Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I was too late,” Aris said. Tears filled his eyes and dripped onto his arm; he couldn’t help it.

  “You may have saved him,” Plostanyi said. “Were you the one pulled the bell cord?”

  “Y-yes.”

  “Thank Gird for your good sense.” Plostanyi’s hands were busy, feeling for Camwyn’s throat-pulse, ripping Camwyn’s trews, exposing the wounds. He pulled wads of washed fleece from his kit, stuffed one into a bleeding wound, and pointed to one of the circle of guards. “You! Push down on this, here!”

  In the corridor outside, Aris heard his brother’s voice and then the king’s. “I don’t care!” the king said. “Let me through!”

  “Not yet, sir king,” Plostanyi said without pausing in his work. “This may be iynisin work; I see the telltale sparkle in the blood. Their blood’s poison to us.”

  Aris had not noticed it, but now, in the greater light of many torches, he could see something odd about some of the blood on the floor. “It’s not all Camwyn’s?” he said.

  “No. Too much of it is, but not all. He wounded at least one of them. You’ll need care yourself when this is over.” Plostanyi handed him another wad of cloth.

  “Will he live? Tell me he will live!” That was the king’s voice from just outside the door.

  “If the gods will,” Plostanyi said. And then muttered under his breath, “If I can stop the bleeding, if the iynisin poison has not gone too far, if his brain is not reft … The gods have their work cut out for them this night.”

  Aris struggled with an urge to giggle or scream.

  “Steady, young Marrakai,” Plostanyi said, as if he knew that. “You’ve done well so far, but your work is not over.”

  Aris clenched his teeth and through the next turns of the glass did whatever Plostanyi told him, trying not to think about any of it—Camwyn, kuaknomi, the contamination of their blood, the cramp in his back from crouching over Camwyn, the king’s mounting anger until at last he was allowed in to see Camwyn, and the king’s grief when he saw the prince looking as near to dead, Aris thought, as a live person could look.

  “He yet breathes,” Plostanyi said to the king. “That is all we know now.” Plostanyi directed the guards, who shifted Camwyn onto a litter and carried him out. He made them hand off the litter to four more who had not entered the treasury and had no blood on their boots, pulled off his own boots, and padded sock-footed ahead. The king pulled off the cloths wrapped over his own boots; a physician checked to be sure he had no blood on him, and then he followed the procession with Camwyn.

  Aris started to follow, but one of the other physicians stopped him. “No—you’re bloody all over, the prince’s and the kuaknomi’s. No farther than the door for you. Strip and bathe.” In the time he’d been with Camwyn, a tub and buckets of water had been carried to the corridor outside.

  Aris stripped to the skin, surprised to find out how much blood had soaked through his clothes. One physician hovered by him, pointing out or scrubbing off spots he hadn’t noticed and looking for any injury that might need treatment. Only when he was pronounced clean enough did a palace servant hand him a length of cloth to dry himself on and another hand him a robe far too long for him.

  He heard steps coming up the stairs and turned to see his brother Juris. “They’re cleaning all the blood off the prince,” he said. “The king asked me to check on you, Aris. Are you all right?”

  “He’s fine,” said the nearest physician—now supervising one of the guards who had helped Plostanyi. “No cuts, no wounds of any kind.”

  “Let’s get you some clothes, then,” Juris said. “Back in the pages’ quarters?”

  Aris nodded. “How is he?”

  “Still breathing, Master Plostanyi says. He’s worried about the wounds—if they’re poisoned—and the effect of iynisin blood in the wounds as well. And that knock to the head. Did you see any of the fight?”

  “No … I heard something …” Aris stumbled on the robe, going down the stairs, and Juris caught him.

  “Kilt that up before you take a tumble,” he said. “Or—I know—Camwyn’s rooms are only one flight down—do you still keep your roof-climbing clothes there?”

  “Y-yes.” He did not want to go into Camwyn’s room and rummage for clothes with Camwyn near death. But Juris led him there, and once he was in his old knee-patched climbing trews and his soft faded shirt, he felt better. “What about the shadows—the kuaknomi? Iynisin?”

