Limits of Power (73 page)

“I was not sure,” Kieri said. “We hoped for it, since I will not live as long as elves do and the land needs what the Lady gave it.”

“They will be stronger than you,” the elf said. “If they survive. Amrothlin has told me of the attacks by the traitor elf as well as iynisin. Arian should have more protection than you can give her. Accept, please, my offer of help. And for your children, if not for you, assistance in training them in their elven magery as they grow.”

Kieri thought about it. He needed to know more about his own magery, and the local elves claimed they could not teach him. The children would need help even more than he did as they grew. But accepting help from this elf meant becoming dependent on someone whose ambitions he could not fathom. Best meet that head-on; he could not hope to outwit an elf with subtlety.

“Your offer is gracious,” he said. “But—with apologies to you and to Amrothlin—” He nodded toward his uncle elf. “—my experience with elves has included enough contradictory behavior that I am … wary. You know more than I, that is clear. You are older, more powerful. I swore an oath to this land to protect as well as rule … I will not lightly give up that charge.”

The elf's eyes flashed; his face stiffened in what Kieri knew must be outrage. Then he calmed again. “I … understand, I believe. You dealt with your grandmother. She was not entirely reliable. Nor were all her elves. You do not know—you cannot know—my honor. Yet we have need of each other. If you are to rule and protect this land as you hope, you need to advance in your mastery of the elvenhome. If I am to see my lineage succeed here, so will your children. I do not dispute your right to rule. I do not dispute my granddaughter's right, through her father. Can we begin with that?”

Kieri nodded slowly. “We can … but you must forgive me if my trust comes slowly. You have not shared your name; you know mine.”

“Ah. My name is long and difficult to say—” The elf uttered something that slipped past Kieri's ears in a ripple of sound like running water. “It is my history as well as my name. In a shorter form, which even elves use, I am Machrynalýthnyan, and my domain is known as the Lordsforest.”

Kieri repeated the short form, noting the stress on the next to last syllable. “I thank you,” he said, “and would welcome assistance in protecting Arian from iynisin if you think another attack might come—”

“Indeed, I am certain it will, though I cannot know when,” Machrynalýthnyan said. “You defeated one whom you did not destroy; it will have told others about you, and as it hated Flessinathlin, it will hate you. I propose that I send four elves skilled in battle, experienced with iynisin. They can arrive where I found Amrothlin; the elves have placed a pattern in their inn, so it will be wise of you to obliterate all other patterns in this palace. Amrothlin and I can locate them for you now.”

“Uncle,” Kieri said, looking at Amrothlin. “Are you able to find these patterns yourself?”

“Yes, sir king,” Amrothlin said. “I truly did not know she lied—”

“I believe you,” Kieri said. He turned to Machrynalýthnyan. “Then, my lord, if you will do me the courtesy—in my concern for Arian, I ask that you return at once to send those guardians for her, and Amrothlin will search the palace high and low. Will that suit?”

“It will, my lord,” Machrynalýthnyan said, equal to equal. “They will have a seal like this—” He held out his ring showing a design carved into the stone. “They will speak this word to you: Watersong.”

“Watersong,” Kieri said. “Thank you.”

“The other matter,” Machrynalýthnyan said, “I will not speak of until Lady Arian has recovered from the birthing, but—when the children are born—will you tell me?”

“Yes,” Kieri said. If he trusted the elven king by then, which would depend on those he sent to guard Arian. Surely the man wouldn't want to harm his own granddaughter.

Arian was not best pleased when Kieri told her he had accepted the offer of additional guards. “He may be my grandfather, but are you sure we can trust him?”

“Amrothlin says yes. He was fostered there for a long time; he insists the king is honest.” He reached out and stroked her hand. “Do you dislike the king that much?”

“No. But … I don't know him. I won't know these elves he sends. I'm used to ours.” She shook her head. “Never mind. It's these two—my balance is gone, I can't sleep through the night, and I'm sure it's affecting my mind.”

“All will be well this time, Arian,” Kieri said.

T
he elves arrived before nightfall, early as that came in winter, showing the correct seal and giving the correct password. They greeted Kieri respectfully and, when he introduced them to Arian, bowed low. Amrothlin knew one of them, Kiliriathlin, from his time fostered to the elven king. Kieri asked him to stay in the palace, meeting the Squires and learning the layout of the place, while Amrothlin took the others to meet the Ladysforest elves.

At Midwinter, Kieri went to keep vigil in the ossuary, wondering if he would have another adventure like the last, but the night—long, dark, and cold—passed quietly. He was ready at dawn to return the Seneschal's greeting and went inside quickly to reassure Arian.

As the days lengthened, the local elves and the visitors kept guard together, always some in the palace, night and day. Iynisin did not come. At the half-Evener, as the year before, a storm blew in, and with it a message from the Sea-Prince of Prealíth, carried by one of the forest rangers.

I
have
word
from
one
with
whom
I
have
had
dealings, in the times before, but with whom I wish no dealings now, that he is intent on mastering all lands, and will have the crown he is sure is his. He thinks me still his ally, but I fear him. He is not who he was since he came back from beyond the Eastern Ocean. You say you escaped from there; you will know what I mean.

