The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  At the thought of Gadwess, Scillia’s thoughts turned soft and sad. She loved him equally as she loved Corrie.

  “What do you suppose,” Scillia said, “that they will make of Gad at home?”

  “They will try and make a man of him,” Corrie answered.

  “Like Jemmie.”

  “Jemson.”

  “Prince Jemson,” Scillia said.

  “And fail,” Corrie added. “Because their idea of a man is not Gad’s. Not any longer.”

  “Poor Gad.” Scillia sighed.

  “Poor Garuns,” Corrie countered. “He shall mock them to the end. And then, perhaps, he will come back to the ones who know and love him best.” He said it with neither conviction nor hope.

  “Us.” Scillia put the cup down. “Thanks for the tea, little brother.”

  “As always, big sister,” he said. It was an old joke between them, begun when he had gotten his first rangy growth and put a full hand’s span of height between them in less than a year.

  “He is appalling,” Skada said as she and Jenna huddled by the fire. Carum had had a bad night, coughing until blood flecked his lips, and neither of them had slept. “Jemmie is worse than a Garun now. He has adopted their creed barrel, stave, and bung, and like any convert works harder at being correct.”

  “He is my son,” Jenna said quietly. There was little conviction in her voice.

  “He is pompous, overbearing, full of ill-considered brags. He is …”

  “… my son,” Jenna said, but this time her voice cracked. “I am tired of repeating it.”

  “That you gave birth to him in no way excuses him,” Skada pointed out. “Have you heard what he said to Scillia? To Petra? Have you heard what he says about you? About me?”

  “He talks too much. As you do,” Jenna said wearily. “It is no wonder when given the chance, Scillia declined to call up a dark sister. She knew you all too well.” She stood up and walked away from the fire, crossing to the great bed. There were no candles there; the dark was to encourage Carum to sleep, a sleep prompted by the infirmarer’s poppy drought. Without candlelight, Skada could not follow.

  Jenna sat on the bed and smoothed back Carum’s hair from his broad forehead. Made even broader, she thought, by the years. In sleep he looked peaceful, vulnerable, even young. Jenna smiled down on him. She loved the way the dark lashes fanned out on his cheeks. He needs to be shaved, she thought.

  Suddenly fear, like a sharp spear in the side, made her gasp aloud. Carum was going to die. Not this moment. Not this day. Likely not for some months yet. His lungs were bad, yet it was a slow disease. But for the first time ever she actually thought about life without him, considered the world without his presence.

  It is not bearable, she thought. I cannot be here without him. I cannot go into the woods knowing that when I come out he will not be there, waiting.

  She went back to the hearth to weep where Skada, at least, could comfort her.

  It was not only the lack of formality that Jemson hated, it was the stinginess of the court. He had grown up in Continental opulence and now took it for granted that a royal family should live differently—and on the backs of—the people it governed. The Garun king and his relations dressed in silks and changed clothing for every meal. Why, he thought, trembling with indignation, there is not even room enough in my chamber here for storing away all my shoes. Most are still in the trunks they were packed in for the sailing. Here King Carum and Queen Jenna—he had trouble thinking of them as his parents—dressed as if they were farmers and not the heroes of the damned Gender Wars.

  Only his brother Corrine had any sense of style, though he dressed too much like an artist, his hair too long to fit beneath a proper wig. He also had an inch-long fingernail on his little finger, for playing the tembla, he insisted. But Corrine had not played any kind of instrument before Jemson went away, and he doubted that Corrine was musical in the least. It was more like an affectation. The very idea made Jemson ill.

  As for that one-armed freak, she is the worst of the lot, Jemson thought. She had never been any great beauty before and the years had not treated her well. Now she had a swarthy complexion from being out in the sun like a peasant, and mouse-black hair. She was muscled as any soldier, too. And worst of all, he thought, the stupid slut dresses to hide the missing arm which only emphasizes the loss. He could not think of her without shuddering, the more so since she was still called heir to the throne.

