The Summer's King (13 page)

“How can this be?” asked Aidris. “Surely the prince is not . . .”

“He is well.” Dravyd smiled. “Yet his estate will soon be changed. The Priest-King Angisfor of the House of Paldo goes forth, and his place will be taken by Prince Ross Tramarn.”

“He will be king!” said Sharn.

“And therefore he can no longer help you,” said Nieva, spreading her silvery hands.

“I do not understand . . .”

“He will go into retreat, beyond the sacred wood,” said Dravyd, “and have no more to do with worldly things. We are the Messengers of the knightly Order of the Falconers and served the prince when he was the patron of that order. Now the new patron will be the Eorl Leffert, and we will be his servants, his Messengers.”

“Can you commend us to the new prince of the House of Tramarn?” asked Aidris.

“The new head of the house is the Princess Gaveril,” said Nieva, “the niece of Prince Ross, for he had no true-born son. She is widowed and has one son, Prince Gwalchai; and he too is a suitor for the hand of this pearl of the House of Pendark.”

“There are ladies of high degree in the Chameln lands,” said Dravyd, “and King Sharn might have any one of them for a wife.”

“Alas,” said Sharn Am Zor impatiently, “is this all the help you have for me?”

Aidris laid a hand on his arm and said to the Messengers, “Come into the palace of the Firn. Accept our hospitality. We will speak further . . .”

The old man inclined his head, and the three walked with the queen to a pathway where three kedran of the royal guard had appeared almost as suddenly as the Messengers themselves. So they were escorted into the palace and settled down to enjoy Chameln delicacies, sampling the apple wine and the brandy. Gerr of Kerrick, Count Zerrah, came with the Countess Sabeth and paid his respects to the Messengers, who were welcome guests in his Athron hall. Presents were given. The Daindru spoke several times with the Messengers but received little in the way of firm advice.

Once Gil, the dark man, said: “Dan Sharn, the land of Eildon makes no alliances these days with the lands of the continent of Hylor. Some would say there is no benefit for Eildon in such a marriage.”

Sharn went from red to white and his torch-bearer, Seyl of Hodd, answered smoothly, “Marriage with the reigning king of a wide, rich and secure kingdom, even a distant one, would seem a benefit.”

“Do you mean,” asked Sharn, controlling himself, “that we have nothing that you want?”

“Perhaps,” said Nieva, smiling.

She walked or floated to the window of the painted room in the king's apartments, where the Messengers had been received, and gazed out into the snowy gardens.

“Give us your Skelow tree, Dan Sharn!”

“What, only that?” asked the king. “Why will Eildon have my tree?”

“There is a vacant place for it in the garden of the White Tower, where all the sacred trees of Hylor are growing,” said Nieva earnestly. “We lost the Carach; it was brought home to Athron, but a seed was soon found to be replanted. But the Skelow is still lacking. This may be the last Skelow in all the world.”

“I doubt that,” said Sharn. “My gardeners have the care of the young trees, perhaps there is a Skelow among them.”

“You mean that the tree has borne fruit?” asked Dravyd.

Sharn and his friend, Jevon Seyl, both smiled, believing they had something to bargain with at last.

“A seedling, a healthy seedling,” said the king, “might be added to my troth gift of pearls for the Princess Moinagh.”

The Messengers bowed solemnly.

“We would take care that this part of the gift came safely to Eildon,” said Nieva.

“It is not a thing to be carried by any mortal man,” said Gil.

“The gardeners take care, with gloves and wooden tongs and so forth,” said Sharn, “but some persons must be immune. I have no fear of the Skelow tree. It will not harm me.”

He walked quickly through the open doorway into his bedchamber and went to the press where jewels were kept. He came back and extended his hand to the Messengers. On his open palm lay a single black leaf.

The Messengers stared at Sharn Am Zor as if seeing him for the first time. They murmured together in Chyrian, and Nieva said, “Dan Sharn, you have a rare gift as well as a rare tree. It is from the Eildon blood; a power of resistance to many influences.”

“Well, I am proof against this tree. Some are not harmed by stinging nettles!” laughed the king.

“You are proof against much more than that,” said Dravyd sadly.

“Against magic, are you saying?” asked the king. “Well and good. You know I will have no truck with it.”

