Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “By my word, Dorrin, you could have killed him for being a blood mage—are you sure he is not one now? And how did he survive the Girdish Wars and make his way to Kolobia? I thought all those mages who left were thought to be of good character.”

  “He survived the war by not being at Greenfields,” Dorrin said. She told him what Matharin had said. “I suspect he survived later by transferring to the body he now wears and pretending to be a peasant, but I did not ask him that.”

  “Faithless to his liege and a blood mage,” Kieri said. Dorrin could feel his anger, see it in the tightening of his mouth. “I will not have him here. He must go or die. I wish—”

  “I did not know what killing by magery would do to your elvenhome or the taig,” Dorrin said.

  “You could have used steel,” Kieri said.

  “He will fight with magery,” Dorrin said. “He tried to dominate me and now considers me stronger, but he would use magery to defend himself. That’s another of the things you must know. Will that destroy or harm the elvenhome, do you think?”

  “I don’t know,” Kieri said. “Amrothlin?” He looked at one of the elves.

  “No human magery can harm the elvenhome, sir king, but only injury to you.”

  “Do you think he sensed the regalia?” Kieri asked.

  “No. He showed no sign of it, and he was not as careful of his face as I was of mine. I believe, too, that the regalia wants nothing to do with his kind. And I now know what the stones are.”

  “What?”

  “At least what he thinks they are. Water, changed by magery to jewels. He showed me a bloodstone, made he said from the blood of a hundred men.”

  Kieri’s face paled. “Bloodstone! Are you sure?”

  “It felt evil to me, but I do not know more than he told me.”

  He looked at Arian. “Baron Sekkady, the magelord who held me captive all those years, had a bloodstone the size of my fist. He told me it held his power and the blood of ten thousand, drained one by one into it. He used it to control people; he said the spirits of those men were trapped in their blood.”

  “But the water …” Arian said, her hand on Kieri’s arm. “Are those stones evil?”

  NO.

  “I am sure they’re not,” Dorrin said. “I think they’re why the Sandlord came. I think the old magelords used up the water to make them.”

  “So few?”

  “Who knows how many jugs of water it takes to make one of them? You say the blood of ten thousand went into the fist-sized stone—imagine if it were water—and we don’t know if the amounts are the same. Or if the stones in the regalia are the only stones. Remember, I told you more were found on Verrakai land.”

  “It hardly seems possible …” Kieri said.

  “I know. And yet … the regalia say that’s what it is … they’ve been trying to tell me, but I didn’t understand. That’s why they want to go back to Old Aare, I’m sure. There’s some way to undo the magery and restore the water.”

  “But the other magelords want the regalia and the power in the jewels to regain their power. Of course.” He stroked his beard. “And we must not let them. This one you spoke with—is he the most dangerous, do you think?”

  “I won’t know without talking to the others. I suspect he’s their leader—or the most powerful mage, which means the same to him. He wanted to go fight King Mikeli for the throne; he thinks only mage strength matters.”

  “We can’t wait,” Kieri said. “It will not be long before they do mischief, one way or another. I thought them stupid and harmless at first, so far out of their time, so ignorant of current happenings, but even one magelord determined to upset rule—Mikeli’s, mine, the Marshal-General’s—”

  “Is too many. Yes.”

  Another King’s Squire came to the door. “Sir king, a messenger arrived for Duke Verrakai; he will not say the cause—”

  Dorrin’s belly clenched again. “What colors?”

  “Tsaian.”

  “Excuse me, then,” she said.

  The messenger, a royal courier, was still standing in the entrance hall, gulping down a mug of water, when she emerged and nearly dropped the mug in his haste to reach her. “My lord Duke, the king’s word—” He held out the velvet pouch.

  Dorrin took it. “I have received the king’s word,” she said formally. “You have witnessed it.”

  “I must start back,” he said, taking another gulp from the mug.

  “You must rest until the Master of Horse finds you a mount,” Dorrin said. “And why not overnight?”