  Had he hated her so much when he had left as a hostage to the Garun court? He could not remember. What he did recall was how, right before he had gone, she’d nearly gotten Corrine killed and he had had to rescue them both with his bow and arrow. Jemson smiled. It was a story he had told over and over in the Garun court, one his hosts never tired of hearing. He was ever so much better now with the bow.

  When he and Corrine had met again, he’d noticed right off the marks on Corrine’s neck, still there after all the passing years, but he had refrained from mentioning them, not wanting to spend past coin too soon. As King Kras liked to say: The anvil must be patient. Only the hammer can be strong. He would be patient until he was in a position to be the Hammer of the Dales.

  THE BALLAD:

  JEMMIE OVER THE WATER

  The oceans between are blue and black,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  Oh will ye come back? oh will ye come back?

  Sing Jemmie over the sea.

  He rode the wild waves to his land,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  They gave him but the back of the hand,

  Oh, will ye come home to me.

  He left in winter, back in spring,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  To find his sister crowned the king,

  Sing Jemmie over the sea.

  An’ will ye take silver, will ye take gold,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  Or will ye take the throne to hold,

  Oh will ye come home to me.

  I neither gold nor silver make,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  But I the throne will surely take,

  Sing Jemmie over the sea.

  So, kill the girl upon the throne,

  Sing Jemmie over the water,

  And then, oh then, will I come home,

  Oh I will come home to thee.

  THE STORY:

  Carum rallied after that dark night, and was now back in the council room if not back on the throne. Neither his infirmarer nor Jenna would let him sit in the cold, drafty hall where anyone might cough or sneeze on him, spreading further contagion to his already-weakened lungs.

  Instead it was Jenna, with Scillia by her side, who held the long Realty Sessions where farmers and fishers and herdsmen and weavers alike could bring their complaints and sue for the Queen’s justice.

  It was a time the balladeers called “Anna’s Court,” but Jem referred to it in letters back to King Kras as “The Sluts’ Assemblage.”

  “My All-Father,” Jem wrote in one letter, “if you could but see her making judgments, ruled not by her head or by the precedence of law, but making decisions on what she is told by her weak, womanly heart. It makes a mockery of justice as we know it, and I can see that the people are not pleased. And there next to the queen sits my stepsister—who owns no blood in common with any royal—squatting all the day like a toad on a log but without a jewel in her head. Or a notion either. And my mother—curse the day she won her war—lets the one-armed slut make fully half or more of the rulings.”

  And in another: “I know you have cautioned me, All-Father, to patience. So I shall remain, smiling and playing the Dalian fool. I will try not to overpraise you in the presence of your enemies, but rather keep the Garunian counsel of the wolf who waits to tear at the meat till his packmates are by his side.”

  And in a third: “My father, who had a bad turn when first I arrived, is well enough now, but the women rule him completely. I cannot stand to see a king so unmanned;
he has no pride of himself and does not seem to care who knows it. He speaks in council chambers still, but that is all. When we have dinner together—in his bedchamber and not the dining hall—he will often ask me about my life on the Continent. They are never seriously probing questions, however, nor does he—I think—really listen to my answers. He is but a shadow of that great tree that once overspread this kingdom root and branch. The women are like rats gnawing at the oak’s foot.”

  It did not occur to Jemson that his letters might be opened and read, that their contents might be reported to his increasingly angry mother. It did not occur to him that Jenna, after months of making excuses for her eldest son, might need to confront him.

  A lot of things did not occur to Jemson. Or if they did occur to him, he always recast them in a pleasanter light.

  Still, when his letters from the Continent carried no responses to his questions, no praise for his astute observations, he did worry that one or two of them might have gone astray. However, he did not allow that worry to go deep enough. He merely set up an alternate mail route, bribing a Garunian sailor on one of the smaller ships that brought pantiles from the Continent in weekly trips across the narrow sea.

