“He tried his best not to meet me face to face. He knew well, as the poor false queen did not, that I would know him for a pretender. I found myself sorely tested. I left the city, and since the countryside had risen, I was able to gather about me certain other lords and ladies come out of hiding or retirement. We proclaimed the Daindru far and wide.
“Then at last, and to our great joy, the true king landed at Winnstrand. With our help he was recognised at once; he led our army. Old Gilyan marches with the king, Lady, and Count Barr and the Countess Caddah. We skirmished with the Melniros on the shores of the Danmar. King Sharn, jealous of his right, sent a troop of kedran back into Dechar, seized both the pretenders out of the citadel and held them prisoner. Only then, with those two outside the walls, would he consent to enter the city. Since then we have marched many leagues beyond Dechar, gathering strength, but we are still not prepared to strike at Achamar.”
“You have done bravely,” said Aidris. “I cannot see that the pretenders threaten our rights any longer.”
“My Queen,” said Bajan, “your rights must be proclaimed in the same way. There are landholders in the hills between Zerrah and Achamar who have lived quietly in accord with Mel’Nir. They will not risk their forces except for a true queen and a certainty of victory.”
“You have not spoken of the greatest pretender of all,” said Aidris. “How does Lord Werris? What of his marriage plans?”
“He has not married the Lady Micha Am Firn,” said Nenad, “but she has been brought to Achamar. Werris denies the right of princes and pretenders alike. He is fighting for his life. He goes about in fear of assassins.”
“We will send none,” said Aidris, “yet he may not escape.”
She rose up from the table.
“We must ride out of Athron boldly and without secrecy,” she said. “I will be seen far and wide, and it will be known that I am the queen. I will make myself known to the princes in Varda, my cousins. I will write at once to my uncle the Markgraf Kelen asking that he help my right to prevail. I will go further . . . I will send letters proclaiming the Daindru to the so-called Great King of Mel’Nir and to his son, Prince Gol. I will ask them to abandon Lord Werris.”
“This might all be done,” said Lingrit, “but it is difficult to get a message to the rulers of Mel’Nir.”
“The healer at the court of Mel’Nir is called Hagnild,” said Aidris. “I believe he would deliver my letter.”
“This is all bravely said,” put in Jana Am Wetzerik, “but the queen must be closely guarded. We would not lose her now that she has been found again.”
“Dear General,” said Aidris, “I have been invisible too long. All men must know that the queen has come again.”
Then Zabrandor uttered a rumbling cheer, and the councillors saluted her and drank her health. The steward of Kerrick Hall looked in at the fierce Chameln folk and bade them timidly to come and dine with the lord and lady of the house.
Towards the end of the long dinner, there was a noise of singing and drumming in the north court. The captain Megan Brock came into the room where they were dining; Jana Am Wetzerik stood up to take her salute.
“It is the kedran, my lord,” said Captain Brock, in answer to Lord Huw’s question. “They are making a drum parade for the queen. If she would be so gracious as to step out on the balcony . . .”
Aidris crossed the long gallery with the two tall kedran women behind her and stood on the balcony beside the blue fir trees. Down below all the kedran drummed and shouted and waved torches. She felt foolish tears sting her eyes as she waved to the upturned faces.
“Well, Brock, my dear old comrade,” said Jana Am Wetzerik, “this is a far cry from the Chyrian lands. What have you to report of this recruit that came to you?”
“I am loath to let her go,” said Megan Brock. “Where else will I find an ensign who writes in two scripts and has the Old Speech? And she rides well, I will allow.”
“What veterans have you?” murmured the general, as the kedran waved still and began to march off, cheering for the Queen of the Chameln.
“Enough,” said Megan Brock. “Some of the younger ones would be keen to see action. There are kerns who could be mounted . . .”
As they went in, Aidris said to the captain, “My room in the barracks must be cleared, Captain. I would have my comrade Ortwen Cash bring all the things to me in the morning.”