  “The king sent guards after them, searching—the bell sound followed them, I think. I don’t know—he sent me to you. But Aris, how did you know? Everyone else was caught by their glamour.”

  “I don’t know … Gird maybe?” Aris shivered, and Juris put an arm around him. “I was asleep and then I was awake, and I went to see what had waked me … and the palace guards were all just standing there. Then I heard a cry.”

  “And the prince is lucky you did. We’re all lucky. You, that they didn’t kill you—did you even have a weapon?”

  “One of the uniform blades pages carry, my dagger—”

  “Gird’s blood, Aris, you’d have been killed if they’d attacked you—”

  “Yes … I kept thinking someone would wake up.”

  “The Bells must have recognized iynisin,” Juris said as they walked down the passage together. “I wonder why not sooner. Maybe when Camwyn wounded one and the blood spilled …”

  “Ummm … I think it was the bell pull.”

  Juris stopped short and grabbed Aris by the arm. “The bell pull? What bell pull?”

  “That old one in the passage between the king’s rooms and the prince’s. The one everybody knows doesn’t work … the one with the stories about it … but it was all I could think of.”

  “You …” Juris shook his head. “I would never have thought of that. Never. When I was a page, I yanked it once, just to see, and nothing happened. Didn’t you, your first year?”

  “Yes. And it was like yanking a rope tied to a rock. I thought it was tied off somewhere up in the ceiling. But no one was answering me, and I heard Camwyn up there, yelling, and blades … I had to do something.”

  “You woke the Bells in the tower, and how that happened I do not know. Some elven magery, I suppose.”

  They met a palace servant hurrying toward them. “The king wants you,” he said. “Down in the scullery.”

  The first words Aris heard the king say, to the captain of the palace guard, were “Where are the other iynisin, then?”

  “They fled somewhere—the bell sound followed them, but the palace guard did not pursue past the gates.”

  The king, clearly furious, opened his mouth then shut it again, shook his head, and said, “And your task, as you understood it, was to protect me and the prince.”

  “Yes, sir king. I’m sorry, sir king …”

  “You did what you thought was your duty. No one can ask more.” He caught sight of Aris. “And you, Aris Marrakai—if he lives, it is you who saved him. You alone broke the spell laid on all the rest of us. Do you know how?”

  “No, sir king.” Aris’s throat had closed again, seeing Camwyn lying so pale, so still, blood seeping through the many bandages. The dented helmet still covered his head; the physicians argued over how best to remove it without causing more harm. “But … we’re friends.”

  “So you are. And it was you who pulled the rope, I understand, and woke the Bells of Vérella. How did you know to do that?”

  “It was all I could think of, sir king. I could not wake the guards. I didn’t know it would wake the Bells, only that someone had said they’d heard it could bring the gods’ help.”

  “And so it did. Aris, you have my thanks for this, and another day I will thank you properly. Stay watchful; those who did this may hold a grudge against you for it.”

  “Yes, sir king.” He wanted to ask Mikeli if Camwyn would live, but he knew he should not.

  “King of Tsaia, a word.” The speaker, a dark figure by the door, took everyone by surp
rise. Several drew blades; Mikeli whirled, scowling.

  “I am no iynisin,” the figure said. Aris stared at him, the dark leather clothing faintly patterned like scales, the dark-skinned face and startling golden eyes like flames. “And you, King, have met me before, when I was sent by Lord Arcolin in company with his sergeant, Stammel.”

  “Put up your blades,” Mikeli said. “I do indeed remember Sir Camwyn.”

  “Your brother the prince fares ill,” the man said.

  “He does. He was attacked.”

  “We must talk, King. Step aside with me.”

  The king’s guards protested, but the king and the strange man went into the kitchen, the king gesturing for the servants there to leave.

  “Why are you here?” Mikeli asked the man who was not a man.

  “I came too late for another; I may have come too late for my namesake.”

  “Your … name really is Camwyn?”

