Summer King, Winter Fool Read online

  Summer King, Winter Fool

  Lisa Goldstein

  To Doug, once again

  One

  ON A COLD WINTER NIGHT IN ETRARA, two figures strode toward the palace. A loud wind blew, and the torches of first one and then the other flared into brightness, casting their faces into light and shadow.

  One of the men was tall, with brown hair and slate-gray eyes. But the other was taller, his hair and eyes nearly black. Their cloaks coursed behind them in the rough wind. The lighted windows of the palace shone before them; they pulled their cloaks closer and hurried on.

  They passed Sbona’s fountain, a statue of the goddess creating the waters with her tears. Wind gusted through the yard and sent an icy spray of water over them. The torches guttered and nearly went out.

  “Cold,” Valemar said to his cousin. “They say this is the coldest winter anyone can remember.”

  Narrion said nothing. The wind blew his long black hair behind him, and he paused to fit his half-mask over his head.

  Valemar did the same. His silver mask gleamed in the dim light.

  “Listen,” Narrion said. His tone was low, conspiratorial, though there was no one in the courtyard to overhear him. “I have some business to attend to tonight. You can come with me or not, as you choose. But don’t ask questions, and don’t hinder me.”

  “When have I ever hindered you? You’ve always done as you pleased.”

  But Narrion had hurried on ahead. What business? Val thought. He saw his cousin knock at the outer palace door and go inside.

  The door closed as Val came up to it. He knocked, and the porter opened the small spy-hole. “Who is it?” the porter asked.

  “I—” Val said, his mind still on Narrion. What business?

  The porter began to close the spy-hole. “It’s Valemar, of the house of the willow tree,” Val said.

  The outer palace door opened. A fire burned in the grate in the entrance room and candles lit the walls; compared to the chill outside the palace seemed almost hot.

  Valemar handed his cloak and torch to the porter and went into the banquet room. A page came to escort him and his cousin to their places. Valemar sat and looked around at the other guests, searching for Tamra and not finding her anywhere. She had told him she would be at the banquet. Perhaps she had come in a clever disguise, but he felt certain he could recognize her from her mouth and figure alone.

  The half-masks hid the eyes and foreheads of all the guests but, as always, Val could make fair guesses at who they were from their position in the room. The king’s half-brothers and half-sisters sat on the raised dais, two each on either side of the carved chair reserved for Gobro IV. At one of the lower tables Val saw the King’s Pen and at another the King’s Axe; he looked around for the King’s Coin and found him at the far end of the hall, nearly opposite the king. The treasurer had refused to grant more money to the private purse and was still suffering Gobro’s displeasure.

  The broad-shouldered man near the front of the hall had to be Andosto, said by some to be the grandson of the god Callabrion—said in whispers, because his grandparents were still alive. He sat next to Riel, talking to her in a low voice. Appropriate, Val thought, because Riel, a former lover of the king, was herself rumored to be the daughter of the god Scathiel. Her beauty, at any rate, was legendary; even men who had never met her composed sonnets to it. On her other side sat her husband, newly ennobled by the king in gratitude for his wife’s favors. He looked startled and confused and delighted; the gold ring of his knighthood reflected back to the candlelight.

  Now Val could see three or four of the king’s old lovers scattered throughout the room. And in the shadows at the far corners sat a few cripples and beggars; it was the king’s custom to welcome the Wandering God in all weathers and not just at the changing of the seasons.

  Trumpets sounded. Conversation stopped as the herald announced the king: “Gobro IV, King of Etrara and the Southern Marches, Ruler of Udriel and Astrion, Master of the Seas and the Son of Sbona.” The king was a short plump man, addicted to sweets made of vanilla and ginger; folks whispered that his hands were always sticky. His clothes and mask were gold and black and white, the royal colors.

  “Look where he comes, the Ascending God,” Narrion said as the king climbed heavily to the dais. A few folks at the table laughed; Gobro was not popular with either the nobility or the people.

