Liar's Oath

Chapter Three

Through the hottest days of summer, Luap kept to his work. Gird wanted copies of the newest version of the Code spread widely by late harvest; he asked no more about Luap’s real father, only about how the copying proceeded. Aside from the heat, the work suited Luap well. He could concentrate his mind on accuracy, on the precise flavor of a phrase, on Gird’s intention and its best expression. He had little time for memory, though he found forgotten courtesies creeping into his speech. “It’s that old lady, eh?” asked Gird. Luap agreed it probably was, or perhaps Arranha. He tried not to think about it, and claimed his work prevented visiting Dorhaniya until he’d finished the Code. It was safer not to think of it, to submerge himself in Gird’s plans, to become, if he could, the eldest son or younger brother that Gird so desperately needed.

But at last the copying had been done, and in the cooler fall weather, he had more than an excuse to leave Fin Panir—he could best be spared to carry the copies to the larger granges, where more copies could be made to send elsewhere. So it was that on a dank autumn day he found himself peering along the bank of a stream for the overhanging rock and dark entrance to a certain cave.

He did not let himself wonder why he chose not to stay overnight at Soldin, knowing he could not reach Graymere by sundown. When the chill autumn drizzle thickened to gusts of rain, he made for the cave directly. It was the only thing to do. It was logical, reasonable, and he did not have to manufacture an excuse.

It bothered him slightly that he could think of making an excuse. He had legitimate business, Gird’s business, in Soldin and Graymere both. No one would have questioned his spending a night in the cave, even if anyone had seen him. The yeoman-marshal in Soldin had suggested that he stay the night there, but obviously saw nothing amiss in Gird’s luap choosing to press on, even in bad weather. Young and earnest, he expected such dedication in Gird’s personal staff.

Luap had wondered if other travelers used the cave . . . surely they did. But on this dank, dripping evening no smoke oozed from the entrance, and no tethered mounts or draft teams snorted or stamped as he legged his own mount along the creek bank. A pile of blackened rocks marked a firepit, obviously in recent use—but not today. He would have it to himself, unless someone showed up later. He hoped no one would, but he was grateful to the previous users, who had stacked dry wood inside the entrance, out of the rain.

He got his fire going, and went out to gather more wood to dry beside it. Someone had improved the path down to the creek, cutting steps and anchoring them with stone; the single plum he vaguely remembered had suckered into a thicket, now dropping their narrow leaves to the sodden ground. By the time he had found wood to replace what he expected to use, it was nearly dark.

His wet cloak steamed as he set his traveling kettle to boil. So did his horse’s coat, and the smell of horse expanded, he thought, to fill the cave as well as his head. Wet wool, wet horse . . . almost as bad as the stench of their army, the last time. And then someone else had done the cooking. His head felt heavy, stuffed with thick smells and memories . . . including that final memory, of Gird’s fist against his skull. He ran his hands over his wet hair as if feeling for that old lump. There—it had been there, and another bruise on the other side, where he’d fallen against stone.

He had eaten his soaked wheat and beans, and a lump of soggy bread that wrapping had not kept dry, had gone out into the fine rain to use the jacks he’d dug, and was back in the cave’s relative warmth and dryness, when he admitted to himself just why he had chosen that trail, that day, in that weather. Of course he didn’t expect anything to happen. He had had his revelation, first from the gods, and then from Gird: you are a king’s son, and (or but) you can’t be a king. One revelation to a lifetime, Gird had said after Greenfields, and would explain no more than that.

But for Luap it had happened here, and he still did not understand it. As with the rest of his life, he had been shown something, a small glimpse of some mystery, and then it vanished. He had learned to hoard such glimpses, to keep them hidden deep in his mind, until he found another—and another—and could try to make them fit some pattern. He had learned, he realized, in all the ways Gird despised . . . that he himself despised, when he thought how he admired Gird . . . but ways he could not change. Not now. Gird had all the pieces of his pattern—had always had them. He had always known who he was, and what his place was, growing out of his own ground like a young tree. Luap had had sidelong looks, sly taunts, occasional brief phrases, whispers, suggestions, riddles. “Don’t you know, boy?” he remembered an older youth had asked once. “Only bastards don’t know who their fathers are.” The boy had been yanked away by someone in guards’ uniform, and disappeared; Luap never saw him again.

