My mother had already taken a good dose of the required herb Maid’s Friend, and she had the notion that Tazlo had slipped her a second dose. To me, she has always denied firmly that she had deliberately set out to bear the King’s child—her first care, she said, was for him, for Sharn Am Zor, the golden King of Summer. She would have done nothing to embarrass or deceive him. But despite all, she became pregnant.
She recognized her trouble very swiftly. This pregnancy could hardly have been welcome in the Lady Seyl’s house—this lady tolerated the King’s roaming ways, but to share him with one of her own servants—never! Gathering her things together, my mother made off into Lien, to her father’s herb garden, near Hodd. No one heeded the loss of a seamstress in Achamar—she made some excuse about illness in her family.
Here I must make a note, speaking on my own circumstances, for it seems that I must play the part of King Sharn’s brother, my own Uncle, the Prince Carel, and I want to record the small circumstance of the slight way in which his story has touched mine. After she had fled to Lien, my mother thought long and hard of any person at the court who might have known or suspected that she had met in this way with King Sharn. She had certain friends among the other servants in the Seyl household, but she confided in none of these women. Yet there was one person, a mere youth, who often spied upon the King and his friends, as if he yearned to join them. This was, of course, Carel Am Zor, the King’s brother, the Lost Prince.
My mother and I have always believed that this man is long dead, caught up, innocent or guilty, in the fighting that followed the treacherous killing of King Sharn Am Zor. At any rate, this Lost Prince never proved a danger to my mother and to me, never revealed my mother’s secret.
Still, in those days, my mother was eager to keep the truth of my parentage hidden. She told her father a plausible tale of losing her place through the ill humor of Iliane Seyl and a ripped seam. Then she gathered up some fine, fragrant plants and took ship for this place, Thornlee, near Oakhill in Eildon. Here was the herb garden of her Uncle Elias and his wife Phylla.
It was all swiftly accomplished for a young maid, and she accounted her success in this to the mercy of the Goddess. To bear the King’s child was to be her destiny. When time came for her pregnancy to show, she confided this part of her plight to her Aunt Phylla and claimed that a young man in the guard at Achamar had taken advantage of her. She begged the good woman not to tell her widowed father in Lien, and in fact he never knew that his daughter had been with child. Then, when the time came, my mother nearly lost her life giving birth: she bore twin sons, and one could not live. This child is buried by a stream that runs through the herb farm at Thornlee. It was given no name. I was strong from the first, and my mother gave me the name of Dannell; shortened to Dan, it is a royal title in the Chameln lands, the only indulgence made to hint at the origin of the poor sewing girl’s son.
Now we were approaching the Chameln year 1174; my mother took a long time to recover her strength, but I was never put out to nurse. At this time, King Sharn Am Zor came into Eildon in his quest for the hand of his cousin, Moinagh Pendark. My mother made no secret of her love and admiration for “Shennazar: the King of Kemmelond,” as he was called, so Uncle Elias joined some of his companions in a visit to the Tournament of All Trees, at the Hall of the Kings, not far from here on the northwest border of Lindriss.
He told his niece Ellen of the fine figure cut by King Sharn and how he became Grand Champion of the Bow. He brought back the so-called Emyan pictures of “Shennazar,” sold as mementos at the Tourney of All Trees. These and a few other things were treasured by my mother—our only relics of the King, the god who had descended to her for one night.
I grew happily in Eildon at Thornlee, and I was so forward with studying his books that my Uncle Elias thought I might be apprenticed to an apothecary, his old friend, in the city of Yerrick, to the northwest.
My mother knew that she must build herself a new life and she was still young and beautiful—she had several suitors, from the farmers and herb growers and their sons. She came close to marriage with a young man called Curren, Raben Curren, who taking her troth-promise, sailed off to visit the Lands Below the World, buy rare plants, and make his fortune.
