The Wanderer

by Wilder, Cherry;

  Vanna’s dark eyes were thoughtful. “There was word also of a showing of the Fionnar and the Ruadan, the day Lord and Lady Malm came to the Palace Fortress.”

  The woman pressed too far. “Why do you ask these things?” Gael said, as politely as she was able.

  Vanna stared a moment longer, then seemingly came to a decision. “Come!” she said, and rose up from her place on the settle. “I will show you.”

  She gave Forbian a nod and a wink and beckoned Gael to follow her. “I think a visitor from Coombe will be interested in seeing some further memorials of Master Hagnild and his pupil, Yorath Duaring.”

  Gael was suspicious, but she got up to follow her.

  “Remember my words, Captain!” piped up Forbian, seizing another cake. “I said, even on that day we met in the Swan’s stable, I would surprise you!”

  Tomas gave Gael a solemn look, but he made no move to follow her.

  The guardian of Hagnild’s house led Gael into another comfortable room along the passage; she explained that it had been the Healer’s study—there were a number of his books and scrolls. Gael’s ring sparkled at her side for the presence of magic, magical objects. Mistress Vanna beheld this and smiled.

  “I don’t doubt that you can work magic, Captain, for I know the ones you serve—the light folk, blessings upon the poor souls.”

  “Truly, I do serve them,” Gael admitted, staring around at the room and all its contents. “But how has this come to be known?”

  “At least one person versed in magic was watching at the gates of the Palace Fortress when the Malms and their escort drove in. That great showing of the Eilif lords beneath the rainbow arch upon the crest of that last hill—you were seen, as well as the marvelous presence of your companions. Great heavens, child, there were the Fionnar—Myrruad and Ilmane in a carriage! I do not know when a mortal, one of the dark folk, has been so honored!”

  Gael felt herself blushing.

  “I feel myself deeply honored by the chance to serve such folk!” she said. “I have the spirit for the tasks they will set me when I return to them in spring.”

  “Yes, and you are in love with Tomas the Scribe,” said Vanna, smiling in a motherly fashion, “and that has given you even more courage. But now I will change your view of the world, and again for the better.”

  She whisked aside a fine silken cloth embroidered in green and gold that lay across a table and revealed two large jewels—they could only be Hagnild’s scrying stones.

  “See here,” she said. “This is the Great Wall that is being built in the far northeast of the Chameln lands. Here are the builders and their leaders.”

  As Gael stepped up to the table, wondering at all this interest in the Great Wall, she heard Tomas give a cry in the outer room.

  “There now!” said Mistress Vanna. “Forbian has told the secret to your friend …”

  Gael looked into the left-hand stone, and in its bluish depths there grew a scene, very clear and natural, like the reflection in a fine mirror or a mountain pool. In the jewel-world there were dark trees and a work place with bricks, mortar, and blocks of stone. At a rough trestle in the open air, there were young men, finely dressed, and a small escort of kedran in uniform. Plans on parchment or vellum were spread out on the trestle, and further back she could see the wall itself, half-made. There was no sound in the world of the stone, but suddenly all heads turned as two men, one old, one younger, came walking into the work yard.

  The old man was a giant. He overtopped all those present, he overtopped the world. His long hair was white with a few reddish strands, and he had a strong, cheerful face, ruddy with exertion. The younger man seemed to be his son, almost as tall, and as broadly built—with bright auburn hair and moustaches—clearly these were both Melniros.

  “This cannot be!” breathed Gael Maddoc.

  “Yet it is so!” whispered Vanna. “The ambush, years past, on the cliffs at Selkray did not kill Yorath Duaring.”

  “The Great General lives!” said Gael. “And surely that is his son by his side!”

  “Yes,” said Vanna, “that is Yorath Yorathson, but he has taken the name of his mother—he calls himself Chawn Yorathson.”

  “And Yorath’s lady, the beautiful Owlwife?” asked Gael. Gundril Chawn, Yorath’s leman, had never been in Coombe, but Druda Strawn had seen her once in Krail, and she was a part of the old stories.

  “Why, she is as beautiful as ever, despite her years,” smiled Vanna, “and that gossip, Forbian, has it that she will visit Chiel Hall, to the southeast.”

