20

Maewen had a glimpse of Kialan and Ynen following Moril down a silent golden street, casting blue-black shadows as they went. There was a warm sun and a feeling of humming peace in this place. But Maewen could clearly hear screams and shots and crashing in the distance all round. The battle was only a hair-breadth away. She knew it could come bursting through Moril’s paper-thin enchantment any second. When someone came at her sideways in another long indigo shadow, it was just like Gardale again. She put her hands to her face and screamed.

“Hush!” Mitt said, giving her a shake.

It was only Mitt, who had waited for her. Maewen knew this, but still she whimpered and sobbed.

Mitt shook her harder. “Will you hush! Moril made this out of sounds, don’t you understand! You’re going to break it if you carry on. What are you, a baby?”

Maewen pulled herself together. “Of course I’m not a baby. I’m thirteen. It was just the battle out there.”

“Thirteen? Really?” Mitt found this wonderful and remarkable. He had been thinking of Maewen as the same age as Noreth, and here she was younger than he was! It seemed to turn everything round. As they set off to follow the others, Mitt slid his hand carefully down Maewen’s arm and took hold of her hand. It was the most momentous and the most exciting thing he had ever done in his life.

Click!

“Snap!” said Maewen, as Mitt swung their joined hands up to see what the noise was. They both laughed. On Maewen’s thumb and Mitt’s forefinger were two identical gold bands and two identical gloomy profiles carved out of what seemed exactly the same kind of red stone. “Alk’s copy?” Maewen asked.

“Yes. He made it to fit himself by the size of it,” Mitt said.

After that it became a more normal thing to hold hands. They walked on, following the square gold-yellow stones of what seemed to be a street. Everywhere was misty, white mist with the sun in it, and the other three were out of sight ahead by then. But there seemed nowhere else for them to have gone except along the street.

At first there appeared to be houses on either side, though these were fuzzed out above the first story by the mist. But after a while they seemed to have come into a garden or a parkland. There was a feeling of openness. Delicate trees spread green-gold branches in the mist, and others were spires and blocks of gold-dark. It seemed moist underfoot. Maewen thought she could hear birds, but when she listened, they were somehow out of hearing. Seabirds? Mitt thought. Land birds? There were smells, too, delicately scrawled on the air. Mitt’s head came up at the smell: the peat smell of the North, of a distant farm, the hot tang of the South, water lazily running, and even, amazingly, the far-off salt of the sea. This was a smell he had once thought of as home. Nearby, willows were budding.

It can’t be this wet here! Mitt thought. But it was, secretly. The scent was conveying him the secret that under Kernsburgh the rock was porous and riddled with channels of water flowing down to the sea. Then they can sink wells, he thought with some relief. It had worried him slightly that Kernsburgh did not seem to have a water supply. He found himself saying to Maewen, “There’s going to be war and fighting for the next two years.”

“They can’t do much rebuilding till that’s over,” she agreed.

“They can make a start. That’s not what I meant,” Mitt said. “I meant it was all building to war when I left the South, and I get the feeling I’m going to have to be part of it, but I don’t like to think of you getting hurt in it.”

“I don’t want to be left out,” Maewen said.

“But you don’t like war,” Mitt pointed out. “What I mean is, you might stay here and start the building.”

“Only if you promise to come back and see me after the war,” Maewen said. “I’ll come after you if you don’t.”

“All right,” said Mitt. “I promise. In two years.” In the strange scented gold mist it did not seem ridiculous to talk of these things.

“I’ll hold you to that,” Maewen said, laughing.

They wandered on. Shortly they came out into a wide golden courtyard where they found the other three, none of whom seemed to notice that Mitt and Maewen must have come by a side way. Ynen was pointing to a statue on a pedestal.

“Ours are the only shadows, here,” he said. “Look.”

He was right. All their shadows were long and blue-black. The statue ought to have laid a zigzag shadow up a flight of stairs, but it did not. Moril stumbled on the stairs because they were so hard to see. Kialan caught his elbow to stop him falling, all in a crisscross of inky shadows, and accidentally jarred the cwidder. It sang out melodiously. The sound seemed to shake the entire place. Everything blurred. For a moment, even the inky shadows were faint. Nobody dared breathe. They all stood still until the sound died and the faint golden buildings came back.

