Crown of Renewal

by Elizabeth Moon

  Traders moved through Lyonya, along the River Road in the north, across the middle road through Verrakai territory, and even south from Chaya to pick up the South Trade Road near Halveric’s steading.

  “We had to build an inn,” Aliam said one morning in Kieri’s office. “Otherwise they were camping anywhere and cutting down trees without noticing which were which. Though I suspect some intended to steal blackwood.”

  “What about the road west?”

  “That’s their problem,” Aliam said. “We talked to the gnomes, as you suggested, and they let us use what they call nedross rock. Good for roads. I told the merchants they were welcome to break it up themselves.” He set his mug of sib down on the table. “I am not turning road builder at my age. If my sons choose, they can, but being your military commander is more than enough for me.”

  “Does it bother you to have that traffic there?”

  “Not at all, so long as they don’t steal or make a mess of my groves. Remember, I left home to go fight wars in Aarenis. The elvenhome forest was a trap for the likes of me. I wanted more. Now Estil and I are back in the bigger world. Some don’t like it, of course, but not many. Sier Davonin, perhaps.”

  “She complains about some things, but actually she likes the trade coming in, she told me,” Kieri said.

  “What about the elves?”

  “They’re adapting. And I’ve told them that I will never grant the deep forest to humans. They have almost as much land as before, and I’m enforcing some of the same rules, though not all of them. Outlanders can come through but not settle. Lyonya will always be different.”

  “Good,” Aliam said. He stretched. “I’d best get back to work before the king decides I’m too old for my job.”

  Kieri laughed. “Don’t start that, Aliam. You will be my military commander as long as you live—no one else here has the experience.”

  Several days later, Kieri came into his office to find a man seated in a chair, with Falki standing between his knees. He stopped, startled: Who was this man, and how had he reached the office without being announced? He had never seen the man before in his life, he was sure of it. He looked foreign—perhaps someone who had come to Lyonya seeking work. Or a sailor come from the river port. Someone used to outdoor work, heavy-shouldered, in rough clothes. And why was Falki here? Where were the nursery maids who were supposed to be with the children at all times?

  “I have waited a long time for this,” the man said. He smiled. When Kieri said nothing, he went on. “You do not know who I am?” The man held Falki firmly but apparently not harming him. Then he ran his hand over the child’s hair, stroked the side of his face idly, as one might stroke a favorite statue, while watching Kieri. Falki shivered, lips pressed together.

  Kieri’s stomach twisted; dark memories stirred deep in his mind. “I do not,” he said past clenched teeth. “What are you doing here?” His hand moved to his sword.

  The man ran his hand under Falki’s chin, lifting it a little, and slipped his fingers into the neck of the child’s shirt and ripped the light fabric, baring his chest. “I have missed this,” he said. Falki twisted, distress on his face. The man leaned a little forward and pressed his lips to the boy’s hair. “Shhh …” he said. “Be still, child.” Kieri could feel the power in the man’s voice. Tears welled in Falki’s eyes.

  “Get away from him,” Kieri said. The memories rose to the surface—what he and Arian had talked of—what he had most feared. He pushed them back. It could not be … it must not be.

  “Would you rather I petted you?” the man asked. Then, in a voice Kieri had never forgotten, “Kneel to me!”

  Kieri’s knees loosened for a moment, then rage swamped all fear as he knew without a doubt what mind lay behind that unfamiliar weathered face. “You …” he breathed. “Sekkady.”

  “Ah, yes. I knew you would remember soon enough. You thought you had escaped me, didn’t you? And so you did, for a while … but I knew the time would come.” The man who had been many men, including the Duke of Immer, and was now once more Edigone Baron Sekkady smiled a too-familiar smile. “A long wait makes the feast sweeter. Kneel to me, vas’tanho.”

  “No,” Kieri said. He could scarcely breathe for the mix of horror and rage. He struggled to remember what of his magery might work against Sekkady.

