Kings of the North (50 page)

“And did you connive at the deaths of my grandson’s wife and children?” the Lady asked. Her voice was soft and sweet but held such menace as Kieri had never heard in it before.

“Never,” the king said. “They were killed by orcs, I heard, and we have nothing to do with orcs. Nor was I glad to know them dead, for
I knew it would make the Fox angry, and he would find a way to blame us for it, as he finally has.”

“And yet,” she said, still sweetly, “you paid the man Venneristimon, who was his steward. What did you pay him for?”

“Venner?” The king looked startled. “For information on Phelan’s movements, his plans for his army, that is all. I did not wish to find that army a day’s ride into my kingdom; I needed a spy, and he was willing.”

“It was Venner—” Kieri began, in a choked voice. She held up her hand. He stopped.

“It was that man,” she told the king, “who planned the deaths of my grandson’s wife and children. We know that. And you say you did not know?”

“I did not,” the king said. His eyes were wide; he looked more like a man shocked at truths previously unknown than someone having the truth pulled from him unwillingly. “I bade him spy—so I would know if Phelan massed against me. Who—who told him to do that?”

“The same Weaver you worship,” the Lady said. “Achrya the plotter, the secret weaver of tangled and poisoned webs, lover of plots … 
she
told him.”

Kieri glanced aside from the look on the king’s face to the shelf where the glass stood, the last few grains to fall suspended, motionless, in his grandmother’s trance of time.

“It … it cannot be,” the king whispered; his eyes had filled with tears. “She said kill
children
? She—she has been good to
us
—”

“For her own purposes, possibly,” the Lady said. “But she has wrapped you round in lies the way a spider wraps her prey, blinded you with that unyielding silk. You cannot see what is clear to see: not your daughter’s true nature, not the ambitions of those at your court, not the character of my grandson. You are tangled in her web, nothing more than a morsel for her to devour at leisure, for she enjoys most fooling those who trust her.” She waited a moment; he said nothing. “I would pity you,” the Lady said, “if I could, for you have lost a child and a realm by choosing Achrya and evil. But it is not in my nature to pity those who harm my family, and you have done grievous hurt, though without knowing it.”

“I’m … sorry,” the king said. His tears had spilled over, wetting his cheeks.

“Grandson, what do you really want here? His death? Vengeance? Or peace?”

“I wanted peace,” Kieri said. Slowly, slowly, that cold lump of anger shrank inside him. “I want peace now. But how can we have peace if he—if his people—do not?
You
can withdraw to elvenhome kingdoms where humans cannot come. We must stay in this world, and abide what evil comes—fight it or no, we have no safe havens.”

“Your family—?” the Lady prompted.

“Died years ago. And I believe—” He did not want to believe, but the king’s tears had convinced him. “—he did not really intend their deaths. Was he stupid to be fooled? Yes, but after all,
I
did not recognize that Venneristimon was one of her pawns until Paks exposed him.” He looked at the king, who was staring at him as if he had sprouted feathers. “I was angry,” Kieri said. “I am still angry that they died as they did. But we have killed enough of each other’s people over the years; I will not kill you because of that.”

“I am not so easily moved to forgiveness,” the Lady said, her voice as cold as his heart had been. “But you are our king, and I must defer to your judgment.” It was the first time she had ever said that or anything like it; Kieri wanted to ask why—but he could not, not then. She looked straight at the king of Pargun. “But you, mortal: whatever grievance you have against my grandson, give it up. Or it will become a matter between you and me, and thus to be settled in
my
realm, not his.”

“Your … realm?”

“What humans call the elvenhome kingdom of Ladysforest. I do not choose to share its name with you.” With that, she withdrew, the light folding in around her, and the last grains of sand falling at last.

“She … that … that is your
grandmother
?”

For some reason, after so much emotion, Kieri found this amusing. “Do you still think elves are but a variety of mageborn?”

The king drew a long breath and released it, half huff and half sigh. “No. No, she is … how old is she?”

“I have no idea, and I would not dare ask,” Kieri said. “Thousands of years at least, I am sure. Certainly she was here—in her kingdom, which is not exactly the forests of Lyonya—when the first Seafolk came up the river seeking safety. She was here before the mageborn came over the mountains, and probably before they left Old Aare.”

“She looks young … but not young.”

“Yes,” Kieri said. “But you and I, sir, are kings with a problem to solve. We do not, I assure you, want
her
to solve it for us.”

That got him a sharp look, but the king relaxed. “I would have some water now, if you please.”

“Indeed.” Kieri poured him water. “And shall I now turn the glass again?”

The king shook his head sharply, swallowed, and said, “We are well beyond that. You are not my friend, and may never be, but I give my word not to attack you. I see no way to peace here, but perhaps together …” He drained the mug. “Is there any chance—
any
chance—that Elis would see me?”

“I do not know. I sent word to Falk’s Hall that you had come and were concerned for her welfare. We may hear tomorrow if she chooses to reply. But she will have sworn an oath to obey the Knight-Commander and other officers while she is a student there. He would have to permit her to leave.”

“She is imprisoned?”

“Only by her honor,” Kieri said. “Should she wish to withdraw and return home, she would be provided an escort to the river. And the Knight-Commander, seeing it is a matter of royal concern, may well bring her here and order her to see you. If she does not obey, she will lose her place. Falk’s Hall—like the other knightly training orders—is used to difficult sons and daughters of noble families.”

