Rythe Falls (29 page)

Chapter Fifty-Nine

The morning of the coronation was a strange affair. The air was still and dry, but chilled with a wind that seemed to find each crack in the Naeth Castle and whisper all together, so that it sounded as though the entire building, each stone, each tapestry, the armour of old displayed in the many halls and even the venerable weapons and shields of dead heroes strapped to the walls were all gossiping about the new King.

             
A strange affair, for who could give the king the crown? He already wore it. Renir elected to make the coronation more of a celebration, instead. A renewal and affirmation of the life left to all. A simple thing; him, as he was rather central to the affair, his new council and trusted friends, the Thanes, the city folk and the guard and the servants and dignitaries and functionaries of the thanedom and emmisaries of the other thanes. New accords would be hammered out, trade agreements, friendships and enemies to be forged. A new world for Renir, but one not so alien to Tirielle, not the Thane of Spar, already a fast friend to Renir, a man with no guile about him and that worked for Renir.

             
He rose and donned his armour. His, not the gaudy, uncomfortable thing that the Sard had ordered made for him. Perhaps people would call him the King in Rags, instead of the Laughing King. He didn't care. He would not pretend to be greater than the people, nor, more importantly, did the damn armour fit. He did conceded defeat and allow his manservant (Kingservant, he wondered...) Small Peter to draw him a bath.

             
So it was that Renir stood on a raised dias that had been constructed in the keep, looking out over his people.

             
My people
...Renir shook his head.

             
Tirielle gave him an encouraging smile.

             
'Shall we?' said Renir to Garner, who sat on the dias. The dias was heavy with power...and armour. Renir hoped the carpenters had done their job well.

             
Garner nodded, and Renir stood.

             
'I wish...I wish,' he said, his voice echoing through the castle and city both, 'that friends and lovers, children, fathers, mothers...I wish they could be here to witness this day. This rebirth. But we have honoured our dead and well. Now? Now it is time to celebrate the living!'

*

Of the friends the new king had that still lived, Drun Sard was conspicuous in absence.

             
Drun still sat atop his bed.

             
His brothers Quintal and Cenphalph knew. He was not dead. Dying, yes. Weak, yes.

             
But not dead.

             
'Soon,'
he said to his remaining brothers, communing across the distance so only they could hear his thoughts.
'Soon. Watch with care. I cannot...see...I...he has two faces and none and...soon.'

             
'We heed, brother,'
said Quintal. He sat on the dias, his eyes closed for a moment.

             
'Mourn me not, brothers,'
said Drun, within their minds.
'The day is for the living. Renir is right. Celebrate...when our duty is done. Mourn me not.'

             
'Brother,'
said Quintal.
'Friend.'

             
The paladin who had once been a leader to the Order of the Sard opened his eyes. He pushed down his sadness, and turned his attention from Renir to the first of the emmissaries as they came forth to honour their king.

*

Steps led up to the dias, and those steps were damned sturdy.

             
Good carpenters are a blessing,
thought Renir, strangely reminded of his own attempts at carpentry, building a shoddy chair that his wife once sat in. Every night, stoically refusing to complain.

             
The thought brought a smile to his face.

             
Men brought gold and trinkets, weapons finely wrought, promissory notes on thick vellum or parchment with thick wax seals, chests, beautifully crafted silverwork, and on. Merchant lords came to make friends with their money and perfumed hair, artisans looked for patrons for their skills and artifice, fisherkings looked for rights to sea and river, farmers  and the landed brought offers of wives or livestock...and so it went.

             
'Can't we wind this up? Crack open the ale?' Renir whispered over his shoulder, to Quintal.

             
'I think it's probably poor form.'

             
'I can chase them off with my sword?' offered Wen, seriously.

             
Renir laughed, but at Tirielle's stern look he remembered he was supposed to be patient, and that his time now belonged to the people.

             
With a sigh, he returned his attention to the next man, a man bearing a simple sack. The man's head was down, in some misguided show of servitude, perhaps. He was filthy, long hair plaited crudely. And...

             
'My gods...he...'

             
Reeks of...dead men...
thought Renir, but would not say such of a guest.

             
Until the man looked up, and Renir felt a terrible lethargy settle on him.
A Drayman, here, in the court?

             
'I bring a gift for the new king, my
Liege
...' said the Drayman. His tone mocking, but no one moved or even spoke up.

             
Bear, Wen...his friends...no one?

             
Of they didn't. Renir tried to rise, to push himself upright from his chair.
Where's Haertjuge...where's my bloody axe?

             
He could not rise. His hands would not move from the arms of his chair.

             
Why does no one move?

             
But he knew why no one moved, not him, not his friends. Because this was magic...the foulest kind.

             
'A simple spell...A simple thing to do. Your pet wizard, there, in his fresh green robes...just a mageling. Shouldn't put your faith in mere children.'