He sat staring at the flames, ignoring the dancing shadows on the walls that shifted, bowed, straightened in answer to the flames’ movement. He had come back because . . . because he was going back in there, to the place where he got one straight answer, for once in his life, and might—no matter what Gird said—get another.

But that means, one of his inner voices said, that you are not content to be Gird’s luap. Was that true? Alone in the cave, in the orange firelight, he let himself think about that. Feel about that. He did not resent Gird. Gird had won his heart, that first night, when he had had to confess his duplicity, when Gird had let him sob out the agony of loss. Gird had defended him against the other peasant leaders. And even the blow that felled him had been, he realized, justified. In the years since, he had come to believe that Gird, with all his peasant coarseness, all his human failings, had the intrinsic greatness of an ancient tree, or a mountain.

Yet he did not want to be only a luap forever. He let himself remember, cautiously, his life before the war. His wife and children were long dead, their suffering ended. He would regret his treatment of them for the rest of his life . . . but that was in the past. Tonight . . . tonight, he would like to have had a woman beside him. A child leaning against his knee. A place where he, not Gird, was paramount. A kingdom, however small, in which to be king.

Here, inside a whole mountain, on a black night of dripping rain, no one would see him use his power; no one could see his light. It could not be betrayal if no one knew. He felt his way to it cautiously, even here—a little light, just enough to see by—and his hands enclosed it, glowing. He felt the hairs rise on his arms. He could still do it; it had not vanished. Despite Arranha’s assurance that it would not, he had doubted. Around him, in the throat of the cave, the walls showed their stripes of gray and pink and brown. There was the ledge over which Gird had stumbled . . . there, the opening beyond.

Gingerly, he edged toward it. The little chamber opened, then enclosed him, as if he completed it. Its walls held the same graved patterns he remembered, that Gird had traced with his thumb, that Luap had devoured with his eyes, trying to remember them. Spiral on spiral, coil in coil, lacing and interlacing. He turned, slowly, following the pattern . . . it felt strong, and meaningful, but he could not read it. A bad taste came into his mouth: another failure.

On the chamber’s floor, curiously clean of dust, multicolored tessellations glowed in his light, inviting. A different pattern, in which color as well as line interacted, in which his eye was teased, frustrated, satisfied, and finally released with a snap that echoed in his head. He looked up.

And up.

He stood, not in the small bell-shaped chamber of the cave, but in a lofty hall, larger than the Lord’s Hall in Fin Panir, lit by unshadowed silvery light. He could see no windows, no source for the light. He stood on a pattern like that on which he began, but set on a raised dais large enough for a score to stand uncrowded. All his hair rose; cold chills shook him; his own pulse thundered in his ears.

At last he could hear and see clearly again, only to find great silence and unmoving space about him. He did not want to speak, and risk waking whatever power held sway here, but courtesy demanded some greeting. In his mind, he recited the opening phrases to the first ritual he remembered, something out of his childhood, the morning greeting to the Sunlord. Around him, unbroken silence changed its flavor from austerity to welcome. Was he imagining it? He took a slow, shuffling step forward, away from the pattern. Nothing. He was not sure what he half-expected, but he felt like a child exploring forbidden adult territory. For an instant, such a moment flashed before his eyes, a tower bedroom crowded with furniture, rich hangings, a bed piled with pillows, and the furious eyes, four of them, that glared at him before an angry voice rose and whirled him away on its own power.

No. He was grown, and whoever that had been must have died in the war, if not before. He fought down the fear that trembled in his knees and walked forward, off the dais, across a pattern of black and white stones, to the high double arch that closed the end of the hall. Not truly closed, for he could see less brightly lit space beyond, but he didn’t want to walk under those arches. At the top of one, a harp and tree intertwined; on the other, a hammer and anvil. He shivered: he could not imagine a place where elves and dwarves would both choose to carve their holy symbols. He turned back.

