A Princess of the Chameln

by Cherry Wilder

  The sun was just rising, sending long fingers of light across the plain; not far to the southeast they could see the shores of the Danmar, where lay the largest camp of Mel’Nir. The riders kept together, and the five kedran were watchful. Aidris felt a shred of worry when she looked at Lingrit Am Thuven, more grey and ill than ever. He caught her eye and smiled.

  “We are covered with glory, my Queen,” he said wryly.

  “My Lord,” she said, “how do you fare? I think you are not well.”

  “Well enough, my Queen. But surely Sir Gerr has taken some harm to his leg?”

  “A scratch,” said the knight. “By the Carach and the Morning Star, we are a sorry lot to ride with the queen!”

  Gefion, the kedran officer, cried out. At the same moment that she saw the riders coming in on their left from an old sheepfold, Aidris saw the tower of Radroch caught by the sun’s rays. They urged their horses forward, and they were fresh enough, all except Firedrake, for they had taken no part in the fighting. Aidris whispered to Telavel, and they sped over the endless silver grass of the plain. She looked for their pursuers: two familiar shapes, troopers of Mel’Nir, and other riders on lighter horses, mercenaries. Firedrake trailed, and she heard Gerr give a cry and wheeled to help him. Yvand had checked too, but she saw Lingrit flick the rump of her horse; it bolted for the tower.

  Lingrit called, “Go on! Ride on!”

  Aidris knew that he did not want to utter her name. She reached Gerr and found him standing; Firedrake was lame. A kedran had turned back to help them. Aidris saw another man, a stocky man, running up on foot from the sheepfold. He held up a weapon that she did not recognise at first; she heard one heavy sound, Telavel fell down, fell to her knees, crumpled without a sound. She was dead before Aidris dragged herself free. The bolt of the crossbow was deep in her chest, and the archer was running away, winding his weapon.

  Aidris gave a loud screaming cry of rage and pain. She drew her sword and ran for the stocky man. She ran very fast, caught him up, saw his look of surprise. She kicked him in the groin, wrenched the weapon from his hands and drove at his face with her sword. He fell down, bleeding, and she drove the sword into his throat and wrenched it out again. The kedran came up and held out a hand, and she sprang up behind. The kedran’s grey went wide, far away from the troopers who were hesitating in their pursuit because the small party had divided.

  Gerr had mounted up again, but was not running Firedrake. The kedran turned again, heading in for the keep. Lingrit and Yvand were at the wards of the tower, she saw them shouting and waving to those within. The other kedran had engaged the riders, and Gerr was bringing Firedrake slowly, with painful slowness, to help them.

  She slipped to the ground and said to the kedran, “I am safe. Tell them to break off . . . break away and bring in Gerr, Count Zerrah.”

  The kedran whirled away, and she went stumbling to the base of the tower. Yvand was weeping. Lingrit said, “My Queen . . .”

  They stared at her blood-stained sword.

  “Can you get any help from the tower?” she asked.

  “They are a Chameln garrison, at least,” said Lingrit. “The King holds Radroch Town.”

  There was movement overhead on the battlements of the ancient keep. The garrison had read the skirmish well enough to begin firing arrows at the riders of Mel’Nir. When the kedran of the escort broke away, taking Gerr with them, the pursuit was broken off too, although none of the arrows had found their mark. Aidris bent down and wiped her sword upon a tussock of silver grass and looked at the plain. Telavel was dead.

  A man had come out of the tower. He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the company.

  “What in the name of the Goddess are you kedran doing so far from Radroch Town at this hour?”

  “Are you Lord Zabrandor’s steward?” demanded Lingrit.

  “Sansom, Warden of Radroch Keep,” said the man, “Our lord is not here,”

  “He will be within the hour,” said Lingrit. “We must bring this lady in to rest and send word to the king.”

  “Lady?” echoed the man.

  “The queen.”

  “I don’t know you,” said Sansom. “I don’t know any of you. Lord Zabrandor is far away. What queer trick is being played here?”

  “Mind your manners,” said Ensign Gefion. “Let the queen come in!”

  “Another one,” said Sansom, grinning.

  “No,” said Aidris, “the only one. I will go in and wait for Sharn Am Zor.”

