Lady Cherusay's Daughter, Book I: The People

He paused, puzzled. he replied, obscurely even for him.

As the old oak braced her spine once more, she understood him. Just as spells seemed to have something like location in her thought, so this hilltop now also stood in a unique ‘location.’ A ‘location’ for a location, that was in no physical way the original location . . . she shook her head brusquely. Words, Padriag often said, could break one’s thought, if they were asked to take more weight than their nature permitted.

She sighed wearily; the hours were very wee indeed. Without a word, then, the little peerie reached up and touched her hand, once more to take her swirling down his strange paths. When he let go, she continued ‘on’ for a moment more, all on her own, and blinked in sleepy surprise at the back of the Kingscroft vegetable gardens.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, rubbing her eyes. She hesitated a few minutes, wondering if she felt up to risking going in to bed, or whether she would not rather sleep right here among the—she laughed—onions. A glance at the stars warned her that dawn was not far off, and soon the kitchens would be in full roar for the holy day’s feasting; she just might sleep longer in bed.

She did. For all the passion for the game of Ghost, nearly everyone also lusted for a day of ease, and slept that night and well into the morning, the better to eat, drink, and dance on the day. For that matter, for all that day, Ghost attacks met no defense fiercer than, “Yes, right, I’m dead, bugger off and don’t spill my ale dammit.” It was marvellously dispiriting to martial ambition, and soon even the most dogged self-trainer had given up slaughtering everyone else, for games of greater folly.

But first there was ceremony. An hour before noon, a boisterous parade burst from Kingscroft’s front Gate, and joined a river of brightly-clad Andrastiri, welling from every enclave to flood the streets. Song and cymbal, drum and dancing echoed from the stonework. Effigies of Areolin, huge and elaborately bedecked with roses and chamomile, bobbed upon the swell: every great family seemed to vie for Richest Representation of the Sun.

And Sunwise around the Ardassiann the golden river poured, utterly commingled. Great lords ringed with a retinue of lesser lords paced among servants taskless for the day. And great or lowly, at their own pleasure the paraders stopped at any door along the way: every gate stood open to courtyards full of tables heavy with meat, mead, and sweet treats, as every family vied for Richest Victuals in Honor of the Sun.

At last a great crowd gathered in the square before the Gate of Heroes. With much singing, gold-garbed clergy of Areolin lit two great oaken bonfires, and all the magnificent effigies were flung into the flames. Drums thundered and bells rang, and, still singing, Areolin’s Servants spilled into the mass of worshippers to lead them in a dance about the fires. Rothesay found her hand taken by a smiling androgynous creature in one of Areolin’s spiky golden headdresses, and towed sunwise in a lively vine-step. She in turn grabbed for her neighbor’s hand. He bowed out, a little stiffly, and reluctantly, she thought: he was grey-haired and jowl-faced, and all about the square the elderly retired to the edges taking small children with them, leaving the dance to men and women in their prime. A stocky man in his thirties, perhaps, with Carastwyth colors twisted into the design of his own family emblem, claimed her flailing hand and danced after her.

Another ring of dancers formed closer in, and more further out; behind her, Lacie’s voice suddenly bawled in her ear, “Oh, go ahead and kiss him, Prudy!”

Rothesay, lithe on her feet, missed not a step as she cast the Carastwyath a suspicious glare, and he, with a quick, pointed glance at her Runedaur tunic, glowed with avid innocence.

Down the searing path between the two fires, petitioners half-danced, half-ran: women seeking cleansing of sins, or a fertile belly, or both; lovers pledging troth; anyone sick of a malady remedied by light and fire; a small parade of white-clad youths becoming men, who joined the dance as they emerged. Lavender and eyebright in sheaflike bundles or braided wreaths joined the flames, and the smoke sweetened.

She might have danced there all day, had not Sorchone, and a heartbeat later Rory, cut her out of the dancing rings. “Home, babe!” Sorchone bawled to be heard. “We’ve more serious feasting there!” Rothesay allowed herself to be pulled away, but danced all the way back to Kingscroft, and teased both of them into dancing with her.

