Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (29 page)

Alyanya gives life, and so this magery gives blood and breath
.

The Kuakkgani, Kieri knew, gave a limb to their host tree … and the tree gave a limb to them … each kind to the other kind. But the Old Humans had given season by season, act by act—blooding their tools before cutting the soil and the cornerstone of a new building, burying the birthsack of each child in the corner of a field to be planted, giving the land back the flesh of each who died, and then raising the bones for their spirits. They gave breath—days of their lives—for the magery that saved others from dying of fevers or injuries.

Giving is power
.

The techniques, the rituals, poured into his mind. At last, when he felt stuffed with the new knowledge, the skull released him.

Go in Alyanya’s peace, Palan Oathkeeper. We do not forget
.

Kieri returned from the King’s Grove to his own chamber in the first soft predawn light; he was, he realized, streaked with mud
and other substances he didn’t want to think about. He took the back way and made it into the bathing room without seeing either of his elven bodyguards. Water for his bath after morning exercise in the salle had just been put on the hearth; he poured it into the tub over the servant’s objections.

“I need to get this mud off, and I’ll need another bath later. Doesn’t matter if it’s cold; I’ve bathed in colder.”

It was more cool than cold, refreshing, and he came out of his bath wide awake and ready for drill. Arian was in his room when he entered, in exercise gear with the glint of mail under it. She grinned at him. “Get any sleep?”

“No, but I’m fine.” He dressed quickly. “You’re going to the salle? Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. They’ve had their first breakfast, and I’m too restless to sit around.”

“Half speed,” Kieri said, wriggling into his own mail. “No accidents.”

“Half speed,” she said.

They went down together and met Caernith in the lower hall. “My lady,” he said to Arian. “Are you quite sure you should—?”

“Yes,” Arian said. “What you told me about the children—I need to be fit just to keep up with them, and sitting around will not do.”

“You have servants,” Caernith said.

“And I am their mother for both body and magery,” Arian said. She glanced at Kieri. “Besides, I have the king’s leave.”

Kieri chuckled. “As if you needed it. Come now: a short workout for you today and then you can laugh at me for staying up far too late with that research. Carlion will probably leave bruises.”

They came into a salle already echoing with the sound of steel on steel, but Carlion called a hold as the king entered.

“My queen,” Carlion said, coming to Arian. “Are you certain—?”

“Yes!” Kieri and Arian spoke together, and then Arian laughed. “Yes, Carlion, I am certain. I am wearing mail. I have done the preliminary exercises. I know I must not go full speed yet, but I need to get started. Do not treat me like a crystal goblet; I am not so easy to break.”

“Yes, my queen. I just … we all just …”

“I know.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I am not angry, just determined. I would like you to closely supervise my exercises the first tenday or so.”

“Well, then … no banda for you today; you’re not going to touch a blade. Let’s see you stretch. And you, sir king—” He turned to Kieri. “Usual stretches, then go to the middle with any two of your Squires. One to watch, since I’ll be busy with the queen, and one to engage. Take turns.”

Kieri picked up one of the practice blades and absently, without thinking, ran his thumb down the sharpened edge above the slightly bated tip. A bead of blood smeared the blade.

“What did you do?” Carlion said sharply.

The answer came before he could stop it. “Blooded the blade.”

Caernith looked at him. “Why? That’s—”

“An Old Human tradition, yes. If I’m to find out about my Old Human heritage, I should be using some of their rituals, don’t you think?”

Caernith stared, then said, “Blood magery is … wrong.”

“It’s not the same as taking blood,” Kieri said. “Old Humans blooded the blade to give of their own life.”

“It’s …”

Kieri could almost see the words running through the elf’s mind.

“It’s … primitive.”

“But not selfish or cruel,” Kieri said. He walked on to the middle section of the salle.

Kieri sat in the rose garden, as usual once in the day, fingering the selani tiles for the first time since … that night … letting their runes and their arrangement lead his thoughts. Today, tiles and thoughts seemed scattered. The opposites of
wound
and
heal
were obvious, but what did they refer to? And how could that fit with
seek
and
find
, another pair of opposites, and
truth
and
consent
, which were not opposites? Elves, Kieri knew, hated seeing his scars, even faded
from what they had been. Unlike his King’s Squires, they avoided seeing him partly dressed, let alone unclothed.

