The Summer's King (27 page)

“Yes,” says Merilla in a low voice. “Yes, he is changed. In Eildon his spirit was touched . . . subdued. Since then he has been a better and a happier man. Some would say that he has simply grown up.”

“I ask for a particular reason,” says Zabrandor. “I have a notion that the king's wisdom and patience may be tested.”

The old lord who has been watching the several doorways to the hall breaks off and rises from his chair. A young woman in a long grey cloak trimmed with fox fur comes in from the terrace. Her armed servant prowls before the door.

“My lady,” says Zabrandor, “pray come to the fire.”

Derda Am Inchevin bows gravely to Lord Zabrandor, clasps hands with her cousin, and brushes Merilla's warm cheek with her cold lips. She is very deliberate in manner, almost unnaturally self-possessed.

“This is a strange hour for our meeting,” says Lord Zabrandor. “I hope you had no difficulty . . .”

“The old aunt is sleeping,” says Derda with the hint of a smile.

Merilla finds the Starry Maid a puzzling figure, more difficult to befriend and to love than she would have thought, knowing the warm-hearted family of the Chiel and her dear Aunt Parn. Yet Derda is very beautiful—another beauty at court, no denying it—Merilla admits with an inward sigh.

“If you will talk to me of marriage,” says Derda, “I will hear but make no bonds. I may accept only small tokens of a suitor's affection.”

Zabrandor shakes his head, taken aback, but Merilla laughs.

“I expect you are plagued with foolish suitors, cousin,” she says.

“My kerns will whip them if they offend me!” says Derda.

“My lady Derda, Dan Merilla . . .” begins Zabrandor.

“Why do you use such a title?” interrupts Derda. “Why do you say Dan Merilla when she is no longer the king's heir?”

“For my part Lord Zabrandor need use no title at all,” says Merilla. “Speak on, my lord.”

“I make a patrol of the east and the northeast every year,” says Zabrandor. “What I heard beyond the river Chind, in the foothills and about the town of Threll, was disquieting.”

“My father hunts in those lands,” says Derda, unsmiling. “He will not have the game disturbed and the fishing spoilt. By incomers.”

“Yet there are incomers,” says Zabrandor. “The brigands of the Skivari and their leader Rugal. What do you know of him, Lady Derda?”

“He dares nothing in our lands,” says Derda. “We are the Inchevin. Elsewhere he destroys the villages, takes what he needs, women and so on. He impales the village elders if he believes they have gold. He is said to be very rich.”

“There have been rumors as far south as Chiel Hall,” says Merilla. “But this terrible brigand has not approached our land.”

Derda laughs aloud.

“The Chiel have no land!” she says.

“Has your father, Lord Inchevin, gone to the aid of the free towns and the villages attacked by Rugal?” asks Zabrandor. “It would be better, my lady, if he did. For I tell you plainly that I have heard he makes common cause with this savage chieftain, that he has received him in Inchevin Keep!”

Derda lowers her eyes then looks up through her lashes, first at Zabrandor, then at Merilla. It is a flirtatious trick that does not become her; she smiles, but her eyes do not smile.

“We have made no bond with the Skivari,” she says softly. “Rugal came once to the keep. He sued for my hand. He had heard of the Starry Maid of Inchevin.”

“Derda,” says Merilla earnestly, “you have close ties of kinship with the house of the Zor, you have friends, you have come to court. This brute Rugal is not fit to approach you or any young maid of high estate!”

“My mother is dead now for five years,” answers Derda harshly. “She lived in exile, and my father had no benefit from her once the dowry was spent. I am the Heir of the Inchevin! The runes have told that I will bring golden treasure to our house.”

So saying, she rises up from her place by the fire, nods to Merilla and Lord Zabrandor and sweeps off out of the hall. Zabrandor gives a deep sigh.

“Poor child!”

“It is not easy to make amends to the Inchevin,” says Merilla. “They are a wild folk.”

“I remember Inchevin,” says Zabrandor. “I remember Zarah Am Zor, the king's heir for years, until Sharn Am Zor was born. She was something of a beauty, as I recall, very quiet, not so cheerful and lively as your Aunt Parn, her younger sister. Ilmar of Inchevin was young, proud, dashing, always a little outlandish. What kind of man is he now? I fear for his whole clan!”

“What of this brigand, Rugal?”

