A Princess of the Chameln (2 page)

“Their days of conquest are not past; they exact tribute from the Mark of Lien and from our own lands. Let us pray to the Goddess that they take no more than our goods, at least during your lifetime, child.”

She stored up his words; they were a study guide for her battle with the scrolls. Her life was sheltered; the groves and high stockades of the palace grounds were all her territory. It was a treat when she went with her father and mother to the White Lodge on the shores of the Danmar, the inland sea. She remembered the pearl divers and the distant wooded shore that was part of the land of Mel'Nir.

She roamed the pebbled beaches with Racha and his four Torch Bearers, his honored friends, and learned their names like a chant: Bajan, Gilyan, Lingrit and Wetzerik. Tall Jana am Wetzerik was the kedran general; she taught Aidris to swim. Lingrit am Thuven, Nazran's son, was a silent young man who went to Lien as envoy. Only Gilyan was within hail when Racha came to need him, and then not close enough.

A great deal of the gossip and foolery of palace life passed right over Aidris's head. Her mother, Hedris, and her aunt Aravel, wife of Esher, were two sisters from the ruling house of Lien. They had brought their own ladies-in-waiting, beautiful, arrogant persons who found all the uses of Achamar utterly barbarous.

Hedris of Lien was of middle height, a soft, shapely woman with masses of dark gold hair. She would sing to her only child and tell her tales of Lien, of magic, of journeys on the rivers and over the seas. The stories Aidris liked best were of four children, a brother and three sisters, who lived in a country house. Their father had died when they were very young: only the two eldest, Kelen and Hedris, could remember him. Their mother was heart and soul to them: quick-tempered, loving, full of play. She came riding back to them from the city as often as she could and brought marvellous presents. Aidris was eager for more stories about Guenna of Lien, her grandmother, but sometimes the telling stopped. Aidris remembered a cold, a distant look on her mother's face.

“Trust no one,” said the queen. “You are of the Chameln. The House of Lien is no friend to you. Mel'Nir is a place of violence and death.”

Then in a moment Hedris was smiling again, as the ladies returned. There came Aravel, the younger sister, a more striking beauty, leading the young prince, Sharn Am Zor, while a nursemaid saw to his baby sister. There was kissing and cooing; the five-year-old prince was bored and devilish, in spite of his golden curls. Aidris seized his hand and escaped to the garden. She caught a glance from her mother and understood: Hedris did not trust her waiting women, her own sister.

The memories were no longer a continuous stream, as they had once been. Everything was wiped out and returned hazily. Everything sloped away from the deed as if it stood on a high hill of time. She was walking between her parents, Racha, her father, on her left; Hedris, seven months pregnant, wore a flowing robe. They walked in the garden before the palace, a formal garden after the manner of Lien, planted as a gift from Racha to his queen. The round beds were bright with flowers, but the paths were too sandy and soft and the young trees could not be coaxed into a formal shape. The garden was a hybrid, a blending of Lien and Achamar. There were gardeners, some members of the court at a distance, and the guards at the lower gate.

Aidris saw nothing until her mother uttered a scream. Two young men in dark clothes flung themselves upon Racha Am Firn and his wife and child. Racha was struck to the heart; he fell, half-covering Aidris. At the same moment Hedris was flung backwards, the knife of the second assassin raking at her body. Aidris cried out, everyone was crying out; there was blood, bright blood on the sand of the pathway and a thick gasping sound in her ears.

As the first assassin freed his long, curved knife and, kneeling, came after Aidris, he gave a thick gasp himself and fell forward heavily. The kedran officer from the lower gate had run in, taken aim and felled him with an arrow. A pair of gardeners beat at the second man with rakes, beat him almost to death. People came. Someone drew the body of Dan Racha aside. Aidris, uninjured, was lifted and carried very fast into the shelter of the palace.

The noise and violence did not stop. There was a continual shouting, the cries of women, the tramp of feet. She was almost flung down in her bedroom with guards rushing to the balcony and crowded in the open doorway. Tylit, the young nursemaid, was terrified; she and Aidris sat shivering together on the end of a padded settle. The Lady Maren, wife of Nazran, came in and shut the door against the soldiers. She wrapped Aidris in furs and had Tylit boil water on the nursery stove. Aidris drank tea, sweetened with honey, asked no questions and leaned against Lady Maren, sleepy and limp.

