The Summer's King

by Wilder, Cherry;

  The leaden hours crept by, and he passed them sleeping and waking, gazing at the altar until it swam before his tired eyes. Was it becoming lighter? Was the dawn coming at last? He thought he heard the birds singing and even a fluttering of wings. Yes, woodland birds had come in through the opening overhead; he saw them flying about the altar. A young druda in a long golden cloak stood at the altar. A bird flew down and rested upon his outstretched hand. Tazlo gave some startled exclamation, and Sharn glanced at him, blinking as he turned from the light. The young man from the north looked at the king wildly, then settled himself into a more comfortable position. When Sharn looked back, the young priest and the birds had gone. It was indeed getting light.

  The vigil ended. They were led off in silence, each to a lonely cell. Sharn, feeling drained of strength but oddly peaceful, lay down again on his straw-filled mattress and fell asleep. When he woke, there was his daily ration: a jug of water, half a loaf of bread and beef-dripping to spread on it, two hard-boiled hens’ eggs, two apples. He began to gobble up the food gratefully.

  There was no door to the cell but a thick felt curtain. Now it was drawn back, and a man came in: it was the High Druda, the leader of the college, who had led the opening ceremony for the Tourney of All Trees. He was middle-aged and not as tall as he had appeared at first. Sharn heaved himself up from the low pallet and bowed to the High Priest.

  “Sit down, Sharn Am Zor,” said the druda gently. “I am called Gwion Goldenhand. We must prepare for your quest.”

  “Master Gwion,” said Sharn, not quite sure how to address the priest, “I will do all that I am bound to do, but I am growing tired of Eildon and its magic.”

  “Do not think you know Eildon, my son, because you have spent some time in Lindriss at the princely courts and at the Tourney of Trees,” said Gwion Goldenhand.

  “I am a king,” said Sharn. “I came here to court my royal cousin. Yet I have been ill used and tricked and my loyal followers have been struck down . . .”

  “Put aside all worldly thoughts,” said the High Druda with firm authority. “What you shall do now in the Sacred Wood and in the countryside of Eildon is no courtly game; it is a quest!”

  “What am I to understand by that?” asked the king. “Is it a search for some object, some magic place such as lost Ystamar, the vale of the oak trees?”

  “It is a search for truth,” said Gwion Goldenhand. “Everyone who goes into the Sacred Wood, in good heart, purified by a vigil, will learn as much of the truth as he or she is able to bear.”

  “But what truth?” asked Sharn impatiently. “The truth about life? The answer to some question?”

  “The truth we need most,” said the High Druda. “The truth about ourselves.”

  Sharn Am Zor fell silent. In spite of the warmth of the magic cloak, his only garment, he shivered.

  “You are a king,” said the priest again, “and you are a brandhul. Do you know what that means?”

  “I am proof against certain kinds of magic,” said Sharn. “I have known this for some time, long before the Messengers told me. What else is a brandhul?”

  “It is a strange quality,” said Gwion. “I have seen brandhul who were very ugly, twisted and deformed. Others, like yourself, are well-made, handsome. Magic, especially the empty kind of trickery you have experienced in the city, bounces off the brandhul. A spell misaimed returns upon the sender. A spell aimed at a brandhul . . .”

  Sharn understood before the words were spoken. He uttered a loud cry.

  “Yes, it is true,” said the High Druda. “A spell aimed at a brandhul strikes someone else.”

  The king stared open-mouthed at Gwion Goldenhand. He saw Zilly upon the white horse, heard Gerr of Zerrah struck down in the lists. He thought of many common “accidents” in war and in peace that had visited those near him while he went unharmed. Even the arrow fired in the Hain long ago had wounded Aidris while he escaped. He thought of the ride in the early snowstorm with Tazlo; a guard officer had died and others had suffered for his foolishness.

  “Can I be rid of this?” he demanded. “Master Gwion, can I be healed of being a brandhul?”

  “Think carefully,” said the priest. “Some would say that this quality is no bad thing in a king.”

  Sharn shook his head but fell silent.

  “You will go to the tiring room again,” said Gwion. “Then ride out with Tazlo Am Ahrosh, your esquire, into the Sacred Wood. Take the road that beckons. Open your heart to the power of the Goddess.”