The dais, at that distance, seemed apt for a throne; he closed his eyes, and let himself imagine seeing one there, and himself—no, not on the throne, but walking up the hall toward it. His imagination peopled the hall with vivid colors, the richly dressed lords and ladies of his childhood. Music would fill the hall, harp and drum and pipe, and from that celebration no one would be sent away, solitary, to cry in the dark. His power prodded him from within, responding to some influence he could not directly sense.

He opened his eyes. He could still see what it would be like, but—he shook his head to force the vision away—that was daydream, and this was—if not reality—at least something less tuned to his wish. It lay empty, gracefully proportioned, but blank stone, not filled with the friends he had never had.

Soon he realized that it must be all under stone somewhere, for in his cautious exploration he found no window, no door, no hint of outside weather or time. Fresh air, in currents so gentle he could not detect a source, lighted corridors and chambers, all carved of seamless red stone, all empty, all silent but for his footfalls echoing from the walls. No sign of living things, not the Elder Races he assumed had built it, or the animals that should be inhabiting any such underground warren. He dared not explore too far; he went cold again at the thought of being trapped here forever, in some vast nameless tomb, if he lost his way back to the main hall.

Then it struck him that he might be trapped anyway. Would the pattern work again, and if it did would it bring him back to the cave he knew? Trembling, he placed himself on the dais, on the pattern, as precisely as he could. With a last look around, he concentrated on the pattern, and his own power. A cold shiver, as if touched by ice, and he was back in a bell-shaped chamber. The same such chamber? He intensified his own light, and went back toward the cave mouth . . . to find there the embers of his fire, his blanket, his damp socks now dry on the hot stones. He felt almost faint with relief.

All that night he sat crosslegged with his back against the rock, hardly aware of the rain outside or the smell of horse. In his head, the puzzle pieces would not merge, made no sense. What kind of place was this? What kind of place was that? Twice he found himself on his feet, headed back to the chamber to see if it would work again, and twice he forced himself back to the fire. He shouldn’t try it again until he’d thought it out, and thinking at it wasn’t the same as thinking it out.

Should he tell Arranha? He could imagine the priest’s eager questions, his childlike curiosity. Arranha would tell everyone else, hoping to stumble on someone with more lore, if it were but fireside tales. He didn’t want others to know yet, not until he knew more himself. The Rosemage would want to come try it for herself; she might keep it a secret from everyone but Gird, but she would not let the knowledge rest idle—she would insist that he do something with it. And telling either of them meant that Gird would find out, and Gird would not overlook the use of magery if he found out through someone else. So—should he tell Gird first? That would mean admitting the use of magery, unless he could claim that the pattern acted without his power—and lying to Gird was always, no matter how good the reason, tricky. At best. At worst, Gird would hit him again (he rubbed his scalp, remembering).

The next day, in the rain-wet woods between Soldin and Graymere, he argued with himself and his internal images of Gird, Arranha, the Autumn Rose. Surely the gods would not have given him the power, shown him the inner cave, if they had not meant him to use them. In his head, Arranha agreed, pointing out that using magery where no one could see it, where it could affect no one but himself, was very like using no magery at all. It had not been oathbreaking, because he had not sought power, or influenced anyone, or taken command unbidden. The Autumn Rose also approved; he imagined her striding along that vast hall as if she owned it: she fit that sort of space. She would want to know where it was; she would want to know who had been there before, who built it, who used it now. He had a moment’s vision of her confronting a troop of very surprised dwarves somewhere in those warrens, and almost laughed.

Gird, though. Gird stood in his head foursquare and awkward. You used magery, that image said, scowling. Only a little, and it didn’t hurt anyone, he answered. And look what I found. Excuses, said Gird’s image in his mind. Truth’s truth, lad: you swore to give up the mage powers, and you used them. Even in his own mind, Gird had the stubbornness of a great boulder in a field, or a massive oak; he felt that his own arguments scratched around and around, going nowhere and moving that obstruction not even the width of a fingernail.

