The Crown of Dalemark (37 page)

“Now say—Did you kill Noreth of Kredindale?” Alk said.

“No!”
said Moril, and again the cup flared blue. Moril screwed his eyes up at it as if he might cry.

“Now pass it to Navis,” Alk ordered. When Navis had stretched out and taken the cup and it was once more a mild silver, Alk said, “And did
you
kill Noreth Onesdaughter?”

“I most certainly did
not
,” Navis said, and screwed his eyes up like Moril when the cup shone blue in his hand.

Mitt waited anxiously. Alk was leaving him till last because he thought Mitt was the guilty one. He could see that. It was a wretched thought. But the cup itself was beginning to worry him just as much. If it was behaving as it was supposed to with the others—and from Alk's look as he tested it, it was—then it had behaved all wrong with Mitt, spitting blue sparks at him both other times he touched it. Mitt suspected the thing disliked him. He did not trust it not to prove him guilty out of sheer malice. He could see the faces of his onetime friends in Aberath behind Alk, shut away from him, sure he was a murderer.

“Now to him,” Alk said to Navis.

Navis held the blue-glowing cup out to Mitt. That, and Mitt's worry, made his new horse turn round restively, giving him a sight of Luthan and all his people staring. Ammet only knew what
they
were thinking.

“Take it!” Navis snapped.

Mitt spared a hand for the thing.
“Ouch!”
It was like nettles, squirting blue rays between his fingers. He had to let go the reins and hang on to the cup with both hands or he would have let it fall. It hurt. It crackled blue streams round his wrists and knuckles. The cup clearly hated him as much as the Countess-horse did.
“Ow!”
And Luthan's spare horse did not help, bucking around in fear, until Navis grabbed it and pulled on the bit.

“Can you bring yourself to tell a lie?” Alk said, watching callously.

“You being … sarky is … all I need!” Mitt said with his teeth clenched. “Burn you! I—I—You don't make steam engines!” The blue rays faded inward between Mitt's fingers and vanished. The prickling lasted an instant longer, and then that went, too. Mitt shook the plain silver goblet he was now holding, and the other hand as well. The relief! “Burn you, Alk! This thing hates me! I won't dare tell the truth now, I warn you!”

“I dare you,” said Alk. “Did you kill Noreth of Kredindale?”

“No!”
Mitt spat, hunched against another assault from the cup. It spat at him again, with a sharp sizzle, but, to his surprise, it was nothing like so painful. More like a tingling. The blue rays reaching through his fingers were almost glorious. “Ah. Calmed it down,” he said.

“Turn it off, turn it on. I thought that might do it,” Alk said. He looked smug, like someone who had won a bet. As Mitt thankfully passed the cup back to Navis, he said, “Then I declare you all clear of the charge of murder. Now,” he added to Maewen, “let's have a look at that sword, young lady.”

“But why?” said Navis.

“It might do to swear some more on,” Alk said.

Navis looked harrowed. “Please,” he said. “I have to get to Kernsburgh in case my son, Ynen, is there.”

Maewen hurriedly scrabbled the sword loose, knowing Navis was right.

Alk grinned. “It's just curiosity, really. I love clever metalwork. Just draw the sword and show it to me, young lady, and then you can all go.”

Maewen tried to draw the sword in the same hurry—too hurriedly. She jammed it sideways somehow, and it refused to emerge. “It's stuck!” she said, hauling uselessly at it. Mitt and Navis leaned over to help. They both wanted to get going. Both their horses, and Maewen's with them, got the wrong idea and started to move and were pulled back. All three surged round in a circle, and Moril's horse joined in. Alk calmly moved his own horse back, where he sat watching the confusion. It was only resolved when Navis seized the leather scabbard Maewen was waving about and planted the hilt end on Mitt's saddle. Both pulled. The sword came loose with a slithery clang.

“There,” said Mitt. He rode over and pushed the sword under Alk's nose. “Satisfied?”

