The Complete Chalion Read online

  To Teidez’s ill-concealed impatience, Iselle demanded a stop here, and sent Cazaril scurrying into the temple’s echoing inner courtyard to lay an offering of coins upon the altar of the Lady of Spring in gratitude for their safe journey. An acolyte took charge of it with thanks and stared curiously at Cazaril; Cazaril mumbled a brief distracted prayer and hurried back out to mount again.

  Climbing the long shallow slope toward the Zangre, they passed through streets where houses of the nobility, built of dressed stone and with elaborate iron grilles protecting windows and gates, loomed shoulder to shoulder, high and square. The dowager royina had lived in one such, for a time in her early widowhood. Iselle excitedly identified three possible candidates for her childhood home, until, overcome with confusion, she made Cazaril promise to determine later which had been hers.

  At last they rode up to the great gate of the Zangre itself. A natural cleft across the plateau opened just before it into a sharp shadowed crevice, more daunting than any moat. On the far side, huge boulders formed the lowest course of stones in the walls; irregular, but fitting so tightly a knife blade could not have slid between them. Atop them, fine Roknari work, its delicate traceries of geometric decoration seeming sugar rather than stone. Atop that, yet more crisp-cut stone, towering higher and higher as if men competed with the gods who had thrown up the great rock the whole edifice stood upon. The Zangre was the only castle Cazaril had ever been in where he suffered whirling vertigo standing at the bottom looking up.

  A horn sounded from above, and soldiers in the livery of Roya Orico saluted as they rode across the drawbridge and through the narrow archway into the courtyard. Lady Betriz clutched her reins and stared around with her lips parted. The courtyard was dominated by a huge high rectangular tower, newest and crispest, the addition of the reign of Roya Ias and Lord dy Lutez. Cazaril had always wondered if its great size was a measure of the men’s strength…or their fears. A little beyond it, almost as high, a round tower loomed at one corner of the main block. Its slate roof was tumbled in, and its tall top ragged and broken.

  “Dear gods,” said Betriz, staring at the half ruin, “what happened there? Why don’t they repair it?”

  “Ah,” said Cazaril, thrown into tutorial mode, considerably more for his own reassurance than Betriz’s. “That’s the tower of Roya Fonsa the Wise.” Known more commonly, after his death, as Fonsa the Fairly-Wise. “They say he used to walk upon it all night, trying to read the will of the gods and the fate of Chalion in the stars. On the night he worked his miracle of death magic upon the Golden General, a great storm and gouts of lightning threw down the roof, and set a fire that didn’t burn out until morning despite the torrents of rain.”

  When the Roknari had first invaded from the sea, they had overrun most of Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar in their first violent burst, even past Cardegoss, to the very feet of the southern mountain ranges. Darthaca itself had been threatened by their advance parties. But from the ashes of the weak Old Kingdoms and the harsh cradle of the hills new men had emerged, fighting for generations to regain what had been lost in those first few years. Warrior-thieves, they made an economy of raiding; noble fortunes were not made, but stolen. Turnabout, for the Roknari idea of tax collection was a column of soldiers taking all in their winding path at sword’s point, like locusts in arms. Bribe and counterbribe turned the columns back, until Chalion was become an odd interlocking dance of counting armies and armed accountants. But over time, the Roknari were pushed back north toward the sea again, leaving behind as legacy a residue of castles and brutality. At length the invaders were reduced to the five squabbling princedoms hugging the north coast.

  The Golden General, the Lion of Roknar, had looked to reverse the ebb of his history. By war, guile, and marriage he had in ten blazing years united all five princedoms for almost the first time since the Roknari had landed. Barely thirty, he’d gathered a great tide of men into his hands, preparing to sweep south once more, declaring he would wipe the Quintarian heretics and the worship of the Bastard from the face of the land with fire and sword. Desperate and disunited, Chalion, Ibra, and Brajar were losing against him on every front.

