Crown of Renewal (Legend of Paksenarrion) (46 page)

She came back a few minutes later with them and to everyone’s surprise set them down on the table. Both could sit up now, though Arian set a rolled cloth behind them just in case. Dorrin and the others looked around and then at the babies.

“Falki and Tilla,” Arian said. “Two happy, healthy children.” As if on cue, they both grinned at the adults. “The gods granted us these children … and granted them Kieri and me for parents. Shall we
make ourselves, and them, miserable for having had to face hard choices?”

A startled silence in which Falki let out a happy crow that brought a smile to Kieri’s face. Dorrin felt her own face relax. Tilla copied him.

“We took a chance,” Arian went on, “to save this time from more destruction by iynisin and to save those who had been enchanted into five hundred winters of stillness. It was only ever a chance, not a certainty, that they would live and thrive here. It was only ever a chance, not a certainty, that after losing my firstborn to poison, I would bear more children. And there they are. Look at them.”

Dorrin looked. Everyone looked. The mood shifted; the babies grinned toothlessly from side to side.

“Arian,” Kieri said, “you are very wise, and sometimes I am very foolish.”

“More tired and worried than foolish, but this is a time to consider what was accomplished, not what was lost.”

“Will you give them a bit of pastry since they’re up so late?”

“No … or they will be up all night. But let’s have no more gloom.”

After taking the twins back upstairs, Arian came down again. The talk had strayed to safer topics. Kieri mentioned the Marrakai mare and his breeding plans. One of the King’s Squires brought up the odd-shaped bow one of the magelords had carried and wondered how it was made. Finally Kieri said, “Will you stay another day or so, Dorrin, or will you leave tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow. I would leave tonight but that I am too weary to travel far. Mikeli bids me hurry; there are spies who spread the word that I have the regalia and travel east. I must reach Bannerlíth before them.”

Kieri nodded. “You know I have sent supplies ahead of you. Rest a glass or two, bathe perhaps, while your things are packed, and you can ride a short way tonight with the King’s Squires to guide you. It will be easier to bar the elvenhome forest to others if you are already within it.”

Before the turn of night, Dorrin retrieved the crown and jewels from the royal ossuary and rode away into the elvenhome forest. She
woke the next morning to peace and beauty such as she had never known before. Everything around—every tussock of moss, every leaf on every tree, every glittering dewdrop—glowed with life and beauty. She could have stayed in that one glade forever, she thought, without exhausting its beauty. The taig Arian had taught her to reach for here surrounded her, flowed into her and through her.

“It is the elvenhome,” said one of the King’s Squires with her. “And yes, it affects everyone like that at first.”

She had slept late, so the first day they did not travel, but the next day they journeyed on. Dorrin could not keep track of the days they spent crossing Lyonya; the elvenhome’s innate enchantment blurred her sense of time even as it sharpened her awareness of the taig and its beauty. They never rode above a foot pace; Dorrin’s earlier urgency and worry had vanished. She and her escort talked little as they rode, for the elvenhome was a place of quiet and peace. The crown she carried was silent as well. When they came to the dell Kieri had told her about, still carpeted with violets as he had described, she saw the little white shrine to his mother and no other sign that tragedy had touched the place.

She would not pluck a flower in the elvenhome, but as she approached the shrine and knelt there, violets rose from the ground and lay on the stone, as if she had placed them. “All blessings,” she murmured.

From there, the journey went on the same, day after day, in a land that seemed untouched by seasons—violets, this late in the year?—or storms. Dorrin began to wonder if they would ever reach Prealíth.

Camwyn was gone. Lost forever, most likely. Aris Marrakai went about his duties in the palace, determined not to let anyone see how he felt. He stayed out of the king’s way as much as he could: the king looked as grim as rock, and no wonder. Aris knew he could not have been faster. He knew pulling the old bell rope had been the exact right thing to do. But the great dragon had taken Camwyn away and had not said the prince would ever come back.

Not that Camwyn would want to if he could live with a dragon. If he lived at all.

“Fold those blankets properly,” he said to the younger boys, startling himself with how harsh his voice sounded. They said nothing but refolded the blankets and then stood waiting for his morning inspection.

He didn’t really care if their fingernails were clean, if their badges were on straight. The lump in his throat grew, and he swallowed it down again. “Very good,” he said at last. “Remember to wash your hands after eating. And do not run in the Long Hall.”

“Yes, Aris,” they said in a chorus, and off they went to breakfast.

He looked around the room. Nothing out of place. His own uniform was as perfect as he could make it. If he skipped breakfast, he would just have time to visit the stable and see if the chestnut mare had foaled.

The mare was standing in the big corner stall, a spindly-legged foal nursing at her side. Aris caught his breath, forgetting Camwyn for the first time since the attack.

“Born just a turn ago,” said the Master of Horse. “Skipped your breakfast, didn’t you?”

“Yes—but everything’s in order.” The foal flipped a little brush of a tail, nursing. “I’m not due back in the palace for a half-glass. May I?”

“Go ahead. Your da the Duke said you knew how.”

“Yes …” Aris slipped into the stall. The mare gave him a long look. He crooned to her. She knew him well; she was one of his father’s mares, and he’d seen the foal before this one born. She ran her tongue in and out, and he moved slowly to her side and gave her a slice of the apple he’d saved from the day before. She bumped him with her nose, asking for more, and he gave it.

