Kings of the North (22 page)

“So I could,” Arianya said. “In fact, that was my first intent, to see if it matched. But seeing again that embroidered cloth, so like an altar-cloth, it occurred to me that we might learn more—and more safely—if the pieces were brought together in a place of worship.”

“I will consider,” the king said. “Understand, Marshal-General, it is not my greed that wants those things in my treasury. Duke Verrakai bade them rest here. I am not certain how they will react if moved.”

“You did not mention that at first.”

“I did not think of it until we were here, faced with them, and I recalled how they seemed to obey her.”

“I do wish,” Arianya said, “that she was not quite so full of virtues. Centuries of Girdish predecessors tell me she should die, and yet—”

“She’s not evil,” Paks said.

Arianya eyed her. “I haven’t said she was. It would be easier on me if she were, that’s all.”

“We could test them,” Paks said. “What if we tried to move them to another room in the palace?”

“What good would that do?” Arianya asked.

“If they’re obeying her command to stay here … maybe we can’t.”

Arianya sighed. That abundant energy, that flow of ideas, could
be exhausting. The other paladins weren’t like that—well, not all. Camwynya, she reminded herself, was much the same.

“We could try,” the king said.

The king signed out the box, explaining that they wanted to test something. He lifted it from the chest. “It’s heavier,” he said. He took a step, then another. “And heavier yet.”

“Let Paks try,” Arianya suggested. “It was her idea; maybe it will trust a paladin.”

The king handed the box to Paks, and she took another step. “No,” she said. “It grows heavier with each step. Let me see.” She turned back toward the chest; her arms bobbed up a little. “It’s lighter now—almost weightless. And it’s tugging me toward the chest.” She turned back to the door; her arms sagged. “It doesn’t want to go anywhere. I think we have no choice but to leave it here.” Once more facing the chest, she nodded. “It’s very clear—into the chest or nowhere.”

“Well,” Arianya said. “That settles it for the present. I am still concerned, Sir King, that if it is obeying someone else, it may not be safe to house in your treasury.”

“It has caused no trouble so far,” the king said. He grinned at her, suddenly looking more his age than kingly. “It is a welcome guest, but I will not claim ownership.”

“It wants in the chest,” Paks said. “May I put it back?”

“Certainly,” the king said.

Paks carried the box to the chest; it seemed light in her hands as a feather. She laid it in the box; light flared for a moment and then subsided.

“That’s new,” the king said.

When Paks replaced the other items and closed the chest, the lid—plain wood as it was—seemed to grow into the rest of the chest, so it looked all one piece.

“And that,” the king said, eyes wide.

Arianya felt a pressure in her head and then a voice she did not know.
We are not your enemy
. “Are you not?” she said aloud; the king looked at her oddly. “It spoke to me,” she told him. “I would let it alone.”

“I intend to,” the king said. “And if it speaks to me, I will be prudent—” His face changed expression. Then he relaxed and shook
his head. “Well, it told me I was not its enemy and it would abide here until its sovereign came to take it away.”

“But is its sovereign your enemy?” Arianya asked. “Witting or unwitting?”

NO!
came the voice in her head, and by the king’s expression, it said the same to him.

“It is lonely and wants to go home,” Paks said.

“It spoke to you, too?”

“Not spoke—more like sang. It is from far away and grieving, homesick. I don’t understand it all, but I believe it is right to protect it, and then … then something will happen.”

“Something always happens,” Arianya said. “Perhaps it will happen in the time of the next Marshal-General and not on my watch. At least you need not worry about thieves.”

H
alfway from Vérella to Fin Panir, Paks suddenly reined in her horse. “I must go,” she said.

“What—you have a call?”

“Yes. Somewhere south …” The red horse jigged, sidling off the road and bobbing his head.

“Do you know what?”

“I never know what,” Paks said with a grin. “But I must go—I’m sorry, Marshal-General, but there’s no time.”

And with that she was gone, the red horse kicking up clods from a field as he surged into a gallop.

“Well,” Arianya said to her horse. “You are not going anywhere that fast, so don’t get ideas.” The rest of the journey to Fin Panir, she put her mind firmly onto her many tasks, including finding the right young Marshals for Duke Verrakai’s domain. And the necklace … should she send it to Vérella? If it joined the rest of the regalia—and would the box open for that?—it would be safe from thieves, but she felt certain no thieves would breach the treasury in her own hall.

Cortes Andres, Aarenis

J
eddrin, Count of Andressat and the South Marches, sat in the cool of his loggia on the east side of his residence, overlooking the walls of Cortes Andres. He had a fine view of the pastures where his horses grazed, steep vineyards, and the walls of a village clinging to the slope, its white walls gleaming in the late afternoon sun. Though the day had been hot, on this side of the house he had a little breeze, and the damp cloths his servants had hung chilled the air just enough to make it pleasant.

He had been up at dawn, as always, for a Count of Andressat (as he said daily to his sons and grandsons) must be diligent if he was to do the best for his people. He had duties, not merely privileges; it was in the performance of such duties that a true nobleman distinguished himself from pretenders, those who thought wealth alone or power could make gold from lead by painting it yellow. Ruling—ruling well—could never be easy, and was less easy now, though he had hoped—believed—that with Siniava gone, it would be easier.