  More ordinary forms of assassination failing, death magic was tried upon the golden genius a dozen times and more, without result. Fonsa the Wise, from deep study, reasoned that the Golden General must be the chosen of one of the gods; no sacrifice less than that of a king could balance his thundering destiny. Fonsa had lost five sons and heirs one after another in the wars to the north. Ias, his last and youngest, was locked in bitter struggle with the Roknari for the final mountain passes blocking their invasion routes. One stormy night, taking only a divine of the Bastard who was in his confidence and a loyal young page, Fonsa had mounted his tower, locking its door behind him…

  The courtiers of Chalion had pulled three charred bodies from the rubble the following morning; only the differing heights allowed them to tell divine from page from roya. Shocked and terrified, the trembling court had awaited its fate. The courier from Cardegoss, galloping north with the news of loss and woe, met the courier galloping south from Ias with news of victory. Funeral and coronation were celebrated simultaneously within the Zangre’s walls.

  Cazaril stared around at those walls now. “When Royse—now Roya—Ias returned from the war,” he went on to Betriz, “he ordered the lower windows and doors of his dead father’s tower bricked up, and proclaimed that no one should enter it again.”

  A dark, flapping shape launched itself from the tower’s top, and Betriz squeaked and ducked.

  “Crows have nested in it ever since,” Cazaril noted, tilting his head back to watch the black silhouette wheel against the intense blue sky. “I believe it’s the same flock of sacred crows the divines of the Bastard feed in the temple yard. Intelligent birds. The acolytes make pets of them and teach them to speak.”

  Iselle, who had drawn closer as Cazaril had discoursed upon her royal grandfather’s fate, asked, “What do they say?”

  “Not much,” Cazaril admitted, with a quick grin at her. “I never saw one that had a vocabulary of more than three squawks. Although some of the acolytes insisted they were saying more.”

  Warned by the outrider dy Sanda had sent on ahead, a swarm of grooms and servants rushed out to assist the arriving guests. The Zangre’s castle warder, with his own hands, positioned a mounting bench for Royesse Iselle. Perhaps thrown into consciousness of her dignity by this gentleman’s bending gray head, she used the step for a change, parting from her horse with ladylike grace. Teidez tossed his reins to a bowing groom and stared about with shining eyes. The warder made rapid conference with dy Sanda and Cazaril of a dozen practical details, from stabling the horses and grooms to—Cazaril grinned briefly—stabling the royse and royesse.

  The warder escorted the royal children to their rooms in the left wing of the main block, followed by a parade of servants lugging the baggage. Teidez and his entourage were given half a floor; Iselle and her ladies, the floor above them. Cazaril was assigned a small room on the gentlemen’s floor, but at the very end. He wondered if he was expected to guard the staircase.

  “Rest and refresh yourselves,” the warder said. “The roya and royina will receive you at a celebratory banquet this evening, attended by all the court.” A rush of servants bringing wash water, clean linens, bread, fruit, pastries, cheese, and wine assured the visitors from Valenda that they were not abandoned to starve between now and then.

  “Where are my royal brother and sister-in-law?” Iselle asked the warder.

  The warder made her a little bow. “The royina is resting. The roya is visiting his menagerie, which is a great consolation to him.”

  “I’d like to see it,” she said, a little wistfully. “He has often written me of it.”

  “Tell him so. He’ll like to show it to you,” the warder assured her with a smile.

  The ladies’ party was soon deeply involved in a frantic turning out of luggage to select garments for the banqu
et, an exercise that quite clearly did not require Cazaril’s inexpert assistance. He directed the servant to place his trunk in his narrow room and depart, dropped his saddlebags on his bed, and rooted through them to find the letter to Orico the Provincara had strictly charged him to deliver, into the roya’s hand and no other, at his earliest possible moment upon arrival. He paused only to wash the road dirt from his hands and spare a quick glance out his window. The deep ravine on this side of the castle seemed to plunge straight down below his sill. A dizzying glint of water from the stream was just visible through the treetops far below.

  Cazaril only lost his way once on the way to the menagerie, which was outside the walls and across the gardens, an adjunct of the stables. If nothing else he could identify it by the sharp, acrid smell of strange manures neither human nor equine. Cazaril stared into an arched aisle of the stone building, his eyes adjusting to its cool shade, and diffidently entered.

