The Jargoon Pard

2 Of the Heirship of Kethan and Life in Car Do Prawn

Car Do Prawn is not the greatest of the Keeps that gave allegiance to the Redmantle Overlord, nor the richest. But what it holds within its boundaries is satisfying to look upon. There are orchards of cherry and apple, from which come not only fruit in due season, but also cider, a cherry cordial for which we have no small fame in Arvon. There are also fields of grain, always yielding abundantly at Harvest tide. And there are flocks of sheep and a goodly herd of cattle. Centermost in this smiling and fruitful country sits the Keep itself, and about that a small village. The village lies open under the sun, its cottages possessing sharply gabled roofs, the eaves of which are carved with fanciful shapes. Their walls are all of a light gray stone, the roofs of slate, while those carvings are entwined with runes painted green and gold.

But the Keep itself, while of the same stone, has no such lightsome embellishments. There is always about the Towers a seeming of shadow. It might be that some invisible cloud keeps it so. Within the walls, even in the depths of summer, there abides a chill that none save I ever seemed to note. There I had often the sense that things moved along its very old corridors, in the corners of its shadowed rooms, which had little in common with the ways of mankind.

From the time of my first understanding, my Lady Mother made plain to me that, in the future, I would rule here. But that promise gave me no feeling of pride. Rather, I oftentimes wondered whether any man could claim full sovereignship within such a haunted place. Perhaps my own reticent nature was my protection, for I never spoke to her nor to Ursilla (of whom I was greatly in awe) of those strange and disturbing fancies concerning Car Do Prawn.

Until I reached the age of six, I lived in the Ladies’ Tower, where my only companion in age was the Lady Thaney, she who was Lord Erach’s daughter and my elder by a year. It had been told me early that our destinies were designed to be one, that when we came to a suitable age, we would be wedded, thus fast locking together the House fate; though at the time this meant little or nothing to me, or perhaps to her.

Thaney was tall for her age, and very knowing, also somewhat sly. I early learned that were we in any mischief together and discovered, the blame would fall wholly upon me. I did not like her or dislike her. I accepted her presence as I did the clothing on my body, the food on my plate.

With her brother Maughus, the matter was far different. He was some six years my elder and dwelt in the Youths’ Tower, coming only at intervals to visit his grandam, the Lady Eldris, his mother having died of a fever shortly after Thaney’s birth. I say his grandam, though by descent, I was also a grandson. However, the Lady Eldris made plain her preference, and either ignored me, or found fault whenever I was in her sight, so I kept away from her apartments.

Ours was a strange household, though I did not realize that, as it was all I had known. Thus I could believe that all families perhaps lived in the same fashion. Lady Eldris had her own apartments and it was there that Thaney was supposed to stay, though she followed mainly her own will, for her waiting woman was old and stout and more than a little lazy, not keeping as strict a watch upon her ward as custom demanded.

Maughus’s visits to their rooms were a signal for me to be on guard. He made very plain when we were ever private together (which I saw, as best I could, was seldom) that he carried ill will for me. He was fiercely proud, possessing much of the same ambition that I knew was inherent in my mother. That he would not be Lord in the Keep after his father caused a bitterness that ate at him even as a child, growing stronger through the years until I was well aware he hated me for what I was, if not for myself.

My mother, the Lady Heroise, and the Wise Woman, Ursilla, had in turn their own chambers, which lay at the top level of the Tower. My mother was much concerned with matters of the household. Whether in the past there had been any clash of wills between her and the Lady Eldris, decided in my mother’s favor, I never knew. However, when Lord Erach was absent, it was the Lady Heroise who held Manor Court in the Great Hall and gave the orders. At such times she had me ever beside her, seated on a small stool a little behind the Lord’s great chair, which had the red mantle of our clan draped across its back, listening to what judgments she would give. Afterward, she would explain to me the way of this or that decision, whether dictated by custom, or the product of her own reasoning.

That she longed to occupy the seat permanently, I learned by instinct while I was yet a small child. It was as if the qualities that were adjudged by the world to be those of a man had been embodied in her woman’s flesh, so she chafed against our customs, decreeing the narrow limits of her own life. In one thing alone she was free, and that was the use of the Power.

