The Summer's King Read online

  So the king, well-built and strong, often in his young life doubted if he could ever be a king because he rode so ill. He will not hunt, joust on horseback or ride at the ring, but has trained tirelessly at all the knightly pursuits that can be practiced on foot. He is an excellent archer with the longbow, the short bow and the crossbow. He loves hawking, a sport not much practiced in the Chameln lands, but now becoming more popular. He fences and handles a broadsword quite respectably. He excels in the novel pursuit of swimming, an activity that the common folk of the Chameln undertake mainly when they fall into a lake. Now there are bathing parties of lords and ladies to be seen on every strand from Lake Musna to the Danmar.

  Now the king, after a quick glance at his favorite hawks in the royal mews, mounts up on Redwing. The heralds of the Zor are fretful, but the procession is only a few minutes behind time. The king, preceded by his own horseguards, moves off at last through the outer wards of the palace at a gentle pace.

  It is a perfect autumn day in Achamar; the maples are beginning to turn red. From the northern wall the city sweeps down in a series of shallow terraces, each with its ringroad; and from the southern walls a watcher can see almost as far as the Danmar, the inland sea. The two royal palaces, which dominate the city, are vast irregular buildings made of oak logs, dressed and undressed. Sharn cannot look at his palace rearing up like a barn or a tribal lodge without a twinge of irritation. Let no one tell him of the beauty, the quaintness, the cool-in-summer, warm-in-winter qualities of his home: for the king, true palaces are built of stone.

  He rides in a slow circle on the uppermost ringroad, thronged with citizens of the better sort who live near the palace. Ahead ride the hundred guardsmen and the heralds; behind the king and his four companions come fifty nobles, those men and women who sat down to breakfast with the king. The guardsmen wear green and gold, the courtiers are a blaze of color: the rich dyes of the Chameln land—dark red, purple, blue, emerald—lit with the springtime colors of Lien, yellow, turquoise, apricot, lilac, rose-pink. The ladies of Lien ride sidesaddle in their elaborate gowns; the ladies of the Chameln land, in breeches and jeweled tunics, sit astride on small horses, the Chameln grey. The lords and gentlemen of Lien are fine in puffed and slashed costumes and short cloaks; their Chameln counterparts are more soberly clad, their cloaks are longer, they wear short swords.

  The two races of the Chameln land, the tall blond folk of the Zor and the short dark folk of the Firn, can be singled out, but there are many in Achamar who are middle-sized and brown-haired. Here and there among the courtiers and the spectators are the changelings, giant tawny men of Mel’Nir who have forsworn their country and their king for love of the Chameln lands.

  The ceremonial ride ends in a round park with an enclosure for horses and a crowd of grooms and pages waiting. At this point the procession from the palace of the Firn can be seen dismounting in a similar park three streets away. The king gets down, feeds Redwing a tidbit, and leads off on foot, chatting easily with his torch-bearers. The mounted guard has quickened its pace and come to the huge courtyard outside the meeting hall, another towering structure of ancient wood, with banners of the Daindru spread out upon its flat grey facade like tribal markings upon a birch lodge.

  At last a group of five other persons on foot, divided by a good distance from the mingling crowd of courtiers, can be seen converging on the courtyard. A small dark woman in Chameln dress of emerald green and grey walks ahead with a light springing step in her high-heeled boots. Behind Queen Aidris Am Firn come her torch-bearers: Bejan Am Nuresh, her consort; Jana Am Wetzerik, the kedan general; and two newcomers, Nenad Am Charn and Count Zerrah, an Athron knight. Behind the king’s back, Seyl of Hodd whispers to Zilly of Denwick, who hides a grin. Seyl has murmured, “Ah . . . the bright sparks . . .” The two young men of Lien find the torch-bearers of the Firn, with the possible exception of Count Zerrah, a dull lot.

  The king has eyes only for his cousin Aidris; she is one of the few persons in the world whom he trusts, one of the few for whom he can feel love. The queen comes forward eagetly, and after their ritual embrace, she takes Sharn’s hands.

  “Rilla and Carel!” says Aidris Am Firn. “I have heard . . .”

