A Princess of the Chameln

by Cherry Wilder

  Here in the old town, the Daindru held their first audiences; the green branches of suppliants, all those who would beg a favor of the rulers, followed them in the dark streets. Aidris looked at the people of the Chameln lands, at her subjects, the city-dwellers and the poor tenant farmers of the central hills. She felt their love for herself and for Sharn Am Zor, but who or what it was that these poor folk knew or loved she could hardly tell. She was ashamed to stand before them finely dressed, well fed, warmly housed, and hear them cheer for the Daindru. It was not enough to have the common touch, which even Sharn Am Zor so brilliantly displayed; it was not enough to be a symbol, a light for the people of the Chameln lands in their darkness. What was a king or a queen? What was her right to which she had held so jealously? She felt a doubt, an unrest that could never be stilled, that had to do with the harsh lives of her poor subjects and with battle and bloodshed. She felt in herself a great cry that would never be uttered, a questioning of all the forms and uses of the world, echoing up to the halls of the Goddess.

  She woke sometimes in the night or in the dark winter morning and saw Bajan asleep by her side. Her love and deep content were tinged with fear. What could divide them? She wanted to wind him in her arms and cling to him, crying out, “I have no one, no friend, no lover except you, in all the world!” Yet she resisted this strong possessive love and told herself that it came from old sorrow, from the loss of her parents, from the loneliness of an exile, of a queen.

  She looked into the scrying stone and spoke to the Lady in a new way.

  “Are you alone? Are you lonely? Come out . . . declare yourself. We are here, Sharn and I, we are safe. We will come home to Achamar in the spring. Oh come to us there, let us protect you. Is Lien so dear to you?”

  But the Lady was as elusive as before. She smiled and said, in that distant voice; “Where is Lien? Where is Achamar?”

  On the table in the world of the stone was a spray of whitethorn, the tree of magic and of sacrifice. Aidris found time, during the winter, to work her own magic. A jeweler in Nevgrod polished the large rough stone, the gift of the old Countess Palazan Am Panget, and set it in a silver rim. It was a rare, large carbuncle, deep violet red with a star of light in its depths; she performed her working on it and kept it close to her. She knew it would be her own scrying stone.

  Some time after New Year, a messenger came bearing letters from Athron. Gerr of Kerrick came to the queen with a shining face.

  “She has borne a son!” he said. “She is well . . . she writes it all herself . . . the child thrives, he is beautiful.”

  “I long to see them both!” said Aidris.

  She missed Sabeth. She thought, fondly, how the Countess of Zerrah would decorate her court and turn heads in the court of the Zor.

  “She will come to Zerrah in the spring,” said Gerr.

  He looked at Aidris with the boyish smile that she remembered from the Wulfental.

  “You have rewarded us,” he said, “although I had many strange fancies. Aidris . . . Dan Aidris . . . let me say this. I will go on to the end, to Achamar and beyond. I am your ‘new man’ forever if you will have me.”

  When he had gone, she paced about upon a small, chill “balcony” of the Old Palace, guarded by a breast-high wall of stone with slits for archers. She thought of her journey into Athron and the years that had followed. If life had its seasons, then the spring of her life had been Athron. But she dismissed this as another strange fancy; her life would be too long. She thought of Prince Ross, ages old, and his bleak memory of seven years exile upon a rock in the ocean.

  As she walked about, Yvand came out with her fur cloak, her new sable cloak, Bajan’s latest gift, and laid it tenderly about her shoulders. She was indeed entering a new season of her life; she was delivered over to the old wives. The queen was with child.

  With the spring she was stifled in the Old Palace; she rode out on Tamir, followed the distant clash of the armies. For the first time she asked Bajan to remain at her side; he rode with her and the king to Grunach and then to Zerrah. She lingered there in the old brown manor house, dazed and fretful, waiting for Sabeth to come, waiting for the Melniros to be driven from the land. The Willowmoon went out in a gale of wind; Allerdon hung on with five hundred of his best soldiers in Ledler Fortress, barring the way to Achamar, but his countrymen treated with the Daindru. An army of the protectorate, stripped of honor and arms, was permitted to take the long way home across the plain to the Nesbath road and the Adderneck, symbol of the humiliation of the Great King. The rumor was abroad that Werris was a fugitive.

