I remember I looked first at his sword, noted the gruesomely realistic blood stains and very real and sharp blade. Then I looked up into Geoffrey’s eyes.
Thinking about it, writing it down now, I want to believe that I was furious, or offended, or frightened at least. Oh, I was frightened, but not nearly so much as I should have been to see four pounds of sliver-thin steel coming at my forehead. But I can’t remember thinking anything at all. I just looked into that sharp face with a strand of straw colored hair dripping sweat between his desperate green eyes and that spot in my world that had been clinging to all my past lovers let go.
I instinctively bound his sword off and took a thrust at his far shoulder. He blocked with
We thrust and parried, cut and avoided. It was an intensely beautiful demonstration of two fighters so focused, determined, and in tune with each other that neither of them would ever be able to remember the course of their motions and none of the watchers would ever forget.
But that moment before, when we looked at each other, each apparently more startled than the other, I wasn’t frightened or offended or furious because he was desperate and though I didn’t know him from Adam, the instant our eyes met, the desperation was replaced with recognition. When I say he recognized me, I don’t mean like if I turned and saw the mean-looking little guy. I mean like if, after seeing my sister waving from her plane, I’d turned to find her standing behind me. He knew me.
Just as I know him now.
Two
∞ Edling Geoffrey of Kaveg’s journal ∞
[undated insert on top of the bundle - ed.]
I had thirteen when Mobious sent me from Voferen Kahago. On my birth day, he encouraged the people to celebrate and a festival erupted around the castle. I have the images etched in my memory. There at the tree-arch that tops the footpath Deeva is giving away samplings of her new brew, enticing takers with her cry that the drink will give them as much punishment as she regularly gave the prince. She had gathered a crowd by the time the sun was at full up and she regaled all with tales of my exploits. There is a contest in the gaming yard with the highest prizes going to those excelling in my best weapon, minni. I was the minni throwing champion of the non-intended guarde students and to my credit only two of the students who intended to gain placement in a wing of one of the Kingdom’s protective forces, the Civil or Roaming Guarde, were more accomplished throwers than myself. There was no chance that day to challenge them as I was not invited to the festival. There were the footraces in which kids were encouraged to dodge in and amongst the running adults to slow their times. My friend, the baker Shillar, was giving out my favorite treat, hoskas with honeycream, but I was too conscious of my responsibility to beg Mobious to let me go down and get one. I could have. Mobious did not force me to stay in my private chambers in the castle. He did not lock me in. In fact the castle was itself open and filled with festivities, the staff as desperate as anyone for joy and laughter to cover the horrible memories of this anniversary.
Mobious got me up early that day. It was chilly, with a dew that quickly burned off when the sun rose over the lake. I dressed in everyday clothes, not Hearing formality nor festival finery, but simple sturdy leggings, blouse, and doublet. I ran my fingers through my still wet blond curls as we took the main path out of the front gate, under the tree-arch and down into the central city. Cutting left before the second wing barracks, we took the un-boarded path down to the lake. We stood on the rocks and watched liquid gold spread out along the swells. Small spouts of water would leap up to catch the rays, glinting for a second before falling back into the shadows.
Already at thirteen, I was almost as tall as Mobious. But I still felt like a small child. I looked up into those serious black eyes set deep in his familiar brown face, wondering why we were here.
Mobious looked away at the waves for a moment and then, in his strangely accented tenor, quizzed me on my future duties as a leader of Kaveg. He tested me in the tenets I’d spent my life learning to answer and learning to question.
“My lord Geoffrey,” he stood behind me, the wind blowing off the water whipped his words around me, “Why do we live in an organized society?”
I responded automatically. “We’re pack animals, it is in our nature to live together.”
“Upon what principle do we organize our pack?”
“That everyone should have happiness, freedom, and respect.”
“How do we achieve this?”
“Cooperation and communication”
“What is the purpose of a leader?”
I looked at him, wondering if I was going to be formally acclaimed today despite my lack of a queen. “To watch.”
“Watch for what?” His eyes remained focused on the distant waves.
“To watch for anyone or anything that deliberately causes unhappiness for, denies freedom to, or lacks respect for one or more of the people.”
“And?”
“And to change that situation.”
“Why must we have two leaders?”
My catechism. I’d cut my teeth on these questions, “One cannot watch herself.”
“Or himself. There must be a queen. Her line ensures a peaceful succession. And there must be a partner. His counsel ensures considered action.”
“They watch together as the kimoet for the benefit of the people.”
“You are one. You were approved by the partner and the people when presented by the queen at your twelfth. But you cannot watch alone. Come.”
As he led me back up over the rocks, I thought of the private command my mother had added to these tenets after I was approved by the people of Kaveg to be their partner in my parents’ absence. She told me privately, as she had been told by her mother, Chelor, on the morning of her coronation.
“Your great great grandmother made a promise. Yes, we must watch.” My mother repeated her mother’s words. “But we must also listen. Queen Nrunel, who was born when all the dragons lived, commanded if ever you meet a dragon, say ‘Nan ye’ and listen.”
