The Legacy of Gird (141 page)

"You had no healing magery of your own," the Rosemage reminded him. "How, then, have you remained hale and strong so long? You must realize that the healing magery and control of age are closely allied." Her voice shook; she was, Luap realized, very near tears. "It may be too late, but you must release your magery to its proper purpose."

"It is too late," Luap said, looking at his fingers. "The elves say that, and I believe them: they make unsteady allies, but they do not lie, and they know more than we of the iynisin." He attempted a smile. "I have not even seen one."

"I have," Seri said. He had not known that. Her blunt face, weathered from years in the brilliant sun and dry wind, had lost the bright promise of its youth, but nothing could dim her eyes. Now, as she looked past him into the memory where that iynisin had been, he felt a pang that was almost guilt. She should have stayed in Fintha with Raheli; he should even have allowed Aris to stay, if necessary. She was Gird's child as much as any of his blood; she belonged there, and she might die here, because of his selfishness. If, indeed, he had been drawing on Aris's power. He still could not believe that.

"Let me see," the Rosemage pled, her long hands reaching for his. He seemed to see her doubled, the beautiful woman she had been when he first met her, overlaid by the woman she had become. When had her hair gone silver? When had those lines marred the clarity of her cheek and jaw? An insidious hum along his bones urged him to ignore all that: what did it matter, after all, if one woman aged? He could lay an illusion over anything unpleasant. The important thing, surely, was his reign, his kingdom, his power.

Then her hands grasped his with a touch like fire. He could feel her power in his wrists, her magery only just weaker than his, her skill in using it as great or greater, for she had had the early training. Swift as light moving across the face of a cliff, picking out each hollow and ledge, her magery swept along his nerves, into the chambers of his mind. He could not sense what she found, but she recoiled in horror, eyes wide.

"You—you do not even know, do you?" Her voice was a whisper hardly loud enough to hear. Seri, after a quick glance at the Rosemage, stood alert, as if ready for battle.

"What is it?" Seri asked, not looking away from him.

"He . . . was invaded." The Rosemage scrubbed her hands on her robe, as if to remove the touch of his skin. "I cannot tell when—or I might, but it would take longer. You were right; he has been drawing on Aris's power, though I do not think he knew it. I am not sure how much Luap is left, to be honest."

Luap felt something stirring uneasily deep in his mind, like a hibernating animal prodded in its den. What was it? He tried to explore, to do for himself what the Rosemage had done, and met a vague reluctance—no opposition to meet head on, but the sensation that things would go better if he didn't bother. "I don't know what you mean," he said to the Rosemage, in a voice he hoped was reasonable. "I am the same Luap as always."

"No," she said, with a decisive shake of her head. "That you are not, whatever you are."

He wanted to scream at her, insist on it, but Seri stood there, poised for anything he might do. She looked less angry than he would have expected to find that he had been stealing power from her beloved Aris, but he knew she was dangerous. He tried to gather his magery around him, the comfortable cloak he had had all these years, and the Rosemage stirred.

"No," she said, as if she knew what he was thinking. "No, you cannot do that, not again. I won't let you."

The sleeping monster stirred again, then arose, flooding his mind with its anger. "You!" he said, not knowing or caring if he spoke his own thoughts or those of the thing within him.
"You
not let me? You old woman, I mastered your magery years ago, when first we met: you should remember that. And I can master it now." It was in his hand, as reins in the hand of a master teamster; he could feel the power straining to be free, to strike. His light filled the chamber; his will—

And Seri came alight. He nearly gaped in astonishment. A
peasant?
Had she been mageborn all along? But her light met his and did not mingle; his eyes burned. Where had he seen such light before? He squinted against it, his eyes streaming tears.

"You will not harm her," Seri said. "The gods will not permit it."

