Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “Nor does that surprise me,” Caernith said. “For such magery is too like that of Gitres Undoer, who would change the past.”

  “But we didn’t change the past,” Kieri said. “We made it as it was found.”

  “However it was done, it was done, and what was done made what was known before it was done, so it could not be undoing,” Arian said. Caernith’s brows went up. “Do not plague the king with it now, when he has other duties.” To Kieri she said, “I will check on the twins and make sure none of this affected them, then join you and our guests.”

  Caernith bowed as she left. Kieri waited a moment, but the elf said no more, only gestured toward the door.

  The mutter of magelord voices from the reception room sounded strange, and Kieri realized that without the magery he had used, he could scarcely understand them. What they spoke was not the Common tongue now so widely used but a dialect long since forgotten or their own language from Old Aare.

  They fell silent as he entered, bowing courteously.

  “Be welcome,” Kieri said. From their expressions, he could tell that they, too, did not now understand him. He spoke very slowly, hoping that would help. “This is the city of Chaya, in Lyonya.”

  “Lyonya … Elfland?” one said. The accent was thick, but Kieri could understand it.

  “Two kingdoms … elf … human … joined.” He brought his hands together and intertwined his fingers. That they seemed to understand.

  “Finyatha … Gird?” A gesture that must mean “all.”

  What was Finyatha? It must be Fintha.

  “All Girdish,” Kieri said. Except for the newly discovered mage talents … but that was too complicated to explain when they could not understand one another.

  Puzzled looks that finally cleared. Several nodded. One gestured to the table, and a pastry rose from its tray and came to his fingers. Kieri stared for a moment, then decided that his own show of magery would do no harm and might be comforting. Or impressive. With a glance at Caernith, who had taught him, he lifted a jug on the table by magery, poured from it, and then brought the goblet to him and drank. Silence held the room a long moment, then more questions erupted.

  He had expected the magelords to be confused, not knowing where they were or when. But he had thought, since they came from Fintha and Tsaia and had lived for some years with Girdsmen, that they would speak Common fluently and already be familiar with customs and Girdish law. Their confusion and anxiety were obvious, but their difficulty with the language made his initial plans—to talk over what skills they had and how they might fit into Lyonyan society—impossible. Instead, with a mix of sign language and the few words they did seem to understand, he explained they would not stay in the palace but elsewhere in the city. They followed him, staring and pointing as they went from one lodging place to another.

  By nightfall, Kieri had settled the magelords in their lodgings and explained their lack of local speech to the innkeepers. “See that they have food and drink; the Crown will pay for it, and I will be glad to hear what you think of them.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “Far beyond Fintha. They came by magic, at the elves’ behest, and they have magery not seen in lifetimes.”

  When all had been settled and he was back in the palace, Kieri conferred with his Council.

  “So—these are the same bad magelords Gird fought against?” Sier Davonin asked.

  “We believe these are the magelords who survived the war, tried to live in peace with Girdsmen in Fintha, and left because the others would not believe them changed.”

  “How do we know they are?”

  Kieri had the same troubling thought. “We don’t. If Duke Verrakai were here, she could detect those who have taken over others’ bodies, but she is not. I must find out what they can do—what skills they have, how they can be useful here—and …” And what? he wondered. What could he do if they weren’t suitable here? The magery he had already seen them use made them dangerous if they had ill will; he could not just turn them out on the world any more than a man would turn loose a vicious dog to harry his neighbor’s flocks.

  “Are they all soldiers? Would they help Aliam?” Sier Halveric had discovered more interest in military matters since Aliam had become commander of the Lyonyan military.

  “I had hoped so from Paksenarrion’s description, but I am not certain,” Kieri said. “They wear mail and carry swords, but they do not have the look of soldiers. They do not move like soldiers.” He considered pointing out the differences he had noticed, but his Council members were not soldiers either. “Aliam and I will learn more. I suspect they used magery instead of the weapons and tactics we know.”

  “What is their magery like?” Sier Belvarin asked.

  “Not the same as mine,” Kieri said. “When they make light, it is hot, like a flame. As you’ve seen, mine is elf-light, without heat. They move things by their will, but though I can do that, using elven magery, I suspect it’s not quite the same. Supposedly they can cut rock by magery and multiply some nonliving things; it’s in the old records the Girdish have. I have yet to verify that. They have some skills of enchantment, similar to that of elves, but not as strong as mine.” For which he was profoundly grateful.

  “Do they use blood magery for these powers?”

  Kieri had hoped no one would ask that until he knew for certain himself. “Supposedly not, though some of the magelords of Gird’s day certainly did.”

  “I think they’re dangerous,” Sier Davonin said, shaking her head. “I wish they were not here.”

  “If I had waked them and left them there, they would all have died,” Kieri said. From the expression on Davonin’s face, that would have been fine with her. He tried to explain. “The western elves and the dragon were going to remake that place—”

  “How?”

  “I have no idea.” Kieri liked Sier Davonin, but once she took hold of an idea or a topic, she clung to it and more than once had shifted a discussion off its course. He brought the meeting to a close as soon as he could.

