“Did you get him?” Maewen asked.
“Not sure.” Mitt dragged himself to his knees. There was no sign of Kankredin. The gong note Moril had evoked from the cwidder was still in the air, sounding on and on. If Kankredin was near, he would be visible. “Had a feeling Ammet only got part of him,” Mitt said regretfully, “but I think he’s gone.”
Maewen scrambled up with the bandage. The crown had fallen beside her. She picked it up, thick and orange and heavy, and it left a bare oval shape in the grain that covered the grass. “I knew there was something strange about that horse,” she said as they went back to the waystone among drifting chaff and pattering grain.
Moril looked up as they came. Mitt nodded. Moril put one hand on the throbbing string to stop the sound, and then flexed both hands as if Kankredin had cramped them. Behind Moril, Kialan had Ynen’s belt buckled round his arm to stop the bleeding. He was holding it tight for Ynen while Ynen tore pieces off both their shirts to bandage the place where the slice of stone had been.
“Rather a waste of two good shirts,” Kialan said. His face was a better color. He looked up at Mitt. “What happened to the crown?”
Maewen realized that she was holding it. “Bend your head down,” she said to Mitt.
None of them noticed that the noise of fighting had all but stopped. As Mitt bent his head and Maewen fitted the crown carefully over his hair, Earl Keril came crunching toward them over the scattered grain. He was a little disheveled, but he barely looked as if he had been in a battle. He hooked his thumbs in his sword belt and watched Mitt and Maewen. “Well, now,” he said pleasantly. “I had five possible outcomes in mind when I sent you to Adenmouth, but this was one that I confess never occurred to me.”
Mitt straightened up. He was slightly taller than Earl Keril. “Get me hanged and make sure there’s no uprising,” he said. “Right?”
“Hanging you may yet be the solution,” Earl Keril said in the same pleasant way. “Let me put to you my point of view. The North had been agog for some years with stories that Noreth Onesdaughter”—he bowed pleasantly to Maewen—“would take the royal road the year she was eighteen. Then, all of a sudden, you arrive in Aberath in a manner which fulfills every prophecy ever made, and all the common people are hailing you as the new King come at last—”
“I never knew that,” Mitt said. “I had no idea. If you’d let me alone, I wouldn’t be here now. But you set me on to murder Noreth.”
“Naturally I hoped that the two claimants would cancel one another out,” Keril agreed. He looked at Maewen again. “Rather than the one crown the other. But we were prepared for other outcomes, too. To that end the Countess took you in and educated you, and I took steps to make sure you would remain under the sponsorship of Hannart and Aberath—”
“Sponsorship is one word for it,” Mitt said. “Nice try.”
“I asked you to see my point of view!” Keril snapped. “When I was young and ignorant, I took part in an uprising. I know better now. I would go to greater lengths than this to stop another. People die in uprisings, by thousands, most horribly.”
“When I was young and ignorant,” said Mitt, “I lived in Holand. People died there all the time, only slowly. And the rest were too scared to help. There needs to be an uprising. One that works this time.”
The two of them stared at one another unlovingly. “If this is your attitude,” Keril said, “I shall see you hanged at Harvest. There are plentiful grounds.”
Moril, Kialan, and Ynen surged to their feet, Kialan saying, “Listen, Father—” and Ynen protesting, “Don’t undo the belt yet!”
“Be quiet!” said Keril. “I’ll deal with you two later. What I want to know—”
Hasty feet crunched over the grain, and Alk and Navis arrived, one on either side of Keril. Alk’s leathers were torn all over, showing battered links of mail underneath, and he had a streak of blood on his chin. One side of Navis’s face was black with powder. He looked tired to death, but he spoke to Keril with the utmost courtesy. “My lord, we have to thank you for your timely intervention.”
Alk grinned. “We were goners without you, Keril.”
Keril turned his unloving look on them. Navis said, “Is there some trouble, my lord? May we assist?”
“Yes,” Keril said grimly. “I want to know how this Mitt of yours contrived to have a Southern war band to meet him.”
“I did no such thing!” said Mitt.
“Those are Henda’s men, my lord,” Navis said. “As you surely know, Henda can be trusted to respond to anything that might be a threat to his earldom entirely on his own.”
