The Tale of Oriel

by Cynthia Voigt

  “Your names?” the smiling man demanded.

  “This is Griff, who has traveled with me from the first,” Oriel said. “This is Beryl,” he introduced her.

  “A woman,” the soldier said.

  “As you see, my lord,” Beryl answered. “As befits a land where the King attends to the words of his Queen and consort.”

  “And so I do,” the King assented. “You’re right to point that out, Baer, and I am glad to think that my people know me so well.”

  Then the King and his advisors waited for Oriel to name himself.

  Oriel knew that, and let the wordless time grow, until at last he broke the silence to demand, as boldly and discourteously as it had been demanded of him, “Your names?” He looked at the courtier, who did not smile now, and at the priest, whose eyes narrowed under grey eyebrows. It was the soldier who answered him, with an approving nod, “Haldern. First Captain, Lord Haldern. First Minister, Lord Tseler,” he waved a hand at the courtier, “and Lord Karossy, First Priest as well as Custodian of the Books of Laws and History.” Lord Haldern bowed stiffly, from the waist. When he did that the other two had to follow his example, or make their quarrel known.

  Oriel and Griff imitated him, while Beryl curtsied.

  “My name is Oriel,” Oriel said then, speaking to the King.

  “Oriel?” The King studied him, as if he recognized something about him. “What do you want of me, Oriel?”

  “I would ask of you the privilege to enter the Tourney, and to try my chance to be Earl Sutherland. No more than that,” Oriel answered.

  “Do you think,” Lord Tseler inquired, “to purchase that right with the stone?”

  Oriel understood what the First Minister was attempting to discover about him. He answered boldly. “I have no desire to part with the stone, unless the King will take it as a gift—For it is mine to give—or to spend—as I will—or to keep. I show the stone, sire, to claim my right to ask a place in the Tourney.”

  “Do you not overreach yourself?” Lord Karossy asked.

  Oriel thought there was no need to answer that, which was not a question. He stood patiently until a real question might be asked him, or an answer might be given to his request.

  “Your name is Oriel,” Lord Haldern said, “and you are not, I think, a man of the Kingdom.”

  “That is true,” Oriel agreed.

  “What land do you come from?” Lord Tseler asked.

  “From countries to the south,” Oriel answered. “As far back as I remember, I come from an island far to the south of this Kingdom.”

  The three advisors conferred again, until Lord Tseler inquired, “Who is your father and what is his station?”

  “I cannot say,” Oriel said. “I never knew, and had no way to discover. Nor mother, neither.”

  “Your age?” the King asked abruptly, as if curiosity had caused him to speak out of turn.

  “Not less than eighteen winters, as near as I can count,” Oriel said.

  The King shook his head, as if that was not the answer he had hoped for. He turned to say to Lord Karossy, “You know the story I am thinking of. You know the book.”

  Lord Karossy had a fleshless face that sloped forward to his long, sloping nose. Oriel couldn’t have said whether he was an old man or a man of moderate years. He was thin as a tree in winter. “Surely he is too young,” Lord Karossy protested.

  “Just fetch the book,” Lord Haldern said, impatient.

  The King was a comfortable man, even as he sat in a chair that he made a throne by sitting in it. He merely nodded his approval when Lord Tseler leaned down to say, softly enough for privacy but loud enough for all to hear, “If you give Karossy your word that no one will ask the man any further questions while he is out of the way, then I think he’ll do your bidding swiftly.”

  “You have my word, Karossy,” the King said. He turned back to Lord Tseler, who was pulling straight his white overshirt and brushing smooth his long vest. “I would remind you, Minister, that the man has a name. Oriel.”

  The minister took the correction humbly, or so Oriel thought until he caught the expression in the man’s eyes. “I beg your pardon, Oriel,” Lord Tseler said, and his eyes begged nothing of the kind, would beg nothing of Oriel.

  Oriel answered on a laugh, giving his pardon as if he were accustomed to having it asked by the great men of the Kingdom, as if it were not possible for someone as insignificant as Lord Tseler to offend him.

