A Knot in the Grain and Other Stories Page 6

  On the second day he asked her name. She was tending his side and she said, “Ruen,” without looking up.

  On the third day he said, “My name’s Gelther.”

  She smiled politely and said, “My honor is in your acquaintance.”

  He looked at her thoughtfully. “Where I come from we say, ‘My honor is yours.’ You must be from the south. And you must be of high blood or you wouldn’t be talking of honor at all.”

  “Very well. I am from the south, and I am of high blood. Both these things I would have told you, had you asked.”

  He looked embarrassed. “I apologize, lady. It’s a habit, I believe. I’ve been told before that I’m better at doing things than I am at making conversation. Although I’m not sure if talking to the lady who binds your wounds and feeds you with a spoon when you’re too weak to sit up is making conversation.” She said nothing, and after a moment he went on. “The only Ruen I know of is a princess who disappeared mysteriously a few months ago.… I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

  She nodded, but asked with a careful casualness, “What kind of mystery was she supposed to have disappeared in?”

  She could see him considering what to tell her. “The tales vary. She was old enough to be declared queen, but she—there was something supposed to be wrong with her. This, um, ritual, might have cured it.…”

  She laughed: the noise startled her, for she would not have thought that such a description of her uncle’s perfidy would have struck her so. “I ask pardon. That ritual, had it been completed to expectation, would certainly have cured her.”

  Gelther eyed her. “They do say the rite went awry somehow. And we always did think there was something a little odd about the Regent.”

  “Yes.” She frowned.

  Gelther said, half-desperately, “Are you that Ruen?”

  “Eh? Oh, yes—of course.” Satisfaction and puzzlement chased each other across the young man’s face. “But you heard that that Ruen had the mind of a child who could never grow up, which is why her name was not given her properly upon her name day, as a queen’s should; but I seem quite normal?” Now embarrassment joined the puzzlement, and satisfaction disappeared. “I would not have grown up had I not been rescued and brought here.… But I almost wish I had not.”

  Gelther said, astonished: “Why ever not?”

  She looked at his open, bewildered face. “Because I do not know what I must do. When I believed in my uncle and not in myself, I needed do nothing. I see that my uncle is not as I believed; but I am not accustomed to practical matters—to action—and I am afraid of him.” She sighed. “I am terribly afraid of him.”

  “Well, of course you are,” said Gelther stoutly. “I have heard—” He stopped, and smiled crookedly. “Never mind what I have heard. But perhaps I can help you. This is the sort of thing I’m good at—plotting and planning, you know, and then making a great deal of noise till things get done.”

  She looked at him wistfully and wished she could feel even a little of his enthusiasm for what such a task was likely to entail.

  Gelther was walking, slowly and stiffly, but walking, in five days, and had his first independent bath in the bathhouse behind the stone hall on the sixth. Luthe was never around when Gelther was awake; Gelther had asked, on that fifth day, when he went outside the sleeping room for the first time and saw nothing around him but trees, “Are you alone here?” His tone of voice suggested barely repressed horror.

  “No, no, of course not,” she responded soothingly. “But our host is, um, shy.” She found the solitude so pleasant that she had to remind herself that not everyone might find it so.

  But she did wonder at Luthe’s continued elusiveness; she saw him herself every day, but always, somehow, just after Gelther had nodded into another convalescent nap. That fifth day, she taxed him with it. He replied placidly, “He’s your practical lesson, not mine. We will meet eventually. Don’t worry. You shan’t have to explain my vagaries much longer.”

  She showed Gelther the way to the wide silver lake, and they walked there together. “Where is your country?” she asked, a little hesitantly, for fear that he might think she was taking a liberty.

  He laughed. “I thought you were never going to ask me that,” he said. “No … I’m not offended. I’m from Vuek, just north of your Arn—I meant only that I cannot understand how you have not asked before. I asked you at once—indirectly perhaps, but I did ask.”

