The Summer's King Page 9

  “Dan Sharn,” says Jalmar Raiz, bowing deeply.

  “Get on with your task!” orders the king. “I will not have you in my presence any longer than I can help, Raiz!”

  With the aid of Granja, the Healer of Chernak, Jalmar Raiz makes the examination. He compliments Granja; they consult together.

  “You are healed well, Dan Sharn,” he says. “Do you have any memory of the fall that caused all this?”

  “None!”

  “Yet memory of such an accident may return.”

  So the healer goes on his way, and it is time for the king to return to his palace. A procession of sleighs and carriages decked out with bells, pine boughs and banners makes its way to Chernak. There they stand in the old hall, raising a cheer as he appears upon the stairs in the fine clothes that Prickett and Yuri have brought: Seyl of Hodd, Zilly of Denwick, the ladies of the court, magnificent in their furs and jewels. Merilla and Carel bring the king down the stairs proudly, and behind him, bearing his ermine cloak, comes Tazlo Am Ahrosh. The king, perhaps a shade paler than usual, moves towards the blazing hearth of Chernak Hall where Lorn Gilyan stands in a long golden robe, the mistress of the household. When he takes her hand and speaks his thanks aloud for all to hear, Iliane of Seyl twists her hands tightly inside her sable muff to think of such a whey-faced creature tending the king.

  But any fears the king’s intimates may have had are dispelled at once. Sharn claps Tazlo on the back, is received into the arms of his friends, strides out to the waiting procession. He complains of the weather, will not wear his gloves, demands candied apple for Redwing, whom Tazlo is leading home. He upsets the order of the procession, sets off at once in the sleigh with Seyl and Iliane without another word to his sister and brother, who must ride last of all in an old carriage. Lorn Gilyan comes to stand on the steps of her house, but Sharn Am Zor does not look back. The king is himself again.

  The people of the Chernak estate line the way to cheer the king; and when the procession reaches the south gate of Achamar, there is a great noise of trumpets and voices. Sharn Am Zor is much loved; the thought of losing him through accident or sickness is not to be borne. The king is driven slowly to the palace of the Firn; he goes in with only Jevon Seyl and appears upon the balcony with Queen Aidris Am Firn. The cheers are raised for the Daindru.

  Sharn comes at last to his own palace, and after he has dined, he confesses himself too tired for any further celebrations. He retires to his apartments—he has missed them—and settles down by his own fireside. Only the two valets are allowed to remain. The king sips mulled wine.

  “Now behold, Sire,” says Prickett gently, “the new stuffs and patterns have arrived from Balufir.”

  “What, those slow birds, Starling Brothers?”

  The king begins to lay the swatches of silk and velvet along the arms of his chair.

  “A packet was sent,” says Yuri, offering it on bended knee. “A packet of books and writings . . .”

  The king sees the writing upon this packet, seizes it with an oath of surprise and strips off the wrapping. He reads the letter first, and then, between laughter and tears, dips into the sheaf of other writings. He returns to the letter over and over again, as if this short screed and the wine and the fire’s warmth had made him a little drunk. He looks up, more than once, as if he expected to see a friend, a companion with whom he can share his good fortune—but that other warm room and Lorn Gilyan are far away. He turns back to his letter: one for the silver casket.

  To the most excellent and mighty King Sharn Am Zor: Greeting!

  It is the privilege of poets and fools to address their betters familiarly so I will say at once—Dear lad, I have come out of prison. Think of me as a half-drowned sailor taken from some dark ocean. I am warmed by the sun of this “false summer” and by the reports that you have come into your kingdom. Most of all I am comforted by the thought that the Lord of the Wells in Achamar did not forget his old companion, that unhappy prisoner in “the Wells,” the Blackwater Keep.

  Buckrill has fished me out, then, to cobble up a troth gift out of some new and old Eildon stuff, and it shall be for the new Duke, Hal of Denwick. Yet the fair maid that is praised in these pages, the lovely dark princess, far off as dreams, deserves a better suitor. If I am not mistaken, the Princess Moinagh Pendark is a bride fit for a king, especially if that king be her own blood cousin.

