“Tell Queen Callia that we pledge to serve her as we have served all the royal family of Etrara,” Pebr said. He made a slight bow, and Taja smiled. She hadn’t thought her uncle knew that much about court etiquette.
“She wishes us to consult some records at the library,” the queen’s man said. He seemed to be the leader.
Pebr looked lost. By law everyone had a right to consult the library, but these men could not mean the people of Tobol An any good. “We—I’m afraid we cannot let you—”
“But this is insolence!” another of Callia’s men said, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. He rode forward as far as the knight’s standard and stopped, clearly afraid to continue. “Why are we standing here bandying words with these peasants? We’re not asking their permission. We’re giving them a command from their lawful queen. Any more obstruction and we’ll charge them with treason—tell them that.”
Mathary pushed her way through the crowd toward Taja. “Let them pass, dear,” she whispered. “But see to it that they don’t find what they came for.”
Taja looked at the old woman, startled. “Do it, child,” Mathary said.
Taja moved forward. “Let them through,” she said. “I’ll show them to the library.”
Pebr and a few others looked doubtful. Mathary whispered to another old man, who nodded and signaled to the crowd to fall back.
“Good,” the queen’s man said. The hand that grasped his sword hilt fell back to his side. “At least one of you has some sense. Call off your guard dog.”
“He’s not mine to command,” Taja said. “Step through him—he can’t hurt you.”
For the space of a heartbeat the man did nothing. Then he closed his eyes and urged his horse forward. The colors of the knight’s standard played over him like ripples of firelight.
The man opened his eyes and looked around him. “He’s like the ghosts in the city!” he called back to his companions, looking relieved. “He can’t hurt you. Don’t believe everything you hear about the haunted forest!”
The leader pushed his way forward. The third man, who had hung back a little, walked his horse gently through the standing ghost. Taja thought that he might be a little embarrassed by the rudeness of his companions.
The knight returned to his accustomed place on the road. Taja set off toward the library and the men followed.
She walked slowly, knowing that the riders would be anxious to finish their task, that it galled them to have to rein in their mounts. When they saw the white spire of the library in the distance they galloped on ahead of her. By the time she reached the library they had dismounted and were waiting impatiently.
She unlocked the door to the library and led them in. “Where’s the librarian?” the leader asked.
“Here,” she said. “I’m the librarian.”
The man who had threatened them laughed. “Everyone else is out guarding the forest, I suppose,” he said, and the leader laughed with him.
“What are you looking for?” she asked.
“The queen wants the records of the royal family,” the leader said.
She nodded, and as she did so she saw in her mind the location of the records, a wooden box on the third level near the library’s center. She could not recall ever seeing the box before.
Lately she had been able to find all sorts of things, from Pebr’s lost drinking cup to a child’s mittens. Pebr always looked fierce whenever she did it; no doubt he thought it was sorcery.
But she was beginning to fear that there was magic in it as well; she thought that no one could live long in the city of wizards without coming to understand a few tricks. Witchcraft was in the air they breathed, the food they ate. She had even consulted a few of the old books of magic, trying to understand what was happening to her; she had stared hard at the long lists of words, but the books refused to give up their secrets.
She put aside her worries for the moment and concentrated on the men before her. Mathary had told her not to give them what they wanted. “The records, yes,” she said. “Follow me.”
She started up the corridor, then opened a door leading to a flight of stairs. The third man caught up with her as she started to climb. “That knight in the forest,” the man said. “Who was he?”
“Legend says that he betrayed the village to a king of Etrara,” Taja said. “The king had him put to death, quoting the old proverb that a man who was false once would show himself to be false again. The knight swore that he would prove his loyalty, and he vowed to defend the village against all its enemies forever.” They left the stairs and came out on another corridor.
“Why did he think we were enemies?”
“I don’t know,” Taja said. She looked at him. “Are you?”
The man seemed startled. Taja tried not to laugh. Val had told her the women of the court were not usually so direct.
The man said nothing more as she led him and the others through the library and into the room with the birth records. “This is everything the king sent us from Etrara,” she said.
“Where are the records of the royal family?” the leader asked.
“I don’t know. Somewhere in this room, I imagine.”
“You don’t know? What kind of librarian are you?”
“A very busy one. If you don’t mind, I should be getting to my work.”
“You won’t be going anywhere. You’ll stay here and wait until we find what we came for, and then you’ll escort us back. Or did you think to lose us in the library?”
She heard the fear in his voice, and knew the other men had heard it as well. Probably he was unused to libraries and scholarship, and uneasy in a place with a reputation for sorcery.
She sat at the table and watched as he and his men opened drawer after drawer. The leader grew angrier and angrier, and the man who had insulted the people of Tobol An began to frown as he rifled through the records. Only the third man remained calm as he studied the papers in front of him, the lists of children born to shoemakers and nobility, merchants and scholars.
“It’s not here,” the leader said finally. “By the Burning Ladder, you’ve brought us to the wrong place. Where are the records we want?”
“I thought they were here,” Taja said. The picture of the wooden box was strong in her mind.
