The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

Then the voice spoke to her. “There is a loaded pistol someone has dropped on the ground at your feet,” it said. “Take it and—”

“Oh shut up!” Maewen told it. “Kialan’s hurt.”

“Moril!” said Mitt.

“I know. I heard him.” Moril bent hurriedly over his cwidder, trying to make the power gather. Mitt could feel it was slow and difficult to gather again so soon, and the screams and roaring of the battle did not help.

“I made sure the Adon was injured,” the voice told Maewen smugly. “These are my instructions. Shoot the Southerner with the crown first, and then—”

“I said shut up!” Maewen screamed. The buckles were undone. The bandage was—where? Where? Oh, here it was. She took the roll and backed away. Pistol? Oh yes. There, almost under the horse’s feet.

The voice rose to a blare. “Pick it up, you stupid girl. Shoot them all and take the crown!”

“Quickly!” said Mitt.

“No,” said Maewen. She aimed her boot at the pistol and deliberately kicked it as far away as she could.

Mitt groaned. Moril put all his fingers under the lowest string and plucked, desperately. The cwidder responded with a deep brassy twang, as if Moril had struck a gong instead.

&n

bsp; The horse in front of Maewen drifted away sideways. Although it seemed like a solid horse, it behaved just like smoke and shredded into the air, in brown wisps. In its place was the ghost of a man, twelve feet high or more, bell-shaped and robed, bent over to glare at Maewen with human eyes under fat eyelids. He was hollow. She could see the empty space in the middle of him, and somehow this was the most horrifying thing about him. I was riding that! she thought.

It did not seem to bother Kankredin that Maewen could see him. He blared, “I am the One! You must do as I command!”

Mitt made a movement to stand up. The ghostly fat-lidded eyes caught the movement. The vague hand in the hollow sleeve made a small gesture, as Maewen said, “No, you are not the One. And you never fooled me for a moment.” She was shaking, but she was glad to find she could be brave in this way at least.

The towering shape bent toward her. The sheets of wriggly hair on both sides of its face fell forward, and the huge, vague hands reached. Mitt found he could not move his legs. Beside him Moril’s hands seemed to be stuck to the cwidder, in crooked shapes. But Mitt did not need to walk. He drew breath and shouted.

“YNYNEN!”

Then he moved, in spite of not being able to, and took off like a sprinter. Somehow he covered the distance between himself and Maewen, just in time to knock her over and fall on top of her before Ammet answered his call.

There was a howling wind, full of chaff. They were peppered with stinging grains of wheat, first from one side and then from everywhere. It made them both cringe. But in spite of that, in spite of grain coming at them like hailstones, and flying straw and blinding chaff dust, Maewen and Mitt both craned round to see the ghost of Kankredin spinning in a spinning trumpet shape of wheat-filled wind.

It was over almost as they looked. The ghost drew tatters of itself together and dissolved away backward. The trumpet shape unraveled and streamed away across the green land, carrying chaff and grain far and wide.

“Did you get him?” Maewen asked.

“Not sure.” Mitt dragged himself to his knees. There was no sign of Kankredin. The gong note Moril had evoked from the cwidder was still in the air, sounding on and on. If Kankredin was near, he would be visible. “Had a feeling Ammet only got part of him,” Mitt said regretfully, “but I think he’s gone.”

Maewen scrambled up with the bandage. The crown had fallen beside her. She picked it up, thick and orange and heavy, and it left a bare oval shape in the grain that covered the grass. “I knew there was something strange about that horse,” she said as they went back to the waystone among drifting chaff and pattering grain.

Moril looked up as they came. Mitt nodded. Moril put one hand on the throbbing string to stop the sound, and then flexed both hands as if Kankredin had cramped them. Behind Moril, Kialan had Ynen’s belt buckled round his arm to stop the bleeding. He was holding it tight for Ynen while Ynen tore pieces off both their shirts to bandage the place where the slice of stone had been.

“Rather a waste of two good shirts,” Kialan said. His face was a better color. He looked up at Mitt. “What happened to the crown?”

Maewen realized that she was holding it. “Bend your head down,” she said to Mitt.

None of them noticed that the noise of fighting had all but stopped. As Mitt bent his head and Maewen fitted the crown carefully over his hair, Earl Keril came crunching toward them over the scattered grain. He was a little disheveled, but he barely looked as if he had been in a battle. He hooked his thumbs in his sword belt and watched Mitt and Maewen. “Well, now,” he said pleasantly. “I had five possible outcomes in mind when I sent you to Adenmouth, but this was one that I confess never occurred to me.”

Mitt straightened up. He was slightly taller than Earl Keril. “Get me hanged and make sure there’s no uprising,” he said. “Right?”

“Hanging you may yet be the solution,” Earl Keril said in the same pleasant way. “Let me put to you my point of view. The North had been agog for some years with stories that Noreth Onesdaughter”—he bowed pleasantly to Maewen—“would take the royal road the year she was eighteen. Then, all of a sudden, you arrive in Aberath in a manner which fulfills every prophecy ever made, and all the common people are hailing you as the new King come at last—”

“I never knew that,” Mitt said. “I had no idea. If you’d let me alone, I wouldn’t be here now. But you set me on to murder Noreth.”

“Naturally I hoped that the two claimants would cancel one another out,” Keril agreed. He looked at Maewen again. “Rather than the one crown the other. But we were prepared for other outcomes, too. To that end the Countess took you in and educated you, and I took steps to make sure you would remain under the sponsorship of Hannart and Aberath—”