by David Drake
Garric grinned at Lord Martous: a balding little fellow, a homely man from a rustic place who was incensed that he and the boy on whom his status depended weren’t being treated with greater deference. That implied that pretentiousness was one of the strongest human impulses.
“Come along, Basto, come along,” called Lord Martous to the aide struggling with the bundle. Then on a rising note, “No, don’t you—”
The latter comment was to Lord Attaper, the commander of the Blood Eagles and a man to whom Garric’s safety was more important than it was to Garric himself. Attaper, a stocky, powerful man in his forties, ignored the protest just as he ignored all other attempts to tell him how to do his job. He plucked the package from the aide’s hands and unwrapped it while the aide came aboard and Martous spluttered in frustration.
“I’m sorry you had to scramble up like a monkey, Prince Protas,” Garric said, smiling at the boy to put him at his ease. Protas was obviously nervous and uncertain, afraid to say or do the wrong thing in what he knew were important circumstances. “I’d expected to meet you—and your father, of course—on land in a few hours.”
“King Cervoran is dead, sir,” Protas said with careful formality. He forced himself to look straight at Garric as he spoke, but then he swallowed hard.
“Yes, yes, that’s why we had to come out to meet you,” Martous said, pursing his lips as though he were sucking on something sour. “His highness died most unexpectedly as he was going in to dinner last evening. Quite distressing, quite. He fell right down in his tracks. I was afraid the stewards had dropped something on the floor and he’d slipped, but he just—died.”
“I probably could give you advice on housekeeping in a large establishment,” Garric said, smiling instead of snarling at the courtier’s inability to come to the point, “but I really doubt that’s why you’ve met us here at the cost of discomfort and a degree of danger. Is it, milord?”
Martous looked surprised. “Oh,” he said. “Well, of course not. But I thought—that is, the council did—that since you were arriving just in time, you could preside over the apotheosis ceremony for King Cervoran and add, well, luster to the affair. And of course we needed to explain that to you before you come ashore because the ceremony will have to be carried out first thing tomorrow morning. The cremation can’t, you see, be delayed very long in this weather.”
“Apotheosis?” said Liane. She didn’t ordinarily interject herself openly into matters of state, but Lord Martous was obviously a palace flunky, and not from a very big palace if it came to that. “You believe your late ruler becomes a God?”
“Well, I don’t, of course I don’t,” said Martous in embarrassment. “But the common people, you know; and they like a spectacle. And, well, it’s traditional here on First Atara. And it can’t hurt, after all.”
“This doesn’t appear to be a weapon, milord,” said Attaper dryly. “Shall I return it to your servant, or would you like to take it yourself?”
The velvet wrappings covered a foiled wooden box decorated with cutwork astrological symbols. Inside was a diadem set with a topaz the size of Garric’s clenched fist. The stone wasn’t particularly clear or brilliant, even for a topaz, but Garric didn’t recall ever seeing a larger gem.
Protas, forgotten during the adults’ by-play, said in a clear voice, “We brought it to your master the prince, my man. He will decide where to bestow it.”
Garric nodded politely to the young prince. “Your pardon, milord,” he said in real apology. “We’ve had a long voyage and it appears to have made us less courteous than we ought to be.”
He took the diadem. The gold circlet was thicker and broader at the back to help balance the weight of the huge stone, but even so it had a tendency to slip forward in his fingers.
Cashel had led Sharina and Tenoctris to the stern, but now he stepped aside and let the women join the group of officials. When he caught Garric’s glance over Tenoctris’ head, he smiled broadly. Cashel stayed close to Sharina, but he wasn’t interested in what the locals had come to discuss and didn’t pretend otherwise.
Cashel wasn’t interested in power. He was an extraordinarily strong man, and he had other abilities besides. If he wasn’t exactly a wizard himself, then he’d more than once faced hostile wizards and crushed them. That alone would’ve gained him considerable authority if he’d wanted it. Add to that his being Prince Garric’s friend from childhood and Princess Sharina’s fiancé, and a great part of the kingdom was Cashel’s for the asking.
