The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  “Where eagles dare not rest?”

  Jenna smiled. “Not quite that high, perhaps. But there is nothing at the top to stop the wind now.”

  Jenna had not remembered the woods being such a tangle of beech and oak, whitethorn and larch. Still, thirteen years more undergrowth certainly made walking difficult, and the sharp ascent of the trail soon had them both puffing badly.

  Luckily the higher they got, the sparser the trees and bushes. Pretty soon they could see clear space ahead.

  “At last,” Jenna said.

  “M’dorah?”

  “At least the M’doran plain.”

  As the path crested over the last rise, Scillia could see what Jenna meant. Before them was a wide, treeless plateau that was covered with gigantic, towering rocks rising like teeth from the ground. Some of the rocks were needle points, others huge towers of stone.

  The sight, even a second time, was so stunning that for a moment Jenna could not speak.

  Breaking the silence at last, Scillia asked, “But which one is M’dorah?”

  Jenna pointed to the far side of the plain. “That one, the broad crowned rock there. Once it had a wooden hame atop, an aerie even eagles envied.”

  Scillia squinted. “How did they get up there?”

  “By a hinged ladder of rope and wood.”

  “I mean the first M’dorans.”

  Jenna laughed. “Arguing first causes like a child learning of Great Alta?”

  “But …”

  “How do you think they got up?”

  Scillia shrugged. “Surely there are steps carved in the stone. Or handholds and footholds.”

  Jenna shook her head.

  “Or a slope around the back?”

  Again Jenna shook her head, and without a word more began walking across the plain. Still speaking, Scillia had to run to catch up.

  “A kite! They made a kite of sticks and cloth. A huge kite, and flew someone to the top.”

  Jenna did not stop her strides. “Now that is one method I had not considered. I had no kites as a child.”

  “But then how …”

  “Wait till we get there to ask. Save your breath for the walk. We want to be there before dark.”

  They walked for well over an hour before reaching the foot of M’dorah’s rock. It was a grey granite, sheer for ten feet, then bowing out, muffin-like, before rising again in another sheer cliff face for thirty or forty feet. There were half a dozen ladders hanging over the sides, disappearing at the top of the rounded surface.

  “Look, we can still climb up,” Scillia cried.

  “Perhaps,” Jenna said. “But remember how old these ladders are, how many years they have weathered here. They are but rope and wood. Consider this well—are they still safe?”

  Scillia looked both chastened and angry. “But to have come so far …”

  “Far enough,” Jenna said, suddenly recalling Skada’s words.

  “Do you mean me to fail after all?” Scillia asked, her voice holding a tone of accusation that had been missing since the ash tree.

  “I do not mean you to fall,” Jenna said. “Caution is but the first part of any adventure.”

  “So says The Book of Light?”

  “So says the Book of Jenna,” Jenna replied patiently.

  Scillia ignored her and went to the nearest rope ladder. She gave it a strong one-handed tug. “See, Mother, it’s …” But whatever else she was going to say about the ladder ended when the pieces of rope near the top end gave way, sending a dozen wooden rungs showering down on her. “Ow … ow … ow!”

  Jenna bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  All of the rope ladders proved as flimsy, rotted away by the years of weather.

  “Never mind,” Jenna said, “we have yet to check the opposite side.”

  “Will any ropes there be stronger?” asked Scillia wearily. “Would sun and rain be less harsh around back?”

  “It is,” Jenna pointed out, “the south-facing side. Stranger things have been known to happen.”

  So they made their way around the rock, finding a half dozen more rope ladders, none of them strong enough to bear their weight.

  In the end, they could not find a way up without constructing an entire scaffolding. And that—as Jenna pointed out—was something two women and four hands could not manage. “We would need a whole crew of willing workers.”

  “Then I have failed,” Scillia said.

  “Failed in what?”

  “To find my mother root.” Scillia looked up to the top of the rock which was now barely visible in the fading light.

