by Tanya Huff
One morning, in the quiet hours just past dawn, some five weeks after the war had ended, the Duke of Belkar came to the king. The two men shared an age, but the man on the bed made the other seem obscenely healthy.
Belkar looked down at his liege and his friend and wondered where to begin. Raen spoke before he got the chance, anger turning the words to edged steel.
“It would have been so much easier had Lord Death collected me on the battlefield. Then those I love would not have had to watch me die by inches. And I would not have had to watch their pain as they watched me.”
“Raen, I’m sorry, I . . .”
“No.” The word was faint but still very much a king’s command. “It is I who should be sorry. You didn’t need that on top of everything else. I was feeling sorry for myself and you bore the brunt of it.” His face twisted in a skeletal caricature of a smile. “Forgive me?”
Belkar nodded, not trusting his voice, although what he thought to hide when tears ran unheeded down his face, he had no idea.
“So,” Raen’s voice became as light as he was still capable of making it. “To what do I owe your presence so early in the day?”
More than anything in his life, the duke wanted to follow Raen’s lead, to try to banish the darkness for just a little while, but he was desperately afraid there was no time for even that small amount of comfort. “The people talk.”
“They always have. Death, taxes, and the people talking, the three things you can count on.” Raen shifted into a different but no more comfortable position. “Sit down, Belkar, and tell me what they say.”
Belkar sat, spread his hands, and stared at their backs. It was easier than meeting the king’s eyes. “They’re speaking against the prince, saying he isn’t human.”
“They always knew that; I told them who his mother was when I declared him my heir.”
“To most of them, the Lady is something to fear. The Elder Races have never been friendly to man. People fear and distrust her power and they fear and distrust her power in him.”
“He proved himself in the war.”
“Yes, but the war is over. And . . .” Belkar sighed. “. . . he proved himself different.”
“He won the war!”
“He used his mother’s power to do it. Half of the talkers see the danger in that alone. The other half wonder why he waited so long to use it and ask what game he played.”
Tendons in Raen’s neck stood out as he ground his teeth. “And those titled vultures who circle about my deathbed?”
“The dukes,” Belkar reminded him gently, “have the right to see the crown passed.” Raen dipped his head a barely perceivable amount, as much of an apology as he was willing to make. Belkar continued: “They worry about his mother as well, and the effect her blood will have on the way he rules.”
“They’ve never worried before.”
“He’s never been so close to being king before.”
Raen squinted up at his oldest friend. “They remember that soldier? The one my son killed?”
Belkar nodded.
“And what do they say about me?” The king’s eyes held a dangerous glint.
“They say you don’t heal because he bewitched you as his mother did.”
“And what do you believe?”
“I,” Belkar pointed out, “have met his mother.” Once, many years before, the duke had gone with Raen to the Grove. He still held the memory of the hamadryad like a jewel in his heart. Occasionally, he held it up to the light to rejoice in its beauty.
“Then,” said the king, “you shall stand with me when I speak to the people.”
Belkar shot a startled glance at the surgeon, sure she would not allow such a thing.
Glinna shrugged.
“He is dying. Let it at least be where and how he chooses.”
Raen smiled, his first real smile in weeks. “An honest woman, Belkar. Every dying man should have one.” And then the smile slipped and his eyes looked into the future. “At least the Elite will stand by him. We’ve seen to that, he and I.”
“They’d follow him into the bedchamber of Lord Death,” Belkar agreed. “But would you throw your country into civil war if people decide he is not to have the crown?”
“He is my son and my heir. Five generations ago my house was chosen to rule. We gave our name to the land. He was trained to rule and there is no one else.”
“If you’d only had more children . . .”
“He would still be eldest and my heir.”
The two men locked eyes. Belkar’s gaze dropped first.
“I know. I will support him and do what I can, but the people will make up their own minds.”
“Then I’ll just have to convince them. Now,” he waved the duke over to his desk, “write me a proclamation and see that the criers get it immediately. I want everyone, from the lowest beggar to all six dukes, in the People’s Square by noon.” His voice grew quieter and he sank back on his pillows, exhausted. “I must ensure the succession for my son.”
And how can you do that when such little speech as you’ve had with me nearly kills you, Belkar wondered. But all he said aloud was: “Shall I have the prince sent to you?”
“Not now. Let him have this morning to himself. Send him at noon.”
Noon.
The people gathered in the Square.
Rael entered his father’s chamber slowly, his heart so heavy it sat like a lump of coal in his chest. This would be good-bye, he knew it. It took a moment to penetrate his grief, but instead of his father lying wasted on the bed he saw the king being dressed in royal purple. Even the crown, massive and ugly, stood close at hand.
He grabbed Glinna’s arm and dragged her out of the milling crowd of servants.
“What’s going on? Is he better?”
“No. If anything, he’s worse.” The surgeon’s tone made it quite clear that she took the king’s condition as a personal affront. “But he insists on speaking to the people.”
“Why?”
“The people say they won’t have you as king.”
“I don’t care what the people say.”
