Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  Thundering hooves caught his attention; he did not look away, but heard one of his Squires greet the newcomers. In moments, two rangers were beside him. “Sir King?” one said.

  “Arian says it’s a daskdraudigs,” Kieri said softly. “I think it’s taken the south stable wall and most of the wall around the kitchen garden. Bless your speed in coming.”

  “We knew you were here,” one ranger said. “We came to see and met Aliam’s granddaughter on the way. We sent her on to our camp, to fetch the others. A daskdraudigs? They almost never invade set stone.”

  “It is, though,” the other said. “And something drew it, some lure.” He unslung his bow and looked through his quiver.

  “Sir King, you must withdraw,” Arian said. “You have no weapon to deal with a daskdraudigs, and I have but the one daskin arrow.”

  Kieri obeyed, joining Aliam and his family across the field from the compound. “It’s definitely a daskdraudigs,” he said then. “And they think it was lured here.”

  “Something Achrya left?” Estil asked.

  “No doubt,” Aliam said. “Thank all the gods you came to visit, Kieri.”

  “Indeed,” Kieri said, watching across the field. The rangers reappeared, one on the roof of the house and one on the forecourt’s wall. He saw them draw their bows, the streaking flight of arrows. Then the monster moved. The ranger on the house roof staggered and fell as the south wall of the house heaved up and sideways, breaking roof-beams like twigs and sending slates down in a rattling cascade.

  Estil and the other women gathered the children into a knot, closing them in and comforting those who began to cry. Aliam’s soldiers looked to him, but he held them back. “Can’t fight that with swords,” he said. “They know what they’re doing, the rangers. But be ready to move back if we need to.”

  The monster’s other end, the south stable wall, rose and came down on the rest of the stable with an impact that shook the ground where Kieri stood, then rose again and crashed into the front wall, barely missing the ranger standing on it; the shock of the impact knocked him off the wall, and he landed on the ground just outside. The ranger on the roof rolled down the slope of a sound portion into a chimney, scrambled up, and shot again and again, immobilizing that end of the monster. The other ranger, slower to rise, barely missed being hit by falling stones as the other end struck the front wall again, but his arrows flew true, and soon that end as well was immobilized.

  Was the danger over? Kieri held up his hand to still the excited clamor of voices around him. It still felt … wrong. Whatever had drawn the daskdraudigs was still there.

  The two rangers, arrows ready, clearly thought the same thing, though the monster was motionless now. Paks had said rockserpents died, became once more inert stone, safe. Was there another one? Or some other menace?

  He looked at the forest behind them. The forest taig held nothing of evil; it was alert, wary, but not hostile. Whatever evil he felt was centered there, in the ruins of Aliam’s house. That made sense, with Achrya’s visit, if the Webmistress set the lure that brought the daskdraudigs. But why did he feel evil still near if the daskdraudigs had died?

  Aliam’s people set up a camp and had food cooking before full dark. Halveric troops laid out a perimeter, set sentries. The two rangers near the house came one by one for supper but then went back near the walls to keep watch on the daskdraudigs, they said.

  Shortly before dark, four more rangers arrived with Estilla.

  “She rides like a ranger,” one said. Estilla grinned, but it was clear she was exhausted; her mother took her away for food and sleep. Kieri hoped it would be sleep. These rangers had brought many more daskin arrows from their camp and shared them out with the two who’d arrived earlier. Kieri gave them no orders, as they seemed to know what to do, and he finally lay down in his tent with the King’s Squires outside.

  He woke before dawn, in the death-hour, his skin drawn up into prickles. His sword’s jewel pulsed with light in a way he’d never seen; he drew it and had just reached the tent’s door when sentries raised the alarm, and a blast of dark malice slammed into his mind.

  Not the daskdraudigs with its slow leaching of joy and will to live but something greater. Kieri called on the taig, waking it as he’d been taught this past season, and saw—as if he had the night-vision of a full elf—the field itself heaving, rippling like a shaken rug. Nothing more was visible, but the malice bore down on him, on them all. Children were awake now, the youngest screaming in terror, the older asking questions—adults trying to soothe them, voices shaky with fear.

