The Prize in the Game

  “And you’ll let Elenn break her heart like that?”

  “She has agreed to it, and so has he. Maga may have suggested these men to Elenn, but Elenn has accepted them. Making marriage alliances is a reasonable thing for a king to do.” He hesitated. “Or a queen.”

  “She’s agreed to let you be king if she loses?” Emer was horrified.

  Allel looked uncomfortable. The music stopped, but he led Emer out of the way as another couple-dance began. “I’m of the Royal Kin the same as she is. We were both chosen, in a way,” he said, in a tone of justification.

  Emer had been taught by Inis for a year, and by ap Fial for years before that. “You know better than that, Father,” she said. “Kingship is not something to be passed from hand to hand like an arm-ring. It is a sacred trust, and what’s more, she just won’t give it up.”

  “She swore she would, if she lost.”

  Emer was silent for a moment, amid the noise of the harps and drums and dancers leaping in the firelight. “Then maybe she will,” she said. “But she should not. The gods will not permit it.”

  “The gods are showing every sign so far of being on your mother’s side,” Allel said.

  “I’m sure Damona the Just isn’t,” Emer said, stretching her fingers as she said the holy name.

  Allel frowned. “They are not my concern. If I come to be king, I will stand between them and the people then. Now, that is for Maga.”

  “Is kingship so much for you that you will risk my happiness and Elenn’s and Mingor’s, if need be, for the chance of it? You know there are no children in marriage without love. And all of this is hurting Elenn more than she can bear.”

  “It’s not your happiness, and love grows in marriage,” he said uncomfortably. Emer knew then that this was hopeless, that he would not help her. He could be as stubborn as Maga when he was put to it. He had always resented Maga for being chosen king when he was the war-leader. “It is my promise. Anything I say she will see as interference. And besides, you exaggerate. Elenn is very young. She will recover. Or maybe Ferdia will beat Darag and open the road.”

  “I always thought I could trust you,” she said, feeling that assurance slip away. The world seemed colder without it. As a child, Maga had never been fair, but Allel always had, when she could attract his attention.

  “I haven’t told her you’re driving Darag’s chariot,” Allel said, smiling placatingly.

  “You know?” This was another, even colder, shock.

  “Did you really think a scarf would hide you from your own father?”

  “Who else knows?”

  “Nobody.” Allel smiled. “I haven’t told anyone, and I have stifled speculation whenever I can. When people have talked about it, I have suggested that it is ap Ringabur the lawspeaker, in disguise because she should not stand among the fighting folk of Oriel.”

  “And why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “I wanted Darag to hold. I don’t want Maga to win.” Allel laughed.

  “Then you are not even keeping your promise,” Emer said, despising him. There had to be another way out, even if he had failed her.

  “Not telling isn’t intervening. She can’t know I knew, and even if she did, it isn’t the same as trying to stop her plans,” Allel protested.

  Emer looked at him and saw not her kind and powerful father, but a tired, greedy man, past middle age, his hair thinning on top. “Elenn thinks that those people are dying for her,” she said. “She’ll live with that burden her whole life. I am helping Darag to kill them, and they are my kin and my friends. I will have to live with that. But you don’t understand, and you should. They’re dying for you, you and Maga are killing those good people. And the same would hold if there had been no curse, if there had been a war with battles in the normal way of things. The weight of the souls of everyone who dies in this war falls on you and Maga because you are both so selfish and so caught up in your own personal war that you can’t see how terrible it is to fight that war with other people’s lives. If words were not wounding enough, could you not have taken up swords, or staves, or snowballs in winter as we did in Muin, or wrestled in the mud for supremacy? It would have better become the dignity of the kingdom of Connat than this.”

