The Summer's King Page 4

  That you will know that I live and that this letter comes indeed from my hand alone, I will recall to you the Great Oak where we sheltered, and how we spoke there of the Tulgai and I said they would do us honor if we came amongst them. And I will recall how we overturned a stone urn with a rosebush in the garden of the palace of the Zor at Achamar and ran off and were never charged with the deed.

  The king recalls that he never doubted that the letter came from Aidris; her unquenchable spirit spoke from every downstroke.

  He sighs and stirs before reading the rest of his treasure trove. An imitation of a players’ handbill printed on fine paper for a New Year’s mask at the palace in Balufir. The manuscript copy of a song in a neat pointed merchants’ script. The king is not musical, he can scarcely carry a tune, but he tries to hum the melody of the song. Almost smiling again, he reads another paper in the same hand:

  A Death Spell

  As told to Robillan Hazard by an old woman of the Chameln, said to be a witch, at Athory town on the Ringist.

  When a witch or a sorcerer or one who shares the fairy blood is certain to die, then her enemies must beware, for there is a mighty working that can be turned against them. It is called the Hunting of the Dark or, in the Old Speech, Harkmor, the ox-felling. It works best when the death is one of blood or fire, as sometimes comes to a witch, and this is how it is done. The one certain to die must be purified by fasting and the casting off of all links to this dark and mortal world. Then at the last, as it comes to the final agony the victims, the death partners, are named by their true names and tokens of the victims may be clenched in the hand or secreted elsewhere upon the witch’s person. Or if there are no tokens the names of the victims may be written upon a leaf of Carach, Ash or Thorn or the rare Murcha tree. Then to make the spell complete, the one dying shall utter these words.

  (The old woman, wrote Hazard, would not utter the words but wrote their runes upon a white stone that she carried in her pocket and erased them as soon as they were copied.)

  There is a final notation from the poet at the foot of the page: Not used in a tale but the Lady G. had it copied.

  Sharn Am Zor has written upon this page himself, placing the letters of the common speech beneath the runes of the Death Spell so that they can be sounded. He mouths them now to himself, then frowns and replaces the paper in his silver box. His distrust and hatred of magic run so deep that he cannot recognize in himself that condition of stillness where magic might be worked. Yet he reaches out and takes a folded parchment from the box and reads these words:

  To the most excellent Prince, Sharn Am Zor, Greetings!

  My dear Liege and your royal uncle, the Markgraf Kelen, bids you heartily welcome to the land of Lien and is pleased to grant you every freedom of this land. He awaits you in Balufir and his love for you will be made plain, for he will have you by his side until that happy day when you return to your throne as ruler of the Chameln lands. So let me repeat his welcome and his summons and humbly join with him in all good wishes for your health and well being.

  The signature, like the rest of the letter, is exquisitely penned, with interlocking serifs:

  Ross Ap Tramarn Demerge, called Rosmer, Vizier of Lien

  The paper is folded away with the rest. The king yawns at last and stretches. He thinks of his new day, of swimming in Lake Musna. The night is very still, he is alone and will remain so. It is his natural condition. Indeed he has often had the strange notion that until he sets eyes upon his friends and his servants they do not exist, that they are new made every day. At this moment, unknown to him, Iliane Seyl, in a glorious bedgown, dark hair unbound, comes through one of the many secret passages in the palace of the Zor to a little painted door that opens into the king’s dressing room. She finds the door locked; Prickett has put away the key.

  Sharn Am Zor reads the last letter from the box. It is addressed to Jevon Seyl of Hodd.

  To the Lord Seyl, Greetings!

  The money arrived at last and has been put to good use for the purchase of a settle and other necessaries. Our poor friend does as well as can be expected. More gold may work at the proper time. Discretion will be maintained, but one word from yr. liege would turn the trick.

  Hoping for a happy outcome I remain your obedient servant

  Dylan Buckrill, Printer

  Pen Lane. Balufir

  The king tucks away the letter, locks the coffer, returns it absently to its place and locks the press. Then suddenly he is overwhelmed with remorse and pain. It is as if Hazard stood before him, in his old bronze-colored cloak, tearing his hair, as he often did and crying out in his player’s voice, “Lad, lad . . . this has gone far enough!”

