Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [4]
“But Paks said there were magelords in enchanted sleep out there,” Harin said. Mention of Paks caught Kieri’s attention. “If they are magelords, are any of them Verrakaien?”
Kieri opened his eyes. “What magelords? Where?”
“In Kolobia,” Harin said. “When Paks was there with the Girdish, she said there were noble warriors in the stronghold the Girdish call Luap’s. Didn’t she tell you?”
She had, he remembered. Kieri nodded to show he understood.
“If some were Verrakaien, would they be under attainder if they were to wake?” Arian asked. She sounded fully awake herself. Kieri turned his head and glanced at her. She was plaiting the stems of pink and yellow flowers into a crown.
“Who could wake them?” Maelith asked. She fitted a wristlet of blue flowers over her hand and began work on another.
“Who would want to?” Harin asked. “Magelords were always trouble. Let them sleep, I say, until the end of time.” Then he flushed as Kieri looked at him. The king, after all, had magelord blood. “The Tsaian ones, I meant.”
“The Girdish are trying to find out,” Kieri said without raising his head. “The Marshal-General visited me last winter—back in Tsaia—and I heard a little about it then.”
“Surely whoever put them to sleep could wake them,” Arian said. “And that I would like to know: how did they come to be sleeping there, and who else might be sleeping somewhere else?”
A disquieting thought. Kieri considered what little he knew of Kolobia, what Paks had told him. The magelords had taken refuge in that land, been attacked by something—perhaps the iynisin who attacked Paks—and then cast into an enchanted sleep. Why? For what purpose? And if what cast that sleep ended it, what would come out from that distant fortress? Allies or enemies?
“Maybe dragons out of the old tales are asleep somewhere, too,” Maelith said.
“Dragons! They’re all gone; Camwyn Dragonmaster sent them away.”
“We thought magelords were all gone,” Arian pointed out. “Maybe dragons are just sleeping.”
“They were said to be shape-shifters as well,” Sarol said, putting a pink and white wreath on his head. “We might have one in Chaya today: would we know?”
“The Lady would, surely,” Arian said.
Kieri glanced around at his Squires, now all decked with flower wristlets, garlands, crowns of flowers. They looked harmless as any of the farm lads and lasses strolling down the lane but for the swords and bows laid close at their sides.
Some of them, he thought, must be barely out of Falk’s Hall—certainly not more than a year or so. He felt his years of war and intrigue as a chasm separating them from him. Even Garris, leaning against a tree a few lengths away, a stone jar of summerwine in his hand, seemed young in comparison. His gaze met Arian’s.
“I could make you one,” Arian said, holding up a handful of flowers and grinning down at him as if she’d read his thoughts.
“Oh, just give him yours, Arian,” Panin said, in a teasing tone. “Berne will plait you one to make it up.”
Arian shook her head and gave Kieri a look he couldn’t interpret. “No,” she said, “I’ll make my own.” Before Kieri could move, she’d dropped her flower crown on his chest and turned away to pick more flowers.
It was not the first time he’d felt silent communications between Squires wafting past him, but he was not going to respond to it, whatever it was. If there were covert courtships or rivalries going on, better not to know. He’d learned that in the first few years he’d commanded his own company.
That Midsummer night, he and the Lady sang together again, Kieri trying to blend his taig-sense with hers. Once more she had arrived just in time, but he knew she would stay for the feast. The light of her own kingdom, the elvenhome kingdom, rose around them; the trees of the grove glowed silver-green. Other elves appeared from the trees below, circling the mound. Kieri had met many of them by now and knew their names, their families, some of their history.
After the ceremony the Lady sat enthroned on the mound,