Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [188]
“That is good news,” the Duke said, “though it may shock you to hear me say it. They were under attainder. If I could put a name to them, I could tell the king they are dead. I’ve worried they might come back and cause trouble here.”
“Is that the last of them?”
“Almost certainly not.” The Duke sighed. “My relatives could transfer their own minds and souls into another’s body. The family rolls give some hint to the pretransfer identity of these, but I’m not sure they were ever all recorded. Most horribly, they killed children—sickened them to near death, and then forced themselves into the child’s body, dislodging the original spirit.”
“Falk’s Oath!” Arian said. She thought of the orchard. “Did you—are any such children buried in the orchard out there?”
“Yes. The first I found. You cannot imagine—or perhaps you can—how horrible it was to realize that these children were not children at all, but ancient evil souls in children’s bodies.”
“You killed them.”
“Yes.” The Duke’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I had to, to save the others. But it haunts me still.” She took a deep breath. “Thank you for your news, Arian. At least there are six no longer a menace. Do you think I might gain permission to exhume the bodies and send proof to the king that they are dead, perhaps even identify them?”
“That I do not know,” Arian said. “I know which rangers buried them, though I did not visit the grave site myself. It is our custom, as perhaps you do not know, to leave bodies in the ground until Alyanya has taken their flesh to replenish the earth, and then raise the bones. I think you do not have the same rites—”
Dorrin’s brows had gone up. “No. We do not. We raise a mound, after a battle, or bury in permanent graves otherwise. What—” She looked worried. “What do you do with the bones?”
“Paint them with the life’s story of the dead, and place them with honor,” Arian said. “What else?”
“Old humans—you mean those whose people were here before the magelords?”
“Yes,” Arian said. She could see that Dorrin was upset but could not imagine why. Surely a seasoned soldier would not be afraid of bones.
“My people were magelords,” Dorrin said, her voice rough with emotion. “I think—I know—that magelords had a different use for bones, or some of them did. Nothing so benign as telling the stories of lives.” She swallowed, then shook her head for a moment, and when she spoke, her voice had eased. “But tell me now—you say you were formerly a forest ranger—how do the rangers, or part-elves in general, regard your new king? You know, of course, that I served under him most of my life.”
Arian shifted in her chair. “He is the king we hoped for,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “He has already begun bringing elf and human closer together, and his taig-sense and magery—”
“Magery? I never knew him to have magery.”
“Had he grown up in Lyonya, he would have received it from both parents, elven and human both: the royal magery was always joined.”
“I wish I’d been able to attend his coronation,” the Duke said. “I heard about it from Paks—the Girdish paladin you may have heard of.”
“Yes,” Arian said. “I met her once.”
The Duke went on. “She changed his life for certain—she changed all of us, will or nil, when she returned to us as a paladin, and took Tammarion’s sword off the wall—”
Arian said nothing, trying to gather her thoughts, and the Duke went on talking about Paks. The tale was long; the Duke had just worked her way up to Kieri’s summons to the Tsaian court when a bell rang below.
“Good heavens, I’ve talked far too much,” the Duke said. “Cook will be annoyed if we don’t get downstairs at once.” She grinned. “I may be a duke, but Cook is convinced dukes shouldn’t be late to meals.”
Downstairs they found Gwenno waiting in the small dining room. “All’s settled, my lord,” Gwenno said. “Troops have been fed, horses are all groomed and stalled, and no alarms.”
“Excellent,” the Duke said. As they ate, she asked her squire about the patrol; Arian listened without commenting. Gwenno’s report