Dravyd quelled his fellow Messengers with a glance and said, “Choose an envoy from your court, King Sharn, to deliver your troth gift. We will see that your embassies come safely to Eildon!”

It was all the encouragment that the king needed. The envoy was already chosen: Count Effrim Barr, one of the king's torchbearers. There was much to recommend the choice. Count Barr was a man of forty, handsome and urbane, with something of a Lienish air about him. He was dignified, fluent and, it was hoped, discreet and sensible. His wife, Countess Madelon, who had attended Queen Aravel, was held responsible for some of her husband's good qualities or at least for his stylish dress.

Sharn Am Zor concentrated all his energy upon the preparation of the troth gift, and the letters that would accompany it. Nothing else was undertaken in the palace; all ceremony was set aside. Count Barr was instructed by the king daylong and nightlong. When at last he rode out with this escort, those watching remarked how he smiled.

“Count Barr seems glad to be on his way,” said Bajan Am Nuresh. “Are you sure he has been thoroughly instructed, my King?”

“He is a worthy envoy,” said Aidris with a warning glance at her husband.

Sharn Am Zor, nervous and withdrawn, put on a smile and raised his hand to those departing.

“Surely I know that tall young fellow on the bay,” said Aidris.

“Yes,” said the king, “it is Esher Am Chiel. I had him here as a head groom. Merilla suggested him as Barr's esquire. She has this fancy to do more for the cousins, to set things right.”

The true reason for the virtual banishment of King Esher Am Zor's two sisters was known to Aidris, and it had little to do with the lost land of the Chiel or the money troubles of the Inchevin. Queen Aravel had conceived a jealous hatred against her two sisters-in-law and their children.

Behind the Envoy and his escort rode the Messengers of the Falconers upon their borrowed horses, leaving the Chameln lands in an everyday fashion, however magically they had first appeared. Gil, the dark man, carried a wooden coffer containing a seedling of the Skelow tree, carefully packed to keep out the cold. Those watching upon the bastion of the south wall, above the sacred stones, saw the procession out of sight. The way led to Count Barr's villa on the Danmar, then by pinnace or pleasure boat down the Bal to Balufir, where the party would take ship for Eildon.

“The Messengers have their own boat,” said Sharn Am Zor.

“Yes, Sire,” said Gerr of Zerrah, who stood nearby. “My father saw that boat once, long ago, when he was plain Huw Kerrick, a poor sailor, near Port Cayl.”

“Tell me . . .” said the king.

“It came by night,” said Gerr, “a small boat with a painted sail. It moved upon the sea by magic . . .”

Sharn Am Zor made some incredulous noise, and Zerrah smiled.

“The Messengers stepped out,” he said, “and once they were safely on land, the empty boat sailed away again to the west, or so my father said. I have no reason to doubt him.”

Now there was nothing to do but wait.

Afterwards it seemed to the court of the Zor and even to the court of the Firn that the whole year was spent in a dream of Eildon. Sharn Am Zor planned and replanned his entourage for the journey. He had sent letters through Buckrill, the printer, to his old companion Hazard, suggesting that a poet would be no bad thing to take along, and at last he had a reply directly out of Athron, carried by a merchant. It was a short letter in a clear round script, not the poet's hand; and though the king drew encouragement from it, he was a little disappointed.

I cannot write, lad, because my arm is swollen. An aftermath of my captivity is a plague of boils. This will pass, the leeches say, but meantime I must eat greens and use salves. I am delighted that you have come so far with the Eildon bride and will send more songs, as you have asked, and hope they find favor with you and with the princess. But for the journey I must humbly beg to be excused. An old tattered hack, a patched thing like myself, will be no ornament to your royal entourage. Think of me, if you will, as I was in the old days in our bright city, when I took to the boards and played Wanthor, the Poor Knight, in the
Masque of Warriors
. So I will say, in this character, and as myself:

“The sun may darken, lord king, and the stars fall into the abyss of night,

But my love and duty will never fail!”

The poet had made an effort to sign the letter, but the small, neat signature wandered and sprawled as it had not done before even when Hazard had had too much to drink. With the letter, copied, the king did not doubt, by one of the poet's light-o-loves, were three lyrics: “Moonlight Remembered,” “The Common Day,” and “The Colors of the Springtime,” all counted as the finest work of his middle period.

