“So someone’s going to attempt Eftgan’s life this morning,” Freelorn said. “At least we have warning. But what can we do?”
Herewiss finished scrubbing, dunked again. “Keep it from happening… ”
Freelorn looked at him. “Oh? You can’t do anything, you’re Darthene nobility… and you count as a guard, under that ruling, when was it? Sometime in the 1400’s. You’re one too, by that rule,” he said, looking at Segnbora. “If either of you move to help her, she has to give up the throne by default.” He paused. “That leaves me…. ”
“And how if this whole business is a blind to get you out in the open so that someone can send you to the Shadow?” said Segnbora. “Lorn, there are some methods of killing too quick for even the Fire to prevent. You were fortunate, yesterday… or rather, the Goddess seems to want you alive for something. I wouldn’t do Her the discourtesy of throwing Her gifts away.” Segnbora stood up. “Besides, there are a few others of us… eh, mdaha?”
Those silver eyes looked grave. “Sdaha, we are Dracon… we cannot become involved in the business of humans.”
“Oh really? The way you refused to become involved at Bluepeak last night? You melted a hole half the size of Darthis into the valley, getting those Reavers off our backs.”
“We were protecting our sdaha. No such situation obtains here. Besides, by virtue of the sdahaih relationship we are you… so we would not be allowed to intervene on Eftgan’s behalf anyway, if you are honoring the intent of this law as well as its letter.”
“Dammit,” Segnbora said, knotting her flannel around her, “we are. And a lot of good it’ll do us, Dracon or human, if we wind up with a dead Queen.”
Herewiss got up out of the bath, dripping and scowling, while Freelorn scrubbed meditatively. “What time is it?”
“Half eleven,” Segnbora said. “The forging’s at noon.” She headed for the door. With her, around her, a rumbling uneasy darkness moved, half hiding her.
“See you downstairs,” Segnbora said. The door thumped shut, and the narrow bars of sunlight on the floor reasserted themselves. Freelorn watched Herewiss towel himself off, still scowling.
“Can we stop it?”
“We’ll find out,” Herewiss said.
*
The Great Square in Darthis might have been great when the town was young. These days, as the center of ceremony for a city of ten thousand souls, it was inadequate… especially when three quarters of them tried to squeeze into it at once, as they had today. It was hot, too, on such a summer day, the morning after Midsummer. The only shade was under the huge old blackstave tree in the center of the Square. But no one stood there, even though there seemed no one to keep them away from it. Cool in the shade, in a level spot among the great humped roots and cracked paving blocks, nothing stood but a small flat anvil and a stool. No one went near the spot. Sweetsellers and roast meat-sellers and ice-sellers and people with chilled wine and new whey and barley-water and buttermilk went about hawking these to the sweating crowd, and there were plenty of buyers; but no food or drink kept anyone’s attention for long. All eyes returned at last to the anvil, and the stool, and the tree.
It was of course not just any blackstave tree, but the Blackstave, the Heart-Tree of Darthen, own brother-tree to Berlémetir Silverstock which stood in the Kings’ Grove near Prydon, and from which the White Stave of Arlen had been made. Queens and Kings had been crowned under the Blackstave—both Arlene and Darthene, in the older days when no kingship was complete that had not been solemnized in both countries. Kings had occasionally also been hung from it—once, in the Fell Reign fifteen hundred years ago, and then again three hundred years later: at which time the new King of Darthen, Bron, had made a vow that no such thing should ever happen again. “If a king is a bad one,” said Bron, “then his people should have a chance to do something about it before any more blood is shed than his own.”
So Bron went out in the summer morning and sat down under the Blackstave, unarmed, without any guard, and proceeded to hammer out his own crown out of soft gold; and his people watched him in astonishment, having heard the proclamation that the King had caused to be published. From now on, once a year—the date became Midsummer later on, adding more excuse for celebration to the holiday—every Queen or King of Darthen must forge their crown anew in public. They might bring no guard with them, nor might any subject make to protect them save with his or her own body. And anyone who had a grievance against the King or Queen might make it good on the ruler’s body, right then. The ruler might protect himself, but only with his own body. No revenge might be taken on any attacker, directly or indirectly. If a King died, his successor took up the forging… and hoped to survive it. If a Queen lived, then she was Queen for another year, and no assassin or plotter might expect to survive any attempt on her royalty; they had had their chance. A ruler who broke the rules forfeited the throne. One who tried to forego the Forging was exiled.
