The King's Peace (13 page)

"By my name!" she said. "Your day is done, and this is not your place. Sulien spoke your names and was faithful to you, yes. You may give back her name and take her on to new life, there is no binding but that. Go, you are no stronger than my will." They wavered again, although I knew if I could have called to them they would have saved me.

I tried to reach, to call, to exert my will, but it was out of reach, I was cut off from it. Then they were gone. I realized then in a detached and distant way that she was changing the world by her own will alone, without the sanction of any god. My breath was almost gone.

I knew I was dying. I would never master the lance, never take part in a real charge, never see Urdo or Apple again, never see Darien grown. Then someone stood behind me.

I could not see him, but I could feel a chill. The Lady of Angas looked up.

"You!" she said. "She can have sworn nothing to you!"

"She is my sacrifice," said a voice, dark and laughing, harsh as a raven's call. "She is dedicated to me, and my choice to take her or not to take her. I do not choose to give her to you, Morwen, Avren's daughter, whatever you may have given to me in the past." I was breathing again in the dark and could feel Morwen's hands tight on my wrists.

"She is not in the pattern," Morwen said.

"What are your patterns to me? She has borne me a son," said the voice, the one-eyed liar, the Father of the Slain. I had read about him in the monk's book, how he hung on the World Tree nine days to learn the secret of writing.

"Bah, begone!" said Morwen, tightening her grip. "Your day is done too, old fool, the
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White God will win and be worshiped everywhere, you will never have this land. I have seen it."

The god laughed, with the sound of crows disturbed from their feasting on a two-day-old battlefield.

"Long is a night on the wind-wracked tree, queen with a fair face. Gapes, and grows hungry does hand-pledger's foundling; Terror's barley is still to be threshed. Embla's gift given to this weapon-tree as much as thee, and who shall say what is mine?"

Morwen blinked, and her brow creased. The god's voice was almost a chant. "Think you Necessity makes a hero's deeds?"

She drew in a sharp breath, as if this shot had gone home. "Oh no. I have found him,"

she spat "a different wife."

"Of course, of course," he said, and it was the cawing of dark birds, I felt their wings, and he was gone. Morwen lay back in her chair, eyes closed, her hands limp at her sides.

Sunlight was streaming in through the window. I could move again.

I leapt to my feet and went down the steps and into the cloister, panting and gasping and drawing breath into my parched lungs. I must tell, I must tell, but as I ran I knew that there was nobody here who would believe my word against hers. She would smile and say I was gone mad. She would say I laid hands on her, she could kill me as easily with a knife or in the process of law. I needed to rescue Darien and be gone. Yet no. I stopped, two steps taken. Darien was safe here. She had seen him in her pattern; she would not hurt him. I must go to Urdo, who would listen to me, even though she was his sister. Urdo would be at Caer Tanaga, thirty miles.

I made for the stables. Nobody was chasing me, but monks looked up in surprise to see me run.

Garah was there, crooning to the wounded horse as she spread on salve.

"This is terrible," she said, seeing me. "He's been wrenched and wrenched, poor fellow."

I looked. It was worse than I thought.

"Could you ride him?" I asked. Garah sighed and smiled quizzically.

"No, really. Could you ride him if you had to? Is he too big for you?"

"He's not as big as Apple, and I rode him out when you were too near your time.

But—"

"Saddle him up. I've got to go, now, Garah, no waiting for Urdo in half a month, and you'd better come. You don't have a horse, and this chap doesn't deserve to stay with someone who has done this to him and will again."

"Are you telling me to steal a horse?" Garah spoke to my back, I was fetching Apple's things from the tack room. "Do you know I could be hanged for it?" she inquired, as I began to saddle Apple.

"Rescue a horse," I said. "The woman is a sorceress." I half turned. Garah was getting a plain saddle. "She tried to kill me. Just do it."

