“I bring a message from our king to you, my lord, and another for the queen. Our king rejoices in the birth of your heirs and in the queen’s health. He is concerned, however, that you are no closer to knowing how to awaken the sleepers under stone.”
Kieri nodded. “It is true; I am not any closer to that. I have asked all I know what they know, and what they know is nothing … There are no records, or even stories, about waking someone from a long enchantment. But on another matter—”
Caernith bowed again as he interrupted. “Please. I bring other messages from our king, written in our language as the king cannot write in yours. For this reason I must be privy to what he said, to translate for you. Your elvish is not yet advanced enough, and mistakes are easy to make.”
“Very well,” Kieri said. Best to let Caernith have his way, though he could now read elvish tolerably well, he was sure. He could surprise Caernith afterward.
Caernith pulled a scroll case from his doublet and then a scroll, bound with ribbons, as Kieri’s own letters were, but with braided grass, still fresh and green by elven magery, and with a sprig of some conifer tucked into it.
“Yew,” Caernith said, pulling it out. He sniffed it and gave it to Kieri. “The choice of a sprig carries part of the message. In this case, warning.” He slid the grass ring from the scroll, and—as Kieri had noticed before—the scroll unrolled itself, the graceful elvish writing clear against its creamy smooth surface. “By your leave—” he said, and gestured.
“Of course. Bring a chair.” He glanced at the scroll while Caernith fetched a chair, pleased to find that he could read all of the salutation and much of the first three lines, though he came to a word he suspected of complicated meaning.
“This message,” Caernith said as he sat down, “is longer than it seems.” He put a finger on the scroll. “It is in what I believe you call a code, a way of saying more than is said on the surface.” He moved his finger in a pattern, and new smaller lines appeared, seeming to stack behind and between the those Kieri had seen. “When I put my finger on this—” He touched one of the lines, and it grew in size, seeming to come forward. “—I can read it easily and know its correct place in the sequence. I will begin now.”
“Will you teach me that?” Kieri asked.
“Yes, but not at the moment. There is urgency.”
Kieri nodded, then watched and listened as Caernith read something far longer than he would have thought could fit on a single sheet that did not even cover his desk.
Iynisin leak from the stone like poison from a wound. Many were imprisoned there in ancient times, and that false prince’s alliance with them set them free again.
“Alliance? Luap was their ally?”
“It is possible he did not know what he did, but he offered no resistance to them,” Caernith said before reading on.
We cannot stop their emergence until the stone can be remade in soundness. Dragon has granted us the boon of transforming fire, but Dragon cannot or will not undo the magery that holds the sleepers safe. The iynisin have some purpose in the east—in my granddaughter’s land and yours, Lyonya’s king, or in the lands nearby—and they will come, with all their malice. We think their purpose is magery they shared with humans before we left the land you call Aare; we think they seek remnants of that magery with which to destroy the north, as they did the south. We are not certain what that magery was; we moved our elvenhome to the north before others and rarely met with other Sinyi.
Kieri’s mind leapt at once to Dorrin’s discovery of a mysterious crown and other royal regalia. But elves at Mikeli’s court had seen the jewels—he was sure he remembered being told that—and had not recognized them. Which elves? “Did your elves—those from the far west—ever come to Tsaia’s court?”
Caernith nodded. “The Bells at Vérella—they rang when you drew your sword, did they not?”
“Yes … and they’re said to be of elven make.”
“Indeed. They were given by those of an elvenhome destroyed long since to the magelords when those came over the mountains and the elves moved away. With goodwill then, for there was no enmity between those elves and those magelords, and the sound of those bells repels iynisin.”
Kieri blinked. He had heard many tales of the mysterious Bells of Vérella in their sealed tower but not that one.
“Let me read on,” Caernith said. His clear, pleasant voice made the words he read even more ominous. Iynisin in numbers moving east, more than had been seen since before Gird’s day, since before the magelords came, iynisin accompanied by their constructs and lending them more power than they’d had when left behind in earlier times.
What we believe is that either healing or great harm will come upon the world in less than four cycles of the sun. The rock-brothers speak of spreading evil in the rock, making it nedross as the dwarves say. We have known of daskdraudigs; we see more of them here and rumors of them moving along the flanks of the great mountains, opening the way of iynisin trapped there in old times. We would send you what was our greatest treasure, the Elvenhorn, but it was used before and vanished as they do for a time after use.
“Elvenhorn?” Kieri murmured.
“Ardhiel used it when the Girdish expedition was beset near the stronghold, and I cannot say he was wrong to do so. It was before the paladin Paksenarrion was taken; she would have been killed with the rest if he had not used it. But he did not know how sorely it would be needed later.”
“Perhaps he knew how badly we would all fare if it fell into the enemy’s hands,” Kieri said.
“Perhaps. But you see, my lord, how urgent is the need for you to wake the sleepers. Until the Father of Dragons can transform the stone, iynisin and their evil threaten all.”
Kieri bit back the answer, which Caernith knew as well as he did. No searching he had done, nothing the elves knew of their own magery, had given him a way to do what they demanded. But he had changed his mind and decided he must tell Caernith what he and Paks had accomplished.