  “It could not be helped,” whispers Sharn Am Zor. “It was the time . . . I held to my right . . .”

  The lamp gutters upon his writing table, and the moment has passed. He turns out the lamp and stands in a thin ray of moonlight that comes through a gap in the hangings. He lets his bedgown fall to the floor and blunders into his bed through the silken curtains. He lies curled up thinking of the road to the border and the young courier pounding through the dark and his sister and brother sleeping in some flea-ridden inn with the common folk. He thinks of the land by Radroch, of the long valley where he went hawking, of the grasses of the plain, of the blue waters of the inland sea. The king sleeps.

  CHAPTER II

  BALUFIR

  Night in the city, the watch calls the hours in the dark streets. Candles blaze in the public rooms of the palace where Kelen and Zaramund are gambling, as they do every night with the ladies and gentlemen of the court. Late roses in the palace gardens are asleep, are dying and scattering their petals upon the walks. The park-keeper has closed the gates of the Wilderness, and a few pairs of lovers have hidden away so that they will be shut up in the park. They flit about like ghosts, over the humped bridge, through the long arbors, past the ruined tower. At the furthest border of the park in the west, by a sunken wall, there lurks a true ghost, the shade of a murdered lord, vanishing as he passes a certain tree.

  Behind the towering half-timbered houses, brown and white, in the long street called Three Fountains, a lane runs into an old yard. The sign creaking overhead shows an open book and a quill pen. It is an old sign; books are printed here now, but Master Buckrill and his stable still make use of the pen. The printing house is two stories high, with a spreading, flattened look as if it had been stepped on by a giant. Under the rattling slates Buckrill sits alone in a torrent of paper and parchment, reading by the guttering light of a single thick candle in a wall sconce.

  He is a big, paunchy man with deep lines etched upon his brow. He reads and rereads a crude book or “sheaf” of handwritten documents, then puts them under a paperweight. He snatches up a scroll from the pile before him, glances through it, smiles, growls, hurls it aside. There is a rustling, and the largest of his three cats, Ink, stalks insulted to a more comfortable corner.

  Buckrill hears the watch in Three Fountains Street, calling the first hour of morning and a shower of rain. He takes up the sheaf of paper, girds himself with a bulging money-belt, swathes about him a dark cloak, pulls on his fine leather gloves . . . for Buckrill is a rich man . . . and hides a round token in his gloved left palm.

  He goes down the creaking stair, stepping over Paper and Goldie, the two smaller cats, and, further down, over Jem Toogood, a poet of some reputation, sprawled asleep. A few candles still burn in the printing shop; a black-fingered apprentice is tidying up. The master printer, a lean, dark, dyspeptic man called Hogrim, is sleeping on a settle in a back room.

  Buckrill takes up a thick staff from its place by the outer door, crosses his damp yard and steps out into the lane. There is a patter of footsteps, and he grasps the stick firmly, ready to step back on to his own premises; but the runner cries softly.

  “Master Buckrill?”

  “What d’ye want at this hour?”

  For answer the man comes closer and holds up a dark-lantern. I
n its feeble light he is revealed as a player, still wearing the evening’s motley and a painted face.

  “Sir,” he says, “I am Troy Loverose from the Tumblers’ Yard. I have to tell you that Old Milleray is dead.”

  Buckrill gives a gasp of excitement and presses a coin into the player’s hand.

  “Poor old man,” he says. “And is the scene unfolding as rehearsed?”

  “It is,” says Loverose. “The cart will wait at the corner of Ship Lane, by the chandler’s shop.”

  “Come then . . .”

  They hurry to the east along Three Fountains and turn down one street after another, each meaner and more threatening than the last. They are approaching the part of the city known as Riverside. From the top of a flight of ancient steps, pitchblack and slippery with rain, they can look down upon a part of the docks, a lively place with yellow light spilling onto the cobbles from a sailors’ tavern. The player leads Buckrill down, deep down, into still meaner streets, and they come into the shadow of a huge building overhanging the river Bal. The waters of the river wash far up its stone walls. It is the Blackwater Keep, also known as the Wells.

