Kings of the North (60 page)

“Yes, I’m a Knight of Falk,” Arian said.

“And you’re not that much older than me,” Gwenno said. “But at least I’m a squire now … and my lord Duke has said she’ll sponsor me to the Knights of the Bells if I’m satisfactory. They don’t take girls—women—that often, but I’m sure she can convince them.”

Arian looked at the unlined young face and kept her own counsel. Through the evening, she saw evidence that the young woman, despite her age and inexperience, had the respect of her small troop.

The next day they rode off again. Arian was glad to ride in company that could distract her from her own thoughts. She sensed that the taig here was recovering slowly from grievous wounds—evident when they passed small areas of blight that made Arian shudder. What had the old Verrakai done to cause trees to look like that?

W
hen they came out of the woods and Arian saw across a river and its meadows the big stone house and its outbuildings, she felt a difference again—here was health only. One of the soldiers unfurled a pennant of Verrakai blue with a device like a many-pointed star; by the time they rode up to the house, a hand of riders had come to meet them.

In the center, a tall figure wore a chain of office—was that the duke herself? Arian reined back a little so that Gwenno Marrakai reached the other group first. Yes. That had to be the duke, from the courtesies exchanged. She had only moments to assess the woman she’d come to see. A face like a blade, but with laugh-lines as well. Erect in the saddle, broad-shouldered, weathered skin, dark eyes, steady gaze, intelligent and commanding. This was someone she could trust. And someone who knew things about Kieri she herself needed to know.

“This is Arian of Lyonya,” Gwenno Marrakai was saying. “A former forest ranger, who brings news from Lyonya.”

Arian met the Duke’s gaze as Duke Verrakai turned to her.

“Are you one of Kieri’s messengers?” she asked. “I thought he was using King’s Squires now.”

“The message is not from him, my lord. Forest rangers asked me to bring you this word—best given in private, I would judge.”

“Very well,” the Duke said. “Be welcome here, and I will hear your news when we are warm inside.

“Settle your troop,” the Duke said to her squire. “Then eat dinner with us. Beclan left this morning for the south, so we will be a small group—Master Feddith has another of his headaches. You need not serve.”

“Yes, my lord.”

Arian followed the Duke to the house as Gwenno led her troop toward the stables.

“You’re a Knight of Falk, too,” the Duke observed, touching her own ruby. “Well met, Sister, and Falk’s grace to you.”

“And Falk’s honor be upon this house,” Arian said. She reached out, and they clasped hands in the Falkian greeting.

“You travel light for this season,” the Duke said, glancing at the light pack Arian carried.

“It’s my years as a ranger,” Arian said.

“Enter, and welcome. If you’ve been traveling for days, I expect you’d like a bath.”

“Yes, thank you, my lord,” Arian said.

The Duke beckoned to a neatly dressed servant with a light blue tabard. “Bel will show you to a chamber and make sure you have what you need,” she said.

Arian followed the servant upstairs and along a corridor to a room that looked out over a walled garden and orchard. She could hear shrill voices of children at play and looked out to see them scampering up and down paths at some game, their nursemaids standing by.

“The Duke’s children?” she asked Bel, wondering how a woman soldier had borne so many.

“No, lady. These are the old … the former … they were too young to be attainted, I mean. The Duke’s responsible for seeing they grow up good.”

Arian saw one—a boy, she thought—throw a lump of frozen mud at another and thought the Duke had her work cut out for her.

“The bathing room’s just along here, lady. I’ll have the water hot in no time.”

Soon Arian was bathed, dressed, and settled in a comfortable chair
near the fire with a pot of sib and a plate of pastries; dinner, she’d been warned, would be some hours yet. “Someone will call me?”

“Oh, I’m sure my lord will come to you sooner,” Bel said. She had gathered up Arian’s clothes. “I’ll just take these downstairs to wash, and they’ll be ready for you in the morning.”