  And so he wrote twice a week instead of a single weekly letter. One he sent by way of the royal pouch and one by the sailor. He never suspected that half his mail was being read by strangers; his only suspicion lay at the feet of the Dale couriers whom he believed to be incompetent fools.

  “I worry, All-Father, that you have not received all the letters that I have sent. Nothing here in the Dales runs as it should. They are a lazy, worthless folk, and I never stop thanking Lord Cres that I was delivered to you in time.”

  The contents of Jem’s letters were not made known to many, but certain members of the council knew, Jenna knew, and Skada—of course—knew as well.

  “Do not bother Carum with this,” Jenna cautioned as she sat with her three oldest friends in the council chamber. It was a grey day and the tapers were lit, shadows dancing around the sconces.

  “Bother him? A son plotting with our enemies and we should not bother him?” Piet pounded the table with a meaty fist. “This is not some child’s scrape, some madcap moonlight escapade, Jenna, like stampeding the army’s best herd of horses or …”

  “Do not see plots where stupidity can prove the motive,” Skada remarked. She flickered in and out of the conversation as she flickered in and out with the guttering candles.

  “Pah!” Piet stood and turned his back to her, speaking to the far wall. “I mean no disrespect, Anna, but that boy of yours …” He was holding onto his beard as he spoke because he knew the beard tended to wobble when he was angry. And he was furious now.

  Petra broke in, her voice soft but firm. “Jenna, you must see the seriousness of this. He is boy no longer. He is twenty-three years old.”

  “I cannot see him as such,” Jenna said. “I did not watch him grow up.”

  “He has not grown up at all. That is the problem,” Skada whispered.

  “They are a tricksy sort, those Garuns,” Piet went on. “And they have turned a Dales prince into a …”

  “Shut up, Piet,” Jareth said. “The dark sister has the right of it. Do not insist on evil where the evidence points to idiocy.”

  Piet turned. “I warned this council thirteen years ago that the boy would be molded by his Garun masters much to our despair, and you did not listen then.”

  “We heard you, dear friend,” Jenna said.

  “But you did not listen!” Piet spin on his heel and was about to exit the room.

  “Piet, please,” Jenna called to him. “Do not bother Carum with this.”

  Piet turned back and this time he spoke quietly. “He is dying, Anna. Of course I will not tax him with this. But you—and Queen Scillia that would be—you must deal quickly and sternly with young Prince Jemson. Or the land will suffer.”

  “I will. When the time is right,” Jenna said.

  “The time is already well past right,” Piet said, walking out.

  Jenna looked at Jareth. “Is it too late? Must I speak now? Now when there is so much else that needs doing?”

  Jareth smiled sadly. “I do not think it needs to be just now, Jenna. We have Jemmie’s letters and have sent our own forgeries in their stead. The letters we composed tell of a growing strength in the country, the folk united in their love of you and King Carum. There is no mention of Carum’s illness and …”

  “And must such news be forged?” Jenna asked. “Is the love of my people not true?”

  “Who loves a king when the taxes have been collected?” Skada asked.

  Petra glared at her across the long table but could not silence her.

  “And don’t we say: Easier to love a dead hero than a live king?”

  Jenna looked down at her hands, now clasping and unclasping in her lap, as if they were being guided by some mind other than her own. “Oh,” she sighed, “my poor people. My poor land.” Then she stood, gathered up her papers, and walked out of the room where it was too dark for Skada to follow.

  “Oh, my poor Jenna,” whispered Petra, “you do not understand how well indeed you are loved.”

  “Or how you will be remembered in years to come,” Jareth added, putting his head in his hands and trying hard not to weep.

  “I need to get away for a bit, my love,” Jenna said to Carum in the dark of their room. Only the embers of the hearthfire still glowed, rosy and comforting but shedding no great light. “I cannot think here in the close surround of the stone walls.”

  Carum was sitting up in the bed, one blanket around his shoulders and another over his legs. “You need the woods, Jenna. I do not begrudge you that. Have I ever?”

