Warautumn (55 page)

“There’s a dead Priest back there in the Hall who claimed to be War’s Craft-Chief,” she announced airily. “He managed to escape from the Hall about the time the first arrow hit you—opportunistic little bastard, I must say. I, uh, convinced
him to tell me where the rest of War-Hold’s elite had got off to, and he said that those who hadn’t died when the hold was torched had gone to rally Vorinn’s brother in North Gorge—though he wasn’t supposed to know that. They should be about two days march north of here—which means they can be here tomorrow night if we give them good reason. If you’ve got a spare herald and a spare horse, I’d suggest you make contacting them your first priority, since your army can’t get here in less than two eights.

“That was one reason they hurried Tyrill’s execution,” Merryn continued. “She was the last person with any real power in the gorge that they could actually lay hands on. I think their initial intention was to treat her much as the Ninth Face treated some of their hostages—cut off a bit at a time—except that it wouldn’t have worked in her case.”

Avall scowled. “And you think you can trust this man? It sounds like he was trying to play both sides.”

Merryn nodded. “He was. But I also think he was trying his best to look out for the clan with which he had been entrusted. He’d been Hold-Priest at War before the coup, and knew a lot of people there. He … wasn’t happy with things as they were. In fact, I suspect the Ninth Face would soon have branded
him
a traitor.”

“But you killed him?”

Merryn shook her head. “He asked for my knife and killed himself. That’s why I think he was telling the truth. He knew—or thought he did—that he was a dead man regardless. His last words were ‘people trusted me, and I’ve destroyed that trust, and I can’t live without being trusted.’ ”

Avall gnawed his lips. “Not a bad way to die. Now, what about the Citadel?”

“I’m on my way there as soon as I finish here.” She indicated the prisoners with her sword. “I thought we’d house these folks in the dungeons beneath the Court, since they’re likely to be the highest-placed folks around, which means they’re the biggest threat. Once things settle down I’d suggest
they be put to work searching for bodies in the Hall. That way they’ll be able to see the price of treason up close and stinking before they have their own trials.”

Avall nodded sagely. “Well thought out, as I would expect. I’ll trust you with it. Leave as many guards in the dungeons as you think you need, then divide the rest between Tryffon and Vorinn, unless some of them want to take a rest and let some of these folks who are guarding me take their place.”

Merryn sketched a minimal salute and bounded away. Avall followed her with his eyes toward the slot in the Court where the stairs to the dungeons exited. She started down, then halted in place as she met two people coming up—slowly. One person Avall recognized instantly, one he did not. “Lyk,” he said to no one. “And—”

Merryn and Lykkon spoke briefly, then two of the soldiers split off to support the figure with Lykkon.

But only when they were a dozen steps from the throne did Avall recognize that other man.

“Ilfon!” he cried. “Hail to you, Lord Chief of Lore!”

Ilfon smiled wanly, but looked pained and a little dazed as he let the two men help him to a seat two steps below Avall’s makeshift throne. “Majesty,” he began, “I fear I cannot properly stand and therefore cannot properly bow, but I greet you as well as I can, and thank you for the timeliness of your arrival.”

“They hamstrung him!” Lykkon broke in furiously. “They were going to kill him at noon!”

“He’s free now,” Avall replied. “And I’m more grateful than I can say, though what good two cripples can do the Kingdom, I have no idea.”

“Yours will heal,” Lykkon grumbled. “His won’t. And
I
have a score to settle on that account—when the time comes.”

“When the time comes,” Ilfon echoed. “And when the Law allows. For now—”

“Sit with me, if you will,” Avall told him. “I know you must be eager to resume your duties and reclaim your hold, but I’m
not sure that will be possible in the next little while. In the meantime, tell me what you will of what has transpired here—or rest; whichever pleases you.”

“Both,” Ilfon sighed. “But what would sweeten the telling of what is mostly a grim, sour tale would be a mug of wine—and perhaps a little imphor, to dull the pain …”

Avall refilled his goblet and passed it down to Ilfon with his own hand, while a self-appointed page bustled off to find another vessel. “I know where is some imphor,” the man who had churgeoned him earlier, and who was still lurking solicitously nearby, offered.

“Get it,” Avall commanded. “And see if you can locate a sedan chair, for later.”

“My pleasure, Majesty,” the man murmured, and departed at a run.

Half a hand passed, which Avall spent listening to Ilfon recount the events that had led to his capture. As the older man spoke, Avall was filled with a new appreciation of Tyrill. All his life he had thought of her simply as a hard old woman, given to arrogant rages and ruling her Hold with a tyranny that was all but legend—but which had also produced the best smiths since Eron was founded. Yet he had always taken her loyalty for granted—until he had actually seen it in action, first in the remaking of the shield that lay against his throne, and now, via Ilfon’s report, in her final days as an underground assassin. It had also been she who had secured and coordinated the few messengers who had managed to get out, not only to the King, but also to the Chiefs of the other gorges. If anyone was responsible for the army now marching from North Gorge under Vorinn’s brother, it was she.

“We will have to recover her body if we recover no others,” Avall said flatly. “And frankly, I’m thinking we should leave the Hall exactly as it is: in ruins, as a reminder and a memorial. But I want Tyrill exhumed. I want to give her a proper burial.”

“And you have to recover the Lightning Sword,” Ilfon added with a smile. “No, don’t worry. But it’s true; otherwise,
it’s going to be too much temptation, and half a span of mortared stone above it won’t deter anyone who’s really power-hungry.”

Avall frowned in agreement. “I know. And I hate it, and that’s all going to be to do again. I—” He broke off, for Vorinn was approaching—on horseback, through the ruins of the Citadel’s gates. (And fixing
those
would keep Smithcraft busy for a while, he reckoned—once they finished supplying enough chains to confine an entire clan.)