“Thank you,” Arian said. Shadows dimmed the garden and orchard below; she could hear shrill voices in the house now. She relaxed, muscle by muscle, letting her taig-sense reach out to the orchard. Fruit trees, some espaliered on the walls, answered her touch. A few, at one end of the orchard, were unhappy about something else … she concentrated. Bones? Children’s bones? And something else—the roots were turning back from whatever it was.

A knock on her door; she pulled her attention. “Come in,” she said. The door opened, and the Duke stood there without her chain of office.

“If you’re rested, I thought you might give me what message you brought before dinner.”

“Certainly,” Arian said. The Duke sat down in the chair on the other side of the fireplace. This close, Arian could see silver strands in her black hair. The ruby in her ear flashed red in the firelight.

“You look part-elven,” the Duke said.

“Half-elven, my lord,” Arian said. “My father was elven; my mother old-human, a farmer in western Lyonya, only two days from the border.”

“What news do you bring, then?”

“Six Verrakai trespassers attacked Lyonyan rangers; rangers killed them.” Arian repeated the descriptions. “They were buried with all their belongings, including horned chains.”

“That is good news,” the Duke said, “though it may shock you to hear me say it. They were under attainder. If I could put a name to them, I could tell the king they are dead. I’ve worried they might come back and cause trouble here.”

“Is that the last of them?”

“Almost certainly not.” The Duke sighed. “My relatives could transfer their own minds and souls into another’s body. The family rolls give some hint to the pretransfer identity of these, but I’m not sure they were ever all recorded. Most horribly, they killed
children—sickened them to near death, and then forced themselves into the child’s body, dislodging the original spirit.”

“Falk’s Oath!” Arian said. She thought of the orchard. “Did you—are any such children buried in the orchard out there?”

“Yes. The first I found. You cannot imagine—or perhaps you can—how horrible it was to realize that these children were not children at all, but ancient evil souls in children’s bodies.”

“You killed them.”

“Yes.” The Duke’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I had to, to save the others. But it haunts me still.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for your news, Arian. At least there are six no longer a menace. Do you think I might gain permission to exhume the bodies and send proof to the king that they are dead, perhaps even identify them?”

“That I do not know,” Arian said. “I know which rangers buried them, though I did not visit the grave site myself. It is our custom, as perhaps you do not know, to leave bodies in the ground until Alyanya has taken their flesh to replenish the earth, and then raise the bones. I think you do not have the same rites—”

Dorrin’s brows had gone up. “No. We do not. We raise a mound, after a battle, or bury in permanent graves otherwise. What—” She looked worried. “What do you do with the bones?”

“Paint them with the life’s story of the dead, and place them with honor,” Arian said. “What else?”

“Old humans—you mean those whose people were here before the magelords?”

“Yes,” Arian said. She could see that Dorrin was upset but could not imagine why. Surely a seasoned soldier would not be afraid of bones.

“My people were magelords,” Dorrin said, her voice rough with emotion. “I think—I know—that magelords had a different use for bones, or some of them did. Nothing so benign as telling the stories of lives.” She swallowed, then shook her head for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice had eased. “But tell me now—you say you were formerly a forest ranger—how do the rangers, or part-elves in general, regard your new king? You know, of course, that I served under him most of my life.”

Arian shifted in her chair. “He is the king we hoped for,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He has already begun bringing elf and human closer together, and his taig-sense and magery—”

“Magery? I never knew him to have magery.”

“Had he grown up in Lyonya, he would have received it from both parents, elven and human both: the royal magery was always joined.”

“I wish I’d been able to attend his coronation,” the Duke said. “I heard about it from Paks—the Girdish paladin you may have heard of.”

“Yes,” Arian said. “I met her once.”

The Duke went on. “She changed his life for certain—she changed all of us, will or nil, when she returned to us as a paladin, and took Tammarion’s sword off the wall—”

Arian said nothing, trying to gather her thoughts, and the Duke went on talking about Paks. The tale was long; the Duke had just worked her way up to Kieri’s summons to the Tsaian court when a bell rang below.

