Echoes of Betrayal (31 page)

The leader gave a stiff nod to both Cracolnya and him. “It is this one is your duke?”

“I am Count Arcolin,” Arcolin said. “It is a new title, granted at Autumn Court. How may I address this one with due courtesy?”

The leader nodded more deeply. “Count. This one is title Karginfulk estvin: one speaks to strangers in name of prince.”

“Estvin,” Arcolin said. He had heard that title before but had never spoken to a gnome ambassador. “Be welcome. Would you enter, out of the wind?”

“It incurs obligation,” the estvin said. Arcolin realized the gnomes would stand in the freezing wind until they turned to the gray stone they resembled if he did not find a way to convince them to enter. Hospitality to outsiders was not a gnome virtue. His ears and fingers ached with cold.

“My gods impose on me the obligation of a host,” he said. “It is against law as we understand it to have visitors stand in a cold wind when shelter exists; I must ask you in.”

For a long moment, the estvin stared at him without expression, then he nodded. “It is your law; it is not our Law. But it is not against our Law. Do you then admit we owe you nothing if we enter?”

“I admit it,” Arcolin said.

Inside the tent, Arcolin ushered the gnomes to one of the tables; the benches troops used were too tall for them, but when he offered to prepare seats for them, the leader refused. “Your law may require shelter to be offered, but not comfort. We will stand. You may sit.”

Arcolin sensed Cracolnya’s annoyance at being allowed to sit in
their own tent. “If you would bring sib,” he said to Cracolnya. “There’s still plenty hot.” To the estvin he said, “I would offer a hot drink at no obligation, neither asking nor wanting any exchange.”

Another long silence, then the now-familiar stiff nod. Arcolin sat, facing across the table a row of dour gray gnomish faces. They said nothing, nor did he, until Cracolnya and one of the cooks brought a tray with a pitcher and nine mugs.

“If you don’t need me, my lord Count, I can get on with the day’s work,” Cracolnya said.

“Occupy the troops in camp until the estvin and I have finished talking,” Arcolin said.

“Yes, my lord,” Cracolnya said. Arcolin hoped the gnomes did not recognize the bite of sarcasm in his tone.

“The man who held this land,” the estvin said without more preamble, “he fought against Pargun.”

“Duke Phelan, yes. Pargun and Tsaia—”

“Enemies.” The estvin put up his hand, and Arcolin fell silent. “It is not blame to that man; he did not know. And the prince forbade …” The estvin paused, sipped at the sib, then set down the mug. “It is Law that however wrong comes—by intent, by chance—wrong makes debt. Intent makes blame, but no-intent can make debt. Is clear?”

“In the Code of Gird intent to harm makes a crime—a wrong—worse. Without intent—no-intent—can still require a payment but not punishment.” Arcolin paused. The estvin regarded him with no more expression than before, then spoke.

“Gird was—” The estvin shook his head. “Cannot say in Common.” He stood even straighter than before. “But is time short, before must be done. You go.”

“Go?”

“Go. This land not for you. Not for Pargun.”

“I don’t understand,” Arcolin said. “This land has been Tsaian—and in this domain, now mine—since—”

“Since that duke fought Pargunese and pushed back. Not far enough. It is not land for humans.”

“For gnomes?”

Now the blank face finally showed expression: grief. “It is not
land for rockfolk. It is not land for Law. It is land for—” He uttered a long word Arcolin could not begin to pronounce.

“What is that?” Arcolin was thoroughly confused.

“Elder,” the estvin said.

Gnomes were Elders, like dwarves and elves. “Elves?” he asked. What other Elders were there?

“Pargun attack Lyonya,” the estvin said, as if that explained anything; he went on. “Pargun delve forbidden hill. Blackbone hill. Should not be. The—the sfizn rocks there, they break. Must not be.” Now that stolid face glistened as if sweaty, and the dry, emotionless voice trembled. “Karginfulk fail. Karginfulk must go.”

Arcolin felt his brows rise. Gnomes leaving their native rock? And what was sfizn rock? He knew dross and nedross, dwarf terms for the sound and the unsound rock, but sfizn?

“I don’t understand,” he said. “What has this to do with us—with my realm?”

The estvin turned to one of the other gnomes, who produced a thick wad of cloth from under his jacket and unfolded it on the table. Arcolin stared at the most beautiful map he had ever seen. The Honnorgat—every bend and crook of its path, every tributary. Hills, every one shaded so it seemed to stand up from the cloth. In fact, he realized as he concentrated on their location, the map was not static—it enlarged what he stared at, brought up details impossible to see before.

