Liar's Oath

  “Get OUT!” He felt Aris and Seri joining their power to his, yielding this one last time to his command as his magery proved too weak… and then the presence, whatever it was, fled away down the wind of his anger.

  And left him once more empty, hollow, guilty, hardly able to stand. Seri and Aris supported him; as his strength returned, he could see them more clearly. No longer “the younglings” he had both admired and envied, but weathered and graying, well into middle age.

  “I can’t—I don’t know what to do.” His voice came out rasping and feeble as an old man’s.

  “You’ve made the right start,” Seri said. “Now you might try asking the gods.”

  Luap winced. He had not, he realized, really asked the gods anything for a long time. He had never really wanted to know what the gods wanted of him. He had spent those times in the yearly festivals when prayers were normally offered giving complacent reports on his own genius, looking for praise in return. Now he had no choice; unpracticed as he was, he must ask. He let them lead him back to the great hall, and tried to fix his mind on the gods he hardly knew.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  He knew at once it was no dream, not as he had dreamed before, and his first thought was that Gird had not warned him what meeting a god was like. Where had the space come from, he wondered, in which he hung suspended, like a thought in some vast intelligence? At once his mind clung to that notion, and began elaborating it, an activity he recognized even as it continued: protective flight into logic, the mage’s trance.

  A face appeared before him, a man’s face of near his own age, he thought. Unlike dreams, it carried no emotion with it—a stranger’s face, weathered by life into interesting lines. It stared aside, not directly at him, and he watched with his usual attention, looking for clues to character and motivation. A face used to command, to the obedience of others, to hard decisions… it was turning now, toward him. Eyes a clear cool gray met his, caught his, across whatever gulf of time and space lay between them. Commanded him, as they had (he could tell) commanded so many others. Now he could see the head above the face, bearing a crown—a crown?

  A king. A king’s face, and not the one he had seen last, dead, on the trampled earth of Greenfields. And not Tsaia’s king, past or present, nor the black-bearded king of the Khartazh: those faces too he knew, and this was something else. A god? He thought not, though awe choked his breath. He tried to look aside, and could not. Slowly, inexorably, the rest of the man’s figure became visible. A king in green and gold, the gold crown in his hair shaped of leaves and vines. Something about the clothes seemed foreign, strange: he could not say what. Slowly, as the drifting of morning fog, he began to see the room around the man… its panelled walls, its broad table littered with scrolls and books, its carpet like a garden of flowers, manycolored. Someone else… across the room, a woman whose weathered face wore a curious ornament on the brow, a silver circle… but in a trick of light she seemed to fade and he could not see her. The king said nothing… did he see Luap as well as Luap saw him?

  Then, “You.” The king’s voice, deep, resonant, carrying power as a river carries a straw. “You are part of it; you will help.”

  He did not want to answer a wraith, a dream, whatever this was, but from his mouth came the honest bleat of fear he felt. “I can’t.” Even if he’d wanted to, he had no more help to give, not even to his own people. Could he explain that to a wraith, a messenger, whoever this was? The iynisin could not get in, through no power of his but the original power of those who had sculpted the fortress… but he and his could not get out.

  “You will wake them?” That voice came from the glare he could not see, where the woman had seemed to stand. The king’s face turned aside, and Luap almost sagged in relief. It was like facing Gird again, on his worst days—and worse, that he had now failed at what he’d promised.

  “I must,” the king was saying. “They close the pattern. I cannot explain—”

  “No matter.” For an instant, Luap could see her again, this time as if through a white flickering of flame. She had a smile that rang aloud, louder than laughter would have been; when she chuckled, softly, he realized again that his senses were rapt in some strange magic. “I think you’ve missed your mark, sir king. What you seek to wake has not slept.”

  “What?” The king looked again, deep into Luap’s eyes, a look he felt as a sword probing his vitals. “How can that be? I sought along your memories, to find the place—”

  “While thinking of the reason you sought them, a reason many lives old, did you not?” The king’s eyes never wavered from Luap’s, but he nodded. The woman went on. “You found what you sought, then, but—Gird’s teeth, my lord, I can’t understand how you will get them out, and still leave what we found.”

