Robert Jordan - New Spring - The Novel

The Aesdaishar Palace filled the flattened mountaintop completely, an immense, shining structure of domes and high balconies covering fifty hides, a small city to itself, every surface shining in patterns of red and green. The great bronze gates, worked with the lacquered Red Horse, stood invitingly open beneath a red-tiled arch that led to the Visitor's Yard, but a dozen guards stepped out to bar the way when Lan and the others approached. The Red Horse was embroidered on the green tabards they wore over their breastplates, and their halberds bore red-and-green streamers. They were quite colorful, with their red helmets and breeches and their polished high green boots, but any man who served here was a veteran of more than a single battle, and they regarded the three new arrivals through the steel face-bars of their helmets with hard eyes.

Lan stepped down from the saddle and bowed, not too deeply, touching forehead, heart and sword hilt. "I am Lan Mandragoran," he said. Nothing more.

The guards' stiffness lessened at his name, but they did not give way immediately. A man could claim any name, after all. One of them went running off and returned in moments with a gray-haired officer who carried his red-plumed helmet on his hip. Jurad Shiman was a seasoned campaigner who had ridden with Lan in the south for a time, and his long face broke into a smile.

"Be welcome, al'Lan Mandragoran," he said, bowing much more deeply than he ever had for Lan on any previous visit. " Tai'shar Malkier! " Oh, yes; if Edeyn was not here now, she had been.

Leading his bay, Lan followed Jurad through the red arch onto the smooth paving stones of the Visitor's Yard feeling as though he should have his sword in hand and his armor on. The balconies of stone fretwork that overlooked the broad courtyard took on the aspect of archers' balconies to his eye. Ridiculous, of course. Those open balconies, like lace woven from stone, afforded little protection for archers. They were for watching new arrivals on grand occasions, not defense. No enemy had ever broken past the second ring-wall, and should Trollocs ever make it this deep into the city, all was lost. Still, Edeyn might be here, and he could not shake the feeling of walking onto a battlefield.

Grooms in red-and-green livery with the Red Horse embroidered on the shoulders came running to take the horses, and more men and women to carry the contents of the packhorse's wicker hampers and show each man to rooms befitting his station. Worryingly, the shatayan of the palace herself led them. She was a stately, straight-backed woman in livery, graying hair worn in a thick roll on the nape of her neck. The silvered ring of keys at her belt proclaimed that Mistress Romera had charge of all the Palace servants, but a shatayan was more than a servant herself. Usually, only crowned rulers could look for a greeting at the gates from the shatayan. He was swimming in a sea of other people's expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.

He went along to see Bukama's and Ryne's rooms, and express his delight in them to Mistress Romera, not because he expected them to be given anything unsuitable, but because it was necessary that he see to his men before himself. Ryne wore a sour expression, but surely he had not expected better than this small room in one of the palace's stone barracks, the same as Bukama. He had known well enough how things would be here. At least Ryne had a room to himself, a bannerman's room with a tiled stove built in beneath the bed. Ordinary soldiers slept ten to a room and, as Lan recalled, spent half their time in winter arguing over who got the beds nearest the fireplace.

Bukama settled in happily-well, happily for him; his scowl very nearly vanished-talking over pipes of tabac with a few men he had fought alongside, and Ryne seemed to recover himself quickly. At any rate, by the time Lan was led away, Ryne was asking among the soldiers whether there were any pretty girls among the serving maids and how he could go about getting his clothes cleaned and pressed. He cared almost as much about his appearance, especially in front of women, young or old, as he did about women themselves. Perhaps it had been the thought of appearing in travel-stained garb in front of the shatayan and the serving women that had soured him.

To Lan's great relief, he was not given a visiting king's apartments despite the shatayan 's escort. His three rooms were spacious, with silk tapestries on the blue walls and a broad cornice worked in stylized mountains rimming the high ceilings, and the substantial furniture was simply carved with only a little gilding. The bedchamber had a small balcony overlooking one of the palace gardens and had a bed with a feather mattress wide enough to accommodate four or five. It was all entirely suitable to his station, and he thanked Mistress Romera perhaps a little more profusely than he should have, because she smiled, her hazel eyes crinkling.

"No one can know what the future may hold, my Lord," she said, "but we know who you are." And then she offered him a small curtsy before leaving. A curtsy. Remarkable. Whatever she said, the shatayan had her expectations of the future, too.

Along with the rooms, he acquired two square-faced serving women, Anya and Esne, who began placing his meager belongings in the wardrobe, and a lanky young fellow named Bulen, to run errands, who gaped at Lan's helmet and breast-and backplates as he set them on the black-lacquered rack beside the door, though he must have seen the like many times, here.

"Is Her Majesty in residence?" Lan asked politely.

"No, my Lord," Anya replied, frowning at his bloodstained coat and setting it aside with a sigh. The gray-haired one of the pair, she might be Esne's mother, he thought. It was not the sight of blood that made her sigh-she would be accustomed to that-but the difficulty of cleaning the coat. With luck, he would receive it back both cleaned and mended. As well as it could be, anyway. "Queen Ethenielle is making a progress through the heartland."

"And Prince Brys?" He knew the answer to that-Ethenielle and Brys Consort could be out of the city at the same time only during wartime-yet there were forms to be followed.

Bulen's jaw dropped open at the suggestion the Prince Consort might be absent, but an errand boy could not be expected to know all the usages of the court yet. Anya would not have been placed to serve Lan if she were not fully conversant, though. "Oh, yes, my Lord," she said. Lifting the black-stained shirt, she shook her head before laying the garment aside. Not with the coat. Apparently, the shirt was a lost cause. She was shaking her head over most of his garments, even those she put into the wardrobe. Most of them had seen hard use.

"Are any notables visiting?" He had been itching to ask that as badly as he did from flea and blackfly bites.

Anya and Esne exchanged looks. "Only one of true note, my Lord," Anya replied. She folded a shirt and laid it in the wardrobe, making him wait. "The Lady Edeyn Arrel." The two women smiled at one another, looking even more alike. Of course they had known from the start what he was trying to find out, but they had no call to go around grinning over it like idiots.

While Bulen gave his boots a much-needed blacking, Lan washed himself from head to toe at the washstand rather than waiting for a bathtub to be brought, and dabbed an ointment that Anya sent Esne for onto his welts, but he let the women dress him. Just because they were servants was no reason to insult them. He had one white silk shirt that did not show too much wear, a pair of tight black silk breeches that showed almost none, and a good black silk coat embroidered along the sleeves with golden bloodroses among their hooked thorns. Bloodroses for loss and remembrance. Fitting. His boots had taken on a gleam he had never expected Bulen to achieve. He was armored as well as he could be. With a weapon in hand, there was little he feared, but Edeyn's weapons would not be steel. He had small experience in the kind of battle he needed to fight now.