"A Song for Arbonne" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kay Guy Gavriel)

CHAPTER 13

Tournaments in Arbonne and duels performed in the presence of women were under the aegis of the queen of the Court of Love. It was Ariane de Carenzu, therefore, who was responsible for supervising the formalities attendant upon the challenge issued at the Lussan Fair between Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut and Quzman di Perano of Arimonda.

It was also Ariane who offered the most drily prosaic response of all to what Blaise had done the night before. They had gone to the Carenzu mansion in the morning: Blaise, Bertran, Valery and an extremely pale-looking Rudel Correze. A long night of drinking after a substantial blow to the head had not, it appeared, worked greatly to the advantage of the normally urbane scion of the Correze family.

For that matter, Blaise wasn't feeling entirely well himself, but he'd been more careful than Rudel in the tavern, and expected to become more functional as the day progressed; certainly by tomorrow at any rate, which was a good thing. Tomorrow he was going to be fighting a man to the death.

"I have no idea," Ariane said, reclining prettily on an upholstered divan in the room where she received them, "whether what you have done is sheerest folly or only moderately so."

Her tone was astringent and sardonic, a controlling voice more than a little at odds with the morning freshness of her appearance. She was dressed in pale yellow, the fabric cut with sky blue at bodice and sleeve, with a soft hat of the same mild blue shade on her dark hair, She was looking at Blaise as she spoke and her expression was not particularly mild.

"I cannot decide, because I do not know how well you fight. I do know that Urté would not have hired the Arimondan—the two Arimondans—if they were not very good indeed."

"Quzman? He is good," Bertran de Talair murmured. He was pouring an early glass of wine from a flask on a tray. He seemed more amused now than anything else, though his first reaction, when they told him what had happened, had been one of grimly silent reflection. He hadn't shared those thoughts.

"So is Blaise," said Rudel faintly from the depths of the chair into which he had carefully lowered himself. They could see only the top of his head. "Consider the dead brother and five corans of Miraval."

"Those were arrows," Valery said quietly. Of all of them, he seemed the most unhappy this morning. "This will be with swords."

"It need not be," Ariane said. "I could easily—"

Blaise shook his head quickly. "No point. He uses what he wants, so do I. I would be shamed by an attempt to control the weapons."

"You may be killed by a failure to do so," Ariane said tartly.

It was gradually becoming clear to Blaise, a knowledge accompanied by a growing bemusement, that the reactions of those around him to what was about to happen tomorrow were not entirely shaped by the pragmatic appraisal of risks and gains. They were concerned for him. The countess, Bertran and Valery, Rudel certainly, and now it was equally obvious—even to Blaise, who had never been good with understandings of this sort—that Ariane was speaking with more than an abstract interest in the rules of this challenge.

They had encountered her husband when they first entered the house, then Duke Thierry had gracefully excused himself when Bertran made it clear they were calling upon his wife in her formal capacity. The duke of Carenzu was a slender, well-built man, whose sexual tastes and appetites were in no way visible in his manner. He was also, Valery had said earlier, an exceptionally competent leader.

His wife, Blaise was thinking, was even more than that. He felt oddly unsettled now, meeting her lucid gaze, remembering, with unexpected clarity on this bright autumn morning, the summer night they had spent together, her words and manner as much as the act of love. It came to him that if they had been alone she might have been saying different things just now. For that matter, he might have been doing the same. This was a woman he trusted, Blaise suddenly realized, and he felt a momentary surprise.

They had told her about the meeting with King Daufridi. Bertran had discussed it with the countess and Roban as well; he had been in the palace early, before they came here this morning. Events were beginning to move with speed. With Rosala de Garsenc and a male child in Barbentain it was clear—it had to be clear to everyone, Blaise thought—that any number of dangerous things were likely to happen quickly. His head ached dully. He was beginning to regret the last part of the night almost as much as the first.

Looking at Ariane, drinking in her cool beauty like a reviving draught, he said, "This whole exercise is about how we are seen in the eyes of the world. I lose too much if I am thought to be afraid of him, or to be arranging the affair to my obvious advantage. I am grateful for your concern, but there is no point to this challenge if we manipulate it."

"And there is a point to this? We are entitled to assume that?" The same question the countess had asked.

He ignored the sharp tone and gave her the same answer. "I hope so. I hope there is."

In truth, he wasn't certain. He was certain of nothing just now. He felt like one of those legendary dancers from Arimonda's distant past who were said to have leaped over the horns of bulls for the pleasure of their kings. He was in the middle of such a leap right now, grimly conscious of the gleaming, killing horns. It had seemed to Blaise, late last night—a thought shaped half of piety and half of simple fear—that Corannos had actually guided him here to Arbonne. That his journey south had not been fortuitous, not simply an escape from burdens and sorrows at home or in Portezza. It had been a movement towards destiny, the one chance the world might offer him to make good the vow he'd sworn when he left Garsenc Castle. He hadn't known he would say what he had said to Daufridi of Valensa. He hadn't prepared his challenge to Quzman in advance. He was a dancer with the bulls, moving with their movements, in flight now over the horns of his fate.

Drawing a breath to gather and hold his thoughts, he told Ariane then how he wanted certain things to be done on the morrow. Her features grew still and focused as she listened.

Bertran came closer, resting a hand on the back of her divan. He added a suggestion when Blaise was done. Valery said nothing at all. He looked grimly unhappy. Blaise couldn't tell how Rudel looked; his friend was still slumped in his deep chair, only the fair, tousled hair visible from behind. He thought Rudel might even have fallen asleep, but discovered, when he was finished, that this was not so.

"My father was right," said the heir to the Correze fortune in a musing tone. "I will very probably go forth to repent this allegiance of mine more than all the other errors of my life. I ought surely to have known better than to leave the banking business and take up with madmen from Gorhaut."

There were a number of replies that could be made to that, from the cutting, to the witty, to the soberly judicious. No one said anything, though.

"He will want to cut downwards on the angle and then back across low for your knees," Valery said. Rudel was tightening the drawstrings on the leather armour to be worn by the two men fighting.

"I know," said Blaise. "It's the usual attack with a curved sword." He wasn't really concentrating though, either on the words of advice or the increasing level of sound he could hear from the pavilions. When he and Quzman were ready to emerge from their tents the sounds would rise to a crescendo and then fall for the ceremony of introduction before beginning again, on a different note, when the killing began. It was the same all over the world. Blaise had seen a number of challenges to the death. He had fought in a foolish one, years before, when a Valensan coran had insulted the king of Gorhaut in the presence of one of that king's newest, youngest corans. Blaise had been lucky to survive and he knew it; the Valensan had taken his youthful opponent too casually and paid the price. Blaise had worn the dead man's armour for years.

"He'll have a knife in his belt and one behind his left calf," Rudel murmured. "And he won't hesitate to throw. He's known for that, and accurate with both hands. Keep your shield up."

Blaise nodded again. They meant him a world of good, he knew; it was their anxieties that were producing this outpouring of instruction. He remembered being exactly the same way when serving as squire to friends in their challenges, including Rudel, three times if he remembered rightly.

He really wasn't paying close attention though. This had happened to him before: his mind wandered before battle, drifting along unexpected pathways. It kept him calm, until the moment the fighting began, when the sensation was akin to a muffling curtain pulled swiftly aside, and Blaise would feel all his senses converge like arrows upon the battleground.

