Liar's Oath

Chapter One

Fin Panir in summer could be as hot as it was cold in winter; every window and door in the old palace complex stood wide open. Luap had started work early, before the heat slicked his hands with sweat to stain the parchment. Now, in midmorning, the heat carried ripe city smells through his broad office window. He paused to stretch and ease his cramped shoulders. For once Gird had not interrupted him a dozen times; he had finished a fair copy of the entire Ten Fingers of the Code. He reached for the jug of water and poured himself a mug, carefully away from his work. Could he write another page without smudges, or should he quit until evening’s cool? He wondered, idly, why he had heard nothing from Gird that morning, and then remembered that a Marshal from a distant grange had come to visit. Doubtless they were still telling stories of the war.

He stretched again, smiling. It was nothing like the life he had imagined for himself when he was a boy, or a young farmer, but somewhat better than either of those vanished possibilities. As Gird’s assistant and scribe, he had status he’d never had before; he was living in the very palace to which his father had never taken him. And he knew that without him, Gird could not have created, and revised, the legal code that offered some hope of lasting peace. His skill in writing, in keeping accounts, in drawing maps, had helped Gird win the war; his skill in writing and keeping records might help Gird win the peace.

“Luap . . .” One of the younger scribes, a serious-faced girl whose unconscious movements stirred him brought her work to his desk. “I finished that copy, but there’s a blot—here—”

“They can still read it,” he said, smiling at her. “That’s the most important thing.” She smiled back, shyly, took the scroll and went back downstairs. He wished he could find one woman who would chance a liaison with him. Peasant women, in the current climate, would not have him, as some had made painfully clear. They had suffered too much to take any man with known mageborn blood as lover. The few mageborn women who sought him for his father’s name he could not trust to bear no children; he suspected they wanted a king’s grandson, and in his reaction to their pressure he could understand the peasant women’s refusal. As for those women who sold their bodies freely, he could not see them without thinking of his daughter’s terrible death. He needed to feel that a woman wanted him, the comfort of his body, before he could take comfort in hers.

But he knew that would not happen, any more than wishing would bring back Gird’s wife or children, or restore any of the losses of war. All the Marshals had lost family; everyone around him had scars of body and mind both. His were no worse, he reminded himself, and decided to work on another page. Work eased his mind, and kept it from idle wishes—or so the peasants always said, in the endless tags and ends of folktales that now colored every conversation. He was lucky to have his work indoors, in this heat, or in winter’s cold. He was lucky to have Gird’s understanding, if he could not have his indulgence.

He had just pulled another clean sheet toward him when he heard the old lady’s voice all the way up the staircase. He covered his inkwell; perhaps he would be needed. With that accent, she had to be mageborn, and with the quaver in it, she had to be old. The young guards, he suspected, would have no experience with her sort.

“I don’t care what you say, young man.” A pause, during which some male voice rumbled below his hearing. “I must see your Marshal-General, and I must see him now.”

Luap rolled his eyes up and wondered how far the respect for age would get her. Her voice came nearer, punctuated by puffs and wheezes as she came up the stairs.

“Yes, it is important. It is always important to do things right. If your Marshal-General had had the advantages of good education, he would know that already, but since he has not—” A shocked interruption, from what Luap judged to be a very young yeoman, whose words fell all over each other in disarray. He grinned, anticipating the old lady’s response. She did not disappoint him. “You see, young man, what I’m talking about. You’re very earnest, I’m sure, and very dedicated to your Marshal-General, but you cannot express yourself in plain language with any grace. . . .”

Just as he realized that she would inevitably end up in his office, the yeoman’s apologetic cough at the door brought his eyes to the spectacle. She was, undoubtedly, mageborn: a determinedly upright lady with snowy hair and slightly faded blue eyes, who dressed as if the former king were still ruling. A pouf of lace at the throat, a snug bodice with flaring skirt and puffed sleeves, all in brilliant reds and blues and greens: he had not seen such clothes since childhood. Luap wondered how that gorgeous robe had survived the looting. Then, with the appearance at her back of a stout, redfaced servant in blue and brown, he realized she must have impressed her staff with more than her money. The younger woman gave him look for look, challenging and defensive both.