  Gael shook her head, for this last name was not familiar to her.

  “You have never heard the story of Lien’s swans?” Vanna looked surprised.

  Gael did not know how to answer. She thought she knew the story, but then, she had thought she had known the history of Yorath at the cliffs of Selkray! Vanna saw this, and took mercy. “Princess Merilla Am Chiel, third in line to the Chameln Zor throne, is Yorath’s cousin. As you must know, the Swans of Lien were the daughters of Guenna, the last woman of Lien to rule as Markgrafin—and the mother as well of King Kelen. Guenna’s daughters were all married to Hylor’s Kings—not that it served to protect any of them from the archmage Rosmer, to whom Kelen had fallen sway.”

  “Elvédegran of Lien was Yorath’s mother!” Gael said.

  “That is correct,” Vanna replied, “just as Hedris of Lien was Queen Aidris Am Firn’s mother, and Aravel, the last swan, mother to that other Daindru King, Sham Am Zor, the reigning Zor Queen’s father.”

  “But the Witch-Queen is a dwarf!” Gael protested. “How can she and the giant Yorath be cousins?”

  “What has the south been teaching you?” Vanna laughed. “The Firn people are short, but they are no dwarves. I suppose you must be a true Melniro, to consider her so!”

  Gael blushed, for she considered herself of good Chyrian stock, and she had never thought of herself in this light, despite her fiery hair and long legs. But Vanna had never been to Coombe—perhaps it was not surprising that she should say this.

  Then Vanna gave a sigh and went on:

  “The Princess Merilla is widowed now—like so many of us. Esher Am Chiel has gone—the good lady manages her property with the help of her two sons. I can guess what the princess and the Owlwife spoke about …”

  “What is that?” asked Gael.

  “The princess still hopes for news, good or ill, of her younger brother, Carel Am Zor, who was never found after the cruel death of King Sharn—what, it must be more than fifteen years ago now. Have you not heard of the Lost Prince?”

  “I have,” said Gael. The story was very romantic, tied as it was to the ritualistic death of the last Chameln king at the hands of the wild eastern tribes. Following a great betrayal, King Sharn Am Zor had sacrificed himself for his family, for the land … and Carel, for whom a brother had died, had slipped away from history’s pages. “That story I certainly have heard—they are always mulling over old tales, the secrets of Hylor, at the Swan Inn!”

  This news of the Lien cousins was unsettling, for Gael Maddoc had always thought of Hylor’s lands as separate nations, each with their own treasures, customs, and ways. To think now how the ruling families were so closely tied together … “But Matten, Heir of Lien, must also be a cousin,” Gael said aloud, somewhat startled.

  “Yes,” said Vanna, her manner darkening. “Though it took Kelen years longer than his sisters to get himself a child, young Matten is cousin still to old Aidris and the others. Perhaps that is the reason the Brown Brotherhood feels so threatened by the Land of the Two Queens. Despite all the hand they have had in young Matten’s upbringing, they fear to see this tie renewed.”

  Gael looked again into old Hagnild’s scrying stones, now darkened. She was uneasy at the thought of so much hidden in the chronicles of the lands, but at least the secret revealed to her today was not a cause for sorrow.

  “I am glad to think that Forbian Flink, a master scribe and a keeper of secrets, wil
l be able to see his old comrade once again!” she said softly.

  “He must wait until spring,” said Vanna, hiding Hagnild’s stones as she pulled the embroidered cloth once again over the table.

  Gael gave a sigh. “So must we all,” she said. “I have asked a blessing for my enterprise—my service with the light folk—at Hagnild’s resting place.”

  “This spring should be a time of rejoicing,” said the guardian of Hagnild’s house. “There will be a great celebration in the Chameln lands—Queen Tanit am Zor will wed the young Count Liam Greddaer of Greddach, and many visitors will come out of Eildon. It is said that an Eildon marriage will bridge the angry gap that has opened between the Chameln and Lien—but sadly, I fear the politics of this marriage may have an effect opposite to that which is intended. There are those who do not desire to see the gap between Lien and the Chameln lessened …”

  “Why does the Brotherhood of the Lame God hate women so?” asked Gael. “Why should they challenge the rights of the double queens?”

