King's Son, Magic's Son Read online

  "Your spies are amazing!"

  "They are, aren't they?" he agreed blandly. "Aidan, now that you're here, what exactly do you plan to do? You don't strike me as the sort to be happy simply bickering over the cut of a tunic or hang of a cloak."

  "Duwies, no! I'm perfectly willing to start earning my keep, brawd."

  Estmere gave a startled laugh. "I didn't mean you'll have to labor like a peasant!"

  "What, then? I'm willing to do my share of healing, but most healing doesn't really need magic. And— Estmere, what are you doing to that scroll?"

  He'd been fidgeting nervously with the edge of it. Estmere glanced down as though he'd never seen the thing before and let it go, sitting with primly folded hands. "I'll be frank. For the last day and a half I have been plotting ways to use you, use your Art."

  "What—"

  "Wait, hear me out! I'm not proud of it. And now none of it seems right or just."

  With a sudden burst of that same nervous energy, he got to his feet, staring as well as he could out that ridiculously narrow window. "I have honorable ministers at court," Estmere murmured, "men I trust. And my guard is loyal to me, I know that. But still . . .

  "But still you want the security magic can give you."

  He whirled to face me. "Exactly. I don't want anything dramatic from you; I can't risk having the court think I'm holding the throne through magic. What I ask from you, as my brother, is simply that you attend certain of my royal audiences at my side. You told me you can't read others' thoughts, but I imagine you do have . . . well, abilities to tell you when something isn't quite right?'

  "To winnow out would-be traitors and assassins, you mean. Yes, brawd, that I will do, as best I can." A flash of memory: that day back when I'd frightened away the boar, when I'd felt another magical self brush my own . . . If there was any real peril there, it was something I'd roused. And something I must, of honor, guard against as well.

  "Thank you, uh, brawd." Estmere grinned in relief. "Oh, and I also think it might be a wise idea for you to accompany me on my spring progression."

  Progression? Didn't that Anglic word merely mean a movement from one thing to another? "Your what?"

  "You'll find out." Mischief glinted in the bright blue eyes. "I trust you have a taste for travel?"

  "I came here, didn't I? Besides," I added with a grin of my own, "whatever this progression of yours turns out to be, it has to be better than staying stuck in the palace and bickering over fashion!"

  CHAPTER X

  OF FRIENDSHIP AND

  SPIES

  Every castle, the royal palace included, has an herb garden somewhere within it, to provide for both healing and food seasoning. I'd already had a hand in expanding the royal garden. And now, while I waited to learn what a "progression" might be, I was out prowling amid the neat green rows, checking this plant and that, my cloak wrapped tightly about myself in the early morning chill. The palace walls towered like great gray cliffs all around me, but blessedly not a soul was out here with me. The air smelled sharply of mint and valerian, and I bent to pluck and savor a mint leaf.

  "Now God give you a good morning, Prince Aidan," said a sudden cheerful voice.

  I nearly shot into the air like a startled cat, springing to my feet and whirling in one move. But then:

  "Baron Aldingar." Catching my breath, embarrassed at having been caught off-guard like any magickless man, I added formally, "A good morning to you, as well."

  He was elegant from the cut of his sleek brown hair to the line of his dark blue cloak; his bow was the very essence of courtliness. "Pray forgive me for having startled you."

  Och, no politics, Aldingar, not on such a nice, sunny day! But I dipped my head in polite acknowledgement. When he didn't seem about to say anything further, I bent to my work again, nipping off sickly sprigs, checking for signs of frost or insect damage. For a time, the man contented himself with merely strolling up and down the rows of herbs, his fashionable, fur-trimmed cloak swirling slowly about, as though he really had come out here only to catch a breath of fresh morning air.

  "A pleasant place," Aldingar said at last.

  "Mm."

  "Quiet, too. Private."

  Private. I straightened. "Come to the point, my lord baron. What do you want of me?'

  "Why, nothing, Prince Aidan!" He was the very soul of innocent indignation.

