Limits of Power (46 page)

“No. Yestereve, I thought of having it carved, exactly like that—a marker of my mother's death, a place to remember her—but I'm not a stonecarver. I could not have done it.”

“Save by magery,” Berne said.

“I'm not rockfolk,” Kieri said. “And elves have no power over stone, do they? Even the Lady had rockfolk carve out her underground stronghold. Besides, I would know if I were doing magery; I would feel the power leave me. I felt nothing; I slept the night.”

“What's in this?” asked Panin, another of the Squires, pointing to the box.

“Selani tiles,” Kieri said. “Do you know that game?”

“Selani? I don't know the word.”

“They were my mother's—she was starting to teach me to play the game. You don't know it?”

“I never heard of it. How do you play it?”

“I don't know … I hadn't learned yet. I do remember she said my grandmother would teach me. Perhaps it is an elven game.” He opened the box and showed them the tiles. “I don't know what these symbols are, either.”

“That one's truth,” Linne said, one of the half-elf Squires.

“Truth?”

“Yes … and look, this one here. This is untruth.” She flicked the tiles around. “Honor … dishonor. Reward … disgrace … danger…”

“And this was a game?” asked Panin.

“So I was told,” Kieri said. He could not now remember anything of the game. He had liked the colors, he did recall, and the glitter of the silver and gold. “What kind of game …?” He picked up the tile marked with “Truth” and ran his finger over the rune.

“Would it be like dice?” one asked. “Shake them in the box and pour them out? Toss them?”

“We could see,” Berne said. “Sir king?”

“I am not sure.” Kieri picked up Untruth and held the two in one hand. What question could such answer? He shook them in his hand, and thought,
This
was
the
place,
and released them.

On the cloth Truth lay upright; Untruth had landed blank side up. Both were red; both had gold runes. It could be chance, after all. But the chill that ran down his back suggested something more than chance.

“I heard once,” one of the new Squires, Ceilar, said, “that the elves had ways of telling what would come and of divining the inner aims of other elves. These might be such, might they not?”

A game, his mother had said. But was it? Adults might say that to a child when the truth was more complicated, even dangerous. He picked up Untruth again and looked more closely. Was that gold, or … he picked up Truth again … no. Not gold, but fool's gold. He shivered … this, like all the rest, had come to him for a reason, a reason that had survived his mother's death, and by a power he did not know or understand.

“The gods may reveal it,” Kieri said. He was not sure which of the gods. His mother had been full elf, so her god would have been the Singer, for whom the only name he knew was Adyan, Namer. He touched his ruby again. Falk had a name for truth and mercy, for keeping oaths and releasing prisoners. Here, in this place, he had to wonder if Falk had had anything to do with releasing him … and why, if so, Falk had let him suffer so long. The old sorrow rose again, though this time he could breathe through it. Here, in this place, he had changed from the child he had been and started on the road to the man he now was. None of this had been his choice, but since then he had made many choices, and they had led back here, to the place of no-choice.

“Is there a tile with a rune for choice?” he asked, looking back down at the dell below with its carpet of violets.

He heard the gentle clatter of the tiles as Linne turned them all. “Yes, sir king. One for choice, and one for coercion. That one can also be read ‘necessity.' ”

“I am not surprised,” he said. He took a breath and let it out slowly, reaching for calm. “You know what happened here, but … you may not know all that grew from this seed.”

“We were robbed of our queen, your mother, and you … the heir,” Panin said. “And you suffered…”

“Yes. And as you would expect, that changed me—would have changed any child. But what I see now is a pattern. It started here, for me, though for my mother perhaps it must have started somewhere else, some other time—this was her pattern's end. I had no choice then, or for years after, being young and unable to choose anything—my master chose for me, chose pain and humiliation. When I was freed … the only choice I had was to take the chance or not take it. And I took it. But I did not feel it as a choice … I felt it as inevitable. I long thought that the man who saved me had laid a geas on me … that it was his will that I escape, more even than my own desire to flee.”

“And was it?”

“I do not know. I do not know if it matters. But the choices I made later mattered. I am not the man my father wanted—though his bones are satisfied, they tell me now. I am not the man my mother hoped for, to whom she had given—” He stopped abruptly. He had told no one what Amrothlin had told him, that his mother had transferred her power to create an elfane taig to him. “To whom she had given her elven heritage,” he said. “I am the man my choices made me. And here is where I learned that choices could be unmade. Here, in what should have been a safe place for her and for me.”

“What of the robbers?” Jostin asked.

“Dead men were found here, weren't they?” Kieri asked. “I remember being told that. Robbers, they said. What did those who found them do with the bodies?”

“I don't know … Would they have buried them? Burned them?”

“And risk harm to the land? And ugliness?” He looked again at the scene … the violets, the stone now a graceful little shrine with its offering of flowers. “I think they would have taken the bodies away, somewhere beyond the bounds of the elvenhome.”

“If they didn't find the … your body, sir king, why didn't they search for you?”

“I have heard two tales—one that they did but did not find me because they did not cross the sea, and one that they assumed I was dead and the body simply not found, scattered by animals, perhaps.” He shook his head. “It doesn't matter now. What matters is … coming here, these things that rose to meet me, and that stone. It is meant to complete something, this pattern, and to begin another pattern. Each of these things means something, not merely the tiles of the game—if it was a game, and not my child's misunderstanding.” He turned to the other objects: the ring, the torc, the fitting for the belt. “I think I am meant to learn why these were given me and to consider my choices, past and future. And to do it here.”

“How long, sir king?,” Panin asked. “We will need provisions if we stay long.”

