Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I didn’t expect you,” Arcolin said to Clart, who grinned.

  “Aesil wanted to surprise you,” he said. “And Andressat wanted to be sure there was no more looting in Cortes Cilwan.”

  “Also,” Sarnol said, “we have the cub along.” He jerked his head a little, and Arcolin looked that way to see Poldin M’dierra.

  “She let him come?”

  “She did. Said the lad had to be blooded sometime. Who’s your squire?”

  “Kaim, son of the count whose holding is south of mine in Tsaia.” Arcolin eased his back. “You certainly came at the right moment.”

  “The luck was with us,” Clart said.

  “Camwyn’s Claw,” Sarnol said. “And Esea’s Fire.”

  “And as neat a trap as ever we sprung,” Arcolin said. “You’re coming up to the palace later to talk?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then I’d best get on.”

  Kaim said little on the ride to the city, but he dismounted when Arcolin stopped in the palace courtyard and stood ready to hold Arcolin’s mount. “You’ve done well, Kaim,” Arcolin said. “A hard-fought battle, and you stood firm. When you’ve put the horses away, get a meal and some rest.”

  “Yes, my lord.” Kaim led the horses away, and Arcolin saw Burek waiting for him on the palace step.

  “My lord, I was never so glad to see you in my life,” Burek said. “I did not doubt you were coming, but some of the new militia were on the point of panic. They’d seen what Immer’s men could do when they held the city before.”

  “You held them together very well,” Arcolin said.

  Arcolin half expected another attack from downriver, but none came. The few prisoners they’d captured at the end of the battle—all wounded, some fatally—could tell them nothing about Alured’s plans, only insisting that his name was Visli Vaskronin, Duke Immer, not Alured. Where he was or why he had not come to command in person, they did not know.

  “I don’t believe he’s dead,” Nasimir Clart said, leaning his elbows on the table. “If he was, you’d have people dancing for joy all the way down the Immer.”

  “Except his pirate friends,” Soldan said. “But I do wish we knew what had happened in Fallo.”

  The answer came three days later in the person of Count Vladi himself with an escort of four hands of Kostandanyans rather than his own polearm company.

  “So, you took Cortes Cilwan back,” he said to Arcolin. “That is good. That man is demon-ridden.”

  Arcolin knew he meant Alured. “So Andressat’s son managed to convey,” he said. “Did you know about that?”

  “Not until later.” Vladi accepted a seat under the awning of Arcolin’s tent. “I was over there since middle of last campaign season, trying to get Sofi Ganarrion and his daughter out of there, but she was pregnant. I would not say this to everyone, but Fall’s son is useless save for tupping girls.”

  “Is he back in Kostandan, then?” Cracolnya asked.

  “Sofi? No. And the Duke of Fall and his worthless son are still alive as well, no thanks to the son. No warrior, that one. Fall should disown him and declare one of his nephews his heir. Sofi says he will not go north without the promise of some position in the court and forgiveness for all that happened.”

  “I’ve always wondered,” Cracolnya said.

  “You will continue so,” Vladi said in a tone that created a long pause in the conversation. Then he heaved a sigh, stroked his pointed beard, now snowy white, and said, “I tell you what I can tell you. Our king—” The emphasis was clear. “—he sent shiploads of troops from up north, around the Eastbight in winter, when pirates and spies are few. Though … we killed some.”

  “And Alured—Immer—didn’t find out?”

  “Not until too late. I had no duty to invade his land; my duty is to protect Ganarrion for his father’s blood’s sake. Immer thought Fallo weak—which it is, or was—and planned to take it to secure his flank. He will not try that again, or not for a long time.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  “Oh, no. Demon-ridden, as I said. Hard to kill as long as the demon has him. But he took a wound or two and doubtless needed some time in a bed.” Vladi took out a flask and poured three fingers of a clear liquid into a glass. “Let us drink, Captains, to the defeat of enemies and the safety of allies.”