  “King’s orders,” the man said. “Do not spend even the turn of a glass in that place with magelords, he said. Leave at once, ride back to the nearest relay station—”

  “That’s a half-day’s ride,” Dorrin said. “You won’t be there until full dark, even riding fast.”

  “I must—the king said—”

  “Did he not want an answer from me to whatever this is?” Dorrin asked.

  “Yes, if you could, but he expected you’d send your own messenger.”

  “Come with me,” Dorrin said, and led the way outside. To the doorward, she said, “Send for food and drink from the kitchen; I will be in the stables with this man.”

  She found the Master of Horse in his office looking at the list of mounts available for courier duty. “We have three lame and one that needs shoes,” he said as he looked up. “The king’s been lending mounts to these visiting magelords any time they want to ride, so the horses are out every day. I’ve only two in who are rested, besides the Squires’ horses, which cannot be lent. Of those two, the gray knows that trail—are you comfortable with air and water horses?”

  The courier looked confused.

  “Elves prefer grays and blue roans,” Dorrin murmured. “The color of air and water, they say. Humans here prefer earth and fire horses: bays, chestnuts, red roans.”

  “Oh … ah … I ride any color,” the courier said.

  “He’s in the west paddock right now,” the Master of Horse said. “I’ll have him brought in and tacked up—say, a turn of the glass.”

  “I’m having a meal brought from the palace,” Dorrin said. “It’s crowded in there, and a bit of quiet won’t do us any harm. I need to read the king’s word that this courier brought me.”

  “Stable mess is quiet enough for another turn of the glass,” the Master of Horse said. “Second door on the left. I’ll send in the food when it comes.”

  The room—the size of a double box stall—had a table, six chairs, and a wall of cubbyholes. The courier sat down, leaning on the table. Dorrin untied the ribbons on the velvet pouch and pulled out the king’s message.

  The news, as she’d expected from its urgency, was not good.

  You must leave at once. We captured a spy who knew the regalia was with you and no longer in Our treasury; this spy revealed that others knew as well. You endanger Kieri of Lyonya as well as Our own person and reign. Please—go quickly. Send word if you can that you are gone, but if not, just go.

  Leaving at once would mean retrieving the regalia from the ossuary. If the magelords, especially Matharin, could sense the regalia directly, then they, too, would know, and they were surely—she had to believe—closer than any pursuit from Tsaia could be.

  “Sometimes solutions lead only to new problems,” she said aloud; the courier stared at her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just—I dare not give the king an answer lest you be beset on the road. He is right that you must not linger here, tired as you are, but anything I send with you might be intercepted.”

  A noise in the corridor alerted her; she stood and made for the door. Servants with trays … and behind them, a sly look on his face, Matharin.

  Dorrin waved the servants into the room, where they set out dishes and bowls of food on the table but stood in the doorway, blocking Matharin.

  “I thought you were busy with correspondence,” Matharin said, brow raised. “In the stable?”

  “I had a
new message,” Dorrin said. “From my king, who bade his courier return in haste. I came here with him to arrange for a fresh horse and thought we might as well eat here. Why should that concern you?”

  “Oh … so you are busy …” No relaxation in his stance, no relenting in his gaze. “But I wonder if I might have just a moment—”

  His gaze fogged; Dorrin felt a wave of enchantment. It did not affect her, but she heard noises in the room behind her—falling crockery, someone falling to the floor, followed by unnatural silence. She did not turn to look; she met his gaze steadily, and her own power rose within her. “You forget that you are merely a guest,” she said. “And a guest does not so abuse a host’s servants. Not if the guest wishes to remain within the protection of guest-right.”

  “I merely gave us a quiet place in which to talk,” he said. “They take no harm, though the maid will have to wipe redroots off her face.”

  Falk, help me. Dorrin felt a surge in her own power and shaped it into a spear that pierced the bubble of silence he had wrought, and then—with no attempt at gentleness—she thrust him away with power alone. He staggered back and back again until he fell against a stall door across the aisle.