Ursilla was the only being within the Keep my mother acknowledged her superior. The Wise Woman’s knowledge and talent was, I know, a matter of abiding envy for the Lady Heroise. Though my mother possessed a small talent herself, it was in nowise enough to fit her for the long learning and discipline of spirit that would have made her the equal of her instructress, and that lack she had the intelligence to recognize. But she did not admit in any other thing that she was less than able.

The Lady Heroise lacked the temperament to school her own desires and emotions for any further training in the Other Ways than she had learned in her youth. Even had she not been the vessel to bear the next heir for Car Do Prawn, she would still have been unable to enter into the full training of a sorceress. And to desire so greatly what one cannot obtain because of some lack in one’s self is a matter to sour and warp the one who has failed.

If she could not have one kind of Power, then she would excel in another. To this end she now strove with all the force of her ambition.

I have said I was in awe of Ursilla, and I would have gladly avoided her. But, even as my mother enforced upon me her form of training, so did the Wise Woman concern herself equally with my affairs. Though that part of the Power which is wielded by a sorceress is not the same as that which a Warlock or Wizard may summon, still she gave me what learning she deemed useful, carefully pruning such lessons, I realized later, of any material that I could use in an attempt to escape the fate they had set upon me.

It was Ursilla who taught me to read the runes, who set before me carefully selected ancient parchments—mainly those dealing with the history of the Four Clans, with Arvon, and with Car Do Prawn. Had I not had a measure of curiosity about such things, I would have found such tutoring a dull and discouraging time of enforced attention. But I developed a liking for the Chronicles the Wise Woman deemed useful in fashioning my character and learned eagerly.

Arvon itself, I discovered, had not always dreamed away time in this ease of golden days that now seemed endless. In the past (the addition of years was obscure since it seemed that those who wrote the accounts were never interested in reckoning up any strict numbering of seasons), there had been a great struggle that had nigh destroyed all ordered life.

Before that period of chaos, our present domain had not been bordered by the mountains to the south and east, but had spread beyond, reaching east to the legendary sea, also south into territories long since forgotten. However, those of Arvon had always had the talent in lesser and greater degrees, and our Lords and rulers were often also masters of Power. They began to experiment with the force of life itself, creating creatures to serve them—or, in mistaken experiments, ones to slay their enemies horribly. Ambition as strong as that which moved my mother worked in many of them, so that they strove to outdo each other to establish only their wills across the land.

They awakened much that should never have been allowed life—opened Gates into strange and fearful other dimensions. Then they warred, ravishing much of the land. Many of the forces they had unleashed were plagues destroying even some of the Power itself. The disputatious Lords withdrew as their numbers grew less, returning here to the home—heart of their own country. Some came quickly, alarmed and dismayed by manifestations that they could not control. Others lingered as long as they might, their roots planted so deeply in their own holdings that they could hardly face what seemed to them to be exile. Of these latter, a few never came back to Arvon.

Perhaps in the Dale land to the south, where another species of man now lives, they or their descendants still had a shadow life. But none here knew if that were so. For, after the last withdrawal, the ways outward from Arvon were spell-sealed, no one venturing forth again.

Still not all who had retreated were content with their escape from the results of folly. They continued to challenge their fellows, until the day when the Seven Lords rose in wrath and might, and there was a final, terrible confrontation between the ones who chose the path of struggle and those who wanted only peace and perhaps forgetfulness.

Many of the Great Ones who had used the Power to their own wills were thereafter either exiled beyond Gates that led to other dimensions and times or extinguished when their will force was utterly reft away. Then their followers also went into exile under certain bonds of time.

When I came upon that story in the Chronicles, I asked of Ursilla whether any of the wanderers had ever returned. I do not know why that was of importance to me, save that my imagination was struck by the thought of myself being so sent out of Arvon to wander hopelessly in an alien world.

“Some have.” She made me a short answer. “But those are the lesser. The Great Ones will not. It is of no matter now, Kethan. Nor should such concern you, boy. Be glad that you have been born into this time and place.”

Her voice to me was always sharp, as if she waited for me to commit some fault she could seize upon. Often, while reading, I would raise my head and find her staring at me with such an intentness that small sins I had reason to answer for were drawn to my mind immediately, and I squirmed upon my stool waiting for her to draw a confession from me by dominating will alone. But this never happened.

What did change was that I reached the age when, by custom, I must go out into the Youths’ Tower and there begin the tutorage that would make me a warrior (though for some long years there had been no war except some raiding at intervals from the wild men of the hills). The night before this event, Ursilla and Heroise took me into the inner chamber, which was Ursilla’s own shrine, if shrine might be the term given it.

