Richard Adams - Maia

On the other hand, upon the sudden death of her father, the High Baron Kephialtar-ka-Voro, a young woman named Fornis became, at seventeen, the eristic ruler of Paltesh. Fornis was Kephialtar's only child and he, foreseeing disputes following his death without a male heir (for he had

lived many years in the shadow of this virtually certain eventuality), had already made two attempts to marry her to suitable young men, either of whom he would have been glad to regard as his successor. That Fornis should have succeeded personally in bringing both matches to nothing was matter for head-shaking in a country where daughters commonly did as they were told. At fifteen she had effectively subverted her father's choice of Renva-Lorvil, the eldest son of his most trusted commander-a young man, as everyone knew, ready to live and die for Paltesh. What had finally tipped the scale had been the puzzled, half-incredulous realization of the suitor himself-a likable, straightforward youth-that in some odd way he was afraid of the girl and unmanned in her presence. She, for her part, while never saying or doing anything which could be singled out for rebuke, contrived to convince everyone that she despised Renva and found him ludicrous-and this even while seeming to obey her father's injunction to encourage and be pleasant to him. In time the sound of her detached, mocking laughter, simulating courteous reciprocity, became almost more than her father could bear. It was the young man himself who finally told Kephialtar, almost with tears, that he felt unable to go through with the business. Fornis's sustained front of self-possessed mordancy and contempt had defeated him. Frankly, he had no wish to spend the rest of his life with her.

The second rejection was a far more dramatic affair. Fornis was formally betrothed to Eud-Ecachlon, heir of the High Baron of Urtah-a less attractive young man than Renva, but politically an even better match from the point of view of her father and of Paltesh as a whole, since in time it would unite the two provinces and thus strengthen both against Terekenalt. Eud-Ecachlon, though not a fool, was a rather stolid and insensitive young man; not at all the sort to be either thrown off balance, like Renva, by a cold and malicious girl or, conversely, unduly inflamed if he had happened to be offered a warm and passionate one. Fornis's father-by the standards of his own society kindly and humane-thinking that the girl's unenthusiastic attitude might be due to a secret fear of marriage or of sex, and half-expecting some sort of trouble similar to that with Renva, talked seriously to her about her duty as his sole heiress and about the desperate need of Paltesh for political security. Fornis, seeming to acquiesce, met her bride-

groom and complied with all the customary formalities.

A week before the wedding day, during a night of full moon, she vanished, taking with her her personal maid, Ashaktis, and two young men from the crew of her father's boat on the Zhairgen. These lads had happened to be the watch on the High Baron's moorings for the first part of that night, but whether they were secretly in Fornis's pay and had already agreed to come with her, or whether she had suborned them on the spot, no one ever knew. By the time they were missed it was reckoned that the light, swift boat they had taken must have had a start of a good thirty miles. Another was at once dispatched to follow and find them, but everyone knew that unless they had come to grief, any serious hope of overtaking them-wherever they might be bound-was out of the question. Kephialtar's anxiety was greater than his anger, for he loved Form's dearly and knew that she must be sailing straight down the lower Zhairgen-several hours in full view from the Katrian bank.

Forms, however, did not come to grief. Six days later, having sailed nearly two hundred miles down the Zhairgen and then the Telthearna, she landed at the Ortelgans' sacred island of Quiso and sought sanctuary of the Tuginda and her priestesses-a request never denied to any fugitive woman not guilty of a grave crime. And here she remained for two months, while the scandalous news of her exploit was bruited from Ortelga to Urtah, Dari and all over the empire.

Before the end of those two months, Kephialtar was killed in a brush with the Katrians.

Fornis, an exceptionally strong, energetic girl, returned to Dari on foot by way of Gelt and Bekla; a journey lasting three weeks. She was escorted by Ortelgans, for although Ashaktis was still with her, the two young sailormen were not. Indeed, where they went no one ever found out; but it was commonly supposed that they must be afraid of the probable consequences of showing their faces again in Pal-tesh. A few days after her arrival, having summoned her father's barons and commanders-all those who were not in the field against Kamat-she told them that she, the indisputable successor to her father, intended to rule Pal-tesh in her own right: she called upon them all for loyal allegiance and support.

Her announcement fell upon the province like hail in

harvest. Everyone had hitherto supposed that if the girl had fled from her bridegroom and her wedding, it could only be because she had secretly promised herself to some other lover-an affair of the heart. Her tomboy reputation-though nothing scandalous was known against her- tended to support the notion. There were those who, unen-thusiastic about Eud-Ecachlon, were ready to take her part, despite the appalling effect of what she had done on relations between Paltesh and Urtah. Ah, well, but she'd shown herself a fine, spirited girl, now, hadn't she?-too good by half for that thick Urtan fellow. She'd displayed dash and courage: she was her father's daughter all right. Depend upon it, her heart was already fixed on some young blade of lower birth than her father would have welcomed. Good luck to him, whoever he was! But who was he? It took them some time to become convinced that nothing like this was involved at all.

That the people in general were ready to condone and support her if they possibly could was in large measure due to Fornis's appearance and style. From the age of thirteen or fourteen the girl had been strikingly-almost magically-beautiful, the talk and pride of the province, her fame extending to Bekla and far beyond. Her exquisite, rather pale face and wide, green eyes were framed by a great mane of auburn hair which actually seemed to glow with a kind of incandescence so intense as almost to transcend nature. People stood and stared at her as they might have stared at some magnificent summer sunset, or the migrant purple kynat returned in spring. Beauty of this order (which again and again had blunted the edge of her father's anger) conferred on Fornis a power beyond her years. It was very difficult to resist her. Doors opened easily and objections tended to dissolve.

Together with this, however, she had tastes and leanings over which her uncles-her mother's family-had often expressed misgiving among themselves. Kephialtar had been much engaged in campaigning and all the other affairs of a border province. His wife was a placid, indolent woman, not given to taking a long view or considering consequences. As a child Fornis, lacking brothers and sisters, had been left a great deal with the servants. From their company she had acquired a racy elan, a sly and cunning opportunism in getting her own way, a great belief in the value of intimidation, an appetite for material possessions

and a general conviction that principle and responsibility were so much pretentious rubbish. Whatever else she might have acquired was as yet uncertain; but there had been a whispered rumor, never allowed to reach the ears of her father, that once, when she was fourteen, she had been seen with her maid on the balcony of a room overlooking her private garden, pointing and laughing as though at a play, while below her, on the grass, her groom supervised the serving of a sow by a boar.