Oath of Fealty (64 page)

T
he sun was almost down when she rode away, her own shirt—washed hastily in water from the well and spread to dry—on her back once more, her trousers almost dry, her boots still squelching a bit with every step. She had tasted everything; she had been hugged by grimy, bright-eyed children, thanked again and again by every adult. Her escort said nothing until they were well away from the village.

“What happened down that well?” Black Sef asked.

“Much that I don’t understand,” Dorrin said. An evening breeze wafted across the way and chilled her legs in the damp trousers.

“Did you know you could do all that?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “I just knew I had to do something.”

“I didn’t know magelords could move rocks.”

“It’s in the Chronicles,” Mattis said. Dorrin remembered he was Girdish. “Some battle, a magelord took the water from a river and made it come out a well and it drowned people.”

“That’s water, not rocks,” Black Sef said.

“Bucket of water’s as heavy as a rock,” Mattis said. “Lifting’s lifting.” He looked at Dorrin. “Captain—uh … my lord—if you could lift yourself and a rock up, why did we have to lower you down on the rope?”

“Would you step off a cliff if you had friends with a rope to lower you?” Dorrin asked, then legged her horse into a canter.

She came to the house just before dark. A strange horse grazed in the front field. Her belly clenched: trouble?—but the house was silent, light glowing from a few windows. Closer, she could see it was a red chestnut with a star and white stockings behind.

“You?” she said to the horse. It raised its head, flicked an ear, and blew a soft whuffle. “You are
Paks’s
horse—”

A stamp of hoof. Dorrin understood that Paks belonged to the horse, not the other way around.

“There’s a comfortable stall in the stable,” she said. The horse scratched an ear with a hind hoof and turned away, walking down toward the stream. Dorrin heard a chuckle from her escort; she shrugged and rode on into the stableyard, her heart lighter at the thought of seeing Paks.

She went in through the kitchen. The cook looked up. “You’re later than I thought you’d be. Them villagers keep a-wrangling till dark?”

“No,” Dorrin said. “They had a surprise for me.”

“A wet one, I see,” the cook said, glaring at Dorrin’s boots and the floor.

“That’s why I came in this way,” Dorrin said. “Where are our guests?”

“Front hall. What happened? They throw you in the river?”

“No, there was a problem with the well.” Dorrin squelched on through. “I need a bath; I’ll go straight up.” At least she could now bathe in more privacy than the servants’ bathhouse without fear of being killed by some clever trap.

She came down, wearing the soft slippers she favored in the house. Paks and the royal courier were seated around a small table someone had moved from the kitchen, and one of the kitchen maids was dishing out something that smelled almost as good as the fire-roasted lamb. The maid glanced up and saw her.

“My lord Duke—shall I set a place in the dining room?”

“No—I’ll sit here. Just bring a plate and things.”

The courier had jumped up, almost knocking his chair over. “My lord Duke—”

“Sit down, both of you.” Dorrin dragged a chair to the table. “I’m sorry I was later than I said I’d be. The visit did not go quite as planned.”

“A judgment?” Paks asked.

“I thought it was to be a judgment, but as it turned out, it was several other things as well. But let us talk of lighter things as you eat. You were at Kieri’s coronation, Paks, were you not?”

“Indeed.” Paks swallowed hastily. “The Lady was there—it must be strange to have your grandmother as co-ruler.”

“And you had good weather on your journey here?” She had no idea where Paks had been in the meantime, but that could wait.

“It rained one day,” Paks said. “But the road was sound. And you?” she said, turning to the courier.

“Two days,” he said. “How long is the ride to Chaya? I have a message for the king.”

“And I a message for your prince from the king,” Paks said. “He regrets he will be unable to attend the coronation, for concerns of state in his own realm. He will send an envoy.”

After he finished, the royal courier excused himself to use the bath Dorrin had offered.

“I just found out today is my birth-day,” Dorrin said when they were alone.

“You didn’t know?”

