Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “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.”

  “And did you connive at the deaths of my grandson’s wife and children?” the Lady asked. Her voice was soft and sweet but held such menace as Kieri had never heard in it before.

  “Never,” the king said. “They were killed by orcs, I heard, and we have nothing to do with orcs. Nor was I glad to know them dead, for I knew it would make the Fox angry, and he would find a way to blame us for it, as he finally has.”

  “And yet,” she said, still sweetly, “you paid the man Venneristimon, who was his steward. What did you pay him for?”

  “Venner?” The king looked startled. �
�For information on Phelan’s movements, his plans for his army, that is all. I did not wish to find that army a day’s ride into my kingdom; I needed a spy, and he was willing.”

  “It was Venner—” Kieri began, in a choked voice. She held up her hand. He stopped.

  “It was that man,” she told the king, “who planned the deaths of my grandson’s wife and children. We know that. And you say you did not know?”

  “I did not,” the king said. His eyes were wide; he looked more like a man shocked at truths previously unknown than someone having the truth pulled from him unwillingly. “I bade him spy—so I would know if Phelan massed against me. Who—who told him to do that?”

  “The same Weaver you worship,” the Lady said. “Achrya the plotter, the secret weaver of tangled and poisoned webs, lover of plots … she told him.”

  Kieri glanced aside from the look on the king’s face to the shelf where the glass stood, the last few grains to fall suspended, motionless, in his grandmother’s trance of time.

  “It … it cannot be,” the king whispered; his eyes had filled with tears. “She said kill children? She—she has been good to us—”

  “For her own purposes, possibly,” the Lady said. “But she has wrapped you round in lies the way a spider wraps her prey, blinded you with that unyielding silk. You cannot see what is clear to see: not your daughter’s true nature, not the ambitions of those at your court, not the character of my grandson. You are tangled in her web, nothing more than a morsel for her to devour at leisure, for she enjoys most fooling those who trust her.” She waited a moment; he said nothing. “I would pity you,” the Lady said, “if I could, for you have lost a child and a realm by choosing Achrya and evil. But it is not in my nature to pity those who harm my family, and you have done grievous hurt, though without knowing it.”

  “I’m … sorry,” the king said. His tears had spilled over, wetting his cheeks.

  “Grandson, what do you really want here? His death? Vengeance? Or peace?”

  “I wanted peace,” Kieri said. Slowly, slowly, that cold lump of anger shrank inside him. “I want peace now. But how can we have peace if he—if his people—do not? You can withdraw to elvenhome kingdoms where humans cannot come. We must stay in this world, and abide what evil comes—fight it or no, we have no safe havens.”

  “Your family—?” the Lady prompted.

  “Died years ago. And I believe—” He did not want to believe, but the king’s tears had convinced him. “—he did not really intend their deaths. Was he stupid to be fooled? Yes, but after all, I did not recognize that Venneristimon was one of her pawns until Paks exposed him.” He looked at the king, who was staring at him as if he had sprouted feathers. “I was angry,” Kieri said. “I am still angry that they died as they did. But we have killed enough of each other’s people over the years; I will not kill you because of that.”

  “I am not so easily moved to forgiveness,” the Lady said, her voice as cold as his heart had been. “But you are our king, and I must defer to your judgment.” It was the first time she had ever said that or anything like it; Kieri wanted to ask why—but he could not, not then. She looked straight at the king of Pargun. “But you, mortal: whatever grievance you have against my grandson, give it up. Or it will become a matter between you and me, and thus to be settled in my realm, not his.”

  “Your … realm?”

  “What humans call the elvenhome kingdom of Ladysforest. I do not choose to share its name with you.” With that, she withdrew, the light folding in around her, and the last grains of sand falling at last.

  “She … that … that is your grandmother?”

  For some reason, after so much emotion, Kieri found this amusing. “Do you still think elves are but a variety of mageborn?”

  The king drew a long breath and released it, half huff and half sigh. “No. No, she is … how old is she?”

  “I have no idea, and I would not dare ask,” Kieri said. “Thousands of years at least, I am sure. Certainly she was here—in her kingdom, which is not exactly the forests of Lyonya—when the first Seafolk came up the river seeking safety. She was here before the mageborn came over the mountains, and probably before they left Old Aare.”

  “She looks young … but not young.”

  “Yes,” Kieri said. “But you and I, sir, are kings with a problem to solve. We do not, I assure you, want her to solve it for us.”

  That got him a sharp look, but the king relaxed. “I would have some water now, if you please.”

  “Indeed.” Kieri poured him water. “And shall I now turn the glass again?”

