The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  Tomorrow on the tide, both boys would set sail from their homes, Jem in a Garun ship and Kras’ son Gadwess in a ship from the Dales. Somewhere midsea the ships would pass, flags would be lowered, then raised again. A silly bit of business when smooth sailing and a stiff wind were all that were wanted or needed. But Kras had insisted on it, and it had given them another bargaining chip with the Garuns. Carum hoped he could use it wisely.

  Glancing over at Jem, Carum wondered if the boy had any misgivings about leaving home and family. If he did, he hid them well. His color was high and his eyes sparkled. Carum suspected that Jem, who liked being the center of attention, would play The Prince to the hilt. I should have said to Scillia that no one would be looking at her or any of the rest of us today, that it was all Jem’s moment. But it was already too late to salve that particular wound.

  “Papa,” Jem said, without turning to look at Carum, as if he feared he might miss something, “Why don’t we have any trumpets?”

  “Because,” Jenna said before Carum could answer, “they separate the kings from the people. We do not do that in the Dales.”

  Jem muttered, “I like trumpets.”

  “You would!” Scillia spat at him.

  Only Corrie looked sad and a bit uncertain. He tugged at the back of his cotta.

  “Stand straight, Corrie,” Carum warned quietly.

  Corrie stopped fiddling with his cotta but his fingers still twitched, as if he did not know quite where to put them.

  At that moment the Garunian delegation stepped forward and bowed, a long, slow, elegant, and—Carum thought—somewhat mocking bow to the royal family. It was certainly a grander bow than any used in the Dales court. Full leg extended, a flowing hand movement that went down to the ankle of the extended leg then seemed to flutter and flow back up to the waist.

  Jem clapped his hands in delight and the chief Garun, a man with a moustache that waterfalled on either side of his mouth and ended in twin points, smiled indulgently.

  Nodding briefly at the bowing delegation, Carum signalled them with a pronouncedly languid hand to come closer. Only the man with the moustache left the protection of the group, walking toward them as if he were sailing through the space. When he arrived at the foot of the dais, standing so that his left shoulder nearly touched Jem’s, he bowed again, if anything more extravagantly than before.

  “Enough!” Jenna muttered, sounding like Skada in the explosion of that one word.

  “Your Majesties,” the Garun said, still bowing. “My name is Sir Rodergo Malfas.”

  “Rise, Sir Malfas,” Carum commanded, and the man straightened up smoothly.

  “My bonfis,” he said, handing Carum a scroll.

  “Thank you,” Carum answered, keeping his voice low and controlled. “I am sure they are in order.” But he glanced at the scroll anyway. It is my son, after all, he told himself. I should know something of the man he sails with.

  The scroll was an ancestor-line, males writ in large, gaudy, gilt-lined letters, the females in a smaller but still precise hand. Carum glanced at it quickly. Malfas was well-connected; Carum recognized many of the names. There was even a line, on the sinister side, that went directly to the king.

  “I am impressed,” Carum said in his still-careful voice, though he was not impressed at all. He measured a man by his actions, not his ancestors. Still he knew the Garuns counted a man differently. And a woman not at all! “Your bonfis …” he used Malfas’ own pronunciation: bon’fees. “Your bonfis are sterling indeed. You seem remarkably close to the throne.” He guessed that mentioning the bastard line would be both a compliment and an insult, and meant it to be.

  “Too kind,” Malfas responded, a bit coldly.

  A hit! Carum thought, feeling the bite of it. He wondered suddenly if that indulgence had done his little boy any good. He promised himself to be more careful.

  Jenna had remained absolutely still throughout their exchange. If she had any desire to look at the scroll or talk to Sir Malfas she did not communicate it by the slightest movement. Carum knew her dislike for the Garuns exceeded his own, but he also knew that the exchange of princes was a necessary evil for continued peace between their two countries, a peace hard-won scarce thirteen years earlier. Perhaps, he thought, perhaps her silence will not be read as anger or sorrow or hatred, all of which he was sure she was feeling. Perhaps the Garuns would read it through their own lenses as the silence of a woman who knows her place. No sooner had he thought this, than he regretted the thought.

