“Garah?” I asked, blankly. I looked around. On my left I saw her hand under the keystone block of the arch, which still had my spear trembling in it.
“I couldn’t catch them both,” Ulf said.
I should have been there to catch Garah, though even then I knew I might more likely have got myself crushed under the stones trying it. “You did very well,” I said.
Ulf shut his eyes for a moment. “Where is Morthu?” he asked.
“I’m right here,” came Morthu’s voice from the pile of rocks, as smooth and assured as ever. Elenn jumped at the sound of it, almost cutting herself. There was no sign of him.
“He’s caught in the stone-fall,” I said. “Don’t worry about him. His plans have come to nothing. He will have a fair trial, and a fair death.”
“The gate is broken, but I trust you will keep up the guard at the outwall,” Ulf said. A big bubble of blood burst on his lips, and just like that he wasn’t there anymore, only his empty body. I mourned for him almost as if he had been a friend.
“We were discussing a boat for Narlahena for the queen and myself,” Morthu said, comfortably, as if nothing had happened. I looked at Elenn, who was now sitting as still as a statue, looking toward the fallen stones. She had tears running down her face but she neither moved nor made any sound.
“We were discussing a fair trial for sorcery,” I said. I waved my hand in front of Elenn’s face to get her attention, and gestured to Prancer. She looked at me blankly. Then she seemed to see the horse. She looked back at me, her eyes hard and untrusting. I offered her Prancer’s reins. She took them dubiously.
“You see, it is so unfair,” Morthu said. “When you do it and bring down whole walls, you call it an honest charm. When I do any little thing you call it sorcery.”
With that, he pushed aside the rock as if it had been soft cheese and stood in the sunlight. At the sight of him Elenn was stirred into action. She pulled herself up so that she was standing on the stone where she had been sitting and used it as a mounting block to get astride Prancer. She looked tiny on his back, the way Garah’s children used to look when I put them on a greathorse for a ride.
“It is sorcery because you have undone your soul to have the power to do it,” I said, looking at Morthu to distract him from Elenn.
“And what was I to do, after you had killed my mother and she could teach me no more?” he asked. “Oh, I forget, I am supposed to say that she was a black sorcerer, too, and malign her memory the way the whole world does. Even her other children do it. What is sorcery after all but self-reliance, refusing to be bound by the careful limits the gods set because they fear people growing to be stronger than they are. They are no better than we are. The only difference is that they know how to use power. They would make us take baby steps where we could run, because we have will and they do not. We are greater than the gods, if we dare to use the power we can have.”
Through all this I deliberately did not look at Elenn, so she could get away, yet I heard no clatter of hooves. “And is bending minds and killing innocents to get power being like a god?” I asked.
“They were enemies and people of no account,” he said.
“What do you want, Morthu?” I asked. “Is Darien right that you want to destroy us all and all we have built? And why? Just for hatefulness?”
He laughed. “Because you were all so proud of what you were doing,” he said. “You all cared about the war and the Peace so much, and never about people. I care about people. I know what they want.”
“You may know what they want, but you do not care about anything except yourself,” Elenn said. She was sitting very still on Prancer’s back. “You are still the nine-year-old boy who lost his wicked mother. The love and attention of the whole world would never be enough to feed the hole that is inside you.” She actually sounded sorry for him.
“You were just playing games for attention?” I said incredulously. “All of this?”
“Do you call it a game?” Morthu asked, his voice rougher than I had ever heard it. “A game, when I have killed Urdo?”
“Angas killed Urdo,” I said. “Where were you on the battlefield of Agned when the river ran red with the blood of the brave fallen on both sides? Skulking here?”
“You speak only at my pleasure,” Morthu said. “If I wish it your tongue would cleave to the roof of your mouth and never free itself.”
“I think you understand less of the way the world works than you think you do,” I said, as if I were entirely undaunted by such a threat from a man who had just parted stone like clay.
“Oh, do I?” he sneered. “The gods cannot help you now. By bringing you back from where you ran, they have bound themselves by their own rules. I could have your legs freeze and the muscles die. Before the gods could act again they would be withered, so that you would be a cripple forever, riding only in a special saddle and never fighting again. Yes, I think I shall do that. It would be better than killing you to see you live without everything you live for.”
On my left the spear was sitting in the keystone arch. On my right was Elenn, on Prancer. She still hadn’t moved. Morthu was certainly good at reading people’s fears. I had feared paralysis ever since I had drunk the henbane. I slapped Prancer’s flank hard. “Gallop for the stable!” I shouted, to the mare, not her rider. She was a wise horse, and did as I told her. At the same moment, as Morthu was distracted by Elenn getting away, I grabbed for the spear. I pulled it from the stone and brought the blunt end around to smack into Morthu’s belly. He went down the way anyone would. I reversed the spear and put the point on his neck.
“I want you to live to be tried,” I said. “But I am not so very set on it that I will not kill you if I must.”
There was a blessed clatter of hooves, and Luth was there with a pennon around me. He grinned cheerfully. “We couldn’t find you,” he said. “We looked everywhere, but we didn’t think to look here until we saw the queen riding out. We have the city and the citadel.”
