He knew that he was not a devoutly religious man because he hated the gift; because it was, to him, a burden. Their cries, this unlooked for jubilation, eased the burden of this first day, this seventeenth of Lattan, in the year—in the Imperial year—four hundred and twenty-seven.
Without thinking—and it could only be without thought, because the laws of the City were in no wise transparent or unknown to him—he drew his sword; the crescent caught light and sent it scattering, a flash against stone and cloth, against wall and dirt, window and stall. There was a drawn breath, a sudden cessation of sound, and then when it returned, it was louder—and carried on voices much deeper and fuller than the high fluting of children.
They don’t even know who I am, he thought. Who do they mistake me for?
As if she could hear the question, and perhaps she could, Mirialyn said, “You are a hero come to test yourself against other heroes; in the eyes of these people, you are part story, part song. There are many men who come from across the Empire, often with little money, and few prospects. Each hopes to be found worthy of the Kings’ Challenge; very few are.”
“And the few,” Valedan said, “are those who’ve had the time and the money to train well.”
Again, the expression on her face was peculiar, almost bitter. “Remember that,” she told him, as softly as she could over the street’s noise. “In all of this, in anything that follows, remember.”
Her words were too serious, but he was serious; it was a thing they had in common, this wisdom-born quarter-god and an expatriate Southern noble. He let them in, because he trusted her. There were few people he trusted, and they were almost all Northerners. Almost.
But trust was perhaps not a thing the Lord valued or encouraged. Certainly Baredan trusted no one; Ramiro trusted no one. Alina did not. He held the sword until his arm tired, thinking it foolish while at the same time thinking it wonderful that so simple a thing could cause this momentary happiness, this wave of excitement that seemed to pass from person to person as they traveled.
It should have passed. He should have seen the boy and moved on.
But Meralonne APhaniel felt his age. Felt it not as a matter of fact, an intellectual assumption that governed most of the Order’s members, but as, at last, a thing beyond his control. For a brief moment he understood the folly of searching for immortality, although he had never been a man so trapped by that particular fear.
“What troubles you, Member APhaniel?”
Only one man in the Empire could lay claim to such a voice. Meralonne felt the fall of his shadow in the light of the climbing sun. Felt it pass though him, the touch of a ghostly hand, a hint of a brotherhood and a past long closed to him.
To either of them. He bowed to the master bard, Kallandras of Senniel College. “I did not think to see you here so soon.”
“Or at all?”
Meralonne’s smile was cold, but it was there.
“What has caught your attention?”
“What makes you assume that anything has?”
“I rarely see a man of your station—and relative wisdom—stand staring so long in a street as busy as this one. For one, it makes one too easy a target for thieves.”
As they both knew no thief would dare, Meralonne felt no need to dignify this convivial prattle with a reply.
“In fact I think I’ve seldom seen that look on the face of anyone over the age of eighteen.” There was play and light in the eyes of the man who said those words that robbed them of any edge.
Meralonne raised a frosty brow. “If the truth be told—”
“And what else, between two such men as we?” Sardonic words; smooth, smooth voice.
“—I was indeed stopped by something that would have given me pause in my youth.” His hand rose as if at a sudden gust of wind, a touch of the element they both knew best. “That boy.”
“The one with hair almost as pale as yours, but nothing else whatever in common?” The bard showed a rare flash of teeth; it changed the lines of his face. Oh, he knew how to smile; he could hardly be a master bard without that particularly necessary social skill. But this private half smile was unusual, seldom offered; it was too sardonic to be properly useful. At another time, Meralonne would have felt some echo of pleasure, dim and distant, at the bard’s flattery.
Not today. The ring on the bard’s finger seemed as natural there as flesh—or spirit—and he had never paused, not after the harrowing of Vexusa, to ask why that ring had become the bard’s. He’d assumed that Myrddion, long dead, had somehow intended the ring to serve the purpose it had served. Had assumed that he, mage and loremaster, had intervened so that Kallandras might be spared the price that great magics demanded by their very nature.
But the fact remained, as the ring did: Kallandras of Senniel College was still its bearer, and over the decade and a half that had passed since the ring had almost killed him in Vexusa, he had learned to negotiate with the element the ring was fashioned from. Had learned to summon wildness in a quantity small enough to exhilarate but not to destroy.
An elemental mage would have learned as much, but would never have learned the control so easily.
We are all vain, all fools; none more so than I. I knew there were five rings, and each of those rings had a role. Yet I thought it was almost over. It has barely begun. Do you desire greatness, boy? You will see it. And someone will pay the price. He did not speak the words aloud because he wasn’t certain to whom he was speaking; the youth in front of him, or the youth that he had long since left behind: his own.
The time is coming, he thought, and knew it. In spite of all we have achieved, the Sleepers will waken. It was true, and truth of a type that allows for no other; Meralonne could not be easily dislodged by the master bard’s gently edged humor. And the bard, less stubborn by far than the mage-born man who was one of his very few equals, gave up.
