The Cup of the World

by John Dickinson

  Ulfin had been right. They were already beginning to move against each other. Whoever Septimus left to occupy Tarceny would be well placed. A widow who wanted to assert her position as landlord in Tarceny and Trant would need a powerful following, allies, and most probably a new husband. They all knew that. And if Septimus indeed intended that she should sit beside him on the throne in Tuscolo, and could find the right sort of men to hold Trant and Tarceny for him, why, he would be stronger than many a king in memory.

  She felt very tired. And all at once she was angry. These half-people! Competent butchers of men! They were brave and spoke fairly but in the end they shared all manner of Ulfin's faults without having an ounce of his knowledge or vision. And yet they would shape her future for her. She would be a piece on the board, loved and hated only for the advantages she might bring. How long before one of them remembered whose son Ambrose was? Septimus would abide by his word, but how many barons or counts might see themselves as kingmakers? She could not allow that to happen.

  She wanted to leave, and find somewhere in all this house – her house – where she might rest. Yet there was one more thing.

  ‘May I see the book, please?’ she said. ‘It will not take long.’

  Aun passed it to her. He did not wait for Septimus's nod to do so.

  It was heavy in her hands. She leafed through the pages of vellum, some blank, some written in Ulfin's flowing script, aware that the men were all looking at her. She could not be long, in case they started to think that she was researching some spell.

  It was not a book of spells. It seemed to be more of a narrative. She turned the leaves. The first entry was headed ‘PRINCE PAIGAN’ and ran for pages, broken into short or long sections that recorded each meeting. Her eye fell on some sentences that contained the words ‘King's Stone’, but they told her no more than she had guessed. The next was headed ‘PAIGAN’ again.

  The next entry was her own.

  She was taking too long. The men were growing restless. Septimus was frowning, jerking his head slightly as if to indicate that Aun should take the book back. Aun remained impassive, waiting.

  ‘A moment more,’ she said.

  Quickly her eye fell down the pages. Something in her cried out to stop, and weigh every word. There was no time. She skipped ruthlessly past Ulfin's impressions of a nine-year-old child by the pool, past their early encounters when the girl was learning not to jump and look round as the voice addressed her. Words such as ‘wit’ and ‘lovely’ rose from the page, and she ignored them.

  … and I will whisper my wish upon the water and we shall taste it. For I have mourned enough, and it is time I loved again.

  She wanted more than that. And there was more. There were lines that began with words like ‘She understands quickly’; or ‘She nurses a deep sadness that I cannot touch …’ There was page after page of it.

  But the room around her was thick with armed men and suspicion. The world was not safe, not safe for her to linger with the secrets of a man's love, to find if they were true.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, and shut the book abruptly. ‘Your Highness, I would have your leave to withdraw. It is late, and I am unused to such a day’

  Septimus nodded.

  ‘There was something else in here,’ said a bearded knight, as she returned the book to Aun. ‘See, the cloth is marked.’ He jabbed a stubby finger at the outlines left by the box of white stones, and looked up at her, waiting for an explanation.

  ‘I have no knowledge of that,’ she said.

  It cost her nothing to lie in that company.

  XXIII

  South Wind

  nce more she was waiting for the dawn. The old moon was low above the horizon, the narrowest fingernail of yellow silver, with a whisper of the new moon in its arms. A ghostly light glowed upon the shadow to show the full disc against the sky. She was at the window in the big room in Mistress Massey's house at Aclete. She had risen and dressed with Hera's help, quietly and with as little light as possible. Now Hera had gone. She was alone, turning memories in her mind.

  What would the Angel write: upon Ulfin's page, and hers? Not revenge. Among the knights vengeance was justice. She did not feel vindicated or justified at the memory of his broken corpse, or of the others who had died that night; or the widowed wives and fatherless children whom she knew.

  The moon was rising, pregnant; and what she felt was loss.

  So something had survived in her, when the foul priest had passed her the Cup that had set her free. Had she loved Ulfin from herself then, under all the effects of the spell? Or was it that she had been so changed by the years of enchanted loving that no mere drink could restore her altogether? The secret is not to have fear, he had said. Perhaps the water had simply suppressed the fears that might have kept her from him: think of your father; think of the power of your suitors; think of yourself. And without such fear, love might have grown easily in the lonely girl during the long years when her best companion had been his voice, speaking from shadowed corners in the passages of Trant.

  No one could tell her now. The Prince Under the Sky was her enemy. Ulfin was dead, and his book was beyond her reach. The words she had glimpsed on its pages had added to her knowledge, but not to her understanding. It was as fruitless to ask whether she had loved him as it was to ask if he had loved her.

  He had betrayed Ambrose. Yet his very refusal to admit it to her, and his attempts to conceal it, showed that he had been ashamed. He had made some protection for his son, at some risk to himself. He had claimed that in the last resort he would have given his own life. What of that? Such a thing was easily said, before he knew who was listening. She did not accept it. But neither could she believe that the motives described by the Prince Under the Sky were all that had moved him. Ulfin had wanted the crown, and he had taken it. Yet, like a chess player, he had at the same time positioned himself so that he could make the sacrifice if it came to that. And would he have done so, if it had come? Probably not even Ulfin had known.

