Kings of the North (49 page)

Kieri nearly choked at that. “Elves magelords? No, they are not so!
They are Elders, like the rockfolk, older and wiser than men. But yes, that is my sword now—it always was, but it was lost when my mother was killed and I was taken.”

“I would see this magic sword,” the king said.

“As you will, if you trust me with a blade in your presence.”

The king shrugged. “As you said, if you wanted to kill me, you could already have done it. I think a man bearing your scars is unlikely to kill an unarmed man sitting still and offering no insult.”

“It is hanging just outside,” Kieri said. He called again, and this time Arian answered. “Bring my sword, please, and then withdraw if the king of Pargun wishes it.”

“I am as happy with a witness,” the king said.

Arian brought in the sword and offered it formally to Kieri, laid over both hands. Kieri took it the same way.

“No one can draw it now but me,” he said. “In proof of that, try it—” He held it out to the Pargunese, who stared a moment.

“You know I intend to kill you and you are giving me a magic sword? Are you indeed blind in the mind?”

“No,” Kieri said. “But you are a man who wants proof, not words. You will find proof.”

The king took the sword; Kieri ignored Arian’s indrawn breath, and waited. A hand on the scabbard, a hand on the grip—the great green jewel of the pommel was dark and almost opaque. The king tugged. Nothing happened. He tried again; Kieri could see, under his sleeve, the bulge of his muscles. Again. The king looked up.

“So there is a trick to it?”

“Not a trick. Hold it so, and I will but touch the scabbard.” The king kept his grip and Kieri put his hand on the scabbard, a light touch. The king’s hand flew off the grip as if hit; he yelped. The sword swung toward Kieri, who put his own hand on the grip; the jewel burst into light, and he drew it singing from the scabbard, the blade glowing blue.

The king shrank back in his chair a moment, looking from the sword to his own hands. “I—it threw me off!”

“It did not harm you—”

“No—but I could not hold it when you touched it. And—” He eyed the blade again. “—and it is certainly magic, whoever made it.” He kept looking, as Kieri sheathed the blade and handed it, on its
belt, back to Arian, who withdrew with it. “If I had known this—known it, not heard vague tales—it would have suggested we might have a common enemy, but it still does not affect your treatment of my daughter.”

“I treated her with all honor,” Kieri said firmly, sitting down again. “She came uninvited, as you know; what you may not know is that she arrived before her baggage, having ridden away from her escort and tried to escape them. They followed at speed; they could not stop her, but were with her when she came to the palace in the dead of night.”

“I was not told that.”

“I presume they were ashamed at having lost her, even for a short while,” Kieri said. “While I slept, my staff gave them rooms to suit their claims of royalty; I did not see your daughter until a day later, after she had rested and her baggage arrived. In the meantime, another uninvited princess had arrived, from Kostandan.”

“From Kostandan? Who would they send, that half-cripple Ganlin?”

“Half-cripple?”

“Did she not limp along half-sideways? She fell from a horse as a child and could not walk at all for most of a year—she is some kind of relative of my wife’s, so I heard things.”

“She limps but little, and only when she is tired,” Kieri said. “A pleasant girl, but another who did not wish to come. Her aunt is a formidable woman, and I wonder now if she told such tales when she returned home as your daughter’s escort did.”

“There can be no good tales told,” the king said, his expression hardening.

“Can there not? Listen, then. Your daughter—and the Kostandanyan princess—had rooms in the guest wing of the palace. Their attendants were nearby, unless they were warded by female members of my household—King’s Squires, in fact, well able to protect them should the need arise. They had the freedom of the rose garden, when their attendants permitted. When I met them at dinner, they and their escorts, they were both unhappy to be here—”

“And no wonder,” interrupted the king. “Seeing what came of it.”

“And each desired a private audience. I chose instead to speak to them only in company for some days. The couple escorting your daughter told me she was your pledge of desire for peace, a strong
girl and perhaps willful, but certainly able to bear me strong sons. I asked if she was willing, and they shrugged—the woman shrugged—and said she might take some persuasion, but I was surely strong enough to master a mere girl.” Kieri paused; the king said nothing. “I am not minded to ‘master’ the woman I marry and force a girl who does not want me. ‘Court her but a little,’ the woman said, ‘and she will realize her good fortune.’ ” Kieri poured himself a mug of water and sipped. “It sickened me, but I did not yet know the girl was truly unwilling, and for courtesy I agreed to talk with her. We walked in the rose garden.”

