Zandru's Forge (17 page)

Jandria emerged from the crowd, walking arm and arm with Maura like sisters. Her eyes flickered to the empty dais. “We’ll see little of Rakhal tonight, as he’s taken over all the personal duties of the King’s paxman,” she commented to no one in particular.

“You say that as if it is not a good and noble thing,” the second youth said.

“Don’t be so sensitive, Lyondri!” Jandria replied.

“We are all aware of how dutiful Rakhal is,” Maura said at the same time.

“And if one of us should happen to forget,” Jandria went on without drawing breath,
“you
will surely remind us. Ay, me! They will be at least an hour setting up here and in the King’s quarters. Let’s find Orain and sneak off.”

“I’m here,” Orain spoke from a pace behind Carolin. He moved so silently and stood so still, Varzil had not noticed him approach. Courtiers edged by them, muttering excuses. “Rakhal sends his compliments and bids us go on without him. ”

“Then let’s get out of here before we’re trampled,” Maura flinched visibly as a courtier brushed against her. “We’re directly in the path of the kitchen traffic.” She turned to Lyondri. “You’ll join us?”

Lyondri nodded and held out his arm for her. Jandria followed by herself and Orain beside Carolin, leaving Varzil and Eduin to follow.

A young servant girl, flushed with exertion, jumped sideways to avoid a lady’s beribboned skirts and stumbled under the weight of her burden, a huge pottery jar. She collided with Eduin and the jar splashed wine in every direction before sliding, miraculously unbroken, to the floor. Dropping to her knees, she tipped it upright, but not before a pool of garnet liquid had escaped. Then she looked up to see the dark splatters across Eduin’s fine
linex
shirt and jacket.

“Oh, sir!” she cried, her face reddening even more. “I’m so sorry, sir!”

Eduin brushed at his jacket, but it was no use. The droplets had already sunk into the fabric.

“Oh, -sir!” The girl was almost in tears, growing more incoherent by the instant. With her bare hands, she tried to scoop up the spreading puddle. She reached up as if to wipe Eduin’s clothing, but he jumped back.

“You stupid—” Eduin cried. “Don’t you touch me! Haven’t you done enough?”

The girl cringed, bracing herself for a blow.

She has been struck before.
No servant at Sweetwater was ever beaten, no matter what the shortcoming. Dismissed, yes, or judged and punished. Dom Felix had once ordered a man hanged for poisoning a well that led to the deaths of two children. But that had been an act of deliberate malice. A beating would scarcely improve bad luck.

“Eduin, you’re flustering the poor child—” Varzil began.

“Look at these stains! How can I dine with the King looking like this?”

Varzil had never seen Eduin so distressed, and over such a trivial matter. Then he remembered how Eduin had strutted his borrowed finery earlier in the evening. Varzil’s own family might live simply, but they had lands and servants, warm clothing, decent food, fine horses to ride. No necessity of life was ever lacking. He had been presented to the
Comyn
Council in attire as fine as theirs, had been accepted among them as an equal. He had never—and now he looked at Eduin with new insight—been poor.

Other details came back to him, Eduin’s obscure origins, the rumors of his birth being the unwelcome result of a liaison between a well-born lady and a stable hand, even his hair, muddy brown instead of the shades of red so common in those with
laran.
No wonder Eduin had always seemed so serious, often grim, about his status at Arilinn. No wonder he had reacted with jealousy to any intrusion into his friendship with Carolin, his resentment of Varzil’s more rapid advancement. Varzil could only imagine what scars he hid behind those polished barriers, what fears that the little he had in life might be so easily taken from him.

Varzil crouched beside the girl, focusing his
laran
through his starstone. It was a simple enough matter to increase the surface tension of the wine. Instead of a sheet of liquid, quickly spreading on the the floor, it assumed a rounded shape. By further tightening the outer layer, Varzil was able to gather it up like a bag of jelly and ease it back into the jar. The girl, who had been watching with fists pressed over her mouth in astonishment, gave a little cry.

Varzil helped her lift the jar and balance it in her arms. With a look of naked adoration, she hurried away.

“Watch where you’re going!” Eduin called after her. “Varzil, I am not the Keeper of your conscience, but you need not have wasted your laran trying to help. The chit was clumsy and should have had to clean up after herself. That’s the only way people like her will ever learn.”

Varzil doubted that being publicly humiliated and beaten would teach the girl anything except that nobles were to be avoided. Remembering Lunilla’s kitchen wisdom, he said, “Those wine stains should lift out easily, especially if we do it before they set.” He lowered his
laran
barriers in an overture to work together.

“I don’t want your sympathy!” Eduin snapped. “And I certainly don’t need your help!”

Varzil drew back in surprise. Eduin had been courteous, if not overtly friendly, since they’d worked together in the circle this last year. He had no idea what he had done to deserve such a response—maybe nothing. Perhaps he was merely a convenient target.

Ah, Varzil thought, not all the smiths in Zandru’s forge could mend a broken egg or a man’s stubborn nature, or so his father was fond of saying.

“Shall I tell the others you will join us shortly, then?” Varzil said. Under other circumstances, he would have remained behind, so that Eduin would not be left alone in such a bewildering place. Clearly, his own presence was as much an irritant as the splatters on the ivory brocade.

Varzil wandered down the corridor to Carolin’s chambers, past standing guards and closed doors. Maura stuck her head out of the largest door and beckoned to him. “Sean,” she called to the guard at his post outside, “watch out for Eduin.”

