The Summer's King (33 page)

Your true friend and servant,

Zelline Chantry

The second letter, with a plain red seal, was written on a large sheet of parchment, ruled with faint lines like a child's copybook. The handwriting was very even and round, with no blots or crossings out, as if the letter had been copied several times to make it perfect:

To the High and Mighty King, Sharn Am Zor, who shared the double throne.

My Dearest Son,

I write this at Alldene, in my old chamber, which I shared long ago with my dear sister Elvédegran. The room has hardly changed, only the world outside has changed amazingly, and the woman I see reflected in the windowpanes has changed out of all recognition. My true servants will not let me have a looking glass, but I will prevail on them.

I have wakened from a long, evil dream, and I truly believe that I will not fall into this dream again. A cloud has been lifted from my mind and spirit so that my nurses speak of a miracle. There are new gods worshipped here in Lien. I hope I will not offend good Brother Less, the house priest of the Duchess of Chantry, if I say that I firmly believe this is
a miracle of the Goddess
.

At the royal prison of Swangard there was a young man, Yorath Duaring, who is for me a great part of the miracle. He is believed by all to be Elvédegran's own son, now grown to manhood. He made his escape from captivity and had a thought for the poor wretch who shared the tower with him, for his mother's sister. He possessed a healing medicine of great and magical power, and he sent it to me by this same Brother Less. It has restored my reason.

What can I say to you, my dearest son, after so long?

What can I say to Merilla, my sweet girl, and Carel, my baby. The children I knew and loved so well even in my darkest hours have long gone, but so it is with all children. I joy to hear that you are all well. I am proud to know that you are king, long since, having held to your right as your poor father would have wished. Commend me to all those I once loved and send me news of all my family.

Commend me as well to Queen Aidris Am Firn, child of my dear sister, Hedris. I fear that I used her ill, years past, when I first fell into my sickness.

I am not strong, dearest Sharn, and I do not know how long I will be spared to ravel up the threads of my life.

Do not grieve for me if we never meet again in this world.

Praise the Goddess who has given me these days of peace and accept a mother's blessing.

The signature was bold and steady: Aravel.

Sharn Am Zor walked stiffly to the balustrade and leaned upon it. When Lorn followed him, holding the letters, she found that he was weeping. Tears coursed down his pale cheeks, but he uttered no sound.

So they stood there together for a long time, and at last the king said, “I must tell Merilla and Carel.”

“Will you write to them?” asked Lorn.

The king's sister was spending the summer with her family at Chiel Hall, her home in the east; his brother was at North Hodd, choosing a new horse from Seyl's stud.

“No,” said Sharn. “Carel comes to Greybear Lodge with me. I will tell him on the way, and after the hunting we will visit Merilla.”

He smiled at his wife and kissed her cheek, then beckoned the nearest servant, a page who came running up.

“Danu Lorn will walk with me to the clipped yew trees. We will take refreshment there, and the children may come to us after supper.”

The setting sun made the windows of the east wing light up in rows. Lorn and Sharn walked slowly towards the dark shapes of the yew trees, which stood like sentinels about an oval lawn with marble benches.

“I was an ill-governed boy,” said Sharn Am Zor, remembering. “None of my mother's women or the guard officers could restrain me. I saw too much. I saw that my mother was distracted. A scene of violence—I cannot remember all of it—her hands were bound and the fingers bandaged, for she bit them until the blood came. I saw my father's pain, heard my mother's voice, so untuned and shrill. I have told you something of this before; it was winter, a bad time in winter. The snow lay thick, and there were snow houses in the palace grounds. I was seized with a great sorrow and despair. I did not wish to live.”

“Sharn, you were a child!”

“No, wait,” said the king. “I went out into the night, stole out into the cold and climbed the fence. I crossed a ditch full of snow and lay down beneath the Skelow tree. Yet it did not harm me. Perhaps it knew me for a brandhul, its own kin. I woke up in the morning disappointed, feeling a warmth under the ground, coming from the tree's roots. An old gardener, he is long dead, leaped over the fence and dragged me away. His hands came out in a rash, but I was unharmed by the Skelow and the freezing night.”

