The King's Might: A Legend of Averdan

Part Four, Chapter Two

TWO

In Which Jalith Wakes Up, Again

"--asks only for the use of a few weeks. He understands that--"

"I don't care what he understands. He can't use it because he'll wind up keeping it."

"And why not? He'll wind up doing that anyway. This way there's little loss to you or your people. No fields torched. No villages axed. You wouldn't even have to explain your surrender to the Southking."

"He can't keep it," the second voice said firmly, "because it's mine. Is that enough of an answer for you, Rakarek? Tell your Northmage to go stuff himself. I'll hold these lands against him for as long as I damned well can."

"So you've chosen to ally yourself with the Souchlad."

"Southking can stuff himself too. I'm allied with me, myself, and I."

"Why? You, yourself, and you don't have a very big army. There's no one to protect you out here, Chari. Not even the other Holders will lift a finger to help you. The Southking's too far away to do anything more for you."

"Then I'll have to do something for myself then. In the meantime I suggest you leave."

"Why?"

"Because it'll be much kinder on your backside than me throwing you out."

Jalith listened, dazed, to the voices that came faintly from the other room.

After a moment of silence, his door opened, and a tall woman of indeterminate age entered, dressed all in dark mail. Her hair was shorn, barely a bristle over her head, and her eyes were  pale grey. There was something unusual about her appearance--even more so than the mail and the short hair--but it took Jalith a moment to figure out what it was.

This woman had the dark skin of the Souchlad but the light eyes of the North.

She watched him impassively for a few moments. At long last she said:

"I know you're awake, king's son."

Jalith opened his eyes, a little sheepishly.

"We found you at the gates, bleeding your stuck guts out over my cobblestones, silver hand out for all to see. And you're lucky it was me--I'm sure you know, there are many in this land and the next who wish you ill. But right now I would like some explanations, king's son. "

"As to?" Jalith was still very much unused to being talked to in this manner.

"As to how the missing Silverhand, rumored to be safe at Hamrat but who obviously is not, wound up at the gate of Northold the month the fighting starts."

"I'm going on a journey. My companion was killed by bandits. I was nearly killed--I rode here without knowing where I was going." The woman's clipped, authoritative sentences had a tendency to rub off. "This was suggested to me as a place to stop and resupply. May I do that, your ladyship?"

He had not intended the last words to come out sarcastically, but they nevertheless did. Chari Ironstar put both hands on her hips and glared at him.

"Do you have any idea--any idea at all--what sort of trouble I'll be in if the Northmage's messengers find you here? This is a neutral post now, prince. I have fought long and hard to keep it that way. But if the bastard Northmage finds a single reason to take my hold, he will. And I'll be hung out to dry with yesterday's laundry. You're lucky I saw fit even to stop your bleeding."

"I thought this was a Southern posting. You've always sworn fealty to my father--I've even seen you there, at the Long Council."

"That," Chari said tightly, "was before the war."