by William King
‘Find your own,’ said Tyrion.
Tyrion wandered through the vast city of tents, feeling very much a stranger. In some ways it reminded him of the jungles of Lustria. All around were trees, some of the gigantic ancient things thousands of years old.
It did not feel as close or threatening as the jungle had and there were no poisonous snakes or biting insects that he could detect. Instead there were lots of elves. They had come from every corner of Ulthuan to attend the court of the Everqueen.
He wondered how many of these people danced constant attendance on the Everqueen and how many of them were here for the tournament.
As always, people stared at him. He was used to that and he paid it no more mind than he would have in the streets of Lothern. He rather enjoyed it as a matter of fact, particularly when the onlookers were women. He smiled at anyone who caught his eye and did his best to look amiable.
Teclis would hate this place. His brother did not like being the centre of attention or being surrounded by crowds of people. He would doubtless have something sarcastic to say about all of these happy, thoughtless revellers. He wondered how much of what he was seeing was the product of magic. Teclis would’ve known, of course. He lacked his brother’s sensitivity to the flows of the winds of magic.
Even he suspected that some spell was at work here. The people look too happy, too energetic, too thrilled, even for elves in the mood for merrymaking. An atmosphere of almost complacent contentment hovered over this place. Every single person that he saw really wanted to be here and was really happy with the fact that they were. He could not think of any other place he had ever been in his life where that was true. Over the city of Lothern, for all its thrilling commercial energy, a certain melancholy brooded, shadowing even the happiest festival days.
This place reminded him, in an odd elliptic sort of way, of the atmosphere in the Shrine of Asuryan. There was the same sense of some ancient power touching the world. A girl danced by, flowers in her hair and a smile upon her lips. She blew him a kiss as she passed and, smiling, he answered in kind. She skipped back over to him and looked at him closely, examining him frankly and with considerable appreciation. He looked back at her in the same way, unembarrassed. He had heard tales of the way people behaved at the court of the Everqueen and he was determined to fit in as well here as he did everywhere else.
‘You’re here for the tournament?’ The girl asked.
‘I am indeed,’ Tyrion replied.
‘You hope to become her champion?’
‘I am unsure about that,’ he replied.
She laughed. The sound was like the tinkling of silver bells. ‘You’re unsure? How is that possible?’
‘It is a very long story,’ Tyrion said.
‘We are elves. If we do not have time for long stories, who does? My name is Lyla’
‘Mine is Tyrion.’
‘Like the hero of the Shrine of Asuryan?’
‘Exactly the same.’
‘I had heard he was as good looking as you.’
‘That is quite possible.’
‘You are he, are you not?’
‘I was at the Shrine when it was attacked. I do not think I was all that heroic. I was hiding in it at the time the daemon came.’
‘Do you have a twin brother who is a great sorcerer?’
‘I have a twin who is studying at Hoeth. Although I am not sure he is all that great a sorcerer. He would probably tell you he was.’
‘Let us drink wine. I am curious about you now.’
‘Lead on,’ said Tyrion. Ten minutes later they were naked in her tent. There was something to be said for the festival atmosphere of this place, he thought.
Tyrion took leave of Lyla and continued on his way.
As he walked through the cool shadows of Avelorn, Tyrion studied the people around him in a more leisurely fashion. This was a place utterly unlike Lothern. It moved to a different rhythm. Its people had a different attitude to time. They seemed more relaxed.
He watched a circle of elves gathered round a poet declaiming the ancient epic of Caledor the Conqueror. They knew the words, mouthing them silently as the poet spoke.
Tyrion watched them watching the poet. He knew the work and knew the reciter had been about his business for hours and most likely would still be speaking at sunset. These people had the time and the interest to do this, to watch the performance while other elves, selected by lot or from the family retainers, brought them food and wine. It was the sort of reading that you only saw in abbreviated form among the busy money-making elves of Lothern. It was like stepping back into the past, into the golden age of the first Everqueen, and he knew it was deliberately so.
He looked for notes of falseness and because he was looking, he found some. Here and there, some of the audience were asleep. Others paid no attention and inspected their nails, but this had probably been so during the golden age as well. Perhaps this was part of a different golden age, but a golden age nonetheless. These elves were keeping the old ways alive. They saw themselves as guardians of a certain sort of elfness, and he did not doubt that they were correct to do so.
Lothern was the future, if the elves were to have a future. It was commercial, home of an outward looking, sophisticated, mercantile Phoenix King. It was a city of trade, a hybrid cosmopolitan place where the elves mingled with other peoples and learned from them and adapted to the new and altered world.
In Avelorn, the elves were behaving as they had before the age of Aenarion. It was beautiful and moving and rather sad. Sad because all of this took an effort to maintain and it was dying away. It was an enclave frozen in amber.
