Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (26 page)

Luap alone remained upright, the look on his face something Kieri did not want to see or remember, though he knew he would not forget it. Grief, fear, pleading … If he had been a child, Kieri would have gathered him up, hugged him—but this was a man, or what should have been a man. “It wasn’t
all
my fault,” Luap said, heart to heart. Kieri’s sympathy vanished in a wave of contempt.

Now. Let me
.

Gladly. Gladly he would let anyone else deal with that thing he could not call a man. He still gave power to the link but let Gird and Paks—or Gird through Paks—do what they would with Luap. The man’s shape enlarged and faded until it was a huge misty figure that then rose through the air—and as it passed into the rock, all at once Kieri saw the outside of the place and that shape wavering on a fin of rock sticking out from a big red block of it. So alien was the place compared with anything he’d seen that he could hardly take it in.

Took me that way, too
.

Gird. When had
he
been there in life?

Tell him to stand guard. You are a king; it will mean something to him
.

The wraith or phantom bothered him less than the human man had; Kieri gave his orders crisply, precisely, and the wraith bowed, then stood upright again. For a moment more his awareness held the place—he was seeing what had been, tiny planted fields in the canyon, now trampled and blighted by iynisin as they neared the block of rock on which the wraith stood. And far down the canyon—had it really been that long?—the cluster of refugees, hurrying along a thread of trail.

Then it was all gone; he was falling, falling, and hit the floor of his study, its familiarity like a blow, like waking from a nightmare.

He lay a moment, gathering his wits, and looked over to see Paks also lying still, eyes closed. Then, as he watched, her eyes opened. “Are you all right?” she asked.

“I could ask the same question,” he said. The fall had been but a jolt; the whole experience still roiled his mind.

“Kieri!” Arian’s voice. “What happened? I felt—”

He pushed himself up to sitting; his head swam. He felt as exhausted as if he’d gone three nights without sleep. Arian, still in her dressing gown, stared at him, then looked at Paks.

“Did you try—?” she began, her tone accusing.

“We did … something,” Kieri said. “At least, now we know who put them to sleep. At least we think we did that.”

“We did,” Paks said. “Gird was there,” she said to Arian.

“I thought you were going to wait until I could help,” Arian said in a tone so like a mother to an errant child that Kieri could not help grinning.

“You were sleeping soundly,” he said. “The babes were quiet for once. All we hoped to do was have Paks show me what the place looked like now so I could focus on it later. I thought, if it worked, it would be such a small magery it would not bother you or the babes. But some power—”

“Gird,” Paks said.

“—sent us earlier, in Luap’s own time, when the iynisin attacked and the Elders closed the transfer pattern there, trapping the magelords. There was nothing to do but figure out how to put them—some of them—into enchanted sleep.”

“So I wake thinking you’re under attack and falling? That’s
better
?” She shook her head at them. “You look half dead, the pair of you. I’ll get food and drink; don’t bother to get up.”

Kieri wasn’t sure he
could
get up; even sitting, he felt unsteady. He lay down again.

“I suppose we did ask a lot of the gods,” Paks said. “That was a long way—time and space both.”

“I still think it’s impossible,” Kieri said. “All I wanted to do was see the place. But then, I was told having the elvenhome magery was impossible.” And meeting the Old Human dead and alive returning from it that Midwinter night had seemed impossible. He shivered, suddenly cold with all the impossibilities.

“In here,” he heard Arian say. King’s Squires brought blankets and trays of food and drink.

Very shortly, he and Paks lay wrapped in blankets and propped up on pillows; a fire crackled on the hearth. Arian sat in his usual chair, now set between them. A mug of sib spiked with honey and a pastry cleared his mind, though he still felt tired and sore.

“You are both reckless fools,” Arian said when Kieri had finished the first mug of sib. “You had no one with you—not even one King’s Squire—you might both have broken your heads falling down—and what if an iynisin had come through?”

“I didn’t think of that,” Kieri said, startled. Why had he not thought of that? The use of magery could be sensed by others who used it. As for no one around … “I did not want to expose anyone else to whatever danger there might be.”

Arian heaved a sigh of the kind that conveys entire paragraphs. Kieri winced. “Fools,” she said again. “A king—the only king we have, the only lord of an elvenhome we have, the only father our children have—and you still think you should face danger alone? Yes, you had a paladin with you—” The glance she sent Paks could have pierced steel, Kieri thought. “And I do not doubt, had it come to
that, she would have warded you as much as she was able. But she, too, was bound into the magery. A paladin is not immortal; she could have died of it for all you knew and been no help at all.”

“Gird was there,” Paks offered.

Arian’s snort was eloquent. “Gird is
your
patron, Paks. Not Kieri’s. Gird is always with you, yes. But did Gird save you from falling on the floor like a sack of rocks?”

“I admit we should have had someone on guard,” Kieri said. “I did not think of iynisin, and I do not know why, since I know they were involved.” He took a deep breath. The lethargy was fading now—how long had it been? He realized he had no idea. One glass? Two?

“Your eyes have gone blank again,” Arian said. “Drink more sib.”

Partway through the next mug, he fell asleep and woke in his own bed to the sound of babies nearby, not crying but making other baby sounds and … splashing? Sunlight streamed in the window. He sat up. Arian and one of the nursery maids were bathing the babies; as he watched, Arian lifted Falki, laid him on the towel in her lap, and rolled him up like a cheese roll. Tilla kicked a final time as the nursery maid lifted her.

