A Princess of the Chameln (6 page)

“I am awake!” She eased herself higher in the bed.

Nazran set down his candle on the press at the bedside; he sat in a chair, bending forward so that he could take her cold hands.

“The man who attacked you and Dan Sharn was a guard officer dismissed from the service of the Zor for theft. He was recruited in the city here by mercenaries out of Lien, Redbeard and two others. They carried gold. Two were trained archers.”

“What was their plan?” whispered Aidris.

“Some evil working,” he said, “some ceremony within the wood, in that clearing with the stone drinking trough. Sharn was to be wounded, lamed, and by an arrow of the Firn. You were to be killed. When you managed to come out of the wood, so the wretch claimed, the other assassins became desperate, shooting to kill lest you should reach Musna Village. They were afraid of some dark master. The leader, Redbeard, swore that you two escaped by magic. . . .”

“We did,” said Aidris. “I have told you . . . the oak tree sheltered us.”

“It may be,” said Nazran, shaking his head. “What has your poor Aunt Aravel been saying to you?”

She told him as best she could, but the words were cold, they had lost their power.

“Is it true?” she asked. “Why would that old Councillor of Lien so set upon the house of the Firn, to do us ill?”

“There might be reasons.”

“And has he so much power?”

“Has anyone?” asked Nazran drily. “Does the master of earth and air need to hire assassins? Dark magic is like fear, it grows and festers in our own minds. I have more trust in the magic of the earth itself, the benign powers of the Goddess . . . the magic of hidden Ystamar, the Vale of Oak Trees.”

“Nazran,” said Aidris, “what became of my Aunt Elvédegran in the court of Mel'Nir? No one will tell me.”

“She died in childbirth,” said Nazran. “There is no mystery here. She bore a deformed child to Prince Gol of Mel'Nir and it died or was put to sleep at birth. This may have been a kindness.”

“She bore a son,” said Aidris dreamily. “She held the child in her arms and placed on its breast a silver swan of Lien like this one I wear. . . .”

“Who told you that, child? Was it Aravel?”

“No,” she said, “it was my mother. As she lay dying, she saw Elvédegran with the child and thought she must come to her sister in the Halls of the Goddess.”

“In those bright halls,” said Nazran sadly, “we are all made whole and sound. Take my blessing now, child, for what it is worth, and sleep.”

“Send to Ledler Fortress, to my father's sister, Micha Am Firn,” she said. “I will come to her when my wound is healed; I will go out of Achamar.”

“After that you can come to Thuven Manor,” he said. “We have often thought of it as a haven for you.”

He made no argument at all, and Aidris knew that her plight must be serious.

The summer weather had broken. Oakmoon, the midsummer month, went out in showers, and Applemoon was no better. Throughout the grain basin of the Chameln lands, from Achamar south to the inland sea, the harvest came in with bone-breaking haste, and some of it was lost. The freakish weather continued with storms and whirlwinds, and in the north the smaller lakes spilled over with floodwater until the land became like the sea. Word came out of Lien, to the southwest, of terrible flooding in the land between the two rivers; there the harvest was entirely lost, and poor folk came over the border into the Chameln lands at Nesbath and camped along the highway.

It was in these days that Aidris first saw the giant warriors of Mel'Nir going about in some numbers in the city. They were peaceful enough; it was like the old riddle: “Where does the Great Grey Bear lie down to sleep? Anywhere he wants to.” They were young men, not veterans, and they were the housecarls of the southern landlords. As autumn came, after the poor ending to the summer, Dan Esher called off the Dainmut, the council meeting, for fear of street fighting between groups of vassals.

On the day that she left the city there was still one debt to be paid. Baron Werris answered her summons and brought with him a certain Hem Rhanar, his countryman, proprietor of a newly gathered estate by Lake Musna. Rhanar was a middle-aged junker with a tawny beard; he had to stoop down to enter the workroom. Their business was simple: it had been arranged that Aidris would make him a gift of forty acres of best bottom land from one of her estates bordering his own, and he would give up all claim to the lake shore. The Village of Musna would be saved.

