A Princess of the Chameln (41 page)

This absence from your presence, sweet,

This silence in our love's refrain.”

Sharn relaxed, dreaming by the fire; the candles burned low. When he moved a hand to brush the hair from his eyes, the firelight caught his rings and sent points of light scurrying about on the new hangings. Aidris remembered Aravel, his mad mother, in the palace of the Firn, at Achamar.

“Come harp and lute and lovely flute,

With lilting flight of harmony,

To render all my longings mute

And bring my dear love back to me.”

The song was sweet, but she was far away from any thoughts of love. If she longed for anything, it was for peace. As the last notes faded into silence, there were heavy steps and raised voices outside the door, and she heard Ensign Gefion shouting angrily. Engist, the king's master-at-arms, burst into the room with a drawn sword.

“Remember where you are, man!” said Sharn Am Zor.

The old soldier did not even sheath his sword.

“Majesty,” he said, “the prisoners are gone! The cells are disordered . . . their clothes lie there . . .”

Sharn sprang up. His rage would have been more frightening to Aidris if it had not so perfectly resembled the rage of Sharn the child.

“Treachery!” he said hoarsely. “Firnish treachery . . .”

“Get your henchman out of my chamber!”

She raised her voice, and the man slunk away. Sharn continued to rave and swear.

“You talk of mercy? Are they dead then? You have done this thing, Aidris. They say you are a witch. Must I rule with a damned Firnish witch queen? Did I suffer all my life to be crossed and cozened by a woman now that I am king?”

“You are found out, cousin,” she said. “You sent Engist to kill the prisoners!”

“To fetch them!” he said angrily. “To bring them up the secret stair to this chamber.”

“Engist . . . your master-at-arms?”

“Believe me,” he said. “Aidris . . .”

He sat down again, his whole body shaking. She did not know the truth; she would never know it. She stood beside him and put her arms about him.

“They are safe,” she said. “We are safe. Your suffering must have an end. You have come home again, Sharn. You are king in the Chameln lands, and I am queen.”

She thought she saw those two, Raff Raiz and the nameless girl, the players' wench, wandering about in the snowy night. Yet this was only her cruel fantasy; Lawlor told her a different tale.

“It worked like a charm, Dan Aidris. We went down to the cells, muffled up that precious pair a little and came out with them. The yard of the keep was full of soldiers and house servants . . . who counted heads? The false queen was frightened at first, but we told her to be a good girl and go into exile like a true queen. No shortage of horses—we set her up behind the false king on a big charger captured by Adderneck. We brought them past Radroch Town, as you said, all the way to the shore of the Danmar, within the king's territory.

“There was some magic in all this, I think, for they were awaited. We stood with them on the strand, and a man hailed us from a boat. He had a child with him, or perhaps it was a dwarf. The boat drew into shore, and the young man put the poor false queen aboard, then stepped in himself. The man in the boat, who had the look of a scholar, thanked us for our trouble and commended himself to the queen. Then the boat put out into the inland sea.”

Sergeant Lawlor squinted at Aidris, smiling.

“The false king,” she said. “I had the feeling I had seen him once before. He had a look of that tall, yellow-haired tumbler that Grey Company met in a village way to the north of Athron, coming home from the wedding by Wildrode.”

Next day, when the snow lay thick, there came word of a large force approaching from the northwest over the plain. The army of Hem Allerdon, Mel'Nir's best and most resourceful commander in the Chameln lands, had left the encampment before Vigrund and set out to meet the Red Hundreds. When they learned that their reinforcements were destroyed, Allerdon's proud warriors moved on over the wintery plain like an army of ghosts. The northern tribes followed, harried the army on the plain and moved into the hills of the center. Zerrah was already recaptured.

The other generals of Mel'Nir had waited confidently by the Danmar for the next encounter with the king's horde. Now shaken by the disaster that had been left for them to discover, some of their numbers were tempted to fly the field, by land or by sea. Yet they would not abandon their countrymen. They moved out to join Allerdon, and their retreat was cut off. The time of pitched battles was over. The forces of Mel'Nir were mauled by the Chameln and turned to seek for winter quarters in the hills of the center.

