Liar's Oath

Chapter Fourteen

And so she did. He did not know to whom she’d spoken when she left his office, or what she said, but from the way some Marshals looked at her she had spoken her mind. Whether about Gird or about him, Luap did not know. Others, who had heard she was in the city, but had not seen her yet, greeted her almost with reverence.

“Lady,” said one, then actually blushed. “Rahi, I mean. Marshal. We’re sorry we—”

“I know,” she said, taking his hands in hers. It was, Luap thought, a very dramatic gesture. “Were you there yourself?”

“Not then, no—but I’d been out in the drillfields, and it didn’t take long—”

“It’s all right,” she said. “I understand.” Did she indeed, Luap wondered. Did she begin to understand what she was doing, with her fierce determination to leave Gird’s life as blocky and unshaped as it had been in actuality? Why could she not realize that no story lived without shaping, without trimming here and filling out there? The point was to have Gird remembered.

Later that day, he hugged this certainty around him as he came into the Council meeting, expecting trouble from her, and those other Marshals who had not liked his Life of Gird as much as others. He had been able to hold them off by reminding them that Raheli, as Gird’s daughter, must have some say. He had expected her to understand his purposes a little better than she had, to defend him to the others. Now—now it was going to be difficult.

Cob met him just outside the meeting room, and shook his head, though he smiled. “Luap, I could have told you not to try polishing clay. I know—you were trying to make the story fit the old songs, but you should have realized it would never pass Rahi.”

Luap managed to smile back, shrugging. “I thought I’d done a good job, until she raked me over about it. I really think that of Gird, you know. I think he’s that special.”

“Special, yes. But Gird’s old gray horse—can you imagine it tricked out in flowers and braids and a golden bridle? It was a horse for such a man: strong and brave, not a fancy magelady’s pony. So with Gird—he never wore a fine shirt to the end of his life, and knew better than to try it. You’ve put lace on a plough, Luap, and neither the lace nor the plough looks the better for it.” Then Cob’s arm came around his neck. “But I will say, Luap, that it’s the most gorgeous story I ever read, even though not much like Gird. Life would’ve been easier with your Gird running things.”

The others, once the Council convened, took the copies of the Life which Luap had made for them, and Cob suggested that Luap explain his work.

“You probably know already that Marshal Raheli, Gird’s daughter, doesn’t like what I’ve done.” Better get that out of the way first; they would realize he was being honest. “What I thought—what I wanted to do, was write a Life of Gird that would live through the generations, and show why we reverence him. He did more than just raise the peasants in a revolt and win the war . . . we know that. He tried to make a way for mageborn and peasant to live in peace with one another. He tried to devise a fair law which all could use.” He paused and drew a deep breath, looking beyond the table out the window into a darkening courtyard. “It seemed to me that Gird was too large to fit on my page; I could not find the right words for him as he really was. So I read in the archives, all the lives of the old kings and warriors, and what we know of the songs the elves make, and tried to shape what I wrote into something men and women could remember and chant by the fireside a hundred sons’ sons’ lives from now. Gird is a greater hero than any I found in the tales; it seemed to me I must show that in the way I wrote of him.” He sat down, with a nod to Raheli, now calm and composed.

Marshal Sterin raised his hand, then stood. “I read Luap’s Life of Gird two hands of days ago. It seemed to me very fitting for what Gird accomplished: perhaps more splendid than strictly necessary, but as Luap says, making clear to the future why Gird was great. It’s true I found some of the phrases flowery, but if that is the mode in which men have always written of heroes, why not?” He sat down abruptly, as if he’d finished any argument. Raheli raised her hand, and at their nods stood in her place.

“He’s a hero to you, to everyone: he saved everyone.” She swallowed; her lips firmed. “He didn’t save me.” Before anyone could answer that, she went on. “Oh, I know, that isn’t fair. He didn’t want it to happen; he tried to fight and was outnumbered; he saved my life after. But the plain fact is that he did not save me, and what I remember includes that. My suffering was the price of his action; he waited until afterwards to start fighting.”

Luap closed his eyes a moment. Against the inside of his lids, he saw his wife’s face, the wife who had died—he had heard how terribly—in a village market square because he had not protected her. Gird had seen Raheli, but he had been able to heal her—or at least get her away—while his own wife . . . You would not be her hero, if she had lived, his conscience told him. I am no one’s hero, he thought sourly, and opened his eyes again to find Rahi watching him with all Gird’s intensity. Her face changed; he wondered what had come into his.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “Your wife—”

“Never mind.” He waved that away; he could not tell Rahi what he’d told Gird, that he had not really loved his wife until he saw her dragged away, weeping in fear and shame. He hoped Gird hadn’t told anyone else, but he would not ask if she knew. “I can see what you’re saying, Rahi, but do you think it is valid for everyone? He did not save you, as I did not save my daughter, but does that make what he did less important? Or less important that the future should know about him?”

