The Summer's King

by Wilder, Cherry;

  Aidris sat down, smiling, drawing out the greetings a little as if she did not wish to break the spell. She bade Nerriot play some melodies of Lien, including the Rose Lament, with Hazard’s famous lyric, so apt in these days, though it had been written for the Markgrafin Guenna more than twenty years past.

  When the song was done, the queen said, “I have news for this family.”

  Sharn Am Zor and his sister began to speak both at once; she deferred to the king. He dismissed the servants, gave Nerriot a purse of red brocade and asked the musician to attend him the next evening after supper. As Nerriot made his last bow, his music case fell and scattered its contents upon the grass. Merilla helped to pick up the odds and ends.

  “Nerry,” she said, “I keep finding your lute picks in strange places.”

  When the family was alone, Aidris said, “I think that one who has remained hidden will leave us altogether.”

  There was a sigh, a word or two of sadness; Lorn laid a hand upon her husband’s arm.

  “She will see us in the stone,” said Aidris to Sharn. “She will see the Daindru.”

  “Come, cousin,” said Sharn Am Zor, “shall we walk to the lakeside, to that young oak?”

  The Daindru walked over the lawns side by side and sat down on a stone bench facing the garden lake. Aidris drew out the scrying stone, the blue-green beryl that she had from her mother, Hedris of Lien. It had gone with her into exile in Athron and it had gone with Sharn Am Zor into Eildon. In the world of the stone, they saw their grandmother, Guenna, very pale, her hair silvered, her hands thin and fine resting upon the altar or table, as if she were sitting in a chair.

  “My dear children!”

  Her voice was at last the voice of an old woman.

  “It is time,” she said firmly. “I cannot stay.”

  “Grandmother,” said Sharn Am Zor, “will you not have a healer? Will you not come to us in Achamar?”

  “No, my dear Sharn.” She smiled. “The day is done. My wraiths must be called home before the dark. You two and Yorath have been a light to me in this exile.”

  “Will you remain in Erinhall?” asked Aidris.

  “I will be set in a boat and brought to the hospice of the Moon Sisters in Hodd, across the river, and there laid to my rest,” said Guenna. “I charge you both . . .”

  “What, grandmother?” asked the king.

  “I have failed in the struggle. Perhaps my life and art have been wasted. Yet do you hold fast to the hope of freedom for Lien, freedom from our common enemy.”

  “We will hold fast,” said Aidris in a breaking voice.

  “No, no my brave queen,” said Guenna, “do not weep. Let my good Hazard write some song or catch for me. I will give the poor folk back their roses.”

  Then the light from the world of the stone grew and shone up all around them, where they were sitting by the lake shore; and there, for an instant, stood Guenna, robed and crowned in silver light, holding out her hands to them. Her voice came from far away: “Farewell . . . farewell, my dear children . . .” and the light faded. Aidris gave a cry of grief, and in her palm the scrying stone began to break; it crumbled into dust, and she held only the silver rim.

  “Hush,” said Sharn, putting an arm about his cousin. “We must not weep for her. She has gone to the halls of the Goddess.”

  The Daindru walked back across the lawns and sat quietly with Merilla and Lorn. They remained so long together that servants and couriers came out to peer at them across the twilit gardens of the palace, wondering what it was that held them thus, so quiet and downcast.

  So passed Guenna of Lien, a mighty sorceress, mother of the Markgraf Kelen and of the three lovely swans of Lien: Hedris, Aravel and Elvédegran. Her magic was not entirely lost. When autumn rains lashed the border forest and Garvis of Grays, camped with his followers in a ring of rude huts, began to regret that he had no better roof over his head, an old man was brought into camp by the scouts. He hailed Garvis by name and promised him a great gift if he would mount up and follow.

  Many thought it must be a trap. Mayrose, the leader’s outlaw bride, came from her hut and questioned the old man, and he gave her a leather bag containing a large ruby, framed in gold. It was a scrying stone: it showed a part of the palace at Balufir, always the same room, and the people who came and went in that place. This was only a part of the gift, the old man said; Garvis must follow him.

