- -
- 100%
- +
‘I do,’ he agreed, nodding his head sadly to Maram. ‘But Lord Harsha is right: how can any man’s feelings count at a time such as this?’
Although I sensed his sympathy for Maram, there was steel in him too, and great stubbornness. I knew that, having lost one prospective bride, he would not easily surrender what Lord Harsha had rightly deemed as a good match.
For a while we busied ourselves eating the hearty food that Behira had prepared us. For dessert, she brought out a cherry pie and cheese, and made us chicory tea as well. But Maram wanted something stronger than this – stronger even than the black beer that he had been swilling all through dinner. And so he announced that he had to retrieve a gift from the barn; he nudged my knee beneath the table to indicate that I should follow him.
We stepped out into a warm spring night full of chirping crickets and twinkling stars. We lit the lantern that Lord Harsha had given us, then went into the barn, with its smells of cattle and chicken droppings. We rummaged around in the saddlebags that we had placed on the straw near our horses’ stalls. And Maram said to me, ‘This is not the homecoming I had imagined.’
I nodded my head at this, then asked him: ‘But can you really blame Lord Harsha for wanting what is best for Behira?’
‘I am best for her!’ Maram half-bellowed. Then his voice softened as he said, ‘I love her – this time, I’m really sure that I do.’
I tried not to smile at this, and I said, ‘But you have put off the wedding, again and again. Some might take this as a sign that you don’t really want to marry her’
‘That doesn’t mean I’m ready to let that little squire take her!’
‘Sar Joshu,’ I told him, ‘is a full knight now, and a good man.’
‘I don’t care if he’s a damn angel! He doesn’t love Behira as I do, and she doesn’t love him! Will you help with this, Val?’
I thought about this for a while then said, ‘You’re my best friend, but what I won’t do is to help you make Behira into an old maid.’
‘But I will marry her, if I can, as soon as our business here is done – I swear I will!’
‘Will you?’
He found his sword resting upon a bale of hay, and drew it out of its scabbard. He laid his hand on the flat of the blade and said, ‘I swear by all that I honor that I will marry Behira!’
I gripped his wrist, and urged him to sheathe his sword. Then I pointed at the bottle of brandy that Maram had pulled out of his saddlebags and set on top of the hay, too. I took his hand and placed it on the bottle.
‘Swear by all that you love,’ I told him, ‘that you will marry her’
‘Ah, all right then – I do, I do!’
‘Swear by me, Maram,’ I said, looking at him.
In the lantern’s flickering light, Maram looked back at me, and finally said, ‘Sometimes I think you ask too much of me, but I do swear by you.’
‘All right then,’ I said, clapping him on the shoulder. I retrieved the lantern from its hook on one of the barn’s wooden supports. ‘I will do what I can. It may be that there is something that Sar Joshu desires much more than marriage.’
We went back into the house, and Maram presented the brandy to Lord Harsha as a gift. He told him, ‘It’s the last of the finest vintage I’ve ever tasted, and I’ve been saving this bottle for you for at least a thousand miles.’
‘Thank you,’ Lord Harsha said, holding up the bottle to the room’s candles. Then, with a wry smile, he asked, ‘Will you help me drink it?’
After Behira had retrieved some cups from the adjacent great room and Lord Harsha had poured a bit of brandy into each, I gave them presents, too. For Behira I had silk bags full of rare spices: anise, pepper, cardamom, clove. To Lord Harsha I gave a simple steel throwing knife. He hefted it in his rough hands and promised to add it to his collection of swords, knives, maces, halberds and other weapons mounted on the wall of his great room. When I told him the story behind the knife, he sat looking at me and shaking his head.
‘This was Kane’s, and he wanted you to have it,’ I said to him. ‘When we were made captive in King Arsu’s encampment, one of Morjin’s High Priests made Kane cast the knife at Estrella and split an apple placed on top of her head.’
Lord Harsha’s hand closed around the knife’s handle as he regarded Estrella in amazement – and concern.
But Estrella remained nearly motionless nibbling on a gooey cherry that she had plucked from a slice of pie. Her large, dark eyes filled with a strange light. In the past, she had suffered greater torments than that which the Kallimun priest, Arch Uttam, had inflicted on her. It was her grace, however, to dwell in the present, most of the time, and here and now she seemed to be happy just sitting safe and sound with those she loved.
