The king inclined his head the merest fraction. “I wish you to explain to me, Kalchesene, why you came to Lonne. To kill my son? Despite the Treaty of Brenedde?”
At least this was a question and not a statement. Taudde answered at once, slipping subtle layers of sincerity and truth into his voice. “No, eminence. I never intended to break the terms of the treaty. I came… I came to Lonne because I found myself driven by a desire to learn the magic of the sea.”
“And were discovered in this endeavor by my cousin, Lord Rikadde Miennes ken Nerenne. And were drawn by him into his schemes. Is this so?”
The king certainly seemed well-informed. “Yes, eminence. I didn’t know Lord Miennes was your cousin.”
The king made a slight, dismissive gesture. “A trivial detail. So you agreed to serve Miennes, but instead plotted his destruction. You made ensorcelled pipes for this purpose. You used materials stolen from Gerenes Brenededd’s shop in the Paliante? Gerenes Brenededd is also my cousin, on the left,” he added drily, observing Taudde’s surprise.
“Well… yes, eminence,” Taudde admitted. It would hardly have been worth denying, even if the king hadn’t already known everything.
“And you plotted the destruction of Mage Ankennes, who stood behind Miennes. But less directly. There was a letter, I believe. Did you have any other method in mind for Ankennes’s
destruction? One hardly believes waking the dragon out of darkness and stone was your idea.”
“Ah… Mage Ankennes represented a greater challenge than… your cousin. Eminence.” Taudde was uncertain of what reaction the king expected from him. “I would have been glad to destroy him, but I merely hoped to entangle him in other concerns so that I could slip his attention and escape.”
“But you moved not only against the conspirators but against my son as well.” This was not a question. There was deep anger in that quiet statement.
Taudde made an abrupt, unexpected decision and said, as quietly, “It was a wrong decision, yes. But… my grandfather’s name is Chontas Berente ser Omientes ken Lariodde.”
There was a little pause. Then the king took a step forward and reached out, disregarding the alarm of his guards, to set his hand under Taudde’s chin and tilt his face up toward the light from the window. He said, “Your grandfather has many grandsons. But I would wager that
your
father was Chontas Gaurente ken Lariodde. Is that so?”
“Yes.”
“You have the look of him.” The king dropped his hand and took a step back. “I defeated your father on the field of Brenedde, fifteen years past. I put him to death there, when he would not yield to me.”
“Yes,” Taudde said again. He glanced at Prince Tepres, who was staring at him with a strange kind of recognition: one prince to another. Though Taudde was not nearly so close to his grandfather’s throne as Tepres was to his father’s.
Having confessed to royal blood, Taudde got to his feet. The drama of the original gesture would have to serve; he could hardly now outrage his grandfather’s dignity by willingly kneeling to a foreign king. He was relieved, and a little surprised, that no one tried to force him back to his knees.
The king half lifted a hand toward Taudde, then closed the hand into a fist and let it fall back to his side. “That was why you chose
to accede to Miennes’s demands. To kill my son, as I had killed your father.”
“The idea had a certain compelling symmetry,” Taudde admitted. “It… gave me a reason to take the easy path, I suppose. It would have been far more difficult to strike merely at Lord Miennes. I suspected that your, ah, cousin would know if I lied to him. Especially with Ankennes working behind him.”
“That is very likely so,” agreed the king. There was no forgiveness in his iron tone. It was merely an acknowledgment of truth.
“Yes, eminence. How much easier, then, to create a weapon that would do precisely as he demanded! I told myself that as Miennes forced my hand, and he no agent of Kalches, it was no outrage against the terms of the treaty to do as he commanded.”
“Sophistry.”
“Not… not entirely, I maintain, eminence.” Taudde’s gaze went to the prince’s face. Prince Tepres returned him a level stare that gave away nothing, very like his father’s. Taudde said, quietly, “Yet almost at once I regretted my cleverness.”
“As soon as you discovered the death intended for me had gone so badly astray,” the prince observed. His tone, too, was like his father’s; his voice held deep anger.
