Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [168]
Two days later, as the party neared Chaya, Kieri felt the now-familiar lift of heart as the tall trees of the King’s Grove came into view. Though they had ridden through forests almost bare of leaves most of the way, the King’s Grove held its leaves, now gold and orange, with touches of red here and there in the blackwoods, still mostly green. He felt an urge to leg his mount into a gallop, be home—his real home—as soon as possible, but made himself hold Oak to a quiet canter up the long slope from the bridge. Horns called; he’d been seen. He waved to acknowledge them, and had Oak at a walk before he reached the city.
The moment he was inside the palace, his staff descended on him. It was only midafternoon; he had been gone six days … he fended them off long enough to take a bath in the tub the king of Pargun had ridiculed, and change into more comfortable clothes. Then it was questions, complaints, disputes, and information someone thought he should know. He worked through a third of it before dinner. He had seen letters from both Arcolin and Dorrin in the piles of dispatches, and put them aside to read later.
After dinner, he had a meeting with the Council, attended by the Knight-Commander and, to the others’ surprise, Elis. Kieri gave them a short version of the trip and its outcome, to the point where the traitor stabbed the Pargunese king.
“Didn’t he have mail on? I know you found some to fit—”
“He wouldn’t wear it. Said it would anger his lords; they’d think he didn’t trust them.”
“He shouldn’t have, if one of them stabbed him.”
“It wasn’t one he’d invited. Someone who supposedly happened across them as they traveled, and they thought best to bring him along. He proved a traitor.”
“Well, if he’d had the mail on—”
“ ‘If only’ mends no pots,” Kieri said. He was tired, and also had no idea how to tell what had happened next.
“So the king died,” Belvarin said, giving him the opening.
“No,” Kieri said. “He’s alive and back in Pargun, or I should say he was alive and his boat reached the Pargunese side of the river four days ago.”
“So—it wasn’t a serious wound?”
The Knight-Commander held up his hand. “You must tell them, Sir King.” They had argued about this all the way back from Riverwash; Kieri felt it was boasting when he did not even know how he had done what he’d done, but the Knight-Commander insisted that was not the point: the Council needed to know what he was capable of whether he understood it or not.
“What? What?” Sier Tolmaric looked from side to side like a startled hen.
“I healed him,” Kieri said. Best get it over. “I didn’t know I could, but I was not going to watch him die of a poisoned blade—”
“Poisoned! You healed him of a poisoned wound?!”
“Yes,” Kieri said. “Or rather, I believe the gods healed him at my request.”
“The light,” the Knight-Commander murmured.
Kieri sighed. “I would rather have told you after talking to my elven tutor. I am not sure how much of what happened was due to my elven blood and how much to the human powers I inherited. But … there was light.”
The Knight-Commander snorted. “That is like saying ‘There was blood’ after cutting a pig’s throat.”
“You tell it, then,” Kieri said. “Perhaps you saw more of it than I did.”
The Knight-Commander’s version went into details Kieri thought he could well have left unsaid. From their arrival in Riverwash to the Pargunese arrival, the king throwing his son in the river, all of it, including every detail of Kieri’s own actions. “The light was not exactly the same as elf-light,” the Knight-Commander said. “Not so … silvery. And no sense of being out of time or place, as when the Lady extends her realm. Commonplace things stayed