Heriot (29 page)

H
ours later they found themselves yet again in the throne room of Guard-on-the-Rock. Yet again, the King took his traditional place, restoring himself to his throne. But now it was Dysart sitting beside him in the smaller throne that had always been Betony's place … new heir to Diamond … heir to all that lay beyond Diamond … heir, at last, to Hoad. The chair seemed to open generously, just as if it had been waiting eagerly to embrace him, but, though he had dreamed of sitting in that chair for so long, Dysart didn't look altogether at home.

Heriot moved like a battered shadow to sit behind the King's throne, the true Magician of Hoad … the only one. The Lords of the Counties were assembled, the Master of Hagen among them, Linnet beside him, smiling just a little ironically at Dysart, then looking over at Heriot and then back around the golden room as if she were seeing it for the first time. Guards stood at the doors, but though they were alert men, they also had a certain ease, as if some battle had been won and they were able to relax even as they kept their traditional watch over the King.

The trumpets sounded yet again. A cushioned chair was wheeled into the room and placed in front of the throne. Cayley, the street rat of Diamond, looked back out of the chair at the King. Her injured arm, bound and rebound, was
strapped across her chest and two court doctors stood beside her. She was as pale as milk, but her eyes were wide and sharp.

‘It seems we celebrate a new Hero,' the King said.

‘Not me,' Cayley replied, and there was a startled – an uneasy – ripple not so much of voices as of movement in the great room.

The King looked at her severely. ‘You are too modest,' he said. ‘There is a first time for everything in a history like ours. I, at least, am prepared to consider a female Hero.'

‘No more Heroes,' said Cayley. ‘At least not Heroes in that named way. It's not just Carlyon I wanted to kill, but that old idea, because it all but smashed me back when I was a child. See, Lord King, I've got this story to tell and the Magician has been teaching me to speak proper – properly that is,' she added, sending a mocking look at Heriot, standing in his usual place behind the King's throne. This time the ripple was not simply a movement, but a sound as well, for people not only shifted but whispered to one another.

‘I was born in Senlac,' Cayley said, almost as if that would make her entire story clear. She closed her eyes.

The King looked anxiously at her pale face. ‘Lady Cayley,' he said. ‘Would you like to rest before you release your story?'

Cayley's eyes opened. ‘That's a good word.
Release
is good,' she said. ‘Now that story's got a sort of end I want to turn it out into the world. It's my tale and I want to tell it now. Lord Carlyon came to Senlac and he met my mother. Well, no doubt they fell in love, but she was one of those polite, careful ones and so they married – well, she wouldn't do it with him unless they were married – and they lived there a little while, being happy and all that, until Lord Carlyon cut back to Diamond.

‘He was very young in those days, but there were still wars and he was called on. He did well too, didn't he? You know more about that than I do. And suddenly he knew he might
challenge Link and actually become the Hero. But he was secretly married, and the Hero mustn't marry, must he? That's the ancient rule. And suppose he won his way to be Hero and was able to move into all that glory – a seat beside the King and an island all his own, all that grandeur – and then it turned out, after all, that he was married?

‘But then he thought of an answer. He'd lived in Senlac and he knew Senlac was one of those mixed towns, only partly loyal to Hoad. Just at the right moment there was a bit of trouble there and he rode in with his men and killed nearly everyone in the place, destroying all the records too. If ever anyone did mention he might have been married there would be no proof. He did away with the lot, but not my mother who was the one he wanted most. She wasn't there at the time. And what he didn't know was that he'd left her expecting a child – children. There was me and my brother. We were twins. And we both looked like our father … particularly my brother. She was so happy about that.'

She fell silent closing her eyes.

‘Lord Carlyon came back to Diamond to live a Hero's life before he became Hero,' said another voice. It was Heriot speaking. ‘Before he came to the arena and killed Link in front of you all. How you people need your sacrifices …'

‘Birth, love and death,' the King said. ‘They underlie all human life.'

Cayley had closed her eyes; now she opened them, and smiled at Heriot. ‘See!' she said. ‘The King says so, which makes it true. So over there was Lord Carlyon, my dear daddy, Hero of Hoad, on Cassio's Island. And over in the ruins of Senlac there was my mother and her children, not knowing what had happened. Not knowing who had made it happen. She was one of those simple people, my mother, and she walked backwards and forwards through those ruins, weeping
a bit, and then waited. But Carlyon didn't come. She waited longer. Still no sign. And at last she packed up a few things and made for Cassio's Island. She thought the Hero would take one look at her and at his dear children – particularly his son – and then he would take us in and treasure us, even if we were secret treasures.