Taudde bowed his head. “In Kalches, gifts are never given away again within the same year they are received. It did not occur to me until far too late that the custom in Lonne might not be the same. For the peril in which my carelessness placed an innocent girl, I am indeed to blame. Yet it was only when I thought my plan had gone astray that I realized I would have regretted success almost as much as failure.” He hesitated, and then added sincerely, “I am sorry, Prince Tepres. Even aside from the treaty, I was wrong to strike at you in vengeance against your father.”
The prince lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “My father defeated yours on the field of battle—a battle for which Kalches itself pressed. Do you then claim a right to vengeance for the fortunes of war?”
“The
fortunes
of war, do you say? That was a war
forced
on
us—should we not wish to reclaim lands properly ours, wrested from us by unwarranted Seriantes belligerence?” Taudde caught himself and went on more moderately, “But even so, my father’s death was, as you say, a result of his defeat in combat. I was wrong to strike at you in vengeance for his death, and I beg your pardon for the harm I tried to do you.”
A little to Taudde’s surprise, the prince did not cast this apology back in his face, but answered, “I swore in the dragon’s chamber I would forgive the attempt. But I forgive it now because I believe you are sincere in your apology.”
Taudde bowed his head, finding to his surprise that this actually mattered to him. He had known for some time that he wished the prince no ill, but he hadn’t realized until this moment that he actually cared for Tepres’s good opinion.
“I admit, your professed repentance still puzzles me,” observed Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes, recalling Taudde’s attention. At his gesture, one of the black-clad guards brought the king a chair. He sank down into it, making it instantly a throne. Then he steepled his hands and gazed at Taudde over the tips of his fingers. “I do not understand, now less than ever, why you chose, in the dark beneath the mountain, to oppose Ankennes and defend my son.” The king put a faint stress on the
my
.
Taudde tried to think how to put an answer. He said at last, looking at the prince, “It was not so much a Seriantes I defended, but a man of whom I knew no ill and to whom I owed an act of contrition. Owed it twice over.”
Prince Tepres gave a very small nod.
Taudde turned to the king and went on, “You would say, no doubt, that with the treaty set to run out so soon, any Kalchesene should surely strive to ensure disorder in Lirionne. But… eminence, in that case I should have struck at you. Not at your son. I was a fool to be misled into striking at Prince Tepres by dreams of personal vengeance. When I realized how great a fool I had been, should I have compounded the foolishness?
“Under the mountain, it became clear that Miennes—Lord
Miennes—had never been important. That Mage Ankennes had ruled the conspiracy and was far more dangerous. I could not see everything that would follow if the dragon was destroyed. But I believed Ankennes wrong in his intention.”
“I think he was,” agreed the king, quietly. “His treachery was evidently both constant and thorough. I believe now that he was also responsible for… pressing my elder sons toward… the dark paths they chose.” He glanced at Prince Tepres, who returned his look steadily. Then he turned back to Taudde. “I will own that you protected this remaining son of my wife. Even in this year, and this season.” The king lifted a skeptical eyebrow. “I continue to find this remarkable, Kalchesene. Young Lariodde.”
Taudde hesitated, searching for words. At last he said, “I came to Lonne to listen to the music of the sea. And I have listened to it. I have listened to the music of Lonne as well, so entwined with the sea, for the songs of the sea are clearest where the waves come against the shore. The dragon… your dragon was a surprise to me. But I think now that the dragon’s heartbeat lies at the foundation of all the music I have heard here, and what I heard in that cavern is not what Ankennes apparently heard. I heard a balanced rhythm—powerful, yes; dangerous, without doubt—but with nothing of wickedness or corruption about it. I confess I have no love for the Seriantes line. But I said I believed Ankennes wrong, and I did. Do. Wrong in everything.”
“You take a great deal on yourself, to make such a sweeping judgment. Are you swayed merely by enmity?”
