The Summer's King (24 page)

Britt stood forth with a desperate look.

“Sire,” he said, “this captain is known to us. I fear it is a fellow you would avoid at all costs!”

Tazlo burst out; “My King, forgive me! I did not know. I never set eyes on the impudent devil before. I served with the northern tribes! I was never within a hundred miles of the city of Dechar!”

The word tolled like a bell. On the gangplank of the caravel there appeared a tall, loose-limbed young man with golden hair and flowing moustaches. He was richly dressed in the swashbuckling garb of a merchant adventurer. The king recognized him at once, and so did Gerr of Zerrah, who uttered a cry. Sharn stood erect, gazing at the sea captain as if he saw a ghost.

“Captain . . . Raiz?” he said in a small, cold voice.

“Captain Mazura, at your majesty's service! I see that you need a swift passage over the western sea.”

The pretender, the False Sharn, spoke well and without a shade of irony, but the hearts of those watching failed a little. What hope for a swift passage with this huge, golden caravel, at least as fine as the
Golden Oak
, when its captain, more than any man alive, had struck at the king's right, his very kingship? Sharn Am Zor, still very pale, bowed his head.

“Yes,” he said humbly, “I need a passage for these poor wounded men that you see and for myself.”

He looked up again while Gerr, Tazlo, Britt and the others were mastering their astonishment, and astonished them even more. Sharn Am Zor smiled himself, for the irony of the thing, and met the eye of Captain Mazura.

“I am sure you will handle us most royally!” he said.

So the king saw his two wounded champions on board as well as the other sick men of the escort, then boarded himself together with Ragnafarr, Prince of the Tulgai, and his companions. The
Caria Rose
was spacious, and on consultation with Captain-General Britt, the masters of the two caravels disposed the whole party as best they could. The two ships and the pinnace set sail upon the Laun to catch the evening tide. Hardly three moons had passed since Sharn Am Zor and his followers left Achamar with high hopes and banners streaming. Now they slipped away from the magic kingdom of the west without ceremony. As the
Caria Rose
sailed out of the river mouth into the western sea, Tazlo Am Ahrosh, standing upon the high bridge with the king, gave a startled exclamation. His cloak had lost its magic, and the king's cloak, wrapped about Zilly of Denwick, in his cabin, lost its magic at the same moment. All that the king and his esquire had as a reminder of their quest were two purplish brown mantles of wool frieze.

The ocean began to demand its toll again; all but a few of the travellers were content to lie very still in their bunks, sipping strange cordials. The ship's healer was a woman, very beautiful, black-skinned and utterly forbidding. None of the ailing men dared to seize her hand except Yuri, the poor young valet from the cold north. She worked her magic upon him, gave him her cordials and a little silver charm. He believed she was his witch-mother from that hour; he had dreams all his life long of her lovely dark face and strange festivals in the lands below the world.

It was a charmed voyage, outside time, far from the uses of the world. Sharn Am Zor sat down to table with Mazura; Ragnafarr, unaffected by the seas' motion, bore them company. While the silent, dark-skinned servants plied them with dainties, the honor of the first and strangest tale went to the Prince of the Tulgai.

THE TALE OF RAGNAFARR

“It was eight years past,” he said in his deep, harsh voice, “not long after Princess Aidris, the Heir of the Firn, had visited us on her way into exile. As is our custom, in the spring, I set out with a party of ten to hunt the high and low trails. There is a certain river in the forest that runs for miles underground through huge caverns, and we use it to come to distant hunting grounds.

“This year, as we sailed peacefully down the river, which flows southeast to join the Ringist, there was a great noise of water and a spring torrent filled the caverns. One of our boats was lost at once. My own boat was damaged. I was carried on with four others, clinging to our frail craft. We came to the accursed grounds. I mean those places where the trees have been cut down.

“We came ashore on a strip of underground beach beside a rocky chimney; our plight was desperate. My old arrow-bearer, Forberan, the father of Lillfor, had been dashed against the rocks and his head was broken. We had nothing but the clothes upon our backs.