“Good,” I said. “I have the sorcerer Morthu ap Talorgen. I do not know how we can imprison him until we try him, unless I stand here with my spear on his neck the whole time. Get Darien. And get the Grandfather of Heroes. He may know a way.”
— 25 —
An iron protection,
a mountain eyrie,
how can we recognise truth?
This is not a riddle,
so we will never understand it.
— The Oracular Riddles of Lafada ap Fial
Darien didn’t come himself. He sent Raul and Inis. They came up bearing lanterns, and only then did I realize how dark it had become. Raul suggested imprisoning Morthu in one of the rooms on the top of a tower, and guarding the stairs. Inis suggested stopping the guards’ ears with beeswax.
“Also, there is a charm against sorcery,” he said. “It will not work on him, but I could sing it in the room where he is kept, and over the guards.”
“I am ready to face a fair trial,” Morthu said, sounding dignified and persecuted. “I have no idea why everyone has taken against me so. I will submit to a fair trial where accusations against me will be made in the open and not by insinuation. A fair trial, judged by the kings.”
“The High King will judge you,” Raul said.
“That will not be a fair trial,” Morthu said. “The demon’s brat will listen to his mother and not to me, and it is all her word against mine.”
“You have great trust in the restraint of the faithful hero Sulien,” Inis observed.
I laughed. I would never have thought of it, but it was true, not many people would accuse someone of being a perjured demon while under their spear, not if they really believed it.
“Will the kings at least be there to witness that it is done fairly?” Morthu asked.
“They will,” Raul said. “Everyone who wants to witness may; it will be done before the people. There will no doubt be many who wish to witness.”
“I will submit to a fair trial
and need not be treated like an honorless outcast,” Morthu said.
“Nevertheless, you will wait in the tower room overnight,” Raul said. Several of Luth’s armigers took Morthu off, and he went with them reluctantly.
“I will go and watch with them and sing charms for what good they are,” Inis said. “You go to see your family.”
“I do want to speak to Darien,” I said.
“Your mother is here,” Raul said. “A ship has come from the west, bringing both bishop Dewin and the wife of Gwien.”
“Together?” I asked apprehensively. Inis laughed.
“On the same ship, at least,” Raul said.
“I must hasten after the blackheart before he poisons his guards,” Inis said, and left without another word, his shadow huge and wavering in the lanternlight.
“Do you think he meant with poison or with words?” I asked.
Raul shook his head. “I don’t know why he talks like that.”
“There are many truths that can only be told like that,” Inis said, popping his head back around the door.
Raul jumped. Inis took his head back. We both waited for a moment before speaking again.
“I’m not comfortable about this trial idea,” Raul said. “Morthu’s right that a lot of it is your word against his.”
“Garah and Ulf are dead, yes, but Elenn was there all the time.”
Raul shook his head doubtfully. “She may not speak,” he said. “And the stones cannot speak, though I can read something in them.” He lifted his lantern and peered at them, lighting up the place where Morthu had pushed them apart, and then the hole where the spear had struck.
I had felt awkward with Raul ever since he had shrunk away from me in his fever. “I am not a demon,” I said baldly.
He looked embarrassed. “I do not say you are,” he said. “But enough people say so that your word alone might not sway them.”
“You did say I was,” I said. I was too tired to be diplomatic. “We have always stood on the same side, Raul, on Urdo’s side. You know I am not a demon, why do you also feel that I am?”
Raul looked at me in the wavering light. “I thought about that as I was getting well after my fever,” he said, at last. “Partly, like the queen, it was jealousy. I knew this was wrong and I struggled against it. Urdo had room in his heart for all of us. But the other part I did not face until then. How can I admit that you are a good person, if you refuse to accept God?”
“It means having a place in your world where people can be good and still not worship your god,” I said.
“In Thansethan they do not teach of any such possibility,” Raul said. “Urdo tried and tried to explain it to me. It was easier for me to believe you a demon than to believe it.” He shook his head. His face was wracked with doubt. “If I admit in my heart you are not a demon then it shakes the way I have lived my whole life. For if worshiping God is not the highest good, the only good, the only source of honor, then what is life for? Still, these doubts are between me and God, between me and my god.” He smiled shakily. “This is far from the point. I know you are not a demon. But your word will not hold that weight with the pious even so.”
“The queen will have to speak, too,” I said.
“If she will,” Raul said.
“I will speak to Darien about it,” I said. “And besides, there are many people of the city who will have seen him doing sorcery, and killing people for power.”
Just then a party came to collect Ulf and Garah’s bodies for burial and to begin moving the stones. Glividen came up and began tutting about the gate. I didn’t want to talk to him, so I left Raul with him and went down toward the sally gate. When I reached it I didn’t feel ready to go in and face Veniva and Darien. I went on down the street toward the stables. I would see if Prancer was safe back where she should be, and also see my own horses and help them settle.