‘It wasn't an easy journey, all that way, walking, begging and then limping and straggling on again. But we got there at last and walked – well, straggled, like I say, – out along that Causeway. On and on. My mother lost her nerve a bit as she came on to Cassio's Island. I think she suddenly worried that two unexpected children might be a bit too much, even for a Hero. There's a limit to Heroism, isn't there? I didn't have the glory of being a son, so she pushed me in the grass by the side of the path, telling me to hide until she came back, and took my brother into the city, because having a son is impressive to a man, isn't it?'

Heriot closed his eyes, remembering … remembering all those years ago, when he had strolled up to the place where the gate without a wall was making its strange declaration. He remembered the flattened grass and the curious horror that had overcome him. And then he remembered walking back towards the haven of his own farm and the wave of alteration that had swept over him, reaching into his head and twisting whatever it found there.

‘She found him all right,' Cayley was saying, ‘your great Hero. And he half-welcomed her, and walked with her and my brother too, promising this and that, stopping to kiss her every now and then, back to the gate that's there, just where the causeway runs on to Cassio's Island. And there and then he killed my brother, my twin, and slashed his face away. I looked out from my hiding place. I saw him do it. I heard him tell her to get out and never come back again. He might have been a
Hero but he was in a panic because what he had just won might be taken away from him. He told her that even if she did claim he'd married her there was no proof, and no one would believe her. He said that if she ever came back to Cassio's Island he'd kill her too. He thought he'd killed his only child. He didn't know he had another hidden there in the long grass by the gate, watching everything.'

She paused, closing her eyes.

Heriot cut in. ‘I was close by when all this happened. That causeway – it's close to my family farm. I somehow took on all the horror and grief when the boy was killed, and it was so powerful it shifted me in some way … shifted me towards being the Magician, I suppose, though at the time it was nothing but terrifying. And, later, I stood on a hilltop watching the woman carrying her bleeding boy back down the causeway with a second child trailing at her heels.'

Cayley's eyes sprang open. ‘You? That was you up there on the hilltop?' She burst out laughing. ‘We've been tied together all these years?' She looked back at the King. ‘My mother didn't carry my brother much further. He was too heavy. She did what she could, but in the end we covered him with leaves and grass and left him to rot away. And we walked on to Diamond and then our troubles really began. Different troubles, that is. But I won't tell you all that now.

‘After a bit my mother died, and I lived on the street, pretending to be a boy and practising to be strong, until that Magician there noticed me, and somehow recognised something in me, and made me his helper … his wild boy. That's a huge story, hours of telling in it. The thing is, as I grew into understanding who the Hero was, and what the idea of Hero was, I become determined to wipe him away … not only the man himself, but the whole idea of the Hero. I dreamed of the arena, but I'd have done it some other way – some cheating way – if I
had had to. To be a finished person it seemed I had to even things out.

‘So, like I said, I worked to become strong, and more than strong. I worked to be
quick
! Spun! Danced! Because in times of peace a Hero slows up, doesn't he? That's partly what he was afraid of … my father. Losing himself, drifting back into nothing. And as for me – well, that story I've just told, that story has been my cage almost all my life. And its beginning – the Once-upon-a-time of it – was looking out from the side of the road and seeing my father, the Hero of Hoad, cut my twin brother's throat.'

She looked up at the man on the throne. ‘Your Hero – he's what? He was nothing but dirt … made that way by the history of the idea of him … and now he's dead too, and I'm not going to become Hero in his place. There'll be lots of brave men in Hoad no doubt, but maybe they'll be brave on behalf of your peace … maybe they won't secretly long to be that golden man riding into war and adored afterwards. Maybe they won't have to kill their children to be part of your world. Maybe you won't have to be careful of them, like you had to be careful of my father. Maybe you can cut through that causeway and Cassio's Island will float away out to sea.'

She had finished her story. Silence rose up like a mystery, into the room around them.

‘Maybe,' said the King at last. ‘Those who live will see.'

T
hat night Dysart did a marvellous thing. He could have climbed by inside passages and stairs through the Tower of the Swan, but instead he climbed up the outside wall of Guard-on-the-Rock, up and up again, on and on again, edging his toes and fingers into crevices in the stones. The whole city dropped away beneath him, and though he dared not look back over his shoulder, he could feel it out there, set out like some sort of a game below him … and after all, that’s what it was … a great game. At last he scrambled over Linnet’s little balcony. Her balcony door wasn’t locked and, just as she had once slid into his room, he slid into hers, half-expecting to find her asleep.