  Allel stood speechless as she turned and walked away. She was shaking with anger and tiredness, and she went back toward her tent. She did not know if Elenn would be sleeping there tonight or if she would go with Ferdia. She hoped her sister might at least have one good night with the man she loved to remember afterwards. Thinking of Ferdia’s face, she did not think so. If he loved anyone, it was Darag. Maybe Elenn loved him because he didn’t love her, he didn’t press her to love him, like all the others. She hoped he would be kind. He would die tomorrow, there wasn’t any way around it. He would die, and Elenn and Darag would break their hearts, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it, because the only alternative was Darag dying, with Conal and all the folk of Oriel after him.

  As she went into the tent, she tripped over the pile of bloody clothes. She pushed them outside wearily. Then she went out again and put them carefully out of the way, at the side of the tent where Elenn would not trip over them coming back. It wasn’t much to do for her sister, all things considered.

  Inside the tent once more, finally able to close her eyes, she was too tired to sleep. She kept running over the argument with her father, thinking of better things she might have said, hearing again his denial of her happiness as a thing of importance compared to his own power. She had always loved her father. Still, she had Conal. Conal had said he would go away with her. He did not care more about power. He could be trusted. She tried not to think of Conal’s face riven with pain, but to remember the feel of his arms around her. She remembered the nights they had had together, just sleeping, the comfort of the warmth of his body. She counted them, recalling the feel of each, in Edar at the Feast of Bel, in the Isles, on the road, in Lagin, the whole blessed month in Muin. Recalling Conal in Muin, at last she felt sleep close over her head like deep water.

  Sometime later, she became aware that Elenn and Beauty had come into the tent, and that Elenn was weeping. “Elenn?” she asked, trying to pull herself up out of sleep.

  “Go to sleep,” Elenn said, her voice full of misery and resentment.

  Without opening her eyes, Emer turned and reached over to her sister. She opened her arms and embraced Elenn, who was stiff for a moment and then hugged her back. For a little while, they held each other as they had when they were tiny children and their parents had been quarreling. “Go to sleep,” Elenn said again at last, this time affectionately. “I think you are still asleep.”

  “Mmm,” Emer agreed. “You go to sleep, too.” She let her sister push her into her own space and pull the blanket up and held sleep off until she heard Elenn lie down. Then she went back to sleep, a wonderful healing sleep that brought her the dream that showed her the way out she had thought impossible.

  28

  (FERDIA)

  The sun was shining, the trees were green, and under them was a twilight-blue haze of bluebells, scenting the air even out onto the road where Ferdia’s chariot was hurtling at what felt like breakneck pace towards the ford. He wished they would go even faster so he really would break his neck before they got there.

  Ferdia was ready to die, but he wished he could do it without having to see Darag’s face. He couldn’t pretend Darag wouldn’t mind killing him, however many other champions he had killed. He straightened himself with a hand at the side of the chariot. The banner of Lagin with its green hill spread out behind him. His spears were ready to his hand. It should have been a glorious first ride to war. When they sang about it afterwards, nobody would be able to tell he was only here because he was afraid.

  His charioteer shot him a quick glance. “It’s not too late to change your mind,” she said. He shook his head at her. She was not really his charioteer but Cethern’s comfortable old Pell, who had first taught him to harness horses and h
ow to stand in a chariot.

  “Oh yes it is,” he said, glancing behind them. They were leading the way. Behind them came the other people who planned to challenge Darag that day, after Ferdia fell, and behind them, that part of the army of Connat and the allies who wanted to see the day’s sport, along with those few confident folk who thought that Darag might still be defeated. Less than a third of the champions were there, along with a handful of the farmers. Cethern was there, and Allel, and ap Dair. It was quite enough people to remember it forever if they had seen Ferdia ap Cethern retreat from what he had said he would do. “What I was thinking, though,” he said hesitantly, knowing he should have suggested it before. “They say Darag’s charioteer always fights disguised.”

  “Nobody know who she is,” Pell confirmed. She lowered her voice, even though they were out ahead and nobody could hear them. Pell was no different from the way she always was, even though she knew he was going to die. She always knew all the gossip and loved passing it on. “Some say she is a lawspeaker, and others say she is one of Atha’s women. Atha has lost three charioteers in seven days, but Darag has kept this same one, as far as we know. But even though she’s disguised, if she’d been killed and replaced, someone would have seen her go down. I think it’s the same one, whoever she is. After all, he has the advantage of the water, which makes a difference. The road is higher on the Oriel side.”