“Do you know the penalty for lying to the queen’s men? I could have you hung for treason.”
“I’m not lying. If the royal records aren’t with the rest of them I don’t know where they are.”
The leader slammed a drawer shut. “Let’s go,” he said. “Show us the way back.”
Taja stood. She had not been afraid to exchange words with him, but now that it was over and they were leaving she felt herself trembling. She took a deep breath to steady herself and led the men out of the library.
After they had gone she walked through the library. She came to a room filled with uncatalogued books; they lined the shelves and were piled unsteadily on the floor. A scarred table stood in the middle of the room, and a small alcove opened off to the side. She went into the alcove and took a dusty wooden box from a shelf. The box was locked, but the same vision that had directed her to it now showed her where to find the key.
She took the box back to the table and sat for a moment, studying it. She knew, as strongly as she had ever known anything, what she would find if she opened it. For a moment she considered putting it back in its alcove and continuing on as though nothing had happened. But she could not do that; Callia would not stop until she learned the truth, and it was better that Val learned it from her than from the queen.
And what would he say? She had liked Val at first, thought him handsome, with his gray eyes and brown hair. He had been very brave the night of the storm, but the memory that would stay with her was the sight of him walking along the cliffs, his carefree singing. He must have been so pampered at court, so protected; he knew nothing of the harshness of the world. There was an innocence at the heart of his sophistication.
But as she gr
ew to know him she had come to see his unthinking arrogance, his conviction that because he was from the higher rungs he was somehow superior to Taja, whose parents had been fisher-folk. She remembered the feast night in Etrara, and how he had never thought to introduce her to Duchess Callia. And she remembered his surprise whenever she or Pebr understood one of his literary references. What did he think they did in the evenings, with a library the largest thing within miles? Even the fisher-folk had been known to read a book or two.
Still, he deserved to be told the truth. More than that, he needed to know. Taja had only met Callia for a moment, but in that brief time she had seen that the woman would be a dangerous enemy. Val should be warned about the new queen, and about other things as well.
Taja took a deep breath, stood and found the key behind one of the books on the shelf. She unlocked the box and saw the papers she had been expecting. Then she left the library and went into the village to borrow a horse.
As she rode into Thole Forest she saw what looked like diamonds falling from the sky in front of her. The diamonds touched her hands on the reins and melted, and she realized that she was seeing snow. She had never encountered it before, not so far south, though she had read about it in books.
The severe winter had not lessened after the Feast of the Ascending God. She said a brief prayer to the Summer God and pulled her cloak closer around her.
As fortune would have it Narrion was the first person Val saw on his way to Sbarra’s apartments. “Narrion!” Val said. “What game are you playing now?”
“Hush,” Narrion said, looking at the men and women heading toward Sbarra’s rooms. He pulled Val down a deserted corridor. “I did nothing.”
“Nothing? You forced me into exile—because of your devious plots I spent weeks eating fish and listening to unlettered rustics.” He was being unfair to Taja and her uncle, he knew; at the moment he didn’t care. “And all the while you sat at your ease in Etrara. Why? Because you wanted to marry Tamra? Surely you could have worked out a less complicated scheme—surely you could have accomplished your ends without disrupting my life quite so much.”
“The king wanted you in Tobol An.”
“Gobro? Why?”
“I don’t know. He told me—”
“You don’t know! Why in Callabrion’s name should I believe anything you say now? Gobro wanted me in Tobol An? Come—you’ve never been a King’s Man.”
“Hush,” Narrion said again. He was whispering, though no one in the corridor could possibly overhear him. This was the Narrion Val remembered, subtle, secretive, conspiratorial. “I swear by the Burning Ladder that what I’m telling you is true. Gobro wanted you in Tobol An for some reason. He paid me, paid me well, to see that you got there.”
“What are you telling me? That you killed Damath just to make certain I went to Tobol An?”
Narrion grinned. “Well, I have to admit I didn’t like the man very much. But yes—killing him was the only way I could think of to get you out of Etrara.”
“And Tamra had nothing to do with it.”
“Listen. Listen, Val. I’ve ascended very high on the ladder. Callia could not have become queen without the help I gave her. I’m in a position to do you good—you can rise with me. What do you want? Do you want Tobol An? Lord of Tobol An—it sounds fine, doesn’t it?”
Once again his cousin had caught him off balance. He thought of the stories and laughter of the fisher-folk the night they had read from the Book of Sbona, of their faces flushed with ale and firelight. What would they think of him if he returned with the land-ring of Tobol An on his finger?
He looked down at his cousin’s hands. Narrion wore three land-rings on his fingers; he had had only one when Val had left Etrara. It was true then; Callia and Mariel had rewarded him with land and titles. But how had he helped them?
Suddenly Val remembered something Damath had said the night Narrion killed him: “I saw you at the apothecary’s …”
Gobro had been poisoned. Narrion had gotten the poison at the apothecary’s; that had been the help he had given Callia. Perhaps he had fought with Damath to force Val to leave Etrara, but by killing the man he had also gotten rid of a dangerous witness. And with Val out of the way he had been free to marry Tamra.