Just now he was remembering Rudel's last comment in Ariane's chambers that morning. He thought about Vitalle Correze, who wanted his much-loved son to be a banker not a coran, and then about his relationship with his own father. He wasn't sure why his thoughts were turning that way. Perhaps as he grew older, saw more of the world and its interactions, he was corning to understand the degree to which the Garsenc men had poisoned each other. He suddenly wondered, for the first time, how Ranald would be feeling about Rosala's flight. He realized that he had no idea, absolutely none; he didn't know his brother very well.

Valery tapped him briskly on the shoulder and Blaise obediently sat down on the stool and straightened his legs in front of him. His friends knelt and began lacing and tying the supple Portezzan leather about his thighs and calves. Through a gap in the tent flap behind their bent heads Blaise could glimpse the dazzling colours of the pavilions in the morning sunlight, and the green grass where he would be fighting soon.

They hadn't raised the banner above his tent yet, following his instructions of yesterday. For most of the people in the pavilions or in the commoners' standing ground on the other side he was simply a Gorhautian coran enmeshed in some quarrel with an Arimondan. A quarrel that was about to offer them the most exciting entertainment there was. A handful of people knew more, and there would be rumours of course; there were usually rumours at a time like this.

He felt very calm. He was always calm before fighting now, though it hadn't been that way in the beginning, years ago. He had prayed last night, kneeling on the cold stone floor in the surprisingly handsome chapel of Corannos in Lussan. He had not asked for victory, a coran never did.

Before the two tall candles above the frieze he had offered the ancient prayers for sunrise and sunset and for the strength of the god's life-giving golden light. The frieze itself had been masterfully done, a rendering of Corannos bestowing fire upon the first men, that the nights might hold less terror than before.

Perhaps he shouldn't have been so surprised by the serene grace of the god's houses here. They worshipped Corannos in Arbonne. He had always known that, there were corans here, after all, with the same rituals of initiation and invocation that he had passed through in Gorhaut, the same ones used in all six countries. It had been difficult, though, when he first arrived, in those early days at Castle Baude in the highlands, to overcome a lifetime of prejudice and vicious innuendo, much of it coming, of course, from his father. It was odd how often he was thinking about his father of late. Or perhaps not so odd after all, given what he was about to do. They said the mind reached backwards when one's life was in extreme peril.

Galbert de Garsenc had stipulated that his younger son follow him into the clergy of Corannos. It was not a matter for discussion; what the High Elder wanted, he was accustomed to receive. Blaise's repeated flights as a boy from the chapel school near Cortil, his silent endurance of the whippings he was given, both at home by Galbert's heavy hand and again when he returned to the Elders, and then his obdurate, absolute refusal to speak the vows of consecration when he turned sixteen had represented a colossal thwarting of the High Elder's carefully laid plans.

They had tried to starve him into submitting to the vows—on his father's orders. Blaise had never forgotten those weeks. He woke sometimes in the night remembering them. Even today pangs of hunger made him panic irrationally, and he could not lash a man.

Would your mother have made a difference? Signe de Barbentain had asked the first night he met her. He didn't know. He would never know. No man, with only the one life to live, could answer such a question. He remembered learning, when still a small boy, not to cry because there was no one in the world who would come with comfort if he did. The brethren in the chapel school were terrified of his father; none dared offer succour to the unworthy, ingrate son. Not ever. Once, in Garsenc, Ranald had slipped into Blaise's room at night with a salve for his brother's lacerated back. In the morning, when Galbert saw the healing ointment he had whipped Ranald and then Blaise a second time. Ranald never tried to intervene in his punishments after that. Blaise could have stopped running away. He could have taken the vows they demanded of him. Neither possibility ever occurred to him, not even as options to be considered. When it became clear that Blaise would die of starvation before he broke in this, Galbert calmly proposed to have him publicly executed for his disobedience. It was King Duergar himself, becoming aware of this savage family drama playing itself out, who had forbidden that execution, who had insisted on food and drink being brought for the starving boy, and it was Duergar who accepted the sworn fealty of a gaunt, silent, hollow-eyed sixteen-year-old one month later, and named him a coran of Gorhaut.

Duke Ereibert de Garsenc, doughty and hoar, had died childless when his two nephews were twenty-one and nineteen, his stern mastery in war allowing him to outface lifelong rumours about his lack of heirs. Ranald inherited. He withdrew, of necessity, from his position as King's Champion and became duke of Garsenc instead, lord of the richest, most powerful estates in Gorhaut. Blaise should by then have been, by his father's careful designs, firmly placed in the hierarchy of the god's brotherhood, ready for a smooth ascent all the way to the ultimate station Galbert held, as High Elder of Corannos, with kings and princes subject to his fiat. The Garsenc family should have been poised for generations of power in Gorhaut—the country held as if between the paws of the rampant bear that was on their escutcheon—whomever might nominally have been sitting on the throne.

Ranald would have sons to succeed him at Garsenc and to follow Blaise into the clergy; there would be daughters to bind other families with the hoops of marriage vows. And eventually, perhaps not so far in the future, there might be even more than all of this—there might be the throne itself. A Garsenc ruling in Cortil, and the borders of Gorhaut itself stretching all the time, though first—first of all things, of course—reaching across the mountain passes to the south, to Arbonne, where they were godless and heretical, ruled by women and womanish men steeped in their blood-soaked rites.

Blaise had known almost all of this from very early in his life. He had been the one Galbert talked to when the boys were young. There had been a brief time when he hadn't understood why that was so, and then a longer period when he'd felt sorry for Ranald. It had all been long ago.

"Boots," said Rudel.

Blaise lifted first his left leg and then his right.

"All right," said Valery. Blaise stood up, and Rudel reached around his waist and buckled on the long, Aulensburg-forged sword in its plain soldier's scabbard. From the table he hefted the light helmet. Blaise took it from him and set it on his head. Valery was waiting with the round, unornamented shield. Blaise took that too.

"Where do you want your knives?" Valery asked.

"One for the belt. I have the other." Valery asked no further questions, neither did Rudel. They, too, had both been through this before. Rudel, his face and manner sober, lifted a sleek black knife from the trunk beside the tent flap and handed it to Blaise.

Blaise smiled briefly at him. "Do you remember? You gave me this one?"

Rudel made a quick, warding sign. "I did no such thing. I found it for you. You paid me a copper piece for it. We don't give knives as gifts, you ignorant northerner."

Blaise laughed. "Forgive me. I forgot that you are a superstitious Portezzan farmer at heart. However did you get permission to leave your hoe in the vineyards to travel among men of rank?"

A frivolous gibe, not worthy of a response and receiving none, for the trumpets sounded then.

Valery and Rudel moved to stand on either side of the tent flaps. The tradition was for the squires to say nothing at this time; farewells of any sort were thought to be invitations to fate. Blaise knew this. He looked at each of them and smiled. He was still calm, but there was a slight telltale acceleration to his pulsebeat now, as silence settled like a bird to a branch outside.

He nodded, and Valery and Rudel each drew back a flap of the tent. He stepped past the two of them, ducking his head, and he came out into sunshine and the green grass of the battleground.