By Graymere, he’d convinced himself to tell the Autumn Rose and no one else until she’d had a chance to try the pattern herself. She might agree to keep it secret from Gird until she had used it, or tried to; perhaps Gird would accept that if Luap explained he had wanted confirmation from someone else before “bothering” Gird. Between Graymere and Anvil, by way of Whitberry, he changed his mind, and planned to tell only Arranha. Arranha, for all his skewed approach to things, would be more likely to know what those symbols carved in the arches meant, if there had been a time when elves and dwarves worked stone together. Approached carefully, he might be willing to keep this secret, at least for awhile. But on the long, muddy track back to Fin Panir from Anvil, he realized that he would have to tell Gird, and risk the consequences. If Gird found later that others had known, he would not forgive—he would not even listen. His one chance was to tell Gird first, and hope that curiosity had not completely abandoned the Marshal-General.

He wanted to keep it secret. He wanted one place, one small corner of his life, in which Gird had no standing. He rode hunched against the wind, eyes slitted, remembering that vast silence, that sense of absolute privacy. He did not have to decide now—for certainly he was the only one to have this knowledge. As long as he did not choose to share it, he could have his secret kingdom. His mind flinched from the words—he was not to seek a kingdom. It was more like the memories he had once held privately: a secret, but nothing so dangerous as a kingdom.

But he would have to tell Gird, he argued to himself. It would not be honest to do otherwise. Although it would be important to pick exactly the right time to tell Gird—when the Marshal-General was in the right mood, when he had no pressing worries, when they had ample time to discuss it. From experience, he knew the first few days back in Fin Panir would be a chaotic jumble of work. It might easily be a hand of days, or two, before he could find time to tell Gird about something which, after all, was of no practical importance to the Fellowship.

“Luap . . . sir?” Luap glanced up to see a strange yeoman in the doorway, twisting his conical straw hat in his hand. “It’s about Gird. . . .”

Luap realized he had not heard anything from the other end of the corridor for a long time. He had been working steadily through the mass of accounts and correspondence that had, as he expected, kept him at his desk every day since his return. Gird had been out much of the time, busy with court work. Now his heart faltered—had Gird died? But the man was already speaking, concern overcoming nervousness.

“He come in for a meal like he does so often,” the man said. “And then he sees this old friend from back at Burry or some-such place. And they gets to talking and taking a bit of ale, you know. . . .” His voice trailed away. He didn’t want to say it. Luap sighed.

“You’d like someone to help him home?” he asked.

The man nodded. “This friend, see, he’s eggin’ him on, like, and Gird won’t listen to the innkeeper or even the cook. . . .”

Luap realized that he’d seen the man before after all. He worked in the stables at the largest inn down by the lower market. He groaned inwardly. It was going to be a hard job getting Gird back up the hill. “Do you have a spare room, perhaps?” he asked.

“Well . . . I suppose maybe, but after what he called the innkeeper . . .”

“I’ll come now,” said Luap, standing. Whom could he call? He’d need more arms than two, if Gird had drunk his fill. He flung his blue cloak around him, and took the stout stick that had become a Marshal’s insignia, though all knew he was no Marshal. A glance out the window of the room across the corridor located Marshal Sterin, and a yell brought him in, sweaty and cross from drilling novices.

“Gird?” he said. “What’s the Marshal-General want now?”

“A friend’s help to come home,” said Luap. “He’s down at the Rock and Spring.”

“Ahh . . .” Sterin cut off whatever he’d almost said, with a glance at the man from the inn. “Met an old friend, did he?”

“From Burry, this man thinks. Got to talking about the war—”

“I see. We’ll need another, and it can’t be a novice. Too bad Cob’s not here. Tamis Redbeard?”

“Good,” said Luap. Tamis Redbeard stood a hand taller than he did, and could probably lift Gird in one hand. If he wasn’t fighting back.

They could hear Gird and someone else before they came in sight of the inn. Singing, none too melodiously, one of the songs written after Greenfields. A small crowd loitered outside the inn, a few lucky ones close enough to peer in the windows. It parted like butter before a hot knife, then flowed back as seamlessly, as Luap led the others through the door.

The man from Burry, or wherever, had one arm around a post, and one around Gird’s shoulders. He had reached the green stage; Luap thought he would vomit in a moment or two. Gird had still the flush of early drunkenness, a red rim to each eye and a glitter in them.