  "Come, man, you forget what I am! You did not come out here by accident!"

  He shot me a quick sideways glance, like a startled horse, presumably wondering just how much I knew about him, then gave me the most urbane of smiles. "I wouldn't dream of trying to hide anything from a magician. Prince Aidan, I have always been loyal to the crown."

  "Wise."

  "Now, some would have it otherwise. There have been foul rumors spread about me in the past, rumors linking me with . . . well, with those who some might name as less than friendly to the crown, indeed, who might even be—"

  "Och, enough!" I studied him, physically and magically, seeing ambition, envy, weakness . . . weakness, yes. For all his sleek words and pretty ways, he would never have the will to be a true threat to my brother. "You made some unwise alliances in the past," I summarized, "nothing that could be proven, nothing dark enough to lose you your head."

  Of course I wasn't reading his mind, merely combining what I could feel of his unease with what I'd heard here and there. But Aldingar's stare was nothing short of terrified.

  "That is truly amazing, Prince Aidan." It was probably the first honest sentence he'd spoken so far. "But let me assure you, none of those rumors were true! All were disproved by combat."

  Which simply meant his champion had proven a better fighter than whomever had brought the charges against him. "But my brother has yet to quite trust you, is that your problem?" I asked. "You wish me to speak with him? See you back into his good graces?"

  He sighed in relief. "Exactly!" As though beginning a totally unrelated conversation, Aldingar said, "One of my servants brought me a most intriguing scroll. Of course I cannot read it. But it would seem to be a scroll of the most potent of eastern magics. Surely something of immense value to a magician such as yourself."

  "I don't take bribes."

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You heard me. I do not take bribes!"

  He actually blanched. "I didn't mean—"

  "Go away, Baron Aldingar."

  "You will not—"

  "Tell my brother?' Tell him what? That Aldingar was ambitious and a fool? Estmere already knew both. "No," I decided. "Not unless you actually act against the king. And you wouldn't do something so stupid, now, would you, my lord baron?" I fixed him with my darkest, most sorcerous stare, and he took a nervous step backwards, nearly crushing a row of hyssop.

  "Be careful where you tread, my lord baron," I told him sweetly, and smiled to myself as Aldingar hastily bowed and all but fled.

  Congratulations, Baron Aldingar. You're the first to try to buy me. But I suspect you won't be the last!

  The mysterious progression turned out to be something an Anglic king undertook at regular intervals: a royal tour (in this case, a small army of glittering courtiers and guards and a whole pack train of belongings) through several of the baronies that owed said king fealty.

  "A wise ruler spends a fair amount of time on visits of state like these," Estmere murmured to me as we rode along, he waving at the folks lining both sides of the road and flattering them with his smile.

  "Why?"

  "One reason should be obvious."

  I glanced at the wide-eyed watchers, all of them good, down-to-earth people who'd probably never left their farms or villages in their lives. "You mean, since most of these folk—" I stopped to wriggle friendly fingers at a grinning, toothless baby held up by a beaming young matron—"since most of these folk will never have the time or funding to get to Lundinia, this gives them a chance to actually see their ruler."

  Estmere nodded. A girl, all youth and coltish gra
ce, thought that nod was just for her and burst into a fit of embarrassed giggles that made my brother grin. "That's one reason," he told me, "to give young girls a thrill," and I laughed. "But the other reason," he added, "you'll puzzle out for yourself as we go along."

  And so I did. The various nobles Estmere visited might be honored by the royal visit—but it was they who had to provide food and lodging for king and entourage, no small expense. They'd have no funds free for mercenaries or for buying too much power.

  Not that there seemed to be much danger in the latter. Most of those people I saw, commons and noble alike—saw with magician's sight, that is—appeared genuinely fond of their young king.

  "Just what I told you," Estmere murmured. "They like my pretty golden looks. For the moment. Till I have to raise their taxes or pass some unpopular law."

  "Cynic."

  "Realist. God, I'm glad you're here, Aidan!" he burst out suddenly. "It's a joy speaking to someone I don't have to tax or legislate!"

