The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  Órlaith signed the air with the Old Faith’s pentagram in agreement: “The High King lives for the folk and the land, not they for him.”

  Her left hand was on the pommel of the Sword of the Lady. Her mother’s hand touched hers, and for a single instant they were one and that one was the kingdom, its peoples and also its mountains and plains and waters and the life that thronged them. Her sorrow at Rudi Mackenzie’s death was its sorrow too—

  Ochone, Ochone! He is gone, his blood is spilled upon My breast, he who was Son and Lover and the Father to the land!

  And so were things beyond the human kind: the slow hungry waking of a grizzly in its winter den, the flood of reindeer across a tundra, a lion lying up near the body of a scimitar-horned oryx it had brought down on the fringes of the southern desert, a bristlecone pine in the mountain scree that remembered Conquistadores in morion and breastplate as yesterday, and the long ages of the flint spearhead and hide robe before that, and the giant beasts of yet another age that the land still mourned.

  “It’s a burden,” Mathilda sighed. “But you’re ready to bear it. You . . . you are so like your father, you know that? Like him as he was when we were young together, on the Quest to Nantucket for the Sword.”

  Órlaith had faced battle and storm and the Powers that human-kind called evil in the course of her quarter-century of life. Even so she quailed a little at the thought of filling those shoes. Then she remembered her father . . . remembered him playing bear before the fire, whooping as his children tussled him to the ground in a squirming heap, or sharp-set and hungry, grinning as he rode up with the hounds belling around his horse’s hooves at Timberline Lodge and smelled dinner after a long hunt in cold and mud and bent down to take the cup of mulled wine from her with a word of thanks, or laughing with her mother over the solemn absurdities of Court ceremony and the truly farcical ones of politics when the day was over.

  “Da bore it,” she said. “And I’ve never met a man who was . . . happier in his life, or more at home in his own skin.”

  Mathilda’s smile was fond and sad at the same time. “He said to me once that if you didn’t expect to make old bones, you should pack in as much as you could. He lived, while he lived, your father, every moment of every day.”

  Then she continued with a shrewd edge: “What we don’t need when unity is essential is a High Queen who’s an Associate. I’ve been uneasy about that since your . . .”

  A swallow. “Since your father was killed. There are still places in Montival where monarchy feels a bit strange, and it’s easier if it doesn’t come with lords, barons, dukes, castles and cotte-hardies attached.”

  Órlaith nodded, since that was true enough as far as the politics were concerned. Though . . .

  “No, they call their lords ranchers and farmers and sheriffs and mayors or Presidents or The Faculty Senate, instead, often enough. But you’re right.”

  The High Queen took a deep breath and said: “The Realm needs you. Go then, my darling. Go!”

  She squeezed Órlaith’s hand one more time, kissed her forehead, turned and walked quickly to the Royal pavilion with the Crowned Mountain and Sword banner of Montival flying from its peak and two knights of the Protector’s Guard flanking its entrance like motionless statues of black steel, kite-shields with the Lidless Eye on their arms and their longswords drawn and sloped across their shoulders. They snapped to attention, blade before face, then back to their eternal watchfulness.

  There were plenty of other tents in many styles; little clumps of folk from wherever the heliograph net reached in the High Kingdom and there had been time to send envoys, here to the shelf of flatland where the trail paused before it wound down to the Lake. Here to witness as much of the ceremony as human eyes could see. That was their right, that they could take the word back to their homes. There would be a crowning eventually at the new capital, Dún na Síochána, but this was where the High King or Queen was truly bound to the kingdom.

  She was used to living her life in public, under observation, and here it was true in spades. Some heads of member-states were present. She recognized Mike Jr., the current Bear Lord of Larsdalen and her father’s half-brother, with the head of an actual bear on the helmet he carried tucked under one arm; the saffron-robed head of Chenrezi Monastery in the Valley of the Sun; her aunt Maude Loring Mackenzie, the Mackenzie of the Clan and her grandmother Juniper Mackenzie beside her in a white robe, leaning on the staff with the Triple Moon at its head.