  “What have you been doing with that sword?” asked Sansom.

  “I killed a crossbowman who killed my horse,” she said.

  She walked past him into the tower. There was a big comfortable hall hung with trophies of the chase and the crossed spears that were the arms of Lord Zabrandor. To one side was a small guardroom with a fire. She went in and sat in a settle near the fire. The warmth began to seep over her, to dry the dew on her cloak. Soon, she thought, soon I will be warm, the warmth will reach my heart, I will begin to feel pain again.

  There were voices in the distance, coming and going through the old keep. The door of the guard room was shut, opened again. Yvand brought her a beaker of sweet apple wine and a piece of bread. She ate and drank and leaned her head against the chimney piece and fell into a dreamy state, more sleep than waking. The door opened gently now and then as if someone looked in on her, but she was too tired to raise her head. She slept and dreamed that she was riding across the plain, and thought, in her dream, I will be sad when I wake, for Telavel is dead.

  Then at last she woke, feeling that a long time had passed, but she saw that the fire had burned down only a little. She tried to rouse herself, shrugged off her cloak. There was a silvery trumpet call, loud voices and heavy footsteps echoed in the hall. The door of her hiding place was flung open, and Lingrit came in with Gerr. Her escort were there, too, packing around her at the fire as if to protect her. Yvand came and knelt at her feet and wiped her face with a damp cloth and combed her hair.

  In the hall a voice rang out like the voice of the silver trumpets, “Thuven must do better than this! I might believe Zabrandor. I have received no shred of help from the northern tribes. We will make a vile winter of it here on the plain with not a drop fit to drink and no decent quarters, eh Zilly, my lad? And to top it all . . . the queen? The queen? Is it the queen? Or another of these Chameln pretenders?”

  Two courtiers appeared, strangers in Lienish dress, puffed and slashed, in bright spring colors. Sharn Am Zor came forward, tall and beautiful as the morning in a sky-blue doublet and a golden cape. Aidris, watching him, saw a pride of the flesh, an arrogance that stemmed from his unmatched physical beauty. Yet her true servants clustered about a short dark woman, weary from campaigning, stained with blood, bereaved. She sprang up, pushed past her followers, and strode out to confront the king.

  “No, cousin,” she said firmly. “I have come home!”

  Sharn Am Zor stared, and she stared him down, just as she had done when they were children. The arrogance drained away from his face, leaving it vulnerable and soft.

  “Oh, Aidris . . . oh, is it you?”

  “Yes, my dear!”

  They embraced, held each other close. She glimpsed in the face of one of the courtiers an agonised relief. The silver trumpets sounded a wild call, and those within the keep all hailed the Daindru. With the perfect timing of a good omen, there came another trumpet call from outside; Zabrandor had come with his victorious warriors of the Morrigar.

  Chapter Ten

  “From that hour,” writes a chronicler, “it was but a step to Achamar.” The step took six moons and cost more lives. Yet Ghanor, the Great King, sent no more troops into the Chameln lands, and those lords and their followers who upheld the Protectorate of Mel’Nir were abandoned to their fate. The Daindru was proclaimed throughout the lands: they could be seen going about together, the Winter Queen and the King of Summer, by Radroch on the plain, at Nevgrod, Grunach, Zerrah, and at the seige of Le
dler and at Achamar.

  But from the hour when she reached Radroch Keep, Aidris felt that she campaigned no more; she made no more forced marches through the night and watched no more battles. She was, like Sharn Am Zor who hated to ride, “brought through” to the battlefront, then returned to some safe and comfortable place behind the lines. For more than a moon she lived in the tower of the keep. She did not ride, although half a dozen fine horses . . . from Sharn, from Zabrandor . . . were paraded temptingly below her windows in the inner court.

  Her chamber in the tower was comfortable enough, even if Sharn thought it a dreary hole without good hangings. He sat with her after dinner on the second night when she had recovered a little and they heard music and played at dice. They leaped about in their topics of conversation, their sharing of their exile.

  “Let me show you these two,” he begged. “We can watch them unobserved . . .”

  “No,” she said, “I cannot bear it. Wait a little.”

