Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (40 page)

Early spring, this time
, Rudi thought.
And this
is
my time, or close to it. I recognize the lightning scar on that tree, and the old path’s there under the new growth.

His breath smoked, but the sky was clear, save for a band where the
setting sun made crimson streaks. He turned into the woods northward, letting his feet lead him uphill towards the sound of voices and the hollow clop of hooves. After a few minutes he came to a little clearing, about where he’d expected the sleigh-born party from Timberline to halt, and stopped to watch. None of those who crowded it seemed to notice him this time, ignoring him as if he were a ghost indeed, though he was in plain sight and they armed and wary. He shivered a little and drew the plaid closer; he felt he could walk among them unseen at arm’s length…but also as if this was as far from the Lake as it was wise to go.

There were more than a few of them, with pavilions and a banner and grooms leading away horses and men working to start fires. The flag on the big central tent’s peak was the Crowned Mountain and Sword of Montival, and from their dress the folk came from half of the High Kingdom or more. His eyes went wider as he sought faces in the crowd.

Sam Aylward? But—

At first he thought it was the old bowman, but he looked as Rudi remembered him from his own childhood, middle-aged and strong as a weather-scarred boulder.

No,
he thought with wonder.
It’s Edain, the hair’s lighter than old Sam’s and he’s an inch or so taller. Different scars, too. But not the Edain I saw a few hours past. My friend as he might be in a generation’s time.

Others were wholly strange. Who could the striking young woman in exotic lamellar armor be, the one with the Asian features and the twin curved swords, gripping a naginata? The sound of their voices was a murmur through a hundred yards, under the sough of the evening breeze through the boughs of the tall conifers. Two broke away after embraces and salutes, walking towards him.

A man and a woman, with the look of close kin, and both young, the male around twenty and the other a few years older. Both tall, walking with a quick springy stride he recognized, warriors and hunters both. The man had dark-brown hair to his shoulders beneath a Montero cap that sported a peacock’s tail-feather and green hunter’s garb, with a short heavy falchion at his belt and a bow and quiver over his back. His eyes were the changeable color that can be light honey-brown or green depending
on the light, and very keen; his heels had the small golden spurs that marked a knight.

The woman was in a Mackenzie kilt and plaid and boots and jacket, long hair the color of ripe wheat in bright sunlight flowing down over her shoulders. Closer, and he could see her eyes were the blue of the lake behind him, and her features sharp-cut and regular, somewhere between handsome and beautiful, but worn with some great strain and marked by recent grief despite youth and strength. After a moment they slowed and the pair stopped, the man blinking a little and looking aside.

“This is as far as I think I should go, Orrey,” he said, turning his back on the lake.

“You may have to go further someday, Johnnie,” she replied soberly.

“God forbid!” he said, and crossed himself. “That’s for
your
kids.”

“Which I haven’t had yet. Until then you’re the heir.”

“God and all the
saints
forbid,” he said sincerely. “I’ve seen what the job did to Dad and what it’s doing to you. I’ll be the High Queen’s right hand and wailing wall when you need it, and that’s all I want, believe me.”

They hugged for a long moment—a sibling’s gesture, he decided, not a lover’s, from their manner and speech.

“Reiko will be nervous for me,” the woman said.

“Osian will help. I’ll keep them all laughing, don’t worry.”

She walked past him. At her belt…

The Sword of the Lady itself,
he thought, numb with awe as he fell into step beside her, unseen…though from the way she moved and held her eyes she missed very little.

Just where the woods gave on the lake she hesitated, muttered: “Well, as Dad always said, the job doesn’t get easier if you wait,” and stepped out into the dying sunlight.

Rudi did as well, and faced her. “Órlaith?” he said softly.

Her eyes went wide and her face milk-pale. She staggered, and for an instant he thought she would buckle; he caught her by the forearms and felt her hands clench on his with hard force. Then she was intent, her eyes probing him.

“Dad?” she said. “Is that…you?” Then: “No. You’re too young!”

“It’s Rudi Mackenzie, I am, darling girl,” he said. “Just…let’s say I’m here on the same mission as I suspect brings you. The Kingmaking.”