But Linnet was sitting in her chair, reading by candlelight. He said her name and she looked up at him without apparent surprise.

‘Were you expecting me?’ he asked.

‘I think I must have been,’ she replied. ‘Though I didn’t know I was until now.’

She stood up, moved towards him. He flung his arms around her only to find himself strongly held too.

‘Happy ending,’ he said a little hoarsely.

‘Happy,’ she said, ‘but not an ending. You’re the direct heir to Hoad now, aren’t you? And my father …’

‘Don’t tell me! He’s fallen into line,’ Dysart exclaimed. ‘Is
that what we’re doing, being together now? Falling into line?’

‘He was so angry with me when we met again,’ Linnet explained. ‘And yet he couldn’t hide that he was excited too. He loved the thought that I would someday be Queen of Hoad. In spite of everything, it’s so much more than being Queen of the Dannorad.’

‘Nothing’s certain,’ said Dysart. ‘All the same …’ He felt her breasts pressing against him. ‘Linnet, let’s get married very quickly. Really we’re married already. But let’s get married again. Now!’

Linnet gently stood back from him. She dabbed her finger towards the door.

‘Casilla’s just through there,’ she whispered. ‘She’s been told to watch over me. We’ll have to wait and do the grand, parading thing before we do the grandest thing of all, even though we’ve secretly done it once already. For us there’s what we do as you and me, and what we do on behalf of our kingdoms.’

Dysart sighed, smiled, stepping back a little.

‘Well, the grand, parading thing might be fun,’ he said. ‘And in the end it
will
be just you and me together again. It’s been a long time though, hasn’t it, fighting our way through.’

‘You were the Mad Prince,’ she said. ‘I remember the battlefield. I remember you running out in front of the horses. But you’re free of him now, aren’t you, free of Heriot? You don’t need him in the way you thought you did. He might be Magician of Hoad, but someday you’ll be King and he’ll have to stand behind your throne.’

‘He won’t worry about that,’ Dysart said. ‘After all we’re friends beyond all that King-and-Magician business.’

‘Do you think he’ll marry that wild girl – that Cayley?’ Linnet asked, her voice becoming more uncertain as she spoke, for somehow the idea of marriage seemed irrelevant where Cayley and Heriot were concerned.

‘Those two? Oh, I’d say they were well and truly married,’ Dysart replied dryly.

But Linnet, smiling then frowning then smiling again, wasn’t really thinking of Heriot.

‘It’s all been so strange,’ she said. ‘Like some story straggling out this way then unravelling in another. I find myself thinking about Betony Hoad and wondering …’

‘I think Heriot was right. In a way all there was for Betony was to dream,’ Dysart said. ‘Waking life could never offer him anything that would be enough for him. He had the chance to be King, but the Magician’s very existence was always some sort of challenge to him – the constant reminder that there was someone much more wonderful than he could ever be in waking life. So he lies asleep in a room in the Tower of the Lion, and no one can wake him. Heriot says he might awake someday, but when he does, he’ll be beyond any King and Hero dreams.’

But Linnet didn’t want to hear about Betony Hoad, sleeping his strange enchanted sleep in the top room of the Tower of the Lion. ‘Do you think we’ll be happy?’ she asked, though she thought she knew the answer with certainty. She just wanted to hear Dysart say it aloud.

‘Happy?’ Dysart looked at her as if she had asked him a nonsense question. ‘Of course we will. And even when we are married, just for the fun of it, I’ll climb the castle wall out there and come in at your window. Darling Linnet, we’ll be happier than any other King and Queen of Hoad have ever been. But now I am going.’

‘Back down the castle wall,’ Linnet said. ‘Do be careful!’

‘Well, I will be careful,’ Dysart said. ‘But by now I know some of the handholds and footholds. And anyhow, that power to climb was a gift in the first place … a gift to both of us. I don’t think it will ever be taken away.’

And he climbed down again, sure of himself, but being careful all the same.

Back in his own room, filled with the mystery and excitement and astonishment of the day he had just lived through, he knew he would never sleep, and walked through the halls of Guard-on-the-Rock, silent now, yet never quite deserted, to the room which had once been Heriot’s before the shed in his orchard took him over. The door was open – these days there was no one to close it – and the room was empty but there, on the desk in the corner of the room were sheets of yellow paper … a letter. Filled with sudden apprehension Dysart snatched it up. He read.