  She felt too much like a pretender herself. Then, watching him rattle the dice in the cup, she said, “You mean the pretenders are here? In the keep?”

  “Where else?” He grinned. “Come, see them. It is great sport!”

  She shook her head. He was cruel. It was the bad influences of Lien.

  “Kelen is a fool,” he said in answer to her question. “He drinks too much. Have no fear, Rilla will never be tied to Prince Gol. I have other plans for her.”

  Then seeing her look of fear, he smiled.

  “No, truly,” he said. “I was thinking only of bringing her to Achamar. I am not such a monster. Look, if you beat me on this next pass, I swear I will let you find her a husband when she is of age.”

  It was foolishly easy; she had only to wish on the dice in a certain way, and she won the throw.

  “I must find you a wife first of all,” she said.

  Sharn made a gesture of resignation.

  “You could not wait to be wed to good old Bajan.”

  “We did not wait, dearest coz.” She smiled. “I think we wed to please Yvand . . . or to safeguard any child I might have.”

  The king blushed.

  “I think you have learned coarse ways from the Athron kedran,” he said.

  “Lien is a debauched place,” she teased. “Everyone knows that.”

  “Athron is a backwater.”

  “Yes,” she said, “but it is a kind and lovely land. Not so beautiful to me as the Chameln lands, and not so fine and highbred as Lien, but full of peace, and its own magic. I will go there with you on a progress one day. Would not that be a pleasant time . . . we could go to Kerrick . . .”

  “That would be amusing. To see Terril of Varda and the talking trees. I like your new man, Zerrah, the son of Kerrick.”

  “I like your new man Denzil of Denwick, although his name is foolish.”

  “What, old Zilly? Yes, he is very loyal. Mind you, he owes me a lot.”

  Sharn’s face darkened; he looked about the plain room as if testing the shadows. She thought of Aravel, of whom he would not speak.

  “Lien can be a dark place,” he whispered.

  “Rosmer?”

  He nodded, lips compressed.

  “He tried to destroy the Daindru,” she said.

  “He gave me bad dreams,” said Sharn.

  That night, when the king had ridden with his court back to the comforts of Lord Zabrandor’s Great Hall in Radroch Town, Aidris could not sleep. She sat up sweltering in the Chameln feather quilts, then went back to the fireside. The door of the room where Yvand slept was ajar; she closed it before she stirred up the fire. She sat grieving for Telavel, thinking of the new grey, the colt that had been paraded for her use that morning.

  There was a breath of wind in the room, and she saw that beyond the chimneypiece an old hanging stirred. She was alarmed, ready to cry out. A young girl came into the room from behind the curtain, moving so lightly and gently that Aidris wondered if she were dreaming. The girl was very small and slight, with dark, straight hair that hung over a high forehead. She had a pale, pretty face with full red lips and large eyes. She was dressed in Chameln fashion, in a long beaded tunic of blue velvet, grey doeskin breeches and handsome boots of crimson leather. Her rich clothes were rather new, but not well kept, the beading ripped, the boots scuffed. The tunic almost hid some injury to her left side; she held her left shoulder too high; her slender neck was crooked. Aidris thought: her ribs have been broken and not properly set.

  The girl stared shyly at Aidris and stretched out her hands to warm them at the fire.

  “They say there has been a great victory!” she said in a sweet, rich voice.

  “Yes,” agreed Aidris softly, not breaking the spell, “a great victory!”

  “I won a great victory, too,” said the girl, “but they have put me in prison.”

  “How came you here,” asked Aidris, “to this chamber?”

  “I am allowed out, sometimes, at night,” said the girl sadly. “Sansom lets me go up and down this little secret stair. To his bedchamber.”

  “Sansom!”

  “You should address me by my title,” said the girl. “You should say ‘my Queen’!”

  Aidris shook her head.

  “I could not do it,” she said. “I know you are not the queen.”

  “You know, indeed . . .” said the girl, tossing her head. “Who has seen the queen? How could you . . .”

  She broke off and stared at Aidris. She came nearer with her particular light and graceful step and laid a hand on Aidris’s hair.

  “Your eyes are green,” she said. “You are a little older, I think, and your hair curls naturally. I curled my hair every night, as I was taught, but the curling rags are all used up.”

