The Willful Princess and the Piebald Prince (13 page)

Long I stood, and others came to pack in around me after the better vantage points were taken. I was hot and my head ached and my legs pained me long before the high folk of the keep entered. And when the dukes were seated on their cushioned and gilded chairs and when the lesser nobles had found their places on benches and all were settled, at last the musicians struck up a grand tune, and Lord Canny Farseer and Lady Wiffen entered. Slowly they paced to their high seats, and though I wondered at the absence of the Duke of Buck, no one near me commented on it, and so I chose to keep my silence as well.

This lordly one and that lordly one took a turn to speak, and all of it was the same: here before us was Canny of Buck, the heir to the crown and throne that his father, as King Virile’s brother and next in line for the throne, had ceded to him. To hear them speak, King Charger and Queen-in-Waiting Caution had never even existed. Tears came to my eyes and doubtless those near me thought me a sentimental fool to be so patriotic during those dull speeches, but in truth grief wrenched me.

Then Canny Farseer stood and accepted the will of his dukes and agreed that he would accept the crown of the Six Duchies. Then came all five dukes walking in slow procession and bearing among them the crown on a blue cushion. And at that, a sigh of wonder and a mutter of curiosity went up, for had not that crown vanished when the ‘pretender’ to the throne had disappeared? And though Canny Farseer had been grave of mien up to that moment, I swear that I saw a smile pass briefly over his face, so greatly did he enjoy the crowd’s astonishment. Then he held up his hands, his arms spread wide for silence, and promised that now would be revealed all to them.

Copper Songsmith rose to come and stand before the assembled dukes and the would-be king. The years had passed unremarked between us and he had never seen fit to claim his son, even though the resemblance was such that none could have missed it. He and I had never been more to one another than a few bumps in the night. Yet he had taken Redbird as his apprentice, and somehow I had expected better of him. I was surprised at how deeply wounded I felt when he took up his instrument to strike up a fine and stirring melody and then in his lovely resonant voice, accompanied by his clever fingers on his harp all ornamented with turquoise and opal, sang as dark a string of perfectly rhymed lies as has ever been sung. The refrain was stirring and memorable: a quatrain about how the purity of his Farseer blood pounded in his veins as Canny did that which he knew he must do, and slew the beast-wizard who sought to take the Farseer throne.

It had to have been all arranged, and yet it seemed so spontaneous. As Copper Songsmith sang of how Canny had triumphed in his battle with the evil Witted enchanter, and how he had stooped to lift the disgraced crown from the dirt and wipe the stain of tainted blood from it, the dukes passed the crown from hand to hand until at last the Duke of Bearns set it up Canny Farseer’s head.

And at that there rose such a roar of approval that every person in the hall who had been seated came to his feet. People stamped until the stones rang with echoes and cries of “King Canny! King Canny!” deafened us all.

And so it was done. The crown was set on his brow and the cheers rose. His dukes retreated and returned again with a crown for Lady Wiffen and she became Queen Wiffen Farseer that night. And while all watched the royal pair, my eyes sought for my son and found him at last.

I had not marked him when he entered the Great Hall, for he was dressed all in black rather than his usual piebald attire, and a tight-fitting cowl of black scarfed his copper locks from sight. My eyes ran past him, pitying the wandering minstrel so wan and worn before I looked again and recognized my own son. Sometimes it takes seeing someone you love as a stranger to notice all the changes to them. Illness and sorrow had hollowed his cheeks and sunken his eyes so that he looked a decade older than he was. I doubt that even his own king would have known him at a glance, and surmised that all there thought him murdered or driven away with the others of the Piebald Court. So he stood, suddenly an old man, neglected in the corner, while lesser minstrels stepped forward one by one to sing of the queen’s beauty or the king’s bravery.

Then someone called for Copper Songsmith to sing again of how the king had slain the Witted Pretender. And so Copper stepped forth and once more sang his lies, embroidered with all the artifice of a master minstrel. Once more all heard of how the king had challenged him, vowing to break the enchantment he had put upon his wife, and how they had fought, with Charger constantly changing from one beast to another, each more terrible in form, until at last Canny slew him by hewing his great bear’s head from his massive shoulders, so that the evil enchanter fell to the earth once more in the form of a man.

Silence held in the hall through this telling, though a brief cheer rose again when Copper sang once more of how the king had rescued the dishonored Farseer crown. Quiet washed back through the Great Hall as this time Copper finished every verse, telling how the king called forth his most trusted friends to help him to do what he knew must be done to ensure the slain beast-wizard did not rise from the dead. They hewed his body and burned it over water, and thus the dreaded beast-magic was vanquished and the Lady Wiffen’s mind cleared of the cloud the Witted one had put upon her.

A lone tear rolled down that lady’s cheek, and she leaned her head against her husband’s shoulder. Many a sympathetic sniffle I heard amongst those gathered, and I found myself wondering how much of this falsehood Wiffen herself believed. Then my eye fell on my son, and dread rose in me. For as Copper Songsmith swung into the final refrain of his falsehoods, I marked how Redbird slowly stood taller and how his eyes began to burn.

Every coward may know one moment of courage. So it was with my Redbird. For in the deep of evening, as the queen herself pressed the prize purse into Copper’s cupped hands, Redbird Truthsinger pushed his way through the crowd to the cleared space before the throne and the false king who sat upon it. Then, before all the court, he craved a boon of King Canny, that he might make gift to him of his last song before he departed the court of the Farseers forever. King Canny raised his brows, plainly unaware of who stood so boldly before him. To this day, I think Canny believed him a wandering minstrel hoping to earn a few coins with a flattering tongue.

