The Summer's King (6 page)

“In that case,” says Flood cheerfully, “with three years served
and
my books balanced, my precious numbers . . .”

He reaches for a pen and makes a very brief, neat notation in the middle of a page and rules off with a little rod of green marble. He pulls a bell-rope; the two black-clad men come running up the stairs. Buckrill turns his back politely while Flood gives them instructions; he catches only a few words of prison jargon. “. . .
the wakener . . . the sluice . . . not linked
. . . a
hull but no stones
. . .”

“Master Buckrill,” Flood raises his voice. “Do you have a cart? Good. No corpse boards then.”

After the men have gone, Buckrill waits uneasily, perched on the edge of a mildewed green stool. A long time passes, the silence broken only by crackling of the braziers, then a bell on the wall of the chamber rings softly.

“It is done,” says Flood.

He struggles to his feet, collects the gold pieces, counts them into a leather bag beside his chair and holds out his hand. Buckrill, sweating, clasps the jailer's hand and finds it cool and dry. He blunders from the room in terror, races down the stairs. The heavy door gapes now and from it comes the hideous reek of the river cells, the dungeons of the Wells where men lie half-drowned for years in weedy darkness.

The corpse of old Milleray, the player, has disappeared, and in its place lies a narrow sheath of sacking, a death hull, open at the top and feebly twitching. Buckrill flings himself down beside the river-smelling bundle. He sees the blanched, thin, naked figure of a man, the face half-hidden in lank hair, plastered to his scalp and his wasted cheeks. Buckrill feels, with a stab of pain, that whatever happens, whether the man lives or dies,
it is too late
. Three years in the Wells are enough to scar any man irrevocably.

He cries out, grasping the thin ice-cold arms; “Hazard . . . Hazard, it is all over . . . Hazard for the love of the Goddess . . .”

The poet, Robillan Hazard, suddenly opens his eyes.

“Buckrill,” he says loudly, “we can just make that deadline . . .”

Buckrill heaves the poet into his arms and pushes blindly past the men holding open the narrow door. It clangs behind him; the three players come down like a flock of birds. They lift up their comrade and bear him tenderly to the waiting cart.

He hears Hazard's voice:
“Taranelda, I have found you!”
and the murmur of her voice replying. Buckrill turns back and scatters a few coins through the grating. The journey is not yet done. He walks behind the cart as it is wheeled swiftly out of the shadow of the Black water Keep, out of Riverside into the maze of streets by the docks.

Hazard wakes again to the lap of water; he keeps his eyes shut to make the dream last longer. Buckrill rescued him, yes, by the Goddess, a most tormenting cruel dream. Two blackfrogs gave him the waking dose of spirit, then stripped him and sluiced him down, wrapped him up again, some sleight of hand in a cold yard . . . and Taranelda, his lost love.

The poet utters a loud sob, and the light beyond his eyelids grows painfully bright. He could swear he lies in soft sheets; the dream clings so closely, but still he hears the cursed water lapping, the waters of doom. Come to the Wells where the drowned men lie. He opens his eyes cautiously and sees a color, dark red, and catchs a whiff of bacon.

“Oh Goddess,” whispers Hazard, “it was no dream . . .”

There she sits by his bedside in a dark red robe, older now and sad, with a proud tilt to her head.

“Rob, my dearest . . .”

He begins to laugh and to cry. Their hot tears mingle as she leans across the bed and lays her cheek against his, kissing his face.

“Draw the curtain,” says Hazard, “draw the curtain, my darling, the light hurts my eyes. Have you got me on some sort of a boat?”

“A caravel. A tall ship.”

As Taranelda moves to the cabin window, Hazard gives a cry of pain.

“Nell . . . Nelda, little love, you're hurt, still hurt from the fall, that damned balcony in The Masque of Fair Ishbéla!”

“Hush,” she says, “that was years ago, four years. I do very well, though my ribs have mended somewhat askew. Oh, Hazard, you know nothing and so much has passed!”

“Tell me all!” he says eagerly. “Where is that bacon cooking? Whose ship is this? Did Buckrill get me out of the Wells?”

He struggles to sit up and falls back upon his pillows. Taranelda fetches a tray with wine, bread, a few scraps of the bacon and a strange black drink from the lands below the world, which is said to have restorative powers.

“Buckrill brought you out. He will come soon,” she says. “He has an important commission from the Denwicks.”

“I might have known it!”

“He has remained true!”

“Who has not?”

Taranelda is silent.

