Exile's Valor v(-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  No, not at all. But there was more, as impossible as it seemed. Karath understood her.

  It was magical, how well he understood her. Already they had shared commiserations on how heavy the burden of duty was for a royal child, and how unfair it was that they had less freedom than the lowest of their subjects. How very unfair. . . .

  And he had looked straight into her eyes and said, “It is a sad pity that you have no one to share your burden with.”

  Oh, she had laughed at that, and demurred that she had an entire Council to help her, but his words had rung very true, and she wondered if there was something behind them. As if—could it be—

  No, of course not. He’s a Prince of Rethwellan. If he can charm me into giving Rethwellan advantages, he will. He may even be courting me with an eye to a marriage of state. Right now, though, he’s simply being friendly; he’s a Prince, and there can’t be too many people that he can confide in. It isn’t as if he has a Companion to talk to, or even someone like Lord Orthallen. He was, she thought, a very proud young man. It would be hard for him to confide in anyone that he considered below him. Yes, that is certainly it. She rested her head against the window frame, feeling suddenly melancholy, for herself, for him.

  No, there could be nothing more to it than that. Besides, he can’t possibly stay for very long. He’ll have to return home soon.

  The thought made her feel cheated, somehow, and even more melancholy.

  But after a moment, she shook it off resolutely. The Seneschal had decided that having a Prince of the blood here was an occasion of great import, and had arranged that his days should be enlivened by all manner of amusements, and that it was Selenay’s duty to take part in at least some of them. The Vernal Equinox was in a few days, and although it was the wrong season for hunting, it was the best season for other sorts of outdoor excursions. They were all going to watch a new version of the Hurlee game, played Companion-back by the oldest of the Trainees. Others had been trying to come up with warm-weather variations on Hurlee, but this was by far the most exciting and successful. And there were those who were trying to get horses to do what the Companions were doing, but it would probably take a couple of years to train horses to put up with balls rolling under their hooves and sticks whizzing about their ears. For now, at least, the only mounted version of the game would be played by Heralds or Trainees.

  It made an excellent excuse to sit out on lawns, with hampers of refreshments, in the warm sunshine, rather than in the stuffy Audience Chamber, listening to even stuffier old men complain about each other.

  There would be supper in a pavilion on the lawns after the game, and then, a concert of music under the stars in the gardens. It will be the most fun I’ve had since the Ice Festival. Actually, it will be much more fun than the Ice Festival; I won’t be on show to an entire city.

  She smiled as she thought about it. To think that she would have most of a day devoted to something other than Kingdom business! But her Councilors all seemed very much in favor of the idea, even those who were reserved in their assessment of Karath.

  Maybe he will stay longer. . . .

  After all, Orthallen was convinced that he had come here with every intention of courting her. It was a time-honored means of cementing alliances, marriage. He was the younger Prince; he wouldn’t be in line for the throne at this point, not even if his older brother died, because Faramentha already had a young son of his own. So—

  She shivered, but with delight and anticipation, not dread. Oh, no, definitely not dread. Not like she’d felt with every other would-be suitor that had presented himself or been presented so far.

  Now, wait and see, she cautioned herself. Don’t start chasing hares until the hounds have the scent. Orthallen could be misreading this. He might just be very kind.

  But if he was courting her—it was just a bit difficult to be loverlike when he never saw her except in the company of ten or twenty other people.

  The question was, did she want him to court her? Actually, more to the point, did she want to marry him? She thought—perhaps—but she still wasn’t entirely sure. It probably wouldn’t be too much of a battle to convince the Council, but the rest of her subjects might not care for the idea of a foreign Consort. And while he had beautiful manners, and was extremely sympathetic, it was all words so far. She had no idea if he was truly attracted to her, Selenay, or was just being properly diplomatic and sympathetic to the Queen. He was one of the handsomest men she had ever seen, but how did she look to him, really? And how would he ever be able to say what he really felt with the constant audience that was around her?

  If only there was a way to get rid of the audience—the courtiers, the ladies, all of them. If only there was a way that she could just slip away from them all, long enough for the two of them to be alone for just a little.

  And then, she had an idea. It was a terribly romantic idea. And it just might work.

  I’ll have a masquerade, she thought with delight. I’ll have it when the year of mourning is officially over. Out in the gardens, spread out everywhere, with everyone in costume and masked. I’ll have the same costume made up for me and all of my ladies, except I’ll let him know by some little token which one is me. If he can’t manage to get me alone for a little, then he won’t be trying.

  Yes, that would do it. That would do it indeed. She chuckled at her own cleverness.

  And meanwhile, she had tomorrow to look forward to, a half a day and all evening with nothing before her but to relax and enjoy herself. And perhaps Karath would show something more of his intentions.

  She went to her bed and fell asleep, still smiling.

  ***

  There were three stands set up along the three sides of the triangular playing field; the best one, reserved for the Queen and her Court, was on the side between the Scarlet and Green goals with a good view of both. Out on the field, the two teams faced each other, Scarlet and Green goalkeepers standing warily alert on their respective goals, the two goalkeepers on the neutral, third goal, watching each other as much as the teams.

