YetAmidous waved his hand in dismissal. "All very fine, but the fact remains they have not done as well as they were supposed to in Ladenscion. They said they would triumph there in a few moons. UrLeyn thought they would too. Even I thought that the job ought not to be beyond them, if they applied themselves and threw their troops to the front. But they have done badly. They have failed so far. Cities have not been taken, siege engines and cannon have been lost. Their progress has been halted by every stream, every hill, every damn hedge and flower. I am simply asking why? Why are they doing so badly? What can be the explanation, if it is not deliberate? Might it not be some conspiracy? Might there not be some collusion between the two sides of the war, to drag us and our men in deeper and tempt the Protector himself forward to take part, and then kill him?"
RuLeuin glanced at ZeSpiole again. "No," he told YetAmidous. "I think that is not the case, and nothing is accomplished by talking like that. Give me some wine," he said to Herae.
ZeSpiole grinned at YetAmidous. "I must say, Yet," he said. 'Your talent for suspicion is almost on a par with DeWar's."
"DeWar!" YetAmidous snorted. "I've never trusted him, either."
"Oh, this is getting preposterous!" RuLeuin said. He drained his goblet and sank under the water, resurfacing to shake his head and blow out his cheeks.
"What can DeWar be up to, do you think, Yet?" ZeSpiole asked, with a smile. "He certainly cannot wish our Protector dead, for he has saved him from almost certain death on several occasions, the last time being when each of us came closer to sending the Protector into the arms of Providence than any assassin ever has. You yourself came within a knuckle of sticking a quarrel straight through UrLeyn's head."
"I was aiming for that ort," YetAmidous said, scowling. "And I almost got the thing, too." He thrust his goblet out to Yalde again.
"I'm sure you were," ZeSpiole said. "My own shot was more off target. But you have not said what you suspect DeWar of."
"I just don't trust him, that's all," YetAmidous said, sounding surly now.
"I would be more concerned that he does not trust you, Yet, old friend," ZeSpiole said, staring into YetAmidous" eyes.
"What?" YetAmidous spluttered.
"Well, he may have the feeling that you were trying to kill the Protector that day, on the hunt, by the stream,"
ZeSpiole said in a quiet, concerned voice. "He might be watching you, you know. I would worry about that if I were in your position. He is a sly, cunning hound, that one. His approach is silent and his teeth are sharp as razors. I should not care to be the subject of his suspicions, I'll tell you that. Why, I'd be sorely frightened that I might wake up dead one morning."
"What?" YetAmidous roared. He threw down the goblet. It splashed into the milky water. He stood up, shaking with fury.
ZeSpiole looked over at RuLeuin, whose expression was anxious. ZeSpiole put his head back and burst out laughing. "Oh, Yet! You are so easy to rile! I'm jesting with you, man. You could have killed UrLeyn a hundred times by now. I know DeWar. He doesn't think you're an assassin, you big oaf! Here. Have a fruit." ZeSpiole lifted a buncher and threw it across the bath at the other man, who caught it and then, after a moment's confusion, laughed too, sinking back into the swirling water and laughing uproariously.
"Ha! Of course! Ah, you tease me like a hussy, ZeSpiole. Yalde!" he said. "This water's freezing. Get the servants to bring some more hot. And bring more wine! Where's my goblet? What have you done with it?"
The goblet, sunk in the bath in front of YetAmidous, had left a red stain in the milky water, like blood.
19. THE DOCTOR
The summer passed. It was a relatively mild season throughout the land, but especially so in the Yvenir hills, where the breezes were either pleasantly cool or tolerably warm. Much of the time passed with Seigen joining Xamis below the horizon each night, trailing after it at first, while we performed the first part of the Circuition, dancing almost in step with its senior during those eventful and perplexing early moons at Yvenir, then preceding it by gradually greater and greater increments for the rest of our stay, which, happily, was devoid of significant incident.
When time came to pack up what needed to be packed up and store what required storing, Seigen was anticipating the rise of the greater sun by a good bell or so, providing the hills with a long leading-dawn full of sharp, extended shadows when the day seemed only half begun and birds chorused and some birds did not and the tiny points that were the wandering stars could sometimes still be seen in the violet sky if the moons were absent or low.
Our return to Haspide was accomplished with all the usual pomp and ceremony. There were feasts and ceremonies and investitures and triumphal parades through newly built gates and dignified processions under specially commissioned arches and long speeches by self-important officials and elaborate gift-givings and formal conferments of old and new awards and titles and decorations and any manner of other business, all of it wearying but all of it, I was assured by the Doctor (somewhat to my surprise), necessary in the sense that this sort of participatory ritual and use of shared symbols helped to cement our society together. If anything, the Doctor said, Drezen could have done with more of this sort of thing.
En route back to Haspide, in the midst of all this ceremonial — much of it, I'd still insist, mere flummery — the King set up numerous city councils, instituted more craft and professional guilds and granted various counties and towns the privileged status of burgh. This did not meet with the universal approval of the Dukes and other nobles of the provinces concerned, but the King seemed more energetic in finding ways to sweeten the medicine for those who might lose out in this reshuffling of responsibilities and control than he had on the way to Yvenir, and no less cheerfully determined to have his way, not just because he was the King but because he knew he was right and before too long people would come to see things his way anyway.
"But there is no need for this, sir!"
"Ah, but there will be."
"Sir, can we be so sure of that?"
"We can be as sure of it as we can that the suns will rise after they have set, Ulresile."
"Indeed, sir. Yet we wait until the suns do appear before we rise. What you propose is to prepare for the day while it is still the middle o£ the night."
"Some things must be anticipated further in advance than others," the King told the younger man with a look of jovial resignation:.
Young Duke Ulresile had opted to accompany the court back to Haspide. He had developed his powers of speech and opinion considerably over the summer since we had first encountered him in the hidden garden behind Yvenir palace. Perhaps he was simply growing up particularly quickly, but I think it was more likely that his new-found garrulousness was largely the effect of living in the same place as the royal court for a season.
We were camped on the Toforbian Plain, about halfway between Yvenir and Haspide. Ormin, Ulresile and the new Duke Walen — together with chamberlain Wiester and a fuss of servants — stood with the King in a fabric-walled courtyard open to the sky outside the royal pavilion while the Doctor bandaged the King's hands. Tall flagpoles bent in a warm, harvest-scented breeze and the royal standards flapped at each corner of the six-sided space, their shadows moving sinuously over the carpets and rugs which had been spread over the carefully levelled ground.
Our monarch was due to indulge in a formal stave-fight with the old city-god of Toforbis, which would be represented as an extravagantly hued multipede and played by a hundred men under a long, hooped canopy. The spectacle was that of watching a man fight with the awning of a tent, even if the awning was animated, elongated, painted with scales and sported a giant head in the shape of a giant toothed bird, but it was one of the rituals that had to be endured for the sake of local custom and to keep the regional dignitaries happy.