“I must speak to the Daindru. We will send troops to the northeast. I hope Inchevin is warned by his daughter and casts off all links to the Skivari.”

Merilla gives a rueful smile.

“Derda has been spoken of as a bride for Carel,” she says, “but she is too fierce, and he will not take any wife just yet.”

“Perhaps Inchevin and his daughter should be given what they crave,” says Zabrandor. “Gold. Gold from the treasury of the Daindru as the price of their loyalty.”

The old lord raises his head as if he sniffed the air. It is broad daylight now, but the wintry sunshine hardly penetrates the hall. Zabrandor bends forward and stirs up the logs in the long fireplace with an iron poker.

“I think we are observed,” he murmurs. “The captain stands yonder in the entry, but there is a fellow on the landing of the stair behind the tapestry. I would not have all this known . . .”

“Perhaps it is one of the children,” says Merilla, just as low. “There is a door behind that hanging: one of the secret passages. We used them for hide-and-seek.”

Soon afterwards she takes her leave of Lord Zabrandor and goes sedately up the grand staircase. Suddenly, at the landing she whirls about, pulls back the thick tapestry and wrenches open the small door hidden in the old reed panelling. Nothing. Merilla peers into the cold, echoing passageway. Far away she hears the sound of running footsteps. Something catches the light at her feet. Merilla stoops down quickly, then closes the door and lets the hanging fall. She shakes her head to Lord Zabrandor below and goes on up the stairs. She glances at the shining object, which the watcher let fall: It is a small oval of ivory or bone, highly polished, shaped like a giant thumbnail. If this token does not lie, Merilla now knows who watched and listened and it fills her with a dull sadness.

The king has lost none of his restless energy; on winter afternoons when the whole court is stricken with drowsiness, he goes upstairs eagerly to the room where he once gave his little suppers. There he finds a “new man,” one with energy and obsession to match his own. Trig Grünweg is a master-builder come out of Lien, a dry and unimposing little man, a genius.

On a large trestle table there is a model, slowly growing, complete and perfect in every detail. Sharn Am Zor, absorbed, shakes sand upon a pathway, then turns to cutting out a parchment balustrade. Master Trig, who simply tolerated the king at first, has discovered that he is skilled with his hands. More important his taste is good, if unformed.

Trig Grünweg and his royal apprentice are designing Chernak New Palace, a gift to the king from his shrewd and loving queen. It is a project dear to his heart, an occupation. In the first days of their marriage, she rode out alone with him south of Chernak Hall to a piece of land, well-watered, flat, with richer soil than is usual upon the plain and hence a grove of fine trees. They walked about, arms entwined, and planted two acorns, which Lorn found there. The seeds were sown. There will be a new palace of stone, together with gardens, walks, fish ponds, storehouses, all the appurtenances of a palace. The king is just as interested in perfect drainage as in rooms of state.

Grünweg, designer of the royal rose gardens of Lien and of the Wilderness rose park, has lacked employment of late. His patron, the Lord of Grays, is at loggerheads with the Markgraf and his vizier. The talk continues, year in year out, that fair Zaramund of Grays, the Markgrafin, will be put aside because she is childless. Grünweg has come gladly into the Chameln lands and found the commission of his lifetime, his true memorial.

It is in this room that Queen Lorn acquaints the king with the very thing that the Lord of Grays has feared for so long. She comes in, one afternoon not long after the raising of the tree, and sits quietly by the fire, waiting for Sharn to finish his consultation over the orangery. He sees at last that she is cast down; he hurries over to take her hand.

“What is it?”

He has never in his life been so close to anyone. He is impatient with words and wishes he could know her thoughts.

“I have spoken to poor Veldis,” she says, “and to Mayrose, her sister.”

“Come,” says Sharn, “do not share their tears. It is some little thing . . .”

“No,” says Lorn. “I fear it is not. Do you recall the third sister, the youngest, Fideth of Wirth?”

“Yes.” He nods. “I remarked all three sisters at Zilly's wedding and later at Larkdel. Veldis is the beauty of the family; Mayrose is a bit of a hoyden, I think—she reminds me of Rilla. Then there is sweet Fideth, fairhaired and well-behaved.”

“She has come to harm,” says Lorn. “She is in Balufir at the house of an old gentlewoman, her Aunt Vane, and she has come to harm, as the saying goes.”

