Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (41 page)

“She said she was tired yestereve,” the innkeeper said. “She spent
the afternoon in the garden with our youngest three … but she’d taken to them, and them to her, from the time she came. Like you said, I couldn’t understand what she said, but she made signs … I think she lost her own children.”

“Are they sick?” Kieri asked. “Do you think she brought an illness with her?”

“Oh, no. Cali was coughing before the magelords came, and of course Issa and Vorli caught it. Runny noses, all three, but they’ll be fine. It’s nothing serious, just the usual summer drip children get. No, the magelady is much sicker than that. It might even be lung fever.”

Kieri sent his physician, who came back looking grave. “She’s very sick. I looked at the others in that inn. Dualian shares a room with Tammar and a table with Derin and Meris. Tammar is sneezing and coughing; Meris has a headache and fever.”

“I worry that they might have brought a sickness from Kolobia.”

“From the past, you mean. I suppose, though if they were under a glamour for five hundred winters, anything they had should have worn itself out.”

“No other travelers have been sick at that inn. Only the children—”

“And theirs started before the magelords came and thus cannot be the result of their coming. I don’t know, sir king. I don’t know what it is, but I gave the draught I would for lung fever. We can hope it’s just traveler’s ill. I expect you’ve had that.”

“The flux once every year when I went south, those first years,” Kieri said, nodding. “Then I got used to the water and food there. It’s a long way from Kolobia to here; perhaps it is just the change of water.”

“For some it’s flux, for some it’s coughing. Traveler’s ill usually passes quickly,” the physician said. “I did ask, and not just the innkeeper but no one else staying or eating there has been sick with the like, so it’s not something wrong with the food.”

Despite the physician’s opinion, the other mages complained to Kieri, demanding to know what the sickness was and whether someone had tried to poison them. Kieri began to hear of quarrels among
the mages and complaints from his own subjects about their behavior.

“I don’t mind drinking,” one innkeeper said. “I sell ale and beer and wine, after all. But there’s drinking and drinking, and when I say a man’s had enough and I’m not serving more, I expect him to go sleep it off. Not lift the pitcher out of my hands by magery and drink it dry.”

Kieri nodded. “Quite right. I’ll speak to them.”

That was easier promised than done. That mage and a half dozen others had borrowed horses from the royal stables and ridden out somewhere. Meanwhile, another two women mages had fallen ill.

“They’re not only useless, they’re actively causing me problems,” he said to Arian. “And when I said that to Caernith, all he said was, ‘So we found when we allowed them into the rock.’ ”

Then High Marshal Seklis arrived from Vérella with two scribes. By then the oldest woman, Meris, had died, and another appeared near death. The High Marshal was another problem. He said he wanted to know more about Gird’s time, which to these mages was their own and fresh in memory. But it was clear from the start that he was suspicious of them and looking for an excuse to condemn them.

For the magelords, the Girdish rebellion and Gird himself were only a few hands of years past. Though they knew nothing of the intervening hundreds of years, they knew their own time better than anyone else in the world, though their version of Gird’s rebellion differed widely from Girdish dogma. Marshal Seklis immediately disputed their memories; tempers flared. Kieri found himself having to moderate words and actions on both sides of the table and finally dismissed them for the day.

“It would have been simpler, sir king, to have sent them to Fin Panir,” High Marshal Seklis said later, when alone with Kieri.

“Into the turmoil there? They’d have been killed and made things worse for the Marshal-General. Besides, when I first heard from her about them, she was adamant she did not want them in Fintha. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.”

Seklis flushed. “In fact … she said something like that. But it
seemed to me if they came there and tried anything, they could be … well …”

“Killed?” Kieri said. “And if a mob killed them, so much the better?”

Seklis said nothing, but his face was dark red.

“I suspect the Marshal-General thought of that possibility and believed Gird would not approve.”

“I suppose,” Seklis said.

“You know she came to visit me when I was still a duke in Tsaia, don’t you?”