The tall building at the head of the steps, though it was lost upward into mist, was remarkably like the Tannoreth Palace. Like, but quite unlike, too, Maewen realized, staring up at it while the others tiptoed gently up the steps. It had almost no windows, and its roof was supported on mighty pillars shaped like buds—long whorled buds, like the ones on magnolias—and yet it had the same shape and gave her the same feel as the palace she knew. She climbed the difficult steps on cautious, whispering feet and joined the others in the long gold-stone tunnel.

They trod forward as gently as they could, all horribly aware that this palace of gold was only the most fragile illusion. The stony air from the tunnel made both Ynen and Mitt want to cough. Neither of them dared make that much noise, and they had to keep clearing their throats as gently as they could. Then the tunnel branched.

“Where to?” Moril whispered.

“Follow your cwidder,” Kialan breathed.

Moril seemed to consider this meant straight on. They tiptoed after him, deep into the heart of the palace. Now they seemed to be in a corridor whose golden stone roof was only an inch or so above Kialan’s head or Mitt’s. Both of them ducked when Moril led them under a heavy lintel and down misty steps into a warm oblong room. It was not a big place. It had stone benches along each side and a large stone seat at the far end. The first thing they all noticed was that this seat had a strange gap underneath, as if something that was meant to go there was missing. The second thing they saw was a thick golden circlet on the seat of the chair.

They all knew this was the crown. Everyone waited for everyone else to go forward and pick it up. Before any of them could sort out the courage to do it, a young man jumped up from the right-hand bench.

“At long last!” he said. He was very glad to see them. He strode joyfully over to the stone seat and picked up the crown. “I thought I would never do this again!” he said as he turned round, holding it in both hands.

Everyone stood very still. He was a tall young man, with rounded shoulders wider than Kialan’s or Mitt’s, and there was a sort of gawkiness to him that reminded them all of Mitt. His face, when he turned sideways to look from Moril, along the line to Maewen, was like Ynen’s. He had the same nose, long and pointed. When he turned full face, to look at the whole group of them in a puzzled way, he reminded Maewen of Wend, though everyone else was reminded of Maewen, with a fleeting likeness to Moril and Kialan. And Mitt was reminded of Old Ammet, too, because the young man had the same flying white hair.

“What’s the matter?” said the young man. “Why don’t you speak?”

“Is it all right? It won’t shake the place apart?” Moril whispered.

The young man laughed. “Not here. This part has to be more solid. It used to be my strongroom.”

“Er—then, who are you?” Mitt asked. “If you don’t mind being asked.”

“My name’s Hern,” said the young man. “I used to be King here a long while ago.”

All five of them gasped, and then drew breath, one after another, to ask the King if he was of the Undying—and then let the breath go, not quite sure. He had the same unshadowed golden look as the rest of the palace. If you caught him out of the corner of your eye, bright rays seemed to stand out from him, and across him, that almost canceled him out of sight.

Hern laughed again. “Don’t be afraid. I’m only here because I asked the One on my deathbed if I could present the crown to the new King.”

“Whatever possessed—” Kialan, Moril, and Ynen all began together.

“—me to do such a stupid thing?” Hern asked. “I know. What you ask the One for, you get.”

“Then you are of the Undying,” Mitt said. “In a manner of speaking.”

Hern looked at him. His face was bleak and ribby as Mitt’s face had been in Gardale. “In a manner of speaking is right. I was afraid all my life that I was going to turn out to be of the Undying. And because of that, I was always very careful never to let anyone make a picture or an image of me—that’s how the Undying are bound into godhead, you know—and then I go and ask for the wrong thing, and my reward is this half-life.” Mitt opened his mouth to say something, but Hern shook his head. His face relaxed and went businesslike. “No. Let me first ask who claims this crown. All but one of you have a perfect right to it.”

Nobody answered. Each of them shot dubious looks at the others.

“Oh come on!” said Hern. “Isn’t this what you came for?”

Maewen cleared her throat. “Yes. But I think we were supposed to get it for Amil the Great.”

Hern shrugged. “That’s news to me,” he said. He came toward them, carrying the golden circlet. All of them made a move to back away and then stood, feeling cowardly. But it was alarming. Hern was misty and shot with beams of light, but his personality was as strong as it must have been when he was a King. As if that was the main thing left of him, Mitt thought. And the crown itself was thick, real, and solid between Hern’s misty hands, of such pure gold that it shone orange in the golden light.