‘Well, you have stories to tell,’ Lord Harsha called out, ‘and we must hear them. Let’s drink a toast to your safe return from wherever it was that the stars called you.’
So saying, he lifted up his cup, and we all joined him in drinking Maram’s brandy.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘it’s clear that you haven’t come home just to see Maram happily wed to my daughter’
It came time to give an account of our journey. I said that we had set forth into the wilds of Ea on a quest to find the Maitreya. Many parts of our story I could not relate, or did not want to. It wouldn’t do for Lord Harsha – or anyone – to learn the location of the Brotherhood’s school or of the greatest of the gelstei crystals that they kept there. Of the terrible darkness I had found within myself in our passage of the Skadarak I kept silent, although I did speak of the Black Jade buried in the earth there and how this evil thing called out to capture one’s soul. Likewise I did not want to have to explain to Behira that the round scars marking Maram’s cheek and body had been torn into him by the teeth of a monstrous woman called Jezi Yaga. Nothing, however, kept me from telling of our journey through the Red Desert and crossing of the hellish and uncrossable Tar Harath. Behira listened in wonderment to the story of the little people’s magic wood hidden in the burning sands of the world’s worst wasteland – and how this Vild, as we called it, had quickened Alphanderry’s being so that he could speak and dwell almost as a real man. She wanted to hear more of the Singing Caves of Senta than I could have related in a month of evenings. At last though, I had to move on to our nightmarish search through Hesperu: nearly the darkest and worst of all the Dragon kingdoms. It was there, I told Behira and her father, in a village called Jhamrul, that we had come across a healer named Bemossed.
‘With a laying on of his hand,’ I said to Lord Harsha, ‘he healed a wound to Maram’s chest that even Master Juwain could not heal. In Bemossed gathers all that is best and brightest in men. It is almost certain that he is the Maitreya.’
Lord Harsha sipped his brandy as he looked at me. He said, ‘Once before you believed another was the Maitreya.’
Truly I had: myself. And the lies that I had told myself – and others – had inexorably brought Morjin’s armies down upon my land and had nearly destroyed all that I loved.
‘Once,’ I said to Lord Harsha, ‘I was wrong. This time I am not’
Now Lord Harsha took an even longer pull at his brandy as his single eye fixed upon me. And he said to me, ‘Something has changed in you, Lord Elahad. The way you speak – I cannot doubt that you tell the truth.’
‘Then do not doubt this either: when it is safe, the Maitreya will come forth. The Free Kingdoms must be made ready for him. And our kingdom, before all others, must be set in order. It is why I have returned.’
‘To become king!’ he said as his eye gleamed. ‘I knew it! Valashu Elahad, crowned King of Mesh – well, lad, I can’t tell you how often I’ve wished that day would come!’
Then his face fell into a frown, and the light went out of him. ‘But after what’s happened, how can that day ever come?’
I noticed Joshu Kadar studying me intently, and I asked, ‘Then has another already been made king?’
‘What!’ Lord Harsha said. ‘Have you had no news at all?’
‘No – we entered Mesh in secret, and have spoken to no one.’
‘Likely, it’s good that you haven’t. There are those who would not want you to gain your father’s throne. I can’t think that they would resort to a knife in the back, but as I said, these are bad times.’
‘Bad times, indeed,’ I said, looking down the table at him, ‘if you would even speak of such a thing.’
‘Well, with your father having sired seven sons, I never thought I would live to see such a day: Mesh’s throne empty, and at least three lords vying to claim it.’
I let my hand rest on my sword’s hilt, and I said, ‘Lord Tomavar, certainly’
Lord Harsha nodded his head. ‘He is the greatest contender – and he has become your enemy. He blames you for what happened to his wife.’
I looked down at my sword’s great diamond pommel glimmering in the candlelight, and I thought of how Morjin’s men had carried off the beautiful Vareva – most likely to ravishment and death. How could I blame Lord Tomavar for being stricken to his soul when I already blamed myself?
‘Too many,’ Lord Harsha told me, ‘still believe that you abandoned the castle out of vainglory. And then told the baldest of lies.’
‘But that itself is a lie!’ Joshu Kadar called out. His hand pressed against his chest as if his brandy had stuck in his throat and burned him. ‘Everyone who knows Valashu Elahad knows this! I have spoken of this everywhere! Many of my friends have, as well. Lord Valashu, they say, led us to victory in the Great Battle and should have been made king.’