Here the walls were not cloaked with hangings, but unadorned bare stone, having painted on them, in time-dulled colors, signs and runes I could not translate. In the middle of the floor stood a single block of stone as long as a bed a man might lie upon. It was lighted, head and foot, by candles, four of them, as thick as my small boy’s arm, set in tall holders of silver much pitted and worn, as if they also had existed for countless years.

Above the table hung a globe from which beamed a silver gleam nigh that of the moon itself. I could see no chain to support it. Rather, it was suspended there invisibly, while about the block, on the floor, was painted a five-pointed star. This glinted so bright and new the brush of its coloring might just have been lifted.

At each star point there stood another tall candle-holder, so that the wax cylinders so supported were on a level with Ursilla’s shoulder, well above my own head. The candles at the head and foot of the stone block were red, but those in the points were yellow.

In the corner of the room itself were braziers of the same silver as formed the candlesticks, each putting forth scented smoke, which curled up to the ceiling overhead where it gathered in a blanketing cloud.

Ursilla had put off her usual robe of dull gray, the coif of pleated linen that always wreathed her thin, sharply featured face and hid her hair. Now she stood, arms bare to the shoulders, hair dark, threaded with silver, lying loose over a robe of blue that drew the light of the silver moon overhead, until the fabric rippled with dazzling color.

On her breast lay a great ornament, also of silver, set with moonstones, the gems deeply milky, with about them some of the blue one sees in winter’s ice. And this pendant was fashioned in the form of a full moon.

My mother was also differently clad, though she was wont to go richly dressed always. Unlike Ursilla, she did not now appear more finely garbed than usual, but rather more simply. Her robe was orange, owning something of the orange of fire flames, across which her hair hung like a dark cloak. And the ornament she wore was not a moon, but rather an oval fashioned of copper, plain and un-gemmed.

She had led me into the chamber. Now she stood just beyond the edge of the star, her hands tightly gripping my shoulders as I stood before her, almost as if she feared that I might wish to escape. I was so overawed by what I saw that I did not think of what part I might be called upon to play here.

Ursilla moved about the block of stone, and, as she pointed her finger at each of the waiting candles, a small burst of flame answered her gesture as the wicks caught. At last, only the one directly before my mother and me remained unlit.

Now I was urged forward until we both crossed into the floor star. My mother, moving swiftly, caught me up, to lay me prone upon the stone of the table. As she settled me so, I felt suddenly drowsy, unable to move. Nor was I afraid.

The last of the star candles was crowned with flame. Now Ursilla lighted those at my head and feet in the same manner. While above, that waiting cloud of soft gray smoke began to descend. I felt the need to close my eyes. Faint and very far away, I heard a chanting rise. But the words had no meaning as I slipped into sleep.

When I awoke, it was early morning, and I lay in my own bed. I did not even have traces of dreams following me out of that strange sleep. However, the memory of its beginning clung. Again I sensed, young as I was, that I would not be told the meaning of what had happened to me. This was a secret thing about which it was best not to talk.

Commander Cadoc, my uncle, Lord Erach, and the main portion of the forces within the Keep were absent. They had gone with the Harvest gift of wine and grain to the holding of the Redmantle Clan Chief. So it was an older man who came to claim me that morning, one Pergvin whom I had seen many times before, since he was the outrider whenever Lady Eldris chose to move beyond the walls of the Keep.

In appearance, he was a man of middle years, and never a talkative one. Among his fellows he had a well-established place, as he was an expert swordsman and a good rider. But it would seem he had no ambition to climb higher in Erach’s service and was content with his life as it was. I was a little wary of him, for the one dark promise that lurked behind the excitement and small triumph of being promoted at last to the Youths’ Tower was the knowledge that there I would be largely at the mercy of my cousin Maughus. And since Pergvin was deemed of the Lady Eldris’s household, he would also be ready to favor my tormentor.

“Lord Kethan.” He spoke formally, sketching a gesture such as men used to an officer. Then he looked beyond me to where my mother stood, straight-backed, no shade of any emotion on the smooth face, which always bore a youthful glow as if she were still a young maid, with only the glitter of her eyes betraying the mind that was very old indeed in many ways.