“When shipfulk—sea-fulk—came to here—” The estvin pointed at the distant eastern shoreline. “And upriver to here—” He ran a stubby gray finger up the line of the Honnorgat to the great falls. “They ask land-right of the prince, who then had rock-right here—” He spread his hand north-south from the falls and a handspan wide, more downriver than up. “Our prince saw they had order, though not Law, and granted surface land-right only, for we have no use for wet dirt or trees. Our prince set limits.” He ran his finger in a broad arc that Arcolin saw encompassed where now lay both Pargun and Kostandan. “Not past rock-water, where ships cannot go. So those sea-fulk made pledge.”

“And broke it,” Arcolin said, “if they became Pargun, for Pargun claims this—” He pointed but did not touch the map.

“That is so,” the estvin said. “The Webmistress said to them,
Go higher and be safe
. The Karginfulk prince said no. Then daskdraudigs—you know this?”

“Rock-serpent,” Arcolin said.

“Yes. Bad. Years it grew under stone, then fell and crushed prince and most Karginfulk. And Webmistress threatened more. Then new prince bade us obey the Law and withdraw to the deeps, and there we lived, but with difficulty. For She sent orcs to harass us and her servants, the little webspinners, as spies and talebringers, liars in the dark to spread fear and mistrust. We dwindled but stayed faithful to our task—”

“Task?” Arcolin asked.

“One such webspinner bit our prince despite our care, and he died,” the estvin said without answering Arcolin’s question. “By then were few with the knowledge of Law that a prince needs, for so we had been pressed by trouble. The new prince knew less. We sent for aid from other princedoms, but none came—perhaps our messengers did not survive the journey. By Law they should have come and helped us.”

The estvin looked down now; Arcolin glanced along the line of gnomes and saw that their black eyes glistened like wet pebbles. “They came not,” the estvin said. “Our new prince—our prince was taken.”

“Taken?”

“By secret treachery; it could not have been his intent.” That had the tone of wish rather than certainty. Arcolin imagined a line of increasingly weaker princes. “And the Pargunese—the Pargunese came to see the hill forbidden to all.”

“A holy hill?” Arcolin hazarded.

“Holy!” The estvin glared at Arcolin. “
Not
holy. Cursed. More perilous than daskdraudigs. And—” His head lowered again. “Our task. To protect—to warn away—any who might come there.”

A cold tendril of wind blew under the tent wall and chilled Arcolin’s legs; he shivered. “What is the curse, then?”

“Is not to say.” Now the estvin looked squarely at Arcolin again. Then he shook his head. “Yet must. Humans must always know what and why or they do not obey.” He leaned over the bench on his side of the table, putting both hands flat on the map. “Dragonkin.”

“Dragons? They disappeared ages ago—”

“Human fool.” The estvin did not raise his voice. “Not two hands of days agone Drakka—Dragon himself—came to Lyonya and destroyed the scathefire burning the forests. Then to us he came, and sent us into banishment for failing our trust.”

“He blames you for the Pargunese finding the hill? But if you were few in number and hard beset—”

“It is not that. It is that Dragon believes our prince—our prince betrayed the trust.”

“And your prince—”

“Has not returned. May be dead. May not. We that remain … Dragon requires to warn you to leave this land as far as this stream.” He pointed to a line that Arcolin recognized as a third of the way from the recognized border to the stronghold. “It is for the lives of those that still live. Then we must go, by Midwinter, out from under stone to find our way as we can, taking nothing but what we wear.”

Arcolin could not comprehend all this; the concept of a dragon, a live dragon—now, in this time, a dragon giving orders to gnomes—was difficult enough. “It is not fair,” he said, fixing his mind on the dragon’s demands. “It is not your fault.”

“It is not your fault that you must leave this,” the estvin said. “It is by our weakness Dragon came and thus by our weakness you and your king lose land long held. Our debt. We cannot pay; we must go with nothing. We are all kteknik, for with no prince, no guardian of Law, we all fail in Law.”

“Kteknik?”

The estvin nodded. “Banished from our prince, nameless and clanless. We must not wear these clothes after we leave, for these declare we are Karginfulk, and we will not be Karginfulk.”

