Sunlight was beating on my head. The rain had passed, to leave a brisk, fair, brightening afternoon. Only my face was wet.
Gradually I realized I was seated, hands clenched between my knees, braced against cold uneven rock. I could smell only rain-washed air. Hear only an aching silence, punctured by faint, derisive yarks.
Painfully, I opened my eyes.
The fires had died. The smoke had blown away. Below me on the silent battlefield, Hawge was dining upon its spoils.
I have never purged that image. Some things should not be sung. I can still see it, though: the clear blue sky, the nude black earth, the pitiful debris of torn, broken, strewn bodies, red flesh and glaring new-bared bone amid the sheen and stare of broken weapons, the sepia blotches of sodden bull-hide, the thick red blots that marked pools and pools of drying blood. And the vast black bulk of the dragon couched full length among it, only the head moving as it scavenged. Idly, daintily, here and there.
No telling how long I sat there. Horror erases time. But presently I noticed the body of a horse, lying apart from the rest, and that reminded me of the Geat king whose horse died with him. And that connection shot me to my feet like a red-hot spur.
To do what I did then you would have to be beyond fear: this is not a boast, merely a note that beyond certain points fear ceases to exist. I walked down the hill, out over the blackened earth, up to the carnage, and within earshot I stopped and spoke.
“Hawge,” I said.
The dragon’s side loomed over me, monstrous as a ship, black, moving slightly as it breathed. Hawge did not bother to rise, or to turn its head. But one eye revolved, to take me in a green, crystalline, inhuman gaze.
I looked down. I knew the danger of a dragon’s eyes. There were bodies at my feet. I remember wondering if Asc was one, lying here smashed and twisted with the impossible suppleness of the dead.
The dragon exhaled, a lazy, furnace draft.
<Man,> it replied.
The voice was curiously puny for so large a beast. Indeed it was more of a rasping whisper, hardly vocalized at all. It waited for me to go on. And what I must say next rose in my throat like bile.
“If my lord pleases,” I said, “I should like to make a song, about this famous victory.”
Hawge’s head came round. It is quite true that dragons are very human: vain, with a sense of humor, delighting in riddles, power, gold and death. There was humor in that lidless eye which dwelt on me, but there was also an acuity to chill the blood.
<What,> asked Hawge, <do you want?>
After a moment to gather my wits I answered, “My lord has many... many...” I gestured around. “All that I ask is one.”
Hawge pondered for what seemed an eternity. Then it sank its head, and blew a puff of rose-pink fire. And presently asked, <Which one?>
Ridiculous to say, I don’t know yet. Perilous to reply, The one who wounded you. Hawge waited. In desperation I said, “It will be a famous song.”
Hawge rolled over. The crystalline eye roved from me to the corpses and back, and I felt it pierce through all the subterfuges to my very soul. Then the chin sank on the ground and the vast whisper said above me, <Leave his horse.>
As I turned in flight, a thin tongue of flame licked my calves and Hawge breathed after me, <Remember the song.>
* * * * *
With music or not, that search must remain unsung. There were men still breathing in that charnel house, and I could not, dared not succor them...
Beryx lay just inside the further edge. I saw the wink of steel amid the matted bull-hides, then a blood-red helmet plume. He was face down, legs doubled and twisted under him, arms flung wide as if he had tried to roll with the impact, face buried in the corpses beneath. The corselet was shattered like hammer-struck glass. All his right side was a ghastly mess of broken steel and bone splinters and raw flesh and crusting blood, with a frightful welling pit halfway down his ribs: the mark of the sting.
When I could see his face I did not recognize it, for all of it was black and half of it was burnt. I remember standing there, half-weeping as I sought a way to carry him, to carry him alone, to carry him with the honor he deserved.
Finally I got him over a shoulder, limbs dangling round me, and staggered drunkenly away. Hawge revolved a single eye to watch me go.
If the climb to the watershed was bad, the descent was worse. I kept slipping, and Beryx grew heavier and heavier. Nothing weighs like a lifeless man, and he was a tall one, and I am slight. Finally I had to rest. I set him by the track, thinking that now I could at least lay him out decently, trying not to think of the infinity between me and Astarien, left with no space to think of grief.
It was near sunset. The sky was full of wind-cloud, long plumes of fiery rose and lambent apricot tousled against halcyon blue. The air had chilled. My shadow was long. As I bent over Beryx, another shadow crossed it and I leapt to my feet.
He studied me across the body: a stocky, black-haired, gray-eyed Stiriann, with a farmer’s coarse blue shirt and breeches and a most unfarmerly naked sword. Imagining looters, I was ready to fly at him like a faithful, futile dog. But he jerked his free hand downward and said, “Who’s that?”
“Beryx,” I said. “The king.”
He frowned down at the body. I said, “Who are you?”
He answered without looking up, “Stavan. Coed Wrock.” Almost belligerently I demanded, “What are you doing here?” And he responded in key.
“You’re on my land,” he said.
“Air and Water!” No doubt I was hardly a model of aplomb. “The quintessential pharr’az! ‘You’re on my land!’ Well, there are three hundred other dead men and a dragon also on your land, and if I had a bier I’d be more than willing to get this one off!”
His eyes had not left Beryx. Now, not deigning to answer, he dropped on a knee, and I nearly leapt before noticing he had put down his sword. He went on staring. Just as I prepared to wring his neck, he sat back on his heels and began to pull off his shirt.