“But I saw you—” she began, then rammed to a halt.

Rudi grinned, wonder and joy warring in him. “Die?” he laughed. “My delight, I never thought myself immortal. Except in the sense that we all are, and I’ve had abundant proof of
that
.”

“How?” she breathed. “How is this
happening
?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea; and I have it on the best of authority that Those responsible don’t explain it to us because they
can’t
. How can a man explain all his mind to a little child, or a God to a man? But I suspect that here, from the time the Sword plunged into the earth with Matti your mother and myself your father holding it, all times are one. And the dead and the living and those yet unborn are none so different.”

She cast herself against him and they embraced; her arms were like slender steel, and the sun-colored hair smelled of the woods and some flowery herb.

“I’ve missed you so much, Dad. And Mother has been so—”

He made a shushing sound and laid a finger over her lips. “Arra, there are things
I
should not know. Let me find my own joys and griefs, child! It’s a comfort to hear you, though. I’ve a fair confidence I will be a good King, but it seems I’m none so bad a father, too.”

She nodded vigorously and stood back, wiping at tears with the back of her hand.

“Come, walk with me,” he said.

They linked hands; hers were callused like his, the distinctive patterns left by blade-hilt and shield-grips. After a moment they came to the rock by the water; the Sword stood in it, as if it had been planted there since the land first rose from the sea.

The blue eyes looked at it and then up at him as her own blade-hand touched the moonstone pommel at her side.

“I’m not going to say
how
again,” she said, a hint of the wasp in her voice. “You’re as bad as Grandmother Juniper about answering questions with questions!”

“Sure, and I came by it honestly,” Rudi said. Seriously: “I think that the
Sword is now here forever. More, I think that it always
was
here…now, if that makes any sense at all; we drove it not just through rock, but through Time itself. And that this has become a place of awe and sacredness, the pivot about which Montival turns.”

She nodded vigorously. “Nobody comes here except the High King or Queen and their handfasted,” she said. “But you never told me much about…this.”

“Because there are things that mean nothing until you live them,” Rudi said. He grinned. “Let me guess. You’re facing a great challenge, the realm is in peril, and—”

She laughed, but there were tears in it. “Lord and
Lady
, Dad, but I’ve missed you! Johnnie and Vuissance and Faolan have too, but…I…”

And I have your babyhood and girlhood and young womanhood to look forward to, darling girl
, he thought.
While you have the grief of loss.

Rudi faced her and laid his hands on her shoulders. “Now, this is what
I’ve
seen and done here—”

She frowned as he told her. “That’s…strange. Those were ancestors, weren’t they?
Our
ancestors.”

“Yes. Some of our ancestors, here in this land of ours. And I was led to see and do and know what a King must. What
you
will see…will be particularly tailored to yourself, I would say.”

“Will I see Grandmother…I mean Grandmother Sandra?”

“And how would I know?” Rudi said. “That’s
your
story, though I suspect you will. And perhaps your own children, or your heir at least. Come. Draw the Sword.”

She did, and gasped a little as he reached and pulled the other from the rock; it came free as easily as if that were the sheath. Light seemed to well about them as he reversed the blade and offered it to her. She took it reverently and he the hilt of hers.

“Quickly!” he said, and she sheathed the Sword he’d handed her.

They knelt on either side of the rock, and each touched a finger to the point, the red drops mingling.

“By the bond of blood,” he said, and laid the point against the rock.

“By the bond of blood,” she answered, and wrapped her hands around his.

Together, they thrust the blade forged beyond the world into the Heart of Montival.

“Rudi!” Mathilda gasped. “I’ve seen…I’ve seen…”

They fell together, shivering. She went on: “Oh God, I’ve seen such wonders!”

“Myself also,
anamchara
mine,” he said, stroking her hair.

“And I talked with Dad,” she went on, longing and sadness in her voice. “He’s…he’s in Purgatory, I think. And he said he was sorry…”

She shook her head slightly and fell silent. He nodded.

“Yes, that’s between the three of you,” he said. “And now—”

They stood, and he drew the Sword from its stone sheath. Mathilda blinked, looking at the place it had stood.

