The King's Name (23 page)

"So where exactly is Ohtar?" he asked Atha.

Atha looked intently at the map. "This blue line is the river, yes?"

"The blue line is the river, this black line is the road we are on, and this circle is Caer Tanaga, where the other roads join."

"Then he is—" Her finger circled and stabbed. "Here. Between the road and the river, and also on the river in boats, some his and some ours."

"I wonder what our enemies are doing," Cadraith said.

Then he looked at Inis in alarm, as if afraid his question would be answered in horrible and dubious detail. Inis ignored him, ignored all of us, gnawing away on a chicken leg that seemed already bare of meat.

"The same as we are, I expect," Urdo said, setting down his bowl. "Making camp, eating. What I wonder is what they want."

"The kings want not to pay taxes," Cadraith said. "Not to have to maintain the alae now the Jarnsmen aren't such a threat. Not to have to keep to the Law when it doesn't suit them.

To rule the barbarian way their fathers ruled, and their ancestors back before the Vincans came." He looked at Atha, who just smiled.

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"They would not have gone to war for that," I said. "They want that, yes, but they can see that the Peace is good for everyone. They remember what it was like before."

"Do they?" Darien asked. "I don't. Cinon is only seven years older than I am. Flavien was his father's youngest son and a young man at the time of Foreth. I'm not sure how old Cinvar is—"

"He's a year or two younger than I am," I said.

"Even so, that's not old enough to remember the wars at my father's death," Urdo said.

"You're right. That generation is almost gone. Of all the kings who fought then, only Guthrum and my mother are left. But Flavien and Cinvar must remember the War."

"They remember we won it," Masarn said.

"That's right," said Cadraith. "They don't think of Peace as something that needs to be won fresh all the time, the way you said at Foretii. Even though it's written down in your law code. My father would have loved that.

He believed that, and old Duke Galba. It was the Vincan way, even though your Peace is a new Peace. But what does it mean to Cinvar, except that you stopped a Jarnish invasion?"

"That thought is nowhere in Tir Isarnagiri," Atha said. "Each king makes the Peace, and it dies with them, and their law with it. It was an unusual thing mat I kept Darag's peace and his laws after he died, although he was my husband. Next year, when our son takes the crown, if he keeps them it will be considered amazing."

Urdo sighed. "Still, I don't think I pushed the kings too hard. I doubt they would have risen up, however resentful, or allied with Arling, if not for Morthu."

"Black heart and poisoned tongue," Inis said, in a confirmatory way, without looking up.

"What does Morthu want?" Atha asked.

"Power and importance," I said. "He wants to make himself High King. He calls himself the grandson of

Avren; he schemes and makes alliances with whoever he thinks will help him."

"If he wanted that and was prepared to put all that effort into it he could have had a good chance at becoming

Urdo's heir," Cadraith said. "That way he'd have got to take over something whole, not something broken."

"I think he wants it broken," Darien said quietly. We all turned to look at him. "I know him; I knew him when he was young, at Thansethan. He hates all of us. He thinks we killed his mother and poisoned her memory.

He doesn't want to take over the kingdom, though that's probably what he told Arling and his other allies. He just wants death and destruction and everything broken to pieces." He paused, and looked at Urdo. "I said years ago that I would ask your permission before fighting him. I am asking that permission now. I am a man grown, and a trained armiger."

"You are also the person we can least afford to lose," Urdo said slowly, with a strange expression.

"That is a heavy burden you lay on me," Darien said.

"I know," Urdo replied, smiling faintly. "I have been carrying it for long years without realizing how heavy it was, until now when I set it down."

Inis laughed, and looked briefly at the two of them. "Better than any old bowl," he said.

"It's not as if the whole war could be settled champion against champion," Atha said, looking at Darien speculatively and ignoring Inis entirely. "If everyone would agree to put the weight of the war on that, it might be worth risking, if we had someone very good. Darag won a war that way."

"And hated himself for the rest of his life after, all his lives," Inis said, rocking backward and forward, eyes tight shut.

