“For what it’s worth.”
“Your present position makes it worth more than old Arian’s, say, sitting up north on his moneybags. Stop thinking of yourself as ‘landless’ and ‘poverty-stricken,’ and tell me what I should do about Freelorn.”
“You should ask him that,” said Segnbora. “Or Herewiss.”
“I have. And they’ve been very cautious and polite. But that doesn’t tell me what to do, really. Consider my position. Even if we put down the present incursion, Darthen is still suffering worse and worse harvests, things are coming over the borders of the Waste that shouldn’t be, Arlen is yapping at my western border, the Oath that made those borders safe is in pieces, and the Reavers are coming out of every bolt hole like rats out of a burning granary.”
Eftgan sighed. “Arlen needs someone on that throne who’ll enact the royal rites again, and restore one of the Two Lands to normal. And, lo, here’s the Lion’s Child, sitting right in my lap, wanting his throne back. The question is, if I spend Darthene blood to put him on his throne, will he fulfill his responsibilities as King, or just sit there collecting taxes and parading around in silks and furs, looking royal?”
Segnbora looked her old loved in the eye, reluctant. “I’ve known him for all of a month—”
“You have underhearing. Better underhearing than mine, if things are the same as they used to be. You know them.” She poked Segnbora in the ribs, not entirely out of humor. “The Queen requires your advice, tai-Enraesi. Stop stalling.”
Segnbora wanted no responsibility for advising Eftgan on such a decision. But she had no choice. “I think Lorn will make a good king,” she said. “Better than some who’ve had long quiet reigns and never been in trouble. He loves his land, and he loves his people… perhaps too much.”
“How so?”
“I think if you made him King one week and halfway through the next told him that the royal sacrifice was necessary, he’d tie himself up in the fivefold bond and tell you to hurry with the knife. He has an unfortunate fondness for the concept of the glorious death. It’s a good thing he’s got Herewiss to restrain him.”
Eftgan looked at her squarely. “Does ‘Berend, the ‘swift-rusher,’ say this?” she said. “Or does the tai-Enraesi?”
Segnbora shook her head. “Tegánë, after just a month I could tell you all kinds of stories about noble things he’s done. But they’d be just that—stories. What I know about Lorn is that although I could have hired my sword to any number of high-paying rulers in the Four Kingdoms, he has something that moved me to swear liege-oath to him.”
Eftgan simply kept looking at her. “Loyalty can be blind,” she said.
“So can love,” Segnbora said, “or so I hear. Tegánë, what else can I tell you? I’m fresh out of proofs But the truth is that he’s my liege and my friend, and once or twice a bit more. And if I go to my death in his service, that’s as good a death as any other I’m likely to find.” She swallowed. “Segnbora says that, Queen. The standard-bearer. His standard-bearer, for the moment. Will that answer your question?”
Eftgan looked away from her, gazing down the vale, northward toward the rest of Darthen She let out a quiet breath of decision. “Yes,” she said. “So be it. And we’ll hope that the famous tai-Enraesi luck will stick to him too, just this once. Now, shall we have breakfast?”
“Absolutely.”
They went together from the wall to the great inner court. Halfway down the stairs, Segnbora suddenly lost her footing and brought up hard against the wall to the left. “Sorry!” she said, and then realized that the wall itself was jittering, and all around them a low mutter of vibration ran through the fortress. It subsided after a few seconds.
Eftgan let go of the wall, which she also had been holding for support. “Just a little shake,” she said.
Segnbora gulped as they continued down the rest of the stairs. “Does it do that often?”
“Two or three times a week, they tell me. Better a lot of little quakes, though, than a big one that would bring the mountains down on the valley…”
They went across the huge paved court, where men and women in Darthene blue were grooming horses and practicing at the sword or bow or lance. The court, like the walls that surrounded it, lay in a square around khas-Barachael's central tower. Eftgan led the way in, through a high-roofed hall and up a stair that climbed along one wall. In a smaller room on the next story, a table was set under the south-facing windows. Freelorn, Herewiss, Lang, and the others sat there breaking their fast with several of Eftgan’s officers.