“I can hardly bring home to you, King Sharn, or to our captain here, what it is to be of the race of the Tulgai. In the history of our tangled relations with the Longshanks, there are many runes that tell of cruelty and betrayal. To be a creature of a lesser size is to be delivered over to the will of others. Now our only hope for our wounded comrade and for ourselves lay in making ourselves known to some of the larger race.

“I climbed up and looked out upon a scene of terrible desolation. We were deep into the territory known as the Adz, some miles, as we found later, from the town of Orobin, in a desert place from which all the treasures had been taken. No one lived close to our lookout, but in the distance a faint light burned in some kind of cottage. The edges of the forest could be seen miles away over open ground pocked with old diggings.

“We were too weak and our companion Forberan too sorely wounded to reach the trees alive. We decided to approach the cottage. I went out myself, with Orombek, first of all. I had a good smattering of the common speech and was of course the tallest.

“We crept swiftly over the rough ground to the humped house and peered through a slit in the wooden walls. In a strange room full of shards and scraps there sat one old woman. She crooned over her fire and stirred a pot and there were cats with her and a singing bird in a cage. We were pleased to see that she was a very small old woman, no taller than myself, with a limp and a humped back. I took courage and knocked upon her door, and when she came fearfully peering out, I bowed low and begged for her help. At last I let Orombek come forward.

“The old woman was delighted. She bade us all come in by the fire and settled us in her second largest chamber, filled with straw and meal sacks. We made a place for the old man Forberan, and Lillfor his daughter watched by him.

“Our friend in need was called Mother Riddisal or Use the Herb Woman. She lived from the scraps of gold and the few remaining precious stones that she scratched from the old mine workings. Down in the town, she told us sadly, lived her three grandsons, grown children of her eldest son, who had died of pit-cough like his father before him.

“I promised that she would be well rewarded for her kindness. I wore an armband of gold and I said this was hers, but it must not be shown in the town. She had better melt it down once we had gone.

“Next day we kept hidden; no one came near the cottage. About midday Forberan, our injured companion, died. We mourned his loss. Mother Riddisal took some of her own findings and went down to Orobin to buy food. We kept a close watch until she returned and afterwards, not because we distrusted her but because she might have let slip some word. When darkness fell, we stole out and buried Forberan. Then we ate the good food that Mother Riddisal had prepared and lay down to sleep.

“There is a word in our speech “sashogan” meaning “to be carried off in a bag”; it is what the Tulgai fear most and what we of the royal house fear most for our people. In the early hours of the next day, while it was still dark, the old woman's three grandsons stormed into her house and seized us all. She cheered them on; it was her plan. We were brought down the hill to a covered cart. Three laden sacks were flung aboard, and then, before I was flung in with bound hands, I was stunned by a blow on the head. That same morning we were taken over the Ringist, and when I came to myself we were deep into the land of Lien. Our forest home lay far behind.

“The Riddisal brothers brought us to a fairground in the town of Milnor and sold us there for twenty royals of gold. The transaction was secret; it took place in the tent of our new owner, a man called Born or Burrin. I was the least valuable property, being merely a dwarfish creature, not a “forest fairy,” but I spoke up to this Born. I told him I must stay or my companions would pine and die. Also I was the only one who had the common speech.

“Born was a middleman who hired or sold freaks and misbirths for the fairgrounds. We met with the human skeleton, a poor fellow with a wasting sickness, and the dancing greddles and Gorbelly, the Fattest Man, and Mistress Bart, the bearded woman. She took the measure of my companions and sewed them fanciful clothes out of scraps of fur and leather. For me she found in some trunk a suit of motley. She told me to learn tumbling, to be a fool, so that I might have some worth and be sold along with my friends. We were all moved in painted wagons clear across Lien to a larger fairground.”

“At Denwicktown where the two rivers meet,” put in Raff Mazura, “or so I would guess. I went tumbling for a season or two.”

“In the name of the Goddess!” burst out Sharn Am Zor. “Are stolen Tulgai on display in Lien? Are they bought and sold in this way?”

Ragnafarr and Mazura exchanged glances, and the Captain replied; “It is not lawful to put anyone on show against his will, Dan Sharn, and certainly unlawful to buy and sell human beings. But these laws are hard to enforce. I have never seen ‘forest fairies' set forth, but I remember a Kelshin pair who travelled with a troupe of miniature ponies.”

