The Summer's King (32 page)

The king, who had consulted with Hazard, knew what he was seeking. At the small window, with a view over the city towards the palace of the Firn, there stood a vase with a sprig of evergreen, resting upon a flat reddish stand that looked like a tile. Sharn lifted the vase aside, sat down on the edge of the bed and placed his lighted candle upon the broad windowsill. He looked about for a stylus and found it in the vase. So he waited, staring at the greasy reddish stone of the wizards' tablet, and after a long time, about the second hour of morning, his waiting was rewarded. Words appeared on the tablet, and in a familiar hand.
“What news?”
wrote Rosmer, far away in Lien. The words faded, and the king took up the stylus.
“You will die, old canker, and the world will be healed!”
His words faded too, and he wrung from his enemy a reply of surpassing cleverness.
“Courage, little king; darkness comes to us all.”
A quotation from
The Masque of Warriors
by Robillan Hazard.

The line faded, and the wizards' tablet heaved and twisted; it became crumbly and dry, unfit for messages. The king ordered all the music to be brought to his sister's apartment. He went away feeling sick and puzzled by Nerriot, his gift, his treachery, his narrow room, his violent death. What had Rosmer and his creature to do with Inchevin and with the Golden Bird, a reference to the old miser's magical obsession with the so-called noble art, the attempt to turn base metal into gold?

Tazlo Am Ahrosh soon learned that he had lost all. Sharn walked with his former henchman in the palace gardens and told him, with some embarrassment, that he was banished. Both men held themselves in check; there were no recriminations, the mood was one of leave-taking. The king gave room for hope that the banishment would not last forever. At the last they stood together by the railing before the Skelow, the black tree.

“I hope the sapling grows well in Eildon,” said Tazlo.

“The Skelow grows slowly,” said the king.

He stood in a patch of winter sunlight; his cloak was of white fur, ermine and fox. He was at that moment no longer the young king but an ageless being, an embodiment of the Zor, white and gold.

Tazlo cried out, “I struck for your honor, sire! I killed a spy!”

It was as if he hoped to wring a few angry words from Sharn Am Zor. The king gazed at the young man from the north with a mild and pitying look that stung much more than his old harshness. Tazlo turned and ran off across the snow. In two moons the old land dispute flared up and was at last decided. The king insisted upon a division of the lands, a notably fair decision approved by all but the Aroshen.

Aidris the Queen was puzzled and displeased at first by the tale of Nerriot, musician and spy. As Sharn tried to tell the story at her fireside, she recalled a scene years past when she had sent the two pretenders, Raff Raiz and Taranelda, off into the snowy night to freedom and had spoken of the mercy of the Goddess. Surely this was what had been shown to Nerriot, the master musician? He had been tolerated for his great gifts and kept from doing too much harm. Yet at the heart of the affair there seemed to be a hint of the fear that she hated: the fear of Rosmer, the night-flyer, the eater of souls.

Sharn had spoken of his children and of his nephew Till Am Chiel, who had done so bravely when Nerriot was struck down. Aidris could sigh for a time when her children were still so young; now she had a son full grown, almost a man, fourteen years old and taller than his father. The palace of the Firn was the home of striplings and growing girls, from the wild beauty Imelda Kerrick, of marriageable age, to the green-eyed Princess Micha, shy and woman-shaped at thirteen. Huon Kerrick, barely a year older than Prince Sasko, started climbing out of the palace at night and sporting a red scarf and a broad-brimmed hat. Countess Sabeth wept; Gerr, his father, stormed; and Aidris let her power be felt. The kedran of the garrison fell upon The Sun tavern, rounded by the Salamanders with scant regard for their high estate, and let them taste a day and a night of the dungeons of the South Hall, unused since the Protectorate.

Before the winter ended, there was another strange death in this season of leave-taking. The watch heard shouting upon the ringroad: Jalmar Raiz and his son Pinga, the greddle, were walking by and saw the lanterns. A frail old man, dressed as a steward or house servant of the better sort, was hammering upon a house door. The healer recognized the old man.

“Surely it is the old ballad-maker,” he said to his son, “the old fellow who serves the Countess Am Panget.”

“His name is Lett!” piped Pinga. “And that is the house of the old countess.”

