“And in return?” the hraki says, though he knows the answer.
The day before, his daughter is in the small council chamber he used himself. She sits at the blackwood table where his wars were planned, and her kings are with her as once they were with him.
“Do not do this,” King Tennan of Redwater says, and his voice cracks on the words. “We will find another way. We are strong, my queen. We are hungry, but we are strong.”
Her eyes are calm. She is in both places at once, as is her dreaming father.
“What would we be?” King Abbot of Harnell asks. The voice that had been strong and rolling once is wet. His eyes are rheumy.
“Changed,” the High Queen says. “We would be changed.” And the next day, at the same time, “In return, I will take your son as my husband. He cannot be king, for only my father’s blood may sit this throne, but he will be the queen’s consort. And your grandson will be High King.”
Dreaming, the High King calls out. In the sepulcher, his mouth opens for the first time in years. Young Cormin of Leftbridge slams his hand upon the blackwood table. “We need not do this. We are strong. Your father would not have asked this of you. We can take what we need by force.” When he is needed, he shall rise creaks and whispers, makes the air rich as if it were the scent of blood and smoke.
“We could take it by force. Would that be justice?” his daughter asks, mildly.
“You would take my son?” the hraki asks. His voice is torn between amusement and disbelief.
“I would,” she says, looking down from the throne.
“Gracious queen,” the horned man says, “I thank you, but this cannot be.”
“There have been such unions,” his daughter says. “They have been fruitful.”
“Our honor does not permit that we lay with those not of our kind.”
The High Queen smiles, lifts her chin. She looks like her mother. Sounds like her.
“Make an exception,” she says, and the day before turns her eyes to the old men at her table. Would that be justice? still hangs in the air. That they cannot answer is also an answer. “Mine is not the only way, it’s true. We could take to the field. Or we could accept the loans offered by the bankers in Pallan Syrai. One would mean the deaths of the innocent. The other would mean selling ourselves in all but name.”
Two silences mix. Grief pulls at the High King’s dreaming heart. Grief and shock and something else.
“My father found five kingdoms shattered by war,” she says to the kings of the black table, “and forged them into one. You who would have been my rivals are my brother, my sister, my uncles now. My father was strong and he was just, and you changed for him. Will you not also change for me?”
“I will not command my son to do this,” the hraki says. “But I will speak with him.”
The dream shifts, and the High King is aware of a pool of still water. The stink of its stagnation fills his nostrils, and he knows it is not real. It is an image his mind has conjured to see what is too large to see. A drop of blood falls in the pool’s center, and where the ripples pass, the water is made pure and sweet. A small black insect floats on its surface, its wings spread like the arms of a drowned man, and he knows the blight is gone. Not defeated, not conquered, but endured until its natural death takes it. Someday, in the way of all plagues, it will return, but for now it is sleeping. It is dreaming. This is not the need, and never was. The unbroken dream goes on. And more than that, it deepens.
Like the ripple, its movement is in all directions at once. All history remains before us, the cunning man says. The dream is unmoored in time now. What has been and what will be reach around like arms around the trunk of a great tree, and their fingers interlace. He dreams that he is dreaming, and that he will wake in his rooms. His child is being born, and fear has exhausted him, but the doors will open and the cunning man and the physician and the midwife will wake him with word of the birth. He cannot stay. Redwater’s forces are almost at Hawthor, and if his enemy takes the Bloody Bridge all that he has fought for will fail. He knows that he should not be here, and it gives the dream a sense of terrible urgency.
The woman’s cries are not of pain, but of purpose. The pain is there as well, but secondary. She is in a place of extremes, a place between being and not being, and her work is vital and profound and punishing. He loves her more than his body can contain. His teeth grind against each other, but he cannot wake. He cannot help her.
There is a desperate choking sound, an unfamiliar cough, a thin wire of a wail as much animal as human, and he weeps. The worst is past. He holds the girl wrapped in soft cloth, looks into eyes that have not yet decided what color they will be. “I will make this world deserve you,” he says. He remembers having said, as if it were a thing he had done years ago. And then it is a different baby he is holding, black-eyed with dark lips pulled back in a wide, joyful grin. For a moment, the babe’s swimming gaze seems to find him and it shrieks with delight before it looks away again.
“It seems I have a son,” his daughter says. Her voice is a tissue of exhaustion and satisfaction.
“We have a son?” a man’s odd, musical voice says. He sits at her side. His horns are curved back, and not so large as his father’s. His black eyes are wide with wonder.
“Well,” the High Queen says, “You likely have a son, but it’s certain that I do.”
The horned man’s expression flickers through confusion, to comprehension, to indignation, and then bursts forth in laughter. “You are a wicked, wicked woman,” the queen’s consort says, as he cradles her hand to his breast. The love in his black eyes is unmistakable. She chuckles with him, kisses his knuckle, lays back spent from her efforts. Her face is wide from the months of carrying her boy, and her hair is dark with sweat, and she is joyful. The mother of her family and of the land, the center of her people and her kingdom.
The High King looks into his arms, and she is red-faced, stunned, and confused. She is barely formed, helpless, and so vulnerable a chill might take her away. Curled into herself, she fits in his two hands together. The wars must end. Redwater is coming to Hawthor, and he must be stopped. If she is to live in a world that is not rocked by constant battle, Redwater must be defeated. And so, the High King dreams that he will be. For her.
And in the meadow, King Tennan of Redwater bends his knee to the new High Queen. No acrid stench of pitch competes with the wildflowers’ perfume. The cunning man in his bright, celebratory robe capers and laughs and spills wisdom in jokes too subtle to fully comprehend. In her young face there is the echo of the babe that has gone before and a promise of the woman still to come. She leans forward, touches the weeping Redwater’s shoulder. When he is needed, he shall rise.
In the street, men such as he has known mix with the new black-eyed, horned strangers. Unfamiliar dishes share the plate with the foods that once passed his lips. Around the winter bonfires, strange and musical voices rise with the smoke. They who never knew him sing songs he does not know, and also they sing of the High King who once brought peace. They sing of how he shall rise again in some coming age when he is needed. No one sings of the Bloody Bridge or of making peace with Holt, and the man they sing of seems less and less like him.
He dreams of himself in the sepulcher. No rot has touched him, but his skin is drowned in dust. The great blade Justice has rusted away to nothing. His fingers cup the shape of a hilt that has fallen away from between them. The world has moved on. His daughter has moved on. As she should.