  “Who taught you?” asked Aidris, still very soft.

  “My waiting women, of course,” said the girl. “Seffina, Riane and Fariel and Tylit and the rest . . .”

  “Tylit was the queen’s nurse,” said Aidris, “never her waiting woman. She married a gardener and went to live in Lien.”

  “I remember,” said the girl. “I remember little else. I even have the queen’s dreams.”

  “You have been cruelly deceived. Someone has stolen your own life and your own dreams.”

  “No! said the girl. “No, I still have one dream . . .”

  “Tell me . . .”

  “It is always the same,” she said. “The candles are lit. I step out upon the balcony and it begins to shake, it cannot hold me. I see Hazard, my poor Hazard, waving his arms and shouting . . .”

  “Hazard? A person named Hazard?”

  “Of course,” said the girl. “Don’t you even know that? You are no queen at all, only a pretender. Hazard, Robillan Hazard, is the greatest poet in Lien.”

  “I have his book,” said Aidris, “Hazard’s Harvest.”

  “An early work,” said the girl, “with a private copying done for a royal lady. It is very strange that you should mention it. The king has seen that book.”

  “The king?”

  “You must not be confused,” said the girl kindly. “There are two kings. One is handsome and one is gentle. They are not in the least alike. One is here in the tower, deep down. One rides about, free, and says that Hazard is his friend, but he lies, he is not to be trusted. The other knows only Hazard’s writings. And see . . . this other poor king, this pretender, he has given me this token . . .”

  “Oh stop!” cried Aidris, half laughing and half weeping. “I cannot bear any more . . .”

  “You see,” said the girl, “how hard it is to be a queen. Everything in your life becomes twisted and confused.”

  There was a sound in the next room. The girl took fright at once; she was gone as quickly as she had come by the secret stair. Yvand opened her door.

  “My Queen, I thought I heard voices!”

  “It was nothing,” said Aidris. “I was talking to myself.”

  “Shall I make tea, my Queen, to help you sleep?”


  “Yes please, Yvand.”

  She saw herself as a very old woman, years hence: the Old Queen, crouched by her fire, drinking tea in the night hours. She felt pain and revulsion and wondered if this was how Guenna, her grandmother, had felt when she was betrayed and disgraced. The token from the gentle king, the one who lay deep down in this very tower, the token that the False Aidris wore on a string around her neck, was a turret shell from the ocean shore.

  She bided her time; she had learned patience in Athron. The Morrigar were encamped all about Radroch Keep, and the officers lived in the inner bailey where Zabrandor had housed his hunt servants. An encounter loomed before the winter with the remaining warriors of Mel’Nir, those from the southeast and those marching down from the encampment before Vigrund. There was a war council of the Daindru in the hall of the keep, and here Aidris met again her father’s fourth Torch Bearer, Gilyan, no “new man” but an old man, white-haired, looking older than Zabrandor. He presented a shy girl in kedran dress: his grandchild Lorn Gilyan; and Aidris, knowing what was expected of the queen, took her at once into her service.

  She watched the young king and his advisors at the council board: Old Zabrandor, the Countess Caddah, a dour Firnish woman whose lands lay further east on the Danmar. Then there were the newcomers: Denzil of Denwick, younger son of a Lienish duke called “the richest man in the world”; Seyl of Hodd, a family connection, as darkly handsome as his master was fair; and Engist, the king’s master-at-arms, a gnarled veteran soldier.

  Aidris found herself striving, as they strove, to make all plain to Sharn Am Zor, to hold his interest. He was clever and quick, but he could not put his mind to anything for very long. His gaze wandered from the map, he began to gossip with Zilly of Denwick or turn to the others in his train, Seyl’s beautiful wife, her waiting women, all eager to pander to the humors of the Summer’s King.

  She looked with fond irritation at her own followers: Lingrit, that grey and melancholy man, old Gilyan, Gerr, Count Zerrah. She added to them, mentally, Jana Am Wetzerik, Nenad Am Charn, Bajan. She longed for Bajan, clenching her hands to feel his two rings cutting into her fingers, the small gold ring that he had sent to her in exile, the new silver ring with a fire opal, her wedding ring.