The advance-guard slowed. The cheering began. A citizens’ band struck up the march I had burlesqued; the Regent advanced with outheld hand and a fulsome smile on his silly face. I heard Beryx snap at his horse-leader, “Halt!” As the Regent reached the litter, he thrust the curtains wide.
Nothing is so foolish as forced joy gone bad. The Regent’s hands followed his jaw down. There was no mistaking the expression, and Beryx would have had it full face.
He made a valiant recovery. “My dear boy—my dear boy—whatever have you been doing—oh, dear oh dear—” To cap it, he tried to help Beryx out, a thing not even Inyx dared.
The king emerged between his arms, face white where it was not purple, jaw rigid with the double effort of standing alone and of concealing it. “No, uncle,” he said with a glittering smile. “The question, surely, is: What have you been doing?”
I heard Inyx’s demonically gleeful snort. Beryx cut through a cloud of excuse and explanation, extending his left arm for the ritual embrace.
The Regent would plainly have sooner cuddled a toad. The band was still thumping, grotesque in the widening hush, my sickened stomach had become a knot of rage. To be sure, they could not help it, any more than their well-meaning welcome: but let anyone say anything, I vowed, and harper or no harper, I’ll put his teeth down his throat.
Beryx, as usual, was already in control. “You shouldn’t have come down, uncle.” A purr that barely hid the claws. “I’m not fit yet, I’ll have to go straight home. But I shall expect you up there at the first advice.” Right royal rage would precede a more than right royal rebuke. He climbed back in the litter, the Regent flapping behind him: jerked his head to the horse-leader, sat up straight, and yanked both curtains wide.
You may imagine his progress for yourself. All the way up the hill they were out to cheer him, and all the way they tried. He sat through it, back straight, jaw rigid, nodding to the odd acquaintance. I daresay he would sooner have been washed in boiling oil.
When he emerged at the gate-arch, Inyx and I dead-heated to his shoulder. “No, you old idiot,” he said without venom. “You’re no better than I am. Harran, give me a hand.”
As we climbed his weight grew heavier, his breathing more painful, his face wetter, till I ached to cry, “For the Lords’ sake, let me carry you!” But I dared not suggest a half-minute’s rest.
The armory guards saluted him when we passed: not a royal gesture, but a true salute, of soldiers to a defeated fellow, a gallantry they could understand. Seeing his face ease, I could have cheered them both.
We turned the corner. Reached the path to the royal rooms. And down from her outpaced maidens Sellithar came running, ethereal in a smoke-blue gown, glitter of golden hair and coronal, joy in those clear blue eyes.
“At last!” I never heard her sound more beautiful. “Where have you been?” And as she spoke, Beryx lifted his face.
She could not have helped it. It was a thing beyond anyone’s help, too quick and instinctive and spontaneous to prevent. Her stride faltered, her eyes flared, her face shouted shock, horror, revulsion. And it was over, in that flash.
She caught her smile and her footing and ran forward, words tumbling as she forced joy and relief and welcome back into that lovely limpid voice. I felt Beryx go stiff, as if to meet a spear-thrust with his naked flesh.
His good arm was over my shoulder. As she reached him, he stood up straight and unmoving, and said in a voice that could have been everyday, “I’m glad to see you, Sellithar.”
If protocol can be cruel, it may also be a mercy. In private, she might have broken down. Here, she turned white as he. Then blood and rank and discipline succored her, and she answered with the same formal falsity, “Welcome home, my lord.”
She came with us to his apartments. As his body servants surged forward I felt his almost physical withdrawal, and understood. I too would have wanted to be alone. He smiled apologetically and said, “Kyvan, Ysk... I’m out of practice. Just tonight, will you let the general bed me down?”
Amid assurance and protestation they withdrew. I could not look at Sellithar. I knew if she tried to stay he would eject her, and I dared not imagine how. But she said at once, “Beryx, you must be exhausted. I’ll see you tomorrow. Mind, you’re not to get up until I do.”
Ouch, I thought, recalling Thassal’s iron decrees. He dredged up a smile; I hurried to escape before the door closed. He said, “Harran?” He was rocking on his feet. It was the merest whisper. “Will you. . . go to the queen?”