Hern halted in front of Moril. “Do you claim this crown?”

Moril gulped. The others could see him thinking that his answer would really be addressed to the One, and he had Hern’s example to show him that he had better say exactly the right thing. “No,” he said, “I don’t want to be King. I want to be a new kind of Singer—a very good one, if I can.”

Hern nodded and moved on to Ynen. “You?”

Ynen licked his lips. He was whiter even than Moril. “No, not me. I—I want to be a sailor, and they wouldn’t let me if I was King, because I might get drowned.”

Hern said nothing. He simply moved on to Kialan. “And you?”

“I—” said Kialan. He had to stop and try again. “I know I have a claim, and it isn’t because of the way my father would hate it, it’s—Well, I don’t feel big enough. Inheriting Hannart’s quite enough for me, honestly.”

Hern frowned at this, which made Kialan flush bright red and then stare unrepentantly. But Hern said nothing again and moved on to Mitt. Mitt had expected Hern to pass him by. He backed away. “You’re not including me in this?” Mitt said.

Hern nodded.

“Then include me out,” Mitt said. “I’m not fit, I’m common and—and—” He searched for the feeling he had just now in the strangely scented parkland. “Listen, I don’t mind helping in the war. The country needs a change. But all I want out of it is a bit of peace and maybe a farm somewhere.”

Hern frowned at this, too, and Mitt looked as unrepentant as Kialan. Hern turned to Maewen. “I can’t offer the crown to you,” he explained, “because you are not really born yet. I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” Maewen said, but she knew she sounded wistful. “The only thing I really want is to be allowed to stay—” She caught herself up. The One alone knew what Mum and Aunt Liss would feel, but this was what she wanted and she knew, like Moril, that she had to phrase it right. “Stay in Mitt’s time, I mean.”

Mitt turned and gave her a smile that warmed them both. Hern, meanwhile, retreated, still holding the crown. When they looked back at him, he was sitting in the stone seat, looking exasperated.

“Let’s get at this another way,” he said. “We have eliminated one of you. We know that the one who accepts this crown will be King. Let’s call him King—for the sake of argument—Amil, since that is the name you seem to have brought with you. Who will be Amil?”

“If you like,” Ynen offered, “we could take the crown and give it to my father.”

“Yes, or mine,” Kialan agreed.

Hern gave them that bleak, ribby look again. “You didn’t attend to what I said at first. I am to hand the crown to the next King. That means to one of you, since no one else is here to claim it.” He let them think about this, uneasily, for a moment. Then he said, “When I made my unlucky request to the One, what I had really wanted was to give the new King the benefit of my advice, but since I didn’t ask that, that is something I am not allowed to do. Instead I shall ask you what advice you would give to this new King Amil. Think carefully. You may be advising yourself.”

There was utter silence. Nobody could think of anything.

Hern laughed. “I shall start you off. How about: People’s idea of what they can do is even more important than what they can do?”

“Oh, I know that!” Moril said. “It’s in the King’s Sayings. The Singers all know those.”

“There, you see?” Hern said. “I couldn’t give you that saying if it hadn’t been out in the world already. I said it at the battle with Kankredin. This is why I can’t give advice to the new King. The One knew, though I didn’t, that a dead man’s thoughts stop with his life. Listen to the Singer. He’ll tell you my thoughts.”

“Yes, but I didn’t know they were yours,” Moril said.

“Hang on a minute,” said Mitt. “What do you mean, you can’t give advice? You just gave us a whole load of it!”

“Did I?” said Hern.

He said it perfectly neutrally. This made Kialan say, almost exasperated, “You did, you know. He’s right. You warned us straight off to be careful what we said, or the One would take us at our word.”

“Roundaboutly,” said Mitt. “Using yourself.”

“A King should always set an example,” Hern said. “That’s in my Sayings, too, isn’t it?” he asked Moril.

Moril nodded. “And,” said Kialan, “you told us to attend to your exact words.”

But Mitt broke in across Kialan. “No, before that! Didn’t you listen? There was that about not being bound like the Undying.”

The two of them were leaning forward eagerly. Hern’s face was intent. Oh I see! Maewen thought, from her standpoint as a nonqualifier. We’re in Round Two now. Ynen seemed to have dropped out. He was staring sadly at Hern. Maewen saw Mitt notice Ynen’s sadness and wonder about it as he spoke.