“No. The name-day, not the birth-day, mattered to my family, and my name-day was Midsummer Eve. My villagers knew, though, and lured me out to celebrate it their way. If I had not been able to tell them of the prince’s messenger, I’d be there yet.” Dorrin looked at Paks; it was still hard to believe this young woman—so young—had been through so much. She still had the same open, engaging grin that had made her such an attractive recruit, but the gray eyes had wisdom beyond her years. “So—you are on your way to the coronation in Vérella, I suppose? I’m glad you came this way.”

“No,” Paks said, picking up another stuffed pastry. “One coronation a year is enough. I came here because I felt it.”

“Felt—”

“I can’t explain. I had to come, as I had to leave Chaya and wander the woods in Lyonya awhile. This is delicious—do you eat like this every night?”

“Not quite,” Dorrin said. “The cook made something special for the prince’s courier and, I suppose, you.”

“This place is huge,” Paks said. “The entrance hall’s as big as some
granges.” She eyed the dish of plums and then looked straight at Dorrin. “Are you happy, Captain—Duke, I mean?”

“Happy?” Dorrin bit back the comment she’d almost made—happiness was a child’s wish, not an adult’s duty—but Paks was clearly happy, and she was no naive child. Paks’s easy patience pulled answers out of her. “Sometimes. I had forgotten how beautiful it could be. Not the house; the house is …” She shook her head and left it there. “But the land. The land and the people. It’s softer land than Kieri’s—the king’s—was. Settled longer, cared for longer. The kitchen orchard’s thick with fruit this year. But as I said in Chaya, I never meant to come back. They didn’t want me back. It was …” Again she stopped, feeling tears burning her eyes.

“Their evil is not your fault, Captain,” Paks said.

“I know, but—” In halting phrases, at first, Dorrin told Paks what had happened, the discovery of Verrakai’s use of others, even their own children, to transfer personalities from one to another, the traps and poisons she’d had to disarm before she dared sleep in any of the beds. The deaths.

“I had to do it,” she said. “And I know that’s what my family would say about what they did. They had to, it was … expedient. If I had not, they would have killed others—and how many there are loose in the land I do not know, since I don’t know if all the transfers are recorded in the family book.”

Paks reached out and touched her hand; Dorrin felt a rush of goodwill and strength. “You have a hard task,” Paks said. “But you are faithful; that much is clear. Your people love you already, or they would not have celebrated your birthday.”

“I am better than my uncle, under whom they suffered,” Dorrin said. “Their gratitude is too great for the little I have done so far. It is all undoing—undoing curses, unsetting traps—before I can do anything real,” Dorrin said. “Though today—” She paused.

“Tell me,” Paks said, taking a plum from the bowl.

“The villagers had a well; my uncle cursed it.” Dorrin told the rest of it, hurrying through the details and staring at her hands clasped on the table, for she felt tears rise again and did not want to cry in front of Paks.

“Undoing such evil is no small thing,” Paks said, when Dorrin
paused for breath. Dorrin looked up to see that Paks’s eyes glittered with unshed tears in the lamplight.

“It is so … so sad,” Dorrin said, past the lump in her own throat. “And it makes me so angry. All that waste, all that unnecessary pain and struggle … the years they had to send someone all the way to the stream for water, and why? Because my uncle chose it.” She stopped again; Paks said nothing. “And then, at the end, where I expected water fouled past cleansing … the well was dry.”

“Completely?”

“Yes. I felt the rock. Dry as Andressat in late summer; dry as if it had never been a well. I sat there, with the bones wrapped in my shirt, those pitiful bones—” Tears came despite her intent; she felt them on her face, but went on. “And when I asked the gods, no words came to me, nothing, and so I cried, as—as I am now.” She choked, then found her voice again. “My family—does not—cry. All I could think—was the waste—the misery—the pain—we have caused. Year after year, and for what? And then the water came.”

“Came how?” Paks asked, leaning forward. “And where?”

“Out of a cleft of the rock. It is—scarcely believable. I cried like a child, tears dripping right onto the rock, and then … the water came creeping out of that cleft.”

“Did it frighten you?” Paks asked. “You down a well and the water rising? But wait—you had a rope, you could get out safely.”

“Not quite,” Dorrin said. “It came slowly at first and then suddenly, a gush that lifted me up like a branch in a torrent.” An echo of the joy she’d felt at the water dried the tears on her face as she grinned. “What I’m sure will be told behind my back for the rest of my life, one peasant to another, is how I looked, rising up on that gush of water half naked, with my burden of bones wrapped in my shirt.”