“In the name of the Goddess! That poor child Fideth?”

He can only think that the poor girl has been the victim of an attack.

“She has been seduced by a nobleman,” says Lorn. “Poor old Sir Berndt feels this dishonor very keenly and so do her sisters. Iliane Seyl made some slighting remark.”

“Is Fideth with child?”

“Not yet.”

“Could she not marry?” asks the king.

It seems to him an ordinary misfortune.

“The man is married,” says Lorn. “He is of very high estate, in fact the highest in the land of Lien . . .”

“But that is the Markgraf! Uncle Kelen!”

Lorn bows her head. Sharn is ashamed and disgusted.

“He is nearly fifty years old!” he exclaims. “And the girl . . .?”

“Not yet seventeen,” says Lorn. “The Markgraf has promised marriage. He will put aside the Markgrafin Zaramund at last.”

The king casts a glance at Grünweg, busy with his plans by the window, and thinks of the rose gardens in Balufir.

“Poor Zaramund,” he says. “She was always a friend to me and to Merilla and Carel when we were in exile.”

“There is more,” says Lorn. “Mayrose has the story. The old knight, finding that this Aunt Vane had so betrayed his trust, sent Brother Basil, their house priest, to poor Fideth. This brother met with the head of his priestly order, the Brother Harbinger from Swangard. These two approve the match! Fideth is for them the spoiled vessel, the besmirched woman who will bring Kelen to the light by her sin.”

“That is hateful!” says the king. “This lord of light puts forth some dark doctrine. There will be trouble in Lien . . . the Lord of Grays . . .”

Abruptly he raises his head and calls to Grünweg. The Master-builder leaves his work unwilling and comes shuffling between the tables with his fine quill still poised. He bows to the queen and seems to recollect himself.

“Master Grünweg,” says Sharn Am Zor, “what kind of man is your former patron, the Lord of Grays?”

“Surely, Sire, you knew him . . .”

“I saw him at court in Balufir,” says the king, “a grandiose figure, more richly dressed than Kelen himself. How will he behave when his worst fears come to pass, when his daughter, the Markgrafin Zaramund, is declared unfit for marriage and set aside?”

Grünweg wrinkles his brow and smooths a hand over his bald pate.

“He will foreclose!” he says promptly. “The lord is very choleric and stubborn. He will try to collect all the outstanding monies and mortgages owing to him from the Markgraf and his friends . . . nay, from the state coffers, the realm of Lien itself!”

He looks at the king and his queen politely, having given his opinion, and returns to his drawing table by the window.

“Now I must beg
you
not to be cast down,” says Lorn softly. “These are not your troubles, my dear lord.”

“By the Goddess,” he says, teasing. “I hear of too many young women, chits of girls, troubling the rulers of Hylor! If it is not Derda Am Inchevin and her clan, suspected of consorting with brigands, then it is poor Fideth of Wirth, causing scandal and unrest in the court at Balufir!”

“Scandal in that court is nothing new,” says Lorn, smiling.

“Something should be done!” says the king. “I will speak with Aidris. We may send some envoy into Lien.”

Thoughts and memories of Lien trouble Sharn Am Zor all through the Ashmoon and the feast days. Watchers in the palace often see the king stride across the grounds through the snow to a small gateway in the wall. In the street he dismisses his two guards who wander off gratefully into a pleasant quarter of Achamar called the Old Market.

The king knocks upon the door of an old roundwood house and stoops down to enter Hazard's new home. The poet has a gift of settling, taking possession of a place and making it his own. Taranelda, who had resigned herself to the role of a blind poet's wife, leading a hand-to-mouth existence, now finds herself the mistress of a lively establishment. There are two scribes and a maidservant, not to mention the three cats, the dog and the garden goat.

When Taranelda goes marketing down the broad street among the quaint wooden houses, she finds herself in an elaborate setting for a masque. The Old Market is full of old friends. There is Jem Toogood, the poet, scribbling away at his place by the tavern window. There in the new printing shop is Hogrim, Buckrill's own master painter, lured away from Lien. There is Emyas Bill, the painter of portraits, and surely that old woman told fortunes in Balufir, not far from the Tumblers' Yard. Aram Nerriot, the musician, frequents the quarter, and a nest of minstrels from Athron have moved into an old stable.