“You are very discreet,” smiled the older woman. “There has been talk of a great adventure and a bold magical rescue, near the Halfway House.”
“I had good helpers!” said Gael. She smiled at Tomas and took his hand.
“I was among those rescued,” Tomas offered, “and I can bear witness to Gael’s courage, if she will not—such magical workings I never saw!”
Vanna’s dark eyes were thoughtful. “There was word also of a showing of the Fionnar and the Ruadan, the day Lord and Lady Malm came to the Palace Fortress.”
The woman pressed too far. “Why do you ask these things?” Gael said, as politely as she was able.
Vanna stared a moment longer, then seemingly came to a decision. “Come!” she said, and rose up from her place on the settle. “I will show you.”
She gave Forbian a nod and a wink and beckoned Gael to follow her. “I think a visitor from Coombe will be interested in seeing some further memorials of Master Hagnild and his pupil, Yorath Duaring.”
Gael was suspicious, but she got up to follow her.
“Remember my words, Captain!” piped up Forbian, seizing another cake. “I said, even on that day we met in the Swan’s stable, I would surprise you!”
Tomas gave Gael a solemn look, but he made no move to follow her.
The guardian of Hagnild’s house led Gael into another comfortable room along the passage; she explained that it had been
the Healer’s study—there were a number of his books and scrolls. Gael’s ring sparkled at her side for the presence of magic, magical objects. Mistress Vanna beheld this and smiled.
“I don’t doubt that you can work magic, Captain, for I know the ones you serve—the light folk, blessings upon the poor souls.”
“Truly, I do serve them,” Gael admitted, staring around at the room and all its contents. “But how has this come to be known?”
“At least one person versed in magic was watching at the gates of the Palace Fortress when the Malms and their escort drove in. That great showing of the Eilif lords beneath the rainbow arch upon the crest of that last hill—you were seen, as well as the marvelous presence of your companions. Great heavens, child, there were the Fionnar—Myrruad and Ilmane in a carriage! I do not know when a mortal, one of the dark folk, has been so honored!”
Gael felt herself blushing.
“I feel myself deeply honored by the chance to serve such folk!” she said. “I have the spirit for the tasks they will set me when I return to them in spring.”
“Yes, and you are in love with Tomas the Scribe,” said Vanna, smiling in a motherly fashion, “and that has given you even more courage. But now I will change your view of the world, and again for the better.”
She whisked aside a fine silken cloth embroidered in green and gold that lay across a table and revealed two large jewels—they could only be Hagnild’s scrying stones.
“See here,” she said. “This is the Great Wall that is being built in the far northeast of the Chameln lands. Here are the builders and their leaders.”
As Gael stepped up to the table, wondering at all this interest in the Great Wall, she heard Tomas give a cry in the outer room.
“There now!” said Mistress Vanna. “Forbian has told the secret to your friend …”
Gael looked into the left-hand stone, and in its bluish depths there grew a scene, very clear and natural, like the reflection in a fine mirror or a mountain pool. In the jewel-world there were
dark trees and a work place with bricks, mortar, and blocks of stone. At a rough trestle in the open air, there were young men, finely dressed, and a small escort of kedran in uniform. Plans on parchment or vellum were spread out on the trestle, and further back she could see the wall itself, half-made. There was no sound in the world of the stone, but suddenly all heads turned as two men, one old, one younger, came walking into the work yard.
The old man was a giant. He overtopped all those present, he overtopped the world. His long hair was white with a few reddish strands, and he had a strong, cheerful face, ruddy with exertion. The younger man seemed to be his son, almost as tall, and as broadly built—with bright auburn hair and moustaches—clearly these were both Melniros.
“This cannot be!” breathed Gael Maddoc.
“Yet it is so!” whispered Vanna. “The ambush, years past, on the cliffs at Selkray did not kill Yorath Duaring.”
“The Great General lives!” said Gael. “And surely that is his son by his side!”
“Yes,” said Vanna, “that is Yorath Yorathson, but he has taken the name of his mother—he calls himself Chawn Yorathson.”
