Everran's Bane

Book View Café Edition
Copyright © 2005 Sylvia Kelso
ISBN: 978-1-4523-4185-9
www.bookviewcafe.com

For

The Four Wise Women

eluki bes shahar

Lois McMaster Bujold

Pat Anthony

And now

Lillian Stewart Carl

sine qua non

With thanks to Gordon Aalborg especially for his speedy and patient editing and for playing Virgil through the first publishing
bolgia.

And to the family members who read this book in progress and wanted more.

Where the dragon came from, nobody knows. It may have flown down from the torrid north, up from the icy south, east across the endless red deserts of Hethria, or west over the bulging blue eyeball of Nerrys'yr, the Peaceful Ocean. Whatever its origins, most people were sorry that it fell upon Everran, which was not only a small kingdom but prosperous, and not only a prosperous land but a contented one. They may have felt such a place should be dragon-proof as well as extraordinary.

As dragons go it was quite ordinary. That is, it was longer than an ocean-going ship, black, mail-clad, claw-toed, fire-breathing, winged, and ravenous. Or silver, fire-breathing, crested with stings, bearing a scorpion's tail, and ravenous. Or molten gold, crocodile-legged, fire-breathing, winged, clawed, possessing eyes that spellbound its prey before the teeth dismembered him. And ravenous. Always ravenous.

These descriptions come from eyewitnesses, or, at least, those who left at speed from a safe distance. No one close enough for accuracy survived.

Which brings me into this song: my name is Harran, and for three years before the dragon came I was hearthbard to the Everran kings. Being hearthbard, I am naturally a harper, which as naturally means, lore-keeper: the guardian of past and present, to whom truth is a sacred trust. I shall have cause to remember that, before this song ends. But I pledged myself to make it, and the holder of that pledge shall have truth entire and unbroken, however discreditable it proves to me.

My own origins are not a mystery. I come from Meldene, those high western hills where the winds riot and the yeldtar bloom crimson amid the gray rocks and gray hethel trees. People call it a hard country, grudging, dull: but if you pause to watch the sun slide on the hethellin groves, or try to number the subtle shades of gray that play amid the leaves in their twinkling galaxies, you may never crave bright colors again.

Perhaps that vision, like the memory of my parents' tall, narrow house above the gate in Vethmel, is biased by time as well as miles. After all, it is eleven years since I left for Saphar with a harp under my elbow and a most noble ambition to be the crower of the age, eleven years that have brought me from the carriers' taverns to the houses of the carriers' masters, thence to the hethel oil and vineyard owners' halls, and on to the marble floors and rosewood ceilings of the palace itself. It is a fine palace, despite its oddity. It overlooks Saphar as Saphar overlooks Everran: a thin angular heap of towers and sun-rooms and open audience halls, straggling along the thin high cinnabar scarp from which Saphar falls in rucks of red tile and golden thatch and whitewash to the loop of Azilien, whose clear blue currents girdle the city like a gemstone in a ring.

Curiously for a capital, Saphar itself was a happy town. There were few beggars, except those too lazy to work, and Everran has plenty of work. The soil of Gebria and Tirs and Meldene is too poor for our neighbors to covet, but the vineyards of Stiriand and Saphar and the hethel groves of Meldene demand much labor, and repay in kind. Hethel oil has underwritten half our aristocrats, and our wine is counted the best in the Confederacy. Since our people are too canny to breed big, expensive families, we need not export men, and our lords learnt three generations back to keep their place in things. There were cobbles in the streets, good engineers had arranged the water supply to the many fountains, and the houses rarely fell down, causing lawsuits more often than funerals when they did

I knew little of that when I looked up that first time, pausing on the bridge over Azilien. It was a clear sunset, with a sky like a vast azure bell, making the crimson-shot bulk of the Helkent ranges a mere backdrop for the city beneath. In the elbow-crook of river and range it rose upon its knoll in cornice after cornice of golden light, glossed blue with smoke, edged bright with sunset gilt, buzzing and ringing like a happy human hive. Close by came a cheerful racket from a wayside inn. Higher, a harper was playing in some wine-lord's feast. Highest of all, silver bells rang out from Asterne's lookout post, a sweet wind out of the autumn sky. I shifted my father's harp in its old leather sling, and thought:
I shall be a song-king. Here is my inheritance.

If there may be more than one kind of king, there was only one king in Saphar, as Beryx taught me the first time I played for him. It was in the great audience hall, at the feast on Fire's day. My patron was a high lord, since I was well up my peak by then, and he took me as others took their jesters or jugglers or fire-swallowers: to amuse Beryx, after the lord Iahn had been pledged on His hearth, and the real drinking of the night began.

In such a small capital royalty is not remote. Beryx had crossed my path a score of times, riding out with hawk or hound or border cavalry, banqueting in guildhalls, dispensing justice or inspecting half-built porticoes, overseeing the wine and oil weighed in market when the Confederate traders came. That night in the palace still seems my first real sight of him.