“In the Four’s name!” I bawled. “He doesn’t need a blanket, he needs a bier! And if you got off your behind and signaled Astarien you’d be more use than you’ve ever been in your—”
He lifted those passionless gray eyes and said as if I had not spoken, “Undo that flap-coat of yours while I cut some saplings. It’s a litter he needs.” And, as I went quite rabid, he pointed to the welling pit in Beryx’s ribs and said, “Blood’s wet. Heart’s pumping: see how it makes? He’s alive.”
* * * * *
Whatever else befalls me, I shall number that week in Astarien as the worst in my entire life. It was not enough to be the sole survivor of a holocaust, nor to totter back with a king slung on a couple of shirts and saplings at the point of death, nor that I must bring him into that lunatic’s stewpot of a town where the local government could not make itself heard, or try to nurse him in chaos worsened by scenes of insensate grief, all with the dragon still lying on my friends’ bodies within wingbeat. I, a mere harper, had a kingdom landing round my ears. “Take it to the king.” That week I learnt just how much they took.
Evacuees were still coming. Gerrar was beside himself: half the towns of Everran were asking where to put and how to feed them, every governor north of Saphar wanted to know what the dragon would do and what he should do next. The levy commanders in Saphar were ramping to sacrifice their green troops, the Guard wanted to give Inyx a military funeral. Quarred enquired if it were safe to summer their sheep in the Raskelf, the lords had illicitly raised the wine price, the Regent did not know what to tell Estar and Hazghend, and the farmer holding the phalanx’s horses wanted to know for how long and who would pay for it. There were only three rays of sun: Kelflase, intact, in touch, sending the commander Sarras up next day to Astarian. Stavan. And the nurse.
It was Stavan who got us through Astarien, up to Gerrar’s house, into a bedroom, and before I thought how to strip the king’s armor had produced a thin, leathery, white-haired woman imperturbable enough to be his mother: which in fact she was. She took one look at the bed, the king, the household women in spasms around him, told me, “Clean sheets. Hot water. Lamp.” Told Gerrar, “Get them out.” And told Stavan himself, “Los Nuil. Wild honey. All you can rob.”
Undoubtedly Thassal saved the king’s life that night. She had his armor off with minimal disturbance, the surface splinters out, and the blood sponged off before Stavan reappeared with a bucketful of wild honeycomb, that we were instantly set to crush and sieve, before she bandaged it in a huge poultice over the entire wound.
Next she bade us find hethel oil: that night in Astarien, finding whiskers on a baby would have been a lesser enterprise. With that she soaked the burnt side of his face and bound it up in silk scarves annexed from the wardrobe of Gerrar’s wife. And at midnight, when the spreading stain on the poultice made it clear the sting-pit had not closed, she undid the bandages, bent down, and sucked the wound.
As she spat in the nearest basin, I could not restrain a cry. She merely said, “If it don’t clot, won’t matter if I suck him dry.”
Clot it did. When I said in wonder, “How did you know that?” she looked at me as if I were an idiot, and replied, “It’s in all the songs. Dragon poison thins the blood.”
For three days after that he lay at the river’s brink. Considering the handling I gave him, it is a Sky-lords’ gift that he lived so long. Thassal applied fresh poultices, and fed him honey thinned with water and mixed with yeldtar juice, which she made him swallow by stroking his throat. “Yeldtar to keep him quiet. Water because he’s bled. Honey’s quick strength.”
Unlike me, she never despaired. “He’s a fighter,” she said, watching his death-white face against the pillow. “He’ll fight.” And, as the cocks crew in Astarien’s bleak dormitory-like streets four mornings later, he opened his eyes.
Thassal promptly pushed me behind the lamp. “You he knows.” She fed him again, quietly but relentlessly making him finish the whole cup, then gently lowered his head. But when his eyes had closed, she stood there a long moment, and then she said a curious thing.
“So,” she murmured. “They are green.”
She probably saved his life times over as he mended, for a more fractious patient never filled a bed. He was hardly conscious when he tried to talk, and the smoke must have held poison, for it had seared his throat. Then nothing would do but wax tablets and stylus, and of course, being right-handed, he could not write. When he started to beat the bed-clothes Thassal hauled me upstairs, commanding, “Tell him the tale. Naught else to do.”
So I told him. He turned his face to the wall and lay the rest of the day like a skinned pup, with Thassal seated silently by the bed. Coming up at lamp-time, I heard when she finally spoke.
“King,” she said, “this won’t do. Live folk need you. Those don’t.”
He did not move. But next morning he was propped up with the tablet against his knees and his lopsided turban making him look like a mad Quarred sheep lord, as he doggedly, grimly taught his left hand to write.
* * * * *
His first demand was a move to the lookout tower. Thassal shrugged. “He’ll fret silly else.” With that achieved, he summoned Sarras and Gerrar and me to a council, and then I had to contend not only with the rest of Everran but with a demonically active king.
First he summoned engineers, then ordered them to build a catapult. “We’ll jam stones in the bastard’s gullet.” Informed that, unlike the dragon it would be immobile, he wrote in furious jagged capitals, “Then build one that’s not!” While they digested that he sent for armorers to forge unbreakable sarissas, herb-doctors to compound a dragon-poison, hunters and more engineers to design a dragon pit, and Four knows what else. Between times he took over the evacuation, deployed the levies, dismissed the Regent, summoned the Council to Astarien, set a permanent dragon-watch, quelled the lords, expelled the royal physician who had been slung in a mule-litter and sent north so fast he was only fit to wring his hands, threw his tablets at me for suggesting he should rest, and requisitioned Gerrar’s scribes so he could deal with the Confederacy.