But he didn’t ask. Cashel wouldn’t have known what to do with a kingdom if he’d had it, and anyway it wasn’t something he wanted. Which of course was much of the reason he was Garric’s closest friend: Garric didn’t want power either.
“That may be,” said Carus. “But the kingdom wants you; needs you anyway, which is better. Otherwise the best the citizens could hope for is a hard-handed warrior who knows nothing but smashing trouble down with his sword until trouble smashes him in turn. Somebody like me—and we know the bad result that leads to.”
The ghost in Garric’s mind was smiling, but there was no doubt of the solid truth under its lilt of self-mockery. Garric grinned in response; the delegates saw the expression and misread it.
Lord Martous stiffened and said, “The crown may seem a poor thing to you, milord, a mere topaz. But it’s an ancient stone, very ancient, and it suits us on First Atara. We were hoping that you would invest Prince Protas with it following the ceremony deifying his father.” Garric glanced at the boy and found him chatting with Cashel. That probably made both of them more comfortable than they’d be in the discussion Garric and Martous were having.
Both the thought and the fact behind it pleased Garric, but he politely wiped all traces of misunderstood good humor from his face before he said, “I’ll confer with my advisors before I give you a final decision, milord, particularly Lords Tadai and Waldron, my civil affairs and military commanders. That won’t happen until we’re on land.”
“But you’re the prince—” the envoy protested.
“That’s correct,” said Garric, aware of Carus’ ghost chuckling at the way he handled this bit of niggling foolishness. “I’m the prince and make the final decisions under the authority granted by my father King Valence III.”
Valence was so sunk within himself in his apartments in a back corner of the palace that servants chose his meals for him. He wasn’t exceptionally old, but life and a series of bad choices had made a sad ruin of a mind which on its best day hadn’t been very impressive.
“But I have a staff to keep track of matters on which I lack personal knowledge,” Garric continued. “The political and cultural circumstances of First Atara are in that category, I’m afraid. I have no intention of slighting you and your citizens by acting in needless ignorance. We weren’t expecting King Cervoran’s death, and it’ll take the kingdom a moment to decide how to respond.”
“Well, I see that,” said Martous, “but—”
“I’d have tossed him over the railing by now, lad,” Carus said. “By the Lady! It’s a good thing for the kingdom that you’re ruling instead of me.”
Garric looked into the big topaz. There were cloudy blotches in its yellow depths. The stone had been shaped and polished instead of being faceted, and even then it wasn’t regular: it was roughly egg shaped, but the small end was too blunt.
It was a huge gem, though; and there was something more which Garric couldn’t quite grasp. The shadows in its heart seemed to move, though perhaps that was an illusion caused by the quinquereme’s sideways wobble. Only a few oars on the uppermost bank were working, so the ship didn’t have enough way on to make its long hull fully stable.
Liane touched his wrist. Garric blinked awake; the eyes of those nearby watched him with concern. He must’ve been in a reverie…
“I’m very sorry,” he said aloud. “It was a long voyage, as I said. Lord Martous, while I won’t swear what my decision will be until I’ve consulted my council, I
can tell you that I intended to grant the rank of marquess within the Kingdom of the Isles to the ruler of First Atara—whom of course we believed to be Lord Cervoran.”
“King Cervoran,” Martous protested quickly.
“King is a title reserved for Valence III and his successors as rulers of the Isles, milord,” Garric said. He didn’t raise his voice much, but his tone made his meaning clear. “That is not a matter King Valence or I will compromise on.”
“Well, of course you can do as you please, since you have the power,” Martous said unhappily to the deck plank which his gilt slipper was rubbing. In a tiny voice he added, “But it isn’t fair.”
Garric opened his mouth to snap out a retort. The grim-faced ghost in his mind would’ve backhanded the courtier for his presumption or possibly done something more brutally final. Perhaps it was that awareness that allowed Garric to catch himself and laugh instead of snarling.
