She regarded me with something like compassion. “Do you know of Benat?” she asked. “Benat the Bear, Benat of the Copper Spear, Benat the Champion?”
“I do not recognize the name,” said I.
“The greatest hero this country has known? Victor in a hundred fights, slayer of beasts and monsters, founder of a kingdom?”
“I know neither he nor his kingdom,” said I.
“A thousand songs were made on Benat. Poets labored to create grand word-pictures for his great shoulders, his flashing eyes, his mighty laugh, his deadly spear. The epic of Benat was chanted by every bard in the land. But where is Benat now that the songs are no longer sung and his kingdom is not even a memory?”
“Under yon hill?” Nodding toward the hill, the rampart, the stone fang.
“Nay. I laid my lover a few leagues from here, in a tomb dug into a cliff, with his bright spear beside him. His monument is the golden rambler rose I planted there, and which, like my love, blooms in all seasons.”
“Did he leave your bed?” I asked. “Did he wander and die in a world that knew him not?”
Orlanda slowly shook her head. “I was different in those days,” she said. “I helped his rise. I aided him in his battles, I advised him in ruling his kingdom, I shared in his glory. When he finally came to my home, he came as a grizzled warrior, unbent but weary, and he left only in death.” Her emerald eyes searched mine. “Death comes to all mortals, and all my aid can only postpone that end. But in my house Benat lived long, and in honor, until I laid him to rest.”
She stepped close to me, her voice low and in earnest. “Hard it was to lose Benat, but harder it was to watch as he faded from memory—to watch the kingdom slip away, the great stone monuments tarnish and crumble, the songs fall from memory. That was a harsh lesson, that all earthly ambition is impermanent, and never in the ages since have I so aided the aspirations of a mortal.” She drew lightly on my hand. “Better to come away from this perishable world when you can, and escape the bitter knowledge that your deeds will fade from memory, that all greatness is dust, that your aspirations were doomed before ever you came weeping into the world. Celebrate youth and joy for all the years I can give you, and avoid all sadness.”
I allowed myself to be pulled forward, but came only a few steps before slowing to a halt.
“My lady,” I said. “I have certain responsibilities—to bear a message from my city to Selford, and to lay my family to rest not in a stolen tomb but a monument worthy of them.”
“Well do you know that Ethlebight is mortal,” she said. “What difference will your message make in ten years, or twenty, when the harbor is sealed? All too soon Selford itself will crumble, and the river carry its glories to the sea. And as for your family, it is no longer in their power to care where they lie.”
“I do not honor my family for the sake of the dead,” I said, “but for my own self-regard, so that I can view myself in the mirror and not feel shame. If I fail them, how can I be worthy of the proposal which you have so generously offered me?”
Orlanda’s eyes narrowed. “I am myself the judge of who is worthy to guest in my house,” she said.
“Yet I would know—”
Orlanda turned on me with green fire blazing from her eyes. “What are these questions?” Orlanda demanded. “What is this lawyer’s artful chop-logic and crinkum-crankum?” She stepped close, and cold fear chilled my blood as I felt her power surge through the air, lifting the hair on the back of my neck.
Orlanda’s angry voice fell against my ears like the crack of a whip. “You spoke very differently not long ago, when you needed my aid to flee the bandits’ den! What of those loving, admiring words with which you addressed me? Were you playing me false?”
Through my terror, I managed to find my tongue. “I loved a mortal girl,” I said. “I loved a mortal girl who climbed trees and played the mandola and left me in burning hope of sweet kisses. Yet now it seems that girl is something different than what I had believed.”
Her anger faded. “I am that girl,” she said. “I may be that girl or any girl whosoever you choose. But,” she conceded, finally, “if you have questions, ask.”
I composed my whirling thoughts, and of the many questions that crowded my brain, I asked the one I deemed most harmless. “Why am I bearing this load of silver?” I said. “What use will you make of it? Is there some great hoard in your house?”
“There must be an exchange,” she said, “that is all. To live in my world, you must bring something of value. The silver was at hand.”