No one killed Bron, but then he early showed signs of being a good king, and his children kept to the tradition he had started. Since that time, three Kings and two Queens had been killed by angry subjects, and some nine or ten had been roughed up and given a good talking to. All the other Queens and Kings had beaten out their crowns, and gone inside Blackcastle afterwards, and heaved long sighs of relief. One never knew, on that warm morning, what past sin, or real or imagined slight to a person or political faction, might walk out of the crowd with a drawn bow. Freelorn, looking out his room’s window at that crowd, felt an itching between his shoulders at the thought. There had been some talk in Arlen, a few hundred years back, that the same custom should be adopted there. It had never happened, and he was relieved. He had enough trouble working his courage up to the point where his knees no longer knocked before a straightforward battle, where there were clearly marked enemies and some specific issue to fight over.
He tightened his belt around his surcoat, looking down into the mass of sweaty, noisy people, crying children, hawkers, silent shapes on horseback, and the glint of weapons in the crowd—a spear or two, a few slung bows, a few swords, many knives. All casually worn, to be sure. Many people wore such on their daily business, even in town, for pride and looks and fondness of the weapons themselves as much as for protection. But those people on horseback…. He recognized clearly several faces of lords prominent among the Forty Houses, the Darthene lower cabinet. Hiliard, in the tenné velvet: how could anyone wear velvet on a day like this?—and over there, a blue surcoat semée of white martlets; Nerris of Devenish, from Arrhen-Devenish up in the north. She had reason enough to be annoyed with the Queen, what with the public reprimand about the taxes. And several other people, escorted or just quietly standing in the crowd, all of that party in the Houses that had been most critical of the Queen lately for her actions. What should she be doing, for pity’s sake? Lorn thought, hitching his belt up and fastening the loops to it from Súthan’s sheath. Sitting still while Cillmod raids her granaries and her western borders? They’re so afraid of war they’ll do anything to avoid it, even unbuckle their belts for that damn usurper….
Lorn turned to hunt through the mess of clothes at the end of the bed, and after a moment came up with the knife tossed in among them. He had been holding it for the day until Eftgan should ask for it back; it was the One Knife from the Regalia of the Two Lands, the razory black-bladed knife with which Eftgan’s blood and his had been shed yesterday. He paused to do something that he doubted had been done to most sacred implements: balanced it across one finger to check how far forward the knife’s balance-point was. Not too bad. Two full turns, probably, depending on the range. … Up the sleeve, I think. He hunted about one of his jerkins for the broken leather thong that was in its pocket, and used the thong to snug the knife in place well above his elbow and out of sight. Good…. He took a moment for the mirror, a plate of polished steel fastened to the wall. Freelorn made a wry face, looking at his clothes. This Lion surcoat had gotten him in trouble every time he’
d worn it recently. But Eftgan was going out on a limb for his sake; he had to do the same for her. He brushed a last bit of lint out of the folds. Black surcoat, white Lion passant regardant, standing and looking at you stern and patient, with the silver Sword held up in the dexter paw. Lionchild, he thought, uneasy as always… then smiled a bit, grimly, determined to like it for once. This surcoat was getting tight: or maybe he was putting on some size across the shoulders. Unusual. Wonder if there’s enough seam to let it out a bit…. And Súthan shifted softly in the scabbard as he moved. He glanced down at it with a habitual mixture of great love and great annoyance. We’ve been a long way, we two. But why, why aren’t you Hergótha?! I’d trade you for Hergótha like a dented pot if I had half a chance.
