The Summer's King (18 page)

When Prince Borss has greeted his hostess, she leads him straight away to greet Sharn Am Zor. The prince is tall and heavily built, no more than five and thirty. There is a weatherbeaten quality about his handsome, ruddy face that tells Sharn the prince is “wearing his years,” his fine dark eyes do not peer out of a smooth mask. Sharn, who has a trick of seeing likenesses and sometimes judging people unfairly on them, sees a hint of his uncle, Kelen of Lien in this man. Kelen but without the good humor. Prince Borss stares at the young king, and his smile is closer to a sneer.

“Majesty,” he says in rich tones, “you have gained much honor here today!”

Sharn will not smile at all but gives the prince a hard look and graciously inclines his head.

“We are proud to have our kinsman in the Pendark Court,” says Merigaun quietly.

Now the music plays again, and Tazlo says, “I see the princess, my King, with young Tramarn.”

The young Prince Gwalchai, slender and dark-haired, is nothing like his overbearing mother. There is a change of atmosphere in the Pendark hall. This, Sharn realizes sadly, is how it feels when the Eildon folk are pleased or contented. The lights burn a little lower, the music sounds more sweetly. The dance is a round dance called the Waves of The Sea, and Moinagh, dancing with the Prince of Tramarn, steps as lightly as before, yet he could swear she does not speak more intimately to the prince than she did to him. Sharn Am Zor heaves a deep sigh and wishes the dance were done.

The music strikes up next for a moon dance, and three young girls come smiling to the king's hearth and ask Sharn and his companions to join the dance. All around, the ladies of Eildon are bringing the knights and nobles out on to the floor. Sharn joins his partner with a good grace; she is a dark-blonde beauty who would have caught his eye at any other time. One figure of the moon dance is a chain, and sure enough Sharn comes in his turn to dance for a few moments with the Princess Moinagh. From her smile she is pleased to see him again. He can do nothing more than smile at her in return, press her hand, look into her eyes. Then she has passed on to the arms of Tazlo, of Gerr, of Sir Tarn—it is too cruel. He has the feeling that he will never see her again. Soon after the moon dance, the princess leaves the hall with her waiting women.

A movement of linkmen with their torches in the entry signals the time when guests may depart. The king goes forth and so does Diarmut Mack Dahl. When Merigaun takes his hand in farewell she looks gravely at Sharn Am Zor and says, “You must follow the way to the end.”

Did she speak these words? Or did he hear her voice in his thought? The two kings ride home side by side behind the torchbearers across the unsleeping city.

Diamut Mack Dahl says to the King of the Chameln, “It is a bonny lass . . .”

“It is indeed,” says Sharn Am Zor.

The King of the Isles falls silent again for a little while, then says, “At least we will be outdoors tomorrow, practicing for this Tourney of the Trees.”

Sharn agrees heartily that this will be an improvement. The two kings begin to talk of hawking. Diarmut has trained a sea-eagle to fish for him. So they come to the Sennick Fortress and part very civilly. Sharn sits down to a nightcap with his two remaining champions, Tazlo and Gerr.

“You have gained much honor, my King,” breathes Tazlo, “the Prince of Paldo said as much.”

“Princess Merigaun seems to favor you,” says Gerr. “Blood will tell!”

Alone once more, watching Prickett prowl the unfamiliar bedchamber with a sputtering Eildon candle, the king does not know whether to hope or to despair. His two champions have understood very little of the ways of Eildon. He thinks suddenly, as scenes of the day pass before him, that it should all be written down. When all is done, he thinks sleepily, I will tell it to Hazard, my dear old companion, and have him work it into a tale . . . the Tale of Shennazar.

CHAPTER VI

THE QUEST

More than ten days passed before the Tourney of All Trees. The king rode out in high spirits to practise for the tourney in the wide meadows before the Hall of the Kings. The weather was so clear, untroubled by mist or rain, that the folk of Lindriss thronged the way to see King Shennazar and his guards go by. Surely, reasoned the king, he must meet the nobles of Eildon now on firmer ground and learn to deal with them. Surely the ladies would come to the lists to see their knights, and he would see his lovely childlike princess again, come to watch
him
.

