Kirith Kirin (The City Behind the Stars) Read online

  Our neighbor Commiseth was one of those who met to hide the priest, and soldiers were quartered in his house, too. His contingent was not so well-behaved as the southerners who lived with us, however, and he had four soldiers as his allotment, partly because he was too poor to bribe anybody. Worse, a young lieutenant numbered among the four, and he set himself up like a petty baron in Commiseth’s household, ordering Commiseth about like a servant. One heard horrible stories about the treatment the family endured. Soon the lieutenant took a fancy to the eldest daughter Sergil. At first the certainty of displeasure of the parents was enough to deter him. But as the days passed, the lieutenant became convinced Sergil thought he was nice and set out to win her to his bed. When she protested he took her there anyway. The priest, who was hiding on Commiseth’s farm at the time, tried to help the girl and was discovered.

  When Commiseth learned what had happened he tried to kill the lieutenant as any decent fellow would have. Because of the presence of the priest, the lieutenant accused the family of treason and hanged Commiseth’s sons in front of him, and raped his wife, and killed Commiseth.

  The wife and remaining children were marched off to the south, along with the priest, where later the Queen’s courts declared them traitors and had them sold into slavery. Sergil never finished the journey, dying on the march. I passed their house sometimes when I was grazing the flock in neighboring pastures. Vines overran the sod walls in a season, and every window lay open to wind and rain. Grass grew waist deep in the door-yard; the whole aspect was sad and broken, and we told tales that it was haunted.

  The Queen prospered from the best year of tax collections in history. She commissioned Charnos shipwrights to build a royal yacht for sailing across the bay to Aerfax in the summer. After tax season the soldiers withdrew from the vicinity of Arthen, shutting themselves up in the forts. While we no longer had Blue Cloaks as guests in our houses, their presence was evident everywhere. Each day patrols swept across Athryn’s girdle round the Forest, the patrols maintaining vigilance lest anyone enter Arthen against the Queen’s wishes.

  In spite of the turmoil in the world and Grandmother’s death, in spite of tragedies among our neighbors, our life on Papa’s farm proceeded in something like a familiar order. I grew into my work, from feeding chickens to hoeing weeds to forking hay. I learned to ride and track, with Sim to teach me, a more patient master than my father would have been. Even the presence of soldiers at our table had little effect on our secure family. Now and then, however, a shadow crossed my vision — the look on Mama’s face at tax time, the dread Papa evinced when blue-cloaked soldiers rode across our farmland. Tales Grandmother told me ran through my head, cities in the forest and a high white tower, shrines in ancient fields, tribes of silent, invisible folk slipping beneath tree shadow. Even then, from the earliest moments I can remember, my schooling led me to consciousness of a world of many powers.

  My mother herself gained a strength with the years, a keenness of vision, along with the beauty that emerges beyond youth. She paid no mind to the names people called her, laid no charms on anybody, soured no milk nor ruined anyone’s crops. Not even when she had good reason. At times I could see her restless with some thought she could not say. Once I saw her in her room holding a box, but when I came in she put it away, and the look she gave me reminded me of Grandmother telling the story of the Jisraegen priests when they were making the song that frightened God.

  I turned out to be a fair shepherd, better than my full-sister Mikif who had the job till I showed a talent for it. The sheep would come to me whether I called them or not, and the dogs knew what I wanted them to do without my having to tell them. I never considered this a praiseworthy accomplishment since it came so easily, but my father remarked on it more than once, and after my ninth year the flock of some two dozen was entirely entrusted to me.

  I wandered throughout the countryside, spending summer nights away from home under the starry sky, learning to make my own campfire and to hunt for small game. We would stay off grazing for days, me and the sheep and the hound Axfel, a huge, hulking ribcage of a dog, three years old when I was ten, with tongue enough to trail the ground and a snout that would have done justice to a wolf. We wandered in the farthest pastures of my father’s farm and beyond to the hillsides that approached Arthen herself. At night one could count the watchfires along the girdle, the Blue Cloaks never ceasing their vigilance. It was said that the soldiers hated duty on the Arthen patrols worse than any other post in the Queen’s service. The Woodland swelled vast and dark beyond their puny fires, shadows of branches engulfing the world like a sea.

