Liar's Oath

  “Dyed!” She fairly bristled at him, and thrust the cloth toward his face, yanking it back when he reached out a hand. “It is not dyed, young man; that is fine stitchery.” Now he could see that the blue background was not cloth, but embroidery. He had never seen anything like it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, since she clearly expected an apology. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen work that fine.”

  “Probably not.” Then, after a final sniff, she gave him a melting smile. “Young man, you will not guess how long I’ve been working on this.”

  He had no idea of course, but a guess was clearly required. “A year? Two?”

  She dimpled. How a woman her age had kept dimples he also had no idea, but they were surprisingly effective. “Ten years. You can’t work on this all day, you know. No one could. I began when the king made that terrible mistake; I knew what would come of it. I tried to warn him, but…” She leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Would you believe, the king thought I was just a silly old woman! You may have been my mother’s best friend, he said, but she only liked you because you were too stupid to play politics. Safely stupid, he said. You needn’t think I’ll listen to you, he said, you and your oldfashioned superstitions, Well!” Old anger flushed her cheeks, then faded as she pursed her lips and shook that silver hair. “When I got home, I told Eris here—” She waved a hand at the peasant woman. “I told her then, I said, ‘You mark my words, dear, that hot-blooded fool is leading us straight into trouble.’ Though of course it didn’t start then, but a long time before; these things always do. Young people are so rash.”

  A movement in the passage outside caught Luap’s eye—Gird, headed downstairs on some errand, had paused to see what was going on. For someone his size, he could be remarkably quiet when he wished. From his expression, the old woman’s, rich clothing and aristocratic accent were having a predictable effect on his temper. Go away, Luap thought earnestly at Gird, knowing that was useless. Then Be quiet to the old lady—equally useless.

  She went on. “And that very day, I began the work. My grandmother had always said, you never know when you’ll need the gods’ cloth, so it’s wise to prepare beforehand. This wool had been sheared two years before that, carded and spun and woven just as the rituals say: not by my hands, for there are better spinners and weavers in my household, and I’m not so proud I’ll let the god wear roughspun just to have my name on it. Ten years, young man, I’ve put in stitch by stitch, and stopped for nothing. The king even wondered why I came no more to court, sent ladies to see, and they found me embroidering harmlessly—or so the king took it.” She fixed Luap with another of those startling stares. “I am not a fool, young man, whatever the king thought. But it does no good to meddle where no one listens, and my grandmother had told me once my wits were in my fingers, not my tongue.”

  Gird moved into the room, and the old lady turned to him, regal and impervious to his dangerous bulk. He wore the same blue shirt and rough gray trousers he always wore, with old boots worn thin at the soles and sides. He stood a little stooped, looking exactly like the aging farmer he was.

  “Yes?” she said, as if to an intrusive servant. Luap felt an instant’s icy fear, but as usual Gird surprised him.

  “Lady,” he said, far more gently than her tone deserved from him. “You wanted to see the Marshal-General?”

  “Yes, but this young man is helping me now.” Almost dismissive, then she really focused on him. “Oh—you are the Marshal-General?”

  Gird’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, lady.”

  “I saw you, riding into the city that day.” She beamed on him, to Luap’s surprise. “I said to Eris then, that’s no brigand chief, no matter what they say, even if he does sit that horse like a sack of meal.” Gird looked at the peasant woman, who gave him the same look she’d given Luap. Gird nodded, and turned back to the lady. “Not that you could be expected to ride better,” she went on, oblivious to the possibility that a man who had led a successful revolution might resent criticism of his horsemanship. “I daresay you had no opportunity to learn in childhood—”

  “No, lady, I didn’t.” Gird’s formidable rumble was tamed to a soft growl. “But you wished something of me?”

  “This.” She indicated the cloth on her lap. “Now that you’ve cleansed the Hall, the altar must be properly dressed. I’ve just this past day finished it. Your doorward would not allow me to dress the altar, and said it was your command—”

  “So you came to me.” Gird smiled at her; to Luap’s surprise the old lady did not seem to mind his interruptions. Perhaps she was used to being interrupted, at least by men in command. “But we have a priest of Esea, lady, who said nothing to me about the need for such—” He gestured at the cloth.