“Yes.” The flush had faded, but his face was still blotched and his expression dour.

“I respect the Marshal-General highly,” Kieri said. “I would not cross her will without good reason—very good reason.”

Seklis let out a gusty sigh. “Nor I, sir king. It’s only—we know nothing about these magelords. Why were these chosen, out of all who were there, to be cast into enchantment? Or did they cast that magery on themselves? There are no records—there could be none, I suppose, to tell of the final time—however long it was—leading to that. I intend to find out, but can I trust their reports?”

“I don’t know,” Kieri said, skirting the question of how the magelords came to be enchanted in the first place. That was not something he wanted to discuss with Seklis; time enough if the magelords revealed it. “But don’t Marshals have some ability to sense evil?”

“Paladins. Marshals can be fooled … We’re supposed to use our wits, but—”

“Then you’re where I am. I don’t feel inclined to trust them fully, but I also don’t have special knowledge of which ones are good and which ones bad—if any are.” He shook his head. “If Dorrin—Duke Verrakai were here, she could at least determine if any were body changers.”

Seklis scowled. “Blood mages.”

“But she’s not here, and neither of us is a paladin.” Kieri placed both hands flat on his desk. “So we, High Marshal, must figure this out for ourselves. Try not to enrage them tomorrow and perhaps you’ll learn something we can use.”

“Perhaps.” Another sigh, and Seklis pushed himself up from the chair.

“Do you have any feelings one way or the other about any in particular?” Kieri asked.

“I’m not sure, and that’s the truth of it. They’re so … so lordly. Yes, we have nobles in Tsaia, but they’re not like this. This kind of glossy confidence. Doesn’t that bother you?”

Kieri chuckled. “I’ve been living around elves several years now, High Marshal. You have not experienced real lordliness until you’ve been condescended to by the youngest of them, whom you find to be hundreds of years old though he looks like a youth.”

“Well, that’s natural for them—they’re not human.”

“True, but it’s eroded my sensitivity to condescension. And that may be a bad thing,” he added. “You’re aware of it, and I’m not, and my lack of awareness is a blank spot, a blindness. I thought they were controlling the kind of fear I’d expect anyone to feel, yanked through five centuries. I expected self-control, as if they were soldiers. Yet it’s clear they’re not soldiers. So if they are confident because they have no anxiety … then—”

Seklis nodded sharply. “Yes, sir king. That is exactly what makes me uneasy. They should be struggling to adapt, but they seem perfectly at ease, as if they were the lords here and not you or the elves.”

“One tried to lay a glamour on me, but I tossed it away,” Kieri said.

“I will go softly tomorrow,” Seklis said. “And what I hear, I will tell you. They will expect that, but still—you must know.”

“I will sit with you until I am sure you are safe—”

“Me?”

“What if they try to enchant you?”

“I—?” Seklis stared, then recovered himself. “Gird will protect me.”

“Will he? I have no doubt he could, High Marshal, but consider what happened to Paks. His protection is more distant and less sure than mine.”

Seklis said nothing. Kieri got up and came out from behind his desk. “We will work together, High Marshal, and not at cross-purposes.
They have enough of modern Common now—and should they talk among themselves in their own tongue, elves can understand it.” At Seklis’s look, he added, “It is the language they brought from Old Aare, and elves knew them there and learned their speech.”

“Will elves be there, then?”

“Yes. I’ll ask one of the western elves. They might actually have met some of these people back in Gird’s day.”

Dorrin’s last view of Verrakai House, with the early sun shining on its face, the water meadows speckled with grazing cattle, tore at her heart. She had thought herself resigned to the necessity, but everything she saw reminded her of what she had hoped to accomplish. Though Beclan had promised to take care of it for her and clearly hoped she would return in a season or two, she did not expect it. She would die, she was sure, on this venture even if she was successful. Yet she had no choice. Not only her king’s command but her own reason told her the regalia must go somewhere else. The coast of Old Aare? Perhaps.