Ten minutes later we rode out of Thansethan in the direction of Caer Tanaga as if the Wild Hunt was after us. The two stallions huffed at each other in rivalry, each trying to draw ahead of the other. "I don't know why I'm doing this!" Garah called, when I finished explaining what had happened. "Nobody wants to kill me!"

"You're brave and you love horses!" I called back.

"The penalty is hanging if you steal a greathorse!" she said, as we galloped towards the river.

"You can put on my monument 'Here lies Garah ap Gavan, she was brave, and she loved horses, and she listened to Sulien ap Gwien one time too many!' "

I did, too, but that was a long time after.

We laughed wildly then, and slowed down as we forded the river and turned south onto the road toward Caer Tanaga.

—9—

"Bare is back without brother behind it."

— Jarnish proverb

"She follows dark gods," Urdo said. He let go of the window frame, turned towards me, and strode back across the room, frowning. He had not been still since I mentioned his sister's name.

I found myself biting the skin between my thumb and fingers and pulled my hands together in my lap. I was here, and safe. Even if he did not believe me.

The journey had been uncomfortable. We had not known whether we were pursued and had spent the night in trees beside the high road. Every time we heard anyone coming we hid in the trees, or if there were no trees, in the ditch. My mother had often said I looked like a beggar's brat, but I never looked more like one than that day when I first came to Caer Tanaga, the great city. I was stained and muddy and the front of my clothes were stiff with sour seeping milk. If it had not been for the great luck of Glyn being the day's guard at the inner gates, we would never have got in. Now I was washed, Garah had dragged the twigs out of my hair, and I had borrowed Osvran's second-best spare tunic. Even so I had found it difficult to persuade the clerks and servants that I needed to see the king urgently on business I would not disclose. They took a message at last.

I waited in the marble-floored hall, trying not to bite my finger or rub my sore breasts.

Both these things seemed to make the clerks uneasy. He had to believe me. They brought me to his little office. There was a large table in the corner in place of the bed that stood in his room in Caer Gloran, but it was otherwise very similar. The parchments and writing tablets and maps might have been brought two hundred miles undisturbed and set down again in the same piles and drifts. Sounds of armigers at practice in the yard below drifted up through the window. He was sitting writing at the table when I came m. He greeted me kindly and with concern. I wished I had come with good news to strengthen his arm and not to make his burdens greater. When I mentioned the Lady of Angas's name he sent the boy who was helping him out and told him to keep everyone away. Then he got up and paced while I told him my story.

"Very dark gods indeed," he said again.

"I think it is worse than that." I said. "I am almost sure no gods help her at all." Urdo paused, both hands gripping the back of his chair. He stared at me.

"But the cost to her soul, to have it gnawed away? No gods at all?" His knuckles were white on the wood, and I thought the chair might break. "Using her soul to power the enchantment?"

I looked up at him as evenly as I could. "I have heard stories of such things, my lord.

She called on no name but her own. I have never felt any power like that. She sent the gods of my people away like a flock of pigeons." But they had come for me. She would not have eaten my soul and used it for her sorcery. If I had died they would have taken me down to the dark lands and given back my name. I would have lost this precious life, but I would have come back. Others might not be so lucky. I had to tell him, however much it distressed him.

"That is worse than I thought. But I cannot touch her!" He released the chair, and it tipped over with a sharp crash. He set it up again, patting it absently, then sat down, facing me. "She had done you a great wrong, Sulien, and would have done you a worse one if not for the shield of a god who never has only one purpose." I breathed a sigh of relief and closed my eyes for an instant. He believed me. "She wove such a spell on me once, that took my will away. She could not do it now, the powers of the land would not allow it.

I thought that made me safe from her, but I was wrong. She has wronged you badly, and you are sworn to me, I owe you protection and vengeance and whatever recompense I can make. But I can do nothing openly against her!" He bounced to his feet again and paced up and down the length of the room, his hands bunched into fists.

