The Fall of The Kings (Riverside) (59 page)

Among all his questions, certain facts stood clear. The Fall had cleansed the Land of false kings, of false magic. Basil’s dreams were of an older time: of the grove and the knife, the bearskin and the cup, the deer and the hunt. The Book spoke to him more and more clearly, telling him what to do. He was heir to what the Land had lost. If Theron was mad, it was as it should be. All the true kings were mad. If only Basil studied well, he might yet gain the final knowledge to master this Little King. Together, they would complete the circle and renew the ancient promise.

Meanwhile, he had a book to write, a debate to hold, a challenge to maintain. He did not fear Roger Crabbe; Crabbe was like the false mages of his own imagining: ruthless, ambitious, and utterly without truth. Crabbe was a charlatan. Basil had all the proof of real magic he needed, in his own power and the Book of the King’s Wizard. But the Book was too precious to be paraded before a crowd of gawking skep-tics. He would hide what he had become from his fellows as long as he could; he would clothe the truth in language they could understand, the language of logic and scholarship. When they heaped him with praises, bestowed honors upon him . . . then he could sit secure and work what he knew into the fabric of reality. They might not even know he was doing it. But he would know, and the Land would know. And Theron, his false true lover, Theron would surely know.

So he sat in the Archives late into the night, long after the librarian, who was old and trusting, had left him with instructions to lock up after himself when he was done and leave the key above the door. The Book lay open before him. He had brought it for a purpose, and he opened for a second time to
A Spelle to Un-Cover Hidden Trothes
. Speaking it, Basil felt how weak and halting had been his first attempt. He still did not understand the words, but as he uttered them, they sang along his bones and echoed in his heart, an intimate and well-loved part of him.

When he’d finished, he stood and walked along one of the narrow lanes dividing the long banks of shelves. He reached up his hand and found a plain wooden box, tied up with black tape and very grimy. Within the box were yellowed documents, bundled and tied. They were from the time of the last king, letters to a University librarian, one Carrington. Most of them concerned matters of great interest to a scholar of the history of the University in the last years of the monarchy, but no use to Basil. Except one.

He knew it as soon as he laid his hand on it, before he’d unfolded its crackling yellow pages and squinted at the spiky, archaic hand. He glanced at the signature, then read it through, his heart beating faster as his eyes scanned the glorious, damning text. This was the proof he needed. All he had to do was go up before the Governors and the Doctors, the Fellows and Scholars of the University and show them this letter and Crabbe would be effectively and efficiently silenced before he could open his mouth.

Basil St Cloud sighed and folded the letter up again. Doing that would win the debate straight off, but it would do very little to demonstrate the superiority of St Cloud’s methods over Crabbe’s. There was that to think of, too: he wasn’t only a fledgling wizard, he was a Doctor of the University, whose skills should be enough on their own. He longed to test the edifice of scholarship he had built over the past weeks against the academic rocks Crabbe was preparing to fling against it. He wanted to win; but he wanted to win by his own skills of persuasion and argument.

Briskly, he tucked the letter into the sleeve of his gown and laid the other papers carefully back into their wooden coffer. A debate that ends before it begins is no debate at all. He’d present his argument as he’d constructed it. If Crabbe found a way to refute it, he’d trump him with this letter and take the debate and the Horn Chair in a single definitive move.

When Basil reached up to tuck the library key above the door, the Book, heavy in his sleeve, bumped against his chest. What did the Horn Chair matter anyway? Or the debate, except as a prelude to the binding of the king and the waking of the Land? But Basil had been a scholar before he was a wizard, and to the scholar in him, the debate did matter. He was right, he had always been right, and he owed it to the men who followed him, the men who looked to him to lead them down new paths in the careful quest for truth, to prove to them that he was right. The Book did not change that. And then the Land would wake to a world of men who saw things clearly, who trusted their own intelligence, their skills of reasoning and observation. It would be a new world.

chapter V

GALING WAS NOT THE FIRST OF LADY JESSICA’S guests to arrive. Even those with little interest in the Campion family or in modern art were curious to see what she had made of Lady Caroline’s Folly in three days.

She certainly had not furnished it, which would have taken a warehouse full of massive tables and cabinets. She’d contented herself with a few necessary pieces: a very fine carpet in the entrance hall and a comfortable sofa and a long mirror in the small side room where the ladies left their cloaks. She’d scattered lighted tapers lavishly through the cavernous rooms, where they coaxed the best from the frescoes and inlays with which Lady Caroline had decorated her walls. The effect was kind to cracking paint and buckling wood. It was generally agreed among the older guests that the place hadn’t looked so impressive since it was new.

The hostess herself stood at the head of the stairs, greeting people as they entered her hall. She, too, was impressive. Her purple gown should have clashed with the bright russet of her hennaed hair, but instead they seemed to lend one another fire. Her underskirt was of turquoise silk, woven in a curious foreign pattern; her lace trim was of gold, and gold hung from her ears and about her neck. “Showy,” Lady Nevilleson murmured, and “Magnificent,” breathed her husband.

Inside the salon, her guests’ palates were teased with pickled cherries and roasted goose livers and purple wine that tasted of foreign sunlight. As Cecily Halliday later said to her husband, whatever one thought of it as a whole, it was an evening whose component parts one would be very sorry to have missed.

Those present could not help but remark on who had and had not been invited. No city merchants, bankers, not even other art collectors; only the nobility, it seemed, and of them, almost exclusively men who sat on the Council of Lords and their wives. It was early enough in the evening that they were all on their way to other engagements, to the first balls of the spring season, or to theatre and supper parties. The artist Ysaud was not in evidence, nor were any other members of the Tremontaine clan: not the Duchess Katherine, the Dowager Duchess Sophia, nor her son, Lord Theron—not even the various Talbert nephews and cousins.