Quzman of Arimonda was the first person he saw, standing at the entrance to his own tent on the far side of the field. A banner was flying behind him: three black bulls on a crimson field. Blaise registered the curved sword worn across the Arimondan's back in the western fashion, and he saw the polished golden shield. He glanced east to check and remember the angle of the rising sun; that shield could blind him if the Arimondan used it to catch and throw back the light. Blaise was aware, but only as background, of excited, rapacious murmurs coming from all around them. A death challenge was the keenest sport there was.

The trumpets sounded again, briefly, and Blaise turned towards the central pavilion as the herald of Arbonne stepped forward. He was aware that his heart was beating even more rapidly now, but not from anticipation of the battle, not yet. There was something still to come, before the fighting.

The herald's rich voice rolled out, sonorously naming the most illustrious of those assembled there. Blaise saw King Daufridi of Valensa sitting next to the countess, his bearded features unreadable, betraying nothing more than idle, polite interest.

"To my left," cried the herald at last, his trained voice carrying effortlessly over the grass and the densely packed pavilions, "stands Quzman di Perno of Arimonda, prepared to lay his life before Corannos and Rian in this matter of his family's honour." He paused. Blaise drew a breath. It had come. "All right," he said to the two men behind him. "Do it." He didn't look back, but as the herald of Arbonne turned towards him he heard the rustle and flap of two banners being run up to fly above his tent, and a moment later there came, truly like the roaring of sea surf in wind, a swelling of sound that nearly drowned the herald's urgently rising voice.

"To my other hand," the herald proclaimed, "equally prepared to defend the honour of his name, stands Blaise de Garsenc of Gorhaut, who here lays claim before this assembled gathering of the six nations and upon this holy field where the god and goddess are judges of honour and worth, to the crown of the Kingdom of Gorhaut, falsely now held by traitorous Ademar!"

People were on their feet; the herald was shouting now. "En Blaise has also declared that this combat, freely entered into by him against a felon so proclaimed by the countess of Arbonne, shall serve as a warrant for the worth of his claim, and he willingly lays his life at hazard before you all in this moment of asserting his right to that same crown."

The last was scarcely heard over the thunder of noise from the pavilions and the standing grounds on the other side. It didn't matter whether the herald was audible or not. The banners told the story. Blaise turned slowly—it was all theatre now, all symbol, until the killing began—and he nodded his head, as an equal to his equals, to Signe de Barbentain and then to Daufridi of Valensa. And the countess of Arbonne rose, in the presence of her people and those gathered from the other countries of the world, and gestured to Blaise with an extended hand in welcome, equal to equal. There was screaming now. Blaise ignored it. He waited. One long moment, then another, and finally, the hairs rising on the back of his neck, he saw Daufridi stand. Tall and proud, the king of Valensa turned to left and right, not hurrying, a master of moments such as this, and then very slowly, facing Blaise, he laid his right hand on his left shoulder in the coran's salute.

He had done it. There had been no way of knowing if he would. It was not quite the full gesture of welcome that Signe had offered—Daufridi had far too complex a game of his own to play for that to be possible—but he had given more than they'd had any right to expect: an acknowledgement that Blaise was worthy of a king's standing up to recognize him.

Blaise closed his eyes with relief, and then opened them quickly again. He must not be seen to have doubted, though of course he had. There had been no promises from Daufridi at all—and certainly none regarding an event so unexpectedly swift to develop as this one had been. Leaving that inn outside the walls two nights ago, he had offered only the unreassuring remark that he would think on what Bertran had said. He had done so, evidently. He was with them, at least this far. Blaise was under no illusions though: if the King of Valensa ever decided that they were a greater danger than Ademar and Galbert, he would be swift in his denunciation. But for the moment, in the midst of this tumultuous maelstrom of sound, he had risen to his feet to welcome Blaise to the stage of world affairs. It was something; it was, in fact, a great deal. Keeping his expression as serene and unrevealing as he could, Blaise turned away from the pavilions to face his own tent, and so looked up for the first time at what flew above it now.

The rampant bear of Garsenc, crimson on its deep blue ground, carried its own full measure of significance for those who had not even known who he was until this moment. And above it, in pride and glory and most brazen declaration, flew the banner of the kings of Gorhaut.

Standing at the centre of a growing tidal wave of noise, Blaise looked up at that golden sun on its white ground, with the crown of kings above it and the sword of the god below, and it seemed to him, oddly, as if he had never really seen it before. In a way, he never had; not like this. Not lifted in the breeze and the light by his own command. It had begun. With this banner flying above his head and raised in his own name before the emblem of his country's kings as the noise from all around grew to a climax, louder than he would ever have thought possible.

He knew how to quell that sound. To bring the pavilions and the standing grounds back, like hunting dogs to heel, to what lay ahead of them now on this green grass beneath the morning sun. It had begun here, and it might end here, for there was still the affirmation of the god to be sought. Of Corannos, and of the goddess of Arbonne. For the first time in his life Blaise of Gorhaut offered a prayer to Rian. Then he turned to the Arimondan and he drew his sword.

Jousts for pleasure and sport were done on horseback in full tournament regalia, horse and rider armoured magnificently, the display lying as much in the glitter of the coran's equipment as in anything else. No one ever enjoyed losing—it could be hideously expensive for one thing—but the armour prevented all but the rare serious injury, and in the long run, save for a handful of the most celebrated fighters, wins and losses tended to even themselves out. Tournaments were entertainments, a parading of wealth and success, a revelation of prowess, diversions for the pavilions and the commons both, and they were regarded as such.

Challenges to the death were contested on foot. Only limited protection was allowed. There was no glitter to them, no elaborately ornate breastplate or decorated helm. Death fights were primitive encounters, even holy ones, reaching back to far distant times before the Ancients had come, most purely testing a man's courage and will and the power of his goddesses or gods. They were an entertainment too, of course, as the excitement of the assembled watchers now attested, but of a darker sort, with a grim, foreknown destination: a man broken and dying on trampled grass, mortality made harshly manifest for those gathered to bear witness and be reminded of their own end.

It was because of this more than anything else that when Blaise drew his sword the screaming stopped. In the dining halls of the sanctuary retreats of Corannos, where men and women sometimes withdrew from the world as they felt their endings draw near, there were always tapestries or paintings hung upon the walls, and in every sanctuary at least one of these works would show the gaunt, laughing figure of Death, bearing the mace with which he ground the life from men, leading a winding procession over a wintry hill to the west where the sun was going down. And always, by long tradition, the first figure in that procession, even before the crowned kings and queens of earth, hand in hand with Death himself, would be a tall coran in the prime of his days, his sword useless in its scabbard as Death led him away.

Quzman di Perano, with a smile, reached up and pulled his curved blade from the sheath on his back. He drew upon a clasp and let the scabbard fall behind him on the grass. One of his appointed squires from Miraval quickly knelt and picked it up. The Arimondan moved forward, light on his feet as a tumbler for all his size, and Blaise, watching closely, saw that his first steps carried a little west. As expected. He had seen this manoeuvre before, the last time he'd fought a challenge with a man from Arimonda. He had almost died that day.

Moving to meet the man whose brother he had slain, Blaise regretted, not for the first time, that he knew so little about his foe and how he fought. For all Valery's words about the propensities of those using curved swords—tendencies Blaise knew well—they had little actual knowledge of Quzman beyond what was obvious. He was a big man, cat-quick, and brave, with a longing for revenge and nothing at all to lose today. I could, Blaise thought, be dead before the sun rises much higher.