“But how did he know?” Keril said. “Did you tell him, Navis Haddsson?”
“Oh come now, Keril,” said Alk. “You saved Navis’s life yourself. You heard the Southerners calling him traitor.”
Keril hitched his shoulders irritably. Navis bowed to him. “As to how Henda knew, my lord, since I had heard of Noreth Onesdaughter at least two years ago, I can only suppose Henda’s spies told him at the same time.” Mitt stared. This was news to him. “One of those secrets,” Navis said to him, “that my brother took good care not to have known on the waterfront in Holand.”
“So I am to understand,” Keril said to Navis, “that Navis Haddsson commandeered the hearthmen of Dropwater and Aberath to fight Henda, knowing that Henda would oppose Navis Haddsson’s candidate for the crown.”
Navis’s eyes went to the golden band round Mitt’s forehead. He smiled slightly. “My lord, I did not expect Henda. I expected you. But you are right to believe that I hoped Mitt would be King.”
“Why?” Keril asked icily.
Navis shrugged. “Aside from obvious personal wishes, my lord, one of the pictures in my rooms in Holand was a portrait of the Adon. My impression is that you, too, my lord, were struck by Mitt’s resemblance to the Adon. I thought about it much of the time we sailed North. But I would have waited a few years to do anything about it. You forced our hands.”
“I’m glad I did,” said Keril. “Your candidate is not of age and has no right to that thing on his head.”
Alk had been exchanging looks with Moril. Now he said, “Right, Keril. Why don’t we ask?” And he nodded at Moril.
Moril stood forward. “The One called us to witness just now,” he said, loudly and formally, “that we have a new King. The One gave Mitt the crown and his own name of Amil.”
“I hereby witness this as lawful,” Alk said. “Come on, Keril. Accept it.”
Keril still seemed entirely unwilling. Moril, carefully and meaningly, arranged his fingers on the cwidder. “I could summon the One,” he said.
Keril looked uneasily at the cwidder. “You always were a bit of a mystic, Moril,” he said. “But this is a reasonable age—”
He was interrupted by howls and yells and catcalls in the distance behind him. “Traitor!” they heard. “Traitor! There’s the traitor!” The shouting was coming from hearthmen in all three liveries. It seemed to have something to do with the row of supply wagons beyond the road. Navis set off that way at a run. Alk and Keril followed. Mitt pointed a thumb at Keril’s back. “Never rely on things being reasonable,” he said.
“Sayings of the King,” Moril said, laughing.
They jogged toward the wagons, with Ynen and Kialan following more slowly. As Mitt reached the crowd milling round the wagons, Navis waved. People fell back respectfully to let Mitt through. Everyone’s eyes for a moment fixed wonderingly on the crown. “What is it?” said Mitt.
“We invite you to look at this,” Navis said. And, with a smooth stare at Keril, he added, “Your Majesty.”
He waved again. Several hearthmen hauled on the dark weatherproof covering of one of the wagons. As they dragged it away, the trim green-painted cart underneath came into view.
Hestefan was on its driving seat. When he saw Mitt, Maewen, and Moril all staring at him, he writhed away backward. “I didn’t do it!” he said. His fine Singer voice cracked into hoarseness. “I was
made to! They forced me to come along!”
“What do the Southerners say about it?” Mitt asked.
Alk nodded to the nearest person from Aberath. “Go and fetch the Andmark captain to the King.”
The Southerners were sitting in a large huddle a little way off with their hands on their heads. Luthan and his hearthwomen were walking round and round them with their bayoneted guns. Luthan’s clothes were ruined, and his arm was in a sling. He looked warlike and efficient as he nodded at the message and beckoned someone from the midst of the Southerners.
The man was most unwilling to move. In the end Alk strode over and brought him out of the huddle, almost dangling from his big fist. “Here we are, Majesty,” he said. “One captain.”
The prisoner looked at Mitt and looked puzzled. “It was supposed to be a woman we had to ambush,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Never mind that, Captain Fervold,” Navis said. “Just tell us what this Singer had to do with it.”
“Never forget a name, do you, Navis Haddsson?” said the captain. “It must be ten years since—”
“Twelve years,” said Navis. “Tell.”