  In the end Garvis and Mayrose and some trusty knaves followed the old man on foot through the forest, taking their own secret trails and keeping a sharp look out. They came at last to a huge oak tree not far from the river; beyond the oak was a tangled thicket and a ruin. So the old man bade Garvis of Grays strike three times with his sword upon the trunk of the oak tree.

  The young lord of Grays did as he was told, and at the third stroke of his sword, there was a sound in the air like a chord of music. The outlaws beheld a fair green park where the sun shone, and between two wooded hills there was a small keep with towers and turrets. The old man led them on and bade them welcome to Erinhall, a magical retreat, to be theirs until the Lord of Grays came into his own again.

  With Hazard, who had long known the truth, Sharn mourned not only for Guenna but for the Mark of Lien. There seemed to be no help for that poor country. The roses might return, but the Lien that had produced so many poets, players, artists and musicians seemed to have gone forever.

  More and more folk, gentle and simple, sought refuge in other lands. The players, two full companies, went to Varda, in Athron, and to the Chameln lands; there was a fine playhouse in Chernak New Palace and another in the Old Market in Achamar. At last, in this autumn, which came in very wet and cold, there was a knocking upon Hazard’s door late on a rainy night. When the servant opened up, there was a figure on the threshold that Taranelda could hardly recognize: a tall, sagging fellow, a fat man grown thin. He had a heavy satchel of books and papers and type; under his cloak he carried a bedraggled black cat. It was easy to believe that Buckrill had walked every step of the way from Balufir to Achamar. So he was taken in kindly and brought to a place by the fire.

  The old wives of the Chameln land who read signs of the Goddess in the stars and in the patterns of clouds and in the trees and grasses, predicted a winter of leave-taking. They meant that there would be changes, sudden partings, there would be deaths. No one paid much attention to such messages of gloom, least of all the young bloods at the courts of Achamar.

  Beyond the Old Market in a tangle of poor streets by the city wall, there was a tavern called The Sun. It had long been the haunt of young malcontents, nobles and the sons of rich men, together with their huntsmen and grooms. They drank hot punch, swore brotherhood and went out into the streets of the city in search of adventure. There were stories of citizens robbed, tormented, sometimes badly hurt if they tried to defend themselves. This was the work of the Salamanders: a glimpse of a broad hat and a red scarf in the streets after nightfall sent honest folk far out of their way.

  Who lurked behind the red scarf? There was no leader, but young Ilmar of Inchevin was what the Salamanders called a “plucky boy,” one ready for any devilry. Carel Am Zor called the tune, although he did not know it. His presence and his contempt for authority worked upon the young men. It was common talk that the courts of Achamar had become very dull; at the same time it was agreed that King Sharn Am Zor had changed for the better. Yet was he so much changed? Or had Sharn Am Zor changed towards all the world but not towards his brother?

  Tazlo Am Ahrosh was one of the Salamanders; he came and went and knew that he could take the leadership of these likely lads at any time. His ambition and his love were still directed towards the King; given time, he would be Sharn’s henchman again. Meanwhile, he roamed the streets in his red scarf and broadbrimmed hat, saved Carel from the watch, paid court a little to Derda of Inchevin, the Starry Maid. The Salamanders often gathered, late at night, in the kitchen of old Countess Panget’s home from the ringroad and sampled her apple bra
ndy. Derda, cold and aloof but beautiful, had eyes only for the prince, for Carel Am Zor, her cousin. Carel was frightened of her, yet fascinated, as a rabbit is fascinated by a snake. She made him a gift of an eagle’s claw set in silver with a lock of her hair and some runes for good fortune. It was a charm, she said, that she gave to her true servants.

  One night in the last days of the Maplemoon, Tazlo Am Ahrosh had a strange adventure in the streets of Achamar. The Salamanders, three or four, spoiling for trouble, chased the servants of a rich merchant bringing his carriage to the livery stable, and were chased in their turn by the watch. They scattered, and Tazlo found himself alone in the Old Market. A man went past his hiding place wrapped in a cloak, and Tazlo jumped out with a hoot and seized him. In an instant the young man from the north found himself on his back in the gutter with the point of a knife at his throat.