  “Sir Malfas,” Carum said, “may I present Queen Jenna, called The Anna by our people. And these are our children—Scillia, Jemson, and Corrine.” He was taking a chance naming Jenna that way, though the Garuns knew they shared the throne in equal rule. He had not mentioned that Scillia was heir to the throne. This, too, the Garunians surely already knew and disapproved of. But it was simply not tactful to rub the fact in. Not here. Not now. There was much to diplomacy that irked Carum beyond measure; he knew it bothered Jenna even more.

  Sir Malfas bowed again, to each of them in turn, but it was to Jem that he held his bow the longest.

  Jem grinned, squaring his shoulders.

  “And now,” Carum intruded on the last and longest bow, “please join us for a feast, Sir Malfas. I have put you between Jemson and myself, that we may all get to know one another.”

  “Know one another?” Sir Malfas’ voice held a disapproving note.

  “In the Dales,” Jenna said suddenly, her own voice distant and cold, “we prize that kind of intimate knowledge.”

  “Then, madame,” Malfas said carefully, not calling her either Highness or Majesty, “as I am in the Dales, I shall endeavor to know you as well.” But it was clear he was referring to Jemson and Carum, not Jenna.

  Jem giggled and only with an effort kept from clapping his hands.

  Carum led the way with Jenna a reluctant step behind. They came off the dais, passed between Malfas and the children, split the Garunian delegation in two, and went through the door into the great dining hall where a feast, indeed, awaited them.

  THE SONG:

  FEAST SONG

  Bring in the pheasant, so pleasant to eat,

  Bring in the grouse and the lamb.

  Bring in the capons and salmon and geese,

  Bring in the sucklings and ham.

  Bring in the butter and cheese and the beans,

  The porridge, the barley, and oats.

  Bring in the ale and the red wines and white,

  Bring in the milk from the goats.

  Fast day to feast day to fast day again,

  We feed down from castle to cottage.

  One week we’re ample with courses to spare,

  Next week we dine upon pottage.

  Bring in the black breads, the brown breads, the gold,

  Bring in the honey-Sweet beer.

  Bring in the onions and garlic and cloves,

  Bring in the cup of good cheer.

  Bring in the berries, red, purple, and black,

  Bring in the caramelized candy.

  Bring in the fruit pies, the cakes, and the tarts,

  Bring in the possets and brandy.

  Fast day to feast day to fast day again,

  We feed down from casde to cottage.

  One week we’re ample with courses to spare,

  Dining on venison, wild pig, and bear,

  Finishing off with both apple and pear.

  Next week we dine upon pottage.

  THE LEGEND:

  There is a stone at the entrance to Berike Harbor called “Prince’s Landing.” It is a large grey boulder with a foot-shaped hollow in the top.

  The men of Berike say that stone was the site of the Prince Gadween’s first step on to Dalian land.

  The women say rather it was the last place the Anna’s son Jemuel stood before embarking for the Continent. Further, say the women, the hollow is always filled with salt water. It is not salt from the sea but from the tears the Anna shed
at her son’s leaving. When Jemuel returned a man, he was changed beyond all measure. And so, the women of Berike say, the hollow holds her tears to this day.

  THE STORY:

  The dinner was a long drawn-out affair, with too many courses and toasts to both sides of the ocean. Never any good at such festivities, and tongue-tied when it came to making toasts, Jenna longed to excuse herself, to take Jem out for a walk under the familiar stars.

  She had so much she wanted to tell him before he left, so much to remind him of. Stories of his birth, his first steps, his first word—which had been “crown.” She wanted to tell him again about how she and his father had met, parted, met again in the midst of battle. She wanted to warn him about the Garunians’ softness toward warfare, their hard-heartedness toward women. It would be her last chance to talk face-to-face with Jem for many years to come. She did not doubt that her letters to him would be routinely censored, or read first by the stone eyes of Kras and Malfas and their like.

