Crown of Earth

by Hilari Bell

  “What’s it like?”

  “Horrible,” said Edoran honestly. “I think I’m going to be sick.” But he wasn’t sure if his queasiness sprang from his own shock, or from the stuff the manufactories of the city were dumping into the river. Just as the burning sensation running up his left shin was actually a forest fire in the woods north of Briston. Fortunately, the wind was pushing the flames toward a snowfield, where they’d soon burn out on their own.

  Edoran clenched his teeth and forced his awareness back to… not the present, he realized, but this place.

  “What did you do to me?” he demanded.

  Sandeman’s lips twitched. “You’re probably the first king since Brent who’s had to ask that question. And I can see that if you weren’t expecting it… This is the crown of earth, Your Highness. You’ll get used to it. They all did. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I can be of some assistance to the wounded. I’m a fair herbalist, you know.”

  He backed off and vanished. If Edoran hadn’t been able to feel the agony of those wounds he’d have murdered the man. Assuming he could find a weapon. And control his reeling mind long enough to use it.

  He scrubbed at the dirt on his forehead, hoping that rubbing it off would lessen the uncomfortable sensations that still flashed through him, but it made no difference. He went over to where Weasel sat, with Arisa’s head in his lap. She had begun to stir and mutter, and Edoran knew she’d soon recover from the blow to her jaw. The blow to her heart was another matter.

  “That,” said Weasel critically, “was thoroughly stupid. Never do what your enemies want.”

  “Why not?” Edoran asked. “I couldn’t do what I wanted.”

  Ron the fisherboy had died today, and with him Edoran’s only chance of freedom. He wiped at his forehead once more, the mud rough under his hand.

  He saw Weasel’s worried gaze, but he was still sensing the battle, the red fire of pain, and the cold emptiness of death. Diccon’s men were outnumbered. The only reason they weren’t losing was that the Falcon, in possession of the sword and shield, had ordered her men to retreat to their ships.

  The ships in whose belly Edoran could feel the glowing worms of lit fuses, slowly burning down.

  Diccon was trying to stop her. Diccon’s men were dying to stop her from escaping, their lives snuffing out like candle flames, but achingly more precious, and never to be relit in this world.

  Edoran made his first decision as king. It felt just as wretched as he’d known it would.

  The guardsmen tried to argue when he insisted on being taken to the general, but when he commanded it, to his own astonishment they gave way and escorted him there.

  Diccon had found a low hillock from which he could see the whole sweep of fortress, village, and beach. His lips, as he assessed the progress of the uneven fight, were set in a grim line.

  “What are you doing here?” he snapped before Edoran could speak. “I told you to get into that fortress. The only reason she’s retreating is that she thinks you’re inside those walls!”

  This wasn’t the moment to argue about the general’s right to give him orders.

  “Let her go,” Edoran said. “Stop fighting and let her retreat.”

  A muscle tightened in the general’s jaw. “I almost wish I could, but if those pirates escape… We’ve spent months trying to track them down. I can’t let them get away, to start it all over again.”

  “They won’t get far,” said Edoran wearily. Did he have the strength, the mental focus, to give the general a coherent explanation of the fuses in those ships’ powder stores, and how they came to be lit? He certainly couldn’t explain how he knew the swimmers had succeeded in their task. The spark of those burning fuses flared more clearly in his mind than the general’s face in bright sunlight.

  “Let her go,” he repeated. “She’s going to make it anyway. Trying to stop her just wastes your men’s lives.”

  The general’s face was rigid with resistance; then his shoulders slumped. “You’re right. I just… You’re right. Your Highness.”

  He turned to give the order to one of his officers, and Edoran walked away. By the time he’d hiked back to Weasel and Arisa, the battle was ending. The longboats had been launched, and the pirates were on the way back to their ships, with only a few hopeful guardsmen firing shots from the beach.