  “No? Do you not care for your child? Have you forgotten so much?” The hands moved, one finger stiffening—Falki flinched, eyes wide, but still silent.

  The words came into Kieri’s mind and out his mouth in a long flow of power; Sekkady’s arms flew wide, strained back. Kieri took the three strides to Falki, picked him up and cradled him, then stepped back.

  “You—you—I took that from you—” Sekkady said. “You have no powers.”

  “No,” Kieri said again. As the man tried to stand, Kieri spoke another word of power and knocked him flat. “How many have you destroyed, Sekkady, outliving your own body to seek me? And why? You had other slaves.” Falki whimpered softly. He spoke to his son.

  “There, lad. It’s over.”

  “It’s not! You will kneel—you will see your child as you were—”

  “Be silent,” Kieri said with a flick of his fingers. The man’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. “You silenced others: now I silence you. You will speak only to answer my questions … and you will answer.” Deep in his mind he felt the touch of Sekkady’s power and tossed it away. “How many lives?”

  “Hundreds—thousands—what does it matter? Not all were spent hunting you …” Now the voice was harsh, strained.

  “And you pulled their power, their life, into your bloodstone,” Kieri said. “You still have it, I’m sure.”

  The man’s eyes shifted, a quick glance that told Kieri where. That pocket, of all the pockets in his shabby clothes, or in a pouch beneath.

  Kieri heard a sound behind him. He turned and saw Arian behind him, face white as salt, eyes blazing, her sword drawn, and with her two of her Squires, one of them holding Tilla. How long had she been there? What had she heard? “I will deal with this,” he said to them. “Arian, take Falki and Tilla out of this.”

  “I want to kill him,” Arian said a little breathlessly. Kieri had never seen that expression on her face before.

  “No, love,” he said. “You could, of course—but you must not. It would hurt you in the end.”

  “No one came for you,” she said, “but I have come—why should you bear it all?”

  “Someone did come in the end. And as for why: I am the king.”

  Her expression softened a little.

  “Yes,” he said, as if she’d spoken. “Put up your sword and take our son. Our very brave son,” he said, nuzzling Falki’s neck. “You were brave and good,” he said to the boy as Arian sheathed her sword and moved to his side. “And you will remember that and little else.”

  “Kieri—”

  “Do not fear,” he said. He did not fear. He had passed through his greatest fear and lived; he had saved his son before his son had been hurt as he had been. Sekkady no longer controlled him; that threat about the bloodstone had been a lie. He felt calm then, neither enraged nor terrified … that had passed. Falk, he thought, had taken it away, leaving him the power to think, to make decisions.

  He looked at the wretched thing on the floor … the last of many men Sekkady had ruined. Pity for the man, whoever he had been, whatever he had been of good or evil, brave or craven, rested on him lightly as a flower’s petals: that man was dead, his story ended. The spirit that had stolen his life and now animated his body, the spirit that had stolen Kieri’s childhood and tormented so many more as well, that spirit still alive, powerful, and malign, must be dealt with.

  When the others had left the room, Kieri released the lock on the man’s speech. Sekkady began with curses—curses he clearly thought potent, though Kieri felt them as little as grains of sand. Finally, gasping for breath as if he had been running, Sekkady slowed. “You will become me,” he said then. �
�When you kill me, that will free me to invade you as I did this body—”

  “You cannot,” Kieri said. He was sure of that.

  “If you torture me—you want to, I am sure—” Sekkady smiled, that cruel smile Kieri knew so well.

  “No,” Kieri said. “You delight in others’ pain. I do not.”

  “Then why have you not killed me already?”

  “To learn pity,” Kieri said. “I pity already the man—all the men—whose bodies you stole. But I do not yet pity you—I do not yet understand what made you what you are.”

  A smile—a smug smile this time—settled on that face. “Well. Then you will surely become like me in your own time, and that will give my death savor. For to understand me—even more to pity me—is to become me. You cannot understand without realizing how much more I have than you, and you will want it for yourself.”

