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Twenty-One

That he had not yet enjoyed one blessed minute of sleep for two nights running did nothing to dampen Kal's wide-eyed astonishment as he began his tour of Nua Cearta under the patient tutelage of Alcesidas. Clearly, the Prince was cherished and well-loved by his people and with good reason, for he showed himself to be unfailingly kind and amiable.

Their first stop was at the royal stables, where King Magan kept his carriage horses and fine spirited steeds bred for the thrill of the chase. All of the horseflesh was of a breed fitted to the needs and size of their masters. Alcesidas had hoped at first that they could make their rounds in a magnificent black coach, finely worked and polished, crafted in delicate lines of wrought iron. Both its doors were adorned with Magan Hammermaster's royal crest, an avalynn arrayed with blazing orbs of pendent fruit and set within the outline of a snowcapped mountain. But this splendid coach proved to be uncomfortable, too small even for Kal's slender frame. Besides, there was Gwyn to reckon with as well, his unwillingness to disattach himself from Kal making them a party of three.

Alcesidas resolved the problem handily by having one of his grooms commandeer a broad hay wagon, pulled by two dappled grey horses with broad shoulders and hindquarters. The horses were well-suited to their masters, both horse and master giving the impression of a foursquare solidity that sprang from the rooted bulk of the earth itself, one with it in a way that the taller Holdsfolk, for all that they were bound to the soil too, could not match.

Grabbing hold of the reins, Alcesidas let Kal take a seat beside him, the Holdsman plying him with questions above the clip-clop of well-shod hooves along the cobblestone roads that webbed the countryside beyond the royal palace buildings, which were situated at the focal centre of the subterranean kingdom. Dominating the royal enclave was a set of gleaming white edifices that were founded on such a lofty earthen platform that their roofs merged with the ceiling of the immense main cavern. One of these structures, with its makings of a spherical dome, had all the outward appearances of a glence, while its companion building was rectangular, fitted at each corner with turrets. Each turret was six-sided and overtopped the walls of the building, rising to meet the underbulk of Folamh. The approach to these buildings was through a series of stepped terraces connected to each other by four flights of white marble stairs, which, as far as Kal could discern, marked the cardinal directions. The terraces girdled the foundational ground in concentric circles. Planted on each level were avalynnia, the ground around their smooth trunks awash with the colour of all manner of flowered shrubs and plants and spreading creepers. His curiosity piqued, Kal asked about this impressive sight, but Alcesidas demurred and bade him wait until evening.

Gwyn had taken his seat behind them on the flat bed of the wagon, with his legs neatly crossed. How child-like he was in one respect, and yet how old he seemed in demeanour and address, as if he was in constant communion with some other more elemental and ancient world. Most people remarked on his eyes. Kal thought that he had never encountered eyes that were so transparently deep. Yet at the same time they seemed to overflow like a fountain bubbling from a deep-founded well.

The air about them gleamed bright and clear, more brilliant than even the most light-filled summer's day that Kal could remember in the upper world of the Holding, which was lit by a solitary daystar. Here, on the other hand, the many avalynnia shone like myriad upon myriad of self-contained suns that rendered all the colours of nature's raiment more lustrous—the crowning green of the forest trees more vivid, the earth hues more rich and brown. It was springtime as well in Nua Cearta, where the vegetation turned to seasons that mirrored those of the upper world.

On their way out, the three met up with a group of Holdsfolk on foot, mostly younger men and women, their curiosity stronger than their fatigue. They were being given a walking tour by a talkative Rimut, who took a moment to rest his lean little frame on his staff and greet the wagon riders with a friendly quip. Passing Rimut and his party, the three approached a copse that was throbbing with life, filled with wood pigeons and songbirds. Alcesidas explained that this was called South Wood, on the other side of which lay a deer chase especial to his father's heart—the heart of an avid huntsman.