I was eight years old when he set sail, enjoying myself with my books and my pony and the outdoors. My mother, my aunt and uncle were the ones I loved, and I had friends, tree-climbing companions. Then in the summer of my eleventh year, there came a strange message out of the Chameln lands the truth of it we found out slowly. King Sharn Am Zor was dead, treacherously struck down by conspirators who betrayed their land by making a compact with the Skivari, the northeastern barbarians. My mother was stricken with sadness and mourned her King, but then so did all the world. She made sure that I knew everything concerning the King, the Daindru, the history of the Chameln lands. It was in these days that the gallery and workrooms called Shennazar were set up in Oakhill as a memorial to the Summer’s King.
When I was thirteen years old and ready to be an apprentice in the town of Yerrick, my mother told me of my parentage. I was amazed, but I believed every word she told me. It was our own deep, close secret; no one else would ever know; there must be nothing to connect Dan Thorn and his mother Ellen with the Chameln lands.
So I went off to my Uncle’s friend in Yerrick and did very well, up to a point. Yes, surely, I enjoyed Yerrick, which is a fine city; I liked the studies and the time spent with the other lads, but my master encountered a strange difficulty.
There are parts of the study of an apothecary that have to do with magic. It is barely possible to grasp certain branches of learning without magic—and to his astonishment, my teacher found that I was a brandhul, one locked out from magic. It is a rare form of disorder that leaves one impervious to magical workings. Indeed the spells, even simple ones needed for mixing potions, bounce off a brandhul and seize upon some other person or thing. My hopes of a full apprenticeship, a future as an apothecary, could not be fulfilled. After a year and a half, I returned to Thornlee, with the suggestion that I visit a healer or a magical adept to learn more of my affliction. But then my mother seized upon my news with an almost unreasoning excitement: she told me that this strange affliction, being a brandhul, was unexpected proof that the story of my parentage was true.
For King Sharn Am Zor himself had been a brandhul, proof against all magic and proof against even the dark powers of the dreadful Skelow tree, which grew for a time only in the garden of the Zor palace at Achamar. This tree was a mystic tree, sacred to the Dark Huntress; it is also known as Harts Bane or Wanderers Bane or Blackthorn, Killing Thorn; in some tales it is the Morrichar, the tree under which unwanted children were exposed. When we found out the tale that the King had sent a young plant of this dark tree to Eildon, in the care of the messengers of the Falconers, I was determined to see it.
There beyond the Hall of the Kings lay the White Tower, a sacred place, near the priestly colleges of the Druda and the priestesses, the Dagdaren. Before the White Tower is a garden of the rarest trees from all the lands of Hylor and from distant countries, even the “Lands Below the World.” As an herbalist, I found it easy to come to the gardeners and their apprentices who tended this garden.
I beheld the beautiful Carach tree, the magic tree of Athron—the story went that it actually spoke to certain mortals. The first Carach in the garden had been stolen away and returned to Athron by an old Wizard, Nimothen. But another seedling was swiftly obtained. I saw the Larch and the Raintree and the Black Elm and the Golden Ash and the Sea-Oak, the Baobab and the Kypress pine. And then there was the darkling Skelow, flourishing in a little plot inside a magic wall. Its leaves varied from deep purple to midgreen, its trunk was black and grey, with smooth black patches of dark that seemed to absorb the fight. I felt—I could not help myself but feel—oddly drawn to it.
One spring night, between the dawn and the day, I came into the tree garden, leaped lightly over the magic wall—no bar to one
such as me—and, with a prayer to the Skelow, I plucked free two of its dark leaves. I was unharmed of course—came back over the little fence and the moat and went straight to the Carach. I knelt down in the place where other suppliants had knelt and said:
“Blessed Carach, do you see what I am holding?”
And the Carach tree replied in its dark, purring voice: “You are brandhul, Dannell Thorn.”
“Do you know why, good Carach?”
“You have it from your father the King,” replied the Carach. “Use this strange gift wisely.”
