Fortune's Fool - Mercedes Lackey [24]
All of them were desperate to tell her about the witch. And very, very quickly indeed, she got the sense that the seabirds had not been crying doom frivolously.
Gradually, as she listened to them, she got a sense of what the witch was up to. It was a diabolically clever scheme, for it was always more difficult to remove someone who was the power behind the throne rather than the power on it.
Despite her acquisition of the stone, she still wasn’t all that powerful, not by the standards of a great Wizard or Sorceress. But she was certainly powerful enough to cause a ripple across the land. And it was entirely possible that this talisman, this artifact, was not one that granted overt power, but rather one that granted something more subtle.
That was going to make Katya’s job infinitely more difficult.
As for what the witch was doing…
“She appeared at the lord’s gate in her litter,” fretted a childlike ghost with hair that pooled on the ground at her feet. “The litter-bearers were all demons, of course. She said she had been sent, as a gift, and one look at her and the lord was under her spell.”
That seemed to be her pattern. She appeared on the very doorstep of powerful lords. She said she had been sent as a gift; Katya could only assume she was posing as a courtesan of some note. The moment that the lord saw her, he was under her spell, dismissing other concubines, sending his wife away, and generally acting besotted. She would consolidate her hold over him, then move on to the next conquest.
And then…nothing. One would think she would then urge her conquest to some conflict with his neighbors but…not.
In fact, it seemed she actively discouraged any such thing. She merely consolidated her position, then moved on to the next lord.
Katya pondered all of this and frowned, as agitated water spirits circled her. Others might view this differently, but she saw a pattern.
Once she had all the warlords in this place following her will, she could choose one to become the figurehead, and take the Kingdom. Since this Kingdom had no Godmother, it might be a very long time before she found herself challenged. And if this Kingdom possessed some powerful magical artifacts besides the one she already had—she could challenge the Sea King.
That…would be bad.
As it happened, since this lake was very large indeed, the witch was not far by a straight swim. Katya pushed off from the kelp bed, invoked the webbing between her fingers and toes, and set off at a pace that left most of the water dwellers behind.
And before she was halfway to her goal, it became obvious that this time, the witch was not going to have it all her own way—for flashes of magical power were lighting up the night sky.
Katya put on an extra burst of speed.
She leaped out of the water, but did not bother to change to a more human form. Looming above the water was a Palace—for that was all that such a huge and ornate building could be—and it was from within this structure that the signs of a magic struggle in progress were coming.
As Katya sprinted up the path to the Palace itself, it became very obvious that the witch was taking no chances on unexpected friends or allies showing up and weighing in on the side opposing her. The path was strewn with the apparently lifeless bodies of the Palace guards….
Katya stopped dead in her tracks beside the first one and frantically felt for a pulse. To her intense relief, the man was still alive. So it was the usual trick of shutting the inhabitants of an entire area in sleep.
She wouldn’t be able to wake them until the witch was defeated, but at least they were still alive.
And there was this much. At least they wouldn’t be either at the command of the witch, or able to spring to their mistress’s defense.
Katya hoped not, anyway.
Up a flight of stairs to a stunningly beautiful wooden porch, she ran. The porch