Echoes of Betrayal (34 page)

His father’s presence, stronger than he’d felt it before, warm and steady on his sword-side, conveyed approval of his report. His sister’s, on his heart-side, breathed joy about Arian and a settled distrust still of the Lady and other elves. They seemed to fade, and others made themselves known. He felt the need to move, to walk here and there, hands before him, feeling the edge of the platforms as he moved, touching the bones lightly. Those with a message came clearer in his mind.

One by one, they led him deeper into the ossuary. He had been shown these vaults, but he had not lingered in the other aisles, in the far corners; he had thought those bones too old, those spirits too distant, to have messages for him. He had been wrong.

Without light, without the records that would remind him who lay where, and how far back this bone had been king or queen, he did not know whether what he heard was ancient or merely old—and the bones had no interest in a history lesson. What they wanted him to know—what they pressed into his mind in great urgency—were the secrets of their own realms and the problems they had not solved and had not felt solved since.

His sister had not been the first to have dark suspicions of the elves … not the first to suspect treachery …

The taig was ours as much as theirs
 … from a king in the second aisle.

Long ago, before they came
 … from a skull in the farthest corner from the door—or so Kieri thought, because he was no longer sure where in the ossuary his body moved.

For years—for half my life—they disappeared—and my people prospered
 … a queen in the third aisle on the women’s side.

Kieri tried not to frame questions, to let them speak all they would first, but he could not help it and finally asked aloud, “Are they evil?”

Silence as thick as the darkness. Then, steadily growing, awareness of their uncertainty and their unwillingness to accuse without evidence. Wrongness, yes. Treachery somewhere, yes. Unfair advantage over humans, misuse of their ability to enchant, yes. But … evil?

Here, below ground, Kieri had no sense of time flowing, whether the night had turned or not, and gave up wondering, attending only to the bones and their revelations. He struggled to make sense of it all, but without sequence—without knowing who said what or how far back—he could not make a coherent pattern, anything to give him what he felt he needed.

Then, feeling along a wall, his hands dipped into a niche rougher-finished than the rest. He ran fingers lightly along the top of it, deeper and deeper—arm-deep—and touched a skull. No other bones, only the skull.

They forbade this
.

What? Kieri wondered. His being here, underground, with the bones? And why?

They fear the long memory of bones
.

Kieri drew the skull nearer and felt over its surface. Where had its bones been laid? he wondered.

They are not so old, or we so young, as they wish
.

“You speak of elves?” Kieri asked softly.

Singers of songs and dreamers who make seeming. Touch my head with yours, child
.

Kieri thought of the dragon and touched the skull’s arched forehead to his own. As if from his own imagination, little bright pictures formed—a ring of trees and a ring of little houses, men and women and children in strange clothes all holding hands and dancing around a roofed framework over stacks of bones. It changed: more houses and a line of people coming from outside the ring of trees, following a man and a woman dressed in white.

Inside the hill. Power
.

Inside what hill? Then … the arrangement of trees suddenly
made sense. The King’s Grove … without the mound. Once there had been a village there? A bone-house?

Yes. Place of power
.

It was still a place of power … but he had assumed an elven place of power, the place where human and elven powers were joined. The skull offered no more; Kieri held it a moment longer, stroked the bony arch, and then kissed it and put it back in its niche. A niche, now he came to think of it, that he had never been shown, or noticed, on previous visits.

He was cold, he realized, his bare feet standing not on the stone floor that had warmed him before, but on cold soil. He smelled not the clean dry freshness of the ossuary but the rich, earthy dampness of forest soil. Yet the entire floor of the ossuary was stone-flagged; he had seen it. Stone walls plastered and white, stone floor. He knelt and touched the soil, felt its texture … There was something’s root; some tiny creature scuttled across his fingers. He jerked his hand back, stifling a cry. Ancient fear entered his mind: cold, dark, silent, the weight of the earth pressing down, lost and alone in the grave.

As they were, you will be. Dead. Rotting in the ground. Though your bones be raised, you will remain, neglected and forgotten, as years pass
.

Something larger crawled onto his foot; he shook it off. The niche, when he felt for it, had vanished along with the wall he had touched before; under his hands was a surface of crumbling earth; a clod came loose. He was afraid to move, for he had no idea how to return.

Death ends all. Silence ends all. Cold ends all. All is unmade, and all names lost
.

Kieri felt deadly cold rising from the soil he stood on; he shuddered violently and stamped his feet. How was he to find his way out, back to the ossuary, back to daylight when it came, back to … back to Arian?

“I am the king,” he said aloud. “And I will die. I will come to a grave, and if my people will, my bones will rise and be painted with my life. If the gods grant it, my children will come where I have come and know what I know, but this is not my time.”

It is always death’s time
.