“This is the Marshal-General’s luap,” the yeoman said. He was sweating, his eyes wide. “He’ll be able to help you.”

“I want the Marshal-General,” the old lady said. Then, as Luap rose and came toward her, she raked him with a measuring glare, and her voice changed. “Ohh . . . you’ll understand. Perhaps you can help me.” Whatever she had seen convinced her he was one of her kind. Behind her, the peasant woman smirked, and Luap felt his ears redden. Of course everyone knew about him—at least that he had mageborn blood on his father’s side, which was not that uncommon. But the way this woman said it, she might have known who his father was.

The old lady favored him with a surprisingly sweet smile, and laid a long fingered hand on her chest. “Could I perhaps sit down?”

Luap found himself bowing. “Of course . . . here . . .” His own chair, onto which he threw a pillow. She rested on it with the weightless grace of dandelion fluff, her rich brocaded robe falling into elegant folds. The peasant woman handed her a tapestry bag, then settled herself against the wall. The old lady rummaged in the bag, her lips pursed, and finally drew out a strip of blue gorgeously embroidered in gold and silver; it glittered even in the dim indoor light.

“You will understand,” she began, peering up at Luap with a smile she might have bestowed on a favorite nephew. “They all tell me that the Marshal-General doesn’t like fancy things, that he was a mere peasant, but of course that’s nonsense.” Luap opened his mouth, then shut it slowly at the expression on the peasant woman’s face. Best hear the old woman out. “Being a peasant doesn’t mean having no taste,” she went on, looking up to be sure he agreed. “Peasants like fancy things as much as anyone else, and some of them do very good work. Out in the villages, you know.” She seemed to expect some response; Luap nodded. “Men don’t always notice such things, but I learned as a young wife—when my husband was alive, we used to spend summers at different vills on his estates—that every peasant vill had its own patterns. Weaving, embroidery, even pottery. And the women, once they found I was interested, would teach me, or at least let me watch.” Another shrewd glance. Luap nodded again, then looked at the peasant woman leaning against the wall. Servant? Keeper? The woman’s expression said protector, but it had to be an unusual situation. Few of the city servants had stayed with their mageborn masters when Fin Panir fell.

“So I know,” the old woman went on, “that Gird will like this, if he only understands how important it is.” She unfolded the cloth carefully, almost reverently, and Luap saw the stylized face of the Sunlord, Esea, a mass of whorls and spirals, centering a blue cloth bordered with broad band of silver interlacement. “For the altar in the Hall, of course, now that it has been properly cleansed.” She gave Luap a long disapproving stare, and said “I always told the king, may he rest at ease, that he was making a terrible, terrible mistake by listening to that person from over the mountains, but he had had his sorrows, you understand.” When he said nothing, finding nothing to say, she cocked her head and said “You do understand?”

“Not . . . completely.” He folded his arms, and at her faint frown unfolded them. “This cloth is for the Hall, you say? For the High Lord’s altar?”

She drew herself even more erect and almost sniffed. “Whatever you call it—we always called Esea the Sunlord, though I understand there has been some argument that the High Lord and the Sunlord are one and the same.”

“Yes, lady.” He wondered what Arranha would say about this. For a priest of the Sunlord he was amazingly tolerant of other peoples’ beliefs, but he still held to his own.

“I could do nothing while the Hall was defiled. And of course the cloths used then could not be used again; I understood that. But now that the Hall is clean, these things must be done, and done properly. Few are left who understand that. You must not think it was easy.”

“No, lady,” Luap said automatically, his mind far astray. How was he going to explain her to Gird? How would Gird react?

