A face appeared before him, a man’s face of near his own age, he thought. Unlike dreams, it carried no emotion with it—a stranger’s face, weathered by life into interesting lines. It stared aside, not directly at him, and he watched with his usual attention, looking for clues to character and motivation. A face used to command, to the obedience of others, to hard decisions . . . it was turning now, toward him. Eyes a clear cool gray met his, caught his, across whatever gulf of time and space lay between them. Commanded him, as they had (he could tell) commanded so many others. Now he could see the head above the face, bearing a crown—a crown?
A king. A king’s face, and not the one he had seen last, dead, on the trampled earth of Greenfields. And not Tsaia’s king, past or present, nor the black-bearded king of the Khartazh: those faces too he knew, and this was something else. A god? He thought not, though awe choked his breath. He tried to look aside, and could not. Slowly, inexorably, the rest of the man’s figure became visible. A king in green and gold, the gold crown in his hair shaped of leaves and vines. Something about the clothes seemed foreign, strange: he could not say what. Slowly, as the drifting of morning fog, he began to see the room around the man . . . its paneled walls, its broad table littered with scrolls and books, its carpet like a garden of flowers, manycolored. Someone else . . . across the room, a woman whose weathered face wore a curious ornament on the brow, a silver circle . . . but in a trick of light she seemed to fade and he could not see her. The king said nothing . . . did he see Luap as well as Luap saw him?
Then, “You.” The king’s voice, deep, resonant, carrying power as a river carries a straw. “You are part of it; you will help.”
He did not want to answer a wraith, a dream, whatever this was, but from his mouth came the honest bleat of fear he felt. “I can’t.” Even if he’d wanted to, he had no more help to give, not even to his own people. Could he explain that to a wraith, a messenger, whoever this was? The iynisin could not get in, through no power of his but the original power of those who had sculpted the fortress . . . but he and his could not get out.
“You will wake them?” That voice came from the glare he could not see, where the woman had seemed to stand. The king’s face turned aside, and Luap almost sagged in relief. It was like facing Gird again, on his worst days—and worse, that he had now failed at what he’d promised.
“I must,” the king was saying. “They close the pattern. I cannot explain—”
“No matter.” For an instant, Luap could see her again, this time as if through a white flickering of flame. She had a smile that rang aloud, louder than laughter would have been; when she chuckled, softly, he realized again that his senses were rapt in some strange magic. “I think you’ve missed your mark, sir king. What you seek to wake has not slept.”
“What?” The king looked again, deep into Luap’s eyes, a look he felt as a sword probing his vitals: “How can that be? I sought along your memories, to find the place—”
“While thinking of the reason you sought them, a reason many lives old, did you not?” The king’s eyes never wavered from Luap’s, but he nodded. The woman went on. “You found what you sought, then, but—Gird’s teeth, my lord, I can’t understand how you will get them out, and still leave what we found.”
“Nor I.” The king took a breath, and let it out slowly, now watching Luap with obvious wariness. “You—” and there was no doubt which of them he addressed. “You are of Gird’s time, are you not? And someone who knew him?”
Luap was not aware of speaking, but he knew he spoke in some manner the king understood. “I am Luap.”
“Yes.” One word, in that tone, and Luap wondered what the king saw in his face. What Gird had seen? He hoped not, but the king’s next words were not reassuring. “You are not . . . what legends made you.”
No time to ask that, not of such a king. “I was Gird’s friend, until his death; his chronicler, after.”
“You have Aarean blood.”
He could not help it; his chin lifted. “I am a king’s son.” He did not trouble to explain which king.
“And your mother—?”
Damn the man. Luap struggled once more with the envy that never died, and said, “A peasant woman. I never knew her, past infancy.”
To his surprise, that stern face softened a little. “I am sorry. My mother, too, died when I was young, and I had a . . . difficult time.”
Difficult, Luap thought bitterly, could not have included being tossed out to fend for himself in a peasant village. “I have the royal magery,” he said, uncertain why he said it.
“I suspected you might. Some of you, at least.” The king turned away again, and spoke to the woman. Luap wondered again why she was so hard to see, for a white fog lay across her image. “If you’re right, and we have opened a gap between times as well as places, how should I proceed?”
“I have no idea.” The fog intensified, then she appeared, much nearer, peering past the king’s shoulder. “You truly are Luap?”
He found it hard to answer, even in this nebulous state. “Yes. . . .”
Her eyes widened; humor quirked her mouth. He was reminded, for no reason he could imagine, of Raheli in one of her rare good moods. “Gird—understood you, did he?”
Tears flooded his eyes and ran down his cheeks before he could blink them away. What he might have said vanished in the storm. Her brow puckered; the ornament centered it, serene and unchanging.
“It’s all right,” she said. “Don’t worry . . . he understands.”
“Who?” asked the king.
“Gird. He shelters you as well, Luap.” He had thought the king’s voice commanding; he had never imagined a woman with such power. Light and tears blurred his vision to a white glow. “It will be well,” she said; her voice came to him as a warm arm around his shoulders. “King’s son, listen to the king.” Then he could see again, the king’s face expressing rue and tenderness. For her, he was sure.
“Lady—dammit, Paks, you will unnerve me, as well as him.”
“Sorry, my lord.” She had moved from his sight, though he knew, as if he could see, that she had stretched out in a chair at one end of the table.
“You aren’t really sorry.” It sounded like an old quarrel between them, worn comfortable with time.
“No—but he needs your help, as you need his. Tell him, sir king.” She did not need to say “then listen” aloud; it was implicit in her tone.
The king raised his brows; Luap’s knees would have shaken if he had been aware of them. Not a man to anger, he thought wildly. As bad as Gird. As good? Not another one, he thought; gods save me from heroes! As if she had heard his thought, the woman chuckled again, out of sight, but with no scorn in it.
“I am Falkieri, Lyonya’s king,” the king began. “You won’t know of me—and was Lyonya even a kingdom in your day?”
“Ah—I had heard tales—” Such tales as no one believed, he’d always thought, but so had the iynisin been, until they attacked. And what did the man mean, “in your day—”? Was this foreseeing, this trance? He had thought that gift lost utterly; even the Rosemage, even Arranha, never suggested he might have that power.
“Good. I am half-elven, and if the old tales be true, and your father was a king, then you are half-Aarean. Is that so?”
Half-elven. He had never heard of mortals and elves together; his skin shivered at the thought of the iynisin who waited outside the hall’s protection. “My father was a magelord, sir king—” Odd way of speaking, that seemed, after the Rosemage’s description of court life, after the florid formality of the Khartazh. Plain, even. “They came from Aare, but old Aare is no more. So they say, who have traveled the south; I have not.”