After he regained his voice things speeded up. But when, not a month after the battle, he announced he was ready to get up, Thassal calmly demolished him.
“You have no clothes,” she told him from the tower door. “And no one will bring you any. And if you try to get some I’ll take that nightshirt off you as well.”
Healthy, he would have laughed and admitted defeat. As it was, he lay back and said in that strained whisper, “You cursed woman. You should have been a general. Thank the Four you’re not.”
An hour later he had sent a mirror-signal for the Treasurer’s inventory and was waving his tablets at me, saying, “Here, Harran, you’re a wordsmith. Draft this.”
I asked, “What is it, lord?” And he tossed me the stylus. “Proclamation. All the Confederacy. Champions. Anyone who can stick the dragon, I’ll give them... give them...”
“It’s usual to offer a daughter,” I said flippantly, and then could have bitten off my tongue.
He did wince, but then it brought his first real laugh. “Better than that.” He held his ribs. “Offer them—Maerdrigg’s maerian.”
I dropped the stylus. He said, “Heirloom, priceless, the luck of the house.” Shrugged, and winced again. “Everran comes first.”
He was still in great pain: the physician talked of extracting splinters when he was strong enough, but after three weeks not even Thassal could feed him yeldtar juice. “Saw it in Hazghend. A drug.” So I would play for him, in the night watches where I had now been promoted as nurse.
I still see that little stone wedge of room, the pallet bed overhung by a goose-feather mattress Stavan commandeered the Four know where, the rough iron door, the archer’s slit full of frostily starlit black, the tiny lamp flame on his strained, haggard face. I would play the little, simple airs of Everran’s work and play: songs for all seasons from every Resh, the folk catches that outlast lore. When that failed, we would talk. One learns a great deal, talking at night. Sellithar must have been the only subject on which we never spoke.
After seven days Hawge had flown north-east amid a wave of frantic orders for the border garrisons to shelter the people and let the dragon be, and was now dormant after feeding heavily on a tardy cattle herd in the Coesterne hills. The field at Coed Wrock had been salved. The king had already commissioned a cairn, but that no one had found Inyx’s body was his deepest grief.
“He was right,” he said wistfully during another night conversation. “I shouldn’t have tried it. I threw them—and him—away.”
“I do not think so,” was the best I could do. When he spoke in that quiet remorse so utterly unakin to self-pity was when I pitied him most. “It had to be attempted. They would say the same.”
He shifted his head on the pillow. “All the same... I’d like to have begged his pardon. Told him he was right.”
“He,” I rejoined blandly, “would enjoy that.”
We both chuckled. Then it was time for another of the bed-ridden’s indignities: the sponging, the bed-pan, the food you cannot cut for yourself. Coming back, I beat up the pillows, which as usual were everywhere, and asked, as usual, “Is that better, lord?”
He smiled rather wearily as he lay back. Then he looked up. Whatever wreckage lay under the bandages, his eyes remained beautiful: long-lashed, vivid green almonds, full of impish light.
“Beryx,” he said. “I can’t expect to be ‘lord’ when I ask you to do things like that.”
I murmured some demurral. He said, “That’s an order,” and then began laughing. “Oh, Four! I mean, that’s an order—please.” As he held his side, I thought, No wonder they died for you. If you command, you can also charm.
* * * * *
Like Thassal, Stavan had been invaluable: while I played Regent he wrought with Gerrar’s household, materialized food and physic and sick-room furniture from thin air, excluded hysterical visitors, even managed to achieve quiet in the nearest streets. Later he provided for counselors, engineers, physicians, armorers, and all the king’s other whimsies as well as me. When I asked why he stayed, he shrugged. “Nothing better to do.”
That next night I was supping in Gerrar’s former record room when he came in to announce, “Someone wanting you.” With a mental groan I said, “Send him in,” and looked up at a ghost.
He was propped on crutches in the doorway, wearing leg bandages, a soldier’s under-tunic, and something like a leather corset over it: squat, black, gnarled as an old hethel tree, his calling in his face.
Quite deranged, I said when my breath returned, “We did look for you. I swear it. I am sorry. If you only tell me where you lie—”
At which he shot me a sharp black glance and growled, “For the Lords’ sake uncross your eyes, harper. Pinch me if you like.”
“Crawled away,” he said, disposed in my chair. “After dark. Harper, spare us, don’t cry in m’wine.” Stiffly, he flexed a leg. “That’s just burns.” Just. “Tail hit me high. I’ve the father and mother of all belly-aches, and I spat blood for days, but I can get around in this.” He touched the leather strapping. “Farmer made it. Hauled me into bed when I crawled there. I’ve just broken out. How’s the king?”
I told him. He nodded. Then, with a quick glance under his brows, “Heard what you did.”
“But not for you.” It still kept me awake. “I told the dragon, just one. I didn’t dare—”
“I didn’t matter,” he spoke brusquely, meaning it. “What matters is him.”
* * * * *
“Lord,” I said as I opened the tower door, striving not to grin from ear to ear and spoil the surprise, “lord, look what I picked up.”
Inyx hopped past me. Beryx’s head rocketed up. For one instant his face was all incredible, incredulous delight, he plunged up in bed, grabbed instinctively at his side, forgot it to throw out his arms—then in a flash radiance became the most desperate grief.