  “Nor I.” The king took a breath, and let it out slowly, now watching Luap with obvious wariness. “You—” and there was no doubt which of them he addressed. “You are of Gird’s time, are you not? And someone who knew him?”

  Luap was not aware of speaking, but he knew he spoke in some manner the king understood. “I am Luap.”

  “Yes.” One word, in that tone, and Luap wondered what the king saw in his face. What Gird had seen? He hoped not, but the king’s next words were not reassuring. “You are not… what legends made you.”

  No time to ask that, not of such a king. “I was Gird’s friend, until his death; his chronicler, after.”

  “You have Aarean blood.”

  He could not help it; his chin lifted. “I am a king’s son.” He did not trouble to explain which king. “And your mother—?”

  Damn the man. Luap struggled once more with the envy that never died, and said, “A peasant woman. I never knew her, past infancy.”

  To his surprise, that stern face softened a little. “I am sorry. My mother, too, died when I was young, and I had a… difficult time.”

  Difficult, Luap thought bitterly, could not have included being tossed out to fend for himself in a peasant village. “I have the royal magery,” he said, uncertain why he said it.

  “I suspected you might. Some of you, at least.” The king turned away again, and spoke to the woman. Luap wondered again why she was so hard to see, for a white fog lay across her image. “If you’re right, and we have opened a gap between times as well as places, how should I proceed?”

  “I have no idea.” The fog intensified, then she appeared, much nearer, peering past the king’s shoulder. “You truly are Luap?”

  He found it hard to answer, even in this nebulous state. “Yes…”

  Her eyes widened; humor quirked her mouth. He was reminded, for no reason he could imagine, of Raheli in one of her rare good moods. “Gird—understood you, did he?”

  Tears flooded his eyes and ran down his cheeks before he could blink them away. What he might have said vanished in the storm. Her brow puckered; the ornament centered it, serene and unchanging.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Don’t worry… he understands.”

  “Who?” asked the king.

  “Gird. He shelters you as well, Luap.” He had thought the king’s voice commanding; he had never imagined a woman with such power. Light and tears blurred his vision to a white glow. “It will be well,” she said; her voice came to him as a warm arm around his shoulders. “King’s son, listen to the king.” Then he could see again, the king’s face expressing rue and tenderness. For her, he was sure.

  “Lady—dammit, Paks, you will unnerve me, as well as him.”

  “Sorry, my lord.” She had moved from his sight, though he knew, as if he could see, that she had stretched out in a chair at one end of the table.

  “You aren’t really sorry.” It sounded like an old quarrel between them, worn comfortable with time.

  “No—but he needs your help, as you need his. Tell him, sir king.” She did not need to say “then listen” aloud; it was implicit in her tone.

  The king raised his brows; Luap’s knees would have shaken if he ha
d been aware of them. Not a man to anger, he thought wildly. As bad as Gird. As good? Not another one, he thought; gods save me from heroes! As if she had heard his thought, the woman chuckled again, out of sight, but with no scorn in it.

  “I am Falkieri, Lyonya’s king,” the king began. “You won’t know of me—and was Lyonya even a kingdom in your day?”

  “Ah—I had heard tales—” Such tales as no one believed, he’d always thought, but so had the iynisin been, until they attacked. And what did the man mean, “in your day—”? Was this foreseeing, this trance? He had thought that gift lost utterly; even the Rosemage, even Arranha, never suggested he might have that power.

  “Good. I am half-elven, and if the old tales be true, and your father was a king, then you are half-Aarean. Is that so?”

  Half-elven. He had never heard of mortals and elves together; his skin shivered at the thought of the iynisin who waited outside the hall’s protection. “My father was a magelord, sir king—” Odd way of speaking, that seemed, after the Rosemage’s description of court life, after the florid formality of the Khartazh. Plain, even. “They came from Aare, but old Aare is no more. So they say, who have traveled the south; I have not.”