  The trumpets sounded again and a train of knights came into the room, carrying several dishes. One of the knights tasted the meal and then set the dishes before the king. Gobro nodded, and at that signal pages began to pass through the room with trays of food.

  A page set a dish of oysters covered with sauce in front of Val, then moved on to set another dish before Narrion. Val took a bite; it was too sweet, as were all the dishes served by the king. Near him he heard someone talking about King Tariel III and his legendary banquets. Tariel, Gobro’s father, had died five years before; Val had been seventeen then and too young to be called to court.

  The pages returned and poured the wine. Val sipped at his and recognized with surprise a vintage from the inland country of Shai. Narrion nodded in approval and held out his glass for more.

  The candles burned low, casting a golden light on the lords and ladies at the tables, on the rich tapestries of the Seven Virtues and Seven Vices lining the walls. Jewels winked and glittered in the darkness at the edges of the room. Silks changed color in the soft light.

  The sound of a drum reverberated through the room, and trumpets answered. A troupe of actors danced into the banquet hall and climbed to the stage behind the dais. The guests applauded, and a few people at Val’s table murmured in approval. “He’s learned something, has old King Gobro,” Narrion said. “This banquet might not be as tedious as I thought.”

  “Quiet,” Val said. He was applauding too, but for a different reason: he had seen Tamra among the actors. She stood serenely on stage, her reddish gold hair framing her face; he thought he could almost see the blue eyes he had once compared to the sea in a poem.

  He would like to have acted with her but of course that was impossible; twenty years ago King Tariel had passed an edict making it illegal for men to act in plays. Having to pretend to be someone else, Tariel had said, robbed men of their dignity.

  The men and women on the dais turned their chairs to face the stage. The Prologue, a tall woman dressed in a man’s breeches and tunic, came forward to set the scene: it would be a play of mistaken identities and a king forced into exile.

  “Daring, aren’t they?” Narrion whispered beside him. Val nodded. The actors were indeed taking a chance by presenting this particular play; the king did not like to be reminded of the dangers that beset his throne. One of the king’s brothers—Arion?—applauded a little too loudly at the end of the Prologue’s speech.

  Tamra and another actor came forward. Tamra began to speak, but at that moment six women in black rags stepped to the stage and began to dance.

  At first they seemed to be part of the play. Then Val felt rather than saw Narrion grow alert beside him, heard gasps and exclamations from around the banqueting hall. The women turned as they danced, showing their hoods of badger skin to the audience. The Maegrim. Someone’s fortune was about to change.

  The women danced faster. Now Val saw seven people where before he had seen six. The king sank back in his chair, looking pale. He had reached the pinnacle of his fortune; if the Maegrim had come for him his fall from the ladder was assured. He glanced nervously at the four dukes and duchesses. Arion seemed eager, Mariel shocked, Callia apprehensive; Talenor had no expression at all on his face.

  The Maegrim sank to the stage. One of them took out her bundle of flat conjuring sticks and
threw one down. “Winter!” she called, meaning that the stick had shown a winter face.

  Val wondered which face the stick had shown; he would have to ask Tamra about it later. Tamra stood just behind the Maegrim on the stage, frozen by their nearness. Had the conjurers come for her? She had high birth, beauty, wealth; if her fortune changed she, like the king, could only fall from the ladder.

  “Summer!” the Maegra called.

  The king groaned aloud.

  “Summer!” the Maegra said again. She stood heavily. Had she finished? Two summer casts in a winter month was an ill omen indeed.

  Another stick fell from her hand. She stood unmoving, still as a statue. Tamra walked forward tentatively and looked at the stick on the stage. She said something in a low voice, and then, realizing that no one had heard her, she repeated it: “Winter!”

  The king sank back in his chair. Two summer casts and two winter ones. The Maegra gathered up her sticks and she and the other women left the stage. Val turned to Narrion. “Four casts,” he said, whispering.

  Narrion nodded. “I never heard of a cast that wasn’t an odd number. Always three or five—sometimes seven, like the Maegrim themselves, but never four.”