“It’s winter,” Arcolin said. “You can’t walk away without clothes, without food …”

“It is that we have no choices left,” the estvin said. “The Elder rules. We have obeyed in telling you where you must go. Dragon …” The estvin paused. “Dragon is not safe,” the estvin said then. “But Dragon is just.”

“Where will you go?” Arcolin asked.

The estvin shrugged.

“How many of you? And … and women and children?” He imagined
a string of small naked gray figures struggling through the icy wind, the blowing snow, going somewhere they did not know, and shuddered at the thought.

“It is—it was when we left seventy and eight. Fifteen children—” The estvin closed both eyes: Arcolin glanced along the row and saw that they all had closed their eyes. On each face a single tear ran down, then another.

“You must—” No, he could not say “must” to any of the elders. “Come to the stronghold—to
my
place,” he said instead. “You can shelter there for a time, until spring at least, when it is warmer. There are hills west of us—perhaps they might suit you—”

“You do not understand!” For a moment, Arcolin thought the estvin was angry, then realized the gnome was shaking with grief, not anger. “It is … it is the judgment. We fail. We damage you with our failure. The debt—the debt is already greater than we can survive.”

“It is in Gird’s Code that we shelter fugitives unless they are criminals,” Arcolin said. Fifteen little gnome children in the winter cold?
No
.

“Kteknik criminals. Elder—Drakka—Dragon said.”

“Not by Gird’s law,” Arcolin said. “Gird’s Code is
my
law—the law I must obey. Gird laid on us obeying the bounds kapristi set. I will have to tell the king—my king—but he will agree.”

“Exchange,” said one of the other gnomes. “No take without exchange.”

The estvin looked hard at the other. “Dragon—” Arcolin felt the tension between them.

“It is not Drakka said no exchange.”

The estvin looked at Arcolin. “Gird law not Law. For kteknik kapristi, must exchange make. Take service?”

Arcolin blinked. “Your service?”

“Service for debt owed. Kapristi service for shelter. Until balance level, service to Count. Yes?”

Holy Gird and Falk. He was acquiring seventy-eight gnomes as … as whatever they were good for. All the things he suddenly needed to do ran through his head. All eight gnomes stared at him; the map on the table seemed to squirm when he glanced at it.

“Yes,” he said.

“Dragon may not like. Think before bindings.”

A dragon he had never seen and wasn’t entirely sure existed outside a gnome’s round hard skull was nothing to his vision of those tiny gnome children.

“Yes,” he said again. “I would make bargain with you, estvin, and your clan Karginfulk whether you be kteknik or not. I would trade shelter this winter, and food and other necessities, for service.”

The estvin turned to the other gnomes and loosed a brief torrent of gnomish; they all answered one gnomish word Arcolin didn’t know and couldn’t pronounce. Then the entire troop came around the end of the table and prostrated themselves before him, and the estvin said, from his position, “Turn that I may kiss the feet of my master.”

Across the tent, someone dropped a pan; Arcolin looked that way and realized that the cooks had been listening avidly. He turned on the bench; the estvin grasped his boot and kissed it, and behind him, each gnome kissed the boot heels of the gnome in front of him. Then the estvin stood, once more looking Arcolin in the face. “The master orders?”

“Have you eaten lately?” Arcolin asked.

“It is of no matter,” the estvin said.

“It matters to me,” Arcolin said. “Answer.”

“Then, not since leaving Dragon and our home.”

“Have you food there?”

“A little.”

“You will eat here and carry what food you need back to your people and bring them. Understand?”

“Yes, master.”

“And you will not remove your Karginfulk clothes until you reach the stronghold and are given others, that no harm comes to your people. Understand?”

“Yes, master.”

“Are the Pargunese soldiers harrying you?”

“No, master, not since Dragon came.”

“You will come here—and my men will escort you to the stronghold as we remove ourselves from this place. Will that suit?”

“Yes, master.”

Arcolin looked over to the cooks. “Feed these eight gnomes with as much as they will eat and give them food to carry. They will be
coming back with the rest of their clan, and I will give Cracolnya orders about that.”

The gnomes worked their way through two bowls of porridge each, accepted a bag of oats, and left, bowing deeply to Arcolin. He called Cracolnya back in.

“What was that about, and why are you giving them oats?”

“Because that’s all they’d take.” Arcolin repeated what the gnomes had told him and what he’d done. “And you’ll escort them to the stronghold when they come.”