“And Yorath’s lady, the beautiful Owlwife?” asked Gael. Gundril Chawn, Yorath’s leman, had never been in Coombe, but Druda Strawn had seen her once in Krail, and she was a part of the old stories.
“Why, she is as beautiful as ever, despite her years,” smiled Vanna, “and that gossip, Forbian, has it that she will visit Chiel Hall, to the southeast.”
Gael shook her head, for this last name was not familiar to her.
“You have never heard the story of Lien’s swans?” Vanna looked surprised.
Gael did not know how to answer. She thought she knew the story, but then, she had thought she had known the history of Yorath at the cliffs of Selkray! Vanna saw this, and took mercy. “Princess Merilla Am Chiel, third in line to the Chameln Zor throne, is Yorath’s cousin. As you must know, the Swans of Lien were the daughters of Guenna, the last woman of Lien to rule as Markgrafin—and the mother as well of King Kelen. Guenna’s daughters were all married to Hylor’s Kings—not that it served
to protect any of them from the archmage Rosmer, to whom Kelen had fallen sway.”
“Elvédegran of Lien was Yorath’s mother!” Gael said.
“That is correct,” Vanna replied, “just as Hedris of Lien was Queen Aidris Am Firn’s mother, and Aravel, the last swan, mother to that other Daindru King, Sham Am Zor, the reigning Zor Queen’s father.”
“But the Witch-Queen is a dwarf!” Gael protested. “How can she and the giant Yorath be cousins?”
“What has the south been teaching you?” Vanna laughed. “The Firn people are short, but they are no dwarves. I suppose you must be a true Melniro, to consider her so!”
Gael blushed, for she considered herself of good Chyrian stock, and she had never thought of herself in this light, despite her fiery hair and long legs. But Vanna had never been to Coombe—perhaps it was not surprising that she should say this.
Then Vanna gave a sigh and went on:
“The Princess Merilla is widowed now—like so many of us. Esher Am Chiel has gone—the good lady manages her property with the help of her two sons. I can guess what the princess and the Owlwife spoke about …”
“What is that?” asked Gael.
“The princess still hopes for news, good or ill, of her younger brother, Carel Am Zor, who was never found after the cruel death of King Sharn—what, it must be more than fifteen years ago now. Have you not heard of the Lost Prince?”
“I have,” said Gael. The story was very romantic, tied as it was to the ritualistic death of the last Chameln king at the hands of the wild eastern tribes. Following a great betrayal, King Sharn Am Zor had sacrificed himself for his family, for the land … and Carel, for whom a brother had died, had slipped away from history’s pages. “That story I certainly have heard—they are always mulling over old tales, the secrets of Hylor, at the Swan Inn!”
This news of the Lien cousins was unsettling, for Gael Maddoc had always thought of Hylor’s lands as separate nations, each with their own treasures, customs, and ways. To think now how the ruling families were so closely tied together … “But Matten, Heir of Lien, must also be a cousin,” Gael said aloud, somewhat startled.
“Yes,” said Vanna, her manner darkening. “Though it took Kelen years longer than his sisters to get himself a child, young Matten is cousin still to old Aidris and the others. Perhaps that is the reason the Brown Brotherhood feels so threatened by the Land of the Two Queens. Despite all the hand they have had in young Matten’s upbringing, they fear to see this tie renewed.”
Gael looked again into old Hagnild’s scrying stones, now darkened. She was uneasy at the thought of so much hidden in the chronicles of the lands, but at least the secret revealed to her today was not a cause for sorrow.
“I am glad to think that Forbian Flink, a master scribe and a keeper of secrets, will be able to see his old comrade once again!” she said softly.
“He must wait until spring,” said Vanna, hiding Hagnild’s stones as she pulled the embroidered cloth once again over the table.
Gael gave a sigh. “So must we all,” she said. “I have asked a blessing for my enterprise—my service with the light folk—at Hagnild’s resting place.”