“Don’t you start,” Inyx growled. “Harper’s already pinched me black and blue.”
Beryx stuttered. Choked. Choked again. Tried to wrench his back to us. Inyx’s very shape changed. With a violent effort, Beryx faced round and lifted his head.
“No,” it came almost on a sob. “You old fool—not that!”
He got control of himself. Very clearly, looking Inyx full in the face, making it an indictment, an explanation, his utmost recompense, he said, “You were right.”
Inyx shoved away a cup-stand with a crutch and hopped over to the bed. “Lemme get off these things,” he grunted. “Stand over.”
Beryx moved his legs. Suddenly tears ran down his cheeks and as I closed the door I heard Inyx say in a voice I never believed could hold so much gentleness, “Si’sta... si’sta... That’s a leader’s price.”
Inyx eased life greatly: a close friend, a fellow soldier, competent with things Beryx would delegate to no one else, which slowed him down and mended him faster. Inyx could also curb Beryx’s worst fantasias. If Inyx went, “Mphh!” instead of, “Ah,” the king would grin ruefully and drop the project, saving much wear and tear on messengers, Stavan, and assorted experts’ self-esteem. Inyx also harmonized with Thassal, and to the physician’s disgust thoroughly approved her doctoring, and he had tended enough campaign wounds to offer valid advice. But he was anxious to move the king.
“Too close,” he told me. “And kingdom’s like soldiers. What they can’t see they don’t believe.” When Sarras, who gathered news as wool gathers burrs, told him that rumors of the king’s death were already unsettling Tirs, he actually managed to tune Thassal and the physician on the need for an early splinter-probe.
Beryx wanted to go south first. Thassal told him sternly, “You can’t act till you’re moved. You can’t move till they’re out. If one worked down to an inner vein we could not stop you bleeding to death.” At that he yielded, and the physician set to work.
Afterward he looked worse than on the battlefield: flat on his back, so thin he barely raised the bedclothes, so white I thought he had already bled to death. Helping change the bandages, I saw the pits they had left, and understood why. However, he recovered quickly, and mended faster for it, sleeping better, putting on flesh. Presently Thassal left his head unbandaged, merely rubbing hethel oil into the scar.
When I first saw that it took my breath. As I stood in the door, fighting to school my face, he glanced up and showed me I had failed.
“No,” he said wryly, “I doubt they’ll call me handsome again.”
The scar began where the corselet-collar had met his jaw line, caught the corner of his mouth and swept up past his nostril, mercifully missing the eye, then reached right back to his ear: a rag-edged triangular purple welt fit to terrorize a child. I felt ridiculous tears prickle, and hurriedly burlesqued a triumphant-hero march on my harp. Thank the Sky-lords, he laughed.
But a couple of nights later I found him trying to lift his right arm, immobilized till then to help the wound in his side. As I came in he glanced up with a small worried frown, saying, “Come and rub this for me, Harran. I can’t make the fool thing move.”
The skin was icy, and the muscles had shrunk. Only natural, I told myself. But I told Thassal too, and next day came with her to look.
She freed the arm from the sling and laid it on the coverlet. Prodded. Poked. Felt his shoulder. Two lines rose between her brows, and she said to me, “Fetch the general.”
Inyx hopped in, listened, looked, felt in turn. Said, “Ah.” Then sat on the bed and spoke very softly to the king.
“Remember that lad Kirth? In Hazghend? Took a catapult graze just under the shoulder point?”
Beryx looked up at him. His face was stiff, and rather white about the mouth.
Holding his eyes, steady as a phalanx charge, Inyx said, “Ah.”
Beryx’s eyes turned to the arm. The room was very quiet.
“It barely broke the skin.” His voice was careful. “But he couldn’t use the arm. We... sent him home.”
Under his breath, Inyx said again, “Ah.”
Beryx was still looking down. From the left his face was unmarred, springing nose and clean mouth, winged brow and long-lashed green eye, the strength and decision that go beyond handsomeness. But the steady grief in it tore my heart.
“Well, well,” he said at last. Then he smiled at Inyx, a smile of cold steel courage, and said, “Here’s one Berheage will be leading from behind.”
Going out, Inyx spat in the stair-well and said to Thassal, “Four grant I never have to tell another thing like that.”
She replied as she once had to me. “He’s a fighter. He’ll fight.”
* * * * *
Only he did not. Like that inner vein cut by a splinter, it slowly bled his spirit away before our eyes. I do not know which was worse to watch: the decay, or his effort to conceal it. “Four send the dragon,” prayed Inyx blasphemously. “Or a mutiny, or an invasion. Anything to wake him up.”
I did not try myself: having gratefully abandoned all pretences of Regency, I had retired to my harp. I had a song to make, a battle-song, the most delicate jugglery a bard ever attempted, for I was determined to tell the truth, flatter the dragon, and yet leave honor with the losers at the end. It was in my mind that one day Hawge might recall that song. I was wrestling a tricky modulation in my parchment-lair when an explosion carried clear from the tower.
I flew upstairs. A dusty, spurry messenger was bobbing in the doorway, trying to fit in a wail. As a leonine roar fired him past me I shot inside to find Beryx half out of bed, strewn with parchments and spitting fire like Hawge itself.
“My uncle!” he bellowed, hurling missives broadcast. “My beloved uncle! Doesn’t think I’m fit to deal with this! Doesn’t think at all! The ninny! The nincompoop! The— Inyx! Inyx! Rot it, where are you? Where’s Stavan? Call Gerrar—get a horse-litter—take this thing off me! By the Sky-lords’ faces, I’ll disembowel him when I get back south!”