“I'll say!” Alk looked it over admiringly. “It may look plain and a silly old fashion, but it's better work than any of us could do today. I'd give an eyetooth to meet the man that made it. He'd have taken a year and a day to do it, you know. No one bothers to take that sort of trouble today. All right. Put it away, and let's all get to Kernsburgh.”

“All?” said Navis. He was more depressed than Mitt had ever seen him. “I've no more patience for jokes.”

“No joke,” said Alk. “I said I'd come to Kernsburgh with the rest of you. Keril listens to me.”

“I don't think you understand,” Navis said wearily. “You have just removed my pretext for dragging the Earl of Dropwater there with me.”

Alk's eyes went to Maewen. “Is that so? Who heard me do that, apart from you and two lads who knew, anyway? Didn't you?” he asked Moril.

“Kankredin might have heard,” Moril said.

“All the more reason for going there,” said Alk. He turned his vast horse round to join his hearthmen.

“Just a moment,” Navis said. He seemed to have revived wonderfully. Alk stopped and turned his head questioningly. “If I have no pretext,” Navis said, “you must have one.”

“Must I?” Alk lifted his helmet and scratched his head. “I suppose it stands to reason,” he admitted, “that if I pull the rug out from under you, you'll need somewhere to stand.” He grinned. “Let's say I've got the same pretext as you have.”

Navis laughed and wheeled round to ride back to Luthan.

“What did he mean?” Maewen asked as their three horses shimmied about, glad to be moving again.

“Not to tell Luthan you're not Noreth, I think,” Mitt said, although, knowing Alk and Navis as he did, he was not at all sure.

She made a face. Moril laughed. “Don't look now. Luthan's on his way to ask you all about what Alk wanted.”

Maewen naturally looked. Luthan was mounted again, trotting up the road with an eager, tender, questioning look. “What shall I
tell
him?”

Navis reached Luthan first. He spoke quickly and quietly to Luthan, and whatever it was he said, it seemed to satisfy Luthan entirely. He shot Maewen a look of deep understanding and rode gravely beside Navis as their party joined Alk's.

The two groups together made quite an impressive force, Mitt thought, as he rode in the midst of it. This ought to show Earl Keril they meant business—if this
was
what Navis and Alk had in mind. Since he was not sure, Mitt found himself thinking about Noreth instead, dead before she set foot on the King's Road. Kankredin must be angry about that. Wend had fooled him, and everyone else, by sending Maewen in her place. Except that Wend hadn't seemed to know what he was doing. Mitt was anxious about that. Wend had withdrawn his protection from Maewen, and she could well be in danger if Kankredin turned on her. Mitt decided not to let her out of his sight.

He was surprised, and a little ashamed, to find that when he thought he was thinking of Noreth, it was Maewen he was really worried about.

About an hour later they reached Kernsburgh. At least, it was where Alk and all the Dropwater people said Kernsburgh was.

“It is. Honestly,” Moril assured Mitt and Maewen.

They had halted in a half circle three or four riders deep, facing an ordinary small waystone. Beyond it the green turf rose and fell in a hundred humps and hummocks. And that was all.

“City of Gold,” Alk said genially. “Always on the hill beyond.”

Navis beckoned Mitt and cantered among the grassy mounds to organize his defense. Everyone followed slowly, Maewen among the last. This felt weird. Where they had first stopped could have been the space which Kernsburgh Central Station was going to fill, except that the waystone was all wrong. Those low mounds were where she had last seen shops and office blocks, and the slightly higher hummocks ahead, up which Navis was riding slantwise, were where the Tannoreth Palace would be someday soon. The green crease she was following, full of hoofprints and horse droppings, was probably King Street. And instead of cars and lorries, there was a much quieter confusion of riders in two different liveries. Maewen could so little believe this was really Kernsburgh that she had to look up toward the distant hills to make sure. There she saw the blue jagged shapes she saw from Dad's apartment, the North Dales Peaks. But the oddest part was the way there had obviously been a city here once, under all these lumps. She felt as if time had stood upside down and she really was in the far future, looking at the remains of the Kernsburgh she had known.