  Arisa was still flat on her back, but she had one hand pressed against her head, and her eyelids were crimped tight with pain.

  Weasel’s face was tight with frustration. “You can’t let her get away! She’ll try again, and this time she’s got the sword and shield!”

  “No, she doesn’t.” That truth gave Edoran nothing but peace. “I just hope you’re willing to repeat that statement when Arisa’s really awake.”

  Edoran had made the decision to stop the Falcon himself—but he’d be happy to share some of the blame.

  “I am awake,” said Arisa hazily. “Repeat what?”

  “Nothing,” said Edoran, glaring Weasel to silence. It was bad enough that he’d condemned her mother to death—she didn’t need to watch it.

  But Arisa knew him too well. She opened her eyes and looked around, over the field where the battle had taken place, over the empty beach, out to the bay where the pirate ships were unfurling their sails.

  She screamed, a shrill, tearing sound that made Edoran flinch. She fought free of Weasel’s restraining hands, clawing his face when he tried to stop her. She ran down the road almost a hundred yards before she realized that there was nothing she could do, no way she could stop it. She was no longer screaming, but stood staring, with both hands pressed over her mouth. Shudders ran through her body, shaking her so hard that even at that distance Edoran could see them.

  Weasel hurried after her, and Edoran followed more slowly. He had almost reached them when the ships blew up, wood and flame boiling into the sky.

  A moan forced its way past Arisa’s hands. She slipped through Weasel’s clutch and huddled on the sand, sobbing. Her anguish and shame resonated through Edoran, worse, far worse, than the pain of his gathering headache.

  Weasel sank down beside her and put his arms around her, but his eyes met Edoran’s steadily.

  “You did the right thing. She’d never have stopped, and sooner or later hundreds would have died. You did right.”

  “I know,” said Edoran. But why did it have to hurt so much? Hurt Arisa, who didn’t deserve it. And hurt him, too, with the death of his dreams.

  But perhaps Ron the fisherboy wasn’t completely dead, for he sat down on the dirt beside Arisa and wrapped his arms around her too. And that was something Prince Edoran could never have done.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Lady: wealth, fertility, peace.

  To Prince Edoran’s astonishment, Ron the fisherboy lingered on—perhaps because when he returned to the city he took a piece of Caerfalas with him.

  “It’s only a common sweater.” Moll had looked nervous, saying her farewells in front of the general who commanded Deorthas’ army. “But we knitted in your name, as well as the pattern for Caerfalas. It’s got Togger and my family pattern, too, with a band to show that you’re… adopted, in a sense. Once we realized you were worth adopting into the family, you see.”

  Laughter crinkled the corners of her eyes. She was nervous of General Diccon, but not of him. And she said nothing about the name in the sweater being “Ron” and not Edoran, though she added, “I suppose, being a prince and all, you’ll not have much need of it.”

  Edoran, who was still wearing his fishing clothes, stripped off the guest sweater and pulled on the one she held out to him. He could tell by looking at the general’s hunched shoulders that his sweater cut the cold spring wind better than Diccon’s fancy jacket.

  He also knew how long it took to knit one of these, and how little free time Moll had had in the past few days. She must have started it shortly after the fishing fleet set sail, and Edoran had to swallow down the lump in his throat in order to re
ply.

  “This prince has developed a taste for sailing. I’ll wear it every time I set foot on a deck, and it will keep me warm and safe.”

  He’d recognized some of the old gods’ sigils that were knitted in, though there were others he didn’t recognize, and perhaps those were for… remembering? Being true to yourself? Maybe it was just the affection that came with the gift, but even as the familiar luxury of palace life closed in around him, Edoran found that Ron the fisherboy, far from dying, seemed to be showing up more and more often.

  It was certainly Ron who was scratching his bare feet as he sat on Weasel’s bed, chatting with his friend, on the afternoon that Sandeman came to make his farewells.

