by Melanie Rawn
Besides, it suited him to add Maeta to the group. Pol had already shown a talent for taking off on his own. The mare Chay had lent him, a streak of lightning compacted into four legs and a pair of roving eyes, liked nothing better than a wild gallop. Pol defended his escapades with the innocent reminder that he had promised to keep the horse in good trim for sale at the Rialla. Threats did no good; even the private promise of the application of Rohan’s palm against his backside did not impress him overmuch. But his first attempt to bolt off after Maeta’s arrival earned him an afternoon riding on a lead rein behind her horse. Rohan heartily approved of his son’s discomfiture—while wondering ruefully if he really was so complete a failure as a disciplinarian.
Maarken, too, was glad of Maeta’s presence. They talked tactics and strategies most of the day and half the night. She had been in most of the important battles of the last thirty years, and her wealth of experience was nearly as great as his father’s. Sometimes Rohan and Pol joined in these discussions, sitting around the campfire to trade ideas. But more often father and son spent their time with each other. During the long nights spent talking, Rohan came to understand his son more deeply—especially the reason why physical punishment was nowhere near as effective as a judicious dose of public embarrassment. He should have known, of course; Pol was just like him in his consciousness of rank, his pride, and his notions of personal dignity. It was not quite arrogance—and that failing was something to guard against.
The lowlands of Princemarch were a revelation: rich, rolling valleys of cropland and pasture, a careless abundance that amazed Desert eyes. Farmers gifted the royal party with the summer fruits of the countryside, proud of their productivity and grinning as their guests marveled at the bounty.
One midday an incredible array was produced for their lunch in a farmer’s front yard. Rohan asked, “Tell me, is there anything you people don’t grow?”
The farmer scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, my lord,” he said after due deliberation, “not much.”
And it was true. Fruit, grain, meat, cheese, nuts, vegetables—they partook of the plenty and were amazed.
“And you own all of it,” Maeta remarked to Pol one morning, her arm sweeping out to include the fields and orchards around them.
“All of it,” he echoed incredulously. “It must feed the whole world!”
“A goodly portion of our part of it,” Maeta answered. “You don’t remember the old days. Sometimes we had to give up a year’s salt or half Radzyn’s horses for food enough to last the winter. Now that this is ours, we’ll never have to crawl again.”
Rohan met her gaze over his saddle as he tightened a girth strap. “Never again,” he echoed. He remembered very well the year to which Maeta alluded, and the fury of helplessness in his father’s black eyes when Roelstra had demanded exorbitant payment for food enough to keep the Desert from starving. More lightly he added, “But it probably sharpened the wits, bargaining back and forth. I sometimes miss the stimulation of my first Rialla as prince.”
Maeta snorted. “Nothing wrong with your wits, if what I hear about Firon is true.”
“And what do you hear?”
“That all of this—” She waved again at the fields, “—will include most of that.” One battle-scarred finger pointed northwest where Firon lay.
“It’s possible,” Rohan conceded.
Maarken laughed as he swung up into his saddle. “Don’t let my mother hear you say that! The tapestry map is already being rewo ven, you know—she’s using it to teach Sionell stitchery. If you change your mind, she’ll have your head on a spear.”
“Aunt Tobin knows how to sew?” Pol was astounded. “She doesn’t seem the type to like that kind of thing.”
“She doesn’t,” Maarken said cheerfully. “She says it’s only good for something to do with your hands when you want to strangle somebody.”
“Strangulation really isn’t in her line,” Rohan observed. “Knives, arrows, swords when we were growing up—that’s more her style.”
“Is it true about her marriage contract with Uncle Chay?” Pol asked as he mounted.
“No knives in the bedchamber!” His father laughed. “Oh, it’s true enough. Chay insisted on it.”
“What’s in your agreement with Mother?” Pol teased.