Beyond South Wood along the road, they began to encounter neatly ordered farmsteads with bright painted roofs and branching laneways dyked by turf and stone that were overhung with ivy. Even so, between the settled clearings, there were broad tiers of thick woodland that mantled a picturesque succession of soft humpbacked hills which in the farther distance were broken by great overtopping smudges of metallic grey—the massive pillars called menturya or "stone roots," Alcesidas explained, for they upheld the weight of Nua Cearta's vast rock ceiling. There were pastures too where diminutive cattle and sheep cropped the sweet green grass, and they saw fields being planted with wheat and rye amid a network of irrigation channels. Every other farmstead, it seemed, had a barn-like building with a distinctive flame-red roof. Kal was told that these were individual forgeworks. At a couple of these farmsteads they stopped the wagon and turned from the roadway to tour on foot. Presently they came to a mill whose wheel clacked merrily in a swiftly flowing stream that meandered through verdant water meadows decked with delicate cowslips. Here again, Alcesidas suggested that they make further exploration on foot.

At every place they visited, there were warm endearing smiles and wishes of good health to greet the Crown Prince, who had so recently managed to escape the clutches of their treacherous cousins. Underneath the hearty sentiments, though, Kal could sense a spirit of anxiety and concern. They were, for all that, a genial race of folk, modest and unassuming, bound to simple lives on the farm or at the forge in a world set apart and made habitable by the extraordinary endowments of the avalynn.

Kal had heard, of course, about the hidden kingdoms to be found in the hollowed core of the Burren Mountains and had read about them too in the Master Legendary. The hammerfolk had been great and indispensable helpers in Ardiel's fight against Tardroch as night raiders and scouts, and the Talamadh itself had been fashioned by Vali, the greatest of their craftsmen. But in this stern grey age of limping harmony and faltering order more and more Arvonians, in the lowlands especially, were discounting the hammerfolk as no more than the fabulous creations of Hedric's quaint imagination, another of the hidden peoples bound to the world of myth and the world of myth alone. Yet here they were, the hammerfolk, undoubtedly real and very much alive, giving the lie to the narrowness and self-absorption of the world of the anuasoi, who were so quick to doubt that which they could not see or touch with ease in the drab confinement of their workaday lives.

"I am truly struck with awe, Alcesidas, at the brightness and homeliness of Nua Cearta and its folk," Kal said, as the Prince enjoyed a lusty quaff from the foaming tankard of rich brown ale that the bustling hammerdaughter had served each of them. He and Alcesidas were sitting in the tidy cozy kitchen of a well-tended farmstead whose fields sat on the very edge of the underground kingdom.

It seemed to Kal that Nua Cearta sprawled over miles and miles of landscape, and that for the most part it coincided in extent with one large continuous cavern, broken only by the great supporting menturya. Kal followed the Prince's happy lead and pulled deeply from his own pewter tankard. There was something robust and hale, even earthy, about the flush-faced hammerson enjoying his cups. Kal half-expected Alcesidas to break out into a rollicking drinking song. Thirst had parched them both in their tramping about the neat and pretty countryside, where throstles sang from blooming hedgerows of whitethorn that separated field from field under a vivid firmament of chalcedony and agate, jasper and carnelian. Everywhere, placed at a strategic distance from one another, were avalynnia, shining little islands of light that chased away the perpetual darkness that would otherwise have smothered Nua Cearta.

Alcesidas had explained to Kal how quick the avalynn tree was to flower and bear fruit, even when young and merely the size of a shrub. It was this that had allowed the hammerfolk to settle and cultivate Nua Cearta fairly rapidly after their expulsion from the Burren Mountains. Kal learned too that most of the forges here were small ones, scattered throughout the domain on family steadings that provided the folk with meat and drink. This abundance of small forges was a facet of Nua Cearta which stood in marked contrast to the monstrous smithworks of the forgelands far away in the Burren Mountains. There was, nonetheless, one adjoining cavern outfitted with a large forge for the occasional projects that exceeded the scale and capability of the smaller home-based smithies. Kal smiled at the thought of Devved. The big man must be beside himself.