Then three gold green leaves fell down upon me; I gathered them up and stowed them in my collector’s satchel, separate from the leaves of the Skelow. The Carach spoke no more.
It was about this time that Raben Curren returned from his voyage to distant lands with a splendid cargo of rare herbs and spice plants. He settled in the Pendark lands, for their warmth; he came back to Thornlee, and he married my mother. I get along pretty well with my stepfather and have often spent time on their farm at Pencurren, but I was schooled to take over Thornlee. My mother has borne two more children, Rowan and Rosemary, and I love my half-brother and half-sister. In time, my Uncle Elias made over the herb farm to me and went with my aunt to live down the valley. He died four years ago, and my Aunt Phylla went to live with my mother at Pencurren and help with the children. At Thornlee, for some time, I have had only my true servants, Han Lockyer and his wife, Jean.
A matter had arisen that caused some pain to my mother. I had been marked out for some time to play Shennazar at summer pageants in Oakhill. I was not the only one chosen—there were many men of the right type, with the right hair and features, but she thought I was cheapening my heritage. But I must say this heritage has not meant the same to me as it has to my poor mother. For so long, it was more like an ancient tale, it was not my own experience—I wondered if I might one day travel in the Chameln lands, and I have often wondered if it would be possible to tell the truth to some true friend of the Zor family. But these thoughts seemed to me only a foolish dream.
But my mother was right. I should not have taken my father’s role. My play as Shennazar exposed me, brought me to the attention of those who would otherwise have left me alone. Two years past, I was approached by the artist Chion Am Varr, from the Shennazar workshop in Oakhill. He praised my looks and my performance at the Pageants and expressed a wish to paint my portrait. It was clear that he was sounding me out for something more, and he spoke of the courts of the Chameln. There dwelt the two queens, one old and wise, the other beautiful but coldhearted and a little mad. The marriage of Queen Tanit had just been arranged with Count Greddach. I had no idea where this was leading, but I agreed to meet one he called his patron, the commissioner of the portrait.
I keep in a room apart, a secret room, all my books and scrolls on the history of Hylor—the Chameln lands, of course, and the Daindru, the two rulers, also Lien and its links to old Eildon, which has ever been my home. The man who came to see me was a certain Lord Evert—his father and grandfather had all served the Dukes of Greddach. Some of these noblemen have a strange reputation, especially the one who turned his great park at Boskage, in the south, into a kind of menagerie, then his heir, the current duke, who made it a museum. Yet many of the branches of this ancient line have proved fine and respectable—for instance, the parents of young Count Liam, Count and Countess of Greddach, who served the house of Pendark and were known for helping the tin miners and pit workers. Count Draven Greddaer, Liam’s father, even served Eildon as an envoy into other lands and, before his death, was known and respected at the Conference Hall in Lindriss, where envoys from all lands meet and talk.
This Lord Evert who approached me is about fifty years old, handsome, easy, and not proud. He was very persuasive—asking first about my family, and praising my appearances in the Pageant and the splendid reputation of Thornlee, the herb garden. I suspected that he knew of my mother and her second family. I gave back the story that my mother and I had arranged some years earlier. Her family came from the Pendark lands, and her grandsire, a farmer, had spoken of Pendark blood, a very distant but lawful connection. I admitted that I would have liked to travel into the Chameln lands some day and see the true memorials of Shennazar, the King I was supposed to resemble.
Then he came out with it. There was a tale that Prince Carel Am Zor, the Lost Prince, had been completely innocent of any treachery. There was evidence that he escaped death at the hands of the barbarians, the Skivari, passed through their lands behind the mountain barrier, and came at last to the River Bal. His true companions had brought the wounded prince downriver to the Western sea and so into Eildon.
