Duck laughed. “Nobody knew you had. Remember that mat of rushes that I made?”
“Duck!” I said.
“I told you I was going to be a magician,” Duck said. “I’ve got quite good at little things like that. Peacepiping’s much more difficult. I thought I was going to let Tanamil down when we started. Anyway, I put that mat in the chest, and everyone thought it was your spellcoat. The King wore it. Nobody knew. At least Hern knew, but he was too upset to say and Robin did, of course, but she kept looking away because she hates people to look silly.”
“But, Duck, I don’t think the wedding was legal!” I said. I was thoroughly shocked.
“It was all right if the headman did it,” Duck said grumpily. “And don’t you dare tell anyone. Without that wedding Hern hasn’t the slightest right to be King. So keep your mouth shut.”
Duck is quite right, of course. I have not told a soul except to weave it in my second rugcoat.
By then a certain order began to appear in the coming and going. The bodies of the two Kings and the others who were killed were laid on the broad grass beside the lake. Wren, the headman, went round the lake to the barn among the trees. When he got there, Kankredin was so near that waves were standing high in the middle of the lake and its water was forced over the lowland. Wren found the barn flooded. Our cats were up in the beams, spitting at the water. Wren’s villagers and Robin were up on the hillside above, and Wren brought them back round the lake to the falls, where I was still standing by my loom, wondering what I ought to do.
Robin is no different, in spite of being a Queen and a widow, though she was wearing her best skirt. She burst into tears when she saw me. She says she had known I was not drowned, but she had not been able to believe it. We went down to look at the King. You would not have thought Robin could cry over our King. But she did.
“You didn’t like him!” I said.
“I know. I didn’t treat him well,” Robin sobbed. “Nothing treated him well. He wasn’t the right man for what he was made to do.”
I think Robin is right. But I was glad Tanamil was not near. He would have been hurt.
Tanamil was all this time up at Kars Adon’s camp. I am glad he was there. If Arin had gone alone to the camp with news of our King’s treachery, there would have been bloodshed, and Hern would have died i
n it before he could do anything. As it was, Tan Adon, as they call him, came in majesty to the Heathens and bore witness that Kars Adon had named Hern as his heir. Even so, the Heathens from the camp came down beside the falls with black looks and weapons ready. My people whom Kars Adon had sheltered came, too. But it was noticeable that they kept apart, with those too weak to fight sheltered in the midst of them.
Jay is not dead, by the way. While Robin and I were watching the people coming down the falls, Hern and Uncle Kestrel were laying Jay with the other bodies. And Jay sat up, rubbing his head. “I might have known you’d get the best of it, old-timer,” he said to Uncle Kestrel. Then he looked at me. It was almost his old, joking look. “I’ve been sent back from a hurrying host of dead people,” he said, “with orders to keep you safe, my lass. There are some glass giants at work down the River. It looks as if they’ll be here by nightfall.”
Uncle Kestrel thought Jay’s mind was wandering. I knew it was not. “He means Kankredin,” I said to Hern.
“I was afraid he did,” said Hern. He lifted his heel and hacked at the grass with it. “Now I have a chance to do all the things I swore to do,” he said. “And I don’t think I can.”
The people from the camp arrived and gathered by the lake. Our people went to stand with Wren and his villagers, near the lake. But the Heathens stood up among the rocks and planted their flags there.
“How shall we do the Adon’s will?” a lordly Heathen called out mockingly to Hern.
Hern was very pale. I could see him shaking. He stood out between the two crowds, among the bodies, all on his own. I had expected him to look small there, and I am still surprised that he did not. Hern is thin still, but he has grown as tall as Gull. When Tanamil came to stand near him, the two were the same height.
“First look at this,” Hern said, pointing to the corpses. Everyone was quiet. The noise from the falls meant we had to listen very carefully. “These,” Hern said, “are the bodies of two kings. They were killed in senseless hatred, when both had lost nearly all they had. Someone is coming up the River who knows of this, and it pleases him very much. This will make it easy for him to suck out our souls, and the soul of this land, and rule us as his slaves. He is coming in a wall of water. And he is nearly here.” He pointed down the River, across the lake.
Our people by the lakeside swayed all one way, like grass in the wind, away from the water. The Heathens stood firm, but their crowd was white with faces staring across the lake. The current set it in banks of water, churning toward us, and the space by the lake was flooding as Hern talked.
“This morning,” said Hern, “one King married my sister Robin, and the other named me as his heir. This gives me a title to lead all of you against Kankredin. I did not ask for it, and you may choose again later, if you want. But for the next three days I must ask you to fight as one people against our real enemy. The same flags shall fly over us. The same Undying shall guide us. We shall none of us run away. We are going to hold these falls behind us to the death.”
Heads swung uneasily to look at the rearing white falls. Everyone shifted with infirm resolution.
“We shall do it,” said Hern. “For one thing, we shall lose our souls, anyway, if we do nothing. The main thing is that we have a way to win. My sister Tanaqui can weave against Kankredin, spell for spell. She can unbind Oreth, our Grand Father, so that he can rise and crush Kankredin. She can save us. But she must have time. We must hold Kankredin while she weaves. If we can hold him for three days, we have won.”
So Hern did understand about my weaving. I admire him for grasping it so quickly. I did not think he would because it is not reasonable. But I never foresaw that it would all depend on me. I am very frightened. I know how Hern feels.
“If this is any comfort to you,” Hern said, looking at the stricken faces by the lake and the grim ones up on the rocks, “the chief power of the mages is that they can take our souls. Everyone is right to be afraid. But Tan Adon, Lord of the Red River, will make you each a talisman which will keep the soul within your body. You can wear that and go into battle with confidence.”
Tanamil, for an instant, looked as if he could not believe his ears. But as eyes turned to him, he smiled and nodded.
“So,” said Hern, “will you all follow me—just for three days?”
There was the most nerve-racking pause. Hern sat down on a piece of rock. I think his knees gave.
Then Wren stepped out from among our people and went on one knee in front of Hern. I like Wren. “We’ll follow you, me and my people,” he said. That brought other headmen struggling through the crowd, one by one, and they knelt, too. Zwitt was one of them. Only believe that! He looked very grudging, but he was scared stiff. I think Hern’s talk of talismans tempted him.