"It is too late," the Rosemage said. Luap looked at her; she struggled against tears. "I served one bad king: I killed
him
. Now I have served a bad prince through another exile. I will not kill you, Selamis, but I will serve you no longer. I will serve what remains of our people, and kill only those creatures of the dark. Fare well, Seri and Aris: if you ever come again to Fintha, I hope you bring peace between our peoples. As for you, Selamis, I can neither curse nor praise you; I pray instead that Esea's light will show you what you have become, and the High Lord will judge fairly how far you consented." She pushed past Aris, out into the corridor. Luap could not doubt it was for the last time, that she meant what she said. She had never said anything she did not mean. He wanted to scream after her, beg her to stay, but the shadowy presence inside him forbade it.

"What did I do?" he asked himself as much as those around him. "What went wrong?"

Seri, still alight, came near on one hand, and Aris on the other. "Perhaps," Seri said, "it is what you did not do. Give me your hand." He would have refused, but she had it already; Aris took his other hand, and they joined theirs. In that instant, he saw the thing within him, which like a soft maggot had found his hollow core, soothing and comforting him as it nestled there, growing to fill what emptiness it enlarged. Now a mailed and glittering malice, the self's armor against self-knowledge, raised its claws in mock salute and leered. He knew it chuckled in delight, its long purpose fulfilled.

"NO!"
Not so much scream as moan, with all the intensity of the feelings he had not felt for years. He squeezed his eyes against the sight, but for the eyes of the mind there are no lids. Shame scalded him. Seri's light, and Aris's, flooded his mind, left no shadowy corners, revealed everything Gird had revealed those long years before, but worse. Tears ran down his face; he remembered all too clearly trying to tell Gird he would have been a better king. Better? The presence in his mind mocked him: Could any have been worse? Had any kin of his, any of those royalties whose prerogatives he envied, ever been as feckless, as vicious, as to let such an enemy into such a sanctum? "I'm sorry," he said; the echo of the many times he had said that reverberated through his mind.

He would have been glad to die, but death was not offered. "Is this what you wanted?" asked Seri. He shook his head; that was not enough. He had to answer aloud.

"No," he said hoarsely. "It is not."

"Did you know what you were doing?"

"No." He remembered all the warnings, and how sure he had been that he knew better, that he had outgrown those warnings.

"Then throw that filth out," she said. Luap stared at her; surprised he could see her through his tears. Throw it out? How could he? "You must," she said, more gently, as if she could see every thought in his mind. "You must; no one else can."

He had no more strength; he felt it running out of him like blood from a mortal wound. "I can't," he whispered.

"You were Gird's friend," Aris said, unexpectedly. "You can." All those times he and the others had faltered to a halt in mud or hot sun, certain they could not march another step, and Gird had bellowed at them, rain or sweat running down his weathered face . . . and they had taken the next step, and the next. If Gird were here, would he dare say "I can't"? No. He could almost hear the old man's gruff voice, feel that hard fist once more. He had to try again. "Get out," he whispered to the presence within him. "Get
out
!"

You'll die
came the response. Its sweet poison soothed; he felt himself responding as he had, unwittingly, all these years.
You have no chance but me.
Disgust at himself, and the memory of Gird, gave him strength to resist.

"Get OUT!" He felt Aris and Seri joining their power to his, yielding this one last time to his command as his magery proved too weak . . . and then the presence, whatever it was, fled away down the wind of his anger.

And left him once more empty, hollow, guilty, hardly able to stand. Seri and Aris supported him; as his strength returned, he could see them more clearly. No longer "the younglings" he had both admired and envied, but weathered and graying, well into middle age.

"I can't—I don't know what to do?" His voice came out rasping and feeble as an old man's.

"You've made the right start," Seri said. "Now you might try asking the gods."

Luap winced. He had not, he realized, really asked the gods anything for a long time. He had never really wanted to know what the gods wanted of him. He had spent those times in the yearly festivals when prayers were normally offered giving complacent reports on his own genius, looking for praise in return. Now he had no choice; unpracticed as he was, he must ask. He let them lead him back to the great hall, and tried to fix his mind on the gods he hardly knew.

He knew at once it was no dream, not as he had dreamed before, and his first thought was that Gird had not warned him what meeting a god was like. Where had the space come from, he wondered, in which he hung suspended, like a thought in some vast intelligence? At once his mind clung to that notion, and began elaborating it, an activity he recognized even as it continued: protective flight into logic, the mage's trance.