She received these two men of Mel'Nir with little formality; Riane sat at her embroidery frame listening to their palaver; Nazran stood in the shadows, letting his pupil conduct the interview. Rhanar reared up in the midst of the quiet room like a rock or a tree. His rumbling voice, his muscular shoulders, his enormous hands, were overpowering.

When she looked at him, Aidris thought of the High Plateau of Mel'Nir, where the wild horses rode free in their herds. She imagined the raw life on his estate: cold water, stone floors, loud voices, a life shared with horses and dogs. It was a life she had sometimes envied when the ladies of Lien pressed too closely upon her. By contrast with Hem Rhanar, Werris, the Envoy, was a courtier.

She could see that Hem Rhanar found her a puzzling figure, half a child still, dressed in the Chameln style with a fine linen tunic over soft leather breeches and boots. There was a jocular note in his voice, which showed that he found it difficult to defer to any half-grown girl. He cast admiring glances at pretty Riane, a true woman in a flowing robe.

“Have you obtained your estate by purchase?” asked Aidris.

“No, Highness, not all,” answered Rhanar, “for my mother was a lady of the Chameln. I inherited a manor from her brother.”

Aidris smiled.

“Then you are of Chameln blood. I will make a new bargain with you. I will extend the gift of sixty acres if you will take it as a feoff from my hand and give me your allegiance.”

Baron Werris was not amused; Nazran gave no sign of what he felt; Riane delicately smothered a yawn.

Rhanar slapped his thigh loudly and said, “Agreed! I will do it!”

Nazran hovered as she altered the deed and the map. She wrote well in the common or merchants' script, but not in runes or the straight-letter. Aidris rose up and drew from its silver sheath the short bronze sword, a treasure of the Firn. When Hem Rhanar knelt before her, his eyes were almost on a level with her own. He was enfeoffed of the land and swore himself her liegeman in respect of the land.

The audience was over. When she was left alone with Nazran, he said, “It was well done. Musna is saved.”

He opened the tall wooden shutters onto the balcony and let in the fitful sunshine of an autumn day. Thornmoon, the month of sacrifice, was just beginning.

“Has it occurred to you that
this
might have been the plan?” he asked. “Jalmar the Healer was determined to save the village. Musna rendered an unexpected service to the Daindru.”

“Jalmar Riaz hired the assassins? I cannot believe it!” said Aidris.

Nazran sighed and looked out into the streets of the city. The maples around the distant Zor palace were turning blood red and gold.

“Look there!” he said, his frown lifting.

Aidris came to stand beside him at the window, and he moved the shutter so that she remained in shadow. He pointed into the street beyond the palace stockade, and there was a young man, a soldier in elaborate strip mail, mounted on a tall white stallion. He wore a shining helmet with a plume, and behind him rode a kedran, a battlemaid, with a banner showing a white tree. Their two horses were picking their way through drifts of red leaves and patches of mud.

“Ah, I can read those two,” said Nazran with a chuckle. “A knight questor and his esquire, come out of Athron. That banner is for the Foresters.”

“But what does the knight seek?” asked Aidris.

There was something ridiculous about the young man, his fine trappings, his plume, his banner.

“He is looking for adventure,” said Nazran.

She rode out at nightfall through the northern gate of the city with a troop of nine kedran. Esher Am Zor came with the kedran of his own bodyguard to bid her farewell. Two of the Torch Bearers, her father's companions, were present: Gilyan and Wetzerik. She thought of the lights going out in the palace of the Firn; in all its hundred rooms, its galleries and corridors, only darkness and silence.

She travelled to Ledler Fortress on its high hill and stayed almost to the year's end with the quiet, dark widow woman, Micha Am Firn, her closest relative. Then, before the snow became too deep she rode westward with only two kedran, the officers Kira and Maith, to the distant manor of Thuven, near the border range, on the edge of the forest. Nazran and Maren were already there to welcome her. She remained at the manor house for more than two years, undisturbed.

Chapter Two

I

The manor house had been rebuilt out of an old water fortress. A shallow lake spread out before it, and behind rose a man-made hill, low and grey. It was a barrow for the dead; no one knew who had made it, but the bones that came up to the surface of the long mound were small, almost child-sized. Aidris once found a small dagger made of polished bone, golden with age, twisted into the roots of the grass.