“Sit here,” Eftgan said, and pulled out a chair for her between Lang and a Darthene officer.
Segnbora sat down and reached for an empty cup, glancing up and down the table. To her surprise and slight discomfort, she saw that around Lang’s left arm, and Dritt’s and Moris’s and Harald’s and Freelorn’s, and even Herewiss’s, was bound the white cord of mourning. All up and down the table, eyes rested on her with concern. She blinked back the tears.
“Wine?” Lang said, reaching for her cup.
Her head throbbed at the thought. “Dear Lady, no. Is there barley-water with mint in it, perhaps?”
There was; Harald passed it up.
“Segnbora,” Eftgan said, “you haven’t met Torve, I think. He was raised here.”
She turned to the man on her right. He was young, of middle height and build, with dark hair and beard and a slightly reticent smile. His downturned gray eyes, however, smiled even when his lips did not.
“Torve s’Keruer,” Eftgan said as the two of them touched hands in greeting, “the Chastellain-major. He runs this place.”
“You were raised here?” Segnbora said.
Torve nodded. “My mother was the last Chastellain. But she got tired of the long winters and retired to the lowlands. The Queen was good enough to confirm me in her place.”
“Anything you need, he’ll give you,” Eftgan said.
“Thank you, Queen.”
“Pardon,” Dritt said, and reached across the Queen for the butter.
Eftgan raised a tolerant eyebrow. “His manners haven’t improved any,” she said, looking with wry amusement at her former court musician. “He used to do that at court too. My father thought sending him to Arlen might put some polish on him. But then what does he do but leave his post there, and not send word for seven years…”
There was mild chuckling over that. “Of course,” Eftgan said, “his liege seems to have done the same thing, and taken the long way home as well.”
This time the laughter was more subdued. Lorn shot Eftgan a quick look. Herewiss was suddenly very busy with his porridge.
“Freelorn,” the Queen said, helping herself to bread and holding out a hand for Dritt to return the butter plate, “we’ve already talked a great deal since last night, but I still have a few questions to ask you.”
“Ask,” Freelorn said, sounding unconcerned.
“What on earth do you want to be a king for?”
He looked at her in shock. He took brief refuge in his mulled wine, then said, “It’s what I was raised to be.”
“Rubbish,” Eftgan said, cheerfully, but with force. “That’s like saying that a slopman’s child should spend his life carting slops because his father before him did.”
Freelorn stared at Eftgan, his shock growing greater by the moment.
“Look at this,” the Queen said, gesturing around the room. It was comfortable enough, on a bright summer morning, but definitely not luxurious. “If I’d had the sense to marry out of the royal line young, I could be idling away my days sitting on silken cushions in some mansion in Darthis, eating roast ortolan and botargoes on toast, taking lovers and dumping them, and spending the rest of my time at the races in the daytime and parties at night. But instead I let them make me Queen.”
Segnbora took a long drink of her barley-water to hide her rueful smile.
“I had to be Queen, I thought,” Eftgan said again, “and now look what I’ve got
for my troubles. Battlefield food and soldier’s quarters, five days out of the ten. Back home in Darthis are three children I hardly ever see, because by the time I’m finished meeting with my ministers all morning, presiding over court-justice all afternoon, and receiving visits—I should say, ‘complaints’—from the various members of the Forty Houses all evening, it’s long past the children’s bedtimes. I say nothing of my bedtime. My husband has to have a separate bedroom so that my reading won’t keep him awake all night. In the daytime he has to throw people out of his wineshop because they don’t want to buy his wine, they want to buy appointments with me. Even he comes home aching from it at the end of the day.”
Freelorn had at this point just gotten around to closing his mouth.
