The Crown of Dalemark (40 page)

Mitt turned back. “You mean that?”

“I do,” said Hern.

“Now?”

“Crown first,” said Hern. “Bend your head.”

Mitt sighed and bowed his head down. “Extra bit of advice,” he said, looking sideways at Kialan. “Kings drive a hard bargain.”

Hern chuckled as he settled the thick gold band carefully over Mitt's lank hair. “A King should have a sharp mind,” he said. “That may be in my Sayings somewhere. I am sorry that I cannot give you the kingstone as well as the crown. The stone is in the South. A man in Holand called Hobin knows where to find it.”

Mitt stared at him from under his own forehead. “Hobin? Gunsmith? He's my stepfather!” He straightened up slowly and put one hand uneasily to the crown, thinking it might slip, but it seemed steady enough. Like the Adon's ring, it was an exact fit. “Hobin!” he said. “You Undying really got me hemmed in, haven't you?”

Hern nodded as he stepped backward. “It was the same for me. Now you can ask your favor.”

“All right,” said Mitt. “Then, do you really have to sit here, century after century, waiting for the next new King to come along?”

Hern went very still. “This I know is in the Sayings of the King,” he said. “Never be beguiled by pity. Are you talking pity?”

“No,” said Mitt. “You've been showing us you're stuck here and you don't like it from the moment you first spoke.”

“Mercy, then?” asked Hern. “This sits well on a King.”

“No,” said Mitt. “Flaming Ammet, I don't know what it's called! I'll have to take a leaf out of your book and
show
you. Take a look at Ynen. He's miserable because all he can think of is that you have to sit here, year in and year out, waiting for a King that may not come. Only he doesn't like to say so because the One made you sit here. Isn't that so?” Mitt asked Ynen. Ynen went pink and nodded hard. “See?” Mitt said to Hern. “I don't know the word for what I'm doing, unless it's having the cheek to say things no one else dares to say. Is that kingly?”

Hern did not answer. He laughed.

“Laugh away,” Mitt said. “I'm going to ask the One to take you off duty.”

Hern went on laughing, but the sound was confused now and fading. The beams of light, which had half hidden him if you looked at him sideways, came to cover him however you looked, crisscrossing and elongating confusingly. He was like a candle seen through tears. Then the beams separated and slid away. Each silvery streak carried a dim piece of Hern's shape with it, as if he were dissolving underwater. Mitt set his teeth and clenched his hands until the Adon's ring bit into him. This was exactly like his worst nightmare when he was small. He had been fairly sure this would happen, but it had seemed worth asking all the same. He made himself watch until Hern had rippled away into nowhere.

The rippling did not vanish with Hern. It remained as a green-goldness, like air shaking in heat. The stone seat, and that whole end of the room, wavered as if they were under clear, shallow water. Mitt's hands remained clenched. The scent he had recognized outside, of peat and farm, willows budding, and slow, deep river flowing to the far-off sea, was back again, stronger and more potent. And the rippling had formed a shape, a huge gold-green shadow with a profile like Hern's or Ynen's. Mitt had no doubt, nor had any of the others, that there was a presence standing behind them, casting this shadow, but it was beyond any of them to turn round and look.

When the One spoke, the voice came from behind them. “Hern has long ago gone down the River to the sea.”

Mitt relaxed. Ynen murmured, “Oh good!” Maewen wondered how anyone could mistake Kankredin's voice for the One's. This voice was like the whole land speaking, the settling of rocks, the grind of water through granite, the slow shift of earth, and the wind blowing, and it burred in your ears in the same way as the low string on Moril's cwidder.

“It is not easy,” said the One, “for my mortal children to speak with me face-to-face.”

This was true. All of them were aching to turn round and see the One, and all of them knew it was quite impossible.

“Witness this, all of you,” said the One. “You have a new King.”

No one was sure what to do, until Moril led them in a ragged chorus. “We witness we have a new King.”

“I thank you,” said the One.

The rippling shadow stooped then. It was as if the One bent to have a private word with each of them, all at the same time. Maewen heard the great voice at her ear, saying, “I cannot promise you what you asked. Too many imponderables lie in between. I am sorry.”

To Mitt the One said, “You have been offered the name of Amil, which is my name. Before you choose between that name or your own, you must know that I have sworn to root out Kankredin from my land. If you take my name, that will be your task, too. What name do you choose?”

Mitt knew it was a real choice, even if Maewen had told him which way he chose. He weighed it up. Alhammitt was a good name, except that it was the name of half the men in the South. Amil was a name no one else had, but it carried the One's burden with it. Well, Mitt had carried burdens all his life. Kingship was another one. One more seemed to make no difference on top of that. “I'll take Amil,” he said.