“Why does he draw your eye? To me he would be one of many were it not for the color of his hair.”
“To you, all humanity is ‘one of many.”’
“Not all, old friend.”
The silence that came between them was that of the gathered, expectant crowd: one they could watch, but could never join. But the cries, the expectation almost fulfilled, were not enough to still conversation to one born to the voice, as Kallandras had been.
What would you have been, Kallandras of Senniel, had you been given over to no other calling? You might have sung of life in a voice so loud that no man in the city could remain unmoved. He did not ask the question; he never would. Kallandras stood in death’s shadow, and if life cast the shadow, it was not life he served. Not quite.
“The would-be Tyr is fifty yards away and we are called upon to join them.” Silence. Then, “Meralonne?” Wind’s softest voice.
“He reminds me of the hunger of youth, of being young. Of dreaming,” the mage said, as if Kallandras had never spoken. “Of greatness. I fear that we will see all of these things, and I am old enough to have learned that almost no man is capable of bearing the burden of greatness without dying beneath its weight. And yet, bard, I will tell you this one secret: I have not grown so wise. I see that boy and I desire to see his dream fulfilled, at the same time that I learn to fear it.” The mage shook his head. “A pity we are on display, I would like my pipe.”
“A pity indeed. Miri is not known for her compassion.”
They exchanged a quick smile, but the bard spoke again. “Perhaps you desire this because you have learned to take joy in the joy of others.”
“Is that what you hear in my voice? I know how to hide the truth, but I do not know how to lie. Not to you; your gift is too great a gift. Tell me,” Meralonne said softly, “what my truth is.”
Kallandras did not reply. For a moment, he let the hush of the crowd carry them both. “You’ve never asked me before.”
>
“No.”
The bard turned to the crowd. “They say we can never go back.”
“They are wise.”
“If we cannot go back, are we damned if we also cannot escape?”
“There is always death,” the mage replied.
Kallandras laughed. “And we two are still alive.” He lifted a hand. “No more. See? They are upon us.”
Meralonne nodded, but he did not move.
Kallandras shook his head, opened his lips. Spoke. And from a world away, crowded to either side by a sweaty press of people who spanned all ages, all shapes, all nationalities, came a red-faced boy with platinum hair and too-slender arms.
“Hello, Aidan,” Meralonne said, inclining his head slightly.
“Am I going to lose my spot?”
“I believe you already have.”
The lines of the young boy’s face stilled suddenly, as if the ripple caused by dropping a large rock in placid water had been frozen in time for their inspection. “But . . . but I ain’t done nothing wrong!” He came to life in a rush of motion. Turned to look over his shoulder, to see in fact that the mage was correct; he’d lost his spot. “I was there three whole days! That was—”
“Boy,” Kallandras said softly, although any other man would have had to shout to be heard. “Hush. They come, and we are in their road.”
Words left the boy’s mouth and tumbled into the sudden shouts of the gathered crowd that lined either side of the road, the crowd that he’d been part of and now stood apart from, uncertain of two things: why he’d been called, and why he’d come. He looked to either side, searching open mouthed for the spot he’d abandoned, his stomach folding in on itself and falling as he realized that there was no room at all for him in that wall of people. Three days.
The riders were a shadow that wavered as he stood frozen, struggling with tears. Struggling to move before the soldiers who were walking ahead of the horses moved for him.
The man who had called him from the roadside—why had he come? Why, Kalliaris, why?—put a hand on his shoulder. “Wait.”
The horses were flanked to either side by guards, armed men who wore a crest that was not quite noble. House crest. The boy didn’t know which House. Didn’t care. Because he did recognize the crest of the next visible rider: the Princess of the blood. He stopped trying to get out of the way.
Commander Sivari came next; Aidan recognized him and held his breath because the first and only time he’d ever met this man, there had been a moment of magic. This man had sparred with his champion.
He didn’t recognize the horse. It was big, it was dark, it looked a little too wild to be ridden through streets as crowded as the hundred holdings were on this particular day. But that didn’t matter. He recognized the rider.
The golden-haired man’s hand was still heavy on his shoulder but that no longer mattered; he couldn’t have moved now had he wanted to. He thought he might wait here while the horse and rider bore down on him and either crushed him or passed him by. If he’d been six again, he would have darted forward; shaking the parental grip on his shoulder he would have flagged Valedan kai di’Leonne down; he would have begged to be allowed to follow, to watch. Just that: to watch. He would have promised anything.
But he was old enough now to understand just how open to humiliation that left him. Old enough and experienced enough. He’d begged for food when things were really, really bad; had begged for work when they weren’t. It tired him down, wore him out, made him desperate to be big enough, old enough, that he could do something: join the army, or the magisterial guards, or the merchant navy—anything but sit and beg, stand and whine.
He wanted this more than he had ever wanted food or money—and yet he knew that he wouldn’t cheapen its importance by treating it as if it were just another handout. And as he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he stood there, a stranger’s hand on his shoulder, breathing almost forgotten.