Cob stood, and looked around the table. “Most of you know that I was with Gird from the first forest camp. Except for Raheli, there’s none else can say that now. I was there the day he came, with his son Pidi and his nephew, a man near dead with grief but determined to make something come of it. And that’s when Raheli still lay near death with woundfever and childfever, so though she is his daughter, I knew him longer as a leader in war.” He grinned. “That’s to stop anyone saying he knows what Gird would have wanted. I admit I don’t. He was a plain man, and plainspoken, rough as the bark on an oak, but he knew as well as anyone the value of the old ways of saying things. And I’ve known our Luap from the day he first came, as well. To my mind, he’s served Gird honestly all these years, and endured the taunts of them that didn’t serve half as well. That’s to stop anyone saying that what I say next comes from jealousy or dislike of Luap. It’s not. I like him more now, and trust him more now, than I did that first year.”

“Well then? What’s your complaint?” asked Sterin, a bit flushed. Luap knew, as they all did, that Sterin had hardly met Gird before the war ended. He had organized and fought with a grange far from Gird’s army; he had earned his Marshal’s rank honestly, but resented the easy familiarity of those who had been Gird’s friends.

“It’s what I told Luap, before coming in here.” Cob grinned at Luap, who could not help smiling back. Cob and Gird were wood from the same tree; whatever elevated Gird to greatness had been added to, not changed from, the essential peasant identity. “He’s put lace on a plough; he’s made Gird all smooth and easy, even his mistakes made decorative. Gird was a hero, right enough, but he was a plain man first: good bread and water—yes, and ale—not fine pastries and sweet wine. If the future knows him as a hero just like others, what good will it do them? He can help only those that remember him as he was.”

“If he’s remembered at all.” Luap murmured that, not having permission to speak, but Cob turned to him sharply.

“Luap, he will be remembered. If not by your writing, then by fireside tales—and I grant—” He held up his hand. “I grant those tales and songs are likely to be even more astray. We’ve all heard some of them. But for this, for the story we most want told, I for one would like you to make it more like the man, plainer.”

Luap nodded, expecting the vote that came. He would rewrite the Life of Gird, both now and again . . . and again, when some peoples’ narrow ideas had died with them. He would not falsify—he had not falsified—what had happened, but he would choose his own way of saying it.

By the time they had settled other business, and finished the meeting, Rahi had cooled down. She came to him quietly, when the others had left.

“I know you don’t agree,” she said. “I know you thought you were doing the best for Gird’s memory. You may think you’ll outlive all of us, and maybe you will. But think about what Cob said, not my words alone. I am not that important; what happened to me happened to many, and I believe Gird would have come to his decision even without that. It might have made a neater pattern if Gird had been different. But he wasn’t different; he was what he was, and it’s that—the man he really was—that you must celebrate. The same man who did nothing all those years is the one who led us to victory, and at his death accomplished what his life could not. It makes no pretty pattern, but it’s what really happened. He never asked anyone to believe something of him they had not seen; his Life must show what he really was, for that is what will help later.”

Luap managed to smile. “I will do my best, Rahi.” She asked no more, but went on out. He would do his best, his very best, to make Gird’s life live in memory. She might not like it, but she might not be there to complain.

It occurred to him then that this might be another reason to move his people to the distant stronghold. There he could produce Gird’s life as he knew was best, without interference. If—as seemed likely, given their age and health—he outlived the older survivors of the war, he might find less resistance to his version of events.

The only problem was that he could not tell his people where he was leading them because he still had no idea where that land lay from Fin Panir. Arranha’s curious method of determining sunwise distance had not been proven right in theory, let alone accurate. Besides, it would not work for distance summerwards or winterwards. It would not help at all to start riding west in the hope of finding the place; as narrow as those clefts and valleys were, they could ride right past it and never find a thing. Perhaps he should ask one of the elves or dwarves who would be in Fin Panir for the spring Evener: surely they would know where it was.

A few days later, he found time to ask Arranha’s advice. The priest’s study, with its broad work table and two chairs, looked out on the little sunlit courtyard where he often sat. But the spring sun had not melted all the snow in the corners. The old man sat by the window, wrapped in a parti-colored knit shawl, in a chair softened with pillows, looking far more frail than Luap expected.

“Ask the Elder Races? Of course—that’s what I said in the first place.” Arranha did not look up from the scroll he was reading; Luap recognized his own handwriting. “This bit here, in your Life of Gird—are you sure this is how it happened?”

Luap felt himself reddening. “I’m changing some things,” he said. “Surely you heard that the Council asked me to.”