Thassal fairly bounced in with Inyx bursting after her, purple in the face. Beryx flung his sling at them left-handed, kicked back the quilts, shot to his feet, and promptly collapsed. Inyx shed crutches to arrive in time and pinned him down with a hand in the chest.
Beryx roared, “Get your paws off me!”
Inyx panted, “Can’t.”
The king thundered, “What!”
And Inyx gasped, “Can’t. Over... balanced m’self.”
There was a frightful hush. Then Beryx unwound, and began, albeit painfully, to laugh.
As Inyx levered himself upright, Thassal and I retrieved parchments. I recognized the Quarred ram-horns on one huge red seal.
The king, eyes very bright and dangerous, said, “Do you know what they say? Quarred: ‘Where the doughty warriors of Everran failed, our shepherds can hardly hope to succeed.’ With a five thousand strong standing army and ‘shepherds’ who raid my Reshx every year! Holym: Most unusually concise. ‘Branding cattle. Can’t come.’ Hazghend: ‘Love and best wishes, Ragnor, I have pirates off Osgarien and Estar’s hired my ships.’ Estar: Oh, this is the pearl. ‘We have a current fluidity problem. Our assembly has voted to censure the dragon at the next Confederate Council, and will apply trade sanctions on your behalf.’ Trade sanctions! Shepherds! Branding! I fought for Hazghend, my grandfather saved Estar. Loyalty! Not to mention foresight! Let a dragon ruin your neighbor so you’ll have to fight it yourself!”
Inyx was studying the Hazghend parchment. His brows knit. He said slowly, “This is a month old.”
“My uncle the royal incubator!” Beryx erupted all over again. “He’s sat on those for a month! The—the—incompetent!” It was the worst insult in his vocabulary. He hove himself up the bed. “Find me a horse-litter, Inyx. I can’t rot here any longer, Four knows what else he’s done. No, woman, blight your splinters. I’m going home!”
Over his head Inyx caught my eye, and very nearly achieved a wink.
* * * * *
Characteristically, the turmoil of departure did not make Beryx forget his debts. While I was packing my harp, Stavan came in, perched on the table, and presently remarked, “King sent for me.”
I cocked an eye.
“Offered me a stewardship. Said, ‘If you ran this mess, you’ll run the palace in your sleep.’ I said, I belong in Stiriand. He said, ‘Then Gerrar shall rebuild the house at Coed Wrock.’” He shook his head. “Dictated the order there and then.”
“You deserve it.” I thought how I would miss him, how we had met. “Twice over.”
He shrugged. Fingered my harp. Hesitated. Then, with a palpable jerk, he plunged.
“Harper... what do you know about aedryx?” he said.
“Aedryx?” I was puzzled. “I never heard of it.”
“Them.”
He was watching me oddly. “Who are they?” I asked, wondering what obscure branch of Stiriann folklore I had missed.
He looked down, growing still more reluctant. At last he said, “Wizards.” A pause. “In the old days.” Another pause. “There are songs.”
“I’ve never heard them.” I was professionally piqued.
He shot me another fleeting glance. Then he brought the words out as if loading a fireball catapult.
“They say... Lossian was one. And... he had green eyes.”
Then he was off the table and gone before I could assemble a question to chase, let alone catch, the hint.
Thassal was yet more tantalizing. She saw Beryx to his horse-litter, and as she stood by it in the steep stony street I now knew so well, he held out his left hand. “Thank you,” he said, “general. Now where?—ah.” He hauled his right arm forward. “Here, pull this off.”
She looked down at the great seal ring in her palm. It was a finghend, green and vivid as his eyes, worth a fortune. When Beryx gave, he did it with both hands.
“I doubt,” she said, “Coed Wrock’s enough.”
“Coed Wrock’s for Stavan. This is for you. Rot it, woman, how low should I value my life?”
His mock ferocity raised a faint flush on her cheek. Then, with Stavan’s air of reaching a hard decision, she looked up.
“King,” she said, “I’ll give you a gift to match. If you need to know about aedryx—come to Coed Wrock.”
Beryx started so violently he upset the horses. “Aedryx! How do you know?—what do you?—here, Thassal, listen—come back! Oh... let her go.” He lay watching her gray skirt flick from sight, but all the way to Kelflase he was unnaturally silent. And what I found still odder was that he never, then or later, mentioned the incident to any of us.
After Kelflase a paven road replaced the half-finished horse-track, another sick-bed project, but it was still not fast enough for the king. Counselors might nurse their saddle-galls, the physician might bleat of convalescence, Inyx might cock an anxious eye. Beryx disembarked each night white and sweating worse than the horses, and climbed in next morning saying, “For the Four’s sake, let’s get on!”
With summer waxing, Saeverran’s grass had hayed off, Saphar’s vines were blowsy, heavy-laden, and the humid mornings beckoned to days of laziness. Earth-day had left every road thick with saplings which the refugees watered, as they harvested hay and weeded vines and filled every other occupation ingenuity could suggest. More and more often as we moved south Beryx was met by anxious local governors asking if the Treasury could finance a new well or renovated market for refugee work, by deme leaders swamped with Stiriand folk and fowls and stallions and worried it was permanent, by garrison commanders enquiring about strategy and wine-lords nervy about the market. Or simply by wives whose men had been levied and who asked, “When will he be back?” Small wonder he reached Saphar as thin and haggard and hectic as before Inyx arrived.