“As do I,” Eftgan said. “And it’s not just aches. Wounds, too. A Queen has to be first in every charge and last in every retreat…” She pulled aside the shoulder of her surcoat, looking under it with a momentarily abstracted air. “I was knifed here, once— No, of course you remember that; you were there. Herewiss stopped the crossbow quarrel, but I got the knife of the Reaver before that one.” She pulled the surcoat back in place and spent a moment looking around her plate to find the butterknife. “Bad enough to have to put up with that kind of thing from your enemies. But sooner or later it comes from your own people…in Darthen, at least. One day when you’re hammering out your crown in the Square, somebody whose crops failed last year comes out of the crowd and runs you through. Or worse, the rains won’t come, and all the wreakings and all the royal magics refuse to work. Then there’s only one thing that will save the land from famine.” She looked down and began slowly buttering her bread. “So you take the knife, and call the person who loves you best in the world to witness the ceremony; and pierce the sky’s heart by piercing yours, and cause it to shed rain by shedding blood, and bring the breath of the stormwind by breathing out your last…”
Eftgan’s tone all this while had been light, almost matter-of-fact. Now she looked up at Freelorn and, in the profound silence that had fallen around the table, said, “This is a stupid job to go hunting for, Lorn. You were smart to stay away from it as long as you have.”
Listening hard, Segnbora could have sworn that people were holding their breaths. Only Lorn looked at all casual. The amazement had worn off him; his face was set.
“Eftgan,” he said, “I ran away from Arlen because I was afraid of being tortured to death. I still am. But I notice that I’m no longer running in the same direction. I seem to have gotten turned around.”
At that Eftgan paused to bite into her bread. She chewed reflectively, and swallowed. “You’ve had a lot of help.”
“I have,” Freelorn said, with only the swiftest sidelong glance at Herewiss. “What is it they always say about lovers? That half the time they know your mind better than you do?” Freelorn’s paused, looking around the table for honey for his porridge. He pointed; Lang passed to him. “Herewiss always knew what I wanted—what I really wanted—better than I did. It’s a good thing, too. If he’d been one of those spineless anything-you-say-dear types, I’d probably be peacefully dead in a ditch somewhere now. Instead I’m here, with Fyrd and Reavers on three sides and the Shadow on the fourth.”
That got a smile out of Eftgan. “You’re right to question my motives and intent.” Freelorn ate a spoonful of porridge. “Yes, Herewiss called the tune. And yes, I followed his lead toward kingship because it was convenient and I was confused. But the confusion isn’t so much of a problem now.” He took another spoonful, throwing a quick glance out the window at the great silent mass of Adínë. “Dusty will probably still be the strategist of this group’s business, the brains. But I’m this group’s heart. I’ve forgotten that, once or twice, I know. A prince gets used to having things done for him. But in the past couple of weeks I’ve seen my loved almost die for me—for my cause, rather—three times. I suspect I’m done being a prince. Time to be a king.”
Lorn took a long drink of mulled wine. “And as for you, Eftgan…if you don’t like your job, you should abdicate. Maybe afterward you could take up carting slops.”
Eftgan, who was also drinking at that moment, spluttered and choked—then, when she had finished choking, began to whoop with laughter. “Oh Goddess!” was all she managed to say for a while. When she was calmer, she wiped tears of merriment out of her eyes. “I guess I left myself open for that. Freelorn, your hand! Keep this sort of thing up, and we’ll do very well together.”
They reached across the length of the table to touch hands. “Truth,” Lorn said, sounding rueful, as if the speech had cost him something, “and beauty. A perfect match.”
“Flatterer.”
“Now, what about that news about the Reavers that you promised us?”
“Well, let’s take this in order. There’s more news than just of Reavers. When you left Arlen, Lorn, what was your understanding of the way things stood with the Lords-Householders, the Four Hundred, concerning your succession to the throne?”
“Mixed. There’d have been no question of the succession if I had been Initiated, taken by my father into Lionhall for the Nightwalk. But he put off the ceremony, until finally it was too late. When he died, the Four Hundred split on the issue. I had been spending a lot of time out of the country, gadding about and misbehaving, and there was some question about whether I’d be a fit ruler. The army split on the issue too, and with Arlene regulars assigned to each Household the situation quickly became volatile, as you can imagine. No one wanted a civil war, so the Householders hesitated…which gave Cillmod time to step in with his mercenaries and make the whole question moot.”
