The Tale of the Five Omnibus

  “Till two hours before sunset,” said the clear small voice of a child. Lorn looked over to see the little girl, sitting up on the windowsill and swinging her dusty legs.

  “Why so long?” Lalen said.

  “He says it’s the beans,” said the little girl. “You didn’t boil them long enough.”

  “He’s crazed,” Lalen said. “We’re going to wind up with mush again.” She drank her wine, resigned.

  Lorn put down one well-cleaned pork bone, picked up a fresh one. “Your sister?” he said. “Cousin?”

  “No, my daughter. Nia.”

  Lorn nodded at her. The little girl flashed a brilliant smile at Lorn. “I know,” she said cheerfully. “You’re the damned cheat who sold Mam the pot.”

  “Nia!!” Lalen flushed scarlet, and not from the wine.

  Freelorn laughed. “Never mind,” he said. “It’s all part of business. And how old are you, young woman?”

  “I’m nine years old,” she said grandly. And then screwed up her face into an annoyed grimace as her mother looked at her. “All right, eight. I get to be nine the night before Opening Night. Mam, why do I have to wait??!”

  Lorn found himself staring at Nia. Eight years….

  The world tilted; only the fact that he was presently motionless kept him from falling right off it. The timing was exactly as it had to be. This little girl was not just Lal’s daughter, but his as well. Not dead! Not dead after all! My daughter!… And not just his daughter, but a princess of Arlen, and in fact the Throne Princess, eight years senior to the daughter Segnbora was carrying.

  But Lal told Herewiss she was dead… ! Why did she —

  The Throne Princess’s nose was running, and she had become absorbed in trying to peel a scab off one dusty knee. “The father?” Lorn said, trying desperately to sound casual.

  Lalen shrugged. “Off east somewhere. He wasn’t my loved, it doesn’t matter.”

  Lorn swallowed and felt the pain from his dream, but not in the back: in the heart, and no claw could have been sharper. Indeed, he had sharpened this one himself. And a number of sensible reasons for pretending this child was dead occurred to his guilty conscience immediately. He turned his attention away from them, with difficulty, and back to the pig’s trotters.

  Lalen chatted on, and Lorn made what he hoped were sensible noises every now and then. At last Lalen sighed, and looked over at Nia, and said, “What about your goat? Did you feed her?”

  Nia swung her legs and shook her head slowly, and said, “You didn’t get the hay down.”

  “You’re right, I didn’t… Are you staying the night?” Lalen said to Lorn.

  “I may do, if the innkeeper has a room.”

  “Well then, if we don’t see you again today—next year this time?”

  Lorn smiled at her. The smile felt weak, but was meant, nevertheless. “It might be sooner.”

  Lalen got up. “Come on then, Nia.”

  They went out: the mother, looking slightly weary: the child, wandering after her, bored with the adult world of the inn, looking bright-eyed around her for something to be more interested in. Lorn watched her go, and felt that claw in the heart again. He knew that Marbhan had rooms. He resolved not to take one. I want to be out of here this afternoon. The evening’s ride will get me to Gierhun—I can put up there.

  He finished his meal, and cleaned himself off as best he could with the linen, then paid his reckoning and stepped out into the sunshine. Lorn washed briefly at the well outside in the market square, then drew a bucket of water for Blackie and Pebble, and then a second: they were thirsty. After he had seen to them, he stood there for a few minutes in the market square, at a loss, looking around him. There was the old road that ran north out of the square, past Orl’s and Sas’s farms, and Dak’s place beyond them. Is Dak even alive still?

  He began to wander up that way, scuffing up the white dust of the road. The afternoon turned golden around him, and occasionally went dim as the sun slipped behind some summer thundercloud, then glanced out again; the light shifted, now bold blue and golden, now peach-colored, once greenish when a shower threatened and half the sky began churning leaden-black. Lorn leaned on a root-entangled wall and watched the storm go by trailing a veil of gray over the low hills half a mile off, listened to the wind hissing, suddenly cold, in the branches of the pine trees planted in the middle of the wall. A field over, Sas’s sheep grazed, unconcerned. This field was in winter wheat, almost ready now, tossing and hissing in the wind too. A bit parched-looking. I wouldn’t wait much longer to get it in: there’s no way the ears will get much bigger, not the way it’s been so dry. He cocked an eye at the storm wallowing through the sky to the southwestward. Not enough rain in that to do any one spot much good, he thought. A glance of sun struck down through a parting in the clouds, looking unnaturally hot and fierce by contrast with the darkness of the sky, and lit the side of one hill: it shone like something chosen out by the Goddess for particular notice, until the parting closed and the light faded away again. There came a low rumble of thunder, unthreatening, almost thoughtful.