When we descended to Azilien it was afternoon, and the riverbanks were thick with small white and gold ahltaros flowers turned to the westering sun. The air had lost its springtime clarity. The city and the Helkent themselves looked vaguely smudged. As we clattered on to the bridge I saw Beryx thrust open the litter curtains with a hunger in his gaunt face. Then it changed.
Over the bridge breast appeared a floral archway, banners, a horde of bobbing heads, and the tall figure of the Regent, splendid in official robes.
Inyx’s litter shot out a volley of soldier’s oaths that closed on, “Unconquering heroes—eccch!” Four, I thought, as those determinedly gay smiles curdled my own stomach: you could have spared him this!
The advance-guard slowed. The cheering began. A citizens’ band struck up the march I had burlesqued; the Regent advanced with outheld hand and a fulsome smile on his silly face. I heard Beryx snap at his horse-leader, “Halt!” As the Regent reached the litter, he thrust the curtains wide.
Nothing is so foolish as forced joy gone bad. The Regent’s hands followed his jaw down. There was no mistaking the expression, and Beryx would have had it full face.
He made a valiant recovery. “My dear boy—my dear boy—whatever have you been doing—oh, dear oh dear—” To cap it, he tried to help Beryx out, a thing not even Inyx dared.
The king emerged between his arms, face white where it was not purple, jaw rigid with the double effort of standing alone and of concealing it. “No, uncle,” he said with a glittering smile. “The question, surely, is: What have you been doing?”
I heard Inyx’s demonically gleeful snort. Beryx cut through a cloud of excuse and explanation, extending his left arm for the ritual embrace.
The Regent would plainly have sooner cuddled a toad. The band was still thumping, grotesque in the widening hush, my sickened stomach had become a knot of rage. To be sure, they could not help it, any more than their well-meaning welcome: but let anyone say anything, I vowed, and harper or no harper, I’ll put his teeth down his throat.
Beryx, as usual, was already in control. “You shouldn’t have come down, uncle.” A purr that barely hid the claws. “I’m not fit yet, I’ll have to go straight home. But I shall expect you up there at the first advice.” Right royal rage would precede a more than right royal rebuke. He climbed back in the litter, the Regent flapping behind him: jerked his head to the horse-leader, sat up straight, and yanked both curtains wide.
You may imagine his progress for yourself. All the way up the hill they were out to cheer him, and all the way they tried. He sat through it, back straight, jaw rigid, nodding to the odd acquaintance. I daresay he would sooner have been washed in boiling oil.
When he emerged at the gate-arch, Inyx and I dead-heated to his shoulder. “No, you old idiot,” he said without venom. “You’re no better than I am. Harran, give me a hand.”
As we climbed his weight grew heavier, his breathing more painful, his face wetter, till I ached to cry, “For the Lords’ sake, let me carry you!” But I dared not suggest a half-minute’s rest.
The armory guards saluted him when we passed: not a royal gesture, but a true salute, of soldiers to a defeated fellow, a gallantry they could understand. Seeing his face ease, I could have cheered them both.
We turned the corner. Reached the path to the royal rooms. And down from her outpaced maidens Sellithar came running, ethereal in a smoke-blue gown, glitter of golden hair and coronal, joy in those clear blue eyes.
“At last!” I never heard her sound more beautiful. “Where have you been?” And as she spoke, Beryx lifted his face.
She could not have helped it. It was a thing beyond anyone’s help, too quick and instinctive and spontaneous to prevent. Her stride faltered, her eyes flared, her face shouted shock, horror, revulsion. And it was over, in that flash.
She caught her smile and her footing and ran forward, words tumbling as she forced joy and relief and welcome back into that lovely limpid voice. I felt Beryx go stiff, as if to meet a spear-thrust with his naked flesh.
His good arm was over my shoulder. As she reached him, he stood up straight and unmoving, and said in a voice that could have been everyday, “I’m glad to see you, Sellithar.”
If protocol can be cruel, it may also be a mercy. In private, she might have broken down. Here, she turned white as he. Then blood and rank and discipline succored her, and she answered with the same formal falsity, “Welcome home, my lord.”
She came with us to his apartments. As his body servants surged forward I felt his almost physical withdrawal, and understood. I too would have wanted to be alone. He smiled apologetically and said, “Kyvan, Ysk... I’m out of practice. Just tonight, will you let the general bed me down?”
Amid assurance and protestation they withdrew. I could not look at Sellithar. I knew if she tried to stay he would eject her, and I dared not imagine how. But she said at once, “Beryx, you must be exhausted. I’ll see you tomorrow. Mind, you’re not to get up until I do.”
Ouch, I thought, recalling Thassal’s iron decrees. He dredged up a smile; I hurried to escape before the door closed. He said, “Harran?” He was rocking on his feet. It was the merest whisper. “Will you. . . go to the queen?”
Her porter refused me entrance. When I overrode him with a king’s command, I knew she would not be there. I stood in the arches of the little hall paneled in blonde imlann wood, tiled with a mosaic in palest limes, azures, and smoky lavenders, gweldryx flying among terrian blooms. The air bore her dry light scent, a blend of keerphars. Looking out to the paven paths and pools of the lily garden, I thought: alone. Not in her rooms, probably not in the royal apartments, not where her presence or unescorted going would be remarked, certainly not where anyone could see. I went through the closing lilies, down the southern arbors, round to the little pleasance beneath my tower.
