Oath of Fealty

35

The prince’s courier cantered up to the house on a lathered horse at midafternoon. Dorrin, riding out of the stable yard at the same time to visit the nearest village, reined in.

“My lord Duke,” the courier said. He was a tough-looking middle-aged man with a courier’s tabard over his clothes, sweating heavily in the early summer heat.

“Be welcome,” Dorrin said. She had had no word from Vérella since hearing that the Verrakaien she’d first sent had all been executed. What now, she wondered? One of the stable hands who had followed her out to close the gate came running when she waved. “Maddes here will walk your horse cool; come inside and have something to drink. You will stay the night, of course.”

“I can’t stay that long,” he said. “If you could lend a horse … I should get back to Harway tonight.” He had dismounted, and now unbuckled one saddlebag, pulling out a velvet pouch. “This is for you, from the prince’s own hand.”

“I haven’t a horse that will make Harway tonight,” Dorrin said. “And you must not camp alone on the way. I cannot guarantee your safety.”

He looked at the house, where a servant was just visible coming out with a tray and the ritual bowl of water. “I’m supposed to hurry—”

“From the look of you and your horse, you did. But you could not clear Verrakai lands by dark, and surely you know I am still hunting down errant kinsmen. You are a royal servant; you are owed my protection. Go in, rest, be welcome to what I can offer until I return. I must go now. Two legal matters await me, urgent ones that I promised to deal with today. My people will see you fed and rested; I will be back by dark.”

Dorrin rode off, along with a tensquad of Phelani. The cases were complex, a tangle of Tsaian law and traditional practice, some of it Verrakaien and some apparently local, from ancient times. She had discussed them with the village leaders but the people were adamant that only the Duke could settle matters and only in there, in the village.

It might even be an ambush attempt set up by her missing relatives, designed to lure her away from the house. She could not be sure. Nothing had been seen of the missing young men, nothing heard, according to what she’d been told. But she had promised to come and give judgment in the place the dispute had arisen, and her people needed her.

As she approached the village, a clump of villagers awaited her—more than she thought lived there. Dorrin reined in.

“Good afternoon, Lord Duke,” the eldest said.

“Good afternoon, Elder Sennet,” Dorrin said. “You have a case; I have come to hear it. May the High Lord grant me wisdom to see the truth and judge rightly. Falk’s grace on you and all here.”

“The case is …” The elder looked meaningfully at the oldest woman.

“Our lord Duke’s birthday,” the old woman said, grinning broadly and showing how few teeth she had left.

“What?” Dorrin looked from her to Sennet.

“We wanted to thank you, my lord,” Sennet said. “You sent us back our dead, back then, and you taken no more for the dark tower, not from any village we asked, and so we wanted to thank you.”

“And I knew it was your birthday,” the old woman said. “On account I was there when you was born, a-helping in the house, I was, and it was seven tendays and a hand after the Lady’s Evener, which it is this day, my lord. So I told Sennet, that’s the best day to thank the Duke, it’s the Duke’s Lady’s Day, it is.”

“Maerin!”

“Well, it is. ‘Tis no shame to say it.”

They looked frightened now. Dorrin understood: mention of the Lady of Peace, Alyanya, had been forbidden in her childhood and she supposed that had continued. She herself had left the villagers to what beliefs they chose, except that she had sent word to make no more sacrifices to Liart of the Horned Chain.

“Lady’s grace on you, Maerin,” Dorrin said. “For your kind thought, and on you, Sennet, and the rest of you.” Their faces relaxed and a murmur passed through the crowd. She dismounted; Sennet pushed a boy forward to hold her horse.

A lane opened in the little crowd: they had placed a board across two sections of tree trunk for a bench, and gathered flowers to decorate it. Dorrin sat down; the board tipped only a little.

“If you permit, my lord,” Sennet said. A little girl held a wreath of flowers and field herbs, some drooping already with the heat. “A Lady’s Day crown.”