Maeta answered him. “Sunrunners are much too subtle to go around waving steel. Her contract says that the only Fire she’ll call up in their bedchamber is the kind that burns the sheets. And that, my lad, is how you got started!”
That day, the twenty-fifth of their journey, began the climb into the Great Veresch. Chain upon chain of peaks rose nearly to the clouds, the tallest of them snow-crowned even in high summer. In between were blue-violet depths where, when the angle of the sun was right, thin ribbons of water reflected silver. Conifers ten and twenty times the height of a man grew bunched needles as long as Pol’s arm, and bore cones that could be split open for sweet seeds and resin that tasted like honey. Herds of startled deer lifted white antlers to the sky before racing into cover. The water in lakes and streams was the sweetest any of them had ever tasted, as if milked directly from the clouds without touching the ground at all. The number and variety of birds astounded them; the world seemed alive night and day with wingbeats and songs and hunting cries, so different from Desert silence. They sometimes spent whole mornings watching flocks of birds float across a lake or dive for fish or plummet from the sky over prey-laden meadows. And the flowers—narrow trails through the forest would suddenly give way to mountain meadows awash in blue, red, orange, yellow, purple, and pink, the unbelievable profusion of colors enough to make faradhi senses drunk.
To the Desert-bred, familiar only with the stark beauty of the Long Sand where nothing grew and few birds or animals made permanent homes, the Veresch was almost frightening. Lowlands that had felt fence and plow were somehow more comprehensible than these mountains, where everything was as it had been since the first trees. People were an afterthought here, and the work of their hands could not begin to match the strength of the forest. In the Desert, people grouped together, the better to withstand the harshness of their place; here, folk lived in tiny settlements of not more than thirty, herded sheep and goats endlessly through the high country, and built lonely cottages deep in the woods. But as alien as their patterns of life were to each other, the two shared a bond that became clearer to Rohan as the days passed. Both peoples had accepted that they could not work changes on the land. The silent power of Mountain and Desert was greater than any fence or plow. People knew what their places would give and what they would not.
Pol turned stubborn about snow. He not only wanted to look at it, he wanted to touch it and make sure it was real. Rohan, secretly sharing his son’s curiosity, received directions from a bemused shepherd who obviously thought them all deranged for going to find snow when winter would bring it to them soon enough. The royal party spent two days coaxing their outraged Desert-born horses across frozen crystal fields, and two nights shivering under blankets inadequate for the temperature and the altitude.
“Had enough?” Maarken asked hopefully on the morning of the third day. Pol, clutching a blanket around him on top of every stitch of clothing he had brought with him, nodded emphatically. Pelting everyone with snowballs had been great fun, and the crisp air was literally breathtaking—but he wanted above all things to be warm again.
The ride down from the heights showed them ridge on ridge of blue-misted mountains. Startling outcrops of solid granite alternated with hillsides thickly covered in pine. Strange, smooth slabs of rock half a measure wide and punctuated with colossal boulders set their horses’ hooves to ringing. They even found some long-abandoned dragon caves, and spent a day exploring. There were, oddly enough, signs of humans nearby; Maarken discovered firepits and the foundation stones of a village-sized habitation, also long forsaken. Of more interest to Rohan and Pol was evidence of a primitive smelter works. They exchanged speculative glances and he
aded directly back to the caves. But most of the walls had collapsed, and instead of dragons in one of the few usable caverns they encountered a very bad-tempered hill-cat who deeply resented disruption of his afternoon nap. Father and son beat a hasty retreat.
Back below snowline, they began visiting manors and keeps in more systematic fashion. Word of their coming preceded them; they were welcomed with considerably more state than on the early part of the journey. Their first stop was a small keep called Rezeld, where Lord Morlen and his wife Lady Abinor had been preparing for the anticipated visit since spring. Rohan winced inwardly at the boundless enthusiasm of their welcome, but shared the philosophical observation with Pol that Rezeld had probably never seen a prince within its walls—let alone two—and that neglecting personal visits to each athri under one’s rule was always a mistake.