“Lord Martous,” he said mildly. “The kingdom is under threat from the forces of evil. The people, all those who live on all the scores of islands large and small within the circuit of the kingdom, are threatened. We and those whom we rule won’t survive if we aren’t united against that evil. I hope that in a few years or even sooner you’ll be able to see that First Atara is better off as a full part of the kingdom than it would’ve been had it remained independent; but regardless of that—”
Garric made a broad gesture with his right arm, his sword arm; sweeping it across the long line of warships to starboard. As many more vessels were arrayed to port.
“—I’m very glad you understand that the kingdom has the power to enforce its will. Because we do, and for the sake of the people of the Isles, we’d use that power.”
“We’re not fools here,” Martous said quietly, proving that he after all wasn’t a fool. “We cast ourselves on your mercy. But—”
His tone grew a trifle brighter, almost enthusiastic.
“—I do hope you’ll see fit to crown Prince Protas in a public ceremony. That will be quite the biggest thing that’s happened here since the fall of the Old Kingdom!”
Garric laughed, feeling the ghost in his mind laugh with him. “I trust we’ll be able to come to an accommodation, milord,” he said, glancing toward the prince and Cashel. “I’m sure we will!”
Cashel or-Kenset prickled all over like he’d gotten too much sun while plowing. That could happen, even for a fellow like him who’d been outside pretty much every day he could remember, but it wasn’t what he was feeling this afternoon.
This was wizardry. He’d known his share of that too, in the past couple years since everything changed and he’d left Barca’s Hamlet.
Cashel held his quarterstaff upright in his right hand; one ferrule rested on the deck beside him. He crossed his left arm over his chest, letting his fingertips caress the smooth hickory.
In his tenth year Cashel had felled a tree for a neighbor in the borough and taken one long, straight branch as his price for the work. He’d cut the staff from that branch and had carried it from that day to this.
A blacksmith travelling through Barca’s Hamlet on his circuit had fitted the first set of iron butt caps, but there’d been others over the years. The staff, though, was the same: thick, hard, and polished like glass by the touch of Cashel’s calloused palms and the wads of raw wool he carried to dress the wood. It’d been a good friend to Cashel; and with the staff in his hands, Cashel had been a very good friend to weaker folk facing terrors.
Just about everybody was weaker than Cashel. He smiled a little wider. Everybody he’d met so far, anyway.
The little boy who’d come aboard with the puffed up fellow and the servants looked uncomfortable as he edged back from the adults talking politics. Getting up on their hind legs, really. The fellow from First Atara was trying to make himself big and Garric was pushing him back, showing him he wasn’t much at all. With luck the fellow’d stop making trouble before he wound up with a headache or worse.
A shepherd didn’t have a lot to learn about how people behaved in a palace. It was all the same, sheep or courtiers.
Being uncomfortable while folks talked about things he didn’t know about or care about wasn’t new to Cashel either, so he grinned at the boy in a friendly way. It was like he’d tossed him a rope as he splashed in the sea: the boy stepped straight over to Cashel and said, “Good day, milord. I’m Prince Protas. Are you Lord Cashel? I thought you must be because you’re, well… you’re very big. I’ve heard of you.”
Protas spoke very carefully. He was trying to be formal, but every once in a while his voice squeaked and made him blush. Cashel remembered that too.
“I’m Cashel,” he said, letting the smile fade so Protas wouldn’t mistake it as mocking his trouble with his voice. “Not ‘lord’ though. And I’ve met bigger folk than me; though not a lot of them, I’ll grant.”
Protas nodded solemnly. He looked away from Cashel, facing in the general direction of First Atara. “My father King Cervoran died just yesterday,” he said. “Lord Martous tells me that I’m going to be king now in his place, or whatever Prince Garric lets me be called.”
“I’m sorry about your father, Protas,” Cashel said, meaning it. Kenset, his father and Ilna’s, had gone away from Barca’s Hamlet and come back with the two children a year later. Kenset had never said where he’d been or who the twins’ mother was. He hadn’t said much of anything by all accounts, and he hadn’t worked at anything except drinking himself to death. He’d managed that one frosty night a few years later.