Her porter refused me entrance. When I overrode him with a king’s command, I knew she would not be there. I stood in the arches of the little hall paneled in blonde imlann wood, tiled with a mosaic in palest limes, azures, and smoky lavenders, gweldryx flying among terrian blooms. The air bore her dry light scent, a blend of keerphars. Looking out to the paven paths and pools of the lily garden, I thought: alone. Not in her rooms, probably not in the royal apartments, not where her presence or unescorted going would be remarked, certainly not where anyone could see. I went through the closing lilies, down the southern arbors, round to the little pleasance beneath my tower.
Sellithar was kneeling on the seat, elbows along the outer parapet, staring into the melted evening distance toward Tirs.
I went to her quickly. Then paused, and sat down. She did not move. I took my harp and played at random: an improvisation, what Beryx called “thinking noise.” A little wind rustled like dragon speech among the helliens.
“He would not let me come to Astarien.” She spoke dully, without looking round. “I wanted to. To nurse him.”
I made a soothing nothing on the harp.
“He never mentioned it.” Her voice was duller, dead. “If he had, I could have...” She broke off. I played a hurried attempt at consolation, at erasure of that one small terrible word.
She straightened up. Her profile was still, and set, and curiously calm. “He will never forgive me,” she said. “Not so long as I live.”
Music failed me too. I knew it was the truth. Beryx was a devoted king, a humane general, a loyal friend, a generous master, probably a loving spouse. He would support you, lead you, defend you, rally you, comfort you: quite cheerfully die for you, over and above forgiving you wounds to his body, soul, and dignity. But never a wound to his pride.
I opened my mouth, but my silence had already replied. She cried, “Oh, Harran!” and flung herself round in a tempest of tears.
It was treachery, perfidy, base and unforgivable: but when the woman you love in is your arms, in distress, in your trust and in want of comforting, I defy anyone to be any nobler than me.
Her tears were over long before I stopped kissing her, embracing her, babbling all the usual inanities. Presently she lifted her eyes, tear-drenched, blue as terrian flowers, and studied me as if we had never met before. My heart had stopped when she gave a quick, shy smile, outlined my lips with a finger, and ducked her head.
“Harran,” she said, when I let her speak again, “what shall we do?”
It was in my heart to say, Run away to Meldene and make you a harper’s wife. But the heart is a very stupid organ at the best of times, whereas women are unfailingly full of wisdom, so I said nothing at all.
“I am,” she said, “the queen.”
I have remembered that, I said silently, these last three years.
“So...” she said.
“So,” I tried not to sound bitter, “I had better leave.”
She straightened in my arms, and I saw courage, maturity, accepted responsibility literally form before my eyes.
She kissed me. Then she said, “If you can bear it—I’d rather you were here. But...” her eyes filled with pain. “I have broken a real trust. I must not... break it in name.” She looked into my face. “Can you bear that, my dear?”
No! I wanted to yell. I have already borne enough! Then I recalled what she would bear tomorrow, what Beryx had already borne in that one day, and was ashamed. “If you ask it,” I s
aid, “I can.”
She kissed me again. Then she rose and said with no hint of bitterness, “You must go now. The king might have need of you.”
* * * * *
The king did summon me next morning. He was in bed, conducting simultaneous breakfast, council, and correspondence, which latter he promptly delegated to me with an order to “light a fire under these Confederate ninnies, even if it’s too late.” The Regent made no appearance, unlike the army of servants forestalling his every need: but when scribes and council departed he waved them away, saying, “No, wait, Harran. Play for me a while. ‘Calm me down.’”
A quotation from Thassal I had thought unheard. He was looking pulled and pale. I would have chosen something simple. But as he lay back, eyes closed, he asked, “How’s your battle-song?”
I played what was done. He listened quietly, then bright-eyed, then openly laughing. At the end he cried, “You two-faced singing serpent!” and went to clap his hands.
As I sought desperately for words, he said, wistfully but without self-pity, “There are so many things you can’t do one-handed. Ride a warhorse. Peel an apple. Play a harp, I suppose.”
I did not add, use a sword and shield, wield a sarissa, draw a bow. He opened an eye and grinned. “Never mind, Harran. At least I’ve learnt to shave.”