  More were delegates: grave bearded Mormon bishops of the Seventy from Deseret in long black coats and hats; a rabbi from Degania Dalet; ranchers in fringed buckskin jackets, with string ties and hats and belts bound with silver conchos and heavy-bladed shete-sabers at their waists, braids hanging to their shoulders; Lakota in fringed leather and elaborate headdresses, and envoys from other tribesfolk from the Yurok in Westria . . . what had once been California . . . to the Deisleen ḵwáan in the far north of what had once been British Columbia; the peacock splendor of Associate nobles; the deliberately old-fashioned rusticity of blue-jean bib overalls from the Free Cities of the Yakima league, or suit-and-tie on a Corvallan academic or merchant-prince; Christian clerics of half a dozen varieties; and more. . . .

  The head of the High Queen’s Archers spoke a word, and a semicircle of the kilted bowmen held their long yellow yew staves horizontally before them in both hands and spread out before the head of the trail. Her father’s old friend and battle-comrade Edain Aylward Mackenzie commanded them, middle-aged but still strong as a weather-scarred boulder, and there was a quasi-uncle’s affection under his careful professional respect. His son Karl grinned at her with a reckless youngster’s smile until scowled into solemnity.

  Órlaith took a moment to bow to Reiko, who was waiting in full armor beneath the Rising Sun banner of Dai Nippon and the red flag with the stylized sixteen-petal chrysanthemum that was the House mon of the Yamato dynasty, and received—for the last time—a bow of a nicely judged fractional degree less. After this day they’d both be sovereigns, and the bows would be equal. Montival’s Nihonjin allies were a ceremonious folk, and Reiko was punctilious about it in public.

  “Johnnie,” she said to her younger brother. “Walk with me for a bit, to the head of the track. This is your trail too, you’re allowed.”

  John favored her mother’s family; he was an inch shorter than she, with dark-brown hair to his broad shoulders, and eyes were the changeable color that can be light honey-brown or green depending on the light, and very keen. She’d always thought he was quick of wit, but lazy about anything but his music and chasing girls. Though he was also a very passable swordsman. Possibly because there he’d been terrified into hard work by fear of disappointing their parents, and even more because it was popular with the Associate demoiselles; he’d earned the little golden spurs of knighthood they both wore.

  Since he’d come back from his adventures in the Ceram Sea she took him far more seriously. Today he wore a Montero cap that sported a peacock’s tail-feather, and green hunter’s garb, with a short heavy falchion at his belt and a bow and quiver over his back.

  “Mother’s gotten over your bringing back a bride,” Órlaith said teasingly.

  In fact, she thinks Pip will rule him with a rod of iron and also that it’s just what he needs.

  John looked over his shoulder at Pip. She was in Associate garb—ladies’ traveling garb of divided skirt and loose lap-over jacket—belted high over her gravid belly. She was wearing it as if it were a costume, and reacting to the chill with the horror natural to someone who’d been born and raised in Australia’s northern sugarcane country. She was genuinely fond of John, though. When she spoke words of affection for him it had the subtle bronze tang of sincerity.

  “Pip?” John said, with pride in his voice.

  Órlaith could tell he was about to recite some of her manifold virtues and qualities, and not for the first tim
e to her. He was more eloquent than most, which was his troubadour training, but otherwise babblingly repetitive, very much like any other besotted young man.

  “As much a case of her bringing me here as the reverse!”

  He went into a list of Pip’s virtues which ended with her lineage and: “. . . which would have had grandfather Norman over the moon.”

  “Yes, it would have,” Órlaith said, in a heavily patient tone which she thought he didn’t catch.

  It pleases Mother too, but not as much as Pip’s character does. As she says, a Lord Protector of the Association or their consort can afford to be bad, but not weak, not and dominate that pack of wolves the way that’s needful if you want to keep them on a leash. But Mother’s parents . . . yes, they’d have been glowing at Pip’s association with the House of Windsor. Not that that’s much of a recommendation.

