it was a whisper, the shock in his tone made it as “loud” as a shout.
“No more do I,” Kiron replied grimly. “But it is one way to ‘profit’ from a war.”
“There are others,” Toreth said, after a long silence. “Yet were I to examine things closely, I doubt not that I should find the Magi’s hands outstretched there, too. They are wealthy men; wealthy enough to be above such things as mere noble blood. And when one has the ears of the Great Ones, there are many ways of obtaining more wealth. Theirs is shadow power, but the shadows can hold many things.”
Kiron thought silently of all the ways that one could profit from war. The making of weapons, certainly. The supply of tents, of food for the army, of horses, of other gear, from cooking pots to the linen for bandages. And he wondered; certainly the Great One of Tia was a man of no more than middle years, and there were no Magi as such in Tia. But had he not heard of a certain adviser, a little man, a crafty man, a man to whom the Great Onelistened more often than to others, who had remarkably served in the same capacity to his father, and his father’s father? How long before that adviser whispered in the Tian’s ear, and was heeded and believed—being, in fact, his own best evidence?
He could not be sure. The thought made him ill.
It also had a terrible logic. How else to explain something as senseless as this war, unless someone profited by it?
“I wonder who began it.” A peal of thunder punctuated the question.
He did not realize he had said the words aloud until he saw Toreth shrug.
“I do not think that it matters now,” Toreth replied. “The question is, how to stop it?”
The words hit Kiron like a hard brick, and stunned him nearly as thoroughly. Once again, he spoke without thinking, as his mind put handfuls of bits of disparate thoughts together. “So long as the Tians have more Jousters than we, there is nothing Altans can do to stop it. If the war were fought man to man—”
“Then they could advance no farther, and might be driven back.” Toreth nodded approvingly. “Kaleth thinks that if the Tian Jouster advantage could be nullified, so that we could say to our people ‘there is no more to fear from the Jousters of Tia, let us have a truce,’ then no matter what was whispered in whose ear, the Altans, common and noble alike, would support a truce. The Priests would support a truce; no few of them have lost brothers, fathers, and children to the armies. If the Priests were united, and the Great Ones fostering it, even the Magi would not dare to oppose it. And he believes that if the Tian Jousters no longer ruled the skies, that they could no longer descend upon a village and terrorize it, then the Tians would begin to think on the possibility that it might soon be one of their villages that is served the selfsame dish, and support a truce.”
“But what of those who poison wells and burn fields by night?” Kiron asked reluctantly.
Toreth sighed. “We had not thought that far,” he admitted. “But we have a start. And the Great Ones are old. They grow no younger, and stolen years are not healthy years, they only prolong life, not turn back the sands of time. Eventually, Kaleth and I will take their places, and then—” his eyes gleamed. “—then the Magi had best look to themselves. We will not be gulled by promises of stolen years. We are not greedy. We will content ourselves with power and wealth, and let the gods send as long a life as they may.”
“And in the meantime?” Kiron asked.
The prince tilted his head to the side and shrugged. “We think. We plan. We gather friends to support us when the time comes. Friends of all sorts,” he added meaningfully.
Once again, Kiron felt as if he had been stunned, as the pieces came together. “Like a wing of a new sort of Jouster?” he asked dryly. “Am I the last?”
Toreth laughed, although it was a laugh with a great deal of irony in it. “No, not quite. Is Orest to be trusted, do you think?”
“With my life, yes,” he replied honestly. “With my secret—I am not so sure.”
Toreth shook his head with mock-sadness. “Gossips worse than a girl, that one. Perhaps raising a dragonet