  It is to be expected. She has heard by magic or from one of the hundreds of royal servants and soldiers crisscrossing the city.

  “No cause for alarm,” says Sharn, smiling down at her. “A kedran troop has set out, and I’ve sent a rider, a wild young courser from Vedan, to fly ahead and meet them. Rilla has managed the escape, the hoyden. I am sure she will come to no harm.”

  He likes to reassure the queen. Aidris smiles. She has a striking face, youthful and fresh, and remarkable green eyes. The queen is twenty-eight years old and has borne two children; Prince Sasko, Heir of the Firn, aged three years; and his sister, Princess Micha, one year old; both safely tucked away in the huge, beloved palace of the Firn, far from the tumult of the Dainmut. The cheers from round about are deafening. Aidris and Sharn walk hand in hand, flanked by their torch-bearers, through the long column of cheering citizens and the guards for both their escorts. They pass through the doors of the meeting hall.

  The hall of the Dainmut is a vast, vaulted structure, dark as a cavern after the sunlit streets, with a fresh tang of pine garlands masking the musty reek of age. The Daindru are officially alone except for a shaman from the northern tribes who holds up an oak bough and gives them the blessing of the Goddess. They bow to him and to each other; then part and turn aside to go to their robing rooms. Aidris goes to the left, Sharn to the right, each striding down a narrow, creaking, dark corridor. Then he is in the sunlit robing room that gives on to the dias with the double throne.

  Yuri and Prickett are in the robing room to meet the king, together with Iliane Seyl, Mistress of the Royal Robes and two of her ladies, blonde Xandel and dark Veldis. All three women are so wrapped and swirled in shining Lienish cloth that they almost fill the small chamber. When they sink down before the king, they billow and rustle. Sharn raises up Lady Seyl with a cool, impatient smile and stands like a rock in the ocean as everyone goes to work on him.

  The king has been surrounded by beautiful women like these for as long as he can remember. His curiosity is dulled; the edge has long since been taken off his appetite. Yet he acknowledges his relationship to Iliane Seyl. As she bustles about in her seagreen gown, showing off perfect white arms, he thinks of those secret bathing parties at Alldene. Three children, three halfgrown young people, two boys and a girl, Sharn, Jevon and Iliane, among the reeds, deep in the soft grass. He has even wished that he had married Iliane himself instead of leaving her to Jevon Seyl. She raises dark eyes to him, dimpling, as she sets straight his tabard; he feels her breath upon his cheek. No, it would not do. Iliane, beautiful, high-born Iliane, is a silly goose, vain and empty-headed. As the king’s mistress and the wife of his torch-bearer, she has reached her zenith. Of course her marriage to Seyl of Hodd was arranged in childhood; Iliane could count herself lucky that her husband was a good friend. They are all three good friends, old friends. The king, who is twenty-three years old, suddenly longs for times past, for the deep grass in the shade of the trees and a plunge into cool water.

  Over his clothes the women have placed a long tabard of felt encrusted with jewels. A trailing robe of dark green cloth edged with golden fur is fixed to his shoulders, and a tippet of brown velvet is arranged over it. Prickett girds him with a golden belt, and Yuri, lips drawn back in concentration, sets the first of the heavy gold chains about the king’s neck and fastens it into place with golden pins and twists of thread. Sharn moves a little to make sure that the garments sit well, that his hands are free for the sword and the silver dipper that he must carry.

  Beyond the robing room the hall is filling up. Greater and lesser nobles are crowding the massive oaken benches tiered behind the double throne. Below them in the body of the hall jostle the merchants and their wives, dressed in their best, and further back the common folk of t
he city and the followers of the landowners. In the galleries under the roof are waiting women, pages, scribes, musicians. A team of nimble fellows, the climbers, perch and swing on the beams of the hall, operating the shutters that admit light and air, driving away the rooks and pigeons.

  Prickett, the valet, gets the sign of readiness from the king and passes it through a shutter in the robing room to the trumpeters on the steps of the dais. There is no waiting, for Queen Aidris is ready, too. The wooden trumpets of the Chameln land blend with the silver notes of King Sharn’s new trumpeters from Lien. The king and the queen enter slowly from either side of the platform and move across the old, dark boards to stand before the double throne. The twofold cheer rises for the Daindru. To a long, wild trumpet call, two honored nobles, Lingrit Am Thuven and the Countess Caddah, emerge from the shadows behind the throne and hold aloft the two ancient crowns. Shutters overhead send down beams of light upon the dark gold, the round emeralds, the yellow diamonds that encrust these treasures.