  Aidris woke from her afternoon nap one mild day near the end of Birchmoon. Yvand, at the bedside, knitting, put a finger to her lips. There beside her on the bed in a nest of pillows was a baby. She bent over it half in a dream, remembering the milky odor, remembering an old feeling of mingled fear and distaste that she had had for babes in arms when she was a small child herself. The plump, fair, red-cheeked stranger opened its eyes, and she saw that they were still an indeterminate cloudy blue. It stared, gave a gaping smile, and began to make soft, cheerful noises.

  “Oh you!” she said to the trustful creature.

  The child’s nursemaid curtsied to the queen; it was the young daughter of the Garth midwife. Aidris gathered up the baby unhandily in its wraps and carried it to the window. There on the hillside, among the drifts of spring flowers, was Sabeth, walking with the child Imelda.

  “I do not even know Master Kerrick’s name,” she said to the women.

  “Why, the sweet boy is called Huon,” said Yvand. “An Athron name. We must begin to think of names, my Queen.”

  The journey to Ledler in the last ten days of its seige took on the character of a royal progress. As she had foreseen, Sabeth greatly enhanced the court of the Firn, and Sharn paid her gallant attention. Yet, as they drew near, the sight of the massive fortress casting a shadow over the rough green meadows of the hill cotts filled Aidris with dread.

  She had no stomach for any of the siege tales, but she remained with Sharn to see Allerdon and his defenders march out. Sickness had brought the siege to an end. The men of Mel’Nir had slaughtered some of their horses for food, released others. Aidris sent to ask for Marshal Brond, but word came back that the envoy was dead, killed during the march eastward over the plain. Allerdon was questioned by Zabrandor and Bajan and given horses for his remaining officers for the long, cruel homeward journey.

  The fortress was searched from top to bottom, all of its living quarters and outbuildings and every cranny of the fetid dungeons below ground. No prisoners were found, although Ledler had a reputation as the protector’s dungeon for Chameln rebels. No trace was found of Nazran Am Thuven and the Lady Maren, not even a marked grave or the record of their imprisonment. Lingrit came to Aidris where she was resting in a tent in the besiegers’ camp.

  “Werris has destroyed the records,” he said. “Even the house servants had gone when Allerdon came in. There is an old graveyard within the wall. I do not doubt that they both lie there.”

  The way lay open to Achamar. The high road was broad and old, muddy with the spring rains. It wound through a countryside that Aidris found strange as a dream: green yet stony, with grey rock visible on the sides of the hills and, in the valleys, groves of birch. She knew the land and did not know it. Sharn Am Zor, riding at her side, had a good and patient horse at last; but when he cursed or tugged at its rein, she reached out to help, as if he had still been riding Moon, the fractious white pony.

  Their royal progress was slow; the folk turned out to meet them by tens and hundreds. Here the Daindru came upon the first of the “changelings,” new men indeed—men of Mel’Nir who forswore the protectorate and did homage to the Daindru for their estates. They had all some close connection to the Chameln lands. Some had married women of the Chameln or had married their sons or daughters to neighboring Chameln landowners. Many had gathered their estates long before the protectorate had been established. The changelings t
rod warily and often brought supporters, Chameln kin or tenants, to persuade the king and the queen to accept their oaths of fealty.

  At a last camp in a village, almost within sight of the city walls, Jana Am Wetzerik came to the queen in the main room of the local inn and said, “Here is a changeling who swears he is already your vassal, my queen.”

  “What, a man of Mel’Nir?”

  The general smiled and so did Bajan, who had seen the newcomer.

  “His wife has tamed him,” she said.

  She went out into the sunshine, and the big tawny-haired man dismounting from his charger was Hem Rhanar, to whom she had given a small feoff of land by Lake Musna. He went proudly to hold the stirrup of a woman getting down from a Chameln grey. She was still something of a beauty, but now she wore Chameln dress, her boots were muddy, her figure sturdier than it had been. It was Riane.