“This spring should be a time of rejoicing,” said the guardian of Hagnild’s house. “There will be a great celebration in the Chameln lands—Queen Tanit am Zor will wed the young Count Liam Greddaer of Greddach, and many visitors will come out of Eildon. It is said that an Eildon marriage will bridge the angry gap that has opened between the Chameln and Lien—but sadly, I fear the politics of this marriage may have an effect opposite to that which is intended. There are those who do not desire to see the gap between Lien and the Chameln lessened …”
“Why does the Brotherhood of the Lame God hate women so?” asked Gael. “Why should they challenge the rights of the double queens?”
Vanna Am Taarn passed a weary hand across her face. “Is that all you have heard in the south? No—it is not that simple. It is not just women the Brown Brotherhood hates. To them, the world is a foul and ugly place. Life, the very senses of the body, is a mud that clouds the spirit. Ah, it is a strange fate indeed that brought sensual, life-loving Lien to their control, that brought Fideth of Wirth, who worshipped at the Lame God’s altar, to be Kelen’s bride.”
This talk was strange to Gael. “In the south we have heard only that Kelen is weak, Fideth’s will is strong, and that their heir the young Matten wavers,” she said.
Vanna nodded. “In that, they have not heard wrong. Kelen weakens by the year, and now a new zealot has risen at Fideth’s side: it is the Witchfinder, Brother Sebald. Pray the Goddess that this cruel hunt dies down!”
Gael had already heard this name at the Swan, spoken among the scribes, but she had given it little attention. Now she marked it. She would ask Tomas more of this later—Lien was her lover’s country, and he must have some deep opinions regarding these matters.
They went out into the main room, where Forbian sat on a settle petting Stripe, the great tabby cat, and looking himself like the cat who got the cream, Gael and Tomas exchanged rueful smiles.
“Well, we have been surprised,” he said. “Yorath lives! And I may not even hint at it in my work on the New Chronicles.”
Late at night they sat by the fire in Gael’s tower room. The milder weather had gone—a winter storm had come up, with harsh gusts of wind striking against the narrow windows of the tower room. Tomas poked at the glowing logs and said:
“Do you recall that old scribe I mentioned as a byword?”
“Yes,” she said, “what was it again—‘No one knows more than Brother Less.’”
“That’s the man. He knows as much as Forbian—and now even more, I warrant.”
“I thought he was dead,” smiled Gael, “a part of history like Valko Firehammer, or Ghanor the Great King, or Fair Felnifarr, the lost bride of Rift Kyrie.”
“Well, I’ve always considered the lost bride pure invention, a tale from the hand of some high-born lady in the Southland,” Tomas said, “but Brother Less is very much alive. He was a great scribe and a great one for collecting tales and gossip—he traveled about as a follower of Inokoi, trained at one of their houses in Lien, near Cayl. He told me once that he had spoken to Yorath Duaring in Selkray, before the General’s unfortunate
death. Now I feel that he helped uncover the truth of the General’s ‘accident,’ and must have known that he survived.”
“Where is he now—in a haven of the Brotherhood?”
“Somewhere much more interesting,” said Tomas. “Years ago he became the house priest, the chaplain of a noble lady. He claims to have found his enlightenment. I read this in a dispatch from a scribe in Lien. Now Brother Less has formed the Followers of Truth, a reformed group of the Brotherhood.”
“He lives dangerously,” said Gael. “The king and queen and even the young prince, are guided by the Brotherhood. And now this fanatical Brother Sebald has a witch hunt sweeping the Kingdom.” She spoke shyly, almost tentatively, for her knowledge of these things felt new to her, but Tomas only nodded, as though she spoke accepted truth.
“That hunt is directed against the Chameln lands, I think,” said Tomas. “The idea of the Land of the Two Queens is unholy to Lien, not least because the tie of blood those queens have to their own heir might serve to lessen their own influence.”
“So Brother Less is not in danger?”
“Brother Less is protected—he serves the mother of the powerful Duke Fernan of Chantry, the Dowager Duchess.”
“But that must be …”
“Yes!” grinned Tomas. “Zelline of Chantry had two sons. The younger one is our curious acquaintance, Lord Auric Barry.”