  Kieri struggled with his own battle-trained response, the anger that had carried him through so many times of fear. He’d been taught that anger wounded the taig, drove it away. If you rouse the taig, you must do it with joy and love, Orlith had said. Now he pushed anger aside and spoke to the taig of the love he had for Aliam and Estil and all they cared for.

  Out of the ground, from the trees behind their camp, a silvery light rose. Where it rose, the field lay still. Kieri felt the hairs rise on his arms, his scalp, his whole body. Around him, frightened cries softened into silence. He wanted to know what that light was, but he knew he must hold the taig, strengthen it, pour his love for the land and its people into it, and let the taig itself be what it was meant to be, an unfrayed fabric of life.

  Nearby, someone began a chant his elven tutor had taught him, both prayer and song to the taig. He joined in, only just aware that he was singing louder, and in the elven tongue, as the light strengthened. Across the field fire blossomed in the ruins of the stables, followed by a hideous noise as something exploded and stones rose in the air, falling just short of the silver light.

  Another voice, and another, joined his. The light strengthened again, now almost day-bright, as a wave of music flowed over him from behind. All around now were elves, a crowd of them centering on the Lady. The light spread outward from her, from them, quieting the heaving field, pushing back the malice. Kieri felt the malice retreat, though a final whirlwind of stones and dust and sticks beat at the light’s protection … and then it was gone.

  “Sir King,” the Lady said, turning to him. “Once more you bring alarms—”

  He took a step toward her, thinking to make proper courtesy, but the next he knew, he was flat on the ground with his head in her lap. Inside a tent. A tent? His thoughts wandered; he could not seem to think.

  “You spent yourself,” the Lady said. Her expression was tender, her voice soft and musical. “I should not be surprised, grandson, for your parents were the same. But did not Orlith warn you about yielding so much to the taig?”

  “What’s happened?” Kieri asked. He tried to move, but his body didn’t respond. “Aliam—Estil—the children—?”

  “Are very well,” she said, laying a hand on his forehead. “Rest. You are young in the mastery of your magery; you do not yet know how to measure what’s needed, and you gave much. It is no more than the exhaustion that comes after great labor. The taig will restore you; let it do its work.”

  He realized then that he was not merely flat on the ground, but unclothed as well, skin to grass under a cloak. Instead of cold autumn soil, he felt warmth, the warmth of a summer sun almost, the taig’s gift to him. “What did I do wrong?”

  She laughed. “Not wrong, grandson. Just overmuch. You waked the taig; you gave it direction; you gave it your king’s power. All that was very well done, and Aliam tells me without one curse uttered. But you let the taig take more than it needed.”

  “I knew I wasn’t supposed to be angry,” he said. The warmth beneath made him drowsy, but he was determined to stay awake. He needed to ask her something, if he could only remember. Her hand on his brow pushed the question back below his awareness.

  “Especially here, where it’s been nurtured so long,” she said. “I wonder, though, that Estil Halveric did not sense the daskdraudigs and the lure.”

  “Estil has taig-sense?”

  “Oh, yes. She has bo
th old human and a little elven blood, and in her line the awareness, and the care, of the taig is uncommonly strong. She should have known something was wrong.”

  “You were there last winter, she said. Did you find anything wrong with her taig-sense then?”

  “No …” The Lady’s eyes widened. “Singer of songs! I did that!”

  “What?” Heat pulsed from the ground; Kieri felt fully awake, aware that a glamour she had laid on him was fading. He sat up, pulled the cloak around him, and turned to face her.

  “When I was there,” she said. “I touched them all so my visit would not be spoken of, lest some evil discover your identity before the paladin reached you.” Kieri felt a touch of her glamour like a silk veil across his mind. What was she hiding? “Only to Aliam and Estil I left the memory, but I barred their speech … and that must have interfered with Estil Halveric’s taig-sense. Because of me that vile monster came and tore down their house, and Gitres Unmaker—”

  “Gitres? I thought it was Achrya.”