  “You found the grave of the one who first bore you in her arms. And you have ridden far with the mother who has loved you for thirteen years. What else are you seeking, child?” Jenna could not keep the exasperation from her voice.

  Still staring at the top of the rock, Scillia said, “More than ash, Mother. More than grave dirt. Probably more than there is to find.”

  “I found my birth mother,” Jenna said suddenly. “Or at least I found out who she was.”

  “You never said …”

  “Because it made no difference. She had given me birth all right, but she was not my mother where and when it mattered. Blood counts a great deal less than love.”

  “At least you knew,” Scillia said. “My birth mother could be a farm wife or a beer maid.” She looked once more up to the top of M’dorah.

  “Or she could be dead,” Jenna said. “Mine was.”

  “I only hope she is dead,” Scillia said. “Else I would hate her for giving me up.”

  “I expect that whoever she is—or was—farmwife or beer maid or princess, for that matter, you will know who she is when you are queen.”

  “Why do you say that?” The sun was dropping fast and shadows played around Scillia’s face, making her suddenly look far older than her years, making her look—Jenna thought—like a stranger.

  “Because when a one-armed queen is on the throne, anyone who ever gave away a one-armed daughter will come forward to claim you,” said Skada. There was only a sliver of moonlight, but it was enough for Skada to appear since there was not a cloud in the sky. “And blood counts most when there is coinage at stake. And a crown.”

  “Skada!” both Jenna and Scillia cried together.

  “Now are we going to stand around this forsaken plain till we freeze to death, or are we going to pull those blankets around us and jog-trot back to our horses? I am ready for a good bed and home.”

  THE MYTH:

  Great Alta took the girl child and set her on the eagle’s nest. “Fly!” quoth Great Alta, “And I shall be the wind beneath your wings.”

  Then Great Alta set the girl on the ground. “Crawl. And I shall be the ground below your belly.”

  At last Great Alta set the girl on the throne. “But sit. And I shall be the shadow behind you that all but you shall be able to see.”

  three

  Turnings and Returnings

  THE MYTH:

  Then Great Alta took the boy and turned him ten times around. “Now,” quoth she, “you are a man.”

  The new man took his first steps and fell down, crying, “How can I be a man when I still walk like a boy?”

  “Take smaller steps,” quoth Great Alta.

  THE LEGEND:

  In the town of South Berike there is a ghost of a drowned boy who wanders the harbor on the fourth day of spring. Some say he is a fisher lad, part of a six-man skimmer that overturned in a storm off the Skerry Light.

  Some say he was the cabin boy on the Ginger Pye, the factory ship lost in the Great Storm of ’37, one of seventeen bodies that washed ashore in two days.

  But some say he is the lost prince Jemuel, drowned in a rough crossing, come home at last and no one left to welcome him ashore, so he wanders the strand forever.

  THE STORY:

  It was thirteen years before Jemson came home, in the late springtide, sailing under an oyster-colored sky that tumbled out rain for
the disembarking.

  His father had turned fifty in the fall and was failing quickly, or so it was said by the Garuns, though that was not the real reason Jemson had returned. Thirteen years had been the term set by the hostage agreement. It was time that both boys sailed for home. Jemson would have stayed if he could, but he knew where duty lay, unpleasant though it might be.

  Was Carum indeed failing? Jemson could not tell. His father seemed as tall as ever, a mighty oak under whose branches saplings did not thrive.

  Well, Jemson knew that was not strictly true. Corrie had turned into a big, fleshy man with cheeks like polished apples. If not an oak, at least an ash. And an ass, too! He laughed silently at his own rough joke, but without any real humor.

  And I, first born, am the short one in the family. Even my mother is taller. That Scillia was taller than he did not count. She was not of his blood really, and blood—he knew well—was the coinage of royalty. Besides, she was only a girl. And a homely girl at that. Hardly worth flattering.

  He had landed in Berick Harbor with less fanfare than he had left. Only a small bustle of townfolk was there to greet him, people he supposed he should have recalled well but did not.