“First,” she said, as if he’d asked, as if he would be interested, “the wool must be shorn with silver shears, from a firstborn lamb having no spot of black or brown, neither lamb nor ewe. Washed in running water only, mind. And the shearer must wear white, as well. Then carded with a new pair of brushes, which must afterwards be burned on a fire of dry wood. Cedar is best. Then spun between dawn and dusk of one day, and woven between dawn and dusk of another, within one household. In my grandmother’s day, she told me, the same hands must do both, and it was best done on the autumn Evener. But the priests said it was lawful for one to spin and another to weave, only it must be done in one household.”

She gave Luap a sharp look, and he nodded to show he’d been paying attention. He wasn’t sure he had fooled her, but she didn’t challenge him. “It must be woven on a loom used for nothing else, the width exactly suited to the altar, for no cutting or folding of excess can be permitted. No woman in her time may come into the room while it is being woven, nor may touch it after; if she touches the loom while bleeding, the loom must be burned. Then while it is being embroidered, which must be the work of one only, it must be kept in a casing of purest white wool, and housed in cedarwood.”

Luap nodded, tried to think of something to say, and asked about the one thing she hadn’t mentioned. “And the color, lady? How must it be dyed?”

“Dyed!” She fairly bristled at him, and thrust the cloth toward his face, yanking it back when he reached out a hand. “It is not dyed, young man; that is fine stitchery.” Now he could see that the blue background was not cloth, but embroidery. He had never seen anything like it.

“I’m sorry,” he said, since she clearly expected an apology. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen work that fine.”

“Probably not.” Then, after a final sniff, she gave him a melting smile. “Young man, you will not guess how long I’ve been working on this.”

He had no idea of course, but a guess was clearly required. “A year? Two?”

She dimpled. How a woman her age had kept dimples he also had no idea, but they were surprisingly effective. “Ten years. You can’t work on this all day, you know. No one could. I began when the king made that terrible mistake; I knew what would come of it. I tried to warn him, but . . .” She leaned forward, conspiratorial. “Would you believe, the king thought I was just a silly old woman! You may have been my mother’s best friend, he said, but she only liked you because you were too stupid to play politics. Safely stupid, he said. You needn’t think I’ll listen to you, he said, you and your old-fashioned superstitions, Well!” Old anger flushed her cheeks, then faded as she pursed her lips and shook that silver hair. “When I got home, I told Eris here—” She waved a hand at the peasant woman. “I told her then, I said, ‘You mark my words, dear, that hot-blooded fool is leading us straight into trouble! Though of course it didn’t start then, but a long time before; these things always do. Young people are so rash.”

A movement in the passage outside caught Luap’s eye—Gird, headed downstairs on some errand, had paused to see what was going on. For someone his size, he could be remarkably quiet when he wished. From his expression, the old woman’s rich clothing and aristocratic accent were having a predictable effect on his temper. Go away, Luap thought earnestly at Gird, knowing that was useless. Then Be quiet to the old lady—equally useless.

She went on. “And that very day, I began the work. My grandmother had always said, you never know when you’ll need the gods’ cloth, so it’s wise to prepare beforehand. This wool had been sheared two years before that, carded and spun and woven just as the rituals say: not by my hands, for there are better spinners and weavers in my household, and I’m not so proud I’ll let the god wear roughspun just to have my name on it. Ten years, young man, I’ve put in stitch by stitch, and stopped for nothing. The king even wondered why I came no more to court, sent ladies to see, and they found me embroidering harmlessly—or so the king took it.” She fixed Luap with another of those startling stares. “I am not a fool, young man, whatever the king thought. But it does no good to meddle where no one listens, and my grandmother had told me once my wits were in my fingers, not my tongue.”

Gird moved into the room, and the old lady turned to him, regal and impervious to his dangerous bulk. He wore the same blue shirt and rough gray trousers he always wore, with old boots worn thin at the soles and sides. He stood a little stooped, looking exactly like the aging farmer he was.

“Yes?” she said, as if to an intrusive servant. Luap felt an instant’s icy fear, but as usual Gird surprised him.

“Lady,” he said, far more gently than her tone deserved from him. “You wanted to see the Marshal-General?”

“Yes, but this young man is helping me now.” Almost dismissive, then she really focused on him. “Oh—you are the Marshal-General?”

