The Summer's King Read online

  Ragnafarr and his companions Theranak, Orombek and Lillfor went slowly across the green meadow towards the wooden bridge, the Litch Bridge of the Tulgai that crossed the Lylan, the River of Souls.

  Sharn Am Zor went by the prince’s side, and presently Ragnafarr said, “It is time, my King!”

  The king and the prince embraced and bade each other farewell and promised that they would meet again before too many years had passed. As Sharn retreated a few steps, giving his hand to the little ones, the guardsmen and the brothers and the travelers from the Hermitage, all come to watch the strange ceremony, began to point and cry out. On the far side of the ravine stood a slight figure wearing a golden crown, with two or three others of his height. The edges of the forest teemed with the forest people; the trees were laden to their topmost boughs. The men and women of the Tulgai lifted up their voices in bird calls and ancient chants. Ragnafarr, their prince, walked over the bridge. He returned from the dead with his three companions and was received by Tagnaran, the Balg of the Tulgai, and taken back into the forest.

  Sharn Am Zor stayed long enough to use the excellent bathhouse and to eat a meal at the hospice, then he pressed on over the Wulfental Pass into the land of Athron. There was a chill lurking in the narrow valley, even with the summer sun high overhead; they were all glad to come to the watch post that marked the border. A kedran captain came out and saluted.

  “Will you let us pass into Athron, Captain?” asked the king, smiling. “I may say that I am a friend of Gerr of Kerrick if that will let me through.”

  “By the Carach, sire,” said the captain, looking from one to the other, “I am sure you are his friend and a royal friend at that. I served Frieda, the Lady of Wenns, and I rode with the Morrigar, the Giant Killers.”

  So the king, thinking of his cousin as she rode into exile, came to the top of the pass and looked down, as Aidris had done, upon the magic land of Athron. It was a bright and ordered countryside, beautiful, green, newly washed with a light rain. Yet Sharn had a pang of uneasiness; the scrying stone had come to life and stung him a little, so that he drew it out as he rode along. There was nothing to be seen but a sprig of rue in the world of the stone. As the party rode on towards Varda, they passed their first Carach tree and admired it, but the king would not get down and ask the tree’s blessing. He quickened his pace on the good high road, and they came swiftly to the outskirts of the capital and to the Owl and Kettle Inn.

  The host, a little bouncing man, came running into the yard.

  “Good morrow lords!” he cried. “Have you come out of the Chameln lands? Welcome to Athron! You honor our house. I am your host, name of Polken.”

  “Good Master Polken,” said Sharn Am Zor, “I thank you for the welcome. I think your inn is already honored. I have come to seek my friend Robillan Hazard.”

  There was a low cry from the shadowy doorway of the inn. She came striding out into the yard, a slim, dark woman, almost a beauty, in an Athron gown of dark blue. She moved so well that one hardly saw the injury to her left side. Sharn Am Zor, dismounted now, stood over her without smiling. The innkeeper, too, had a strange look on his clown’s face, all the smiles wiped away.

  “Little Queen,” said Sharn Am Zor, “are you the one who writes for my friend?”

  “I am called Taranelda,” she said. “I am in my right wits, King Sharn, no queen at all. What do you want with my poor Hazard?”

  “He is my friend,” said the king. “I owe him a visit.”

  “You were in Eildon,” said Taranelda, “with a fleet of ships and a troop of attendants . . .”

  “Little Queen,” said Sharn, “I am still not betrothed. My enterprise has not prospered, but the magic kingdom has granted me some understanding. I returned with my followers on the caravel Caria Rose and the captain, Raff Mazura, bade me visit Hazard.”

  “Ah, he swore an oath!” cried Taranelda.

  “He did not break it,” said the king. “In the name of the Goddess, is Hazard very sick?”

  “Come!” said Taranelda. “Follow me, Dan Sharn.”

  She led him through a side door, past the staircase and the taproom and the noisy kitchens. They came to a sunny corridor, and at the end of it was a door that stood ajar. Taranelda, still with her stricken look, put a finger to her lips and pointed to the door. She gave the king a push.

