In The Coils Of The Snake (34 page)

They
climbed shakily to their feet, gazing around in amazement.
The
scorched earth smoked, and shattered tree limbs littered the ground. They
studied their own hands, their clothes. They watched
each other out of the corners of their eyes. Not a scratch, not a
bruise, not a rip in a cloak. Their clothes weren’t
even dirty. Avoid
ing each other’s gaze, they followed Seylin into the
circle.

A shadow flung
itself at the elf lord. “Nir!” cried Miranda, the spell falling from
her as she reached him. Nir put his arms around her and stood still, holding
her tightly, his head bowed over her bright hair. He had fully expected to be
dead this minute. He had never expected to see her again.

Catspaw
turned at Miranda’s cry. Then he examined his adviser’s
careful
expression. “Seylin,” growled the King, flexing his claws, and it was
fortunate for the handsome goblin that they both stood inside the truce circle.

“A good subject
anticipates his monarch’s wishes,” remarked Seylin smoothly.

“And
what does that have to do with
you?”
roared the King.

“Thank you, friend
goblin,” said the elf lord with dignity, “for doing what you knew was
right.”

“Well,
he didn’t do what I know is right!” snapped the infuriated
Catspaw. “I hope you don’t think I’m letting
Miranda leave here with
you.
She’s not tagging after some itinerant, half-mad, flute-playing elf
and
living the rest of her life on deer meat and rainwater!”

`And the life you
have planned for Sika is better, is it?” replied Nir hotly. “Living
in some airless hole among malformed people who can’t even touch her, with no
possibility of the marriage she wanted or the children she’s been worrying
about.”

“Children?
Don’t be ridiculous,” declared the goblin King.
“She’s
not having children with you.”

“That’s a lie!”
asserted Nir.

Marak
Catspaw stared in surprise. “It is not, you crazy elf! Goblins
don’t lie.”

“Tell
him how you know it’s a lie,” Seylin prompted the elf lord.

“How
he knows?” cried the goblin King. “Seylin, you taught me
that
law yourself!”

“Not
exactly,” observed his adviser. “Co ahead, elf lord, tell him
how
you know.”

To Miranda’s
surprise, Nir stiffened and carefully pushed her
away. Then he stood, head high, glaring at the goblins as if he were
back
in combat again.

“Just
as I thought,” mused Seylin. “He won’t tell you because it’s
a secret. A dark, shameful, terrible secret that he hasn’t
told a single
elf. You see, goblin King, the elf lord knows that
Miranda can have his son. He knows it because his own mother was a human, and
she
had
his father’s son.”

A
murmur arose at this from the assembled men, amazement from
the goblins, dismay and disappointment from the elves.
The elf lord
stood perfectly
still, ignoring them all, and stared at the rising moon.

“An elf-human
cross?” growled the puzzled goblin King. “With that kind of magic?
Seylin, it’s not possible!”

“He’d
tell you if I lied,” observed Seylin. “But I didn’t. And
that
isn’t the only secret this elf has been keeping. Miranda thought
that he would give up on his lost human sweetheart
and marry some
elf girl, but I knew
he would fight to recover her with every warrior
he has. Because Miranda
isn’t his sweetheart. She’s his wife. And she’s been his wife from the very
first night they met.”

The
murmuring grew louder. Miranda stared at the elf in confu
sion.
Married from the first night they met?

Nir looked at her,
at the shock and bewilderment in her eyes.
“I’m
not a monster like you are,” he said angrily to Marak Catspaw,
“to
drag home a young girl and announce that she has no choice in such a personal matter.”

“Oh,
no,” retorted Catspaw sarcastically. “You’re so much more
noble
than I am. You dragged her home, gave her no choice, and then didn’t bother to
tell her.”

“I
don’t think a single elf knew what he’d done,” Seylin
remarked to the King. “There was none of the
customary dancing or
the presents of
flowers for the new bride. I suspect that when he swore to give Miranda all
that his world had to offer, he did it very quietly.”

Catspaw
frowned. “Seylin, you’re talking about the Seven Stars
Spell,” he observed. “In its original form, it
is a marriage vow, yes,
but you can’t
pretend that it applies to him.”

“Doesn’t
it?” asked Seylin in excitement. “Look at this elf, not as
an
opponent you personally despise, but as an academic puzzle
instead. He marries a human using the Seven Stars,
and she’s so well protected that she can’t even run her finger along the edge
of a knife.
He heals without spells, which not even a strong healer can
do, or
Sable would have managed to save her
friend Laurel. He knows by
magic the
location of every elf and collects them by twos and threes,
and they
obey him so completely that Arianna couldn’t even drag her feet when he sent
her off to become your wife. He faces you in
single
combat and emerges without a scratch. But all you really need
to know is
that he is the son of a full elf man and a full human woman. Answer the riddle,
goblin King. Do you know who he is?”

Marak Catspaw walked
around the elf lord, studying him. He was beginning to enjoy the situation
hugely. Nir ignored him, staring at the full moon. He obviously was not.

“The
real question is,” mused Catspaw, “does he know, himself?”

“No,”
answered Seylin. “He knows everything he needs to
know,
and not one thing more. But we should have known sooner, and would have, if we’d
listened to Miranda.”

“By
the Sword!” exclaimed Catspaw. “Seylin, you’re right! Tell
us,
Miranda, what did Father raise you to be?”