  There was a tension-filled silence as one of the referees placed the ball on the ground between the two teams, then ran off, well out of the way of what was coming.

  A trumpet blast—

  A single shout swelled a thousand throats, and the game was on.

  “Explain to me what I am seeing, please,” Karath asked, watching as the tide of riders collided, the ball somewhere under the churning hooves of the Companions. One half of the riders were wearing Bardic scarlet, the other, Healer Green—not because they actually were Bards and Healers, but because the two teams had been “sponsored” by the two other Collegia. It would; after all, have been impossible to tell which rider was on which team, otherwise.

  “The players are all Heraldic Trainees, and they usually wear gray,” Selenay said, as there was a loud crack, and the ball suddenly seemed to fly out of the scrum on a pair of invisible wings. “This came out of a game the Trainees made up over the winter, called Hurlee—” She interrupted to cheer, as the Bardic goalkeeper made a last-minute save, her Companion rearing and pivoting on hind hooves, letting her catch the ball in her net. The goalkeepers had nets, rather than club-ended sticks.

  “Anyway, we wouldn’t be able to tell the teams apart, so Bardic Collegium sponsored the team in red, and Healers the team in green.” She shouted again, as the Bardic goalkeeper threw the ball back into play, and one of her own people caught it while it was still in flight and sent it whizzing toward the Healer goal with a mighty blow of his stick. The whole field went charging after it.

  “But how are the horses so well-trained?” Karath asked.

  “They aren’t horses, they’re Companions,” she answered automatically. “Um—they’re—” she searched for a way to explain it to an outsider. “They have Mind-magic, and so do the Trainees, and it’s like having a partner. They can speak to one another.”

  “Ah, magic,” Karath said wisely. “Of course. Like th
e Hawkbrother mages who control their birds in the strange places in the Pelagirs.”

  Actually, it’s not like that at all, she thought, but that was probably as close as he was going to get until he’d been here a while, and saw for himself. Or until a Companion Chose him. “That’s close enough, I suppose,” she said instead, and turned her attention to the game.

  It was absolutely vicious in its way; Alberich had insisted that the original version of Hurlee be played with no holds barred, and nothing short of murder against the rules, and this version was no different, with one single exception. No one was allowed to deliberately thrust a stick among the legs of the scrumming Companions. The idea of a Companion with a deliberately broken leg was just too horrifying. But the Companions were certainly allowed to ram each other, and shoulder each other out of the way; the riders could hit at each other with their sticks, and try to pull each other out of the saddle. Companions and riders alike wore hard helmets of leather over steel; the Companions wore neck guards, the riders wore padding and guards of their own.

  It was war out there; Selenay, who had seen war first-hand, recognized it for what it was. Relatively bloodless, perhaps, but nonetheless, war. Which was why both Weaponsmaster Alberich and the new Equitation Instructor, Herald Keren, approved of it. You could study mounted combat all you liked; you could even practice as much as you dared, but you got no sense of what combat was really like—

  Well, the fourth- and fifth-year Trainees certainly were now. By the time the first third was over, that was obvious. There was plenty of danger; one player was already out with a broken arm, and a second sidelined while the Healers made sure that the crack on the head hadn’t resulted in a concussion. A third was playing with a broken nose, and there were two with black eyes, and no one would know until it was over how many bruises and strains there were. No Companions were injured, but that was always possible, too.

  The second third began after a brief pause for water—both drunk and poured over heads—and a quick change of players. Then they were off again, with no less vigor than before.

  “It seems very dangerous!” Karath shouted to her, over the cheers and shrieks. She glanced at him; he seemed just as excited as everyone else. His color was high, and he had a wide smile of enjoyment.

  “It is!” she shouted back. “Our Weaponsmaster is using it for war-training!”

  “Aha!” He nodded vigorously, then cheered wildly with everyone else as the Scarlet and Green goalkeepers on the neutral goal got into a clinch, and a Scarlet rider nipped in right under their noses and slammed home a goal.

  Hurlee on ice had been exciting. This was beyond exciting—this was intoxicating. Even Selenay, who had been in the thick of war, was caught up in it, drunk as any of them on it, free to feel it, knowing that this time, there was no fear that anyone would die. One rider was actually knocked unconscious by the ball before it was over, and there was a broken wrist and a second broken arm, both caused by being unseated and falling badly. But Selenay knew that the Healers would soon put all of them to rights, and when the Healers were done with them, the congratulations they would get at the hands of the rest of the Trainees—and everyone else with an interest in the game—would soon make the pain just a memory. The Scarlets took the lead and held it for most of the game, but at the very end, in the final third, the Greens took the victory away from them by a single point.

  When the winded and the exhausted winners and losers both had been mobbed and rushed off the field to their own celebratory feast, Selenay found herself hoarse with screaming and nearly as tired as if she had been out there on the field herself.