The captain saluted. In the brightly lit dining chamber, at the head of the table, with Bajan on her left hand and the Lady Aumerl on her right, she remembered suddenly her dream of the forest. The darkness, the movement through the woods on horseback, the melody the captain had sung.
“The Winter Queen and the King of Summer
Will cast them down.
The men of Mel’Nir are tall as trees.
They will lie dead on the plain.”
The wine in her goblet was red as blood. She had as little stomach for the rest of the dinner as she had for a battlefield.
“You are tired,” said Bajan.
“No!”
“The queen may not be tired,” said Lady Aumerl, smiling, “but Ensign Venn has had a long day. Let Count Bajan escort you to your chamber.”
So another toast was drunk, and Bajan led her down the table to bid good-night. She came to Lord Huw at the table’s end; the Lord of Kerrick looked hale enough, but he was still lame, with a basket frame to support his leg.
“Forgive me,” said Aidris, “for entering your service under a false name and for leaving it so suddenly.”
“Majesty,” said Lord Huw, “I do not know when Kerrick has been more honored.”
He smiled at her with a perfect understanding, as if he knew the long way she had come and the long way still to travel. On an impulse she stepped forward and gave the Lord of Kerrick a kiss upon his cheek.
“I will pray that your leg heals perfectly,” she said.
She sat with Bajan at the fireside in the guest chamber, the same where Prince Ross had been lodged. Yvand and Millis moved about in the shadows. The room was high and shadowy, with fine hangings . . . almost, almost they might have been in the Palace of the Firn at Achamar. It needed a smell of fir and dried rose petals, the rose petals sent from Lien for Queen Hedris to scent her linen. She drew out the scrying stone from her new tunic.
“Has your mother’s gift been a comfort in exile?” he asked.
“More than that,” she said. “It has helped me to work magic.”
“The tribal Shamans by Vigrund are beating their drums night and day,” said Bajan. “If it were only magic we needed!”
“Let us see if the stone has any message.”
For the first time in ten years she let another person look into the stone. She remembered the wood where she had crouched with Sharn Am Zor, in peril for their lives. Bajan gasped.
“I see . . .”
“What? Tell me!”
“A crown, two crowns linked, lying upon a green cloth, and near them a bunch of oak leaves.”
“The Daindru has come again,” she said. “Do you see anything else?”
“Now the picture is different,” he said. “A silver coronet and an eagle’s feather.”
“For you,” she said. “Your crown and the eagle feather for the crest of the Nureshen.”
“What place is that we see?” he asked.
“I call it the world of the stone,” she said. “There is a being there, a Lady, who watches over me. She is my witch-mother or my wish-mother as they would say in Athron.”
She looked into the stone herself and saw only a bunch of nettles.
“We must take care,” she said. “There will be danger.”
Bajan smiled with his head on one side as if to say that they did not need a scrying stone to tell them that.
“I must do all,” she said. “I will speak further with Lingrit, prepare the letters . . .”
“Hush,” he said. “Rest now. We have a lifetime. This is only the first day.”
> She slept late in the huge soft canopied bed and woke with Yvand holding a milk posset, the first in seven years.
“There is a big Athron wench waiting, my Queen,” she said. “She has a pass from the kedran captain.”
“Let her come in,” said Aidris.
Yvand showed her disapproval. Aidris set the half-finished milk posset back on the tray and said, “Ortwen Cash is my comrade. She may come to me whenever she will. And I have lost the taste for milk posset. I will drink rosehip tea in the mornings.”
Yvand went off, and presently Ortwen came peering round the door of the bedchamber. She carried the fur cloak and a small bundle of Ensign Venn’s possessions. Ortwen looked shy and sad. Aidris was ashamed of her long masquerade. How was it when a close friend was proved to be of high estate? Sabeth could become a countess in the twinkling of an eye, but Ortwen had to endure the teasing of the stableyard.
“I am still the same,” she said.
Ortwen laid her burdens aside and perched on the edge of the bed where Aidris patted the quilt.
