The Spellcoats (29 page)

Hern screamed, “You promised me not to!” and tried to get in front of Kars Adon. The King's sword sheared Hern's rugcoat half away. Kars Adon tried to step back. Hern fell into me and, as we went down, I heard the King's sword meet Kars Adon's chest. It was the most awful noise I have ever heard, dull and sticky. The same noise came again. I had glimpses of more Heathens with crossbows. Kars Adon may not have suspected treachery, but someone had. I think it was Arin, who fetched us from the island. The King fell just beyond me, choking, his face mauve and smiling a grin of pain. There was a crossbow bolt in his neck. And Arin stood above us, crashing swords with Wren, the headman, glancing down at our King in satisfaction, until they were both knocked aside by Uncle Kestrel, who toppled over with Jay on top of him. One of them was breathing even more dreadfully than the King.

“Grandfather!” I screamed. “Help!”

The answer was like a skirl of sheer anger, shrieking above the thunder of the falls and the rasp of the fighting. I looked up and saw Tanamil on the rocks above us.

Tanamil had been very unhappy. His hair was a wild yellow cloud, and his rugcoat smeared with mud. I could see misery in his face, even through his anger. He was very angry. His pipes screamed with rage and struck across our ears like terror. All round me, people fell apart from their enemies, staring and shocked. And the pipes screamed on, modulating to a wail and down to sobbing. The heat and the shock died out of us. We began to stir sheepishly, and Hern and I climbed to our feet. I noticed that Tanamil seemed to be looking to the rocks behind me as if someone directed him. I turned. But it was not the One. It was Duck. Duck was crouched there, playing as Tanamil played, with that intent and irritable look you have when you are doing something which is almost too difficult for you. And Tanamil was directing Duck.

To the piping of both, even the noise of the falls grew quiet. Tanamil stopped playing and stepped to a high rock where everyone could see him.

“Stop behaving like beasts!” he said. We all winced. Tanamil angry is a great one of the Undying, without question. Like Gull when I first saw him on the bank of the Riverbed, he was more alive than the rest of us below. Unseeable strength came from him like hammerblows. “Attend to your wounded,” he said, “and then attend to your real enemy. The mage Kankredin is nearly here.”

Everyone knew Tanamil for what he was. The Heathen hailed him as Tan Adon. A number of the King's people murmured names: Tanoreth, Red One, and the Piper, to name a few. I had not known he had so many names. But Tanamil ignored their murmurs and came down to where Wren, the headman, was bending over the King. The King was not breathing.

“Who did this?” Tanamil demanded.

A shadow fell across the King, of a hawk-nosed man. I whirled round. It was not the One. It was Uncle Kestrel, heaving aside Jay's body as he got up. I was sad about Jay because I would never be able to make him like me again. But I was glad Uncle Kestrel was alive.

“Tanamil!” Hern said. He was desperate.

We all turned to where Kars Adon was dying, with his hands pushed hard to his chest, and blood running from one side of his mouth. Hern and Arin were kneeling beside him. Tanamil pushed between them and raised Kars Adon, very gently, so that he could see us all. “What is your will, lord?” he asked, as gently as he had lifted him.

Kars Adon looked at no one but Hern. “Hern,” he said. I wondered how he could speak at all. The effort heaved his chest, bringing blood between his fingers. “Hern, was it the King's sword did that to you?”

Hern looked down under his own arm at the slashed ruin of his rugcoat. He was bleeding along his ribs. He was surprised to discover it. “Yes, it was,” he said.

“Then,” said Kars Adon, “we are blood brothers.” He laughed, and pink froth came from his mouth. “I meant to tell you so much,” he managed to say. Then he pushed himself up with his elbows, so that he could see Tanamil, Arin, Wren, and all the rest of us standing round. “This is my will,” he said, “all of you: that Hern is King and Adon after me, and that all the clans obey him.”

Kars Adon passed into death so smoothly then that we could not tell when he did so. He spoke, and there was no difference to him, but he was not alive. After a moment his hands slipped from his chest, and we knew he was dead. I have asked the One many times to help him get past Kankredin in the River of Souls.

Tanamil laid Kars Adon down, and Hern looked angrily at Arin. The anger was because there were tears in his eyes. “I can't do that—rule the clans—can I?” he said.

“Someone must,” Arin said. “It was his will, and you are very like him.”

Tanamil said, with some bitterness, “You're the King's heir, too, since this morning. Accept it, Hern. There is a great deal to do.”

7

After that the day was all hurrying, coming, going, meeting, and mourning. Tanamil seized a word with me in the confusion. “What happened?” he said. “Something came about, but not all. I find I can reveal myself to mortals, yet I had no power to stop the King's wedding. Was something more needed?”

“Yes,” I said, and I told him what Kars Adon had said.

“I thought you might need to weave again,” he said.

“But I think it's more than that,” I said. “The One left me with this bobbin of yarn. What do I use it for?”