Kingscroft’s front garden remained open, providing treats and drinks to whatever celebrants dared the gates, but passage to the rear courtyards had to be won by contesting the guards. As Rothesay personally discovered, a would-be visitor did not have to win the contest to win entry; she lost, badly but hardly shamefully, to the Kingscroft Arms-mistress. Gulda, a Geillan-born little thing about the size of Leoff and possessed of a very similar style, looked down at the fallen Rothesay as though considering which of several desperately-warranted lectures to begin, but barked a quick laugh, waved her in, and turned to threaten someone else. Thus the Kingscroft Solstice feast was joined over time by a handful of outsiders who, having learned that mere daring sufficed, wandered the back gardens in a daze, and had to be rescued from time to time from the traps.

Of the games of great folly, Hunkerhawser was a favorite, with two contestants crouching on rickety little boxes at either side of a pool, and attempting to knock one another either off his box or, better still, into the water, by yanking a long rope between them. Giants, Mages, Peeries involved two teams, who agreed each among themselves just before each match what kind they would all be: giants had the right to chase mages, mages chased peeries, and peeries chased giants. After a timing volley of mock spellcasting, each team revealed its chosen character and the race was on, the fleeing team’s members attempting to reach the haven at their end of the field before the pursuing team caught, and abducted into its own ranks, any stragglers. It clearly had no point other than an excuse to run, increasingly drunkenly, back and forth over the lawn. And Ullenna’s Purse was a kissing game, played in a circle with a men’s half and a women’s, and demanding that one of each, on command from whomever was ‘it’ at the center, race to see if one of them could kiss the ‘it’ before being caught and kissed by the other. Rothesay gave that one a pass; and anyway, she was drenched from match after match of Hunkerhawser: strength alone was no guarantor of victory.

At sunset, Kingscroft lit its own bonfire. Here no one sought release from sin; instead, everyone interested twisted some shape in roses, lavender and eyebright, taken from great fragrant stacks, and invested it with some gratitude, to be cast into the fire and conveyed to the heavens. Rothesay twined a wreath circumscribing a five-rayed star, and sat staring at it as the evening deepened, wondering what she should represent by it.

Rory dropped down beside her, and showed her his own figure of a butterfly, its lavender wings dotted with red and yellow flowers. “I don’t know what I want it to be for, though,” he mused, unknowingly echoing her own dilemma. “Just being alive a year later counts for something. Counts for a lot!” He shook his head. “And, I learned rope-walking. And I’ve got a really sweet touch with a suture-needle—but I guess that’s more for somebody else to be grateful for!” he added with a laugh that she shared. He scratched her back idly. “It’s just, I’ve got this feeling that there’s something else I shoulda done. Something more important. Something really important.”

She nodded. She had plenty for which she owed thanks in some direction, including the lovely, delicate, rose-cream-filled pastry half-eaten in her left hand, as well as the simple fact of being already too full of wonderful food to eat the rest of it. Compared to just this past winter, she had become obscenely wealthy, at least by association, and if half of what Kahan claimed to have done back in Harrowater were true, her family there shared in it. They would be on the beach now, with the rest of the clan sending a bonfire adrift on the waves, and the boatmasters would sail about the floating pyre, bearing all the prayers of the village.

All the Geillan prayers. The Harrowater edgelings would be sneaking in their own celebrations, quietly passing from home to home while the Dunhaldring rioted on the shore. Would Pinnar be finding kinder treatment, now that Alrulf was in some sense her heir; or would Alrulf be still more scorned by the clan for the same reason? Rothesay looked at her little wreath. She wished she could say, I’m grateful that the edgelings aren’t being beaten up any more. That would be something worthy of thanks.

“I think,” she said slowly, “I think I’ll be grateful that my head hasn’t exploded from all that I’ve been learning.”

“Good one,” he agreed soberly.

She had in mind all the strange ways of the Runedaur, so unlike Harrowater’s; but more than those, the ways of Onions and her kinship there made her feel that between Equinox and Solstice, she had fallen out of one world into one wholly strange. She wondered what Rory had in mind. What was it like, there in his heart? There were magics, she knew, for entering another’s soul. Yet even as she recalled that, she shrank from the thought of entering his, not with dislike so much as dread: Rory himself seemed to find no great joy there.

She laid a kind hand on his arm. “Let’s go ask Master D what he’s grateful for!” And was rewarded with his sun-god grin.

Dav stood with Mael and an elderly woman with sunken blind eyes that nonetheless seemed to watch the two students approach, one of the Kingscroft sorceresses. As they came near, they caught the words ‘Rhyllandon’ and ‘occupation.’ Much of everyone’s festivity today had been modulated with fascination for the mystery up north.