There was no end to his cousin’s deviousness, Val thought; the man never did anything without having three or four reasons for it. If the plot to kill Gobro hadn’t succeeded Narrion would still be high in the king’s favor because he had sent Val to Tobol An. He had worked for both sides.
“Val?” Narrion said. “Did you hear what I said?”
“I don’t want any gift of yours,” Val said. “You killed Gobro, didn’t you?”
“Quiet—”
“No, I won’t keep quiet! You committed treason against your lawful king—”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“You bought the poison to kill him, then. Do you deny that?”
“Mariel and Callia asked me to find the poison. Mariel is a powerful woman, and even Callia has her supporters. A request from the royal family has the weight of a command—surely you understand that.”
“But you did well out of it. You rose by Gobro’s fall, just as you said you would.”
“I couldn’t disobey them. Even you can see that I didn’t have a choice.”
Val studied his cousin for a moment. “Of course you had a choice,” he said softly. “You could have gone into exile.” He turned and left the corridor without looking back.
“Val!” three or four people said as he entered Sbarra’s apartments. “Good fortune, Val, and welcome back. Tell us—”
“Come sit next to me,” someone said, and the others fell silent. Val looked in the direction of the voice and saw Queen Callia, dressed in royal gold and black and white. So the new queen was serving notice that she would not tolerate any conspiracies begun in Duchess Sbarra’s rooms; she would not retire discreetly as King Gobro had. “I want to hear all about the wonderful poetry you wrote,” Callia said, playing with the black pearls at her throat.
He took a seat next to her, noticing the golden land-ring of Etrara on her hand as he did so. Should he tell her what had happened? With Gobro dead he no longer had to hide the truth. But Narrion stood very high in the queen’s favor, and it would not do to accuse his cousin in front of Callia on his first night at court.
“I’m afraid I have no poetry to show you,” he said. “All I learned in Tobol An is that I’m no poet.”
He looked out over the faces around him, all of them eager for something to break the tedium of the court. Perhaps he would start a fashion; perhaps now every young courtier would travel to distant places and write poetry. He hoped their quests would prove more successful than his had been.
Tamra and Narrion came into the room and sat near the queen. Narrion put his arm around Tamra and she leaned closer to him. Val felt nothing. It had all been a pose, then: he had not loved Tamra. The knowledge was bitter to him; it would almost have been better if he could have written her reams of poetry, or challenged Narrion to a duel.
But did Narrion care for her? Or had he only married her to rise higher on the ladder? Tamra had high birth, and her family’s wealth was far greater than that of the house of the willow tree.
The talk swirled around him. Listening to them Val realized how quickly fashions at court changed; he did not know half the people they mentioned. Gobro had apparently made a secret treaty with Shai, their old enemy to the east. Callia and her faction—Duchess Mariel, Narrion and others—thought the treaty shameful, and had broken it as soon as Callia ascended to the throne.
“It’s no wonder Gobro’s peace lasted so long,” Arion said. “The man was a coward, anxious to placate anyone who rattled a sword in its scabbard. Imagine—he was about to give the Shai access to our ports! Did he truly think no one among us would object?”
“As if we’d let them have our riches,” Callia said, playing with her ring. “As if we’d share the wealth of the c
olonies across the sea with them.”
“What does the Shai ambassador say?” someone asked.
“Oh, he’s gone home,” Callia said. “Silly man. He said I’d broken a peace of five years’ standing.” She giggled. “He didn’t understand that that was exactly what I wanted. And they say the Shai are subtle folk!”
“Who says they’re subtle? They have no pageants, no court amusements—they’re nothing but barbarians.”
“But they have great poet-mages among them. People say they speak in poetry.”
“Will they declare war, do you think?”
“I hope so. If they don’t I’ll have to do it myself.” Callia giggled again.
War, Val thought. So it’s come to that. The world he knew seemed to have turned upside down while he had sat at his ease in Tobol An.
The man sitting at his side turned to him. “And will you fight in Callia’s war?” he asked.
“Oh, aye,” Val said.
“Ah. But do you think valor is the greatest of the Virtues?”
Val remembered him now; he was the man who had argued in favor of love the night before Val’s exile. His appearance had not improved since then; his tunic was, if anything, more threadbare than before, and his breeches had a hole at the knee. His thick white hair rayed out from his head, making him look like an image of the Summer God.
“No, I agree with you,” Val said. “The greatest of all the Virtues is love.”
“Of course it is, my lord,” the man said forcefully. “Of course it is.”
Suddenly Val thought he recognized the other man; he had been the beggar at the Feast of the Ascending God, the one who had thanked Val for the sovereign and called him “my young lord.” But no, that was impossible. Although Duchess Sbarra was known for her charity to beggars she would certainly not have invited one to her gatherings.
The other man watched Val shrewdly. For a moment he seemed to become what he resembled, the Summer God, the Wandering God. Gold sparked from his eyes. The room grew warmer, seemed to pulse with heat. Val felt dazed, unanchored. Could this man be a god? Was Val blessed by a god’s nearness?
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