The house and the lake were enclosed in a ring of trees, poplar and birch; on the eastern side there was a windbreak of spruce and pine. Beyond these darker trees the plain swept away; the road east could be seen crossing the plain. She used to watch the traffic on the road, coming from distant Achamar and the towns that lay between. A smudge of dust became a solitary rider, a moving scrap of yellow among the wild flowers grew into a laden wagon with a bright hood. They came on, wagon and rider alike, and passed by on the road.

Looking westward from the manor house she could see the plain come into the shadow of the forest. Here, where plain and forest met, the deer came out to graze, and she saw or imagined hunters stalking the deer. Oak mingled loosely with dark firs here on level ground; there were pleasant glades and woodland pools. Then the forest closed its ranks. Massed dark trees covered the world farther than eye could see and clothed the knotty slopes of the border mountains. The road ran on out of sight, cutting through the forest to the town of Vigrund. Beyond the town by several leagues the road crossed through a mountain pass into the land of Athron.

Aidris learned to study alone while Nazran was absent in the capital. Lady Maren's household was very small; there were few visitors. When riders or vehicles struck out from the road towards the manor, there was always a moment of tension until the newcomers were recognised. When pedlars came in spring or autumn or the Pilgrim Brothers in any season, she did not show herself. If they caught her out in the open air, she kept her distance or rode Telavel up onto the barrow.

One evening in late summer, the Hazelmoon, after she had been at Thuven half a year, Lady Maren came to her in Nazran's study.

“You had better come down,” she said.

Lady Maren half frowned, half smiled; as they walked onto the landing, she put her finger to her lips. Aidris peered through the railing and looked down into the hall. Two hunters stood below holding the carcase of a young white deer. They were both bearded men, well-proportioned and muscular, their hair dressed in shining curls and tresses; they wore deerskin tunics and sturdy boots. They were tiny men; they stood little more than waist high to Maith, the kedran on duty; they were hunters of the Tulgai.

Aidris walked slowly down the stairs, unable to keep from smiling, and the hunters smiled back at her, teeth flashing in their dark, snub-nosed faces. The older man, whose beard was streaked with white, spoke up.

“A gift for the heir of the Firn!”
he said in the Old Speech.

They laid the deer on the flagstones of the hall, and stepping forward, they knelt down at her feet. Aidris felt a rare moment of pride and delight.

“Rise up,”
she said. “
I thank you from my heart, brave hunters of the Tulgai.”

They stood before her, blinking a little in the lighted hall.

“My greeting to the Balg,”
she said.
“Let me send a gift to him in return for the white doe.”

As they heaved up the deer again and headed for the kitchen, Aidris called after them,
“Did the birds tell you I was here?”

The younger hunter smiled over his shoulder, shy and fierce.

“We have heard
. . .” he said.

“What will they be given?” she asked Maren.

“Honey,” she said. “Salt. A firkin of apple brandy as your gift to the Balg. They come in about once every two years.”

At Thuven she began to sleep peacefully; her nightmares went away. She began to think of her fear as a childish thing she had outgrown. In spite of reading, riding, caring for the horses, apple picking, her life seemed pleasantly empty. She waited eagerly for Nazran and for the dispatches he sent. She treasured up the news from Achamar, from Lien and Mel'Nir, and the stories of Athron and its delights, which were common in this border country.

Bajan came in her sixteenth year and stayed for the year's end: for the Ashmoon, the month of changes, the five days of the Winter Feast, and the Tannenmoon, Old Man's month, the first month of the new year. It was a time of so much rejoicing that she became anxious. Could this be herself, Aidris Am Firn, who woke every morning, eager and unafraid, and looked from the window only to see if more snow had fallen?

She began to work her own magic. On the day that Bajan took his leave, the snows of a mild winter were still patchily covering the ground. She rode out with Bajan and his northern escort beyond the pines of the windbreak, far on to the plain. Parting he leaned from his horse and kissed her formally on both cheeks; they clasped gloved hands. She wheeled Telavel and galloped back again, then turned up the path to the top of the barrow. She did not look at the small cavalcade heading northward across the plain.