Firethorn (10 page)

Now the rumormonger sweetened his voice and played with a gentler touch, and he sang that eight years of peace passed under the rule of Queen Regent Caelum, while Prince Corvus grew tall and his shoulders broad, until he looked the very man his father had been. Then the southern kingdom sent the prince a portrait of a princess painted lifelike even to her size, as if she might step out of the frame. He stared at it long and longing, and the wide eyes of Princess Kalos stared back, and her lips were parted as if to speak. In his dreams, he heard her voice.

The prince said, “I will have her.” Queen Regent Caelum said—being wiser—“Let me send for word of her nature, to see if she is fit to wed a perfect prince.” She sent birds southward and when they returned, the birds sang, “Not a word is spoken against her.”

The rumormonger plucked the twittering of birds from his dulcet, and he strummed faster and faster. He sang of one little brown thrush that carried back a different tale. The bird had spied on the princess late at night when she thought herself alone in her chamber, and saw her hold up a mirror, shinier than bronze, shinier than silver. In that mirror the princess showed her true self, gleaming all over with scales of the palest green. The thrush sang, “If you wed her, you will wed a lamia, a serpent woman, who means to catch you in her coils and squeeze the life from you. Your father stole the jewel of her father's kingdom, that sapphire lake set in an emerald valley, and she wants vengeance.”

The prince drew his dagger and struck down the bird even as it flew, crying out that it was all a lie. But Queen Regent Caelum heeded the warning and would not consent. Prince Corvus said, “Mother, dear, in this you do not rule me. I will have her when I reach my majority.” On his seventeenth birthday he wed his princess and all Incus rejoiced.

Bitterly Queenmother Caelum watched her son fall prey to the wiles of the lamia. She begged him to find the mirror Kalos hid in her wedding chest, to hold it over her as she slept so that he might see through her disguise. But Corvus raged, saying, “Mother, dear, the kingdom is mine, the woman is mine, and you shall not part me from one or the other. I banish you to the Keep of Northernmost, and there you shall molder for doubting me and my judgment.”

The tune turned plaintive, and the rumormonger paused in his singing to let his fingers coax melancholy from the strings, and it was a wonder to me that he could turn the same simple melody to so many purposes. There was such a hush around his music it seemed even the trees stooped to listen.

When he lifted his voice again, he sang of the Keep of Northernmost, where for two long winters and a third Queenmother Caelum sat lonely in her tower, staring across the white wastelands, wondering how fared her son, her city, and her kingdom. Even her birds deserted her, flying south to roost in the orchards of Malleus and sing the winter out.

When the birds returned in spring, she asked, “What news of my kingdom? ” For two years the birds sang of festivals that lasted winter long, of men clad in armor of beaten gold and women in gowns of gossamer. They sang, “The granaries grow empty, but the feasting goes on.” And Caelum wept.

This spring when the birds returned, she asked, “What news of my son and his wife?” The birds sang, “Day by day Corvus grows thinner while Kalos swells. Soon she will bear a child, and all Incus is rejoicing.” And Caelum wept, saying, “What serpent will she birth to sit on the throne of Incus?”

Then the queenmother said, “I have done with weeping.” She whistled for the gray Wolves that guarded her keep, and they loped at her heels as she rode around the Inward Sea and south to Ramus, and the way was long and hard. She knelt before her brother, King Thyrse, and begged him to lend his strength to save her son and kingdom from the lamia's stranglehold. But he bade her go home to her northern keep, saying, “It more befits a woman to weep than to war.” She rent her gown and showed under it a corselet of steel, saying, “Brother, by our sire and dame, remember the same blood runs in both our veins.”

The king relented, and he summoned the Firsts of all his clans, saying, “Our forebears came from Incus long ago, and if you meet me by the Inward Sea before the Ingathering Moon has waned, the winter winds shall blow us to our homeland.”