  She watched the night greying, the headlands above Aclete beginning to take on distance. At last she smiled.

  Footsteps, and a soft knock at her door. It was Hera, beckoning. Phaedra rose. Together they tiptoed along the corridor, past the room where Chawlin slept with his head still swilling from an evening's wine. Martin was waiting at the foot of the stairs, his head cocked towards the kitchen, where someone – Massey's housewoman – was chatting with the man who should have been on watch. He must have been lured indoors with the promise of a hot breakfast. The fellow would get trouble for this. Phaedra thought of leaving money to be smuggled into his purse. But that would only make it worse for him if it was discovered. She grimaced as she stepped from the door into the cold wind. In the world of iron, nothing could be done without causing hurt to someone.

  Her escort had made no difficulties. They were guarding her on her way to Trant, and were to accompany her on to join Septimus at Tuscolo when the time came. They had taken it on trust that the ship would not sail until noon. Yet Chawlin knew that the prince and his counsellors expected the Lady of Tarceny to arrive safely for his coronation. And once at Tuscolo she would have no freedom at all until the ordering of the Kingdom, and her part in it, had been decided.

  She would slip away now, and disappear on the face of Derewater.

  Martin had fallen into step beside her, saying nothing. A few moments ahead was a parting that would last for many years. After this he would fade into the south of the country, for he alone of the party knew where Phaedra would go. It was a blow for him. He had given much for the chance to work on the mountain borders of the March. But this part of the Kingdom would have a long memory of those involved in the lady's disappearance. And if they saw him in the valleys, they might begin to wonder if she had not gone that way too. It would be better for both of them if he were well away when Septimus, from Tuscolo, and Tancrem, from Tarceny began to look for her.

  They would not find her. Nor would Ul
fin's followers (for whom she had obtained from Septimus their lives, if not their lands) when they came hunting for their revenge. She would stay only briefly within the bounds of the Kingdom, to gather Ambrose and supplies, and Eridi and Orani if they would still go with her. Then she would go into the mountains again. She had a duty to do.

  ‘They are fell creatures,’ Martin muttered at last. ‘To have so little hurt from iron; and none at all, it seems, from my mouthings. Will you take care?’

  Hearing his words, she smiled. ‘Of course. But there is a simple answer. Do not fear for me.’

  As they approached the jetty she spoke again. ‘I must take your miracle from you, Martin.’

  ‘My lady?’

  ‘The one who woke you in your camp, and brought you to find me …’

  ‘Ah. Yes, I know.’

  ‘You know who he was?’

  ‘Remember, I saw him among those foul things a fortnight ago in Tarceny. And – it was not the first time.’ He frowned, as if in thought.

  ‘At Chatterfall?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was a sore hour. I do not remember it gladly. He appeared and called on us to remove the stones. But diManey listened to his wife before his angel, and they did not come by us. You left your son in good hands. And so did I.’

  So the priest had found the hiding place, and the people there that he had thought were his own. She shuddered. She had wanted to believe that Ambrose could remain hidden, even from him. She did not want to think that her son must live every day so close to capture. Yet Ambrose's defences – his defenders – had held. The ring had not been broken. Her friends had been true, and had not been deceived.

  ‘Thank the Angels,’ she said.

  ‘Thank them indeed. For you have not robbed me of a miracle. Or if you have, they have given me another, and you as well. Did you hear how your husband spoke before they killed him? That was true prophesy, from the man who lied. I tell you, as we fought with those things, we heard the voice of Umbriel telling us what the end of this will be. I do not doubt that was what it was. And I think the one he spoke to knew it too.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phaedra. ‘I think he did.’ For all his power, the priest had been in fear. Truly she could begin to believe in victory now.

  There was a ship at the jetty black against the greying water and the gilding sky. Its mast was stepped. It was rocking gently among the little wavelets that puckered the lake surface. There were men about it. Mistress Massey herself was waiting for them at the end of the quay.

  ‘The master knows to steer north,’ she said. ‘Once you are clear, you can tell him where to head. And my business will take him to Jent after this. He does not reckon to drop anchor in the March again for three weeks or more.’

  Phaedra looked around at the harbour. Four other boats rocked at their moorings.

  ‘And do you know, some rogue has been at my ships overnight?’ said Elanor Massey ‘Every rope is cut – and the oars are hidden where it will surely take us all day to find them. That I should live to see this!’

  Phaedra smiled. Almost the last of Tarceny's silver was in the purse at Mistress Massey's belt: a fair price for the trouble her people were going to. Aclete would benefit from the peace as well. Even so, she was proving a good friend, and one Phaedra wished she could have known better.

