Heriot (9 page)

T
he foremost rider, the stranger, was a man in blue and gold wearing a golden helmet that was also a crown. Lining himself up neatly on the left hand of this crowned figure rode Lord Glass, while on his right was the magnificent man who only a few hours ago had tried to kill him, dressed in velvet and lace now, but not too grand for Heriot to recognise. And he could feel the man’s inner shock, like some sort of echo of his own, as their eyes met.
How did he
get here?
they were both asking themselves. But he dared not spend time staring back at his enemy. Instead he let his gaze slide on to the fourth rider … a white face looking out of the shadows of the black hood. As he met the eyes staring out of this white face, they blinked rapidly and the face seemed to shrink away from him, deeper in under the hood as if it were trying to hide in shadows.

And now, in spite of his pain and his tiredness, something ferocious happened to Heriot. He’d never met the hooded man, yet he knew him at once. He recognised the quality of the power this man gave off, and knew – beyond all doubt – that since he had been a small child, perhaps from his very birth, this man, this creature, had been aware of him, had somehow hovered over him, had somehow fed on him, feasting on the power that now seemed to be so much part of him,
and throwing him into huge disorder. At last he was confronting in a tangible form the consuming essence which had torn into him over and over again in his nightmares, triggering agonising headaches and the violent, twisting fits that had so disfigured his early childhood. He was face to face with the predator who had torn him in two and who had forced some part of himself to hide behind a black window in a lost part of his head. But up on the hillside, with Cassio’s Island on his right hand and his home on the left, that protecting division, that black glass, had dissolved. He might be confused. He might be troubled and exhausted, but, standing there in the city of tents he was almost a single man once more.

‘Dysart! Who is your friend?’ asked the crowned rider in a grave and formal voice.

‘He’s just – oh, someone I saved,’ the boy who had volunteered to be Heriot’s crutch answered, with something almost impudent in his voice. ‘As you would know, Lord King, the edge of a battlefield is a great place for saving people.’

‘Those others tried to kick me to death,’ Heriot mumbled, ‘but this one saved me. Maybe that’s why I’ve sat on his windowsill all those years – maybe I needed him to know me when the time came.’ The men on horseback stared down at them in silence. Their expressions didn’t change, yet Heriot felt an odd startlement thrilling through them, as if he’d just answered a riddle they’d been asking themselves for years … a riddle they had all largely derided. ‘I knew him straight off,’ Heriot said, then paused. ‘But I know only one of you,’ he added, lying quickly, somehow knowing that lying was the safest thing to do just then. ‘I know Lord Glass.’

Now Lord Glass opened his mouth, but the boy called Dysart raced in to speak first, glancing sideways at Heriot.

‘You’re in grand company,’ he said. ‘This is my father, the King of Hoad. And that’s Carlyon the Hero of Hoad, and
Izachel, the Magician of Hoad.’ He spoke the formal titles almost impudently as if he were making fun of them.

There was no way of truly taking in everything he’d been told. For all that, Heriot felt himself straightening, and then, incredibly, he felt his battered face twisting into a smile – a smile he had smiled only once before. He felt that smile fly out from him … and felt the riders receive it … each one in a different way, though, momentarily, they all seemed to shrink from him.

‘Some Hero!’ Heriot said, directing his smile at Carlyon.

‘Just for a moment my breath was quite taken away from me, but I can clarify things,’ Lord Glass said quickly. ‘Lord King, this is none other than Heriot Tarbas, the boy who …’

The crowned King turned sharply, interrupting him.

‘What? The one who …’

‘That very one, Lord King. Right at this moment he might look like a scrap left over from the battle, but, I promise you, he has the power. Dr Feo will confirm it. Heriot Tarbas, it seems as if you have had some adventures since I saw you last.’

Still partly supported by Prince Dysart, Heriot continued to stare at Carlyon, Hero of Hoad. He dared not look at the Magician – that shadow of a creature – just a little beyond the King and the Hero.

‘Too many adventures,’ he said at last. ‘Too many to tell about. I’m nothing but a secret man.’ He saw the Hero’s tight expression alter, and saw his hand, which had moved to hover over the hilt of a sword that hung at his side, move back just a little. ‘I climbed and fell,’ Heriot said. ‘Broke a rib maybe.’