“This Born knew the law very well,” said Ragnafarr. “He kept us well hidden until he found the ideal purchaser for his ‘little treasures.' There came by night a sea captain and with him a courtier, a certain Lord Evert, who served an old, eccentric nobleman of Eildon, the Duke of Greddach, who kept a bestiary in his wide park. After a rough passage over the western sea, we were off-loaded in our cage, trundled through the misty countryside and set free in the old duke's park at Boskage. We all took to the trees again with goodwill. We lived a strange half-life, pleasing our new master by showing ourselves for visitors. We became ‘forest fairies' indeed, popping out to frighten ladies and knights on horseback.

“Yet I saw that our life was not as it should be. We could no longer live like true Tulgai. When the old duke died and his domain went unwatched for a time, I decided that we must overcome our fears. I stole a pony cart; my friends rode under the hood, and we simply left Boskage one autumn afternoon and took to the roads of Eildon. In the first town with a fairground, I found a band of tumblers and spoke to the master. Farr the Fool tumbled and sang for the first time with his Three Farthings. We were well received, and we earned our keep. We have done so ever since. We were safe enough. A little hairy man come out of the trees is something to be caught and sold, but a dwarf or a midget, living on a fairground, is a person of some estate, however humble.

“So we came at last to Lindriss. I knew more of the world by this time and understood that it would take an enormous amount of luck and of gold to get us home again. In time we became accustomed, as you have seen, to work in noble company.”

“And you trusted no one with your story?” asked Sharn Am Zor.

Ragnafarr sighed.

“I tried the truth first of all upon a circus master,” he said, “a powerful showman who rules over the Five Ways, the great year-round fair beyond the walls of Lindriss. He could hardly believe me. What did he know of distant lands, of a race living in the border forest? He pointed out a poor black man, old now and toothless, working as a roustabout, who had been billed once as the King of the Savages, from the Lands Below the World.

“More than a year ago we stood before Prince Ross Tramarn, whose magic allowed him to recognize many strangers. He spoke us fair and counselled patience. He matched one of my fool's couplets with another:

“‘Keep watch for the king whose way is long,

For only a king will hear your song . . .'

“Now I understand the meaning of his rhyme. We worked before the courts of Eildon, and we were put into your service by Prince Borss Paldo as a piece of foolery, my King. You have answered our prayers. So ends the Tale of Ragnafarr.”

Prince Ragnafarr and his listeners drank a round in silence, then Raff Mazura asked a question.

“Prince, you and your Tulgai have lived in the world. Will you be content to live in the forest?”

“I cannot tell,” said Ragnafarr. “First of all we must return from the dead and see our loved ones again.”

So the charmed voyage continued, and Sharn Am Zor went about on the caravel and sat at night on the deck, watching the sea and the stars. He came together several times with Raff Mazura, and they understood each other very well. As they sat one night watching the coast of the continent draw near, Mazura said, “The civil war in Mel'Nir is hot as ever. I spoke lately with a sea captain who had been in Krail, the city of the Westmark, ruled by Valko Firehammer.”

“My sister Merilla was there once,” said the king, “and Nerriot was in her service then, I think.”

The musician who was not far off bowed his head and played melodies of Mel'Nir and the Chyrian lands.

“There is a certain warrior in Krail, in Valko's service,” said Raff Mazura. “His name is Yorath, Yorath the Wolf, leader of a Free Company. Have you heard of this man, my King?”

“I have heard some strange tale from Dan Aidris,” said Sharn. “Was it from you she had it then?”

“I warrant Nerriot has heard the story, too,” said Mazura softly. “What d'ye say, Master Nerriot, to this Yorath of Mel'Nir?”

Aram Nerriot looked wise and nodded his head again.

“I saw this man once, Dan Sharn,” he said, “and your noble sister, the lady Merilla, saw him on the same evening in the citadel in Krail. He is a mighty warrior, the tallest and strongest of all the warriors of Mel'Nir that I have seen. Also he has a rough charm and a native wit. I have heard him trade words with the Vizier of the Markgraf himself.”