  They awaited Lord Karossy’s return in a silence of occasionally cleared throats, and shuffled feet, and questions almost asked. “Did you—?” “No, did you—?” Lord Karossy brought back with him a large, leather-covered book, which he carried before him like a babe. The King held out his hands to take the book, but Lord Karossy gave it instead to Oriel, with a sharp glance from under the grey eyebrows, and terse instructions. “The section the King remembers is twenty-six pages back from the center.”

  By the expression on Tseler’s face, and the consternation on the Captain’s, and the displeasure on the King’s, Oriel knew Lord Karossy hoped to snare Oriel somehow through the book. He couldn’t know exactly how the snare worked, but he knew how he planned to elude it. First he asked the King’s permission to read. That given, with Lord Karossy mumbling apologies to the King, Oriel opened the book to its center. Silently, he counted back twenty-six pages. Silently, he stood and read.

  The page told part of the Kingdom’s history, not as a story is told, but as if the writer wrote down notes of the significant events for later reference. Oriel read slowly, to understand why the King had sent for this book. A name caught his eye, written in fading ink on the heavy paper. He read the writing: “Sutherland’s heir slain, leaving eldest son Orien.” Later, the name reappeared in the small script. “Orien gone, rumor says run off—murdered by brother?—to wed his southern Princess.”

  Oriel questioned the King. “What would the writer mean when he spoke of a southern Princess, sire?”

  “There are no such southern Princesses in the Kingdom,” the King answered, which was what Oriel expected to hear. “I think it must mean a Princess from the lands beyond the great southern forest, beyond the Kingdom, where maps picture a sea, and stories describe a watery world as endless as a forest.”

  Oriel nodded calmly, although his heart raced. He thought he knew the King’s mind in this. “Orien’s year gone. Gladaegal sworn Earl. Dry season in the north but generous crops in the south, so doling rooms fully stocked. Queen brought to bed of a son.”

  Oriel passed the open book to Griff, ignoring the expressions on the faces of the King’s advisors, and pointed with his finger. Beryl studied the stone floor of the hall, avoiding his glance, and he judged that her own skill in reading must be kept a secret.

  Griff read, looked at Oriel, closed the book. He said nothing. He returned the book to Oriel, who returned it to the King, who passed it back to Lord Karossy.

  “It’s the story of Orien I was thinking of,” the King said to Lord Haldern and Lord Tseler.

  “That was long ago, in your father’s time,” Lord Tseler said. “Was it not? If I remember correctly, for my memory is not as fine as yours, sire.”

  “Do you think of some magic, sire?” Lord Haldern asked, and the thought troubled him. “Do you think to explain the falconstone? By what, an ageless sleep?”

  The King answered neither of them. “Step forward, you, man. Griff? It is Griff, isn’t it? Step forward.”

  As if they had often played this game together, Griff first asked Oriel’s permission, and only when he had it did he approach the King. Even concentrated as he was on winning his desire from the King, Oriel understood how fortunate he was in Griff’s quick understanding, and his unwavering loyalty. The King reached up from where he sat, to pull Griff’s head down, and then turn it to one side, to show the scar on his cheek.

  Oriel thought to protest, but chose to keep silent a little longer.

  “There was a story, was there not? about the
lost Earl. That he had been scarred on his face, in a battle with pirates?” The King asked these questions of his advisors, and then released Griff, who returned to Oriel’s side.

  “You wish to let the man try his luck,” Lord Haldern spoke. “You think—and I agree, sire—that there are too many coincidences.”

  “What coincidences?” Lord Tseler demanded.

  Lord Haldern answered. “The name. The scar—never mind that it’s on another’s face. He comes as he says from lands to the south. He brings a falconstone. These are coincidences enough for me. You, Griff, where did you get that scar? Come on, man, speak up—or shall I whip it out of you?”

  Oriel couldn’t have held his tongue if he had wanted to. “You’ll whip no one, unless it’s me.”