“I have my own tale to tell you: I now know who set the enchantment that binds the magelords there, though I still do not know how to free them.” Caernith stiffened and started to speak, but Kieri waved him to silence and quickly told what he and Paks had done and what he now understood of the situation there at the time.
“You—and a Girdish paladin?” Shock and disdain combined in that.
“Yes. I could not see the place, make a mental picture of it, myself. Though you taught me how to perform small acts at a distance, it was always someplace I knew and could imagine clearly. Paks, because she had been there, remembered it clearly enough to imagine.”
“You worked magery across that span of time?” Caernith’s expression was one Kieri had never seen on an elf’s face—complete astonishment. “Indeed—you are the king we hoped for. And you enchanted them—so surely it is your enchantment to break.”
“Except I cannot. I can now imagine the scene as I last saw it—but I cannot reach it. Paks was involved in that magery, and Gird himself, I believe. But I am not Girdish, and my calls on him have gone unanswered. Paks had to leave at his call; I do not know where she is. If I am to accomplish it, I must gain access to all my own magery.”
“No age is easy,” Caernith said. “But this one seems like to be exceptionally hard. It is our shame that we cannot help you learn what you need to know. If there were Old Humans yet in this world—”
We are not gone. We do not talk with elf-kind.
The words, blunt as hauks, came from a voice Kieri had heard before. The Old One, as he thought of that skull, now on its plinth of stone in the bone-house where the hill had been. Would that one talk to him, teach him Old Human magery? Help him wake the sleepers out west? Because those sleepers were magelords …
Humans. Not elves.
And magelords killed Old Humans or enslaved them.
Sometimes. Here it was elves that destroyed our power and took our home.
So … would the Old One help hi
m wake the magelords?
Yes. Come at midnight. And before Kieri could open his mouth: Do not tell the elf. Do not tell any elf.
That was clear enough. He looked up at Caernith. “I will try again; I have not asked others here with Old Human blood if they know aught. I will ask them now.”
“Do so, my lord, with what urgency you can. As well, given the situation in which the magelords were enchanted, we cannot guarantee their character.”
Kieri agreed with that but said nothing. Caernith went on. “We met none but the prince himself, Selamis Luap, and thus know little of the others except that at the very end, we felt both good and evil in the crowd around the prince.”
Kieri still did not grasp how elves sensed time passing. “You speak of a year or more to wait—”
“What cycle it is, I leave to you, my lord; you and your queen know best how long the babes remain so closely linked that any magery your lady makes will pass through them—”
That, too, was news to Kieri, though he well knew their sensitivity to himself. He said nothing, and Caernith went on. “We of the King’s Guard remain at your service, my lord, and are vigilant against any return of iynisin. Though I believe your own powers have grown and you as well as I would sense their presence.”
“They—or that one—broke in while the Lady was yet alive,” Kieri said.
“The Lady … was not all of herself,” Caernith said.
“So I was told.”
“Did her son—what you call your uncle, I suppose—tell you why? What happened?”
“Some of it,” Kieri said. He wanted to know more—but not now. Not when he was going to have to spend however long it took in the bone-house discussing Old Human magery with the dead. “But if you will excuse me for this time, the queen and I have things to discuss.”
“Of course.” Caernith bowed. “If you need to leave the palace later, merely call.”
Kieri nodded and left the room. He’d forgotten that Caernith would expect to accompany him if he went out, as protection from iynisin. How was he going to evade an elf? Caernith did not come into the ossuary with him, so perhaps he could leave Caernith outside the King’s Grove. But no—Caernith would see danger in that.
When he came to Arian’s room, she was on the floor with the babies, holding a ball on a string for them to bat at. She looked up. “What disturbed you this time?”
“It shows that clearly?” Kieri let himself down onto the floor, and Falki turned, reaching. Kieri put his finger into that grip and stroked his son’s head with the other hand. “Hello, bright one.”
His daughter turned her head and gave him a toothless grin, waving a hand vaguely.
“You, too,” he said to her. “Arian, are these two approaching readiness for bed?”
“You need to talk to me?”
“Yes. And not something I want to discuss around them; they’re too tuned to our emotions.”
“Ah. Well, it’s time anyway.”
In a shorter time than usual, the twins were sleeping in their cradle. “Now—what is it?”
“A message from your grandfather.” Kieri took a swallow of sib. “I wish for once someone would send a message that everything’s all right and there’s nothing to worry about.”
“What is the worry?”
“Iynisin. Their movement from Kolobia eastward. I think it’s the regalia Dorrin found, myself. Iynisin and magery both appeared in the world shortly after the regalia were brought to Vérella.”
“Could be Dragon,” Arian said.
“So it could, but I think Dragon would tell us. I think it’s the regalia. Your grandfather urges me to hurry and find a way to wake the magelords in Kolobia. Yet no one can tell me how.”
“But—?”
He grinned at her. “But … I may have found a way to gain access to the Old Human magery that the elves say is necessary. The Old One’s skull spoke to me again. It won’t have anything to do with elves, but it will help me. It said. The only thing is—”
“How to evade your elven bodyguard?”
“Exactly. Ideas?”