He barely understood what he was saying or why he was saying it. It was partly because he feared that, even in that grand company, the Hero might strike him down. Yet, even as he lied, he felt the secret he shared with Carlyon suddenly twist and turn into a sort of power within him, for he knew
something about the Hero of Hoad that no one else knew, and the knowledge was not to be carelessly spilled and wasted.

‘I think, perhaps, I should take Heriot Tarbas to the Doctors’ tent,’ Lord Glass said. ‘After all, he’s from my country. His family are my people.’

‘And I’m coming with him,’ said Prince Dysart quickly. ‘After all, I’m the one who found him. I rescued him.’

‘I’ve sat on his windowsill and looked in at him a thousand times,’ Heriot told them once again, but he was telling himself too.

‘Put him on my horse,’ Lord Glass told Dysart, and Dysart bent, cupping his hands so Heriot could put his foot on the small platform of locked fingers and hoist himself high into a saddle so grand that in a curious way it seemed to Heriot he had lifted himself into a safe room with invisible walls.

‘I’ll take him on,’ Lord Glass said. ‘Prince Dysart, you’ve been a friend to him, so walk with us.’

Heriot felt himself hunching forward, longing to lie along the horse’s neck. And as they left he heard Carlyon the Hero of Hoad saying, ‘Perhaps he is some sort of Magician, but did you see that smile he gave us? He’s a monster as well as a Magician.’

By now Heriot thought he might be right.

L
innet would remember for ever the way Dysart behaved when he came upon Heriot being beaten and kicked by other boys. They had been walking together, arguing and joking, speculating about the possibilities of peace – a peace that would last. They had been arguing in a curious, light-hearted way, laughing at one another’s arguments, and it had seemed to Linnet that their voices were weaving a pattern of thought in the air around them as they danced along through a little forest of ideas.

And then, within seconds it seemed, Dysart forgot her completely. He had leaped in to save the strange beggar boy as if the boy were a friend of his. And the beggar sat up, bleeding, bewildered and staring, covering one of his eyes as if seeing Dysart with both eyes was too much for him. Afterwards, though she followed them and even asked questions, it was as if she had ceased to exist. Linnet was taken aback to find how deeply this sudden exclusion hurt her feelings and how angry she was with Dysart, who was apparently able to forget her so easily. When, later that night, back in her parents’ tent, Linnet was told that she and her mother were to go home to Hagen in three days’ time, she was delighted.

‘I’ve had enough of it here,’ she said, but her mother, who was brushing her own hair, did not look up or smile an agreement.

‘Your father thinks it is too dangerous for us,’ she said.
‘They say there’s an outbreak of sickness among the camp followers.’ Her voice was calm … too calm for Linnet, who wanted her mother to rejoice. She wanted her mother to make their return even more real by flinging her arms wide, and singing aloud, ‘Home to Hagen!’

So she flung out her own arms, and spun around joyously, dancing on her mother’s behalf as well as her own. She saw her skirts spinning too – a wheel of colours.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ she cried

‘Of course,’ her mother answered from behind her veiling hair, and Linnet came to a sudden stop.

‘Don’t you want to go home?’ she persisted, made suddenly uneasy by her mother’s curious calm.

‘Of course,’ repeated her mother, sounding like her own cool echo.

‘I’m tired of all this,’ Linnet persisted, not wanting to explain that somehow the third Prince, the mad one, had become a friend and, being a friend, had also been able to hurt her feelings by suddenly ignoring her. ‘I want to be home again. Will Father be coming with us?’

‘Soon … soon,’ said her mother, her words sounding like the beginning of a sad song.

‘It’s all starting again tomorrow,’ Dysart told Linnet, when they met that afternoon. ‘Carlyon’s back again. And so’s Lord Glass. They’re close to working it all out in ways that suit everyone. That’s a victory for my father. And then we’ll have a party and we’ll all go home.’

‘I’m going home now!’ Linnet told Dysart triumphantly, and this time his expression did change. He looked at her with a dismay that made her feel like a significant person once more, but, for some reason, the fact he had this absentminded power in her life annoyed her.

‘What? Now? Back to the ice and snow where nothing ever happens?’ he asked, half-jeeringly, and Linnet had her revenge by agreeing joyously.