“Roses are a soft southern flower,” the king said.

“My mother planted that garden,” Kieri said. “I would not change it.” He sipped again. “So we walked, and I asked her why she had come. She answered shortly at first, but finally said she had been drugged and carried away in the night. With my history, you can imagine, perhaps, how that affected me.”

The king looked thoughtful. “I did not know,” he said. “Now I see … it made you remember …”

“I always remember,” Kieri said. “And I would not marry an unwilling woman, certainly not one who had been treated that way. I told her so; her first expression was relief, but then fear. I asked what frightened her, and she said your anger. You would punish her, she said, and she would never have the life she wanted.” He paused again; the king’s expression had softened slightly. “That is when she told me about the knife, and about what her guardians had told her were your orders.”

The king’s eyes flew open. “Orders I did not give. I will not say I never thought of that, because I did, but in the end I rejected it. No child of mine should play assassin; it is unworthy of royalty to do such deeds, and she, in particular, would feel that.”

“But she thought you had. She begged my help. She begged me to contrive an escape for her. She would do anything, she said, be it never so hard or humble. She would cut her hair and dress as a boy; she would cut herself and scar her face; she would … she had a double-hand of ideas, most involving mutilation or death. She seemed in the mood I had been in, not caring if only I could escape.”

“But I didn’t—”

“She thought you had,” Kieri said again. “She acted on what she
had been told. Have you not done the same, and I as well? Do not all men, if they have been told plausible lies, believe them and act accordingly?”

“Perhaps … yes, I suppose so. But Elis …” His hands clenched and unclenched.

“She went on her knees to me, as if she were my subject, and would have clasped them, promising obedience to any orders I might give her—as long as they accorded with her desires, that is.”

The king gave a harsh bark of laughter. “
That
is like Elis. Obedient to my will when my will ran with hers.”

“I reminded her that might look ill, should her guardians be watching, and said I would think on it, but could promise no more for the time. I would, I said, keep secret our conversation and asked her to do the same. Then I took her back inside, and bowed over her hand, and had my interview with the other princess—with Ganlin.”

“From what Hanlin says, she is far more biddable than Elis,” the king said.

“Indeed she may seem so—she is younger by a few years, I think—but she was no more interested in marrying me than your daughter. Her injury and pain have taught her more patience, but her determination I judge not less. She first met your daughter a few years ago, in Kostandan—”

“My wife took Elis to visit her own parents. Apparently Elis behaved badly, and they came home early. She was found instructing Kostandanyan princes in the art of riding.” The king’s voice carried a mix of pride and ruefulness. “She wore trousers to do so, and her grandmother was scandalized and scolded my wife for her leniency.”

“Ganlin admires Elis greatly; she is not as strong but has in some ways modeled herself on the Elis she saw in that visit. According to her, Elis is her best friend; they have written each other secretly—”

“What!”

“Using a courier between Pargun and Kostandan; I do not know who, because neither of them wants to get the fellow in trouble. At any rate, Ganlin knew of Elis’s plans to have her own horse-farm, and planned to run off and join her there.”

“Ridiculous!”

“On that I agree. Young people that age easily develop hero-worship
of an older, more striking relative, and given time and freedom, outgrow it. Aliam Halveric’s son Cal followed me around like a puppy when I was first a squire, but he had other models, and though we are friends now, it is no more than is proper. But still, when Ganlin also asked my help to escape the fate her father intended, and told me she, too, had been apprehended and forced to come to my court, I decided to help them.”

“By sending them to …” the king did not quite say “brothel” this time, but his eyes said it for him.

“By sending them, at my expense, where they wanted to go—to a knights’ training hall. I could have offered the choice of training with the Girdish, but Falk, I thought, would be more acceptable to you and to Ganlin’s father. I was wrong, but did not know it.”

“At your expense—you are not living off their pay?”

“Surely you have better spies than that!” Kieri let his anger show. “Falk’s Hall is not some Girdish grange welcoming any farmer’s brat who can pick up a hauk: the fees are high, and the students cared for as if they were the Knight-Commander’s own … within the limits of the training, which is long and difficult.”