  “Magelord… and that means?”

  “Some of the mageborn retain the powers all once had. I myself have some—but much diminished, if the tales be true, from those with which the magelords came.”

  The king sighed. “As I suspect it was my magic that called you, it is but courteous that I explain why. Your ancestors, king’s son, had long abused the powers they held before they came to this land. No blame to you, but when the pot’s broken, it matters not who spilled it—all must clean. Long and bitter wars have followed every trail your ancestors took; the Seafolk they raided and scourged from the eastern coasts fled seaward, and found this land, only to find your people moving into it from the mountains. Generations of war—which I, as a young man, helped to fight. Injustice on injustice, which I now feel called to redress.”

  “You?” That got out; Luap clamped his lips on the “alone?” that would have followed.

  “I have an heir. Several, in fact. I have a trustworthy Regent— ” The king’s glance went aside, to where the woman sat out of Luap’s gaze.

  “And Council,” she put in. “You know my limitations.”

  “If Gird sends you elsewhere on quest now—” the king began.

  Another warm chuckle. “I’m not that old; you were still commanding the Company—”

  “But—”

  “And I’ll make no promises I can’t keep.” Luap flinched, and hoped the king didn’t see. From something in her voice, he knew it as truth: she had never made promises she couldn’t keep, and had kept promises he didn’t want to contemplate.

  “I know. And you know my meaning. King’s son, I am going back to a place where I made grave errors; I will try to put them right. I need your help, and that of your people—Gird’s people—to bring justice to Aarenis and even to Old Aare. Now—”

  As if that pause released his voice, Luap heard himself asking “Who is she?”

  “A paladin of Gird,” she said, a bright shape once more wavering at the king’s shoulder. “Does that grieve you?”

  She had chosen the very word. Whatever she was, he could not be. “Paladin?” he asked, clinging to the unfamiliar word.

  “Gird’s warrior,” the king said. “Sworn to his service, under his command.”

  Awe choked him again. “You’ve—seen—him?” Faster than speech could be, the hope ran through his mind that Gird had not mentioned him; shame made his ears burn.

  “In my heart,” she said, bringing a fist to her chest. Now he could see clearly; a big fist, scarred with work or war, and a face that had seen a life’s trouble without hardening to bitterness. A yellow braid hung over one shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said again. “Gird will help you.”

  Even the Sunlord wouldn’t help him, he thought miserably. If this was foresight, no wonder the gift disappeared; it would drive him mad, one more instant of it. He squeezed, trying to close his eyes, but could not. “Not me,” he said, with difficulty. “I—erred. Stupidly. Again. He warned me, but I thought—I could read, you see. I was smarter.”

  “Smart enough to cut yourself with your own sword?” asked the king. His smile was rueful again. “I did that, too.” He flicked a glance at the woman. “We kings’ sons have much to learn from peasants, Luap.”

  The rush of laughter came as suddenly as the tears, as despair; he gulped it down. “So… so Gird said. And Rahi.” At the king’s look of incomprehension, he added “Gird’s daughter.”

  “I never knew he had a daughter,” said the woman; Luap winced, suddenly quite aware of the reason. He had left Rahi out of the chronicles where he could, helped by her own belief that being Gird’s daughter meant nothing special. If these folk were indeed from far in the future, when some at least of the records must have been lost, Rahi’s part might have vanished.

  He could think of nothing to say about Rahi. He could think of nothing but his guilt, and the iynisin outside, waiting.

  “You’re afraid,” the woman said. “What is it?”

  Her voice soothed, warmed. “Iynisin,” he said. Best get the tale over with quickly; this vision had lasted a long time already. Without sparing himself, he told of the decision to move all the mage-born to the canyons, and how he and the others had used their powers to smooth the way, to make the canyons liveable. Then of his dealing with the Khartazh, and his decision to use his power—he thought only his—to keep him young. And then the iynisin, whose influence at first escaped notice, until that morning’s attack, and then of the judgment of elves and dwarves that sealed the mageroads against them.

