Kings of the North (61 page)

“In a manner of speaking,” Arian said. “Let me tell the tale in order, if you will.”

“Go ahead.” The Duke’s expression was grim.

“When princesses arrived from Pargun and Kostandan, all women King’s Squires were assigned to guard them and learn what we could from them. Both princesses spoke Common well enough. Soon we realized that they knew each other.” Arian went on to describe their demeanor, the messages they wanted passed secretly, and the reports the Squires made to Kieri.

“He wasn’t interested in them as future queens?” the Duke asked.

“Not at all; he was adamant he would not wed any young girls, and not Pargunese, above all.” Arian went on to tell the rest, including sending the girls to Falk’s Hall.

“Their guardians agreed?”

“It seemed so at the time, but in the case of Pargun, that agreement was a ploy. That princess’s guardians told Pargun’s king that we’d sold his daughter to a brothel—”

“What?!”

“And a few tendays ago, Pargun’s king came across the river alone, intent on assassinating King Kieri to revenge the insult.”

“But that’s ridiculous! Kieri would never—not even the Pargunese could believe—”

“They did, my lord. There’s more—” Arian explained about the
guardians’ lies to the princess, the Pargunese king’s visit to Chaya, and his return to the north, including the king’s injury, and Kieri’s healing of it.

“That’s like what happened to
him,
” the Duke said. “That’s what you meant about Paks—she healed his poisoned wound.”

“We were all amazed, you may imagine. Not in living memory of men has a Lyonyan king had such power.”

The Duke frowned. “And yet you are not come as a King’s Squire and his messenger. I do not understand. Nor why any of this should be held secret.”

“So much is not—I agree your king needs to know it, and I expect the king has sent a courier direct to Vérella,” Arian said.

“Why not you?”

“It is difficult.” Arian took a breath and reached to the taig for support. “My lord, how old do you think I am?”

“Somewhere in your twenties—perhaps thirty.”

“My lord, I am over fifty, and am like to live to near two hundred, as will the king. We are nearly of an age.”

The Duke frowned. “You don’t look it.”

“No. It is my elven blood. I have lived all my life in Lyonya, where the taig nourished me. And that leads to the core of what I would have you hold close in Falk’s Oath, Knight to Knight.”

“If it does not harm those I love, I will hold it so,” the Duke said, touching her ruby.

“The king chose many half-elves, men and women both, to be King’s Squires,” Arian said. “Because he himself is half-elven, and looks younger than his human years, we did not realize that he saw us all as younger than we are. Too young when he considered whom to marry.”

The Duke’s brows went up. “You love him.”

“Yes. From the first, but he showed no sign that he cared for me. I am not a rash youngster to go chasing a man.”

The Duke nodded. “I have trouble seeing you as my elder, looking so young, but I can believe a woman of fifty would not act like a girl of eighteen.” She laughed a little. “I was a girl of eighteen when I thought he was the hero of
my
life. As he was, but differently than I’d imagined.”

“All the spring, all the summer, into the fall,” Arian said, “I respected
him, as our king, and admired him for what he was doing, and my affections … grew. I said nothing; he showed nothing; I was careful not to hint. Then the morning after we came back from the north, I took him down in the salle.”

“You took Kieri down?” This time the Duke looked startled. “I’ve sparred with him; I think I’ve taken him only four times in twenty years.”

“He wasn’t attending. Our armsmaster signaled me.” Arian did not mention that she’d taken Kieri down before. “Everyone at the palace had been pressuring him to find a wife—even Armsmaster Carlion, that morning. So when he said he wanted to find a woman with a sword, my heart leapt, because he had smiled at me. And then he said, still looking at me, if only we Squires were not all so young, and left it unfinished. So … I told him I was not so young.” Arian stopped. Her throat had closed; she could feel tears stinging her eyes. It had been so frightening to say that, to risk his scorn or his indifference, and then so wonderful … and then so terrible. The Duke said nothing. Arian managed to swallow at last.

