The Wide World's End (25 page)

“You don't take your heritage seriously enough, young Pr—Kelat,” the Uthar behind the table said sternly. “You there—Glennit. Quit your giggling and find out where Landron is. If he can't come here, come back here and lead these . . . these two back to him. Regent's orders.”

“As the Regent commands!” shouted Glennit enthusiastically, and ran like a shurgit out of the booth into the dim day.

“What happened to Harbim?” Deor asked, when the silence became uncomfortable—which was right away.

“He could tell you himself,” said the Uthar behind the table grimly, “if your friend there hadn't broken his jaw.”

Kelat sheathed his sword and looked ashamed and angry.

“Never mind it, my friend,” Deor said. “I bet it was a rotten jaw that deserved breaking.”

“I don't know,” Kelat said guiltily. “He was always riding me about something. Saying I wasn't good enough to be the next King of the Vraids. As if anyone ever said that was going to happen.”

“How many of you are there, anyway?”

“Too many.”

“Three hundred and fifty and three,” said table-Uthar proudly, “as of this morning, when the King's ninth alternate wife gave birth to a son.”

From the crazy look in Kelat's eyes, they were about to see the color of his spearblade again. Deor silently said a prayer to Oldfather Tyr for something to calm down the young man or at least distract him. Then he readied himself to tackle Kelat if he drew his weapon again. Prayer was all right, but Deor strongly believed that Those-Who-Watch helped those who helped themselves.

A new shape darkened the doorway of the booth: a very tall man, broad-shouldered, his back straight, and with a majestic mane of gray hair and a beard to match. Deor took beards seriously, and he felt immediately that this was a man to respect.

“My boy!” cried the old man and rushed in. “I heard you were back! We were so worried about you, your mother and I.”

“You don't even remember my name. Or my mother.”

“Your name's Uthar, of course. And you mother was Kyllia—is Kyllia. We had a late supper just last month. A very late supper! I think we understand each other, oh? Oh? Oh?”

“I understand you perfectly, sire.”

“She's as fertile a cow as any I've put in kindle. How many of you are there? Seven?”

“Five brothers and four sisters, sire.”

“Oh, the girls don't matter.”

“I disagree, sire.”

“Shut your mouth, you insolent little prick!” hissed table-Uthar.

The king's pale face also darkened with anger, but then he smiled. “Not at all, not at all!” Lathmar said. “The next King of the Vraids will have to think for himself.”

Kelat said evenly, “I'll mention it to him when I see him, sire.”

Deor felt it was time for a diplomatic stomp on Kelat's toes. He narrowly missed—the boy had superb reflexes—but his action drew the king's attention to him and away from the misbehavior of the Prince Uthar called Kelat.

Lathmar the Old looked Deor up and down and said, “Hm! You're not one of mine, are you?”

“No, sire,” Deor said politely. “I'm Deor syr Theorn, Thain to the Graith of Guardians,
harven
-kin to your regent, Lady Ambrosia Viviana. I'm honored to meet you.”

“Hm! From the Wardlands, eh? Wardic dwarf?”

“Yes, sire,” said Deor, though he didn't really like the sound of that.

“Well, we do very well for ourselves out here, you know,” the great king said. “Lady Ambrosia has hundreds of dwarves down from the mountains sometimes. They do a lot of our digging, you see.”

“Yes, sire.”

“I don't understand all of the digging, as a matter of fact, but the Lady Ambrosia assures me it is necessary and that it might as well be done by a pack of filthy dwarves as by honest Vraidish gentlemen.”

“Majesty,” whispered table-Uthar nervously.

“Oh? Oh? Oh?” the old king said in evident confusion. “Oh? Oh? Oh? Oh? Have I said something untoward? Set me straight, boys. Set me straight. Keep me honest. What was I saying?”

“You were insulting my friend, sire,” said Kelat coolly.

“Uh, what? No! No! I don't think so. Was I?” The doddering old man turned to Deor with a tear in his eye.

“Don't mind it, your majesty,” said Deor. “We do like to dig. And it's no fun if you stay clean while you do it; that's a fact.”

“Fun, is it? Fun. Hm. I would like to have fun, I think. Perhaps I should try it. Yes, I think I will try it. You—you there. You—Prince Uthar. Get me a shovel. That's what you dig with, isn't it? I'm going to have some fun, for once.”