  “But I attach more importance to the fact that she saved your life,” Órlaith said. “And so does Mother—I could see that the sun rose in her eyes when you returned, and she’s scarcely displeased by the prospect of grandchildren either. Everyone’s descended from everyone, if you go back far enough, and every dynasty has to start somewhere. Even Reiko’s!”

  “Though hers is supposed to start with Amaterasu-ōmikami . . . and some of the things I’ve seen her do . . . I might believe it, if it weren’t blasphemy.”

  Órlaith replied with malice aforethought—John was a sincere Catholic, though not a very good one as far as women were concerned:

  “And your new children will descend from Odin through the Kings of Wessex, if the House of Windsor’s official genealogy is to be believed. Both of them, philoprogenitive little brother of mine.”

  He had the grace to blush slightly. Complex personal dynamics had resulted in John getting Pip and his battle-comrade Thora Garwood pregnant during his late adventures, though not in that order and not intentionally in either case. Órlaith took a slight sly pleasure about twitting him over the matter; and it wasn’t just a personal matter, it touched on the succession.

  “That Odin thing is a historical fiction,” he huffed.

  “Except that Da met him,” Órlaith pointed out dryly.

  “In a dream! The legend about Pip’s ancestors probably just means some Dark Age chief had a genealogy that ended with: and who granddad’s father was, only Odin knows.”

  “Probably,” Órlaith said equably. “On the other hand, perhaps the Wanderer knew that his blood would be mingled with House Artos through Pip, eh? And that was one reason he helped Da when he lay wounded and near death in that cave? He’s a tricksy one, Gangleri.”

  John snorted. “I’d say you pagans are all light-minded, if it wouldn’t make my wastrel’s head explode.”

  “Former wastrel. Pip will take care of that,” Órlaith said, and grinned for a moment as he looked stricken, like a man who’d just had a truth revealed and wasn’t sure about it.

  “This is as far as I think I should go, Orrey,” he said, turning his back on the lake and unconsciously relaxing a little once he had.

  “You may have to go farther someday, Johnnie,” she replied soberly, which was the point—it never hurt to remind people watching of the dynastic implications.

  “God forbid!” he said sincerely.

  She could tell that too, and it was one reason their father hadn’t worn the Sword more than he must. There were reasons human beings had to rely on imperfect wit and intuition to tell how honest others were being.

  He crossed himself. “That’s for your kids.”

  “Which I haven’t had yet. Until then you’re the heir, and after you, Pip’s little bundle of joy. Nice of you to choose Sandra for her name, if she is a girl, though.” If a boy, John Michael was de rigueur. Norman was still out of the question; the memories of his rule hadn’t faded enough.

  The thought of children was starting to make her feel a certain wistful yearning, though she couldn’t take the time right now—it was a different matter for men, of course, who could impregnate and run.

  “God and all the Saints forbid,” he said . . . sincerely again. “I’ve seen what the job did to Dad, and what it’s doing to you. I’ll be the High Queen’s right hand, and wailing wall when you need it, and when Mother passes—in, say, another forty years or more if God grants—I’ll be Lord Protector of the Association. That’s all I want and more than I want, believe me.”

  “I do, Johnnie.” She slapped the Sword. “I can’t help it!”

  “So I’ve no desire to walk this road again—”

  He stopped for a moment, and looked up at the sky, and then at his watch—he had a pre-Change self-winding model strapped to his wrist.

  “Wait a minute!” he said. “We’ve been walking for . . . We should have been at the Lake long ago!”

  He shuddered; Órlaith made herself smile, but the same thought made the skin between her shoulder-blades crawl. She looked around: trees, blue sky, white-topped mountain . . . but this was other.

  They hugged for a long moment; she took comfort from his warm solidity. Family was at the core of things, though friends and battle-comrades were close to it.

  “Reiko will be nervous for me,” Órlaith said.

  Though she won’t say so, of course, went unspoken. She’d thought she knew stoics, until she met the Nihonjin.

  “Deor will help. I’ll keep them all laughing, don’t worry.”