“We saw each other, our hearts and our souls face-to-face. We felt the taig, and I was sure it rejoiced. And we were happy … but then …” She told the rest of it, knowing her voice was uneven, knowing that Dorrin could not possibly understand. When she was done, she stared at the grain of the tabletop in front of her.

The Duke sighed, a long noisy breath. “That is … incredible. I want to say stupid, but you’re not stupid or Kieri wouldn’t love you. But it’s exactly what a youngster would do, balked in a first love affair; yet you say you’re not a child. Why in Falk’s name run away?”

Arian looked up to meet an expression both puzzled and amused. She had not expected that.

“The taig,” Arian said. “It’s the life of the land, more important than anything else. The king and the Lady, as joint rulers, must cooperate to keep it healthy. Their quarrel tore it, and I felt its pain. I cannot be the cause of that. If I’m not there, they won’t quarrel, and if they make peace, the land may live.”

“But … you want to marry him and he wants you.” The Duke’s voice was gentler; Arian did not look up.

“Only if it helps the taig. I can wait; the Lady may consent later.”

“Can he?”

Arian said nothing. That question had pierced her every moment since she left. That he
could
wait, she was sure—but would he? Or would he think her faithless, for leaving? “That is the reason I came here,” she said finally. Dorrin raised her brows; Arian went on. “You have known him for years; you know him better than I could in the short time he’s been our king. I know it was necessary to care for the taig more than myself, but I do not know if he will understand. He was not brought up with the taig as I was; he discovered his taig-sense only this year.”

“I do not understand how this—this tree-love, as it seems to me—would force you to leave. You said this taig rejoiced with you at first—”

“It has been my care my whole life,” Arian said. “My happiness does not matter compared to the health of the taig. Think of Falk: He could have gone free and never ransomed his brothers.”

The Duke shifted in her chair. “I am trying to understand, Arian, truly. Clearly you feel your duty to the taig strongly, but to my mind this calls for clear thinking. And you will excuse me, but you have not had my experience abroad in the world. Think back to Falk’s Hall and those lectures on tactics and strategy.”

Arian tried. “How will that help? I thought knowing more about him—”

“The problem is not Kieri,” the Duke said. “He did nothing dishonorable in loving you, did he?”

“No.”

“Nor, by your words, had you done anything wrong in loving him. The Lady accused you, but were you guilty of anything she accused?”

“No …”

“If the Lady’s duty includes ministering to the taig, is it not
she
who should refrain from anger, put aside her own feelings for the health of the taig? It cannot be your duty alone.”

“She’s—she’s the queen …”

“And what did we learn in Falk’s Hall? High rank never excuses wrong behavior.”

“No … of course … but …”

“Kieri is the king, her co-ruler: how has she performed her own duties, this past half-year?”

Arian felt a deep reluctance to reveal what she knew about that, but the Duke’s dark gaze insisted. “The king has not been pleased,” she admitted. “She has not come when he asked, when he wanted her counsel and aid. And yet other times she has come, as she did in that battle before he even arrived.”

“Were you there?”

“No, my lord.”

The Duke nodded. “I was. I saw her; I heard her. A being of great beauty and power—and yet, Arian, not flawless. She came late, and many died because she had not come earlier. Though we needed that help, she is not someone I would depend on. And now she’s shown herself unreliable when the king needed her help, and hostile to you—creating a problem for the taig. If this were anyone else, what would you think? Imagine if it were another Squire or one of your Siers.”

“It would be … wrong. Very wrong.” Arian felt as if she had one foot hovering over a precipice.

“She seems inviolate to you because you are half-elven, I’ll warrant,” the Duke said. “Perhaps she has special power over you … elven mageries to cloud your mind? It is said the elves can maze humans with their glamours—can they maze one another?”

“I … I am not sure …” It was hard to think, hard even to hear what the Duke said. Could the Lady have cast a glamour on her? Or on the taig? Was that why it was closed to her in Lyonya but open here?