It had always been possible. There was no honour to be sought or found in a meaningless challenge, no elevation in the eyes of the gathered world beneath the banner of Gorhaut's kings—which was, of course, the point of all of this.

Moving forward, Blaise found what he was looking for. His small round shield rested on his left forearm, leaving his fingers free. He transferred his sword to that hand and stooped quickly. In the same motion, as Quzman came straight towards him, he seized and hurled a clump of earth squarely at the Arimondan's gleaming shield. Quzman stopped, surprised, and Blaise had time to rattle another dulling handful of mud against the shield before straightening and reclaiming his sword in his fighting hand.

Quzman was no longer smiling. It was Blaise who grinned now, with deliberate mockery. "Too pretty a toy," he said. It was quiet now, he did not have to raise his voice. "I'll have it cleaned when you are dead. How many men have you killed by blinding them first like a coward?"

"I wonder," said Quzman after a short silence, his beautiful voice thickened by passion, "if you have any idea how much pleasure your death will bring me?"

"I probably do. Blood ants on the plain. You told me already. By contrast, though," Blaise replied, "your life or death mean almost nothing to me at all. Welcome to the dance. Do you want to talk all morning or are you actually able to use that blade you carry?"

He was. He was more than able, and sorely provoked. The first stroke, exactly as Valery had predicted, was a downward angled slash on his backhand. Blaise parried smoothly, guiding it short of his body—but then was only barely quick enough, even with the anticipation, to block the vicious return sweep of the curved blade along the level of his knees. The impact, a grinding collision of weapons, was almost enough to numb his wrist. The man was strong, enormously so, and his reactions were even quicker than Blaise had guessed they would be.

Even as he thought this, Blaise was twisting desperately and dropping, guided only by reflexes of his own, an utterly instinctive movement shaped by years of combat in tournament and war, the primitive drive for survival letting him react to the curved sword abruptly planted, quivering, in the earth, to Quzman's gloved hand reaching for the back of his calf and the knife blade flung in a blurred motion for his throat. It went by, almost. Blaise felt a searing pain at the side of his head. He brought his sword hand quickly up to his ear and it came away soaked with blood. He heard a sound from the pavilions then, deep and low, like wind on a moor.

Quzman, his sword recaptured before it had even stopped vibrating in the ground, was smiling again, the white teeth gleaming. "Now that," he said, "is pretty. Why don't you throw some mud on it like a peasant? You do seem to enjoy scrabbling in the earth."

The pain was bad and would probably get worse, but Blaise didn't think his ear was gone. Not entirely, at any rate. He seemed to still be hearing sounds from that side. He thought of Bertran suddenly, with his own missing ear lobe. He thought of how much depended on his walking alive from this field. And with that his anger was upon him fully, the familiar, frightening daemon that came to him in battle.

"Spare your breath," he said thickly, and surged up from the ground to engage the other man. There were no words then, no space for words and indeed no breath, only the quick chittering clatter of blades glancing and sliding from each other, or the harder, heavier clang as sword met blocking shield, the controlled grunting of two men as they circled each other, probing with cold metal and cold eyes for an avenue along which they could kill.

Quzman of Arimonda was indeed good, and driven by the fierce pride of his country and his family, and he had a sworn vengeance to claim. He fought with the fluid, deadly passion of a dancer and Blaise was wounded twice more, in the forearm and across the back of his calf, in the first three engagements.

But Quzman's thigh was gashed, and the leather armour over his ribs was not quite equal to the scything blow it took on a forehand slash from an Aulensburg sword wielded by a man with a passion and rage of his own.

Blaise didn't stop to gauge how badly he had wounded the man. He drove forward, attacking on both sides, parried each time with impacts that sent shocks up his elbow and shoulder. He registered the welling of blood at Quzman's left side, ignoring as best he could the stiffening protest from his own leg as he pushed off it. He could easily have been crippled by that low blow, he knew. He hadn't been. He was still on his feet, and before him was a man who stood in the path of… what? Of a great many things, his own dream of Gorhaut not least of all. Of what his home should be, in the eyes of the world, in the sight of Corannos, in his own soul. He had said this two nights ago, words very like this, to King Daufridi of Valensa. He'd been asked if he loved his country.

He did. He loved it with a heart that ached like an old man's fingers in rain, hurting for the Gorhaut of his own vision, a land worthy of the god who had chosen it, and of the honour of men. Not a place of scheming wiles, of a degraded, sensuously corrupt king, of people dispossessed of their lands by a cowardly treaty, or of ugly designs under the false, perverted aegis of Corannos for nothing less than annihilation here south of the mountains.

It was one thing to have ambitions for one's homeland, dreams of scope and expansion. It was another to use the sky-blue cloak of the god to hide a smoke-shrouded inferno of men and women—a nation of them—thrown to burn on heretics' pyres. Blaise had seen such fires as a boy. He would never forget the first time. His father had clutched his shoulder and had not let him turn away.

He knew exactly what Galbert wanted, what Ademar of Gorhaut would be guided to do when he came south. He knew how strong, how wealthy the army of Gorhaut would be by the time the snows melted in the spring. He had seen those pyres; he would not watch another burn. He had sworn it to himself those long years ago, watching an old woman die screaming, flames in her white hair. And to stop them, to stop his father and his king, he had first to defeat this Arimondan who stood now in his way with a curved sword already reddened by Blaise's own blood.

The most celebrated troubadours and the better known joglars did not watch the tournaments from the commons' standing ground. By courtesy of Ariane de Carenzu, as a sign of their high favour in Arbonne, they were given a pavilion, not far down the lists from her own. An invitation to sit among those in the pavilion was one of the prime measures of success each year among the musicians, and this autumn marked the first time Lisseut had found herself included in the elect. She owed it to Alain, she knew, to his own growing reputation, and to the little man's brash assertiveness that memorable night in Tavernel when she had sung his song to the queen of the Court of Love and the dukes of Talair and Miraval.

And to the red-bearded Gorhaut coran who was now battling for his life on the grass before them. It seemed he wasn't just a coran, though. Not since those two bright banners had been run up above his tent and the herald's voice had fought to be heard over a roar of sound. She had known since Midsummer who Blaise de Garsenc was and had kept faith by telling no one. Now he had revealed his identity to the world, and had done something rather more than that. The man she had upbraided so caustically in The Liensenne a season ago, and had then followed to the Correze gardens later that same night, was laying claim to the crown of Gorhaut.

It was with a sense of deep unreality that Lisseut remembered inviting him to come back with her that night in Tavernel. Unlucky to spend tonight alone in this city, she had told him. Unluckier still to have a degree of presumption as rash as her own. Her mother would likely be forced to take to her bed if she found out about any of this. Even now, months after, Lisseut could not stop herself from flushing at the memory.

Looking up at those two banners in the wind, she wondered what he must have thought of her, of the wet and straggle-haired, interfering, impertinent singer who had accosted him twice in a night and then taken his arm in the street and invited him to bed with her. He didn't even like singing, she remembered. Lisseut, among friends in a bright pavilion, had winced at that thought, too. No one had noticed. The others were busy wagering on the coming fight, laying odds on a man's death.