He had claimed the South Marches, the cities of Cha and Sibili that Siniava had ruled so badly, and at first this security on his southern border gave them all confidence. His son-in-law Narits governed Cha; his son Ferran governed Sibili. That should have given Andressat direct access to the Immerhoft trade, but he had recurring problems with Confaer, the only port he’d captured, and pirates controlled the island that lay in the harbor’s throat like a stone. Andressat wine and
Andressat wool piled up in the warehouses of Confaer, easy prey for thieving gangs—pirates ashore allied with pirates afloat. None of the allies of Siniava’s War had the resources or will to help him clean out the other port cities or the island towns.

Other problems had arisen, as well. Duke Phelan had allied with Alured the Black in Siniava’s War to gain unhindered passage through the southern forests and so outmaneuver Siniava’s army and pin them at last. Alured now claimed the title of Duke of Immer and moreover claimed it was his by birthright, not merely conquest.

That led everyone the Count knew to ask him, for he was known as a genealogist, possessor of the most complete archives of Aarenisian families and their relationships, whether Alured’s claim could possibly be true. Jeddrin was sure it was not, for Alured had none of the qualities of nobility.

The man had been a pirate from nobody knew where, had made a reputation at sea, then—for no reason anyone knew—had come ashore and begun gathering a force in the great southern forest that lay between the Immer valley and the Chaloquay drainage. Phelan had befriended him and used him in Siniava’s War, but Phelan was—had been—he had
thought
Phelan was—merely a northern duke, whose title reflected nothing of blood or bone.

And now Phelan was shown to have had royal blood after all, royal and elven, and he had treated the man as a mere mercenary captain. Well, that was done and he could not undo it, but he did not want to make any mistakes about this new Duke of Immer.

Now, having brought up another stack of documents from the family archives, he spread them on the table and began looking them over.

He ran his eye down the pages of a bound book—very old, the leather binding flaking away; he preferred scrolls—recording the yields of wheat and the produce of vineyards in a time before his father’s father’s father’s father. Rainfall records, damaging storms: the same kinds of records he himself kept. Nothing in that one about families, politics, or even trade. He put it aside for a stack of flat sheets tied with a ribbon faded gray from its original color; it had left marks on the outer pages. He turned them one by one.

One page had genealogy … he recognized his great-great-great-great-grandfather’s name at the bottom in spidery writing. Up the
page … he began jotting the names down; this was older than the Family Roll in which he’d listed his sons.

The sheet beneath, the ink much faded, bore the inscription “To the right honorable, the faithful, the most noble Va-Jeddrinal—This being the copy you asked for, the which I most humbly present for your pleasure, of the oldest known record in the north, of the Fall of Aare and the King’s Quest, as recorded by Mikeli himself in the fifth year of exile in the north.”

Jeddrin stared. No one had a copy of the Fall of Aare, though the story was known. The lords of Aare suffered a defeat of some kind and came north across the sea … could this treasure have lain so long in his archives unrecognized? Apparently so.

In another hand, the work began, “I, Mikeli, heir of the kings of Aare, sing the lament of Aare’s fall, the Sandlord’s ruin, the towers that shattered and the waters that vanished, as a lament but also a warning to those who follow, that they may escape the ruin that still roams the world below.”

That was plain enough. Ibbirun, the Sandlord, god of chaos, had sent waves of sand to swallow the cities of Aare. Jeddrin felt his skin prickle with awe and dread. He read on and on, as the light faded and servants brought lamps and food and drink. He ate nothing, absorbed in the story he thought he knew, but had known wrong, from the start. Though the language was archaic, he had studied old texts before, and few of the words puzzled him.

When he finished at last, in the dark, silent hours, and lifted his gaze to the sky, the stars before morning hung before him, challenging. The men of Old Aare, the men he had thought of with respect—his ancestors, those who had survived the Fall and the hard journey north, the sea and its storms, to land on the shores of this land and conquer it, who had even—in attenuated blood, as he thought—gone over the pass of Valdaire to conquer the north—those men, those magelords, had not been, but for Mikeli and perhaps a few others, the nobles of Aare.

They had been servants, crafters, merchants, and—Mikeli made it clear—thieves and whores as well, the scum of the city, lifted on a tide of disaster and tossed away, while the nobles—nearly all of them—died.

“For of the princes of Aare, and the princesses, the lords and
ladies, all those of high degree, now so few are left that to populate one palace with those of pure blood is scarcely possible …”

The nobility of Aarenis, Jeddrin read, had been created out of what was left: “As I was sent ahead, to be saved against my will while all around me knew their doom, so I must do what I can to redeem my guilt, and theirs, and make this story plain … and for Aare to continue in men’s hearts, I must create from nothing a semblance of its greatness.” Mikeli then explained how he had chosen this one and that to be duke or count or baron and how he had striven to ensure that literacy survived, and arts and crafts.

For a long bitter time Jeddrin stood looking out at the night, hands clenched on the railing of his loggia. So the despised mercenary captain proved a true king, the born son of a king and an elf-queen, while he—who had been so sure of his lineage—traced back, as the tale made clear, to a stonemason and a count’s bastard daughter. Kieri Phelan was royal, and he himself as common as dirt, all his pride of blood based on lies, on the accumulated wealth of a fellow—a great-father those many generations back—who was strong and honest—the qualities for which he was chosen—and whose wife, chosen for him by the prince, could read and write. Mikeli in his wisdom—if that is what it was—had assigned masons to the stony lands and wood-crafters to the forests.