Lalen looked up at him with the beginnings of a smile. “I’ve seen people be caught short before, but—” she started to say: and then her voice failed her. “Who—” But she could see that the clothes were the same. Only the face had changed. And her voice left her again.
“Yes,” he said. He didn’t want to say anything more.
Lalen stared. Then she found her voice again.
“How dare you,” she said. Lorn opened his mouth, and closed it. “How dare you come back, just like this! As if nothing had happened!”
Lorn looked at her in surprise. “Plenty has happened—”
“Indeed it has! More than plenty! Well, what do you want?” Lalen said. “What trouble are you going to make this time?”
He looked at her, openmouthed. “What do you—”
“Doubtless you haven’t a clue,” Lalen said. “You never did think things through. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, last year: what do you think happened? Who do you think paid four times the usual tax to make up for it? Well grown, Nia is, yes! No thanks to you! Who do you think went without food two days out of ten so that she wouldn’t have to?” She paused. And even more angrily, but quietly, she said, “And that isn’t even her real name. Fastrael, it is.”
One of the old names of the royal line: a queen of Arlen four or five hundred years junior to the Lion. Lorn let that go, still flinching from Lalen’s anger. “Lal,” he said, “I’ve come to start putting all this right.”
“It can’t be put right! It’s done! Do you think you can make seven years just vanish?” She glared at him.
“There is,” he said, rather tightly, “atonement, if nothing else. Whether you think it’s worth anything or not, I have come back. And I mean to do right now, if I didn’t do it earlier.”
She looked at him with scorn. “And how long will this phase last, do you think? A week? A month? Before you take yourself somewhere else, for some perfectly good reason?” Lal scowled at him. “You were always somewhere else! What kind of king is it who’s always somewhere else? A king needs to be home. Dead or alive.”
“The first chance,” he said, “will happen sooner or later. And as for the second part, here I am.”
Lal’s expression was still skeptical and cold. “Everyone always said you wouldn’t be king,” she said. “Not even right after your father died. You weren’t Initiate then, and you aren’t now. You’ve a way to go yet.”
There was a silence. “Odd, though,” Lorn said, “that feeling that way, you gave the little one a name like that one, regardless.”
They both glanced over at Nia, momentarily guilty to be talking about the child as if she wasn’t there. But she was sound asleep. “No one uses it around here,” Lalen said. “Not with them around.”
“Why did you tell Herewiss she was dead?” he said.
Lal shrugged, a cool gesture. “She wasn’t your business any more,” she said. “You were outlawed. What child needs an outlaw for a father? Especially with things the way they were then. Had anyone known— And how was I to know that one of your friends might not let it slip? So I protected her. I was the only one around to do it.” Lal looked at him blandly. “But why should you care one way or another? I would have thought it would be one less thing for you to worry about.” The scorn in her voice had lost even its passion now. That was the most terrible thing about it. Rage he could have dealt with. This resigned skepticism….
“I’ll be going tonight,” Lorn said. “I don’t want to take a chance of endangering her, or you. But I would like her to know. Not about the kingship… just about… me.”Lalen stared at him, her face still. Then softly she moved to the settle by the fire and stroked Nia’s, Fastrael’s, hair. “Sweet,” she said. “Wake up: you have to go to bed. And say good night.”
The child yawned and smiled.
“But listen first. No, wake up some more! Now listen. Remember I told you that some day your father might come back?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, he has. It’s a surprise. This is your father.”
The child looked at him. Lorn had to fight to hold himself still. The regard was so like Lal’s, so cool, so uninterested, that chills ran down him.
“Is that true?” Nia said.
Freelorn nodded. “Yes.”
“That’s nice,” Ni said. “When will you go away again?”
His heart broke.
“Mam said,” said Nia, “if you ever came back, you wouldn’t be here for long.” There was no censure in the words, no heat: she was simply stating a fact.
“I don’t know when I can come back,” he said. “I have a lot to do.”
