The Summer's King (16 page)

Effrim Barr, whatever his success with the nobility of Eildon, has done his work well elsewhere. The livery stable he engaged has provided decent horses for the guards as well as three or four well-mannered and docile steeds for the king to inspect.

“A herald?” asks Sharn. “A brace of knights?”

“Not yet, my King,” says Tazlo, his spirits dampened, “but all is in readiness . . . see there.”

The young men peer through a different porthole and behold a large carpet, red and white like a Battle board, laid down below the gangway and beyond it some kind of striped barrier like the lists of a tournament. The king is uncertain whether or not to go on deck. Perhaps his appearance will touch off a satisfactory welcome as it has done so often in the past.

“Come then,” he says impatiently, “let us put ourselves to rights and stand in the waist of the ship. Tell the escort on board to stand close about the gangway.”

The king and his champions are then “put to rights,” their gorgeous attire checked by the valets. As they emerge behind the backs of the escort to see better, still without being seen, a herald has appeared on the gaudy checkerboard, together with a trumpeter. After the trumpet sounds, the herald roars out a welcome in the common speech: they must all strain to catch the words in his Eildon dialect.

“Shennazar,” says the king. “Shennazar of Kemmelond.”

“Two gifts,” says Zilly. “Begs you to accept two gifts, Sire.”

The king nods to his own herald, mounted on the bridge, and the man bellows in his turn. King Sharn Am Zor gives thanks for the herald's welcome and deigns to accept the gifts.

The scene is still eerily deserted. The guardsmen at the next mooring, some already mounted and looking very fine in their green and gold uniforms, stand stock still. Suddenly, to a burst of harp music and the jingling of bells, a figure clad in motley, red and white, bounds on to the mat and cartwheels about.

“A fool! A fool! A fool!” cries the fool in a loud, brazen voice. “A fool for Shennazar! Half of a fool and the other half of a fool!”

A strange figure in a long black mantle teeters onto the mat and stands towering over the fool, who is an undersized man about four and a half feet tall with thick dark red hair twisted up into three peaks like a fool's cap. Now he prods the “giant” at his side, and the black mantle billows out. Three very tiny creatures, dwarfs or midgets standing on each other's shoulders, fall about on the checkerboard then group beside their leader, making their music. Sharn Am Zor feels his lips drawn back in disgust; he remembers an old fear he had of dwarfs and little people. In any case he has never liked fools.

“Great King! Mighty Shennazar, come from afar,” cries the fool. “Here is the second gift.”

Another trumpet call sounds, and a young kedran in white livery leads onto the carpet a splendid white horse caparisoned in green and gold. It is, happily, not the kind of fiery steed that the king would have to reject out of hand. It is in fact a heavy, aged charger, well-mannered, docile. The kedran has it gently stepping from square to square of the mat, and now she feeds it a tidbit. The horse waits patiently with its head held up.

“Well, what d'you think, Sire?” asks Gerr of Zerrah. “It looks a remarkably suitable beast. Their best horses come from the island of Ariu.”

“Yes,” nods the king. “Yes, I like the horse. It has a look of my good Redwing.”

“Wait, my King,” says Tazlo Am Ahrosh. “Let me go down with an officer and examine the horse.”

“Well, we have time,” says the king. “Have a round of schnapps sent up from the galley.”

Tazlo and the second officer of the escort march down the gangway and examine the white horse upon the red and white carpet.

“Strange welcome,” says the king. “When will we know where we are lodged?”

Tazlo and the officer lead the white horse about and it responds with perfect docility. At last they return, and Tazlo says to the king, “Sire, I do not trust the horse. Perhaps it is the strangeness of this place. It would be better to have someone of your own weight try out the beast.”

“All seems quiet enough down there,” says Zilly of Denwick. “Let me go down and try this gift horse, my King.”

The king nods to his old friend. Denzil of Denwick, clad from head to foot in gold satin of Lien, with a white and green short cape, strides briskly down the gangway with an officer. The fool and his group bow low and play a musical accompaniment. As Zilly climbs into the saddle and the kedran adjusts the stirrups, Sharn Am Zor becomes aware of a murmur of sound, beyond the music and the sounds of the common day here upon the wharves.