Arian smiled, a singularly smug smile. “I need him.”
“What?” That was the last thing he’d expected; Arian had been no more than coolly polite to the western elves.
“I need him. I need to consult him about the babes and about any limitations on their exposure to magery, as well as their education as … what they are. The nursery maids as well as I have noticed how quickly they advance.” She stretched, then gave a sharp sigh. “I’m not inventing a need, Kieri. I should have done it before, because we have no other I trust to teach me to mother children who will rule an elvenhome. So, when does the skull want you to come?”
“Midnight.”
She grimaced. “It would. Hard to explain why I need to meet with an elf at midnight without you present. Does it have to be tonight?”
“I don’t know … I don’t think so.”
“Good. Tomorrow night, then. I’ll talk to Caernith.”
Kieri left his King’s Squires at the dike around the bone-house. Starlight showed him the path down; the roof of the bone-house sparkled with dew. He bowed before entering and felt his way to the Oathstone. Faint sounds of clicking and rustling raised the hairs on his neck, but he ignored that and bowed again. “Elder, I am here,” he said.
A vague glow appeared in the dark, then strengthened until the skull on the Oathstone was outlined in green light. By that light Kieri now saw two skeletons standing, bone on bone, one to either side of him.
You are not of this tribe. The skull’s voice in his head was clear, but his outward ears heard nothing. To learn the magery of which you ask, you must be adopted. Give your hands to your father and your mother; they have agreed to sponsor you.
Kieri reached out, and the cold bones of the skeletons clasped his hands as if he were a child between parents.
They will lead you where you must go.
They were already moving, their grip on his hands inflexible as the bones, powerful as stone; he had no choice but to follow. Out of the bone-house and then to the heart-hand … then an intricate dance he could not understand, stumbling now and then as he was pushed and pulled through the pattern. Darkness rose around him; the starlight disappeared; under his feet he felt earth, not grass: damp, yielding, slippery.
You must be born, child of Alyanya, child of Sian and Olath. That was a different voice, softer yet more powerful than the old skull’s. Kieri stared into dark nothing, hearing a rhythmic sound, and realized that the bones no longer held his hands and he was curled into a ball, hands fisted. What was this? He tried to take a calming breath—and could not. He struggled, and whatever was around him squeezed, pushed at him; he felt himself sliding … where? He was a grown man; he could not be birthed … but he could not stop what was happening, compressed as he was. Whatever it was would happen. Do not fear, child. You must be born in love and joy. Love poured from that voice; he relaxed in spite of his confusion.
In that moment, he was once more able to breathe, the moist night air clean and fragrant on his face. Once more he was clasped in bony hands, as if he were in truth a tiny child.
Alyanya’s Grace. A child is born to the tribe. May he grow in peace and share in the parrion of power. The skull again. Sian. Olath. Name this child before the tribe.
The skeleton holding his heart-hand raised it high. I, Sian, mother of fathers, new-birthed this child and name him Palan, for his parrion’s use, in Alyanya’s honor. Let the child bear this name with other names, and let it be known to him and the dead alone.
The skeleton holding his sword-hand then raised it high. I, Olath, father of mothers, engendered this child anew and name him Oathkeeper, for his guidance, in Alyanya’s honor. Let the child bear this name before all.
Kieri shivered; had it been Alyanya, then, who spoke while he was helpless? And where was he now, besides in the air, standing, able to breathe? The bony hands tugged again at his, and again he followed so
me pattern they walked or danced, confused but willing.
When they stopped, he could see more clearly: the bone-house, the glowing skull within, the other skeletons now standing in rows to either side of the aisle to the Oathstone.
Bring him.
They led him forward.
Palan Oathkeeper, kiss my brow.
Kieri, hands now free, lifted the skull and kissed it.
You are one of us. For Alyanya’s sake, I will share what you would know.
Power poured into him, dark as dirt, rich with life. The Old Human magery reminded Kieri of both elven and Kuakkgani magery, based as it was on the life that flowed through the world. And yet it was different at root from the elven, for the Old Humans did not use it to force even beauty or growth from plants. Their magery was based on giving, not taking … on asking, not commanding.
Alyanya gives life, and so this magery gives blood and breath.
The Kuakkgani, Kieri knew, gave a limb to their host tree … and the tree gave a limb to them … each kind to the other kind. But the Old Humans had given season by season, act by act—blooding their tools before cutting the soil and the cornerstone of a new building, burying the birthsack of each child in the corner of a field to be planted, giving the land back the flesh of each who died, and then raising the bones for their spirits. They gave breath—days of their lives—for the magery that saved others from dying of fevers or injuries.
Giving is power.
The techniques, the rituals, poured into his mind. At last, when he felt stuffed with the new knowledge, the skull released him.
Go in Alyanya’s peace, Palan Oathkeeper. We do not forget.
Kieri returned from the King’s Grove to his own chamber in the first soft predawn light; he was, he realized, streaked with mud and other substances he didn’t want to think about. He took the back way and made it into the bathing room without seeing either of his elven bodyguards. Water for his bath after morning exercise in the salle had just been put on the hearth; he poured it into the tub over the servant’s objections.
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