill him now or you'll regret it later."

Denethon met Elspeth's eyes. "I'm sorry, Lady Elspeth."

"Why?" she asked him. "You have no more guilt as to the content of the message as does any signal sergeant bringing us bad news."

"It feels more personal when you've had it bottled up inside you, waiting for the right moment to speak."

Freidal reached out and put his arm around Elspeth's waist and pulled her closer to him. "It can be done, Elspeth."

"Easily, no doubt," she said, staring into the distance.

"Killing an infant is only easy to the depraved," Freidal rejoined. "But it can be done."

"Not now," she told him. "I'm sorry. It was you yourself who told me that he was half my son. I have no idea how much inheritance means, if souls truly pass from person to person. I will see him, I'll have him watched, but I won't have him killed. Not yet, anyway."

"Lord Verkan seemed rather certain," Denethon offered.

"Aye, such men always sound certain," Elspeth told him. "It's called salesmanship."

She looked around the room. "Now, I have a state secret for you. One known only by myself, up until this moment. I'm pregnant."

Freidal let out a whoop, grabbed Elspeth and whirled her around, kissing her hard as he could.

As soon as the sun was up the next morning after what the men were now calling the Wagon Box fight, the signal mirrors were flashing. Lieutenant Gryllos and Captain Landsruhl were standing next to the Hostigi signal sergeant, already told to send their status. The signaler saw the first few flashes and turned to Gryllos. "Sir, Brigadier Markos sends, 'Mission successful?'"