  She nodded, smiling. “I remember. That is different, somehow. You were the one in bed, and I was the one standing on my feet. You needed to know.”

  He looked at her. “I always need to know.”

  They came to the lake, and found a log to lean against, and sat down, Gelther very carefully. Then she asked the question that she had wished and feared to ask since she first saw the wounds in his side. “How—how did you happen to come here?”

  He frowned, staring off over the lake. “I’m not sure. I don’t remember much of it. At home, I hunt a lot when there isn’t anything else to do, and the tale was brought to me of a huge stag that had been sighted a way off, and I thought to track it. They said it had a rack of antlers the like of which had never been seen anywhere, and they knew I would be interested. I’m a good tracker, I would have found it anyway; but it was so damn easy to find you’d think it was waiting for me.…” His voice trailed off. “So, I found it, and it led me a fine dance, but my blood was up and I would have followed it across the world. And it turned on me. Deer don’t, you know—at least not unless one is wounded to death, and cornered. And this great beast—I’d been following it for days by then, and we were both pretty weary, but I’d never gotten close enough to it even to try to put an arrow in it—and it turned on me.” His voice was bewildered, and then reminiscent. “It did have antlers like nothing I’ve seen. It was a great chase.… I don’t remember after that. I woke up … here … and there you were, the little lost princess from Arn.” He smiled at her and it occurred to her that he was trying to be charming, so she smiled back. “Maybe I’m supposed to help you,” he said.

  It was her turn to look out over the lake. That, I suppose, is what Luthe has had in mind all along, she thought, and suddenly felt tired.

  The next morning Luthe presented himself to Gelther for the first time. “Prince,” said Luthe, and bowed; and Gelther glanced sidelong at Ruen to make sure she registered the title before he bowed back. “Forgive my long delay in greeting you.”

  Gelther accepted the lack of explanation with what seemed to Ruen uncharacteristic docility, but after Luthe had left them, he said to her accusingly, “You didn’t tell me he was a mage.”

  “I didn’t know,” said Ruen.

  “Didn’t …? By the Just and Glorious, can’t you read the mage-mark?”

  “No,” she said, and he shook his head; and she thought that for the first time he understood the boundaries of her life with her uncle; it was as though she had said she had never seen the sky, or never drunk water.

  Luthe said, at their next meeting, “I am glad to see you recovering so quickly from your hurt.”

  “I have had excellent care,” said Gelther, and smiled at Ruen, who fidgeted. “And I thank you, sir, for your hospitality—”

  “You are welcome to all that my house may afford you,” Luthe interrupted smoothly. “And as soon as you are quite healed—for you are a little weak yet, I believe—I will set you on your way home again.”

  Prince Gelther, however forthright he might be to common mortals, had the sense to leave mages well enough alone, so he did not inquire how he happened to be here or where here was. Ruen could see these questions and others battering at one another behind his eyes, and she could guess that Luthe saw them too; but none escaped Gelther’s lips, and Luthe offered nothing but a smile and a bright blue glint from half-shut eyes.

  “Sir,” said Gelther carefully. “I would ask … perhaps a great favor.”

  “Say it,” said Luthe, with the careless generosity of a gre
at lord who may instantly retract if he chooses.

  “I would beg leave to take the lady Ruen with me, for I believe that I might help her, and her country and her people, escape the heavy reign of the false Regent.”

  “An excellent plan,” said Luthe. “I applaud and bless it.”

  Ruen sighed.

  They set out a few days later, on foot, bearing a small, heavy bundle each, of food wrapped up in a thin blanket; it was nearing summer, and travel was easy. Luthe bade them farewell in the small court before his hall; he was at his most dignified with Gelther, although his words were cordial. But he set his hands on Ruen’s shoulders and stared down at her with almost a frown on his face. “Gelther is a very able man,” he said at last; “you and your country are fortunate to have gained him as an ally.”

  “Yes,” Ruen said dutifully.