“Good heavens, I’ve talked far too much,” the Duke said. “Cook will be annoyed if we don’t get downstairs at once.” She grinned. “I may be a duke, but Cook is convinced dukes shouldn’t be late to meals.”

Downstairs they found Gwenno waiting in the small dining room. “All’s settled, my lord,” Gwenno said. “Troops have been fed, horses are all groomed and stalled, and no alarms.”

“Excellent,” the Duke said. As they ate, she asked her squire about the patrol; Arian listened without commenting. Gwenno’s report was organized and concise, lightened with humor aimed mostly at herself. Afterward the Duke said, “We were talking about Paks before dinner, Gwenno. Arian here met her as well.”

“Did you? Where?” Gwenno went on without waiting for an answer. “My father had met her at court, before Duke Phelan was found to be king. My brother Aris knew her in Fin Panir. And she was here when I arrived; she crossed swords with me—”

“And,” the Duke said, interrupting this spate of enthusiasm, “she proved to all three of my squires that they still had somewhat to learn about swordplay.”

“She gave me a huge bruise,” Gwenno said, as if that were a reward.
“And showed me how to improve my offside parries. And the next day I got a touch on her.”

“Gwenno,” the Duke said dryly, “is not deterred by mere bruises.”

“I had brothers,” Gwenno said, shrugging. “Bruises are just bruises.”

“Until the blade’s sharp,” the Duke said. “Then they’re wounds and blood and infection.”

“Yes, my lord,” Gwenno said, calming down.

“I’m not scolding,” the Duke said. “But I’d prefer to send you back to your father in one piece.” She turned back to Arian. “You said something about Kieri taking Paks as an example. You probably know she helped restore my own magery—did she help him recover his?”

“Not that I know of,” Arian said. “I heard it was his elven tutor, Orlith.” She felt breathless suddenly. She had hoped to find out more about Kieri’s past before revealing anything about his present, or her relationship with him. But the challenging look the Duke gave her now, woman to woman, made it clear she suspected Arian was keeping something back.

The Duke would hold a secret given under Falk’s Oath … but the girl? Arian turned to Gwenno. “I have things I need to say to your duke under an oath of secrecy, but I have no right or way to bind you to the same.”

“Is this something for which another witness might later be desirable?” the Duke asked.

“I … don’t know. I do know it’s not something to be gossiped about widely.”

“Gwenno’s no gossip,” the Duke said. “But she should not be burdened with unnecessary secrets. What involves the king of a neighboring realm may affect this. As a peer, I have a responsibility to my king—and think of that, Arian, before you divulge anything you do not wish Tsaia’s king to know.”

Arian held her peace until Gwenno had left the room. The Duke cocked her head.

“Well?”

“Some of what I say has to do with both realms, and some does not,” Arian said. “First, what does: Pargun plans an invasion of Lyonya. Troops are gathering on the north shore of the Honnorgat.”

The Duke’s brows went up. “
That’s
certainly dire news, and something I must report to King Mikeli. What’s Kieri doing about it?”

“He’s moved troops to the river: rangers, Royal Archers, and a cohort of Halveric troops.”

“If so much is known to everyone, the Pargunese must know it, too,” Dorrin said. “Where were you, that you know so much?”

“I said truly that I used to be a forest ranger,” Arian said. “But like many others, I came to Chaya for the king’s coronation, and was offered a position as King’s Squire.” She took a sip of water. “And I accepted. The king expanded both the number and the duties of King’s Squires. We acted as couriers, and the women among us as squires to the foreign princesses who came in hopes of marrying the king.”

“I met King’s Squires,” the Duke said. “Those who came to Tsaia with Paks, and some in Chaya as well. They wore his colors—you do not. Does this mean you have left his service?”