  And how did I feel about Estmere? I wasn't quite sure. We had so very little in common! And yet, we returned from that procession chattering together as though we'd known each other all our lives. And later, when I watched him at court welcome ambassadors or meet with his ministers, I was impressed by his tact (more than I would have shown to those stubborn folk) and sense of justice. He taught me something of the intricate game of politics in the days that followed. In exchange, I took him down into the city, the two of us disguised in laborers' cloaks, showing him odd little corners of Lundinia I don't think he'd even known were there.

  The slow seasons swung their way about from summer through autumn through winter. There's little to be done in a palace during those long, dull, dark weeks, particularly once the bright, cheerful days of Yuletide feasting are past. The roads become too treacherous to allow much work or travel, and everyone stays close to home and hearth. Estmere and I spent much of those chill, dark winter days sitting before the fireplace in his chambers, simply talking. I told him something of what it meant to grow up a Cymraen witch-boy. He in turn, envying me my childhood freedom, I think, told me something of being a king's son, heir to a throne, with all the endless lessons (and, though he didn't actually say it, the loneliness) that entailed. Proud of his skills, since most kings, like most of their subjects, couldn't read, Estmere taught me to be literate in his tongue, and I taught him the rudiments of Cymraeth.

  I also discovered an unexpected talent in my royal brother that winter: he threw a wickedly accurate snowball.

  The night after the Great and Regal Snowball Fight, I slipped into trance for my usual visit with Ailanna, only to find myself face-to-mental-face with an unexpected interloper: Tairyn.

  "My lord Tairyn," I said warily. "You honor me."

  The touch of his mind was as cool as ever his voice had been. "You learn the ways of human nobility. Do not forget your former training."

  "My Faerie training? Not a chance of that!"

  "Indeed." Tairyn's disapproval was subde but very real.

  "Look you, much as you hate the thought, I am human! And I'm enjoying my first human friendship, thank you."

  The sense of cold disapproval grew stronger. "And is human friendship such an illogical thing? Can it really be based on something as simple as the sharing of scholarship or winter sport or childhood memories?'

  I'd been wondering the same thing. After all, Estmere and I didn't even laugh at the same jests! But I was hardly about to admit any doubts to Tairyn. "Estmere is my brother, my closest kin. And I enjoy being in his company. Is that wrong?'

  "Humans do need their clan ties."

  "And the Faerie Folk don't?" I snapped. "I've seen this proud lord refuse to speak to that proud lord, even though neither one of them had any 'degrading' human blood, just because he happened to be of the wrong clan!"

  There was a moment's quiet. Then Tairyn said as coolly as though I'd never spoken, "Be wary, human. Be ready. The time may well come when we shall summon you. And then, remember your vow to me."

  With that, he was gone, and I was waking, dazed and shuddering, from my trance. Vows within vows. What had I sworn to Tairyn, not in easy words, but in meaning?

  Leave me alone, Tairyn, I pleaded silently, even though he couldn't hear me. I've barely had the chance to enjoy being a brother. Grant me that pleasure, just for a while.

  But I knew that Faerie would come for me when and where it would.

  The days passed without another interruption by Tairyn. By the time the spring came round again, I was almost able to put the Faerie Lord's strange message from my mind. He must simply, I decided, have been playing one of his alien little games of Alarm the Human!

  As for Estmere, well, I'd finally come to the conclusion that human friendship had little to do with logic. Instead, as a grizzled old palace guard put it, grinning at me paternally (half drunk from the herbs I'd given him so I could tend his broken arm), it was simply a matter of "knowin' there's always someone there to drink with in good times and guard your back in bad."

  Well, yes, that was it. To have discovered both blood kin and friend in one when I'd been lacking in both (and hadn't even realized the lack) was a wonderfully bewildering thing.

  But of course things couldn't stay so simple.

  Cut off from the refuge of my own tower rooms, I raced up the winding palace stairway as quickly as I could without slipping off the narrow steps. Pausing on a cramped landing to catch my breath, I listened for the sounds of pursuit.