  The wind suddenly started to die off—one of those freak quiets that comes between bouts of storm in the summer, so that you can never be sure whether the rain is finally over, or just pausing for breath and the next fit of gust and downpour. Lorn leaned there, listening. There was no sound now; just his heartbeat, slower than usual, and seemingly louder. It might have been the land’s heartbeat, almost. But then his father would have said that it was.

  It’s all we’re for. The words had been spoken, not leaning on this wall, but one like it, somewhere northeast of Prydon; they had been watching the weather, but it had been some hot still day with a sky burning blue, everything blazing under a pitiless sun, everything seeming straightforward and obvious: nothing like this equivocal weather. There’s no point in having kings at all if the land doesn’t bear. We’ve found some shortcuts to help us, but that’s all. The land has to be re-quickened, reborn, every year: just as the seed does. Blood does it, because it runs in us the way rain does in the ground; and the royal marriage, or even just lovemaking, does it, because male or female, you quicken the spirit in your loved, and they in you; they’re more than they were afterwards, and so are you, because of the giving and not caring whether you get anything back. He had stolen a glance at his father then, and seen nothing but the long, relaxed face, that gave nothing away. It was six months after his mother had died. And having a special family to do it works, because it’s not fair to ask the people who work the land to also sacrifice themselves for it. They do that every day. And a family with experience in the art of making the land bear can pass the experience down… train its children and make sure the art isn’t lost. He had looked over at Lorn. Don’t you forget about that, when it’s your turn.

  Lorn breathed out, once and sharply: a laugh, or a gasp of pain. Train your children, he thought. He had been doing little enough of that. But until now it hadn’t been an issue, he having had only one daughter that he knew about, and she still in Segnbora’s womb.

  But Nia—

  He sighed. Little enough it mattered, for he had no idea what to train any child in. Oh, he knew the use of the Regalia, and the words and rites of the various royal magics, and a great deal about the mechanics of getting the crops in, managing the land, dealing with disease and so forth. What he did not have, had never had, was that essential feeling that he was the land, and was also its father. He was sure his own father had it; he had seen him gazing out over the walls of Kynall, or leaning on a country wall like this one, all moss and ants, his face gentle with something Lorn wanted to share, but didn’t, and didn’t know how to ask for. The sense that your fleshly body and that earthy body were the same, and that earthy body and the Goddess’s were the same: that you were Her lover, becoming fruitful, in the mystery, from your union with Her: and the land’s lover too, so that you, the quickener, paradoxically were quickened yourself by the ancientness and power of what you s
ought to enter and fructify— In the dusty scrolls and tomes of the Archive, he had read about this, the most obscure and important part of royalty, until his eyes had smarted from rushlight and frustration. It had been no help. No feeling had come.

  He leaned there on the wall, listening. No sound anywhere. Only the heartbeat. Softly, softly, the wind slipped itself through the pine branches, breathing more gently than he did.

  It’s a shame that you can’t manage this part of rule without feeling it. I could be a king with the best of them, then. He put his head down on his folded arms, watching the wind slide gently through the wheat, so that it rippled like twenty acres of shaken amber silk.

  … Unless you don’t have to feel it. Unless… it just is, and you take it as such. And feeling that way, or not, doesn’t matter.

  And if that were the case… then his father was right: then the heartbeat he felt was the world’s: or at least, his part of the world’s. That his blood running, was the rain falling; that his quickening, the fertility or sterility of his life, was the land’s.

  Why have I been trying to complicate matters? he thought. That is, if it’s true. It was hard to believe that things could be so simple. Irony of ironies, then, if someone who prefers the easiest way should have been purposely making it difficult for himself for so long….