I remembered the story of Menasso, and what part of himself the goddess Sylvia had demanded as a toll in her domaine, and I felt grateful for my brief stay in the bandits’ treasury. I asked the question that was both of greatest import, and perhaps the greatest peril.
“How much time will lapse in this mortal world while our wedding night passes beneath the hill?”
“I hope it will be long,” Orlanda said. “For its duration depends on the strength of our desire, and how long that desire may be prolonged and renewed and protracted and satisfied and re-satisfied before our love reaches its uttermost, if temporary, satiation.” And, seeing me about to ask another question, she pressed her fingers to my lips, and said, “If you leave my house after that night, you will indeed be an exile in whatever world you find. No one will remember you, and no one will believe your story.” She took her hand away, then raised warm lips to mine and kissed me. “Therefore do not go, and stay with me for night after night, for song and revels and dance, for raiment of rich fabrics sewn with gems, for the long span of life I can grant, and for the many long nights of mutual pleasure that will be ours beneath the eternal stars.”
She kissed me again, and the taste of her lips made my mind whirl. But I forced my thoughts into the form of words.
“And if I choose to take up my worldly duties, and decline this sublime offer you have made? Will you curse me, or pursue me into the world on some mission of vengeance?”
Her eyes flashed again, and she took a step back. “I cannot answer your question,” she said, “for no man has ever refused my favors.”
I took her hands and raised them, and kissed the warm, fragrant skin. “I would give you anything in thanks for my rescue,” I said, “anything but spending all my days as your lodger.”
Orlanda’s face blazed with fury and scorn. “It is your ambition that is behind this refusal!”
Against her power I could summon only the truth. “I will not deny it.”
Nor would I put into words my other thought, that I had not escaped slavery at the hands of the Aekoi to become the house-pet of a capricious nymph.
She gazed at me with eyes both cold and magnificent. “Adventure and worldly power you may have,” she said, “but it will be swept away. Love you will have, but it will thrive only in the shadow of death, and the grave will be its end.”
My blood ran chill. “Is that your curse?”
“Pah! As if I needed to expend an ounce of my power to make this augury!” Her lip curled. “You are cursed only as all other men are cursed, to death and misery and futile striving.”
I kissed her hands again, but her fists were clenched.
“I esteem you above all others,” I said, “and I would give you anything but this one thing.”
“The only thing that matters.” She gave me a cold look from her green eyes. “There will be a price for this decision of yours.”
“A dear price it is that I shall not see you again.”
A smile touched the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps,” she said, “that is not quite what I meant.” Orlanda drew her hands away, and pointed toward the trees that rimmed the hill. “There you will find the path that will take you down into the valley. From there, follow the stream until you reach the road. Turn left, and you will enter a village where you can find a horse, and then you may go about your precious, useless, pointless errand. The errand that leads only to the grave.”
�
�My lady.” I bowed deeply, and backed away from her until I reached the limit of her radiance, and then with a last look at the beautiful figure standing before me, I turned and walked into the woods. Whole worlds seemed to be crumbling around me.
The trail was plain in the moonlight, and I made good speed through the pines, which turned to aspen as I descended the slope, and then to willows as I reached the floor of the valley. A cold stream laughed and plashed alongside the narrow trail, which soon turned to a narrow cart-track. The sky in the east was brightening, and I found my heart surge. The farther I walked from Orlanda’s hill, the greater was my sensation of freedom and release; and after I found the promised village. There, I looked at the contents of my rucksack and was faintly surprised to discover that the silver had not vanished like the morning mist.
I rented a post-horse from the mean, wretched posting inn, and heard the sound of the hooves on the road, and as I felt the surge of the horse beneath me and the breath of freedom in my face, I laughed aloud.
Surrounded by a storm of falling leaves, I rode hard from stage to stage, changing horses at every stop, and paused only for the bread, meat, and beer that were offered me. None of the horses had the gliding gate of my palfrey, Toast, but they all carried me closer to the capital. And by afternoon I had left the steep, winding roads of the Toppings behind, and was in the fertile plain of the Saelle on a good road that ran straight as an arrow’s flight across the country.