  “But you are ill and Scillia …”

  “Scillia has a solid head and the advice of Jareth and Petra and Piet. She will counsel well. Go. Go quickly. But do not be too long in your return.”

  She did not like the forced gaiety in his voice nor the look of terror she supposed she saw behind his eyes. Or is it my own terror I see there? she wondered. If she had hoped he would beg her to stay, he did not. And so to please him, to make him believe she was not worried, she left.

  Corrie was reading a books of essays by the philosopher B’kana, when his brother entered the room. Jemson did not knock, but took the room as if he had some sort of siege machine.

  “You’re welcome,” Corrie said, saving his place in the book with a tasseled silk marker. “Do you want some tea?”

  “No. Yes. Damn.”

  “Is this the most recent Garunian mode of conversation? Or are you just not pleased to see me?”

  “She’s off again.”

  Corrie stood and began his tea-making ritual which gave him a moment before he had to answer. “Do you mean mother?”

  “Yes. Of course I mean mother. Though she is a sorry excuse for one.”

  Corrie swished the hot water through the pot. “I did not hear that.”

  “I said …”

  “I am not deaf, Jem. And you are not stupid. At least not as stupid as you have been acting.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Jemson sat down on his brother’s bed. His face took on the kind of pout one might expect on a ten-year-old.

  “No one could be as stupid as you have been acting,” Corrie said. He was suddenly angry enough so that when he shook the leaves from the caddy a few floated down to the floor. “Damn. That’s the last of the vervain mix.”

  Jemson stood, flushing. “I won’t take that kind of accusation from anyone, not even one of royal blood.” His hand went to his belt and fumbled there, as if expecting to find a knife that was suddenly not available.

  “I am accusing you of nothing but acting stupid, dear brother,” Corrie said, forcing himself to become calm. He poured the tea water into the pot. “You are not in the Garunian court now, but here in the Dales. You need to curb your natural tendency toward asininity and try to be one of us again.”

&nb
sp; “I am not one of you,” Jemson said, “if it means bending the knee to that one-armed slut.”

  “Then you should probably book passage tomorrow for the Continent,” Corrie said handing him the cup. “For it is my guess that mother will not outlive father by much.”

  “She is healthy as a horse. As two horses.”

  Corrie smiled at his brother sadly. “You never were able to see past your nose, Jem.”

  Jemson wrinkled his nose, took a sip of the tea, spat it out loudly. “What is this? Some sort of poison?”

  “An herbal posset. For temper.”

  “I have no temper.”

  “You are all temper, brother. As I am all temperament. Scillia will make a fine queen. She has been studying for it since you left. Tutors galore!” He waved his hand about as if the tutors were all crowding in the room with them.

  Jemson stood. He put down the cup carefully on the little table, though it was clear from his face that he wanted to fling it into the fire. “I came here to sound you out, brother, thinking that you could not possibly wish to live beneath a woman’s hand. As I saved you once, so I wish to save you again.”

  “Save me? From what?”

  “From cats, dear brother. From the feline race.”

  “Oh, by Alta’s crown!” Corrie said, stopping himself from laughing just in time. His hand went to his neck and fingered the scars there. “The Cat Story as Jemson remembers it. Ah well, heroes are made by those who tell the stories, not by those who lived the life. Mother always said that and now I see it is true.”

  “What do you mean?” Jemson asked, squinting his eyes. “What exactly do you mean?”

  “Just this—Scillia will eventually be queen, Jem. Bend the knee or board the ship.”

  “My All-Father has often enough said that where there are two answers, there are three.”

  “What on earth does that mean?” Now it was Corrie’s turn to be puzzled.

  “Use your temperament and figure it out.” Jemson went out of Corrie’s room the same way he had entered, leaving a large silence behind.

  “Oh, sweet Alta!” Corrie said after a minute into the silence. “He plans to fight. The bloody fool plans to fight her for the crown.” He put down his own cup and went at once to speak to his father.