Hazard says, “Where is he then? Where is our golden lad? Where is King Sharn?”

“On his throne, where else?” she answers bitterly. “And with Queen Aidris Am Firn at his side. The Daindru rules as it has done for a thousand years.”

Her face has a stiff, dreaming look; she speaks in an altered voice: “It is the time of the Dainmut in Achamar. The queen is roused early with a milk posset. Her chambers have windows to the south, with golden hangings; they can be reached by the grand staircase from the north hall, by circling the galleries from the east, or by two sets of stairs from the kitchens and the servants hall. First, the chamber maid comes in, then the mistress of the robes with her attendants, and the queen may receive the chancellor or other officers while still in her bedgown, before she has bathed. A member of the house of Gilyan holds the jewels for her to choose. With green she may wear emerald, yellow beryl, jade or rubies, but the rubies are usually worn alone, without other jewels . . .”

“Where have you learned all this?” asks the poet. “Sweetheart, what became of you? You were healing, so they said, when I visited you in the Broad Street Infirmary. But when I returned from a four-day progress with the prince, with Sharn, you were gone. Released in the care of a man and a woman.”

“So I was,” sighs Taranelda. “I went with them willingly. They were part of the plan. I came into the power of a magician.”

“Not the old scorpion himself!”

“There is more than one magician,” she replies. “This one is a healer, too. He saw me on a chance visit to the infirmary, saw me too late to mend my ribs better. I was the answer to his prayer. Either my injury suggested the scheme to him, or he had it in his mind and chanced upon a girl of the right shape and coloring. She is older than I am . . . her hair grows curled from her head . . .”

“What magician? Whose hair?”

“I was in the power of a man called Jalmar Raiz,” says Taranelda. “The woman and the man who took me away were a gardener and his wife. The woman had been a nursemaid once to a princess of the Chameln, Aidris Am Firn. This royal heiress had not been seen in her native country for several years, since she fled from the warriors of Mel'Nir.”

“There were wild tales about,” says Hazard. “I collected them for Sharn.”

“Jalmar Raiz put a sleeping spell upon me; I was half in a dream. He taught me to be the Queen of the Chameln, Aidris Am Firn.”

“You were ever a quick study,” says Hazard.

“Hazard, I
became
the queen. I became another person. I remembered an endless torrent of sights and words, always at one remove from my true self. I even dreamed the queen's dreams. I forgot all my past life! I forgot Lien and Balufir and the players. Only a few true memories were spared to me. I dreamed of the balcony falling. I knew
you
, my love; I heard you cry out. I remembered your work when I saw the books. Yet I was the queen . . .”

“Where?” asks Hazard. “Where was all this done?”

“At Nesbath, I think. Do you know this Master Raiz?”

“Indeed I do!” says Hazard. “He had to do with the Chameln royals and with the palace set here in Balufir. Something of the showman about him. Yes, surely, he had a son, a tall yellow-haired player with some promise. He was never more than a walking gentleman here in town but might have done better.”

“He played the king,” says Taranelda.

“The king? Our king? Sharn Am Zor?”

“He played the king and I the queen,” she says softly. “I was brought into an old keep, full of Moon Sisters in Dechar in the Chameln land. The good women knew me for their queen. They treated me according to my estate, and when the time was right, I was brought forth. I called upon the folk to throw off the power of Mel'Nir. I put in some part of your Queen Negartha . . .”

“Very suitable!”

“Oh Hazard, I played well! I was not playing at all. I
was
the queen. Yet there were those who knew that I was not, that I was a puppet. I remember one old soldier who lectured me very sternly for my imposture. I thought he must be mad or a traitor.”

“This
is
madness,” says Hazard. “How did it serve Raiz? Who were his masters? What profit did he have?”

“The Daindru were restored,” she says. “The king, the player king, Raff Raiz, came to the loyal city. I knew him at once for my cousin and co-ruler Sharn Am Zor . . .”

“Pah, he was nothing like . . .”

“He played well,” says Taranelda. “He has a talent. He was acting the king, not under a spell as I was. What a precious pair we were. There was fighting. I had no fear; it was like a pageant. We were proclaimed as the Daindru, and the south rose up against Mel'Nir. Dechar held firm; we saved the city and drove the Melniros out.”

“I see it more or less,” grumbles Hazard. “I was half-mad searching for you. I fell out with Sharn-me-lad over this search. I heard something of this tale when I was returning from a wild goose chase to some hospital in Hodd. Pretenders. Yes, pretenders. A blow at the king's right, the dearest thing he had in the world.”