“It’s still there, isn’t it?” she asked. “Even if we can’t see it.”

“It’s perceptive you are, darling. It always was and always will be there now.”

She looked around at the snowy trees and the dark-purple surface of the lake. “And I can
feel
it. Feel…everything, a little. Feel how I’m
part
of everything.”

“Myself also. It wasn’t a form of words. We
are
the land. Though I suspect it’ll become a bit less obtrusive as time goes on and we grow accustomed.”

“It feels strange,” she said. And after a moment: “But…you know, it feels pretty
good
, actually. Like being at home, with friends.”

Rudi nodded. They packed up the gear again; a sudden thought made him glance at a shadow, the usual way of judging time even if you could afford the luxury of a watch. His lips pursed a little in surprise.

“Hardly any time at all!” he said. “And it felt like an hour or more.”

“Rudi…” Mathilda said.

Wordlessly she pointed to their own footprints in the soft damp earth, where they’d walked to the edge of the water just after they arrived. The outlines were blurred, indistinct, and the water had seeped in to make each a miniature puddle.

“
Carson a chiall!
” he said mildly. “What on earth…well, we’ve skipped about…a day, would you say?”

“Just about.”

He felt tired, too, as if he’d been up a day; tired and hungry, but not
bad
. More the way you felt after you’d spent a day cutting timber or pitching sheaves onto a wagon. Mathilda suddenly put her hand to her stomach.

“I’m pregnant!” she said, wonderingly. Then: “I wasn’t sure…I’ve been working hard, sometimes that delays things…but now I know. Our daughter, our first child.”

“Sure, and it’s a wonderment,” Rudi said, warmth in his voice. “And I’m afraid this just past will be your last campaign for a while,
a ghaoil
!”

She nodded. “That’s OK. It’s not as if I won’t have enough to do, behind the lines, and essential work. It’s just…seeing what will come of things.”

They linked hands and walked up the trail. The Lake vanished behind them in a score of yards, and soon the musty-chill and resin smell of the woods was leavened by woodsmoke and cooking odors. It felt as if they were walking…

Back into the world
, Rudi thought, and his stomach growled.

“And how the most exalted things give way to the fact that we must eat daily or regret it!” he said quietly.

Mathilda chuckled. “Just as it should be, dear,” she said. “When God’s own Son established the most holy rite of the Faith, He did it with bread and wine at a supper.”

The camp of the emissaries wasn’t anything fancy, but it did have some tents of considerable size. Juniper Mackenzie was the first to see the pair, and hurried towards them. Her pace slowed, and it was stately when she reached them rather than the dash and leap to an embrace he’d half-expected.

“Oh, my son,” she said quietly; there was a glitter as of tears in her voice, and her eyes shone. “Oh, my darling foster girl. What have the Powers done with you?”

Then, as the others came up, she gathered the skirts of her arsaid a little and sank to her knees.

“Hail, Artos,
Ard
Rí
!
Hail, Artos, High King in Montival!” she cried,
the steady tones of her trained soprano ringing through the camp like a bell. “Hail, Mathilda,
Bana-Ard-rí
, High Queen in Montival! All hail!”

Rudi stood, waiting, meeting the eyes of the others. They knelt in a ripple and cried the pair hail. He suspected—

No,
he thought.
I
know
that there are few in Montival who didn’t feel
something,
however faint, when Mathilda and I thrust the Sword into the stone. Those with the Inner Sight would have felt a great deal; and these were very close indeed to the Heart.

When a ringing silence fell, he spoke aloud:

“I am High King.”

“I am High Queen,” Mathilda said, matching him.

“The land has accepted us, the ancestors and the Powers,” he said. “Our blood has been bound to the land and the folk, and so it shall remain so long as our line does—unless the sea rise and drown us, or the sky fall and crush us, or the world end.”

“This has been accomplished according to the will of God the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and by the grace of the Holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God and my patron,” Mathilda added.

“Is there any here who denies our right?” Rudi asked, his voice firm but not menacing. “If so, let him speak now or hold his peace hereafter.”