Then thoughts of herself and memories of summer had gone flying far away, for the two men on the grass had drawn their blades, the straight sword and the curved one, and had advanced upon each other. Blaise had bent to throw grass and mud at the other man's shield, something she hadn't understood until Aurelian, without being asked, had quickly stooped to speak an explanation in her ear. She had not turned to him. She had been unable to take her eyes from the two men on the grass, though a part of her was recoiling in horror even as she watched. They spoke to each other, but none of them could hear the words. She saw the Arimondan react as if scalded by something said, and then spring to attack. She saw him parried, once and then twice, as her breath caught in her throat. Death was here. This was not for show. The reality of that came home to her, and just then she saw the curved sword planted, unexpectedly, in the earth.

And it had been in the next moment, precisely then, she would afterwards remember—the Arimondan's flung dagger slicing through Blaise's ear as he twisted away, then the swift, bright flowering of blood—that Lisseut of Vezét realized, with a cold dawning of despair, that her heart was gone from her. It had left without her knowing, like a bird in winter, flying north to a hopelessly wrong destination where no haven or warmth or welcome could even be imagined.

"Oh, mother," she whispered then, softly, to a woman far away among olive groves above a coastal town. No one paid any attention to her. Two men were trying to kill each other in front of them, and one of them had claimed a crown. This was matter for song, whatever happened; it was matter for tavern and castle talk for years to come. Lisseut, her hands gripping each other tightly in her lap, spoke a prayer then to sweet Rian, and watched, even as she felt the flight of her heart from her breast across the bright green grass.

Some things about fighting Blaise had had to teach himself, or learn from his brother at those rare intervals when he was at home and Ranald would consent to give him a secret lesson: Blaise was heading for the brethren, what use would skill with a blade be for him? Other elements he had learned from the men who guided him in swordsmanship, quite a few years later than most young men in Gorhaut, in the year after the king had already made him a coran, more as a rebuke to his High Elder than through any recognition of Blaise's merits.

But the greater part of his education had come in the field, in war and in the tournament melees, the nearest thing to warfare that peacetime offered. He was lucky he had survived in those first months and years. He knew that now. He'd been far too callow and untutored to have had any right to expect to walk away from battlefields at Thouvars or Graziani or Brissel, or those early tourneys at Aulensburg or Landeston in Valensa. By the time of Iersen Bridge, though, he had known the craft of killing and surviving extremely well. And it was there on that winter field that he had come nearest of all to dying: which was, of course, the darkest of many ironies at the heart of a soldier's life.

In any case, what Blaise proceeded now to do was as obvious to him as the direction of sunrise or the proper flight of birds in winter. The Arimondan was badly hurt on his left side. The task then was to make him use his shield again and again, to lift it high against forehand blows aimed towards shoulder or head. It didn't matter if the blows landed; against a good man they wouldn't be expected to. But with each one warded by a shield thrust upward in defence, Quzman's wound would be forced open more and his arm and side would grow weaker. It was straightforward, routine; any competent soldier would know this to be so.

Blaise became aware after a time that this was exactly what was happening. It began to be visible in the Arimondan 's face, though his expression of arrogant concentration never really changed. There was more blood now, welling from the wound in his side. Meticulously, with the precision all field surgeons claimed and most lacked, Blaise set about exploiting the injury he had inflicted.

His focus was calmly precise, unhurried, patient, so much so that he nearly died.

He ought to have been killed, for he was badly fooled. What Quzman did was feint a throw with another knife. For the second time he stepped backwards and stabbed his sword into the flattened grass, reaching towards his leg with his freed hand. Blaise, alert for the throw, was already dodging, twisting downwards again, when Quzman, on one knee, hurled his heavy shield instead like an athlete's disc with his left hand, cracking Blaise so savagely across the shins it sent him sprawling, crying out with the pain. The Arimondan seized his sword again and was up with frightening speed, lunging forward with a downward slash intended to decapitate.

Blaise rolled desperately backwards and flopped to one side, gasping at the pain in both legs. The descending sword bit earth a blade's width from his head, but Quzman was reaching in earnest now for his second knife, at quarters too close for swords as he fell forward upon Blaise.

He never reached that blade.

Years ago, during one of the endless campaigns against Valensa, King Duergar of Gorhaut, who had continued to take an interest in Galbert de Garsenc's curiously rebellious younger son, had called for Blaise to ride out alone with him one morning in the king's circuit of his army's encampment. On that springtime ride, as a purely passing remark, he had offered a suggestion as to where a useful blade might be secreted upon one's person, before pointing out how cherry trees in blossom were a good place for archers to hide.

In real pain, his sword useless, Blaise rolled again desperately and released his grip on his shield. And as he did so he claimed his own hidden dagger from the iron sheath he'd had made for it, at his king' suggestion, on the inside face of the shield. Jamming his right arm against the ground at the end of his awkward roll he rang the shield hard off Quzman's shoulder and then, pulling his left hand free with the blade, he stabbed the Arimondan twice, once deep in the muscles of the sword arm, and then a raking gash across the ribs already wounded.

Then he twisted out from under his writhing foe and struggled to his feet. He quickly regained his sword. Quzman, twisting in pain, his sword arm now useless, his left side streaming with fresh blood, lay on the smeared grass beneath him. There was a sound of people shouting in the distance, oddly remote. Blaise was aware that he was swaying unsteadily on his feet. His ear felt as if it were shredded, on fire. His legs, from the first sword wound and then the last shield blow, could barely support him. But he was upright, and he had his sword again, and the other man was down.

He set the point, as steadily as he could, at Quzman's throat. The Arimondan's black eyes gazed up at him implacably, without fear, even as death arrived for him.

"Do it," he said, "that my spirit may rejoin my brother's."

Blaise said, breathing in hard, short gasps, "I am free of your blood before the god? It was fairly done? I have your dispensation?"

Quzman managed a bitter smile. "It matters to you?" He dragged a breath. "You have it. It was fairly done." Another harsh breath. "It was more than fair, after the woman's rooms. You are free of my death. Do it."

The shouts and screaming had stopped, It was eerily silent now all around the ground where they stood. One man called out something from the commons' side. In the stillness his voice rose and fell away, leaving silence again. There was, Blaise realized, one more thing he could do this morning. And it seemed, remarkably, that he wanted to do it in any case.

He said, the words coming slowly as he struggled to control his breathing, "Your wounds are not mortal. I will need good men with me to do what I must do. I killed your brother when attacked by six corans and only after they first shot at me. Will you let this combat settle the past for us? I am loath to kill a brave man. I do not want your death on my hands, even with dispensation."

Quzman shook his head, his expression curiously tranquil now. "I might have agreed," he said, his breathing quick and shallow, "were it not for one thing. My brother carried no bow, he never did, and he died of an arrow in the throat. You ought to have fought him, Northerner. For killing him at a distance you must die, or I must."

Blaise shook his head. There was a great weariness in him now. "Need it be written before the god that we be enemies?" He fought off a renewed wave of pain. He could feel blood dripping from his ear. "It was not a tourney that day by the lake. I was fighting six men for my life. I am not going to kill you, Arimondan. If I ask, they will let you go from here. Do what you will with your life, but know that I will be pleased to have you in my company."

"Do not do this," said Quzman of Arimonda.

Blaise ignored him. He turned and began to walk—cautiously, because he could not move any other way just yet—towards the pavilion where the countess sat with Ariane and Bertran and die king of Valensa. It seemed a long way off. And it was very nearly the hardest thing he had ever done, not to try to move faster, not to look back and see.