  “You!” he snarled, pushing himself to his feet. Dorrin walked forward, and he stumbled sideways toward the stable opening. She walked with him, keeping the pressure on, noting as she went by that the Master of Horse was slumped over his desk and the palace courtyard empty of its usual traffic.

  “You abused guest-right,” Dorrin said. “And I, as the representative of Tsaia’s king and the friend of Lyonya’s, will not let you get away with it.”

  “What are you going to do, kill me?” he asked, all sarcasm now. He made a gesture with one hand, and Dorrin felt his power pushing against hers.

  “I am going to present you to King Kieri for judgment,” Dorrin said. “As I would do with any thief or liar or lurking menace I found in his palace.”

  “You can’t—” He made more gestures, this time rubbing the bloodstone on his finger. Wind swirled in the courtyard, cold as Midwinter night.

  Dorrin’s gesture quieted the wind. “You are not the ruler here,” she said. “Your day is done.”

  He opened his mouth again, but Dorrin saw Kieri coming across the courtyard, glowing in silvery elf-light, his sword already drawn, his Squires and some of the elves behind him.

  “What has this fellow done?” Kieri asked.

  “He laid silence on all in the stable, holding them in thrall, including your Master of Horse, and would have forced me to speak to him if he had been able. He has abused guest-right; I was bringing him to you for judgment.”

  “You dare not harm me,” Matharin said. “I am greater than you know—”

  “You are a blood mage,” Kieri said, his voice cold as stone in winter. “You have taken body after body, killing the souls of those born to them. You believe that puts you beyond all law. You are wrong.”

  “I am—” Matharin’s face shifted from anger to calm in a moment; his lips quirked in that false smile. “I am no danger to you, sir king—you are more powerful. And there is much I could teach you, ancient wisdom lost for centuries.”

  Kieri’s answering smile held no mercy. “From my elven mother, I have ancient wisdom of vanyrin, not mere centuries, and from my years as a soldier, I have war’s wisdom, which knows an enemy and the use of a sword.”

  Matharin’s expression changed again from calm to exasperation to, finally, fear. “You cannot—you would not—it would be murder to kill an unarmed man—a guest—”

  Kieri shook his head. “No mage is unarmed. I have seen and felt your magery, and I know you have used it to harm my people. Your life is forfeit.”

  Amrothlin now stood behind Kieri, his sword also drawn. “I am here,” he said.

  “Little you know.” Matharin looked calm again, and as they watched, his human semblance darkened, blistered, and peeled away, leaving behind a dark-clothed shape Dorrin had seen—and fought—before. Iynisin … how had she not known that? How had the elves not known that?

  The iynisin laughed as a sword grew from his hand, flickering with mage-light. With his other hand, he made a gesture and a dagger appeared in an instant. “You call us evil, you tree lovers who claim the name of singers. And you humans … blackcloaks, isn’t it? Or tree haters, which is true in part, or unsingers? The names mean nothing. Your rules mean nothing.”

  Dorrin took a step toward him, pushing with all her power, but he did not retreat, and she could not advance. As she watched, his shape wavered, as if to disappear, then solidified again.

  “That won’t work now,” Kieri said. He moved. “Dorrin—hold what you have and no more.”

  “She can’t—”

  From the corner of her eye, Dorrin saw other magelords in the palace entrance; Matharin’s son, Lethrin, ran down the steps, both hands glowing with mage-light.

  “Kieri! ’Ware behind!”

  Two King’s Squires turned, intercepted Lethrin, and—when he drew a dagger and lunged—spitted him on their blades. Kieri did not turn; Matharin’s lunge toward him met steel—blade clashing against blade. Matharin’s form wavered again, solidified again, as both Kieri and Amrothlin pressed in. Dorrin dared not look aside. She ignored the noise from the palace entrance—the magelords, Squires, palace staff yelling, struggling—as she would have noise on the battlefield, meaningful only if it suggested a reinforcement or a weakness. Instead, she concentrated on Matharin—now recognizable as iynisin—using her magery to hold him in that one form so that he could not be become invisible or divide into ephemes, as the other iynisin had done.