  For a few moments only Sharn feels the cap of leather slip onto his head and the immense weight of the crown. It is a weight too great for Queen Aidris to bear even for a short time, and Lingrit, her chancellor, supports the crown upon her head. Then the crowns are upheld a second time and carried away. Two other favored personages, Iliane Seyl and Sabeth of Zerrah, both beautiful women, come forward and set simple diadems of gold and pearls upon the heads of the Daindru. At last the king and the queen sit down upon the double throne, holding their swords of office. Aidris Am Firn carries a silver bough for her office as Lady of the Groves, just as the king bears a silver dipper as Lord of the Wells.

  The cheers and shouting rise to a thunderous climax that seems to shake the hall; the king and the queen smile and nod to their subjects. Sharn can see very clearly in memory two men seated stiffly upon the throne as he sits now: his father, Esher Am Zor, and Racha Am Firn, father of Aidris. The Daindru has prevailed: they reign in Achamar as they have done for a thousand years. There are tears of joy still among the citizens as there were at the coronation two years past. A kedran with a strong sweet voice, below the dais, begins to sing the last verse of a battle song, an anthem for the restoration of the Daindru, and the whole multitude take up the strain:

  Far off, far off in Achamar

  The fires are lit,

  The king and queen have come home,

  O let me live till that moon!

  The ceremony lasts six hours. The closest advisors of the queen and the king have worked hard to cut it to this length. The Daindru are no longer forced to remain before their subjects for ten, twelve, twenty hours at a time, eating and sleeping on the double throne with only a gold screen hiding them now and then so that they might answer calls of nature. Queen Charis Am Firn, grandmother of the present queen, almost gave birth before the Dainmut on one occasion, and at another meeting her co-ruler, King Vavar Am Zor, was seized by a fit of apoplexy.

  Even now, with hourly pauses, brief forays to the robing room, Sharn Am Zor is tormented by the ceremony. Aidris talks to him, they smile, they listen to the loyal addresses, accept oaths of fealty, name officeholders. More than two hours after noon, a trio of lesser lords from the town of Winnstrand on the Danmar are permitted to read a loyal address. They are liegemen of Sharn Am Zor, for the town lies within one of his personal feoffs. After the usual expression of love and fealty, the third lord appeals to the king. On behalf of his fellow lords he urges the king to marry and secure the succession of the Zor.

  Sharn is furious. After enduring the discomfort of the long meeting, now he is harassed by these presumptuous fools. Aidris, seeing his handsome face dark as a thundercloud, clasps his hand firmly on the throne bench.

  “Hold firm!” she whispers.

  “Curse them!” he says aloud.

  He leaps to his feet before the loyal address is done and speaks in a voice taut with anger. “Good lords of Winnstrand, I see you are all old men. You cannot earn the respect due to your grey beards if you do not respect your king and liege. I will marry when it pleases me. My sister, Princess Merilla Am Zor, is my heir, and my brother, Prince Carel, is in good health, too. Do not think that because I am your king I can be commanded in any matter!”

  Aidris quickly rises, and she too is inwardly cursing the clumsy lords of Winnstrand.

  “Sharn Am Zor is my co-ruler and my dear cousin,” she says firmly. “If it please the lords of Winnstrand and any other lords or citizens who presume to consider the matter of the king’s marriage: I will advise the king. I will find out and set forth for him the names and estates of any maidens fit to be honored as his wife!”

  There is a murmur of satisfaction. The Winnstrand lords are rebuked. Sharn, still furiously angry, asks Aidris for the ending of the ceremony, and she nods. He gestures to the trumpeters, and they blow up “The Daindru Goes Out.” The Dainmut is at an end. The king stalks perfunctorily through the closing ceremonies; he disrobes so hastily that the floor of the robing room is covered with scattered seed pearls and scrapings of felt. He leaves the meeting hall down his private corridor at the double; his horse guards are thrown into confusion when he appears.