  The others poured ale or water as they chose and drank the toast. Vladi stayed until all but Arcolin had gone to bed that night, then spoke. “What is this I hear of demons in the north?”

  “Iynisin,” Arcolin said. “Kuaknomi, we call them in Tsaia, or blackcloaks. They attacked.”

  “Ah. Very old trouble. Very bad. I hear the silverbloods want to war with them again.”

  “Silverbloods?”

  Vladi spit. “Those so-called Elders, the tree singers. They would not let us south of the river up there, wanted all for themselves. You know the demons are their cousins—”

  Arcolin had never known the Kostandanyans’ opinions about elves were so different from his own. He could not think what to say; Vladi started again.

  “They call them dark cousins when they admit their existence at all. That woman silverblood, the Lady you people call her: she drove all the Seafolk out when all we wanted was a little land to farm and the river to fish in. I heard she died last year; one of her own killed her … maybe not a close cousin but a dark one. Good riddance. Phelan the Fox is king now, eh?”

  “She was killed by iynisin, yes,” Arcolin said.

  Vladi poured himself more of whatever was in his flask. Arcolin was sure it wasn’t water. “I thought, when Kieri Phelan was young, just Halveric’s squire, that he had the look of royalty, but later just a good soldier. That can be enough for a man. And now he’s king up there. I would visit him and toast his success if not that my king tells me to keep watch on Ganarrion.”

  Arcolin realized that Vladi was working his way to something. “Do you have a message for him?” he asked, hoping to shorten the ordeal.

  “Perhaps,” Vladi said, stiffening again. “I hear he is part silverblood and that deplorable Lady his grandmother … Is that true?”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said. “Apparently.”

  “What Aliam Halveric told me, years ago … he took the boy in, and the boy had come through the woods from the east.”

  “Yes,” Arcolin said again.

  “So … then … when I was young, a boy, all our boys go to sea for two winters. And I went to sea as I was bid, and we sailed far out in the eastern ocean and came to land on the other side. And then we sailed back.” He paused to pour and drink another glass. “And there was a man, a magelord of Aare, he said he was, at the port where we landed to sell the fish we had caught, and he questioned the captain of the ship closely about a boy who had run away.”

  Arcolin’s skin rose up in gooseflesh. “Did he give his name?” he said.

  Vladi looked hard at him, his eyes cold. “Would you know the name if I said it?”

  “I might,” Arcolin said.

  “That man was demon-ridden, too,” Vladi said. “He looked at me, and I felt fear for the first time. Our captain saw it and sent me below, and they gave me the drink so I vomited out the fear the demon had put in me. Still I don’t forget. Kieri should be very careful. It was long ago, but the demon-ridden do not die easily. And it comes to me that when Alured the Black was a pirate, it is said he sailed from across the eastern ocean, and … he is demon-ridden.”

  “You think it is the same?”

  Vladi shrugged. “Who am I to know the ways of demons or which one is which? There is more than one kind, that I know. Very long ago, I think, the Elder demons taught some men how to become demons themselves and how to take the bodies of others and use them so they need not die of age. If Kieri the Fox was ever a demon’s plaything, then despite the years between he might become so again if the demon found him.”

  “No!” Arcolin could not help himself. “He would never—not now. He has his own magery.”


  “The demon has a magic stone,” Vladi said. His chin was sunk on his chest now, his eyes half closed. “I saw it when I was a lad on our ship, and I saw just such a stone in the hand of that Alured when he invaded Fallo. Red as ruby, but not ruby. A demon stone.” His voice softened. “Might be same stone. Might not. But … I would tell Kieri to be wary.” He was silent a long time; Arcolin waited for him to speak, but then, in one long noisy breath, Vladi started snoring.

  In the morning, Vladi swore he remembered nothing of what he’d said and would confirm none of it. “I was drinking spruce,” he said. “I was drunk. Gods only know what I said or what I meant by it. And my head splits with the sunlight and the heat. That is what comes of drinking spruce and talking of demons. I will go back to my work.”