  She had given Jem a small satchel of gifts she had put together, but privately, not in view of the Garunian delegation. They would certainly have made mock of her offerings. A packet of his favorite dried blackberries, so delicious on porridge, like a burst of late summer on the tongue. A leather-bound copy of Blessum’s Book of Wisdoms, with her own favorite sayings underlined in red ink. A book marker woven of marsh-rush and dyed purple with madder, with his name and a crown embroidered with gold thread; Scillia’s handiwork, all the more to be prized because it was so difficult for her to do. A pillow potpourri with rose petals from the castle garden, as well as lavender, orris root, and other spices from an old receipt she had found in the archives. If he slipped it under his bed linen, the bed would keep fresh for days on end. A ginger chewing ball in case he had more problems with his back teeth. And his old stuffed bear, resewn and rehatted by her own fingers. Jem had put the bear away only last year, but she thought that a boy in a new place would want to be surrounded by some of his familiar things.

  She remembered when she had traveled away from Selden Hame her first time. She’d been older than Jem, but had lived a much more restricted life, a life that was both more sheltered and yet harder than her own children’s upbringing. Four girls—she and Pynt and two others—had been sent off together on their year’s mission, parting at the confluence of two rivers. She—like Pynt—had carried a corn dollie in her pack. It had meant a great deal to her at the time.

  Jem’s bear—Brownie—could serve as his blanket companion in the foreign court. If, Jenna thought suddenly, the Garuns let him keep it. He had certainly seemed pleased enough with the things in the satchel, giving her a little hug and a half smile as he looked at every item.

  “Jenna!” It was Carum, calling on her for the next toast.

  She raised her glass reluctantly and looked around the long table, at Carum at the far end, his face slightly flushed with the wine. She looked at the Garun, Sir Malfas, who was so like one of her old enemies, she had trouble focusing on him. Then she looked at Jem beside him, his little face bright with the watered wine and the excitement, rather more the second than the first, she imagined. Then her eyes strayed to Corrie next to his brother, in whose mien pleasure and sorrow were mixed together. She let her eyes track widdershins around the banquet feasters until they rested, at last, on Scillia to her own right.

  Scillia was staring down at her plate.

  Jenna stood. She stood very straight, lifting her chin and looking as regal as she could. And looking as well—if she had but known it—like the goddess the country people thought her. She willed her voice to betray nothing.

  “I give you—my son,” she said, deliberate in the play on words. Then knowing she would have to say more, added, “We have a saying here in the Dales: What you give away with love, you keep.” She lifted the glass to her lips and drank the wine down quickly. There was little left in the bottom of the goblet anyway, and what remained was warm and slightly sour.

  “Jemson!” Corrie cried, leaping to his feet and holding his own cup aloft. “To the great adventure!”

  All around the table the feasters likewise rose. A few had clearly been refilling their cups to the brim for each toast. Marek seemed to have the most trouble getting up.

  Scillia, though, was a beat behind them all. “Mother,” she whispered and Jenna heard the strain in her voice even though the dining hall was noisy with the sound of chairs shifting against the floor. “Mother, you can still stop this. Do not let him go. It will be the worse for him.”

  Privately Jenna agreed. But she knew she could not stop the exchange now—not without dire consequences to the Dales. She feared the tide of history that could drown them all.

  “Be still,” she whispered back, as much to her own traitor heart as her daughter.

  Jem rose last of all. Raising his own glass, he said “I have something to say, too.” He hesitated a moment, then turned to Carum. “May I, father? May I say it?”

  At Jem’s hesitation, at the childishness of the request, Jenna’s eyes filled with tears.

  Carum nodded.

  Jem grinned broadly. “Today,” he said in his high, unbroken voice, “today I am a boy. Tomorrow I will be a man, taking a man’s journey, going as my country’s pledge to the land of the Garuns.”