“Self-defense?” I inquired blandly, recalling certain horrendous interludes at Astarien. He retorted with spirit, “The most horrible barber I ever suffered.” And as we laughed together I gave thanks to the wisdom of women, which let me share laughter and memory with a whole heart.
* * * * *
A day or so later the first champion arrived.
He strode into the audience hall as if he owned it, wider than Asc and twice as tall as Inyx, his barrel chest cased in a gold-inlaid steel corselet, his fur trousers tucked into knee-high cross-laced boots, a double-headed axe over his shoulder, a silvered boar-crest helmet on the back of his blonde curls. His bright blue eyes and sweeping corn-gold moustache and general air of rambunctious confidence shouted Hazghend to the skies. Dropping the axe-head with a clang on the marble pavement, he boomed, “Where’s this dragon of yours?”
“In Stiriand,” replied Beryx, evidently used to Hazyk manners. He looked closer. “Gjarr—am I right?”
“Gjarr it is,” nodded the giant. “How’d you know?”
“We met in Hazghend. Tyr... Kemmoth, I think. You’d gathered up a pair of corsairs. We took one off your hands.”
“By Rienvur, that’s right! Galley on my port side—somebody jumped aboard and chopped the captain, left us the starb’d one just before I sank. Nice piece of work.” His eye said with perfect unconsciousness, perfect friendliness, Poor soul, you couldn’t do it now. “Dragon tickle you up a bit, I see?”
“Just a little,” Beryx replied gravely. “There’ll be a mirror signal soon to report its position today. Do you want any help? Horses? Archers? Diversions?”
Gjarr laughed aloud, a splendid flash of white teeth in sea-bronzed face, and slapped the haft of his axe. “Oh, I think Skull-splitter here’ll be all the help I need.”
I saw Beryx and Inyx exchange one straight-faced sidelong glance. Then Beryx said demurely, “As you like. The maerian will always be here.”
Hawge kept the axe: it was taken with the intricate swirl of fire-red hazians and scintillant blue-white thillians that made the hand-grip on the ivory haft.
The next was supreme archer of the Quarred army, born in the Hasselian marshes where they can shoot out a duck’s eye before they talk, a lithe darting black snake of a man with the best reflexes I ever saw, a vanity that would have sat loose on Hawge, and a very canny wish to see the maerian before he risked his life. Beryx sent to the Treasury. As it was borne in, the sunlight turned it to a cataracted eye full of baleful, beautiful fire, and the archer licked his lips. He said, “I’ll be back.”
He took on Hawge from ambush. Unluckily, he chose a rock-heap, and when his first arrow went in an eye, Hawge demolished ambush and archer with one infuriated swipe, before using a hind claw to pluck the arrow out.
It had whole vision just in time for the next contender—contenders, I should say, for they were two big blonde Hazyx as loud and cheerful as Gjarr, who liked to fight in tandem, one with spear, the other with axe. Hawge trod on the axeman when it turned to see what had pricked its other flank, and the spear-haft was wooden: an unhappy oversight.
After that they came thick and fast for a while, more Hazyx, hot to retrieve the national pride, a couple of Quarred phalanxmen, an Estarian mercenary wielding a mace, a Holmyx who, despite hearing my battle-song, went into action with horse and lance. Inyx watched them come and go with baleful amusement, Everran took a perverse pride in its unkillable bane, and Beryx grew grimmer with every disastrous trial.
He was walking now, though with difficulty, and still shy of strangers, but nothing would have kept him from the market when the first Confederate traders came. I went down too, for I love trade-days: new faces, new things, and if you are lucky, a new song.
This party was Estarian, sallow, meaty, dully-dressed but whistle-clean, the shrewdest bargainers in the Confederacy. They had come for hethel oil and, arriving the night before, had already unpacked and filled the town with drunken carriers. The bales of woven stuffs, tools, pottery, and Estar’s myriad other manufactures were neatly disposed opposite the tall pointed Meldene oil jars, the scales were set up, half Saphar had begun its private chaffering, and traders and guildsmen were waiting for the king.
He took the high seat. Mint-tea was served, the overture began. It would last for hours: grave compliments, discreet news fishing, veiled probes for a weak bargain point, before anyone mentioned the goods, let be something so vulgar as a rate of exchange. Having seen them accept the new Beryx without blinking, I left on my own affairs.