Zilly sits firmly upright in the saddle, and the kedran, unexpectedly, springs away several squares of the mat. The big gentle horse flings up its head, bears its huge yellow teeth, rolls a wild eye and begins to buck with the agility of a mule. Zilly is thrown almost at once and comes down heavily. There are shocked exclamations from the guardsmen on land and on the ship; Tazlo and the officer run to help Denwick who has scrambled to his feet.

The fool dances about on the mat crying out in his harsh, loud voice, “Fell down! Fell down! Shennazar fell down and lost his crown!”

And behind the low barrier, there are suddenly knights and ladies, mounted upon noble steeds or seated in graceful open carriages. Banners wave and snap; the sun comes through and blazes upon patterned stuff, jewels, gilded armor, painted tissue and gauze threaded with gold and silver. The denizens of the courts of Eildon laugh and clap their hands.

Sharn knows instinctively, and with a quiver of revulsion for the magic of the thing, that the Eildon lords and ladies were watching all the time, although the newcomers could not see them. Now they have played a cruel trick on him, struck at his right, threatened him with injury, injured his trusted friend instead. But the painted fools of Eildon have laughed too soon. Can they really believe that it is the king who has fallen from the gift horse? The fool still dances about, but his horrid little companions have run to Denzil of Denwick and are crouching at his feet in attitudes of submission. Three knights have dismounted and are striding across the checkered carpet in Denwick's direction.

The king says quietly to Captain-General Britt, just in front of him, “Full flourish, Britt. And stand away.”

The signals are given, the silver trumpets of the king, three on the ship and three on shore, sing aloud their full flourish. Sharn Am Zor stands forth at the head of the gangway in Chameln dress of white, the long jeweled tunic panelled with gold, a gold circlet just visible upon his golden head. He does not acknowledge the presence of the Eildon nobility at all. He walks a few steps down the sloping planks, in the silence following the trumpet calls, and speaks to Denzil of Denwick.

Zilly, looking shaken but sound, replies, “No great harm, my King.”

The spectators, acknowledging perhaps that the jest has not found its mark, cheer and applaud the appearance of the king. The fool summons his followers and bows lower than ever at the foot of the gangway.

“King Sharn,” he cries in his rasping voice, “in these days we celebrate the Feast of Fools. Your forfeit has been paid, and you have the fool's leave to enter the kingdoms of Eildon.”

Sharn meets the eye of the fool and finds the man's gaze as hard and full of anger as his own.

“Is the white horse bewitched?” he asks quietly.

“No, my King,” says the fool. “It is a clod-catcher, a yokel trap from the fairground. It bucks when a certain weight is on its back.”

“What is your name, Fool?”

“I am called Farr the Fool, Majesty, and these are my three farthings.”

The little creatures, apparently two men and a young girl, are muscular, well-proportioned midgets with long tresses of glossy black hair caught back with bone clasps.

“You may attend me, if you will,” says Sharn with a first hint of a smile, “though I am sure there are many fools in Eildon.”

The fool and his farthings tumble away from the mailed feet of the three knights who have reached the foot of the gangway. They make obeisance to the king, so far as their strip mail will allow, and the knight of the Hunters acts as spokesman.

“King Sharn Am Zor,” he begins. And even in the accents of a knight of the realm, it is thinned a little into Shennazar. “We bid you welcome in the name of the orders of Eildon. I am Mortrice of Malm and this is the noble Sir Pellasur of Hay, knight of the Falconers, and the noble Sir Tarn of Whitrow, knight of the Fishers. Pray you mount up with this your noble company and follow. You are lodged at Sennick Fortress.”

The king bows to the three knights, observing the ruddy countenance of Sir Mortrice, the dark glance of Sir Pellasur, the youthful brow of Sir Tarn. He nods to the herald and to Captain-General Britt. The disembarkation proceeds smoothly. One of the stolid mounts from the livery stable, a brown gelding that does indeed have a look of Redwing, is brought forward for the king, and it bears him safely all the time that he is in Eildon. Now he rides forward, just as he had hoped to do, and receives the greetings of those who gathered to welcome him.

