The Coral Kingdom - Douglas Niles [5]
"No," the queen said, quietly and firmly. "You're one of two royal children. You must be prepared to rule should it be required of you. Your place is here, in Callidyrr-in the Moonshaes."
"But there is so much more in the world!"
"Your father is dead!" snapped Robyn, and the bluntness of the painful admission was enough to quiet Deirdre for the moment. "The three of us-you, your sister, and I-hold the destiny of the Moonshaes in our hands. The great peace begun by King Tristan can flourish or fail. Do you believe for one moment that the Council of Lords will agree to the continuance of the Kendrick reign for old times' sake?"
"Surely they won't try to wrest the crown from you!" exclaimed the princess.
"Who knows what they'll try?" Robyn sighed. "In three days, in Corwell, we shall see. I know we have allies-the good Earls of Fairheight and Corwell, to name two. And the Grand Mayor of the Halflings, Lord Pawldo, will certainly side with us. As to the others, who can say what schemes they've set in motion."
"They wouldn't dare!" There was no fear, just an icy fury, in the younger woman's tone. The queen looked at her daughter sharply, never doubting the threat in her voice.
"If the three of us are united," Robyn said quietly, "then I'm certain there is little that the lords can-or will-do. But if we go into the council squabbling and bickering, I don't doubt that some challenge is inevitable."
"I hear you, Mother," said Deirdre softly.
"But do you understand me?" Robyn persisted. "Will you do as I ask?"
The princess stared at her mother, and Robyn saw anger flashing in those dark eyes. She barely heard the reply.
"I will."
Neither woman averted her gaze for a moment, but finally Deirdre looked away. "May I go now?" she asked angrily.
With a sigh that was more tired than angry, Robyn nodded, turning back to the window as her daughter left without another word. Once again she saw the sunlit landscape and the dazzling sea, and it was a scene that seemed to mock her. With conscious discipline, she forced her mind to turn back to her plans.
The funeral could not be a simple ceremony. It must be a festival worthy of the passing of a great High King. Yet neither would the normal rites suffice, for they had no body to bury.
Traditionally the great men and women of the Ffolk were put to rest in large barrows, mounds of earth raised over timber enclosures, where the corpse was laid together with an assortment of weapons, treasures, food, and drink-all that the deceased would need on his long journey into the afterlife.
For Tristan Kendrick, there would be no place in the barrows mound, no gifts for him to bear into the realms he now explored. Yet his queen would ensure that his passing was marked with proper ritual and ceremony. This goal had given her strength during the past weeks, and now that the event drew near, it provided a focus for her mind when it would have been so easy to collapse into grief.
Corwell! She knew instinctively that she had made the right choice in the location for the ritual of the king's passage. That pastoral kingdom, childhood home to both Tristan and Robyn, was a place where she could get away from the chaos of the high court, returning like a wounded animal to the den from which she had emerged as a cub.
Corwell was the ancestral home of the Kendricks, and both the queen and her daughters bore that name. The ancient castle-protected still by a palisade of wooden timbers, though the king had ordered a stone wall started some years back-would reinforce in the minds of the lords and kings of the Ffolk that Robyn came by her rank honestly. And that her daughters, too, bore the blood of the island's royal line.
And there was more than political truth to her choice, just as Robyn was more than a queen to the Ffolk. The kingdom of Corwell was on the isle of Gwynneth, and there Robyn would find Myrloch Vale, the heart of