Then there was a woman at the door, one of the palace midwives, hiding her blood-stained hands under a dark apron. Maren shook Aidris firmly and made her stand up.

“There is no help for it,” she said. “You must do as I tell you, child. Dan Racha has gone; your mother was not spared; her child could not live. She has a few breaths of life remaining, then she too will go to the halls of the Goddess. She has sent for you, to know that you are safe, and you must go to bid her farewell.”

Still Aidris did not speak; she was led through broad, sunlit corridors to the dark bedroom. Hedris lay covered to the neck, her face whiter than the bed linen, her hair spread out. Her sister Aravel had been summoned; she knelt by the bed together with four ladies in waiting. When Aidris was led to stand beside her pillow, Hedris smiled.

“I have had a dream,” she said in a clear voice. “I have seen our dear sister Elvédegran and her child.”

“Her child?” asked Aravel, hoarsely.

“A male child,” said Hedris, “and she placed on its breast this Swan of Lien that we all wear, sister. Surely, surely I will come to her. Let Aidris wear my amulet now . . .”

Aravel nodded to the youngest of the women, Riane, and she came trembling to the head of the bed, took the medallion of the silver swan from around the neck of the dying woman and slipped it over Aidris's head.

“Let me . . .” said Hedris in a fading voice. “Let me be alone with Aidris.”

The women did not move at once, then Aravel rose up and stretched out her hands to the others.

“Come, we will go to the end of the room.”

“Leave us!” said Hedris more sharply. “Sister . . . I charge you!”

“Come then!”

Aravel bowed her golden head and shepherded the women out of the chamber.

Hedris smiled thinly at her daughter; her eyes were wide, as if she strained to see through a mist.

“Kneel by me . . .” she said. “Have they gone?”

Aidris cleared her throat, coaxed out a reply.

“Quickly,” said her mother. “There is something else. A treasure. A secret. Feel the bed frame . . . the carved snake, then the three figures of the Goddess, then the flower . . .”

Aidris did not look away from her mother's pale face.

“The flower?” she asked, as her searching fingers moved over the dark, polished wood.

“Press its center!” The voice was growing weaker.

A small hollow opened two finger breadths from the carved flower in a circle of leaves. Aidris drew out a long, fine chain of bronze; the jewel or medallion on the chain was hidden in a pouch of soft green leather. She closed the hiding place.

“Hide it well!” said Hedris. “It is all my legacy, all I have to give. Guard it. Tell no one that you have it.”

“I promise.”

Hedris lay exhausted; her voice had faded completely, but her lips still moved. Aidris crumpled the treasure in her hand and thrust it down into the pocket in her right boot. These were her favorite boots, red leather, from the northern tribes; the long pocket was meant to sheath a dagger. She drew out the scrap of leather for polishing that stayed in the sheath, stowed the treasure far down, then replaced the leather.

“Mother,” said Hedris again. “Mother, protect my dear child. It was well done . . . do not blame yourself . . . he was kind and good.”

She moved a hand out from under the bedclothes and reached blindly towards Aidris. Then there was a sound in her throat; her hand was still. Aidris saw that it was bandaged; her mother had clutched at the assassin's knife. She saw that the bed beneath its embroidered coverlets was soaked with blood. She screamed aloud, and the women tumbled into the room. Riane led her to the lighted doorway while the others knelt round the bed again, keening softly.

“Aidris . . .”

Aravel stood in the sunlit corridor and held out her arms; Aidris was guided to her aunt's embrace.

“Poor mouse! Poor minikin!”

The sweet voice rang out above her head; the strong delicate hands held her tight. Once Aravel laid a palm on her niece's tightly curling black hair then withdrew it hastily. Aidris looked up into her aunt's lovely face, pale but unmarked by tears; she saw a new vision of herself, undersized, ugly. For the first time she glimpsed a whole world, looming close at hand, where she was not loved and cherished.

Aravel's hands moved to the child's throat, fingered the silver swan on its chain and the fastenings of her tunic.

“What else did your mother give you?” she demanded softly.

Aidris could not answer; she shook her head. The strong hands tightened a little; a ring grazed her chin.

“Where is it?”
said Aravel.

“The swan . . .” faltered Aidris. “She gave me only the swan. You saw . . .”

Aravel took her by the shoulders and shook fiercely.

“Where is it? Where have you hidden it?”