  Aidris took her hands, greeted her with tears. The youngest waiting woman of Queen Hedris brought back a whole chapter of her life in Achamar. The fate of this lady of Lien seemed strange as her own. She looked into Riane’s grey eyes and found a hint of resignation but no regret.

  “I have borne three sons,” said Riane, explaining her life, “and we do very well on my lord’s manor.”

  So Aidris accepted the homage of Hem Rhanar . . . or Haral Am Rhanar, the Lord of Musna Vale, as he was now called. She recalled their last meeting, fateful for all concerned.

  “The last time I set eyes upon Baron Werris,” she said. “What has become of the protector?”

  “Majesty,” he said, gazing down at her respectfully, “I never knew or liked the fellow, but I will say this: he was forced to do as he did by the troubled times and by Ghanor, the king. I have heard that he is dead.”

  A kedran troop had been sent ahead into Achamar to prepare the way for the Daindru. In the morning, the king and the queen, together with their courts, their escorts and their soldiers, set out over the high road. The city walls of wood and stone loomed ahead, curving, receding, then coming nearer, now like a cliff face, now like a forest of trees. Then Sharn Am Zor cried out and pointed, and Aidris laughed with delight. There before them the citizens had opened the Oaken Gate: an event of such moment that it was supposed to take place only once in a hundred years. The Oaken Gate had last been opened to let in Zendra Am Zor and Ochim Am Firn, the warrior queen and king who had put down the rebellious northern tribes. Now the mighty oaken sections of the wall that formed the “gate” had been cast down again into a hollowed place in the road. The dust was still rising from the gate’s fall as they rode over the ancient logs and entered Achamar.

  The city spread out before them like a tapestry; the trees were in full leaf for the spring; the two palaces rose up like wonders of the world. They followed the ring road, and the citizens cheered them round about. Aidris, more contained than she had expected, looked into their faces. Had they suffered? Had the poor always bound their feet with rags, had the merchants always been so fat? What did they see looking at the queen? Were there any who truly recalled that child who rode out in the mornings at Nazran’s side, who crossed the city yard by yard with her mother with the honored merchants smoothing the way in the snow? Might not a pretender have done as well, the poor false queen out of Balufir, Hazard’s light o’ love? They passed the south hall, and she saw that there had been fires lit in the yard. On the sharp gables of the gatehouse there were two severed heads. Revenge had been taken upon the garrison of Mel’Nir. She would not look, turned away sickened, and urged Tamir forward. Sharn Am Zor paid not much heed to the trophies.

  The procession came to the Palace of the Zor in the east, and the Daindru parted formally. Bajan rode at her side along the ring road until they returned almost to their starting point at the Oaken Gate, and there arose the Palace of the Firn, large as her dreams and filled with life, green branches springing from every cornice and balcony. The chorus of wonder from the Athron folk in her train reached her ears at last. There had not been many suppliants along the way; she half knew, in the way that things were known to her these days, by hints and whispers, that petitioners were hustled out of the way at her approach because her escort knew that the queen did not care to be pressed. Now, as they came up to the central gate of the palace, two suppliants sprang up in her path, an old man and a child. Before Gefion could pounce, Aidris cried out to the escort:

  “Let them come to me!”

  She waited, in a dream, as they walked towards her hand in hand. They both wore ragged clothes of greyish homespun and leather sandals. The old man . . . and he looked truly old . . . had a straggling beard, unkempt yellow-grey locks; he might have been a Shaman from the northern tribes. Yet it was Jalmar Raiz.

  She leaned down and took the green branch from Pinga, the greddle, and he smiled at her, saying, “See the truth, Dan Aidris!”

  “What will you have, old man?”

  She fixed her eyes on him.

  “You have sent for me to be a healer in Achamar,” he replied. “I have come to serve you.”

  “What shall I call you?” she asked.

  “Some call me Jaraz,” he replied, humble and unsmiling. “This is my elder son, Pinga. I had another son, but he has sailed to the lands below the world.”

  “I accept your service,” she said. “Find a lodging in the city and wait till I send for you.”