  “No. But tell me: What made you what you are?”

  “What made me the greatest mage since the fall of Aare?” The smile widened, gleeful and feral at once. “Power. Strength. Will. I never flinched from what I had to do to become that, whatever it was.”

  Despite himself, Kieri shivered. In Luap he had sensed some good eaten out by evil, a weak man who might have been good if he had not been tempted beyond his strength. But here … here was strength, not weakness, and one who had chosen evil freely. He sensed nothing good, if ever there had been.

  “The iynisin are right,” Sekkady said. “When the First Tree turned traitor, when it revealed weakness and could not resist a human’s song, all creation was contaminated. Love is weak. In every love song, every tale of love, the lover is weakened until he cannot resist the beloved. Your weakness, too—you would not let those you love kill me lest they be harmed. That is folly. You should have learned better from me. All that matters is power, and power means the power to kill, to destroy. If you can destroy, you can control anything. So I learned when they taught me how to create the most powerful of all the jewels of power—the bloodstone. You must care only for power, they said. You must kill any you love first and always. Their blood is in the stone. That proved my worth to them—”

  “You are in league with the iynisin? They taught you, didn’t they?” Kieri glanced around the room, looking for any sign of an iynisin’s arrival.

  “I am Gitres’s servant, as are they. Together we will unmake this flawed world riddled with weakness. That silly woman who thinks Falk can protect her, who intends to restore water to Aare—she will not succeed. She was thrown overboard with a broken back and sank like a rock. Even if some power aids her—and it won’t—and even if she succeeds in her quest, I can undo what she has done. No one can destroy the bloodstone, and any who holds it will use it.”

  “She has succeeded,” Kieri said. “Rivers flow where only sand blew; the drought here in the north has ended.”

  “You lie!” The voice was nearer. Sekkady had moved in spite of the power Kieri had used. He was only an armslength away now, and he held the great red jewel Kieri remembered. Its power had clouded his mind despite his own defenses.

  “You see,” Sekkady said. “I still have more power than you. Your blood is in this stone, too—blood from the wounds I dealt you. Your blood gave me power over elves as well as humans. Either your blood in the stone will force you to submit and you will be my slave again, you and your queen and your children—or you will take it from my hand and—join me.”

  A flicker of light from his own heart-hand caught Kieri’s attention: the dragon figure deep in his ring writhed, glowed. Simultaneously the torc around his neck loosened, straightening, sliding down his arm toward the ring, its gold covering uncurling to reveal the spiraling whiteness Kieri had briefly glimpsed before, this time clearly a long white horn.

  Hardly thinking, he grasped it when it slid into the palm of his heart-hand; the dragon figure flowed out of the ring and into the horn, lighting it from within until it reached the tip, and extended a fiery tongue the pure white of starlight. Sekkady’s eyes widened. “That! How did you—it was lost!” He lunged, reaching for Kieri with the bloodstone.

  The horn twisted in Kieri’s hand like a live thing, faster than Kieri could have moved it himself, and the dragon’s tongue touched the bloodstone, pierced it.

  A roar burst from the stone, loud as the battle cry of an army. Blood spurted out, wave after wave that never touched the horn’s purity nor Kieri himself but splashed back on Sekkady. The thick metallic tang of blood filled the chamber, choking-strong. Then the bloodstone shrank, and the blood lifted in red mist that coiled about Sekkady. Thicker … thicker … Kieri could no longer see the man’s shape within it.

  When it dispersed, Sekkady was gone. Where he had been, nothing remained but the clean floor. No blood, no mist of red, no stench, no body, nothing.

  Kieri looked around the room. Silence. Peace. No danger that his senses, human or elven, could detect. More, a feeling of joy that came not only from his own heart but filled the air around him. Could that be the spirits released from the bloodstone? It faded, and as it did, Kieri was aware of movement in what he held. He watched as the straight horn curled slowly and the little dragon figure flowed back up the length, leaving the tip once more shiny white as a child’s tooth. “Thank you,” he heard himself say, and repeated it in elven and the old tongue of magery. “I don’t understand.”