  The man heaved Tazlo to his feet by his red scarf and said in a hoarse whisper, “Take care, Count Ahrosh! I learned street fighting when you were eating berries in your stinking birch lodge!”

  Tazlo, afraid and furiously angry, could only show his teeth. He knew the man; surely it was a fellow called Hunter who ran a stall in the market.

  “Have no fear,” said the man, tightening his grip. “I’ll not hand you over to the watch. Achamar has seen the last of me. Would you do a service to the Daindru instead of waylaying honest citizens?”

  “What service?” gasped Tazlo.

  “There is a cursed spy out of Lien in the king’s household this many a year,” said Hunter.

  “How would you know?” demanded Tazlo, regaining his courage.

  “The spy serves Rosmer, the old scorpion, and once I served this same master,” came the reply, still very low. “I fell foul of him and was cruelly punished. Only the mercy of Queen Aidris Am Firn saved me, and I honor the double throne for that. But I still remember much from the old days in Balufir, and I know that this man was one of Rosmer’s most secret knaves.”

  “Would he talk with Rosmer by magic then?”

  “Likely they use wizards’ tablets,” said Hunter. “Little wooden frames filled with a greasy stone, red shale or grey. They are charmed in pairs. Writing on one tablet appears on the other at a far distance.”

  Tazlo made some sound of disbelief.

  “I do not lie,” said Hunter.

  “Where are you going?” asked Tazlo, full of mistrust. “Why not bring this intelligence to the king yourself?”

  “I am going home,” said Hunter. “To my first home, which is Lien, and to my second home, which is the forest. There is a leader there after my own heart, and I will do him good service. I will seek out the Great Outlaw, Garvis of Grays.”

  “Good luck to you,” said Tazlo. “Tell me the name of this spy.”

  Hunter drew the young man from the north back into the shadows and began to whisper.

  It came to a death in the first month of the new year, in the Tannenmoon, when the snow lies heavy. The king was spending an evening hour in the nursery of the palace in Achamar, a bright room hardly changed since his own childhood. A noisy game of two crows was going on at the round table with Hal Denwick and the king taking tricks from Zilly and Tanit, with Gerd holding the purse and keeping score.

  Sharn, looking about at the children, marvelled at their difference, their cleverness. Surely he and old Zilly had been singularly blessed. He saw how grave and lovely Tanit looked, how well she reckoned up her score and helped her brother manage his hoard of gilded acorn money. He marked the good looks of Hal, like his mother Veldis, but with all of Zilly’s good humor. The king heard a cry outside. Perhaps it was just the wind on the balcony. Instinctively he wished away all harm from these children, as if he clutched at an amulet.

  The cry came again, close at hand this time and play was broken off. The nursery door flew open, and there was Princess Merilla, pale and dishevelled. She held a twin by the hand, Till, the one with more freckles, and the boy was shocked and gasping.

  “Sharn!” she cried. “Have you done it then? How could you choose this way?”

  “What is it?” demanded the king.

  “Nerriot!” she hurled the name at him. “It is Nerriot, stabbed to death!”

  “In the name of the Goddess, Rilla,” said Sharn Amn Zor, “the children . . .”

  “This child saw all!” she said. “He and Esher were crossing the court. Will you say you had no hand . . .”

  “I swear it!” said the king. “Who has done this?”

  Till Am Chiel broke away from his mother and ran to open the balcony doors. They followed him, everyone crowded onto the deep snowy balcony; far below they saw the north court. There stood Esher Am Chiel and officers of the guard. Nerriot could be clearly seen, lying in the snow in the midst of scattered music sheets, his lute by his side. A guardsman picked it up, and it gave off one last sad note, echoing up to the watchers overhead. The children were very still. Tanit took her father’s hand on one side, and on the other she put an arm around her brother.

  Hal Denwick said, “Nerry is dead?”

  “Yes,” said Zilly. “It seems so, old son. Come away.”

  The Countess Caddah had appeared; she shepherded the children back into the nursery. Only Till and Merilla and the king remained on the balcony. Sharn knelt down and spoke to his nephew.

  “You saw it then?”

  The boy nodded.