“Trouble,” she whispered, trying to smile.
“Forgive me,” said Aidris. “I told no one. Not Sabeth. Not Sir Gerr or the lord and lady. Terril of Varda did not know, although he is my own kin. Only Niall of Kerrick guessed, I think, and Prince Ross of Eildon knew me because of his magical powers.”
“It was plain from the first that you were some lord’s daughter,” said Ortwen with some of her old humor. “The book-learning. The queer fine clothes . . . linen underdrawers!”
Then they laughed aloud, and Aidris said, “How we will laugh and cry when we think of these seven years!”
“The barracks is in an uproar,” said Ortwen. “Nothing to match it since the Carach came back. Lord Huw has spoken with your tall general, Brock’s old comrade. A company of volunteers will follow you home. It is all settled.”
Aidris stared at her friend.
“Ortwen,” she said, “dear Ortwen Cash . . . will you do one thing for me?”
“Surely,” said Ortwen, wondering.
“Do not ride with me,” said Aidris earnestly. “I pray you . . . do not ride to battle. Go home to Cashcroft and be married to Han the Smith.”
“But why . . .?”
“I am the queen; I must go,” said Aidris. “But I cannot lead you to blood and death. I would be a false friend indeed.”
“Others will go,” said Ortwen stoutly.
“No, they will not,” said Aidris, making the decision. “I will not have them. If the veterans, the true kedran and kerns . . . Brock and Yeo and Wray and Lawlor and the rest . . . make up companies I will not object; but no untried soldier of Kerrick Hall will ride with me, I swear it.”
Ortwen sighed.
“They will never believe, back home, that I rode seven years long with the Queen of the Chameln lands.”
“My friendship lasts forever,” said Aidris. “We will meet again and ride together and speak of old times. You will have all that remains of my soldier’s pay to buy that south field your father likes.”
“Would you do that?” said Ortwen. “Truly, it is a good field, but you have no need . . .”
“Let me,” said Aidris.
When Ortwen had gone, Aidris stood at the window in her nightgown looking at the gardens of Kerrick Hall, which she had never seen from the south wing. The women were waiting to dress their queen. Bajan and the councillors were waiting. The queen’s horses were waiting to be exercised. She looked at a few of the tokens that had sustained her during her time in exile: the sword of the Firn, the beloved book Hazard’s Harvest. Unexpectedly Yvand gave a loud sob: She was holding up the white tunic, Aidris’s good white that she had worn perhaps nine times in seven years.
“It is still good,” said Aidris. “Hardly a bead has been shed.”
“We sewed it together,” said Yvand, “the Lady Maren and myself.”
Aidris slipped under the rail and knelt beneath the Carach tree.
“Carach,” she said, “the time has come. Give me your blessing once again for my journey back into my own country.”
“Oak maiden,” said the Carach tree. “Your own trees will give you that blessing.”
“Carach, we speak in the Chameln lands of lost Ystamar, the Vale of the Oak Trees. Is there such a place?”
“No one knows where it lies,” said the Carach, “except the wild creatures, the wolf and the wild swan.”
Three leaves of the Carach, just turning to gold, dropped down upon her, softly as bird’s feathers. She gathered them up and bade farewell to the Carach tree. She had come alone to the top of the hill, but when she turned, Niall of Kerrick and his dog Crib stood waiting.
“The Carach honors you,” he said. “Go well, Queen Aidris.”
“Watch over me, I pray,” said Aidris. “You are far beyond me in magic, Master Kerrick, since you went into Eildon.”
“My brother rides questing to help regain your throne,” he said.
“It is not a quest!” she said.
Niall of Kerrick smiled at her, but his eyes were solemn. For a moment, holding the Carach leaves, she knew what he had wished to say to her for so long, which now could not be said. They clasped hands, and she went down the hill to the point where her kedran were waiting.
There was a brief leave-taking. Lord Huw and his lady stood at the door of Kerrick Hall, but Sabeth stood at her chamber window, her golden hair unbound, holding the child Imelda. She called a farewell to Gerr and to the queen.