  There had been a greying woman, Petra, at the head of the bustle who claimed she was his mother’s dear friend. “Do you not remember me, Jemmie? I’m the one who can always make your mother laugh.”

  “A talent, madam, I never had,” he said, bowing his head to her. But there was no warmth in his greeting, no pretense at intimacy.

  Her husband, Jareth, was equally familiar in his address, calling him “Young Jem,” and speaking of his youthful antics, all of which made Jemson sound like an absolute jackass of a child. Jemson did not remember any such child and, besides, a royal should never be remembered as less than perfect.

  “My title, sir, is Prince Jemson, and I prefer you address me that way.” Better to begin as he intended to go on. Old Faulk, his Garunian tutor, would have given him grudging, grunting approval for the way he handled that. It pleased him enormously that Jareth flushed from the reproval and his wife’s eyes got like hard pebbles. Satisfied that the lesson had gone home, Jemson turned away to look at the troop waiting for him.

  There were seven guardsmen under the command of a sloppy veteran who would have to be reprimanded later, for his jacket buttons were not properly shined and he should never have led out an uneven number of men on such an assignment. Six or eight would have been proper. Twenty or thirty would have been better. A hundred would not have been amiss. Jemson ground his teeth in anger, a sound he no longer heard, but one that set the grey woman to shaking her head.

  The return of the eldest son and heir to such a greeting! Jemson could scarce credit it. Neither his father nor mother—nor yet his brother nor sister—had bestirred themselves to meet his ship, though of course the ship was five hours early and the weather drear. He knew that Gadwess, for all that he was not the Garunian heir, was to be hailed on his return with a parade of hundreds and a great banquet whatever the time, whatever the kind of day. Crown Prince Malwess had included Jemson in on the planning. There were to be minstrels and jugglers and an indoor archery shoot which Malwess would no doubt win. He was a wonderful shot, especially when there was no wind to contest his aim.

  And no Dales prince to pace him! Jemson thought with a small, knowing smile. He was himself a better shot than Malwess, especially outdoors, especially with a moving target. But he would not be there to pull for the prize. Damn the hostage agreement anyway!

  No matter that the excuse in the Dales was that it had been a hard winter and the farmers had few extra supplies to spare for any feast, great or small. The winter had been just as severe on the Continent, the snow up to the eaves of lowland houses, and wolves in packs chasing after sledges. Jemson bit his lip and ground his teeth again. The Garunian farmers had complained as well, of course. It was the nature of farmers to complain: about wind, about rain, about sun, about everything. But a royal homecoming deserved some sacrifice. The Garunian people understood this. But not—it seemed—the people of the Dales.

  Jemson was not at all happy.

  The later, intimate dinner held in his honor for the family and a few of his parents’ closest friends only added to the insult. The food was unimaginative, the talk as stolid as farmers’ conversation, the wine just this side of vinegar. His mother kept wanting to touch him—on the hand, on the cheek, as if to excuse herself for not being at the harbor. Her real excuse—that she had been out riding and had not known of the early landing of his ship—was unacceptable. Jemson told them what he thought, straight out, without bothering to couch it in courtly terms. They deserved no face-saving.

  His return was not a success.

  “He went away a small boy,” Scillia complained, “and he returned a large one.” She did not say this to her mother, who had problems enough with her father’s winter-long cough, but to Corrie. “And our loss is doubled with Gad gone, back to that awful place.”

  Corrie smiled at her, in that blurry way he had. “Jem’s just arrived home, Sil. Give him time.”

  She was not soothed. “He was bad enough before he left, don’t you remember? But he is all Garun now, and the worst kind. Wants to be called Prince Jemson by the family’s friends, and sir by the guards.”

  Corrie shrugged. “That is his right, you know. I wonder … would they call me Prince Corrine?”

  Sil was not amused. “He called me girl. Girl! And I three years his senior. As well as the kingdom’s heir. Which, by the way, he refuses to acknowledge.” She flung herself into the cushioned chair by Corrie’s hearth where a small fire kept a kettle boiling.