  She did not see the blade wielded by one of the other mages until it was a handbreadth from her face, striking from the left side. She whirled, grabbed for her dagger—but it was in the other’s hand. He lunged again. Dorrin retreated, drawing her sword, frantic to keep her power on what had been Matharin, but she could not ignore the attacker. At least he had no long blade—but the dagger was faster than her sword. Then he had two daggers, one in either hand … and then another danced in the air before her.

  They could multiply things; she’d been told that. Including—she jerked her head aside—daggers. But how many could he control at once? And how experienced was he? She snapped her blade back and forth and charged him. One dagger rang against her blade and fell; the man jabbed at her with the daggers in his hands, a beginner’s mistake—and her sword swept his arms aside, almost severing one. He dropped both daggers and screamed, stumbling backward. Dorrin rushed him before he could gather his wits and killed him quickly.

  When she turned back to Kieri and Amrothlin, the iynisin was dead, a sprawled mess on the paving stones. Kieri shook the guts from his sword and looked at Dorrin. “Well done, my lord Duke. You gave us time.”

  “And you,” she said.

  The courtyard now was ringed with elves, the hand of surviving magelords huddled in a tight group at the foot of the stairs, under guard. Five more lay dead, sprawled between that group and Kieri. Dorrin spotted a stealthy movement along the wall behind the others, a hunched figure, almost invisible, heading for the passage between the main palace and the salle. “There!” she said, pointing. The figure tossed something at the nearest elf and then ran for the passage. The elf crumpled. Dorrin ran after the magelord, but he made it into the salle before she could stop him.

  Except it was not “he” but a woman, Flannath. Dorrin caught a glimpse of Siger and Carlion turning from the rack of practice blades, then a gesture of Flannath’s hand plunged the salle into darkness.

  Dorrin called her own light, but only a dim glow came, just enough to see the blade that flew at her and evade it. Then light filled the salle again as elves came through the door, and the iynisin who had worn Flannath’s skin hissed, then screamed in what Dorrin guessed was elvish. Together, Dorrin and the elves advanced, trapping the iynisin in the far end of the salle. An elf killed it; Dorrin turned to look for the armsmasters. Both were alive, u
nharmed.

  Out in the courtyard, Dorrin found Kieri, looking as grim as she had ever seen him, staring at the bodies. All the magelords there were dead, not just the ones she had seen attacking. “What happened?” she asked. “Did these also join the fight?”

  “They ran at us,” one of the elves said. “They threw fire from their hands and dire spells.”

  “And they had all stolen the bodies they wore,” Kieri said. “Murderers.”

  “What about the others?” Dorrin asked. “The ones in the city?”

  “The others,” Kieri said, “await my judgment. And I do not know what is best to do.”

  “I know you’ll say the Girdish are unfair,” Seklis said, “but while I’ll agree a child who turns mage may be innocent, these are mages from the days when mages ruled and abused those they ruled. As long as they have mage-powers, they’re a danger.”

  “What kind of king invites visitors and then condemns them to death when they have not yet offended?” Kieri asked. “The others have not stolen bodies, have they?” He looked at Dorrin.

  “I know all of these had; I am not sure of the others—most have not. But they may have done other mischief.”

  “You can’t trust them,” Seklis said. “Not any of them. Not while they have magery and know how to misuse it.”

  “Sir king, what about the Knight-Commander—or the Captain-General of Falk?” Dorrin said. “Remember that my magery was locked for years; I had no use of it or even the knowledge that I had it. Perhaps the magery of those remaining could also be locked.”

  “Could you do it, Dorrin?” Kieri asked. “It would be days before either of those could come here.”

  “I don’t know,” Dorrin said. “I could try, but I’ve never done it.”