Heir of Sea and Fire - Patricia A. McKillip, ebook, CALIBRE SFF 1970s, Temp 1
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Heir of Sea and Fire
Patricia A. McKillip
1
In spring, three things came invariably to the house of the King of An: the
year's first shipment of Herun wine, the lords of the Three Portions for the
spring council, and an argument.
The spring of the year following the strange disappearance of the Prince of
Hed, who had, with the High One's harpist, vanished like a mist in Isig Pass,
the great house with its seven gates and seven white towers seemed to be
cracking like a seed pod out of a long, bitter winter of silence and grief.
The season dusted the air with green, set patterns of light like inlay on the
cold stone floors, and roused restlessness like sap in the deep heart of An,
until Raederle of An, standing in Cyone's garden, which no one had entered for
the six months since her death, felt that even the dead of An, their bones
plaited with grass root, must be drumming their fingers in their graves.
She stirred after a while, left the tangle of weeds and withered things that
had not survived the winter, and went back into the King's hall, whose doors
were flung wide to the light. Servants under the eye of Mathom's steward, were
shaking the folds out of the lords' banners, hanging them precariously from
the high beams. The lords were due any day, and the house was in a turmoil
preparing to receive them. Already their gifts had been arriving for her: a
milk-white falcon bred in the wild peaks of Osterland from the Lord of Hel; a
brooch like a gold wafer from Map Hwillion, who was too poor to afford such
things; a flute of polished wood inlaid with silver, which bore no name, and
worried Raederle, since whoever had sent it had known what she would love. She
watched the banner of Hel unrolling, the ancient boar's head with tusks like
black moons on an oak-green field; it rose jerkily on its hangings to survey
the broad hall out of its small fiery eyes. She gazed back at it, her arms
folded, then turned suddenly and went to find her father.
She found him in his chambers arguing with his land-heir. Their voices were
low, and they stopped when she entered, but she saw the faint flush on Duac's
cheekbones. In the pale slashes of his brows and his sea-colored eyes, he bore
the stamp of Ylon's wild blood, but his patience with Mathom when everyone
else had exhausted theirs was considered phenomenal. She wondered what Mathom
had said to upset him.
The King turned a dour crow's eye to her; she said politely, for his mood in
the mornings was unpredictable, "I would like to visit Mara Croeg m Aum for a
couple of weeks, with your permission. I could pack and leave tomorrow. I've
been in Anuin all winter, and I feel--I need to get away."
There was not a flicker of change in his eyes. He said simply, "No," and
turned to pick up his wine cup.
She stared at his back, annoyed, and discarded courtesy like an old shoe.
"Well, I'm not going to stay here and be argued over like a prize cow out of
Aum. Do you know who sent me a gift? Map Hwillion. Only yesterday he was
laughing at me for falling out of a pear tree, and now he's got his first
beard and an eight-hundred-year-old house with a leaky roof, and he thinks he
 wants to marry me. You're the one who promised me to the Prince of Hed; can't
you put a stop to all this? I'd rather listen to the pig herds of Hel during a
thunderstorm than another spring council arguing with you about what to do
with me."
"So would I," Duac murmured. Mathom eyed them both. His hair had turned
iron-grey seemingly over night; his sorrow over Cyone's death had limned his
face to the bone, but it had neither tempered nor bittered his disposition.
"What do you want me to tell them," he asked, "other than what I have told
them for nineteen years? I have made a vow, binding beyond life, to marry you
to the man winning Peven's game. If you want to run away and live with Map
Hwillion under his leaky roof, I can't stop you--they know that."
"I don't want to many Map Hwillion," she said, exasperated. "I would like to
marry the Prince of Hed. Except that I don't know any more who he is, and no
one else knows where he is. I am tired of waiting; I am tired of this house; I
am tired of listening to the Lord of Hel tell me that I am being ignored and
insulted by the Prince of Hed; I want to visit Mara Croeg in Aum, and I don't
understand how you can refuse such a simple, reasonable request."
There was a short silence, during which Mathom considered the wine in his cup.
An indefinable expression came into his face; he set the cup down and said,
"If you like, you can go to Caithnard."
Her lips parted in surprise. "I can? To visit Rood? Is there a ship--" And
then Duac brought his hand down flat on the wine table, rattling cups.
