Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [3]
Yes.
What … do you want? From his father’s hand—he could not think it otherwise—came a sense of love, support, peace. He could almost smell that dimly remembered smell, from times his father had picked him up and held him close. From his sister’s hand, something different: affection, wistfulness, and—stronger as he listened—anger. Then, sudden and strong: betrayal and warning.
Kieri scarcely breathed. Betrayal? Danger? Who?
They lie. She—But that was interrupted; his right cheek seemed to feel more pressure.
Not now. No shadows this day.
The sensation faded, his father’s faster than his sister’s, leaving the certainty that he had more to learn from them. The final word from his father felt like duty … from his sister, like judgment.
“Sir King.”
Kieri opened eyes he had not realized he’d closed; the Seneschal knelt before him, picking up the Suncandle’s holder, in which only a puddle of wax remained.
“The candle has ended, Sir King.”
“Thank you,” Kieri said. He had no idea how long it had burned. “I … I will need to talk with you after the rest of this.” A wave of the hand encompassed all the Midsummer rituals.
“I wondered,” the Seneschal said. “From my post I saw the Suncandle burn higher than I have ever seen it before. When it flares, sometimes there is a message.”
“There was … something,” Kieri said. “Something I do not understand, but must.” He shook his head to clear it. “Seneschal, do the bones ever speak to you?”
“Speak to me? You mean, do I hear voices?”
“I suppose … or something, some knowledge you feel the bones are giving you?”
“That, yes, Sir King. Just as you said you did, on your first visit. Is that not still happening?”
“Yes. But I do not know … how much is real. How much is my wish, or my … I was never given to fancies, that I know of.”
“Nor would I think you so, Sir King. You have every aspect of a practical man, a man of experience and action. If your ancestors’ bones are telling you something, then to my mind you should listen. I am at your service whenever you wish, but is it so urgent that you must ignore this feast?”
“No … I think not.” Kieri sat down on the bench outside the ossuary to put on his boots. “I must come back again, find the time to sit awhile with them, and then—then I will need to ask you how to interpret what I think I hear.”
He found the court waiting for him outside, musicians and all. He led them to feast in the shade of the trees at the edge of the Royal Ride. They ate sitting on the grass, even the stuffiest of the Siers, and watched as a parade of livestock decked with flowers and ribbons, mellow bells around their necks clonking gently, ambled past on the main street. Music eddied in and out of hearing as the breeze shifted: ballads, jigs, round dances.
“We never did any of this in the north,” he said to Arian, one of his half-elven Squires. In the quarter-year since his coronation, he’d found himself attracted to her despite the disparity in their ages and his determination not to involve himself with much younger women. “I wish I’d thought of it.” It did no harm to talk to her, he told himself.
“Were you even there, in Midsummer?” she asked.
“Not often. I spent the summers in Aarenis.” Hot summers those had been, sweat gluing his shirt to his body, sun beating down on his helm. “When we were in a safe camp, I poured a libation on Midsummer Morn, and some of the troops would sing songs through the night.” Kieri lay back on the soft grass, eyes half-closed against the gleams of sun coming through the tree’s canopy overhead, and pushed those memories away; the present peace and ease were too precious to waste. After a time, the Squires talked softly among themselves. He scarcely listened, letting his mind wander to the coronation taking place in neighboring Tsaia, to his former captains