No, he told himself. That was not fair. This place still lived. It was the beating heart of asur society. It was where artists and poets and dancers came, to compete, to find an appreciative audience, to seek fame and a certain kind of glory. It was not the sort of glory that he himself was interested in, but he could understand why some elves were.
He moved into another glade. Elves in green raiment practised archery, drawing and firing at targets hundreds of paces away. These were not competitors in the tournament he realised. These were just ordinary citizens of Avelorn, training with their weapons as was their right and duty. The practice made them the finest archers in the world, and the backbone of the elven citizen-armies.
He inspected them, as a general might inspect his troops. Each of them was an elf in his or her prime. All of them must have handled bows for decades, if not centuries. All of them were hale and hearty and would remain so for hundreds of years.
No other troops would or could have their skill or their discipline or their experience. Simply by virtue of still being alive for so long, they would have fought in dozens of skirmishes and battles. They would have survived encounters with numerous foes.
Like the poets he had just witnessed, they too were part of an older Ulthuan, one that dated from the age of Morvael, of the first great citizen-soldier levies. They were part of the culture. They too moved to a different beat than the elves of Lothern.
It came to Tyrion that elves like these could be found all over the island-continent. In aggregate, they must far outnumber the elves of Lothern although they had no single town or city that was even a fraction of the size of the city-state. Probably they were much more representative of the people as a whole. And they looked at least as much to the Everqueen as to the Phoenix King for leadership.
Perhaps for the first time in his life, in this place, he started to get a sense of what his own people were like, all of the folk beyond the city in which he lived and the mountains he had called home from his earliest youth.
For these people here, the folk of Lothern were something new and strange. The people here were the ones who represented the mainstream of life. Looking at them, he saw the majority of the elves as they wanted to see themselves and he realised that he wa
s not at all like them.
He passed on, entering a vast clearing in the forest filled with silk pavilions and corrals for proud elven steeds. The symbol of the Everqueen was on everything and he realised that this must be the place in which she currently dwelled. Maiden Guards strolled everywhere, but no one looked at him suspiciously. It was inconceivable that anyone would want to harm the ruler of Avelorn.
Magic shimmered in the air, the sort of powerful conspicuous magic his brother could work. Beneath it he sensed the presence of another type of magic. The air was thick with it, a constant stream of something living, beneficial, potent. He remembered again the atmosphere of the Shrine of Asuryan, and the feeling here was of the same kind, although not produced by the same being.
In Asuryan’s Shrine the being had been of fire, powerful, destructive, mercurial, somewhat akin to Chaos. Here, whatever was present was slower, more placid, enduring, fertile. It was a spirit of earth and forest, and its locus of power was in this place. Or perhaps in the person of the Everqueen.
A thought struck him. Perhaps Lothern was a place of water. If the old magical schemata of the elemental universe was to be believed, then there must be a place of air as well. He wondered where that could be, and it struck him that perhaps the place was in the north, a place of cold and storm winds, perhaps where Malekith was.
He amused himself with such idle fantasies as he passed through the shadow of pavilions and onto the grounds where scores of elven artisans were at work creating the tournament fields.
A pulse of excitement started to beat in him. There was going to be a great contest here and he was going to take part in it. It was a ritual that had been enacted only a dozen times during the course of history, and it was one that had a significance that was embedded deeply in the nature of his people.
He understood that perhaps he was seeing things at an unusual time, during a change in reigns. The old queen was dead. The new queen was just that – new. The tone of her reign had yet to be set. Her likes and dislikes were as yet unknown. There were those who had known her as a child, and who thought they knew her as a woman, but they could not know what she was going to be like as the Everqueen. She was a butterfly newly emerged from that particular chrysalis and she might be changed as utterly as her relationships with those around her were going to be.
If he won the tournament he really would have a chance to influence the tone of this new age. He would have his chance to be part of her court, to sway her choices. It was not the sort of power he wanted, or the sort of role he craved. He was a warrior, not a courtier.
And yet, he had to admit to himself, despite his reluctance to do so, there was something here that appealed to him. This felt like the setting of one of those tales of heroism and chivalry he had so loved as a child. It was glamorous and full of intrigue. It was beautiful. There was pageantry and magic. He could picture himself as a knight at the court of the fairest of elf queens. It was the sort of role he had delighted in imagining as a boy. It still had its appeal even now, although he could see the folly of it.
In spite of all his reservations, like all those others, he was happy to be here.
Chapter Seventeen
In the morning sunlight, Tyrion watched the gathering of heroes. More and more warriors arrived on the tournament grounds, great champions shorn of their retinues, single fighters who had come alone, perhaps following a dream, perhaps merely to test themselves against the best the island-continent could provide.
He stood on the field itself, where today only contestants and representatives of the Everqueen were allowed. Atharis and his retainers watched from the surrounding hillocks along with the followers of all the other champions present. He saw Arhalien of Yvresse turn and bow to his followers before he passed through the arch and onto the tournament field. His retainers cheered him but could go no further.