Arin came just then, to take Tanamil to the camp of the Heathens. “Your mother can tell you that,” Tanamil said, and he left.

I snatched a word with Hern. “The King married Robin?” I said.

“Oh One!” said Hern, and covered his face with his hands. “It was my fault! I made him so ashamed, and all I wanted to do was to cover up for you. The trouble was, I said it in front of everyone, and he felt he had to marry her. Then Jay came in soaking wet, saying you'd run off with the One and were lying drowned for your sins, and the King was so furious that he swore nothing would stop him marrying Robin. He had them dragging the lake for the One. And Robin was too upset about you to bother what the King did. Then Uncle Kestrel appeared. The King went wonderfully calm after that, and I suppose I should have suspected he was up to something. But Tanamil had disappeared, and Duck and I had our hands full with Robin. Wren arrived around dawn. He had his whole village with him, and they were too scared to stop at first. The King made Sard shoot one of them. So they stopped. They were terrified. They say there's a wall of water half a mile high coming up the River. The King said we'd all move when he was married to Robin, but then he made them wait to look after Robin while he went to meet Kars Adon. He took Wren and me to make sure the rest all stayed. It's not been fun, I can tell you. Then Tanamil! Tanamil turned up during the wedding. He went dashing out across the lake, tearing his hair and yelling, and Robin began crying again. It was terrible. It's all terrible, Tanaqui. I can't be a King, can I, Tanaqui?”

He had wanted to say that most of all. “Gull knew you were going to be,” I said. “He wouldn't tell me because he thought I'd laugh. But I wouldn't have laughed. Gull doesn't know how much you've changed.”

“Being with the King has taught me what
not
to do, if that's what you mean,” Hern said, but it made him happier. He wanted me to tell him what had happened to me, but I was not sure he heard it all. They kept asking things, and he had to hurry away before I had finished.

I found Duck brooding up on the rocks. “Isn't fighting beastly?” he said to me. We talked of that for a while. Then Duck said, “Old Smiler married Robin after all, just this morning. Did you know?”

“Yes,” I said. “But I'd taken the rugcoat. What wedding clothes did he wear?”

Duck laughed. “Nobody knew you had. Remember that mat of rushes that I made?”

“Duck!” I said.

“I told you I was going to be a magician,” Duck said. “I've got quite good at little things like that. Peacepiping's much more difficult. I thought I was going to let Tanamil down when we started. Anyway, I put that mat in the chest, and everyone thought it was your spellcoat. The King wore it. Nobody knew. At least Hern knew, but he was too upset to say and Robin did, of course, but she kept looking away because she hates people to look silly.”

“But, Duck, I don't think the wedding was legal!” I said. I was thoroughly shocked.

“It was all right if the headman did it,” Duck said grumpily. “And don't you dare tell anyone. Without that wedding Hern hasn't the slightest right to be King. So keep your mouth shut.”

Duck is quite right, of course. I have not told a soul except to weave it in my second rugcoat.

By then a certain order began to appear in the coming and going. The bodies of the two Kings and the others who were killed were laid on the broad grass beside the lake. Wren, the headman, went round the lake to the barn among the trees. When he got there, Kankredin was so near that waves were standing high in the middle of the lake and its water was forced over the lowland. Wren found the barn flooded. Our cats were up in the beams, spitting at the water. Wren's villagers and Robin were up on the hillside above, and Wren brought them back round the lake to the falls, where I was still standing by my loom, wondering what I ought to do.

Robin is no different, in spite of being a Queen and a widow, though she was wearing her best skirt. She burst into tears when she saw me. She says she had known I was not drowned, but she had not been able to believe it. We went down to look at the King. You would not have thought Robin could cry over our King. But she did.

“You didn't
like
him!” I said.

“I know. I didn't treat him well,” Robin sobbed. “Nothing treated him well. He wasn't the right man for what he was made to do.”

I think Robin is right. But I was glad Tanamil was not near. He would have been hurt.

Tanamil was all this time up at Kars Adon's camp. I am glad he was there. If Arin had gone alone to the camp with news of our King's treachery, there would have been bloodshed, and Hern would have died in it before he could do anything. As it was, Tan Adon, as they call him, came in majesty to the Heathens and bore witness that Kars Adon had named Hern as his heir. Even so, the Heathens from the camp came down beside the falls with black looks and weapons ready. My people whom Kars Adon had sheltered came, too. But it was noticeable that they kept apart, with those too weak to fight sheltered in the midst of them.

Jay is not dead, by the way. While Robin and I were watching the people coming down the falls, Hern and Uncle Kestrel were laying Jay with the other bodies. And Jay sat up, rubbing his head. “I might have known you'd get the best of it, old-timer,” he said to Uncle Kestrel. Then he looked at me. It was almost his old, joking look. “I've been sent back from a hurrying host of dead people,” he said, “with orders to keep you safe, my lass. There are some glass giants at work down the River. It looks as if they'll be here by nightfall.”