Valedan kai di’Leonne had carried his sword from the isle, waving it as if it were a flag; he caught sunlight with the flat of the blade, sent it back to the ground where it was greeted as if it were gold by people who waited with outstretched hands. He couldn’t remember feeling this excitement, this adulation, for anyone.
For anyone but his father and the man that all the young boys in the harem had worshiped: Anton di’Guivera. The man who had bested the Northern foes. The man who was honor and power defined. The man who had killed his father.
It soured his mood a moment; he stared at Mirialyn ACormaris wondering how it was that she, a rare child who bore Kings’ blood, could bear to see the throne pass to brothers who did not. They carry Gods’ blood, he could hear her say. And half is as dilute as we want it, when there is so much to rule, so much to destroy when we make our mistakes.
“You are here,” the Princess said, as quietly as Alina might have, and as gently. “They are watching.”
He lifted a mailed fist, wondering if any of these people understood who he was. Wondering if his own people would honor him so easily if no threat of death bound them. Wondering who his own people even were.
The streets opened up before him. People waited to either side, like the walls of a mountain pass. And in the tunnel they formed, he saw three: Kallandras the bard, Meralonne the mage, and between them a boy whose hair had been burned to light by the touch of the Lord.
The boy reminded him—for no reason he could think of, of the blindfolded boy. It was only when their eyes met that he realized that he’d seen him once before. At the first test, the winnowing of challengers.
The Callestan Tyran looked askance at him; he shook his head. No.
Both the bard and the mage bowed their heads and dropped to one knee, draping an arm across their chest. But the boy who stood frozen, his mouth half-open, his knees locked in a standing position, honored him by the absence of formality.
Can I live up to that?
Probably not. Certainly his father had not. Anton di’Guivera had not. The winds had scoured them, the sun had bleached them; both would scour and burn him in their time. So the ACormaris said, and she was seldom wrong.
“No,” he said.
“No?” The Princess said.
He did not reply. Was barely aware that he had spoken the reflexive word aloud. There was nothing at all about this common boy that reminded him of himself; indeed, the opposite, with his pale skin, his lack of height, his obvious lack of wealth or rank. Nothing at all because the boy had been born free, and Valedan kai di’Leonne—the man who would be Tyr’agar—had been born to a slave, and freed at his father’s political convenience because his mother was the least favored of his wives.
They had nothing at all in common, except the passing of hope. The belief in things greater and better than oneself at twelve.
“Valedan.” Mirialyn’s voice, heavy with wisdom and certainty.
You watched me fight. What did you see? Did you see what I saw when I watched them? Did I promise you some honor, some wisdom, some law that was greater than power, just by picking up a sword and swinging it well?
No. No more than Anton di’Guivera had done.
“No.”
“Valedan?”
“I am Valedan kai di’Leonne,” he said, sliding down off the back of a horse that he knew should not be left without rider in streets as crowded as this. He handed the reins to one of the Tyran. “I ride to join my peers in the King’s Challenge.” He stopped speaking as he approached the boy who stood between two kneeling men—two of the most powerful men in the Kingdom. “I fly a foreign flag. It is the foreign flag; the crest that rules the Dominion.”
“Valedan,” Mirialyn said. He chose not to hear the warning in her voice.
“But it is the Empire that has sheltered me, and it is in the Empire that I have been tempered and honed. You
were witness to the first step I took on this path, the first step I took on my own. I would be honored if you would continue to bear witness for me.” He bowed then, bowed to this commoner, this sunburned, white-haired boy. “Because in watching, you will remind me of what I must strive for. And why.”
He was not terribly surprised when the boy burst into tears.
Ser Anton di’Guivera arrived at the West Gate in good time; too good a time for his liking. Some handful of men had already gathered, armed and armored in the Northern style. He had studied them, where he’d had opportunity, and he understood their strengths and their weaknesses as well as any man not born among them could. They were the greatest threat to his students’ desire to claim the crown—they always were—but they were no threat to him personally, and they were therefore beneath his notice.
The horse that he rode had come from the Mancorvan Plains shortly before the slaughter; he had seen to its purchase personally because he understood the measure of Mareo di’Lamberto well, and had rightly felt there would be no supply between the Tor Leonne and the Circle in Amar after the deed was made public.
Still, although he’d chosen the beast, he’d chosen in haste; he had meant for the new horse to better the horse that had once served him in his quest for bitter glory, and although the stallion had the appearance and the bearing, he did not have the spirit. Things pass.
His students rode beasts of only slightly inferior worth; they had been sent to make a statement, after all. But the man they had chosen to make that statement to was nowhere in evidence.
Carlo was having problems with his horse. A pity, since Carlo was a horseman without parallel. That he found the crowds intimidating was expected; that he fared so poorly at the reins because of it was not. Unfortunate. Andaro, where the horses would allow it, rode at his side, attempting to soothe. They would remain this friendly until they entered the combat itself. After all, only one head could wear the crown.
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