No other name. But it must be Alured the Black the Sea-Prince meant. Beyond the Eastern Ocean … was the memory of horror. Baron Sekkady. Kieri shuddered once, then reminded himself: he was free now. He had been free a long time. But … Alured there? And “not who he was”? Had Alured met Sekkady? Surely Sekkady was dead by now. His heir, though—surely he had had an heir, and his heir was like to be as vile as Sekkady.

The thought sprang into his mind in one vivid image: how Sekkady might outlive an aging body—how a magelord might outlive an aging body—as Dorrin had learned. Could Alured have been taken over by Sekkady? But why would Sekkady choose a pirate? If it could be, if Sekkady came near … for a moment the lust for revenge rose in him again, the thought of Sekkady at his mercy, a chance to kill, once for all, what had so tormented him.

Falk.
Only the one word, but Kieri knew what it meant. Falk had never sought revenge on the tyrant who had enslaved him or the brothers who had lived in luxury while he suffered. To be Falk's knight … Kieri touched the ruby he wore, and turned his attention to the message.

He
plans
a
feint
to
the
west, but will attack both over mountains and up the great river. I have sent word to Kostandan.
The rest of the scroll was a crude map with a line across the mountains from a square marked “fort” to somewhere in southern Lyonya. The map showed the coastline of the Eastbight and north to the Honnorgat in careful detail, but inland only crudely. Aarenis was the wrong shape, and the Immer drainage nowhere near reality, with four cities marked at equal distances along it. The man must have drawn it from hearing it described, not from seeing it or any good map. But the “fort” lay north of the circle for Rotengre … Kieri's mind leapt to Dwarfwatch.

Snow pummeled the windows, coated the courtyard, veiled the view beyond. Kieri tried to remember his own trip across the pass at Dwarfwatch when he was Aliam's squire, but the wounds he'd taken getting Aliam out alive and the fever that had followed left him no clear notion where that pass came out. Not too far from Halveric Steading … where Estil and the family were alone, all the soldiers having come north with Aliam.

He could do nothing in the teeth of this storm. Aliam was days away in Riverwash. He could but hope that Alured had not sent any substantial force across the mountains before the pass closed.

Aarenis

S
pring came early to the island, bringing the tangy fragrance of flowering white-bush, the bleating of newborn goats, the chink and scrape of hoes working house-gardens. Stammel, on his way to fetch water one morning, stopped short. Smoke. Not the village's cookfire smoke, but a more acrid smoke from somewhere at a distance. He knew that smell. The smoke of war … death, destruction, ruin.

“What's wrong, Matthis?” asked Rimmel.

“Smoke,” he said. “The wrong smoke. Tell everyone: douse all fires here.” It was too late, he knew, to pretend no one lived here; enemies would already have seen cookfire smoke rise pale in the morning sun against the slopes of the mountain. And enemies already knew their way up from the sea; they had been here before. “Pack up,” he said. “What I told you—” Someone cried out, a youngster he thought by the sound—panic in that cry. Stammel said, “Be quiet,” in a voice that no recruit had ever disobeyed, and none here disobeyed either.

“We can't be sure they'll come,” Rort said.

“We can't be sure they won't,” Stammel said. Another gust of wind from the east brought a stronger whiff.

“I smell it now,” Rort said; others muttered agreement. “It's early for pirates.”

“They're closer,” Stammel said. Two other villages lay between them and the coast; it was the smoke of the nearer one burning, he thought. “Gather the children; form your groups. You know what to do—” He had told them, argued with them, told them again, all the summer long, all the autumn. Insisted that they find a place, carry supplies up, practice leaving.

“How long—?”

“If you go now, maybe long enough.” Stammel set down the yoke with its buckets, turned, and went back to the shop. He could hear Cadlin inside, the clink of his tools as he picked them up and packed them into a leather bag.

“It's now, then,” Cadlin said. Not a question.

“Yes,” Stammel said. He felt his way past the shaving horse almost as quickly as if he could see and reached up to take the crossbow off its peg. He reached again for the sack of bolts and met the sack coming down in Cadlin's hand.

“You should come with us,” Cadlin said, his warm, callused hand on Stammel's shoulder. “You are a better leader than anyone else.”

“We have one bow,” Stammel said. “And one archer. And you are a better leader than you know. Tell them what they know to do, and keep them moving.”

“There's always a chance pirates won't come this far,” Cadlin said.

“If they don't, I'll climb up and tell you it's safe,” Stammel said. They both knew better. Cadlin hesitated, his feet shuffling on the floor. “Go now,” Stammel said, putting all those years of command into his voice. “They need you.”

“Gods keep you, Matthis,” Cadlin said, and was gone out the door. Stammel waited out of sight, listening to him organizing the villagers—it was taking too long, so much longer than a disciplined troop of soldiers … but the climb up from the sea grew steeper and should slow the enemy down. They would stop to eat and drink; they would stop to loot and rape.

He stroked the crossbow, checked that he had a second string curled into the sack of bolts, counted the bolts—Cadlin had made him more than he remembered. And all the while the bustle and scurry and noise of the villagers gathering what they could carry, dropping things, children beginning to cry, women scolding, men barking gruff orders, the baaing of goats and sheep, the grunting of pigs … anyone would know there was a roused village up ahead.