Arranha waved a dismissive hand. “That’s to be expected. Nothing would please everyone the first time around. But I don’t recall this conversation.” He pointed, and Luap craned his neck to read the passage. He sighed.

“I was trying to make clear Gird’s reasoning,” he said. “At the time it seemed muddled, but later we could all see how it made sense.”

Arranha looked up at him. “Luap, if you are telling the tale of people stumbling around on a dark night, you can’t bring sunrise earlier so that you can see them stumble around. I remember this; Gird’s reasoning was muddled, and it became clear later only because he himself straightened it out. If you make it too neat, it’s not real.”

Luap threw himself into the other chair in Arranha’s study. “So I have been told,” he said, trying not to let the resentment he felt color his tone. “Evidently I misunderstood the whole purpose of writing Gird’s story. I thought the important thing was to have him remembered for what he did: freeing the peasants from oppression, establishing a new and fairer law, and his final sacrifice. I thought the details didn’t matter, so long as people understood the structure of his life. That’s why you can’t write a life in progress: it has no shape yet. The shape you think you see cannot be the real shape.”

“That’s true enough, but—”

“But the Council—and now you—seem to think the details of the embroidery are as important as the design. I’m sorry. I thought making the whole design clear and easy to see was more important.” He ran his hand up and down the chair’s arm, enjoying even now the smooth curves and fine texture of the carving.

Arranha looked at him, that clear gaze which even Gird had found disconcerting. Luap remembered Gird telling the story of their first meeting, how the gaze of the old man’s eyes unsettled him. “If you had been telling the story of a more conventional hero, I might agree: leave out the little inconsistencies. But Gird was in no way conventional, as we all know. He transcended all the easy definitions; he was a tangled mat of contradictions, heroic knotted firmly to unheroic. He fits no pattern, Luap, and it is that which you must make clear. Not trim and tuck and pad the old man to fit an existing model.” He tilted his head slightly. “Why does this bother you? Why are you so determined to make Gird like any other hero of legend?”

Luap tried to subdue his anger, knowing that would move Arranha no more than it would have moved Gird himself, though for different reasons. His hands had clenched; he opened his fingers consciously, forcing himself to calmness. “Because I think that’s what people remember. That’s why the heroes of legend are alike, because that’s what it takes for people to believe in them. If I told Gird’s story exactly as it was, some would say he was no hero at all. They would disbelieve in his greatness precisely because it fit no pattern. Such a man, they would argue, could not have done those things; the gods would not work with someone who failed so often, and remained so muddled for so long. Even his death: think, Arranha—will any description in words of that cloud of malice and fear convince someone generations hence that Gird’s death was more than a sick old man’s vision? I can almost hear someone complaining that it was not enough, that he had done nothing to deserve the gods’ favor, that cleansing all of us from all the dark desires of our hearts was less than killing a monster of flesh and blood.”

“But it was more, of course,” said Arranha.

“Of course it was.” Luap heard his voice go up, and took a deep breath. “It was far more than that; we all knew it who lived through it. But later—I think of those in the future, Arranha, who will not have even the shadow of a real memory handed down from grandparents. To say that Gird was, for most of his life, as confused, frightened, and ignorant as they are will not make them believe in his greatness later. To say that he died uttering strange words, with no mark or wound upon him . . . well, so do many old people die, and if their families feel a sudden wave of relief and joy that the elder’s struggle is over, that’s no proof of the gods’ intervention.”

“So you do not trust Gird’s own people to understand his real life?”

Luap shook his head. “No, I don’t. I read all the old legends I could find, Arranha, and had the elders tell me the legends they recalled—of their own folk, not just mageborn tales. There’s a difference, of course. The mageborn legends all name their heroes prince or king, princess or queen; the peasant legends are full of younger sons and daughters, talking animals, and the wise elder. But they still follow a pattern. The young hero looks like one—it’s clear to friends and family that this is the hero. The hero never works with the evil he overcomes—he never submits to it. And he always knows what he’s doing. I’ll grant you, after knowing Gird I doubt this has always been true. But it’s what people believed to be true, believed enough to remember. If I show Gird too different from that pattern, I don’t think his legend will survive.”

Arranha nodded. “Your reasoning is clear. But for that reason I suspect it’s faulty in dealing with the life of someone who could no more reason than a cow can fly. Gird felt his way along, knowing the right as a tree knows good soil, by how it flourishes. In all my life, I never knew another like him, someone so infallible in his perception of good and evil, whose taproot sought good invisibly, in the dark. I learned from watching him that those with none of Esea’s light—inspiration, intelligence, what you will—may have another way to seek and find goodness. Because Gird, as we know and can say with utmost respect, was not a man given to intelligent reasoning. Shrewd, yes, and practical as a hammer, but incapable of guile, which comes as naturally to intelligent men as frisking does to lambs.” He laughed, shaking his head. “And I have only to think of Gird to find myself mired in agricultural images: listen to me! Cows that can’t fly, tree roots feeling their way through the soil, frisking lambs—that’s Gird talking through me, or my memory of him.”