“It is always
life’s
time, and the death of one year is the birth of the next,” Kieri said. “I choose life and light, for my kingdom and for
me.” He turned about and strode into the dark, choosing—whenever he bumped into a stone, an earthen wall, a tangle of roots—the way that felt most like life.

T
he final barrier was stone. Not the rough native stone he’d fallen over and into several times, but dressed stone, a smooth wall. He laid both hands on it. On the other side, he was sure, was the ossuary. He could feel his sister’s bones there and his father’s. He could feel something else as well, a thread of life, not bones, calling him. He leaned on the stone, pressing his forehead into it.

“Let me in! My place is there, not yet here.”

Something with too many legs fell on his neck and scrabbled its way down his back inside his clothes. He did not move. If it stung, it stung, but he was going to open this rock if there was any way to do it. Whatever the thing was went on down the back of his heart-hand leg and disappeared.
Life
, he thought with all his strength.
Arian
.

T
he Seneschal lit a candle from the King’s Squire’s new-lit torch and carried it down the steps to the outer chamber, fixed it in a holder, and opened the door.

“Sir king! The sun returns, life wakes again, and spring …” His voice faltered. Where he expected to see the king … where in other years the ossuary’s own magical light had risen … nothing. Darkness, emptiness, cold.

“Sir king!”

No answer but the sharpened attention of the bones. A stale smell, unlike any he had smelled before in this place. Not true corruption, but … His throat closed as he considered what might have happened. He entered the ossuary, candle held high, and stopped abruptly. He could not go farther; the bones forbade it.

“He is our king,” the Seneschal said. “Our hope. And his bride awaits. You cannot have him!”

No answer. The soft voices of the bones that he had heard ever since his first visit to the ossuary were silent.

“Alyanya …” the Seneschal said, struggling to get the word out. But this was Midwinter, and no live green remained in this place; he had himself removed the branches, the leaves on eyeholes and earholes. He started to turn, thinking to fetch something—but how, if he came out without the king?—and could not take even a single step. “Alyanya!” This time louder, more desperate. What evil magic had taken the king, and such a king? What could he do? He mumbled every potent name he could think of: Alyanya, Adyan the Namer, all the gods, all the saints, and finally the lineage of the human rulers of Lyonya in case the bones would help.

He heard voices behind him in the outer chamber, calling him, calling Kieri. He could not turn; he could not answer but went on with his litany, ending with the oldest he knew.

From far in the darkness, from the distant corner of the ossuary, came the grinding of stone moving on stone. His candle flickered wildly. Was it a daskdraudigs? Was that the evil that had taken the king? But the bones, which surely would have reacted in horror to that, gave no warning. Another sound now; his heart leapt. For this was breathing—harsh, uneven, but the sound of someone alive, not dead.

“Sir king!” he called into the darkness.

A hoarse sound answered him, not true speech, and fear filled him again. Had something reft the king’s mind? He had judged the king to be strong in himself, in no danger from a night alone. Whoever it was coughed, deep racking coughs, then the familiar voice came from the darkness, asking the ritual question: “Is the long night over, Seneschal?”

“The sun returns, life wakes again, and spring will surely come, sir king.”

Light bloomed in the ossuary, drowning the light of his candle. Out from between the platforms came Lyonya’s king, his clothes, his hands and face, all stained and streaked with dirt, his bare feet caked with mud. The Seneschal had one horrified thought that the king looked like a corpse raised too soon after burial, but then the king grinned at him. “Lord Seneschal, I need a bath. And breakfast would not come amiss. Am I late?”

T
he rest of the morning passed in a blur as Kieri hurried to bathe, eat something, and dress in the clothes appropriate for the ceremony scheduled for midday. No time for explanations, no time for a private conversation with Arian. No time even to wonder what his people thought.

The Knight-Commander of Falk and the Captain-General of Falk both came to his chambers as he was dressing.

“I brought your ruby, sir king,” the Knight-Commander said. “Accept it now, and Falk’s blessing with it.”

Kieri paused. “As the king, I cannot be Falk’s alone.”

“We understand,” the Captain-General said. “Yet you are Falk’s, in all honor. Will you accept it now, or shall I make a public presentation?”

“Now,” Kieri said. “My Squires can witness … and Arian, if she has time.”

“For you, always,” Arian said from the doorway. She wore a gown Kieri had not seen before, though he knew it was taken from the former queen’s wardrobe: gold and crimson brocade.

Kieri knelt, and the Knight-Commander repeated the formal words of commissioning a Knight of Falk. “Receive this ruby as a sign of Falk’s Oath. In mind and heart, be as Falk: speak only truth, keep all promises, and shed blood only in the protection of those who cannot
protect themselves.” The Captain-General touched his head and throat with the tip of his sword.