Yet the days passed, and he saw none of the Eildon princes. Only the three knights—Sir Mortrice, Sir Pellasur and Sir Tarn—came and watched the king and his companions at their practice. No one waited upon his pleasure at the Sennick Fortress. The King of the Isles was more favored: he rode out to practise in the park of Earl Nollister, and more than once received heralds from the Paldo Court.

The king's efforts to woo the Princess Moinagh were all in vain. First he sent a jeweled fan, with a request to Princess Merigaun for an audience. When there came no reply, he sent Nerriot with his lute. Nerriot was not admitted, and the Pendark house kerns were dour and threatening as ever.

At last Sharn Am Zor rode out himself with Gerr and Tazlo one late afternoon and came secretly to the Pendark Court. He thought of an adventure: he would leap over the wall to that garden where the princess walked beside a pond. The white mansion was deserted. In the dusk a few guard lights sprang up, a ring of wildfire burned upon the walls. The solitary gatekeeper told them that the family had gone to Gwanlevan.

Sharn was cast down, then angry and petulant. After a miserable meal time, he tried to control his ill humor and sat with Denwick in his sickroom. Zilly was no longer pale but flushed and feverish with a nagging headache; he was eager to hear of all that had passed. Presently Nerriot was sent for, and he helped compose a lying letter to Lady Veldis, leaving out all mention of her bridegroom's accident.

On his way to practice in the meadow, Sharn rode sometimes past the Paldo Keep, a mighty edifice of red and white stone with six tall towers and a gateway carved with stags and wild boar. On his way home in the evening, he had the escort ride another way, past the Tramarn Park. Gerr of Zerrah had once stayed in the old house of grey stone that could be glimpsed among the trees. The king ordered Gerr to visit the house where he had spent those bright moons as a new bridegroom, the guest of Prince Ross.

Gerr returned on the eve of the tourney angry and perplexed.

“I spoke with the Princess Gaveril,” he said. “My King, she begged me to leave your service!”

“No more than that?” returned Sharn.

“I spoke up hotly,” said the knight, “and said that for my honor and the love I bear the Daindru I could do no such thing. I protested over the treatment we have received here, my King, and so I took my leave.”

“Ah, my King!” cried Tazlo Am Ahrosh, “they are afraid of us! They fear the King of the Chameln Lands and his champions!”

Gerr shook his head; this was not the cause of Princess Gaveril's appeal to him. Nerriot, at the window of the king's bower, called softly and played a chord of music. When they looked out, knights were passing; the nobility were returning to the city for the Tourney. Sharn Am Zor, fighting irritation and foreboding, wrote letters to Achamar: to Aidris, to Seyl. In the morning they would be brought to Captain Dystane in the harbor. The
Golden Oak
was sailing to Port Cayl, then on to Balufir. The king gazed around the chamber in the dark tower, saw its heavy trappings, gilded ornament, smelled the particular Eildon reek of neatsfoot oil, lavender and cherrywood logs and was overwhelmed with homesickness. He saw Yuri crouched by a settle and knew that the boy suffered from this sickness so badly that Prickett feared he would run mad.

Though Sharn retired early, he could not sleep. The dark tower was quiet; he felt no magical presence, no hidden watchers. He thought of the morrow and knew again an unreasoning fear, a foreboding of ill fortune. Sharn Am Zor did what he had never done, had never intended to do. He crept from his massive curtained oaken bed and moved confidently through the dark chamber. He found his leather jewel case, unlocked it with his own key and took out his magical protection, the scrying stone that Aidris had given him, in its leather pouch. He carried it back to bed and sat propped on his pillows.

As he drew the stone out and cupped it in his hand, it felt warm to the touch. Still he did not look at the stone. He remembered Aidris, her look of care and urgency as she gave him the stone and said, quite simply, that it was her most treasured possession. Then she had gone on to speak nonsense, magical nonsense that he could not believe. He had the evidence of his own senses. He had seen his Grandmother, Guenna of Lien, seven years or so ago at the Hospice of the Moon Sisters in Hodd. He could still conjure up her pale twisted face, her hands fumbling with the coverlet, her mild gaze that flicked over him, unseeing. The old woman—yet was she so old?—was half blind, unable to speak. Her expression was peaceful; she tried to nod a little when his mother touched her hand. Aravel spoke the name of her eldest son several times. It was the last time Queen Aravel was able to go abroad.

