Echoes of Betrayal (61 page)

“Yes.”

“And I heard that you also have the power of water, which no magelord has had since Gird’s day, when the Sier of Grahlin died at the Battle of Greenfields.”

“If you mean that I healed a cursed well, that was the gods …”

“Lord Duke, if you will accept the word of one who was alive to see your ancestors arrive in Aarenis, it is wise to accept reality … and you may think that strange from a Sinyi. After all, we are known for enchantments that fool men. But beyond all enchantments is the world the Singer sang into being—or if it suits you better, that the Namer made by naming it, or the Maker made by hammering it out like iron on an anvil, as the dasksinyi believe. In that reality, lord
Duke, your powers are as real as mine, and if you do not admit what you are, you will bring more trouble into the world, which I deem you do not wish.”

“Indeed,” Dorrin said, “the world has troubles enough without my adding to them. I do not wish to cause harm, sir elf, but I am not all-wise—”

“Which to know is good, but to excuse inaction is not good. We Sinyi are not accounted wise by any our enchantments do not fool, so I cannot guide you except to share my own experience. My daughter Arian here—who has never known her whole name because her mother forbade it—has met Wisdom itself. She has met Dragon and flown with him.”

“You did not tell me that,” Dorrin said to Arian.

“I met the dragon after I left you,” Arian said. “The night the dragon’s young burned tracks across Lyonya. He asked if I were wise and named me Half-Song, then bade me touch my tongue to his.”

“You touched a dragon’s tongue! Isn’t it fire?”

“It is what the dragon wills it to be,” Arian’s father said. “A dragon’s nature is fire, and fire transforms. So Dragon can be in the shape of anything with a mind.”

“It did not even sting my tongue,” Arian said. “And I felt safe inside it.”

“And so you were … as safe as with me, or safer,” her father said. “But lord Duke, when you seek wisdom, it is to Dragon you must go if human wisdom will not serve. You must learn and master your powers, for though I am no foreteller, yet I do foretell this: what the paladin wakened in you has wakened more than you know and will bring either good or ill depending on you yourself.”

Dorrin grimaced. “It has chosen a poor vessel—”

“Nonsense. It has chosen a magelord of the purest blood, and one free of evil taint by her own choices and the gods’ aid. Just as the gods chose that raw country girl as paladin when she had shown herself able … so you. That is why I wanted to meet you and speak with you. I have knowledge you may need.”

“Do you know what that crown really is?” Dorrin asked.

“
Really
is?” Arian’s father looked away then back at her. “I know something about it but not everything. You will have heard by now,
I suspect, that the dasksinyi say the jewels came from no source they know, and disclaim any part in its making—as do we Sinyi. It was made by men—perhaps with aid I do not know—and men of your blood: magelords.”

“It speaks to me,” Dorrin said. “I told the king and the Marshal-General that: they could hear nothing. Do you know if it has a demon in it, or one of my family’s mind, to speak?”

“I do not know all its nature,” Arian’s father said. “What I do know is that it has chosen you, by all accounts, and yet it is possible that another could find and abuse its powers.”

“They tell me not even Paksenarrion can now move it from the treasury in Vérella,” Dorrin said. “If she can’t, who else could?”

“So I also heard,” he said. “However, one other might do so. Part of the set was stolen from Fin Panir and is now in the hands of the man you knew as Alured the Black, now calling himself the Duke of Immer.”

“I met him in Siniava’s War. I did not know he had the necklace,” Dorrin said. “Why does that give him the power to move the other pieces if he can reach them?”

“I am not sure,” he said. “But I know it might if he shares your bloodline. He badly wants to prove himself descended from the kings of Old Aare, and it might be so … I did not memorize the pedigree of every human in Aare and Aarenis from the migration until now.” He sounded resentful. “Then he need only kill you, and the crown might yield to him.”

“Oh.” Dorrin looked as startled as Arian felt. “You think he knows that?”