  They stared at him, the two faces unlike but the same expression.

  “We will die,” he said, facing it for the first time. “All of us. If we can’t go out to plant and harvest, or trade… we will starve.”

  “What would you?”

  “Escape, of course. Can you—”

  “No.” The king’s face was grim. “I have no magicks to bring so many so far, from such a length of years. What I had thought to do was wake those found sleeping in your Hall— ” Luap opened his mouth, and the king raised a hand to silence him. “Paks saw that, years ago. I presume that was you and your remaining warriors. She traveled by the pattern—the mageroad, you call it?—back to Fin Panir, where the Girdsmen rule; I had thought to ask you to go that way, or to another end—for some went elsewhere, the time Paks used it. But you are not now sleeping in that hall— at least, the man I talk to is not—”

  “Sir king.” The woman’s voice carried power again; again she reminded him of Raheli. If Gird’s daughter had been fair instead of dark… he shivered, suspecting that she was Gird’s daughter in a way he had never been his father’s son. “If he is not sleeping, yet we found him sleeping—if peril threatens which he cannot escape, and fighting will not serve any good—Gird knows I understand the iynisin—” She turned to Luap. “They captured me, for a time.” Luap shuddered; her eyes were steady below the circle on her brow. “Perhaps you can suggest a way for him to save his people in that enchantment.”

  The king’s eyes came alight. “And then—”

  “And then perhaps a call to wake will actually awaken them.”

  “But— ” Luap cut that off. To sleep but awaken only to another danger, to whatever distant war the king had in mind, to waken only to more guilt, more peril… what purpose was that? Even if it could be done, why not simply die, and be done with life? Despair seized him again, and all he could remember were the numberless lies, the many times he had dodged trouble, to let it fall elsewhere. The face of his dead wife swam before him, for the first time in years; he heard his daughter’s pitiful cries as they dragged her away. He could hear his own voice, the perpetual whine that Gird had accused but he had never heard. And he had robbed even Gird’s daughter of her due, in shaping the chronicles as he had. He
would be better dead; he would only ruin another man’s dream.

  “All the others with you?” asked the woman. She had read his thought again, or it showed on his face for all to see. Now she shook her head slowly. “No—they can have a better death than that, to fall once more because you fell. And for you, too, death is not the answer.”

  “How?” All his rage, all his sorrow, all his weakness; they knew everything now, or should have. “I was their king; I failed them!” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears, then stared at her through that wavering pattern. “How many? Tell me— how many were left?”

  “I… don’t remember. Fifty, perhaps. A few more or less. I was not counting them, and the High Marshals left them in peace.”

  “We have more than that—some hundreds— ‘ He could not reckon them up; their faces flickered through his mind too fast to count. Somewhere they had records, he was sure of that. ”Children, parents, old people… not just warriors…“ He shook his head.

  “Few warriors; we were a peaceful people.” That too was his fault; guilt squeezed him harder.

  “Yet there are warriors with you,” the woman said. “Two of them: who are they?”

  He had forgotten: the dream or vision had taken him so far away that he had lost any memory of Seri and Aris standing near, holding him. He tried to see, tried to remember, but the woman went on as if he had spoken, her voice suddenly lighter. She spoke to them, not to him, some greeting that they answered, though he could not really hear it.

  “I should never have been a prince,” he said, not knowing to whom he said it. Perhaps to himself, perhaps to Gird’s memory.

  The woman spoke to him again: “What do you mean?”

  “Do you know what my name means?” he asked. Irony flavored the thought, even now.

  “Luap? It’s your name: that’s all I know.”

  Luap looked for mockery on her face, and found only compassion and mild interest. “It means ‘one who holds no command,’ ” he said. “Or ‘one who does not inherit.’ Some called bastards that, when they meant to be kind. I was Gird’s luap—his scribe, his helper, his friend—but he forbade me command, and in the end I took the name of my position. Then he died.”