‘He should have,’ Lord Harsha agreed with a sigh. ‘But on the battlefield, five thousand warriors stood for Lord Valashu, and eight thousand against, and that is that.’
‘That is not that!’ Joshu half-shouted. It must have alarmed him, I sensed, to speak with such vehemence to a lord knight who might become his father-in-law. ‘If the warriors were to stand again, they would acclaim Lord Valashu – I know they would!’
Lord Harsha sighed again, and he poured both Joshu and himself more brandy. And he said, ‘If the warriors were free to gather and stand, it might be so. But we might as well hope that horses had wings so that we could just fly to battle.’
He told us then that Lord Tomavar had made many of the knights and warriors who followed him swear oaths of loyalty in support of his kingship. In order for them to stand for another, he would have to relieve them of their oaths. So it was with Lord Tanu and Lord Avijan, the two other major contenders for Mesh’s throne.
‘Lord Avijan!’ I called out, shaking my head. This young lord resided in his family’s castle near Mount Eluru just to the north of the Valley of the Swans. ‘My father was very fond of him and trusted no man more.’
‘And no man is more trustworthy,’ Lord Harsha said. ‘Of all Mesh’s lords, none has spoken more forcefully in favor of your becoming king. But when you went off with your friends and did not return, he thought you must be dead, as everyone did. He never wanted to put himself forward against Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu, but we persuaded him that he must’
‘We, Lord Harsha?’ I said to him.
I felt the blood and brandy heating up his rough, old face as he said, ‘Myself, yes, and Lord Sharad and Sar Jessu – and many others. Almost every warrior around Silvassu and the Valley of the Swans.’
‘Then have you taken oaths to support Lord Avijan?’
Lord Harsha rubbed at his face to hide his shame. ‘We had to. Otherwise we would have come under Lord Tomavar’s boot, or Lord Tanu’s. In any case …’
‘Yes?’
‘In any case, only one can become king, and we all agreed that no one deserves the throne more than Lord Avijan.’
I remained silent as I squeezed the hilt of my sword, and I felt Maram, Master Juwain and Liljana looking at me.
‘No one, of course,’ Lord Harsha went on, ‘except yourself. But we all thought you would never return.’
I gazed at him and said, ‘But I have returned.’
‘That you have, lad,’ he said. ‘And Lord Avijan would release us all from our oaths and be the first to stand for you. But Lord Tomavar commands six thousand warriors, and another four thousand follow Lord Tanu, and they will surely oppose you if you come forth.’
Although Atara, sitting near the middle of the table, kept her face still and stern, I could almost feel her heart beating in time with my own. I wondered if she had foreseen this moment in her scryer’s crystal sphere or what might befall next.
‘Will Lord Tanu and Lord Tomavar,’ I asked Lord Harsha, ‘oppose me so far as to go to war?’
I would rather die, I thought, than see Meshians slay Meshians.
‘Who can say?’ Lord Harsha muttered. ‘These are bad times, very bad. And since the Great Battle, Mesh is weaker, much too weak. New trees we need to stand in the ranks and face our enemies, but we’ll be a whole generation growing them. Our enemies know this. Already, it’s said, the Waashians are looking for a way to attack us. And the Urtuk already have: they invaded through the Eshur pass last fall. They weren’t many, only a thousand, and they might have been just testing our strength – and so Lord Tomavar’s army threw them back easily enough. And then there is Anjo.’
‘Anjo!’ I said. ‘But Anjo has never threatened us.’
‘No, and that is exactly the point: Anjo hasn’t had a real king in two hundred years, and can threaten no one. Her dukes and barons still battle each other bloody. You will not have heard that only two months ago, the Ishkans annexed Adar and Natesh. And King Hadaru still looks for other of Anjo’s domains to bite off. Lord Tanu has vowed that this must never happen to Mesh.’
‘And it must not!’ I told him.
‘No – and so Lord Tanu has said that Mesh must have a new king, and soon, if we don’t want to wind up like Anjo. Lord Tomavar has said the same thing. They have each demanded that the other stand aside, and have made threats.’
‘But if they make war upon each other,’ I said, ‘then they would make Mesh like Anjo!’
Lord Harsha shrugged his shoulders as his face fell sad and grave. He muttered into his cup of brandy: ‘These are bad times, the worst of times, so who can blame an old man for wanting to see his daughter well-wed and give his grandson his first sword? Now, in your father’s day, and your grandfather’s, no one would ever have thought that –’
‘Lord Harsha,’ I said, with greater force. ‘Will Lord Tomavar and Lord Tanu take up arms against me?’