They had offered to erase the scars, as the Lady had offered to erase Paks’s scars—but not his, he thought suddenly, spun out of a consideration of bodyguards who couldn’t look at his body to another of his grandmother’s oddities. Had she lacked that gift? No, because she had offered healing to Paks. Why not to him? Perhaps she could not do it always? He himself had been able to heal Torfinn’s poisoned wound once but not his injured leg later.

He fingered the torc he now wore, invisible under his mail and gorget. Thinking of his grandmother led inevitably to his mother and the gifts that had risen from the ground to become his at last. He had shown elves the selani tiles; he now knew all the runes and some of what the tiles were for—not so much foretelling as remembering and connecting memories into patterns that allowed deeper understanding. They knew about his sword and dagger, about the ring he wore on his heart-hand and the belt buckle. But he had not shown them the torc. Every time he’d thought to do so, he had been distracted by something else. That brief glimpse of something inside the golden twist … what was it, and what did it mean?

He scooped up the tiles, glanced at the angle of the sun, and decided he had time for one more meditation with them. He let a few slide through his fingers, landing on the table as they would.
Wound. Heal. Choice. Protect
.

Sun blazed down on him; the scent of roses became overpowering. He felt a pressure, as if someone tried to force his understanding. Whose choice? It must be his. A choice to protect or heal or wound? He would choose to protect and heal whenever he could.

Whom?

Whom? Heal whom? Anyone hurt, was his immediate thought. Immediately the patterns he had just learned from the Old Humans rose in his mind.

For them, healing was the most delicate, intricate of gifts, one requiring full understanding of the situation, not just the injury. Just to lay pain on a stone—a traditional remedy for pains that did not respond to an infusion of feverbane, bruisebane, or goodweed—depended
on the pain and its cause, the parrion of the one in pain, and the stone’s own nature and its function. Casting sleep on an adult or waking one out of cast sleep was even more complicated.

Kieri talked all this over with Arian when they met later that day.

“My mother had what we called good hands,” Arian said. “I don’t know if that’s the same.”

“What do you mean? Healed people?”

Arian shook her head. “Not exactly. But if you were sick or hurt, when she touched you, or laid her hand on it, it felt better. Not just for me, but for others in the household. And I remember as a child, being restless and unable to sleep. Her hand on my forehead would be so gentle, so soothing … I’d wake up the next morning and never have noticed going to sleep.”

“What about waking you?”

Arian laughed. “That was a wet cloth dropped on my feet if I didn’t come when called,” she said.

Kieri tried out the magery on Arian, at her suggestion. At first he followed her mother’s example: a hand on her forehead, along with what he understood of the magery itself. He had to find peace and rest in himself and give that to her … and the second time he tried it, she fell asleep in an instant, a smile on her face. Within days, he could cast sleep on her from a distance. Waking her gently was more difficult; her memories of cold wet feet interfered with his intent and woke her with a jerk. Finally he found a way to do it—and give her sleep again—and do it from the other side of the room.

“Almost there,” he said, yawning. “But I need to sleep myself. By Midsummer I might have this figured out. Surely nothing will happen between now and then.”

Unseen, unheard, the shadows entered the palace gate past guards who stood open-eyed, staring at nothing. Unseen, unheard, the shadows moved across the courtyard, up the stairs, where the great doors swung open for them, and the guards posted there stood as motionless as the others, eyes open, seeing nothing.

Within the palace they moved in a body along corridors dimly lit, past the occasional guard, up stairs, around turns, unerring in their search … and still unseen and unheard. At the last door, the one that guarded the treasury, two guards stood, the whites of their eyes gleaming a little in the faint light. The shadows paused; the guards saw nothing, heard nothing. The shadows touched the door; it did not open to them at first, but the locks yielded at last to slender wands and wires of steel.

Prince Camwyn woke with a start and stared at his hands. Both were alight; his room showed clear in every detail. He scowled. This had not happened for a quarter-year; he had finally learned, he thought, how to control this part of his magery. He stood up and padded barefoot across the carpet to the candle holders always ready for such a situation. Candle after candle flared; his hands did not dim.

Come!

His hand jerked away from the candle he intended to light. The crown again. He had given up hoping it would not talk to him; it talked to Duke Verrakai and Mikeli as well, and its intrusions had grown more frequent of late. But why did it command him to come now, in the middle of the night?

Come! Come now! Danger!