  Vanna Am Taarn passed a weary hand across her face. “Is that all you have heard in the south? No—it is not that simple. It is not just women the Brown Brotherhood hates. To them, the world is a foul and ugly place. Life, the very senses of the body, is a mud that clouds the spirit. Ah, it is a strange fate indeed that brought sensual, life-loving Lien to their control, that brought Fideth of Wirth, who worshipped at the Lame God’s altar, to be Kelen’s bride.”

  This talk was strange to Gael. “In the south we have heard only that Kelen is weak, Fideth’s will is strong, and that their heir the young Matten wavers,” she said.

  Vanna nodded. “In that, they have not heard wrong. Kelen weakens by the year, and now a new zealot has risen at Fideth’s side: it is the Witchfinder, Brother Sebald. Pray the Goddess that this cruel hunt dies down!”

  Gael had already heard this name at the Swan, spoken among the scribes, but she had given it little attention. Now she marked it. She would ask Tomas more of this later—Lien was her lover’s country, and he must have some deep opinions regarding these matters.

  They went out into the main room, where Forbian sat on a settle petting Stripe, the great tabby cat, and looking himself like the cat who got the cream, Gael and Tomas exchanged rueful smiles.

  “Well, we have been surprised,” he said. “Yorath lives! And I may not even hint at it in my work on the New Chronicles.”

  Late at night they sat by the fire in Gael’s tower room. The milder weather had gone—a winter storm had come up, with harsh gusts of wind striking against the narrow windows of the tower room. Tomas poked at the glowing logs and said:

  “Do you recall that old scribe I mentioned as a byword?”

  “Yes,” she said, “what was it again—‘No one knows more than Brother Less.’”

  “That’s the man. He knows as much as Forbian—and now even more, I warrant.”

  “I thought he was dead,” smiled Gael, “a part of history like Valko Firehammer, or Ghanor the Great King, or Fair Felnifarr, the lost bride of Rift Kyrie.”

  “Well, I’ve always considered the lost bride pure invention, a tale from the hand of some high-born lady in the Southland,” Tomas said, “but Brother Less is very much alive. He was a great scribe and a great one for collecting tales and gossip—he traveled about as a follower of Inokoi, trained at one of their houses in Lien, near Cayl. He told me once that he had spoken to Yorath Duaring in Selkray, before the General’s unfortunate death. Now I feel that he helped uncover the truth of the General’s ‘accident,’ and must have known that he survived.”

  “Where is he now—in a haven of the Brotherhood?”

  “Somewhere much more interesting,” said Tomas. “Years ago he became the house priest, the chaplain of a noble lady. He claims to have found his enlightenment. I read this in a dispatch from a scribe in Lien. Now Brother Less has formed the Followers of Truth, a reformed group of the Brotherhood.”

  “He lives dangerously,” said Gael. “The king and queen and even the young prince, are guided by the Brotherhood. And now this fanatical Brother Sebald has a witch hunt sweeping the Kingdom.” She spoke shyly, almost tentatively, for her knowledge of these things felt new to her, but Tomas only nodded, as though she spoke accepted truth.

  “That hunt is directed against the Chameln lands, I think,” said Tomas. “The idea of the Land of the Two Queens is unholy to Lien, not least because the tie of blood those queens have to their own heir might serve to lessen their own influence.”

  “So Brother Less is not in danger?”

  “Brother Less is protected—he serves the mother of the powerful Duke Fernan of Chantry, the Dowager Duchess.”

  “But that must be …”

  “Yes!” grinned Tomas. “Zelline of Chantry had two sons. The younger one is our curious acquaintance, Lord Auric Barry.”

  “Oh, Lienish ways are all so strange!” cried Gael, suddenly. She thought of Auric Barry and his mistress Yolanda Hestrem, and could not quell a sour suspicion that the strictures on the common women of the land must be harsher than those which governed the folk born to a higher estate. “I am weary after today’s magic. I long for the spring to come, but I am afraid of my employment with the Shee. I wish I could return to this tower, where we have been so happy through the winter.”

  He drew her down to his side—she sat on the sheepskin rug and leaned her head on his knee.