“Who knows of this?” asked Lorn.

“Merilla might know,” said the king. “Some of the servants. My father knew, of course, and to cheer me he took me on that first expedition to Greybear Lodge. Now I have lived to this hour, to learn that my mother has been miraculously healed. The ways of the Goddess are strange to mortal men.”

On the first day of the Hazelmoon, the harvest month, Sharn Am Zor rode off to North Hodd with an escort of guardsmen. It was the hottest summer for a hundred years; the grass of the plain was burned brown; a few wells had dried up, and the shepherds brought their flocks to better-watered pastures—to oases such as Chernak New Town and North Hodd. The king started off very early in the morning while it was still dark. The children were allowed to get up in their nightgowns to bid him farewell.

As they stood in the stable yard with their mother watching the dark shapes of the horses and their riders go jingling off down the broad avenue of half-grown linden trees, the young prince, Gerd Am Zor, burst into tears. Queen Lorn looked at her son in surprise. He was seven years old, tall and well-built for his age, with a thatch of blond hair, bleached almost white by the summer sun. Gerd was overshadowed by his sister, beautiful and lively. Now he wept in the stableyard and would not be comforted. Neither Lorn nor Tanit nor the servants could get any sense out of him, unless it was that Papa and Redwing should not go away.

The king remained at North Hodd only two days. He paid his respects to Seyl and Iliane and rode out again with his brother. Carel had chosen a brown stallion named Ayvid, four years old, spirited but well-schooled. Captain Kogor and Lieutenant Dann, two veteran soldiers, made up the hunting party, together with Yuri, the king's younger body-servant.

The king was in a strange mood, not sullen, but given to long silences as they rode out upon the plain. Carel was in high spirits, like his new mount, and took it ill when the captain suggested that he was using his horse too hard in the summer's heat. Sharn Am Zor, waiting in the shade of a wilting birch grove, hardly knew the young man who came riding out of the heat haze. Carel was like no one at all, only like himself: brown-haired, brown-faced, still inclined to plumpness, his eyes blue-green.

Sharn Am Zor tried to come closer in their conversation to things of childhood, to Alldene and Queen Aravel. The letters in his pouch, which should have been a cause for rejoicing, now weighed upon his spirit. He saw how far divided he was from Carel and believed that the division was mainly his fault. The prince was tense and alert, his jokes all seemed forced. He shied away from Sharn's faltering attempts to speak of the past in Lien and had no patience with tales of Achamar.

Because the summer was so hot, they rode by night and made a detour to a sheepfold with a good well and shelter for the horses during the heat of the day. As they moved on from this place, Sharn became convinced that they were following the very same trail that he had taken years ago with his father, driving the pony cart. The countryside began to change; they saw before them the forest and grassland that spread out from the river Chind, and in the hard, blue distance, the eastern mountains. At last, early one morning, they came riding up to Greybear Lodge among its sheltering trees. A thread of smoke rose from the chimney, horses whinnied, a dog barked. Out came Engist, grey-bearded indeed, and a thickset Firnish fellow with a dog at his heels: Jarn Réo, the elder hawkmaster.

It was sixteen days since the king left Chernak New Palace, ten since the party set out from North Hodd. The travelers rested and swam and explored the river banks. The king went out several times with Réo and the hawks that were kept at the lodge. On another day the whole party forded the river a mile downstream from Greybear and hunted for small game until nightfall, bringing home more than they could use.

The king would spend his birthday at the lodge; he set no store by it, but the men thought of feasting their lord and drinking his health. A cask had leaked in the storeroom so that the wine was running low. It was arranged that Lieutenant Dann and old Réo would ride to Chiel Hall for more wine and dainties for the king's feast and bring Princess Merilla and her family a gift of gamebirds.