“I do not know,” Kieri said. He sighed. “Until it is done. I have had little leisure in my life to stay in one place and think. I trust it will not be too long, for I would not want to worry the queen and my Council. Only two of you need stay with me. The others—Berne and Varne, continue to the east and let the Sea-Prince know of the changes since he left. He met you both at the wedding. Jostin and Ceilar, return to Chaya and tell the queen of what I found. Send back two other Squires with provisions enough to reach Prealíth—we will need a courier service to and from the Sea-Prince if he agrees, the sooner the better. If I do not return betimes, start back here with more provisions. I will write the letters now.”

He saw protest in their expressions, but they left him to write the letters and set to dividing provisions and other supplies. The Sea-Prince—he hardly knew the man and nothing of his attitude toward elves, though he had been escorted through this forest by them. By the same way? Perhaps, or perhaps not. Perhaps wrapt in elven magery and allowed to see nothing. A land looking to the sea would value ship timber: mastwood and sparwood. Did Prealíth have forests, or was it mostly farmland or scrubland? He could not remember that from either journey.

Change
has
come,
he wrote.
The
Lady
of
the
Ladysforest
was
murdered
by
one
of
the
iynisin, and you and I, lord prince, must see to our borders that she long guarded.
Would the Sea-Prince even know what iynisin were? If he did, would he be insulted to have it explained?
You
may
know
iynisin
by
another
name: these are those who rebelled against the Singer when the First Tree sang with the first Kuakgan. Some call them kuaknomi or blackcloaks. Pray send your envoy, that we may discuss how best to accomplish what profits us both. These my envoys are King's Squires such as you met on your recent visit, and will return your messages to me, or guide your envoy, as you desire.

To Arian he wrote of what he'd found, what had happened, and what he thought he was supposed to do—a much longer letter—and begged her to share any thoughts she had about it. He asked if she'd ever heard of the game selani, and did his best to draw the runes on all the tiles.
Ask
the
elders,
he concluded,
if
they
ever
saw
such
things
or
heard
my
mother
use
the
term. Especially the Seneschal.

Then he handed the letters to the two groups of Squires and bade them take provisions for their own journeys. “I have no positive warning that the Sea-Prince would do you harm, but he remains a stranger, so stay together, rather than one return to me, unless there is great need.”

They bowed. “Yes, sir king.”

When the four had ridden away, the glade's silence seemed once more to close in; Kieri walked down to the little shrine and knelt there. He laid the ring on the shrine's shelf. The stone was pale green, nothing as dark and rich as emerald but like clear water in a deep pool over white stone. The design incised on its rounded top showed a fern frond, the setting heavy gold. His mother had worn it on her heart-thumb, he recalled. Now, as he watched, a flicker of light rose from within the stone. He glanced aside a moment. No ray of sun was near: this was the stone itself. Under the fern frond, another design showed, etched in light: a dragon shape, tiny but perfect in detail. Then it faded again.

His heart thundered in his ears. Was this a dragonspawn, somehow captured or about to break free in scathefire? But the ring suggested no menace. He looked at his hands. He wore his father's ring on his sword hand, a peculiar stone that flashed red-in-green. He'd been told it was the symbol of the power shared by human and elven.

He picked up the ring, kissed it, and slid it onto his heart-hand thumb; it fit as if made for him. The light returned again; the tiny dragon seemed to writhe, his hand and arm tingled, and then the stone showed clear pale green again and the sensation vanished.

When he put the gold torc on the shrine, the twisted strands brightened, then slowly untwisted to show something gleaming between them … the strand on which they were wound. White, glowing like polished ivory, itself twisted … he reached out, and the gold tightened, closing over it again. He laid his hand on it. He felt it was something magical, but he had never seen anything like it. No vision or word came to him, but the conviction that he should wear it. He ran his hand over the thing … His mother's neck, as he remembered it, was smaller than his own. But when he set it about his, it also fit precisely, comfortable … even comforting.

Well. The belt clasp next. The bright enamel shone as if lit from within, which did not by this time surprise him. Tiny letters appeared like those on his father's and sisters' bones; he could read those, though the words made little sense at first, jumbled together as they were. They faded before he could read them clearly.

Finally, the only object left was the box of selani tiles. He set that on the shrine. The clasp opened of itself, and the lid lifted. The box inverted itself, pouring the tiles out on the shelf. Two rolled off the shelf; Kieri caught them in his hands. Both were green, their runes in silver. He didn't recognize them, but the meaning seeped into his mind as he held them. Loyalty. Regard. Not opposites, this time.

He considered loyalty: to whom had he been loyal, and who had been loyal to him? To Aliam Halveric … to his oaths, to his kings, to his soldiers … and he had known loyalty from them. Regard? Yes, that, too.

He laid those two on the shelf, and another two stirred. He picked them up. Pair by pair, the same thing happened—runes he could not read revealed themselves and sometimes gave him alternatives and sometimes merely examples. He did not understand the colors … why loyalty and regard were green, and courtesy and kindness were red and blue, respectively, but all of that kind—virtues or valued qualities—had their runes in silver. The ones with opposites had their runes in gold and false gold.

By day's end, he had worked through perhaps half the tiles. When his Squires called that they had prepared a meal, he stood up—finding himself less stiff than he expected—bowed to the shrine, and poured the tiles back into the box.

The next day he began again. At times the pairings did seem playful—like a game—but at other times he found himself thrust deep into his own history and heart. He kept on, but for a rest in midday, and by evening had worked his way through all the tiles. The meanings of all were now clear to him, as was his past life. Choices he had made and where they had led. What lay behind those choices. He saw the choices before him more clearly than he had before. He looked at the tiles, took them into his hands, and put them into the box again.

“We will return to Chaya tomorrow,” he said to his Squires. Their eyes held curiosity, but they did not ask.