  Still the king strides on without a page or an esquire, let alone a courtier. Seyl and Denwick, seeing how things have gone, are trying to extricate themselves from the hall. Sharn, already at the stabling park, setting the grooms into confusion this time, mounts Redwing. Behind him he leaves cheering citizens, cursing guardsmen and grooms, disturbed horses. His two closest followers continue to fight their way after him, and indeed they catch up on their own horses, trotting back to the Zor palace followed by a demoralized guard escort.

  Inside the meeting hall Aidris Am Firn bids the trumpeters sound the call for order and has the heralds cry out for a peaceful departure. She and her consort Bajan stay an hour or so longer, talking to those greater or lesser landowners who have come from a distance.

  The city of Achamar now prepares for a great feast. The tables are being decked in each of the royal palaces for a hundred nobles and their servants. In the meeting hall itself, as soon as the merchants and citizens have made place, the trestles are flung up and food brought in from the High Reeve’s Hall nearby to feast three hundred lesser lords. Merchants of any worth provide a banquet table in their houses, and in every city square oxen or sheep are roasting and barrels of apple wine are tapped.

  “Well, Zilly,” says the king, close to home, as they catch a whiff of roast meat. “Are you for the feast? Are you, Seyl?”

  Someone must preside at the banquet table in the palace, but the king cannot be reminded of his duty. Seyl says with a smile, “I will dine, my king, and so will Iliane.”

  “Take the head of the table then,” says the king. “Zilly, bring me some good company to the bend in the path by the old elm. I’ll get out of this rig.”

  He goes by swift and devious ways to his chambers again. Yuri and Prickett await him, panting a little. They have run and jostled through the crowded streets while the king rode home on the ringroad. Sharn Am Zor begins to strip off his clothes; again beads jingle on the polished floor. He splashes his face in a bowl of perfumed water held by Yuri.

  “I will have a tray,” he says, “and the stirrup cup . . .”

  “They are ordered, Sire,” says Prickett.

  Sharn begins to relax, to smile as he dons his Lienish hunting breeches and is helped into his most comfortable boots. When the tray of hot meat, bread and greens together with a few sorbets and sweetmeats arrives, he eats sparingly. Prickett covers the dishes. He and Yuri will clear the tray when the king is gone.

  There is a moment’s disturbance when a party of nobles including the Countess Caddah present themselves at the outer door of the royal apartments. All the screens are up however, and Prickett could hold the doors against an army. No, there will be no audience, and no, the king will not dine, and no . . . no one may ask to accompany the king if he rides out.

  Sharn sprawls in the chair, eats a lamb cho
p and picks his teeth dreamily. Then with a new burst of energy he springs up, dons cloak and hat, takes his gauntlets. With only two guards, he returns to the maze of corridors and comes to his own stable yard by the lower eastern hall. He must play hide-and-seek once or twice with parties of nobles struggling to reach the banquet table in the great hall. The stable yard has been kept very quiet; Redwing is waiting and the two hawkmasters, the brothers Réo, and their servants. A page hands the king his stirrup cup of apple wine once he is in the saddle.

  “Go ahead, Hawkmasters!” cries the king. “Carry their cradles down to the gate. We’ll try the Chernak road, what d-ye say? That valley I’ve been saving . . .”

  “My King . . .”

  The swarthy elder Réo grins and bows. Four men bear out the long wooden cages, hitch them to their shoulders; two others handle the dogs, cheerful black pointers, waving their tails. They all set off through the palace grounds to a private gate out of the city.

  The king smiles down at the head groom. “Master Chiel,” he says, “we must have some decent mounts, some tall horses, I think. My sister Merilla is coming and Prince Carel.”

  “My pleasure, Dan Sharn,” says Esher Am Chiel. “Does the princess ride in the manner of Lien?”

  “Not if she can help it,” says the king. “She hates the sidesaddle.”

  He laughs in fond irritation thinking of Merilla, riding so coolly out of Lien.

  “She rides a great deal better than I do,” he says, “and young Carel has been known to ride at the ring. Goddess, they may even join the hunt . . .”