“Danu Aravel!”

Lady Maren stood in the corridor; she let fall a heavy bunch of keys which clanged dismally on the polished wooden floor. Her face was heavy and still; two bright circles of color burned in her cheeks. Her voice was threatening. Behind her, like a bodyguard, stood three elderly servant women carrying white linen. Aidris ran or stumbled to clutch at her robe. Aravel threw up her arms. She began to cry and keen aloud, swaying away from the restraining hands of Riane and the guard captain from the Zor household.

Maren directed the women, then led Aidris away, walking so briskly that she almost had to run to keep up. Outside the palace walls a restless crowd grew and grew all through the night, raising the keen, but Aidris was not shown to them.

II

Dan Esher Am Zor rode out to hunt in the Hain, the royal grove, by Lake Musna. The sole ruler of the Chameln and regent for the Firn rode at the head of a large cortege, and it seemed to Aidris, trotting behind on her new grey, that his melancholy grew less with every furlong. The city, the palaces, were far behind.

The nine-year-old prince, Dan Sharn, rode at her side, suffering, because he had not been well taught and neither had his pony. He allowed Aidris to reach out and steady the contrary little brute as they rode quickly, down and up again, through a wide, shallow ditch, full of leaf mould.

The season was high summer. They rode between fields of ripening grain then up a gentle slope, where the ranks of nobles and the outer ring of archers and hunters could spread out from the road. Thick grasses, untrodden, stirred into silver waves by the wind, covered the downward slope to the trees. A mighty head of cloud, a cloud palace, reared up in the endless summer blue, to the east, over the hidden lake. The wood was of oak, birch, elm, planted in ranks and aisles, but in places so old that Aidris felt the breath of the true forest, the urwald, in its deep shades.

The hunt reined in on the long crest of this grassy rise. Dan Esher and those who rode nearest to him must go down first. Below, at the entrance to that broad aisle, the Royal Ride, were the hunt servants, including Tilman Loeke, the hunt master, holding four deerhounds, as many hands high as Sharn's white pony. On the king's right hand rode the envoy from Mel'Nir, Baron Werris, no giant but a handsome, dark man with a peculiar carriage of his head, as if he spent his life talking to giants. On his left Dan Esher had placed a family visitor from Lien, Bergit of Hodd. She was a tall, tough, jolly woman, more than forty years old, widowed and well-connected . . . to the ruling house of Lien for instance. She was the cousin of Kelen, the Markgraf, and his surviving sister Aravel.

In the stableyard that morning she had reacted with a strange “Lienish” delicacy to the timid suggestion from Aidris that she ride astride. No, no it would never do, the sidesaddle it must be.

“All very well for you breeched gals from this wild place . . .” she panted at the mounting block, hitching her sturdy booted leg over the pommel and watching while Aidris arranged the billowing skirts of her habit.

Then she peered closer with shortsighted blue eyes and saw who it was acting as her groom.

“Oh is it you, Dan Aidris? Well, I'll tell you a thing . . . as a gal I rode astride, too. Secretly on the estate at Hodd, flying through the summer meadows. Now this does well enough. I'm used to it. Never missed a season in the hunting field.”

The royal party began to descend the slope to the wood; halfway down grew a solitary young oak. Aidris saw the movement at the same time as the archers; she checked and reached for Sharn's rein. An elderly man in a dark cloak limped out from behind the tree, a woman and a child came to stand beside him. They all held up green sprays of leaves, the sign of a suppliant. They looked peaceful enough, but the suddenness of their appearance was uncanny: the tree did not seem wide enough to have hidden them. What kind of folk rose up so recklessly in the path of the royal hunt?

The archers swung out with a soft whoop, circled the tree even as Dan Esher and his guests drew rein. The ranks of nobles and huntsmen all fanned out and checked admirably. Bajan came up in a breath on the left hand of Aidris.

“Steady . . .”

“Bajan, who are those fools?” demanded Sharn Am Zor in a shrill voice.

He looked the very picture of a Zor princeling, a young boy of surpassing physical beauty, golden-haired, blue-eyed, well-made . . . a being so bright and perfect in his blue tunic and red cloak that he might have ridden out on his white palfrey from an illuminated scroll. Aidris knew two things: the poor wretch was abominably spoiled, and he had great spirit. He was fighting back tears from his trouble with the ill-mannered pony.