  There are four prisons in the city of Balufir, all far away from the palace and the gardens and the fine houses in the west. Buckrill recalls a jingle:

  Go to the Watch house

  You’ll not swing,

  Go to Motherhill

  The lash will sting,

  Go to the Wells

  Where the drowned men lie,

  Go to the Caltrap

  You’re bound to die . . .

  He is anxious to proceed with the plan, to come to the end of the journey, and at the same time fearful of what he might find. In a little square, beside the chandler’s shop, another dark lantern blinks its eye. Two more cloaked figures stand beside a handcart on which there lies a shrouded bundle.

  “Good cheer, Master Buckrill!” says a rich, sweet voice.

  “You here, Lady?” says the printer. “Will you risk the streets and with a dead man for company?”

  “Master Milleray’s ghost will protect us!”

  He sees her in the lantern light, a slight figure in tunic and hose under her cloak. She stands very light and straight to hide her injured side. Her face is pale and beautiful, her full lips painted red, her dark hair falling in a heavy fringe across a high forehead. Buckrill lifts her gloved hand to his lips, and she receives his salute like a queen.

  “Taranelda . . .”

  “You know Master Quaif . . .”

  The third player is strong and darkly bearded, a heavy. He carries a very practical pike. Buckrill turns his attention to the fourth player; he bids Loverose hold up the lantern and lifts aside a fold of canvas. The old man, Milleray, newly dead, has a noble face and a white beard. Buckrill sighs, murmurs a blessing, covers the face again.

  “We must serve the living,” he says.

  The strange procession moves on up to the very walls of the prison keeping a sharp look-out. A drab and a drunken sailor reel into an alley; a party of three men, muffled to the eyes, give the deathcart a wide berth. At the outer wards Buckrill calls a halt, goes forward alone to a certain low door hidden beside a buttress. He knocks in a special rhythm and speaks urgently into a drawn shutter. He turns and beckons the others.

  Nothing loath the two men, Quaif and Loverose, lift the dead man from the cart and with the help of the actress arrange him between them, his hood drawn up, his arms about their shoulders, his poor old feet trailing in their long, fancy slippers. Carrying him thus, as a drunken or a senseless man is carried, they follow Buckrill, squeezing through the low and narrow door, Taranelda walks proudly after them, but there is a whispered argument. She must go back; no woman may enter the Wells. She turns aside and perches on the upturned handcart in the deep shadow of the wall. In a short time, while the low door is held open, the two players return and sit beside her, waiting patiently, as players have learned to wait.

  Inside the yard, Buckrill is surprised again by its neatness and order. The body of old Milleray, lying untidily beside a refuse bin, is the only thing out of place. Two black-clad men with close hoods and close, brutish faces have the run of this small, neat yard, little more than a corridor leading to another low door. On the other side of a towering brick wall, Buckrill can hear movement in a larger space, orders, the sound of bolts being drawn and a strange high-pitched cry like the cry of a bird. He enters the door at the end of the yard and is confronted by another door, ironbound, that bars the way down to the dungeons. He turns aside and climbs up one flight to the quarters of Flood, the head warder. The jokers say that no one drowns so many men.

  Buckrill knows that men of dreadful calling seldom look like monsters, that a murderer, a poisoner, may look quite unremarkable. Flood gives the lie to this; he is a creature of nightmare. He is a big misshapen old man with a thick neck, a quivering pale jelly of a face and bulging brown eyes. There is a wetness about him; his thin arms, with large, limp hands, the fingers bulbous at the tips, resemble the forelimbs of a frog. He sits in a room with old hangings of green leather, heated by two braziers, so that it is filled with steamy warmth. The tallow candles give off a sweetish stink. There is no day, no night in Flood’s chambers, but a perpetual twilight. The head warder has a huge book chained to a stand beside his chair.

  “Ah, Master Buckrill,” he says pleasantly, “I was balancing my book. What can I do for you?”

  “I have a piece of work for my poor friend,” says Buckrill, “as I have had once or twice before.”