So it was that a force of the Nureshen and the Oshen who had pursued Allerdon's men arrived at Radroch. Aidris watched them come from her tower and, at last, mounted the new grey colt Berith and rode out to meet Bajan and Jana Am Wetzerik. There was great rejoicing. She saw Nenad Am Charn, Millis, his daughter, mounted upon Tamir, and one Athron knight, the indefatigable Sir Jared Wild of Wildrode, who had determined to see the adventure through to the end.

“But Queen Aidris,” he trumpeted, “where is your sweet grey mare, Telavel?”

She bent to stroke Tamir and hid her tears so as not to spoil the pleasure of the meeting.

The winter pressed upon all the armies and upon the Daindru and their personal followers. Radroch and the towns of the plain were garrisoned as far east as Dechar and Winnstrand. Old Zabrandor led out the Morrigar once more and came swiftly to the old walled town of Nevgrod, nearby in the hills, and held it so that the men of Mel'Nir could not take refuge there. The Daindru were brought through to winter in the Old Palace, which rose above the town. This ancient monument had served none but a small garrison of Mel'Nir in the past seven years, and they had quartered their horses in the great hall. It was made fast for winter, cleared of rats and old swallows' nests; and by the time of the winter feast, Sharn Am Zor confessed himself at least half satisfied.

At Nevgrod Aidris learned to sit still and play the queen. Bajan went about and saw to the quartering of the troops; Lingrit came to her with affairs of the kingdom. She had named him her Chancellor and Nenad Am Charn her new Torch Bearer and his son Racha Am Charn the new trading envoy. She had her nobles with whom she dined, her waiting women and the kedran of her escort who knew her tastes, and the hours when she ate and slept. She saw that her court, the court of the Firn, would always be, like Athron, warm, rich, but not glittering like the court of the Zor, which resembled Lien.

Here in the old town, the Daindru held their first audiences; the green branches of suppliants, all those who would beg a favor of the rulers, followed them in the dark streets. Aidris looked at the people of the Chameln lands, at her subjects, the city-dwellers and the poor tenant farmers of the central hills. She felt their love for herself and for Sharn Am Zor, but who or what it was that these poor folk knew or loved she could hardly tell. She was ashamed to stand before them finely dressed, well fed, warmly housed, and hear them cheer for the Daindru. It was not enough to have the common touch, which even Sharn Am Zor so brilliantly displayed; it was not enough to be a symbol, a light for the people of the Chameln lands in their darkness. What was a king or a queen? What was her right to which she had held so jealously? She felt a doubt, an unrest that could never be stilled, that had to do with the harsh lives of her poor subjects and with battle and bloodshed. She felt in herself a great cry that would never be uttered, a questioning of all the forms and uses of the world, echoing up to the halls of the Goddess.

She woke sometimes in the night or in the dark winter morning and saw Bajan asleep by her side. Her love and deep content were tinged with fear. What could divide them? She wanted to wind him in her arms and cling to him, crying out, “I have no one, no friend, no lover except you, in all the world!” Yet she resisted this strong possessive love and told herself that it came from old sorrow, from the loss of her parents, from the loneliness of an exile, of a queen.

She looked into the scrying stone and spoke to the Lady in a new way.

“Are you alone? Are you lonely? Come out . . . declare yourself. We are here, Sharn and I, we are safe. We will come home to Achamar in the spring. Oh come to us there, let us protect you. Is Lien so dear to you?”

But the Lady was as elusive as before. She smiled and said, in that distant voice; “Where is Lien? Where is Achamar?”

On the table in the world of the stone was a spray of whitethorn, the tree of magic and of sacrifice. Aidris found time, during the winter, to work her own magic. A jeweler in Nevgrod polished the large rough stone, the gift of the old Countess Palazan Am Panget, and set it in a silver rim. It was a rare, large carbuncle, deep violet red with a star of light in its depths; she performed her working on it and kept it close to her. She knew it would be her own scrying stone.

Some time after New Year, a messenger came bearing letters from Athron. Gerr of Kerrick came to the queen with a shining face.

“She has borne a son!” he said. “She is well . . . she writes it all herself . . . the child thrives, he is beautiful.”

“I long to see them both!” said Aidris.

She missed Sabeth. She thought, fondly, how the Countess of Zerrah would decorate her court and turn heads in the court of the Zor.

“She will come to Zerrah in the spring,” said Gerr.