             
The Drayman grinned, but something seemed wrong with his face. He began to walk toward Renir.

             
My friends...

             
Renir strained and strained...but nothing would move apart from his eyes.

             
No one else, is seemed, could move at all. As he was, Renir sat before the rest of his friends, his council, and he could not even turn his head to look upon them.              

             
The man stopped at the bottom of the steps. His teeth were together, his lips open, his cheeks raised...but it looked nothing like a smile should.

             
'You know...I could kill you all. Take your lives like...nothing. But why? I confess, I have little to live for these days and you and your kind are more amusing than...the Elethyn...they are so very dry in their pursuits.'

             
The Drayman seemed unable to control his own face. As he spoke, his muscles twitched, or tensed, or an eyelid would drop.

             
'Here. Your coronation gift. I will kill you...King. I will spare the rest of your shining lords and ladies...for now. But first? A gift. Custom, I think, should always be respected.'

             
Renir strained every single muscle in his body until his tendons felt like they would snap...but nothing. Not an inch.

             
When the Drayman dropped the filthy sack free of his gift, and when he held Shorn's head up high by his friend's lank hair, Renir did feel something give in him. Something
snapped.

             
'A good gift, no? One can never have too many friends...apart from me. I have none. Can't imagine why.'

             
The Drayman smiled again, a better attempt this time, full of dark, ill-humour. It was a big, broad smile with teeth showing that didn't not fit the face. Then he threw Shorn's head to Renir's feet. It landed with a horrible thud.

             
The Drayman raised his hands and from his eyes (
they're red...blood red
...thought Renir, as his mind snapped and snarled at his invisible bonds) came a blinding light. It built until the light was blinding and sickening both.

             
'Goodbye, young king,' said the creature with the poorly-fitted face, and unleashed his power at the king.

             
The full power flew, instantly, but instead of killing Renir, Klan Mard's full might hit Drun instead.

             
'No!' roared Renir. That broken thing inside him realised he was suddenly free...his limbs, his voice...he could move.

             
Drun was between him and the monster. The priest stood for a moment, smoking, his body ruined and surely dead...yet somehow, he still stood. In death, in life, all that had stood between Renir and the Gates to Madal's open arms.

             
'Move aside!' shouted someone from behind Renir, but Renir was an idle fisherman no longer. He hadn't been that man for a long time. He was moving, the first weapon he could find already in his hand.

             
'Move!'
Garner,
thought Renir dimly as Drun's smoking corpse hit the floor. Renir was past his old friend. The Drayman raised his hands this time, and fire crackled outward in all directions. People screamed and burned. People died.

             
The Drayman laughed as he sent fire lancing for Renir's chest. Renir ducked and rolled - the fire burned his hair, his back, but fire like a lance was no better than a lance against a man with a dagger...only useful at a distance.

             
But Renir wasn't distant, he was close.

             
He roared so loudly his throat screamed pain back to him. As he roared, the Drayman brought his hands - burning hands - together at Renir's face, but Renir ignored the awful pain. In truth, in that moment of pure rage, it did not even register, for while the bastard burned him, he was beating the man to death with Shorn's head as his weapon.

             
The Drayman's hands fell away. Where he'd touched Renir's skin there was no sensation. In Renir's mind, there was no thought. He beat and beat the man, the creature. Others were hacking and stabbing the creature, too.

             
Finally, Renir stopped when Tirielle's face appeared before his eyes. He blinked, and regained focus. Saw what he'd done and dropped his friend's head in the mess that remained of the Drayman wizard.

             
His chest was heaving. He wasn't sure if he was sobbing, or out of breath, and for a moment he forgot he was king, and that it was his coronation, and that thousands watched the moment.

             
He took the simple solace of a woman's arms around him, and Tirielle held him while he let lose his sorrow. His rage was already spent. Sorrow was all he had left.

             
'Someone...clean that up.'

             
'My Lord?'

             
Renir allowed himself to be led away. Tirielle leading. He was aware of the men behind, of the dead, the stench of death and burned men.

             
'Just...my Lord...'

             
Quintal and Bourninund beside them, watchful, now, for more treachery. Wen Gossar's booming voice, commanding someone behind him.

             
'You...bury that bastard. Bring the head...he was...a friend.'

             
'But...my Lord...it is...'

             
'What man, not simple enough?'

             
'The...the Drayman...he's...
hollow...
'

             
Something in the simple honesty of the poor man's voice stopped Renir cold. He turned. 'Wen, wait...'

             
But he needn't have spoken. Wen saw. So did plenty of others. So many voices, all talking, whispering. Cries of pain, and Renir's own tortured breath ringing in his ears.

             
'Renir...let others deal with this...' Tirielle. Sensible, no doubt, but he gently shrugged her care aside and strode back through the yard. Looking, now, there were dead all around, burned by the mage's awful fire. Smoke still drifted and the air was hazy.