Jalmar Raiz pushed through the small crowd and addressed the wild-eyed old man, who was shouting in the old speech.

“Master Lett, what is it? Where is your mistress?”

The old man drew breath and told the tale. He had been awaiting the countess in her southern manor, but she had not come. All her servants had come on to the manor house, and all the baggage.

“My lady was promised an escort from her eastern cousins . . .” panted Lett.

“The house is deserted,” said Raiz. “Perhaps the countess has taken another way.”

“Good Master Raiz, I fear she is within!”

The watch had the doors open now, and old Lett ran in, followed by Jalmar Raiz. They called softly, and no one answered. In the torchlight the rooms were disordered. At last the two men came to an upper room, to the bedchamber of the old countess. There she sat in her chair, her eyes wide open; she had been dead for many days. The chamber was icy cold; snow had drifted in through a broken pane. The jewel boxes lay scattered empty about the room; the rings had been stripped from the old woman's fingers, and the brilliants torn from her earlobes. Of her two beloved wards—Derda, the Starry Maid, and young Ilmar of Inchevin—there was no sign.

CHAPTER X

THE HUNTING OF THE DARK

The summer of the year 1184 was long and hot; by the time of the Elm Moon, the alarms of the winter were burned away, almost forgotten. From his apartments at Chernak New Palace, Sharn Am Zor beheld the wide, decorous expanse of the formal gardens, descending beyond the stone balustrades first to the long walk, then to the south lawn. Further south upon the plain, a whole town had grown up, first to build, then to serve and maintain the new palace.

Sharn was a creature of habit, but at the same time he loved surprises. The day must not run just so; or if it did, the king welcomed a diversion. One morning in the Elm Moon he was enjoying a leisurely breakfast with his queen and their good friends the Denwicks in the garden room of Queen Lorn's apartments. The royal children and Hal Denwick came by, ready to set out beyond the palace grounds to collect herbs and simples: the “holiday task” of Princess Tanit.

The children were permitted to join their parents at table and drink kaffee, which was not good for them, heavily laced with milk. Presently there came a distant trumpet call, which no one could read; a guessing game followed, but only little Gerd guessed right.

“By the moon!” said Zilly. “It
is
Seyl! What brings him from the Danmar?”

“I hope it is nothing bad,” said Danu Lorn.

Jevon Seyl, who came in without ceremony, had a fierce look as he handed a packet of letters to the king.

“We live in stirring times, my King.”

So the king quickly scanned the letters, which came from Countess Barr, taking the waters at Nesbath and doing a little newsgathering for the Daindru. In a swift action by the newly formed army, the Mark of Lien had added the coastal state of Cayl to its territory. The time being adjudged to be right, new patents of nobility had been wrung from the courts of Eildon: Lien was proclaimed a kingdom. Kelen Vauguens was king, his son a prince; he would be crowned in autumn, together with Fideth, his beloved young queen. The grand design was complete.

There was excitement in this and a certain finality, as if such news must come. Hal Denwick, a handsome boy, nearly ten years old, asked a question,
“Why
must the Markgraf Kelen and Aunt Fideth be king and queen?”

The grownups smiled and looked from one to another. Tanit who found the question vaguely shocking listened wide-eyed.

“Some would say it is good to hold high rank, old son,” said Zilly. “Question of prestige, if you know what I mean.”

“Yes,” said Sharn Am Zor. “Uncle Kelen wants his estate to measure up to the crowned heads round about.”

“More than that, Sire,” said Seyl. “He will make clear that the
Kingdom
of Lien is larger and more important than the old Mark of Lien, Ydillian's Pledge, between the two rivers.”

“Ah, it is my sister's doing!” cried Lady Veldis softly. “I am sure she will have a crown for her son!”

“Yes,” agreed Queen Lorn. “King Matten of Lien—it sounds well. I hope the poor boy is equal to his task and has good advisers.”

“It is unsettling,” said Sharn Am Zor. “Can kingship be plucked from the air? Is it a matter of an Eildon parchment?”

“Hope a copy was made in Eildon!” said Zilly with unexpected wit.

Everyone laughed aloud at the notion of Kelen's patents of nobility changing upon the page as Eildon edicts were wont to do.