“My Lady, Lord Erach has given me governorship over Lord Kethan for the while. All will be well with him—”

She nodded. “That I know, Pergvin. Son—” Now she spoke directly to me. “Bear well what lies now before you, put aside childhood, and reach for all that shall make you more speedily a man.”

My excitement had ebbed, my apprehension grew. For in those moments I felt myself far from a man, rather more and more of a child without any security in which I might trust. This Pergvin would take me from the safe cover that had sheltered me all my life, deliver me directly into another world in which Maughus had power and I no defense. That I could stand up to his bullying, I did not believe, having tasted too much of his sly trouble-making during the short visits when I had not been able to escape his company. But that I should ask for any aid, either from that stern person who was my mother, or from this stranger who had come to fetch me, that I would not do. For young as I was, I determined within myself that no one, above all Maughus, must ever guess I felt fear. That was the deepest shame, one I dared not allow myself to sink to.

“You will have a lonely time of it, Lord.” Pergvin had not taken me by the hand, I noted thankfully, as if I must be drawn reluctantly to a waiting doom. And when he spoke to me it was with the tone of one addressing an equal in age, not one trying to force awkward conversation with a small boy. “Lord Maughus has gone with the gift party, we shall have the Youths’ Tower mainly to ourselves.”

I hoped that my relief at that news was not openly manifest. At least some kind fate had given me a space of time in which to learn a little about this new life without having to be on guard against the spite of my cousin. I longed to ask questions, but my fear of being thought too much a child kept me quiet.

We had crossed the wide courtyard and were near the door of the Tower that was to be my new home when there was a sudden loud barking. A great, spotted hound flashed out of nowhere. To me he looked very large, and, as his lips drew back in a warning snarl, his fangs showed threateningly. But, just as he might have been about to leap at me, he flattened to the ground, his snarls changing to a whining. Though I knew very little of dogs, having seen them only at a distance, this behavior was not natural, of that I was sure. Whining, saliva dripping from his jaws, the dog faced me for a long moment. Then, with a loud cry, he backed away, snapping and snarling, as if he faced some enemy too strong to attack, before he fled, tucking his tail tight against his haunches.

I watched him go in dumb surprise. When he had first appeared I had known a flash of fear. Now this abject terror in the hound’s flight was utterly puzzling. Had Pergvin in some way caused that to protect me?

However, when I turned to gaze at my companion, I saw amazement as open as my own mirrored on his face. He studied me oddly, as if, before his eyes, I had somehow grown some monstrous form. Then he shook his head slightly, as if he might be trying so to brush off some confusing fog.

“Now that be a queer happening—” he said slowly, though I believed he spoke his own thought aloud and was not addressing me. “Why should Latchet do so?” He was frowning a little, though the puzzlement was still to be read along with that frown. “Eh, a queer thing that do be. Ah, well, we’d best step out briskly, my Lord. It be close on the nooning and this afternoon we must get you a mount—”

I found the food brought me by Pergvin much plainer than that served at my mother’s table, being mainly a round of cold meat, some cheese and bread. But all tasted good, and I left very few crumbs. When I had washed my hands in the table basin, I was willing enough to face my new lessons, which were to begin with riding.

My mother’s life had been strictly within the Keep walls, and the one or two times I had been beyond them were to walk through field or garden with one of her women. Neither she nor Ursilla had encouraged or allowed outside exploration. But if I learned to ride, then I, too, could see the wide world, perhaps next year accompanying my uncle on such a journey as Maughus this time shared. So eagerly I followed Pergvin to the stable that afternoon.

He led me down the line of stalls. Horses eyed me over the half doors that kept each in its own place. They tossed their heads, snorted, made ear-piercing noises. Again I was surprised, for when I had watched, from the Tower windows, riders coming and going in the courtyard, I had never been aware of such uneasiness and din.

Men turned about to watch me coming, and several of them hurried to quiet mounts who now reared up and kicked at the wooden walls about them, making an even greater confusion. Then I was aware of Pergvin’s hand hard and heavy on my shoulder, as he turned me back toward the outer door.

“Out with you, my Lord,” he ordered urgently. “Wait you outside until I come.”

I would not run, I told myself, I would walk, though I felt about me a great fog of fear, so that my heart beat faster, and I found myself breathing in short gasps. But walk I did, hoping again to display nothing that these men could see and know to be signs betraying that fear.