  He needed to say no more. His word was good, and every man in that room knew it. Moreover, by the expression deep in Lord Haldern’s eyes, he saw that the soldier had hoped he would answer a threat to Griff in just that manner.

  “Baer?” Lord Tseler asked. His voice was rich and soft and pleasant, but it was dangerous.

  “Sir?” Beryl looked up. She feared these men. Oriel didn’t know why she should fear them, when she stood under his protection.

  “I think you are a subject of this Kingdom?” Lord Tseler asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Who is your father?” he asked. “Who are you, that you come here with this man?”

  “I am the puppeteer’s granddaughter,” Beryl answered, “and my father was a soldier, who left my mother behind. She, dying, left me behind, a newborn babe. Now, I am the puppeteer.”

  “What do you know of these men, Baer?” the King asked.

  “Sire, they came to my door in a winter storm, and that is all I know. Hildebrand gave my grandfather a holding which stands alone at the western edge of a narrow valley, far beyond any other village or habitation. My uncle had it from my grandfather, and now I keep the farm and flocks. If you follow the river backwards into Hildebrand’s lands you will reach my uncle’s holding. Beyond me to the west are only empty forests and bare hills, and the mountains.”

  “Was it this last winter when they came to your door?” Lord Karossy asked.

  “Aye, it was, sir. In a storm. They wore wolf skins over bare shoulders, and wolf skins wrapped around their bare feet. They had boards tied onto their feet in a strange manner. They were starving, thirst tormented them, they were exhausted. They said they had come over the mountains.”

  “Did you believe them?” Lord Karossy asked, as if he intended to credit Beryl’s answer.

  “Aye,” Beryl said. “I believe them.”

  “It will be you,” Lord Tseler’s voice said, “who hatched this scheme to bring Oriel before the King.”

  “Aye,” Beryl said. “When I saw the green stone, with the falcon carved,” she said, and hesitated, looking at Oriel, before she went on. “All know that the falcon is the sign of the Earls Sutherland. All know of the Tourney, to name the next Earl. I thought the King should know of the stone, and the man who owned it.”

  “How do you know he owns it?” Lord Tseler asked, sharply now, as if at last he had caught her out, as if at last now the truth would be told.

  “Aye, he told me so, my lord,” Beryl answered him. “He is a true man,” she said.

  “But does that make him worthy to be Earl?” Lord Karossy asked.

  “I can’t answer that, sir.”

  The King interrupted. “That’s not a fair question to ask, when there is one man in the room who is entered in the Tourney himself, and two of us who have sons contending. Do you think you are worthy to be Earl?” the King asked Oriel.

  “If I did not think so,” he said, “I would not have come before you.”

  Having answered that, and all the other questions, he judged it time to require an answer of the King. He looked at all four of the men’s faces, wondering how he should put the question. He could choose one of the three advisors to be his sponsor, and trust in that man’s influence with the King. He could ask all three, one after the other, which might join them together in his support, but might insult the King’s pride by seeming to put his advisors before him in importance. He could make his suit to the King—but the King never seemed to determine anything without taking advice—and moreover he might thus risk offending the other three by seeming to put the King before them in importance, and risk further that they might band together against him.

  The King, he thought, wished to say yes to him, for the fact of the stone, and the nearness of the name, and Griff’s scar. For the King, those were reasons enough. So it was the King he asked, and he went down on his knee to make the request. “I ask permission to try my chance to win the Earldom, sire,” he said.

  “You must meet the lady,” the King said.

  That was answer enough for Oriel. He rose, satisfied.

  But the King’s advisors were not satisfied. “Do you grant his suit?” Lord Karossy asked.

  “We don’t even know if he can fight,” Lord Haldern said. “If he can’t, it’s only a cruelty to let him try. Can you, Oriel? With sword, and lance? On foot and on horseback? As to words, I think we have seen already how well you fight with words.”

  Ignoring the question of lance and horse, Oriel spoke from confidence. “I have some training in soldiery, sir. I have fought for my life, and I think I will fight as well for an Earldom.”

  “He has time to learn what he doesn’t know,” the King said. “The Tourney isn’t until the autumn fair.”