Tyrion saw proud armoured riders from Ellyrion mounted on their matchless, prancing steeds. He saw a lovely woman warrior from Tiranoc, staring around with fierce wary eyes. There were grim-faced soldiers from Yvresse, and tall, hard-faced elves from the Shadowlands, as harsh and craggy as the land that bore them.
They looked at him as much as he looked at them, and there was a challenge in their stare. They knew instinctively that he too was here to compete and that he would be a rival, and they could tell just from the look of him that he would be a worthy one.
In some glances there was hostility but in most of them was an odd form of comradeship. They were all here for the same reason, and by the nature of the contest, they were set apart from the mass of other elves. It was something that they shared, a kinship of spirit born of rivalry, yet forging a bond. That was the way he felt it at least, and he suspected that for those he saw it would be the same.
He looked at his potential rivals and wondered about them. What were their stories? What sights had they seen on the way here? What drove them to compete? What was it they sought?
He felt like simply going over and asking. He was endlessly curious about these things. He could not do so though, not out of shyness, but because he knew that it would be misconstrued. Perhaps they would see him as only seeking an advantage, as attempting to uncover weaknesses, and perhaps he would be.
There would be time enough to get to know a small fraction of these warriors. There would be drinking bouts and dances and all manner of merry meetings. It was something he could wait for with anticipation, part of the pleasure of being here.
He could tell by the way some of them looked at him that his reputation had preceded him. They had heard of the battles he had fought and the way he had survived an encounter with a Keeper of Secrets while still only a callow youth. They knew he had crossed blades with a monster that had fought against Aenarion himself, and that he was of Aenarion’s blood.
That thought cast a shadow over his happiness. One day the monster would be back and it would come looking for him, and it occurred to him that it would come looking for the new Everqueen as well. Like every Everqueen before her, she was descended from Aenarion’s lost daughter, Yvraine. She too would be a target when N’Kari returned to pursue his infernal vengeance quest.
Tyrion tried telling himself that he might live his entire life without ever encountering the daemon. There was over six thousand years between its last two appearances in history. He could live and die and his descendants unto the tenth generation might do the same, before the daemon reappeared.
He doubted that things would be that way. He had a feeling that he and N’Kari were destined to meet again, that their paths were due to collide during his lifetime and, if that happened, he would need to find some way to banish the daemon forever, not just for his own safety but for the safety of his children and their children beyond them. He needed to find a way if he could. He let his hand rest on Sunfang. Perhaps the great blade held the secret. He prayed that it was so.
Horns announced the coming of the Everqueen. Surrounded by her Maiden Guard, she made her way into the massive stand that had been erected overlooking the tournament field. At this distance it was hard to see anything but a tall, stately golden haired figure, graceful of movement, wealthy of dress, carrying a mystical staff in her hand. There was something about her though, a sense of power, deeply hidden, that commanded attention.
Tyrion was not the only one watching her arrival. Every eye on the field was drawn to the stand and its new occupant. It was understandable. She was after all the reason they were here. He glanced around and saw something odd. Everyone present was looking at the Everqueen with an expression that combined awe, religious reverence and love. He had not realised they all felt quite that way, and then it dawned on him that they probably could not help themselves. What he was seeing was most likely the result of a very powerful spell.
He wished Teclis were here to advise him about this. He was genuinely curious now.
Horns sounded again. This time the seque
nce of notes was different, a summons to battle, a challenge, a demand for attention.
The herald of the Everqueen took up his position on the great dais in front of the stand. All eyes were upon him now. He spread his arms wide with a flourish. Then he paused, dramatically, in order to focus attention before he launched into his speech.
The herald was a tall elf with silver hair. His features were very fine. He carried himself with great dignity. And yet beneath this, there was something else, a suggestion of the mountebank, of the need to please and the need to be at the centre of attention that was somewhat at odds with his majestic air.
‘Friends, fellow elves, subjects of our beloved Everqueen,’ he said, turning with a flourish to the stand. His voice carried over the murmur of the great crowd. He gave the impression of speaking in a conversational tone, but there was some magic at work that carried his voice to every corner of the field.
‘We are gathered here at the start of the reign of a new Everqueen to select her champion. Unto that champion will fall the duty of guarding our kingdom’s greatest treasure. Into his hands will be placed the life of the Everqueen. He will be called upon to defend her from all threats and all challenges and to protect her from harm, even if it costs his own life. The victor of this great tournament will be participating in a grand tradition that stretches from the earliest days of our realm.’
Tyrion thought the herald very self-satisfied and pleased with the sound of his own voice, but the words resonated anyway. He realised that up till now he had been thinking about this tournament simply from the point of view of his own needs and desires.
He had known about the responsibilities the position of champion entailed but he had never really thought about them and about the place implied in history and culture. Now he was forced to.
If he did win, he would be subordinating his own life to that of the Everqueen. He would be expected to give up his own life to save hers if need be. Was he really up to that challenge?