  Once I asked my mother why the Queen found it necessary to watch Arthen so closely, why didn’t her army ever go inside it? She told me the forest would guile them if they did, would lead them farther and farther into its heart and they would never come out again; that the forest called to them day and night, because Arthen was their home the same as it was ours. Many of the Blue Cloaks were Jisraegen, too.

  The Queen feared something beyond the border. But Mama refused to tell me what it was, and none of my brothers and sister had ever heard anything but stories.

  By then I knew all the stories I would ever need to know, or so I thought. At night, gazing at the dark old forest, I counted the campfires and watched the tree-shadows, feeling as if I were waiting, though I had no idea what I was waiting for.

  2

  The trouble in the north grew worse with the years, and by the time I was fourteen I understood enough to worry. Taxes were higher than ever, and grumbling across the Fenax had become heated enough that the Queen enlarged the fortress garrisons again. She had not yet quartered more soldiers with us but rumors were she might do so before summer. The whole Fenax rode on an undercurrent of murmuring, rumors the Queen intended to bleed the country white from taxes one more year and then send Drudaen to rid her of this burdensome northern rule. Or, worse, rumors that she was saving all this gold to buy a Tervan stone so that Drudaen could build a High Place in the north. The taxes swelled again, when already an honest family could hardly feed itself from its own share of the harvest, let alone have anything for market.

  My father and his friends had begun to meet again once the soldiers were out of our houses, to remember Commiseth to each other and to keep abreast of the news. At this time it became harder to keep the new priest in any safety where we lived, and many priests were caught by the Blue Cloaks and hanged from the walls of the forts. It was a shame, my mother said, to hear of good people hanged from Fort Cunavastar’s walls, with birds feeding on their bodies. Even the meanest shrines, merely closed before, were destroyed during these years. No one understood why, at the time, and I can remember my parents discussing this new turn of events. Our temples were simple places where lamps were lit at night, when this was allowed. Many of these places were very ancient and their destruction caused much grief.

  In Cordyssa, the major northern city, Her Majesty’s tax on plain bread was twice the market price of wheat per stone, with the Queen being the largest vendor of wheat as well. That year there were over two hundred separate levies special to Cordyssa and her citizens, including a fixed tax on hand-mirrors, white hen’s eggs, garden plots, excessive ownership of silverware and children’s toys beyond a maximum number fixed by royal decree. A tax assessor could enter the house of any common citizen at will. This caused unrest enough, and incidents aplenty. But it was the wheat tax that broke the city’s back. When people could barely afford to eat, they could no longer afford the luxury of fear.

  Soon came the quiet news that another army was forming in Cordyssa, not like the early rumors told in taverns but a soft ripple spreading from farmers group to farmers group across the Fenax. The clans and the country posses shared their news. Papa attended the meetings of his own secret circle but refused to encourage any of his friends to head for Cordyssa. Jarred talked idly at supper of enlisting himself but my mother told him that would be utter foolishness, since any war or t
hreat of war would bring Drudaen Keerfax to the north. After that the farmland we treasured would be barren desert from Arthen to the walls of the mountains. Help would come out of Arthen, if it came at all. The rest of the family listened to her speech in shock. Mother had never before mentioned Arthen in this manner. Jarred looked sheepish and never brought up the subject of heading to Cordyssa again.

  It is odd, to one as young as I was then, to know that one’s parents can be afraid. Grandmother Fysyyn’s stories took on more weight with each passing day, and I began to understand that we had been in the midst of a kind of war all our lives. The Queen in Ivyssa was not satisfied with what she could take from us in taxes, in corn or in gold. If she could have taxed the blood in our veins or had payment in pounds of flesh, she would have done it. Why did she want so much?