  As Kieri learned more about the magelords, he found very little of it encouraging. “Once again,” he said to Arian, “I was wrong. It’s disappointing … I thought of them as a potential army to fight evil in Aarenis, but they are only a few and their experience in war is limited to losing the one against Gird. None of the women fought in it, nor did some of the men. None of them commanded regular military units. Siger and Carlion have watched a few of them in the salle—most ignored my invitation—and say their technique is mediocre.”

  She nodded. “I’m glad you’ve given up that notion. Your place is here—must be here.”

  “I know that. But what are they to do? It’s understandable that they are confused by the changes since their day; none of them had visited Lyonya anyway. And I’m not sure how to make use of the considerable magery they have. Multiplying rocks, for instance, or splitting them … I can move stones, but it’s very hard and feels peculiar. To some of them it’s natural. At least they can multiply only nonliving things. They say their ancestors could do the same with plants or some animals.”

  Arian shuddered. “Or humans?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to know.” Kieri downed the last of the wine in his goblet. “If … if they could multiply living bodies, could they multiply the spirits in them, or would that give them bodies to transfer into? Is that like the iynisin multiplying themselves with ephemes?” He shook his head. “Let’s not talk of that. Surely it is a great evil to multiply persons.”

  “What about skills?” Arian asked.

  Kieri shook his head. “Until Gird’s War, they seem to have lived off their holdings. Their peasants grew the crops, built whatever was built, prepared the food, wove the cloth, and so on. They used magery for personal pleasures and to enforce their rule, though by Gird’s time they had trained nonmages as militia. In Kolobia, they used magery for those things we consider skills and trades as much as possible. They are quite pr
oud of having done so. But no two have the same mage talents, and they show little respect for those who do things without magery.”

  “It’s … sad,” Arian said. “Elves use magery, but they also have skills of hand and eye … weaving, for instance, and carving.”

  “Exactly,” Kieri said. “I asked those who lacked a mage talent for working wood, for instance, if they used tools instead, and they laughed and insisted they would not consider it. If a woman cannot magically make cloth, she leaves that to one who can, or to what they call a handworker. Apparently some of them in Kolobia were handworkers, but none who survived.” He sighed, considered pouring himself more wine, and then decided against it. “I could almost agree with Sier Davonin, annoying as she can be: it may have been a mistake to bring them here. Yet how could I not, with both elves and Dragon insisting I must?”

  Trying to meet with most of the magelords every day added to Kieri’s workload. He could not spend as much time with them as he needed—only a single glass—and the rest of the time they were free to wander about the city. Though they adapted to the modern forms of Common very quickly, Kieri could not understand their language.

  “It is from Aare, as they told you,” Amrothlin said when Kieri asked him. “It is nothing like the language of Old Humans here in the north.”

  “But you understand it,” Kieri said. “Translate for me. Teach me some of it. What does this mean?” He recited a phrase he had heard often.

  Amrothlin spoke in elven, a longer utterance that Kieri turned into Common: “It is sorrow to leave a land of power.”

  “Why don’t you say it in Common?” he said. “Or why don’t they speak elven? Then I could understand them myself.”

  “They never did,” Amrothlin said, his lip slightly curled. “They said it was too elaborate.” Kieri could have said the same but knew better. “I cannot say exactly what they say in Common; it is easy to put in elven.”

  With Amrothlin’s help, Kieri made headway in the magelord language, but he had little time to spend on it and still needed an elf with him to understand an entire conversation.

  A few days after their arrival, one of the magelords fell sick—Dualian, who woke with a fever and cough and became rapidly worse.

  “She said she was tired yestereve,” the innkeeper said. “She spent the afternoon in the garden with our youngest three … but she’d taken to them, and them to her, from the time she came. Like you said, I couldn’t understand what she said, but she made signs … I think she lost her own children.”

  “Are they sick?” Kieri asked. “Do you think she brought an illness with her?”

  “Oh, no. Cali was coughing before the magelords came, and of course Issa and Vorli caught it. Runny noses, all three, but they’ll be fine. It’s nothing serious, just the usual summer drip children get. No, the magelady is much sicker than that. It might even be lung fever.”

  Kieri sent his physician, who came back looking grave. “She’s very sick. I looked at the others in that inn. Dualian shares a room with Tammar and a table with Derin and Meris. Tammar is sneezing and coughing; Meris has a headache and fever.”

  “I worry that they might have brought a sickness from Kolobia.”

  “From the past, you mean. I suppose, though if they were under a glamour for five hundred winters, anything they had should have worn itself out.”

  “No other travelers have been sick at that inn. Only the children—”

  “And theirs started before the magelords came and thus cannot be the result of their coming. I don’t know, sir king. I don’t know what it is, but I gave the draught I would for lung fever. We can hope it’s just traveler’s ill. I expect you’ve had that.”

  “The flux once every year when I went south, those first years,” Kieri said, nodding. “Then I got used to the water and food there. It’s a long way from Kolobia to here; perhaps it is just the change of water.”

  “For some it’s flux, for some it’s coughing. Traveler’s ill usually passes quickly,” the physician said. “I did ask, and not just the innkeeper but no one else staying or eating there has been sick with the like, so it’s not something wrong with the food.”