Now the rumormonger played the last verse, and he sang it as wistfully as he'd sung of Queenmother Caelum banished to the icy north, and there was such yearning in his voice that I felt the ache of exile; he made me pine for a place I'd never been. He sang of the yielding plains of Incus, of cedar-covered hills that made the dawns smell of spice, and he sang again of Malleus the fair, a city of marble spires and gilded domes. He sang to the men of the Blood, “You've been tempered by war so that you are keen and hard as steel, while the men of Incus have grown soft as their golden armor from too much peace. Do you not long to return?”

When the rumormonger finished we paid him the tribute of silence. Then the cheering began, and the men stamped their feet and whistled and struck their open palms against their chests. And I marveled that I too was part of his tale, though he'd never sing of the likes of me—for wasn't I bound to cross the Inward Sea, following the king's army? Soon I'd see the queenmother and her Wolves with my own eyes; I'd see her kingdom and her city. I might live long enough to know the end of her story even before a ballad could be made of it.

But the lowliest bagboy understood the meaning of the song before I did. What mattered the cause of her war? When the rumormonger sang of Incus and held up the beauty of Malleus to dazzle us, every warrior of the Blood and every mudsoldier in camp saw a kingdom ripe for sacking, gold so plentiful it covered the rooftops, women in gossamer gowns to be had for the taking.

The rumormonger put down his fragile dulcet and quenched his thirst with all the wine that came his way. There was singing at every fire, and the men strove to drown each other out. Spiller stood up and sang the song of Iza. He had a shrill falsetto, and before long the rumormonger strolled up and pulled out his little clay pipe, his avicula, and began to pipe along as if he already knew the tune. Spiller sang:

The rumormonger played high above and then he sang below, but always he knocked his knee drum so the song sped along.

Men were clapping and stamping. Noggin began to jig, kicking the coals at the end of the verse to make the sparks dance. He had a rapt look on his face, as if all his meager wits were bent upon his feet.

Sire Galan tossed the rumormonger a coin—I saw it flash, it was a silverhead—and the rumormonger snatched it out of the air and made a deep bow, and kept the beat. Everyone roared the last verse, for the song had been with us on the road for days.

It wasn't much of a song, but they made the most of it. They started all over again, and I crawled under Sire Galan's quilt and covered my head. When I woke in the morning, the rumormonger was still there, with his long feet sticking out of a short blanket, his soles toward the embers of our fire.

Villagers came to meet us with fat ducks and round loaves of bread dusty with flour. They tested the coins between their teeth, knowing enough of soldiers to be wary. I had no coin and nothing to trade.

The river ran shallow and close to the road. I forded it on steppingstones and waded into the tall dry weeds and brambles of a fallow field, for I spied fawn lilies, and I thought the bulbs would do well roasted for supper with a relish of tart rose hips. I foraged whenever I got the chance, and often found enough to stretch or flavor Spiller's bland cooking, and a little besides for the Crux's provisioner. I was glad to do it, as I was glad to tend to the mare that carried me—but it was all I meant to do. Sire Galan's drudges had their duties; if I let them lay their tasks on me, there'd be no end to that road.

I came upon Fleetfoot and Sire Pava's horseboy, Ev, sitting cross-legged on the ground, hidden in the grass. I found them by the smell of roasting meat. They had a fire going, a few flames licking a skinned rabbit on a stick. Ev waved away the smoke with a clutch of straw, so not even a trickle could be seen above their heads.

It was just as well Fleetfoot could fend for himself. I felt ashamed. I had promised Az to look after him, and been a miser with my thoughts instead. I'd not spared one to wonder whether he was cold or hungry.

They had heard me coming, and waited with their ears pricked up. Fleet-foot laughed when he saw me. “Oh, it's you! I feared it was Harien—he always follows his nose into our business. You're just beforetimes. In a moment she'll be cooked.”