  “No. I am Dragon; that is all the name I need. But your brother—he has a touch of dragonfire, and he loves me. I felt that before. So I came at once.”

  “The physicians will not tell me … I know by their looks … and already a High Marshal has prayed for Gird’s healing and it has not come. I laid my hands on him—some kings in the past could heal, it is said. Kieri of Lyonya healed the king of Pargun. But when I tried, nothing happened.” Mikeli fought back the tears rising in his eyes. “What kind of king am I, if I cannot heal my own brother? Was it to murder him that I prayed I might have no magery, in order to keep the throne?”

  “You love your brother,” the dragon said.

  “Of course I love my brother,” Mikeli said. “And he … he may die. They think he will die. And that if he does not die, his mind … it is like the kick of a horse that splits a skull, they said. A few live, but not as themselves … a broken life.”

  “Do you love your brother enough to lose him?” The dark man kept his eyes fixed on Mikeli’s.

  “To … to let him die, you mean?”

  “Would it not be better than living as a mindless body?”

  “No … yes … but is his mind then destroyed?”

  “Perhaps not. But here it cannot heal. There is a place … You surely know, King, that there are places of power as well as powers embodied.”

  Mikeli wept. “If there is a place of healing for him, then … then yes, I will take him there, leave him there, if that is what it takes.” He struggled to keep speaking. “But … but our physicians say he will surely die if he is moved.”

  “If you moved him, the way you travel, he would die. He will not die if I take him.”

  Mikeli stared. “You? You would take him? In your … in your mouth?”

  “Where all who fly with me must ride, yes. Half-Song, Lyonya’s queen, has ridden so, and the Blind Archer has ridden so. Your brother for a short time, as you know.”

  “And … you can heal him?” The thought of Camwyn alive, Camwyn beside him again, almost stopped his breath.

  “I am certain he can be healed. But I tell you this truth: he may not be as he was—as you know him. Alive, well, in a good place, and yet changed.”

  Mikeli struggled with his grief for himself at losing his brother and his joy if Camwyn could live. “I love him,” he said, hating the shakiness of his voice. “The last thing both my father and my mother said to me was ‘Take care of your brother, Miki … he needs you.’ If he must leave, to live, then … then I must let him go … but not to know …”

  The man’s impossible tongue came out, shimmering with heat, and touched Mikeli’s forehead, a touch no warmer than his father’s hand had been and as comforting. “You will know how he fares in healing, for I will tell you. I promise that, though I cannot promise his return.” He looked aside at Camwyn for a moment. “It would be best if I took him now, sir king. He is sinking.”

  Mikeli noticed, even in his grief, that the dragon had addressed him formally for the first time. He went back into the scullery and waved the others away, ignoring their protests. They would think he had given up, that he knew Camwyn was dying and wanted to mourn, and that much was true.

  He sat down again on the stool by the table on which Camwyn had been laid and touched Camwyn’s forehead. “Brother, heart-kin more than blood-kin, if you can hear me at all, know I love you and always will. You wanted to fly with the dragon; the dragon offers a chance at healing for you, and so I send you in the best and only care I can find. If I never see you again, I pray you know in your heart your brother loved you and for nothing less than saving your life would have sent you away.” He looked at the dragon. “Can you take him here, or shall I carry him to the courtyard for you to change?”

  “I must change,” the man said. “For the shape of this body will not encompass him as he is now. But I can carry him more safely than you; for what lesser magery this body can do will keep him safer.”

  Together they walked through the palace, the dragon man cradling Camwyn like a small child. Camwyn never stirred. In the courtyard, the man handed Camwyn to Mikeli. Once again Mikeli saw the transformation of a man’s shape to a dragon’s. When the last scales rattled a little on the pavement, the mouth opened, and the long red tongue slid out, hissing a little on the dew that slicked the stones.

  “Lay him there,” the dragon said in Mikeli’s mind. “His head to the outer world.”

  Mikeli bent with difficulty and laid Camwyn on the tongue, then kissed his brow.