  I learned to be afraid myself. Sometimes, leading the flocks through the green hillsides, I felt the wide world hovering around me ominous on every side. Sometimes I was afraid with a fear I didn’t understand and would sing Kimri alone with my hound and my sheep, in sight of the shimmering sea of Arthen’s blue-green leaves. I was fourteen that year, nearing manhood as we define it. I could hardly have guessed, when I was able to drink the watered wine of the fourteen-year-old at my naming supper, that this would be the last such celebration I would pass on Kinth’s farm with my family.

  While I was grazing the sheep in the hillsides later in the spring, a strange man mounted on a handsome horse rode into our farmyard, leading an even handsomer horse behind him, a black stallion with silver trappings, the horse of a lord or a rich merchant. The stranger said he was my mother’s brother Sivisal, and at the sight of him my mother burst into tears.

  The first I learned of this was when Jarred came running toward me across the outer meadow. I had not planned to return home for several days and was surprised to see him. When I spied him headed toward me across the swale I thought some trouble had come up at home, that soldiers had come to live at the house again, or worse, and Jarred’s expression and haste only made me the more fearful. When he came near enough to make himself heard, he shouted, “Jessex, we’re to gather up the flock and take it home, now. Our uncle Sivisal has come here and he’s asking for you.”

  “Sivisal? Our uncle?”

  “He came from Arthen. But he won’t talk about it. He asks for you by name as if he knew you all your life.”

  “Does Mama know him? Is it really her brother?”

  “Mama fell down in the milk when she saw him, and you should have heard her scream. Father came running in from the planting, he thought the Blue Cloaks had killed us all. Now they have Uncle Sivisal shut away in the house, in case any of the Queen’s men happen to ride by. Uncle Sivisal isn’t afraid though.”

  We gathered the flock for our return while he described the whole scene for me, from the beginning, our lost uncle riding into our farmyard with horses only noble folk could own, and with a rust-colored cloak streaming from his shoulders. We had all heard the story a thousand times, from Grandmother and from Mother, how he vanished while hunting in Arthen years ago.

  The poor sheep rambled home confused with half a meal in their bellies. We hurried them relentlessly through the split-log gates into the pen, where their dried clover would not seem as rich to them as the sweet grass of the hillsides. Axfel, seven years old by now, but still fit and able, nipped at the heels of stragglers and lay down with his chin on his paws to keep watch on the farmyard.

  In the stable Jarred showed me the fine horses Uncle Sivisal had brought. One of them was a well-built gray sorrel stallion, sturdy and of good stock, but the other beat him by a stade. He was a stallion taller than any horse I had ever seen. Even the horses of Papa’s rich relatives could not compare with this one. His coat was glossy black and had a shine as if it were carefully brushed every hour, culminating in an extravagant black waterfall of mane. Silver trappings hung beside him in the stall, a shine like nothing I had ever seen. The horse had been offered the freshest hay and sweetest grasses and deigned to eat a mouthful now and then. He had fine eyes, a calm gray color I had never seen before on a horse, and the shape of his head was aristocratic, with delicate flaring nostrils and a sensitive, disdainful mouth. My father knew good horses from growing up in Curaeth and had begun to teach me points a horseman will note. This horse was the finest in every way that I had ever seen.

  “Don’t stand there staring forever.” Jarred pulled me along by the sleeve. In the fading afternoon we walked through the yard to the house. I don’t remember feeling any particular fear. I asked Jarred if our uncle looked like Grandmother Fysyyn. He said he had not noticed.

  Papa was in the house, and so was my oldest brother Sim, unusual since hours of daylight were left when good work could be done in the fields. The stranger my uncle sat in Father’s chair beside the hearth, where a fire burned even in that season, his large frame lounging quiet and easy. His brown hands cradled a mug of cool ale from the cellar. Mother hovered over him as if he might dissolve. She called me to her side and presented me. “This is Jessex, my youngest child,” she said, and he gave me a long inspection. He said nothing. Something in his eyes gave me to know I need not hold myself shy before him, quiet as children are taught to be when among adults, and so I inspected him back with pretty much the same thoroughness. “This is your Uncle, Sivisal son of Veneth.”

