Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I don’t know … I was not in condition to notice.”

  “Light?”

  “That, yes. She was the only light in the room for a time.”

  “As were you.” The Knight-Commander sighed. “My lord king, what you have shown this night goes beyond our expectations. I heard about the daskdraudigs, but this—not for generations have we had a king with such powers. When did Orlith instruct you in healing magery?”

  “He hasn’t,” Kieri said. “He said I still needed more training in other arts … I did manage to sprout a seed, though.”

  “It is more than a seed I witnessed,” the Knight-Commander said. “It is a blackwood tree, grown to full height and flowering.”

  Kieri looked at the dead traitor; while he had rested, the Pargunese lords were stripping his body. One had a knife. He reached out, and Kieri understood. “No!” he said. They looked up, startled. The Knight-Commander glanced down and stared.

  “No,” he said, too. “You must not.”

  “But he needs,” one of them said in halting Common, nodding at their king. “Einar said, he come back with man-pizzle, maybe prove honor. No pizzle, nobody listen.”

  Kieri switched to Pargunese. “I don’t care what Einar said. You are not going to mutilate the body here, in Lyonya. This is my kingdom, and I forbid it.” He glanced at his Squires. “Get a blanket from our gear and wrap him up well; take the body outside—the stableyard, maybe—and mount a guard over it. They can take it back to Pargun tomorrow. What they do there is their concern, not mine.”

  “You show honor to the traitor who would have killed me?” the king asked.

  “It is not his honor that concerns me, but mine,” Kieri said. “I have killed many men, but it is against my beliefs to treat their bodies as no more than that of a wolf or an ox, and take pieces. They were once men like me.” He remembered having that argument with Aliam, the first time he went to Aarenis, and saw—with mingled horror and fascination—a belt decorated with human ears. They’re already dead, he had said to Aliam, and Aliam had clouted him to the ground. So will you be someday, Aliam had said. Should someone take your ears or scalp as a trophy, as if you were a wild animal?

  The king glared, then shrugged. “You saved my life,” he said. “If that is your decree, in your own land, I will obey.” He and the Pargunese lords moved away from the body. In Pargunese, the king spoke to the four Pargunese guards. “It is over—no more fun tonight. But if that king bids you do something, do it for me.”

  “We need to clean this room, and let the landlord finish clearing the table,” Kieri said. “There is yet work to do; what we came for is not accomplished. I would see swords put aside and the floor cleaned.”

  By the time the body was gone, and the mess on the floor had been cleaned away, Kieri’s headache had eased. With the door closed once more, the room warmed. Outside the storm beat at the town; wind shook the door and shutters in great gusts, and the chimney whistled and moaned. The landlord’s servants having cleared the table—for a wonder, nothing had broken—the group settled around it once more. Kieri let the Pargunese king do most of the talking, speaking only when the king turned to him for confirmation.

  The night dragged on. Twice the landlord came to ask if they needed anything, and finally Kieri told him to go on to bed. It was a full glass after that when the king finally got the Pargunese lords to agree that Elis was the only possible—and the best—envoy they could have to Lyonya, and the best chance of peace.

  “Not that we fear war,” one of them said, eyeing Kieri. “For the Lady promised us undying fire that would surely burn the forest to the roots and open the land for grain, if we had the courage to defend the king’s honor.”

  “Undying fire?” Kieri suppressed another yawn and leaned forward.

  “Yes,” the lord said, turning to him. “The Lady, the Weaver, told us we would have with us scathefire that could not be quenched by anything, not even by the sea. Kindled from the bones of ancient dragons, she said.”

  “You know what the Earthfolk said about that, Knof,” the other lord said. “We would be cursed forever if we set spade to that hill. They would withdraw their gift that they had long regretted.”

  “Yes, but She—”

  “Einar told us what She said. He says She talks to him more than to the king.”

  “And Einar’s a traitor, if the king’s right. I understand that, Harn. But still—” The man looked at Kieri. “If we do want peace, it is not because we fear you, or fear war. You have hideous powers, that is clear, but so did those who drove us from our homelands.” He spat, but politely, away from Kieri, toward the fire. “If you healed our king to impress us, know that I will not bend the knee to you without my king’s orders.”