  “Touch your tongue to mine again,” the dragon said. “For this is a vow between us.”

  The dragon’s tongue tasted, impossibly, of Camwyn’s favorite food.

  “So you know that I know him, and care for him,” the dragon said.

  Mikeli stood and backed away. The tongue, with Camwyn upon it, slid into the dragon’s mouth. Mikeli saw no movement of the dragon’s throat, nothing at all but that great yellow eye gazing steadily at him. Then the lid of that eye blinked over it once, and the dragon rose into the air, still with its tail coiled to avoid the wall of the court. When it rose above the palace, it stretched, opened wings so wide they shadowed the entire palace, and sped into the sky, vanishing into the blue.

  Mikeli stood a long moment in the courtyard, then turned and bypassed the turn to the kitchen wing, instead climbing up the stairs and turning to Camwyn’s room … the room his brother might never see again. He had thought he was over the worst, calm again after his decision, but the empty bed, covers still rumpled where Camwyn had been sleeping earlier, struck him to the heart with grief and guilt. He collapsed onto it, smothering his sobs in Camwyn’s pillow.

  “Sir king …”

  He did not recognize the voice at first; he wiped his face on his sleeve and turned around. It was Rothlin, his cousin. A coolness had come between them after he’d forced Beclan’s exclusion from the family, and a little more when he’d realized that Rothlin really was interested in the Kostandanyan princess and was afraid Mikeli would offer for her.

  “Is he … did he die?” Rothlin asked.

  “No. Not yet.” Mikeli took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He was failing so fast … we could all see it; you saw it. And the dragon came.”

  “Dragon? The same one who—”

  “Yes. The dragon said Cam could find no healing here, but only in a magical place the dragon knew of. But that he might never return … I suppose that means his memory … he might have none.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rothlin said. “Cousin … I am sorry for it all.”

  “And so am I, Roth. You love Beclan as I love Cam. Damn this stupid prejudice against magery! If we had magery, we might have saved Camwyn from the beginning, and more besides.”

  “You are making changes,” Rothlin said. “There’s been no mob violence here, as in Fintha.”

  “But too many deaths, and deaths from lack of magery as well.” Mikeli reached out, and his cousin took his hand. In a moment they were hugging, pounding each other’s back.

  “We will survive this,” Ro
thlin said. “You will, as king, and—in case no one has told you during this mess—you’re being a good king.”

  “And so will you be,” Mikeli said.

  Rothlin looked shocked.

  “I have no heir of the body; you just moved from third to second in line.”

  “But you will marry—”

  “If I have time.” Mikeli walked around the room, picked up Camwyn’s dagger, wishing he’d thought to send some of Camwyn’s favorite things, then realizing the dragon might not have agreed to take them. And if Cam had no memory, how could these things remind him of home? He put down the dagger, touched the stone in its hilt, and turned away. “What if the iynisin come again? What if they are able to take the regalia?”

  “It’s still there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. For now. But it’s a danger to us all, just being here and wanting—wanting to be somewhere else.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Duke Verrakai. It speaks to her—she told me it wants her, thinks it belongs to her. And she alone can open the chest now.” He glanced at Rothlin, who had raised one arched brow. “Yes. And … it has begun speaking to me. In my head.”

  “Does that mean you’re a mage, too?”

  “No. Or Camwyn would be here, healed, and not wherever the dragon’s taken him.” Yet even as he said that, he felt something deep inside himself, something he could not define … but knew, with terrifying certainty, was his own magery. He turned to Roth. “We must send the regalia away with Duke Verrakai.”

  “It’s not her fault—”

  “I know. But it is the lure that brought the iynisin, the lure that drives the Duke of Immer’s ambition. Better that it be somewhere else. Duke Verrakai believes it may be from Old Aare and wants to return there. I do not see any other course than to send her with it, since she alone can move the chest.”

  “Will she be a queen in Aare?”

  Mikeli shook his head. “I have no idea … but she will be gone, and the regalia with her, and that may save us from invasion from the south or more of those—things—that attacked Camwyn.”