The Heirs of Hammerfell (29 page)

He confided his anxieties to Gavin, and Gavin laughed. "I know what you mean," he said. "If this were a ballad, there would have to be another complication, preferably with a great battle, to make a satisfying ending."

"Well, I certainly don't want that," Conn said. "By the way, how goes it with King Aidan and his Queen?"

Gavin, who had been checking in with the king each night, replied, "The lady is safe in Renata's hands, and while her recovery may be slow―and it's hardly likely she will ever be her old self―it's unlikely she will be gravely incapacitated either. As for the king, he crossed the Kadarin late yesterday and should be reaching the foothills this evening."

"You must be a powerful laranzu," Conn said, "to reach him that far away."

"Not really," Gavin said. "I actually have very little laran; it's mostly the power of the king that holds the link. It seems that you are the truly powerful laranzu; in fact, you could probably survey the condition of the lands and tenants from here," he gestured around the solar, where they were sitting, "and save yourself many hours out on horseback in bad weather."

"I like riding," Conn said calmly, "and as for bad weather, you haven't seen any of it yet." But he thought about what Gavin had said. "You really think I could see much from here?"

Gavin shrugged. "Try it," he said.

Conn took out his starstone and focused on it, lying back against the pillows. Suddenly he seemed to have risen and crossed to the windows, but when he looked back, he saw himself still sitting in the chair. He took another step forward and floated through the window and down to the ground. He was starting to walk down the road from the castle when he remembered some old stories he had heard, about leroni who flew on the

mountain winds, using large gliders. He didn't have a glider with him, but then, he seemed free of his body at the moment, so perhaps ...

Apparently simply thinking about it was enough; he1 found himself floating over the trees. Should he go to Hammerfell? No, he'd ridden all over those lands yesterday and the day before―and he had always wondered what lay on the far side of Storn's borders.

Several minutes of drifting brought him to a point over a large stone keep. Scathfell, he thought, remembering Storn's comments about Aldaran. On the wings of thought he

moved over fields and hedges, crowded with flocks of woolly sheep. Near the main part of the keep many men were gathered. It's not harvest festival nor a hiring fair, he thought, can it possibly be time for a roundup, a sheep shearing? But as, impalpably, he moved closer, he noted that none of them bore shearing scissors and that most of them were armed with swords and pikes. Half a dozen men in what looked like Aldaran livery, with the blazoning of the Aldaran emblem, the double-headed eagle, were mustering the men into squads that looked alarmingly like an army. ...

But why was Scathfell raising his men like this? There was no conflict in the hills, except his own family's private feud, and Aldaran had never interfered in that. But raising them he certainly was, to judge by the look of it. Conn could not at the moment imagine why.

I had better go back, and perhaps send someone out with a glider, if only to gather more information about what is happening in these hills. He was beginning to understand that there was more to ruling Hammerfell than administering the tenants or even making decisions between farms and sheep.

Maybe I should have a long talk with Lord Storn and

find out more about the business of a great estate like this one. Although of course this is really more Alastair's business than mine; Mother expects me to return with her―and Floria―to take my place there in the Tower for training. But am I to be a laranzu for the rest of my days? he wondered. It did not seem like the kind of work he would be

satisfied to do forever; and yet he knew in his heart that if he remained here, he could only dilute Alastair's authority with the men who had come to think of Conn as their young duke. But it did not seem right for him to desert his people, or to stand peacefully by while Alastair adopted Storn's policy of turning men off the lands to seek work in Thendara or elsewhere, in favor of the endless sheep.

He had been trained to be responsible for these people! Did Alastair have the least concept of what it meant to be Duke of Hammerfell? For that matter, did his mother even know anything about it? She had married into the line when she was a young girl.

He could not blame her; but the fact was that she probably knew almost nothing

whatever about it. For a short time Conn drifted, caught up in his personal dilemma; but Scathfell was mustering, and he must somehow act―he must get back to Storn Heights and Gavin.