  “Maybe that last one was an accident.”

  “Don’t say that too loudly,” Narrion said. He was whispering as well. “The king doesn’t want to hear ill omens. If anyone asks you saw four casts, just like everyone else. I wonder what they were.”

  “We’ll ask Tamra after the banquet,” Val said.

  But later, when everyone had gathered in the Duchess Sbarra’s room, Val did not see Tamra anywhere. Sbarra was the wife of Duke Talenor, a beautiful and witty woman whose hospitality was legendary. King Gobro retired early and woke late, and after he had gone to bed the nobles and courtiers met in her apartments. No one knew if the king was aware of this arrangement or not, but the thought that he might not be, that the true business of the court was decided without him, added spice to the gatherings.

  The people who met in Sbarra’s room had another bond as well: most of them thought the reign of King Gobro would be a short one. King Tariel had fathered five illegitimate children on five different women, and when he had died suddenly, of a fall from a horse, he had not had time to designate an heir. After months of rancorous argument among the five siblings they had compromised on Gobro as the next king. His brothers and sisters thought him stupid and ineffectual, and no doubt one or two of them had agreed to him for precisely that reason; he would be easy to overthrow.

  Gobro responded to his election as everyone thought he would. He behaved modestly for the first few months of his reign, deferring to his brothers and sisters in everything. Gradually, though, he realized he had real power. He bought fabulous suits of clothing and arranged lavish entertainments. He took women to his bed nearly every night, and when he grew tired of them he showered them and their husbands with land, money and titles, until the King’s Pen complained that there was no land left to give, and the King’s Coin told him most of the money was gone from the treasury, and the nobles complained that he was cheapening their titles.

  “Really, Arion, you shouldn’t have applauded so loudly at the Prologue,” Duchess Mariel said. “Our brother has ways of showing his displeasure.”

  “What do I care?” Arion said. “After tonight his fall from the ladder is assured.”

  “Do you think so?” Sbarra asked. She sat in a high-backed chair under a tapestry depicting the battle of Arbono. Her poet sat in a smaller chair at her feet.

  “Of course. You saw the Maegrim.”

  “The Maegrim could have come for any of us in the room,” Sbarra said. “For you or me, or even for Narrion here.”

  Everyone laughed. Narrion had been singled out because he seemed proof against Sbarra’s charm; his silence at her gatherings had become the stuff of gossip. Val was certain his cousin had his own plans, his own designs, that he used Sbarra’s gatherings as a place to collect the information he needed to act.

  Suddenly he remembered that Narrion had said he had business that night. Should he go with him?

  “What were the casts?” Duchess Mariel asked. “Did anyone see them?”

  “The actors did,” Val said.

  “And where are they?” Sbarra said. “Carousing across the river, no doubt. The king must have rewarded them handsomely—they did well to continue the play after the Maegrim left.”

  “What could Gobro have given them?” Callia asked. “The King’s Coin has a tight hold on the purse strings.”

  “Did you see the poor man?—sent to the outer reaches of exile. It must have taken him hours just to get his first course.”

  “Ah, but no doubt he had a wonderful conversation with the Wandering God,” Arion said, meaning the beggars King Gobro sat at the ends of the banqueting hall.

  “The King’s Coin isn’t here either,” Sbarra said. “I suppose my influence must be waning.”

  A chorus of voices protested. At that moment the door opened and Tamra and her companions entered. “You do know your cues,” someone said. “Your names were mentioned just a minute ago.”

  “Favorably, I hope,” Tamra said. She and the other actors were still in their costumes; she wore a green satin dress with the flowering skirts fashionable a generation ago.

  “That depends,” Mariel said. “We wanted to know what the casts were.”

  “Everyone’s been asking me that,” Tamra said. “And I always wanted to be famous for my beauty.”

  A dozen courteous flatteries rose to Val’s mind in an instant. He opened his mouth to speak, remembered just in time that Sbarra, as their hostess, should be praised before anyone else. Tamra should not have been so tactless.

