Summer King, Winter Fool

by Lisa Goldstein

  The tower fell. The crash echoed through the courtyard. Soldiers screamed, or shouted curses to the gods. Horses reared and stamped, trying to get free of their riders.

  Kotheg’s anger overwhelmed her, became her entire world. He hated her for besting him, if only for a moment, hated the strange barbaric land of Etrara, hated even his masters among the Shai for forcing him to fight a battle he could not win. But he would win this battle, she saw, if he had to crack the foundations of the earth to do it.

  Another tower fell. Some of the soldiers ran to safety but most stood unable to move; Kotheg had included a spell of binding in his last verse. Lightning shot from the sky and hit Sbona’s fountain. Taja saw herself from Kotheg’s perspective as she stood near the fountain, unmoving, unable to free herself from the vast machinations of Kotheg’s brain.

  A jagged rent appeared in the palace wall, running from one of the balconies to the porter’s door. Kotheg spoke quickly, sweat pouring down his face. The breach in the palace grew wider; the walls shook.

  People ran from the palace. Someone shouted to Kotheg, ordering him to stop. The poet-mage paid no attention.

  One of the many ladders leaning against the palace clattered to the ground. Taja heard it but could not see it, her vision limited to what Kotheg looked at. Another ladder fell, and then a third.

  Shouts came from the courtyard. “Look!” a voice said.

  Kotheg turned toward the palace wall. Someone was descending one of the remaining ladders, a woman, strong and regal. The air around her seemed to burn with her beauty. She stopped halfway down the ladder and gazed out over the courtyard.

  “Sbona,” someone whispered. “Mother of all.” Kotheg looked out across the courtyard; Taja saw Val and Narrion fall to their knees, saw herself standing straight, unyielding, still bound to Kotheg.

  Kotheg’s anger melted away, turned to fear. Sbona had not come to earth for thousands of years, not since her children were lost. His grip on Taja slackened. She slipped the bonds that held her, slipped them as easily as if they had never existed, and found her body again.

  She raised her hand and spoke a short verse. Kotheg stilled, turned to stone. Then she knelt to the goddess.

  “I thank you, my lady,” she said slowly. “We are unworthy of your help.”

  “I did not come to aid you,” Sbona said to Taja. “I came to find my child, lost on earth a second time.” She motioned to the old man Taja had seen in the crowd; Callabrion went toward the ladder unquestioningly.

  “I fashioned you for finding,” Sbona said. “When my children are lost I need you to discover them for me. And so you have.”

  She looked out one last time at the ruins in the courtyard, at the people she had created. Then she turned and began to climb the ladder. Callabrion followed her.

  “Look where he comes, the Ascending God!” someone said next to Taja. She turned. To her surprise she saw Narrion, still on his knees, watching the god he had rejected climb to the heavens. There was an expression she could not read on his face.

  Taja rose; Val and Narrion did the same. All over the courtyard soldiers began to move, freed now from their spell of binding. The men of Shai looked in horror at Kotheg, standing frozen at the turret window. They dropped their weapons and began to run.

  The soldiers from Etrara pursued them. Two or three of the Shai went down before their weapons. Someone beside Taja shouted, “Hold!”

  She turned. Val had climbed to the small rise near the fountain to stand beside her. “Don’t kill them,” he said. “Capture them for ransom or let them go.”

  “Let them go, my lord?” Oldo said scornfully. “After what they’ve done to us? After Andosto?”

  “Will you argue with your king?” Val asked.

  Oldo turned away, saying nothing. A moment later Taja saw him forcing men inside the palace. Val left them and moved among the men in the courtyard, stopping to speak to one or two of them.

  “Search the palace before you go in,” Val said. “And capture only those of the upper rungs. We’ll need to ransom them.”

  The strange light in the courtyard started to dim. She began to speak the spell to restore it, realizing only then how tired she was. “Leave it,” Val said. “You can’t do any more work here tonight—you’re dropping as you stand.” He raised his voice. “We’ll meet in the council chamber early tomorrow morning.”