My mother, Queen Laurienel made me promise to obey Nrunel’s command but to keep it a secret and pass it on to my chosen successor only at her ascension or my demise.
Watch and listen, I thought as I followed my regent through the grass and trees to the edge of a clearing north of the castle, where I was distracted from my thoughts when he walked into a large oak and disappeared.
I stopped where I was, a few steps behind him waiting to see him appear beyond the tree to my right. But he did not pass through the tree. I tilted my head to the left to see if a visual illusion had hidden him from me on that side of the tree, but he was not there. Eventually, creeping slowly forward, my hands ready before me, I walked into the tree.
The tree was solid. It was alive and real and solid. But some permanent nature had changed its physical limits and when I walked into it I did not bang my head on wood or scrape my hands on bark. I entered the center of the tree.
Before me was a hole dug into the earth. Some roots of the tree had been woven into a stair of rungs leading down into this deep hole. Facing the roots, I climbed down as I would any ladder, but the farther I descended, the more the incline lessened until I was lying flat on rungs almost parallel to the ground. I turned over then and tried crawling, but my legs kept slipping through so I gracelessly fell off the edge of the stair/ladder to the dirt half a greg below. Not far distant, the stair finished its easy descent and blended into the ground. Mobious stood about five greg beyond the last of the rungs, waiting for me with an unusual source of light. He was waiting. But when I began towards him, he turned and walked away, remaining ahead of me for our entire underground journey.
Some light and oxygen filtered down from holes I wasn’t sure existed despite the fact that I could see them leading up into other trees. The way was thin and sometimes so filled with roots twisting through the small tunnel that I could see neither Mobious nor his light, but if I wandered off course, a wall would quickly set me
back on the path. I was a small boy and it was rough going for me. The way must have been much tighter for Mobious though he too was small for a man.
We went on through this forest of roots for what must have been a full sandturn before I caught up to him holding a door for me. The light he had been carrying was gone, but the room we entered was well lit with shuttered torches. The room was an alcove off of the lower rooms of the east wing. I knew every part of the castle and I’d often raced other kids from this room to the far southern skywings where the guest suites looked over the western city. But I had never found this underground tree-path before and though I made immediate plans to explore it, I wasn’t actually going to see it again for seven frseason and a moon.
We walked through the castle bottom to top, chatting occasionally with early rising staff who were getting ready for the day’s celebration. Most of them readily tossed aside their work to sing a song or call a quick tale about me. Birth days are a great time for tales. I had already greeted, the night before, three callers come to earn their berth and bread spinning tales at my birth day festival. These men and women were skilled and usually managed to collect the most colorful tales, but at this festival my friends had a jump on them because all tales had to include me. Demo stalled twice when we ran into him in the blue larder. He was fixing a meal tray for himself and his bond when Mobious took us in for some water. I assume that he was starting to call a tale about my parents and caught himself in case the memory might sadden me, but I don’t think many tales could be called that did not include them. In fact, Jirak caught us as we passed his room in the southern annex to sing me a song about my first attempt at a duet with my talented father. Even Mobious laughed. He had been off on one of his disappearances the frseason my father discovered that I had not inherited his voice.
My guardian began his final lesson as we passed into the family wing of the castle. He released the royal wingmen standing guarde at the open port and shut the heavy double doors that I had, until that moment, quite forgotten could be shut. He led me past the closed doors leading to my family’s suite, past the adjoining rooms reserved for an un-bonded partner’s family, through the nearly empty larder needed now only for the single resident of the family wing, myself. We entered the Hearing chamber from the side door. The main doors were closed from the outside and the adjoining stairwell unguarded, this being a day of no Hearing. I crossed unconsciously to my chair and sat glancing naturally to my right expecting, I suppose, that I was preparing for a day of Hearing dragon complaints. But the little table was empty. I looked up to Mobious only to find him kneeling before me. No one knelt to me. No one knelt to queen or partner. But he seemed overcome. I could not think how to alter his behavior and so I waited.
“My lord,” his voice almost shook. He took a deep, shuddering breath but exhaled slowly. He looked up as if to speak to me, and looked down again at his hands, one lying atop the other on his knee. “My lord, I have a bloodprice to pay.”
I almost stood, denying this confession. My teacher, my guardian could not be guilty of infringing the responsibilities he himself had taught me. But he raised one hand, stalling me.
“This is a no Hearing day and I do not demand judgment, but I must speak.” His words came slowly, his voice more solid though his eyes remained lowered. “When I was a boy, younger in understanding than yourself, the death of my father passed on to me a responsibility which I have been unable to fulfill. Because of my failure, your people have lived in fear, your family, in sadness. You have within you the ability to heal the wounds of the past and correct the ill I have been unable to prevent. Today, I do not instruct you as your regent, your guardian, or your teacher but ask you as your friend, as you are my chosen lord; please, help me to pay my bloodprice.”