Paks stared. “No shirt? But—oh, but you had to carry the bones—but—” She shook her head, chuckling.

“It was not,” Dorrin said, laughter replacing tears, “
not
the dignity of a duke. I did think of that, on the way up, but too late.”

“In terms of undoing your family’s pride—” Paks began, but was laughing too hard to continue.

“My uncle would be mortified,” Dorrin said. Laughter and tears
together had left her now, and she felt more relaxed than she had since—since she could not remember. “My mother—well, she disowned me, years ago, but this would leave even her speechless.”

“It was a very good thing,” Paks said. “That is how magery should be used.”

“I hope the Council will see it that way,” Dorrin said. “It is still against Tsaian law, since Gird’s time.”

“I came for more than a visit,” Paks said. “You should go to the Tsaian prince’s coronation … you have had the invitation—?”

Dorrin looked up, startled. “That must be what the courier brought. I had no time; I had to go to what I thought was a judgment, and then I forgot.” She looked around, and saw the courier’s velvet pouch, embroidered with the royal arms of Tsaia lying on a side table. Inside was a scroll tied with rose and silver ribbons. Dorrin unrolled the stiff parchment. In formal flowery language it requested the honor of her presence as a peer of the realm at the coronation of Mikeli Vostan Keriel, rightful heir to the throne of Tsaia, unto whom she, as peer, would pledge fealty. It carried the seals of Tsaia, the signatures of Dukes Marrakai and Mahieran, members of the Regency Council, and the crown prince.

A smaller, thinner paper, rolled into the scroll, bore a personal, less formal message from the prince himself.

No word of her family members sent to Vérella, no comment on her rule so far. She pushed both across the table to Paks. “You were right; it is the invitation to the coronation. But I cannot go. I’ve still not found the young men and older boys who were here before I came—evidence of their sudden departure, yes, but by the time I had dealt with those left behind, they were beyond tracing. I expected them to come back, to attack—I still do—but so far, nothing. I have no one here I can trust, yet, to guard it while I’m gone, no one who knows it well enough.”

Paks read intently, her finger moving down the lines. “Why do the peers—that’s lords I suppose—have to swear fealty again? If they aren’t loyal already, why are they on the Council?”

“Didn’t Kieri—the king—have them do that in Lyonya?”

“He was new to them,” Paks said. “That made sense, but this—they’ve known the prince for years—”

“As prince, not as king,” Dorrin said. “Now it will be personal, as yours was to Kieri in the Company.”

“If all are swearing fealty again, you should go,” Paks said. “They must all—all the lords, and the prince—see that you have a personal oath to him. And you should know them, as you are one of them now.”

Dorrin traced the seal of Tsaia lightly with her forefinger. “And leave behind those the prince and Council told me to protect and rule?”

“Others do.”

“Others do not have a domain infested with Verrakai malice to deal with,” Dorrin said. “Come—I will show you.” Taking a lamp, she led the way to her uncle’s office. Along the way, she warned Paks of the many traps and spells. “I disarmed as many as I could. Some are magical, some not—but all are subtle and dangerous. Every piece of furniture, so far, has had its way of killing the unwary, many that I did not know of, since children were brought here only rarely.”

The study was emptier now; Dorrin had removed one item after another, to be dismantled and its traps destroyed outside. “Here’s the record of transfers—the words are hidden unless I unlock them with magery.” She glanced at Paks; Paks nodded. At Dorrin’s command, the hidden pages came into view. “Most give the new host only a single name, no location or occupation. Those within the family have this symbol—” She pointed.

“You use the lamp,” Paks commented, “instead of your own light.”

“I use magery as little as may be,” Dorrin said. “Aside from practice and at need.”

“Does it want to be used?”

Dorrin turned to her. “Every moment. It is like the pressure of a stream; once the Knight-Commander and you released it, it has been harder to contain than to use. When I arrived here, and my relatives used theirs against me, it swelled into a river. You and the Knight-Commander
had said you thought I had great power. So it proved, enough power to hold them all motionless, silent, under my will.”