  “But he’s a stranger, and knows nothing of our laws,” Lord Tseler objected. “I can’t permit this, sire.”

  He had gone too far. “But I can, and I do. As long as I am your King,” the King said.

  Part V

  The Earl Sutherland

  Chapter 23

  ORIEL WOULD BE THE KING’S man in the Tourney. “If you agree to stand in my sponsorship,” the King said, “then no man will deny you the right to take your chance. Who is the victor of the Tourney, that man will be Earl Sutherland. He will wed—you aren’t married, are you?”

  “No,” Oriel said.

  “The victor will wed Merlis, only child of the last Earl. Thus he will join himself to the ancient house of Sutherland, and insure that his children will have the blood of Earls in their veins. In direct line,” the King added. “There are many who can claim the lineage, including my own family. I have two nephews in the lists, and one son. Tseler has his eldest born entered. Haldern is himself a contender, for he has long been a widower. Many lords have sent also their sons, and grandsons.”

  “Many of the southern lords,” Oriel guessed.

  “Also the northern houses,” the King told him. “For every house has younger sons ambitious for a higher place than birth gives them. I think there is no house that is not represented.”

  “Arbor’s,” Lord Haldern spoke.

  “That’s so,” the King said. “Arborford sends no man, although the lord Arbor has two sons here as pages, and neither one of them is the elder son, and both are brave lads. He will not give them permission to enter the Tourney.”

  “Why is that?” Oriel asked.

  The King didn’t know. He looked to Lord Haldern, who answered, “Arbor says, he will not have his sons fighting one another to the death, brother against brother.”

  Lord Tseler had something to add. “Arbor says also that he will not have younger sons dreaming that they might supercede the elder. He says, he is master in his own house and he will serve his Earl, and he will serve his King, and both willingly, but he doesn’t think he could accept service to his own son.”

  “Or,” Lord Haldern added, “service to any man who had slain his son.”

  Oriel needed to be sure he had understood correctly, so he asked, “The Tourney must be played to the death?”

  “To the death,” the King echoed sadly. “That is not my will,” he said, “but my will has been overruled.”

  There was soft whispering behind Oriel,
and then Griff spoke in his ear. “Ask, if you can, how a King’s will might be overruled.” It was good advice, and he guessed that Beryl had given it. He guessed also that Beryl couldn’t give her own voice to her own question. He gave his voice to it, thinking that if a King couldn’t work his own will, then a man who would be Earl should know why, for his power was more limited than the King’s.

  The King didn’t answer him. He looked at his First Captain, and then at the First Priest, where they stood beside Lord Tseler.

  “The King’s will cannot, of course, be overruled,” Lord Karossy said, the words formed precisely by the thin lips. “That is the law. A wise man, however, knows his own limitations and takes counsel when it is needed, for every man, even a King, can profit from counsel.”

  Oriel looked from one man to the other, thinking his own thoughts. The King’s sad expression said that a King must stand by his own rulings.

  “A man who has seen a chance to increase his own wealth, lands, power,” Lord Tseler began. He spoke the words slowly, as if they were addressed to one who might have difficulty understanding what men of greater understanding comprehended without explanation. “If he has seen his chance and then lost it, he will in his bitterness be a great danger to the man who has won it from him.”

  “If you defeat a man in trial of arms, or battle, and let him live,” Lord Haldern warned, “you’ll have an enemy in him, and probably in his sons as well. That’s common sense.”

  “For you have taken something away from him,” Lord Karossy explained, “and he will feel the need to take the thing, or something of equal value, away from you.”

  They were convincing, but Oriel wasn’t convinced. However, the argument of it wasn’t what concerned him, not at this time. “Do you mean then that at every contest there will and must be a man left dead on the ground?”

  “Yes,” Lord Haldern said, with a resolution that seemed strange to Oriel, until he remembered that Haldern himself was a contender.

  “Not the spoken contest,” the King pointed out. “And if your opponent is unhorsed with the lance, and cannot rise up, there is no need to slay him.”