  Balufir is a melancholy place these days, however tall the roses grow; I hear the brown brothers at the corners of the streets exhorting one and all to forgo every pleasure. I will go into Athron and see what they have to offer in the way of homespun magic, garrulous nut trees and the like. An old friend is host at the Owl and Kettle Inn, near Varda, but if you would favor me with a reply, send it first through Buckrill.

  So I wish you well for the New Year, the year of changes in old Eildon and in Lien. There will be no change, come wind and weather, in the unswerving love and duty of one who is bold still to call himself

  Your friend,

  Robillan Hazard

  Sharn Am Zor dips into the sheaf of parchment. He skims through at first, then begins to read more carefully. At last he calls Prickett to his side and asks:

  “Who do we know from Eildon?”

  The valet tugs at his lower lip a moment and replies, “No one of name, sire. A few kedran in the queen’s guard. But wait . . . the lute player, Princess Merilla’s lute player, Aram Nerriot . . .”

  “Excellent!” says Sharn. “Send for him! No, wait . . .”

  He is in a kind and reflective mood.

  “Send first for Count Ahrosh. He must take my compliments to Rilla and Carel, and yes—I will send them each a gift. Do we have one of those leather baldrics with a dagger for young Carel? I will choose a ring for Merilla. Then the count can ask for the musician, to play to me in my sickness.”

  Prickett bows deeply and goes about his business. A log crashes down in the fireplace, sending a shower of sparks up the chimney. Far out in the gardens of the Zor palace, cold but not snowcovered, there is a soft thump and a frantic rustling. Some animal has been caught in one of the gardeners’ pitfalls.

  Snow fell again at the proper time, and Achamar celebrated the Winter Feast. When Aidris raised the question of the king’s marriage and the promise she had made to the Dainmut regarding a list of suitable maidens, Sharn Am Zor was surprisingly keen. He proposed an immediate meeting with those members of the inner council who were wintering in the city.

  They sat down together in the palace of the Zor, in that pleasant room above the royal apartments where the king gave his little suppers. It was the third festival day, given over to fasting and long wintery sleeps in preparation for the New Year celebration. In the warm anteroom the royal attendants whiled away the time with dice games and fortune-telling for the season; the musician, Nerriot, waited to play for the Daindru.

  The king welcomed Lingrit Am Thuven, the Chancellor of the Firn, and Nenad Am Charn. Of his own torch-bearers only Seyl of Hodd was present; Denzil of Denwick and his betrothed were visiting in Lien, and Count Barr was not expected until the New Year. Sharn had invited his sister Merilla and the Countess Caddah, and now he spoke kindly to them. He was so agreeable that Aidris wondered if he might still be sick. He talked aside with Jevon Seyl, and they seemed to share a secret.

  Aidris spoke some words of welcome herself and then said to the king, “My good torch-bearer Nenad Am Charn has an interest in family history, and I have asked him to prepare a list of maidens suitable to be your wife.”

  Nenad bowed to the king a little warily, and Sharn gave an encouraging smile.

  Nenad Am Charn chuckled sadly.

  “Sire,” he said, “I have ransacked the archives of Achamar, and I must say that we live in a time of bad harvest. Ten years earlier or later, and you would have had a wider choice.”

  “Perhaps I should wait ten years,” said Sharn, “and wed Imelda of Kerrick, Zerrah’s lovely daughter.”

  “For shame!” s
aid Aidris. “Let me hear your list, Nenad, and compare it with my own.”

  So Nenad, moving from north to south, presented such names as: Jamilar, High Chieftainess of the Durgashen, niece of Ferrad Harka; and Natocha, High Chieftainess of the Ingari; and Dan Sharn’s cousin of the Inchevin, Derda, aged seventeen, not well endowed with the world’s goods but a beauty: The Starry Maid of Inchevin.

  “Were the others not beautiful?” inquired Seyl of Hodd in an undertone.

  “Each of these maidens has her own qualities, Lord Seyl,” replied Nenad seriously.

  “On the southern plains,” he pursued, “there is indeed a dearth of daughters in the great families, but if we move nearer to Achamar, we find a lady who fulfills all hopes. I mean of course Lorn Gilyan, the Heir of Chernak.”

  There was an uneasy silence.

  Sharn Am Zor cleared his throat and said, “The lady is my true friend, I hope.”