The ranking personage and the only member of the royal courts to welcome the king is a lady in an open carriage: Princess Gaveril Tramarn. By her smooth look, her wise and unfriendly dark eyes, he guesses that she is not wearing her years. Her long robe is entirely quartered with the arms of all her feoffs and possessions. Her spreading headdress of gauze is adjusted by a lady-in-waiting so that king and princess may speak face to face. Sir Pellasur speaks her name and titles to the king, who bows his head, unsmiling, and says: “My greetings to the noble house of Tramarn!”

The princess bobs her head with a broad smile.

“What did he say?” she demands out of the corner of her mouth. “Sir Gerr of Kerrick, is that you? Can you tell me what the King of Kemmelond said?”

Gerr rises to the occasion.

“Sire,” he says loudly to the king, “the princess is suffering from deafness. She did not hear your greeting.”

“Perhaps I gave none,” says Sharn Am Zor, smiling terribly at Gaveril and riding on.

A ripple of laughter or surprise follows him. Led by the three knights and followed by his own champions, his escort, the Eildon folk who gathered for his curious welcome, and at last by the twenty officers of his guard, he sets out on his first long ride across Lindriss.

As the procession winds along fine streets, between high houses, or through many tracts of parkland the patches of mist still come and go. Vistas, glimpses of the city, are all that the king beholds. More than once, between the tall houses or on the brow of a hill, other groups of knights and their followers can be seen, as if there were several processions all crossing the city at once, hardly aware of each other.

At last, after riding for more than an hour, the three knights draw rein in the shadow of a mighty fortress. Sennick stands upon a low hill above a warren of grey houses and narrower streets, a village that has become part of the great city. It has two massive round towers of grey stone linked by a wall with a battlemented walk upon the top. Each tower stands in a separate round garden plot with a low rampart faced with stone and a drawbridge crossing the moat. Yet there the likeness ends. The tower on the left looks as if it has been scrubbed clean or newmade; banners fly from its arrow-slit windows. The garden below this tower is a perfect round of soft, clipped, bright green Eildon grass with two or three young trees standing in beds of mooncups and daisies, yellow and white. The tower on the right is of old, dark stone without banners. Its round garden is grassy but unkempt with nothing but an old plum tree struggling into blossom with a few spring flowers among its mossed roots.

“King Sharn!” cries Sir Mortrice of the Hunters, as the procession slowly comes to a halt. “You have come first to the fortress and may choose the tower where you will lodge!”

“Great Goddess, Sire,” says Tazlo, on the king's left, “there is no choice . . .”

As other voices are raised and the escort begins to drift towards the bright tower, Sharn feels a gentle touch on his right boot. He glances down and sees one of the fool's small companions, the little maid, gazing up at him with large, liquid brown eyes. She holds a finger to her lips, and with her other hand points urgently towards the old, dark tower. Weary with the long ride and the strange welcome, the king makes his decision, feeling as if he were plunging into the icy waters of the moat.

“Another trick,” he murmurs to Gerr of Zerrah.

He raises his voice and says, “Good Sir Mortrice, I trust Eildon hospitality. I will choose the tower yonder, the one that wears its years!”

His words are understood by the Eildon nobles; there is a burst of laughter and applause. The king's trumpeters sound his call, the drawbridge of the dark tower is lowered. Farr the Fool and his three farthings play their music and tumble about on the drawbridge, leading the king and his followers into the tower.

Sir Pellasur makes bold to say, “King Sharn . . . Majesty . . . will you keep the fool then?”

“For the moment,” says Sharn, “but the white horse may go back to the fairground.”

The king is dismounted quickly in a spacious inner ward and brought through a warm well-appointed hall up to a set of rooms with rich hangings, a pleasant fire, gleaming oaken furniture of antique design. As he sinks into a chair by the fire, Prickett is in the doorway wringing his hands. Two guardsmen bring in Zilly of Denwick, green as his cloak, and lie him on a settle. The healer has been summoned.

“Zilly!” the king kneels beside his friend. “That damned gift horse! What ails you, man? Something broken?”

Denzil of Denwick is now deathly pale, a terrible color. He can only whisper, “Forgive me, old son . . . we showed them . . .”

Then he faints dead away, his eyes rolling up in his head. Captain Ruako, the healer, makes a quick examination, has the lord carried up to his bedchamber overhead.