  Fifteen

  BUT TAJA WATCHED, AMAZED, AS VAL WORKED tirelessly through the night. He spoke to the wounded and saw that the fallen were prepared for burial. When he came to the body of Andosto he bowed his head for a moment; as he looked up Taja saw tears in his eyes. “He feasts in Sbona’s court tonight,” he said.

  Finally he motioned to Taja and they went into the palace. He stopped in the banqueting hall, where his men had taken the Shai prisoners, and talked to Oldo; when he left he gave orders that the prisoners were to be fed from the stores in the palace buttery. One of the guards seemed about to protest, but Val stopped him, saying, “When I was a prisoner in Shai they were generous with their food and drink. I would not have them say their hospitality surpasses ours.”

  He turned and went up the vast stairway. Mariel stood at the doorway of her rooms in the royal apartments. “Is it true?” she asked. “Are the Shai gone?” She looked haggard, even older than she had appeared when she had watched the play in Tobol An.

  Val nodded.

  “I heard them call you king,” she said to Val. “Callia told me the story of your birth.”

  “And do you contest my right?” Val asked softly.

  Half-brother and half-sister stood for a moment, each studying the other. The last of Tariel’s children, Taja thought. What will he do if she claims the throne? Will she try to take it from him? She thought that Mariel’s rule could prove as disastrous for Etrara as Callia’s and Gobro’s had.

  Mariel looked away first. “No,” she said. “No. Gobro has given me no peace since Callia ascended.”

  “Gobro?” Val said.

  “Aye. He haunts me day and night.”

  “Because—because you killed him?” Val asked softly.

  Mariel laughed harshly. “I wish that were so. If he accused me, if he said something about the manner of his death, his haunting might help me atone for the crime of killing him. No—all his talk is of Riel. He asks me daily where she is. He is useless, Gobro is, as useless in death as in life.”

  Mariel turned back to her room. Val climbed another stairway. Taja followed him. She saw that they were headed toward the turret holding the stone figure of Kotheg, and she began to grow uneasy. “My lord,” she said.

  Val did not stop. They came to the turret and ascended a small spiral stairway. Kotheg stood with his back to them, unmoving.

  “Can you undo your wizardry?” Val asked.

  “I—No. No, I don’t think so. I was in his mind, trapped there, when Sbona came. I took the knowledge of binding from him. If there is a spell of unbinding it is lost with him.”

  They walked to the front of the statue. Kotheg’s face had frozen in a rictus of fear and anger. “What will you do with him, my lord?” Taja asked. “Bury him? Return him to the Shai?”

  “I think I’ll keep him where he is. We need something to remind us of the dangers of wizardry.” He looked out over the courtyard, seeing his men sleeping by the campfires, and then turned to Taja.

  “I first sought to become king to protect myself from Narrion,” he said thoughtfully. “I never thought—” He gestured to the men below. “No sane person would seek the office. Gobro, and Callia, and Talenor—they were all mad. And no wonder. I understood yesterday that I am responsible for the deaths I caused.”

  “But you are responsible for life as well, my lord.”

  “Aye. For the lives of all these people, each and every one of them.”

  “And Narrion?” Taja asked. “What will you do with him?”

  He seemed not to hear her. “I will need a poet-mage when I am king,” he said.
<
br />   The change of subject nearly caught her off balance, but she took his meaning quickly enough. “I am honored, my lord,” she said. “But I’m afraid I must refuse.”

  “Why?”

  “I was—I told you I was bound to Kotheg, trapped in his mind. He was unaware of me, and at first I was able to trick him, to counter his verses before he spoke them. But his anger was so great it overwhelmed me, and I was unable to free myself.”

  “I don’t see—”

  Taja stopped him. “My lord,” she said. “I understood his anger. Don’t you see? I am more like him than I am like anyone in the world. I knew what it felt like to want to crack the foundations of the world, to destroy all of Sbona’s creation. And a part of me could not help but delight in that destruction, to rejoice that I had the power to do it.”