Luap could barely manage a smile in response to that. He felt colder than the raw early-spring day. He had not felt Gird’s memory come alive while he was working on the Life; he had not felt Gird’s presence at all, since the first days after his death. And if Arranha felt it, if others felt it, was that why they did not agree on his way of telling the story? Because they felt so close to Gird, they could not understand that distant ages would not have that feeling? He could not think what to say, how to ask the questions in his mind that troubled him without taking definite form. He waited a moment, one finger tracing the floral carving of the chair-arm, then reverted to his first topic.

“So you think I should ask the elves or dwarves where that pattern took us?”

Arranha’s brows rose. “Yes, I said that. I admit I’m surprised you haven’t already done so, though I suppose you’ve been too busy . . .”

“I felt—I wanted to finish Gird’s Life first. But now—it will take me as long to rework it, and even then they may not like it. I just thought—”

Arranha’s smile was sweet, understanding, without a hint of scorn; it pierced him just as painfully as Arranha’s disapproval. “You just thought of your secret realm, a place of refuge. Quite natural. Yes, by all means ask them. But think of this, Luap: what will you do if they claim it as their own realm, in which we are not welcome?”

That had occurred to him before; he knew that was the root of his reluctance to ask. What is never asked cannot be refused: an old saying all agreed on. “The day I took Gird,” he said, having thought long about it, “we saw at first only two arches, which I had seen before. But another appeared—”

“Gird saw this?”

“He saw three arches; I had seen but two, and saw two when we first arrived. You saw the third that is there now, with the High Lord’s sigil upon it. When I told him there had been but two, he felt—I think he felt, for I admit he did not say it thus—that our presence, or at least his human presence, had been accepted.” Luap had no idea himself what the appearance of that third arch meant, but trusted Gird’s interpretation.

“I wonder if they’ll see it that way. But better to find out now, before you take a troop out there and find you’re intruding and not welcome. Will you ask the elven ambassador first, or the dwarves?”

“I had thought the elven. The legends say they’re the Eldest of Elders.”

“They will ask,” Arranha said, “why you did not ask them before. Gird’s will could not have withheld you past his death, not in their eyes.”

Luap knew they would ask exactly that: another reason he had not asked.

The elven ambassador arrived a few days before the Evener. Luap had never been sure why the elves chose to recognize Gird or his successors; they had not, Lady Dorhaniya told him, ever come to the court in her lifetime. But from the first year of Gird’s rule, an elf or two had come at Midwinter, Midsummer, and the two Eveners, at first asking audience with Gird, and then with the Council of Marshals. Then the dwarves had begun to appear, on the same festivals, glaring across the Hall at the elves, who ignored them except to proffer an icily correct greeting. Some of Gird’s followers preferred elves, and some preferred dwarves—the dwarves, Luap had heard, made good gambling and drinking companions. He himself found elven songs too beautiful to ignore.

This elf he recognized: Varhiel, he had said, was the closest human tongues could come to his real name. He stood taller than Luap as most elves did, a being of indeterminate age whose silver-gray eyes showed no surprise at anything. He greeted Luap in his own tongue and Luap made shift to answer in the same. He had discovered a talent for languages, both human and other; he particularly enjoyed the graceful courtesies of the elves. When the preliminaries were over, Luap felt his heart begin to pound. He should ask now, before he changed his mind. . . .

“When Gird was alive,” he said, “I found a place which might have been elven once.”

Varhiel raised his brows. “Once? What made you think it is not still elven?”

“I found no elves there, or sign of recent habitation,” Luap said. His palms felt sweaty. Why was this so hard?

Varhiel shrugged. “Perhaps it is a place we do not frequent; perhaps you came between habitations . . . but I doubt a place once ours would be abandoned.” He picked a hazelnut from the bowl on Luap’s desk and cracked it neatly between his fingers. “Where did you say this was?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Luap took a hazelnut himself, cracking it on his desk. He pushed across a basket for the shell fragments. “It’s a long story . . .”

“Time has no end,” the elf said He leaned back in his seat with the patience of one who will live forever, barring accidents.

Luap wondered what it would be like to feel no hurry, no pressure from mortality. He pushed that thought aside, and began his tale. Necessarily, since the elf could not be expected to take an interest in minor human affairs, he left out much of it. He told of his first visit to the cave, of his discovery of his mage powers, and of the later discovery that the cave and those powers transported him somewhere.

