Path of the Sun: A Novel of Dhulyn and Parno (10 page)

“I don’t know if they tossed a coin,” Cleona said, “but you are right, the sister lost. You have heard of her, if not of this part of her story. She was Ardera, our first Tarkina, the mother of our country. Half the Royal Stables she took with her, and many of the Houses that had supported her went with her also, or at least their younger daughters and sons.”

Alaria shrugged. “And so? We’ve prospered, have we not, each in our own way?”

“At first, yes. Despite the dispute, there was love between the siblings, and each swore they would send a child to the other, to marry the heir, and that there would be an exchange in every generation, so their lines would mingle and rule in both lands.”

Now Alaria was nodding, her tongue tapping her upper lip. “When was the oath broken?”

“Before your time and mine,” Cleona said, pleased that her cousin was so quick to understand. “During the reign of Auselios Tarkin, more than seven generations ago. The details are lost, so whether it was that Auselios had only the one child, or there was no one else close enough to the royal line to send, or whether he had another match in mind I cannot say, but Arderon sent a princess for his son and received no one in return.”

“So they broke their oaths?”

“They did, and at first all seemed well. Then their horse herds began to dwindle, until there are, as you know, only a few left with perhaps some wild ones in the hills to the north. The harvests have been worsening for generations.” She paused to give weight to her next words. “Last year a blight affected the olive groves.”

“And Menoin is famous for its olive oil,” Alaria said. “It’s shipped everywhere, even across the Long Ocean.”

“You may not have realized it, but there were no ships of the Long Ocean Traders in port today, nor have there been this season.”

“Sun, Moon, and Stars!
That’s
why you are here! And why you agreed to come. Why it had to be
you
and no other. You are the Tarkina’s only unmarried first cousin.” Alaria sobered. “And is that also why the people here in Uraklios were so happy to see you arrive?”

“I’ve always known you were quick,” Cleona said, patting her younger cousin on the knee. “The late Tarkin, Falcos Akarion’s father, went himself to petition the Seer’s Shrine in Delmar, and it was the Seer who told him that he was cursed, he and his land, for breaking the ancient vow. And so this marriage was arranged.” Cleona got up and refilled her glass. She held up the pitcher of wine, but Alaria shook her head.

“But why did we agree? We didn’t break the oath, we’ve prospered all along.”

“Ah, but if we now refuse, we would be the oath breakers. We had to agree. What?”

Alaria was shaking her head. “But in order for the oath to be kept, it would have had to be your child who inherited the throne, not Falcos.”

“Correct,” Cleona said. “Falcos would have been sent to Arderon, as consort for Moranna, the Tarkina’s firstborn. Now my first child with Falcos will inherit, and we will send the next available son to Arderon.”

“And if you don’t conceive fast enough? Moranna is already eight.”

“Then we will send Epion Akarion. He is the closest kin to Falcos, barring Tahlia House Listra.” Cleona shrugged. “He will be old for her, but it is his blood that is important, not his companionship.”

Alaria scrubbed at her face. “Well, better you than me, that is all I can say. To bring Menoin back to the old ways, to attract again the favor of the gods,” she shook her head. “It goes without saying that I will help you in any way I can, and not just in the stables.” Alaria reached out her hand.

Cleona took her cousin’s offered hand, leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead. She drained her glass and stood, pressing her hands into the small of her back. “Ah, I am stiff with so much sitting.” She went to the window. “Our little ride from the harbor has given me the taste for exercise, and the moon will rise early tonight.”

“When does Falcos Tarkin expect you?”

Cleona turned back into the room. “Oh, we’re excused for this evening,” she said, “since he’s greeted us already. It will make a better show, according to the Lord Epion, if we meet tomorrow in public as if for the first time.”

“And you’re going out riding? How would that show?” But Alaria was smiling and already on her feet.

“It was he who put me in the mind for it,” Cleona said. “He spoke of the good riding country just there, in those hills we can see—can you imagine, when I said I might go, he actually suggested that it would be best for me to wait until he or the Tarkin could accompany me.”

Alaria laughed. “He doesn’t know you, does he? Very well, let’s begin as you mean us to go on. Let them know what you expect in terms of your personal freedoms. Where shall we ride?”

Cleona hesitated. She knew that Alaria had to be at least as eager as she was herself to get on the back of a horse, but somehow, that did not match with the her own ideas. This would be her first ride here, and she’d seen herself alone, with nothing between her and her new land.

“Would you mind
very
much if I go alone?”

Alaria laughed, shaking her head and putting up her hands palms out. “Since you aren’t yet Tarkina, I can tell you that I am just as tired of looking at your face as you must be of looking at mine.”

Cleona smiled, relieved.

“Besides.” Alaria stood up and straightened her chair. “I’m sure you won’t be alone. I’ll wager one of those guards stationed at the door will feel it necessary to go with you.”

Cleona drew down her brows as she also stood. “No wager. That is an irritation I will have to learn to put up with.” She met her cousin’s eye. “I’ve agreed to be Tarkina here,” she said. “And always having an escort is the price for that.”

Alaria came suddenly closer and put her arms gently around Cleona. “Not the only price, cousin.”

Cleona slipped her arms around Alaria for a moment and patted her cousin on the back.

 

Cleona was pleased to see that they knew enough to give her the same horse that had carried her up from the ship. It was a sturdy animal, and it showed signs of being as intelligent as it was beautiful. Alaria should learn who’d had the breeding of it. Cleona had expected interference or questions, but no one, neither the guard Essio, who rode a respectful half a horse length behind her nor the staff in the stables, had seemed to think it at all unusual for their Tarkina-to-be to ask for a horse just as the sun was setting. In fact, one of the stable girls had even asked the guard if a basket was coming from the kitchen. Moonlight rides were apparently commonplace here.