The foal pulled back, stumbled, and sat down in the straw, startled at its own clumsiness, then noticed Aris and stared.

“I help?” Aris asked the mare in the old language his father had taught him. She reached out and blew in his face, then looked at the foal. Aris turned to the foal. “So, little one, brave one,” he said, still in the old language. “I help you.” He leaned near, breathed gently into the foal’s nostrils, breathed in its milk-smelling breath, scratched along the crest and that infant mane. The foal shook its head and lunged forward, trying to stand again. Aris reached quickly, an arm under the rump, and helped it up. The mare spoke to the foal, and it tottered a step forward.

Aris leaned close to the foal and spoke into its ear the secret name his father had suggested, then gently turned the head and spoke into its other ear. Now it was his and his alone, a naming even Juris would not know. “Must go now,” he said in the old language to both foal and mare. “Will come again.”

“You’d better run,” the Master of Horse said, smiling. “The house bell’s rung.”

He’d never heard it. The foal … not a replacement for the horse Verrakai viciousness had killed but the first horse he would train himself, for himself, from the very first day. Sired, his father had said,
by one of the Windsteed’s own. He jogged across the stable court, through the gate, in through the scullery entrance, pausing at the well there to speak a word of thanks to the
merin
.

Lessons took forever, yet once he was back in the stable, time raced. He was sitting in the corner of the stall with the foal’s head in his lap when Juris showed up, carrying a tray. “You skipped both breakfast and lunch,” Juris said. “Starving yourself won’t help you with the foal.”

“I wasn’t hungry,” Aris said.

“You’ve lost weight since …” Juris’s voice trailed away, then strengthened again. “If anyone can heal the prince, the dragon can.”

“I know that,” Aris said, his voice rising. The foal flicked an ear, opened its eyes, and lifted that heavy little head. “Saaaa …” he said to the foal, and it dropped its head onto his lap like a rock.

The mare, across the stall, gave them both a look.

“You know me, lady of grass,” Juris said to the mare in the old language, and she waggled her ears. To Aris he said, “I brought you food, and I’m staying until you eat it.” He uncovered the dishes on the tray.

The smell went straight to Aris’s stomach. He was hungry all at once. A cheese roll disappeared, then another.

“You’ve handled it all over,” Juris said, swallowing the last of his own roll as the mare took a step toward them.

“Of course,” Aris said. “From nose to tail, ears to hooves.”

“It’s clear there’s no fear,” Juris said. He uncovered the last dish on the tray between them. “Look—apple custard.” He dug a spoon from his pocket and handed it to Aris.

The mare whuffled. She had come closer, and her head dipped toward the custard.

“You can’t have it all,” Aris said. She blew on his hand. Juris laughed softly and reached out to stroke the mare’s head. The foal woke up again and this time lifted its neck all the way up; the mare nuzzled it.

Aris dipped his finger in the custard and rubbed it on the foal’s muzzle. Out came the pink tongue, licking. The mare made a noise;
Aris pulled an apple slice from the clinging custard and offered it; she pulled it in.

Marrakai had no pastures near the city; their own were to the west. Aris knew the mare and foal must go now that the foal had been bonded … but not until the day before did his father tell him that he could come along.

“You’ve done very well, the Master of Pages tells me, and kept the younger ones in line without abusing them. If you’ll stay in the palace over the winter rather than take Midwinter leave, you may come home now and only need to be back for Midsummer Court. How say you?”

Aris barely restrained himself from jumping up and down, something he was too old for. Next morning he mounted the mare, and with the foal ambling along at her heels, they rode west up the River Road, he and his father and five armed guards. They did not hurry, for the foal’s sake, and it was four days before they reached Marrakai’s green pastures. One of the mare bands trotted over to see them, but they rode past, the mares jogging alongside to the end of that field, and turned down the lane that led to the house.

It seemed forever since he’d seen it. The years in Fin Panir … a quick visit, then the trip to the palace where he was installed as page, almost the youngest. He turned his face away, riding on to the stables, then dismounted, untacked the mare, waited until his father had finished chatting with the senior groom, and then turned the mare and foal into a double stall for the night. He began cleaning the saddle, but his father interrupted him.

“Come, Aris; let one of the grooms finish that. Your mother will want to see you.”

He bit his lip, set the bridle down carefully on a shelf, stoppered the bottle of oil, and followed his father up through the kitchen gardens, all the smells of home around him. Herbs, vegetables, the clucking of hens being urged into the coops for the night, and there, at the
scullery door, the two old hounds, gray-muzzled now, which flattened their ears and grinned at his father and then at him.

“You’ve grown again,” his mother said as she came into the scullery from the kitchen.

He had been sure he would not lose control, but the sight of her, the smell of her cooking wafting in from the kitchen, took him by surprise, and a sob caught in his throat before he realized it. She opened her arms, and he was in them, crying like a fool, he thought, but he could not stop. She said nothing but held him and stroked his hair. He felt his father’s hand on his back, and shame flooded him, but his father’s voice eased it.

“About time,” he said. “You need to cry, Aris. No shame, lad, no shame at all. You loved the prince; everyone knew that, and he loved you.”

The sobs went on a long time; he couldn’t stop them. He heard his father’s feet on the stone floor, water running from the spigot, then his father returning. Cool wet cloth wiped his hot face.