  “She may have laid the lure to punish the Halverics for aiding you, but it was Gitres you held off this night, Sir King, and proved beyond any doubt your right to kingship. Not that I have doubted you since I first met you.” She turned away. “I must apologize to Aliam and Estil, if you will excuse me.”

  “Of course,” Kieri said, still astonished. Light remained—her light? His light? Now he recognized his own tent, his own neatly folded clothes nearby. Before getting up, he laid both hands flat on the ground. “Thank you,” he said to the taig, and without realizing he was going to, bent down and kissed the turf.

  His clothes felt warm when he put them on. When he came out, dawn painted the eastern sky rose and gold. Off to his right, a fire crackled and steam rose from pots set on and near it. He smelled sib, bacon, porridge. To the left, a group of elves looked at the ruins of Halveric Steading; one noticed him, said something to the others, and they all bowed, then went back to staring. The Lady, Aliam, and Estil were talking quietly as they, too, watched a thin trickle of black smoke rising from the stable wreckage.

  Kieri could think of nothing to say at first; he put an arm around Aliam’s shoulders and stood in silence. “I seem to have made a mess of your house,” he said finally.

  Aliam prodded him in the ribs, as of old. “You seem to have saved our lives, you mean. Don’t try to play humble, my liege.” And into Kieri’s ear: “I can’t call you Kieri with her around; she’d skin me and eat me.”

  “I don’t eat humans,” his grandmother said austerely, without looking at either of them. “No elf would touch man-meat. Call him Kieri if you wish; I do.”

  Aliam stiffened; Estil chuckled.

  “I could eat whatever’s for breakfast,” Kieri said. Moment by moment he felt his mind clearing. “Unless we have need of haste to do something.”

  “We have need of sunlight, and that is coming soon,” the Lady said. She smiled. “You, grandson, have need of breakfast. Others have eaten already.”

  “You?” Kieri asked Aliam.

  “Indeed.” He patted his stomach. “My daughters say I will grow fat if I eat so much.” He looked ten years younger, this morning. Kieri glanced at Estil.

  “There is enough work to do, rebuilding,” Estil said. “I will not worry about your appetite unless you lose it again.”

  “It was my doing that left you unable to sense the taig, Estil Halveric,” the Lady said, as if continuing a conversation Kieri had interrupted. “Do not refuse my aid in rebuilding what my deeds caused to fall.”

  “Do not take on the responsibility of others,” Estil said, in a tone she might have used to a child. “It was the malice of Achrya and Gitres, not you, that tore down those walls.”

  “I am well rebuked by a mortal,” the Lady said. “And yet—may not a friend offer restoration even so?”

  “I am well rebuked, to lecture one so far above me,” Estil said, looking down. “My Lady, your kindness to us, all these years, has more than repaid any injury that might have resulted.”

  Kieri put one hand on Estil’s shoulder and the other on his grandmother’s. “Ladies, you are both more courteous than my stomach, which is empty of fine words and full of discourteous growling. Can you please end this competition of manners and let us find a place to sit down and eat? I dare not command either of you, and yet I am your king.”

  The Lady laughed, and after a moment Estil laughed, too. Each took an arm, and he walked them to the fire, where someone had contrived a table and benches. “Sit here,” he said, handing them to seats on either side of the table, “and keep me company while I eat, remembering that I know nothing of the last part of the night.”

  One of Estil’s daughters set in front of him a mug of sib, a jug of honey, a platter of bacon and flatbread, and a bowl of porridge. Kieri’s stomach took command, and he ate, as the two women talked, more easily with each passing moment. When he had wiped his porridge bowl clean with the last of the flatbread, he sat back. “So … it is gone forever, or gone for the moment, that menace?”

  “Gone for a time,” the Lady said. “Evil is never gone forever; the seeds of it are abroad in the world, and given the right conditions, it grows again. But for now—and I cannot say how long, perhaps a turn of the year, perhaps a lifetime—it is gone from this place.”