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I wondered if he were seeing into other worlds now, looking for one where his grandchildren were happy and alive. I looked away from him uneasily. Darien and Urdo were still looking at each other. I could not read their faces. "Can I fight him, if it comes to that?" I asked.

Urdo looked at me, and back to Darien. "Neither of you may challenge him. He is no fool to settle for a single combat. What happens in the field is different. Certainly if he were dead this war would be a very different matter."

"He should be mine to kill," Darien said, like someone who knows their argument has been incontrovertibly countered.

"He is a talker, not a famous fighter, that I have ever heard," Masarn said. "He was in my pennon and he learned as well as most, but not better. I'd say Sulien or Darien could take him, or I could, come to that."

"They say he knows sorcery," Cadraith said.

"Who says so?" Urdo asked.

"He says so himself," Atha said, surprising me. "He claims the reputation of his mother in his letters, trying to awe and overpower his would-be allies."

"Has anyone seen him doing sorcery?" Urdo asked.

Darien stirred, but did not speak.

"He read Gunnarsson's dreams," I said. "You did not want to believe him an enemy. He may claim to be a sorcerer to make himself seem more powerful. I would not give him reputation he does not deserve, but better that than be caught unawares and burn like tallow the way poor Geiran did at Caer Lind."

"Very well," Urdo said. "We will consider that he may be a sorcerer. That is another good reason for not fighting a single combat, even if he would agree to it."

Cadraith shifted uneasily. "We don't know for sure that Darien's right," he said. "Morthu is more dangerous if he wants to destroy everything, but I've seen no signs of that, only of wanting to make himself High King.

We've gone straight onto talking about combats as if we were sure that was the truth."

"I know it is," Darien said.

"If he is a sorcerer it makes it more likely he wants to destroy everything," Masarn said. "It would take a powerful lot ofhate to do that."

"It's a terrible thing to want," Urdo said. "Even his mother just wanted to be safe, in her way, walking the path she saw in her madness. But I think Darien is right even so."

"It makes no difference," Atha said, glancing at Inis, who was staring at his hands in his lap and ignoring us again. "It sometimes helps to know what your enemies want, but it's rare enough to be able to give it to them, and we would be wanting to deny him all of it in any case. If Suliensson turns out to be right we may be able to separate Morthu from his allies in negotiation.

We don't lose anything by trying."

"He's very good at talking," Masarn said. "He always has been."

Urdo yawned. "Tomorrow we will meet with their leaders. At worst we will buy enough time for ap Meneth and

Luth and ap Erbin to join us, and maybe Alfwin as well if he can. At best we will come to an arrangement.

Raul is visiting their priests even now to see if they can help—most priests of the White God will negotiate to save lives."

"Let's hear what they say they want," Cadraith said. "They might not be foolish enough to fight now they've seen us on the field."

"Cinvar has lost that army," I agreed. "He might want to slink off home himself now."

"We will have to fight Arling," Masarn said. "We will have to get him out of the city and fight him."

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"It does seem unlikely that he will just agree to go away," Urdo said.

"And only six stood scatheless at the battle fought at Agned, and the bloody hand of battle brought dark death to both the islands," chanted Inis gleefully. Then he began to cry like a baby, and Atha made apologies and led him away.

—13—

Lady of Wisdom, guide thou my thoughts, aid thou my strategy, let my words fall clear on the air from my lips to listening hearts.

Let me be lucid.

Let me be heard.

—From "Charm for Rhetoric"

The ala doctor, ap Darel, woke me. He was arguing with X Govien outside the tent about whether it was too early to wake me or not.

"If it's an emergency you can call her," Govien was insisting, loudly, right outside my tent.

"It's not an emergency, but I've never seen anything like it before, and I wish Sulien would come and see," ap

Darel said firmly.

I yawned, stretched, sat up, and poked my head out. I obviously wasn't going to get any more sleep mis morning.