All the way to the border she could not stop grieving for what she was losing … the first home of her own, the work she had started, the people she had come to love and care for. She would never see trade moving on the road she had begun; she would never see the children grown and know whether her intervention had done them good.

Her escort, silent out of respect, did nothing to distract her from her thoughts. Not until the border itself, where five Lyonyan rangers waited, did her escort speak. “My lord Duke—” That was Natzlin. Her voice sounded thick. “My lord—we will hope for your safe and soon return.” The others murmured assent. Natzlin came forward and bent her knee; Dorrin clasped her shoulder.

“Natzlin, you will do well, and I know you will be a strength for
my heir if I do not return. All of you—I believe your lives will continue to prosper. Beclan will have his father’s advice and help; the king himself wants you to prosper.”

“My lord—” Natzlin stepped nearer and lowered her voice. “
Will
you return? On your oath?”

“I don’t know,” Dorrin said. “I can’t know. If I can, I will return. But if I cannot, then I believe you are in good hands.”

“But not your hands,” Natzlin said. “I will do my utmost for you, my lord, but I hope you do return.”

They stood beside their horses as she remounted and rode forward to join the rangers, into the tall forest of Lyonya. Dorrin did not know these rangers. They greeted her politely but talked little. One handed her a letter from Kieri welcoming her to Lyonya but warning her about magelords … she read the rest of that with astonishment. She would not have believed the tale from anyone else. He and Paks had caused the enchantment the elves wanted him to break? He and Arian had then broken it? She looked at the rangers, but they showed no sign of knowing what she read.

When they stopped for the night at one of their way stations, Dorrin tucked away Kieri’s letter and unloaded her packhorse herself. She set the pack saddle in the back corner of the three-sided shelter, in a row with the rangers’ saddles. The rangers were busy with camp chores; she rested on one of the logs and watched them work until supper was ready.

“You were at the king’s wedding last year, weren’t you, lord Duke?”

“Yes, I was. And I was in Chaya still when the queen lost their child. I look forward to seeing the twins. I’ve known the king since he was at Falk’s Hall … I’m sure you know I was one of his captains when he commanded his own mercenary company.”

“Yes, lord Duke. He made sure we knew you were his friend of old. He also said you have mage-powers.”

“Some, yes,” Dorrin said. “Blocked for years by the Knight-Commander of Falk but released by the paladin Paksenarrion.” She waited for someone to ask about the reason for her visit, but no one mentioned it. One of them turned the conversation to horses instead.

“That chestnut you’re riding—is that a Marrakai-bred?”

“Yes, it is,” Dorrin said. “Your king wanted a mare of that breeding, and Duke Marrakai asked me to bring her, since I was coming this way.”

“I always thought Tsaia bred heavy horses, like Pargunese Blacks only not black.”

“The royal stables breed a heavy gray,” Dorrin said. “But they’re too slow to be useful for a mercenary company or ordinary travel. Mahieran, the king’s family, breed horses as well, but they’re taller and leaner than the Marrakai.”

The rest of the evening passed in horse talk—breeds, colors, stories of favorites—not a word about magelords from Kolobia who had lived in Gird’s day. Well, if they weren’t going to mention it, she would not ask. Dorrin slept soundly, to her surprise, and woke refreshed. She remembered that feeling from her travels with the Duke’s Company—often a reluctance to leave, followed—once on the road—by an eagerness to reach a destination. Only then she had known the destination. This time …

She pushed herself out of her blankets and went to check on her horses. Soon they were riding again. At the next way shelter, they met four King’s Squires, who took over as her escorts on the following day. From them, she heard a little about the magelords and about Kieri’s concern for her and what she carried.

“They’re not like anyone here,” a young woman said. Dorrin had met Lieth the year before and remembered her. “And though you’re a magelord, they’re not like you, either. They thought if they ever wakened again, it would be a world where magelords ruled.”