“Marshal-General, we’ve need of you up the hill,” Luap began. It wouldn’t work, but he could start with respect and good sense.

“No court today,” said Gird, head thrust forward. He belched, grinned at his companion. “So we’re just taking a bit of ale, like, and singing the old songs. No harm in that. Everybody’s got to have some time—”

“No, it’s not court,” Luap said. “It’s something else.”

“I know,” said the other man, slurring the words. “You think we’re drunk and ye’ve come to nursemaid th’ old man.” Luap glared at him; that would end any chance of Gird cooperating. Gird glowered, first at his companion and then at Luap.

“Is that what it is, you think I need a keeper?”

“No, sir. We’ve need of you, that’s what I said.”

“And you need me so much you brought two Marshals along? Can’t you ever tell the truth, Luap? Did you think I wouldn’t know Sterin and Tamis, big as they are, with their staves?”

Luap gritted his teeth. It was not fair, in front of all these people, and in such a cause. Confront drunks directly and start a brawl—even Gird said that, when he was sober. It wasn’t as if he himself hadn’t used subterfuge on other drunks, from time to time. Rage scoured his mind, eroding the controls he placed so carefully. He opened his mouth, but Sterin was before him.

“Aye, Father Gird, if you’ll have the truth of it, we was told you’d drunk more’n was good for you, and would be the better of friends to bring you home. Yer friend there’s had more’n his fill; he’s green as springtime berries, and the both of ye smell like ye’ve emptied a barrel—”

“Lemme alone,” began the other man, when Sterin reached to unhook his arm from Gird’s shoulder. Then he turned even greener around the mouth, his eyes widened, and he spewed across the floor, then fell headlong in the mess. Sterin had stepped back, not quite in time, and now gave Luap a disgusted glance. He shrugged.

“I’ll get this mess clean,” he said, meaning man and floor both. “You and Tam get the Marshal-General back before he doubles it.” Luap fought down another surge of anger. Sterin was in his rights, as the senior Marshal present, but did he have to make it so obvious that Luap had no right of command?

“Yes, Marshal Sterin,” he heard himself saying, the effort at courtesy clearly audible and destroying the effect he had meant to produce. He and Tam moved around the man from Burry, now struggling to sit up, and moved into position beside Gird. He put his arm under Gird’s elbow, ready to lift or push or whatever would be necessary.

“Let’s go now,” he suggested, in the calm quiet tone that worked best with most drunks. Gird glanced from one to the other.

“I am not drunk.” As always in this state, his words came slow, the peasant accent distinct. “My father wouldn’t put up with it.”

“Your father’s dead these many years.” Luap heaved, as effectively as he might have heaved at a live, deep-rooted oak. “Come on, now, man . . . you’ve got to get back home.”

“No home.” His forehead knotted. “Gone. Went away.”

The other drunk, still pale from throwing up the first wash, tittered weakly. “I’m not that drunk,” he lied. “My home didn’t go away.”

“Shut up,” Luap muttered at the man from Burry. “Sterin—get him away.” He had seen the expression on Gird’s face before, the swift change from hilarity to grim sadness. It had something to do with whatever happened the morning of Greenfields, which Gird would not speak of—but he was more dangerous in this mood than any other. The man from Burry vanished, and in a few moments Sterin reappeared. Luap could feel the tension in Gird’s shoulders, some mingling of rage and sorrow.

“No home,” Gird said again. “Never . . . it will never be. . . .” All around the eyes stared, the ears listened; Luap could almost see the legend growing. In a moment someone would decide it was prophecy, that Gird had the foreseeing gift beside all his others. He caught Tamis’s eye, and Sterin’s, and gave a minute nod. “It is not finished!” Gird’s voice sharpened, and Sterin, who had reached for his other arm, stopped to give Luap a worried glance. Somewhere outside, Luap could just hear pattering hooves of sheep or goats, and a voice calling to them. Everyone in sight was silent, motionless, waiting Gird’s next word. And this, too, he would have to explain, somehow, when Gird sobered up the next day, for all that some thought the gods spoke truly to men drowned in wine.