  They were prickly and proud as young boys in training, and yet, Kieri knew, they could not be treated as boys, not these men of the Pargunese king’s Council. “I do not doubt your courage or your will,” he said to them. Their wisdom, yes, but not their courage. “I do not want your submission; I do not want Pargun. But I do want my own land and people to flourish.”

  “Well.” Suspicion in the tone, but agreement, too. “Well, I am not so fond of fighting I must pick quarrels out of the air. It will be as our king wishes.”

  As long as he was king. Kieri sent a prayer into the snow-blown night that this might be, and they sit someday eating and drinking again with no death at the end of it.

  “To bed, then,” the king said, slapping his knees. “We have far to go tomorrow, if we can even get across the river.” Then he looked at Kieri and raised his brows.

  “Upstairs or down, as it suits you,” Kieri said. “I am going up.” Despite the abundance of rooms, the Pargunese crowded into one on the ground floor; Kieri’s Squires had brought his own bedding along, so he slid into familiar rose-scented sheets and was asleep at once. Outside his door, a King’s Squire stood, and another at the head of the stairs.

  In the morning, clouds and snow had blown past, and a pale blue sky scoured by wind opened over them. Kieri heard a noise in the stableyard below and pushed open a shutter, peering out to see the Pargunese king, stark naked, washing himself from a bucket of steaming water; two Pargunese lords, just as bare, were doing the same. Did they never stop proving how hardy they were? When the king had finished, he gave a shout and ran, bare as he was, around the yard, and the other two ran after him, all laughing like boys. Kieri eased the shutter closed, and shook his head.

  He dressed and came down to breakfast to find the king and his lords dressed again, in clothes he had not seen, the king wearing mail and a different sword, this one with a richly jeweled hilt. On the table was a helm of the kind Kieri associated with Pargun.

  “They brought my things,” the king said. “If I proved worthy. You know, the only thing wrong with your kingdom, if you will forgive me, is the lack of proper baths. Those metal tubs you have in your palace—pfaugh. We have pools, with heated water, heated from underneath, hot channels. And the sweat-house, for cleansing from evil humors of the body. Your people should learn them from us.”

  “Perhaps we should,” Kieri said. “And will, if time is given us.”

  “Elis can teach you,” the king said. “If you learn about proper baths, perhaps you will know we are not merely wild men of the north running around naked in the cold.” He gave Kieri a look that made it clear he’d noticed the shutter opening and closing.

  Iolin, this morning back in his own clothes and sitting at his father’s side, had a worn look, Kieri thought. If his father and the other Pargunese men had been after him all night … well, boys learned, or they didn’t make men. Elis sat with the Knight-Commander, eating porridge so demurely Kieri wondered what she was up to. The Pargunese guards, at the other table, were eating like any experienced soldiers when hot food was available and a cold day of duty waited outside. Kieri sensed no real hostility there, and much less anxiety than the night before.

  Before the glass turned again, they were ready
to leave. The king grinned at Kieri and opened his arms. Kieri and the king embraced, pounding each others’ backs.

  “You saved me twice,” the king said. “I will not forget that. If ever we must meet blade to blade, I will put nothing on mine but will.”

  “And I,” Kieri said.

  He and Elis and the Knight-Commander went with the Pargunese down to the landing stage. The Pargunese carried the wrapped body of the traitor, now frozen stiff. The boat they had come in was gone. “Back to Pargun,” one of the lords said. “It is our own; we would not risk it.” He took off his cloak and waved it three times. Across the river another wave—something that flashed. Kieri hoped it was not Einar’s sword. A boat set out, skimming swiftly in the wind. When it tied up to the landing stage, Kieri saw long oars in it and seats for rowers. The two men crewing it lowered the sail. The guards lowered the traitor’s body in, then the lords climbed down. The king embraced Elis and whispered something in her ear that made her blush; Iolin also hugged her, and then the king bowed to Kieri, who bowed in return. He and his son climbed down, and at the king’s command everyone but the steersman took an oar—even the king. To Kieri’s amazement, they all rowed—in perfect cadence called in the steersman’s voice—out into the windswept river and the boat returned to Pargun almost as fast as it had come.

