Oath of Fealty (20 page)

“You mean … it’s all connected? I knew that …”

“More than connected—” Amrothlin frowned. “It is hard to say in your speech. Your old humans had more words for it, the weaving of life’s fabric, they called it, but more specifically. You cannot rightly speak of a tree as an individual, apart from the earth in which it grows, the air it breathes, the sunlight that wakes it to life, the living things that surround it. And yet each tree is also an individual—we think of them as having personalities, you know. They have fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, throughout the forest; they have a history going back to the first Singing.”

“I … think I understand.”

“You do not now,” Amrothlin said. “But to grow to full kingship, you must. Orlith wants you to feel that—not know it with the mind—” He touched his head. “But feel it, know it in blood and bone. When you do, then you can not only feel the taig—discern, as you do now, whether it is healthy or not—but heal it and use it.”

“Use?”

“To raise the taig. When called by someone of power, the forest taig can act—can maze human senses, herd men almost as a shepherd herds sheep, even resist some evil forces: health against sickness, you might think of it.”

“So … I go on spending a turn of the glass every day trying to feel more and more of the taig, is that it?”

“Not so much trying … more letting the taig come to you. The taig is easily frightened at times—it is like a shy child. If you are patient, it will come. Orlith cannot teach you much more until you can touch smaller elements than trees.”

“How long will that take?” Kieri thought of all the other tasks awaiting him … and the possible need to have the taig on his side if an invasion came. And how could the taig be both easily frightened and any help against an invading army?

Amrothlin laughed aloud. “Nephew-our-king … that is such a
human
question. It will take as long as it takes, and longer if you are impatient.”

“I will do my best to be patient,” Kieri said. “But it would be impolite to teach patience to my Council by making them wait longer for our daily meeting.”

“Neatly said,” Amrothlin said, with a warmer smile than usual. “And as courtesy is never haste, let us show them courtesy and begin.”

T
hat Council meeting and those following concerned mainly the coronation, now barely more than two hands of days away. Kieri himself found it hard to concentrate on other matters when the palace staff bustled about preparing guest rooms, taking down the winter hangings and pulling out formal decorations. Day by day the tension grew. A tailor came to measure him for the new clothes
the occasion required. In one room, green-draped tables held a rapidly increasing array of gifts.

Dorrin came for a last visit, early the morning she rode away, and eyed the changes with amusement. “Have you ever seen a coronation?” she asked.

“The prince’s father’s,” Kieri said. “But in Tsaia the rituals are very different … as you will see, at Midsummer.” He led her into the room he now used as his study, and shut the door.

“If I can,” she said. “If I can hold things together.”

“What was the training like?”

“It was … a delight,” Dorrin said. “Much easier than I expected, as if I were remembering skills, not learning them. Paks thinks it is the years I spent as your captain; the Knight-Commander thinks it’s my age and experience both, and Falk’s blessing.” She gave a quick precis of the tests she’d passed.

“I agree,” Kieri said. “You learned to use power well; the form of power is not as important as your judgment and discipline.”

“Thank you, my lord. I will do my best.” Then her expression changed. “I can’t help remembering how my family used it,” she said, then after a pause went on. “Some things I could not say—that I can say now.” She stopped.

“Do you need to tell me?” he asked gently. Dorrin had never confided much about her past, just that she was estranged from the family.

“Yes. If you have time—”

“For an old comrade? Always.”

The tale she told matched his own in ways he had not imagined: the suffering she’d endured, as a child, the final determination to flee at any cost. He thought back to his first impressions of Dorrin at Falk’s Hall—a difficult, moody girl, not much liked by the other women for what they called her sullenness, her refusal to enter into easy friendships, her distrust of others. Like the other older students, he had dismissed her as likely to fail, as having none of the graciousness Falk’s followers were supposed to show. He had said as much to the Knight-Commander.

“When we older students complained of you,” he said when she’d finished, “the Knight-Commander said we did not understand, and such hasty judgment meant we ourselves were unfit for the ruby. He
told us nothing specific, only that our opinions were the opinions of—let me see if I can remember—’rash, callow youths lacking wisdom or mercy, who could be judged as harshly by those without discernment.’ He bade us fast a night and a day for our ungraciousness. It did not, I’m afraid, change many opinions, though we did learn to keep them to ourselves.”

“And yet you hired me.”

“It was seeing you covered in mud, working away in that ditch to get the wagon out, and then the look in your eyes—you still expected me to refuse. There, I thought, is a true Knight of Falk, whatever she seemed before, and I must honor that. As you have honored me, these many years.” Kieri felt tears on his own cheeks and did not brush them away. “You and I, Dorrin, had more in common than either of us knew. I sorrow for your suffering, and I am sorry for my early arrogance, that assumed no one else had also suffered.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Dorrin said. “I was—I was not an easy person to like, back then.”