I rode all day and through the night, and in the morning, when exhaustion overcame me, I rented a small, light carriage, and slept as the coachman drove through the day. As I drowsed, I realized that I was not scratching, and that Orlanda had given me a parting gift: I was no longer prey to vermin. By late afternoon I was riding again, passing through rich farmland, where smoke curled from the chimneys on every horizon, and workers picked apples from the groves. I paid a penny for a pearmain, and relished the sweet remembrance of home as I rode into the night.
Again I rode on past dawn and into the morning, and passed through villages large and small. At noon of that brilliant day, as the high sun glowed gold on the stubble of the fields, and the sky dappled with silver cloud, I came within sight of the walls of Selford, and on a bluff above the river beheld the white towers of the royal palace. There was a great crowd of people outside the walls, surging under a brilliant array of flags, and on a conical hill in the center of the mass I could see a tall canopy, striped red and gold, and beneath it a throne, and around the throne an array of men and women in silks and gay colors; and at once I knew that I had come to the capital on the day that the princess Berlauda would receive her crown, and reign as Duisland’s new Queen.
CHAPTER TEN
* * *
hough you say nothing, I can sense a certain degree of skepticism in you. You may have thought the preceding was a fantasy, or the concoction of a mind confined too long to a dungeon. Perhaps it is better—safer—that you think so.
But what follows is historical-factual. There are many witnesses, and if you can find one, you may consult that person.
The crowd surrounding Coronation Hill was so large it would have overspilled Scarcroft Square in Ethlebight. I eased my horse through the mass until from horseback I could see the figures standing beneath the spreading canopy in the red and gold of the Emelin dynasty. The canopy was held aloft by men in the robes of knightly orders. A little below the throne, a man in the garb of a monk addressed the crowd with well-bred sentences, while an armored man with a naked sword stood guard. Other guards, red-capped and clad in black leather, pressed with their pikes to keep the crowd well back.
A blond, rather impassive woman sat on the throne, her figure clothed in golden silk, on top of which several tabards or surcoats, all of different colors, had been placed. Two figures stood on either side of her, one a tall woman in brilliant blues and yellows whose glance, at once fierce and nervous, darted over the crowd; the other a small, dark-haired girl of about fifteen who seemed aswim in the vast embroidered acreage of her silk gown. Both wore small crowns. These, I decided, were Berlauda’s mother, Leonora, one of Stilwell’s divorced Queens, and the new Queen’s half sister Floria, who was the child of another Queen, likewise divorced.
There seemed to be an abundance of Queens in our realm. I began to feel a degree of sympathy for Floria, who was a mere princess.
Behind the throne stood a brilliant half circle of men and women, most wearing coronets and scarlet, fur-trimmed robes, and I supposed these kin of the new Queen. Another brilliant half circle faced the throne, most of them nobles by their coronets and by the banners displayed by their followers. These, more junior than the group behind the throne, were careful to keep outside the line of pikes. While the monk’s sonorous phrases floated through the still air, I searched these banners for that of Lord Utterback’s father, the Count of Wenlock, but I failed to find it.
The monk came to his beautifully rounded conclusion, and called in the Pilgrim’s name for prayer, which he then proceeded to lead himself, calling for blessings upon Duisland and its Queen. I knew that some of the followers of the Compassionate Pilgrim eschewed prayer as useless, and that the issue was one of controversy within their sect. By the fact there was prayer at all, I assumed that Berlauda had shown her own preference.
The prayer over, the monk gracefully stood aside, and the coronation continued. Notables detached themselves from the group behind the throne to recite a bit of antique verse and hand the Queen a pair of spurs, or place a ring on her finger, or waft her with a peacock-feather fan. To me these rituals were meaningless, for all they were performed with great solemnity. The orb and scepter were placed in the monarch’s hands, and she rose from the throne so that a clutch of elderly peers could drape her in a scarlet cape trimmed with ermine, a cape so long that it took eight noblemen to carry it.