"No."
She stared at him, astonished, and he closed his hand. His eyes were narrowed
slightly as he gazed back at Mathom. "He's asked me to go, but I've already
refused. He wants Rood home."
"Rood? I don't understand."
Mathom moved away from the window suddenly with an irritated whirl of sleeve.
"I might as well have the entire council in here babbling at me at once. I
want Rood to take a leave from his studies, come back to Anuin for a while;
he'll take that fact best from either Duac or you."
"You tell him," Duac said inflexibly. Under the King's eye he yielded, sat
down, gripping the arms of his chair as though he were holding fast to his
patience. "Then will you explain so I can understand? Rood has just taken the
Red of Apprenticeship; if he stays he'll take the Black at a younger age than
any living Master. He's done fine work there; he deserves the chance to stay."
"There are more riddles in the world than those in the locked books behind the
walls of that College in Caithnard."
"Yes. I've never studied riddle-mastery, but I have an idea that you can't
answer them all at once. He's doing the best he can. What do you want him to
do? Go lose himself at Erlenstar Mountain like the Prince of Hed?"
"No. I want him here."
"For what, in Hel's name? Are you planning to die or something?"
"Duac," Raederle breathed, but he waited stubbornly for the King to answer.
She felt, like a live thing beneath the irritation and obstinacy in them both,
the binding between them beyond all definition. Then Duac heaved himself to
his feet at Mathom's silence and snapped before he slammed the door behind him
so hard the stones seemed to rattle, "By Madir's bones, I wish I could see
into that peatbog you call a mind!"
Raederle sighed. She looked at Mathom, who seemed in spite of the rich robe he
wore, black and impervious as a wizard's curse in the sunlight. "I'm beginning
to hate spring. I won't ask you to explain the world to me, just why I can't
go visit Mara Croeg while Cyn Croeg is here at the council."
"Who was Thanet Ross and why did he play a harp without strings?"
She stood a moment, dredging the answer out of interminable, half-forgotten
hours of riddlery. Then she turned; she heard his voice again, just before the
door slammed once more, "And stay out of Hel."
She found Duac in the library, staring out the window. She joined him, leaning
against the window, looking down at the city that sloped gently away from the
King's house to spill around the rim of the harbor. Trade-ships were drifting
 in with the midmorning tide, their colored sails deflating in the wind like
weary sighs. She saw the white and green of Danan Isig's ships bringing the
marvellous crafts from Isig Mountain; and a hope stirred in her that the
northern Kingdom had sent news more valuable than all its beautiful cargo.
Duac stirred beside her, as the peace of the ancient library with its smell of
hide, wax and the iron of old shields returned the composure to his face. He
said softly, "He is the most pig-headed, arbitrary and exasperating man in the
Three Portions of An."
"I know."
"Something's going on in his head; something's bubbling behind his eyes like a
bad spell... It worries me. Because if it came to a choice between a blind
step into a bottomless pit with him and a walk across the apple orchards with
the Lords of An at their finest, I would shut my eyes and step. But what is he
thinking?"
"I don't know." She dropped her chin in her palms. "I don't know why he wants
us all home now. I don't understand him. I asked him why I couldn't leave, and
he asked me why Thanet Ross played a harp with no strings."
"Who?" Duac looked at her. "How could... Why did he play a harp with no
strings?"
"For the same reason he walked backward and shaved his head instead of his
beard. For no reason except that there was no reason. He was a sad man and
died backward."
"Oh."
"He was walking backward for no reason and fell in a river. Nobody ever saw
him again, but they assumed he died since there was no reason--"
"All right." Duac protested mildly. "You could spin that one into yarn."
She smiled. "See what education you missed, not being destined to marry a
riddle-master." Then her smile faded; she bowed her head, traced a crack in
the old mortar. "I feel as though I'm waiting for a legend to come down from
the north, breaking out of winter with the spring water... Then I remember the
farmer's son who used to put shells to my ears so I could hear the sea, and,
Duac, that's when I become afraid for him. He has been gone so long; there has
not been one word from him for a year, and no one in the realm has heard so
much as a harp-note from the High One's harpist. Surely the High One would
never keep Morgon so long from his land. I think something must have happened
to them in Isig Pass."