  Carum mouthed the words with him. It was clearly a rehearsed speech, none the less charming for being rehearsed. Jenna had no idea when they had thought it up or had time to practice.

  Then Jem added, and this was certainly his own addition, “When I return, you will all know I am a man.”

  Involuntarily, Jenna shivered. There was too much of a threat in his little boy’s voice. She thought of the bear in the satchel. Brownie. Perhaps, she thought, I should have taken off the bow.

  “I thought it went well,” Carum said, taking off the gold-lined jacket. The collar of his silk shirt was grey with sweat. He sat down on their great bed to slip off his stockings. As he bent over, Jenna saw how thin his hair had gotten on top.

  I never noticed, she thought. She was standing in the dark corner of the room, her back against the wall. Neither moon-light nor candlelight illumined her. Being king has aged him so. Then she made a small grimace. We have both grown older. He is just too kind to say anything. Or to notice. She sighed.

  “You did not think so?” Carum asked, sitting up straight.

  “My son is going from me in the morning, perhaps forever, and you ask if things went well?” She had not meant to snap at him.

  “He is my son, too, Jenna. And we long ago agreed that this exchange was our only guarantee of peace.”

  “It is easy to agree when the day is far off.”

  It was Carum’s turn to make a face. “You knew this day would come eventually.”

  “I am like the prisoner waiting the executioner. As long as the blade is not on my neck, I do not think of the morrow.”

  “You are sounding remarkably like Skada.”

  “I am Skada,” Jenna said, moving out into the arc of the candlelight. “And on occasion she is me.”

  “Only on difficult occasions,” Skada said, suddenly standing by Jenna’s side. Dark sister and light, they mirrored their sorrow.

  This time it was Carum who sighed.

  “Jem is only a child,” Jenna said.

  “A boy,” agreed Skada.

  “And will be a man,” Carum said. “Even he recognizes this fact. Why can’t you?”

  “I would he become a man of the Dales,” Jenna answered.

  “As he is and will always be,” Carum countered.

  “He will be what they make of him,” said Skada.

  Carum stood up, and the one stocking he was still wearing slid down around his ankle, giving him a slightly comic look. But his face held anything but amusement. “We had the making of him for ten years. That making will prove true.”

  Jenna moved toward him till she was close enough to be touched. He did not reach for her, nor for Skada who stood just as near.


  Jenna’s eyes searched his and he did not flinch from her gaze, but Skada snorted. “Remember what the farmers in the South say: Better a calf of one’s own than a cow owned by another.”

  All three of them burst into laughter at that, more from the relief of tension than good humor.

  “I don’t know what that means,” Jenna said.

  “You will,” Skada answered.

  Only then did Carum put his hand out to draw Jenna to him and Skada, of course, came too.

  “Put out the light, Carum,” whispered Jenna.

  Skada laughed.

  In a swift, practiced movement, Carum turned and blew out the candle on the washstand. Then he lay back on the bed, and pulled Jenna, alone, to him.

  THE TALE:

  There was once a widow with three sons: Carum, Jerum, and little Jeroo. They lived in a hut in the middle of a dark and tangled wood. Their lives were hard and their days were long and there was precious little laughter in them.

  “Do not go to the north of here,” said the widow to her three. “For under the hill and under the dale lives the King of the Fey. He will steal you from me as he stole your father and that will make our lives harder than before.”

  For years the boys listened to their mam. And though they went east, and though they went west, and though they went south to pick blackberries and nuts, to gather windfalls and storm-blowns, they never—not even once—went north.

  One day, when they were all but men, Carum strayed into a path that was lined with bluets and set about with bay. He was so mazed by it, that twisty, windy path, that he walked a night and a day going due north and straight away was stolen by the fairies.

  When he did not come home, his mam wept and wailed and threw her apron up over her head. She knew then that what she had feared most had come at last. So she made the other two, who were still left at home with her, promise faithfully that they would never stray.