It had always been a good idea before. Even after Apple was killed I found visiting the stables calming. Now every stall and bale of hay spoke to me of Garah as she had been when we had first come to Caer Tanaga. I had not yet had time to take in her death. Now I remembered how we had joked as we rode from Thansethan. “Here lies Garah ap Gavan. She was brave and she loved horses and she listened to Sulien ap Gwien one time too many.” How could I possibly explain it all to Glyn and the children? I was blinded by tears as I walked among the gentle huffing and munching of contented horses. I remembered how Garah had tended Starlight in this stable, and how I had sat here late and overheard Mardol and Urdo talking. I felt old. It wasn’t my fault that she was dead. She had volunteered to go and open the gate. It may have turned out to be useless, but we had no way of knowing that in advance. I did not weep for guilt or self-pity, but because I would never hear her teasing me again.
I don’t know how long I wept on Brighteyes’ patient neck. The grooms and occasional armigers politely ignored me as they went about their business. After a while I began to groom Brighteyes, getting the dust of the road out. It was soothing. When I was done I moved on to Glimmer. As I reached behind me for the bigger brush someone put it into my hand. I did not turn or stop. “Thank you, my lord,” I said, and went on currying in companionable silence.
After I had finished with Glimmer I went back up to the citadel. The streets were full of cheerful people. I returned all their greetings. When I came to the sally gate the guards let me in at once. “Do you know where my mother is staying?” I asked the nearest, one of Alfwin’s men who had been in the ships with me.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But the High King was asking for you. He’s in the upper room.” He gestured with his hand and I thanked him.
The courtyard bore the signs of the fighting earlier. The bodies had been moved, but it was slimed and bloodstained in places. As I came to the door that led to the stairs I almost fell over something small and sticky. When I peered at it I saw that it was half of someone’s hand, the palm and fingers. For no good reason Conal’s ironic voice came into my head, saying, “There will be rather less sword fighting, or rather more one-handed people.” Friend or foe, I wondered. There was no way to tell. I kicked it into a corner where it wouldn’t be in anyone’s way. Time enough to clean in the morning.
Darien was in Urdo’s study, sitting on one of the spindly chairs. The table was full of papers already, but they were set in neatly squared stacks. Veniva was sitting in the other chair, reading a piece of unrolled parchment, holding it out at arm’s length to see it clearly as she always did. They both looked up when I came in.
“There you are at last,” Veniva said. Then she came forward to embrace me, and so did Darien.
“What brings you here?” I asked.
“The news that the battle was won and that Darien would be crowned and want oaths,” she said. “I have brought Galbian and little Gwien. They are asleep in our room now, but they are longing to see you, Gwien especially.”
“I will be delighted to see them,” I said. “As I am to see you. This is only the second time I have ever seen you away from home.”
“It is only the second time I have come further from Derwen than Magor since I was married,” Veniva admitted. “I left Emlin in charge at Derwen. I came on the ship, which called at Caer Thanbard and Caer Segant before coming up-river. Bishop Dewin and Linwen ap Cledwin are here, too, come to advise young Gorai.”
“Is Gorai here?” I asked. It had been difficult to restrain him from joining in the river expedition.
“He will be here tomorrow, with all the infantry,” Darien said. “We will try Morthu at noon. Alfwin and Flavien and Hengist and Sidrok will all be here by then.”
“What witnesses have we?” I asked. “Raul was saying there might be a problem with my word. Garah is dead.”
Darien’s face fell. “I heard,” he said. “I shall miss her. She was always here, until last year. When I first came to Caer Tanaga she was very kind to me when I was lonely. She taught me a lot about horses. She was a good friend. But she knew the ris
k when she volunteered to open the gates. That is why she wrote down a sworn statement and had it witnessed by Luth and Cadraith.”
“I have just been reading it,” Veniva said. “It could not be better put. Did you really teach her to read, Sulien?”
“Yes,” I said. “But that was such a long time ago I’d almost forgotten. She’s been reading and writing for years.” Making lists, I thought, remembering her crossing things off them decisively in this room.
“There are also the servants,” Darien said. “We have plenty of evidence.”
“And Elenn?” I asked.
There was an awkward little silence. “She wanted to speak to Urdo,” Veniva said. “She did not seem herself.”
“Morthu had her under an enchantment,” I said. “She is only halfway back from it. Where is she?”
“She went to see Urdo,” Darien said, frowning a little. “Halfway back? I have never heard of such a thing. I thought the spell might not be broken until Morthu died. Do you think she will feel better tomorrow? Far enough back to speak against Morthu?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t count on it.”
“We have plenty of evidence even without her,” Darien said. “My concern is why he agreed to be tried. Do you think he has some trick prepared?”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” I said. I walked over to the window seat and sat down. I was more tired than I had thought. “He kept asking if you would be there and if all the kings would be there. He may mean to bewitch you all.”
“Teilo will be there, and Raul,” Darien said. “And Inis, too. He must be tried before the Law and seen to be guilty, and then executed for his crimes.”
“I know,” I said, “Inis said there is a charm against sorcery, but he did not seem very sure of it. Will Angas be here, too?”
“He is here already; his ala came up with us,” Darien said. “It has been very complicated fitting everyone in. Dalmer and Celemon have been rushed off their feet. And as for the citadel it has been a nightmare, without Garah or the queen to set it in order. I need a tribuno to see to it for me.”