Vidanric Writes a Letter
copyright Sherwood Smith 2002

My dear Russav:

In my last I complained about the mud. If only my problems now were so simple.

Last night one of those damned traps were sprung--the tenth, I believe--but instead of one of us, it got one of them. Debegri, of course, has been gloating all over the camp about that. The healer reports that the victim appears to be one of their scouts; no trained warrior, this, but an undersized female. It pains me that Tlanth is reduced to using such. What can they be thinking?

Well, I had to come back here lest I betray myself. My interview with the Tlanth scout was most salutary. Size obviously does not equate with courage. The girl can be scarcely more than a child, but even laid by the heels (the trap actually got her ankle) she mouthed off to me in grand style. It was so difficult not to laugh--especially at the look on Debegri's stupid face--I had to retreat.

And not just to recover my equilibrium, but to think. Despite a quite spectacular coating of mud, that child has an unsettling resemblance to the portraits of the Calahanras kings and queens hanging forgotten in the Athanarael gallery . . .

I might see you before you see this. Still, I will send it down the mountain with my courier, just in case you do get it first.

You once accused me of having an instinct for trouble. It certainly seems to have proved true. My prisoner is none other than Tlanth's sister, and no child at all. She's asleep now, and I fear quite sick from a necessarily precipitate ride halfway down the mountain, entirely to keep her out of Debegri's clutches. The man is insane, I think. But not interestingly so; he's even more stupid than I'd feared, twice as venal, with a lamentable taste for torture and blood, if his conversational habits are anything to judge by. Infinitely wearying. The single benefit that I can see is that I actually prefer Galdran's company.

Enough of him. Galdran seems to want to give him freedom to chase all over the mountains; as you feared, he did not like my successes, slow them as I would, but at least my removal from command will thus protect the Tlanthi rabble, who have earned my sympathies. Debegri is far too stupid to see how to find them, and I took good care to keep my observations about their movements to myself.

As for the Tlanth sister--Meliara is her name; I was right about the Calahanras connection--I see no other way around bringing her to the city. Maybe Galdran will waste time trying to hostage her against her brother, which will gain us enough time to put another plan into place. I don't know, though; he's still too angry over that letter. Oh yes, the letter was really theirs--it was not a ploy on the part of the Marquise, as some surmised--and quite proud they seem to be of it. Meliara, alas, is as earnest as she is ignorant. But she's not stupid, not at all. Just uneducated, a lack she makes up for in wit and temper. I wish you could have seen her light into me over our campfire last night! You would have expired from mirth at her discourse on court decorations--a delightfully old-fashioned term she has to have gotten from her equally outspoken mother, if all reports be true. Were the end result not so predictable, I could wish to see have a whack at Galdran; our friends would get years of quiet retribution from the spectacle of her free speech and plentiful insult.

As it is, you must warn my mother to look about her. Galdran's thirst for blood and blame is as predictable as his cousin's, and the truth is, however ignorant they might be, the Tlanths are also right. They will not die for speaking the truth if I can possibly contrive it.