“It is not finished!” Gird said again, louder. “Not until mageborn and nonmage live in peace, not until the same law rules farmer and brewer, crafter and crofter, townsman and countryman. Not until they agree—” He paused, breathing hard, as if from battle, then he shook his head. “And they won’t,” he said quietly, sadly. For all Luap’s recent annoyance, he found himself moved, almost to tears, by that tone. “They want what cannot be—” He turned to face Luap. “You do, whether you know it or not—and they—and maybe I myself wish for what cannot be.” He spoke still quietly, but with such intensity that everyone around stood breathless, straining to hear. “It should not be so hard, by the gods! To agree to live in peace: what’s so hard about that? Or is it because I didn’t die at Greenfields?”

Luap stared at him, feeling the hairs rise on his scalp and along his arms. Die at Greenfields? What did he mean? He peered around Gird to meet on Tamis’s face the expression of what he felt: fear and confusion.

“They told me,” Gird said, now almost conversationally, “that I would not live to see the peace. I came down from the hill to die—and then lived. Is it that?”

“Thank Alyanya’s grace you did live, sir,” said Tamis quickly, and Sterin murmured something similar. Luap couldn’t say anything; his mouth was dry, his tongue stuck to the roof of it. He had never believed in the drunkard’s truth, but this was truth if ever he heard it.

But Gird was shaking his head. “My head hurts,” he said. “It’s hot. I think—I think I’ll go back—if you’ll settle with the innkeeper, Luap?”

He walked off, not quite steadily, Tamis and Sterin at either elbow, leaving Luap to pay and—since Sterin had gone—to help the innkeeper in mopping the stinking floor. That’s what I’m good for, Luap thought. Pay the bills, keep the accounts straight, clean up after him. That wasn’t a fair assessment, and he knew it, but he indulged himself a little anyway. It wasn’t fair that Gird had called him a liar in public, when he was only trying to be tactful.

When he had finished mopping, much of the crowd had melted away, as crowds do. Not as interesting to watch a sober man mop a floor as watch a drunk foul it . . . and Gird hoped to make a strong and peaceful society out of these sheep? The innkeeper accepted his coins with a sour look, although he’d added a sweetener to the total. “Great men!” the innkeeper said, leaving no doubt that he was still angry. “I’m not saying a thing against what he did, y’understand, but that doesn’t give him th’ right to call honest men thieves or cowards.”

Luap couldn’t decide if an apology would do any good, and his momentary silence seemed to irritate the innkeeper even more.

“I know what you’re like,” the man went on, feeling each coin ostentatiously before putting it in his belt-pouch. “You won’t tell me what you think, but anything I say goes straight to him.”

“He’s not like that,” Luap said.

“Huh. He’s not, or you don’t tell him everything?” Shrewd hazel eyes peered at him. Luap shrugged.

“Tomorrow he’ll be sorry he insulted you; surely you know that. Bring it up at the next market court, and he’ll fine himself and apologize before as large a crowd as heard the insult.”

“Oh, aye. Apologies don’t mend broken pottery or put wool back on a shorn sheep. My da said them’s don’t make mistakes don’t have to waste time on apologies.” Luap wondered where the innkeeper had been during the war. The innkeeper answered that, too, in his final sally. “We’ve had royalty in here, you know, before the rabble—before the revolution. Dukes, even a prince of the blood. Knew how to hold their wine, they did, and it wasn’t any of this cheap ale, neither.”

Luap’s temper flared. “Well, you’ve had another prince of the blood, for what that’s worth.”

The innkeeper’s eyebrows went up. “Who, then?”

“Me,” said Luap, turning to go, sure of the last word. But the innkeeper cheated him of that, as well.

“But raised with peasants, weren’t you then? Makes a difference, don’t it? It’s not like you’re a real prince, just some summer folly, eh?”

And if that’s not enough to sour a day, thought Luap as he climbed back to the upper city, there’s maudlin Gird, who will no doubt spout more difficult prophecy I’ll have to explain.

Down below conscious thought, he was not aware of the relief he felt: another day in which he had a good reason not to tell Gird about the cave.