Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [101]
I’m here, he thought.
Once again: Betrayal. Danger. He sat quietly, trying to open his mind as he did to the taig. They lie. She had conveyed that before, but who lied? She trusted. Who trusted? A fuzzy image of a face leaning down, a sense of warmth and safety. Kieri finally realized this was an adult’s face as a very small child might see it … a face he almost knew … did know, as he noticed the elven bone structure, subtly different from human.
Our mother trusted? Trusted whom?
This time the image was clear as if incised in crystal: the Lady. Their grandmother. A wave of distrust and anger came with it. Kieri tried to think it through: their mother had trusted their grandmother, and his sister thought their grandmother had … had what? Neglected her in some way? Betrayed that trust? But how? The obvious was behaving as she had with him, staying away, not helping in some way.
You trusted. All wistfulness with that, a palpable stroke along his left cheek. You left. You never came again. Followed by a burst of anger.
The hair stood up on Kieri’s body; he could feel it prickling in his clothes. Betrayal … could she mean his mother’s death? His captivity? Nausea roiled his gut; he stood up, gulping, struggling not to pollute the ossuary, and staggered into the anteroom.
“Sir King!” The Seneschal stared at him. “What’s wrong—what can I—?”
Kieri could not speak; he lurched up the stairs barefoot with the Seneschal behind him, still talking. His Squires, at the entrance, turned to him; he saw the shock on their faces. It didn’t matter. It could not be true, she must be mistaken, it could not be—he made it to a corner of the courtyard, leaned over, and spewed, choking, tears suddenly burning his eyes and overflowing.
Moments later someone handed him a cloth; he wiped his mouth. Another cloth, this one wet; he wiped his face and tried to stand, but his stomach betrayed him, and he had to bend and gag, bile burning his mouth. Hands steadied him; he began to know where he was, that the Squires were screening him from view, that they had brought water, towels, his cloak, that his feet burned from the hot pave stones.
Finally, aching as if he had a fever, he was able to stand, clean his face again, turn away from the mess on the stones.
“Come, sit here,” the Seneschal said. He had brought a chair and set it in the shade of a wall. Kieri leaned on a Squire’s arm without noticing whose it was, made his way to the chair, and sat. The Seneschal washed and dried his feet, put on his socks, helped him into his boots. His breathing steadied. He accepted the mug of cold water someone brought, sipped. It stayed down.
“I’m … sorry,” Kieri said.
“Sir King … Something happened—the bones.” The Seneschal’s wise gaze held his.
“I … believe I misunderstood,” Kieri said. “It must be that I misunderstood.” Out here, under the bright sky, what he had been shown and events he had surmised from it were impossible to imagine, let alone believe real. His sister had been a tiny child, barely walking, when their mother died; how could she know what their mother thought—whom their mother trusted—who had betrayed their mother and him, if indeed it was not a random attack by brigands? Whatever his sister believed, he could not—he would not—believe that his grandmother had connived at his mother’s death. “And,” he said, trying to straighten more in the chair, “I may have a touch of summer fever. I drank from a spring yesterday—” A spring the taig had assured him was safe, but tainted water could cause summer fever.
“Sir King,” the Seneschal said. “Bones do not lie.”
Kieri looked up at that old, wise face. “Bones can be mistaken,” he said.
“Yes,” the Seneschal agreed. “But if it comes to the living tongue or the bones: bones do not lie, and tongues do. Whatever you learned from bones will have truth in it. I pray you, come again to the ossuary and listen.”