With a jerk of his head, Lord Harsha downed the last of his brandy and sighed out, ‘I don’t know. Lord Tanu will be cautious, as always. Once he makes up his mind about something, though, he can strike fast and hold on like a bulldog. And Lord Tomavar …’
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Lord Tomavar is burning for vengeance now. Full of the blood madness, do you understand? His warriors captured thirty of the Urtuk – and Lord Tomavar accused them of helping Morjin escape across the steppe with Vareva. And so he had them hacked to death.’
‘But that is not our way!’
‘No, it is not,’ he said. He let loose an even deeper sigh. ‘And so what will he do when you come forth to claim your father’s crown? That I don’t want to know, lad.’
The sound of steel forks against earthen plates full of pie rang out into the narrow room, and echoed off the stone walls. I noticed Liljana concentrating all her attention on Behira and Joshu, while Master Juwain looked at me as if admonishing me to find a way of peace in a world full of hate and vengeful swords.
‘What needs to be decided,’ Lord Harsha finally said to me, ‘is what you will do. Will you go to war for your father’s throne, Valashu Elahad?’
Would I draw my sword against my countrymen, I wondered? I sat considering this while I gripped Alkaladur’s hilt. As Lord Harsha had said, only one man could be king of Mesh.
‘There must be a way without war,’ I said to Lord Harsha, and everyone. ‘If I could step aside and see Lord Avijan crowned king, I would. Or even Lord Tomavar or Lord Tanu. But from what has been said here tonight, this is not possible.’
‘No,’ Lord Harsha agreed, ‘such a grace on your part might only make the situation worse.’
Atara, who had said little all during dinner, now drew forth her sparkling crystal, and told us: ‘Neither Lord Tanu nor Lord Tomavar will ever be king. Nor Lord Avijan. It must be Val – or no one.’
I tried not to smile at Atara’s seeming assurance. Most of the time, she refrained from saying such things. I could not tell if her words were a true prophecy or whether she wished the mere force of her statement to bring about the future that she willed to be.
I drew my sword a few inches out of its scabbard, and the flash of silustria warmed my blood. And I said, ‘It must be me. I never wanted this, but what other choice is there?’
‘But Val,’ Maram said, ‘what will you do? Coming forth now will be dangerous – even more dangerous than we had thought. And what if Kane’s worries prove out, and you find that some of your countrymen have joined the Order of the Dragon?’
At the mention of this secret society of blood drinkers and murderers who followed Morjin, Lord Harsha said, ‘It is bad enough to know that Prince Salmelu went over to the Red Dragon, and is now a filthy priest who calls himself by the filthy name of Igasho. For even one Valari in all the Nine Kingdoms to turn traitor this way is a disgrace.’
He tapped his sword and said, ‘Despite what I said earlier, I won’t believe that any man of Mesh would ever dishonor himself so – I won’t! And the warriors of the Valley of the Swan are as true as diamonds.’
‘Yes,’ Maram agreed with a nod of his head, ‘but will they be true to Val?’
‘Nine of ten will be – perhaps more.’
‘But what of Lord Tanu, then? His army is only a two-day march away. And Lord Tomavar? How long would it take him to lead his six thousand here – a couple of days more?’
How long, indeed, would the hot-headed Lord Tomavar need to march his army from the northwest down across our small kingdom?
Lord Harsha frowned at this as he rubbed the lines creasing his face. He had never been a quick thinker or a brilliant one, but once he decided on a thing, his reasoning usually shone with good common sense.
‘We had thought,’ I said to him, ‘that we might send out a call to those who would follow me to assemble at my father’s castle.’
Lord Harsha slowly shook his head at this. ‘That won’t do, lad. The castle is all burned out, and it would take a week even to get the gates working again. And Lord Tanu might move before you had enough warriors to man the walls.’
He drummed his thick fingers on the table as he looked at me.
‘What do you suggest then?’ I asked him.
‘Let’s do this,’ he said, looking at Joshu Kadar. ‘Sar Joshu and I will ride out tomorrow and gather up those we absolutely trust. We’ll escort you to Lord Avijan’s castle, where you’ll be safe. And then we’ll put out the word that Valashu Elahad has returned to Mesh. Two thousand warriors have sworn oaths to Lord Avijan, and another thousand, at least, look to the weather vane to see which way the wind will blow. Let’s see how many will declare for you.’