  She hesitated a little and then went on. “I know so little about wizardry, after all. Kotheg’s power, and my power—it frightens me. I would like to go back to Tobol An, to spend my days studying the books of magic, to learn whatever Mathary has to teach me.”

  “Well, then,” Val said. He took a long breath. “I will also need a queen.”

  “No, my lord. I am—I am far beneath you on the ladder. The people will never accept me as queen.”

  “When I saw you speak your verses against Kotheg I thought the same of you. It seemed to me that you were so far above me on the ladder as to be unreachable. I thought that even a king could never aspire to wed a poet-mage.”

  “I’m sorry. It is as I said—I would like to return to Tobol An.”

  “Very well. But even a king—even a king might have reason to consult the library.”

  She smiled. “That’s true.”

  “Then you will let me visit you?” He looked young, hopeful; for a brief moment she saw the innocent courtier who had once come to Tobol An seeking lodging.

  “Of course,” she said.

  “And perhaps I can persuade you to change your mind.”

  She said nothing, unable to deny him again. He seemed to take her silence for assent. “I might send you sonnets,” he said. “I hope this day has not made you sick to death of poetry.”

  She laughed, and they went down together into the courtyard.

  Narrion sat at the table in the council chamber. To his right sat Oldo, to his left Tamra. Taja and Noddo were across the table. No one had seen Val for hours.

  He remembered one of the last times he had sat in this room. Callia had declared war on the Shai, and, by issuing her edicts against the Maegrim, on her own people as well. A great deal had happened since then—the war, the fall of Etrara, the summoning of Callabrion. And the most surprising thing of all—Val’s ascension to the throne.

  He almost wished they could return to those days. He had understood Callia’s ambition, her desire to rule, but he did not know the man Val had become at all. What would Val do with his newfound power? Would he seek revenge for the way Narrion had used him? What judgment would Val pass on him?

  Everyone turned toward the door. Val entered, looking drawn; although he had told everyone to go to sleep, he must have worked through the night.

  He should have had a herald announce him, Narrion thought. There’s so much he doesn’t know. I could help him—he could make me the King’s Pen, or the King’s Axe. He needs me—my position here is not as hopeless as it looks.

  Val looked around the table. “I want to thank all of you for your help yesterday,” he said. “And for your help in the weeks and months before that. I know what you went through to overthrow the Shai.

  “I don’t want to spend time on state business now, not while we still have to negotiate with the Shai. But I want to make some appointments before I do anything else. Oldo will be the new King’s Axe, and a man named Anthiel my poet-mage. He returned to his village after the war with the Shai—I will send for him later.”

  A few people looked surprised. But Narrion, who had spoken to Taja that morning, knew why Taja had not accepted the office. Someone started to speak; Val cut him off. “And Narrion—” he began.

  Val looked down the table to the man he had once thought of as his cousin. Everyone was silent, looking back at him. Now it comes, Narrion thought, and knew that the others around the table were thinking the same thing. Now we find out what our new king is made of. His heart was beating quickly.

  “Narrion, my old friend,” Val said. “Twice a year, on the Feasts of the Ascending and Descending God, we are told that Callabrion needs Scathiel, and Scathiel needs Callabrion. The gods are two sides of the same coin, the priests say. But I never understood that, not until this year. You helped me see that. Death exists within life, and life within death.”

  He’s toying with me, Narrion thought. He didn’t make speeches when he announced the other appointments.

  “In the middle of the battle you called me a fool, and I told you that at the end of it I expected to be made a member of the Society.” Val grinned at Noddo, who had started to frown. No king had ever been a Fool; no one could be king and Shadow King at the same time. “Don’t worry—I won’t hold you to that. I have decided, though, in view of everything you have done for me, to make you my Shadow King. I would have no one else dance and sing for me at the Feast of the Descending God, would trust no one else to issue the proclamations of the Shadow King for that day. That is, of course, if you accept.”

  Everyone looked at Narrion. He said nothing, his breath nearly taken away by Val’s cleverness. Val could have done no different, he thought. The king could not have risked sending him away; he still had friends and influence among the nobility of Etrara. But Val could not have trusted him enough to give him a position of authority either; his desire to rise on the ladder was too well known. “In view of everything you have done for me,” the king had said; Narrion had heard the underlying meaning, even if no one else had.