That was what stuck in his throat, thought Sharn, crushing the stone in his hand. This was cruel nonsense that Aidris had told him. Could Guenna of Lien still be hale and sound, a mighty sorceress living in some secret place, with some poor invalid bearing her likeness in the hospice? Could she do all this and not make herself known to Aravel, her surviving daughter? Could she not heal his mother's madness?

Still Aidris had sworn it was their grandmother “in the world of the stone” as she called it. Could it be some fairy spirit, some demon? He did not doubt that he needed protection for himself and his champions. The king took a sharp breath, opened his hand and stared into the stone. It was a large oval stone, a green beryl set in a silver rim. Around this rim was a little band of sparkling mist, like the glittering trails of light that certain fishes left at night upon the surface of the sea. Before his eyes the mist began to fill the stone and then to clear away again from the center. He saw another place, a forest glade, a huge oak tree. Sharn Am Zor grew cold with wonder. Under the oak tree stood two horses cropping the grass: a Chameln grey, a young mare, and a plump white pony. Moon, balky, foolish Moon, long since turned out to pasture in Achamar, and lovely Telavel, killed in battle, the horse of Aidris the Queen. And there under the tree stood a young girl with crimped black hair looking down at a boy, a golden-haired boy in a red tunic stained with earth. Aidris and Sharn.

The image faded and was replaced by another. A tabletop, an altar covered with a green cloth, just as Aidris had described it. A crown lay on the altar and a bunch of oak leaves and an angular twig of mistletoe with glassy white berries. Sharn concentrated on the world of the stone. The crown and oak leaves for himself, and the mistletoe, the sacred plant of Eildon, for protection, for magic, perhaps the two together. The stone became dark. Disappointed he slipped the stone's silver chain over his head and lay down to sleep.

Next day at breakfast Britt, the Captain-General, brought the king a letter. It was bound with a strip of leather to the shaft of an arrow; the watch had found it embedded in the trunk of the plum tree. In the night an archer had fired it across the moat.

“Shall I open it, my King?” asked Britt. “There may be some magic . . .”

“Let me,” said Sharn Am Zor.

He untied the folded parchment, broke the plain seals of blue wax, and his hand did not wither nor his eyes dry up in his head. The letter was written in an Eildon hand, not so fine as the Eildon script he knew best, that of Rosmer, and addressed to “The High and Mighty Prince, Sharn Am Zor, King of the Chameln, who shares the double throne.”

You will bring no bride out of Eildon. Know this and, while you can, hold yourself and your champions far from the Tourney of All Trees and the vigil that will follow. Do this for those who love you and respect your ancient line. There is still time for you to forswear this tournament because of the injury to the Lord Denwick or for some other ground. For if you once take part in these ceremonies, you will be bound, by Eildon custom, to follow the ritual or suffer a disgrace that is worse than death for a true knight. Heed this entreaty, noble Sharn, and know that the one who risks great pain and penalty to send this warning is your true friend.

Sharn made some sound of anger and disgust and flung the letter down on the makeshift table, an oaken press covered with a cloth.

“My King?” asked Britt, alarmed.

The two men were alone. The king woke early in Eildon, dressed at once and ate by an eastern window of the tower.

“Read it,” he said.

The Captain-General, a burly, hawk-faced officer from Hodd in the Mark of Lien, bent awkwardly over the table and read the letter almost without touching it.

“The watch saw nothing, Sire,” he said. “Who would have sent such a thing?”

“Well, I have a friend in Eildon,” said Sharn with a bitter smile.

One line of the letter had excited in him a cold fear:
You will bring no bride out of Eildon
.

“Sire,” said Britt, “I cannot think that you, that your royal person, will be harmed at this tourney. Count Ahrosh, too, is an excellent horseman, and Count Gerr was never better in his tiltyard practice. I doubt they will come to harm. But the vigil afterwards when you are far from your escort.. . .”

“Come, Britt,” said the king, “a vigil? It is in the temple, the White Tower where our own Skelow tree grows and all the magic trees of Hylor.”

“What does this unnamed friend fear, my King?”

“Who knows? Some breach of their damnable ritual? I will not heed the warning,” said Sharn Am Zor.

He folded the letter and stowed it away in the pocket of his tunic.