The hunters had seen no one in the wilderness: no other hunters, no shepherds or travelers upon the plain. Chiel Hall seemed worlds away. Sharn Am Zor sat outside the lodge in the twilight watching the stars come out. A trout leaped in the silver waters of the Chind; Carel walked about snatching at fireflies; Yuri sat with his back against a tree. When the king had gone indoors, Yuri followed him shortly, saying that a fire could be seen over the river to the north. Everyone went out and stared at the small flickering light in the darkness over the river. Engist, who knew the countryside well by this time, said that it must be a campfire on the side of Bald Hill. The king and his brother took a nightcap of apple brandy, and the whole party turned in. Carel had come up with a plan to take a longer ride in the morning. His horse, he said, was fretting for lack of proper exercise and old Redwing was positively fat from the lush grass near the lodge.

Yuri did not hunt and was not called upon to take part in the early morning ride. The king dressed himself and so did Prince Carel. When Yuri awoke, there was only a smell of breakfast in the air; he was alone. He turned over and went to sleep again.

It was a cool morning; the summer was coming to an end at last. Carel led the way upon Ayvid and then came Captain Kogor upon his black gelding; after them came the king on Redwing and Engist upon Sorrel, a massive light-colored Lowlander. They rode far out on the plain, five miles or more from the lodge on the riverbank. The prince was in fine fettle, putting Ayvid through his paces, breaking off to chase a hare that rose up in his path. At length he turned back in a wide curve and led the party to a shallow valley at the foot of a down, a place they called the Valley of the Stones.

One huge flat stone or piece of masonry lay in the midst of the valley and smaller stones, very worn, grew up out of the grass; it was like a giant's hall with a table. The king had wondered, when he first saw the place, whether the table formation was in fact a grave, the resting place of some ancient chieftain. Now he dismounted and sat down at the head of this table on a convenient hump of rock. Engist brought out food and drink from his saddlebag. It was getting on towards midmorning and the day was warm but not bright; a film of cloud hid the sun.

Carel, who was more restless than ever, made some sound. The king looked towards the north. A clear line of demarcation could be seen between the brown grass of the plain and the green of the river lands, tree-shaded. A party of riders had come out of the tree half a mile away; the leaders, four horsemen in dark cloaks, came on at a steady pace over the plain. The king felt a thrill of alarm even though these were Chameln riders, his own subjects. Kogor and Engist seemed to feel the same; they both stood up and moved towards the king.

Carel said in an ill-governed voice, “Do you see who it is, brother?”

The king did not see; no one saw who it was. Then, as the leaders were very close, one, mounted on a Chameln grey, came forward. Kogor spoke sharply to Engist; the king did not stir.

Carel cried out, “It is Tazlo! It is Count Ahrosh!”

Sharn Am Zor cursed under his breath, cursed his brother. His first thought was that Carel had arranged this “chance meeting” upon the plain so that Tazlo could plead for an end to his banishment. In after years it became a matter of hot dispute: Had the prince done only this innocent service for his friend? The young man from the north rode forward to the very edge of the giant's board; he stared boldly at the king. Tazlo Am Ahrosh had a desperate look; he had not come to plead for anything. At his back his three companions remained hooded and wrapped in their black cloaks in the heat of the day. Further back there was a movement as armed riders dispersed north and south to surround the Valley of the Stones.

Tazlo cried out, “Greetings to Prince Carel Am Zor! What is done here was the blessing of the Goddess!”

“I doubt that,” said the king quietly. “Who rides with you, Count Ahrosh? Why are you so far from home?”

“Be still!” said Tazlo. “Your time is spent! I have found you out!”

Engist and Kogor both spoke at once. The old master-at-arms strode forth angrily.

“Count Ahrosh, have you lost your wits?” he demanded. “Address King Sharn as you should. Answer his question!”

“Old man,” said Tazlo, “you are deceived! King Sharn Am Zor, my true liege, is not here. This false king that you serve is a changeling come out of Eildon!”

There was a silence, then the king gave a short laugh, nervous and scornful.

“This is madness!” said Engist.

“Not so!” said Tazlo. “Who would deny that the king is changed, sadly changed, since he returned from the magic kingdom of the west. I have seen the truth. This is an imposter!”

“Tazlo Am Ahrosh,” said the king, “you were long my friend and rode with me. Will you turn traitor?”

“I rode with the king!” said Tazlo.

“So did we all, Count Ahrosh,” Captain Kogor said cautiously. “We ride with him still. Who would believe this foolishness?”