Then he turned round, like someone waking up, wondering what the One had said to the others. The rippling shadow was gone, and with it, most of the golden mistiness. He could see they were standing in a place that was no more than an oblong trench, with walls made of big blocks of yellowish stone that were broken off at about waist height. Beside him Maewen was fiercely blinking back tears. Moril looked much the same. But Ynen and Kialan both looked happy, in a stunned kind of way.

“I think we have to go back through the stone,” Moril said.

21

When they turned round, they found three stone steps the color of oatcakes leading into a green-gold landscape of humps and hillocks. Had it not been for the silence, and the mist still clinging to the near distance, they would have thought they were back in Kernsburgh outside the waystone.

They walked, slightly downhill, through a dip on the gold-green turf. The humps of Hern's palace were small behind them. Ruins were like that, Maewen thought. Buildings, even palaces, seemed to take up far more room than they really did.

At first they were very silent and sober. Everyone kept glancing at Mitt, walking in the midst of them with the crown gleaming orange against his hair. He seemed taller. Nobody knew quite what to say. At last Maewen decided that someone must say something.

“Do you want us to call you Your Majesty?” she asked.

“Flaming Ammet!” said Mitt. “Don't you dare!” He grabbed hold of her hand. “Don't any of you treat me different,” he said. “I'm going to need you all around for sanity.”

Everyone broke into relieved laughter. After that they were able to talk together quite normally until Moril said, “Hush a moment.”

His cwidder was humming, and humming louder for every step they took forward. Something dark was rising out of the mist ahead. The cwidder was almost growling as they reached it. It was the waystone, but it was not small any longer. It towered in a mighty arch above them, even bigger than the one Maewen remembered outside the station.

Moril murmured, “Wider than the world, or small as in a nut.” It must have been a quotation. Kialan recognized it and grinned at him as they all stepped through the waystone together, with Ynen, who was last, almost treading on Moril, who was just ahead of Kialan.

They were back on green grass under a gray morning. The waystone was waist-high behind them, and they were in a battle.

The fighting was noisy, it was vicious, and it was all round them. Everywhere they looked, people ran and struggled and hacked at one another. Riders and loose horses galloped and screamed. They had a glimpse of Luthan, still on horseback, furiously hacking at someone in a wavy helmet and shiny armor that gave him a chest like a pigeon. Luthan's face was bright with blood that clashed with the red of his clothes. One of his arms was the wrong red, too, and the mail was dangling from it in strips. They just had time to see this before the horses and fighting swirled and both Luthan and his opponent vanished. The air was full of drifting puffs of white smoke, shouts, clangs, and the slurring whisper of crossbow bolts, which were even crueler than the guns, because you could barely hear them coming.

Kialan threw himself behind the waystone. “Get down, all of you!”

The waystone was a tiny piece of cover, but it was the only one available. The rest crowded up against Kialan, kneeling or crouching, Mitt on one knee with one hand steadying the crown.

“What's going on?” Moril gasped. He was doubled protectively across his cwidder. “Those look like Southerners! That armor!”

Ynen took a look through the hole in the waystone. “They are, too! I
think
they look like Andmark.”

“Earl
Henda
!” Mitt exclaimed. Everyone except Maewen bobbed up for a hasty look. “Hundreds of them,” said Mitt. “Where have they all come from?”

“It must have been
them
we heard in the night—Ynen and me,” Kialan said, doubled over his own knees. “I remember thinking I heard supply wagons.”

Mitt bobbed up again to look through the savage smoky confusion. He bobbed down again, almost at once, and a speeding crossbow bolt whizzed above all their heads, but he had had time to see a row of big black wagons drawn up some way beyond the green road. “They're using the wagons for cover,” he said. “The ones with guns.”

“Who do you think's winning?” Kialan asked.

Mitt shook his head. It felt heavy with the crown. The battle had obviously gone long beyond the stage where you could tell what was going on, but there had looked to be far more Southerners than Northerners. He had a feeling the Northerners were getting beaten.

There was another noise now. It was hard to pick out among the din. Mitt thought he had noticed it only because he seemed to feel it in his bones as much as his ears. For a moment, he wondered if he had accidentally said the name of the Earth Shaker. The earth seemed full of drumming.

There was a tremendous shouting behind.

They all whirled round to find a wall of horsemen galloping down upon them. The world seemed full of thousands of pounding horse legs, flying divots of turf and hollow drumming thunder. Kialan spread his arms out and pulled the four of them into a tight bundle in front of him.
“Down!”
he yelled, and fell forward on top.