  Sivisal was taller than Father and a little older, with a lean belly and broad shoulders, powerful legs and arms like a soldier’s. Something in his dress reminded me of soldiers as well. He wore a brown leather tunic laced with bright beaded strings, and leggings of tough leather, good for riding through brush country. A crossbow of polished wood propped against the stone hearth, decorated with metal inlay, some collected talismans dangling from the stock; a sheath of arrows tipped with stiff feathers stood there, too. Sivisal had a handsome, dark face with heavy brows and deep-set eyes that seemed to take in everything at once. He looked so much like my mother I would have taken them for twins; the only difference lay in the weathered skin of his face that contrasted with my mother’s smooth and prosperous complexion.

  If he had asked for me by name when he rode in he showed no sign of any particular interest in me now. He sat in that crowd of strangers with complete ease and without any need to say much. I decided he might be testing us and therefore refused to be curious myself. Uncle Sivisal asked my father how often the patrols came by, and whether the watchfires along Arthen were visible from the farm at night. His accent was curious, as if Upcountry were not his common tongue. Later Papa told him some of the stories that had been current in our part of the country in recent times, the hanging of Commiseth and his family, the quartering of troops, the general poverty and stories of trouble in Cordyssa. Much of this Sivisal seemed already to know, except the story of the lieutenant and pretty Sergil. That made him angry, I think.

  Sim and Jarred laid supper on the table, Mother hardly glancing in their direction. She said, “Sivisal, I can’t believe it’s really you. If only Mother were here, she would think you so handsome.”

  “I’m lucky to leave Arthen at all,” he said quietly. “Except for the grain patrols, no one gets out.”

  Father smiled at Mother. “At least the old stories don’t come from nothing. The Prince is still alive.”

  Uncle Sivisal studied his cup for a long time and his eyes filled with quiet pride. “Yes. He’s still alive, and nothing Queen Athryn can do will touch him while we live to defend him.”

  Jarred and I looked at each other.

  Uncle Sivisal gave me a long, cool inspection. “Do you know where I come from?” he asked.

  “From Arthen,” I said, my voice very small.

  He nodded. “Did your brother tell you I asked for you by name?”

  “Yes sir. Why?” Voice diminishing still, as the rest of my family fell silent.

  “Never mind, for now. I’ve been sent to see if you can ride that horse I brought with me. When we’ve tested you on his b
ack, I’ll tell you more.”

  After that there was a lot of talk, little of which I understood. I was thinking about the horse with his fine gray eyes. Mother protested that I was only fourteen, and Father was saying I could sit a horse better than he could. Jarred predicted I would break my head and Mikif said she didn’t think I’d be brave enough to get on this horse at all, but she would. I watched Uncle Sivisal and felt a vague stirring within me, as if I were understanding the purpose for which he had come. “Answer me, boy. I’ve been sent here to call you by name and to see whether you can ride that horse I brought. Do you want to give it a try?”

  “Yes,” I said, very nearly breathless.

  “All right,” Uncle Sivisal said. “We’ll test you now. No use delaying.” Without a word he rose up from the chair.

  I followed him into the farmyard and everyone else came out to watch. Uncle Sivisal ran lightly to the stable. In the doorway he placed a ring on his finger, drawn out of a pouch at his waist. He polished the stone against his tunic and went into the barn. Soon he emerged, leading the big black horse, bare-backed, Sivisal’s ringed hand on the horse’s silver-studded reins. My heart misgave me at the horse’s size and I almost ran for Mama’s skirts again, but I kept before me the image of the horse’s calm, gray eyes. When Sivisal led the stallion close to me, I could see the horse watching, as if all this fuss amused him. The horse looked deeply into me. I knew he would bear me then and was not afraid. When Sivisal signaled me I lightly found his broad back and buried my hands in his mane, like the fine thread my mother spun, soft and richly twisted. The others watched as if I had become magical. I took the reins Uncle Sivisal offered me. My hands were trembling. The horse cantered around the yard and galloped to the kitchen creek. He was aware of me and everything in me. He tolerated me and kept me on his back for reasons known only to him. We headed a way toward the hills leading to the Woodland. Finally I walked him back to Sivisal, who bowed. “Well, Jessex, it seems you have known this horse before in some other life.”