“Then she might actually learn discipline?”

“She will, or she will not gain her ruby,” Kieri said.

“And you?” The king seemed to be looking for that ruby.

“My ruby is still in the cabinet in the Knight-Commander’s office, in a little box with my name on it, should I give my oath to Falk.”

“You are strange,” the king said. “You are not what I thought.”

“Nor are you,” Kieri said. “But it has grown late as we talked. Let us sup a little, and sleep, and in the morning consider what is best for both our kingdoms.”

“And where shall I sleep?” the king asked, a little of his earlier suspicion returning.

“Not in
my
bed,” Kieri said. “But if you will, in the same room where your daughter stayed when she was here.”

“Locked in?”

“Watched, if you come out,” Kieri said. “Have you no guards in your own palace in Rostvok?”

The king nodded.

T
he Knight-Commander, in Falk’s red and white, sat with Elis at one end of the table; Kieri and the king of Pargun sat at the other. Kieri’s sword lay athwart the table, a reminder whose domain it was, in case emotion overpowered reason. Elis, in the leaf-brown uniform of Falk’s Hall for first-year students, sat bolt upright, pale, lips compressed. She was here by the Knight-Commander’s orders, as Kieri knew, and she did not look at her father.

Her father scarce looked at anything else in the room but her. Kieri tapped the table to get his attention. “We are met to discuss grave matters of state,” he said. “Pargun is in disarray, and that disarray threatens to spill over its borders, the king tells me. Knight-Commander, I believe you have not met the king of Pargun: I present him to you. And to you, Sir King—” The title felt strange in his mouth, but it must be given. “—I present the Knight-Commander of Falk, he who commands in Falk’s Hall, where Knights of Falk are trained.”

The two men acknowledged each other with a seated bow. The Knight-Commander spoke. “I have brought Elis of Pargun as you requested, my lord king. As a student in Falk’s Hall, she cannot travel alone, and she wishes to remain there until she has earned her ruby. As her guardian while she is under my command, I must ask if you intend to withdraw your support of her candidacy.”

“No,” Kieri said. “I support her still.”

“Then it was not to send her home you had her brought here?”

“No,” Kieri said. “I do not go back on my word. But her land and mine are at risk of war, and her father, Pargun’s king, would have her know what is happening.”

Elis opened her mouth, glanced at the Knight-Commander, and closed it again. Kieri turned to the king of Pargun.

“She is here,” he said. “And, you can see, unharmed. Have speech with her, if you would.” Down the table, he saw Elis pale even more; her eyes were wide.

“Daughter,” the king of Pargun said. He cleared his throat. “Elis, the king knows … you must know … I did not, on my honor, want you to kill this king. What Countess Settik told you was a lie.”

“Your
honor
!” she said, her voice edged with scorn. The Knight-Commander touched her arm; she folded her lips.

“I did break my word to you, that is true,” the king said. “I did have you drugged and brought here—I thought your wish to live alone was but a willful girl’s daydream, and you owed duty to serve Pargun in some way. Here, as a king’s wife, you could do that, and this man—though as I thought a rough soldier—would neither fear you nor be disgusted by your own rough ways.”

Elis said nothing, staring at Kieri’s sword on the table with lips folded tight.

“I did not know, until this king told me of his talks with you, about the poisoned knife. I did not know that my brother planned to challenge me for the kingdom and so he told me—told all the court—that this king had not only refused to wed you, but had sold you to a brothel of soldiers.”

Her head came up; her eyes flashed. “Einar?”

“Indeed. And before all he questioned my judgment and my fitness to rule. If I was so weak that for peace I would send my daughter to such dishonor, and not avenge her myself, with my own hands, then it was time for a better man, a stronger man, to rule Pargun or the whole kingdom would be sold like a slave.” The king swallowed. “It was he who urged me on to send you in the first place.”

“And now,” Kieri said, “the Pargunese army waits across the river for their chance to attack and fire our forests and burn us all.”

“B
urn the forest?” the Knight-Commander said.

“Yes,” the king of Pargun said. “It is what Einar said he would do to avenge both me, if I did not come back alive with proof that I had killed this king, and you, Elis. Our funeral pyre, to cleanse our honor and that of Pargun.”

“You burn your own dead?” the Knight-Commander said, in a tone of horror.

“You do not?” the king said. “But—but how do you free their spirits, if you do not give them an honorable fire?”

Kieri spoke, before that got out of hand. “We can discuss later the ways of honoring the dead,” he said. “But you must know, Sir King, that we burn only those whose evil threatens the land: orcs, other vile creatures, and the worst of criminals. Here is another difference between us that could be easily misunderstood.”

The king chewed his mustache. The Knight-Commander had the expression of a man discovering half a worm in a fruit he has just bitten. Kieri went on.

“We must think and act quickly. The king, if he returns to Pargun without Elis and proof of my death, faces rebellion and death. If lucky, he tells me, he will be allowed to face his brother alone in mortal combat. He might prevail, if the fight is fair, but he might be killed through a chance of war or through treachery. Otherwise he will be killed, as soon as his army knows he has not avenged the presumed
dishonor of his daughter, and his brother will take command—as it is clear from what the king has told me has been his brother’s intention all along.”