  The king shook his head sharply, swallowed, and said, “We are well beyond that. You are not my friend, and may never be, but I give my word not to attack you. I see no way to peace here, but perhaps together …” He drained the mug. “Is there any chance—any chance—that Elis would see me?”

  “I do not know. I sent word to Falk’s Hall that you had come and were concerned for her welfare. We may hear tomorrow if she chooses to reply. But she will have sworn an oath to obey the Knight-Commander and other officers while she is a student there. He would have to permit her to leave.”

  “She is imprisoned?”

  “Only by her honor,” Kieri said. “Should she wish to withdraw and return home, she would be provided an escort to the river. And the Knight-Commander, seeing it is a matter of royal concern, may well bring her here and order her to see you. If she does not obey, she will lose her place. Falk’s Hall—like the other knightly training orders—is used to difficult sons and daughters of noble families.”

  “Then she might actually learn discipline?”

  “She will, or she will not gain her ruby,” Kieri said.

  “And you?” The king seemed to be looking for that ruby.

  “My ruby is still in the cabinet in the Knight-Commander’s office, in a little box with my name on it, should I give my oath to Falk.”

  “You are strange,” the king said. “You are not what I thought.”

  “Nor are you,” Kieri said. “But it has grown late as we talked. Let us sup a little, and sleep, and in the morning consider what is best for both our kingdoms.”

  “And where shall I sleep?” the king asked, a little of his earlier suspicion returning.

  “Not in my bed,” Kieri said. “But if you will, in the same room where your daughter stayed when she was here.”

  “Locked in?”

  “Watched, if you come out,” Kieri said. “Have you no guards in your own palace in Rostvok?”

  The king nodded.

  The Knight-Commander, in Falk’s red and white, sat with Elis at one end of the table; Kieri and the king of Pargun sat at the other. Kieri’s sword lay athwart the table, a reminder whose domain it was, in case emotion overpowered reason. Elis, in the leaf-brown uniform of Falk’s Hall for first-year students, sat bolt upright, pale, lips compressed. She was here by the Knight-Commander’s orders, as Kieri knew, and she did not look at her father.

  Her father scarce looked at anything else in the room but her. Kieri tapped the table to get his attention. “We are met to discuss grave matters of state,” he said. “Pargun is in disarray, and that disarray threatens to spill over its borders, the king tells me. Knight-Commander, I believe you have not met the king of Pargun: I present him to you. And to you, Sir King—” The title felt strange in his mouth, but it must be given. “—I present the Knight-Commander of Falk, he who commands in Falk’s Hall, where Knights of Falk are trained.”

  The two men acknowledged each other with a seated bow. The Knight-Commander spoke. “I have brought Elis of Pargun as you requested, my lord king. As a student in Falk’s Hall, she cannot travel alone, and she wishes to remain there until she has earned her ruby. As her guardian while she is under my command, I must ask if you intend to withdraw your support of her candidacy.”

  “No,” Kieri said. “I support her still.”

  “Then it was not to send her home you had her brought here?”


  “No,” Kieri said. “I do not go back on my word. But her land and mine are at risk of war, and her father, Pargun’s king, would have her know what is happening.”

  Elis opened her mouth, glanced at the Knight-Commander, and closed it again. Kieri turned to the king of Pargun.

  “She is here,” he said. “And, you can see, unharmed. Have speech with her, if you would.” Down the table, he saw Elis pale even more; her eyes were wide.

  “Daughter,” the king of Pargun said. He cleared his throat. “Elis, the king knows … you must know … I did not, on my honor, want you to kill this king. What Countess Settik told you was a lie.”

  “Your honor!” she said, her voice edged with scorn. The Knight-Commander touched her arm; she folded her lips.

  “I did break my word to you, that is true,” the king said. “I did have you drugged and brought here—I thought your wish to live alone was but a willful girl’s daydream, and you owed duty to serve Pargun in some way. Here, as a king’s wife, you could do that, and this man—though as I thought a rough soldier—would neither fear you nor be disgusted by your own rough ways.”

  Elis said nothing, staring at Kieri’s sword on the table with lips folded tight.

  “I did not know, until this king told me of his talks with you, about the poisoned knife. I did not know that my brother planned to challenge me for the kingdom and so he told me—told all the court—that this king had not only refused to wed you, but had sold you to a brothel of soldiers.”

  Her head came up; her eyes flashed. “Einar?”

  “Indeed. And before all he questioned my judgment and my fitness to rule. If I was so weak that for peace I would send my daughter to such dishonor, and not avenge her myself, with my own hands, then it was time for a better man, a stronger man, to rule Pargun or the whole kingdom would be sold like a slave.” The king swallowed. “It was he who urged me on to send you in the first place.”