Gird’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, lady.”

“I saw you, riding into the city that day.” She beamed on him, to Luap’s surprise. “I said to Eris then, that’s no brigand chief, no matter what they say, even if he does sit that horse like a sack of meal.” Gird looked at the peasant woman, who gave him the same look she’d given Luap. Gird nodded, and turned back to the lady. “Not that you could be expected to ride better,” she went on, oblivious to the possibility that a man who had led a successful revolution might resent criticism of his horsemanship. “I daresay you had no opportunity to learn in childhood—”

“No, lady, I didn’t.” Gird’s formidable rumble was tamed to a soft growl. “But you wished something of me?”

“This.” She indicated the cloth on her lap. “Now that you’ve cleansed the Hall, the altar must be properly dressed. I’ve just this past day finished it. Your doorward would not allow me to dress the altar, and said it was your command—”

“So you came to me.” Gird smiled at her; to Luap’s surprise the old lady did not seem to mind his interruptions. Perhaps she was used to being interrupted, at least by men in command. “But we have a priest of Esea, lady, who said nothing to me about the need for such—” He gestured at the cloth.

“Who?” She seemed indignant at this, more than at Gird “What priest would fail in the proper courtesies?”

“Arranha,” said Gird, obviously curious; surely she could not know the names of every priest in the old kingdom.

“Arranha . . . is he still alive?” A red patch came out on either cheek. “I thought he had been exiled or executed or some such years ago.”

“Ah . . . no.” Gird rubbed his nose; Luap realized his own mouth had fallen open, and shut it. “You said you were in the city when it fell—when we arrived. Surely you came to the cleansing of the Hall?”

“No.” Now she looked decidedly grumpy. “No, I did not. At my age, and in my—well—with all due respect, Marshal-General, for those few days the city was crowded with—with noise, and pushing and shoving, and the kinds of people, Marshal-General, that I never—well, I mean—”

“It was no place for a lady of your age and condition,” Gird offered, twinkling again, after a quick glance at Eris, the peasant woman. “You’re right, of course. Noisy, rough, even dangerous. I would hope your people had the sense to keep you well away from windows and doors, most of that time.”

“In t’cellar, at the worst,” said Eris, unexpectedly. “But the worst was over, time you come in, sir. Worst was the other lords’ servants smashin’ and lootin’ even as the lords fled. Runnin’ round sayin’ such things as milady here shouldn’t have to hear. Though it was crowded and noisy enough for a few hands of days. And when th’ yeoman marshals sorted through, takin’ count o’ folks and things. But they didn’t seek bribes, I’ll say that much for ’em.”

“They’d better not,” said Gird, suddenly all Marshal-General. Even the old lady gaped; Luap, who had seen it often enough not to be surprised, enjoyed the reactions of others. He had never figured out what Gird did to change from farmer to ruler so swiftly, but no one ever mistook the change. “So,” he went on, this time with everyone’s attention, “you did not come to the Hall that day, and had not known Arranha was with us? You should know that I’ve known him for some years—he’ll tell you in what tangle we met, if you wish. I knew he’d been exiled, and nearly killed, but for all that he’s a priest of Esea, one of the few left alive these days.”

“He’s a fool,” said the old lady, having recovered her composure. “He always was, with his questions into this and that and everything. Couldn’t let a body alone, not any more than a bee will give a flower a moment’s peace to enjoy the sun. Always ‘But don’t you think this’ and ‘Well then, don’t you see that’ until everyone was ready to throw up their hands and run off.”

Gird grinned. “He did that to me, too. You know he took me to the gnomes?”

She sniffed. “That’s exactly the sort of thing I’d expect. Gnomes! Trust Arranha to complicate matters: mix a peasant revolt with gnomes and both with religion.” The flick of her hand down her lap dismissed Arranha’s notions.

“Well, it worked. Although there were times, that winter, when I could happily have strangled your Arranha.”

“He’s not ours,” the old lady said. “A law to himself, he is, and always has been. Although you—” She gave Gird a look up and down. “I expect you give him a few sleepless nights, and all the better.”

