A Princess of the Chameln (42 page)

Their royal progress was slow; the folk turned out to meet them by tens and hundreds. Here the Daindru came upon the first of the “changelings,” new men indeed—men of Mel'Nir who forswore the protectorate and did homage to the Daindru for their estates. They had all some close connection to the Chameln lands. Some had married women of the Chameln or had married their sons or daughters to neighboring Chameln landowners. Many had gathered their estates long before the protectorate had been established. The changelings trod warily and often brought supporters, Chameln kin or tenants, to persuade the king and the queen to accept their oaths of fealty.

At a last camp in a village, almost within sight of the city walls, Jana Am Wetzerik came to the queen in the main room of the local inn and said, “Here is a changeling who swears he is already your vassal, my queen.”

“What, a man of Mel'Nir?”

The general smiled and so did Bajan, who had seen the newcomer.

“His wife has tamed him,” she said.

She went out into the sunshine, and the big tawny-haired man dismounting from his charger was Hem Rhanar, to whom she had given a small feoff of land by Lake Musna. He went proudly to hold the stirrup of a woman getting down from a Chameln grey. She was still something of a beauty, but now she wore Chameln dress, her boots were muddy, her figure sturdier than it had been. It was Riane.

Aidris took her hands, greeted her with tears. The youngest waiting woman of Queen Hedris brought back a whole chapter of her life in Achamar. The fate of this lady of Lien seemed strange as her own. She looked into Riane's grey eyes and found a hint of resignation but no regret.

“I have borne three sons,” said Riane, explaining her life, “and we do very well on my lord's manor.”

So Aidris accepted the homage of Hem Rhanar . . . or Haral Am Rhanar, the Lord of Musna Vale, as he was now called. She recalled their last meeting, fateful for all concerned.

“The last time I set eyes upon Baron Werris,” she said. “What has become of the protector?”

“Majesty,” he said, gazing down at her respectfully, “I never knew or liked the fellow, but I will say this: he was forced to do as he did by the troubled times and by Ghanor, the king. I have heard that he is dead.”

A kedran troop had been sent ahead into Achamar to prepare the way for the Daindru. In the morning, the king and the queen, together with their courts, their escorts and their soldiers, set out over the high road. The city walls of wood and stone loomed ahead, curving, receding, then coming nearer, now like a cliff face, now like a forest of trees. Then Sharn Am Zor cried out and pointed, and Aidris laughed with delight. There before them the citizens had opened the Oaken Gate: an event of such moment that it was supposed to take place only once in a hundred years. The Oaken Gate had last been opened to let in Zendra Am Zor and Ochim Am Firn, the warrior queen and king who had put down the rebellious northern tribes. Now the mighty oaken sections of the wall that formed the “gate” had been cast down again into a hollowed place in the road. The dust was still rising from the gate's fall as they rode over the ancient logs and entered Achamar.

The city spread out before them like a tapestry; the trees were in full leaf for the spring; the two palaces rose up like wonders of the world. They followed the ring road, and the citizens cheered them round about. Aidris, more contained than she had expected, looked into their faces. Had they suffered? Had the poor always bound their feet with rags, had the merchants always been so fat? What did they see looking at the queen? Were there any who truly recalled that child who rode out in the mornings at Nazran's side, who crossed the city yard by yard with her mother with the honored merchants smoothing the way in the snow? Might not a pretender have done as well, the poor false queen out of Balufir, Hazard's light o' love? They passed the south hall, and she saw that there had been fires lit in the yard. On the sharp gables of the gatehouse there were two severed heads. Revenge had been taken upon the garrison of Mel'Nir. She would not look, turned away sickened, and urged Tamir forward. Sharn Am Zor paid not much heed to the trophies.

The procession came to the Palace of the Zor in the east, and the Daindru parted formally. Bajan rode at her side along the ring road until they returned almost to their starting point at the Oaken Gate, and there arose the Palace of the Firn, large as her dreams and filled with life, green branches springing from every cornice and balcony. The chorus of wonder from the Athron folk in her train reached her ears at last. There had not been many suppliants along the way; she half knew, in the way that things were known to her these days, by hints and whispers, that petitioners were hustled out of the way at her approach because her escort knew that the queen did not care to be pressed. Now, as they came up to the central gate of the palace, two suppliants sprang up in her path, an old man and a child. Before Gefion could pounce, Aidris cried out to the escort:

“Let them come to me!”

She waited, in a dream, as they walked towards her hand in hand. They both wore ragged clothes of greyish homespun and leather sandals. The old man . . . and he looked truly old . . . had a straggling beard, unkempt yellow-grey locks; he might have been a Shaman from the northern tribes. Yet it was Jalmar Raiz.

She leaned down and took the green branch from Pinga, the greddle, and he smiled at her, saying, “See the truth, Dan Aidris!”

“What will you have, old man?”

She fixed her eyes on him.

“You have sent for me to be a healer in Achamar,” he replied. “I have come to serve you.”