  Órlaith turned, set herself and took a stride. She half-checked when she did; there was a feeling of presence, suddenly. Not just the looming awe of Lost Lake—in an older tongue, E-e-kwahl-a-mat-yam-lshkt, Lake at the Heart of Mountains. That had been there before, and it was growing, like a weightiness in the clear air.

  What she felt was a person, unseen but there. And a feeling of overwhelming love, of safety and comfort walking beside her as she walked down, and then the way turned and the lake was there, like a blue eye looking up into the blue of Heaven. An osprey dove, struck the water in a spray of drops that the sunset turned into a necklace of rubies, and flogged its way back into the air with two feet of rainbow trout writhing in its talons.

  “Well, as Dad always said, the job doesn’t get easier if you wait,” she said, took a deep breath and stepped out into the dying sunlight with her boots grating in the gravel.

  A man faced her. “Órlaith?” he said softly.

  Órlaith felt her eyes go wide, and her face milk-pale as blood drained from her. She staggered, and for an instant she felt her knees buckle as her pulse thundered and breath seized in paralyzed lungs and the world started to grow gray at the edges. He caught her by the forearms, and she clenched her hands hard on the corded swordsman’s muscle of his.

  The jewel-cut handsome face was achingly familiar, and the blue-green eyes, and the fall of gold-and-copper hair to his shoulders from beneath the Mackenzie bonnet. Those memories were graven on her soul. But . . .

  “Dad?” she said. “Is that . . . you?” Then: “No. You’re too young!”

  “It’s Rudi Mackenzie, I am, darling girl,” he said. “Just . . . let’s say I’m here on the same mission as I suspect brings you. The Kingmaking.”

  “But I saw you—” she began to say, then rammed to a halt.

  No. I saw a man twenty years and more older than this die, in that skirmish down in Westria. This is Da as he was when I first remember him, only younger still.

  This was the man who achieved the Quest to the Sunrise Lands, who fought the Prophet’s War, and had a throne and a kingdom yet to make. Not yet the wise kindly land-father of the long peace he gave, when the littlest crofters might sow and know they could reap their own with none to put them in fear, and have his hand by their side to give just judgment against the powerful.

  This is the warrior-king, the son of Bear and Raven, foretold at his Wiccaning to be his people’s strength and the Lady’s Sword. And foredoomed to die with
blade in hand before his beard showed gray. Like Lug of the Long Spear come again, in glory and majesty and terror.

  He grinned, and her heart felt as if it would tear itself loose with joy and hard sorrow mixed.

  “Saw me die?” He laughed, the Clan’s lilt strong in his voice but—now that she heard it from his youth—subtly different from the way Mackenzies spoke now. “My delight, I never thought myself immortal. Except in the sense that we all are, and I’ve had abundant proof of that.”

  “How?” she breathed. “How is this happening?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea; and I have it on the best of authority that Those responsible don’t explain it to us because they can’t. How can a man explain all his mind to a little child, or a God to a man? But I suspect that here, from the time the Sword plunged into the earth with Matti your mother and myself your father holding it, all times are one. And the dead and the living and those yet unborn are none so different.”

  She cast herself against him and they embraced.

  “I’ve missed you so much, Da. And Mother has been so—”

  He made a shushing sound and laid a finger over her lips. “Arra, there are things I should not know. Let me find my own joys and griefs, child! It’s a comfort to hear you, though. I’ve a fair confidence I will be a good King, but it seems I’m none so bad a father, too.”

  She nodded vigorously and stood back, wiping at tears with the back of her hand.

  “Come, walk with me,” he said.

  They linked hands; she remembered that from her earliest girlhood, slipping her tiny fingers into his and looking up at the tree-tall gentle strength that warded her days and made all the world safe and would forever more. Now hers were callused like his, the distinctive patterns left by blade-hilt and shield-grips. After a moment they came to the rock by the water; the Sword of the Lady stood in it, as if it had been planted there since the Ice retreated to the mountaintops and left the land free for human-kind.