The Seeress of Kell

Palace . Javelin privately suspected that Urgit's new wife had a great deal to do with the High King's change of dress and demeanor. Urgit was not bearing up too well under the stresses of marriage. His face had a slightly baffled look on it as if something profoundly confusing had entered his life.
    "That is our current assessment of the situation, your Majesty," Javelin concluded his report. "Kal Zakath has so reduced his forces here in Cthol Murgos that you could quite easily sweep them into the sea."
    "That's easy for you to say, Margrave Khendon," Urgit replied a bit petulantly, "but I don't see you Alorns committing any of your forces to assist with the sweeping."
    "Your Majesty raises a slightly delicate point," Javelin said, thinking very fast now. "Although we have agreed from the start that we have a common enemy in the Emperor of Mallorea, the eons of enmity between the Alorns and the Murgos cannot be erased overnight. Do you really want a Cherek fleet off your coast or a sea of Algar horsemen on the plains of Cthan and Hagga? The Alorn kings and Queen Porenn will give instructions, certainly, but commanders in the field have a way of interpreting royal commands to suit their own preconceptions. Your Murgo generals might very well also choose to misunderstand your instructions when they see a horde of Alorns bearing down on them."
    "That's true, isn't it?" Urgit conceded. "What about the Tolnedran legions then? There have always been good relations between Tolnedra and Cthol Murgos."
    Javelin coughed delicately and then looked around with some show of checking for unwanted listeners. Javelin knew that he must move with some care now. Urgit was proving to be far more shrewd than any of them had anticipated. Indeed, he was at times as slippery as an eel and he seemed to know instinctively exactly the way Javelin's fine-tuned Drasnian mind was working. "I trust this won't go any further, your Majesty?" he said in a half whisper.
    "You have my word on it, Margrave," Urgit whispered back. "Although anyone who takes the word of a Murgo—and a member of the Urga Dynasty as well—shows very poor judgment. Murgos are notoriously untrustworthy, and all Urgas are quite mad, you know."
    Javelin chewed on a fingernail, strongly suspecting that he was being outmaneuvered.
    "We've received some disquieting information from Tol Honeth."
    "Oh?"
    "You know how the Tolnedrans are—always alert for the main chance."
    "Oh, my goodness, yes." Urgit laughed. "Some of the fondest memories of my childhood come from the times when Taur Urgas, my late, unlamented father, fell to chewing on the furniture when he received the latest proposal from Ran Borune."
    "Now mind you, your Majesty," Javelin went on, "I'm not 'Suggesting that Emperor Varana himself is in any way involved m this, but there are some fairly high-ranking Tolnedran nobles who’ve been in contact with Mal Zeth."
    "That's disturbing, isn't it? But Varana controls the legions. As long as he's opposed to Zakath, we're safe."
    "That's true—as long as Varana's alive."
    "Are you suggesting the possibility of a coup?"
    "It's not unheard of, your Majesty. Your own kingdom gives evidence of that. The great families in northern Tolnedra are still infuriated about the way the Borunes and Anadiles pulled a march on them and put Varana on the imperial throne. If something happens to Varana and he's succeeded by a Vordue or a Honeth or a Horbite, all assurances go out the window. An alliance between Mal Zeth and Tol Honeth could be an absolute disaster for Murgo and Alorn alike. More than that, though, if such an alliance were kept a secret and you had Tolnedran legions in force here in Cthol Murgos and they received sudden instructions to change sides, you'd be caught between an army of Tolnedrans and an army of Malloreans. That isn't my idea of a pleasant way to spend a summer."
    Urgit shuddered.
    "Under the circumstances, your Majesty," Javelin went on smoothly, "I'd advise the following course." He began ticking items off on his fingers. "One: There's a vastly diminished Mallorean presence here in Cthol Murgos. Two: An Alom force inside your borders would be neither necessary nor advisable. You have enough troops of your own to drive the Malloreans out, and we'd be ill-advised to risk any accidental confrontations between your people and ours. Three: The rather murky political situation in Tolnedra makes it extremely risky to contemplate bringing the legions down