“Say that again!” The elf’s gray eyes shone. “You travelled—?”

“Somewhere,” Luap said, nodding. For a moment he felt he had been saying that word forever, telling one after another that he went somewhere, to meet the same incredulous response each time. “I don’t know where. That’s why I’m talking to you.”

“Say on.” The elf’s wave of hand was anything but casual.

Luap tried to read the elf’s expression as he described the great hall in which he had arrived, the arches out of it . . . and then Gird’s journey.

“You took another there before asking our permission?” Luap had never seen an elf angry, but he had no trouble interpreting that.

“Gird was my . . . lord,” he said. “He held my oath; all I learned went to him first.” Then he realized that “there” had been said with complete certainty. “You know where it is?”

“Of course I know. And it is not a place for you latecoming mortals. You must not go again.” The elf looked hard at him. “Or have you been more than those two times?”

“When Gird came,” Luap said, side-stepping the question, “another arch appeared. One with the High Lord’s sigil on it—”

“No!”

“—And thus Gird said our presence was accepted.”

The elf stared at him. “Another arch . . . appeared?”

“Yes.”

“When Gird came?” At Luap’s nod, the elf sat back. “A mageborn human blunders into that, which we have kept inviolate for ages longer than your people, Selamis the luap, have existed . . . it is a clangorous thought.”

“Gird walked through that arch,” Luap said warily. He felt he must say it, but he did not know why he felt so. “He walked through, and then up the stair—”

“I hardly dared hope you had seen only the hall,” Varhiel said. “And Gird would, yes—would have no doubt that he could walk through any arch he wished, or climb any stair, and I suppose he opened the entrance for you, did he? What was it like, your first view of that land?”

“It was blowing snow,” Luap said. The memory could still make him shiver. Varhiel laughed.

“I’m glad. It is unseemly, but I take pleasure in the thought that at least one protection held against invasion. Now, I suppose, we must go to the trouble of destroying the patterns.”

“No,” said Luap. The elf’s look reminded him he had no rights to argue. “Please,” he said more softly. “Please listen—let me tell you the rest.” As smoothly as he could, he told of his later visits, of the need for a place where the mageborn could train their powers to good, of Arranha’s approval, and the Autumn Rose’s. “They felt—we all felt—the holiness of that place, the great power of good that lies in it. This I’m sure would prevent any misuse of our powers, as our people learn to use them well.”

“It is impossible,” the elf said. “It is not your place; you did not make it; you do not understand those who did.”

“But it is so beautiful,” Luap said. He could feel tears gathering in his eyes, and blinked them back. Never to taste that pine-scented air, that cold sweet water? He could not bear that. Varhiel stared at him.

“You find that beautiful, all that bare rock?”

Luap nodded. “It eases something—I know not what—in my heart. And it’s not barren—if you have not been there for years of human time, you may not know the trees that grace those narrow valleys.”

“Canyons,” Varhiel said. “That is what the Khartazh calls them, at least.” He sighed. “If you find it beautiful, I am sorry to forbid it to you—but it is not yours. Even if I had the right to permit you, I would not, for I know why it was built, and under what enchantments it lies: it is not meant for mortals, and certainly not for humans. But I have not the right; you would have to have leave of the King—our king, of the Lordsforest, in the mountains far west and north of here—and I can tell you now you would not receive it.”

“You could ask him,” Luap said, in desperation.

“Ask him! You want me to ask the King to let a gaggle of latecomer humans inhabit a hall built by immortals for immortals? So you can practice your paltry powers in safety?”

Luap felt himself flushing. What he might have said he never knew, for the Autumn Rose came in at that moment. She had clearly overheard the last part of that.

“I will ask, of your courtesy, and as you are the ambassador, whose duty it is to carry requests from Fin Panir to your lord.” Luap had not imagined that any human could approach elven arrogance, but the Autumn Rose angry came gloriously close. “Pray ask him, if you will, if he minds the corners of a deserted palace being home to those who have no other home, if they agree to be responsible for damages.”

Varhiel stood. “Damages! Little you know, lady, what you say . . . little you know what damages such a place might sustain, or how to mitigate them. But as you command, and courtesy requires, I will take your message, and bring back his, which I am sure I could do without the effort moving from my seat. Yet you will have what you ask: the King’s command, and speedily.” He did not quite push past the Autumn Rose, yet she felt his movement, as a tree feels the gale that shreds its leaves.

She raised her brows to Luap. “If your meekness would not work, could it hurt to try my boldness? We shall see: I suspect Varhiel is not in his king’s pocket any more than I am in yours, or the reverse. And you are a king’s son; he owes you a king’s answer.”