“All right,” she said. “Good night… ” And, yawning, she went through the door that led to the bedrooms.
Lalen said nothing for the moment, simply watched her go. Lorn felt the claws inside him catch and tear. All the small betrayals, he thought, all the times I’ve run away, all my life; they come to this at last. When you finally come back, there’s no one left to come back to, and no one who knows you, or cares. The price is fair.
“You’ll do what you like, of course,” Lal said at last. “You always did. But if we don’t see you again, we’ll understand. It won’t make her unhappy.”
The anger and despair were rising in him, but there was no way for Lorn to express them that would make the slightest difference. Is there anything in life I can do that matters now, he thought, except die Initiate, and quickly, to bind the Shadow until someone more competent can be made king? Someone from one of the cadet lines. Perhaps even Cillmod?— And why not? It occurred to Lorn that everything that Herewiss had been working for, all his calm plans, were possibly simply unjust—because he was truly the wrong person for the job.
Normally defiance would have risen in him at such a thought. But the bottom had fallen out of his world, and now Lorn simply stood there and realized that he had a problem, because Herewiss was set on seeing him made King… and this could be the worst possible move. How do you talk a kingmaker out of his work… especially when it’s your loved, intent on seeing you king, or himself dead trying?….
“I’ll go,” Lorn said. He was thanking the Goddess that he had brought the horses down before dinner. His first urge, to leave across the fields, he quickly dismissed; in such a tiny town, the fact that no one saw you leave would be noticed and discussed as much, more even, than if someone saw you leave quietly at night. No, he thought. Right through the market square, and north.
Freelorn stepped out and found that the weather had given him one small piece of help: it had gone chilly, and a mist was rising. He had an excuse for a cloak. He undid it from its lacings at the back of Blackie’s saddle and slipped into it, then saddled the horses hurriedly. Lalen stood in the door, watching him.
Lorn swung up into the saddle, pulling the hood of the cloak up.
“Next year, about this time?” Lalen said.
He swallowed, knowing how far sound carried in a road like this at night, in still air. “Maybe sooner,” he said. “The Goddess keep you. And the little one.”
Lalen turned away. “And you,” she said, and the door shut.
Lorn swallowed again and rode on down to the market square, not hurrying. There was a single torch burning in a bracket outside Marbhan’s, its light a weak diffuse circle on the cobbles. Along with a couple of other people, one of the Arlenes was leaning against the doorpost, gazing out into the night. Lorn swallowed through a dry throat and said, “Good night, now.”
“Night,” said the soldier. Lorn rode on past, sweating, not hurrying. He didn’t start to hurry after he left the town—the sound would have carried: nor did he start hurrying when three hills over, for it would have made no difference. If anyone had realized who he was, the hunt would not be after him right this minute, but in a couple of days, and in more force.
He made it to Gierhun about an hour before midnight, and the kitchen fires had indeed all been put out. Those cheapskates, he heard Lalen’s voice say: c
ontentious, cheerfully scornful… loved.
For whatever good it did. Freelorn lay in the dark, his face bare again, now plain for anyone to see in this country where his head was worth the price of a year’s harvest or a year’s wage.
And the worst of it, he thought, is that it all may have been for nothing. Nothing.
Sleep came hard.
EIGHT
Ou’sta nnou’anv-lnrahaih thiemnh’sraihh staoiodh’rui.
(Better the dark under the stone, than sunstorm unsuspected.)
— Dracon proverb
Looked on from above, the Eorlhowe was nothing special. Up here at the tip of the North Arlene peninsula, a chain of hills ran up to a northward-pointing cape, tapering as they went. Then suddenly at the cape’s end, the great hill reared up. It had a look of melted stone about it—slumped and shouldery. The casual viewer could not see the tunnels, the cavern openings. It hardly mattered. There were no casual viewers of the Eorlhowe.