But, “What am I grateful for?” mused Mael, a tall, twisted willow of a man. He swirled wine in his silver cup, and breathed deeply of its fragrance. “Mmmm, that’ll do,” he purred for answer.

The woman, one Sunarre na Sur, chuckled. “I? For you, girl, aye?” Rothesay blushed, confused.

“And you, sir?” she asked Dav then.

His blue eyes blazed like his sapphire earrings, and his shark’s grin flashed. “For everything,” he murmured passionately, and shaking his head to toss his hair awry, barked a laugh to the sunset. “For everything!”

The fires blazed the brighter as the sunset faded. Presently the students realized that an informal convocation in the front garden was growing larger and quieter, and the back gardens were emptying. They hurried up to the outskirts.

Dav, Mael, and Gulda sat about a brazier with several strangers. The guests were not Runedaur. By their pine-colored garb, they were Rhyllands. By their talk, they were the Lord Chamberlain and several other notables of the Residence of Rhyllandon-in-Andrastir. And a little diffident but persistent questioning revealed the old woman enthroned still beneath a silken sun-shade to be the sister of Clar Meyl the vanished Rhyllanthysel.

One of the Kingscroft knights stood up from the grass and the already-quiet throng fell silent.

“Here is the tale, as we in lands far from Sparca have heard it,” his voice rang clear, and Rothesay heard in it some echo of the cadences of Geillan bards. Looking sharply, she thought him a bit large and fair for a Sferan man. So even a trained bard might, like Rory and Leoff and even Dav, leave his clan for the black and silver

“Once upon a time, Rhyllandon wandered forth from his home, as oft he would. Passing deeper into the forest than ever he had done before, he came upon a wren caught amid briars. The bird fluttered and struggled, but stilled as Rhyllandon drew near, and suffered his touch as he untwisted the thorns. Then would his brothers and sisters have marvelled at this, for he was often thought cold and even cruel, but soon the bird was free.

“Then it flew thrice about his head and perched on his shoulder. It spoke and he understood, for the speech of birds and of serpents is not so dissimilar. And it gave him warning that his friend, the King of the Ceidha, was even now assailed by the Giants of the East, and sore beset. ‘I will lead you,’ said the wren, and flew still deeper into the forest.

“Rhyllandon followed at once without waiting to send for any aid; he went alone into the wood.

“And came out upon a hillside and saw below, the armies of the Giants and the armies of the Ceidha in close combat, and he saw that it went hard with his friends.

“Then did he raise all the power that was in him, and all the art he had taught himself and all the art he had learned of the Ceidha. Into the armies of the giants he hurled fire, and blasted them with levin-light—”

“That one’s still a Rhyllands mystery,” Lacie sighed hungrily at Rothesay’s elbow. “Carialla can.”

“Sh—”

“—and wrested boulders from the mountainside to dash them down. But a strange black fire ringed the King of the Giants round, and no magic could touch him. All the day and into the night the battle raged without pause and the Ceidha were driven ever back and their fiery blood burned the grass. Then Rhyllandon reached to the deeps of his power and opened a well of magic that had never before been tapped—and which has never been touched since. And he sent against the King of the Giants a bolt that lit all that shadowed valley like the sun at the noon. And the black fire was rent and the King of the Giants died. But Rhyllandon, too, fell.

“The power that poured through him broke his limbs each from the next, down to the smallest, and he fell to the earth. Then he must have died, but the giants fled without their king, and the Ceidha came to Rhyllandon and with all their arts healed him of his hurts.

“Then was Rhyllandon amazed, for he seemed to be filled with a white fire, a fire that flashed forth at the bending of his least finger, or his knee or his hand.” Rothesay frowned and flexed her own fingers and tried to imagine such a light.

“But his friend the Catha-king warned him that he had done too much, more than even their arts could mend. ‘Here in the ambit of our power,’ said the king, ‘you may be as you are now. It is your return home that must grieve you. I beg you will stay with us, for I fear you will suffer sorely if you leave us.’

“‘I am prince of my people,’ Rhyllandon answered him, and his friend the king understood.

“‘So it must be. Return home, Cathallyn, and tend to your people. But accept this gift of us. If ever you find the burden of the Outerworld press you too hard, this will return you to us.’ And the King of the Ceidha gave into his hands a magical key.