“What shall I call you?” she asked.

“Some call me Jaraz,” he replied, humble and unsmiling. “This is my elder son, Pinga. I had another son, but he has sailed to the lands below the world.”

“I accept your service,” she said. “Find a lodging in the city and wait till I send for you.”

The suppliants bowed and stood aside, and she rode into the palace yard.

“Will you have him then?” murmured Bajan. “After all that he has done?”

“I did send for this healer,” she said, smiling. “He has come ten years late. I will have him.”

There were no secrets between them. Bajan had a gleam in his eye of pure jealousy—half-real, half-feigned—for those he called “Venn's admirers”: Raff Raiz and Terril of Varda. She knew too that in the north there was a child of five years, Bajan's daughter, given into the care of the Nureshen by a woman of the lngari. Exile was long. Now they had come home together. In her love for him she found, at that moment, the true feeling of comfort and elation for such a homecoming.

So they went in, and she remembered the turmoil of allotting rooms for courtiers and guests. She admitted herself tired and sat taking the sun in a room that had been part of her father's suite on the west side, for he had given the best and warmest chambers to his queen. Lingrit came to her with a strange look.

“A room, an inner room on the courtyard, was purified,” he said. “Will you hear the reason from me or from a servant who was here with the protector?”

“Tell me . . .”

So she heard at last of Werris, the end of Werris, that handsome dark man, the courtier, the usurper, the self-styled protector. He had taken his own life with poison and with a knife. She cried out as the tale continued, thinking of the small dark room they had chosen. For Werris had not been alone; Micha Am Firn had died at his side. It was a love death. The poor widow had given her heart to the usurper. Aidris felt wonder and guilt and a vile relief at the tale. No mercy could have been given to Werris. Micha Am Firn had loved without hope. In past times her own life might have been forfeit. The queen had been spared; she would not have to be cruel. Now these two lay hastily interred, unblessed, in the palace grounds, by the royal graveyard of the Firn.

Suddenly she was very tired indeed. She could only stare out into the grounds of the palace and hear the women in the room behind her setting things to rights. The child stirred in her womb. She looked out and saw a few birch trees where once she and Nazran had practised shooting with her toy bow. There was a sound like the sea beyond the whispered arrangements of the women. The people of Achamar were rejoicing for the return of the Daindru. She began to count, as she had done for Sabeth and for Telavel . . . Birchmoon, Elmmoon, Oakmoon, Applemoon. . . .

The Queen of the Firn came to her labor late in the Thornmoon, the moon of sacrifice, and after three days and three nights, she bore a prince. The midwife, Gezi, Chieftainess of the Nureshen, helped draw the child forth and showed it to the witnesses, Lingrit Am Thuven and Lord Zabrandor, who attended by custom for the House of the Zor. Yet she feared for the life of the queen and called her son, Danu Bajan, and the Queen's friend, the Countess of Zerrah, and at last the healer, Jaraz of Lien. He practised his healing art and, some said, his magic upon the queen.

Aidris saw the eyes of Jalmar Raiz fixed upon her, then a mist gathered, her pain lessened. She came to herself feeling cold and found that she was walking across an endless plain. The ground under her feet was thick with frost; she was crossing the frost fields. She saw, not far off, a tall mounted figure made all of light and knew that this was the White Warrior, come to take her to the halls of the Goddess. She saw as she came closer still that he led another horse, and it was Telavel, her true companion in exile.

She longed to go with them, but she stood gazing up at the White Warrior and said, “I cannot go with you. It is not yet time!”

As she spoke, she began to hear voices, a groundswell of distant voices, all the folk of the Chameln land who called back the Queen of the Firn, and nearer, she heard Bajan's voice and Sabeth's voice, calling her by name. She heard the thin cry of a child.

“So be it,” said the White Warrior, his voice as soft and cold as the crackle of frost under her boot soles, “So be it, Aidris Am Firn. Go in peace. We will be waiting.”

Then she was rushing upwards towards the light. She saw Jalmar Raiz, still standing at the foot of her bed, and felt the constraining cloth in which she had been wound. There was still a sensation of cold; her lower body had been wrapped in ice-cold linen to stop the bleeding. She saw Bajan, his mother, Gezi Am Nuresh, and Sabeth, holding the child in her arms. Sabeth wept and tried to smile through her weeping.

“Hush,” said Aidris. “I have come back . . .”

Bajan knelt beside the bed. Sabeth knelt too, and showed her the child. It was small and red-faced and sturdy, with clenched fists waving and black hair, a child of the Firn, a prince. She looked at the child and at the faces of those around her wistfully, coldly, as if she took leave of them. For now she knew that her foreboding was true: she would live to be very old, to be the Old Queen; she would outlive them all save only the newborn child. Her childhood, her exile would be half forgotten in the course of a long life, returning as pictures or legends, just as her long life itself passed in a moment upon the eternal plain.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1984 by Cherry Wilder

Map by John M. Ford

Cover design by Frances Lassor

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2697-0

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