  Edoran sat up in alarm when he saw the man’s worn traveling clothes. “You’re leaving? So soon? How will I… Ah, have you had trouble with the courtiers?”

  He’d introduced the Hidden priest to his court simply as “my welcome guest,” and there’d been so much else for them to gossip about that Edoran had thought the courtiers mostly ignored him.

  “It’s not that,” said Sandeman. “Everything here is fine. You’ll do perfectly well without me—although you’ll be happier if you try for some control, instead of scratching your feet raw.”

  Edoran blushed. He knew that the itching in the soles of his feet was really the beginning of a crop blight, in the winter wheat fields south of Westerfen. He’d already sent a message warning the farmers about the threat to their crops, but the wheat had to reach a certain stage in its development before it could be dusted with the powder that would kill the blight. Both the university chemists who’d created the powder and the farmers who’d used it in previous years had told him that. So until the wheat grew to the right height, he had to either suffer the itch or exercise the mental controls Sandeman had taught him.

  That was becoming easier, and Edoran knew that eventually it would be something he could do without even thinking about it—but for now, unless he concentrated on handling the sensation, his feet itched. And the itch was beginning to spread up his ankles.

  He focused now, finding the source of the irritation, which was not in his feet but in his sensing, and firmly shutting it… not down, but away. Locked in a mental box, until he had need to check on the situation.

  The itching vanished, and Edoran pulled on his stockings, feeling that was more dignified for a serious discussion.

  “If everything’s fine, why are you going?” he asked.

  “In a sense, it’s because everything’s fine,” Sandeman said. “If I’m about to become the head of a legal church—legal for the first time in centuries!—I’d better start organizing. It feels odd, after all this time, to step into the light.”

  Some of that light was already in his face, and Edoran sighed. “I suppose you must.”

  That would teach him to pick men of true faith for his advisers.

  “You know,” said Weasel critically, “you could have wiped that mud on his forehead when you first met and saved us a lot of trouble. Or better yet, when you and I first met! It might have… A lot of things might have been different.”

  They all knew what he meant. Miraculously, Arisa didn’t blame any of them for her mother’s death, not even Edoran, but she still grieved. It was hard to watch, though Edoran’s sensing told him she would heal eventually—and that the scars left by her mother’s dishonor would be deeper than those left by her death. Those same scars would keep Arisa from ever following her mother’s path. But it was just as well she wasn’t encountering any of the courtiers these days.

  She spent most of her time with Yallin, the Hidden’s seamstressspy, and the old woman’s company seemed to be doing her some good.

  And Yallin showed no sign of going anywhere, so Edoran would have someone to go to when his unfamiliar gift baffled him.

  But Sandeman was finally answering Weasel’s complaint.

  “I couldn’t do anything when we first met, my boy, or even when Edoran and I first met, because at that time none of you had become what you needed to be.”

  Weasel frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  Sandeman had already explained it to Edoran, but Edoran had understood the heart of the matter since that moment on the beach.

  Now the Hidden priest sighed. “It was Deor’s death that forged the crown of earth, the link between any of his descendants who would become king and the whole land of Deorthas. The teachers of that time feared the link would grow weaker as the generations passed.”

  “It didn’t,” said Edoran dryly.

  Sandeman laughed, curse him. “I think that although it took Deor’s death to create the link, somehow those old teachers managed to fuel it with the withe that exists in every living thing, to keep its power always fresh. Though some of the other teachers disagree about the power’s source. We’re still arguing about it.”

  His eyes twinkled, and Weasel snorted.

  “But however it was fueled, the crown was forged,” Sandeman went on. “And King Brent, who first experienced it, was even more shocked and baffled than you were.”

  “I doubt that,” Edoran said.

  “He was angry about it,” Sandeman told them. “According to our histories he hated the gods for what he saw as a curse, and for his father’s death. So the gods granted him one final gift.”

  “The sword and shield,” Weasel put in. “Which weren’t actually a sword and shield, but his two chief advisers.”

