The Crown of Dalemark (The Dalemark Quartet 4)

“Now?”

“Crown first,” said Hern. “Bend your head.”

Mitt sighed and bowed his head down. “Extra bit of advice,” he said, looking sideways at Kialan. “Kings drive a hard bargain.”

Hern chuckled as he settled the thick gold band carefully over Mitt’s lank hair. “A King should have a sharp mind,” he said. “That may be in my Sayings somewhere. I am sorry that I cannot give you the kingstone as well as the crown. The stone is in the South. A man in Holand called Hobin knows where to find it.”

Mitt stared at him from under his own forehead. “Hobin? Gunsmith? He’s my stepfather!” He straightened up slowly and put one hand uneasily to the crown, thinking it might slip, but it seemed steady enough. Like the Adon’s ring, it was an exact fit. “Hobin!” he said. “You Undying really got me hemmed in, haven’t you?”

Hern nodded as he stepped backward. “It was the same for me. Now you can ask your favor.”

“All right,” said Mitt. “Then, do you really have to sit here, century after century, waiting for the next new King to come along?”

Hern went very still. “This I know is in the Sayings of the King,” he said. “Never be beguiled by pity. Are you talking pity?”

“No,” said Mitt. “You’ve been showing us you’re stuck here and you don’t like it from the moment you first spoke.”

“Mercy, then?” asked Hern. “This sits well on a King.”

“No,” said Mitt. “Flaming Ammet, I don’t know what it’s called! I’ll have to take a leaf out of your book and show you. Take a look at Ynen. He’s miserable because all he can think of is that you have to sit here, year in and year out, waiting for a King that may not come. Only he doesn’t like to say so because the One made you sit here. Isn’t that so?” Mitt asked Ynen. Ynen went pink and nodded hard. “See?” Mitt said to Hern. “I don’t know the word for what I’m doing, unless it’s having the cheek to say things no one else dares to say. Is that kingly?”

Hern did not answer. He laughed.

“Laugh away,” Mitt said. “I’m going to ask the One to take you off duty.”

Hern went on laughing, but the sound was confused now and fading. The beams of light, which had half hidden him if you looked at him sideways, came to cover him however you looked, crisscrossing and elongating confusingly. He was like a candle seen through tears. Then the beams separated and slid away. Each silvery streak carried a dim piece of Hern’s shape with it, as if he were dissolving underwater. Mitt set his teeth and clenched his hands until the Adon’s ring bit into him. This was exactly like his worst nightmare when he was small. He had been fairly sure this would happen, but it had seemed worth asking all the same. He made himself watch until Hern had rippled away into nowhere.

The rippling did not vanish with Hern. It remained as a green-goldness, like air shaking in heat. The stone seat, and that whole end of the room, wavered as if they were under clear, shallow water. Mitt’s hands remained clenched. The scent he had recognized outside, of peat and farm, willows budding, and slow, deep river flowing to the far-off sea, was back again, stronger and more potent. And the rippling had formed a shape, a huge gold-green shadow with a profile like Hern’s or Ynen’s. Mitt had no doubt, nor had any of the others, that there was a presence standing behind them, casting this shadow, but it was beyond any of them to turn round and look.

When the One spoke, the voice came from behind them. “Hern has long ago gone down the River to the sea.”

Mitt relaxed. Ynen murmured, “Oh good!” Maewen wondered how anyone could mistake Kankredin’s voice for the One’s. This voice was like the whole land speaking, the settling of rocks, the grind of water through granite, the slow shift of earth, and the wind blowing, and it burred in your ears in the same way as the low string on Moril’s cwidder.

“It is not easy,” said the One, “for my mortal children to speak with me face-to-face.”

This was true. All of them were aching to turn round and see the One, and all of them knew it was quite impossible.

“Witness this, all of you,” said the One. “You have a new King.”

No one was sure what to do, until Moril led them in a ragged chorus. “We witness we have a new King.”

“I thank you,” said the One.

The rippling shadow stooped then. It was as if the One bent to have a private word with each of them, all at the same time. Maewen heard the great voice at her ear, saying, “I cannot promise you what you asked. Too many imponderables lie in between. I am sorry.”

To Mitt the One said, “You have been offered the name of Amil, which is my name. Before you choose between that name or your own, you must know that I have sworn to root out Kankredin from my land. If you take my name, that will be your task, too. What name do you choose?”

Mitt knew it was a real choice, even if Maewen had told him which way he chose. He weighed it up. Alhammitt was a good name, except that it was the name of half the men in the South. Amil was a name no one else had, but it carried the One’s burden with it. Well, Mitt had carried burdens all his life. Kingship was another one. One more seemed to make no difference on top of that. “I’ll take Amil,” he said.

Then he turned round, like someone waking up, wondering what the One had said to the others. The rippling shadow was gone, and with it, most of the golden mistiness. He could see they were standing in a place that was no more than an oblong trench, with walls made of big blocks of yellowish stone that were broken off at about waist height. Beside him Maewen was fiercely blinking back tears. Moril looked much the same. But Ynen and Kialan both looked happy, in a stunned kind of way.

“I think we have to go back through the stone,” Moril said.

21

When they turned round, they found three stone steps the color of oatcakes leading into a green-gold landscape of humps and hillocks. Had it not been for the silence, and the mist still clinging to the near distance, they would have thought they were back in Kernsburgh outside the waystone.

They walked, slightly downhill, through a dip on the gold-green turf. The humps of Hern’s palace were small behind them. Ruins were like that, Maewen thought. Buildings, even palaces, seemed to take up far more room than they really did.