  Cave, Southern Waste

  The boy woke. In the dark, he had no idea what time it was, or where, and his head … his head was a strange place, full of empty shelves, shattered boxes, torn fragments of cloth. He reached out his hands … one glowed red as a firecoal, but he could see nothing beyond the dark.

  Sense departed; he fell again into heavy sleep and did not know it when a vast shape crept near him, wrapped a long, fiery tongue around him, and drew him once more inside. For a time he dreamed … dreamed of staring into a fire, the flames dancing and writhing, the colors beyond any colors he had seen. He dreamed of melting, of being poured, twisted, and stretched, molded … he dreamed of every good scent a bakery could produce—spices toasted on hot iron, then baked in bread and pastries … he dreamed of lying on a roof somewhere, the sun warming his back.

  And he woke to darkness solid as stone. Warm. Comfortable. Where was he? He put out his hands, and one glowed red as a firecoal, and he could see nothing more in the light of that hand. He wasn’t afraid, and that brought him the first flicker of real thought: Why wasn’t he afraid? He felt himself, rediscovered his arms, his hands, his head, his neck, his chest and belly, and … What was that? Something tangled over him, something flexible … but soft. He pulled it up, sniffed it, rubbed his face in it, then put it aside. He had no more name for it than he had for himself. For a moment that woke fear, fear that threatened to pull him down to nothing again.

  Had he always been in the dark alone? He tried to answer that question, and a vague sense of light came to him … of space illuminated. Of … rooms? Of knowing what was over there, or over here, knowing what he could touch from where he lay and what was out of reach.

  As he lay wondering about this, a sound moved in the darkness, a sound for which—like everything else—he had no name. A long streak of red, edged with flickering blue, appeared. He shrank back, frightened by what he could not understand. The red shortened, disappeared.

  “You’re awake,” a voice said.

  The words, he knew, referred to himself. He should know them.

  “I will touch your head,” the voice said.

  He was still puzzling out the meaning from the sounds when something warm brushed his face and settled—not uncomfortably—around the left side of his face. The something grew warmer; a smell came with it, a smell that brought with it a memory of red, yellow, heat, and loud noise. Darkness swept across the remembered fire, then his memory jerked aside and he saw a figure hitting … hammering … the word came to him … on something … the noise hurt.

  “Better,” the nearby voice said. “Drink.”

  He had not thought of his face, but when a rim touched his lips, he opened them and drank whatever it was that flowed down his throat. He felt different after. Thoughts moved in his head, separate as beads on a string. He could imagine beads and string-wire-thong-rope.

  “I will take you,” the voice said.

  Before he could realize what would happen, he was wrapped down his length in that warm touch and moving—he could feel it under him, a quiver. The noise returned—a noise like the sound of hammering but much fainter and less regular. A distant clang and clatter. He slept.

  At next waking, darkness had been replaced by light. He could see no source for it, could not name it, but he could see across a space to a solid wall of rock and see the surface of rock between himself and that wall. That way—the light dimmed. That other way—the light seemed stronger. He looked down at himself: a body he recognized as … human. He lifted his hands, stared at them a long time in puzzled wonder. Slowly words came: “finger,” “thumb,” the numbers to count fingers with, the name “hand” for the whole. He had time alone to consider the rest, to recover the names: wrist, arm, elbow, shoulder, head and neck and chest … to remember that what he saw with were eyes, what he smelled with—still a smell he could not name—was a nose, and his mouth—his lips—his teeth …

  He made a sound himself and remembered that he heard himself with ears. The sounds he made … were not words, though he did not have a word for words; he only knew the sounds meant nothing to him. Abruptly, his body made demands; he sat up and looked around. Without naming it, without knowing what he would do, he stood and, stumbling, one hand against the rock wall nearest, made his way toward dimness and found there a pot that smelled … right. Fluid emerged; he knew it should go into the pot and aimed it. Most did.