Dorrin bent her head; the child, barefoot and with a strong smell of pig about her, put the crown on her head; Dorrin felt the stiff stems of wild rosemary prickle through her hair. “Thank you,” Dorrin said to the child. In that face, she saw no hint of Verrakai cunning; the girl smiled and stared until Sennet touched her shoulder and guided her back to her mother.

“And now,” Sennet said, “Cheers for our Duke and best wishes for her life—the Lady’s grace to her!” The crowd gave cheers, somewhat raggedly, and when that trailed away another child’s voice could be heard.

“Kin we eat now?”

“Hush, Larn! Be still. The Duke will speak.”

Without that cue, she would not have known what came next. “Sennet, Maerin, you have surprised me very well. You wanted to thank me for the very little I have done; I must thank you all, every one of you, for the great things you have done. You have done your work in the shadow of terror; you have welcomed one you had reason to fear. Who could do more? I shall try to be as good a duke to you as you deserve.” The faces of those nearest her were intent, hopeful.

From the back of the ground, the child’s voice came again. “But Ma … I’m hungry!”

Dorrin laughed. “And right now, you need your duke to say the best way to celebrate a Lady’s Day is with her bounty—let us eat!”

They had brought out their poor best for her; when she saw the little meant to feed them all, she felt ashamed to take one bite. She had seen them tending flocks and herds, these past tendays.

“Them’s your sheep, my lord,” Sennet said, when she asked. “Your sheep and cows. We didn’t have no right to take one of them.”

“Is it not Alyanya’s rule that guests and hosts share the wealth of both? Send someone, Sennet, and bring back a sheep, or two—enough to roast on the fire and give everyone enough and more.” She thought a moment. “And if there are fruit trees or berries, outside the house garden, that you thought reserved for my use—use them now.”

“Does the Duke want to choose the sheep?” Sennet asked. “The flock’s penned just outside there—” He pointed beyond the houses.

“Nay,” Dorrin said. “I trust you, as you trust me. Alyanya’s blessing on it, and be sure there is plenty. Let the children eat, meanwhile.”

Sennet nodded to several of the men, who slipped away toward the sheepfold, and to several women, who went the other direction, whether to garden or woods, Dorrin did not know. The others watched her as she waited.

Her magery nudged: she could enlarge the feast without even those sheep. She did not, knowing that all they had seen of magery meant death and torment for one of their own. As she looked around, she could not help comparing the village to others she’d seen, from Kieri’s domain to the Immerhoft Coast.

This was hers; she was responsible for this—these houses barely more than mounds of sticks, roofed in bundles of old grass, not even proper thatch. In this season she should have seen kitchen gardens bursting with flowers and vegetables, trees hung with ripening fruit. Instead, meager gardens whose plants looked stunted, much smaller than those at the big house. Only a few trees, and little fruit on them. Ragged, dirty children, ragged clothes—stream-washed, she guessed, to honor her, but—

“Where do you get your water?” she asked Sennet.

“There’s a well, but it’s … it doesn’t give good water now, not since—” He gulped and looked away. “We go to the stream—it’s a sunhand away. I know, my lord, I know we’re not as clean as they in the house—”

“Let me see your well,” Dorrin said.

He led her to the well; one side of the old stone coping was gone. A few withered flowers lay on what remained and the ground around it. Sennet paled. “I’m sorry, my lord, the children will believe in the merin and put flowers …”

Dorrin could smell the stink of blood magic from where she stood, ten paces away. She went closer. “Someone cursed it.”

“It was—” Sennet gulped. “It was the old Duke, my lord. Said the likes of us had no right to water like that, said we was lazy. Please don’t be angry, my lord …”

Anger filled her as water filled a bucket. “It is not you I am angry with,” Dorrin said. “And those I am angry with are dead.” As they deserved.

“We tried to get the stones out,” Sennet went on. He still sounded scared. “But twice when we sent someone down with a rope, more stones fell and killed—and we did not want more to die.”