  Aidris, the queen, could not repress a sigh. Still the list went on, corresponding with her own. The greatest prize in the land of Athron was a certain Baroness Ault, a battlemaid, who had fought in the late conflict with Mel’Nir as the esquire of her kinsman, Sir Jared Wild of Wildrode, but she had been spoken for half a year past by Prince Terril of Varda.

  Bajan laughed and looked at the queen.

  “The prince had always a weakness for battlemaids,” he said.

  “Go along with you,” said Aidris, blushing a little as she bent over her list.

  Nenad Am Charn moved on into the Mark of Lien, where women were famed for their beauty, but even here there were no more than three or four families who could hope to wed their daughters to a king of the Chameln. He spoke of the twin sisters of Duke Hallem of Denwick and his brother Denzil, Rose and Anne-Rose of Denwick, sixteen years old. Merilla and her brother laughed aloud.

  “What, the twins?” asked the king. “We used to tease them in the schoolroom at Alldene. Have they lost their baby fat, Merilla?”

  “Yes,” said Merilla, “but they are still a pair of silly geese.”

  “In the family of Grays,” said Nenad, “there is a daughter of the younger son, one Zelline of Grays. She is a beauty and attends her cousin, the Markagrafin Zaramund.”

  “No,” said Sharn Am Zor, shortly. “Out of the question.”

  “Is it a matter of pre-contract?” inquired Nenad. “I have heard a rumor that she will be given to the Duke of Chantry.”

  “Zelline is a splendid girl,” said the king, “but as a queen . . . I mean, she is not . . .”

  “She has been too long at the court in Balufir,” put in Lingrit Am Thuven helpfully.

  Now the king seemed to blush a little, but it may have been only the firelight.

  Nenad Am Charn, coming to the end of his list, made mention of a princess of Mel’Nir. There could be no question of an alliance with the Duarings, he said, but Ghanor, the so-called Great King, had one grandchild, eighteen years old, Princess Gleya, called “the unmarked child,” the daughter of the Princess Merse and Kirris Hanran, the general defeated at the Adderneck Pass.

  “Goddess forbid,” said the Countess Caddah, who had suffered at the hands of the Mel’Nir landlords in the south. “They are surely the blood enemies of the Daindru.”

  “Yet it might have been otherwise,” murmured Aidris. “Suppose the Lady Elvédegran of Lien had lived or had borne a living child, a son, a giant warrior prince, to Gol of Mel’Nir.. . .”

  She broke off, and Nenad took up his list again.

  “We must move over the western sea, my king, for the last and, some say, the loveliest of all high-born maidens. We must speak of Eildon, and of the family of your royal grandsire, Prince Edgar Pendark.”

  “Speak on, Count Charn,” said Sharn Am Zor softly. “Tell us of Eildon, of the Eildon blood that we inherit, and of the family called Pendark.”

  Aidris looked at the young king in surprise and at her own list again. As Nenad began to speak, everyone listened closely, as if the very name of Eildon had cast a spell upon them.

  “The Pendark lands,” he said, “lie in the southwest of Eildon, a rich and beautiful inheritance of which bards have sung from old time until this day. When Edgar Pendark crossed the seas to wed Guenna of Lien, he left behind two brothers and a sister, all older than himself and with families of their own. It might have been thought that fortune had smiled upon the Pendarks. Yet all was changed in the space of a few years. Prince Edgar, that comely and beloved young man, died of the sweating sickness before he was five and twenty. More than that, his brothers and sisters fell victim to accident and disease. A tournament took the life of the eldest, Prince Morr and his young son; the sister and her children died in the old water fortress of the Pendarks from a poisonous fever. So only the second son, Prince Kilnan, survived, and raised one son, Prince Thorm, who married twice. With the second lady, Merigaun Ap Llir, he had a son and daughter and died himself only a few years past. The family now consists of Prince Kilnan, relict of that time of misfortune, the aged great-uncle of the Daindru; his widowed daughter-in-law, Merigaun; and those two bright hopes of the house of Pendark, Prince Beren and and Princess Moinagh, who will one day divide all the lands between them, according to Eildon custom. Many hopes and wishes center upon these two: not only upon Prince Beren, a knight of the Order of the Fishers, but upon his sister. She is eighteen years old, born in the Birchmoon, and a being without fault if we are to believe the slight reports we have. She is your cousin, my King, and she is, moreover, the only princess of marriageable age in Eildon . . .”