“Simple enough,” said Fervold. Alk let go of him, and he straightened up, looking relieved. “Orders were to land secretly at Cressing Harbor, come up by night to the green road, and rendezvous with the Singer at dawn, and he would show us where Kernsburgh was. Then we were to ambush the, er—Anyway, get to them before they got the crown. And we’d have got you, too, if you hadn’t been a day late. But we missed the green road in the dark both nights, and the Singer didn’t turn up to put us right until well on in the morning. What did he do? Give us away? Our information was we’d only find five folk here.”
“Your bad luck,” said Alk. “So Hestefan was working for the South?”
“Has been for years,” said Fervold.
At this Hestefan cried out, “They made me! I tell you, they made me!”
Alk turned to him with his lawman’s look. “And did they also make you murder Noreth of Kredindale?”
Hestefan straightened up and jutted his beard. “What nonsense is this? How could I have done? Look. She’s standing there!” He pointed at Maewen.
“I’m not Noreth,” Maewen said. It was embarrassing to say it in front of all these people, but a great relief, too.
“And I have seen Noreth’s murdered corpse,” said Alk. “The others who might have killed her are proved clear. I accuse you in law and before the crown of cutting Noreth’s throat.”
“Never,” said Hestefan. “On my honor as a Singer. Never.”
“Better get that cup out,” Alk said to Navis.
Maewen had a different idea. She tugged at Mitt’s sleeve. “This may not be right, because it was Kankredin who said it, but if he did kill her, he may have stolen a golden statue.”
“That statue!” said Mitt. “You know, that clean slipped my mind! Where would Hestefan hide something really valuable?” he asked Moril.
He had to nudge Moril and say it again. Hestefan was saying, “A Singer is honorable. Our word is our bond. We are sworn to speak true and purvey no lies. Nor do we do dirty deeds and dastardly acts. This accusation soils all Singers.”
Moril was staring at Hestefan as if he could not believe what he was hearing. “Sliding panel under the cart at the back,” he said colorlessly, and went on staring.
Mitt whispered to Alk. Alk passed the cup back to Navis and, leaving Hestefan still ranting, he strode round to the rear of the cart. It heaved. There was the sound of wood splintering. Alk came grimly back with gold shining in one massive fist. “Shut your mouth, Hestefan. Where did you come by this?”
Hestefan gaped at the statue. His face had gone gray and piteous. “I tell you I did not kill her! The woman is of the Undying and cannot be killed! I took that statue—yes, yes, I admit—the first time I tried to cut her throat, but she was alive again half an hour later on the green road. I had no choice but to go with her and kill her again. And as I knew she would not die, I sent word in Kredindale to Henda’s agent there to send a boat South for an armed band to cut her in pieces. And sure enough, she did not die, though I killed her twice in Gardale.” He rocked about on the seat of the cart. “I had to do it. I had to do it for Fenna!”
“Deranged, I think,” Navis said, leaning wearily on the nearest wagon.
“How come—you did it for Fenna?” Mitt said.
Hestefan looked at him and did not seem to see him. “Fenna is in Earl Henda’s dungeons. The Earl will kill her painfully if I do not do as he wants.”
“Oh nonsense!” said Navis. “You and I both know that Fenna is in Adenmouth recovering from a cracked head.”
“That,” said Hestefan, “is not my Fenna. That Fenna is the daughter of Henda’s court musician. He sent her with me so that no one would know I had lost my daughter.”
“You think this is true?” Alk asked Navis. “Is it true?” he said to Fervold.
“No idea,” said Fervold. “But knowing our Henda, it could well be.”
“True or not, the man’s confessed to murder,” Earl Keril said, stepping in to take command. He nodded to some of his hearthmen. “Take him down to Dropwater—it’s nearest—and ask Earl Luthan to see him hanged.”
Mitt could see that Keril had stepped in because it was what he was used to. Keril was thinking of himself as the senior Earl here. It made him angry. In spite of all that had been said, Keril was simply discounting the crown on Mitt’s head. And it made him even angrier that Keril had done to Mitt himself exactly what Hestefan said Henda had done to him—and Keril had not even seemed to notice.
“Wait a minute!” he said. “You can’t hang him. We need him. Singers can go where other people can’t.”