Sellithar was kneeling on the seat, elbows along the outer parapet, staring into the melted evening distance toward Tirs.
I went to her quickly. Then paused, and sat down. She did not move. I took my harp and played at random: an improvisation, what Beryx called “thinking noise.” A little wind rustled like dragon speech among the helliens.
“He would not let me come to Astarien.” She spoke dully, without looking round. “I wanted to. To nurse him.”
I made a soothing nothing on the harp.
“He never mentioned it.” Her voice was duller, dead. “If he had, I could have...” She broke off. I played a hurried attempt at consolation, at erasure of that one small terrible word.
She straightened up. Her profile was still, and set, and curiously calm. “He will never forgive me,” she said. “Not so long as I live.”
Music failed me too. I knew it was the truth. Beryx was a devoted king, a humane general, a loyal friend, a generous master, probably a loving spouse. He would support you, lead you, defend you, rally you, comfort you: quite cheerfully die for you, over and above forgiving you wounds to his body, soul, and dignity. But never a wound to his pride.
I opened my mouth, but my silence had already replied. She cried, “Oh, Harran!” and flung herself round in a tempest of tears.
It was treachery, perfidy, base and unforgivable: but when the woman you love in is your arms, in distress, in your trust and in want of comforting, I defy anyone to be any nobler than me.
Her tears were over long before I stopped kissing her, embracing her, babbling all the usual inanities. Presently she lifted her eyes, tear-drenched, blue as terrian flowers, and studied me as if we had never met before. My heart had stopped when she gave a quick, shy smile, outlined my lips with a finger, and ducked her head.
“Harran,” she said, when I let her speak again, “what shall we do?”
It was in my heart to say, Run away to Meldene and make you a harper’s wife. But the heart is a very stupid organ at the best of times, whereas women are unfailingly full of wisdom, so I said nothing at all.
“I am,” she said, “the queen.”
I have remembered that, I said silently, these last three years.
“So...” she said.
“So,” I tried not to sound bitter, “I had better leave.”
She straightened in my arms, and I saw courage, maturity, accepted responsibility literally form before my eyes.
She kissed me. Then she said, “If you can bear it—I’d rather you were here. But...” her eyes filled with pain. “I have broken a real trust. I must not... break it in name.” She looked into my face. “Can you bear that, my dear?”
No! I wanted to yell. I have already borne enough! Then I recalled what she would bear tomorrow, what Beryx had already borne in that one day, and was ashamed. “If you ask it,” I said, “I can.”
She kissed me again. Then she rose and said with no hint of bitterness, “You must go now. The king might have need of you.”
* * * * *
The king did summon me next morning. He was in bed, conducting simultaneous breakfast, council, and correspondence, which latter he promptly delegated to me with an order to “light a fire under these Confederate ninnies, even if it’s too late.” The Regent made no appearance, unlike the army of servants forestalling his every need: but when scribes and council departed he waved them away, saying, “No, wait, Harran. Play for me a while. ‘Calm me down.’”
A quotation from Thassal I had thought unheard. He was looking pulled and pale. I would have chosen something simple. But as he lay back, eyes closed, he asked, “How’s your battle-song?”
I played what was done. He listened quietly, then bright-eyed, then openly laughing. At the end he cried, “You two-faced singing serpent!” and went to clap his hands.
As I sought desperately for words, he said, wistfully but without self-pity, “There are so many things you can’t do one-handed. Ride a warhorse. Peel an apple. Play a harp, I suppose.”
I did not add, use a sword and shield, wield a sarissa, draw a bow. He opened an eye and grinned. “Never mind, Harran. At least I’ve learnt to shave.”
“Self-defense?” I inquired blandly, recalling certain horrendous interludes at Astarien. He retorted with spirit, “The most horrible barber I ever suffered.” And as we laughed together I gave thanks to the wisdom of women, which let me share laughter and memory with a whole heart.
* * * * *
A day or so later the first champion arrived.
He strode into the audience hall as if he owned it, wider than Asc and twice as tall as Inyx, his barrel chest cased in a gold-inlaid steel corselet, his fur trousers tucked into knee-high cross-laced boots, a double-headed axe over his shoulder, a silvered boar-crest helmet on the back of his blonde curls. His bright blue eyes and sweeping corn-gold moustache and general air of rambunctious confidence shouted Hazghend to the skies. Dropping the axe-head with a clang on the marble pavement, he boomed, “Where’s this dragon of yours?”
“In Stiriand,” replied Beryx, evidently used to Hazyk manners. He looked closer. “Gjarr—am I right?”
“Gjarr it is,” nodded the giant. “How’d you know?”
“We met in Hazghend. Tyr... Kemmoth, I think. You’d gathered up a pair of corsairs. We took one off your hands.”
“By Rienvur, that’s right! Galley on my port side—somebody jumped aboard and chopped the captain, left us the starb’d one just before I sank. Nice piece of work.” His eye said with perfect unconsciousness, perfect friendliness, Poor soul, you couldn’t do it now. “Dragon tickle you up a bit, I see?”
“Just a little,” Beryx replied gravely. “There’ll be a mirror signal soon to report its position today. Do you want any help? Horses? Archers? Diversions?”
Gjarr laughed aloud, a splendid flash of white teeth in sea-bronzed face, and slapped the haft of his axe. “Oh, I think Skull-splitter here’ll be all the help I need.”