"As far as anyone knows, the land-rule hasn't passed from Morgon," Duac said
comfortingly, but she only shifted restlessly.
"Then where is he? At least he could get a message to his own land. The
traders say that every time they stop at Tol, Tristan and Eliard are there at
the dock waiting, hoping for news. Even at Isig, with all they say happened to
him, he managed to write. They say he has scars on his hands like vesta-horns,
and he can take the shape of trees..."
Duac glanced down at his own hands as if he expected to see the withered moons
of white horns in them. "I know... The simplest thing to do would be to go to
Erlenstar Mountain and ask the High One where he is. It's spring; the Pass
should be clearing. Eliard might do it."
"Leave Hed? He's Morgon's land-heir; they'd never let him leave."
"Maybe. But they say there's a streak of stubbornness long as a witch's nose
in the people of Hed. He might." He leaned over the ledge suddenly; his head
turned towards a distant, double-column of riders making their way across the
meadows. "Here they come. In full plumage."
"Who is it?"
"I can't... blue. Blue and black retinue; that would be Cyn Croeg. He appears
to have met someone green..."
"Hel."
"No. Green and cream; very small following."
She sighed. "Map Hwillion."
She stood by the window after Duac left to tell Mathom, watching the riders
veer around the nut orchards, flickering in and out of the lacework of black,
 bare branches. They appeared again at a comer of the old city wall, to take
the main road through the city, which led twisting and curving through the
market and old high houses and shops whose windows would be wide open like
eyes, full of watchers. By the time they disappeared through the gates of the
city, she had decided what to do.
Three days later, she sat beside the pig-woman of the Lord of Hel under an oak
tree, weaving grass blades into a net. From all around her in the placid
afternoon came the vast snort and grumble of the great pig herds of Hel as
they stirred through the tangled roots and shadows of oak. The pig-woman, whom
no one had ever bothered to name, was smoking a meditative pipe. She was a
tall, bony, nervous woman, with long, dishevelled grey hair and dark grey
eyes; she had tended the pigs as long as anyone could remember. They were
related, she and Raederle, through the witch Madir, in some obscure way they
were trying to figure out. The pig-woman's great gift was with pigs; she was
abrupt and shy with people, but the beautiful, fiery Cyone had inherited
Madir's interest in pigs and had become friends with the taciturn pig-woman.
But not even Cyone had discovered what Raederle knew: the odd store of
knowledge that the pig-woman had also inherited from Madir.
Raederle picked another tough stem of grass, sent it snaking in and out of the
small, square weave. "Am I doing this right?"
The pig-woman touched the tight strands and nodded. "You could carry water in
that," she said, in her plain, rugged voice. "Now, then, I think King Oen had
a pigherder whom Madir might have been fond of, in Anuin."
"I thought she might have been fond of Oen."
The pig-woman looked surprised. "After he built the tower to trap her? You
told me that. Besides, he had a wife." She waved the words and her pipe smoke
away at once with her hand. "I'm not thinking."
"No king I ever heard of married Madir," Raederle said wryly. "Yet somehow the
blood got into the king's line. Let's see: she lived nearly two hundred years,
and there were seven kings. I believe we can forget Fenel; he was too busy
fighting almost to father a land-heir, let alone a bastard. I don't even know
if he kept pigs. It is possible," she added, struck, "that you are a
descendant of a child of Madir and one of the Kings."
The pig-woman gave a rare chuckle. "Oh, I doubt it. Me with my bare feet.
Madir liked pig-herders as much as she liked kings."
"That's true." She finished with the grass blade and pushed the stems close,
frowning down at them absently. "It is also possible that Oen might have grown
fond of Madir after he realized she wasn't his enemy, but that seems a little
scandalous, since it was through him that Ylon's blood came into the Kings'
line. Oen was furious enough about that."
"Ylon."
"You know that tale."
The pig-woman shook her head. "I know the name, but no one ever told me the
tale."