  Sharn Am Zor went on tiptoe down the corridor, fearful of what he might find and swung the door open wider so that he could step in. The room was full of sunlight and the scent of garden flowers. Hazard was seated at a table before the open casement; he looked so like himself, even to his old buff-colored waistcoat, that Sharn could barely keep from crying out his name.

  The poet’s hair was greyer than it had been. On the table before him was a wooden box with many small compartments and a metal tray about the size of a large printed page. Hazard selected wooden letters from the box, packed them into a narrow metal frame—was it called a rod? a stick?—and transferred one or two lines to the tray. He ran his fingers over the letters in the stick and in the tray, mouthing the words he had made. He stopped suddenly and lifted his head, half turning towards the door. The king saw his friend’s face, unchanged, a little thinner perhaps, brown from the sun. His large hazel eyes were wide open.

  “Nell, is that you?” asked Hazard.

  The king shut his own eyes against the sunlight and against a keen shock of pain. Hazard was blind.

  “I know someone stands at the door!” said Hazard. “Who is it?”

  “Hazard . . .” whispered Sharn Am Zor.

  “Dear lad,” said Hazard in a trembling voice that he soon mastered. “Is it you? Who has peached on me? Was it Buckrill?”

  Sharn Am Zor crossed the room and laid a hand on the poet’s shoulder. The pain he felt as he gazed into his friend’s smiling face was surely more than he could bear. He dug his fingernails into the palm of his right hand and bit his lips so that these slight physical hurts would stop him from sinking down, from crying aloud. He thought of the madwoman in the white tower at Swangard, beating her faded golden head softly and repeatedly against her bed frame. He uttered a sob.

  “Steady,” said Hazard. “It will pass. I do truly believe that it will pass!”

  “I come too late by five years or so,” said Sharn, “but now I must request your service, Rob. You will come with Taranelda to Achamar. I’ll brook no refusal.”

  “To live in your court?” asked Hazard warily.

  “To live however you will and wherever you will in that good city.”

  “What have they done to you in Eildon?” asked Hazard. “Lad, how is it with the princess?”

  “She was beautiful as your songs,” said the king, “but I was not meant to win her hand. We fared badly in the magic kingdom of the west.”

  “I set you on to this wooing,” said Hazard.

  “Not so,” said Sharn Am Zor. “It was my own doing. I was too headstrong. Yet some good has come of this ill-starred adventure and more may follow.”

  And to Hazard, in his darkness, these words were a proof that Eildon had worked magic upon the king.

  The King of the Zor came home at the end of the Applemoon, and the Queen of the Firn rode out to meet him with a small escort. The Daindru were reunited just beyond Zerrah, where the road struck out over the plain to Vigrund. Aidris had seen her cousin go forth proudly on the Danmar, accompanied by his champions and his escort in a string of painted boats. Now he came home with four officers and a blind man driven by his wife in a little pony cart.

  She saw at once that the rumors were true: Sharn Am Zor, clad in worn Chameln dress, was a changed man. The miracle that she had prayed for had been granted; the young, feckless king had been made to care. Aidris was stricken with pity and regret. Was he still the Summer King? Had he suffered so much? She urged her white mare, Shieran, forward to meet him, and they embraced.

  “Ah, Goddess!” cried Sharn. “How fine it is to come home!”

  “How fine to have
you back again!”

  “You must meet Hazard! You must speak with his wife, the little queen from Dechar.”

  “Gladly,” said Aidris. “But first, do you see who rides with me?”

  There, a little apart from the kedran of the escort, was a tall dark-haired girl mounted upon a spirited black horse. Sharn stared and could not speak.

  “She wears your ring,” said Aidris.

  Sharn Am Zor slipped from the saddle of his Lienish bay and strode across the yellow-flowered meadow. Lorn Gilyan had dismounted, too, and they stood at arm’s length. Then the king knelt and took her hands and pressed them to his lips. Lorn Gilyan spoke, and as Sharn stood up and took her in his arms, she uttered a soft cry. No one but the king heard her words.

  “I have loved on, my dear lord, though hope was gone . . .”

  Sharn was an eager bridegroom. He was wed to the Heir of Chernak upon his birthday in the first days of the Thornmoon, and a shaman from the north performed the ceremony.