The end is swiftly told. Redbird set his harp before him and struck a commanding chord. For a brief time he played but notes, but they were of a power and progression that stilled tongues and drew the attention of all present. And then, louder and more clearly than ever he had sung before, he told his truth. He sang of King Charger walking in the garden alone, and how his minstrel had come to join him and how the king had bid Redbird flee. He spoke of climbing the tree, and name by name, he sang of those who had come and how they had ringed the unarmed king.

Faces paled and the king stared, while at his side his queen sat as stiff as if turned to stone. Redbird’s voice was true and strong, but abruptly King Canny seemed not to wish to hear the end of the song. No sooner had he begun the verse that told how Lord Curl drove a knife into King Charger’s back and himself killed young Lord Lock than King Canny cried out that the minstrel was a traitor. A dozen men, anxious to prove themselves loyal to the new king, sprang upon my Redbird.

He had never been a hearty man, and his long confinement had made him only more frail. A big man kicked him hard, driving his harp into his breast. He flew backwards, already limp. I heard his skull crack as his head struck the stones. He did not move again. I shrieked, over and over again, but my cries of anguish went unheard amongst the screams of anger and horror that rose from those around me. Then the room spun and had there been room for me to collapse, I would have. But the press of bodies held me up and though I felt as limp and paralyzed by horror as my son once had been, I had to see that which is burned still into my memory: the guards dragging Redbird’s lifeless body from the Great Hall.

And then, quite suddenly, a raven glided suddenly down from the high corner of the Great Hall. He fluttered and he jibed, like a day-bird baffled by the shadowy hall and the flaring torches. Then, as he swept low, causing people to duck, he made a final swoop and struck from King Canny’s head the crown he had falsely claimed. As men shouted and ladies shrieked and all cowered away from his passage, he circled the hall three times, cawing as he did so. The queen shrieked and sought shelter behind the false king’s throne. From the left and the right folk pressed and surged against me as they sought to flee the gallery. The king shouted angrily for an archer, but the raven vanished as he had come, swooping over men’s heads as he flapped his way out of the Great Hall.

A panicked girl pushed me hard and as I fell to my knees she clambered over me in her panic to escape. Battered and half-trampled, I crouched, hands over my head, adding my wild sobs of sorrow to the cries of fear and anger that filled my ears. When I finally came to my senses, enough time had passed that the king and his dukes were gone, and half the gathering fled as well. I pulled myself to my feet and staggered back to my room. Alone. Alone, as ever I will be now.

And so Redbird’s tale ends. It took all the courage I could muster to go to the guards and asked after the body of the last minstrel. They told me harshly that he had been judged a Witted one, and hanged and quartered and burned over water, and thus there was nothing left to claim. Some were mocking as they spoke, but one old man had the grace to be ashamed. And as he hurried me away, he told me in a hushed voice that the wandering minstrel had been dead when they took him from the hall.

So now I shall roll this scroll around the one my son made, and a second one as well, as he asked of me. One seal I have broken, for I wished to read every word of his last song, the one he was not allowed to sing to the end, to see if he had guessed that which I now know. He did not, and as a truthsinger, he would not have written that he could not verify. But I can and I will. So I will end this account as I began it, by speaking of events to which Redbird was not a party. And yet I will vouch for the truth of them with as honest a tongue as ever a minstrel had, and will put my truth alongside his, to be found a day or a decade hence.

A winter of storms followed King Canny’s coronation. The hunting was bad and an ice storm such as we had never seen before broke the roofs on two grain warehouses, leaving us short of bread for the first time anyone could remember. At Buckkeep Castle, the court was less populated than it had been in previous years. The storms kept folk inside, the long days were dreary and the superstitious began to see ill omens in every broken cup or sputtering hearth-log. The queen had fainting spells and twice it was feared she was losing her child. A storm that lasted three days lashed Buckkeep Town so that the main dock was carried off on the waves and two ships sank despite believing themselves in safe harbor. Just as the weather began to warm, a disease swept through the byres and many a cow lost her unborn calf in blood and lowing. I would have blamed the poor hunting on the fools who had killed our best hounds for the crime of being spotted, and the disease on the fools who had driven away the Witted folk who once had tended Buckkeep’s stables, coops and barns. Instead, many saw it as a curse put on the castle by the Witted folk, and throughout all the Six Duchies persecution of them grew only the harsher.

Yet all winters must end, even those infused with grief and injustice. Spring came, and with it kinder weather. Thaws melted the snows and the early crocus began to bloom. The queen became less pale and sickly and ate with a better appetite and her child swelled her belly. Farmers planted and as the fields began to sprout, Queen Wiffen was delivered of a boy-child, hale and hearty. His birth was celebrated far more than even the birth of a prince deserved, for all seemed to feel it marked a turning point and an end to our ill fortune. The heir secured the throne and the Farseer line. All would now be well.

And when the prince was two months old, I stood with the others to watch his name bound to him in the old Farseer tradition. Courage was his name, and his father passed him through the flames and poured the earth over his head and chest and dunked him well. All saw it as a good omen when the boy sputtered, sneezed and then laughed aloud for the first time in his life.

That laughter spread throughout the observers and as the boy was lifted high, I joined in. For as King Canny elevated the naked prince that all might behold him, I looked on proof that he was truly the rightful heir to the crown. For on the back of the child’s left arm, I saw that which I had seen also on his father’s arm; a small birthmark in the shape of a dark bird with outstretched wings.

And so I write here, in a clear hand, as my son Redbird would wish, the truth of the prince’s lineage. Prince Courage Farseer, may he prosper and rule long, is the son of the rightful king, King Charger Farseer, son of Queen-in-Waiting Caution Farseer, daughter of King Virile and Queen Capable Farseer. And grandson of Lostler of Chalced, Stablemaster and Witted one.