  “Don’t worry, my dear—your beauty is legendary,” Sbarra said gently, and the awkward moment passed.

  “The casts,” Tamra said. “Let’s see. The first one was winter, wasn’t it?” She closed her eyes to better call up the conjuring sticks; she seemed to be enjoying the attention. “The Sun Obscured by Clouds. And the two summer casts were the Tree in Flower, and the Running Brook.”

  For the first time Val wondered if the casts had been intended for him, if the Maegrim had come to announce that his fortune was about to change. And what did it mean if they had? His family could trace their ancestors back twenty generations, to the reign of Ellara the Good, but at present they were not high in the king’s favor. He could rise on the ladder, then. He touched the charm at his throat for luck.

  The room around him had grown silent. “And the fourth cast?” Sbarra asked.

  “You know, I don’t remember,” Tamra said. “I was terrified—I didn’t even know if she’d meant to drop that stick, or if I should be announcing it.… It was a winter cast, I remember that.”

  A few people looked dissatisfied. “We should go, Tamra,” the woman who had played the Prologue said. “They’re waiting for us across the river.”

  Tamra stood and smoothed the skirts of her costume. “That’s true, they are,” she said. “Good fortune.”

  Several people called for her to stay. She walked to the door and turned to face the gathering, brushing back her red hair. Her hand touched the earring Val had given her. It was a gesture as old as the court itself; he rose from his seat and followed her.

  As he went he saw Narrion frown. Val knew that Narrion paid court to Tamra as well, and he smiled to think that for this one evening, at least, she had favored him over his cousin. He went with the actors into the hall and closed the door behind them.

  “I thank you for the sonnet,” Tamra said.

  “Ah,” he said. “How did you know it was mine?”

  “You asked everyone I know for the names of my favorite flowers. Hardly discreet, Val, especially when you included those flowers in your rhyme.”

  “Ah,” he said again, pleased. He had wanted her to know the poem was his, and she knew he had wanted it; the court game had been played out to the end. “Did you like it?”


  But Tamra seemed to be thinking of something else. “Listen,” she said suddenly. “I have to tell you something. But you must swear never to repeat it to anyone, on the honor of your house.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you remember that last cast, the one I said was winter? It was a summer cast, just like the two before it.”

  “Three summer and one winter, in a winter month?”

  “Aye. A terrible omen. I doubt the king will last the year.”

  What did she expect him to do with this knowledge? He could give it to Narrion, of course, but Narrion would use it for his own ends, and lately Val had come to suspect that those ends included the overthrow of King Gobro. And what would happen then? Val had come to adulthood during the long and peaceful reign of Tariel III, and he feared the chaos of civil war.

  But she had sworn him to silence, he remembered. The choice was not his to make, all the gods be thanked. “Good fortune, Val!” she said. She kissed him and hurried down the corridor with the other actors.

  He watched her go, reluctant to return to Sbarra’s rooms. She seemed to have more life within her than all the rest of the court combined; for a moment he felt tempted to go with her across the river. Could she save him? Could she rescue him from the tedium and hypocrisy of the court?

  He shook his head. No, not her, and not any of the women whose favors he had sought in the past few years: they were, if anything, more frivolous than he was. Perhaps he should leave the warmth of the court, see what the great world around him had to offer.

  He laughed at his fancies. Sign on for a voyage across the great ocean to Astrion or Udriel, perhaps, or fight in a border war against the Shai! No, it was best to stay with what he knew, to remain at court and be himself.

  Narrion looked up as he came into Sbarra’s room. An old man was speaking, someone Val didn’t know. He wore a long unadorned tunic in a style that had been popular among the nobility five or six years ago, and his breeches were nearly worn through at the knees.

  If he hadn’t seen him at Sbarra’s gathering Val would have taken the man for one of Gobro’s beggars. But who was he? King Gobro raised or lowered those around him almost at his whim, but Val thought he knew all the players at court, both those who stood high in the king’s favor and those who had fallen.