‘It’s beautiful up there,’ she cried. ‘It’s the land of white hares and eagles. I’m Queen of the Sky in Hagen.’ Then she was suddenly alarmed to find herself sharing a secret game she’d played with her father ever since she was a little child. But Dysart had paused, his odd-coloured eyes still fixed on her face.

‘Queen of the Sky?’

‘In Hagen we’re close to the sky,’ Linnet said. ‘I can almost touch it. Someday I will.’

‘You’ll never grow tall enough,’ he declared.

‘I’m catching up though,’ said Linnet, and this was true.

In the late afternoon, still bickering, they walked out on the plain with members of both courts to witness a riding display by the gypsyish Orts, who, having been part of Tent City, selling horses to those who had lost horses in the great battle, were now about to take to the road again. Their wagons, painted canvas stretched across hoops of willow, were making ready to travel down through County Doro and onwards into the heart of Hoad. Linnet stared, as she always stared at the Orts, half-enchanted by this display of an ancient but unknown history passing by.

The King, his Lords, the Hero and his campaigners, and the Dannorad Host were seated on platforms spread with furs. Betony Hoad and Talgesi sat side by side, while the King’s Dragons made a place for Luce to stand beside Carlyon of Doro. And there, sitting on the edge of the noble crowd, was the boy Dysart had rescued only the day before, with Dr Feo standing over him. Linnet saw Dysart staring at the boy.

‘Who is he?’ she asked, annoyed once again by Dysart’s sudden concentration on this stranger. The boy had been
washed and tidied up, and dressed in warm clothes. A long thick braid of black hair hung like a rope over his shoulder. Seeing them there together, he smiled and lifted his hand, palm outward. Linnet thought there was something in his smile that shouldn’t be there. He was smiling at Dysart as if they were close friends … had known one another for many years.

‘Nobody knows,’ Dysart said a little complacently. ‘Mind you, they’re guessing away.’ She was immediately sure there was something he wasn’t telling her … something secretly thrilling. She made up her mind not to gratify him by asking any questions. But then he said, lowering his voice. ‘That’s the one, the one who’s been spying on me all these years. The one I told you about. And he knows me, too. I can feel him recognising me.’ Linnet was about to ask questions after all, but her mother’s maid nudged her into silence.

There was a ceremony in which the captured banners of the Host were given back to the Dannorad Lords … a sign of the Hoadish King’s determination that there should be goodwill and peace between Hoad and the Dannorad. And then the riding began.

Linnet had wanted to stand with her father and mother, but, once again, she found herself standing off to one side with other children and their nurses and attendants, set between her maid Lila and Dysart, with Dysart’s watchdog Crespin a step behind them. At first it was entertaining, and they all applauded the elegant tricks of the horses with true pleasure, but then Linnet couldn’t help boasting sideways to Dysart … boasting, yet again, of Hagen, of its pure skies and strange stunted forests, and of Warning, the volcano her family displayed on their banners.

‘But it’s only one little county of Hoad,’ Dysart said at last, in a lofty voice, boasting back at her, grinning as he did so because he knew how to annoy her.

‘It isn’t,’ Linnet argued. ‘It’s high above Hoad and the Dannorad …’ She sketched its height with her arms. ‘It’s the country of the air.’

‘You are the air,’ Dysart seemed to say, and she was about to smile, thinking he was agreeing that she was the Queen of the Sky, when she realised that what he’d really said was ‘You are the heir.’ She nodded proudly. Someday Hagen would all be hers. It was hers now, intricately hers, in everything but name.

‘But what if your father has a son?’ Dysart asked unexpectedly.

Linnet knew she would be displaced by a son, but she couldn’t believe her father would really allow Hagen be taken away from her.

‘I’d still be the heir,’ she told Dysart. ‘I was born first, and my father wouldn’t love anyone more than me.’

‘Crespin says your father has fallen in love with a Dannorad girl,’ Dysart muttered, pointing secretly. ‘That one there.’ Linnet looked in the direction in which he was pointing, and saw a group of Dannorad women watching the riders. At the front of the group stood a girl with long braids that fell almost to her knees. She was half veiled in the Dannorad fashion but she looked as if she might be very young and very pretty under her layers of silk gauze. Linnet thought of her father’s unexpected remoteness and her mother’s sad voice saying ‘Soon! Soon!’ She was taken over by a dark astonishment that turned almost at once to fear, swelling rapidly into fury.