  “I held his head,” he said, “while Pa called the guard. The other man ran off through the arches.”

  “You are a brave fellow,” said Sharn. “Was there some fight or quarrel? Was only one man with Nerriot?”

  “Only one.”

  “Can you say what he looked like?”

  “I knew him,” said Till, “and so did my father. It was Tazlo Am Ahrosh. We saw him very plain as he passed us by.”

  “Go in now,” said the king. “Sit by the fire. Lady Caddah will give you a posset.”

  “There is more,” said Merilla in a low voice. “You must tell the king.”

  “Nerriot said some words,” said the boy, moving his feet on the snowy floor. “He said, very loud, ‘The Treble is false!’ Then he said, ‘Inchevin . . . the golden bird . . .’ Then he murmured low to himself. The guard came. Nerriot spoke no more.”

  “Thank you, Till,” said the king. “You have done bravely.”

  Merilla kissed her son and let him go into the warm room, where he was claimed by the Countess Caddah. The king and his sister remained standing in the cold.

  “Will you believe me?” asked Sharn.

  “Yes,” she said. “But why would Tazlo . . .?”

  “To win my favor,” said the king. “He must have learned what I have known, what you have known too: that Aram Nerriot was Rosmer’s creature.”

  “He was a poor boy, a beggar,” said Merilla, “with nothing but his gift for music. He was an easy victim.”

  “I know it!” said the king. “I have had thoughts about him since the return from Eildon. I tried to keep him far from our councils, and I saw that you did, too. I might have charged him with being a spy one day, but I would never have had him killed.”

  “Will you send out after Tazlo Am Ahrosh?”

  “Tazlo will show himself, never fear,” said the king. “Let us go in. I must search Nerriot’s chamber.”

  For more than ten years the musician had lodged at the palace in a small room under the eaves of the west wing. A guard officer found the door unlocked; Sharn Am Zor went in alone. He saw the few possessions of Nerriot strewn about, his bed made untidily, his makeshift desk piled with music, written in Nerriot’s personal, crabbed notation, written upon paper, parchment, cloth. Two lutes rested on a shelf. A mirror hung upon the wall, and Sharn peered into it anxiously, but saw no more than his own face, shadowed and dark, more like the face of Nerriot.

  The king, who had consulted with Hazard, knew what he was seeking. At the small window, with a view over the city towards the palace of the Firn, there stood a vase with a sprig
of evergreen, resting upon a flat reddish stand that looked like a tile. Sharn lifted the vase aside, sat down on the edge of the bed and placed his lighted candle upon the broad windowsill. He looked about for a stylus and found it in the vase. So he waited, staring at the greasy reddish stone of the wizards’ tablet, and after a long time, about the second hour of morning, his waiting was rewarded. Words appeared on the tablet, and in a familiar hand. “What news?” wrote Rosmer, far away in Lien. The words faded, and the king took up the stylus. “You will die, old canker, and the world will be healed!” His words faded too, and he wrung from his enemy a reply of surpassing cleverness. “Courage, little king; darkness comes to us all.” A quotation from The Masque of Warriors by Robillan Hazard.

  The line faded, and the wizards’ tablet heaved and twisted; it became crumbly and dry, unfit for messages. The king ordered all the music to be brought to his sister’s apartment. He went away feeling sick and puzzled by Nerriot, his gift, his treachery, his narrow room, his violent death. What had Rosmer and his creature to do with Inchevin and with the Golden Bird, a reference to the old miser’s magical obsession with the so-called noble art, the attempt to turn base metal into gold?

  Tazlo Am Ahrosh soon learned that he had lost all. Sharn walked with his former henchman in the palace gardens and told him, with some embarrassment, that he was banished. Both men held themselves in check; there were no recriminations, the mood was one of leave-taking. The king gave room for hope that the banishment would not last forever. At the last they stood together by the railing before the Skelow, the black tree.

  “I hope the sapling grows well in Eildon,” said Tazlo.

  “The Skelow grows slowly,” said the king.

  He stood in a patch of winter sunlight; his cloak was of white fur, ermine and fox. He was at that moment no longer the young king but an ageless being, an embodiment of the Zor, white and gold.