  “Is the wood very wide?” asked Sharn.

  “About three times the size of the Hain, near Achamar,” said the priest. “If your way leads out of the wood, you must follow it, but the power of the vigil and the quest will be on you, and you will come to no harm.”

  “Is the quest peaceful?” asked Sharn. “I have heard of knights who fought with dragons and so on . . .”

  “Perhaps it was so in old time.” Garion smiled. “But today the dragons have all flown to the warm lands. They do not trouble us. The quest is peaceful, and no blood can be spilt in the Sacred Wood.”

  It all seemed easy enough, Sharn thought, and in the same moment he distrusted the Sacred Wood. He clung to the feelings of peace, of emptiness that he retained from the vigil. In the tiring room, still under ban of silence, he grinned at Tazlo, and they dressed in their clothes from the Tourney, newly pressed and refurbished, but were allowed to keep their cloaks of the magic cloth. So they came out into the noonday sun beside the White Tower and followed two druda to a stableyard where their horses were waiting and were led by their two grooms over a flowery meadow between the colleges of the priests and priestesses.

  They beheld the Sacred Wood on the other side of a little river, and Sharn’s first thought was that it did not compare with the Hain. The trees were lower, with the gnarly Eildon look he had marked as his ship sailed up the river Laun. The elder of the two druda bowed and blessed them and pointed to a small bridge. They rode over the bridge, first the king, then Tazlo, and Sharn saw a decent path beside a bush of yellow broom, so he took it and they rode into the wood.

  The ban of silence was ended; they both burst out laughing. It was delicious to speak aloud, to ride through the low green aisles talking and laughing over every cruel detail of the vigil.

  “I saw no visions,” said Sharn. “I wonder how the others fared?”

  “On the last night I saw a strange thing,” said Tazlo, “and I could have sworn, my King, that you saw it too.”

  “What, that tall blond priest and the birds?”

  “A priest?” said Tazlo. “In the gold cloak?”

  The young man from the north had reined in his bay horse. They stood on the edge of a clearing. Sharn felt for the first time that the wood spread out all around them, impenetrable. He looked about keenly and saw nothing that he could interpret as a magical sign leading him on.

  “The man at the altar in the golden cloak, sire,” said Tazlo uneasily, lowering his voice, “it was yourself. You lifted a hand, and the bird settled on it.”

  Sharn shook his head, wondering.

  “Perhaps it was a chance likeness,” he said. “I did not see the man as myself.”

  They rode on into the clearing and found the ashes of a fire in a ring of stones and hoofprints in the thick soft grass.

  “Choose a path,” said Sharn. “We must go further into the wood.”

  Tazlo turned his steed to the right under the branches of an oak entwined with mistletoe, and the path he had chosen opened up before them and became very beautiful, springing with wild flowers. The wood, as they went in deeper, was full of life. Squirrels chattered at them overhead; birds started up at their approach or ran off into the thickets; a badger swayed across the path. They had ridden so long that it must be near sunset, but the light in the wood was deceiving. Sharn felt as he had while crossing the city of Lindriss, that ways and paths closed up around him just before he caught sight of them, obscured by leaves as they had been by p
atches of mist.

  Suddenly Tazlo drew rein with a rapt expression.

  “Listen, my King!” he breathed. “The singing . . .!”

  Sharn heard nothing but the sounds of the wood: the chirring and ticking of insects, the sleepy call of a bird. Tazlo swung his horse awkwardly to the right again and rode off down a narrow dark path. Sharn did not follow. Tazlo had been called to seek his own destiny, they would surely meet up again.

  The king rode on; a horse whinnied close at hand, and he peered through a screen of alders across the path. There he saw a clearing, wider than the first, with a brook running through the glade. A black horse was tethered to a tree, and a man sat on his saddle blanket gazing into the waters of the brook. It was Diarmut Mack Dahl, King of the Isles. Sharn parted the alder saplings and rode through, giving a friendly greeting.

  “Good company at last!” cried Mack Dahl. “This stream is alive with fine trout that we’re not permitted to fish. I hope our saddlebags are filled with meat or game. Nuts and berries are not to my taste!”

