David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Cashel stood, taking his empty mug and Sharina's by the rims in one hand. He walked to the serving table at the side, out of earshot of the diners. Across it was a line of Blood Eagles, and beyond them stood servants in nervous frustration at not being able to dispense the dishes and cups themselves. The guards let them reach through to the table to exchange full platters for empty ones, but Garric and his friends were serving themselves.

Sharina winced to see her lover carry the mugs that way, then smiled faintly. Cashel had taken most of his meals alone on a hillside while he watched his sheep; the rest were with his sister Ilna who cooked and washed for the pair of them. Nobody'd ever told him not to stick his fingers into the cups and bowls he was carrying.

Sharina wouldn't have to either, because Ilna had seen the incident. She'd explain the etiquette to her brother, in private because she loved him. Nobody needed a second explanation when Ilna had provided the first one, though. Sharina's smile widened.

To Garric she said, "Judging from the crowd in the harbor, the people here are at least as enthusiastic as those in Valles that there's really a kingdom again. Are you worried about how the other islands will react if you're crowned on Haft?"

"My sources say that folk on Sandrakkan and Blaise understand that because Garric's of the old royal line of Haft, it's appropriate for him to be crowned here," said Liane, speaking as Garric's spymaster rather than merely as a friend; though a friend too, of course.

She smiled broadly. When she didn't have to be formal, Liane had a boisterous sense of humor well matched to Garric's own. "While the Earl of Sandrakkan has his own view of his island's proper place in the restored Kingdom of the Isles," she continued, "I wouldnot recommend Prince Garric be crowned in the Earl's palace in Erdin."

Twenty years before, the uncle of the present Earl of Sandrakkan had claimed to be King of the Isles. The royal army-the army of Ornifal-had defeated and killed him, but his heir and the Sandrakkan nobles more generally hadn't lost the notion that they were better men than those snivelling merchants from Ornifal.

"They're more pleased than not, the ones I've talked to," said Chalcus said as he refilled his cup from the beaker he'd brought to the dining table. He, Liane, and Tenoctris were drinking wine; the others stuck to beer as they'd been raised on in Barca's Hamlet-though here it was brewed with hops instead of the dark germander bitters of home. "They're not the nobles, as you'd guess, but sailors and shopkeepers…"

He grinned, swigged, and went on, "Nobody minds that it's Carcosa, so long as it isn't Valles. You're one of theirs, Prince Garric, not somebody who's on the throne because an ancestor owned twenty acres of pasture on Ornifal."

Cashel settled himself again between Sharina and Tenoctris, setting down the mugs without spilling them. He licked ale from his thumb. Sharina hugged him.

There was no formal requirement that Garric be crowned prince, here or anywhere else. King Valence the Third had publicly acknowledged 'Prince Garric of Haft' as his son and heir apparent; that was sufficient for legality. The government and royal army had accepted Garric as regent as well, which gave him the real authority-so far as Ornifal went.

For the past several hundred years the King of the Isles had been little more than a Duke of Ornifal to whom the rulers of other islands paid lip service. Garric was determined to reform the Isles into a real kingdom with unity and a degree of universal peace unknown since the fall of the Old Kingdom, so he'd decided to be crowned Prince of Haft in Carcosa where King Carus and his predecessors as Kings of the Isles had their coronations.

His friends, his formal advisors, and even the officers of the army led by Lord Waldron, a stiff-necked noble from northern Ornifal, had agreed with the plan. Sharina didn't understand Garric's apparent hesitation now.

"The problem is deciding who'll offer me the diadem," Garric said, still frowning into his beer. "It was always the Chief Priest of the Lady. It never crossed my mind to wonder about it."

He looked around the circle of his friends with a fierce expression. "But here in Carcosa, that'd mean I was joining a gang. And I'mnot going to do that."

The anger faded back into the previous look of troubled doubt. "If I can't be crowned by the priest of the Lady or the priest of the Shepherd…," he continued.

Liane turned and stared at Garric with dawning horror. Sharina had seen Liane face a demon with equanimity; her present expression was completely inexplicable.

"Then I thought, maybe the third aspect of God," Garric said. He was barely muttering, obviously ill at ease. "I thought I could be crowned at the shrine of the Prophesying Sister. Liane says the priest is just a functionary; the temple doesn't have any part in the politics of Carcosa."

Now Sharina understood Liane's look of horror. Her own face probably mirrored it.

"Garric, you can't be crowned by the Sister," Sharina said, controlling her voice with an effort. "If you're worried about what people will think, they'll think it's disgusting!"

"The Sister rules death and the underworld," Garric said, straightening and speaking with obvious anger. "Death isn't evil. Death is a part of life!"

"That's words!" Sharina said. "People don't swear by the Sister, theycurse by Her."

Liane nodded firmly. "Sharina's right," she said. "It isn't politicallyconceivable that you'd be crowned in a shrine of the sister. Besides, it's a little place on the side of the High City, the old citadel. The only reason the shrine still exists is that its an oracle. I doubt there'd be room for twenty people to stand in it."

She looked around the table. "Am I wrong?" she demanded. "What do the rest of you think? Mistress Ilna?"

Ilna looked at Liane without expression. "I don't know," she said, as calm as ice over a stream. No one could guess how swiftly the current might be tumbling beneath that frozen sheet. "Mistress, I don't believe in gods and I don't know anything about how cities are run. I just don't know."

Sharina glanced back at her brother, set-faced and grim. Garric was much more fiercely determined about this than she could understand.

Thinking that, Sharina looked into her own heart. She didn't understand why she was so strongly opposed to the idea, either, but she began to shiver.

Cashel put his left arm around her. Sharina smiled. There was danger and there would always be danger; but evil would never be as strong as the good that supportedher.

Cashel tore another chunk from the round loaf of bread with his teeth so he could sop the last of his sauce. Since he started to travel he'd learned to eat a lot of new things. He wasn't fussy, but generally he'd rather have had the simple fare he'd been raised on. The wheat bread he got whenever he ate with rich people was a treat, though. He'd gotten used to rye and barley loaves the same way he got used to sunburn, but they weren't things he looked forward to.

Liane wrung her hands, then laid them flat on the table and managed a laugh. "I'm sorry I'm so vehement," she said, letting her soft smile slide across the faces of her friends. "The truth is I had a dream while I was napping this afternoon. It isn't…"

She reached over to squeeze Garric's hand without looking up from the empty platter in front of her. In the silence Tenoctris leaned forward slightly and said, "Did you dream of the Sister, Liane?"

"I don't know," Liane fiercely. The words came tumbling out as though the old wizard's question had loosened the keystone of an arch. "I think I dreamed about the Underworld. About Hell, ice and demons and someone in the middle of it all."