He took five or six steps only. He had thought it might be thus. The man was an Arimondan. after all. There had been a slim chance, no more.

"I told you to kill me!" Quzman di Perano cried. Blaise heard footsteps crossing the grass. He flung a prayer outwards, to whoever might hear him from this field in Arbonne, the god, or the goddess who was more than his maiden daughter here. And with his silent invocation, he heard the impact of arrows.

Behind him the Arimondan grunted queerly and spoke a name, and there came the sound of a body falling on the grass.

For a long moment Blaise stood motionless, dealing with an unexpected regret. When he did turn it was towards his tent, to see Valery of Talair and Rudel Correze approaching, the two best archers he knew, both grim-faced, both with bows to hand and the arrows gone. He went slowly back to stand above the body of the Arimondan. Quzman lay face down in the grass, still gripping his splendid sword, but Blaise, gazing upon him, saw something he could not understand. There were four arrows, not two, in the dead man's body. He looked limp, almost comical, stuck full of arrows like a sorcerer's pin-doll. An ugly ending for a proud man. Blaise looked up, his brow furrowing, and saw a third man with a bow step forward as if he had been waiting to be noticed. The man began hesitantly to come across the grass towards them from the far end of the pavilions. A moment later Blaise blinked in astonished recognition. It had been a long shot, that one, but he remembered Hirnan of Baude, the best coran there, as being exceptionally good with his bow.

Hirnan came up to him and bowed, his expression awkward and anxious. "I must ask your forgiveness," he said. "I saw him rise up with the sword. I did not know the others had instructions from you."

"They didn't," Blaise said mildly. "I didn't know I was going to do that." He extended a hand and touched the big coran on the shoulder. "Well met again, Hirnan, and hardly a time to be asking forgiveness—you might have saved my life just there."

Hirnan took a relieved breath but did not smile. He seemed uneasy here on the grass with so many people watching them. "I heard what the herald said," he murmured. "We never knew who you were, you understand." He looked Blaise in the eye. "But I made my own judgment last spring. I claim no very great skills or dignity, but if you can use a man you can trust in your company I would be honoured. My lord."

Blaise felt a truly unexpected feeling of warmth beginning to steal through him, pushing away the pain. He liked this man and respected him. "The honour will be as much my own," he said gravely. "I made my own judgments too, in the highlands. But you are a sworn coran of the lord of Baude Castle. I doubt Mallin will be eager to lose one such as you."

For the first time, Hirnan allowed the trace of a smile to cross his face. "Look again," he said. "It was En Mallin himself who told me to ready my bow, there at the end when the Arimondan fell and you stood talking to him. I truly do not think he will object if I join you now."

Blaise did look over then, where Hirnan was indicating, to a bright yellow pavilion far down the lists, and he saw that Mallin de Baude was on his feet. Even at this distance he could see that the young baron was smiling. Memories of the springtime came flooding back as Blaise lifted a hand in salute. And then Mallin de Baude, as if born to such gestures, to performing them before the eyes of the gathered world, saluted Blaise in return with a lifted hand, and then he bowed to him, the way one bows to kings. Beside him, with exquisite grace, Soresina de Baude, in a skirt green as the grass, sank low to the ground and remained thus for a moment before she rose. There was a murmur from the pavilions and the commons, both.

Blaise swallowed, struggling without great success to adjust his own thinking to this sort of thing. It was difficult to resist the urge to return the salute in kind, but a man claiming a crown did not bow to minor barons. The rules of the game were changing; as of this morning they had changed for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be. There was something frightening in that thought.

Behind him there came a dry cough. He looked over his shoulder at Rudel and Valery. "That ear will need looking to. And there is a fourth arrow here," Valery said prosaically.

Rudel's expression was odd, as if astonishment were vying with hilarity for mastery in him. "And the man who fired it is making his appearance even as we speak, like the unmasked coran at the end of a puppet play. This is the end of the play, Blaise. You'd best think quickly. Look to the other tent."

Blaise looked. From behind the Arimondan's tent, very much indeed as from behind a stage curtain, resplendent in green and gold, with a longbow in one hand, came Urté de Miraval.

He was seen now by the pavilions and the commons both, and so the noise, not surprisingly, began to grow again. In the midst of it, Urté began walking towards them with a measured, unhurried tread, as if he were doing no more than stroll the grounds of Miraval.

He came up to Blaise and stopped, his carriage straight as a spear for all his years. There was a stillness where they stood, though the sounds continued to grow all around them.

"Do not," Urté said, "expect another salute. The last time I looked into the matter, Ademar was king of Gorhaut. I'm afraid I do not bow to the presumption of pretenders."

"Why do you save their lives, then?" It was Rudel who asked as Blaise kept silent, thinking as swiftly as he could.

The duke didn't bother to look at Rudel. His eyes held Blaise's as he smiled thinly. "The Arimondan was a disappointment. He cost me ten corans two nights ago, and a thousand in gold to Massena Delonghi this morning. And I didn't really want to be the sworn liege lord of a coran who killed this man from behind in a challenge. Bad for my own image, you understand."

"I think I do, actually," Blaise said. A cold anger was rising in him. "You were at risk if he survived, weren't you? Since you betrayed him in Lucianna's rooms, he might have continued to talk about how you were really part of that attempt on my life two nights ago. Very bad for your image, I agree. You didn't save me, my lord, you killed an inconvenient man."

The duke was undisturbed. "A fair reason to kill a man, I would say. You might want to take care to avoid becoming inconvenient yourself, as well as presumptuous."

Rudel gave a bark of shocked laughter. "Are you mad? Are you threatening him?"

Again Urté did not even look at him. Blaise said then, very deliberately, "Does it matter greatly what I do? I'd heard simple error was enough to cause you to kill, actually. Musicians who sang the wrong tune, loyal corans who made the mistake of obeying your instructions at the wrong time." He paused, and fixed his gaze on Urté. He knew he shouldn't say this, but there was a rage working through him now, and he didn't care any more: "And then there was a child who had the regrettably bad judgment to be sired by the wrong man, and a young wife who—"

"I believe that is enough," said Urté de Miraval. His smile was gone.

"Do you? What if I do not believe so, my lord? What if I choose to suggest otherwise? To become truly inconvenient, as you put it? To denounce you myself for plotting to have me slain? And for other things, however long ago?" Blaise felt his hands beginning to tremble. "If you wish, I will be pleased to fight you now. I have my attendants here, and there are two corans of Miraval already waiting by that tent. I will be happy to engage you. I don't like men who kill babies, my lord of Miraval."

Urté de Miraval's expression had grown thoughtful. He was calm again, if very pale now. "De Talair told you that?"

"He told me nothing. I have never asked him. This has nothing to do with Bertran."

The duke smiled again. It was not a pleasant smile this time either. "Ah, then," he murmured, "it was Ariane, last summer. Of course. I ought to have guessed. I love the woman dearly, but she loosens her tongue when bedded."

Blaise's head snapped back. "I have just offered once. Need I do so again? Will you fight me, my lord?"

After a moment, Urté de Miraval shook his head, seeming now to have fully recovered his composure, to be genuinely amused. "I will not. You are hurt, for one thing, and are possibly of some importance to us right now, for another. You fought bravely this morning, Northerner. I can honour a man for that, and I do. Look, the women are waiting for you. Go play out the game and then have your ear dealt with, coran. I rather fear you are going to look like de Talair when that blood is cleaned away."