Thinking about Gavin, Conn found himself suddenly back in his body in the solar. His friend-swiftly gauged Conn's mood and said, "What's wrong?"

"I don't know for sure that anything's really wrong" Conn answered, "but I don't understand what's going on. . . ." He described what he had seen at Aldaran.

Gavin looked grave and said, "The lady Erminie must hear of this."

Conn didn't know what Erminie could do about it.

but Gavin seemed so sure that he did not protest. Erminie came into the room at Conn's summons, took her own starstone, and went to see for herself. When she opened her eyes again they held a look of fear. "But this is terrible! Scathfell is arming, and marching against King Aidan's people. He has at least three hundred men."

"Against Aidan! But he has only an honor guard," Gavin said. "Perhaps twenty men at best."

"He will think we lured him into these hills without knowing," Conn said swiftly.

"Someone should ride at once to warn him―"

"But no one could reach him in time," Erminie said despairingly, "unless . . ."

"Well, I could try," Gavin said without much hope, "but it is hard enough when it is night and all is quiet―"

"Three hundred men," Conn said in dismay. "King Aidan could not face so many with only his honor guard even if we armed the bears and rabbits."

He was restating an old proverb; but to his surprise Erminie smiled.

"We can do that," she said.

20

For a moment both young men stared at Erminie as if she had taken leave of her senses.

Then Gavin said, "You're joking, of course?" But he did not sound sure.

Erminie said, "I never joke about such things. Were you joking when you told me Aidan has only an honor guard with him?"

She sounded positively hopeful; for the first time, Conn realized the vast implications of laran power. He could feel, as within himself, his mother's unwillingness to use all she knew; and with the knowledge came a kind of sympathy for her. Suddenly he knew the difference it could make, would make, not so much in the battle (which he did not yet understand), but in the way people would forever after regard his mother or anyone else who called upon such powerful forces.

Although she had worked for many years as a

leronis in the tower in Thendara, there she was one of a group, and people took little more notice of her laran gifts than of her skill at needlework. In Thendara, she was Erminie first, and a leronis second. Here in the mountains, where leroni were scarce, doing something this dramatic would make her visibly different, forever alienated from those who would be her neighbors. She would never be allowed to forget it.

She looked up at Conn. "You must help me," she said, "all of you must. This is going to be complicated, and we have so few of us with any laran: me, the two of you, Floria, Lord Storn . . . Conn, do you know of anyone else on these estates who has laran?"

Conn shook his head, while Gavin protested, "But, lady, I have so little laran―I never had any training ―I'm not good for much of anything!"

"What little you have, we need," Erminie said grimly. "But for the moment, you can run errands. Find Storn, Floria, Lenisa, and that swordswoman governess of hers, and bring them here―quickly, please."

Gavin ran from the room, and she turned to Conn. "We need Markos, and you're closest to him. Call him."

Conn started to rise from his chair, but she gestured him back impatiently. "No, we haven't time for you to ride out and find him. Concentrate on him― call him like that!

Think at him, make him feel that something is terribly wrong and we need him here at once. If he starts calling up the men on his way over, so much the better; we'll need them all."

Conn concentrated, furrowing his brow with the effort. Markos, come to me; I need you.

He was quite surprised when Markos appeared,

and more so when his stepfather clearly thought nothing of it, taking it for granted.

Gavin came back, with Lenisa and Dame Jarmilla; Alastair with them.

"Alastair! I'm glad to see you up and about," Conn said.

Dame Jarmilla said crossly, "He shouldn't be, you know; he's still as weak as a kitten."

Erminie explained quickly what she meant to do; to transform any wild animals she could find into the semblance of an army. "There would not be a proverb about it if no one had ever done it," she said.

"It is not a laran I've ever heard of," Gavin said.