“Then you made a song and dance about your sayings being dead and over with,” Mitt said, “just so we’d notice they weren’t.”

“Yes, the exact opposite of what you seemed to be saying,” Kialan agreed. “Your thoughts have gone on after you.”

“That’s not new,” Moril put in. “It’s in a song by Osfameron.”

Moril would be disqualifying himself, Maewen thought, if he went on sticking just to what Singers knew. Perhaps Moril did not mind. Maewen had thought she did not mind, but now she knew she felt sad and alone and left out.

“I’m glad it’s not new,” Hern said. “I have no business having new thoughts. It wouldn’t be reasonable.”

Mitt could not help grinning.

“What are you smiling at?” Hern asked.

“You,” Mitt said, “must have been a regular eel in your day. Not reasonable, my big toe! You keep turning up new ideas.”

A slight, enjoying smile bent Hern’s mouth. “I was always very hot on reason,” he said. “If I had been able to give the new King advice, I would have told him never to rely on things being reasonable. I did, and it caused me no end of trouble.”

“There you go again!” said Mitt.

Kialan laughed. Hern’s smile grew slightly. “I defy you,” he said, “to discover any other new thoughts I’ve shown you.”

“Well,” said Kialan. “You can have new thoughts. Osfameron may have written that song about thoughts flying on, but you were dead when he wrote it.”

Hern shook his head. “Won’t do. Osfameron is my brother.”

Kialan looked very dashed at this and turned to Mitt for help. “He said shown,” Mitt said. “And he did tell us to listen to every word. Let’s see.” He looked at Hern. “You’ve shown us what comes of asking for the wrong thing, and then shown us yourself getting round that, and giving advice like you meant to. That’s how to keep the rules and break them, too. I like that. It takes a cool head. But there’s more,” Mitt said, thinking aloud, which was the way he always thought best. “Maybe this was what Kialan was driving at. Yes—you’re still at it. You’re not beat yet. You’re showing us that.”

“Is it a new thought, then, to say, ‘Keep on, there’s always hope’?” Hern said. “I thought that was a very old saying.”

“Yes, but you’re the first person I’ve met who’s still saying it when he’s dead,” Mitt answered. “That has to be new.”

Hern laughed and stood up. “I believe you. Bend your head, Alhammitt, so that I can put this crown on it.”

“What!” Mitt backed away in horror. “Now, look. I told you. And I was only saying what Kialan said.”

Hern looked at Kialan. “Was he?”

“Not really,” Kialan admitted.

“Tidying it up, then,” Mitt said pleadingly. “Take the thing away. I’m not qualified.”

“Yes, you are,” said Hern. “I told you. Your right descends from the Adon’s son Almet, who went to live in Waywold.”

“Pretty sideways, I’ll bet!” Mitt said.

“Only as sideways as direct descent, from father to son,” said Hern. “If that was not so, why does the Adon’s ring accept you?”

Mitt looked down at the Adon’s seal, snugly above his knuckle. “This is just a copy.”

“No,” said Hern. He nodded toward Maewen. “Hers is the copy.”

Mitt shot a disbelieving look from Hern to Maewen and rapidly tried the ring on his little finger, then on his thumb. Each time it slid over his lump of knuckle and fitted as if it had been made for him. “This is plain ridiculous!” he said. He turned round. For a moment it looked as if he was going to storm from the room.

“Wait!” said Hern. It was the voice of command that Navis was so good at using. Mitt almost stopped. But he shook his shoulders and put one foot on the steps. Hern said quickly, “Accept the crown, and you may ask the One one favor.”

Mitt turned back. “You mean that?”

“I do,” said Hern.

“Now?”

“Crown first,” said Hern. “Bend your head.”

Mitt sighed and bowed his head down. “Extra bit of advice,” he said, looking sideways at Kialan. “Kings drive a hard bargain.”

Hern chuckled as he settled the thick gold band carefully over Mitt’s lank hair. “A King should have a sharp mind,” he said. “That may be in my Sayings somewhere. I am sorry that I cannot give you the kingstone as well as the crown. The stone is in the South. A man in Holand called Hobin knows where to find it.”

Mitt stared at him from under his own forehead. “Hobin? Gunsmith? He’s my stepfather!” He straightened up slowly and put one hand uneasily to the crown, thinking it might slip, but it seemed steady enough. Like the Adon’s ring, it was an exact fit. “Hobin!” he said. “You Undying really got me hemmed in, haven’t you?”