It was a dismissal, in fact, a high lord speaking as if to some promising young swordsman, but Blaise, though recognizing that clearly, didn't quite know how to turn it into something else. Valery did it for him.

"There remains one unanswered question, my lord," Bertran's cousin murmured to the duke. And Urté turned to him as he had not done for Rudel. "Is it shame that keeps your back so straight just now? Shame because you have been off with an Arimondan on a dark trail of murder while the rest of us, including En Bertran, are trying to save Arbonne from a ruin we know to be coming. How far into the present will you carry the past, my lord, whether or not you killed the child?"

For an instant Urté was rendered speechless, and in that moment, feeling an easing of his own fury and a rush of satisfaction like a cool breeze, Blaise nodded politely to him and then turned his back, in the sight of all those watching. He heard his friends following as he began to walk towards the pavilion of the countess of Arbonne and the queen of the Court of Love, leaving the duke of Miraval standing alone on the grass with his bow, beside the body of his dead coran, the sunlight falling clearly upon the two of them.

Roban, the chancellor, standing discreetly but readily available towards the back of the countess's golden and white pavilion, saw the son of Galbert de Garsenc turn his back upon Urté de Miraval and begin to walk towards them. He winced. He hadn't heard a word of what had been spoken, of course, but the cool effrontery of the gesture carried its own message.

The messages were coming fast and furious this morning, all tending towards the same end. He still didn't like what was happening—it was too flamboyant, far too provocative for Roban—but he had to concede that the Gorhautian was carrying it off with real grace. Given what had just happened, he couldn't honestly claim to doubt the man any more. He might fail in this, they might all fail, but Blaise de Garsenc had abandoned any chance to betray them when he'd had the banner of the kings of Gorhaut raised above his tent this morning.

Roban made an unobtrusive gesture and one of his own people came hurrying over from the cleared space behind the pavilion. He sent the man running for the countess's physician and the priestess of healing as well.

In the middle of the field he saw En Urté make a belatedly imperious gesture, summoning the two Miraval corans to remove the body of the Arimondan. Roban had spent most of his life at court. He knew perfectly well why Urté had fired that long, splendid arrow shot from behind the tent. The duke, he was certain, had fully expected to find Blaise of Gorhaut already dead when he arrived at the Delonghi woman's rooms with the countess two nights ago. It wasn't any particular hatred of the young coran that would have driven him—de Miraval very possibly hadn't even known who Blaise really was—it would have been simply another blow, one more stupid, trivial, destructive blow in the endless war of Miraval and Talair. Bertran valued the Gorhautian and kept him close: therefore, and needing no other reason, Urté de Miraval would be pleased to see him slain. After which the Arimondan would have been abandoned to his fate, exactly as he had been in any event, and the unsettling, possibly dangerous lady from Portezza left to the countess. And to Roban, of course; the hard things were always left to Roban.

He watched as Blaise de Garsenc approached, walking with obvious difficulty. Some distance behind him the two green-garbed Miraval corans were running across the grass in response to their lord's summons. Roban was a thoughtful man, and it had long struck him as strange—and did so again now—that none of the blows between the warring dukes were ever directed at each other. It was as if—in some unspoken, unacknowledged fashion—they needed each other to keep alive the clear, bitter memories of that long-ago year, to give each other, however inexplicable it might appear, a reason to continue living.

It was ridiculous to Roban, hopelessly irrational, dark as pagan ritual, but at the same time something the countess had once said still rang true for him: it was virtually impossible ever to think of either man without immediately calling the other to mind. They were bound and grappled together, Roban thought, as in a net, by the death of Aelis de Miraval. Roban looked over and saw Bertran, relaxed and at ease in a chair under the countess's golden canopy. He was smiling broadly as he watched Urté stalk before his corans as they bore the Arimondan's body from the field.

It never stopped. It would not ever stop while the two of them lived. And who knew what people—and nations—they would draw down into the dark net with them, suspended forever in that time more than twenty years ago when a black-haired woman had died in Miraval?

The man who had just claimed the throne of Gorhaut was standing before the countess now. He looked, Roban thought, somewhat changed from before, even making allowance for the fact that he'd been bound and nearly naked on a woman's bed the last time the chancellor had seen him. The Gorhautian, for all the evident pain of his wounds—the gashed ear was dripping blood—carried himself with composure as he faced the two reigning ladies of Arbonne and the king of Valensa. He wasn't as young as Roban had first thought him to be, either. The look in his face just now included, unexpectedly, a hint of sadness. It was not the expression of a youthful man.

Behind him stood Bertran's cousin and Vitalle Correze's son, and a third coran in the livery of Castle Baude. They already looked like an entourage, the chancellor thought. Or was it only the manner of the Gorhautian himself that made that seem the case? Could the mere assertion of a claim effect so much of a change? It could, Roban decided, if the claim was as large as this one was. Men were often no more or less than what others saw in them, and no one in the world would ever look at this tall northern coran the same way ever again. That might, he thought suddenly, explain the sadness.

The countess rose, gesturing for those beside her to remain seated. Roban couldn't see her face, but he knew she would not be smiling. Not now, with so much cast into hazard this morning. She said, her light, clear voice carrying, "You have acquitted yourself on this field with honour Blaise de Garsenc, and have received the favour of Rian and Corannos. We call upon all those here to bear witness that the matter of blood between yourself and Quzman di Perano is ended and resolved forever." She glanced deliberately over to where the banner of the Gorhaut kings was snapping in the breeze above his tent. "As for other matters that have emerged this morning, we will have much to say to each other in the days to come, and we doubt not that the king of Valensa will wish to offer his wise counsel in these affairs. Such matters will be dealt with soon. For the moment, we offer you the care of our healers in Barbentain—" she glanced briefly back towards Roban, who nodded " — and we shall say nothing more at this time but an offered prayer that holy Rian will bless you with her grace."

Although that, Roban thought grimly, was a great deal to have said. The countess had made the point already when she rose to salute the Gorhautian at the first running up of his banners, but this was signalling it again, and quite unmistakably. The chancellor looked over his shoulder. The physician and the priestess had arrived; they were coming swiftly over, almost running. But there was one more thing to be done, Roban knew, before Blaise de Garsenc could be released from the public gaze into their care. This was theatre, and he was on the stage.

As the countess took her seat again it was Ariane who rose, beautiful in autumn hues of russet and pale gold. Sunrise and sunset, the chancellor thought, looking at the two women, or, since Ariane was not really young any more, perhaps noontide and twilight would better suit as images. The beauty of the lady of Carenzu was almost dazzling in the clear light. His own love, though, was for the older woman, for the grace of the ending day, and it would be until he died.

There was a rose to be given now. Mildly curious, in fact, as to what the Gorhautian would do, Roban heard Ariane's formal words spoken to invoke the symbolic rituals of the Court of Love. He was not a troubadour, not a coran, not a dancer or a wit or the sort of man who set styles of fashion at court among ladies. Even so, Roban the chancellor loved his country with his own enduring passion, with an inward, private flame, and he knew that these rituals, frivolous as they might seem, were what defined Arbonne and set it apart from the rest of the world. And he too, prosaic and dry and sober as he might be in the castle corridors of day, had had his own dreams of winning this rose and offering it—of course—to the countess before cheering multitudes. Not for some time had he had that dream, but it was not so very long ago, either.