  Despite the physician’s opinion, the other mages complained to Kieri, demanding to know what the sickness was and whether someone had tried to poison them. Kieri began to hear of quarrels among the mages and complaints from his own subjects about their behavior.

  “I don’t mind drinking,” one innkeeper said. “I sell ale and beer and wine, after all. But there’s drinking and drinking, and when I say a man’s had enough and I’m not serving more, I expect him to go sleep it off. Not lift the pitcher out of my hands by magery and drink it dry.”

  Kieri nodded. “Quite right. I’ll speak to them.”

  That was easier promised than done. That mage and a half dozen others had borrowed horses from the royal stables and ridden out somewhere. Meanwhile, another two women mages had fallen ill.

  “They’re not only useless, they’re actively causing me problems,” he said to Arian. “And when I said that to Caernith, all he said was, ‘So we found when we allowed them into the rock.’ ”

  Then High Marshal Seklis arrived from Vérella with two scribes. By then the oldest woman, Meris, had died, and another appeared near death. The High Marshal was another problem. He said he wanted to know more about Gird’s time, which to these mages was their own and fresh in memory. But it was clear from the start that he was suspicious of them and looking for an excuse to condemn them.

  For the magelords, the Girdish rebellion and Gird himself were only a few hands of years past. Though they knew nothing of the intervening hundreds of years, they knew their own time better than anyone else in the world, though their version of Gird’s rebellion differed widely from Girdish dogma. Marshal Seklis immediately disputed their memories; tempers flared. Kieri found himself having to moderate words and actions on both sides of the table and finally dismissed them for the day.

  “It would have been simpler, sir king, to have sent them to Fin Panir,” High Marshal Seklis said later, when alone with Kieri.

  “Into the turmoil there? They’d have been killed and made things worse for the Marshal-General. Besides, when I first heard from her about them, she was adamant she did not want them in Fintha. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

  Seklis flushed. “In fact … she said something like that. But it seemed to me if they came there and tried anything, they could be … well …”

  “Killed?” Kieri said. “And if a mob killed them, so much the better?”

  Seklis said nothing, but his face was dark red.

  “I suspect the Marshal-General thought of that possibility and believed Gird would not approve.”

  “I suppose,” Seklis said.

  “You know she came to visit me when I was still a duke in Tsaia, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” The flush had faded, but his face was still blotched and his expression dour.

  “I respect the Marshal-General highly,” Kieri said. “I would not cross her will without good reason—very good reason.”

  Seklis let out a gusty sigh. “Nor I, sir king. It’s only—we know nothing about these magelords. Why were these chosen, out of all who were there, to be cast into enchantment? Or did they cast that magery on themselves? There are no records—there could be none, I suppose, to tell of the final time—however long it was—leading to that. I intend to find out, but can I trust their reports?”

  “I don’t know,” Kieri said, skirting the question of how the magelords came to be enchanted in the first place. That was not something he wanted to discuss with Seklis; time enough if the magelords revealed it. “But don’t Marshals have some ability to sense evil?”

  “Paladins. Marshals can be fooled … We’re supposed to use our wits, but—”

  “Then you’re where I am. I don’t feel inclined to trust them fully, but I also don’t have special knowledge of which ones are good and which ones bad—if any are.”
He shook his head. “If Dorrin—Duke Verrakai were here, she could at least determine if any were body changers.”

  Seklis scowled. “Blood mages.”

  “But she’s not here, and neither of us is a paladin.” Kieri placed both hands flat on his desk. “So we, High Marshal, must figure this out for ourselves. Try not to enrage them tomorrow and perhaps you’ll learn something we can use.”

  “Perhaps.” Another sigh, and Seklis pushed himself up from the chair.

  “Do you have any feelings one way or the other about any in particular?” Kieri asked.

  “I’m not sure, and that’s the truth of it. They’re so … so lordly. Yes, we have nobles in Tsaia, but they’re not like this. This kind of glossy confidence. Doesn’t that bother you?”

  Kieri chuckled. “I’ve been living around elves several years now, High Marshal. You have not experienced real lordliness until you’ve been condescended to by the youngest of them, whom you find to be hundreds of years old though he looks like a youth.”

  “Well, that’s natural for them—they’re not human.”

  “True, but it’s eroded my sensitivity to condescension. And that may be a bad thing,” he added. “You’re aware of it, and I’m not, and my lack of awareness is a blank spot, a blindness. I thought they were controlling the kind of fear I’d expect anyone to feel, yanked through five centuries. I expected self-control, as if they were soldiers. Yet it’s clear they’re not soldiers. So if they are confident because they have no anxiety … then—”

  Seklis nodded sharply. “Yes, sir king. That is exactly what makes me uneasy. They should be struggling to adapt, but they seem perfectly at ease, as if they were the lords here and not you or the elves.”

  “One tried to lay a glamour on me, but I tossed it away,” Kieri said.

  “I will go softly tomorrow,” Seklis said. “And what I hear, I will tell you. They will expect that, but still—you must know.”

  “I will sit with you until I am sure you are safe—”