“Alas, sire, I believe it's time for your nap,” gurgled table-Uthar in a fit of desperate invention.

“Nap,” said Lathmar, Great King of All the Vraids, quietly. “Nappy nap nap. Yes. I would like a nap. Where—where's my nurse? Where's Magistra Gullinga? I—I—”

The old king wandered out as abruptly as he had wandered in, and both of the Prince Uthars present drew a sigh of relief.

“They shouldn't let him wander around alone,” Kelat said.

“That Gullinga frail is no better than a paper hat in the rain,” said table-Uthar.

“If
she
has a son he won't be named Uthar,” Kelat agreed.

“Don't be so sure. He wasn't joking about that late supper with Kyllia, although it was Kyllia from Fishtown, not your mother.”

“My mother's dead.”

“And resting undisturbed. I thought you'd want to know. There's not much the old fool won't stick his penis in, except—”

Table-Uthar's voice faded to a whisper, faded out entirely.

Deor turned to see his old friend Ambrosia in the doorway. He was about to speak to her when she drew the sword at her hip and struck at the gaping prince behind the table.

Kelat uttered an inarticulate cry of protest and, drawing his spear, leapt between Ambrosia and her intended victim. The blades clashed and Ambrosia stepped back, on guard, watchful.

Morlock walked into the booth and said dryly, “Kelat. Deor. Prince Uthar. Ambrosia, what are you doing?”

“What are
you
doing, Uthar Kelat?” Ambrosia said. “Unless I'm mistaken, you and Uthar Olthon detest each other. Yet here you are risking death for him. You
are
risking death—aren't you aware of it? Before your mother's grandparents were born I was learning to fence against the best swordsman in the world.”

“Second-best,” Deor said firmly. He admired Morlock very much, but the truth was the truth. (Morlock favored him with a rare smile, but no one else seemed to notice he had spoken at all.)

Kelat shook his head and held his ground. “I can't let that. . . . I have to do something about it.”

“All right,” said Ambrosia patiently. “But
why
?”

“He spoke the truth!” shouted Kelat. “Someone should make that old man keep his pants on! You can't kill someone for telling the truth!”

“A disappointing answer,” Ambrosia said, sheathing her sword. “Of course I can kill someone for speaking truth. If I had killed your half-brother for doing so, he wouldn't have been the first man I killed for that very reason. A ruler of men does what she must, Kelat. You must learn that, or you will never be a ruler of men.”

“So what?” muttered Kelat, and sheathed his own sword.

She shrugged her crooked shoulders and turned to open-mouthed, motionless table-Uthar. “Prince Uthar Olthon, remind me of your task here.”

The hapless prince closed his mouth with a snap, opened it and closed it again without speaking, and finally managed to say, “Lady Regent, I keep track of the whereabouts and well-being of all the princes.”

“And you do that from in here?”

“Lady, I recruited a cadre of the younger princes to run messages for me around the camp. They either know where everyone is or know who knows. You called it an ingenious system once.”

“And so it is. From now on, though, you have a single task. You are to keep track of King Lathmar at all times and keep him out of trouble. That does not mean—” she paused to glare at Kelat “—making him keep his pants on. It does mean making sure he takes them off only in private, and does not otherwise tarnish the majestic name his grandfather wore so proudly in another age of the world.”

“Yes, Lady. I will, Lady. May I use my young messengers?”

“No, your successor will need their services.”

“Very well, Lady Regent.”

There was a brief silence.

“Prince Uthar Olthon,” Ambrosia said gently.

“Yes, Lady?”

“Where is King Lathmar?”

“I—” Olthon sighed and got to his feet. “Your pardon, gentles,” he muttered, and left the booth.

“I feel like a walk, myself,” Ambrosia said. “Won't you join me, my friends?”

They filed out of the booth's narrow door into Uthartown. Ambrosia strode alongside Morlock, and Deor and Kelat walked behind.

It was strange for Deor to look on the decent-sized village and know that everyone (or almost everyone) in it was named Uthar, and that each Uthar was also the son of the demented old man he had just met. There were a pair of decrepit old geezers playing drafts—sitting on the ground between a couple of booths, with a board scratched into the dirt and chunks of rock for counters.