I thought about this for a while as I traded glances with Maram, Master Juwain and Liljana. Atara inclined her head toward me. Then I told Lord Harsha: ‘Very well, then, it will be as you have said.’
Our decision so stirred Joshu that he whipped forth his sword and raised it up toward me. ‘Tomorrow morning I will speak with Viku Aradam and Shivalad and a dozen others! I know they’ll all ride with you, Sire!’
This word seemed to hang in the air like a trumpet’s call. And Lord Harsha banged the table with his fist, and turned his angry eye on Joshu.
‘Here, now – that won’t do!’ he snapped. ‘You may call Lord Valashu “Sire” when the warriors have acclaimed him, but not before!’
Joshu bowed his head in acquiescence of Lord Harsha’s admonishment. Lord Harsha, as he should have known, was a stickler for the ancient forms, and he believed that a king must always draw his power from the will of the warriors whom he led.
‘All right, then,’ Lord Harsha said as he stood up from the table and picked up the brandy bottle. He went around the table filling up everyone’s cup. He returned to his place and raised his own as he said, ‘To Valashu Elahad – may he become the next in the unbroken line of Elahad kings and protect our sacred realm!’
After we had clinked cups and sipped our brandy, Behira stared across the table at Joshu and said, ‘Then tomorrow you’ll ride off again?’
At this, Joshu turned toward me. I sensed that he didn’t want to wed Behira half as much as he burned to take his revenge for what had happened upon the Culhadosh Commons. As our eyes met, I felt a bright flame come alive within him.
‘I must serve Lord Valashu,’ he told her. ‘There will be war – if not against Lord Tanu or Lord Tomavar, then against the Waashians when Lord Valashu becomes king. Or the Urtuk will invade in force, and the Mansurii with them. Perhaps Morjin himself will march against Mesh again. And when he does, I must ride with Lord Valashu.’
‘If he is your king, then you must,’ Lord Harsha agreed. ‘And so must I. And that is why we should arrange a wedding while we can.’
I felt Maram’s knee pressing against mine beneath the table, and I said to Lord Harsha, ‘I am afraid there will be war. Why not let the question of your daughter’s marriage wait until greater matters are settled?’
‘Do you mean, wait until one of Morjin’s knights puts a spear through Joshu’s other lung?’ Lord Harsha said bluntly.
As my father had once told me, sometimes problems worked out best if left alone. And death solved all of life’s problems.
‘Or Sar Maram,’ Lord Harsha said. ‘I would no more see him lying bloodied on the battlefield than I would Sar Joshu.’
In the dark corner of the room above Maram’s head, I caught a sense of a deeper darkness. The Ahrim, I knew, followed Maram as it did me.
‘I understand your concern,’ I said to Lord Harsha, ‘and I will do what I can to ease it. Do you know of the estate my family holds along the Kurash River?’
‘The lands by the Old Oaks?’ Lord Harsha said. ‘Five hundred acres of the best bottomland?’
‘Yes, those,’ I said. ‘It shall be my present to Behira at her wedding.’
Lord Harsha nodded his head at this as he regarded me. Ever a practical man, he said, ‘You’re even more generous than your father, lad. But suppose that neither Sar Joshu nor Sar Maram survive what is to come? Suppose – may the stars forbid it – that you yourself do not?’
‘Then,’ I told him, ‘let these lands be held in dower for Behira to whomever she might marry.’
‘Generous, indeed!’ Lord Harsha called out. Again he lifted up his cup. ‘Well, let us drink to that!’
At this, Maram smiled at me in gratitude. We raised our cups, even Master Juwain, though he would drink no intoxicants. Behira, however, sat still and stolid, refusing to touch her cup.
‘What’s wrong?’ Lord Harsha asked her.
And in a clear, strong voice, she said, ‘What if I don’t want to marry?’
Lord Harsha sat in a stunned silence staring at her. ‘Not marry – what do you mean?’
‘I mean, father, that I’m not sure I want to marry anyone.’
Her words struck Lord Harsha speechless, and he glared at her.
Then Behira looked down the table at Liljana, and caught her eye. Usually Liljana stayed out of such business, but something in Behira must have moved her, for she said, ‘There are other things a young woman can do besides marry.’
Her words caused Lord Harsha to turn his black blazing eye upon her. And he commanded Behira, ‘You won’t listen to such outlandish talk!’