  Sharn dismounted, and they drank a sup from Diarmut’s leather bottle, filled with island spirit, and examined their saddlebags. Grumbling a little, the two kings fed themselves on bacon, cold beef, bread and ripe pears.

  “Well then, how d’ye go with this request?” asked Diarmut, leaning against a tree and picking his teeth luxuriously with the point of his dagger.

  “A blank,” said Sharn. “I see no signs.”

  “I will go out of the wood,” said Diarmut, slyly. “It is a long two moons until we come to account with the Eildon princes. I will meet my folk north of the wood a little and go to the city of Yerrick.”

  He gave a sigh.

  “I am out of the running,” he said. “Princess Moinagh is not for me. I have been offered a compromise.”

  Sharn could not hide his surprise.

  “I will wed Nollister’s lass,” said Diarmut. “She is bonny and good-natured, though not so beautiful as the pearl of Pendark. It is as my auld carlin wife foresaw matters. I consulted this wise woman before I came down, and judged it worthwhile even at the sacrifice of my island.”

  “The golden island of Kaindelly,” said Sharn. “What will become of this land pledge?”

  “The Council will have it tended,” said Diarmut, “and the mines worked by someone of their own faction. In this case Eorl Nollister, whose territory is in the north, in Imbermal. It is usually this way: a neighboring lord works the pledge on behalf of the Council.”

  Sharn stopped with a scrap of cold bacon halfway to his lips. He felt sick; a wave of nausea swept over him. He breathed in the cool air of the Sacred Wood and cursed under his breath.

  “Man, what ails ye?” asked Diarmut Mack Dahl. “Are you away with the fairies?”

  “They promised a revelation in this wood,” said Sharn Am Zor, “and, by the Goddess, you have given me one, good Diarmut. I begin to think that my whole courtship, my love for the Princess Moinagh, was awakened only for this. There are those who would have my land pledge, the silver mine in the Adz of the Chameln lands.”

  “Pardon me, noble Sharn,” said Diarmut, “but I have only the haziest notion of your kingdom: that it is bigger than Eildon more than threefold. Who d’ye think will have the care of your pledge?”

  “The rulers of the Mark of Lien,” said Sharn. “The Markgraf Kelen and his vizier.”

  He saw it all; he even saw, with the eye of love or with the help of the Sacred Wood, that Hazard was an innocent tool in the matter. Buckrill had been the link, and even he had been driven to rescue Hazard. Behind the whole enterprise was Rosmer. He, Sharn Am Zor, had been the willing victim, eager for a royal bride, a pearl, a princess of dreams. He felt a hopeless anger, which he could not give vent to. In his mind he saw Sharn Am Zor in his apartments at Achamar falling into a royal rage, striking the servants, smashing jewels, dishes, armor to the floor, ripping at the silken hangings, roaring aloud in his frenzy. He clenched his fists and bowed his head. He knew now that he must digest his anger and his failure; he would not bring home the Princess Moinagh.

  “Alas,” said Diarmut softly, “alas, my good friend, you have done better than any of us, I think. But for the princess: I think they will give her to Tramarn.”

  Sharn gave one sigh, which seemed to come from his very soul.

  “Yes,” he said. “I think they will.”

  In silence Diarmut Mack Dahl handed him the leather bottle of Usqubeg; Sharn took two good swallows, felt the spirit burn down to the pit of his stomach. The King of the Isles matched him drink for drink, and they spoke more companionably than ever. They drank to brotherhood; they exchanged rings. Sharn gave the King of the Isles his ring with the fox’s mask, and Diarmut gave him in exchange a ring with a large topaz. When the twilit glade swam before their eyes, the two kings lay full length on the greensward, wrapped in their magic cloaks, and fell asleep.

  When Sharn woke in the dawn, he was alone; the King of the Isles had ridden away. Sharn, as he opened his eyes, saw the fair green leaves overhead, heard the sweet song of the birds and remembered his failure, his misery, the way he had been set on to a hopeless enterprise. This would be his lot now: waking every morning to this bitterness. He remembered waking in Lien, as a young lad, and feeling the same pain: the king, my father, is dead, and we are in exile. Yet the Sacred Wood still soothed him a little. He rose up and washed in the brook and groomed Blaze, his horse. The thing was to find Tazlo if he could.