“But they have both men and women there … it must be …”

“A place where well-born young men and women train to become honorable warriors, and some to become paladins.”

“Oh, paladins!” The king sniffed. “Troublemakers, those are.”

“Only for those desiring evil,” Kieri said. “Look here—I am willing to admit that your ways are different from ours, and that you may not intend evil, yet do things I think are wrong. But to sneer at paladins—”

“
She
says they are troublemakers,” the king said, making a hand-sign Kieri did not know.

“She?”

“You know. The Lady. The Weaver.”

Kieri’s blood ran cold. “You are not speaking of Alyanya the Lady of Peace or the Lady of the Ladysforest?”

The king looked blank. “I know neither of those ladies. I mean the true Lady, the Weaver, she who knows all secrets.”

That could mean only one being: Achrya, Webmistress, who had attacked Kieri and those he loved so many times.

“You mean Achrya,” he said.

The king made another gesture. “You must not say her name; she will be angry.”

“I will be angrier,” Kieri said. “Have you, then, been in league with her all these years? Was it
you
who connived at the death of my wife and my children, and yet you come complaining because I gave your daughter a chance at an
honorable
life?” Kieri felt his old rage rising within him, a white fire that yearned to consume the man who had killed Tammarion, their children, and yet would not have dirtied his own hands with the deed. “You made war on my children!” he said, knowing his voice hoarse with that rage.

“I—no!”

“When?” Kieri demanded. Some part of his mind told him to fight the rage, but he did not want to listen to it. Not with the memory of Tamar, of the children—

“Peace,” said a voice. Kieri managed to turn away from the king, and realized only then he had grabbed the man’s shoulders and held him down. “Peace,” the voice said again, and calmness filled Kieri’s mind even as the glow of elf-light filled the room. His grandmother stood in the doorway, watching him. He bowed.

“You have a strange way of seeking peace,” she said. “I could feel the taig flinching from my own home and came to see what was afoot.” She turned to the king in his chair, now rubbing his shoulders with both hands. “And you,” she said. “You boasted of never having seen an elf, did you not?”

“Who are you?” he asked. And then, jerking his chin toward Kieri, “He hurt me.”

She chuckled. “Hurt your pride, maybe, but not your body. Kieri, grandson, you will introduce me to this man.”

Kieri realized then that he had never asked the king’s name, and fell back on titles. “The king of Pargun, my lady. And this is the Lady of the Ladysforest, the ruler of that elvenhome kingdom.”

The king stood and bowed. “My lady. I do not know the correct address—”

“No matter,” the Lady said. “I suppose you are come chasing your wild daughter?”

“Er … yes.”

“She will not go with you. She does not trust you.”

“She must, or my people will come and burn the forest with scathefire that does not die.”

The Lady seemed taller and brighter. “That will not happen,” she said. She turned to Kieri. “Was it for this threat, and to save the taig, that you frightened the taig into retreat?”

“No,” Kieri said. His anger felt cold and hard now, a cold ember of the fire before, but still solid in his mind. “He follows Achrya and I believe he planned the deaths of my wife and children years ago, with her help.”

Her brows went up. “Well, king of Pargun? What say you?”

Before the king could speak, Kieri saw the thread of elf-light that coiled around him. The king would be compelled to speak truth.

It came out in Pargunese, in a rhythm that sounded more chant than speech. “When we came up the river, fleeing the magelords’ slavers, the Earthfolk granted us landright from the river to the hills that lay between the forests and the horsefolk fields to winterwards. They said go not beyond the great falls, for there demons reign. But the slavers came and harried the river shore, and some of our people were taken. Beyond the falls the slavers could not go, and beyond the falls we went, only to be safe from harm. Then came the Lady, the Weaver, and gave us patterns of power for our women’s looms, so the cloth of our sails never rots nor tears in the wind’s grip. We could live there, She said, and worship what gods we would, as long as we did her bidding from time to time. It was her land first, she said.” At first, he said, she had asked little, but king by king she had entered into the councils more and more … and yet she had brought peace and prosperity mostly, until the magelords came from the south. “And then was war, and blood like water, and bones like stones in the ploughed ground, and without Her aid, we would have perished. So are the words I learned from my father, and he from his, and he from his, all the way back to the beginning of our time.”