  Lorn smiled half a smile. It sounded like something Herewiss would have said.

  But all this being so… if it is so… then I can’t be father to my country just by enacting the Royal Magics, or by using the Regalia. Not even by just giving my life for it. Something else is needed.

  To his horror, he had a suspicion what it might be. He straightened up and breathed out a heavy, unhappy breath.

  How the Dark can I be father to my country if I can’t even be father to my own daughter?

  The wind was rising again, taking the storm off eastward with it. Lorn brushed the moss off himself, and started back down the dusty road to town. It was time he got started.

  If I leave now I can be in Gierhun by twilight at least—

  When he got to the market square, there were a few men and women lounging around the door at Marbhan’s—done with the day’s chores, drinking wine or barley-water, gossiping, and looking out at the evening, which was turning golden again after its fit of squalls. Off to one side, lounging on one of the benches there, rather to his surprise, and immediate discomfort, was Lalen; she was looking over at Blackmane and Pebble. When she saw Lorn, she sketched him a small casual wave and said, “We were beginning to wonder where you’d got to. Thought you were heading out.”

  “Caught out in the weather,” Lorn said.

  Lalen laughed. “I should have warned you it does that here, this time of year.”

  Lorn paused beside her, looking over at Blackie’s and Pebble’s packs, ready to go back on them. “I would have thought you’d have been eating dinner by now,” he said. “Was he right about the beans?”

  Lalen laughed softly. “So he was. Embarrassing.” She looked at Lorn as he knelt down beside the packs and started to lift one. “Listen,” she said. “You might as well have some.”

  “Pardon?”

  Lalen wrinkled her face up in the original of the expression he had seen on Nia earlier. “The Goddess invented hospitality so that She could partake, after all,” she said, not entirely unwilling. “You’ve got a long way to go before wherever you’re going tonight—”

  “Gierhun.”

  “Those cheapskates at Witling’s, always trying to save their firewood for themselves—they’ll put you to bed on an empty stomach if you turn up an hour after sunset. You come have some beans.”

  He was inclined to refuse… but his resolve was melting in the memory of how well Lalen cooked. “Madam,” he said, bowing slightly, “the Goddess thanks you by me. Let me water these two again, and then perhaps I can lead them down to where you live. Just to keep them under my eye until I leave. Not that I distrust the neighbors, mind you—”

  “No,” she said, “of course not.” She was smiling at him oddly: probably at his court manners, which were somewhat out of place here. Lorn went to get the bucket.

  When the horses were watered Lalen had fetched the beans from Marbhan’s oven. She headed off down the east-running lane: Lorn followed her.

  The house to which she led him was the same one Lorn remembered, a big one for the town, five rooms and a roof of slate rather than thatch. Her family had held their lands successfully for some years, growing wheat and mutton, and the house reflected their prosperity, having been added to several times. But there was a quieter feel about it now that was not entirely the fault of the evening stillness. “Do you have sharers?” Lorn said.

  Lalen shook her head as she pushed the door open and led the way into the kitchen. Lorn said nothing, realizing that this meant that Amien and Rab, her parents, were dead.

  The kitchen smelled of spice, and bread, and mutton ham: the pot he had sold Lalen that morning was hanging on a crane over the kitchen fire. Beside it, Nia was laying the table, the same one Lorn remembered, of white beech planks six inches thick, scarred by many children, including him, with initial- runes and attempted drawings. Most of them had been sanded off over time, but a few of the deepest gouges remained. Nia put a tin spoon down on one of the worst of them, set a fired- clay plate beside it, and looked up at Lorn. “There you are finally,” she said in a voice almost exactly that of her mother. “We’ve been waiting all night.”

  “Hush, dear,” Lalen said, and put the pot down on the table. She lifted the lid, and the rich smell of white beans and braised smoked lamb and potted goose filled the air.

  “Thanks to the good creatures who gave of themselves,” Lorn said, and meant it, most emphatically. “Where do I sit?”