"It was better known in the old days than now," Erminie said. "Shapechanging has given rise to many legends; but I have never done it; there were those in my family who, they say, could transform themselves at will into wolf, hawk―I know not what. It is

dangerous for humans to do this; if they keep that form too long, they can take on the characteristics of the beast-kind. A part of it is simple illusion, of course; they will not be as human as they look. They will be able to carry no weapons but those nature has given them. And in the case of a rabbit, that is not very much. Still, they can be useful to us nonetheless."

"I don't know anything about it," Conn said, "but we will be grateful for anything you can do to help us; one blood feud at a time is enough. How will you get them?"

"I can call them to me," Erminie said. "So could you, I think; do you want to try?"

But Conn was too far out of his depth to try anything of the sort. And gratefully left that duty in the hands of a more experienced leronis.

"Bring them to me now and I will do what I

must," Erminie said, and Storn seemed to understand. He picked up his starstone, and a little later when Conn looked out the window, he saw that the clearing around the building was rapidly filling with the wild animals of the woods.

There were rabbits and rabbit-horns, hedgehogs and squirrels, and there were two or three small animals that even the woods-bred Conn did not recognize. But there were also bears.

Erminie studied them all, thoughtfully. After a time she got up and went out, moving among the animals. "When I change them, it will not give us the army we need except in illusion," she said, when they came out to join her. "The rabbits will still be rabbits, and will run away rather than fight if they are threatened."

That, Conn imagined, made sense. But what of the bears? He and Floria were still

closely in rapport; and she said quietly, "I hope the appearance of a vast army will stop those of Scathfell without need for confrontation, I do not relish the task of controlling a bear in human form!"

Conn didn't either. "Not in any form!" he said; but by that time Erminie had approached the nearest of the animals. She threw a little water on it and said in a low voice, "Leave the form you wear and put on the form of a man."

As Conn watched, the animal, groaning in protest, stretched out, and a small man stood there; clad in brown and gray, he was bucktoothed and―as Erminie had said―he was

essentially still a rabbit; but in form, at least, he looked like a man. Now Conn knew what she had really meant when she promised to arm the bears and rabbits against

Scathfell.

When Erminie had finished her work, it seemed that an army stood before them―but, he understood, it was still an army of wild things. Alastair understood this, too, and said,

"They cannot really light for me, even in human form―"

"We hope they will not need to fight," Erminie said. "But I can give you a bodyguard who will defend you to the death." And so saying, she called Jewel to her; the old dog came, and as she had done in Thendara, looked long in her face; then, as she had done with the other animals, threw a little water in her face, saying; "Quit that form you wear, and take the form your soul seeks."

"Why," exclaimed Dame Jarmilla, "It's a woman!"

Erminie said, "Yes, but she is like you―a warrior." She said to Alastair, "She will fight for you as long as life is in her body; it is in her nature to defend you."

Alastair looked at the fed-haired woman who stood where the dog had been. She was roughly clad in leather and wore a sword at her waist.

"This is the―this is Jewel?"

"This is the form Jewel has taken to guard you," his mother answered. "This is the true shape of her soul, or at least this is akin to how she thinks of herself." And Alastair remembered that Jewel had guarded him since he could remember. In fact the old dog was one of his earliest memories.

"But if she is not to fight―"

"I did not say she would not fight," replied Erminie. "It is her nature to defend you―I said we hope it will not be necessary for the other creatures to fight; they will look like an army, and that is probably all we really need, but they could never really defend us."

Jewel crouched at Alastair's feet; he expected at

any moment that she would begin licking his hands, and wondered how he would

respond if she did; she was still a dog, but she did not look like a dog; she looked like a woman warrior. Only her eyes were the same: wide, and brown, and devoted.

21

Alastair waited in the bushes for sight of Scathfell's army. His own force―the pitifully few real men and the "army" his mother had raised by giving the bears and rabbits human form, waited with him; so many that if Scathfell―or his military

advisors―caught sight of them he would turn and run―or so Alastair hoped.

But if Scathfell―with the use of his laran―could tell what had been done, what then?