Vorinn rode to the foot of the wall around the seats, then dismounted easily. Like Merryn, he had found a cloak in his clan colors. Avall wondered if the story of its acquisition was as portentous as his sister’s had been.

“Majesty,” Vorinn began, after a bow even sketchier than Merryn’s. “I am pleased to report that all halls and holds on North Bank as far as Stone are secure—which, I’m sure
you
will be pleased to know, includes Smith-Hold-Main and Argen-Hall-Prime. I am also—‘honored’ would be a more appropriate word than ‘pleased’—to report that we have found Tyrill’s body, and with it, the Lightning Sword, the latter of which I have with me now.”

And with that, he reached to his scabbard and withdrew, indeed, that already-fabled weapon and extended it, hilt-first, to Avall.

Avall took it because he had to, but felt a keen reluctance to touch it.

“Where …?” he demanded, to distract himself.

“In her rooms in Argen-Hall,” Vorinn replied. “In her own bed, as a matter of fact—with her bonds still on her and the sword still in her hands.”

Avall felt his heart double thump, and found himself utterly at a loss for anything to say.

“I felt exactly the same way,” Vorinn confided with a grim smile. “But I’ve had the whole ride here to compose myself—and to try to figure out what happened, and only one thing makes sense.”

“That she got her final wish,” Avall finished for him, nodding in realization. “She knew she was dying—from the arrow, if not from the dome—and like anyone would, she wanted to escape, and naturally the image in her head—the thing she wanted most—was to be in the place where she had always felt most secure. And I guess a dying wish is pretty powerful, because the sword jumped her there before the dome could—”

He broke off, unable to complete the sentence because the images that rode with the words were far too terrible.

“Just in time for her to arrange herself on her back, in her own bed, with the sword lying along her length and both hands gripping the hilt.”

“I hope you remember it well, Vorinn,” Avall whispered, “because that’s the image I want to grace her tomb.”

“It will be done as you have requested, never fear,” Vorinn acknowledged. “When I am King.”

“When you are King,” Avall echoed. “And let me say again:
that
phrase has a marvelous sweet sound indeed.”

“Peace,” Rann said softly. “It’s one of those things you never appreciate until you don’t have it, and then it becomes the most precious thing in the world, because without it there isn’t time for any of the other important things in life.”

“Like enjoying times like this,” Avall murmured in reply. He leaned back in his rough-carved granite chair and allowed himself in a long, slow swallow from the cup of walnut liquor that was one of his true indulgences. And one he would miss … eventually. Which meant he should not take it for granted now—which prompted another lengthy draught.

Rann did not reply, comfortable as he was in the twilight that was weaving shadows across the water garden secreted atop the former Ninth Face citadel. A few stars glittered bravely in the purple sky behind them, but the sky Avall and his bond-brother faced was the fire-clouded sky of the west. The sun was sinking there, above the Spine, and the rays were painting the whole landscape ruddy gold. The pool a span from their feet looked like an ingot of molten metal. They had swum there earlier, while the air was still warm enough to allow such things. And though the water was warmed by the
same hot springs that heated the hold, the autumn wind was too chill to permit lingering once the sun went down. Already night breezes were stirring the fur-trimmed robes Avall and Rann had donned at the end of that most practical of pleasures. Merryn had watched them silently—but she was often silent these days.

“—Like enjoying making,” Rann continued eventually. “Like enjoying … love. Neither of those things ought ever to be hurried.”

Merryn rose listlessly from where she had curled in a nest of cushions to the right. She paced the narrow pavement before Rann’s and Avall’s seats, then stopped, gazing east. “Peace,” she mused. “It’s hard to believe that what we’ve got right now doesn’t extend everywhere. But it doesn’t, not in Tir-Eron.”

“Not like we have it here,” Avall agreed. “But it’s coming there too, merely at a slower pace. Yet every day something is better there than it was. One more stone is laid in the restoration of a building. One more person—one more
good
person—is confirmed in the Chieftainship of a clan. Someone who’s been thought dead is found alive, or someone who’s been missing is confirmed dead, and even that starts their survivors healing. It will be slow, but it will happen.”

“And faster, once the Royal Army gets there, which should be any minute now.”

Avall snorted amiably. “That used to be my army. And I don’t miss it.”

“It’s still your army,” Merryn retorted. “Until Sundeath.”

“Until Sundeath,” Avall conceded. “And that is going to be passing strange, let me tell you: to crown someone else King without rancor or remorse.”

“It won’t be the last strange thing you do in your life,” Rann chuckled, helping himself to a drink of his own. “In fact, if I guess correctly, the strange things in your life are only beginning.”

“Our
life,” Avall corrected. “Or so I assume.” A troubled pause. “You are still coming, aren’t you?”

Rann nodded. “West? Of course. The only question is whether I go now or in the spring. I’ve a few things I need to tie up here.”

“Div may
come
here and tie you up and drag you back,” Avall countered.

Rann regarded him seriously. “Do you really think we can do it? Build a new hold in the ring lake without the rest of the Kingdom knowing? Run our lives by our rules, without reference to useless rite and ritual?”

“We can if we’re careful,” Avall assured him. “If we choose the right people. We have a solid core now, but there will have to be others. There will have to be children, and Div can’t give you any. And Myx and Riff and Bingg and Lykkon: All of them deserve mates, and they certainly won’t get them in the Wild. Sure, the first two are betrothed, but that doesn’t mean their consorts will follow them, their vows to that effect notwithstanding—or that we can trust those women not to reveal our secret, for that matter, which means we might ultimately lose two very good prospects. As for Lyk and Bingg: They deserve better than someone they’ve courted in haste.”

“No one will have to stay,” Rann reminded him. “That’s what you said.”