  “Over there. Nia means to have you to herself, I fear. Any new face… ”

  They sat down, put aside the Goddess’s portion, and then Lalen dished out and they all fell to. It was a quieter meal than nunch had been, at least on Lalen’s side; she ate silently, and tensely, as if uneasy under her own roof. Lorn became determined to be out of there as quickly as he could. But Nia was fascinated with him, and wanted to know how he made nails, and where the pots came from, and a hundred other details. He told her, and told her, until Lalen finally looked over and chided her for making the guest let his food get cold.

  Nia twisted up her face, considering whether to complain, and then let it go and set about clearing the table instead, and setting out cups and a jug of wine for her mother and the guest. Herself, she curled up on the settle built into the wall by the kitchen fire, yawning. “It’s past her bedtime,” Lalen said, pouring out the wine, “but when there’s a guest… ”

  He nodded absently, his gaze dwelling on Nia as she started to doze off. She looked entirely like his mother—the resemblance was shocking. He had tried hard not to see it, at nunch, but in the intimacy of the firelight there was no mistaking it—the high cheekbones, the large soft eyes. But my daughter, he thought. What a beautiful little girl. This will be a good memory to take away with me, even if nothing ever comes of it…

  He turned to say something to Lalen, and then flinched back slightly from the suddenly suspicious, cool, angry look in her eye. What is she—oh, no! She couldn’t think that I— Yes she does! He flushed, shocked again. There was probably no crime in the Kingdoms that was considered more vile than forcing one’s sexual desires on a child. True, the Goddess’s law required such people to be offered Her mercy—cured with the Fire, or branded as what they were, and exiled, if the cure was impossible. But to tell the truth, especially out in the country, such people were usually killed outright if caught in the act, or beaten within an inch of their lives and driven out if found out afterwards. And Lalen was looking at him as if she suspected him of evil intentions toward Nia. What else was she to think, when a stranger, unrecognizable, looked at a stranger child with such sudden tenderness—?

  He was going to have to explain himself.

/>   But there was the problem of those soldiers, still sitting there in Marbhan’s. And Goddess only knew how many more of them between here and Prydon….

  The Dark with them.

  He opened his mouth to start explaining, and Lalen abruptly sat back and shook her head. “One thinks the strangest things, sometimes, out here in the country,” she said, looking suddenly contrite. “Far from everything…. ”

  “I’m sorry,” Lorn said. “She reminds me of one of my relatives, that’s all. I hadn’t noticed, earlier. Not,” he said hurriedly, “that she isn’t a fine child on her own behalf. Wonderfully grown for her age.”

  Lalen nodded and had a sip of her wine. “Please pardon me,” she said.

  Lorn shook his head. “It’s understandable… it’s so quiet here. I suppose you don’t get many… ”

  He broke off. She was staring at him again.

  “Sorry,” Lalen said abruptly. “Sorry. You just—”

  “Did I say something wrong?”

  “No, you just sounded, your voice sounded exactly like someone I—” She stopped, and laughed. “Funny, it’s been years. Amazing how something, a turn of phrase, will make you think of someone that you haven’t…. ”

  “A friend?” Lorn said.

  Lalen sighed and sat back in her chair. “He was then,” she said. “Quite a good friend.”

  It was too much to bear. Lorn stood up. “I’ve got to go,” he said. And something cold-voiced, totally unfamiliar, stood up in him and shouted: Traitor!

  “No,” he said, “wait. There’s water in the kettle?”

  Lalen looked at him as if suddenly concerned for his sanity. “Yes—”

  “A spare cup?” Lorn said, and got up from the table.

  “Over on the sideboard—”

  Lorn found it, an earthenware cup: hooked the lid off the kettle with the pothook, dipped the cup into the water, trying not to scald himself and being only partially successful. “Half a breath,” he said, and ducked out the back door, feeling Lalen staring at him.

  Past the graveled walk outside the door was the flower bed, as he remembered. Lorn reached down near the roots of one of the rosebushes, scrabbled for a handful of dirt, poured it into the cup. Blood was no problem: he had thorned himself thoroughly in his digging. He wet his hands in the hot muddy water and scrubbed at his face. He stood up, dripping, and feeling foolish: he wished he had a mirror to judge the results by. Lorn wiped his face as dry as he could on his sleeves, and then went back into the kitchen.