“Perhaps they’ve been given a private showing,” Lord Condell muttered to Davy Tyrone. “I do hope Ysaud turns up at this charming fair, she’s better than a juggler with knives.”

“I think,” his friend said, “you’ll find Lady Jessica entertainment enough. One hears she robbed the Marquis of Carabas of his grandfather’s diamond ring, and sold it as a love charm to the Emperor of Tierce—a
love
charm, mind you!”

“Oh, dear. I had best look to my purse,” Condell said. “Are those candied
quinces?
Pray get me some. Look, there’s Galing—I know he likes them, too.”

LADY CAROLINE’S FOLLY CAME COMPLETE WITH A PANELED library, and it was there that Theron sat among the scattered volumes, awaiting what was to come. Jessica had said, “You’ve nothing to do but stay right here; don’t come out until I tell you to, no matter what. If Galing wants to see you, I’ll send him in.”

He stared at the bowl of fruit on the table: hothouse grapes, and some apples. They had neglected to leave him a knife; or perhaps she did not want him to have one. There was also a carafe of watered wine.

He could hear music, and voices. They were gathering, his people, in the house. His sister had summoned them. But they did not know of his hiding place. The hunter could not find him, could not smell him, could not see him where he rested amongst the leaves of all the books.

He curled into the cushioned chair by the library table, and fell into an uneasy doze. There the bear-man found Theron, whose hair was braided in two-and-twenty braids, tied off with jewels and bits of polished bone.

“My lord.” The bear-man did not touch him, but Theron could feel his breath, hot as sun on earth. “Why do you hide from your people? Come out, and let them do you proper homage.”

Theron shook his horn-branched head. “They will not do homage to this.”

“Truly. You have run in this form for far too long. One wonders if you are king at all. The proper rites have not been observed. You led the hunt in your own shape, and now you cannot rule yourself in this one. I fear the time of trial is at an end.” From the fur of his cloak, he drew forth a knife, dully gleaming stone, with an edge like an animal’s tooth. “Rise, Little King, and kneel to me; bare your throat, and give your power back to the Land.”

“No!” Theron tried to fling up his hands, but he stood trembling in deer form; his hands were hooves, planted on the ground beneath him.

The bear narrowed yellow eyes. “Then will you run?”

“I have run,” Theron said. “I have been hunter and hunted. I have a deer’s horns and a man’s heart. And I have the Blood of Kings.”

“Yes,” the bear growled. “That is a beginning.”

“Where, then, shall I run?”

“Why, to the grove,” the wizard said, handing him the knife of stone. It was cold as death in his hand. “Run to the sacred grove, where oak and holly ring the pool—where you may know whether you shall live to take up kingship, or die to feed the Land.” He struck the deer a blow on the haunch: “Run!”

Theron awoke with his heart pounding, his breath coming in quick, tight gasps. The room was squeezing the life out of him. He dashed to the window, flung open the casement and breathed in the sharp, cold air. Above, the stars pricked glittering patterns in the sky. The rooftops of the city gleamed in their light. There was no footing for him on the slate of the rooftops—no escape for him other than through the forbidden door.

THEY ALL CALLED HER “LADY” JESSICA BECAUSE THAT WAS how she had styled herself on the invitation; those who would refuse her the courtesy title would also have scorned the invitation. But the older ones there remembered Jessica Campion as a girl. The women, particularly, recalled visits to Tremontaine House, and a fox-faced child who could be coaxed to sit on their laps with offers of sweets.

The ancient and delectable Lady Godwin kissed both her cheeks. “Jessica, my dear. You quite put me in mind of your mother, standing there. You have her stature, the way she dominated the stage. Do you ever engage in theatricals, my dear?”

“As often as I can, dear Lady Godwin. How good of you to come.”

Lord Philip Montague bowed deeply over her hand. “Congratulations, Lady Jessica.” He was a collector, and had canceled another engagement to come to this viewing. “A year of Ysaud’s work, one hears, and not yet seen by any of us. Generous of you to share it with us before it all goes off to— where did you say it was going?”

Jessica looked him in the eye. “To a foreign monarch, my lord.”

“Just so. I didn’t know you dealt in canvas; I thought bibelots and jewels were more your line.”

“They’re easier to transport, certainly. But I hate to disappoint my clients.”

“Oh, indeed. And we do appreciate it, as you know. That jade carving you sent me has pride of place in my summer home. Ysaud’s work, though, is a particular favorite of mine. Should I see any paintings tonight that I really cannot live without, I hope that your monarch will not be disappointed if his cache is a few pounds lighter?”

“I really cannot answer for him, sir.”

“I am prepared to be generous.” He cocked his fair head, birdlike, waiting confidently for her answer.

“Of course you are,” she said affably. “Well, go on and see them, then. Don’t be distracted by the food, though; just walk past it through the double doors to the octagonal ballroom.” She turned to the next guest. “Can it be Lady Herriot? This is not fancy dress, yet I could swear you are masquerading as your own daughter!”

Having gorged himself on quinces to his heart’s delight, Lord Condell had attached himself and Tyrone to Lord Nicholas Galing. “And where, dear Nicholas, are you off to after this?” Condell asked.

“Well, if you must know, and I suppose you must,” Galing drawled, “for there is no keeping secrets from you, Condell; as well try to hide a bit of candied quince that’s got stuck between one’s front teeth!” and he had the pleasure of watching his friend surreptitiously try to find out if he did. “I have a little
assignation
this evening, not far from here.”