  He turned, steadier now on his feet, and moved toward more light. He had lain … there on something soft. He did not want to lie down. He wanted to move; he wanted to see. An angle of wall blocked him; he moved along it and found between that and the other wall an opening half the width of the chamber he’d been in.

  Beyond a turn of the wall, brightness stabbed his eyes; he squinted, blinked away the instant tears, and ventured closer, very slowly. A gust of air brought him more smells, smells he now thought he should know. He went on carefully, one step at a time, one hand always on the rock, until the rock fell away before him and he was looking out over shapes and colors, smelling too many things to count, seeing distance after distance melting away into haze. Colors … his mind dredged up only a few names, and none that quite fit but for “blue” of the sky … another word he remembered … and “green” for a small plant growing in another pot, just inside the opening.

  He sat down, his legs failing him suddenly, and stared out at the vastness, his eyes watering, the water running down his face, and tasting … salty, he remembered as he licked his lips. Salty. The light shifted as time passed; he did not think about that but merely noticed more light, a paler sky. The wind continued to blow across his face, bringing more strange scents.

  “It is good to see you in the light,” said the same voice he had heard before.

  He turned and saw a … human? Dark skin, unlike his, and fire-gold eyes. The human—if it was a human—wore dark clothes that rippled in the wind like … like … flames, only flames … were not … dark. The man held a pot, a pot he recognized, and carried it to the opening, closer than he himself had gone, and threw its contents outward, even as a long red tongue emerged from the man’s mouth and in a gout of flame incinerated those same contents and then—aimed at the pot’s interior, scoured the pot, and set it down.

  “You are not human.” His own voice startled him. It spoke words, and he knew the meaning of the words, and more words rose in his mind, a chattering swarm of them. “Too many words,” he said then, and shut his eyes.

  “You see truly,” the other said, and this time he knew the meaning of those words as well. “I am Dragon, and we share a name, you and I. Do you know it?”

  He shook his head, unable to speak for the clamor of all the words. Something warm touched the heart-hand side of his face, and the words settled as blown leaves settle to the ground when the wind passes. He opened his eyes. “Dragon,” he said.

  “Your name is Camwyn,” the dragon said. “Camwyn … dragon-friend.”

  The words lay still in his mind, ready for his use, and now he knew the use. “I … am not at home,” he said.

  “Where is your home?” the dragon asked.

  He looked out into the blues and grays and tans for which he now had names and at colo
rs for which he had no names because he had never seen them before. Now he knew the wind felt dry and hotter than it had. Now he knew the land below had no forests, nor farmers’ fields, nor pastures for beasts, for there was nothing green there and no water that he could see.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It was …” He felt around for direction and found none. “There were trees outside the city,” he said.

  “Yes,” the dragon said. “There were trees and fields. Do you miss them?”

  He thought about that. Between the vague memory of another place and time and this place now lay a thick curtain of nothing.

  The dragon cocked his head. “Well. This has been a safe place for you, in this time, but you are correct: it is not your home. If you do not know where your home is, perhaps a new home will do.”

  “Is there any water?”

  “I brought water for you,” the dragon said. “A moment.” The dragon walked back down the passage, into the dark, carrying the pot, and returned shortly with a different-shaped pot and a mug.

  Water. Cool, fresh, cleaning the last taint of salt from his … tears. “My name is Camwyn,” he said. “Has it always been Camwyn?”

  “Yes,” the dragon said. “And you were a prince, and you will be a king.”

  “I don’t remember,” he said. “I am Camwyn. Camwyn is my name … and my … myself.” He looked down at his legs, bare to the wind. Scars marked them. “I am not a child.”

  “No,” said the dragon. “You are a young man. Do you want the tale of your coming here?”

  Tale … the word meant story, a kind of story sometimes not real but also a story that could be real.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You were beset by evil enemies,” the dragon said. “You fought them; they were many, and you were but one. You were wounded—those scars you can see, and also inside your head, where you cannot see. So you have no memory of that, but … you are alive, and now awake, and you have words.”