Cleona was as content with that thought as she was with the ready service of the Tarkin’s household. Someone had a good hand on it, whether it was the pretty boy himself, or his uncle, or—as seemed more likely—the female Steward of Keys.

It took only minutes for them to pass through the small double gate of the stable precincts and directly out of the palace grounds. Though the temperature was warmer than she was used to for this time of year, it really was late summer, and the moon would rise, fat and red and clear, while the sun was still in the sky. She could ride as long as she liked and still have moonlight for her return journey.

With discreet indications, mere polite gestures of his hand, Essio the guard soon had them on a smooth wide road, much of it natural stone and the rest hard packed by the passage of many feet. Not a main road, Cleona thought, but clearly a well-traveled one. They skirted the city, the outer wall of Uraklios to their left, and were soon out in the open country, passing through olive groves. Cleona touched her heels to her mount and smiled when the horse trotted up with no signs of reluctance or discomfort. After half a span or so, however, she let the horse slow down and pick its own pace, mindful that, however smooth the road might appear, it was new to her, and the lighting was not the best for a gallop.

The guard stayed a respectful half-length behind her, close enough to give her ready aid but far enough away that she could feel herself private. Cleona had often seen her cousin the Tarkina of Arderon escorted thus, and it struck her, as if for the first time, that she, too, would be Tarkina. This, all that she saw around her, would be her country now, her responsibility.

“Where does this road lead, Essio?” She might as well begin learning as much as she could.

“Ah, well, it’s hunting ground this way, mostly, my lady, once we’ve passed the olives.” Essio narrowed the gap between them but still kept back of Cleona’s elbow. “Deer, boar, and the like. Though there’re goat herds as well, in season.”

“This fine roadway for hunting alone?” A much richer land than Arderon, failed harvests or no.

“Well now, well, no, my lady, not as such.” Essio put his hand to his mouth and coughed.
New to noble service
, Cleona thought. No harm in that. “The ruins lie this way, my lady. And the Path of the Sun. Caids’ ruins the Scholars say.”

“An old place of the Caids?” A piece of roadway said to be an artifact of the Caids ran straight through Arderon, and Cleona had heard of other, larger remnants of the Ancients, but to have one so close . . . “A holy place?”

“That’s what’s said, my lady. And they say too that there’s Scholars looking there now for artifacts. All I know for certain is the Tarkina—beg pardon, I meant the late Tarkina, Falcos Tarkin’s mother, had a favorite spot where she liked to come and sit in the afternoon with her ladies, and the road was kept up for her pleasure.”

“And now mine,” Cleona said.

The road took several more leisurely turns, and Cleona could well see what a nice ride it would make for the Menoin version of court ladies. They had not gone much farther when Essio sat up even straighter in his saddle and, with a muttered “your pardon,” rode ahead of her toward what appeared to be a small fire burning just a few paces off to the left of the road. Cleona spurred her own horse forward until she was half a length behind Essio, in effect reversing their previous positions. Let the man know that an Arderon princess did not hide behind, any more than his Tarkin would.

The man at the fire could not fail to both see and hear them coming, and he stood as they approached, putting himself just on the far side of the fire, where the light from the flames would strike his features. Paradoxically, as they walked their horses nearer the fire, the night seemed for the first time to be growing truly dark, as if the flames stole their light from what little remained in the sky.

“Well met, well met,” the man was calling out. “Are you benighted? Can I offer you any assistance?” His accent was strange—at least, stranger than the Menoin accents Cleona had been listening to all day.

“You can explain your presence here so close to the road,” Essio responded. But though his words were stern, Cleona noted that Essio’s tone was relaxed, and indeed, the set of his shoulders, so martial a moment before, had rounded again.

The man gave a warm chuckle, as if he knew why Essio was taking these precautions and was already looking ahead to the moment when they would all laugh about it. “I’m a trader, sir—and lady—as you can see from my packs.” True, there were two well-stuffed packs sitting back away from the fire, where Cleona had not noticed them at first. “Unarmed,” the man continued, “except for the knife you see at my belt. But with provisions enough to offer you both supper if you are hungry and a cup of fine Imrion wine, if you thirst.”

Cleona relaxed even further. This was like the beginning of one of those tales of adventure that her cousin the Tarkina was so fond of. A moonlit ride, a chance-met stranger who would unfold a secret of mystery and honor that would set the heroine on her path.

“I would love a cup of wine,” she said.

“The hour is already late, my lady, and you have much to do tomorrow.” Essio spoke as one who gave necessary information, not as someone who had the right to tell her what to do. But somehow, though she knew the guard was right and she should even now be heading back, there was something in the smile of the trader that made Cleona swing her leg over her mount’s back and step down, in the Arderon fashion, to the ground.

“My lady?” the trader was saying. “Tomorrow? But you are not—you can’t be—” The man looked more closely at Cleona’s clothing and then to Essio as if to read on the guard’s face the answer to his unspoken question.

“The Lady of Arderon?” He had been faintly smiling all along, but the smile that now passed over the trader’s face was at once humbler and yet more proud than it had been a moment before. And somehow genuine, as if before he had only been going through the motions of courtesy required of all honest folk on the road, but now those feelings of hospitality and friendship were real, and came from the heart.

“I would be honored beyond measure if the Lady of Arderon—the Tarkina of Menoin I should say—would take a cup of my wine. What a story for my wife! For our children!” As the man scurried over to the farther of his two packs, Cleona caught Essio’s eye. The guard grinned, shrugged, and dismounted, joining her on the ground.

“We won’t be long,” she promised him. “A cup of wine for the man to tell his children of, and then we’ll be on our way.”