“If it was the Lady’s anger that disturbed the taig—and if you and Kieri had done nothing wrong in loving each other, a love the taig recognized—then who is really responsible for the taig’s distress?” Before Arian could answer, the Duke had gone on. “Remember what we were taught: though others thought Falk dishonored by the work he had to do, the gods did not agree. Your honor is your own: the Lady’s honor is her own. She chose anger.”

“You are saying it is her fault,” Arian said.

“I am not part-elf,” the Duke said. “So I have no loyalty of blood. I neither like nor dislike elves, except as they show themselves to me. Those I have met have been no more perfect than humans. The Lady, I will venture, may be mistaken, and moved by her own desires rather than wisdom.”

Arian’s father had hinted at this, but she had not believed him … could not, with what she now discerned in her own mind. As if a physical veil were ripped and blown away on a clean wind, Arian’s mind cleared. “She put an enchantment on me,” she said. “She locked my taig-sense—she wanted me to think it was my doing.”

“Do you think she also enchanted Kieri?”

“I do not know,” Arian said. “But he was angry with her—he did not act as if he believed her.” Joy rose in her heart, along with shame that she had been fooled. If indeed the taig had not withdrawn from her—if it had been the Lady’s doing—she could return, and pray that Kieri would understand.

“Will you return?” the Duke asked.

“Of course,” Arian said.

“And if the Lady lays another enchantment on you? Because I think she will try. Have you the strength to hold her off?”

The joy faded. “I … I do not know.”

“Do not go into battle without a plan,” the Duke said. “Even though such plans are never perfect, it is better to have one. Tell me, how much experience have you had in battles?”

“Little,” Arian said. “A few skirmishes with poachers, a daskdraudigs or two.”

The Duke shook her head. “Forgive me for presumption, as I am younger in years than you—though not much—but I have experience you might find useful. Let’s start again: call me Dorrin, Arian, and we will be sword-sisters, two Knights of Falk on campaign, shall we?”

“I … yes, my lord—Dorrin; I would be glad of your advice.”

“As I see it, this is your situation. You and your king want to marry; his co-ruler opposes it for some reason—do you know the reason?”

“She doesn’t like my father,” Arian said. “She says he’s disobedient to her and has fathered too many half-elf children.”

The Duke—
no, Dorrin
, Arian thought—snorted. “That’s not reason enough to oppose your marriage. Any intelligent being—let alone an immortal of such power—would know that. Either she has other reasons she has not told you, or … or something is wrong with her. Since she has been a problem for your king even before, you and Kieri must find out what it is. That’s one goal.” She held up
one finger. “Then there’s Pargun.” She held up another. “If there’s an invasion, how many troops has Kieri? The Pargunese? Do you know—does he know—whether the Pargunese king is still alive? And what are the elven resources?”

Arian answered as best she could as the questions went on and on. She had learned much from Kieri—all the Squires had—but she had also spent much time on the road, carrying messages, or with the princesses; she had only begun to learn how complex war and politics could be.

“I feel like a child,” Arian said when Dorrin sat back and called for more sib. “Ignorant—”

“We know different things,” Dorrin said. “I know nothing of your taig, or your elven relatives. When I was at the Hall, the part-elves would hardly speak to me. A foreigner, from a hated family …”

“Magelords.”

“Yes. The kind of magelords who caused the Girdish Revolt with their cruelty.” Dorrin gave her a lopsided grin. “But you, Arian … you are more like Tamar than I first thought. You think like her when you have the facts. And there are no cruel shadows in your past.”

Arian thought about that. Her mother, strict though she had been, was not unkind, nor her elven father until—as she grew older—he went back into the elvenhome, emerging only rarely. “Like what happened to Kieri—the king,” she said. “His captivity.”

“That, and what happened to me, in this very house,” Dorrin said. “You have none of that in you. Though I have no elven blood, and thus no taig-sense, I can sense old evil in humans well enough. Tammarion, like you, was all light, without shadows—Kieri had enough shadows for both. You will be good for him.”

“If—”

Dorrin made a sound close to a growl. “Do not fall back into that, Arian. You want to be Kieri’s queen—well, then, act like one.”