“He does.”
Rael studied his father standing supported between two burly footmen as a valet pushed his feet into boots. Raen’s skin was gray and his eyes had sunk deep in indigo shadows. The column of his throat stood out in a bas-relief of ridges and hollows. “Will he survive it?”
“No.”
“And you’re just letting him die?!”
“Yes.” She held up a hand and stopped Rael’s next words. “Before you say anything, consider this: he is still the man he was. Would you have that man die in bed?”
Rael released her arm and shook his head. His father might have no fear of Lord Death, but he would refuse to meet the Mother-creator’s true son lying helpless in bed.
“I thought not. Now, go to him. He needs you.”
Dressed, the king reached for the crown, but his hands shook so they couldn’t grasp it. Rael’s hands covered his. Together they lifted it from the table.
“A crown,” said Raen as it settled on his brow, “is a heavy burden.” He grinned a death’s head grin as he struggled to straighten his neck under the weight. “There’s more than a little truth in these old cliches.”
“Yes, Father.”
“I’m going to see that this burden goes to you. Perhaps I’m doing you no favor.” He sighed. “A king has no conscience, my son, he gives it to the people.”
“I will remember, Father.”
Raen snorted. “They’re not likely to let you forget.”
Attendants moved the king to a litter and carried him through the halls of the palace, Rael keeping pace alongside. Although they tried, it was not always possible to keep the litter even and once, when it jerked on a stair, Raen bit back a pained cry. Chok
ing back a cry of his own, Rael reached out a hand and his father’s wasted fingers closed gratefully around it.
Belkar, in the formal, ornate robes of a Duke of Ardhan, stood by the Great Door.
“My liege.” He knelt and kissed the shadow of a hand stretched out to him.
“Just help me off this thing,” Raen snapped. Friendship could weaken him now as easily as pain and he still had much to do. “I’m not dead yet!”
The king had not stood unassisted since he had been carried off the battlefield for the second time, but when he was on his feet he shook off the supporting hands of his son and his friend.
“This I must do alone,” he said through gritted teeth. “Let it begin, Belkar.”
Belkar shook his head at the prince’s pleading look, a look that said as loudly as if Rael had spoken, You can’t let him do it alone!, and gave the signal. Trumpets called and the great doors swung open.
The People’s Square was full and overflowing with the entire population of King’s City and, as commanded, all six dukes. They represented only a small percentage of the population of Ardhan, but they would spread the news and by the end of the week, the whole country would know. And then the people would judge.
Raen did not call up deep reserves of hidden strength so that he walked proudly, shoulders back and head erect to the edge of the dais—he had no reserves to call. He tottered that twenty feet, sweat running and lips snarling against the pain. One foot went in front of the other by strength of will alone.
The people saw what it cost him and began to cheer. First those near the dais and then the noise moved back through the crowd until the walls shook with it and Raen felt it through the stones under his feet. He stopped and raised his hands for silence, but the crowd refused to quiet until he swayed and collapsed.
“Father!”
Rael, Belkar, and the king’s attendants rushed forward, all expecting the worst, but the king still clutched at life.
“Get me on the litter,” he rasped, “and raise it so I can see and be seen. I must say what I have come to say.”
“Father, it isn’t important, I . . .”
“This isn’t just for you. I will not have my country torn by civil war!”
With gentle hands, Rael lifted his father and laid him carefully on the litter. Some of the crowd hissed at this show of his strength—wasted or not, the king was a large man still—but Rael didn’t care. His only thought was for the man he loved who lay dying.
Two of the attendants hoisted one end of the litter to their shoulders. Raen stared out at the Square from the dark hollows his eyes had become.
“I am still your king!” he cried in a voice surprisingly strong.
The people cheered.
“This,” he continued, taking Rael’s hand, “is my son.”
Only a few cheered. Most muttered sullenly and one, a weaver, apparently the chosen spokesman, twisted his cap in his hands and called out: “We don’t doubt you are his father, Sire, but we have concerns about his mother.”
“You know who his mother is.”
The weaver squirmed and reddened but he persisted. “And that’s the problem, Sire. He isn’t human and who’s to say with you gone that he won’t turn on us. You can’t trust the Elder Races, they’ve never had what you’d call good will toward man. If he should take after his mother . . .”
“If you knew his mother,” Belkar’s voice rang out over the muttering that signified agreement with the weaver’s words, “you wouldn’t . . .”
His last words vanished under the noise that rose from the far side of the Square. There was no need to strain to see the cause of the commotion, for Milthra’s silver head shone like a star amongst suddenly drab browns and reds and yellows.
“The Lady,” ran the awed whisper as the crowd parted before her. “The Lady of the Grove.” Those who had lost their ability to believe in the wondrous found it again. Those who had doubted, couldn’t remember why. A young woman reached out and let a lock of the Lady’s shining hair caress her fingers and then stood gazing at her hand in amazement as if it belonged to another. Peace walked with the Lady and the smell of a sun-warmed forest grove filled the air.