  “Well,” the Knight-Commander said. “That was … not at all what I expected.”

  “What we thought we knew was wrong,” Kieri said. “Start to finish, the man surprised me again and again. I hope he lives and we have no invasion, but Elis—” He looked at her. “—I have been wrong about Pargun for a long time. You must help me learn.”

  “Of course, Sir King, though I have much to learn myself. Not only of your kingdom but—but everything a Knight of Falk must know.” She glanced at the Knight-Commander.

  Kieri spent the rest of that day conferring with the Halveric commander, the town mayor, and representatives of the rangers and Royal Archers who had ridden in to meet him. The town had records of past floods, freezes, and thaws in its archives; Kieri suspected that the Pargunese would rather attack over the ice, but after seeing the speed with which they could row across into the wind, he wasn’t sure. To make up for the loss of business the night before, Kieri had arranged to hold a public reception in the same inn. He shook innumerable hands, accepted presents—more practical than had shown up at his coronation, for the local craft specialty was knitting the fine underfur of a wild animal that lived along the river, and every woman seemed determined to give him something she’d made. Soon he had enough mittens, socks, and caps for any three kings. That night, the inn was open for business downstairs; he and his party retired early, and the next morning started for Chaya. The wind had eased by then, though a skim of high clouds dimmed the sun.

  Two days later, as the party neared Chaya, Kieri felt the now-familiar lift of heart as the tall trees of the King’s Grove came into view. Though they had ridden through forests almost bare of leaves most of the way, the King’s Grove held its leaves, now gold and orange, with touches of red here and there in the blackwoods, still mostly green. He felt an urge to leg his mount into a gallop, be home—his real home—as soon as possible, but made himself hold Oak to a quiet canter up the long slope from the bridge. Horns called; he’d been seen. He waved to acknowledge them, and had Oak at a walk before he reached the city.

  The moment he was inside the palace, his staff descended on him. It was only midafternoon; he had been gone six days … he fended them off long enough to take a bath in the tub the king of Pargun had ridiculed, and change into more comfortable clothes. Then it was questions, complaints, disputes, and information someone thought he should know. He worked through a third of it before dinner. He had seen letters from both Arcolin and Dorrin in the piles of dispatches, and put them aside to read later.

  After dinner, he had a meeting with the Council, attended by the Knight-Commander and, to the others’ surprise, Elis. Kieri gave them a short version of the trip and its outcome, to the point where the traitor stabbed the Pargunese king.

  “Didn’t he have mail on? I know you found some to fit—”

  “He wouldn’t wear it. Said it would anger his lords; they’d think he didn’t trust them.”

  “He shouldn’t have, if one of them stabbed him.”

  “It wasn’t one he’d invited. Someone who supposedly happened across them as they traveled, and they thought best to bring him along. He proved a traitor.”

  “Well, if he’d had the mail on—”

  “ ‘If only’ mends no pots,” Kieri said. He was tired, and also had no idea how to tell what had happened next.

  “So the king died,” Belvarin said, giving him the opening.

  “No,” Kieri said. “He’s alive and back in Pargun, or I should say he was alive and his boat reached the Pargunese side of the river four days ago.”

  “So—it wasn’t a serious wound?”

  The Knight-Commander held up his hand. “You must tell them, Sir King.” They had argued about this all the way back from Riverwash; Kieri felt it was boasting when he did not even know how he had done what he’d done, but the Knight-Commander insisted that was not the point: the Council needed to know what he was capable of whether he understood it or not.

  “What? What?” Sier Tolmaric looked from side to side like a startled hen.

  “I healed him,” Kieri said. Best get it over. “I didn’t know I could, but I was not going to watch him die of a poisoned blade—”

  “Poisoned! You healed him of a poisoned wound?!”