“But if they’re angry,” Luap said. “If they never let us return—”

“Then we will find other mountains,” she said. He wished he could believe her. He felt a cold wind sweeping through him; he could not bear to be barred from those red stone walls forever.

“Let’s go there,” he said suddenly. “Let’s go now, before he returns.”

She stared at him, eyes wide. “Luap—what is it? We can’t go haring off to the cave now, and you can’t get there by magery without those patterns . . . can you?”

“No. But—perhaps I could reproduce the patterns. It may not be the place, but the patterns laid there—” He wet his finger and began to trace a design on his desk. “See . . . like this, and this . . .”

She frowned. “Luap—I’ve seen that somewhere else.”

“The design? You can’t have.”

“No, I have.” She stood motionless a moment, brows furrowed. Then she looked at him. “Luap, come with me.”

“Where?”

“Just come.” She grasped his hand, and when he asked if she wanted to find Arranha first, shook her head. Down the stairs, outside, across the courtyard, and into the High Lord’s Hall. He was halfway up the Hall toward the altar when he remembered what she was talking about. Incised in the floor just behind the altar was a pattern he had never really noticed. “That’s the same, isn’t it?”

Luap bent over it. Here he dared not bring his own light, and the shallow grooves hardly showed in the dimness. “It . . . seems . . . the same,” he said, tracing part of it with his finger. He dared not trace all of it, and vanish.

“In the old law,” the Rosemage said, “our law, the man in a house has a better chance of keeping it. But you may be right that we need Arranha.” Before he could say anything, she strode away, leaving him with his hand splayed out across the pattern as if to protect it.

Arranha, when he came, was inclined to shake his head. “It is not Luap’s place, though he found it untenanted; we knew all along someone else had made it. If they forbid, we dare not object.”

“But look at this.” The Rosemage pointed to the pattern. “It’s here, in the most important place of worship our people had in the north. You told us this was the first of Esea’s Halls over the mountains. If it is their pattern, then why is it here? If it is here with their consent, then Luap has an heir’s right to it . . . to its use, at least.”

“I don’t know,” Arranha said. “If it is the same pattern, then what it might mean is that they made some agreement with our ancestors. That doesn’t explain why there were only two arches until Gird came, though.”

“We could see if it works,” she said.

“And if it didn’t?” Arranha said. “I’ve never known you to be rash, lady, before this?”

“I’ll try it,” Luap said suddenly. “If it doesn’t work, then you will have the most excellent excuse to do nothing.”

“You can’t—” the Rosemage began. Arranha looked thoughtful.

“Perhaps you should. If it works . . . are you prepared to meet the elves in that place, by yourself? We could come along.”

“No,” Luap said “If all three of us vanished, who would help the mageborn? We all know that I am one of the points of stress. Without me, some of our people would be quicker to forget their heritage and merge with the peasantry. If one of us must risk, I should be that one. You both have the respect of the Council of Marshals; you can do anything I could do for our people here.”

“Well said.” Arranha nodded. “Go, then, and Esea’s light guide you.” As he spoke, the pattern glowed in the shadowy hall, just bright enough for Luap to see that it was clearly the same. He stood on it, motioned them away, and thought of that distant hall.

And was there, on the dais.

But not alone. Under the arch crowned with harp and tree stood an elflord, crowned with silver and emeralds and sapphires: Luap could not doubt that this was the King, the Lord of that fabled Forest in the western mountains. Under the arch crowned with anvil and hammer stood a dwarf, his beard and hair braided with gold and silver. His crown was gold, studded with rubies. Luap could not doubt he was the king of some dwarf tribe, though he knew not which one. On one side of the hall stood a company of elves, facing a company of dwarves. All wore mail styled as their folk wore it, and carried weapons. In the center of the hall, a gnome in gray carried a great book bound in leather and slate. Varhiel faced the dais, only a few paces away.

“I told them you would come,” he said. “Without invitation, without courtesy . . . see now, mortal, what you dare by intruding here. This is not your place: you did not make it, you do not understand it.”

Luap surprised himself with his composure. “Is that your king’s word, Varhiel?”

“You may ask him yourself,” said Varhiel; his bow mocked Luap, but Luap did not respond. He looked down that long hall at the elvenking, inwardly rejoicing to see the hall filled and alive as he had always imagined it.

But before he could speak, the elvenking spoke; his voice held a richness of music Luap had never imagined. “Mortal, king’s son you named yourself: what king claimed you?”

No human words could be courteous enough for speech with this king; Luap felt himself drowning in that power. His magery responded, seemingly of itself, and he did not suppress it, allowing his light to strengthen. “My lord, my father died while I was young; I have been told by those who knew both him and me that he was Garamis, the fourth before the last king.”