“I’ll take them, my lady,” the nursery maid said after bundling Tilla in another towel. She went out with a babe in each arm.

Kieri looked at Arian; she tried to keep a serious face but then grinned. “I’m fine,” he said. “I don’t even ache where I hit the floor.”

“You scared me,” she said. “If—”

He was up and by her side and laid a finger on her lips. “I’m sorry I scared you. The worst didn’t happen, thank Falk and Gird and all the gods, and I won’t be that careless again. I will try to understand the compulsion that made it seem reasonable. No one was there—”

“But Paksenarrion.”

Kieri shook his head. “It wasn’t Paks. I’m sure of that, because—now that I can remember it all—she asked if we should have someone in the room.”

“Gird, then?”

“I don’t think Gird could affect me. Falk might, but I didn’t sense
Falk there. But something … I can’t believe the danger from iynisin never occurred to me.” He stretched, then started dressing. “I can’t believe we did what we did—what I think we did—and I can’t believe your grandfather didn’t know it. If he could tell it was a mix of elven and human mageries, why couldn’t he tell it was me?”

“Would that have made more sense to you? That you were going to travel back in time to enchant them?”

“I suppose not,” Kieri said. “I would have thought it even more impossible.” He pulled on one sock, then another. “Where is Paks?”

“I don’t know. I had Queen’s Squires carry her to her room; I haven’t seen her since. She has the freedom of the palace.”

Kieri finished dressing and belted on his sword. “Someone should check on her. She looked worse than I felt.”

“I’ll come with you,” Arian said. She picked up the sword that had lain by her chair and hung it to the baldric she still wore. “I’ll be glad when I fit back into my proper gear.”

Kieri touched her shoulder. “It won’t be long.”

Upstairs, outside Paks’s chamber, they heard nothing at first. Arian tapped on the door. A peculiar noise, like a truncated snore mixed with a gulp, came from the room. Then a yawn. “Uh?”

“Paks, it’s Arian and Kieri. We were worried.”

The thud of bare feet on the floor, then another yawn, and finally the door opened. Paks had color in her face again, and after a few more blinks, her eyes brightened. “I haven’t slept this late in years,” she said.

“I’m glad to see you upright,” Arian said. “Kieri woke less than a half-glass ago. Do you remember what happened?”

“We worked magery,” Paks said. “And—” She grimaced. “We’re going to have to work it again.”

“Not today you’re not,” Arian said. “And not alone, either.”

Paks left the next day as suddenly as she had come. “I must be back in Fin Panir for Midsummer,” she said.

“A rule for paladins?” Kieri asked, smiling.

“No … just … I must go.”

“Go with our prayers, then. Come again—we still have to wake those magelords, you know.” She waved, already moving away. Kieri sighed. Her Old Human magery had helped him, but what if she did not return? Supposedly he had it, but he felt nothing when he tried to imagine what it might be like.

The western elves, who had left immediately after the twins were born to take word to their king in the west, had not yet returned. Elves’ sense of time again … He had expected them back by now, since travel by their patterns seemed instantaneous, but to them it might be no time at all since they left.

On second thought, that might be convenient in this instance. He did not know how to explain to them what he and Paks had done. He was sure they would have questions he could not answer. How had he imposed enchantment on the past? He had no idea. Why had he not then broken the enchantment? And so on. It would be simpler not to tell them: in this day, the magelords were there, silent and motionless, and if the elves hadn’t known who put them there, they did not need to know now.

On that thought, he set to work in his office, reading through
reports from supervisors of various projects he had put under way. Every time his thoughts veered to what Paks had brought up—the possibility that Sekkady still lived, perhaps in another body, and might still be a menace—he pushed it away and forced himself into the details of the day.

Later, he tried twice—very carefully, with a King’s Squire sworn to secrecy at hand, and sitting down—to reach with his magery to Kolobia and do something—anything—that might wake those he had enchanted. He was sure he found the place again—he felt it the same way he felt his former stronghold, or Vérella, or the winter quarters in Valdaire. But that was the most he could do, lacking Paks and Gird. And though he asked Gird for help, nothing more happened.

Except that night after night, he remembered what Paks had said and could not push aside the thought of Sekkady still alive, in another body, searching for him, threatening his children. His dreams were troubled. He did not want to bother Arian while she was so busy with the babies. He would try something else.

Arian was asleep; the babies were asleep. Kieri sat by the window in his own chamber, the box of selani tiles open before him. He took one without looking and then read the rune.
Sorrow
. He took another.
Loss
. Another and another and another:
pain, rage, distance, death
, each one drawing a fine line of pain on his heart as Sekkady had long ago used a stone blade on his skin to draw a fine line of blood. And then, with the bloodstone he always had with him, Sekkady had sorcelled that blood into the stone and murmured to Kieri as he did so.

Even if you escaped this place—but you will never escape—you could not escape me, for your blood is with me, and with it your fear and your submission. By this stone I command you. Here you are, held motionless and silent, even when you know what I will do to you. So will you be always, everywhere and anywhere, every time and any time. And someday, I will let you have something precious to you, and you will
think you are safe, but I will come, and you will kneel before me, helpless as you are now. And I may let you beg for mercy, but you know now as you will then that my will is greatest, and you will surely suffer all I desire
.