“See there,” said Millis Am Charn, riding in the escort, “the Countess of Zerrah is lovely as a princess from some old legend!”
Ten kedran and ten mounted men-at-arms, all veterans, rode with the escort of the Chameln. Sir Gerr, in the panoply of a knight Forester, led them down the avenue. Sergeant Lawlor led a second horse, Telavel, skittish and excited by the presence of six other Chameln greys.
As they came through Garth and turned to the east, Aidris looked up and saw that the sky was covered with mares’ tail clouds. She rode in the midst of a company of Chameln lords in dark cloaks. She was dressed in white and mounted upon Tamir, the white stallion. Turning her head, she saw the hulk of the old mill looming among the trees. She waved her hand to Kedran Venn, watching through the eastern window; then the mill was lost to sight behind the hedges of the Varda road.
Chapter Eight
The news of the Queen’s coming ran ahead of them through the autumn countryside. The people of Athron came to wave and cheer; the maple, ash and Carach blazed scarlet and gold beside the strange banners from the Chameln lands. Those who saw the queen riding past, a young girl, dark-haired, sitting her magical white horse so well, swore that she was beautiful, her complexion delicate as a wild rose, her eyes green as oak leaves. It was clear to them and to the bards and storytellers that this was how a queen was meant to look.
As they came to Varda, there were many banners hung out, and the gates of the city had been shut but only so that they could be ceremonially opened at the queen’s approach. When the trumpets had spoken to each other, the gates parted, and there before the assembled citizens and the lord mayor was a solitary horseman in green and gold, upon a roan mare. He came out of the city and doffed his plumed hat to the queen. They touched hands.
“Dearest cousin,” said Terril of Menvir, “welcome to Varda.”
“Dearest cousin,” said Aidris, “I thank you for this fine welcome!”
They smiled at each other most warmly and rode side by side into Varda.
“I was forewarned,” said Terril. “There was word that the Queen of the Chameln had been living at Kerrick Hall.”
“And this told you all?”
“I swear it!” said the prince gallantly.
The ceremony went forward. It was a clear cool autumn day, and the queen’s party and their escort rode right through Varda to the palace where it stood among the gardens of the city. Riding down Tower High Street, they drew rein at the sign of the double oak, hung with m
ore flags, and Aidris gave a friendly greeting to Lallian Am Charn and her younger daughters and to Racha, the envoy’s son. The young merchant of Varda looked more worried and disapproving than ever.
As they came through a certain quiet square, Aidris sent word to the heralds, and the whole procession turned into a quarter of Varda with large, old-fashioned houses that had seen better days. They came to a rambling mansion, somewhat decayed, but now hung with banners and evergreen from all its musty turrets and crumbling balconies. There in its garden was raised a spirit tree, a totem of the Chameln lands, crowned with long tresses of human hair.
The inhabitants of House Imal to the number of forty or fifty persons, mostly of humble estate, came streaming out cheering loudly when they saw the queen. The front door of the house flew open and down the path came the old Countess Palazan Am Panget in all her finery, accompanied by the elderly minstrel and her two waiting women.
Here for the first time Aidris saw green branches raised in almost every hand; these were not only her poor subjects, they were petitioners. She would be whipped to death by their green branches; she shrank away from such a tide of human wishes. She said to Nenad Am Charn who had come up to her left hand, “What can we give them?”
“Silver, for their feast,” he said. “Their exile is not yet at an end.”
So she rode forward and addressed the crowd saying:
“Good people of the Chameln lands . . . take a gift in my name! But you must wait with your green branches till I rule again in Achamar with the king, Sharn Am Zor!”
The cheers redoubled. The old countess held out her arms on either side, her two waiting women took hold of her by the arms, lowered her into a curtsey, then hoisted her up again. The elderly minstrel came forward and bowed. He was proud and unsmiling as before; she could not tell if he recalled their last meeting.
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