  Luthe dropped his hands. “You were born to be queen,” he said plaintively. “There is a limit to the miracles even I can produce.”

  “Yes,” repeated Ruen. “I thank you for all you have done.”

  “Ah, hells,” said Luthe.

  Gelther and Ruen went down hill all that day, and the trees were so tall and thick they could not see the sun but in occasional flashes, useless to give them a sense of direction; but Luthe had told them to go down hill, and that they would not lose themselves, and Luthe was a mage, so they did as he said. They went down hill the second day as well, sliding on the steep bits and holding on to convenient branches; and in the afternoon the trees grew thin and the slope eased, and Gelther said, “I know where we are!” and strode off purposefully. Ruen followed.

  She did not know what she was expecting from Vuek, or from Gelther’s family; but they greeted her with pleasure—almost with relief, she thought, for Gelther was a third son, and it was obvious, although perhaps not to Gelther himself, that his father, mother, and eldest brother had begun to wonder how much longer their small kingdom could contain him. Everyone believed her story at once; or if any had doubts, they were swiftly set aside, for several aristocratic Arnish families, tiring of the Regent’s inelegance, if not his tyranny, had emigrated to Vuek, and the manner in which her subjects-in-exile greeted Ruen left no room for question. There was even one woman among these who had borne brief service as the young princess’s waiting maid, and if Ruen felt that the woman’s eagerness to prove her loyalty now was a little overemphatic, she did not say so aloud.

  Soon Gelther, and a few of the Arnish men, were out rousing the countryside; and sooner than it took Ruen to wonder what the next step should be, there was an army, forming up for drill in the fields surrounding Vuek’s capital city.

  A week before they were due to march to Arn, Gelther and Ruen were married. Gelther’s mother planned and arranged it; Ruen stood quietly where she was put while gowns were pinned on her and shoes cut and fitted, and hairdressers tried for the style best suited to her small solemn face. When the day came, Gelther took a few hours off from enthusiastic drilling to stand at Ruen’s side while the priests muttered over them and the girls of the royal family threw flowers over them, and all the aristocracy available from Vuek and Arn and the other small kingdoms and duchies who were providing soldiers for Gelther’s army made obeisances at them; and then he rushed back to his military maneuvers. Ruen retired to a handsome, well-furnished room that her new mother had set aside for her, for she was to have no part in the restoration of her throne.

  Gelther was preoccupied on their wedding night, but then so was Ruen.

  But Arn was taken without a sword’s being drawn. Vuek had a common border with Arn, if a short one, and Gelther’s soldiers marched directly to the Regent’s palace; they saw few farmers in the fields, and those they saw avoided them; the streets of the city were empty, and when they reached the palace itself, the few guards they found were sitting or wandering dazedly, and when ordered to lay down their weapons, they did so without demur. Gelther and his captains strode through the front doors without any to say them nay; and when they reached the great hall where the throne stood, and where the Regent was accustomed to meet those who would speak with him, it was empty but for a few courtiers. These courtiers only turned to look at the invaders.

  One shook himself free of the vagueness that held everyone else; and he came toward them, and bowed low. He wore no sword or knife. He said to Gelther, who was obviously the leader, “You will be Prince Gelther, husband of our beloved queen, whom we look forward to welcoming soon, when she returns to her land and her people. We wept when she left us, and turned our faces from the Regent, and have hoped upon each dawning that it heralded the day she would come back to us.”

  Gelther exchanged looks with his captains, and all grasped their sword hilts in expectation of a trap. But there was no trap.

  The Regent’s body they found, as the courtiers had found it two days before, bowed over a long table in the high tower room where he had called the storms and watched for portents. His lips were writhed back over his teeth in a grimace, but it appeared to be a grimace of anger; he did not look as though he had died in pain, and there was no mark on him. His captains shivered, but Gelther said, “The man is dead, and he was Regent, and my wife’s uncle; and that is all we need now remember. The people have declared that they wish to welcome us; so let us allow ourselves to be welcome.”