Red light from burning tarsal wood and golden light from pendant hethel lamps overflowed the hall, cascading through open arches into the sky where Valinhynga, the evening's herald, loveliest of planets, was just pricking through. In Saphar, men dress their halls in air and dress to allow for it. All down the table the lords wore fur-lined jackets and trousers of creamy Quarred wool, with gold chains of office shining over everything. They answered the silver tableware, the ruby glow of wine, the glitter of gems on the ceremonial sword sheaths propped against each chair. But at the table's head Beryx leant a little aside, chin in palm, elbow on the arm of the king's seat, and all the light of the hall seemed to gather on his royal crimson cloak, his raven hair, and his long, lazy, twinkling green eyes, that saw so much and made such a joke of it all.

Sea-eyes, the name means, so it was of sea I sang: not Nerrys'yr, the wide blue ocean, but Berfing, the green southern sea where the whalers of Hazghend stain the ice-floes red with blood. Everyone knows that in boyhood he ran away to ship with them. As I sang I could see the royal brooch, a huge circlet of whale-tooth ivory, rich cream upon his crimson cloak.

The lords clapped at the end, in more than courtesy. It made my patron flush. He was high in his clique, and ambitious of climbing higher, and had seen me as a chancy ladder rung. He called to Beryx, “Is he not a prince of harpers, lord?”

Beryx nodded. Then the corners of his long mouth went up, and he drawled, “A prince of harpers, Vellan. But not—yet—a king.”

Though Vellan was a ruddy man I saw his color fade. It was a mere moment, a tiny aside. Yet I, too, saw those eyes were the color of an iceberg's shadow, and I, too, understood.

Then Beryx looked back to me and smiled, a real smile this time. “Harpers are long-minded in Meldene,” he said. “So, you will find, are kings.”

So I went back to the lords' halls, and I wrought with my art as vinegrowers do with weeds. And two years later, when the corsairs ravaged Quarred and Beryx took his soldiers down to a great cleansing by the sea, I made a song about newer deeds.

When I finished, he leant back in the high seat and nodded toward the right side of the fire, the place of a hearthbard, which had been empty since his father's harper Quennis died.

“Bring a seat for the harper, Kyvan,” he told his chamberlain. “He has been standing long enough.”

* * * * *

The king's hearthbard is expected to entertain at every banquet, with an endless fund of songs and a fine tact in their choice. He also adorns household ceremonies, from Lords' days to chambermaids' betrothals, creates memorable lore from mundanities, and commemorates both his lord's judgments and his nobility. I had my rank, my bardic lodging, my robes and role to fill. The one flat in the strings, and that an ungrateful one, was within me. Beryx was easy to serve and easier to compliment: in three years I never had to hide one shabby deed. But in those three years I was never more or less to him than a hearthbard, and he was never more or less to me than a king.

Nevertheless, it was as hearthbard that I had attended audience, on that chill spring morning when the first news came. Counselors, messengers, plaintiffs had all come muffled to the eyebrows: I relished the fire near my own ribs. Vast blue gulfs of air spread below us over the slopes of Saphar Resh, which were all that most delicate green of newly burgeoned vines. Trying to catch it in a couple of phrases, I hardly heeded the messenger, till the silence round him made my fumblings over-clear.

“...from Pentyr, lord.” A farmer, an ordinary pharr'az, dirty breeches, wide straw hat, wide red face. But the cheeks were drawn in, and shiny with sweat. “Couldn't find a mirror-signaler nowhere, we thought best to send... There's half a deme of vineyards scorched to ash. 'N steadings burnt. My neighbor Varn.” He swallowed noisily. “We heard the screams. 'N Pensal's gone, lord. That selfsame night. Fire high as the stars... Burning. We smelt it on the wind.”

I saw general Inyx's hand clench upon his sword. He had gone against the corsairs. He knew what such burning meant.

Counselors clucked like hawk-scared fowls. In the high seat, Beryx's face was hidden from me, but Inyx stiffened when he spoke.

“Pentyr deme burnt. Pensal razed. Where was my lieutenant in the north?”

The farmer rolled his eyes up. Appalled, I saw he had begun to weep.

“Marched out, lord. All t'garrison of Pirlase, 'n Lyvar at their head. When I left 'twas three days—three days quiet. 'N never a man of 'em come back.”

Inyx's sword rasped, half-drawn, then driven home into the sheath. Beryx said, “Thank you.” Then, to the chamberlain, “Kyvan, attend this messenger. Counselors, good day.”

Counselors' mouths opened. Shut. Out they went, and the rest with them. Only Inyx stood his ground.

Beryx left his high seat and paced about. Harper and general, we watched him as he walked, wind fluting the crimson cloak, across the hall and back across, blazing, dulling, from arch to sunlit arch. Tall, and straight as a spearhaft: a kingly king.

Halting, he looked at Inyx: squat, black, gnarled as an aged hethel tree, his calling in his face. Their eyes spoke, an old comradeship.

Beryx said, “Pentyr deme. Half Stiriand Resh.”

I remember finding it odd that Inyx, usually so definite, should seem hesitant, indeed reluctant to speak.

“Lyngthirans,” he growled at last.

Beryx shook his head. “There'd have been some alarm.”

“Quarred, then.”

“Too early. And too far north.”