“You claim the royal magery?”

Luap smiled before he could stop himself. “My lord, the magery claimed me, when I had long thought I had none.” He felt his mind as full of light as his body; he might have been burning in some magical flame. Was this Esea’s light?

“Varhiel said you claimed that when you brought Gird here, a third arch appeared, and on that basis you claimed a right to use this place. Where is that third arch?”

Luap started down the hall. Sure enough, he saw but the two arches he had seen when he first came. He felt the sweat start on his forehead. It had been there; it had appeared with Gird and had been there when he brought the Rosemage and and Arranha. Now he could not see it. Surely it had to be there, between the others, where a blank red wall stood.

“Show us this arch,” the dwarf said suddenly. “If you are not nedross.” He did not know much of the dwarf speech, but no one could talk long to dwarves without learning something of drossin and nedrossin. He looked again, saw only the bare stone. But, his memory reminded him, the elves are illusionists. At once a rush of exultation flooded him. He walked forward, past the ranks of elves and dwarves, through the very current of their disapproval, their determination to exclude him. He walked past the gnome, who stepped aside without speaking. He thought of Gird, of how Gird had strolled down this hall as if he had the right to walk anywhere. Could he be that certain? Yes. For his people, he could.

He walked to the red stone as if he expected it to part like a curtain. Two paces away, one pace: he could see the fine streaks of paler and darker red, the glitter of polished grains. “Here,” he said, laying his hands flat on the cold, smooth stone. “It bears the High Lord’s sigil; in Gird’s name—” His hands flailed in air; he nearly fell. On either side of him, the columns rose, incised with intricate patterns: over his head the arch curved serenely, with that perfect circle at its height.

He struggled to control his expression; blank astonishment filled him. He heard, inwardly, a rough chuckle that reminded him of Gird. Did you think I’d let you make a fool of yourself? Luap shivered; he knew that voice. He wanted to ask it questions, but it was gone, leaving his head empty and echoing. And no time. From their arches, the elvenking and dwarvenking had come to confront him.

“Mortal, I see the arch. I do not see why you should be allowed to use this hall.” This near, the elvenking’s beauty took his breath away; it was all he had ever imagined a royal visage to be.

“My lord, it was my thought—and Gird’s, for that matter—that such a thing meant either the god’s direct command to come here, or their approval.”

“For what purpose?” The arching eyebrows rose, expressing without words the conviction that no purpose would be justified.

“A haven for the mageborn—”

“You would use magery here?” That was the dwarf, a voice like stone splitting.

“This is magery,” Luap said, with a wave that included the entire place. “How could one be here and not be using magery?” That came close to insolence; he felt his stomach clench, as if he’d leaned far out over a precipice.

The elvenking’s eyes narrowed dangerously; Luap felt cold down his spine. “Mortal man, this is not human magery, but the work of the Elder Races, far beyond your magery—”

“Yet I came, and this arch appeared—I do not claim by my magery alone but with the gods’ aid.”

“And what gods do you serve?” Luap blinked; that was one question he had not anticipated. The gods of my father, or of my mother? The gods of my childhood or my manhood?

“I was reared both mageborn and peasant; I have prayed to both Esea and Alyanya . . .” he began. The elf interrupted.

“I did not ask from whom you sought favors, but whom you served.”

How could any man say which god he served—truly served? He might think he had rendered service, but the god might have refused it, or not recognized it. Possibilities flitted through his mind, an airy spatter of butterflies. He could think of only one he had served, and that one not a god. “I served Gird, mostly,” he said. The elf’s brows rose as the dwarf’s lowered; he had a moment to wonder if those were two ways of expressing the same reaction, or two different reactions to the same words.

“And it was Gird’s visit that brought this arch,” the elvenking said.

“Yes.”

The elf looked at him so long in silence that Luap felt his knees would collapse. Finally he spoke. “You convince me that you are convinced of what you say. But you do not know what you ask. This stronghold was made for another, not you. It was built to ward against dangers you do not understand and could not face. If you live here, you may rouse ancient evils, and if you do, it would be better for you that you had not been born. Yet . . . if you ask me, knowing that you do not know, and knowing that I say your people would find better sanctuary elsewhere, I will grant you my permission. But whatever harms come of it will rest on your shoulders, Selamis-called-Luap, Garamis’s son.”

“What dangers?” Luap asked. “What evils? I saw a land of great beauty, breathed air that sang health along my bones—”

The king held up his hand, and Luap could not continue. “I tell you, mortal man, that you would be wise to choose some other boon from me. Yet wisdom comes late or never to mortals; I see in your eyes you will have your desire, despite anything I say. Be it so: but remember my warning.”

“And you will not say what that danger is?”