‘What do you know about fathers … you haven’t really got one,’ she hissed as cruelly as she could. ‘Your father is too grand to be father to anyone – especially anyone mad.’ And she glanced scornfully across at the distant golden image of the King, sitting in the great chair, his arms folded in front of him. The honey-coloured fur that lined his helmet shone like a circle of light around his forehead, the spiked helmet made him
look as if a rod of gold was thrust down through his skull and neck to merge with his straight spine. The clothes were so grand that the face between collar and helmet hardly mattered at all.

‘I told you that,’ Dysart said, looking serenely towards the mountains. As he did so, the sun settling into the west beyond them came out from behind a bank of cloud, so that within seconds not only the sky but the mountains, the plain – the very ground under their feet, were all were dyed with a wild light.

Far out on the plain the Ortish horsemen had gathered for their final stampede. A cry set the horses galloping. The whole horde thundered towards them, the ground trembling under the impact of hoofs.

Dysart suddenly turned to her.

‘But I don’t need a father,’ he cried. ‘I’m protected. I always have been. I can feel the protection. It’s around me now. It’s never been as close as this. Watch me!’

And then, without waiting for a reply, he leaped away from them all, sliding away from Crespin who exclaimed desperately as he grabbed out for him. But Dysart had broken free – he was running out on to the plain towards the oncoming horses. He cartwheeled twice, then ran again. Almost no one saw him to begin with, except Crespin, Lila and Linnet. Linnet, impressed by a crazy exaltation in his running, was almost tempted to follow him just to show him she could be free and crazy too, but Lila caught her arm, moaning and exclaiming under her breath, while Crespin gasped and groaned and swore, as he set off running in a desperate, but lumbering fashion. He had no chance of catching the Mad Prince. Looking around wildly, hoping for some sort of rescue, Linnet saw the King and the Hero leaping to their feet, and, vaguely, saw the strange boy raising his right arm high, as if he were giving a command.

Springing into the path of the oncoming horses, bright in his crimson clothes, Dysart looked as if he was on fire. Determined rather than graceful, he came to a sliding stop and flung his arms wide as if he might fly up over the stampede. Even those riders and horses who saw him weren’t able to halt their furious pace – they rode him down and he vanished under their hoofs.

The noise was astonishing. Some of the Ortish riders, either failing to see him or too caught up in the power of their charge to change their mood, raised their clenched fists, saluting the King. Then they swept on by and were gone. The grass was crushed flat. Yet there was Dysart, standing as straight as ever, his arm still flung up high, turning towards Linnet, smiling back as if he was dedicating a clever trick to her. Linnet stared at Dysart, then, still staring around wildly, vaguely saw the strange boy collapsing. Dr Feo was bending over him – he was being watched over. She looked back at Dysart, wild, triumphant and standing tall, while beyond him the horses seethed and reared and neighed, touched by some huge alarm.

Now there was something new to be talked about. There was astonishment beyond reason … an assertion of the power of Hoad. And the next day a wild rumour began to circulate. The King’s Magician, the strange Izachel, had vanished. There was no longer a man of mystery to stand at the King’s elbow to tell who was being devious, who was lying, who was planning alternative possibilities to those the King preferred. Izachel had vanished.

But by then the King’s peace was mostly worked out between Hoad, the Dannorad and Camp Hyot. The King had been formidable, yet generous in a way no victor in history had ever been. With or without his Magician to tell tales on other men at the table, his agreements and treaties would be signed and the Peace of Hoad would become more than a dream. And, the rumours ran, he already had a new Magician, a strange
child of power. The land of Hoad might have taken away one blessing from its King but, so the whisper went, it had delivered another.

Linnet didn’t get a chance to speak to Dysart again on the edge of the battlefield, yet, on her way back to Hagen, and over the next five years, she thought about him every day, remembering him, tiny but untrodden and triumphant, making it seem, for the moment, that he was the true centre of that great plain set in the ring of mountains, able to hug the sunset, the charging horses, Linnet of Hagen and time itself, every wild moment of it, along with everything around him, to his heart.