“It may simply be that the Auldek fear the ocean, fear it so much they believe they must hide behind a wall to be safe from it. Isn’t that strange?” Sire Neen waited a moment and then turned to Dariel. “All right, Prince, hold your tongue. Keep your eyes open, though. There’s going to be plenty to see. But what of you, Rialus? You’ve barely said a word all day.”

Rialus was surprised Neen had noticed. No, he had not spoken for some time. He almost felt his own mouth as stuffed as the prince’s, filled with awed questions that bulged his cheeks as much as a mouthful of stones would have. Actually, it was the fact that he had so many questions that kept him quiet. The things his eyes took in, the words he heard bantered about by Sire Neen and the others, the long history of things he had believed to be and had expected always would be and was now being told were no longer all struck him dumb.

Sire Neen waved his fingers toward him, almost flirtatiously. “Say something. Speak. Speak.”

“I—I—” Rialus stammered. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“I’m not surprised. There is nothing harder for a mediocre mind to understand than the fact that the world is ever vulnerable to great change. People like you—and the prince here—believe that the world is. Just is. Some things are. There is an order, you believe, a pattern to things that you never imagine can be changed. You only ever see portions of the way things are. You are like a soldier on a battlefield. You see what is before you. You choose right or left and try desperately to stay alive. That’s you, yes? You’ll forever be surprised when you realize you have no control over your fate. But the league stands atop a high ridge. We look down and see the entirety of it. With such a view, the world is so much easier to navigate. And to reshape. There are risks, yes. Surprises, surely, but—Look, we’ve reached our destination!”

The structures that marked the shoreline were but a stone’s throw away, the distance narrowing. For a moment, the leagueman’s eyes scanned the dock and the heights of bare wall above it. He looked every bit as transfixed by the sight as Rialus felt.

“The league is bold,” Sire Neen said, musingly, “and to the bold goes the world, all its riches, all the power. This will be a fine day.”

C HAPTER
E IGHTEEN

Dariel kept trying to decide what to do. He kept trying to take control, to act, to assert himself, to say something; but he also kept learning he could do nothing. He could not speak with his mouth stuffed, assert himself with his hands and legs bound, act with the Ishtat guards shouldering him on all sides, or take control while Sire Neen so completely held the reins. He had not felt this powerless since boyhood, since the day his guardian had abandoned him in a broken-down shack in Senival, since that horrible time when everything he knew of the world had been stripped from him. This felt the same.