  “My word!” the Prince said, his eyes still wild with excitement. “That’s altogether more thrilling than any tournament I’ve ever seen! You say your Weaponsmaster is using this for war-training?”

  Selenay nodded, and sat down so that everyone else could. Protocol, after all—while the Monarch was on her feet, no one else could sit. There was some little time before the alfresco dinner, which would be served out in the gardens, and she wanted to give her staff plenty of time to have it set up before she led the ravenous hordes toward the food. Meanwhile, pages were going around with wine and fruit, and she availed herself of both. Karath sat down in the place of honor beside her, though he still looked as if he would like to go find a Hurlee stick and try the game for himself.

  Not Selenay. She enjoyed watching the game, but once it was over, she couldn’t help but think about why Alberich was so in favor of it. She didn’t want any of those youngsters to have to see what she had seen. There had been too many no older than they who had not returned from the Wars.

  “Indeed, he is, Your Highness,” the Seneschal said, as both the Rethwellan Ambassador and the Ambassador from Hardorn leaned closer in order to hear. “He and the Equitation Instructor have found it an invaluable substitute for melee and skirmish training. They say they have found that both the mounted and foot versions are equally valuable. And it is all the better for the fact that the Trainees want to do it, and several of them spend a great deal of their free time in practice at it. We are restricting the mounted version to the final-year students, however, given the level of expertise required, and the danger involved.”

  “Better a broken bone or two now, than something worse in combat,” Selenay said, sobered by her recollection of another spring day—nearly this time last year—

  Then she shook off her melancholy. This was supposed to be a day given over to relaxation and pleasure, and she was not going to spoil it. “Well, gentlemen, you can tell your friends and kin back in your homelands that we here in Valdemar know how to provide both novelty and entertainment for our guests,” she said lightly. “I do believe that was the first ever public game of mounted Hurlee.”

  “And I hope you will convey my admiration to your Weaponsmaster for finding so clever a solution for a training dilemma,” the Prince said with a smile. “Though I will confess, if that is the level that he trains to, he is fully as expert as our own Weaponsmaster at home—though perhaps not quite to the exacting standard of Swordmistress Tarma shena Tale’sedrin, the famed Shin’a’in who trained my father and older brother.”

  “But not you?” asked the Hardornan Ambassador, and Selenay had the oddest sensation that he knew something about Karath that he would like very much for Karath to reveal. Something unflattering. . . .

  Though why he would wish for such a thing—

  Ambassadors are always jockeying for favor. I suppose he thinks that if Karath appears less than perfect, I will lose interest in him. Absurd.

  The Prince frowned, and for just a moment, a shadow passed over his face. But in the next moment, he was all smiles again, and Selenay wondered if she had even seen it. “Alas, no,” he replied smoothly. “The Swordmistress retired and closed her school before I was old enough in my mother’s eyes to be sent away to it. And at any rate, from all I have heard, the lady is extremely ascetic in her ways and strict in her discipline; some might say, she is overzealous in both regards. And I—well—” he shrugged. “I am not much like my brothers. While I feel that every man of breeding should be adept at the use of arms, I fail to see why he should undergo the same rigorous training as someone who intends to live by them. Personally, I am afraid that the Swordmistress and I would be doomed to perpetually clash, so perhaps it is just as well. It would be a terrible scandal for a Prince of the blood to be thrown out of a school for mercenaries as an abject failure, or worse, a discipline problem.”

  The Rethwellan Ambassador laughed, politely, but it sounded strained. Selenay was baffled. If that was all the Hardornan Ambassador had been angling for, she failed to see what was so unflattering about it. Not even a Trainee who was unsuited to the martial arts was required to do more than learn how to defend him or herself. Why, look at Myste! Most of her training had been in the best ways of running away!

  She decided to steer the subject away from the area that Karath was finding uncomfortable. “The Swordmistress�
�is that a Shin’a’in name?” Selenay asked, curiously, thinking wistfully of her earlier daydream of a wild Shin’a’in Clan Chief coming here to claim her hand. “I’ve never seen a Shin’a’in, though I believe some of our people in the south have traded with them.”

  “It is, indeed, Majesty,” Karath replied. “Why do you ask?”

  “Oh, only that I had never heard of Shin’a’in living outside the Dhorisha Plains, and I often think I would like to meet one, someday,” she confessed. “I believe one came as far as Lord Ashkevron’s manor in my father’s day, to help the Lord with his horses, but it was before I was born.”

  “It is true that they do not often venture off their traditional grounds,” the Rethwellan Ambassador said, after waiting for a few polite moments for all of them to nibble a little at their fruit and sip from their goblets of wine. “We see them from time to time selling horses, but as soon as the beasts are sold, they swiftly return to their homeland. The city of Kata’shin’a’in is the only spot off the Plains where you will see them regularly. The Swordmistress is somewhat of an anomaly; she lives—or lived, since she was quite old, when last I heard—with her blood-oath sister, who had a school of sorcery alongside the school for swordsmen. Perhaps one day I will be able to entertain you with some tales of their adventures. They are rather famous in Rethwellan.”