  “Who?” She seemed indignant at this, more than at Gird “What priest would fail in the proper courtesies?”

  “Arranha,” said Gird, obviously curious; surely she could not know the names of every priest in the old kingdom.

  “Arranha… is he still alive?” A red patch came out on either cheek. “I thought he had been exiled or executed or some such years ago.”

  “Ah… no.” Gird rubbed his nose; Luap realized his own mouth had fallen open, and shut it. “You said you were in the city when it fell—when we arrived. Surely you came to the cleansing of the Hall?”

  “No.” Now she looked decidedly grumpy. “No, I did not. At my age, and in my—well—with all due respect, Marshal-General, for those few days the city was crowded with—with noise, and pushing and shoving, and the kinds of people, Marshal-General, that I never—well, I mean—”

  “It was no place for a lady of your age and condition,” Gird offered, twinkling again, after a quick glance at Eris, the peasant woman. “You’re right, of course. Noisy, rough, even dangerous. I would hope your people had the sense to keep you well away from windows and doors, most of that time.”

  “In t’cellar, at the worst,” said Eris, unexpectedly. “But the worst was over, time you come in, sir. Worst was the other lords’ servants smashin’ and lootin’ even as the lords fled. Runnin’ round sayin’ such things as milady here shouldn’t have to hear. Though it was crowded and noisy enough for a few hands of days. And when th’ yeoman marshals sorted through, takin’ count o’ folks and things. But they didn’t seek bribes, I’ll say that much for ’em.”

  “They’d better not,” said Gird, suddenly all Marshal-General. Even the old lady gaped; Luap, who had seen it often enough not to be surprised, enjoyed the reactions of others. He had never figured out what Gird did to change from farmer to ruler so swiftly, but no one ever mistook the change. “So,” he went on, this time with everyone’s attention, “you did not come to the Hall that day, and had not known Arranha was with us? You should know that I’ve known him for some years—he’ll tell you in what tangle we met, if you wish. I knew he’d been exiled, and nearly killed, but for all that he’s a priest of Esea, one of the few left alive these days.”

  “He’s a fool,” said the old lady, having recovered her composure. “He always was, with his questions into this and that and everything. Couldn’t let a body alone, not any more than a bee will give a flower a moment’s peace to enjoy the sun. Always ‘But don’t you think this’ and ‘Well then, don’t you see that’ until everyone was ready to throw up their hands and run off.”

  Gird grinned. “He did that to me, too. You know he took me to the gnomes?”

  She sniffed. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect. Gnomes! Trust Arranha to complicate matters: mix a peasant revolt with gnomes and both with religion.” The flick of her hand down her lap dismissed Arranha’s notions.

  “Well, it worked. Although there were times, that winter, when I could happily have strangled your Arranha.”

  “He’s not ours,” the old lady said. “A law to himself, he is, and always has been. Although you—” She gave Gird a look up and down. “I expect you give him a few sleepless nights, and all the better.”

  “But my
point,” Gird said, now very gently, “is that Arranha is the only priest of Esea now in Fin Panir, serving his god within the High Lord’s Hall, and he has not said anything about needing such cloths… although your years of labor should not be in vain, you must know that we are not such worshippers of Esea as your folk were.”

  “Even he—even he should realize—” Abruptly—Luap wondered if it were all genuine feeling, or a habit known to be effective with men in power—the old lady’s eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, sir—and I don’t mind calling a peasant sir in such a case—I don’t care what you call the god: Sun-lord, High Lord, Maker of Worlds, it doesn’t matter. But he must be respected, whatever you call him, and I’ve made these…” A tear fell, almost on the cloth; when she saw it, her face paled, and she turned aside. “I must not—cry—on the cloth—”

  Eris came forward, and offered her apron, on which the lady wiped her damp face. “She really believes, sir, that if the altar’s not cared for, it’ll come bad luck to everyone. It’s no trick, sir, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  The old lady’s hands, dry now, fumbled at the cloth, to fold it away safely. She didn’t look up; her shoulders trembled. Luap felt a pang of emotion he could not identify: pity? sorrow? mean amusement? Gird sighed, gustily, like his horse. Luap knew what he wanted to say; he had said it before. You should have worshipped better gods he had told more than one mageborn survivor who wanted enforced tithes to rebuild the Sunlord’s lesser temples. Only Arranha’s arguments had kept him from forbidding Esea’s worship altogether, although Luap couldn’t see how the god could be responsible for his worshippers’ mistakes. What he could see were any number of ways to placate the old lady without causing trouble among Gird’s followers. Give the cloths to Arranha, and let him use them once or twice… the old lady would not make the journey from her house too often, he was sure. Agree to use them, then not—only she would care, and she would not know.