  “Yes,” Kieri said. “Or rather, I believe the gods healed him at my request.”

  “The light,” the Knight-Commander murmured.

  Kieri sighed. “I would rather have told you after talking to my elven tutor. I am not sure how much of what happened was due to my elven blood and how much to the human powers I inherited. But … there was light.”

  The Knight-Commander snorted. “That is like saying ‘There was blood’ after cutting a pig’s throat.”

  “You tell it, then,” Kieri said. “Perhaps you saw more of it than I did.”

  The Knight-Commander’s version went into details Kieri thought he could well have left unsaid. From their arrival in Riverwash to the Pargunese arrival, the king throwing his son in the river, all of it, including every detail of Kieri’s own actions. “The light was not exactly the same as elf-light,” the Knight-Commander said. “Not so … silvery. And no sense of being out of time or place, as when the Lady extends her realm. Commonplace things stayed commonplace. We were all startled into stillness, to be sure, but it was not the same as enchantment.”

  He went on to detail Kieri’s appearance during the healing itself, the way the elf-made dagger flashed light, and the wound closing. “Then our king appeared unsteady; I expect it was the power he had used, drained from him.” He went on, detail by detail, including the reactions of the Pargunese lords, the Pargunese soldiers, and what he had heard from the Halverics when he interviewed them later.

  “You talked to the soldiers?” Kieri said. “I did not know that.”

  “You were exhausted,” the Knight-Commander said. “I wanted to know what others had seen, to be sure I had not missed anything. You are as near as can be to a Knight of Falk, Sir King. Your deeds must be reported in our archives as well as those of the kingdom. I am of a mind that this is proof of Falk’s favor, and you should have your ruby, vows or no.”

  The Council stared at him.

  “If the Council needed proof that you were not just a soldier, not one to bring the waste of war here, this is more than enough,” the Knight-Commander went on. “You risked everything to bring the king of Pargun here—to try to convince him of the need for peace between these two kingdoms—to give him a chance to make such peace—and spent your own strength to save his life.” He looked directly at two elves, who for once seemed abashed. “I wish you had seen it. He is the king we hoped for.”

  “Now al
l he has to do is marry and get an heir,” old Sier Hammarrin said, all too audibly. After a startled moment, a nervous chuckle spread around the table.

  “As to that,” Kieri said, “I have been, as you all know, busy learning this kingdom. I assure you, I have not forgotten its need for an heir.”

  “You’re not going to marry that Pargunese girl just to keep the peace, are you?”

  “No,” Kieri said. “It is not fair to the young to marry old men. Though I am not yet old, and thanks to my mother’s blood will live long, I have seen too much of life to be a good husband to a young girl. Young women should marry young men, and build their dreams together.”

  “That’s a new idea,” the old Sier said, shaking his head. “So you will marry an old woman, and by your magery she will bear children? Will she live to see them grown?”

  His fellow Councilmen were trying to shush him, but once in full flow, nothing stopped Hammarrin.

  “Or maybe you’ll marry an elf and she’ll outlive you. If she doesn’t take it into her head to go get killed somewhere.”

  The elves around the table stirred and looked at Kieri.

  “Whoever I marry,” Kieri said, in a tone that silenced the old man for the moment, “it will be someone willing, someone old enough to know her own mind, someone who cares for this kingdom as much as I do. And,” he said, looking around, “it will be my choice and hers. Not yours. Not yours to make, and not yours to criticize.”

  “Well said,” Sier Halveric said. “Falk’s blessings on your courting, Sir King, and I will keep my granddaughters home, then.” He grinned; the others chuckled. Several daughters, Kieri thought, might be going home for Midwinter Feast.

  When Kieri went up to his room that night and his attendants had left him alone, he went to the window, pushed aside the curtains, and leaned his head on the cold stone. Winter stars glittered in the cold sky. His memories of Tammarion rose, bright as ever, as clear as Torre’s Necklace. He had never intended to cloud her memory with another woman in his bed, in his life.