Kings of the North - Elizabeth Moon [91]
“No … it was a test …”
The Marshal-General gave Arvid a warning glance. “Baris, do you remember anything more about the man. Young, old, bearded, clean-shaven, dark hair or light?”
“There wasn’t much light. He was about as tall as you, Marshal-General, and his hair was … not black, and not really light. Brown, I guess. He had a short beard, like a lot of Marshals. Hair to here—” Baris touched his shoulder.
“Would he look like a Marshal out of that tabard, Baris?” Arvid asked. “Would you recognize him in ordinary garb, say, if he cut his hair?” The boy merely looked confused.
Once back in her office, Arianya summoned the Archivist to see what more had been learned from Luap’s scrolls while she was away.
“Quite a bit, Marshal-General, but the most important things may be these: that cloth we found was an altar cloth for the High Lord’s Hall made by a mageborn woman named Dorhaniya. That’s in both Luap’s writings and the records here. Gird himself gave permission for her to show it to a mageborn Sunlord priest named Aranha, and it was dedicated at the altar.”
“In Gird’s time?” Arianya asked. “I thought the rituals of Esea Sunlord were forbidden, as being tainted by blood magic.”
“It’s clear, Marshal-General, that our records of the period deviate from Luap’s and from the writings of his followers as we found them in Kolobia. Another thing—not all the scrolls Paks brought us are Luap’s. Some are even older than that, relating to events in Aarenis so distant in time, our only referents for the names and places are legendary. The language, too, is difficult.”
“But the altar-cloth,” Arianya said. “You’re sure it was made for the High Lord’s Hall and there was an actual priest of Esea Sunlord present?”
“According to Luap and the archives, Marshal-General.”
“I need to see it again,” Arianya said. “I believe I have seen a duplicate in Tsaia.” She described the cloth that wrapped a crown now hidden from view, a crown from magelord times. “And,” she said, “a magelord lives now, magery unlocked, to whom that crown answers.”
“Answers?”
Arianya nodded. “I must talk to the Council about all this, but ask you to hold it close until I convene a Council meeting—but you scholars must know what to look for. That regalia is surely royal, from kings of old, and it speaks to Duke Dorrin Verrakai. Paksenarrion—whom I met again, and more must be told of that—helped unlock Dorrin Verrakai’s mage-powers and was there when the regalia first showed power. Dorrin Verrakai gave it to Tsaia’s king, as a coronation gift, and it lies presently in the king’s treasury, but only Dorrin Verrakai can move it. The crown is wrapped in a cloth that, to my memory and Paks’s, is the same design and style of embroidery as the cloth found in Kolobia. Moreover, that necklace Paks brought us—the sapphires and diamonds—is much the same design as the other regalia. Paks thinks it’s part of the set.” Arianya sighed. “I need all these threads untangled and the pattern laid clear, to know how best to proceed. Two years ago, I thought I understood all—now I know nothing, or so it seems.”
“Here’s the cloth, Marshal-General,” said one of the scholars, who had gone to fetch it. She unfolded its wrappings and laid it out.
“It’s the same,” Arianya said, leaning over it. The scholar hovered, as if to be sure Arianya didn’t touch those tiny stitches. “I shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. An altar-cloth would be made to an older design … at least, I’m assuming the regalia are from before Luap’s time.”
“We haven’t started on the priest’s journal,” another scholar said.
“Another question,” Arianya said. “Have you found anything from Luap’s Stronghold to indicate that elves ever lived there?”
“Elves? No. Their holy symbol is carved there, and Luap said one appeared, along with a dwarf and a gnome, but no sign of their living understone. Why?”
“We never asked Paksenarrion, when she was a student here, about what she saw in the