“As you say,” whispers Taranelda. “Dearer to him than any loyal servant. Why Rob, this was the whole reason: to rouse the Chameln and to summon the true king. So we ruled in Dechar till he came, landing at Winnstrand with his toadies: Seyl, Seyl's wife, young Denwick . . .”

“Nay, come,” says Hazard, “they were not bad fellows . . .”

“The king came into his own,” says Taranelda. “Jalmar Raiz should have brought us out, his two pretenders, but the plan went wrong. Sharn, the true king, sent kedran into the city and had us brought out. The play was done.”

She begins to weep now, wringing her hands.

“I could not be anything but the queen. I knew nothing else. Oh what a figure I made them, what a foolish, lost creature. Oh unkind to leave me so, this Master Raiz, to be tormented, insulted, questioned, injured, with folk coming to stare at me in my cell and make me play the queen. I had only one friend, and it was the False Sharn, Raff Raiz. He did his best for me. He knew I was innocent.”

“Sweet love,” says the poet, “I pray you, do not weep . . .”

“I must; I cannot help but weep for that foolish false queen . . .”

“Heaven help me, I was already in the Wells,” says Hazard. “I was jumped by the watch for old debts, else I might have gone with the king and found you. I thought Rosmer was behind it, that
he
sank me in the Wells. I still think so. It was pure malice. I had led a racketty life: never enough gold, trouble with the scripts, insulting the court. Rosmer struck at me just at this time to embarrass the king, because I was his friend. I sent to Sharn at the last . . .”

“Sent to him?”

“A ring he had given me. A last appeal from the Wells. He knew what it meant to come into the Blackwater, that I was a drowned man. Perhaps the ring never came to him. He sailed off upriver to the Dannermere to reclaim his kingdom from the men of Mel'Nir and from the pretenders.”

“It is a tangled web.” She sighs. “Sharn had some notion of who I was. We spoke together of you, of the masques and songs. You are a most renowned poet, my dear. Even Aidris Am Firn, the true queen, had a book of yours. Can you guess which one?
Hazard's Harvest!”

“There was magic in it,” smiles Hazard, “for those who were interested. Did you see the Queen of the Chameln?”

“We were held in an old keep, Radroch, upon the plains,” says Taranelda. “We were kept in the menagerie, the False Aidris and the False Sharn. We feared for our lives. There was an old, fat jailer there, Hazard, and I went to his bed to get extra food and to try to find a way out of the keep. He was not a bad man. I went up a little privy stair and came to his room and to the king's room when he visited.”

“The king?”

“Have no fear. He had no wish to make love to me. He could not bear my crookedness. He teased me, saying I was an imposter. He showed me your books; we spoke of you. The king swore he was your friend. Perhaps he hoped that I would confide in him at last, tell him who had raised up the pretenders. But I could not shake off my enchantment. I believe he had your ring and knew that you were in prison.”

“Hush, I never expected the lad to remain true. His kingdom was more important to him. This is how it must be with princes. For a handsome fellow, a rich and lively sovereign, Sharn is in some ways a shadow man. He suffered too much as a young boy. His mother is mad. His Uncle Kelen is a fool. Rosmer is his enemy. If there is one person the old Scorpion, the Night Flyer, should fear, it is Sharn Am Zor, King of the Chameln. But what of the true queen?”

“There was a mighty victory,” says Taranelda. “The Great Ambush. The Red hundreds of Mel'Nir were overwhelmed by the Chameln at the Adderneck Pass. The queen led this ambush, and my stern old soldier Zabrandor. So Queen Aidris came to Radroch, the old tower upon the plain . . .”

“I have missed a good deal of excitement . . .”

“I came to the queen's chamber late one night, by the secret stair,” says Taranelda. “I can see her now, sitting by the fire, mourning for some horse that was killed, or so the kedran said. I was very haughty. I queened it over her. But the sight of her sent a ray of light through my darkness. So many people—Zabrandor, the kedran, the jailer Sansom, the king, the false king—had told me my life was treason, my memories a pack of lies. I could hardly believe them until I saw this straight, pale woman seated by the fire. I knew she must be the true queen. I had a strange thought concerning Raff Raiz, my friend, the False Sharn. I believe those two, Aidris the Queen and Raff Raiz, were known to each other, friends or even lovers during the queen's exile. I do not know how this could be, and I have never questioned him about it. At any rate the queen saved us both. Sharn Am Zor might still have had us killed.”