Alcesidas drained his mug and looked up to see the goodwife's husband, who had made his appearance, gripping the twin ears of a huge earthenware pitcher, which he set upon the kitchen table with evident satisfaction. His knobbed hairy hands were dark and smudged and quite out of proportion to his body, yet supple, even sensitive. One could tell from the sure way he handled the pitcher and then leaned over to unlatch the window by their table.

"Briacoil, my prince, it is no short while since our rooftree has harboured your august person and you too, anuas, briacoil. I bid you especial welcome to Far Acres, since Signy tells me that you fill now the office of Hordanu."

"Kalaquinn, I present to you Volodan, the greatest of all our craftsmen here in Nua Cearta, and I doubt that even Shadahr would be able to find his equal, even if he combed every nook and cranny of the Burren forgeland itself," replied Alcesidas, doing the honours. "It was he who made Magan Hammermaster's coach, which you did admire earlier."

"My dear Prince Alcesidas, you are too much flattering. Signy will think that you are swelling my head. And now already she thinks it is a gourd that is thick-skinned and large beyond due measure," Volodan said, laughing from a florid face streaked with the grime and heat of his work. With a weary but relaxed air, the man undid the leather apron that covered his loose-fitting tunic and hung it on a peg by the door. No less smudged than his face, the once cream-coloured tunic was girdled at the waist with a rough length of cord.

"I am a forgeworker like any another here in Nua Cearta," sighed Volodan. "But enough, have done with your overgenerous praise, Prince Alcesidas, or you shall have me blushing like a forge ember. There's another sort of 'meed' that better fits my case, and yours too, I'll wager, from the dust and sweat that cover you both. Indeed, I have taken the liberty of fetching a pot of Signy's honey cider for us to savour. We must show the young Hordanu that our hammerdaughters do best their men in their work. Our smithcraft is but paltry diddling to their honeyed labours in the brewhouse."

"What, Volodan? Will you have us mix ale and cider like callow guzzlers?" teased Alcesidas.

"Surely, you have heard the Cider Rhyme, my prince? 'Beer upon cider is a bad rider, but cider 'pon beer is very good cheer!' "

"Very well, then, Volodan, your versesmithing has won us. Come, pour us a well-filled cup. We shall undertake the labour of putting your rhyme wisdom to the test, shall we not, Kalaquinn?" pronounced Alcesidas with a full-toothed grin. Kal rushed to empty his mug of ale, so that their host might replenish it with cider. The mellowness of late afternoon's avalynn light lay upon them like a blanket, a perfect match for the ripeness of the cider. From outside they could hear the joyful fluting of a meadowlark blending dozily with the rise and fall of laughing children's voices, which drifted to their ears from an apple orchard close by the forge. That's where Kal and Alcesidas had left Gwyn, who had drawn open his ever-present pouch of marbles at the sight of the two children, a boy and a girl, who could not resist Gwyn's simple charm any more than he could resist theirs.

Kal's head grew lighter. He found it harder and harder to keep abreast of the conversation. Determined though he was not to be an impolite guest, sleep pulled at him. He'd had no food to soak up the edge of the ale and the cider, although Signy had now returned with a fresh loaf of rye bread and a generous slab of old cheese from the pantry. It proved a most pleasant light meal, all the more tasty because it was garnished by hunger. Alcesidas advised him to save some room for the evening's feasting in the Hall of the Stars. Again an unbearable weight of drowsiness tugged at him. He could no more resist yielding to it than could a tree, given its final felling strokes by the woodcutter, resist being sent crashing to the ground. It was as if all the sleeplessness and exertions of the past two days had conspired to come together and take their toll at last.

 

The next thing Kal knew he was slowly awakening in a great four-poster bed, complete with a leek-green canopy pricked out with many brightly plumed birds like pheasants. The soft fragrant linen sheets had helped to make his sleep sweet and forgetful. Indeed, it felt as though he had been sleeping for ages. At first his senses were confused by vague hints of wakefulness and dream all jumbled. There had been shouts of alarm, the rattle of arms, and the shriek of a woman's voice. But all these snippets of conscious recollection had only just managed to enter that tiny nook of his mind which had been the last to resist the relentless pull of sleep. Ah, but he had been weary, weary beyond caring, too weary to bestir himself no matter what. And then somehow he had ended up lying in the back of the wagon, with Gwyn bent over him, while the light grew dim and the monotonous noise of bees in the yellow musk slowly faded, leaving only the regular clip-clop of horseshoes on the cobblestones, sending him deeper into his slumbers.