He looked at Aidris with the boyish smile that she remembered from the Wulfental.

“You have rewarded us,” he said, “although I had many strange fancies. Aidris . . . Dan Aidris . . . let me say this. I will go on to the end, to Achamar and beyond. I am your ‘new man' forever if you will have me.”

When he had gone, she paced about upon a small, chill “balcony” of the Old Palace, guarded by a breast-high wall of stone with slits for archers. She thought of her journey into Athron and the years that had followed. If life had its seasons, then the spring of her life had been Athron. But she dismissed this as another strange fancy; her life would be too long. She thought of Prince Ross, ages old, and his bleak memory of seven years exile upon a rock in the ocean.

As she walked about, Yvand came out with her fur cloak, her new sable cloak, Bajan's latest gift, and laid it tenderly about her shoulders. She was indeed entering a new season of her life; she was delivered over to the old wives. The queen was with child.

With the spring she was stifled in the Old Palace; she rode out on Tamir, followed the distant clash of the armies. For the first time she asked Bajan to remain at her side; he rode with her and the king to Grunach and then to Zerrah. She lingered there in the old brown manor house, dazed and fretful, waiting for Sabeth to come, waiting for the Melniros to be driven from the land. The Willowmoon went out in a gale of wind; Allerdon hung on with five hundred of his best soldiers in Ledler Fortress, barring the way to Achamar, but his countrymen treated with the Daindru. An army of the protectorate, stripped of honor and arms, was permitted to take the long way home across the plain to the Nesbath road and the Adderneck, symbol of the humiliation of the Great King. The rumor was abroad that Werris was a fugitive.

Aidris woke from her afternoon nap one mild day near the end of Birchmoon. Yvand, at the bedside, knitting, put a finger to her lips. There beside her on the bed in a nest of pillows was a baby. She bent over it half in a dream, remembering the milky odor, remembering an old feeling of mingled fear and distaste that she had had for babes in arms when she was a small child herself. The plump, fair, red-cheeked stranger opened its eyes, and she saw that they were still an indeterminate cloudy blue. It stared, gave a gaping smile, and began to make soft, cheerful noises.

“Oh
you!”
she said to the trustful creature.

The child's nursemaid curtsied to the queen; it was the young daughter of the Garth midwife. Aidris gathered up the baby unhandily in its wraps and carried it to the window. There on the hillside, among the drifts of spring flowers, was Sabeth, walking with the child Imelda.

“I do not even know Master Kerrick's name,” she said to the women.

“Why, the sweet boy is called Huon,” said Yvand. “An Athron name. We must begin to think of names, my Queen.”

The journey to Ledler in the last ten days of its seige took on the character of a royal progress. As she had foreseen, Sabeth greatly enhanced the court of the Firn, and Sharn paid her gallant attention. Yet, as they drew near, the sight of the massive fortress casting a shadow over the rough green meadows of the hill cotts filled Aidris with dread.

She had no stomach for any of the siege tales, but she remained with Sharn to see Allerdon and his defenders march out. Sickness had brought the siege to an end. The men of Mel'Nir had slaughtered some of their horses for food, released others. Aidris sent to ask for Marshal Brond, but word came back that the envoy was dead, killed during the march eastward over the plain. Allerdon was questioned by Zabrandor and Bajan and given horses for his remaining officers for the long, cruel homeward journey.

The fortress was searched from top to bottom, all of its living quarters and outbuildings and every cranny of the fetid dungeons below ground. No prisoners were found, although Ledler had a reputation as the protector's dungeon for Chameln rebels. No trace was found of Nazran Am Thuven and the Lady Maren, not even a marked grave or the record of their imprisonment. Lingrit came to Aidris where she was resting in a tent in the besiegers' camp.

“Werris has destroyed the records,” he said. “Even the house servants had gone when Allerdon came in. There is an old graveyard within the wall. I do not doubt that they both lie there.”

The way lay open to Achamar. The high road was broad and old, muddy with the spring rains. It wound through a countryside that Aidris found strange as a dream: green yet stony, with grey rock visible on the sides of the hills and, in the valleys, groves of birch. She knew the land and did not know it. Sharn Am Zor, riding at her side, had a good and patient horse at last; but when he cursed or tugged at its rein, she reached out to help, as if he had still been riding Moon, the fractious white pony.