"Oh, Sulien," Govien said in obvious relief. I had slept longer than usual. The sun was well up, and visible, too, in a blue sky.

"Anything urgent?" I asked. Both men shook their heads. "Then is there any chance of hot water?" I asked.

Govien frowned anxiously. "If you really need some, I expect so. The cooks have the fires lit."

"I'll use the stream," I said, pulling myself to my feet. "I see you, ap Darel. If it isn't urgent I'll speak to you

when I'm clean."

I walked down to the stream. The cooks' assistants had marked off a place upstream for drawing drinking water. So many had come down to bathe that it seemed as if a whole ala was in the water together. Even

Cynrig had shaken off his modesty for once and was splashing about with the others. I plunged in to join them. It was a warm morning, but the water was as icy as if it had come straight from the twin peaks of fire and ice on the island on top of the world. Rigg had been there, I thought. Emrys had. I knew then that however vast the world might be I would never leave the island where I was born. Then Masarn splashed me and I whirled around to splash back. I went back up the slope goose-pimpled and needing to rub myself down, but with a much clearer head.

Ap Darel was still waiting outside my tent. "I can show you here, quickly, I think," he said. He took my arm and frowned at the scratch I'd taken yesterday at the battle. "Yes. Look at your arm."

I looked. The scratch was red-rimmed and slightly swollen. I looked at him in sudden alarm. "Poison?" I

asked. "Is there much of it?"

"No poison I recognize," he said. "And ineffective for one. But it must be something like poison. It seems as if everyone who was hurt yesterday has a wound that looks angry and is healing more slowly than it should."

My scratch hurt, now I was thinking about it. I frowned down at my arm. Normally I would expect something like that to have scabbed over already. My arms bore the light scars of a dozen similar scratches I had taken over the years, and there had been at least as many that had
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healed without leaving any mark. I remembered how tired I had been after the healings the night before. "I will come and see some of your cases after I have eaten," I said. "I've never seen anything like it either. It might be they poisoned the weapons. Though I wonder how Cinvar could have persuaded his people to agree to that. Or maybe they cursed them? Now I think of it I

have read of a curse called the weapon-rot. It is named in the charm I sing over any cut that bleeds."

"It is in my charms too. And I have read of it in Talarnos," ap Darel said, looking horrified. "He says the

Malms suffered from it long ago. He says their wounds turned green and full of pus, and then their blood became poisoned, the wounds turned black, and the patients invariably died.

He treated it with spiders' webs and salt water, and said it was not found among civilized people but only among the barbarians from across the Vonar. He thought it not a curse but a disease."

"How could it be a disease? Diseases spread between people, they don't infect wounds!"

Ap Darel shook his head. "Talarnos was a frontier army doctor two hundred years ago. The useful half of his book is charms for when you haven't picked up the weapon. Maybe he didn't know much about disease."

"Well, now," I said, as briskly as I could. "Whether it is poison, curse, or disease, it is nothing like what

Talarnos describes. It is at least a red swelling, not a green one." The thought of a green wound was too horrible to contemplate.

Ap Darel frowned. "Can you see if there is anything you can do?" he asked hesitantly.

"We are not in Derwen," I said. "And I do not think it is a disease. But I will look."

I closed my eyes and felt for the scratch on my arm. Then I reached out for the Lord of Healing.

He was there, part of the structure of the world. Concentrating, I tried the charm for preventing weapon-rot. It was the same as when I had tried to send Darien back before he was born. My will could not connect to the god's power. I

tried to see what was preventing me, but I could not. The gods were there. I knew better than to call on them for no reason, but I could feel then-presence threaded through the world where they needed to be. There was some invisible barrier preventing that one charm from reaching the Lord of Healing. Another god? Somehow it didn't feel that way. A person? I tried to push against it but it slipped away from me. Eventually I opened my eyes to see ap Darel watching me curiously.

"The charm isn't working," I said shortly. "It is not a disease, whatever else it is. I will see the wounded, and then I will speak to the High King."