Keril stared at Mitt with his lips pressed together hard. He glanced round and saw that everyone else, including the hearthmen he had nodded to, had turned respectfully to Mitt. He pressed his lips together harder still. But he said nothing.
“Hestefan,” said Mitt. Hestefan looked up, still not really seeing Mitt. “Hestefan, I want you to go and tell Henda that you carried out his orders. Tell him Noreth is dead. Can you do that?” Hestefan nodded, blinking, as if he were beginning to be able to see again. “But,” said Mitt, “you’re to go to Andmark through Holand. You’re to go to Hobin the gunsmith in Holand—got that?—and tell Hobin that I’ve got the crown and he’s to bring me the kingstone. Understand?”
“Well … yes…” Hestefan said slowly. “But if Henda hears I did that—No, no! I can’t!”
“Oh yes, you can!” Moril said. “My father did that kind of thing all the time! Do it!” Hestefan turned to Moril, shivering so that his beard juddered. This made everyone look at Moril. Moril was as white as a person can be, so white that he was lurid, and the look of betrayal on his face made everyone look away again quickly. “Do it,” Moril said, “or I’ll curse you, Singer’s curse, with the power of this cwidder, so that the curse will follow you beyond your grave! You’ve betrayed all Singers!”
“Ah no.” Hestefan held up a shaking hand against him. “I only did what any man—”
“You aren’t just any man!” Moril shrieked at him. “You’re a Singer! I thought you were a good one. I trusted you. I know better now. So go to Holand. Go now!” He turned his back on Hestefan, looking as if he was going to be sick.
Keril turned to Mitt. “And what about our Southern prisoners?” he said, with a politeness and sarcasm that outdid Navis. “Are you finding a use for them, too?”
This was enough to make Mitt find a use for them on the spot. “Of course! This crown is the crown of all Dalemark. I’m going to need an army that comes from the South as well as the North. They can all swear to me on the Adon’s cup, and the ones it doesn’t shine for can flaming well stay here under guard. I don’t want word out round the South until Hestefan’s got through to Hobin.”
“And what will they do here? Sit with their hands on their heads?” Keril asked.
&n
bsp; Mitt laughed. “No. They’ll be digging. They can start on the foundations for the palace I’m going to build here. After that they can go on and flaming well rebuild Kernsburgh.”
“That’s the stuff!” said Alk. “I’ll be the guard. Want me to make some drawings for the buildings? That’s much more my line than fighting. Let’s see—Luthan’s scribe had pen and paper.” He looked at the statue in his hand and then looked round for somewhere safe to put it. “Seeing you thought to look for it,” he said to Maewen, “just hold it for me while I do some sketches.”
He passed her the statue. As soon as her hands were on it, she was not there any longer.
PART FIVE
KANKREDIN
22
She was not there any longer. She was back in the museum gallery of the Tannoreth Palace, in exactly the same spot where she had been standing when she left. Wend, who was in the act of locking the golden statue away again, jumped round and stared at her.
Wend was as neat and trim and handsome as ever. Maewen was instantly aware that she was dirty, and moist all through with showers of rain she had given up noticing days ago. Her mail smelled of rust. Her boots were filthy. The livery of Dropwater smelled of wet wool, horse, and person. Under the little helmet her hair felt damp and clotted.
“You’re back!” said Wend.
“Yes.” The animal wariness she had acquired in those days of journeying told Maewen that Wend had not expected to see her again. It was in every line of Wend, as he carefully placed the statue on its shelf and locked the glass front. She noticed it, even though she was distracted by her hearthwoman’s clothes dissolving away from her, leaving her again in grubby shorts and shirt. Her hair tumbled back to her shoulders, and it still felt damp and clotted. She was even more distracted by the shrill beeping of the radio clipped to Wend’s uniform, but she still noticed.
“What happened?” Wend casually rattled keys, but that wariness showed Maewen he was, underneath, very eager to know.
“Hestefan the Singer murdered Noreth before she even set out from Adenmouth,” she said. She was ashamed of the wariness—it showed her Wend was full of fury and frustration, carefully hidden—but she could not help knowing it. They all had this wariness: Moril, Mitt, Hestefan, Navis, everyone. It was the way you lived in those days.