A great shout jerked her attention back to here and now. Mitt was down from his horse, leaping across the hummocks, yelling. Maewen shook her own horse to a fast trot and arrived at the top of the palace mounds in time to see Mitt delightedly greeting two newcomers. The tall, curly one was plainly Kialan. Navis had his arm round the shoulders of the small pale boy with Kialan. They were alike enough for Maewen to know that this was Ynen. There were two weary-looking horses in the hollow behind the two. It looked as if they had ridden all night as well.

“I'm sorry we kept out of sight,” Kialan was saying. “There was a big troop of horsemen in war gear on the road last night. We had to leave the road to avoid them. We couldn't see who they were in the dark, but we didn't think they should see us.”

“It was probably Alk,” said Navis, “but we'll take precautions.”

Maewen was watching Ynen frisk round Mitt like a terrier puppy round a greyhound. I'm so glad! she thought. He
likes
Mitt! I don't think I could have borne it if he'd been like Hildy. Ynen was so unlike Hildy that she thought maybe he was a bit of a softie. Then Ynen looked up at Maewen, and she knew he was not soft at all. He smiled at her uncertainly, not knowing who she was.

“Are you Noreth?” Kialan asked her. Lordly, Maewen thought. He reminded her of the boys at the sixth form college.

“We all thought so, but apparently not,” Navis said. “Mayelbridwen, I believe, is the name.”

Just then, there were agitated noises from Luthan a little way off. Mitt went haring over there to see what was wrong. Maewen found she could not face the puzzled looks from Kialan and Ynen, and she followed Mitt.

In another hidden hollow Luthan was standing over an immense heap of mixed bread and grapes. There was another heap beyond that looked like oats. “Where did all
this
come from?” Luthan demanded.

Mitt narrowed his eyes at the stuff. The loaves were the kind plaited into a wheat shape which he had last seen in the Holy Islands. The grapes were the sweet green Southern kind. He grinned. “A present,” he said, “from the Earth Shaker and She Who Raised the Islands.”

“You're joking,” Luthan said uncertainly.

“I am not,” Mitt said.

However it arrived, the breakfast was very welcome. By the time Navis had the place organized, everyone was glad to sit down and eat at their posts. Alk's people, and most of Luthan's, were posted hidden behind mounds in a great circle. Kialan and Ynen were sent to help pass a loaf and a bunch of grapes to everyone, while Maewen and Mitt were busy pouring a pile of oats in front of each of the horses picketed in the middle. Luthan's hearth-women were standing by a third of the horses to mount a cavalry charge if necessary.

“There's still quite a heap of bread and grapes left,” Kialan said as he arrived at the horses with an armload for the hearthwomen.

“As if they might be expecting more people,” Ynen said, following Kialan with his arms clutched round loaves and grapes dangling from his fingers. “I got these for us.”

Mitt wondered about this as they went to eat in the central hollow. What did the Undying think was going to happen? He had a sense that this was a lull before things got frantic. And once things got frantic, he knew they would go on that way for quite some time.

Before Mitt could mention this feeling to the others, Navis arrived with Alk and Luthan. “There,” Navis said. “That should stop anyone interfering while we look for the crown. Has anyone any idea where it is?”

Everyone shook their heads. Wend would know, Maewen thought. Oh, bother the man!

Luthan broke apart a loaf. “They say,” he said, “that the crown is buried in the ruins of King Hern's palace. You may be sitting on it,” he added, with a melting smile at Maewen.

“Then it's going to take digging to find,” Alk said, sitting on the slope with a loaf in each hand.

“Long, careful digging,” Kialan agreed. “They took six weeks' digging to find the second spellcoat up above Hannart.”

“I doubt,” said Navis, “that we have six hours.”

“Then we think it round another way,” said Alk.

Moril arrived then, with his vaguest look, and was introduced to Ynen. Ynen was delighted. It turned out that he had met Moril's brother, Dagner, in Hannart, who had told him a great deal about Moril. The two of them chattered as they ate. They were the only ones talking. Everyone else was wondering how to find the crown, except Luthan, who kept giving Maewen such melting looks that she wanted to tell him to start digging. But he won't, she thought. It would spoil his scarlet suit.