Kal yawned, then stretched and noticed that he was clad in just a long nightshirt. He raised himself and drew aside the curtains of the four-poster. The room was of finely cut stone blocks, and on much of its wallspace there hung vivid scenes woven into old rich tapestries. There was even a fireplace, in which the glowing coals lay ready to be banked up and stoked with the logs piled high in a chased gilt box braced by four legs alongside the hearth. A broad window opening set in a thick embrasure gave the room its allowance of natural light, now receding into an indistinct twilight. What had happened? How long had he slept? It was all a puzzle to the Holdsman. The last thing he remembered was his visit to the home of Volodan and Signy, and by then it had already been late afternoon.

As Kal, still sleepy and disoriented, sought to disentangle these questions, his eye strayed to the door of the chamber. A nervous-looking fellow stole in on tiptoe, lantern in hand, wearing green hose and a brown sleeveless jerkin over a white shirt. Kal did not need to see the avalynn crest sewn into the jerkin to recognize the livery as being that of one of King Magan's retainers. Without so much as a glance in Kal's direction, keeping his back to him, the man reached up to a sheltered niche in the wall, no more than an empty depression. Kal heard a click and rasping sound as of something being slid, and there was a sudden outpouring of light that came from an avalynn fruit suspended in the niche by a glowing filament. At this the man ventured a glance in the direction of the bed. He seemed almost as taken aback as Kal. Without waiting to be given leave by the young Holdsman, he blurted out an apologetic "briacoil" and explained that he had been sent by Prince Alcesidas to build up the fire, unscreen a chamber light, and wait by, until Master Hordanu should awaken. The footman must have noted Kal's knitted brows and puzzled countenance, for he bade him wait until he fetched Prince Alcesidas, then muttered another polite "briacoil" and hurriedly bowed and left.

Kal ambled to the window and unlatched it, swinging it open to the spring air, heady with the delicate scent of the gardens below. Nua Cearta was spectacular beyond words. As the vista unfolded before him, he realized at once that he was atop the pinnacle of layered terraces which dominated the sightlines of the kingdom. Apparently his sleeping chamber was situated in one of the turrets affixed to the building he had seen earlier.

Below him the brightness of many avalynnia was waning into a unique mimicry of twilight. The air was tinted with the pink flush of a sunset akin to the ones that Kal had experienced so often in the Holding, except that in this case it seemed to have undergone a sublime diffusion into all points of the horizon, not merely its western portion. And the granite mass of Nua Cearta's sky, bereft as it was of the upper world's nightwork pattern of twinkling stars and lamping moon gave the dusk an ominous louring final quality, like that of a dense linen shroud being pulled tight over the mortal remains of day or a great stone slab being closed over its rocky tomb.

Beautiful as it was, Kal found it somewhat unsettling. Touched to the quick for a moment by a strong and poignant sense of life's perilous sojourn on the brink of engulfing night, he gazed down at the majestic marble pile of Magan Hammermaster's palace. Cut from the very rock of the cavern, its cream facade too had been sculpted to resemble the meticulous craftsmanship of master stonemasons working block by block. This made for an altogether unique combination of artifice and nature—an emblem of the hammerfolk themselves, whose forgecraft and stonework existed so happily side by side with their agricultural pursuits. The palace, like a gigantic dove brooding with half-folded wings, was flanked by the royal mews and stables and armouries and sundry other buildings—looking like the dove's nestlings.