  What could he say? The position of Shadow King was many rungs down the ladder from his place as Callia’s advisor. Tamra would not like it, Tamra who lived for her position at the king’s court. Still, he could not expect Val to offer him anything else.

  “Very well, my lord,” he said. “I would be honored to become your Shadow King.”

  After Callabrion ascended to the heavens the days began to move toward spring again. The sun rose earlier and set later, and the crops flourished. After a hard year of winter, a year under cold Scathiel’s rule, the citizens of Etrara were only too happy to take Callabrion’s advice and enjoy the bounty of the earth.

  Even in the first year of his reign people began to call their king Valemar the Good. The Shai had paid a great deal of money to ransom their prisoners and Val used it wisely, helping city folks burned out of their homes by the Shai and farmers who had lost crops to the ravages of winter. He built a triumphal arch to Andosto, and another, because he had promised, to Duke Arion.

  But not all his decisions had been popular. The Shai demanded that he apologize for invading their country and he did so, only to be accused by his own people of love for the king-killers. But he felt strongly that Callia’s war against Shai had been wrong.

  Six months after Callabrion ascended, on the Feast of the Descending God, he wandered through the streets of Etrara. While the Shadow King ruled he was a private man again, and he enjoyed talking to his people without the strains of ceremony and protocol.

  Laughter came from the street ahead. Val made his way toward a crowd of people and saw a Fool struggling with a huge wheeled telescope. The Fool turned; the telescope tipped to point at the ground. Several children screamed with laughter. The Fool stood on tiptoe to look in the eyepiece, and then made a comment on the heavens in the sonorous tones of the astronomer-priests.

  Val grinned and moved on. Three Fools stood near the university. Two hit their drums in a simple rhythm; the third joined in several times, always missing the beat. Finally, after much cursing, the three managed to play together, and they began to sing. Men and women around them joined in, singing the traditional
words, and after a while Val sang as well.

  “There is a skull that bides beneath each skin,

  There is a time when high and low must fail.

  The prince, the priest, the poet all must die,

  When death receives them even kings are pale.

  So fill the cup and raise your glasses high

  And lift your voices loud to sing the tale.

  Today we drink, tomorrow we may die

  And lie in earth, our bones as brown as ale.”

  People smiled to see their king, and waved, and when the song was over they came up shyly to talk to him about one thing or another. A child gave him a mock chain of office made of flowers; he draped it around his shoulders. They could never be totally at their ease with him, knowing that he would assume the land-ring of Etrara the next day, but that day he learned a number of things about his country that his courtiers had not told him.

  When the clock at the university struck two he headed back to Palace Hill. Narrion had told him there would be entertainment that afternoon, and he was curious to see what edicts his Shadow King had issued in his absence.

  The palace’s fallen towers had been replaced, the vast breach in the walls repaired. He looked with satisfaction at the white and gold building, and then glanced up at the stone figure of Kotheg in his turret. Death in life, and life in death, just as he had said to Narrion a half year ago.

  He knocked at the palace door. “Who’s there?” the porter asked.

  “Valemar, a private citizen,” he said without hesitation.

  The porter opened the door. “Our gracious King Narrion has reserved a few seats for beggars,” he said. “Enter.” In a lower voice he added, “That’s a beautiful chain of office, my lord.”

  Val looked down and saw that he was still wearing the flowers the child had given him. Well, why not, after all? He grinned at the porter and went inside.

  He went to the banqueting hall and took one of the outer seats. Murmurs rose around him: “The king.” “Look—King Valemar.”

  King Valemar the Good looked with pleasure around the hall. At one table sat Lord Oldo, the King’s Axe, and near him sat Lord Carrow, who had taken back his office of King’s Coin. Lord Varra was at another table near them; Val had ransomed him from the Shai and had confirmed him in the office of King’s Pen. And there was Anthiel, the poet-mage.