  “What made the fire and explosion?” Kieri asked. Sunlight now touched the ruins, and the smoke had thinned to a gray wisp. “It looked like it was in the stable cellar, but all that I remember being there was—oh.” The wine, the brandy, the oil from southern berries. Barrels of the stuff, kept under the stable because no one lighted a flame in a stable and thus it would not catch fire.

  “Gitres can bring fire from the sky,” the Lady said. “Blowing open a cellar door would be no difficulty.”

  “That was southern wine, Andressat wine,” Aliam said, coming to the table and sitting down beside Estil. He made a sad face, but his eyes were merry. “All that lovely red wine. All those juicy oilberries. And the oil for our lamps this winter.”

  “Be serious.” Estil elbowed him; he laughed, and she poked him again. “You should be over there nailing the sticks together to make us a hut.”

  “Can’t. Nails were in the stable cellar, too. They’re scattered all over the meadow now.” He made a face at her, then winked at Kieri.

  “You can whittle pegs, then.”

  “Estil, my little bird, you are not going to pretend we have no help, and you are going to accept the help we’re offered.” His voice was sober now; he put his arm around her shoulders.

  “It’s—you built that wall, Aliam. You did. I remember—it’s what you built and I cared for all these years, and it’s gone …”

  Kieri had never seen Estil cry; he looked to his grandmother, whose face at first showed only mild distaste but then warmed to compassion.

  “Estil, Estil …” Aliam kissed her hair, murmuring. “It is never the same, one year to the next. We will build again; you will have more memories; the children will laugh in the halls and in the courtyard and in the fields. What more could we want than that? The same stones in the same place? The past to return? Brave one, dear heart, grieve awhile because you must, but then rejoice with me. The darkness has left my heart; do not let it invade yours.” He kissed her again, hair, eyes, nose. “Or I will tickle you,” he said.

  Her eyes flew open. “In front of—you would not dare!”

  “Oh, I would dare anything to see my love again in her own place, laughing and fierce all in one. Make peace with our friends, Estil, and take heart.”

  Estil dug her head into Aliam’s shoulder, then sat up. “You’re right, of course.” She turned to the Lady, drying tears still streaking her face. “My Lady, I’ve been rude and silly, but now—whatever you wish to do, I accept with a grateful heart.”

  “You are most courteous always, Estil Halveric, and I say again I was well rebuked and bear no resentment. Day is here; the sunlight we need for a working of power is here. Tell
me, Alyanya’s own, what would you for your household?”

  Estil looked confused.

  “Is there not some part of your house you always wished were different? A chimney that did not draw well, a room with an ill-placed door?”

  “The second pantry,” Estil said, nodding. “Open the door and it bangs right into another one, so you have to leave the kitchen, shut that door, then open the pantry—”

  “We will build better,” the Lady said. She rose without appearing to move and reached out her hand. “Come with me, Estil, and we will look at that mess and consider how best to clear it.”

  Kieri set his elbows on the table, rested his chin on his hands, and looked at Aliam. “Well?”

  “Very well, thank you. Gods, Kieri, I can’t believe I was sunk so far I could think of nothing but death. Die? Leave Estil to grieve and my children … when so many love me? And leave you to rattle around on that throne surrounded by courtiers and not one man who knows war? Not that we want war to come here.” Aliam nodded to the woman who offered him a mug of sib, and sipped from it. “I don’t want a daskdraudigs either, but I’m glad to have some reason for my behavior other than simple idiocy.”

  “Father, should we let the horses into the field where that … thing … was?” Cal had come up; he smiled a little shyly at Kieri.

  “Cal, I’m keeping your father away from his work; forgive me. Aliam—go on. I’ll be there shortly.”

  By the time the sun was at noon, the Lady and other elves had cleared much of the tumbled stone away, setting the unbroken stones in neat rows, while the humans salvaged smaller, lighter items strewn across the meadow. Kieri, forbidden to work magic, picked up whatever he could find.