  But he knew as well that Gird would not take any of these easy ways out. He would refuse her utterly, or agree, and use the damn cloths, and leave Luap to explain it all. Or Luap and Arranha together, an even less likely combination. Luap squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could think of a deity who might be interested in this minor problem, and untangle it with no effort on his part.

  “Luap,” said Gird. Here it came, some impossible task. He opened his eyes, to find Gird’s expression as uncompromising as ever in a crisis. One of those, then. “You will take this lady—may I have your name?”

  “Dorhaniya, bi Kirlis-Sevith,” said the old lady. Eris spoke up again. “Lady Dorhaniya, as a widow, was entitled to revert to her mother’s patronymic and her father’s matronymic, sir…” As if Gird really cared, but he smiled and went on.

  “Luap will escort you, Lady Dorhaniya, to confer with Arranha. I presume there is some ritual… you do not merely lay the cloths on the altar yourself, at least not the first time.”

  “N-no.” Her voice was shaky. “N-no. Properly—” Now it firmed; clearly the very thought of propriety and ritual gave her confidence. “Properly new cloths are dedicated by the priest… it’s not… it’s not a long ceremony,” she said, as if fearing that might make a difference.

  “I understand. Then you will need to speak to Arranha, tell him what you’ve done, and have him arrange it.”

  “Then you will—you give your permission?” She looked up, flushed, starry-eyed as any young girl at her first courting. Gird nodded, and her smile widened, almost childishly, the dimples showing again. “Oh, thank you, Marshal-General. Esea’s light— no—” and the smile vanished. “If you don’t honor Esea—”

  “Lady,” said Gird, as to a frightened child, as gently as Luap had ever heard him. “Lady, I honor all the gods but those who delight in cruelty; in your eyes, Esea’s light is kindly. May Esea be what you see; you need give me no thanks, but your blessing I will take, and gladly.”

  She had not followed all that, by the bewildered expression, but she put out her hand, and Gird gave her his. She stood, then, and said “Then Esea’s light be with you, Marshal-General, and—and— then I can rest, when I see the altar dressed again as it should be.”

  Chapter Two

  Arranha had a favorite walled court, on the west side of the palace complex, edged with stone benches and centered with a little bed of fragrant herbs. Against one wall a peach tree had been trained flat: something Luap remembered from the lord’s house in which he had grown up. Most mornings, Arranha read there, or posed questions for a circle of students. Luap led Lady Dorhaniya by the shorter, inside, way, ignoring her running commentary about who had lived in which room, and what they had done and said. When he reached Arranha, the priest responded with his usual cheerfulness to the meeting.

  “Lady Dorhaniya! Yes… weren’t you—?”

  She had flushed again, whether with anger or pleasure Luap was not sure. “Duke Dehlagrathin’s daughter, and Ruhael’s wife, yes. And you—but I’m sorry, sir, to so forget myself with a priest of Esea.”

  “Nonsense.” Arranha smiled at Luap. “This lady knew me in my wild youth, Luap, and like her friends gave me good warnings I was too foolish to hear.”

  She softened a trifle. “I blame my sister as much as anyone, she and your father both. If he had not tried to force a match, or she had accepted it—”

  “I would be a very dead magelord, having fallen honorably on the turf at Greenfields with my king,” said Arranha. “If, that is, your sister had not knifed me long before, for driving her frenzied with my questions. She threatened it often enough, even in courtship.”

  “Well… that’s over.” With a visible effort, the old lady dragged herself from memory to the present. “And my business with you, Arranha, is about the Sunlord, not about the past.” At once, he put on dignity. “Yes, lady?”