  “That’s what really gripes him, of course,” Corrie said. “You know what the Garuns think about a woman on the throne. Give him time to become one of us again, Scillia.”

  “I shall be 101 before I get to rule anyway,” Scillia said. “Father may not look well, may Alta hold him. But mother will go on forever.”

  Corrie took the kettle from the metal arm over the fire and spilled a bit of boiling water into the earth-colored teapot. He sloshed it around, then emptied it into the corner of the hearth where it made a comfortable hissing. “The trouble with ruling,” he said wryly, “is that by the time you get to sit on the throne, your bones are too brittle for the seat.”

  Sil stared at him for a moment, then broke into laughter which completely changed her face. One minute she was a rather ordinary-looking young woman and then, with the smile, a striking one, the planes of her face shifting with her merriment. “Oh, Cor, you do amuse me.” For all his outer softness, she knew, her brother had a hard, fascinating center, like the jester in one of the old fairy stories.

  “My goal, actually,” he said, as he continued making the tea, tipping out just enough leaves from the caddy into the pot. Tea was a disastrously pricy commodity but one of the few that even their mother thought worth the expense.

  Scillia stuck her tongue out at him. Then she turned serious, the planes of her face shifting back to ordinary again. “I do not want the throne if it means mother or father dying.”

  “No one thinks you do,” Corrie said as he poured the hot water into the pot. “Especially not mother or father. But they will die, nonetheless. Even a highest tree …”

  She finished the adage for him. It was one of Petra’s favorites, or at least one that she quoted most frequently. “… has an axe at its foot.” She sighed.

  “Which is why,” Corrie reminded her, putting the kettle back on the flame, “Mother had you tutored in history and governship, taught higher sums, and made to learn the diplomatics of the Continent. Thank Alta it was you, not I, who had those extra hours in the classroom. And it is why she has been having you sit in on all the Realty Sessions and helping form the judgment of the court these past five years. And the Farmers Council and the Market Fairs Meetings and …”

  Scillia sighed again. “It is dreadfully boring stuff, actually. I can understand why she takes off fo
r the woods whenever father can spare her.”

  “Boring, but necessary. Like eating.”

  “Like making babies.”

  “Like learning scales.”

  It was an old game between them, and they both enjoyed it.

  “Of course it is necessary,” Scillia said. She leaped up, nearly turning over the small table on which the pot sat brewing its musky tea. She walked over to the hearth and set her back to the fire, less for warmth—it was early spring after all—than to glare at her brother. “Only there needn’t be half so many meetings. Or councils. Or sessions. Why can’t the people just do what is right on their own?”

  “You are so like mother, you know,” Corrie said suddenly.

  “I am certainly not like her at all,” Sil said, “being dark and short and one-armed.”

  Corrie smiled again, a grin which dimpled on both sides. “And she is tall and fair and two-armed. And you, of course, share no blood. I see. No resemblance at all.” He handed her one of the mugs and poured the tea. “Except that inside, dear sister, which is the only place that counts, you are as much like Queen Jenna as her own dark twin.”

  “I have a slower tongue.”

  “And lighter hair.”

  “And …” they both said together, “one less arm than Skada.”

  “I give up,” Scillia said. “You are the one who should be next on the throne, Corrie. You are smarter and dearer and …”

  “Too smart to want to be king and too dear for the kingdom,” Corrie said laughing. His one failing, they both knew, was a love of rich, flamboyant clothes and ear-bobs. The embroidered caftan he wore now, with its swirls of red and gold leaves, its jeweled bucklers, was but a minor player in the cast of dozens in his dressing closet. He and Gadwess had loved to dress up outrageously, even as boys, calling one another Sister Light and Sister Dark, and riding out in their flowing robes on full moon eves to frighten cows in the meadow and—once—stampeding the entire herd of army horses. Gadwess’ share of their clothes had not gone with him back to the Continent but remained in Corrie’s room, waiting his return.