I considered his words carefully. He had revealed more of his private heart in that moment than I had ever before considered. Mobious, a son and a failure. He was not these things to me, and for everything he was to me, this small favor would scarce repay. “Come, tell me what I must do. But sit, here, beside me.”
“I will stand. And my lord, there is no ‘must’ in your life anymore. Now you have only choices. But, my lord, I would ask you to leave Voferen Kahago.” He looked at me then, watched me. I wondered what was to follow, his opening request was so unfathomable. “If you leave Voferen Kahago, you will be safer from the threats to your queenless rule and... you will find a queen. You will find the queen with your own heart and she will be the healer of the kingdom.”
I leaped to my feet. “She’s out of Kahago? What does she look like? I will go find her at once.”
Mobious laughed, “It is not so easy. In time she will become apparent to you. But I do not know her. I know that her hair will be as the fire of sunset. Her eyes, her eyes will be spectacular. Her laughter, a joy that will raise in your heart a passionate and overwhelming sorrow that you might ever be denied such a beautiful sound.” I must have smiled for he continued with a warning that revealed to me I had not so many secrets as I had believed, “But your thoughts of her will never raise in you the dreams that have taught you to wash your own bedclothes.”
I sank back into my chair, mortified, and not surprised.
He taught me then, about choice. I could stay in Voferen Kahago and rule, alone. I could go and try to pay the bloodprice my parents had died attempting to satisfy. Or I could leave all I knew and search out a mystery.
I thought I understood him to be telling me that the journey would be long. How little I understood. I wanted to choose the sword, to fight the dragon. I didn’t want to abandon my people; to leave, I felt would be to desert them. Again, how little I understood. But I owed him much, and to find such a queen . . .
I asked him to have patience while I considered my responsibilities. And I let him out through the public entrance to the Hearing chamber. I locked the doors and I retreated through the larder to my little sleeping room in the queen’s suite where I sat at the window and watched the festivities.
I’ve seen so many festivals through that window. When I was little, my parents would dress me and set me on the cushioned ledge to look for friends in the crowds while they dressed. Sapets would fly up at my father’s whistle and flit around me, calling out a trill if it looked as though I was going to fly out of my little nest. My mother would dress quickly, doing up her short hair with flowers while my father got around to choosing his outfit. She would always chide him for dressing so slowly. I wonder if she ever knew that he waited until she was done so that his outfit would compliment hers. I watched him. He’d dawdle, seemingly distracted by the sapets or a new tapestry, all the while watching her intently. And if she changed some part of her costume, I knew that he might change completely. When they were both satisfied with themselves, they would take down the long, metal chain of their bond ring which was draped in a circle above their sleeping pillows, and twist it about their wrists. They would sometimes wear the ring, connecting them physically to each other as they were emotionally connected, throughout the event. But other times, when they had to go separate ways, they would take the bond ring off and drape it around my neck.
The ring had gone with them on their journey to the Dormounts and it had not returned either. The pegs above their empty pillows waited as patiently, as ignorantly as I had waited for the bond to return.
So many callers tell it with me kneeling at Mobious’ feet, they get the odd kneeling in but mix up the subjects. They have him prophesying my futures and me wisely and quickly choosing the queen quest. But truly I sat at my window until the eve meal was well begun, neighbors feasting together at long tables thrown together in the streets. I can’t remember what I thought about, but when I was done thinking I walked through my parents’ rooms, our living areas. I touched things and remembered their tales. I visited the sapet roost outside the study window and filled the feeder. I lay down on my parents’ pillows and stared at the empty circle of pegs. And then I packed. Five times.
I packed ha
phazardly, emotionally, eventually throwing the piles of luggage out in favor of a single carrysac from my father’s stores and a cloak with many pockets. Then I returned to the window.
Mobious stood at the tree-arch talking with Deeva. I hollered down with the voice of a lazy castle-bred child aided by a little nature, the wind honoring a light request and carrying my words to Mobious’ ear. He joined me and we walked together to the southern balcony. The castle is not tall for all it is wide and the southern balcony juts out over the formal entranceway just at the height of two tall people. As a little boy, I had dashed as fast as I could into the castle for fear the unsupported stone would fall on me. I urged my parents and friends to run with me, fearing as much for their lives not understanding that the castle was built with natural assistance and that it would not fall as long as we dealt with nature on the same principles that we dealt with each other. An intricately carved wooden railing edged the curve of the ten greg wide circle, but even so, when you’re a smaller than average six frseasoner used to slipping through barriers, stepping out to wave to the city is a torturous ordeal. I’d since developed an uneasy trust of the balcony.
Someone had woven some vines and fieldpurples, my mother’s favorite flower, into the wooden rail for the festival. I plucked one from its fellows and traced its veins against my palm. I waited, and Mobious waited with me. Deeva noticed people looking up at the balcony and turned from her stone game to waggle a few fingers at me. I smiled and waggled a handful back at her. Slowly, the people of the city left their meals and gathered in front of the balcony. When I judged that the grounds were as filled as they could get, I began, knowing that these two or three thousand would relay my message to the rest of the city by sundown.
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 2