Beyond the Burning Lands (5 page)

It was a contraption in the shape of a small broken hoop, covered with bright stones. It was to be worn across the top of the head, he explained, and demonstrated this by opening it out and ludicrously pressing it in place for a moment over his own black thatch.

My brother thanked him gravely. He asked him how he had made his way so far, through such hazards. And how had he managed to cross the Burning Lands?

There had been a party of them, the peddler explained. For a long time his people had traded into the countries of the savages. There were risks—he shrugged expressively—but there were also profits. And for years it had been known that the Burning Lands were cooling: there were fewer mountains that spurted fire and the fires themselves, with their flows of molten rock, were smaller. There was a pass and others before had ventured part way in but had been forced to turn back—as his companions this time had also done. He had pushed on, gambling that he would get through before the heat from the ground overcame him. It had been a near thing but he had succeeded.

Peter said, looking at the polish and the shining buckles: “Your boots have stood it well. You must have good leather in the land of the Wilsh.”

The peddler shook his head. “I threw away the ones I wore. They were well-nigh scorched through.”

“And your horse? Did you have spare hoofs for him?”

“No, sire. But I made him boots of leather; and bound them round, as I did my own, with a cloth that we have in my country. It is woven from a stone called chrysotile which protects against heat.”

A cloth woven from stone? But the very improbability made his tale convincing. My brother put other questions to him, which he answered as readily. His city lay in mountainous country and lacked the richness of land we took for granted. Their sheep gave poorer wool and stringier mutton; what corn they had was scant and small-eared. But their craftsmen, he thought, made things which our people might enjoy. He would hope to return another time and bring others.

“Your story is an interesting one,” Peter said. “If we send an embassy to your city, will it be received in peace?”

“How not?” the peddler said. “In peace and with rejoicing. We are a civilized people.”

•  •  •

Peter dismissed the peddler, with a present of gold that brought a gleam to his eye. He dismissed the Captains also, but asked me to stay. We went together to the little room where my father had liked to sit, away from the noise and ceremony of the court. He sat in my father's old armchair and turned the ornament the peddler had given him in his hands.

“Copper,” he said, “though more highly burnished than is common with us. And the stones are pretty but not precious. Some are glass.”

I said: “One does not expect a rich gift from a peddler. You were more than generous in return.”

“There was more to it,” Peter said, “than the return of a gift.” He looked at the metal hoop and smiled. “For my Lady, indeed! Can you imagine Ann with such a thing? She will wear no ornaments, though I should have delight in giving them to her. I wish she would. I used to love looking at your mother in all her finery: a bird of bright plumage. I often think of her.”

I was surprised by what he said, but even more by the easy way he said it. The bird of bright plumage had died in fire, after all, and his mother, my Aunt Mary, had paid for it with her own life in the square outside the palace in which we sat. This had been the root of the bitterness between us.

He dropped the hoop on a table and looked at me.

“I am glad to have you back, Luke.”

He had said it before; but there was a different sound to it here in this room with its memories. Margry, the court painter, was dead of a flux, but on the wall opposite hung his finest picture, of my mother sitting in a shaft of sunlight, with puppies at her feet and flowers behind her head. I knew his words to be sincere and with that knew the suspicions I had had—that the scene at the banquet had been designed to trick me—were unfounded, fancies of my own jealous nature. I realized also that he felt no guilt over taking the place which I had looked to have. In earlier days, although the elder, he had accepted inferior rank without complaint. Then, as it must have seemed to him, fate had redressed the balance, restoring the natural order. It was for me to accept this in my turn. The pledges at the banquet had been meant as public affirmations of the renewal of a brotherly bond: no more than that.

“I am well served by my Captains,” Peter said, “and more fortunate in my Lady than I could ever have hoped to be. But I missed you. There were three Perrys in this city; then suddenly one. It is good there are two again.”