“No … but now you are, as you have been for years, a Knight of Falk, grave and courteous to all, and I do not think Mikeli could have chosen anyone better able to save what can be saved of Verrakai. Go with my blessing, and know you have always a friend at this court.”

She nodded, and then bowed; when she had gone, Kieri was immediately immersed in the myriad details that now filled every day before his coronation.

P
eople poured into Chaya for the coronation: Siers and their families, merchants and craftsmen, musicians and jugglers and dancers and mimes. The crown prince of Tsaia sent his regrets, owing to the unsettled times, nor could the Regency Council members attend, for the same reason. Kirgan Marrakai, he wrote, would represent him, and was on the way with a squad of his father’s militia. Aliam and Estil Halveric had already arrived, to stay with Sier Halveric.

Every inn bulged with travelers, packed as many to a room as they could manage, and anyone with space on the floor to let could make a quarter’s living from it.

“Some families are moving into their outbuildings and renting the house,” Sier Belvarin said. “Not ours, of course.”

“Of course not,” Kieri said. He did not smile; Sier Belvarin had already demonstrated a very limited sense of humor.

“Are your relatives staying with you?” Sier Halveric asked Belvarin. “I’ve got Aliam and his wife and two of their children and gods know how many grandchildren.” Belvarin nodded.

T
he Pargunese had been informed, with cool courtesy, but not actually invited; to Kieri’s surprise, their king dared send a
representative, an elderly woman who arrived in Riverton in a boat with white and gold ribbons fluttering from every possible attachment. She was, she told the alert and very nervous port militia, Hanlin Orenalt, the king’s wife’s oldest sister.

“Pargunese arrogance,” Halveric said, when the report came that she was on her way from the port.

“She’s not likely to get drunk and assault us all,” Kieri said. “Pargunese women don’t drink alcohol. And who else could he send? A boatload of women was the only possible envoy we wouldn’t kill or turn back.”

“I didn’t know they had women who could handle a boat,” Belvarin said.

“Fisherfolk, along the river,” Kieri said. “I imagine every fishwife can row, at least a little. Well, if they mean to show courtesy, so must we. A guest is a guest—but the host is allowed to be wary, though not inhospitable.” Given the lady’s age, he insisted she must be housed in the palace. The Council protested.

“We can also watch her better here,” Kieri said. “If the Pargunese have agents in Chaya, as they well may, she cannot meet them without one or the other coming through the gates.”

The lady’s carriage arrived under guard; Kieri watched from a window to the courtyard as she climbed down, with help from her two attendants, both middle-aged, sedate women in plain dark dresses with the Pargunese king’s crest in brilliant embroidery. She herself was a hand taller than they, almost as tall as Kieri. White-haired, moving a little stiffly, dressed in sumptuous clothes of the Pargunese style, she had the regal carriage of someone who has never had to ask someone to step out of her way. Kieri watched as his steward gave her formal welcome and offered an arm, which she refused for that of one of her women.

Once settled in her room, Hanlin of Pargun seemed—compared to others—to be the perfect guest. She asked for little, praised what she was offered, and made her formal bow to Kieri along with the other foreign ambassadors at a reception that evening. Close up, she had remnants of beauty, her ice-blue eyes not at all dulled by age. The lines of her face suggested someone who laughed easily, and indeed she had a merry twinkle in her eye as she was introduced and the herald stumbled over her Pargunese title.

“It would be a delight to my old age,” she said, in the brief seconds allowed each guest, “to see peace between our lands. I am only an old woman—” Patently false, Kieri knew. “—but I have seen faults on both sides, begging your pardon.”

“War brings anger, and anger brings ill judgment,” Kieri said. What a clever man the king of Pargun was, to send an old woman as his envoy of peace! He smiled at her. “I have no delight in war, though I am good at it.” Offer and warning.

“Indeed you are,” she said, smiling up at him. “May peace bless both our houses.” Then she turned, and the long train of her Pargunese dress rustled along behind her.

Kirgan Marrakai scowled at her, being young and rash, Kieri noted, but most others remained coolly polite. Kieri’s elven grandmother spoke to Hanlin of Pargun, but Kieri could not hear their brief conversation. He hoped his grandmother would tell him later.

The talk he could hear concerned the coming ceremony or—annoyingly—his marriage prospects. On the edge of his hearing, quickly hushed if he neared, were speculations about what he might like, which style of beauty, which accomplishments. He noticed that every Sier had brought along a daughter or granddaughter or niece, and he wondered about the young elven woman at his grandmother’s side.

He sought out the Kirgan Marrakai, with whom he could talk horses at least, but that young man was all too obviously interested in the young women. They did talk horse breeding, and the kirgan had ideas about which strains of Lyonyan horses the Marrakai blood would nick with, but his eyes kept straying to one girl after another. “I’m boring you,” Kieri said at last.