Segnbora looked down on it as they began their first descent. Even in a cloudy morning, with the mist not yet cleared off the water, the place looked forbidding merely to human eyes. To a Dragon— She could for one thing sense the heat in it, the warmth trapped in the heart of the mountain. There had been tunneling in the Eorlhowe since it was first laid down over Dahiric. Some of that tunneling had touched on old heats in the earth and brought them nearer the surface. There was another power there, too, one that spoke more clearly to the human in Segnbora than to the Dragon. Stirring there was something like Fire—a kind different from hers, perhaps, but still identifiable as the stuff of life, the force of it, trapped and tamed to a purpose. The tremor of it deep inside the hill, the slow beat of it, quiet, brooding, she could hear clearly. It was the Eorlhowe Gate. It was a door of the kind that Herewiss had opened in the old Hold—but one peculiar to the Dragonkind and their use. It had simply made itself apparent on the site after Dahiric’s interment. The Eorlhowe Gate was not just a door into other places, Segnbora had heard, but a timegate as well. At least so the stories had run in the Silent Precincts—but how much truth there was to them, she had no idea.
But for a Dragon visiting the Howe— There were no comparatives for it in human experience. If there had been one king of the world, or queen—one ruler—who lived in a given place: if that ruler were king, not only of the living, but the dead and the yet unborn, able to call them, and bid them, and be obeyed: then that was what the Dweller in the Howe was. And if that ruler had lived in the same place since the dawn of one’s presence in the world, if that place were haunted by the spirits of all the kings and queens who had gone before—then that was what the Eorlhowe was like. Segnbora’s mdeihei were nervous about it. Some of them had been called there on one business or another, not in this Dweller’s tenure, but earlier. They were hesitant to share those memories: especially the ahead-memories—something was going to happen there that frightened them….
She glanced over at Hasai. His ehhath was less certain than she had seen it for some time. He caught the look, and the feel of her concern: how not?—he was inside her—and banked into a turn with greater than usual precision. It was not that Hasai was a sloppy flier, but informal. “Well, sdaha?” she said, matching the bank. “Will they have seen us enough now, do you think?”
“Enough for my taste,” he said. Since he had pitched Hiriedh and Aivuh out of Aired Marchward a few days back, Hasai had been out of temper, and less than pleased with Dragons that he would normally have respected highly and obeyed without question. It was a different Hasai she was seeing—a more assertive one, and one who was angrier. Segnbora was not quite sure what to make of this change. She knew her mdeihei were quite upset about it. But then she suspected that was simply because mdeihei were not supposed to be able to change. The dead were, even among Dragons, dead.
She and Hasai landed together near the chief of the cave entrances, at the base of the Howe. Hiriedh was waiting for them there. The gold and green of her were pale in the cool silver light; the mist was not yet burned off, and everything around them looked slightly indistinct. Greetings were exchanged, and Hiriedh led the way into the caves.
The tunnels were large and wide. Three or four dragons abreast could have passed through them. The ceilings were high. No shafts had been cut to let the light in, for there was more than enough ambient heat for a Dragon to see by, and the seeing got better as the tunnels sloped downward.
A long while, they walked into the mountain. Other Dragons passed them, though there were surprisingly few. They nodded courtesy here, paused for a word of recognition there. There were some whom Hasai had not seen for many years. They looked at him most strangely, as if they saw someone risen from the dead. The tunnels turned and twisted, and delved downward; the air got hotter. The feeling of power, stifled, waiting for something, got stronger as they went. Several tunnels came together, then; the one they were in grew wide and high, and then abruptly opened out. They paused at the brink of it.
Segnbora looked around, and determined as she was not to be amazed, was amazed regardless. All the tunnels they had been in, all the sloping downward and twisting and turning, had served only to bring them through the outer skin of the mountain. Now they were come to the center of it, the heart of the Howe—a cavern nearly half a mile across, under the roots of the mountain itself and reaching high up into the core of it, perhaps an eighth of a mile. The air was hot and still. Many Dragons, a couple of hundred at least, were gathered, crouched or perched, around the edges of the rough circle that was the floor. And in the center, in shadow, lay the Dweller.