He went on to talk of a number of things, in much the way my father used to do, and I was flattered by the confidence he showed in me. The plans of Ezzard and the High Seers seemed remote and unreal. What did their cold science matter compared with this? I was glad I had warned Ezzard that I would take no part in intrigues against my brother. In other ways I would help them as duty required, so far as it lay within my power, but they must accept him as Prince as I did.

The suggestion of sending an embassy to the city from which the peddler had come had not been an idle remark, it seemed, but something closely pondered. Peter discussed the form it should take: a troop of horse, under a Captain. Not a large troop, but picked soldiers who would do us credit in the eyes of foreigners. And which Captain? We discussed their merits. Nicoll or Greene, he thought. I gave my preference to the latter as less impressive physically—Nicoll was a huge, handsome man—but of better judgment. Peter nodded.

“That is right enough. And although courage and strength are enough in a soldier, it is judgment that a Captain needs most. I will send Greene.”

“Can I go with him? I would like to cross the Burning Lands and see this city of theirs in the north.”

He put his hand on my shoulder, smiling, and this time I was glad of its weight.

“Lose you again so soon? No. There will be other expeditions, I have no doubt. For the present, I cannot spare you.”

•  •  •

Rudi said: “Health, Captain.” He called to one of his apprentices: “Take the Captain's topcoat. And bring us pots of ale.”

The Armorer's forge had not changed and nor, so far as I could judge, had Rudi himself, the Master Armorer. His arms were as brawny, his hair and beard as white. His head, it was true, now reached below my shoulder, but that was because I had grown. The pewter pots of hot spiced ale were brought by the dwarf apprentice; as usual Rudi offered me his own seat, carved with the likenesses of past Armorers, and as usual I refused it. We sat together in the warmth of the central fire from which flames leaped toward the high roof. Rudi raised his pot.

“To your return, Captain! And to your new rank.” He smiled. “It seems so short a time since you sat there bemoaning your ill fortune in not being chosen as a Young Captain for the Contest. And now you are Captain in fact, serving your brother, the Prince.”

“Are you making the swords yet for this year's contest?”

“Not yet.” He nodded toward the sword that hung from my belt. “And I see I do not need to forge one for the new Captain, since he is already provided.”

“The High Seers . . .”

“I have heard of it,” Rudi said. “A Sword of the Spirits. May I look at it, Captain, or is it too holy to be touched by ordinary mortals?”

He was joking, as we both knew. He had never spoken disrespectfully of the Seers or the Spirits but like most dwarfs I do not think he took them seriously. Dwarfs were interested in real things: in goods and victuals and their own craftsmanship. The Spirits, like the campaigns of the army, were affairs with which they did not concern themselves.

“The object of a sword,” I said, “whoever makes it, is to wound or kill. So since it is meant to strike it may be touched.”

I unbuckled the sword from my belt and gave it to him. Rudi drew the blade slowly from the scabbard. He held it up to the light of the fire, one hand under the hilt and the other supporting near the tip. He moved it slightly, tilting up and down, so that the edge gleamed. Then, gripping the hilt in his right hand, he plucked a hair from his beard with the left. He flicked the blade lightly upward and the hair parted.

“Are the Spirits dwarfs?” he asked.

It was not a question to which he would expect an answer. He weighed and hefted the sword, turning it this way and that. I said:

“You approve, Rudi?”

He nodded, his eyes intent. He said:

“We make as good swords here as in any city in the land, and better than in most. This is not boasting; our cousins in Romsey and Basingstoke and Alton would acknowledge it. But we make nothing like this, nor could. The temper of the steel. . . . And the working of it. I would give much to see the forge on which this blade was beaten out.”

I visualized him in the laboratories and workshops of the Sanctuary. I doubted if he would be shocked and confused as I had been when I first saw them. I could imagine him putting questions to Murphy and deeply pondering the replies. There would be no opposition from the dwarfs if the Seers declared the Spirits wanted machines built again. Although lacking the imagination to seek such a thing they would accept it readily enough. But of course what dwarfs thought was unimportant.