  They buried the Regent with restrained pomp and the respect that might have been due a queen’s uncle who had stood by her and cared for her when her parents died while she was yet too young to rule herself. Gelther, who knew much more about the Regent than he would ever have admitted to his wife, would let no man say a word against him. None ever knew if he had died naturally, or been slain, by his own hand, or another’s; perhaps even by a portent he had wrongly tried to call up.

  Her people did indeed honor their queen when she returned to them; they could not leap quickly enough to do her bidding, smile quickly enough when her eye fell upon them, clamor loudly enough to serve her, spread quickly enough the tales of her evenhanded justice, of her kindness to the weak and patience with the confused. But their hearts were perhaps particularly captured by the prince, who was loud and strong and merry—it was noticed that the queen never laughed—and who refused to be crowned king in deference to his wife, who, he said, “is the real thing.” And of course, the people of Arn had seen Gelther only in triumph, and the fact that the queen did not find anything in her native land to rouse her to laughter perhaps stirred memories they wished to forget.

  Gelther also made Arn’s army the finest in the whole of the Damarian continent, and all the countries near Arn were very careful to stay on the most cordial terms with it; and the Arnish families’ greatest pride was to have a son or two or three in the prince’s army. A goodly number of the young men who flocked to carry the Arnish prince’s banner came from other countries, for tales of the prince’s greatness travelled far.

  Ruen bore four children, all sons; and she was kind and loving to them, and they responded with kindness and love. But, although there was perhaps no one to notice, her maternal kindness was little more exacting than the kindness she gave the least of her subjects who pleaded for her aid. But perhaps it was only that she had so little in common with her children; for while her sons treated her always with respect, they thought of nothing but the army once they were old enough to be propped up on their first ponies.

  The people did notice that the queen seemed most at ease with folk young enough not to remember the days of the Regent’s rule; but her people chose to tell one another that many women are happiest in the company of those they may pretend are their children, and such a one was their queen. It had been only a very short time after Gelther accepted the Arnish welcome in the queen’s name that all her subjects were eager to tell her that they had forgotten the Regent entirely—and the longer anyone had lived under him, the more eager he was to proclaim his complete lack of memory—if she had asked; but she never asked.

  Her youngest son was eleven years old and would
soon outgrow his third pony the morning that her eldest burst in on his parents’ quiet breakfast. “Father! We go hunting today! There are sightings of a great stag—as large as the one that gored you when you met Mother—to the northwest. Several sightings. He’s been showing himself to different villages but everyone’s been afraid to mention it … seems they think he’s half man or something, and an ill portent—some nonsense about something my stupid great-uncle did. You’d think they’d have forgotten by now.”

  “No.” It was so unusual for the queen to say anything when the conversation turned to hunting that both Gelther and their son gaped at her.

  Gelther swallowed. “No … er … what?”

  “No, you will not hunt this stag. I insist.” She opened her wide eyes wider and fixed them on her handsome husband. “You shall not go.”

  It was a struggle for Gelther, for he loved hunting best of anything when there were no wars to be fought; but he was fond of his wife, and she had never asked him such a thing before. Indeed, she asked him little enough at any time—and, well, she was a woman, and the Regent had been very queer to her for many years, and it was perhaps understandable that she should be a little, well, superstitious about something that reminded her so suddenly of the bad old days. She’d been the one who’d patched him up then too; it had probably been worse for her. And the villagers were probably exaggerating the beast’s size anyway. “Very well,” he said, a little wistfully.

  She smiled at him, and there was such love in her eyes that he smiled back, thinking, I could not have had a better wife; four sons she’s given me. Then he rose from the table and slapped his eldest on the shoulder and said, “So, my son, we must find our amusement elsewhere; have you tried the new colt I bought at the Ersk fair? I think he’ll just suit you.”