“Yes, and when he made you an outlaw, you and Herewiss and the rest fled the country.” Eftgan sat back in her chair.
Segnbora knew much of the rest of the story, and listened with only half an ear as Eftgan filled in details for Freelorn. Cillmod had done well enough for several years. He took the Throne and bore the Stave, though he didn’t go into Lionhall. Likewise, he reaffirmed the Oath with Eftgan’s father, who was still alive and ruling then. It was around the middle of his fourth year that the crop failures began. The next year the harvest was even worse, and the next year worse still. Then the failures began spreading into Darthen as well. The royal sorceries, and the Great Bindings, were wearing thin for lack of an Initiate on the Arlene throne.
Eftgan’s father had been unwilling to help Cillmod beyond the reaffirmation of the Oath. He was among those who hoped that an uprising would eventually bring Freelorn back. But by the time of Eftgan’s first crowning the situation had become untenable. “I didn’t know where you were,” Eftgan said, “so I did the only thing I could. I wrote to Cillmod and offered to try to repair Arlen's Royal Bindings myself.”
Freelorn looked dubious. “Would that even work?”
“I thought that in such an emergency, the Goddess might be convinced to make an exception and allow the descendant of one of the two Oathmakers to intercede for a descendant of the other. It had to be tried, anyway.”
“And?”
Eftgan shook her head. “Cillmod refused.”
Segnbora looked up in surprise at that, as did the rest of Freelorn’s company.
“He said that inquiries were being made in Arlen for a surviving heir to the Lion’s Line,” Eftgan said. “He’d put it about that you had died, did you know that?”
“No!”
“Yes. Later he even came up with ‘proof’ of it -- some poor mangled head that Dariw of Steldin had sent over from his torture chambers, pickled in brine.”
“Hmmm.” Freelorn felt his head absently as he reached for another piece of bread. “Must have been a mistake.”
“Must have been. Anyway, Cillmod was apparently unsuccessful in finding any other children of the Lion’s Line. Which is fortunate, since I’m sure he would have killed any that he found. Another question, Lorn: do you have any children outside of Arlen?”
Freelorn shook his head sadly. “I only fulf
illed the Responsibility once,” he said. “My daughter died in infancy.”
“Well enough.” Eftgan chewed some bacon. “I ask because Cillmod’s search for an heir took some strange turns. For example, some of the searches were conducted by large groups of mercenaries who crossed the Darthene borders and went after our granaries. It was the only way Cillmod could forestall a revolt by the Four Hundred and their starving tenant-farmers. Anyway, there were also reports for some time of sorcerers and Rodmistresses visiting Prydon. More sorcerers than Rodmistresses, of course. There’s one sorcerer in particular—”
“Wait, don’t tell me,” Freelorn said. “Either somebody who claimed to be of the Lion’s Line himself, or someone who claimed he could get Cillmod into Lionhall without dying of it, and show him how to reinforce the Bindings.”
“The second, in this case. Rian, the man’s name is. What’s peculiar, though, is that as far as my spies can tell, the man never went into Lionhall at all. Neither did Cillmod. Nevertheless, starting about a year ago Rian became a fixture at what now passes for the Arlene court.” Eftgan took a drink of barley-water. “Other odd things—the Four Hundred have become very quiet recently. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, for example, it became apparent that you weren’t dead after all. Naturally there was a clamor for your return and coronation. But it died down very quickly.”
“Why?”
“I believe because the families who called loudest for your crowning were suddenly beset by Fyrd—the thinking variety.”
Mutters of distaste were heard round the table. “Rian,” Segnbora said, very quietly to herself.
The Queen nodded. “I have no doubt that we’re dealing here with a person whom the Shadow occasionally inhabits and controls. The man has a past and a family just as he should, but he’s the center of too many odd occurrences. Where his influence appears, Cillmod’s neglect usually breaks out into full-fledged malice.”
Lorn finished his porridge and set down his spoon. “So what else has friend Rian—or rather, the Shadow—been up to?”