Springwar (44 page)

Averryn was sleeping, having been fretful most of the day, so Avall’s mother said. Which was good. She wanted simply to look at him for a while. To wrap him in her mind and memory so that she could then let go. It made sense, she knew, letting a child’s one-parents care for it, which freed its parents for endeavors more suitable for the young and active. Certainly the system had worked for years uncounted. It had even worked for her and Avall—and Merryn and Eddyn and everyone else she knew. That in spite of the plague that had eaten a generation.

But she wondered if every mother felt the pangs of impending separation she was feeling. Then again, most mothers didn’t share ten days in the Wild with their newborns.
Most
mothers kept their offspring by them for the ritually prescribed eight days, and then saw them when the Fateings posted them near enough to allow such things.

But most mothers didn’t have to play a major role in a war.

“This is bad for you, isn’t it?” Avall whispered into her neck, even as Averryn gave a little twitch and snugged a chubby fist to his mouth.

She shrugged. “No worse than for any other woman, I suppose. Nor is it a thing I want to avoid—if I think about it
rationally. But motherhood isn’t rational, Avall. It’s instinct. It comes from somewhere else. I wonder about this system, sometimes: this clan fosterage we all undergo. It gives us many parents, in a sense, and it allows bonds to form with those with whom we’re most compatible, and it frees us to be ourselves earlier than might otherwise be the case. But I wonder if we don’t miss something, too. I wonder if it doesn’t set a part of us adrift, looking for what we should’ve had from birth.”

“Maybe that’s why we’re makers,” Avall murmured. “Maybe we look for a special bond with someone early in life, and not finding that, we bond with our crafting. That’s what we’re encouraged to do, anyway.”

“And maybe it’s cost our country its soul,” Strynn gave back. “Maybe we’re all form and no substance. Maybe we deserve to lose this war because—well, because we need a good shaking up.”

“We had one a generation ago. It was called the plague.”

“And maybe we should’ve taken it as a sign.”

“Like Averryn’s name?”

She tensed ever so slightly. “You noticed that, then?”

He nodded. “Avall and Merryn, merged into one. I guess I was a little surprised.”

“That I tried to link it that closely to you? Maybe it was a mistake, and we can still change it, up until Sundeath. But I thought … maybe. Avall, I know it’s going to be hard for you to love him, even though you won’t see him that often. But I wanted to give him that tie. I want him tied to you, if possible. Certainly now that Eddyn’s gone. I don’t want his father’s disgrace to shadow his whole life. If he grows up like you, I’ll be proud.”

“Distracted and indecisive and distant? I hope he does better than that.”

“As long as he knows what he is and isn’t, and gets a chance to be whatever he wants to be, I’ll be happy.”

Avall heaved a sign. Averryn whimpered at that, as though he knew he was being discussed. Which given all those gem-bondings while he was in the womb, might even be the case. “You’re still determined to go to the front?” he whispered.

“Where you go, I go.”

A deep breath. “What about Kylin? This is one thing he really can’t be a part of.”

She tensed again. “He wants to stay here and play for Eellon. He says it’s the only thing he can do. Krynneth will look after him. You
know
Krynneth was in love with Merryn?”

“Like everyone else, apparently.”

“Poor Kylin.”

“He’s happier than we are, in some ways. He’s found his place where he can make a difference without losing who he is. That’s all he wants.”

Silence, for a while.

Avall peered down at Averryn. “Well,” he sighed. “I guess we’ve got one
more
person we have to make proud of us, now.”

“I guess,” Strynn chuckled sadly, “we do.”

O
n the first day of The Eight-day festival called Sunbirth that divided the dark half of the year from the light, the sun rose above a particular point on the eastern horizon exactly as it did every year at that time. But this year its beams lanced over a landscape still mostly clad with snow—and rapidly priming for war. Movement was afoot in clan and craft alike, and five times as many treks as usual plied the icy roads, over half of them heading south under various banners, each commanded by a subchief from War-Hold.

But that light also did something else.

At precisely a breath after dawn, a beam entered the easternmost window of the eight that made a lantern above the Hall of Clans. It struck a mirror there, which bounced that beam to another, then another and another, so that raw light laced the air between Sarnon’s famous dome and the rough, empty weight of the Stone, which was the seat of the High King in council. At the start of the dark half of the year, at Sundeath, the light that filled the chamber was white. This was ruddier. Fit for a kingdom at war.

And as the sun rose, that light shifted, so that eventually it focused into a single narrow beam, centered on the Stone like a red dagger stabbing the land. And then it was gone.

So was the King, for the nonce. Gone from Eron Gorge, Tir-Eron, the Citadel, the Council of Chiefs, and the Stone …

Esshill, who’d turned twenty during the dark half of the year, and was therefore entitled to sit as Witness in Priest-Clan’s official box during this, the first day of Sunbirth, was more than a little disappointed he would
not
get to see High King Gynn.

Unfortunately, some things carried even more force than ritual, and His Majesty had felt it his duty to take himself away to defend South Gorge, leaving his kinsman, Eellon, in charge of the Council of Chiefs—for all that Eellon was old, sick, and a powerful ally who would no longer be able to vote in the King’s favor, save in the case of ties. It was a flaw in the government, Esshill had heard voiced more than once: that Eron had no established provision for a second-in-command after the Sovereign. No chancellor, no royal steward. Nothing.

Eellon had been appointed before the King’s departure, with no one’s approval but Gynn’s own. Then again, Eellon was not a man to be trifled with, even by Esshill’s clan.