  He mounted up and caught sight of a narrow path that led out of the clearing past a wild plum tree, which bore a few pink blossoms. He took the path, giving himself up to the power of the wood, as he had been told. The way led uphill and became so steep that he got down and led his horse up the grassy banks. In the distance he heard other horses and thought he glimpsed riders below him. Then he saw open ground up ahead and came out into bright sunshine.

  He stood on high ground, a grassy clifftop that fell away at his feet in chalky tiers and down into a wide plain. Eildon spread out at his feet, a very green countryside, with clumps of gnarled trees in new leaf and stone walls and villages. To the north, beyond the reaches of the wood, he saw blue hills; before him, to the west, there was wooded hilly country and another blue haze that might be the seacoast. He admired the cantrys of Eildon, and at the same time he pined and longed for the Chameln lands. Eildon was hilly and rough, a little like the central highlands of the Chameln lands, and it was hardly bigger than the Mark of Lien. Why, the seacoast, yonder, was surely not more than a day’s ride. He had a sudden urge, if he could find a path, to ride down the cliff and set out for the sea. Where was Tazlo? The king called aloud for his esquire, and the cliffs sent back loud echoes. He rode along the cliff and saw a path. The sunlight dazzled on a piece of metal; Sharn peered, shading his eyes, and glimpsed a bay horse far below, at a turn in the path.

  He took the way down the hillside as swiftly as he dared, calling Tazlo’s name anxiously. At last he reached the turn of the path, a wider shelf than it had looked from above, and found the horse, Trueheart, riderless and restless. There was Tazlo sitting on the ground trying to wrap a cloth round his head. Sharn leaped down and ran to him.

  “What is it man? How are you hurt?”

  Tazlo let the cloth fall. His face was swollen and reddened on the right side, his lips so distorted that he could hardly speak.

  “Stung?” said the king, falling to his knees. “Here, let me . . .”

  Something moved on the ground, and he saw that Tazlo sat panting, his eyes dark and wild. Sharn took his water bottle that he had filled at the brook and wet the cloth that Tazlo was holding to his face. The young man had been stung in three or four places, and the hornet had left a deep purpling wound each time. The wet cloth did little to ease the pain. A voice came to them, borne by the wind, and when Sharn looked far up to the cliff top he saw that two riders had come out of the wood. It was as hard to see upward as it had been to see down, but at last he made out a dark blue
shield.

  “Trarnarn, I think,” he said, preparing to stand up and wave.

  Tazlo suddenly gripped the king’s arm with both hands and shook his head violently.

  “. . . not call . . .” he whispered.

  They remained stock still; only their horses could just be seen. The riders above soon rode back into the wood. Sharn took the young man’s shyness for a kind of vanity. Who would be seen in such a state? Yet Tramarn or his kedran might have had a slave with them.

  He looked helplessly at Tazlo, who was still in great pain, and was inspired. Both of them still wore their magic cloaks, hitched back on their thongs because the day was warm. He took a fold of the misty, magical stuff and laid it to his esquire’s swollen cheek.

  In a few moments Tazlo was able to say “Better, Sire!”

  “Mount up then,” ordered Sharn. “We will ride down to the plain. In a day’s ride we can be beside the sea.”

  There was no particular sense in what they did; Tazlo swathed his head in his cloak, and they rode down to the plain and took a road to the west. They passed through two villages and at a third they found a kind of tavern where they dined on mutton pies, stewed leeks and bread and cheese: good Eildon fare. They were treated as knights and gave no hint of name or estate.

  As they sat drinking their ale, Tazlo burst out awkwardly; “I am glad to be free of the wood! It was an uncanny place.”

  “I did not find it so,” said Sharn. “It was peaceful. I saw and heard nothing unearthly.”

  His disappointment in this was only a part of the greater disappointment that he was concealing from Tazlo. He did not know how to tell the young man from the north that their journey must end in failure.

  “The air was full of voices,” said Tazlo, wild-eyed. “The power of the Goddess breathed from every leaf. I rode for miles and seemed not to have gone a step. I came to a stone shelter in the wood and heard some men of the Isles, waiting for their master. They said King Diarmut would wed another!”