“I think he sees you as his rival, because he knows where the jewels were for so long. He must suspect that you inherited the power to use them.”

“Is it possible that he has spread lies about Dorrin in Tsaia?” Arian asked.

“It is certain,” he said. “She became Constable, and she warned Tsaia’s king of danger from this fellow—he would see her as a personal enemy, anyway. And he has met you, has he not?”

“Yes,” Dorrin said. “The last year of Siniava’s War, Kieri allied with him—we thought he was just another half-civilized brigand.”

“At heart he is all brigand. My point is that he knows your face;
he can send his assassins after you. That crown in Alured’s hands could ruin not just the south but the north as well.”

“You were there, you say, when my ancestors came to Aarenis … from Old Aare?”

“Yes. We had left Aare—”

“Elves were in Old Aare?” She had not considered that they existed anywhere but where they were now.

“Yes. And it is something we do not talk about with anyone else: it involves the Severance. Then we came to the north, and a few humans were there already—they sailed over, and some farmed and some fished. We moved on to the forests, which we prefer, and found the mountains already inhabited by dasksinyi. They let us live in the forests but said we would be happier over the mountains, so most of us came—and all, in the end. We told the dasksinyi about the magelords of Aare, and they helped us set wards to keep them back if they ever came so far north.”

“I never knew that,” Dorrin said.

“Nor I,” said Aliam.

“And you would not, if I were not minded to save my daughter great grief, and the world as well. Listen, then: when the magelords came, with those things you found, they used that power to break the wards we set and reset them for their own purposes. The Sinyi were evil, they said.”

“Why?”

“Why did they say that? An old quarrel. Some elves mistook all humans for Kuakkgani, for one thing. For another … the rise of the magelords seemed to mean a loss of our power, and we had been proud of it a long, long time.”

“The dragon told me that you asked dragons to limit their children.”

“We did, since they could not control them, and each clutch a dragon laid could produce hundreds. Neither we nor any other creature could survive if they bred freely. Dragon saw the sense of this and agreed to limit their young to those they could train.”

“Will you tell me what you know of my family?” Dorrin said.

“I do not know how much to tell,” Dameroth said. “And some of it I did not see myself but heard from others, and not Sinyi alone. I cannot tell you what the jewels are, only that they are unlike all others
known to me and full of power. We believe they were made by magelords.”

“Made? Not found? They looked like ordinary jewels, not made things …”

“If neither we nor the dasksinyi know where they could be found, then I think they were made later.”

“By my ancestors?”

“By them or others like them. And I do not know how, except I suspect that the higher mageries you have—with water and healing—have something to do with it.”

“I don’t think that my being a target for assassination by Alured is going to convince Duke Mahieran that I’m not conspiring against the king.”

“No, almost certainly not. I find human politics unpleasantly similar to Sinyi court maneuvers, and I am too familiar with such things.” He made the elven gesture to avert evil. “But I believe you must find a way to … to make use of whatever those jewels are, or destroy them. And in the meantime stay alert for danger.” He turned to Arian. “And you, beloved daughter, flower of the forest that you are: be wary, child, for yourself and for the child you carry. This realm has been robbed before.”

“Kieri’s sister’s bones talk to him,” Arian said.

He shuddered. “Do not, please, talk of such things. It is not in our nature to think what our remains might do. When we are gone, we are gone.”

“She also warns, Father. She warns me as well.”

“Thank the gods you were ranger before Squire and Squire before queen, then. You will know how to protect yourself … if you are not taken by surprise.”

“Do you know what happened to his mother?” Arian asked. “The bones say treachery; Kieri suspects someone … No, let me be clear; he suspects elves, because he was told she expected an elven escort that never came.”

Dameroth seemed to fade and solidify again before their eyes. “I cannot … I cannot say. I was away … sent on an errand to the western kingdom. I have had thoughts, but they are only thoughts at this time. I asked and was told one version and then another. It is not something to ask the Lady, I can tell you that.”