  Farewells now on the jetty Elanor Massey, with a smile and a slight bob. Hera, crying and trying not to. Martin, with a sudden energy in his handshake that said many things. She bowed her head and stepped aboard, unattended. The boatmen were lashing the last supplies and readying the oars. The captain was talking with Massey. Phaedra stood in the bow, feeling the gentle rock, tug, rock of the boat on the face of the water. Its soft urging spoke of a hurry to be gone. All that had happened here was memories. A new cycle was beginning.

  Above her rose the bulk of Talifer's Knoll, its eastern face still deep in shadow. The curve of its brow was bare. She searched it for signs of some robed figure, or figures, looking down on the bay. There were none.

  I know you now, Paigan, my enemy. I know what you meant when you spoke of truth and mirrors, up there. I know what manner of creatures walked with you when you left us on the hilltop. You have worked all your living years to ruin the heirs of your brothers and bring each as low as is in your power – shamed, corrupted, condemned, even to the father who would kill his own son. I know how you trapped Ulfin; how you worked to trap me, and Martin, Adam and Evalia to be your pawns. Now we who are living have slipped you. And I am coming to wall you in.

  It was simple, if not easy. The King's stone was the key. It lay where the brothers had felled it, in the mouth of the gap in the cliffs around the priest's pool. Raise it, and the ring the brothers had broken, the circle of white stones, would be complete. It would keep the things of the pool within, just as the pebbles that Calyn had cut from the monoliths had kept them out. She did not know how the stones had come there, or when. Perhaps the last of the High Kings had learned the source of the evil that was wasting his Kingdom, and had known how to confine it for a while. Perhaps they were ancient, the teeth of Capuu himself, and had risen and fallen many times at the hands of men.

  The hillmen would help. She would need crowds of them, which would demand more gifts and goats, and the means to get them where they were wanted. She would need any aid that there was to be had at Chatterfall. They would wall Paigan and his creatures behind the King's stone. She would live in the ruined house, beyond the reach of counts and princes, watching over the ring. And Ambrose would run free on the mountainside; until one day she, or maybe he (if that was what the voice that had spoken from within Ulfin had meant), would find how to finish the monstrous prince within it.

  The sun was rising. There was little movement in the town, and none from the escort, billeted for the most part at Ulfin's lodge. A sentry watched them idly from the doorway, uncomprehending. The sailors were waiting for their captain. They were squatting in the bottom of the boat, talking to one another in low voices. One had dug out a little reed flute and was nursing it on his knees. None looked her way. They must know who she was, and what she had done. Elanor Massey had chosen each one of them. They would do their part. And now the captain was stepping aboard. The sailors were pushing off, sitting to their oars and pulling the first short strokes. The strip of water between her and the jetty was already more than she could jump across.

  Behind her the piper lifted his flute and struck into the ancient song of the lake-sailor, who calls on the winds to carry him home. She felt the rhythm of the boat alter. Wash, wash, wash went the oars, in time to the long notes. She waved a last farewell to the three figures on the quay, and turned to see the lake flooding with the sunrise.

  Bright water, dark hill. The contrasts on the fringes of Tarceny were as the two faces of the moon. There had been a day, two years before, when she had stepped from one to the other. Even then her love had been corrupted by the waters of the undead prince. Perhaps all that had followed had already been inevitable.

  But she had ridden up out of the lake at sunrise, on the arm of the man she loved. There was something perfect about that still. She could remember the mingled sense of wonder and disbelief, then and for a time after, as it had seemed that everything she had wanted and yet never known she had wanted was being given to her hour by hour. She had been more truly alive then than before, or than she ever would be again. That time belonged in her life. It shone clear like the arc of the new moon.

  With it, there should have been other times, times with Ulfin unclouded by war or dark things, going on and on in the full disc of their lives. Maybe they would have been less bright – the face of the moon bore many marks and seas, as no doubt did many a marriage. They should have been there. And perhaps they were somehow, as the full moon was there beneath the shadow on its face. The shadow was terrible; darkening, corrupting. Yet in the ruin of her dreams she could imagine no other life that could have been meant fo
r her.

  Well, fancies coloured fact – the more so when she sought to justify what she had done. And it was done. Both brightness and the dark were part of her now. The months and years ahead would show her new perspectives.

  But the sunset would bring her to Chatterfall: to Evalia, and Ambrose in her arms.

  Also by John Dickinson

  The WIDOW and the KING

  ⋆ “A delicately interconnected tale that gratifies on multiple levels …. [A] luminous and memorable high fantasy story”

  —The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Starred

  “[A] compelling, thoughtful sequel. Dickinson creates an intricate, complex world with memorable characters and engrossing subplots that fantasy enthusiasts will thoroughly enjoy.”

  —Booklist

  “John Dickinson obviously has storytelling in his blood. He is a gifted writer able to create a detailed fantasy with believable flesh-and-blood humans inhabiting a strange world.”

  —KLIATT

  “An intelligent literate sequel …. Its subtle depths demand careful attention that will reward any thoughtful devotee of speculative fiction.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  Published by Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of Random House Children s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the

  product of the author s imagination or are used fictitiously Any resemblance

  to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.