She was stretched at her ease. The shadow about her, Segnbora recognized immediately. It was like that which came and went about her when the mdeihei were manifesting more clearly than usual. But the sight of it surprised her, for normal Dragons, living Dragons, did not manifest such. Their mdeihei lived inside their heads, or whatever part of them it was that Dragons kept thought in. Here, though, the shadows lay thick, even seen by darklight. They pooled about the Dweller, lay over her to a great height, like the fog outside that would not burn off. But this was dark, and wings moved in it, and eyes; and eyes looked out at Segnbora. And the looks—
She paused where she was. They yearn. They yearn toward us. But they hate, as well—and dear Goddess, the virulence of it—! That she couldn’t understand, for what harm had she and Hasai ever done them? Less still could Segnbora understand the greater darkness she now perceived behind the Dweller. The shadows within which Dithra’s mdeihei moved, seemed thickest about it. The darklight of heat which illuminated everything else in the cavern, even to some slight extent the mdeihei, did not affect that dark shape at all. Yet—held in that tall darkness—was there some trace of motion?—
“Greetings, Hasai ehs’Pheress,” said the voice. Segnbora’s attention was drawn back to the figure that lay in the midst of the shadows. She was not there the way a living Dragon would have been there. There was an uncertainty about her shape and color, which was by itself curious, for livery is the commonest way a Dragon defines itself; colors and combinations of colors have temperaments associated with them, and family traits. Overtly, the Dweller was of one of the less assertive, quieter lines, to judge by the main color, a dark star-amethyst above, the eyes a paler violet to match the crusting of hyacinth diamond beneath. But at the same time, hints of other colors came and went in her hide, making it seem that briefly she was amber-scaled, was ruby, was hided in onyx or emerald. She was insubstantial, but not from a lack of substance; from a surplus of it. She could be any Dragon or any of its mdeihei. She was Dragonkind, in one form, one shape; and if that shape was troubled around the edges, that was because of an excess of available choices, not from lack of them.
Hasai bent low and greeted the Dweller. “And to you, Segnbora Welcaen’s daughter,” the Dweller said, and paused, “greeting.”
The phrasing, in Dracon, was rude, only one utterance-name being given. Nonetheless, Segnbora kept her ehhath quite proper, and bowed
greeting to the Dweller, and said, “Well met, Lady of the Dragons.” And if the Dweller’s address to Segnbora had been a bit on the abrupt side, so was hers; the bare human phrase, and none of the long string of honorifics normally used by one who was meeting the Dweller for the first time.
They looked at one another, she and Hasai, and the Dweller. It was a brief look on Dithra’s side. Dithra’s mdeihei, though—and were they all hers, Segnbora thought, or were some of them her own and Hasai’s?— looked at Segnbora and Hasai out of the darkness, unswerving. Segnbora paused for a moment, reached back inside herself and felt about for the presences of her own mdeihei. They were subdued, and some of them indeed were looking back at her out of Dithra’s darkness—unwilling, constrained to it, but having no choice.
No use leaving the offensive to her—
“Offense and defense are all one to us,” said Dithra. “Or at least to me, in this time and place. Do you know why we bade you here?”
It was a “royal” we, but with more cause for the plurality than usual, even among Dragons. Segnbora bowed again slightly, letting her ehhath speak irony for her. “Perhaps the DragonChief will be so good as to tell us. We thought that we had reasons of our own. Perhaps we will now find that they were hers?”
A soft rustling went through the gathered Dragons. They were not used to such insolence to the lhhw’Hreiha, especially from a human. “You made your causes plain enough to Lhhaess and Sd’hirrin,” said Dithra, “and to Hiriedh and Aivuh, who were sent to bid you here. Your mdaha there has made it plain as well.”