“Does she know?”

“I don’t know. And I must not say more, not here—”

“Not even if it means the life of your grandson?”

He faded and solidified again. “My heart … I would not see you hurt. I worry … but here, so near what your king suspects and the bones of his ancestors, I cannot … It could endanger you more, if I were overheard or if I was wrong in my guesses. Another time, another place.”

K
ieri Phelan greeted his old friend Sonder Mahieran warmly. He suspected the Tsaian duke would want to talk about Dorrin and whatever had happened with her squires … especially how Sonder’s son Beclan had become Dorrin’s adopted heir. He would hear it again from Dorrin, he was sure, but he wanted Mahieran’s side of the story.

Instead, Mahieran began with conventional courtesies. “I’m glad to see you married again, sir king,” he said with a bow.

Kieri did not correct the formality. If this went as he expected, they might both be better within its limits. “I never thought to, my lord Duke,” he said, relaxing into his chair and waving Mahieran to another. “But once this happened,” he waved his hand at the room and all it represented, “I knew I must. Then, with Arian, I knew I wanted to.”

“She’s half-elven like you?” Mahieran looked hard at Kieri.

“Yes.” Kieri knew he had changed in his year in Lyonya—he had lost the few gray hairs among the red; he knew he looked younger. Was it enough for Mahieran to notice?

“I’ve always wondered how the joint kingdom works, sir king,” Mahieran said, settling more firmly in the chair across from Kieri. “Lyonya’s never been a problem to our realm, but I confess I still find elves uncanny. Naturally so, of course. Not like … um.”

“It works like a cart with one square wheel,” Kieri said. “They’re so beautiful, so elegant, and being long-lived, they give the sense of age we associate with wisdom. It’s easy to think of them as Elders … but in practice, they’re as full of foolish pride, stubbornness, and downright obstructiveness as any human.”

“But wasn’t your mother—?”

“An elf, yes. As is her mother, still alive.”

“How old are they really?” That was what humans always wanted to know about elves.

“I don’t know. I can’t ask—it’s the height of rudeness. Even my grandmother.”

“And she rules them, I know. How is she to work with?”

“Mostly she’s not here,” Kieri said. “Especially when I need her to answer a question.” He looked at Mahieran. Of course the man would be interested in Lyonya’s method of governance; it had been a mystery to all outside the realm. But he would rather get to the topic he was sure Mahieran most wanted to discuss—his son. “I was glad to see your sons looking so well,” he said, forcing the topic.

Mahieran shifted in his seat. “I suppose we must get this over with, sir king. Before anything—I agree that Beclan’s … difficulty … was not due to any negligence on Duke Verrakai’s part.”

“Good,” Kieri said.

“Still, if I had not sent him to her as squire, none of this would have happened.”

“Are you sure?” Kieri said. “That close in succession, he would be the logical target for renegade Verrakaien anyway. Not Camwyn, not you, not Rothlin—all of you at court, constantly observed. Beclan is just the age—and was in just the position—where an enemy might seek to enthrall him, gain control of him, wherever he was.”

Mahieran frowned, tapping his fingers on the arm of the chair. “I had not thought of that.”

“How active have you been searching for such enemies since Mikeli’s coronation?”

“We … haven’t, really. Duke Verrakai was supposed—”

“To rebuild and manage Verrakai lands, act as Constable and chivvy you peers into doing proper training to meet your obligations to the crown, patrol the whole kingdom constantly, root out every evil—?” His tone made his opinion of that clear.

Mahieran flushed. “It’s
her
family. No … I see your point. We expected too much.”

“You did indeed,” Kieri said. “Falk and Gird together, when alive, could not do all you demanded of her. And what I know of Dorrin is that she won’t ever complain at being asked for more.”

“Mmm. I just wish I didn’t have to be grateful—”