Carolin’s sitting room was almost as large as the family gathering hall at Sweetwater. If all the suites were this big, it was no wonder the castle sprawled over so much territory. Varzil glanced around at the richly patterned Ardcarran carpets, the panels of pale blue translucent stone, so smooth and perfectly matched that they could only have been set by matrix work, the deeply cushioned chairs and divan, the low table of blackwood set in a mosaic of ash and mother-of-pearl. Warmth swept across his bare face from the fireplace with its marble mantle carved in a life-sized relief of Aldones, Lord of Light, and his son, the very first Hastur, the one who had become mortal for love of the Blessed Cassilda and thereby founded the clan of his name.

Carolin and Orain had already made themselves comfortable on the divan facing the fireplace, with Jandria in an armchair. Lyondri shifted from one foot to the other as if unable to make up his mind whether to stay.

Maura drew up one of the two remaining chairs at a comfortable distance from the fireplace and gestured for Varzil to do the same. The chair was wooden, although of graceful design and excellent crafting, softened only by a needlepoint cushion. She settled herself, back straight, feet primly tucked beneath her skirts and hands folded in her lap.

Varzil took his own seat. “There isn’t another chair for Eduin.”

“We can send Sean for one,” Carolin said.

“That rather defeats the purpose of posting a guard, if you insist on ordering him about on menial errands,” Lyondri said. “Maybe things are different at Arilinn.”

“I think the three of us can manage to defend the honor of the ladies, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Orain said laconically.

Lyondri scowled and was about to respond when Jandria broke into laughter and said, “Orain, we can take care of our own honor!”

Maura added, lightly, that with two and a half Tower-trained
leronyn,
the half being Carolin, or three and a half when Eduin showed up—they had nothing to fear. “I rather suspect it is
we
would end up defending poor Sean and not the other way around.”

But no one made any comment about there being nothing to fear, here in the family seat of the Hasturs. The powerful Kingdom of Hastur might be at peace for the moment, but that did not guarantee personal safety for the King or his heir.

Ariliinn, with its Veil which admitted only those Gifted with
laran,
was an isolated fortress. In a circle, in the training rooms, even in the evening gatherings, people shared an intimacy of mind. Surely no outsider could penetrate that community.

“What is it?” Maura bent toward him.

Varzil shook his head. A little shiver, half premonition, crossed his shoulders. “I was thinking about Arilinn, which is so—so self-contained.”

Lyondri asked where he had come from before Arilinn. Though the question was posed politely enough, it had an edge, like a blade slipping noiselessly from its scabbard.

Varzil took no offense, though he knew one was intended. There were currents within currents here, like a river with hidden rocks and shoals, deepness and unexpected eddies, rapids to slam a boat onto hungry rocks. The sunny moss-laced banks, like the sumptuous furnishings, were a lure and soporific for the unwary. He did not yet know where his allies lay, or which practiced smile masked self-interest and malicious intent.

He replied, pretending the question was nothing more than a courteous inquiry, but before he had said more than a few words, Eduin arrived at the same time as a bevy of servants bearing trays of hot spiced ale, bread, and winter-crisp apples and bowls heaped with honey-glazed nuts and round cookies redolent with spicebark. Varzil recognized them as a special Midwinter treat, with their dusting of sparkling honey crystals. He noticed, too, that Eduin’s jacket had once more been restored to its pristine appearance, Varzil felt the faint residue of the mental power Eduin had used to remove the wine stains.

“Ah, Eduin! You have saved us from starvation!” Carolin cried. Taking the bowl of nuts, he offered them to the others. Maura took a few, as did Orain and Lyondri, but Jandria said she’d wait for a proper dinner.

At the smell of the food, Varzil felt a thrill of nausea. He instantly identified it as a combination of the natural fatigue of a long journey and the expenditure of his
laran
in gathering up the wine. He bit into a sweet bun and refused the hot wine, knowing how potent it would be, as hungry as he was. He needed to keep all his wits about him.

Eduin, too, helped himself to the energy-replenishing sweets, although he accepted a steaming goblet. For a long, awkward moment after the servants had left, the new friends sat or stood, feigning concentration on their food.

Carolin broke the silence, directing his words at his cousin, Lyondri. “Rakhal is slow in joining us tonight. Has he forsworn our company?”

“He is much in the King’s attendance since you went to Arilinn,” Orain said with an odd hesitation.

“You say that as if it were not the proper role for a kinsman,” Maura replied tartly. “Yet who else should tend His Majesty in his time of need?”

Carolin paused, setting the nut bowl beside the other vessels. His brow furrowed and a tightness crept into his voice. “I was not informed the King was ill. Why was word not sent to me at Arilinn?”

“He hasn’t been ill, not exactly, nothing more than the natural infirmities of age,” Maura said. “For some ailments, there is no cure.”

“There was no reason to disturb you,” Lyondri added. “Prince Rakhal has personally supervised every aspect of the King’s care.”

“Prince
Rakhal?” Carolin said, his head coming up. “Have we become so formal with one another?”

“He is the son of the King’s younger brother,” Lyondri said, bowing to Carolin, “even as you are of the older, Your Highness. Your return to Hali has brought you one step closer to the day when you take the throne. You must therefore assume the dignity of your rank.”

Carolin glanced from Maura to Orain and his cousin, Jandria, to see if any of them took this statement seriously.

“We are no longer playfellows together, with no greater thought than tomorrow’s amusement,” Maura said gravely. “Lyondri has the right of it ”

“Maura, I never wish to be anything but your true friend,” Carolin said.

“You will someday be my King,” she insisted, “and that is a fate neither of us can escape.”

Carolin reseated himself beside Orain and stretched his legs out toward the fire. “Please do not trouble yourself on the matter of titles. There are enough forces in the world to drive even brothers apart, without the need for artificial distinctions. Here, in this room, we are cousins and friends together. Surely we all remember the hours we played together as children in these very halls. Come now, sit here at my side, Lyondri. Be at ease. Let us enjoy this festival time, renewing our ties with old friends and greeting new ones. There will be time enough later to discuss affairs of state.”