"This is intolerable! Her husband Talorgen is the king of Demedia, the Lord of Angas, the
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greatest clan of the north. Demedia is a great land. It is the largest of them all if you measure by paces, though far from the largest by hides of cultivated land, for the most part of it is mountains. High mountains, where the folk still live in the forts in the hills they built before the Vincans came. I have not been there, the people do not know me, and they look to their lord, as well they might. He is a good king, in his way, harsh but within the bounds of the law, they respect him. He has supported me, he has paid taxes and sent me his heir as pledge. I am well pleased with his son, who is now one of my best and most loyal armigers."

He spun, rocking a fidchel board that sat on the edge of the big table ready to play, the white king in the center with his troops around him, the red pieces waiting at the edges to set up an ambush. "He has come south now to witness young Angas's wedding and also to see if I have an ala for him. He is beset by Isarnagans from the Western Seas. I doubt not that he also fears Borthas to his southeast. He does if he has any sense. But if I speak out against his wife, even were she not my own sister in blood, it would mean war. We would lose everything, and it would be a bloodfeud to shame the old songs. Only the Jarnsmen would be victors in such a war, for Talorgen has many allies among the other kings. We might win the battles, but the kingdom would fall."

He paused in his pacing and spun round to face me. "Do you think she means harm to the kingdom?"

I thought of her words in the darkness, and how I had been held still, incapable of even calling on the gods to aid me. I shuddered. The sounds of laughter and the clash of weapons sounded loud from below. The square of sunlight lay warm on the wooden boards, just touching the corner of my boot. Although the linen rubbed on my aching breasts and I was very weary, it felt good to be alive and breathing. "I have told you what she said to me as near as I can remember. I thought she wanted to know everything and control everything. She said it was a pity I was loyal to you, but she said she had always known you would be a great king."

Urdo's frustration was almost palpable. "I think she must be mad. What can one do with the mad who have power?" He frowned. "I could send her a priest, some priests strong in their own power who could stand against her. I wonder if I might get my mother's priest Teilo to go to her. She might be a match for Morwen. In any case, I will speak to her. But I cannot let the kingdom take fire from this spark, Suhen. I will do what I can for you short of that. There is not always a way forward which keeps both honor and a whole land." He looked tired. "I will go up to Thansethan as I planned, and speak to her.

The Lord of Angas will have his ala, but I will not give Morwen back her son. I will honor young Angas with a command in the south, though he will need someone very steady as tribuno to balance him." Angas. How would I ever be able to look him in the face again? "I will send Marchel north and make sure all who go are loyal to her and to me. I will have a blessing said over all of them that will be a protection. I will tell the queen I will allow no move against any of mine."

"I wanted to warn you about her. And I wanted to warn other people. That spell works only on the unwary. It works because people trust her."

Urdo sighed. "I will tell her I will not tolerate it. And see that all the armigers I send to Demedia are protected against such things."

"I hope that's enough. I do not ask for vengeance, and certainly not for war, but I would not like her to make any more moves against me." Urdo laughed shortly and sat down again.

"She is not entirely lost to fear. That should have been warning enough for her. 'And who shall say what is mine.' " He paused, and repeated the words of the gallows god again, more slowly, "

'And who shall say what is mine.' " He shook his head and looked back at me. "I will make sure that anything she may try openly against you is stopped. Tell me if there is anything I should know, at any time. Even warned, it might be as well to see that you and yours are protected in case she is fool enough to try more sorcery, but I do not think she will." I raised my chin in agreement.

"I will do that."

"And your boy? Darien Suliensson. That form of name was brave of you."

"I was angry with Father Gerthmol," I muttered, looking down. The ache redoubled in my swollen breasts at the thought of Darien, who would not understand, who would not know that I had not come. "I asked the gods to look kindly on him as soon as he was born.

He is safe enough with the monks, I think. She said he would be a great hero." I smiled at this thought. Urdo raised one eyebrow slightly.

"Good. Then what do you want to do? If you wish it I will give you land and a lordship of your own. It won't be anywhere safe, for I have nothing to give that is anywhere safe.