  Damnio! There they were, and closer than I liked. And if I kept climbing, sooner or later I was going to run out of tower and be cornered up there on the top with no place to run.

  Wait. Craning my neck back and aslant, I could just make out that up one turn of the stair was a second landing, with a doorway watched over by two guards. Behind me, the sound of hurrying footsteps was growing louder, so I took a deep breath and cast over me that simple invisibility illusion learned at my mother's side. Flinging open the door, I rushed inside.

  And then I froze, staring. Behind me, I could hear the startled guards snatching at the door, calling in embarrassed tones into the room:

  "Pardon, Majesty. The wind musta caught it."

  An equally startled Estmere, seated behind a table piled with documents, nodded impatiendy and waved them away. As embarrassed as the guards, I was trying to figure out a way to steal silently out again when he frowned and asked uneasily, "Is someone there?"

  "It's only me. Aidan."

  I let the invisibility illusion fade. Estmere's brows shot up in astonishment. "Now, that is truly amazing."

  "That is nothing more than an illusion. Estmere, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to come storming in like this. I'll—"

  "Hey now, you can't just run off like this. In God's name, what's chasing you? A demon?"

  He had the look of a man who's not sure whether he's joking. I froze at a sudden sound outside the chamber door and waved him to silence. From without, a sweet, plaintive voice called:

  "Prince Aidan? Oh, Prince Aidan?"

  There were faint footsteps, the whisper of a silky gown brushing by, then silence. I sighed in relief and turned to my brother, who by this time was watching me in total fascination.

  "No demon," I told him drily. "Only the Lady Elspeth."

  He laughed. "Pretty little Elspeth? Why, Aidan! Don't tell me you're afraid of a charming young woman like that."

  "She's not a woman, she's a child, a child with a head full of old romances."

  "And marriage."

  "That, too." I sighed. "I made the mistake of flirting with her. Harmlessly, I thought; a Cymraen woman would have understood it was a joke, no more. Something like this, I mean."

  I tossed an illusion-rose to Estmere, who was inured enough to me and my ways by now not to flinch. He had time to give the rose a sniff before it dissolved again into air.

  "No scent."

  "There are limits."

  "And our little Elspeth misunderstood your in
tentions."

  "Not just Elspeth. Ever since I stopped hiding my magic, I seem to have become the most intriguing creature ever seen at court. I thought everyone's fascination would wear off over the winter, but . . ."

  "Well? You have to admit you are unusual."

  Unusual. The court physicians already hated me for curing patients more successfully than they, though of course they didn't dare do anything about it. And by now, just as I'd suspected, a good many nobles after Aldingar had tried to buy me, to make me use my magics for their advancement. But none of them had known how to hide their true intentions from a magician's sight. It had been ridiculously easy to frighten them away with dark, mysterious glances and the unspoken threat that I would set a demon or—more terrifying to a courtier—my brother at them.

  But I wasn't thinking of ambitious nobles right now. "You don't understand! Yes, I can see that little Arn might be awed by me—"

  "He should be. You saved his life."

  "That's not what—he's a child, it's natural for him to be full of hero worship, but—Estmere, I—" Exasperated, I stopped short and began anew, "I just don't understand it here! I'll be talking to someone, and we'll be having a perfectly sensible, logical conversation—and without warning, in the same sensible voice, he'll ask me the most incredible questions, whether I've ever spoken to an angel or seen the pits of Uffern!"

  "Well?" Estmere teased. "Have you?"

  "Do you think I'd be alive if I had? Och, and the ladies! They follow me around like so many silken kittens, purring, 'Ohh, Prince Aidan, do a bit of magic, just for me, Prince Aidan!' " I broke off again, staring at my brother, who was struggling not to laugh, fair skin reddening with the effort. "D'you know how close I've come to getting challenged by jealous husbands?"

  That was too much for him. He erupted into laughter, gasping out, "Aidan, my d-dear rustic brother. Many—many a man would give a fortune to have your problem."