"Well." She sat back against the tree trunk, the sun shimmering in and out of
her eyes. Her own shoes were off; her hair was loose; and there was a small
spider making a bewildered foray up one strand. She brushed it off without
noticing. "It's the first riddle I ever learned. Oen's land-heir was not his
own son, but the son of some strange sea-lord, who came into Oen's bed
disguised as the king. Nine months afterward, Oen's wife bore Ylon, with skin
like foam and eyes like green seaweed. So Oen in his anger built a tower by
the sea for this sea-child, with orders that he should never come out of it.
One night, fifteen years after his birth, Ylon heard a strange harping from
the sea, and such was his love of it, and desire to find its source, that he
broke the bars on his window with his hands and leaped into the sea and
vanished. Ten years later Oen died, and to his other sons' surprise, the
land-rule passed to Ylon. Ylon was driven by his own nature back to claim his
heritage. He reigned only long enough to marry and beget a son who was as dark
 and practical as Oen, and then he went back to the tower Oen had built for him
and leaped to his death on the rocks below." She touched the tiny net, squared
a corner. "It's a sad tale." A frown strayed into her eyes, absent, puzzled,
as if she had almost remembered something, but not quite. "Anyway, Ylon's face
appears once or twice a century, and sometimes his wildness, but never his
terrible torment, because no one with his nature has ever again inherited the
land-rule. Which is fortunate."
"That's true." The pig-woman looked down at the pipe in her hand, which had
gone out during her listening. She tapped it absently against the tree root.
Raederle watched an enormous black sow nudge her way through the clearing in
front of them to loll panting in the shade. "It's almost Dis's time."
The pig-woman nodded. "They'll all be black as pots, too, sired by Dark Noon."
Raederle spotted the boar responsible, the great descendant of Hegdis-Noon,
rooting among the old leaves. "Maybe she'll bear one who can talk."
"Maybe. I keep hoping, but the magic, I think, has gone out of the blood and
they are born silent."
"I wish a few of the Lords of An had been born silent."
The pig-woman's brows flicked up in sudden comprehension. "That's it, then."
"What?"
She shifted, shy again. "The spring council. It's nothing of my business, but
I didn't think you had ridden for three days to find out if we were first or
third cousins."
Raederle smiled. "No. I ran away from home."
"You... Does your father know where you are?"
"I always assume he knows everything." She reached for another stem of grass.
The odd, tentative frown moved again into her face; she looked up suddenly to
meet the pig-woman's eyes. For a moment, the direct, grey gaze seemed a
stranger's look, curious, measuring, with the same question in it that she had
barely put words to. Then the pig-woman's head bowed; she reached down to pick
an acorn out of an angle of root and tossed it to the black sow. Raederle said
softly, "Ylon..."
"He's why you can do these small things I teach you so well. He and Madir. And
your father with his mind."
"Maybe. But--" She shook the thought away and leaned back again to breathe the
tranquil air. "My father could see a shadow in a barrow, but I wish he didn't
have a mouth like a clam. It's good to be away from that house. It grew so
quiet last winter I thought whatever words we spoke would freeze solid in the
air. I thought that winter would never end..."
"It was a bad one. The Lord had to send for feed from Aum and pay double
because Aum itself was growing short of corn. We lost some of the herd; one of
the great boars, Aloil--"
"Aloil?"
The pig-woman looked suddenly a little flustered. "Well, Rood mentioned him
once, and I thought-- I liked the name."
"You named a boar after a wizard?"
"Was he? I didn't... Rood didn't say. Anyway, he died in spite of all I could
do for him, and the Lord himself even came to help with his own hands."
Raederle's face softened slightly. "Yes. That's one thing Raith is good with."
"It's in his blood. But he was upset about--about Aloil." She glanced at
Raederle's handiwork. "You might want to make it a little wider, but you'll
need to leave a fringe to hold it after you throw it."
Raederle stared down at the tiny net, watching it grow big then small again in
her mind's eye. She reached for more grass, and felt, as her hand touched the
earth, the steady drum of hoofbeats. She glanced, startled, toward the trees.
"Who is that? Hasn't Raith left for Anuin yet?"
"No, he's still here. Didn't you--" She stopped as Raederle rose, cursing
succinctly, and the Lord of Hel and his retinue came into the clearing,
scattering pig.
Raith brought his mount to a halt in front of Raederle; his men, in pale green
and black, drew to a surprised, disorderly stop. He stared down at her, his
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