  The dragon paused in its way, and the tiny tongue of fire extended again. Waited. Kieri bent his head and touched his tongue to it. Hot … with a flavor of the dragon he’d met. It disappeared—reappeared for an instant in his ring, and then sank into the green again. The horn continued to curl toward its former shape. He wanted to touch it with his other hand, to feel that smooth surface, the coils of its spiral, but he could not—and even as he watched, gold wrapped it round once more, until it was, as it had seemed, a simple torc for his neck. He put it on again.

  Well done. More than one voice, but Falk, he was sure, was among them.

  Then a blast of enmity came out of the air, cold, implacable hatred. He turned. Iynisin.

  “You are even more foolish than your grandmother,” said the one in the center. “We cannot be undone by mortals. That one was only mortal—”

  “And so am I,” Kieri said. “But you can be undone by those of steady purpose.”

  “You think so?”

  “And by Elders older than you,” Kieri said. “Dragon destroyed your western hold, did he not?”

  “Dragon!” They spat, all of them, vile stuff that hissed on the floor like acid. “Dragon killed many of us, but Dragon cannot be everywhere at once. Dragon is busy elsewhere, and you are here, little king. We will unmake you.”

  Swords appeared in their hands, and they moved to encircle him. Their malice battered him before they were close enough to strike. Power he recognized as greater than his own—but not beyond what he could resist. He drew his sword; they would not kill him easily.

  Even as the first one struck, Amrothlin ran into the room, sword drawn and calling for aid. Then other elves, then his Squires.

  When it was done, five iynisin lay dead, and Amrothlin, badly wounded, lay with his head in Kieri’s lap. “I was wrong,” he said, gasping. “I should have—I didn’t believe—and I could not let you die—”

  “Uncle,” Kieri said, “I honor you, whatever lies in the past.”

  “Take me where my mother lies—please—others can show you. And remember me as one who saved a king’s life.”

  “You are not dead yet—”

  “No, but I will die of this wound. It is not the first iynisin wound I have taken.”

  That night Arian and Kieri lay in the king’s bed with the twins between them. Falki slept peacefully; Tilla seemed to be dreaming, twitching and muttering.

  “Is it over?” Arian asked when Kieri had told her everything that had happened.

  “Is anything ever over? I’m sure there’s still evil in the world and it will seek destruction. But if the rains come, and the sun, to re
fresh the taig, I think we can deal with the rest—”

  “Listen,” she said.

  From outside came a faint sound. Kieri rolled out of bed and went to the window, pulling the curtains back. Damp air wafted in; he touched the sill outside and felt drops touch the back of his hand.

  “What Dorrin did will last,” Arian said. “The taig will have the rain it needs, and farmers in all lands, as well.” She sounded completely confident. “Gitres Undoer will not prevail, not in our lifetimes or our children’s.”

  “Well,” Kieri said, surprised by her vehemence. “If that is so, then my worries are over. And it feels like it’s going to rain all night. Now I can sleep.”

  “If that’s what you want to do.”

  “Oho. You have something else in mind?”

  “You are the last of your grandmother’s line. I am the last of my father’s. Now my grandfather thinks elf-lords should have more heirs … and I agree.”

  “Every child,” Kieri said, “can be hurt.”

  “Is that really your concern? Everyone can be hurt. Every living thing—even stone—can be hurt. But you and I are on the side of life, of beauty, of honor … and so you risk, as that man who set you free from Sekkady risked his life for you, and I risk, as my father risked for the Lady.”

  “Then let us move these two back into the nursery—without waking them if possible—and risk what pleasure we can find.”

  All that night the rain fell steadily.

  The next day, Falki came to Kieri and hugged him. “Father—that was a bad man.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “You said I was brave.”