  He had seen the ford on the first day, and the terrible sight of Darag’s single chariot standing alone to defend it against all the might of the army.

  “I was wondering if I could fight disguised,” Ferdia said.

  Pell laughed. “Because you are too new a warrior for your name to put fear into anyone? It might do for a charioteer, but not for a champion. You must give your name to make your boast. Only a fool would fight an unnamed champion at a ford.”

  Ferdia had forgotten the boast. “It is just that Darag is my foster brother,” he said apologetically. In some ways, it was best that Darag recognizing him would be the worst thing. It would be over quickly, right at the beginning, and dying would almost be easy after that.

  “Your father told me to keep reminding you that you could turn around at any time,” Pell said. “I told him you wouldn’t, young men are fools. But you could turn around now and in fifty years’ time, think back on riding this far as youthful folly.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” Ferdia muttered. Nothing would have pleased him more than turning around. Nothing was less possible.

  Pell pursed her lips but kept driving on, barely slowing for the bends in the road. She was good, but then, she had been a charioteer for thirty years. Three of her four children were here with the army. “Yesterday Darag chose to fight with swords first,” she said. “He talked with Laran ap Noss about it a while across the ford, asking if he would do that. Then when Laran agreed, they fought on the far bank. He might do that again.”

  “I have a sword,” Ferdia said.

  The road passed through a belt of alder and willows, then came out into the open space with the river ahead of them, and the ford. Darag’s chariot was standing on the farther bank, just as it had the first day, and no doubt every day since. He looked at it and looked away. His stomach turned over and he swallowed hard. There was nothing else now. He was here to die and he would die. He wondered if the garlanded animals at the feasts felt like this when they saw the knife.

  Pell slowed, and he realized that everyone following them was stopping. They drew to a halt just by the ford. Ferdia braced himself and looked up. Darag wasn’t looking yet; he was in intense conversation with his mysterious charioteer.

  “Give your boast now,” Pell urged. He didn’t know what to say. How could he boast, he who had no deeds to boast of?

  When in doubt, go with what you have learned. He had a name to give, at least. He shut his eyes. “I am Ferdia ap Cethern,” he began, and rolled out his ancestry as he had learned it, one after another—his grandfathers and great-grandfathers back through the generations—until he came to the end, or the beginning, the founding heroes of his line. “ … ap Galian, ap Liath, ap Lethan. I am a prince of Lagin,” he said, raising his voice a little, because it was here that his own deeds should have gone if he had any. He opened his eyes. Darag was standing as still as a stone and staring at him.

  “I am here to challenge you for passage of this ford. Will you yield to my might and let us pass?”

  He kept his eyes resolutely open. It was about as bad as it could be. Darag leapt out of the chariot and ran down the bank toward the water. “Ferdia ap Cethern?” he called. “How can this be? Ferdia ap Cethern is my friend and my foster brother. Surely you are some imposter abusing his name to challenge me.”

  “No, it really is me,” Ferdia said miserably, but beginning to be aware that there was something strange about the way Darag was talking. Something unnatural. He sounded as if he were playing a part, not like himself at all. Maybe it was the shock.

  “Then why do you come against me, my brother?” Darag demanded.

  “Honor demands it,” Ferdia said, falling back on what had worked before. He wished he could explain to Darag, who, alone of everyone he knew, might have understood. But of course it wasn’t possible. There were too many other people here. In any case, Darag was honorable, he wouldn’t understand how Maga had a hold on him. Ferdia could never tell him about the dog.

  “We have been brothers, must we now be enemies?” Darag asked sadly, spreading his empty arms.

  Despite Darag’s unnatural tone, Ferdia choked on a sob and felt tears burning in his eyes. Pell put her hand on his arm. “You really could back out now,” she advised. He shook her off fiercely.