“The best way of judging a keep or a manor is to visit it yourself,” he mused. “Granted, they usually have the place looking its best—except for what they want you to pay to refurbish—but the trick is to look beneath the surface and see what’s really going on.”
They were seated in Lady Abinor’s large, finely proportioned chamber, theirs for their stay. Threadbare tapestries and frayed rugs brightened the room and eased some of the stone’s chill; all the weavings, including the bedclothes, showed signs of mending inadequate to their state of wear. The furniture was simple and sparse, and the glass in the windows needed replacing—but the wine made from pine cone resin was excellent. Rohan poured himself another cup and leaned back in a chair, regarding his son thoughtfully.
Pol looked around him, correctly interpreting his father’s last remarks to mean that he was to evaluate Rezeld and its occupants. Their arrival that morning had been the greatest event of the past twenty years at the manor; everyone from the athri’s family to the lowliest kitchen boy had turned out, scrubbed and polished and beaming. The sons of the house, both a few winters younger than Pol, had served as squires through dinner and acquitted themselves nicely for never having had formal training in a large keep. Lord Morlen’s sixteen-year-old daughter Avaly had shown up in her mother’s best silk veil, a-clatter with wooden and elk-horn ornaments. But Pol saw Rezeld as a distinctly minor holding, without much wealth or importance.
“They really did bring out their best for us,” he said, gesturing to the rugs and tapestries. “The necklace Lady Avaly had on was just carved stuff, not valuable at all. And from what else I saw . . . I mean, they don’t even have candles, just smelly old torches. I don’t think they’re playing poor to get more money out of us, Father. And they seem glad to have us here.”
“Yes, they do.” Rohan smiled.
“But why is Pandsala so stingy? There’s plenty of money for new rugs and such, and it’s not as if it’d be a foolish luxury in a climate like this. I can feel the cold coming up through the floor even with boots on.” He sneaked his toes beneath a carpet for emphasis. “The sheep and goats are probably all out at summer pasture, but still. . . . If I was welcoming my prince, I’d want to have my best animals here so he’d know how good they are and reward me accordingly by getting good prices at the Rialla.”
“That’s a very interesting analysis, Pol, based on what I’m sure were careful observations.” The boy’s eyes lit with pride until Rohan added, “Unfortunately, all of it is wrong.”
“What? Why?” Pol demanded.
“The young lady was indeed wearing row on row of ‘carved stuff’ in a necklace. Very pretty it was, too. If you’d really been listening to some of the people we’ve met on the road, you’d know that each betokens a certain number of sheep, goats, cattle, bushels, or other local produce a family lays claim to. Rezeld boasts a rather fine quarry nearby, I’m told, administered by his lordship.” He grinned. “But remember, we’re only ignorant Desert folk and don’t know about that. We think these are her only jewels, poor girl, and not much of a dowry it is to our way of thinking—when in fact she’s wearing more dowry than most of our own girls can offer! She also made big eyes at you—yes, I was watching!” he teased as Pol blushed. “Not that I’m surprised. You’re a well setup young man and a prince into the bargain. But she hasn’t a hope of attaching you and she knows it—so her probable intention was to make you wistful that so pretty a girl doesn’t have more in the way of material wealth. It appears she succeeded, too. Clever girl. His lordship is, in fact, flaunting what he owns and trusting our ignorance to lead us to believe that he’s poor.”
Pol’s jaw had dropped, and his blue-green eyes were as wide as they could get. Hiding another smile, Rohan got to his feet and went to pour himself a third cup of thick, sweet wine.
“Consider the tapestries,” he continued, gesturing to the walls. “If their purpose is to keep out cold and damp, why arrange them on rods so they can be pulled aside? They ought to be nailed right to the wall as close as can be. If you’ll notice, the rods are new—you can tell not by their polish but by the whiteness of the plaster used to secure so heavy a load. Just to the sides of the fixtures is more plaster, hiding marks where other tapestries used to be. I’m sure there’s a whole line of marks beneath, telling us that another weaving does regular duty here. It’s the same in all the other chambers we were shown, by the way.”
