STRICTLY PRIVATE:
Your Excellency
I write in haste. Three days ahead of Chathrand have I sailed, with no safe means to send word to you, and I must depart again before the Great Ship reaches this town. In fact I am already at the docks: the mate is calling us aboard.
My news is awful, my fears and guesses worse. So bad indeed that I should not dare to write them at all were it not for this good and simple man, Rom Rulf, a chemist I trained myself at the Imperial Medical School, to whose keeping I entrust this letter.
The Lady Syrarys betrays you, Excellency. She loves another, and would kill to hide the fact. How foul the effort to write these words, how wounding that you should read them! And yet what choice do I have?
After Chathrand sailed with Rose at the helm I spent an hour on the headland, despondent. Then I came to my senses and jumped aboard a fast clipper to Etherhorde. We arrived just ahead of the Great Ship. If only I had gone straight to your door! Instead I galloped to Castle Maag. I still hoped to change the Emperor's mind about Rose, who is one of the vilest men ever to sully the name of Arqual.
The Emperor was not in his castle, but Syrarys was. She lay among courtesans in the boudoir. The room was dim. When I entered she mistook me for another, and called out, laughing: "Again, love? Will you never let me sleep?" Then she saw me and went mad. "Stop him! Shoot him! He cannot leave!"
She hurled a burning lamp in my direction. Had she been dressed I should never have made it from the castle alive, for many obeyed her once they heard her shouting. Someone chased me all down the mountain, and sent a falcon to dive at my face and the horse's. In the end I was thrown from the saddle and thrashed blind through the trees.
Two days I hid in the only place one may hide from the mighty in Etherhorde: in the hovels of the poor. It was my good fortune to have cured many last year of the wax-eye blindness. They remembered me, bless them, and asked no questions. But strange men-at-arms prowled the streets, and I am sure they were looking for me.
When the hunters came too near, my friends took a great risk and smuggled me in an apple-crate to the port. I was three days out of Etherhorde, on a ship bound for Tressek Tarn, before the crew dared let me out. And in Tressek I find myself little safer: the governor fears to meet with me, as do my fellow doctors. Only this morning armed men stormed my tavern-room-by good luck I was in Rulf's shop down the street. Have I lost the Emperor's favor? I cannot say; I only know that I have not fled far enough.
I never saw the face of the one who chased me-but I saw Syrarys, as plain as I see this pen and ink. She is not yours, Eberzam. Do not trust her. Do not leave Thasha in her care.
So much for my news-more bitter than any drug I ever made you swallow. But my fears! There is no time to explain them now. Beware the Nilstone! Did your mother never scare you with that word? It exists, and someone wants it, though to use it can only bring ruin on us all. You know the briny graveyard where legend says it fell. Should Chathrand near that spot, you must find a way to turn her back.
Horrors and madness. Who would choose such a moment to unearth that weapon, that malignant hole in the weave of our world? No one but a madman, and yet-
There is the bell, damnation! I must take to my ship or be left behind. I shall write to you again when I can. Until then I ask a final favor: take care of young Pazel, Capt. Gregory's son. He is a prickly runt of no talent or significance, but I swore to his fair mother that no harm would befall him. Do not fail me in this, I beseech you.
Rulf has your medicines, sealed by my hand. Drink from no flask you do not open yourself; dispose of what Syrarys has touched. And do not despair of love, Eberzam: it surrounds you yet.