  “I must challenge you for the passage of the ford, so we must fight, but we need not be enemies,” he managed to say clearly.

  “Then come here and embrace me for the last time before we begin,” Darag said.

  Ferdia looked at Pell for guidance and was astonished to see that she was dashing away tears from her eyes. “Go, go,” she said. Then, as he was climbing out of the chariot, she added, “It’s like a story. They will sing of this for as long as there’s anyone on this island to sing.”

  Ap Dair was somewhere in the crowd behind them. Ferdia had almost forgotten.

  He walked down to the edge of the water and waded across. It was cold but not unpleasant. The other side was steeper. Darag offered his hand to help him out.

  They stood there for a moment, looking at each other. Darag’s face, up close, did not look sad but full of suppressed excitement. They embraced, and he whispered fiercely into Ferdia’s ear. “Emer told me. You have promised to fight and challenge me for the road. You haven’t said you’ll try to kill me, and neither have I said I’ll try to kill you. You said we’re not enemies. We can fight here all day, the way we have other days. Practice, I mean. Say what we’re going to do, so we can block. Make it look good.”

  “Emer?” Ferdia whispered, completely confused. Darag’s eyes went to his charioteer. Once Ferdia knew, he wondered how he had not recognized her before. He didn’t understand why she was here, when he had seen her in the camp of Connat last night. She was betraying her own land, her own family. He blinked at her.

  “Do you agree?” Darag asked.

  Ferdia thought it through for a moment. Pretending to fight opened up a possibility he had thought lost—life opening up beyond today, with honor. But was it honor, truly? “I promised Maga I would fight you,” he said.

  “Did you promise to try to kill me?” Darag asked.

  “No, but I promised to try to open a road into Oriel, which is the same,” Ferdia said wretchedly. He pulled back from the embrace, and they stood looking at each other. “You just heard me say so,” he said, as if it would help.

  Darag looked uncertain now. He frowned. “Tomorrow will be the ninth day since this began,” he said. “Inis ap Fathag said that the sickness that has fallen on everyone else would last three days, or six, or nine. So tomor
row, it should be over. Why don’t we fight here today in show only, and then tomorrow you can fight anyone you want for the road to Oriel, and I’ll fight to stop your army, but we needn’t fight each other.”

  “Yes,” Ferdia said. That was honorable. He smiled at Darag, and wanted to embrace him again. But everyone was watching. He bowed instead.

  “Swords first?” Darag asked, bowing. “I should think we can change weapons several times, and have rests between. Usually I rest while people are taking away the bodies and making their boasts. You wouldn’t believe how tiring it is fighting all day, day after day.”

  “We could stop for meals,” Ferdia said and giggled.

  “Don’t forget that people are watching,” Darag said. “They can’t hear us saying what we’re doing if we keep it low, but they can certainly see everything.”

  He drew his sword, and Ferdia did the same. Absurdly, he remembered all the reasons against practicing with real swords. “Be careful. It would be terrible if we killed each other by accident,” he said, but this time managed not to laugh, even though the nervous relief he felt was greater than it had ever been before. He could live past this day. He could live and still be friends with Darag. The sun was shining and sparkling on the water of the ford, and he was alive and might remain so. He could have sung with joy.

  “We have to make it look good,” Darag said, and leaped towards him, sword high.

  They fought hard, moving up and down the clear space before the water. After an hour, they rested, and after another hour of close sword-work, Ferdia went back to the chariot for the spear-fight, sweating and bleeding from a few scratches where he hadn’t brought his shield up quickly enough. Pell looked frankly admiring as she blotted and sang charms over the scratches as he rested. “You have lasted longer against him than anybody else,” she said. “They must have good arms-masters in Oriel. It’s clear you and Darag learned from the same one.” Ferdia looked at her sharply. Had she guessed they were going through practice forms? But it hadn’t all been routines; he thought they had varied it enough.