A jewel merchant always came with the first Estarian traders, though he rented rooms all year in the north colonnade, and he did not barter but bought and sold for gold rhodellins all the precious stones of the Confederacy. Last year he had shown me a bracelet, a goldsmith’s whimsy of fine-beaten gold, set with plaques of smoke-blue enamel to feather a chain of the tall graceful birds we call terrephaz, the blue dancers. Graingrowers say yazyx: thieves. No guildwife had thought it dear enough, and it had already been touted in Estar, so I doubted he had taken it back.
We sat in his outer room with a view up the steamy market bustle to the heights of Asterne above the palace roofs. A mirror signal was winking rapidly as the boy brought mint-tea. We had just opened a parcel of uncut maerians when a hullabaloo broke out and people began to run like startled goats.
The Estarian raised his brows: a suave, elegant person, his pose was never to be in haste. Then his tea-boy burst in, red-hot with news. “The dragon, harper, the dragon! Come to th’Raskelf ’n et all Quarred’s flocks!”
I left without bothering to excuse myself. People were behaving as if Hawge were overhead. The Estarians looked affronted, the guildsmen panicky, a winded signaler was gasping at Beryx’s side.
“Raslash... last night... Fire north. Shepherds... today... Lost whole flock!”
He had to breathe or burst. Over his crimson-faced heaving Beryx’s eye shot round the market, and I jumped forward in response.
“Send Inyx here,” he rapped. “Tell Asterne to confirm. Then get a scribe and rescind that proclamation and send the messengers immediately. No more champions.” His mouth tightened. “Wasted lives and stirred it up!” And he turned with iron calm to the Estarians.
“Excuse this interruption, gentlemen. A slight problem in the north. Nothing to worry you.”
* * * * *
It did more than worry them. Hurrying downhill behind the first messenger, I met him coming up on the chamberlain’s arm. He had tried it alone and failed, and was plainly galled to the quick as well as infuriated by his helplessness. “Gone,” I said before he could ask about the message. “Where are the—”
His eyes narr
owed to blazing green chips. “Upped ensigns. Gone home. Risk your own gear, but you can’t run oil over Bryve Elond with a dragon just up the road.”
“Oh... Oh.” The disaster was beyond words: the trade-route cut, our oil and wine unsold, Everran starved of cloth, tools, pottery, arms, the Estarians’ news spreading the damage over the Confederacy. “The... The sheep?”
“Sent Inyx—here, Kyvan, that’ll do. Harran can see to me.” He held his side. “Rot it, I’ll have to stop.” We paused under the arch. “Told Inyx, take the levies. Mount archers, beat it off. Shift the flocks. Shepherds’ll run in circles alone.” I could feel his own urgency to be there, hot as iron in a forge. “Only one flock taken yet. We have to get them away. At any cost! Confederate stock. And I told them it was safe.” His face twisted. “First the Guard, then the champions. Then the traders. Now the sheep. The thing’s put a spell on me. Every choice I make is wrong.”
Chapter IV
A week later Inyx came into the king’s presence chamber, walking with a stick, his battered leather corselet black with soot, trousers nearly solid with horse-sweat, a helmet mark framing his sooty face under the flattened hair. “They’re out,” he growled, transferring his helmet from armpit to cup-stand. “Send me to shift fowls next time, not —ing sheep.”
Kyvan rushed for a chair and wine, Beryx produced a brief tight smile. “How bad?” he asked.
Inyx took a long draught, wiped his moustache, and looked his king in the eye. “Three hundred and eighty,” he said.
Beryx said nothing. I knew his thought was not of three hundred and eighty widows, their present grief or future livelihood, or of the three hundred and eighty themselves. He was thinking of the order that had sent them there.
“Good lads.” Inyx’s voice was slightly thickened. “Good as the Guard.” His ultimate accolade. “Stood like rocks when I told ’em and shot like—like Hazyk skirmishers. Lost two more flocks, then Morran got ’em marshaled while I took the dragon on. Smart lad, that one. Bunched ’em up like a red Quarred dog and had ’em across Bryve Elond right after dark. Six turn-ups we had to cover him. And riding horses down between ’em to make ground for the next.” He took another long swallow, and sighed. “But, Four, it’s nasty work. The burns... Hospital camps all over the Raskelf. And a lot of ’em... went hard.”
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