Tanit put in primly, “Kings and queens . . . the Daindru . . . have their right from the Goddess!”

“Yes!” said Seyl. “The princess has shown us another truth. I warrant that King Kelen deems
his
right to come from Inokoi, the Lord of Light. A new kingdom, a new religion.”

“Too much remains the same,” grumbled Sharn. “The architect of the new kingdom, the gatherer of all this territory, is still Rosmer.”

“Hush,” said Lorn. “You will spoil your breakfast.”

Presently Tanit persuaded her father to walk to the end of the palace grounds with the party of herb-gatherers, and the Denwicks went along. Only Queen Lorn remained with Jevon Seyl, pouring him another bowl of kaffee.

“Alas,” he said. “No one has a word to say for Cayl, that poor neglected place. What did it have but a few ports and market towns, a few bumpkin lords . . .”

“I think of the people there,” said Danu Lorn, “and hope they have not suffered.”

“There was a certain interest in Cayl,” said Seyl, “though I am not sure I would point it out to the king.”

“Tell me, good Jevon.. . .”

“It had no ruler,” he replied. “No overlord. It was governed by a council of free towns where lords and commons sat together. Could men live without kings and queens, I wonder? Could they form some kind of commonwealth and make shift to govern themselves?”

The neighbors of Lien were more wary than ever. Only Athron had an intact natural barrier to divide it from the new kingdom: the mountains that rose between Athron and Cayl. Lien had spread out beyond the Bal into Mel'Nir and had a small foothold over the Ringist in the Adz. The new king's ambition, it was rumored, embraced not only land but water. King Kelen would claim half of the inland sea as his own and dispute the fishing and the pearling rights.

Within their wide boundaries, however, the Chameln lands were still at peace, though there was a feeling abroad that the peace was fragile; it might be broken. Perhaps the summer days, perfect, hot, without even the relief of a thunderstorm created this anxiety. The king spent time with Tanit, working upon her holiday task. The expeditions in search of feverherb, sourwort, nightshade, lissmenil, led beyond the lakes and gardens of the palace.

Towards the end of the Oakmoon, after her birthday feast, a high point of every summer, Tanit came home one afternoon from riding with her brother. They had left their horses and were kicking stones on the long walk. Above them, half hidden by the spray from the fountains, they glimpsed their father and mother, side by side, leaning upon the balustrade. Tanit was about to run and call, but Gerd tugged at her arm.

“Something has happened!” he said.

They came to the next staircase and went up slowly, peering through the balusters. At the top they were gathered up by Lady Denwick; she drew them aside murmuring of a messenger out of Lien. A knot of courtiers in their fine summer clothes stood by the blazing beds of redsage and wind-flowers. Far away the king leant upon the balustrade, and Queen Lorn stood very close with a protective hand upon his shoulder.

“Is somebody dead?” whispered Tanit. “Is King Kelen dead, or anyone of his family?”

She remembered just in time that Lady Veldis was sister to the new queen.

“No,” said Veldis of Denwick, distracted. “No one from the court. The messenger was a house servant of the Duchess of Chantry.”

Her voice shook.

“The messenger was sent directly to Dan Sharn, here in the gardens . . . for a surprise.”

The king was suffering front the greatest surprise of his life; for Sharn Am Zor it was as if the sun whirled in the heavens. Queen Lorn had run to him, hearing the name Chantry, the name of his mother's chief attendant. She saw the blood drain from his face as he recognized Zelline's fair round script. She drew him aside to a stone bench while he broke the seals of the package and read what was written. He uttered a cry; then he could not speak.

Lorn took the letters from his lap and read them. Zelline, Duchess of Chantry, had written with wild informality in violet ink, her words eating up a whole pink page from a lady's writing case.

Sharn, my dear friend!

You may hear in some roundabout way, as news travels between Balufir and Achamar these days, that your lady mother, Queen Aravel, has been removed from Swangard to the royal manor of Alldene.

It is generally believed that her condition has worsened, and indeed the poor lady is in weak health. But the truth concerning the queen is wondrous and strange and can no longer be kept from her family. A change began to show itself some five years past and continues to this hour. Please read this letter that I send to you and share the joy and thanksgiving of all who attend the queen.