  A couple of former stalls were converted to cages for a pair of wonderfully glossy black bears. One was asleep on a pile of clean golden straw; the other stared up at him, lifting its muzzle and sniffing hopefully as Cazaril passed. On the other side of the aisle stalls housed some very strange beasts that Cazaril could not even put a name to, like tall leggy goats, but with long curving necks, mild and liquid eyes, and thick soft fur. In a room to one side, a dozen large, brilliantly colored birds on perches preened and muttered, and other tiny, equally bright ones twittered and flitted in cages lining the wall. Across from the aviary, in an open bay, he found human occupants at last: a neat groom in the roya’s livery, and a fat man sitting cross-legged on a table, holding a leopard by its jeweled collar. Cazaril gasped and froze as the man ducked his head right next to the great cat’s open jaws.

  The man was currying the beast vigorously. A cloud of yellow and black hairs rose from the pair as the leopard writhed on the table in what Cazaril recognized, after a blink, as feline ecstasy. Cazaril’s eye was so locked by the leopard, it took him another moment to recognize the man as Roya Orico.

  The dozen years since Cazaril had last glimpsed him had not been kind. Orico had never been a handsome man, even in the vigor of his youth. He was a little below average in height, with a short nose unfortunately broken in a riding accident in his teens and now looking rather like a squashed mushroom in the middle of his face. His hair had been auburn and curly. It was now roan, still curly but much thinner. His hair was the only thing about him that was thinner; his body was grossly broadened. His face was pale and puffy, with baggy eyelids. He chirped at his spotted cat, who rubbed its head against the roya’s tunic, shedding more hairs, then licked the brocade vigorously with a tongue the size of a washcloth, evidently pursuing a large gravy stain that had trailed down over the roya’s impressive paunch. The roya’s sleeves were rolled up, and half a dozen scabbed scratches scored his arms. The great cat caught a bare arm, and held it in its yellow teeth briefly, but did not close its jaws. Cazaril unwound his clutching fingers from his sword hilt, and cleared his throat.

  As the roya turned his head, Cazaril fell to one knee. “Sire, I bear you respectful greetings from the Dowager Provincara of Baocia, and this her letter.” He held out the paper, and added, just in case no one had mentioned it to him yet, “Royse Teidez and Royesse Iselle are arrived safely, sire.”

  “Oh, yes.” The roya jerked his head at the elderly groom, who went to relieve Cazaril of the letter with a graceful bow.

  “Her Grace the Dowager instructed me to deliver it into your hand,” Cazaril added uncertainly.

  “Yes, yes—just a moment—” With some effort, Orico bent over his belly to give the cat one quick hug, then clipped a silver chain to its collar. Chirping some more, he urged it to leap lightly from the table. He dismounted more heavily, and said, “Here, Umegat.”

  This was evidently the groom’s name, not the cat’s, for the man stepped forward and took the silver leash in exchange for the letter. He led the beast to its cage a little way down the aisle, unceremoniously shoving it in with a knee to its rump when it paused to rub on the bars. Cazaril breathed a little easier when the groom locked the cage.

  Orico broke the seal, scattering wax on the swept tiled floor. Absently, he motioned Cazaril to his feet and read slowly down the Provincara’s spidery handwriting, pausing to move the paper closer or farther and squinting now and then. Cazaril, falling easily back into his old courier mode, folded his hands behind his back and waited patiently to be questioned or dismissed at Orico’s will.

  Cazaril eyed the groom—head groom?—as he waited. Even without the clue of the name, the man was obviously of Roknari descent. Umegat had been tallish, but was now a little stooped. His skin, which must have been burnished gold in his youth, was leathery, its color faded to ivory. Fine wrinkles wreathed his eyes and mouth. His curly bronze hair, going gray, was tightly bound to his head in two braids that ran from his temples over his crown to meet in the back in a neat queue, an old Roknari style. It made him look pure Roknari, though half-breeds abounded in Chalion; Roya Orico himself had a couple of Roknari princesses up his family tree on both the Chalionese and Brajaran sides, the source of the family hair. The groom wore the service livery of the Zangre, tunic and leggings and a knee-length tabard with the symbol of Chalion, a royal leopard rampant upon a stylized castle, stitched upon it. He looked considerably tidier and more fastidious than his master.

  Orico finished the letter, and sighed. “Royina Ista upset, was she?” he said to Cazaril.

  “She was naturally disturbed to be parted from her children,” said Cazaril cautiously.

