“Magelord . . . and that means?”
“Some of the mageborn retain the powers all once had. I myself have some—but much diminished, if the tales be true, from those with which the magelords came.”
The king sighed. “As I suspect it was my magic that called you, it is but courteous that I explain why. Your ancestors, king’s son, had long abused the powers they held before they came to this land. No blame to you, but when the pot’s broken, it matters not who spilled it—all must clean. Long and bitter wars have followed every trail your ancestors took; the Seafolk they raided and scourged from the eastern coasts fled seaward, and found this land, only to find your people moving into it from the mountains. Generations of war—which I, as a young man, helped to fight. Injustice on injustice, which I now feel called to redress.”
“You?” That got out; Luap clamped his lips on the “alone?” that would have followed.
“I have an heir. Several, in fact. I have a trustworthy Regent—”
The king’s glance went aside, to where the woman sat out of Luap’s gaze.
“And Council,” she put in. “You know my limitations.”
“If Gird sends you elsewhere on quest now—” the king began.
Another warm chuckle. “I’m not that old; you were still commanding the Company—”
“But—”
“And I’ll make no promises I can’t keep.” Luap flinched, and hoped the king didn’t see. From something in her voice, he knew it as truth: she had never made promises she couldn’t keep, and had kept promises he didn’t want to contemplate.
“I know. And you know my meaning. King’s son, I am going back to a place where I made grave errors; I will try to put them right. I need your help, and that of your people—Gird’s people—to bring justice to Aarenis and even to Old Aare. Now—”
As if that pause released his voice, Luap heard himself asking “Who is she?”
“A paladin of Gird,” she said, a bright shape once more wavering at the king’s shoulder. “Does that grieve you?”
She had chosen the very word. Whatever she was, he could not be. “Paladin?” he asked, clinging to the unfamiliar word.
“Gird’s warrior,” the king said. “Sworn to his service, under his command.”
Awe choked him again. “You’ve—seen—him?” Faster than speech could be, the hope ran through his mind that Gird had not mentioned him; shame made his ears burn.
“In my heart,” she said, bringing a fist to her chest. Now he could see clearly; a big fist, scarred with work or war, and a face that had seen a life’s trouble without hardening to bitterness. A yellow braid hung over one shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said again. “Gird will help you.”
Even the Sunlord wouldn’t help him, he thought miserably. If this was foresight, no wonder the gift disappeared; it would drive him mad, one more instant of it. He squeezed, trying to close his eyes, but could not. “Not me,” he said, with difficulty. “I—erred. Stupidly. Again. He warned me, but I thought—I could read, you see. I was smarter.”
“Smart enough to cut yourself with your own sword?” asked the king. His smile was rueful again. “I did that, too.” He flicked a glance at the woman. “We kings’ sons have much to learn from peasants, Luap.”
The rush of laughter came as suddenly as the tears, as despair; he gulped it down. “So . . . so Gird said. And Rahi.” At the king’s look of incomprehension, he added “Gird’s daughter.”
“I never knew he had a daughter,” said the woman; Luap winced, suddenly quite aware of the reason. He had left Rahi out of the chronicles where he could, helped by her own belief that being Gird’s daughter meant nothing special. If these folk were indeed from far in the future, when some at least of the records must have been lost, Rahi’s part might have vanished.
He could think of nothing to say about Rahi. He could think of nothing but his guilt, and the iynisin outside, waiting.
“You’re afraid,” the woman said. “What is it?”
Her voice soothed, warmed. “Iynisin,” he said. Best get the tale over with quickly; this vision had lasted a long time already. Without sparing himself, he told of the decision to move all the mageborn to the canyons, and how he and the others had used their powers to smooth the way, to make the canyons livable. Then of his dealing with the Khartazh, and his decision to use his power—he thought only his—to keep him young. And then the iynisin, whose influence at first escaped notice, until that morning’s attack, and then of the judgment of elves and dwarves that sealed the mageroads against them.
They stared at him, the two faces unlike but the same expression.
“We will die,” he said, facing it for the first time. “All of us. If we can’t go out to plant and harvest, or trade . . . we will starve.”
“What would you?”
“Escape, of course. Can you—”
“No.” The king’s face was grim. “I have no magicks to bring so many so far, from such a length of years. What I had thought to do was wake those found sleeping in your Hall—” Luap opened his mouth, and the king raised a hand to silence him. “Paks saw that, years ago. I presume that was you and your remaining warriors. She traveled by the pattern—the mageroad, you call it?—back to Fin Panir, where the Girdsmen rule; I had thought to ask you to go that way, or to another end—for some went elsewhere, the time Paks used it. But you are not now sleeping in that hall—at least, the man I talk to is not—”
“Sir king.” The woman’s voice carried power again; again she reminded him of Raheli. If Gird’s daughter had been fair instead of dark . . . he shivered, suspecting that she was Gird’s daughter in a way he had never been his father’s son. “If he is not sleeping, yet we found him sleeping—if peril threatens which he cannot escape, and fighting will not serve any good—Gird knows I understand the iynisin—” She turned to Luap. “They captured me, for a time.” Luap shuddered; her eyes were steady below the circle on her brow. “Perhaps you can suggest a way for him to save his people in that enchantment.”
The king’s eyes came alight. “And then—”
“And then perhaps a call to wake will actually awaken them.”
“But—” Luap cut that off. To sleep but awaken only to another danger, to whatever distant war the king had in mind, to waken only to more guilt, more peril . . . what purpose was that? Even if it could be done, why not simply die, and be done with life? Despair seized him again, and all he could remember were the numberless lies, the many times he had dodged trouble, to let it fall elsewhere. The face of his dead wife swam before him, for the first time in years; he heard his daughter’s pitiful cries as they dragged her away. He could hear his own voice, the perpetual whine that Gird had accused but he had never heard. And he had robbed even Gird’s daughter of her due, in shaping the chronicles as he had. He would be better dead; he would only ruin another man’s dream.
“All the others with you?” asked the woman. She had read his thought again, or it showed on his face for all to see. Now she shook her head slowly. “No—they can have a better death than that, to fall once more because you fell. And for you, too, death is not the answer.”
“How?” All his rage, all his sorrow, all his weakness; they knew everything now, or should have. “I was their king; I failed them!” He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to hold back the tears, then stared at her through that wavering pattern. “How many? Tell me—how many were left?”
“I . . . don’t remember. Fifty, perhaps. A few more or less. I was not counting them, and the High Marshals left them in peace.”