  “I have had the same thoughts,” he said in a low voice, stroking her hair. “The spring will come, and you will ride out bravely—I have asked Mistress Beck, and the tower room will be ours. As a betrothed pair …”

  He drew out a small coffer from his sleeve pocket, and in it lay two silver rings in a simple plaited design; the larger ring was plain and the other set with three small moonstones. Gael caught her breath; they exchanged the rings in the firelight. Outside the storm howled about Lort and flurries of sleet were flung against the sturdy walls of the Swan, where lights still burned in many of the windows.

  INTERLUDE:

  THE REALM OF THE TWO QUEENS

  I

  The Hidden Rooms

  There were hidden rooms high up in Chernak New Palace. Queen Tanit Am Zor, she whose heart was called cold, spent much time there in secret, when she was believed to be asleep, at prayer, having fittings for her clothes, or visiting some other great house. The young queen had never enjoyed reading, but now, at last, she read hungrily in books of history and magic. No other person had been told of the rooms, but she thought it likely that some of her closest attendants knew of them and guessed where she kept hidden. She kept watch stones all about the entrance to the rooms, ready to flash a warning and to show who was approaching.

  Once Tanit saw a young page, a handsome boy called Dene, wandering about in the chapel outside the rooms. How would it be if she let him in—swore him to secrecy—teased him. Or better still, she thought harshly, when Dene, all innocent, had simply gone away through the corridors, she could have used a spell to strike him dumb.

  Then there came a dream. At night in her sumptuous bedchamber, she dreamed that she stood in the largest of the hidden rooms, excited, half clothed. Dene the page was dead. He lay on a carpet and shriveled and divided until he was no more than a basketful of dead leaves, which she scattered from the mouth of a gargoyle onto the gardens below.

  Of course the queen was well guarded; there was a palace guard of tall foot soldiers, the Tall Oaks, and two companies of kedran, who ran the palace and its stables. Besides this, there was the queen’s personal bodyguard, the Companions. Ten chosen soldiers, five kerns, five kedran, who lurked about discreetly in dark clothes. They knew the location of the Hidden Rooms but did not come too close. Tanit did not like being guarded: the Companions were not her friends.

  She commanded many persons, but there was no one she loved and trusted. Ishbel Seyl, daughter of her Chancellor, had been a kind of ‘best friend.’ Ishbel was a beauty, a simple girl, lost without her domineering mother. N
ow she was married to young Lord Barr and lived in a great mansion by the Danmar, the inland sea.

  Tanit was full of an angry guilt because of her own mother, whom she could see as the best, most kind and worthy person in the world. Yet she could not love her mother as she should. The young queen’s heart was a hidden room, a cold room, full of old tales, of voices, even, which told of treachery and death.

  On an old hanging shelf near one slitted window she had set up two portraits, larger than miniatures, but coming from the school of the great portrait painter Emyas Bill, famed for the delicacy of his small work. There was a young woman with dark hair and blue eyes, wearing a simple blue and white gown and a single great yellow jewel at her throat, on silver chains. She was not too much taken with the portrait and had been pleased when Lord Seyl looked quizzical and said perhaps it was too bland.

  The other portrait showed a young man—another young man, one of Emyas Bill’s trusted pupils, had traveled to Eildon to do this work. Prince Liam Greddaer of Greddach had rich brown black hair and taut, aquiline features. Yet his expression was sweet and pleasant; he wore a half smile, and it was for a spaniel, black and white, which sat on a hassock before his tall chair.

  She had found a way to exchange informal letters with the prince. His formal letters, including the announcement of his suit and the declaration of his Troth Gift, were written in a fine, straight letter, by a secretary. The informal letters, which were carried by the wife of an envoy, Lady Fayne, were in a fluent Merchant’s Script, which she judged to be more childish than her own:

  I hope you will not blame me if I say that I have read every word I could find about your late father, King Sharn Am Zor and his time in Eildon and all of his life and his most tragic and noble death. I have a few works by me of the great poet Robillan Hazard, your father’s friend, and I have my factors searching for more of his work. Perhaps these are to be found in Chameln Achamar, where the poet died, at a good age, not many years past.