  “I was afraid of that. Can’t be helped. As long as she is disturbed in Valenda, and not in Cardegoss. I’ll not have her here, she’s too…difficult.” He rubbed his nose on the back of his hand, and sniffed. “Tell Her Grace the Provincara she has all my esteem, and assure her that I have concerned myself with her grandchildren’s good fates. They have their brother’s protection.”

  “I plan to write to her tonight, sire, to assure her of our safe arrival. I will convey your words.”

  Orico nodded shortly, rubbed his nose again, and squinted at Cazaril. “Do I know you?”

  “I…shouldn’t think so, sire. I am lately appointed by the Dowager Provincara to be secretary to the Royesse Iselle. I had served the late provincar of Baocia as a page, in my youth,” he added, by way of recommendation. He did not mention his service in dy Guarida’s train, which might well trigger the roya’s more recent memory, not that he had ever been more than one of the crowd of dy Guarida’s men. A little unplanned disguise was surely lent him by his recent beard, his gray-flecked hair, his general debilitation—if Orico didn’t recognize him, was there a chance that others also might not? He wondered how long he could go here at Cardegoss without giving his own name. Too late to change it, alas.

  He could remain anonymous a little while longer, it appeared, for Orico nodded in apparent satisfaction and waved his hand in dismissal. “You’ll be at the banquet, then. Tell my fair sister I look forward to seeing her there.”

  Cazaril bowed obediently and withdrew.

  He chewed worriedly upon his lower lip as he made his way back to the gate of the Zangre. If all the court was to attend tonight’s welcoming banquet, Chancellor the March dy Jironal, Orico’s chief staff and support, would not be absent; and where the march went, his brother Lord Dondo usually attended upon him.

  Maybe they won’t remember me either. It had been well over two years since the fall—shameful sale—of Gotorget, and longer than that since the unpleasant incident in mad Prince Olus’s tent. Cazaril’s existence could never have been more than a petty irritation to these powerful lords. They could not know that he had realized his sale to the galleys had been calculated betrayal and not mischance. If he did nothing to draw attention to himself, they would not be reminded of what they had forgotten, and he would be safe.

  A fool’s hope.

  Cazaril’s shoulders hunched, and his stride lengthen
ed.

  BACK IN HIS HIGH CHAMBER, CAZARIL FINGERED HIS SOBER brown wool robe and black vest-cloak longingly. But, obedient to the orders sent down from the floor above via a breathless maidservant, he donned much gaudier garb, an eggshell-blue tunic with turquoise brocade vestments and dark blue trousers from the old provincar’s store, still smelling faintly of the spices they’d been packed with as proof against moths. Boots and sword completed a courtier’s attire, even if it lacked the wealth of rings and chains.

  At Teidez’s urgent behest Cazaril stumped upstairs to check if his ladies were ready yet, there to discover that he was part of an ensemble. Iselle was arrayed in her finest favored blue-and-white gown and robes, and Betriz and the lady-in-waiting wore layers featuring turquoise and night-blue respectively. Someone in the party had come down on the side of restraint, and Iselle was decked in jewels befitting a maiden, mere diamond sparks in her ears, a brooch at her cleavage, one enameled belt, and only two rings. Betriz displayed some of the rest of the inventory, on loan. Cazaril stood straighter and regretted his resplendency less, determined to hold up his part for Iselle.

  After only some seven or eight delays for last-minute exchanges and adjustments of clothing or decoration, Cazaril herded them all downstairs to join Teidez and his little entourage of rank, consisting of dy Sanda, the Baocian captain who had guarded their journey, and his chief sergeant at arms, the latter pair in their best livery, all with jewel-hilted swords. Swishing and clinking, they followed the royal page who was sent to guide them to Orico’s throne room.

  They paused briefly in the antechamber, where they formed up in proper order under the whispered instructions from the castle warder. Doors swung wide, sweet horns sounded, and the warder announced in stentorian breaths, “The Royse Teidez dy Chalion! The Royesse Iselle dy Chalion! Ser dy Sanda—” and on down the pack in strict order of rank, ending with “Lady Betriz dy Ferrej, Castillar Lupe dy Cazaril, Sera Nan dy Vrit!”