Which didn’t mean his presence on the dais wasn’t an insult. Traditionally these ceremonies were orchestrated by Priest-Clan, most lately by Grivvon of Law. But the die Grivvon had rolled to open the ceremony had conferred that function on World, who was the weakest and least charismatic of the Priests of The Eight. Also the most intelligent, so everyone said, but his was knowledge without sense to back it up—or aggression.

Which fact Eellon had seized upon in his first official act as de facto regent. He had, in short, co-opted the floor on the assumption that it was easier to get forgiveness than permission.

“My Lord and Lady Chiefs,” he began, “those of you old enough to understand language—which I believe is
most
of you present”—he garnered a few chuckles at this—“should know that there is here, as in all things, a fixed form that defines the order in which our business ought to be conducted. Like Sunbirth, certain events and concepts ought properly to be addressed in their own time and season.”

He paused and coughed into a cloth. From his high vantage point, Esshill thought he saw blood. Certainly there
were rumors: headaches that had the old man screaming. A heart that ran fast with no reason. And now this …

“Still,” Eellon went on hoarsely, “many of those rites can be properly conducted only by the King in his capacity as Voice of The Eight, and those rites neither I nor anyone here dares usurp. Yet King Barrax of Ixti has dared to usurp a portion of this
kingdom!
Therefore, in riding to our mutual defense, the King performs his primary duty. In short, rites that exist only to function
as
rites should wait until they can be properly conducted.

“But that is only a small part of the function of this Council,” he continued. “The greater part, in terms of time invested, lies in debating how affairs in this land shall be conducted to our mutual benefit and good. And that role does not require the King’s presence so much as ours. I therefore ask if any here have business to lay before the Council that does not require attention to rite, writ, or royal seal.
Real
business, in other words.”

An uneasy rumble of voices ensued, which Eellon overruled with a loud rap of his staff upon the bronze “silencing tile” between where he stood and the Stone. “If you have business, drop your insignia balls into the tally holes in your seats. Fate will determine the order in which you speak.”

Esshill strained forward. It was hard to tell who intended business and who didn’t, though he did see two members of his own clan remove red balls from pouches and deposit them into the specified holes. A system of gears, chutes, and shuttles beneath the hall would arrange the balls in random order—or the order demanded by Fate, depending on whom one asked.

The results were already appearing: rolling from beneath a marble sleeve into the palm of Fate’s statue, which, along with representations of the other Faces, made a semicircle behind the dais. World retrieved the first and handed it solemnly to Eellon.

Eellon read it calmly. “Lord Law, it is you whom Fate would first have say his piece.”

Law rose from the ranks of Priest-Clan, adjusting the
mask he wore instead of a hood. He stood very straight. “Are you familiar with the Law of this land, Lord Eellon?”

Eellon regarded him narrowly. “I have read every word of it that is written down, have heard or read the Prophecies for longer than you have been alive, and have watched it played out here for seventy years in one guise or another.”

Grivvon nodded gravely. “And what is the rite that opens Sundeath?”

The briefest of pauses, then, “The Proving of the King.”

“To what end?”

“To assure that the King is perfect in body and mind, so that he may be a perfect vessel for The Eight when he drinks from the Wells and reveals Their will to us.”

“And is the King perfect?”

A rush of silence filled the Hall. The Council had reached this point once before—almost. Before Avall had pulled … whatever it was with that attack.

And yet that silence lingered. More than one brow was creased in thought. More than one chief was caught, like Eellon, at the balance between the abstractions of Law and the hard, clear fact of the war.

“He limps!” someone said at last, from the segment of Beast.

“He commands!” someone retorted.

More silence, and then Eellon rapped his staff again.

“Is
implies this present moment,” he said. “And since His Majesty is not present, there is no way to determine such a thing. Nor would it serve anyone if he were summoned here for that purpose.” A pause. Grivvon started to speak, but Eellon preempted him. “And now, my Lord Law, I would ask
you
a question about the Law: a question any child could answer.”

“And that is?”

“When is the Proving of the King?”

“The first eighth of the first day of Sundeath.”

“Which, I believe, is half a year from now.”

“Still,” Grivvon gritted, “I raise the question now for a reason.”

“That being?”

Grivvon snorted derisively. “One has only to look around this room at the seats left empty because those who should fill them are mustering themselves and their halls and holds for war. At the faces that would not normally sit here at all, but that those who rank them are absent, and someone must take their seats. There are sub-subchiefs here, Lord Eellon. And the witnesses in the galleries—some are mere children.”

Eellon nodded gravely. “If you like, we can spend the rest of the day inspecting the credentials of those in attendance. I think even you might suggest better ways in which to spend that time.”

Grivvon stiffened. “I would
suggest
we spend it debating whether or not there is some connection between what I strongly believe to be an imperfection in the King and the fact that our land has suddenly become afflicted.”

“Remember the last invasion,” someone from Wood chimed in. “Ventarr had gone blind.”

“—In High Summer, while Ixti suffered drought,” a woman from Lore shot back. “Who would
not
invade a rich neighbor then?”

“And the Queen during the Year of Four Feints was judged perfect four times that same year—by a Council as stupid as this!” Elvrimm, the ranking chief from Warcraft, snapped.

“Barrax has wanted war since he took the throne,” Ekalynn of Eemon rasped in turn. “There is no correlation.”

“Aye,” said Morkeen of Stone. “Whatever Barrax does now, he would have had to lay the foundations eighths ago. The King’s limp has only manifested since the waning of Deep Winter.”

“And not always then,” someone from Water whom Esshill couldn’t identify put in.