Hern nodded as he stepped backward. “It was the same for me. Now you can ask your favor.”

“All right,” said Mitt. “Then, do you really have to sit here, century after century, waiting for the next new King to come along?”

Hern went very still. “This I know is in the Sayings of the King,” he said. “Never be beguiled by pity. Are you talking pity?”

“No,” said Mitt. “You’ve been showing us you’re stuck here and you don’t like it from the moment you first spoke.”

“Mercy, then?” asked Hern. “This sits well on a King.”

“No,” said Mitt. “Flaming Ammet, I don’t know what it’s called! I’ll have to take a leaf out of your book and show you. Take a look at Ynen. He’s miserable because all he can think of is that you have to sit here, year in and year out, waiting for a King that may not come. Only he doesn’t like to say so because the One made you sit here. Isn’t that so?” Mitt asked Ynen. Ynen went pink and nodded hard. “See?” Mitt said to Hern. “I don’t know the word for what I’m doing, unless it’s having the cheek to say things no one else dares to say. Is that kingly?”

Hern did not answer. He laughed.

“Laugh away,” Mitt said. “I’m going to ask the One to take you off duty.”

Hern went on laughing, but the sound was confused now and fading. The beams of light, which had half hidden him if you looked at him sideways, came to cover him however you looked, crisscrossing and elongating confusingly. He was like a candle seen through tears. Then the beams separated and slid away. Each silvery streak carried a dim piece of Hern’s shape with it, as if he were dissolving underwater. Mitt set his teeth and clenched his hands until the Adon’s ring bit into him. This was exactly like his worst nightmare when he was small. He had been fairly sure this would happen, but it had seemed worth asking all the same. He made himself watch until Hern had rippled away into nowhere.

The rippling did not vanish with Hern. It remained as a green-goldness, like air shaking in heat. The stone seat, and that whole end of the room, wavered as if they were under clear, shallow water. Mitt’s hands remained clenched. The scent he had recognized outside, of peat and farm, willows budding, and slow, deep river flowing to the far-off sea, was back again, stronger and more potent. And the rippling had formed a shape, a huge gold-green shadow with a profile like Hern’s or Ynen’s. Mitt had no doubt, nor had any of the others, that there was a presence standing behind them, casting this shadow, but it was beyond any of them to turn round and look.

When the One spoke, the voice came from behind them. “Hern has long ago gone down the River to the sea.”

Mitt relaxed. Ynen murmured, “Oh good!” Maewen wondered how anyone could mistake Kankredin’s voice for the One’s. This voice was like the whole land speaking, the settling of rocks, the grind of water through granite, the slow shift of earth, and the wind blowing, and it burred in your ears in the same way as the low string on Moril’s cwidder.

“It is not easy,” said the One, “for my mortal children to speak with me face-to-face.”

This was true. All of them were aching to turn round and see the One, and all of them knew it was quite impossible.

“Witness this, all of you,” said the One. “You have a new King.”

No one was sure what to do, until Moril led them in a ragged chorus. “We witness we have a new King.”

“I thank you,” said the One.

The rippling shadow stooped then. It was as if the One bent to have a private word with each of them, all at the same time. Maewen heard the great voice at her ear, saying, “I cannot promise you what you asked. Too many imponderables lie in between. I am sorry.”

To Mitt the One said, “You have been offered the name of Amil, which is my name. Before you choose between that name or your own, you must know that I have sworn to root out Kankredin from my land. If you take my name, that will be your task, too. What name do you choose?”

Mitt knew it was a real choice, even if Maewen had told him which way he chose. He weighed it up. Alhammitt was a good name, except that it was the name of half the men in the South. Amil was a name no one else had, but it carried the One’s burden with it. Well, Mitt had carried burdens all his life. Kingship was another one. One more seemed to make no difference on top of that. “I’ll take Amil,” he said.

Then he turned round, like someone waking up, wondering what the One had said to the others. The rippling shadow was gone, and with it, most of the golden mistiness. He could see they were standing in a place that was no more than an oblong trench, with walls made of big blocks of yellowish stone that were broken off at about waist height. Beside him Maewen was fiercely blinking back tears. Moril looked much the same. But Ynen and Kialan both looked happy, in a stunned kind of way.

“I think we have to go back through the stone,” Moril said.