I sat down with them. “I'm glad to see you both,” I said, and so I was. A few days ago these boys had barely known each other, though I knew them both, one from the village, one from the manor stables. Now they sat with their knees touching. They were of an age a few years behind me. I could swear that since I saw them last their cheeks had grown a fine down and their bones had stretched.

Fleetfoot poked the rabbit and Ev said, “Wait.” It seemed he'd learned patience from the Dame's old horsemaster, who'd rather coax a colt than beat him. Ev had always lived in the stables; I used to marvel to see him, when he was a small boy, so fearless among the quarrelsome warhorses.

I tucked four or five lily bulbs into the ashes and pushed coals over them. “It's such a small thing,” I said. “Not much to share.”

Fleetfoot lifted some matted grass under his elbow to show three more rabbits hidden away. He grinned. “There's enough and to spare. I'll give you one to take with you.”

My stomach growled and they laughed. They gave me a hind leg, lean but savory. Fleetfoot said the field was full of rabbits. He and Ev had scattered burrs before their warrens and beaten the grass; when the rabbits ran for safety, the burrs stuck to their feet and Fleetfoot caught them easy as you please. “I can always get a few more,” he said as he pulled the skin from another rabbit.

“Save the hides,” I told him. “I'll sew you a cape if you get enough. Aren't you cold at night?”

“Not so cold. Dogmaster lets us sleep with the dogs.”

They were just pups themselves, those two, not yet grown as large as their hands and feet promised. Maybe the war dogs took them for their own whelps.

I had feared dogs since I'd run from the hunters in the Kingswood, and had kept far away from the war dogs. They were huge tawny beasts, short in the muzzle, deep in the chest, long and lean in the back. They could wrestle a horse to the ground by its nose. Their descent could be traced far back, it was said, to two famous boarhounds, Asper and Audax, but they were more massive than any boarhound and more cunning too. They were called manhounds, after their prey, and once unleashed upon it, they were relentless.

“I wonder you' re not afraid,” I said.

Ev said, with his eyes on the fire, “It's the safest place in the world, once they know you.” I'd heard tell that Sire Pava's horsemaster, Harien, had used him for a bedboy until Ev took to disappearing every night instead of sleeping by the horses—and that he got a beating every morning for shirking his duties. I guessed by the look on his face that it was true.

We went back across the river together and I stopped to greet some of Sire Pava's men from the village. Sire Galan was looking for me. Fleetfoot had his last rabbit hidden under his leather tunic; I had the one he gave me by the ears. I held it up to show Sire Galan. “See what I've got for supper!” I said.

“Where did you get it?” He was frowning.

“In the field,” I answered, pointing across the river.

“I don't suppose you caught it yourself. Who gave it to you?”

“Why, I could catch a cony if I chose,” I said, indignant that he should think I couldn't. “But it was this boy here who gave it to me.”

He put his hand on my arm with such a grip the rabbit loosened in my fingers. All his charm had vanished. “Pava's boy,” he said hoarsely. He turned to Fleetfoot. “Did he bid you to give her this?”

Fleetfoot stood there with his mouth gaping open, so I answered. “This boy is a cousin of mine,” (well, it was almost true) “and he gave it to me of his own will. Am I not to eat when I am hungry?

“You've no cause to be hungry,” Sire Galan said. “I have enough in my stores. You shouldn't come begging around Pava's men.”

I laughed in his face, as riled as he was. “I wasn't begging. But if I waited for you to feed me, I should go hungry indeed. Cold pease pottage and onions gone soft and bread as hard to chew as leather. Even a drudge wants more than that.”

He pried the rabbit out of my hand and flung it into the middle of the river. Fleetfoot and Ev went after it; Fleetfoot got there first, of course. Sire Galan was stiff with anger. He looked at me with his eyes narrow and his nose pinched, and his grip on my arm was painful. He pulled me along the riverbank toward his men and said, in a voice dangerously even, “Stay away from Pava. There is no hunger you have that I cannot answer for.”