The girl looked at
him and then at the silent Nir. She was angry
that
they were laughing over him and puzzled that he wouldn’t
defend himself.

“Marak raised
me to be a King’s Wife,” she snapped.

“Well, you’re a
wife now,” observed Catspaw, “so that means
your husband must be a king. You’re married to the prettiest elf there
is,
Miranda. You’re the wife of the elf King.”

Dead silence reigned in the truce circle. No one moved.
Then Nir
dropped his contemptuous gaze to
Marak Catspaw’s face.
“Don’t mock me,” he said coldly.

“Mock
you, brother?” said the goblin. “There’s nothing I’d love
better.
Unfortunately, I’m not mocking you.”

“The
elf King is dead,” declared Nir. “He died hundreds of
years
ago, and he left no Heir.”

“We know that’s
not true, or you wouldn’t be here,” observed Catspaw. “I don’t know
how you happen to be his Heir, but I do
have
a chief adviser who generally knows this sort of thing. Adviser!”

“Goblin King?”
responded Seylin.

“Can
you tell us how this upstart elf-human cross came to be
a
King?”

“I
can do better than that. I can read it to you,” answered Seylin.
“Dentwood,
did you bring the books?”

“Yes, Father.”

A
young man came forward through the assembled goblin Guard.
He looked like an ordinary human, with thick brown hair
and
brown eyes, but when he
turned to hand Seylin two books, Nir saw
that
he had pointed elf ears. “Thanks, son,” said Seylin absently, and the
human-elf-goblin walked back into the ranks.

“This is the
last of the elvish Kings’ Chronicles,” announced
Seylin, holding up one of the books so that they could see the markings
on the spine. “I’ll read you part of the story of the last elf King’s
father, Aganir Melim-bar, the elf King named Saturn’s Ascent. But
in
English, because I think it’s only fair that Miranda be able to understand it.

“‘The King’s
Wife of Saturn’s Ascent,”’ he began, “‘was much
praised by the advisers because she was a strong
and gifted woman. She studied her new people, mastered their language, and won
their
hearts. But her vain and weak
husband did not love his human wife
because she was not beautiful.
Having enslaved her heart through the amnesia drink that destroyed her memory
of her world, the elf
King treated her
devotion to him with disdain, and when at last she
was pregnant with the
Heir, he put her aside altogether. His wife confronted him about his cruelty,
and words passed between them
which neither
would forgive. He gave her the choice of living in any
other camp she
wished, but he would keep her in the King’s Camp no longer.

“‘The King’s
Wife toured the camps, and the elves mourned her
disgrace. At last, she settled in the Camp of the Bright Shoulder
Star because the lord of this camp had died and
his lady also waited
to bear a son. The two bereaved women, one human,
one elf, took
each other to their hearts,
and they comforted each other through the
long months of their
pregnancy. And so strong and brave was the
King’s
Wife that she delivered the Heir alone and then rose from her
bed to
help her friend through her difficult labor. At the end of the
night, the two women lay side by side in the
midwife’s tent, and their
two new sons lay with them.

“‘But here is a
strange thing, for as noble and as good as this
King’s Wife was, she hated her own son. She sent him next evening
to
his father’s camp without shedding a single tear. But she begged the right to
name the son of the lady of the camp, and because of their love, the lady gave
her consent.

“‘When the full
moon came, the King’s Wife held her friend’s
son,
and she kissed him and cried over him. She said that here would
be no
cruel elf King who would bring torment to a human girl, and she named the baby
Ash, which means “unique,” or “alone.”

“‘The King’s
Wife ceased to eat from the night of her delivery.
The people lamented, and the advisers were angry because the King
would not save his wife. But the elf King himself
was pleased because
he had never
cared for the sight of her. She died two nights after the
naming of Lord
Ash, and only the elf King did not mourn her passing-”’

“She
switched the babies!” exclaimed Marak Catspaw in amaze
ment. “She sent the lady’s son to the King. She kept
the Heir in
camp and named him Lord Ash!”

`And there, goblin
King, stands the heir of Lord Ash,” said his adviser. ‘Ash is his proper
name, the name he received from his father and his father’s father.”

Nir stared at the
book in Seylin’s hands, pondering the story.
“They
were wrong,” he said quietly. “The King’s Wife did love
her
son.”

“But
she hated her husband enough to destroy his entire people,”
countered Seylin. “The
recognized Aganir U-Sakar, the elf King named New Moon, was an unwitting
impostor, the son of a camp lord. His advisers were astounded at the weakness
of his magic.
They couldn’t persuade him to
marry for years because the elf King
is
the only elf man capable of feeling an interest in a human woman.
The
impostor found the thought of marrying a human revolting.
When he finally did marry, he had enough magic to
place the Seven
Stars, but the stars were always dark. His human wife
didn’t bear a
child because their marriage
was sterile, and when she killed herself,
the stars couldn’t stop her.

“By this time,
the impostor King must have been assailed by terrible doubts. He took to dangerous
amusements, in which the King’s defense magic should have kept him safe, but
New Moon had no defense magic. Changed into the form of a white fox, he jumped
into a trap, and the trap broke his neck. The master of Hallow Hill displayed
the beautiful fox pelt on his wall until the elves
stole it back, and the despairing elves set fire to the Hall as a
revenge.
Fire isn’t a normal elf
weapon, but it was the worst thing they knew,
and that’s why Hallow Hill
has one wing that has been completely rebuilt.”