There he had lived quietly for a number of years but now he was dead. His grave was to be seen in the north. Yet, continued Lord Evert, in these times of uneasiness with the Kingdom of Lien, it was of supreme importance for a watcher to be placed in the court of the Zor. Count Liam would naturally send his own intelligences to his family, but he was no spy. What if a suitable person, carefully introduced, took the place of the Lost Prince? Yes, indeed, there was an age difference between myself and the prince, but there were methods of aging by magic, by the application of certain salves and potions. I could grow a beard …
What was behind this curious offer? I could hardly say, though it seemed to me Lord Evert spoke with no approval of Count Liam’s marriage, which the Count, being long-since orphaned, and having reached his majority some years past, had undertaken without the blessing of the immediate members of his remaining family, though this had not been widely spoken aloud, the marriage being a very honorable one, and reflecting well upon the power and prestige of the Greddach family. I awaited two things—a threat and an offer of payment—and they came promptly. Thornlee and its famous herb garden was in fact “under the cowl,” held by the priestly colleges of the Druda—it might be reclaimed and the tenants evicted if anything displeased the landlords. Then, of course, if I proved apt for this task, I would receive rich rewards in land, gold, and goods—I had surely, said Evert, thought of marriage. In fact, I had not considered it very much—I had two dear mistresses, both actresses from the pageant, but the hidden circumstances of my birth held me back from a more permanent commitment. Despite all my reason told me of the futility of my mother’s ideas, perhaps I have always had this dream of traveling to the Chameln lands.
I could see no way out of the offer that had been set before me; all I had to protect myself was the hidden secret of my birth, which must remain hidden, lest it offer some new idea for my usefulness. So, with a pretty show of reluctance mastered by greed—and a hidden, true eagerness to go into the Chameln lands—I agreed to the plan.
Chion Am Varr, who had already suggested I allow my beard to grow, arrived the very next day, with a smug look—as if he had known I would be open to suggestion. He painted the portrait in the large drying room for certain herbs, which is above this room, my study. He explained to me all the symbolism of the picture—from the oak tree to the letters printed on the saddle for Prince Carel’s lost horse, Ayvid.
He has worked carefully to make me appear older both in the portrait and in the flesh. I had already a ruddy complexion from outdoor work—not for me, the sheltered life of the gentle born—and some of his salves have produced wrinkles. I refused any attempt to alter my appearance by magic because I knew it would not work on a brandhul, and I did not want them to uncover my secret. Lord Evert would have challenged my refusal, but Chion pointed out that the very folk who welcome a Lost Prince can accept a Lost Prince who wears his years lightly. Besides, there would be those in the Chameln who would have recognized any whiff of magical fakery.
It took the painter four moons to complete the portrait—when it was dry and aged a little in the dry air of the loft, it was given to Evert. I understand it was held for a time, then sent mysteriously to the new-wed queen, arriving the day after her wedding. I don’t know how this has been done.
Lord Evert has c
ome often and provided me with a tutor. A handsome kedran ensign, who gives the name of Quelin—she is a good tutor, and I believe I am being tested again. Should I or should I not try to make love to my teacher? Is there some curiosity about whether I love women—or men? I have compromised by showing her fond attention, even taking her in my arms once or twice, but then drawing back—out of shyness, it seems.
From the first, Lord Evert has been concerned with keeping his tame pretender safe from other spies, especially from Lien and from the Chameln lands, even the court of the Zor. He showed me half a dozen stalwart men who patrolled the grounds and shielded Thornlee against magic. Nevil, steward for the lands “under the cowl,” is privy to the whole plan.
I am a quick study of lines and facts. I already know the history of poor Prince Carel very well; I have heard rumors that place him in the distant lands of the barbarian tribes, long dead in the border country or living in the Southland, in Eildon or in Mel’Nir. I believe I will make an excellent Lost Prince. May the Goddess and the family of the Zor forgive me for this masquerade that is about to begin. I have sent word to my mother at Pencurren—I am off on a visit to a Festival in the north in the lands of Eorl Kimber, then a voyage in a pleasure boat to some of the western isles. In truth—come fall, they will send me to Lien, and I will be in the Swangard for a final month of tutoring before being sent on into the Chameln.
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