I saw Beryx and Inyx exchange one straight-faced sidelong glance. Then Beryx said demurely, “As you like. The maerian will always be here.”
Hawge kept the axe: it was taken with the intricate swirl of fire-red hazians and scintillant blue-white thillians that made the hand-grip on the ivory haft.
The next was supreme archer of the Quarred army, born in the Hasselian marshes where they can shoot out a duck’s eye before they talk, a lithe darting black snake of a man with the best reflexes I ever saw, a vanity that would have sat loose on Hawge, and a very canny wish to see the maerian before he risked his life. Beryx sent to the Treasury. As it was borne in, the sunlight turned it to a cataracted eye full of baleful, beautiful fire, and the archer licked his lips. He said, “I’ll be back.”
He took on Hawge from ambush. Unluckily, he chose a rock-heap, and when his first arrow went in an eye, Hawge demolished ambush and archer with one infuriated swipe, before using a hind claw to pluck the arrow out.
It had whole vision just in time for the next contender—contenders, I should say, for they were two big blonde Hazyx as loud and cheerful as Gjarr, who liked to fight in tandem, one with spear, the other with axe. Hawge trod on the axeman when it turned to see what had pricked its other flank, and the spear-haft was wooden: an unhappy oversight.
After that they came thick and fast for a while, more Hazyx, hot to retrieve the national pride, a couple of Quarred phalanxmen, an Estarian mercenary wielding a mace, a Holmyx who, despite hearing my battle-song, went into action with horse and lance. Inyx watched them come and go with baleful amusement, Everran took a perverse pride in its unkillable bane, and Beryx grew grimmer with every disastrous trial.
He was walking now, though with difficulty, and still shy of strangers, but nothing would have kept him from the market when the first Confederate traders came. I went down too, for I love trade-days: new faces, new things, and if you are lucky, a new song.
This party was Estarian, sallow, meaty, dully-dressed but whistle-clean, the shrewdest bargainers in the Confederacy. They had come for hethel oil and, arriving the night before, had already unpacked and filled the town with drunken carriers. The bales of woven stuffs, tools, pottery, and Estar’s myriad other manufactures were neatly disposed opposite the tall pointed Meldene oil jars, the scales were set up, half Saphar had begun its private chaffering, and traders and guildsmen were waiting for the king.
He took the high seat. Mint-tea was served, the overture began. It would last for hours: grave compliments, discreet news fishing, veiled probes for a weak bargain point, before anyone mentioned the goods, let be something so vulgar as a rate of exchange. Having seen them accept the new Beryx without blinking, I left on my own affairs.
A jewel merchant always came with the first Estarian traders, though he rented rooms all year in the north colonnade, and he did not barter but bought and sold for gold rhodellins all the precious stones of the Confederacy. Last year he had shown me a bracelet, a goldsmith’s whimsy of fine-beaten gold, set with plaques of smoke-blue enamel to feather a chain of the tall graceful birds we call terrephaz, the blue dancers. Graingrowers say yazyx: thieves. No guildwife had thought it dear enough, and it had already been touted in Estar, so I doubted he had taken it back.
We sat in his outer room with a view up the steamy market bustle to the heights of Asterne above the palace roofs. A mirror signal was winking rapidly as the boy brought mint-tea. We had just opened a parcel of uncut maerians when a hullabaloo broke out and people began to run like startled goats.
The Estarian raised his brows: a suave, elegant person, his pose was never to be in haste. Then his tea-boy burst in, red-hot with news. “The dragon, harper, the dragon! Come to th’Raskelf ’n et all Quarred’s flocks!”
I left without bothering to excuse myself. People were behaving as if Hawge were overhead. The Estarians looked affronted, the guildsmen panicky, a winded signaler was gasping at Beryx’s side.
“Raslash... last night... Fire north. Shepherds... today... Lost whole flock!”
He had to breathe or burst. Over his crimson-faced heaving Beryx’s eye shot round the market, and I jumped forward in response.
“Send Inyx here,” he rapped. “Tell Asterne to confirm. Then get a scribe and rescind that proclamation and send the messengers immediately. No more champions.” His mouth tightened. “Wasted lives and stirred it up!” And he turned with iron calm to the Estarians.
“Excuse this interruption, gentlemen. A slight problem in the north. Nothing to worry you.”
* * * * *
It did more than worry them. Hurrying downhill behind the first messenger, I met him coming up on the chamberlain’s arm. He had tried it alone and failed, and was plainly galled to the quick as well as infuriated by his helplessness. “Gone,” I said before he could ask about the message. “Where are the—”
His eyes narrowed to blazing green chips. “Upped ensigns. Gone home. Risk your own gear, but you can’t run oil over Bryve Elond with a dragon just up the road.”
“Oh... Oh.” The disaster was beyond words: the trade-route cut, our oil and wine unsold, Everran starved of cloth, tools, pottery, arms, the Estarians’ news spreading the damage over the Confederacy. “The... The sheep?”
“Sent Inyx—here, Kyvan, that’ll do. Harran can see to me.” He held his side. “Rot it, I’ll have to stop.” We paused under the arch. “Told Inyx, take the levies. Mount archers, beat it off. Shift the flocks. Shepherds’ll run in circles alone.” I could feel his own urgency to be there, hot as iron in a forge. “Only one flock taken yet. We have to get them away. At any cost! Confederate stock. And I told them it was safe.” His face twisted. “First the Guard, then the champions. Then the traders. Now the sheep. The thing’s put a spell on me. Every choice I make is wrong.”