  PART III

  THE KING’S DESTINY

  CHAPTER VIII

  SECRETS

  Snow has fallen in the night. It curls upon the gables of those two wonders of the world, the royal palaces of Achamar. The palace gardens are white and still; the square before the hall of the Dainmut is thickly carpeted and untrodden except by some cheeky fox or marten that has come to the city looking for food. It is the first day of the Ashmoon in the year 1177; it is the hour before dawn.

  No one is supposed to be awake, but furtive candles gleam here and there; lights can be seen flitting past the windows of the palaces. In the South Hall the kedran garrison have lit their fire, and the smoke rises up into the frosty air. A horse neighs and stamps by the open south gate and is hushed by its young rider. A knot of dark figures have gathered in the shadow of the gatehouse: a small procession is being formed. The gilded sleigh is laden, its burdens secured.

  A tall man says, “Whose idea was this?”

  Before his head is covered, he is given warm wine to drink. A woman begins to laugh, it spreads to the entire party.

  The boy on his grey horse, hitched to the sleigh, says in an urgent whisper, “Oh do hush! You will spoil it all!”

  Gravity is restored. The boy receives a sign from a single kedran riding ahead and follows her. They move off slowly through the silent streets: the boy drawing a golden sleigh and two strange figures, one shaggy and tall like a tree walking, the other clad in a green-hooded robe trimmed with fur. Lucky children, looking out at the right time, see them go by: the Winter Man, the Green Woman and the Moonchild, bringing in the tree on a golden sleigh laden with good things.

  On the ringroad in a soldier’s house, a young boy and his sisters see the sleigh go by and call to their mother.

  “But Ma,” says the boy, “it was surely going to the Zor palace.”

  “Is that so?” Mistress Britt, wife of the Captain-General smiles. “Well, your father can tell us if it came there safely.”

  “Do they have all the gifts?” wails the youngest girl.

  “Go into the warm front room,” says her mother, “and see if a tree was left for us.”

  Sure enough, when they rush down the stairs, there is a tree by their own fireside and a sack of good things to nibble all Ashmoon long, until the Feast Days.

  Meanwhile the Moonchild has drawn the golden sleigh right up to the palace. Guardsmen open the doors; the sturdy Chameln grey goes up the ramp, and the sleigh is drawn right into the hall of the Zor, into a warm, whispering darkness.

  A voice cries, “Lights! Lights!”

  Candles and torches flare up; the fire is stirred into life. On the grand staircase, hanging over the bannisters, standing before the wide fireplace are children, everywhere children, dressed or in their nightgowns. Mothers and nursemaids hold up the little ones; even babes in arms have been brought from their cradles. High up on a landing, a pair of young malcontent bachelors wonder aloud where all the little beasts have come from. Tazlo Am Ahrosh gives Prince Carel his candle to hold and draws forth a flask of schnapps.

  “For shame!” hisses the countess Caddah, going down the stairs, dragged by two well-grown four year olds. Merilla’s twin Chiel-brats, notes the prince.

  Before the fireplace the Countess Palazan Am Panget has commandeered one of the large golden chairs. She too has a motherly role to play, and it has given her a new lease on life. Her two young wards stand by her chair; they are persons of such interest that the old dame is received everywhere on their account. The king himself and his consort have visited her ancient townhouse on the ringroad.

  The young man with a shock of white-blond hair is Ilmar of Inchevin, one of the royal cousins. He is looking for an opportunity to slip away and join his boon companions, Tazlo and Carel. His sister, a year older, wears a star-maid folk costume from the east of the Chameln lands, a stiff white robe of felt, glittering with sequins and precious stones. She outshines these brilliants: Derda, the Starry Maid of Inchevin, is white and gold, a lady of the Zor with a grave, old-fashioned beauty. She knows her duties as a lady in waiting and is quick to hand Countess Palazan her muff, her lozenges, her pine cone rattle. A rumor says that she rules the old woman, not the other way about. After so long with few persons to love, the Countess dotes on her two young charges and certainly they wear her jewels.