Changing the subject, I asked him about his family. He had three sons, two fully grown and skilled metalworkers, though not in armory. The third, much younger than the others, was called Hans and I knew Rudi had hopes that he would follow him—perhaps one day be Master Armorer in his turn.

I spoke of this and Rudi shook his head.

“He does not choose it.”

“I am sorry to hear that. But what would he do instead?”

There was a pause before Rudi said: “He has always been a strange one, and the strangeness has grown. Do you remember once you asked me if I would have wished to be a warrior?”

I remembered it: a cold winter's morning much like this, with the Contest only a few days off. I said:

“You reminded me that you were Master Armorer. It was a foolish question.”

“Not foolish. Even a dwarf does not smile all day long or every day; and even a dwarf can have vain dreams. But it is true that in the main I am content. If you asked the question of my son, though, there would be a different answer.”

“But he knows such a thing is impossible.”

“True. It does not stop him watching the soldiers with an envious heart. And he will not settle to a trade.”

“He may do so in time.”

“I hope so. He is almost your age.” He hesitated. “Captain, may I ask a favor of you?”

“Any I can grant. I cannot make a warrior of him.”

“I know that. But you will ride out with the army next summer?”

“If the Spirits will.”

“The army takes no polymufs with it even as servants. But once or twice dwarfs have gone, as part of the baggage train. If this could be permitted for Hans . . .”

“You think a campaign might cool the fever in his blood?”

“It is possible. And if not, it would make him happy. Or happier, at least. He is my youngest.”

“I will see to it, Rudi.”

“I am grateful, Captain. I would put my thanks into the making of a sword for you, but it seems you have had the help of greater skills than mine.”

“If this sword breaks I will come to you for my next.”

He watched as I slid the blade back into its sheath.

“If it breaks I doubt if you will need another. But I do not think it will break.”

•  •  •

I paid my respects to Edmund's mother, she who had been Lady to Prince Stephen, in her new house. Her elder son, Charles, had won booty from the campaign against Petersfield, and had shared with the other Captains in the ransom money paid by Romsey for its army and its dead Prince's son. These things had enabled him to take her from the tiny house in Salt Street and put her in a place more fitting to her rank.

It was still not large, smaller than my home before we moved to the palace, but she was not a woman who cared for show. She had no great wit and it was clear she had never had beauty, but her two sons and Jenny, her daughter, loved her dearly. She did not often rebuke them but when she did the rebuke was heeded. She greeted me warmly, embracing me. Jenny said:

“You must show him more respect, Mother, now that he is a Captain.”

Her voice had an edge of mockery which was familiar to me and could still unsettle me. She was a little less thin in the face, I thought, a little more womanly in figure. She was more than a year my senior. I said, trying to match her banter:

“It is not she but you who should show respect.”

She dropped a curtsy to me. “I beg your pardon, sire. And if you could find time to school me in manners, I would promise to pay close attention.”

“Leave him alone, Jenny,” her mother said. “He is not back two seconds before you are provoking him again. And last summer when he was not here we had mopings and gloom and constant wonderings about where Luke was, and was all well with him.”

To my surprise she blushed while making her outraged denials. I was as embarrassed, if not more so, and hastened to find a different topic. I talked of the peddler, as the whole city was doing, and of the supposed wonders of Klan Gothlen in the land of the Wilsh. It was public news now that Peter was sending an embassy there and had hired the peddler to go with them and be their guide and herald.

Edmund's mother said: “I suppose there is a reason for it, but I cannot see what. Our own land and city are good enough, I would think, without going to look for others. But men are restless creatures.”

Jenny said: “I would go. Gladly!”

“Go where?” her mother asked.

“To the peddler's city, if I could.”

“It is a day of wonders,” I said. “A dwarf who would be a warrior, and a girl who wants to go hunting for strange cities.”