Jack Vance - Lyonesse

"Sir, I have only just returned to Troicinet. I rode here as fast as horses could carry me, as my comrades here will attest. Before this time I was prisoner to King Casmir. I escaped only to be captured by the Ska. There is more to tell, but with the aid of my comrades I have arrived in time to preserve my crown from the murderer Trewan, who pushed me into the dark sea!"

Trewan gave a cry of rage. "No man may besmirch my honor and live!" He swung the ancient ceremonial sword in an arc to cleave Aillas' head from his body.

Nearby stood Cargus. He flung out his forearm; through the air flew his broad Galician dagger, to strike deep into Trewan's throat, so that the point protruded from the side opposite. The sword clattered to the stone floor. Trewan's eyes rolled upward to show the whites and he dropped in a spraddle-legged heap, to kick and convulse and at last lay quiet on his back.

The seneschal signaled to the guards. "Remove the corpse."

He waited half a minute. "Let the ceremony proceed!"

AILLAS AND SHIMROD, departing the palace Miraldra before dawn, rode eastward along the coast road. Late in the afternoon they passed through Green Man's Gap, where they halted to look across the view. The Ceald spread away before them in bands of many colors: hazy black-green, grayed yellow and fusk, smoky blue-lavender. Aillas pointed across the distance to a glint of placid silver. "There is Janglin Water, and Watershade. A hundred times I have sat just here with my father; always he was happier to be coming home than going. I doubt if he was comfortable in his kingship."

"What of you?"

Aillas considered, then said: "I have been prisoner, slave, fugitive, and now king, which I prefer. Still, it is not the life I would have chosen for myself."

"If nothing else," said Shimrod, "you have seen the world from its underside, which perhaps might be to your advantage."

Aillas laughed. "My experience has not made me more amiable; that is certain."

"Still, you are young and presumably resilient," said Shimrod. "Most of your life lies ahead of you. Marriage, sons and daughters; who knows what else?"

Aillas grunted. "Small chance of that. There is no one I wish to marry. Except..." An image came to Aillas' mind, unbidden and unpremeditated: a dark-haired girl, slender as a wand, olive-pale of complexion, with long sea-green eyes.

"Except for whom?"

"No matter. I will never see her again... Time we were on our way; there are eight miles yet to ride."

The two men rode down upon the Ceald, past a pair of drowsy villages, through a forest, over old bridges. They rode beside a marsh of a hundred waterways, fringed with cat-tails, willows and alder. Birds thronged the marsh: herons, hawks perched high in the trees, blackbirds among the reeds, coots, bitterns, ducks.

The waterways became deeper and wider, the reeds submerged; the marsh opened upon Janglin Water, and the road, passing through an orchard of ancient pear trees, arrived at Watershade Castle.

Aillas and Shimrod dismounted at the door. A groom came up to take their horses. When Aillas had departed Watershade for the court of King Granice, the groom had been Cern the stable-boy. Cern now greeted Aillas with a broad, if nervous, smile of pleasure. "Welcome home, Sir Aillas—though now it seems it must be ‘Your Majesty.' That doesn't come comfortable to the tongue, when what I remember best is swimming in the lake and wrestling in the barn."

Aillas threw his arms around Cern's neck. "I'll still wrestle you. But now that I'm king, you've got to let me win."

Cern tilted his head sidewise to consider. "That's how it must be, since it's only proper to show respect for the office. So then, one way or the other, Aillas—sir—Your Majesty—however you are to be called—it's good to see you home. I'll take the horses; they'll like a rub and a feed."

The front doors were flung open; in the aperture stood a tall white-haired man in black with a ring of keys at his waist: Weare, the chamberlain at Watershade for as long as Aillas could remember and long before. "Welcome home, Sir Aillas!"

"Thank you, Weare." Aillas embraced him. "In the last two years I've often wished to be here."

"You'll find nothing changed, except that good Sir Ospero is no longer with us, so that it's been quiet and lonely. How often I've longed for the good days, before first you, then Sir Ospero went to the court." Weare took a step back and gazed into Aillas' face. "You left here a boy, without a care, handsome and easy, with never a harsh thought."

"And I have changed? In truth, Weare, I am older."

Weare studied him a moment. "I still see the gallant lad, and also something dark. I fear you have known trouble."

"True enough, but I am here and the bad days are behind us."

"So I hope, Sir Aillas!"

Aillas once again embraced him. "Here is my comrade the noble Shimrod, who I hope will be our guest long and often."

"I am happy to know you, sir. I've put you in the Blue Chamber with a nice view across the lake. Sir Aillas, tonight I thought you would prefer to use the Red Chamber. You'd hardly be for your old rooms, nor for Sir Ospero's chambers, quite so soon."

"Exactly right, Weare! How well you know my feelings! You've always been kind to me, Weare!"

"You've always been a good boy, Sir Aillas."

An hour later Aillas and Shimrod went out upon the terrace to watch the sun settle behind the far hills. Weare served wine from a stoneware jug. "This is our own San Sue which you liked so well. This year we've laid down eighty-six tuppets. I won't serve nut-cakes, because Flora wants you with your best appetite for supper."

"I hope she's not producing anything too lavish."

"Merely a few of your favorites."

Weare departed. Aillas leaned back in his chair. "I've been King a week. I have talked and listened from morning till night. I have knighted Cargus and Yane and invested them with property; I have sent for Ehirme and all her family; she will live out her life in comfort. I have inspected the shipyards, the armories, the barracks. From my spy-masters I have heard secrets and revelations, so that my mind throbs. I learn that King Casmir is building war galleys at inland shipyards. He hopes to assemble a hundred galleys and invade Troicinet. King Granice intended to land an army at Cape Farewell and occupy Tremblance up into the Troaghs. He might have succeeded; Casmir expected nothing so bold, but spies saw the flotilla and Casmir rushed his army to Cape Farewell and arranged an ambush, but Granice was warned by his own spies, and called off the operation."

"The war apparently is controlled by spies."

Ailias agreed that this might seem to be the case. "On balance, the advantage has been ours. Our assault force remains intact, with new catapults to throw three hundred yards. So Casmir stands first on one foot, then the other because our transports are ready to sail, and the spies could never warn Casmir in time."

"So you intend to prosecute the war?"

Aillas looked out across the lake. "Sometimes, for an hour or two, I forget the hole where Casmir put me. I never escape for long."

"Casmir still does not know who fathered Suldrun's child?"

"Only by a name in the priest's register, if even he has troubled to learn so much. He thinks me moldering at the bottom of his hole. Someday he will know differently... Here is Weare, and we are summoned to our supper."

At the table Aillas sat in his father's chair and Shimrod occupied the place opposite. Weare served them trout from the lake and duck from the marsh, with salad from the kitchen garden. Over wine and nuts, with legs stretched out to the fire, Aillas said: "1 have brooded much on Carfilhiot. He still does not know that Dhrun is my son."