Taudde drew a breath and tried to find words. “Ankennes was, I suspect, possibly brilliant. But deeply mistaken. I believe he had developed an edifice of theory. I think that this theory became all he saw. I perceived nothing of the corruption in which he believed so passionately, and for which he was willing to bring down Lonne.” Taudde hesitated, then added, “You may suspect me of arrogance, but if you will permit me to say so, eminence, I am not the least skilled of Kalchesene sorcerers.”
The king lifted an ironic eyebrow. “From what I observed of
you in the dragon’s chamber, I do not doubt it. Were all Kalchesene sorcerers so powerful, I should greatly fear Kalches. I suspect you are fortunately exceptional.”
Anything Taudde answered to that would be either presumptuous or insolent. He said nothing.
“You may continue.”
Still off balance, Taudde hesitated. He said at last, “The destruction of Lonne might serve Kalches, but at what cost? But for my country’s sake, I might have supported Ankennes in what he tried to do, except he was too powerful. I believe there was no limit to his desire to force the world into accordance with his theories. And once he had destroyed Lonne… What then? Would he ever have felt himself finished? Or would he have chosen another project, equally misguided and equally destructive?” Taudde concluded carefully, “I struck at him then because there was at that moment so much power loose to grasp, and thus the opportunity existed. Above all, I did not want to face Ankennes later in my own country.”
This time the silence stretched out. The king continued to regard Taudde steadily, his expression still unreadable. Yet Taudde thought he might have recognized truth when he heard it. Not all kings could. But, then, Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes was not an ordinary king. Taudde rather thought that behind the stillness of the room, he could hear the heartbeat of the dragon. He could not tell what the king was thinking.
“Thus your actions were ultimately on your own behalf, and on behalf of your own country,” the king observed at last.
“All my reasons were important to me,” Taudde said steadily. “Why should anything but the result be important to you?”
There was another pause. “I have several remaining questions to ask you, Kalchesene,” the king said eventually. “I will have truthful answers to each. Then I shall decide what to do with you.”
Taudde opened his hands to show that he would yield to the king’s will. He had no idea what questions the king had in mind, or whether he himself would in turn be willing and able to answer
them honestly. He wondered, rather desperately, whether any plea of his could prevent the re-imposition of the muting spell. He knew now, to his shame, that he
would
plead, rather than suffer the silencing of the world around him.
“Do you now wish harm to my son?”
Taudde almost exclaimed in relief. He was able to answer at once, with perfect truth, “I do not!” Then, when the king merely lifted an eyebrow and waited, he went on more slowly, choosing his words with care, “Do you think my apology was not in earnest? I assure you otherwise, eminence. I wish your son no harm.”
The king gave a little nod. He asked softly, “And do you wish me harm? Do you wish Lirionne harm?”
These were more difficult questions. Taudde was not even certain of the answers himself. “I could wish Lirionne had different borders,” he answered at last. “I could wish the treaty you imposed on Kalches had had different terms. But I think… I think I can honestly answer that I do not wish your people ill. You… when I was a boy, I dreamed that someday I would meet you on the field of battle and leave you broken in the mud.”
“A natural dream for a boy,” acknowledged the king. “And now?”
“Now, eminence, I think I have come to prefer that the borders between our countries be redrawn by some more peaceable means.”
The king inclined his head. “I am satisfied with the borders as they are. But peace is my own preference.”
Taudde found that he believed him. Fifteen years ago, the Dragon of Lirionne had been ruthless in his victory. Taudde, in his boyhood, had perceived only the ruthlessness. His grandfather had tried to explain to him the tactical uses of brutality, but Taudde had not been able to understand him. But he saw now that it was that same ruthlessness of will that had presided over the grim horror of the executions of Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes’s older sons and, more recently, sent the King of Lirionne into the shadowy paths of death to find this younger son. And had then allowed
him to force his way out again. Geriodde Seriantes ruled according to his grim view of necessity, and spared himself no more than his enemies. But Taudde thought he truly did not want the war to resume.