From out the window came a peculiar whirring sound, the reflected noise of the clockwork in the northern tower of Blackcastle as it ground toward position to strike noon. Freelorn slipped out the door and pounded down the stairs to the tunnels that led into the courtyard.In the doorway full of hot light he paused, just behind the guards, peering out to see if he could see anyone he knew, Herewiss or Segnbora of any of his own people. None of them were in sight. As he stood there, eyes in the throng crowded up by the doorway glanced at him, noticed the device on his surcoat, and lips began to move. King it out, Lorn thought to himself, and stepped out into the crowd as if his stomach weren’t wringing itself like hands. People made way for him, a touch uncertainly, and glances fastened themselves to him and prickled under his skin as if he brushed his way through a field full of burrs.
Above him, noon struck, the slow deep notes falling heavy in the close courtyard. Lorn kept walking, looking for a good spot to stand. The midsummer sun bore down on the shoulders of the black surcoat like a hot weight, and Lorn began to regret his undertunic. But without it he would itch, and the silver embroidery would rub him raw; and he could hear his father telling him, when he was twelve, “Kings don’t itch, and they don’t squirm. It’s not dignified. But they’re allowed to sweat; no one minds that.” We’ll find out today, Lorn thought, making for the tree.
He stopped right at the front of the crowd, ten feet or so from the anvil, and stood quietly with his arms folded, feeling the eyes bite into his back. It was peculiar. He’d been stared at often enough before; but today it was really bothering him. If only there were someone else he knew in this crowd—
Abruptly he saw one: right across from him, on the other side of the tree, the Queen’s husband Wyn. Wyn was not a tall man, but didn’t need to be. He was one of those people who seem to be about twice anyone else’s height even when kneeling, with the face of a handsome hawk. Wyn was a wine merchant, and had a reputation for being a calm man—which made it interesting to consider the five-foot-long, unsheathed, two-handed broadsword he was leaning on, as casually as if it was a pruning hook. He met Lorn’s eyes with a slight twitch of a grin.
Freelorn returned the half smile, didn’t move otherwise. He casually looked over the people standing behind and around Wyn, wondering why their glances were bothering him so today, trying to conceal it. Just a crowd of city people, dressed for holiday: broad ladies in bright dresses, men in breeches and embroidered shirts, here and there a surcoat of some son or daughter of hedge-nobility; the flash of silver, the glitter of eyes; whispers, murmurs, chatter, the happy shouting of a little girl near the front waving a toasted sausage and getting its grease all over herself and her smock and the skirt of the lady next to her, who turned and—
You go first.
No, you.
He refused to turn around. “Kings don’t turn to overhear things,” his father had told him in that same severe session so long ago, which had ended with Freelorn arguing the point and having his bottom warmed. “Kings wait till the speaker comes round to face them in courtesy.” But it was hard not to turn, especially when the voices seemed so close behind him that they were nearly in his own head. And truly only the slightest difference in tone kept them from seeming as if they were in his own voice: one of them quicker, lighter than his own tone, with faint, odd harmonies weaving around it; the other with the touch of drawl that he almost knew better than his own voice anyway. That voice he had heard before, this way… though not realizing it at the time. But never before in broad daylight, in a crowd like this. Only in the dark, in the silence, and only a few times lately—only in moments when outer voices failed, and words ran out, and his heart heard the other’s overflowing heart whispering My loved, my own, O my loved…. until the urgency of their bodies built to strike the sweetness through with lightning, and left them both gasping and blind. This was not that slow, deep warmth, but something brisker, more businesslike… though in its own way just as personal, just as fierce—
Freelorn swallowed. Underhearing. It was the commonest of the othersenses… and something he had never had a problem with until recently, until Herewiss’s Fire burst free. Lorn gripped Súthan’s hilt and began to understand the piercing of eyes, the threatening pressure of minds he wasn’t sensitive enough to hear. But all his reading on the subject had never hinted that the sensitivity might be catching— Well, never mind it now! They’re about to do something. Be ready for it.
I’m not ready, I can’t feel who—
— Neither can I. No use waiting. Go!
Is she ready?
Yes. A third voice, drier. Let’s play out our hand.