"We have our traditions here in Arbonne," Ariane was saying. "Here, where Rian the goddess is so much more than merely Corinna, maiden daughter of the god. She has many incarnations, our goddess, and both death and life are contained in her. Which is why," she said, her clear, strong voice now the only sound among the pavilions, "which is why, at the end of a death challenge, there is a ceremony to honour Rian and the mortal women who are all her daughters. We ask the victor, the chosen of the goddess and the god, to give a rose." She paused. "Sometimes, as a higher recognition of his worth, we invite him to offer three."

She opened the coffer they had given her, and Roban saw that she had indeed chosen to invoke the full ceremony this morning. It was seldom done, but it was obvious that Signe and Ariane were marking this moment and this man as indelibly as they could. He wondered if the Gorhaut coran could possibly be aware of how much he had taken upon himself today. He wondered how long the man would live-but that, of course, was bound up in how long any of them could expect to live with a war coming, certain as winter and the spring to follow.

"White is for fidelity," Ariane said, holding the coffer up to be seen. There was a murmuring all along the pavilions, of anticipation and speculation. The morning was offering more than anyone could have imagined. "Yellow is for love, and red is for desire." She smiled. "You may bestow them as you choose, my lord de Garsenc. We will all be honoured by your doing so." Blaise of Gorhaut, grass-stained and bloody, bowed to Ariane and took the coffer from her long fingers. It was purest ceremony, Roban knew, a spectacle intended entirely for those in the other pavilions and the commons' standing grounds, and for the words and music of the troubadours and joglars who would carry it to castles and villages far beyond this field when the fair was over. Knowing this, having seen it so many times before, he was nonetheless moved. Gravely the man handed the open coffer to Vitalle Correze's son and took from it the white rose. He looked upon it in silence for a moment, before turning back to the queen. "Fidelity I offer where it is most richly deserved, if I might be allowed to name a woman who is not with us at this field. May I ask you to guard this for her and have it laid at her feet in my name when the time allows?"

Gravely Ariane nodded. "You may and I shall. Where should I carry it?"

"To my sister," said Blaise, and Roban was almost certain the emotion in his voice was not feigned. "To Rosala de Savaric de Garsenc, who kept faith with her child and her own vision of Gorhaut. And say to her, if you will, that I shall never break faith with her while I live."

The woman was still in the castle, Roban knew. This open ground was no place for someone only days past childbirth. The herald was declaiming her name now that all might hear it. There had been rumours, but this would be the first formal confirmation of who the mysterious woman in Barbentain was. They were going be talking about this morning in all six countries for a long time, Roban thought, shaking his head.

Blaise had already turned to take the red rose. He seemed to be hesitating, brow furrowed, but then Roban saw him smile slightly for the first time since he'd approached. Carrying it before him, laid across both palms, he limped a short distance down the row of pavilions and stopped before the handsomely carved and decorated chair of Lucianna Delonghi, who had bound him in ropes two nights ago, and cut him with her dagger. Extending both hands he gave her, with another low bow, the red rose of desire.

Roban, watching with frank curiosity, saw the woman go pale, even as the father, beside her, smiled—and then slowly stopped smiling as implications came home to him. Lucianna Delonghi said nothing at all; her composure seemed shaken for the first time the chancellor could remember. With a court-bred instinct Roban turned just then to look at Ariane, and saw how thin her mouth was as she watched. A new twist here, he thought. I wonder when that happened?

"I begin to think," murmured Bertran de Talair, speaking for the first time, "that we may have all found more than we bargained for in this man. I may yet learn to fear him. He has just taken his full revenge upon Bosiard d'Andoria."

It was true, Roban realized. This was a very public rose of desire offered to a married woman whose husband had been banned from the fair for trying to have Blaise killed. Everyone in the pavilions and most of the commons would now be certain they knew why. No wonder Massena Delonghi was no longer smiling. Turning back to the Portezzan pavilion, Roban was in time to see the Gorhautian speak one word to the woman, and the chancellor's line of vision was clear enough that he was very nearly certain that the word was farewell. The revenge, he considered, might not be only upon the husband.

The herald was busily crying Lucianna d'Andoria's name as Blaise came back for the yellow rose.

He took it in both hands, as he had held the other two, and turned to the countess and the queen. He looked from one to the other and then said, calmly in the stillness of the morning air, "This one, if you will allow, I shall keep for a time. In my own country of Gorhaut we speak love privately before we declare it to the world."

And then, before either woman could reply, without any dramatics at all, he fainted.

And that, thought the chancellor of Arbonne sagely as he motioned urgently for the healers, is probably the first act of this entire morning that wasn't meant for an audience.

As it happened, he was wrong.

"You might consider fainting if this goes on too long and you want to get out of here," Rudel had murmured, not moving his lips, as Blaise had taken the first rose. "Gallant victor pushed to his very limits. They'll like that. "

Towards the end, as he walked back from Lucianna's pavilion, Blaise had decided that it was, indeed, going on too long. He hadn't, actually, expected to see real pain in her eyes. Anger yes, and perhaps a scornful pride, but not that sudden pain.

Following upon everything else, it made him feel extremely strange. He didn't want to actually collapse, so he took Rudel's advice and allowed himself to seem to do so, slipping to the grass and letting his eyes fall closed. He heard voices of sharp concern about him, the countess calling for aid, Bertran's voice guiding the physician through the pavilion's seats to where he lay. Rudel and Valery quickly contrived a litter to carry him upon, and he heard Hirnan's brisk, highland accent clearing a path as they bore him away, out of the too-bright sun and the scrutiny of so many people. Part of the way back towards the castle Blaise did, in fact, lose consciousness, but not before the thought came to him, quite unexpectedly, along the momentarily undefended pathways of his mind, that Rosala's child, Cadar, was almost certainly his own son.

Most of the troubadours were loudly, even wildly expressive in their enthusiasm for what had just happened. Even when En Blaise de Garsenc fell to the ground in a faint it did not check their exuberant spirit. Remy, it seemed, had elected to forget about his swordspoint encounter with the man at Midsummer. He would probably end up regarding it as an early bond of blood between the two of them. Jourdain and Alain were already speaking of a hurried collaboration this afternoon, to have at least one song ready for the evening's banquet in Barbentain.

"You don't look well. What is it?" Aurelian, of course, the one who always noticed, even in the midst of pandemonium.

Lisseut managed a shaky smile for him. "I don't much like this kind of thing, I've just discovered."

"Neither do I, and I learned that some time ago. It is over now. We can go." He hesitated, looking down at her thoughtfully. "He will be all right, you know. I saw the physician and a priestess coming over."

"I did too. I'm sure he's all right." She was aware that there was an expression of knowledge on his part in what he had just said, and an admission in her brief reply. She didn't care. He had given out the white rose to his brother's wife, and the red to Lucianna Delonghi, who was as beautiful as Aurelian had said she was. He had kept the yellow one.

Beside her, Aurelian was silent for a moment. She saw some children running about on the grass now, play-acting battles. People were beginning to leave their pavilion and all the others, joining the milling, feverish crowd. The inns were about to become extremely busy in Lussan.

"And you, my dear?" Aurelian asked finally. "Will you be all right?"

"I don't know," she answered, truthfully.