“But, Father, why would they do such a thing?”
“Excellent question. The tapestries these replaced are probably very fine ones that we weren’t supposed to see or know about. As for torches, because they can’t afford candles—have a look at the brackets. They’ve been scrubbed clean, but there are still traces of dripped wax. And the size of the sockets is rather inconvenient, wouldn’t you say? See how the torch-ends have been whittled to fit. Thus we find that in addition to plenty of sheep, goats, tapestries, and so on, they also possess candles. But we’re meant to think they have none of these things.”
Settling in his chair again, he gave his son a wry smile. “So we finally have to ask ourselves the point of all this. Why so much trouble to disguise their wealth? Do they want us to cough up a bit? Or is there something else going on here? I tend to think the former, for his lordship doesn’t seem quite devious enough to have schemes afoot other than the obvious. But I’ll be watching him over the next days—and so should you.”
Pol’s mouth still hung open. Rohan laughed softly.
“Don’t feel foolish, Pol. I’m no magician. Many years ago one of my vassals—long dead—tried to pull similar tricks on me. When I pointed them out to your mother, she looked just about the way you do right now.”
“How did you know?”
“Well . . . to be perfectly honest, I didn’t at first—not until I noticed something else interesting. In a place famous for the quality of its goats, I was served cream made of cow’s milk one morning over a dish of moss-berries.”
Pol suddenly laughed. “Where was he hiding the cattle?”
“Oh, the cattle weren’t even the problem. They were only the clue to the private deal he had going with the Cunaxans across the border to supply him with more than just a few cows every year. I won’t go into the details, but suffice to say he supplied me with excellent cheese until the cows died—as any self-respecting cow does as soon as she can in the Desert.” Rohan winked.
Shaking his head ruefully, Pol said, “I never would’ve seen it! And I would’ve made a fool out of myself by promising to make Pandsala do more for them! Father, may I ask you something?”
“Whatever you like.”
“I don’t understand about being a prince.”
“Oh, dear,” he murmured. “Is it things in general, this manor in particular, or something else?”
“All of it.” Pol sighed. “We can’t trust them for an instant, can we?”
“Of course we can.”
“But you just said—”
“In the important things, we have to trust them. Pol, this matter of tapestries and candles is unimportant. I’ll let Lord Morlen know that I know what he’s up to—discreetly, of course, to save his pride—
and fine him some of his quarried stone for a building project I have in mind. I doubt he’ll ever try it again. He’ll know I’ll catch him at it. But he’ll also respect me and trust me, because not only was I smart enough to see through this, but I didn’t execute him for it.” Rohan shrugged self-mockingly. Getting to his feet, he paced to the windows and stood looking out at the mountain twilight.
“He’s only doing what his father did, you know, hiding his real wealth from Roelstra. In his time, if Morlen had been caught, he’d be dead. He’ll be free to try to outwit me again, but my guess is that he won’t. People only hide what they fear will be taken from them. I won’t take what he can’t afford to give—he’ll come to trust me for it and appreciate the way I work. Which means he’ll fight if I ask him to, so he can keep me as his overlord.”
“And will you trust him?”
Rohan faced him and grinned again. “As much as I trust any of them—which is to say that I trust my own judgment and wits.”
“You know, I think I’m beginning to understand how we got to be where we are,” Pol mused, his eyes dancing suddenly. “Maybe we just outlasted everybody—but maybe we were smarter than all the rest!”
“That’s one way of looking at it, and probably as accurate as any other.”
Pol was silent for a moment, then burst out, “But why do people have to treat us different? I mean, everybody bowing and deferring to us and all—do they do it because we’re princes, or because they really think we’re special?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just—the way people react when they find out who I am.”