All this in a second’s flicker. And because Freelorn had not turned around, he saw the darkness draw itself together on the far side of the courtyard, by the postern door; saw day slide back defeated from a growing patch of night, in which darker shapes moved, and voices chanted slow warning in a choir of muted thunders, while many eyes gazed out, glowing like those coals of which gems were said in lore to be the burnt-out cinders. People backed away hurriedly from that darkness, all but the smallest children, who stared at it in calm fascination and had to be pulled back.
Out of that dark came walking a slight slim form in black, wearing a long formal surcoat, tenné-brown, the arms on it the undifferenced arms of a Head of one of the Forty Houses: lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold, holding a sword. Unsheathed in her hand the woman held a three-foot splinter of pure night, black enough to have been broken off death’s own Door. And so it had been, for this was Skádhwë out of legend, the sword Shadow, won and lost in the ancient days by Efmaer Queen of Darthen, and newly recovered from Glasscastle beyond the world’s bourne. For a thousand years and more that sword had not seen the light of day. Now the midsummer sun fell in vain on its blackness, and around the length of it blue Fire wreathed, curling upward in quick fierce flames the color of deep twilight at their hearts.
Segnbora pushed her silvering hair back out of her face, where a breeze had blown it, and paused just out of the Blackstave’s shade. One hand in her pocket, she leaned casually on the Shadowblade… and then looked down in understated surprise as the needle point of the shadow calmly slipped downward into the cobble it rested on, as if she had chosen to lean on a cheese.
Segnbora pulled the sword out of the stone and stood straight with it, looking around the crowd in cool assessment. So did the larger pair of eyes in the darkness about and above her, silver with a cast of blue.
I think we have their attention, Segnbora said, and her amused bespeaking seemed to Freelorn so loud in the silence that the whole crowd should have been able to hear it.
No agreeing answer came—just another movement over by another of the gates, the south gate that led out into the marketplace. There was less motion in the crowd this time, but more sound; a gasp that turned into a whisper that became a murmur, and then a cry that many voices took up, unbelieving, astonished: “Fire!” And so it was: for here, sauntering casually, nodding and smiling at people, came a tall broadshouldered man all in white—the white of the Brightwood surcoat, with its Phoenix in flames, and the white Cloak of the Wood’s ancient livery, now only given to lords of the Brightwood line, or the Queen’s own knights. The man had a han
d-and-a-half broadsword resting on his shoulder, and the Flame of Power wound and wreathed about it and streamed away behind, harsh, hot-colored and clear, the pure fierce blue of a midsummer noon or a Steldene cat’s eyes. “Fire,” they shouted after him, unbelieving, astonished, delighted, “Fire!” Millenia, it had been, since anyone but women had wielded the Fire. And the last two men to wield it, more than two thousand years ago, had had to become gods to do so, and died of it. If the Goddess Herself had walked in from the market square, it would probably have caused less amazement. After all, everyone saw Her at least once before they died. But this—!
Lorn watched the crowd push back and forth and reel and shout at the miracle that walked through them. Herewiss slipped free of the crowd, about halfway between Freelorn and Segnbora, and slid Khávrinen off his shoulder and set it point down on the cobbles before him, folding his hands about the hilts. His glance flicked left to Segnbora; she tilted her head at him, the slightest nod.
Do you ever stop eating? Freelorn underheard her ask Herewiss silently, in that moment’s look. You’ve got sausage smutch on your face.
Which side?
Just under the left cheekbone.
Herewiss turned to Freelorn, gave him that slight nod, binding them all together into a united front, a gesture to whomever or Whatever watched. Freelorn returned the nod. If you’d get up at a decent hour, he said inside, experimentally, you wouldn’t need to be scrounging snacks in the marketplace.
Herewiss put one eyebrow up. When I do wake up early, someone who shall remain unnamed rarely lets me get up. He circumspectly wiped his face. Loud today, are we? Must be nerves.
Dusty, I’ve been meaning to ask you— But Freelorn was jolted out of concentration as the trumpets on the walls sounded a sennet. The Queen came out.