The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [80]
“We are all very serious here,” Robert said. “Now, tell us, my friend.”
Hardening himself to Areana’s distress, Leoff cleared his throat. “You are familiar with the story of Maersca?” he asked.
Robert thought for a moment. “I am perhaps not so familiar with it.”
No, the counterpoint said, and you had better not be trying to make me seem ignorant.
“Neither was I, until I read the books you gave me,” he said quickly. “It happened, as I understand it, in Newland, long ago—before that region was actually named Newland, when the first canals were being built and the poelen drained.”
“Ah,” Robert exclaimed. “A subject near to the hearts of the landwaerden, I shouldn’t doubt. Isn’t it so, Areana?”
“It is a popular story among us,” Areana agreed stiffly. “I don’t find it surprising, then, that you do not know it.”
Robert shrugged diffidently. “Neither did your friend Leoff. He just said so.
“But he didn’t grow up in the heart of Newland,” Areana retorted. “Your Majesty did.”
“Yes,” Robert said a bit crossly, “and I did what I could for your kind, even fathering the occasional child to lighten your thick blood. Now please, young lady, tell us the story.”
Areana glanced at Leoff, who nodded. He was starting to feel rather wrinkled but had no intention of asking to get out while the girls were still present.
“It happened when they were building the great northern canal,” she said. “They did not know it, but when they diverted the channel of the river, they destroyed a kingdom, a kingdom of the Saethiod.”
“Saethiod? A kingdom of Meremen? How delightful.”
“Only one survived. Maersca, the daughter of the king, the granddaughter of Saint Lir. She swore vengeance, and so she put on human form to wreak it. When the canal was done, she went to the great sluice with the intention of flooding the newly drained land. But she saw Brandel Aethelson on the birm. She spoke to him, feigning womanly interest, asking how it was that the water was held back and how it might be loosed. She was clever, and he did not suspect her designs. In fact, he began to fall in love with her.
“Thinking that she could do more damage if she learned more, Maersca pretended to love him, as well, and soon they were married. She hid her sea-skin in a coffer in the roof beams of the house, and she gave him this condition: that each year on the day of Saint Lir she must bathe alone, and he could not watch her.”
“And so for months she nursed her vengeance, and the months became years, and in that time a boy was born to them, and then a girl, and after a fashion she began to love her husband and to love Newland, and her thirst for vengeance faded.”
“Oh, dear,” Robert said.
“But the husband’s friends chided him,” Areana continued. “‘Where does your wife go on the day of Saint Lir?’ They filled his head with the notion that she had a secret lover and that his own children were not indeed his. And so, over the years he became uncertain, and finally, one Saint Lirsdagh, he followed her. She went to the birm and cast off her clothes, then slipped on her fish skin, and he saw her for what she was—and she knew it.”
“‘You’ve broken your vow,’ she said. “‘Now I must return to the waters. And if ever I come out into the air again, I shall die, for this changing can only happen once.’
“In despair, he begged her not to go, but go she did, leaving him with her children and his tears.
“Many years passed, and he searched for her in all the rivers and canals he knew. Once or twice he thought he heard her song. He became old, and his children grew up and married.
“Then the army of the Skellander swept down from the North Country, putting all before them to the torch, and next was Newland. The people gathered on the birmsteads and prepared to loose the waters and flood their country, for that was their only protection against the invader. But the capstone would not break; it had been built too well.
“And now the army was near.
“It was then the old man saw his wife again, as lovely as the day they’d met. She emerged from the waters, put her hand on the capstone,