A face appeared before him, a man's face of near his own age, he thought. Unlike dreams, it carried no emotion with it—a stranger's face, weathered by life into interesting lines. It stared aside, not directly at him, and he watched with his usual attention, looking for clues to character and motivation. A face used to command, to the obedience of others, to hard decisions . . . it was turning now, toward him. Eyes a clear cool gray met his,
caught
his, across whatever gulf of time and space lay between them. Commanded him, as they had (he could tell) commanded so many others. Now he could see the head above the face, bearing a crown—a
crown
?

A king. A king's face, and not the one he had seen last, dead, on the trampled earth of Greenfields. And not Tsaia's king, past or present, nor the black-bearded king of the Khartazh: those faces too he knew, and this was something else. A god? He thought not, though awe choked his breath. He tried to look aside, and could not. Slowly, inexorably, the rest of the man's figure became visible. A king in green and gold, the gold crown in his hair shaped of leaves and vines. Something about the clothes seemed foreign, strange: he could not say what. Slowly, as the drifting of morning fog, he began to see the room around the man . . . its paneled walls, its broad table littered with scrolls and books, its carpet like a garden of flowers, manycolored. Someone else . . . across the room, a woman whose weathered face wore a curious ornament on the brow, a silver circle . . . but in a trick of light she seemed to fade and he could not see her. The king said nothing . . . did he see Luap as well as Luap saw him?

Then, "You." The king's voice, deep, resonant, carrying power as a river carries a straw. "You are part of it; you will help."

He did not want to answer a wraith, a dream, whatever this was, but from his mouth came the honest bleat of fear he felt. "I can't." Even if he'd wanted to, he had no more help to give, not even to his own people. Could he explain
that
to a wraith, a messenger, whoever this was? The iynisin could not get in, through no power of his but the original power of those who had sculpted the fortress . . . but he and his could not get out.

"You will wake them?" That voice came from the glare he could not see, where the woman had seemed to stand. The king's face turned aside, and Luap almost sagged in relief. It was like facing Gird again, on his worst days—and worse, that he had now failed at what he'd promised.

"I must," the king was saying. "They close the pattern. I cannot explain—"

"No matter." For an instant, Luap could see her again, this time as if through a white flickering of flame. She had a smile that rang aloud, louder than laughter would have been; when she chuckled, softly, he realized again that his senses were rapt in some strange magic. "I think you've missed your mark, sir king. What you seek to wake has not slept."

"What?" The king looked again, deep into Luap's eyes, a look he felt as a sword probing his vitals: "How can that be? I sought along your memories, to find the place—"

"While thinking of the reason you sought them, a reason many lives old, did you not?" The king's eyes never wavered from Luap's, but he nodded. The woman went on. "You found what you sought, then, but—Gird's teeth, my lord, I can't understand how you will get them out, and still leave what we found."

"Nor I." The king took a breath, and let it out slowly, now watching Luap with obvious wariness. "You—" and there was no doubt which of them he addressed. "You are of Gird's time, are you not? And someone who knew him?"

Luap was not aware of speaking, but he knew he spoke in some manner the king understood. "I am Luap."

"Yes." One word, in that tone, and Luap wondered what the king saw in his face. What Gird had seen? He hoped not, but the king's next words were not reassuring. "You are not . . . what legends made you."

No time to ask that, not of such a king. "I was Gird's friend, until his death; his chronicler, after."

"You have Aarean blood."

He could not help it; his chin lifted. "I am a king's son." He did not trouble to explain which king.

"And your mother—?"

Damn the man. Luap struggled once more with the envy that never died, and said, "A peasant woman. I never knew her, past infancy."

To his surprise, that stern face softened a little. "I am sorry. My mother, too, died when I was young, and I had a . . . difficult time."

Difficult, Luap thought bitterly, could not have included being tossed out to fend for himself in a peasant village. "I have the royal magery," he said, uncertain why he said it.