  “So you have placed her name upon the list,” said Sharn Am Zor.

  “So have I, cousin,” said the queen.

  “It is the only name I will hear!”

  Jevon Seyl rose up from the long table where they were sitting, crossed to a press by the window and brought out a thick sheaf of parchment which he carried to the king.

  “I have received this book from an old companion in Lien,” said Sharn eagerly. “It is a copy of a troth gift made by Hal of Denwick. As I read the poems addressed to Princess Moinagh and the descriptions of this dark, sweet girl, it came to me that I must ask for her hand.”

  He stood up and spoke directly to the queen.

  “Oh, Aidris, you will say that the way is too long, that it will take half the revenue of the Chameln lands to fetch her home, but I must attempt to win her! Do you not believe that I may be preferred, as King of the Chameln and as a cousin, to other suitors?”

  The king stood in the candlelight holding his book. Those watching had seldom seen him so moved. There was in his question a kind of modesty. It took no account of those things that could win the heart of a young girl and that might weigh with her family. Sharn Am Zor was tall, straight, the height of manly beauty, and his charm overrode all the vagaries of his character. He was the Summer’s King, and to all those watching he was at that moment an irresistible suitor.

  “Eildon!” said Aidris Am Firn.

  Other voices echoed her cry. She saw the king’s look of certainty and excitement. She knew that he would persuade them all, the Council, his own liegemen and women, the people of the Chameln lands. She had no thought to hold him back, only an inner fear. Was it simply a woman’s fear, like a mother’s for her child? She caught the eye of the Princess Merilla and wondered if the Eildon blood that they all shared had given her a warning, too.

  “My King,” said Bajan, “you have been in danger lately. This journey far beyond the kingdom to find a bride must be undertaken step by step with particular care.”

  “I will bear all,” said Sharn Am Zor. “I have set my heart on this marriage.”

  Then Jevon Seyl gave the signal for refreshments to be brought in, for a pause in the proceedings. Aram Nerriot came in and played sweetly while they all ate and drank, working his magic upon the company. He played airs of Eildon and answered a few questions about the customs of his native country. There was an air of lively congratulations at the table, as if the king had already won h
is dark princess. Yet when Nenad Am Charn mentioned slyly to the Princess Merilla that Prince Beren Pendark was also of marriageable age, she laughed aloud.

  “No, Count Charn,” she said without a blush, “do not add the poor prince to my list of suitors, for they were a sorry lot however high-born. You may depend upon it; if I marry, it will be a man of the Chameln lands.”

  When the pleasantries were done, Lingrit Am Thuven was the first to comment seriously on the king’s plan. The trusted advisor of Queen Aidris was a thin, refined, rheumatic man who had spent many years in Lien as Envoy. He knew Sharn Am Zor well, from the time he had come into Lien as an exiled prince, aged eleven. Lingrit had some knowledge of Eildon and had travelled once to the magic kingdom of the west when he was a young man. His approval was guarded.

  “My King,” he said, “you must be prepared for a stiff and formal reception from those of high estate. And you must remember that the courts of Eildon know little of the Chameln lands. They will expect something of the order of Voyvid, The Wild Warrior King.”

  “Strange,” said Sharn loftily, “that is rather how I see one rival of whom I have been told, the King of the Isles!”

  “Lord Lingrit,” asked the Countess Caddah, “can you tell us from your knowledge of Eildon who will decide the match? Will it be the princess’s widowed mother? Her grandfather, Prince Kilnan? The councils of the realm?”

  “I cannot tell,” said Lingrit. “I would say all of these, plus the knightly orders and the religious colleges.”

  “And the princess herself?” asked Aidris. “Could she express a preference?”

  “Of course,” said Lingrit sadly, “but where in the world would a young girl of high estate be permitted to choose all by herself? Even here, where women have many rights, a princess of the blood would be . . . assisted.”

  The Princess Merilla seemed about to speak but thought better of it.

  Lingrit went on, “Your own marriage, my Queen, was arranged in your cradle.”

  “The queen could have let the bond lapse when she was of age,” put in Bajan Am Nuresh drily. “She could have thrown me over . . .”