She looked neither to the left nor the right as she approached the palace, her eyes never moved from the man on the litter or the youth standing beside him. At the steps of the dais she paused, as if gathering strength—the fragrance of the forest became stronger and a breeze danced through her hair—then she lifted her skirts in her hand and climbed the steps.
With a strangled cry, Rael threw himself into her arms. She held him to her heart for a moment, stroking his hair, and then gently pushed him away. Green eyes gazed into green.
Rael wondered how he could ever have thought of his mother as young. He saw wisdom, understanding, compassion to a degree most mortal minds could not accept, let alone achieve, resting in the depths of her eyes. She had walked with the Mother-creator at the beginning of the world. She had seen the creation of man. And she loved him. Rael felt her love wrap around him, a warmth, a protection he would always wear.
Milthra saw that her son would make a fine king. His heart sang with courage and pride and his eyes were filled with hope. He might stumble and fall, but he would try, and no mother could ask more. She had no regrets.
The people in the Square saw only the Lady of the Grove and the young man she claimed as her son, but it was enough. The unworldliness of their future king turned from a thing to be feared to one to be treasured. Not one of them realized what Milthra had done in leaving the Grove.
“Mother,” Rael’s voice grew heavy with a new anguish, “you’ve left your tree.”
“I have left my tree.” She touched his cheek softly. “How could I live when my love died? My sisters sleep and someday a child of your children’s children will wake them, but my day is done.”
She kissed him and turned to the king.
Raen looked up at her with such a mixture of longing and pain that those in the crowd who saw it, wept.
“Why have you come?” he cried.
“You would not come to me, beloved, so I have come to you.”
“Then you will die.”
“Yes. But what is my life without you?” She tried a smile, but it faltered and the brilliant green of her eyes dimmed for an instant as they filled and overflowed. Her hands were caught in his, fingers too tightly woven to be parted, so she let the tears drop where they would.
They fell almost slowly, taking form and beauty in the air, and then lay shimmering like jewels on his breast. Instead of drying in the sunlight, they caught it, bound it, and gave it back. Their light grew and grew until everyone save Raen and Milthra covered their eyes. Even Rael stepped back and shielded himself from the glory.
When eyes could see again, an old and dying king no longer lay on the dais. In his place was a young man with hair of jet and smooth golden skin over corded muscle.
“The king,” sighed the crowd. “His youth has returned.”
Rael’s eyes widened, joy beginning to surface, but Milthra shook her head.
“It is an appearance only, my child,” she said. “Death is the true son of the Mother and not even I can stop him.” And then she looked beyond Rael, to the young man who stood in his shadow. The young man that only she, of all the hundreds in the Square, could see.
Under the weight of her regard, Lord Death bowed his head and when he raised it again said softly: “I would spare you both if my nature allowed it, Eldest.”
Raen looked down at his body and raised his hands to his face.
“It’s true!” His voice throbbed with passion. “I’m a man again. I am as I was in my prime!” He held out his arms and Milthra lay down beside him, her head pillowed on his chest.
“As you always were to me, beloved, and as you always will be now.”
He kissed her
once, softly, and then together they died.
The silence was so complete, the crowd so quiet and still, that the sunlight bathing the bodies in golden luminescence could almost be heard. From the distance, from the forest, came the sound of thunder.
Belkar stepped forward and three times opened his mouth to speak. Finally, his voice got past his grief and filled the Square.
“The king is dead!”
And then he dropped on one knee before the tall young man with eyes the green of new spring leaves.
“Long live the king!”
* * *
Rael buried his mother and father in the Sacred Grove under the remains of his mother’s tree. It had been hit by lightning and then consumed by fire until only a charred stump remained. Not one of the other trees, or even so much as a blade of grass, had been touched.
“This stump shall be your headstone,” he said softly, patting the last bit of earth into place. “And I will see that none disturb your rest.”
“I won’t cry for them” he had told Belkar, “for they’re together at last and even in death that is no cause for grief.”
As the young king left the Grove, he thought he heard women’s voices, lamenting, soft with sorrow, but when he turned, he saw only the wind moving through the circle of trees and leaves falling to cover the grave.
INTERLUDE ONE
Rael joined with the Duke of Belkar’s blue-eyed daughter and their years together were filled with love and laughter and children. He never found the common touch that had so endeared his father to the people, but he ruled well and was always after remembered as just.
For all the years of Rael’s reign, Doan, the Captain of the Elite, stood by his side. His unaging presence became a part of the king: two arms, two legs, and the captain. And when he buried his sword in Rael’s grave and vanished from mortal lands, that too was accepted with no surprise. It could not be imagined he would serve another.
The death of the Eldest became the subject of a thousand songs and in her honor, or perhaps to save her sisters from a like fate, Rael, as his first act as Lord of Ardhan, forbade all mortals entry to the Grove, swearing those who knew its direction to oaths of secrecy. Over forty years later, when his son took the throne, time had erased the reality of both the Lady and the circle of silver birch and left only the songs.