  Sandeman shook his head. “Not exactly. What the gods gave Brent, and his heirs, was the ability to recognize the right people to fill those jobs.”

  That part of the story had traveled across the realm with a speed that made Edoran suspect magic—certainly no horse could have moved that fast. In the countryside, a startling number of people remembered enough to understand what it meant when the king claimed the sword and shield. The populace of the city neither understood nor cared, but that was a problem for the future. Edoran had enough troubles right now.

  “Neither the sword nor the shield is infallible,” Sandeman went on. “Their advice isn’t divinely inspired. Sometimes they’ll disagree with each other. And kings have been known to go against their advice as well. Look at the woman Regalis’ father married.”

  “You mean even with Weasel and Arisa’s advice, I can still screw up?” Edoran asked. “Wonderful.”

  Weasel looked interested. “So Regalis really was someone else’s son? You can prove it?”

  Sandeman grimaced. “I don’t have documents, or anything like that, but it was proven to our teachers’ satisfaction, because… You have to understand, more than a thousand years had passed since Deor and Brend, and certain traditions had been developed by both our faith and the royal family. The most important was that our teachers had realized that the moment when an heir claimed the sword and shield marked the moment he was ready to receive the crown of earth. It wasn’t any set age, though I think all of them were at least in their teens when they recognized their sword and shield. And that didn’t always happen at the same time, either. Sometimes an heir would claim one or the other, but wait for years till he could… well, complete the set. In those first centuries, the noble families would fight, sometimes even kill, to get their kinsmen into a position where a prince might choose them.”

  “Like shareholders sending their daughters to court,” said Edoran, growing interested himself. He hadn’t heard this part of it before.

  “Like that in some ways, but a lot less civilized,” Sandeman told him. “Those were violent times. The idea of one king ruling the whole realm was still a new one—and not entirely popular. Anyway, over time the teachers decided that only when an heir had claimed both sword and shield would he be given the crown. Sometimes that didn’t happen till after he’d inherited the throne, so it soon became a private ceremony.

  “The country folk all remembered what it meant, but with the rise of the narrow god’s church—which performed the official ceremony when a new king took the throne—the city pe
ople soon forgot that another ceremony even existed. And the kings themselves developed… a family tradition, call it. They’d tell their sons about the crown of earth, but they wouldn’t tell them what they had to do to get it. The claiming of the sword and shield, which sooner or later all descendants of Brend’s blood would accomplish, was considered the final confirmation that this was an heir of the true blood.”

  “And Regalis never claimed the sword and shield?” Edoran asked. “That’s how you knew he wasn’t the king’s son?”

  “Oh, he claimed the sword and shield, loudly and repeatedly,” Sandeman told them. “But he never claimed the people the sword and shield represented.”

  “I’m surprised some courtier didn’t tip him off to the truth, in exchange for being chosen,” Weasel said cynically. “Or the servants. Surely some of them came from the country.”

  “I’m not surprised,” said Edoran. “Servants and courtiers… they’re not really…”

  “Regalis surrounded himself with people who thought like he did,” Sandeman said. “And the private ceremony… Perhaps it was because when the heirs were given the crown they tended to vomit, or faint, or fall over”—he nodded to Edoran—“but the private ceremony had become very private. A lot of nobles didn’t know what claiming the sword and shield entailed, and some didn’t believe the gods’ gifts were real, even though their king demonstrated them all the time. They thought he had ‘good sources of information’ or some such thing.”

  “So with Regalis, the line of Deor’s descendants was broken,” Edoran said. “And none of his heirs knew the truth.”

  “And the old faith had been outlawed,” said Sandeman. “In part for pointing out to those who did remember that this king was not of the true blood.”

  “So in a way,” said Weasel, “you’re responsible for all the problems between the city and the countryside yourselves.”

  Sandeman scowled. “That’s a vast oversimplification! And Regalis was a false king. It was our duty to…”