“Haha,
Uthar
! King me, you bitch of a bitch's bastard!” crowed one of the relics.

“I'll king you with this,” replied his opponent, briefly grabbing his sagging trousers at the crotch.

These princes looked far more decrepit than their father. But some of their half-brothers were playing naked in the mud nearby. Deor was no judge of human pups, but he guessed these were two or three years old at most.

“Lady Ambrosia,” said Deor, “can you explain to me about all these Uthars?”

“The next king must be named Uthar, so—”

“I do understand that,” Deor interrupted, earning a respectful look from Kelat. “But is it quite usual in the unguarded lands for a man to have hundreds of children?”

“Well, that's my fault, I suppose,” Ambrosia admitted.

“Madam,” said Deor, not knowing what else to say.

Ambrosia looked back at Deor and then quizzically at Morlock. “He fears there may be some scandal,” Morlock explained.

“Oh? Well, it's not scandalous. A long time ago—well, Lathmar and I, we helped each other out of a tight place.”

“Doesn't sound less scandalous,” Morlock observed.

“Shut up. I assure you, Deortheorn, he was too old for me, even then. But I owed him a favor, and what he wanted in repayment was an extended lifespan. He felt he had no heir worthy of the crown, which was true enough, and he wanted to conquer an empire in the wide world beyond the Vale of Vraid. I managed to arrange it. But the effects left him—well, they left him rather single-minded. That was eighty-seven years ago, almost to the day.”

“Ah.”

“Things were going well enough, though. He might have seen a capable son carry his dream closer to its conclusion. Until the world began to die, and we had to turn our energies to survival.”

“How are you and the Vraids doing?” Deor asked. “Our journey through the Lacklands was grim indeed.”

“Morlock told me some of it. Other parts I can guess. Yes, those lands are pretty well empty. The farmers there would not change their ways. Some crops respond better to the shorter growing year—there are greenhouses and other resources. And it has been a pretty good year for mushrooms, if you can tell the good from the bad. The sea is not much harmed yet, though some waters have been over-fished.”

“So your Vraids are more adaptable?”

“Not really, but they follow orders, you see, which is close enough, where I'm concerned.”

Kelat grumbled, but nobody took his bait.

“Here's Prince Uthar-Null,” Ambrosia remarked. “Greetings, Vice-Regent!”

Walking toward them up the unpaved street was Prince Uthar-Null, a man about a half-century old with a long, clever face and a long, thin beard and a fringe of silver hair around a shining pink scalp. Next to him walked young Uthar Glennit, whose shining eyes were fixed on Lady Ambrosia.

“Vice-Regent am I now?” asked long-suffering Uthar-Null. “Well, it sounds better than Mayor of Uthar-Town. What are my duties?”

“Every one of mine until I return. I have to go on a trip west and south, and then, it may be, to the far north. Keep a lid on things here for me, eh?”

“I'll try.” Uthar-Null pointed with a disdainful thumb towards the sun. “Something about that?”

“Maybe.”

“Good. Good. If anyone can do anything about it, you can.”

“We'll try. This is my brother, Morlock Ambrosius, by the way: Prince Uthar-Null, Morlock.”

They clasped hands.

“And me,” Deor said, coming around Morlock's side. “Deor syr Theorn, at your service.”

He grabbed Uthar-Null's proffered hand, although that wasn't really a dwarvish custom.

“Theorn, eh?” said Uthar-Null shrewdly. “You've come a long way from the Deep Halls under Thrymhaiam.”

“Well worth it, sir. I never thought to see so many Uthars in my life.”

“Nightmarish, isn't it? What the next king will do with them all is beyond my telling.”

“What's traditional?”

“A quiet execution of rival heirs was apparently not unheard of. I don't think any one of us will stoop to that. But they say that kingship does strange things to the mind.”

“And—pardon me for asking—why are you Null?”

“Many of us are Null,” Uthar-Null said without apparent offense. “It means we are no longer in the succession. Therefore we can wield certain types of power and also marry and have children of our own, which is a great comfort I sometimes think.”

“Only sometimes? Never mind: we do things differently under Thrymhaiam.”