“So they parted in friendship and love, and Rhyllandon returned to his home. And at once he understood the warning of the king. For when he crossed the threshold of the worlds, the white light within him changed and became instead a terrible fire. Nothing of it could be seen, but at the bending of his least finger, or his knee or his hand, an agony consumed him. The Ceidha could give him the wholeness of his bones, but the pain of their breaking could not be assuaged.

“Yet he remained with his people for many years after this, enduring in silence for their sakes.”

He sank smoothly back onto the grass. Under the canopy, the old woman nodded gravely, and putting a hand to her throat, spoke in turn. There must have been magic in her touch; there was certainly magic in her voice, which carried over the wide lawn as sweet and clear as a wood thrush’s piping:

“Well told. I thank you. And so it is said among us also. We still have—” she broke off. When she resumed, her sweet tone held a bitter edge, “we had, as an heirloom, the very box in which the Key was kept. I myself have held that box; I felt the weight of its years; I felt the flicker of power in its wood, ash-wood. . . .” Her voice trailed into recollection, and of their own her hands shaped a space perhaps the size of an infant’s head. Then she sighed. “And we tell also another tale.

“Rhyllandon the father of our House had a wife, here, but he had also a fairy wife. When he left the Ceidha that last time, she gave him their son, new-born that night. Malyag, his name. He grew to full manhood in but a single year. He returns to us now and again. My grandmother spoke with him once, when she was a child.” The old woman smiled. “Or so she liked to tell.”

Dav stirred. “What became of Rhyllandon? What was his fate?”

The old woman did not answer. After a moment, the Lord Chamberlain spoke up, his jowly face puckered in a sour smile. “Certainly every Sparcan precinct claims to shelter his grave. Yet many say that he used the Key at last, and returned to the Otherworld—must have done, for the Box of the Key is empty now, is it not?” he pointed out with an overly credulous smile. Then he shook his dark head proudly. “Myself, I think it always was.”

“Whence came the Box, then?” the old woman snapped at him. “Can you look on it and say that that was made by any mortal hand?”

“No longer can I, certainly,” he drawled, and made no device to hide his bitterness. “She has gone, our Princess, and taken it with—” he drew a deep and steadying breath to contain himself before his hosts, “them.”

Talk turned then from legends to rancor, as the remnant Rhyllandon-in-Andrastir reawoke to their abandonment. Rothesay noticed Dav, in the cover of evening and the crowd, withdraw towards the Kingscroft great-house, and she reached to nudge Rory even as he poked at her. He grinned as they slipped after the Master. She did not, sobered by a kind of relief. If people could accept the legend of the Key, she would not have to choose between being the only one around who knew what had happened and admitting that she talked to peeries.

With great caution Rory approached the small, dark side door that Dav had used, motioned for Rothesay to follow, and Dav clubbed the both of them into greater wisdom. He also made them go back out and try again, twice over, and exhorted them to an attentiveness that Rothesay privately thought had to be purely fabulous.

“Oh? Am I fabulous?” said their teacher, and mocked her when she beat her head against the wall: “Then are you beaten by your own fancies of the world. Now,” he went on, resuming his errand, “I am going to bespeak Carialla. She was Rhyllandon; did you know? You shall be my wards.”

They watched then over the same couch that Master Mael had guarded the few nights before. They did not speak; Dav had not bidden them to silence, but neither one knew this magic and feared to disturb the spelling. They both jumped away when Dav sat up sharply after only a few minutes. The Master looked at them distantly.

“She has of course seen that Box,” he said, as if continuing some conversation with them. “I did not care to ask so, ah, openly—” he tipped his head more or less towards the garden they had left, “but I wondered what, exactly, this ‘key’ was thought to be.”

The two students gazed uncomprehending at him, and then Rothesay started. “Oh! There’s no reason for it to have been anything like a house-key, is there!”

And, “Nor Geillan nor Sferan, neither,” Rory chimed in quickly.

Dav grinned. “Yet it seems Rhyllandon has thought exactly that all these ages. Well,” he yawned and stretched, lured Rothesay into attacking this purely illusory moment of weakness and sat on her back as he went on, “there seems little for us here to do about it except finish our festivities.”

She flung him off with a shudder of magical strength. Dav fled gardenwards and she had not the sense not to pursue till she woke to Rory nursing her back to consciousness in a dark hallway. And so relieved was she that folk were finding their own solution to Sparca’s mysterious vanishment, that she could even laugh at herself for her folly, even before her head stopped pounding.