Then, last of all, the Queen’s mother and the princess Floria stepped forward, carrying the crown between them, and raised it over Berlauda’s head. There was a moment of unintentional comedy as the little princess had to stand on tiptoe to hold the crown fully over the head of her taller sister. I saw that all the men in the crowd took off their caps, and the nobles their coronets, and so I took off my own apprentice cap. The nobles’ banners were also dipped, the flags bowing down.
Trumpets called, and the crown was lowered onto the head of the monarch. Cheers rang up from the crowd, and cannon boomed out from the city walls, white powder smoke blossoming from the embrasures. Coronets and caps were returned to heads or tossed in the air, and the flags were raised and flaunted overhead.
“The gods save your majesty!” bellowed one giant voice from the back of the crowd. There was laughter and applause from the audience.
Queen Berlauda, burdened by the weight of her crown, costume, regalia, and the enormous cape, made no movement—perhaps was unable to move at all—but a look of displeasure crossed her face at the interruption. Her supporters helped her gather her skirts and cape, and she backed herself onto the throne. Officiants carried away the orb and scepter, and someone handed her a paper.
The cheers died away, and Queen Berlauda took her oath, in which she vowed to respect the ancient rights and privileges of the nobles and commons, to do justice, to maintain the security of the realm, and to punish treason. At the word “treason” her eyes flashed, and I felt myself reappraise the scene before me. What had seemed hollow ritual now took on a deeper meaning, a monarch’s reassurance to her people in a time of uncertainty.
The bastard Clayborne, I decided, had raised the standard of rebellion after all. Resulting in confusion across the realm and a very hasty coronation for Berlauda, to prove her right before the people.
For if we have a civil war, plundered cities will be common as spots on a leopard. I remembered Lord Utterback’s words, and shivered.
I remembered other parts of that conversation, and wondered if I had failed to find the Count of Wenlock in the crowd because Utterback’s father was off with the rebel
army.
Berlauda completed her oath, and the armored man with the sword raised his voice and offered to fight anyone disputing the Queen’s right. He threw down his gage, and glared furiously over the crowd, as if Clayborne might saunter out from the throng and pick up the gauntlet at any moment.
That moment of drama passed, and the ceremony grew tedious as the nobles knelt, one by one, to proffer allegiance, and office-holders knelt to kiss the royal hands in order to retain their position. It reminded me too clearly of the scramble for place and office taking place in Ethlebight, so I edged my horse toward the margins of the crowd, and then wondered where I would go next. The crowd was such that the inns were almost certainly full, and I thought that wandering a large, strange city, in the midst of what promised to be a boisterous holiday, with a fortune on my back would not be conducive to my long life or health.
Perhaps, I thought, it would be best if I could return to the country and find lodging there.
There was another blare of trumpets, and more red-capped pikemen appeared, creating a lane between the throne and the city gate. The crowd was pushed aside by a wall of pikes, and I found myself and my horse backed against the city walls. The horse snorted a warning and threatened to lash out. I was unhappy with the idea of being atop a misbehaving horse, and had very little idea how to pacify the animal, and for lack of any other idea I patted its neck in hopes of calming it.
The cannon began to fire another salute, and the horse gave a nervous leap at the first shot. I urged the crowd to keep clear and tried to find a safe way to withdraw, but the pikemen were adamant and the crowd were confused, and packed into too small a space.
I spoke soothing words into the horse’s ear, and wished I had a piece of toast or some other bribe to distract it from the tumult. Its ears were laid back, and it glared at the crowd nearby and snorted, but it calmed once the barrage overhead was over. I felt a modest glow of pride at the thought that I might be on the verge of becoming a competent equestrian, and then I glanced up to see the Queen gliding along the lane the pikemen had carved for her. Though in motion, she was herself utterly motionless, the orb and scepter back in her hands. Her impassive, handsome face looked straight ahead, and she seemed to be somehow soaring in midair.
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