  The suppliants bowed and stood aside, and she rode into the palace yard.

  “Will you have him then?” murmured Bajan. “After all that he has done?”

  “I did send for this healer,” she said, smiling. “He has come ten years late. I will have him.”

  There were no secrets between them. Bajan had a gleam in his eye of pure jealousy—half-real, half-feigned—for those he called “Venn’s admirers”: Raff Raiz and Terril of Varda. She knew too that in the north there was a child of five years, Bajan’s daughter, given into the care of the Nureshen by a woman of the lngari. Exile was long. Now they had come home together. In her love for him she found, at that moment, the true feeling of comfort and elation for such a homecoming.

  So they went in, and she remembered the turmoil of allotting rooms for courtiers and guests. She admitted herself tired and sat taking the sun in a room that had been part of her father’s suite on the west side, for he had given the best and warmest chambers to his queen. Lingrit came to her with a strange look.

  “A room, an inner room on the courtyard, was purified,” he said. “Will you hear the reason from me or from a servant who was here with the protector?”

  “Tell me . . .”

  So she heard at last of Werris, the end of Werris, that handsome dark man, the courtier, the usurper, the self-styled protector. He had taken his own life with poison and with a knife. She cried out as the tale continued, thinking of the small dark room they had chosen. For Werris had not been alone; Micha Am Firn had died at his side. It was a love death. The poor widow had given her heart to the usurper. Aidris felt wonder and guilt and a vile relief at the tale. No mercy could have been given to Werris. Micha Am Firn had loved without hope. In past times her own life might have been forfeit. The queen had been spared; she would not have to be cruel. Now these two lay hastily interred, unblessed, in the palace grounds, by the royal graveyard of the Firn.

  Suddenly she was very tired indeed. She could only stare out into the grounds of the palace and hear the women in the room behind her setting things to rights. The child stirred in her womb. She looked out and saw a few birch trees where once she and Nazran had practised shooting with her toy bow. There was a sound like the sea beyond the whispered arrangements of the women. The people of Achamar were rejoicing for the return of the Daindru. She began to count, as she had done for Sabeth and for Telavel . . . Birchmoon, Elmmoon, Oakmoon, Applemoon. . . .

  The Queen of the Firn came to her labor late in the Thornmoon, the moon of sacrifice, and after three days and three nights, she bore a prince. The midwife, Gezi, Chieftainess of the Nureshen, helped draw the child for
th and showed it to the witnesses, Lingrit Am Thuven and Lord Zabrandor, who attended by custom for the House of the Zor. Yet she feared for the life of the queen and called her son, Danu Bajan, and the Queen’s friend, the Countess of Zerrah, and at last the healer, Jaraz of Lien. He practised his healing art and, some said, his magic upon the queen.

  Aidris saw the eyes of Jalmar Raiz fixed upon her, then a mist gathered, her pain lessened. She came to herself feeling cold and found that she was walking across an endless plain. The ground under her feet was thick with frost; she was crossing the frost fields. She saw, not far off, a tall mounted figure made all of light and knew that this was the White Warrior, come to take her to the halls of the Goddess. She saw as she came closer still that he led another horse, and it was Telavel, her true companion in exile.

  She longed to go with them, but she stood gazing up at the White Warrior and said, “I cannot go with you. It is not yet time!”

  As she spoke, she began to hear voices, a groundswell of distant voices, all the folk of the Chameln land who called back the Queen of the Firn, and nearer, she heard Bajan’s voice and Sabeth’s voice, calling her by name. She heard the thin cry of a child.

  “So be it,” said the White Warrior, his voice as soft and cold as the crackle of frost under her boot soles, “So be it, Aidris Am Firn. Go in peace. We will be waiting.”

  Then she was rushing upwards towards the light. She saw Jalmar Raiz, still standing at the foot of her bed, and felt the constraining cloth in which she had been wound. There was still a sensation of cold; her lower body had been wrapped in ice-cold linen to stop the bleeding. She saw Bajan, his mother, Gezi Am Nuresh, and Sabeth, holding the child in her arms. Sabeth wept and tried to smile through her weeping.