At last, towards the end of the Birchmoon, in bright spring weather, Count Barr returned. The Council, hastily summoned, sat down in the cold hall of the Dainmut.

“I will let Count Barr, my good torch-bearer speak,” said the king. “Our embassy has been crowned with success!”

So, nothing loath, Effrim Am Barr told of his winter journey. The caravel, captained by a certain Master Dynstane, a friend of the Chameln, made good time: ten days from the port of Balamut, in Cayl, to the great and ancient city of Lindriss upon the Laun.

“The Messengers of the Falconers,” said Count Barr, “parted company from us at Balufir to take their own boat, and they came to Eildon before us. So our way was prepared. Lindriss is a large city; the port is busy and foreign visitors might be lost without a guide and a full purse. As it was, there were horses waiting and a kedran captain of the Falconers. We had planned to go straight to the Pendark Court, but our guide led us another way. We had come to Lindriss just in time to lay our suit before the Banquet of the Long Board, a meeting of all the nobility of Eildon, and the Messengers were insistent that we should not let slip this chance.

“So we set out in midmorning, and when the mist cleared, we saw all about us the hills and towers of Lindress, a city larger than Achamar or Balufir. The citizens hailed us as we passed, and a few seemed to grasp what we said and called us Kemmerlonders or Chemlings. We came at last to the Hall of the Kings, a long grey pile with a wooden dome, set in green meadows.

“There is a custom at this Banquet of the Long Board for the Lord of the Revels to call for a wonder, some piece of magic or good news. Our Embassy from the Chameln Lands was this wonder for the year of changes. At a given moment, our trumpeter sounded the call of the Daindru and of the Zor; we entered the hall and stood before the noble company while our herald cried out the names and titles of King Sharn Am Zor and my own name as envoy.

“Dan Sharn, Dan Aidris. I need to be a poet, a minstrel of old time to do justice to that brave sight: the long, draped festive board, the noble hall, the princes and princesses, together with their nobles, all richly dressed in blazoned surcoats and flowing raiment—all the pride of Eildon was there.

“I marked out first Prince Beren Pendark, a handsome open-faced young man under the baldachin of the Fishers, then in the center of the board Prince Borss Paldo, broadly built and auburn-haired. It was this prince who bade me welcome with a great display of knightly courtesy. He said that it was a great wonder we had come so far and asked certain simple questions about the Daindru, the double sovereignty.

“There was an interjection from a nobleman, the Duke of Wencaer, who asked: ‘Had the kemlings not lately destroyed the armies of a neighboring kingdom with their wild hordes?' My good esquire, Esher Am Chiel, plucked me by the sleeve and bade me mark the crests beside Prince Borss. There, next to the prince sat a handsome dark lady and a young girl with long, blonde braided hair; theirs was the crest of the Duarings of Mel'Nir. It was the Princess Merse of Mel'Nir, daughter of Ghanor, the so-called great king, and her daughter Princess Gleya, the betrothed of Prince Borss.

“So I replied to Wencaer, ‘The lands of the Chameln are at peace, and we bear no present enmity to any here. The Daindru rules in Achamar as it has done for a thousand years.'

“So Prince Borss asked me plainly what the King of the Zor had to seek in the land of Eildon. I saw then that the Messengers of the Falconers had appeared in the hall, and I went on according to their instructions. I begged the Courts of Eildon to accept the king's gift of a young Skelow tree. The elder messenger, Dravyd, came forward and laid the coffer with the tree before Borss Paldo, and by magic, for it had never done so before, the coffer glowed with a dark radiance, and all the company gave a gasp of wonder.

“Prince Borss expressed thanks for this great gift and said that it increased the honor of King Sharn, as the giver, and the honor of the Falconers, whose Messengers had brought it into Eildon. He gave the tree into the care of the High Priest of the Druda and the White Prophetess, who both stood by, ready to speak a grace at the banquet.

“Then I spoke again, and this time I addressed Prince Beren Pendark, saying the words that were agreed upon. I told how the beauty and virtue of the Princess Moinagh Pendark were known to the king and humbly begged, on his behalf, that he be allowed to sue for the hand of this princess, to make her his queen. Here I disgressed a little and set forth the qualities of the king, my master, and also the benefit to both kingdoms of this loving and peaceful bond. Then I opened the silver casket of pearls, the troth gift, and set them before the Prince of Pendark.