The children’s grandmother had raised Cashel and Ilna while she lived. After she died, leaving a pair of nine-year-olds, they’d raised themselves. Ilna always had a mind for things, and Cashel as a boy had a man’s strength. When he got his growth, well, his strength grew too. They’d made out with Ilna’s weaving and Cashel doing whatever needed muscle and care. Mostly he’d tended sheep.
“I didn’t know my father very well,” Protas said, continuing to look out to sea. Cashel guessed the boy really didn’t want to meet Cashel’s eyes, which meant either he was embarrassed or he figured Cashel’d be embarrassed by what he had to say. “He was very busy with his studies. He was a great scholar, you know.”
“That’s a fine thing to be,” Cashel said. He meant it, but mostly he spoke to help the boy get to whatever it was that he really wanted to say.
Cashel’d learned to spell his name out or even write it if somebody gave him time and didn’t complain that the letters looked shaky. He was proud of knowing Garric and Sharina because they read and wrote as well as anybody even though they’d come from Barca’s Hamlet instead of a big city. Those weren’t skills Cashel felt the lack of himself, though.
“My father King Cervoran was a wizard, lor-l… Master Cashel,” Protas said, his voice squeaking three times in the short sentence. He glanced sideways, then jerked his eyes away like Cashel had slapped him. He kept talking, though. “You’re a wizard too, aren’t you? That is, I’ve heard you are?”
“I don’t know where you’d have heard that…,” Cashel said, speaking even more slowly and carefully than he usually did. He cleared his throat, wishing there was room so he could spin his quarterstaff. That always settled him when he was feeling uncomfortable, which he surely was right now. “Anyway, I’d as soon you just called me Cashel with no masters or lords or who knows what elses. It’s what I’m used to being called, you see.”
“I’m sorry, m-mas… Cashel,” the boy said. He sounded like he was ready to start blubbering. “I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing. I’m just so, so—oh, Cashel, I just feel so alone!”
Cashel squatted down so that his face was a bit lower than the boy’s instead of staring down at him. He didn’t look straight at Protas either, because that might be enough to push the boy into tears.
“I’m not a wizard like most people think of wizard,” Cashel said quietly. He didn’t guess anybody but Protas could hear him over the sigh of the light easterly breeze; and if
they could, well, he wasn’t telling any more than the truth. “I don’t know anything about spells or the like. Only my mother…”
He paused again to figure just how to say the next part. Protas was looking at him straight on now. He seemed interested and no longer on the verge of crying.
“I didn’t know my mother till I met her just a little bit ago when we were on Sandrakkan,” Cashel went on. He gripped the upright staff with both hands, taking strength from the smooth hickory. “She was a queen in her own land, and she was a wizard. Not the way Tenoctris is by studying and memorizing old books, but sort of born to it. Tenoctris says my mother is really powerful; and I guess she must be, from the things I saw her do.”
He cleared his throat again, then made himself look up and meet the boy’s eyes squarely. “I guess I picked up some of that from her,” Cashel said. “I did and Ilna did too, only not the same way. Ilna can do things with cloth, weave anything and make a net that catches somebody’s mind when they look at it. And Ilna’s smart, too, like our mother.”
He grinned broadly. “Not like me,” he added. “I’m about smart enough to watch sheep, but that’s all.”
“King Cervoran wasn’t a wizard in a bad way,” Protas said. He was still facing Cashel but his eyes were fuzzy; looking back into the past, most likely. “He just used his art to learn things. That was the only thing that was important to him, learning things.”
Cashel nodded. “There’s people like that,” he said carefully. It struck him as strange to hear Protas talking about his father so formally, but he wasn’t the one to judge. He didn’t talk about Kenset much at all.
But then, maybe Cervoran hadn’t had any more to do with Protas than Kenset had with his children while they were growing up. The things Cervoran wanted to learn about didn’t seem to have included his own son.