“You did not ask me for help with this,” Dorrin said. “I will ask you—will you permit me?”

“What can you do?” Sennet said.

What could she? She had no idea, but that the magery was tugging, shoving, telling her something. “I am not sure,” she said. “But will you let me try?”

“You are the Duke,” Sennet said. “I could hardly stop you.”

“True, but you are the elder here. If I can get the stones out, can you rebuild the wall?”

“If the Duke permits—but my lord, there was also—the blood.”

Naturally, there would have been blood.

“Did he sacrifice something here?”

“A—a woman, my lord. A woman with child, near her time.”

Dorrin shivered. Most potent sacrifice, she had been taught, for this kind of magery. “I must go down,” she said.

“No, my lord! No, we don’t want to lose you! We can do without the well.”

“You cannot,” Dorrin said. “It cannot be left unclean; it is why your gardens bear so little. Not just the lack of water, but the presence of so much malice. I know this is not what you intended, Sennet, but it is my judgment—and you invited me here to give judgment—that this well must be cleansed, and to do that I must go down.”

He looked horrified; she left him there and went back to her escort. “Find me stout ropes,” she said. “And I need you all to lift and lower on my command.”

“My lord?”

“It is urgent.”

The only ropes in the village were gray with age and frayed—no time to ride back to the house for better. Dorrin loosed her magery enough to mend them, and led the escort back to the well. Everyone who had not gone for more food now stood around it, a careful distance away.

“Back more,” Dorrin said. “I do not know how good my control is, and you all know it takes magery to heal mage-dealt wounds.”

They backed until most were behind their pitiful hovels. Dorrin took off her cloak, her armor, all but her shirt and trousers and boots, her sword, and her ducal chain of office. “I’m going down that well,” she said to her escort.

“You’re not!” More shock than refusal. “Let one of us—”

“None of you have magery,” Dorrin said. Her heart pounded; her skin felt tight. “My uncle cursed this well, and with it, the village; I am going to heal it or die in the attempt, but I need people I can trust on the ropes. I may be able to move the stones by magery—or not. I’ve never done this before. Make me a sling and some loops for climbing.”

They had used ropes like this in the Company, tying in fixed loops for hand- and footholds, making slings for lifting and lowering burdens and people. Dorrin checked the knots and again touched the ropes with magery. They should be sound … she went to the well and sent some of her light into it. The well had been made long ago, lined with hand-cut stone. That stone was still sound, tightly knit in place, in part by its revulsion at what had been done to the water. No water showed, only the jumble of stones thrown down from above. She sensed below them the evil intent that had killed a woman and her unborn child to spoil the well.

Dorrin touched Falk’s ruby. “Lord Falk, help me,” she murmured. She would try to move that one, there at the top—she sent her power down. The rock screeched, twisting, and jammed deeper. The one next to it broke in two, and the broken piece landed on top of it. A gout of malice surged out of the well; Dorrin staggered, but threw her power at it, imagining a net, and then a scythe, to cut it loose from what was left below. A writhing half-visible shape outlined by whirling dust rolled about her, knee-high. Dorrin drew her sword and touched its glowing blade to the mass … and the mass vanished.

“That was … interesting,” she said.

“Was that … it?”

“Not all, I think.” She looked in. A sullen menace filled the well now; she could sense it sinking lower as she let her magery strengthen. She tried to move the rock fragment now on top; it rose so fast it almost hit her in the head, bursting out the roof over the well and then landing with a jarring THUNK just short of a cottage wall. Again she sent a scythe stroke of magery to sever the power that propelled it, and again dispatched the remnant that threw up a cloud of dust in its struggles.

“It’s too dangerous,” Black Sef said.

“Too dangerous to try that again,” Dorrin said. “Some of those rocks are much bigger. I will have to go down.”

“Today?”

“Today. It will be stronger tomorrow, now it knows someone’s trying to destroy it.”