  The tree, a noble blue tannen, is lifted from the sleigh. The Winter Man strides about to the sound of pine cone rattles; he is dressed in a spreading robe heavy with evergreen twigs: tannen, fir and pine. His headdress is trimmed with golden branches that curl like antlers. The Green Woman is just as fine, her robe of velvet trimmed with ermine, her mask of silver leaves. The Moonchild is a dark-haired boy of eight in Chameln dress of white and grey and a fur hat with a moon emblem: Prince Sasko, Heir of the Firn.

  Now the Winter Man, with a whooping sound like the wind, comes to the staircase. There stands Danu Lorn, the queen consort. She carries in her arms Gerd, her son of three moons; at her side stands a dark-haired girl, two and a half years old. She is bright-eyed, tall for her age; her beauty is something to wonder at, for the waiting women to whisper about. She is Princess Tanit, Heir of the Zor; this is the first raising of the tree she will remember. The Winter Man bends down and lifts her up in his arms. He smells of the forest; his branches are rough. She sees his eyes glittering deep under the gold and green mask, like the eyes of a wild beast. It is too much; Tanit’s lip begins to tremble, though she tries hard to be brave.

  “Oh sweetheart!” says the Winter Man, reaching for his headdress.

  Uncle Denwick, hovering nearby with his own boy, little Hal, lends a hand, and the headdress comes off.

  “There now,” says Queen Lorn.

  Tanit is overcome with surprise. The Winter Man is her father, with a few pine needles in his golden hair. It is like magic, as if he shared a secret with her, as if this whole exciting morning with the tree, the candles, the waiting in the dark, was arranged for her alone because she is his darling. Tanit and Sharn smile at each other. Their eyes are exactly the same deep brilliant blue—the eyes of Queen Aravel, the last swan of Lien.

  Now those rough country boys Till and Tomas Am Chiel have captured the Green Woman, and when her hood falls back, a mass of brown hair shows that it is Merilla, their mother.

  “Come then!” she cries. “You must help me give out these favors!”

  Sasko stands by his horse’s head. Morrah, a patient fellow, lets the younger children take turns sitting on his back. The prince, surrounded by his cousins and other trusted friends that he sees every day, is still pleased when his own sister Micha comes storming up with Nila, their nurse. Privately he decides that the tree is better raised in his own palace, but Cousin Sharn must have a turn at playing the Winter Man.

  Sasko’s father is riding back from the tribal lands in the north; his mother waits in the Palace of the Firn with his newborn sister Maren. He saves up amusing incidents to cheer her. The snow fight that Huon Kerrick begins
on the terrace; the way in which Carel and Count Ahrosh and Ilmar Inchevin slide down the bannisters. The children are overexcited; there are tears and scoldings. The young prince sees how that proud full-blown lady, Iliane Seyl, now the mother of Seyl’s little son and daughter, speaks aside to her former waiting woman, Veldis of Denwick, and makes her cry. Sasko hates to see grown-ups weep or quarrel.

  The incident cannot be hushed up; Veldis is led away half-fainting by her younger sister, Mayrose of Wirth, come to Achamar for the Winter Feast. Danu Lorn catches the eye of the king, and he gives the signal to end the early morning revels. Babies and older children are whisked away, not without protest, to their warm nurseries. The day is now a day of rest with nothing planned until evening.

  Sasko is permitted to drive his sister and Nila, the nurse, home across the city in the gilded sleigh. The Countess Am Panget, wreathed in her furs, is assisted to her waiting carriage. The hall of the Zor is almost empty now; the tree stands in place with tubs of sweetmeats and candied apples at its base. Servants carry away scattered twigs and cones, the Winter Man’s headdress, the Green Woman’s silver mask.

  Now a gilded chair before the pleasant fire has been occupied by an old soldier. When a guardsman passes by, he beckons.

  “Lord Zabrandor!”

  Captain Fréjan salutes the old warrior.

  “At ease, Captain,” says Zabrandor. “See if you can find me some breakfast and an urn of herb tea or that newfangled Lienish drink.”

  “At once, General!”

  “Keep watch, Fréjan,” says the old man. “See that no one comes too close.”

  He gives the captain a wink.

  “I have a tryst with two beautiful ladies!”