“But my point,” Gird said, now very gently, “is that Arranha is the only priest of Esea now in Fin Panir, serving his god within the High Lord’s Hall, and he has not said anything about needing such cloths . . . although your years of labor should not be in vain, you must know that we are not such worshippers of Esea as your folk were.”

“Even he—even he should realize—” Abruptly—Luap wondered if it were all genuine feeling, or a habit known to be effective with men in power—the old lady’s eyes filled with tears that spilled down her cheeks. “Oh, sir—and I don’t mind calling a peasant sir in such a case—I don’t care what you call the god: Sun-lord, High Lord, Maker of Worlds, it doesn’t matter. But he must be respected, whatever you call him, and I’ve made these . . .” A tear fell, almost on the cloth; when she saw it, her face paled, and she turned aside. “I must not—cry—on the cloth—”

Eris came forward, and offered her apron, on which the lady wiped her damp face. “She really believes, sir, that if the altar’s not cared for, it’ll come bad luck to everyone. It’s no trick, sir, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

The old lady’s hands, dry now, fumbled at the cloth, to fold it away safely. She didn’t look up; her shoulders trembled. Luap felt a pang of emotion he could not identify: pity? sorrow? mean amusement? Gird sighed, gustily, like his horse. Luap knew what he wanted to say; he had said it before. You should have worshipped better gods he had told more than one mageborn survivor who wanted enforced tithes to rebuild the Sunlord’s lesser temples. Only Arranha’s arguments had kept him from forbidding Esea’s worship altogether, although Luap couldn’t see how the god could be responsible for his worshippers’ mistakes. What he could see were any number of ways to placate the old lady without causing trouble among Gird’s followers. Give the cloths to Arranha, and let him use them once or twice . . . the old lady would not make the journey from her house too often, he was sure. Agree to use them, then not—only she would care, and she would not know.

But he knew as well that Gird would not take any of these easy ways out. He would refuse her utterly, or agree, and use the damn cloths, and leave Luap to explain it all. Or Luap and Arranha together, an even less likely combination. Luap squeezed his eyes shut, wishing he could think of a deity who might be interested in this minor problem, and untangle it with no effort on his part.

“Luap,” said Gird. Here it came, some impossible task. He opened his eyes, to find Gird’s expression as uncompromising as ever in a crisis. One of those, then. “You will take this lady—may I have your name?”

“Dorhaniya, bi Kirlis-Sevith,” said the old lady.

Eris spoke up again. “Lady Dorhaniya, as a widow, was entitled to revert to her mother’s patronymic and her father’s matronymic, sir. . . .” As if Gird really cared, but he smiled and went on.

“Luap will escort you, Lady Dorhaniya, to confer with Arranha. I presume there is some ritual . . . you do not merely lay the cloths on the altar yourself, at least not the first time.”

“N-no.” Her voice was shaky. “N-no. Properly—” Now it firmed; clearly the very thought of propriety and ritual gave her confidence. “Properly new cloths are dedicated by the priest . . . it’s not . . . it’s not a long ceremony,” she said, as if fearing that might make a difference.

“I understand. Then you will need to speak to Arranha, tell him what you’ve done, and have him arrange it.”

“Then you will—you give your permission?” She looked up, flushed, starry-eyed as any young girl at her first courting. Gird nodded, and her smile widened, almost childishly, the dimples showing again. “Oh, thank you, Marshal-General. Esea’s light—no—” and the smile vanished. “If you don’t honor Esea—”

“Lady,” said Gird, as to a frightened child, as gently as Luap had ever heard him. “Lady, I honor all the gods but those who delight in cruelty; in your eyes, Esea’s light is kindly. May Esea be what you see; you need give me no thanks, but your blessing I will take, and gladly.”

She had not followed all that, by the bewildered expression, but she put out her hand, and Gird gave her his. She stood, then, and said “Then Esea’s light be with you, Marshal-General, and—and—then I can rest, when I see the altar dressed again as it should be.”