  She sat on the stone ledge beside him, and recited the whole tale again. Arranha, Luap noted, actually seemed to listen with attention to each detail—but of course it was his god whose rituals mattered here. But when she started to pull the cloth from her bag and unfold it, Arranha put out his hand.

  “Not here, lady.”

  “But I wanted to show you—”

  “Lady, I trust your piety and your grandmother’s instruction, but you have now told me—Esea’s priest—about them. From here, the ritual is his, not yours or mine. Give me the bag.”

  She handed it over, eyes wide, and Arranha held it on outstretched hands. A pale glow, hardly visible in the sunlight, began to gather around it. Luap realized that the sun seemed brighter, the shadows of vineleaves on the wall darker… stiller. No air moved. The glow around the bag intensified, became too bright for eyes to watch. Luap felt a weight pressing down on him, yet it was no weight he knew, nothing like a stone. Light. But very heavy light. Abruptly it was gone, not faded but simply gone; he blinked at the confusing afterimages of light and shadow. A cool breeze whirled in and out of the courtyard. And the bag on Arranha’s outstretched hands lay white as fresh-washed wool, only less white than the light itself. The old lady sat silent, mouth open, eyes wide; her companion’s face had paled, and even Arranha had a sheen of sweat on his forehead, “Lady, your gifts are acceptable, and we can now, with your help, restore Esea’s altar to its proper array.”

  “What was that?” Luap asked. Arranha merely smiled at him and shook his head; a fair answer. He offered his arm to the old lady, who roused suddenly from her daze and stood, more steadily than Luap would have expected.

  “You should come too,” Arranha said, as he guided the women toward the High Lord’s Hall. Luap knew better than to ask why; he suspected the answer had to do with his ancestry, and only hoped Arranha wouldn’t think it necessary to tell the old lady about that. He tried to think of a duty he must perform, right now, somewhere else, and couldn’t—and in Arranha’s presence, he could not make one up.

  Fortunately for his composure, the walk through the maze of passages and little walled yards that ha
d grown around the old king’s palace kept the old lady breathless enough that she had no questions to ask. When they finally came to the great court before the High Lord’s Hall, Arranha led the way straight across it to the main entrance. Whatever the doorwards may have thought, they offered no challenge to Arranha and Luap.

  Inside, the coolness of stone and tile and shadowed air. Most of the windows shattered when the city fell had been boarded up. Luap supposed that someday artists would design new windows to fill the interior with manycolored light, but for now Gird had no intention of spending the land’s wealth on such things. The great round hole in the end wall, above the altar, had been left open, for light, and through it the sun’s white glare fell full on the pale stone of the floor, a bright oval, glittering from minute specks in the slabs of rock. Luap noticed how it was all the brighter for the shadows around it, focusing the eye on what lay within the light.

  Arranha walked up the Hall, followed by the other three, their footsteps sounding hollowly in that high place. They walked through the sun, and back into shadow, halting when Arranha did, then moving at his gesture to stand at either side, where they could see. At the altar, he bowed before laying the bag atop it. His prayer seemed, to Luap, unreasonably elaborate for something so simple as the consecration of a handwoven cloth for its covering, but he omitted none of the details the old lady had mentioned, from the selection of the animal, to the washing and spinning and weaving. From time to time, he asked the old lady for the name of the person who had performed each rite. At last, he came to some sort of conclusion. By then Luap was bored, noticing idly how the sun’s oval slipped up the floor, handspan by handspan, as the morning wore on. Arranha’s shadow appeared, a dark motionless form; when he looked, the sun blazed from Arranha’s robe. It shifted minutely to catch the edge of the altar, which would be in full sun any moment.

  Abruptly, in silence, Arranha came alight. As if he had turned in that instant to the translucent stone of a lamp, his body glowed: Luap could see the very veins in his arms, the shadows of his bones. Once more he prayed, this time in a resonant chant. Without haste, yet swiftly as the sun moved, he opened the bag and drew out the cloths, unfolding them with cadenced gestures. In the full light of the sun, that rich embroidery glittered, shimmered, gold and silver on blue. Arranha’s hands spread, and passed above the cloth. Its folds flattened as if he’d soothed a living thing. Blue as smooth and deep as the sky… light rose from the altar, as light fell from the empty window, to meet in a dance of ecstasy.