“It is none of your concern.” A look passed from the elven to the dwarven king, and returned, which Luap could not read but knew held significance. His anger stirred.

“And why is it not? If the gods led me to this place, as I believe they did; if Gird’s coming hallowed it for mortal use, as I believe it did and this arch proves; if then you know of some danger which threatens, why should you not tell me, and let us meet it bravely?”

Another look passed between the kings; this time the dwarf spoke. “You believe the gods intended this: do you think the gods do not know of the danger? Are we to interfere with their plans? No: you have our permission; that is all you need from us, and all we give.”

Luap realized suddenly that he was hearing the two kings each in his own language, and understanding perfectly, yet he knew he could not speak or understand more than a few courtesies of his own knowledge. Such power, he thought, longingly; his own magery was but the shadow of theirs. But pride stiffened him; he looked each in the eye, and bowed with courtesy but no shame. “Then I thank you, my lords, for your words. As the gods surpass even the Elder Races, I must obey their commands as I understand them.”

The elf looked grim. “May they give you the wisdom to accompany your obedience,” he said. Then he turned to the gnome. “Lawmaster, record all that you heard, and let it be as it is written.” He strode up the hall, and when he reached the dais, the elves vanished. The dwarf king came nearer and looked up into Luap’s face.

“You may be a king’s son, mortal, but it will take more than that to rule in this citadel. You are not of the rockblood; you do not know how to smell the drossin and nedrossin stone. The sinyi care for growing things and pure water; we dasksinyi care for the virtues of stone; the isksinyi care for the structure of the law. Now ask yourself, mortal, what the iynisin care for, and what that corruption means. We will not forgive an injury to the daskgeft.” He turned, and his dwarves cheered, then burst into a marching song. Luap could no longer understand their speech: he watched as they followed their king to the dais and vanished.

That left the gnome, a dour person who gave Luap a long humorless stare. “Gird should have had more sense,” it said. “I am a Lawmaster: this is a book of law. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Lawmaster.” Luap struggled with a desire to laugh or shiver. How had Gird endured an entire winter understone with such as this?

“In this book will be recorded the contract between you and the Elder Races. Do you understand that?”

He did not, but he hated to admit it. “If we wake this danger, whatever it is, they will take it ill.”

“They will withdraw their permission,” the gnome corrected. “You are, for the duration of your stay here, considered as guardian-guests, not as heirs. You have the duty to protect this as if it were your own, but it is not your own, nor may you exchange any part of it for any value whatsoever. Is that clear?”

“I—think so. Yes.”

“You have the use-right of the land, the water, the air, the animals that live on the land and the birds that fly over it, but no claim upon dragons—”

“Dragons!” Luap could not suppress that exclamation.

“Dragons . . . yes. There may be dragons from time to time; you have no claim upon them. You are forbidden to interfere with them. You may not, through magery or other means, remove this citadel to another place—” Luap had not even thought of that possibility. “—And you must keep all in good repair and decent cleanliness. You must not represent yourself as the builder or true owner, and you must avoid contamination of this hall with any evil. Now—if these are the terms you understand, and you accept them, you will say so now—”

“I do,” said Luap.

“And then the sealing. You were Gird’s scribe as well as luap; you know how to sign your name. As you have no royal seal, press your thumb in the wax.” Luap signed, pressed, and the gnome laid over the blotch of wax a thin cloth. The gnome bowed, stiffly, and without another word walked to the dais, where he vanished.

Luap could not have told how long he stood bemused before he, too, went back to the dais, as much worried as triumphant. He arrived in darkness—not in the High Lord’s Hall, as he’d expected, but in his cave . . . and realized he’d been thinking of it. Could he transfer directly? No. Back to the distant land, then to Fin Panir. The High Lord’s Hall was empty; it was near dusk. Where had they gone, and why? Or had the elves wrapped him in such sorcery that years had passed, and they thought him lost forever?

“Almost,” said the Rosemage when he found her in his office. “Four days is too long to stand waiting.”

Quickly, Luap told her what he remembered of his meeting with elves and dwarves and the gnomish Lawmaster. He found it hard to believe it had been four days . . . but he could not remember everything. Something about danger, about drossin and nedrossin, about which of the Elders cared most about which aspect of creation . . . but none of that mattered, compared to the final agreement. The Rosemage grinned; she looked almost as excited as he felt.

“Well, then—and where is this fabulous place, now that we have permission to use it?”

At that moment, Luap realized he had not asked—that he had not been given a chance to ask. And he doubted very much that the Elders would answer any such question now.

Arranha was the least concerned about that; he was sure, he said, that he could figure it out by means of celestial markers. Luap, annoyed with himself for being so easily enchanted by the elves, grunted and left him to it.