  “Yes,” says Flood, slowly turning the crackling pages. “Yes, yes, yes. He was brought up, dried out, I remember. How long has he served in all?”

  “Three years,” says Buckrill. “I hope he—”

  “Master Buckrill, you and other friends have made several payments,” says Flood. “All has been done. Here I have listed floorboards, blankets, a settle, food of the first serving—namely bread, meat stew, apples. Trust me. What is it this time?”

  “A final payment,” says Buckrill. “This new work for the house of Denwick must be done elsewhere.”

  He begins to count out gold coins onto a clammy tabletop, and at Flood’s shrill outcry he says, “Good Master Flood, your books will balance!” He points over his shoulder and adds, “In the yard.” Flood knits his brows and whispers; “No violence?”

  “A natural death.”

  “Very sudden,” says Flood. “Sprung upon me. How can I . . .”

  Buckrill, his gorge rising, peels back his glove and shows the jailer a round copper token with the sign of a hawk. It is the badge of the Harriers, a secret troop of the city watch.

  “In that case,” says Flood cheerfully, “with three years served and my books balanced, my precious numbers . . .”

  He reaches for a pen and makes a very brief, neat notation in the middle of a page and rules off with a little rod of green marble. He pulls a bell-rope; the two black-clad men come running up the stairs. Buckrill turns his back politely while Flood gives them instructions; he catches only a few words of prison jargon. “. . . the wakener . . . the sluice . . . not linked . . . a hull but no stones . . .”

  “Master Buckrill,” Flood raises his voice. “Do you have a cart? Good. No corpse boards then.”

  After the men have gone, Buckrill waits uneasily, perched on the edge of a mildewed green stool. A long time passes, the silence broken only by crackling of the braziers, then a bell on the wall of the chamber rings softly.

  “It is done,” says Flood.

  He struggles to his feet, collects the gold pieces, counts them into a leather bag beside his chair and holds out his hand. Buckrill, sweating, clasps the jailer’s hand and finds it cool and dry. He blunders from the room in terror, races down the stairs. The heavy door gapes now and from it comes the hideous reek of the river cells, the dungeons of the Wells where men lie half-drowned for years in weedy darkness.

  The corpse of old Milleray, the player, has disappeared, and in its pla
ce lies a narrow sheath of sacking, a death hull, open at the top and feebly twitching. Buckrill flings himself down beside the river-smelling bundle. He sees the blanched, thin, naked figure of a man, the face half-hidden in lank hair, plastered to his scalp and his wasted cheeks. Buckrill feels, with a stab of pain, that whatever happens, whether the man lives or dies, it is too late. Three years in the Wells are enough to scar any man irrevocably.

  He cries out, grasping the thin ice-cold arms; “Hazard . . . Hazard, it is all over . . . Hazard for the love of the Goddess . . .”

  The poet, Robillan Hazard, suddenly opens his eyes.

  “Buckrill,” he says loudly, “we can just make that deadline . . .”

  Buckrill heaves the poet into his arms and pushes blindly past the men holding open the narrow door. It clangs behind him; the three players come down like a flock of birds. They lift up their comrade and bear him tenderly to the waiting cart.

  He hears Hazard’s voice: “Taranelda, I have found you!” and the murmur of her voice replying. Buckrill turns back and scatters a few coins through the grating. The journey is not yet done. He walks behind the cart as it is wheeled swiftly out of the shadow of the Black water Keep, out of Riverside into the maze of streets by the docks.

  Hazard wakes again to the lap of water; he keeps his eyes shut to make the dream last longer. Buckrill rescued him, yes, by the Goddess, a most tormenting cruel dream. Two blackfrogs gave him the waking dose of spirit, then stripped him and sluiced him down, wrapped him up again, some sleight of hand in a cold yard . . . and Taranelda, his lost love.

  The poet utters a loud sob, and the light beyond his eyelids grows painfully bright. He could swear he lies in soft sheets; the dream clings so closely, but still he hears the cursed water lapping, the waters of doom. Come to the Wells where the drowned men lie. He opens his eyes cautiously and sees a color, dark red, and catchs a whiff of bacon.