Beyond that could be seen the roads that traced their way outward to the hinterland of the kingdom, with its farms and mills and forges laid in a quiltwork pattern of undulant fields and forests, all settling into the blackness of a Nua Ceartan night. Along several of the roads, Kal watched flat-bedded wagons, hung with lanterns and brimming over with folk, hastening to the royal enclave, called, as Alcesidas had told Kal, Sterentref, to distinguish it from Sterenhall, the building from which he enjoyed this view. Kal noted that there were several other wagons and coaches stationed empty in a large open area that lay behind the royal stables, equipped with tethering posts and rails. Many people, too, were mounting the wide stairs up towards Sterenhall and its companion building in the shape of a glence.

Clearly discernible, as well, although not near enough to be identifiable in the gathering murk of the fading light, were Kal's fellow anuasoi, their superior height and difference in gait allowing him to pick them out from among the hammerfolk that plodded their way up the stairs.

"It is an awe-inspiring sight, is it not, Kalaquinn, Nua Cearta spread out before you at dusk? I too have pondered many a problem from that window." Startled, Kal whirled around to find Alcesidas, clad in garb befitting his station, smiling at him from the open door. "Briacoil! It pleases me to see that you have slept long, and well I trust. Indeed, I had begun to doubt me whether you had somehow been ensorcelled. We shall have need of your presence this evening. Without you our feasting would scarcely be complete, and we have waited one day already for you to have your rest."

"How long have I slept? Where am I?"

"From yesterday afternoon. I made merry asking Signy if she was not perhaps wont to spice her cider with a sleeping draught. I thought nothing would wake you after that affray you did studiously ignore with your snores and wheezings."

"What affray? What mean you, Alcesidas?"

"Come, wash here and change into your day clothes and I shall tell you what honour that crippled boy who dogs you has brought upon himself." Alcesidas pointed to a screen in the far corner of the room, on the other side of which there stood an ample bathtub of porcelain filled with steaming water and a fresh set of clothes laid out on a chair, together with a large mirror. Above the bathtub was another strange-looking niche, like the one at which Alcesidas's groom had earlier groped. The back of it was faced with a kind of door that Alcesidas slid open to reveal a glowing avalynn fruit that provided Kal with light to see by in the area behind the screen.

Letting Kal scrub himself clean behind the partition, Alcesidas recounted yesterday's events to him. As the Prince had sat talking with Volodan—while Kal drifted off to sleep—a frantic high-pitched shriek of alarm from Signy reached their ears. Leaving Kal in his slumber, he and Volodan had dropped their mugs and rushed outdoors towards the orchard in time to see Gwyn laying down a short bow beside a figure spread out on the ground, facedown and inert. Two shafts protruded from the back of the lifeless man. Signy too arrived on the scene, favouring a forearm that had been gashed.

It happened that one of Shadahr's spies had been spotted by Signy as he crept up to Volodan's forge. She had just emerged from the rootcellar, which faced the rear entrance to the forge. Otherwise she might not have seen him skulking towards it. Shadahr's minion was keen, no doubt, on gaining some notion of the state of Nua Cearta's forgecraft—which, Alcesidas added, was far superior to that of Cearta itself. Realising that he had been discovered by Signy and that a hue and cry was imminent, he let fly a bolt at her in order to silence her and make good his escape. The shaft merely grazed her arm. At this she cried out in her alarm—which is what Volodan and Alcesidas had heard and Gwyn as well, from the orchard, where he was still playing at marbles with the two children. Shadahr's spy made to run, well aware that the game was up and his only chance lay in headlong flight, his straightest way back to his own tunnels being by way of the orchard.

Gwyn had loped to snatch up a shortbow that Volodan had left leaning against one of the pear trees, where there had been a butt set up for archery practice. Signy had watched the whole scene unfold before her. Her children screamed, as the fleeing spy ran in their direction, making for the screening outbuildings that bordered the orchard. He eyed the children, slowed for a moment, and then turned towards them, ignoring Gwyn. Scooping up the little girl in his arms, he ran to the outbuildings with her. An arrow thudded into the ground behind him as he ran, while the little girl screamed, held in his grip.

Then, before he could turn the corner of the milking barn, he emitted a muffled cry of pain. Gwyn had placed an arrow in the fleeing man's shoulder from behind. But this did not stop him, for the arrow hit the quiver slung over his back, which blunted its impact. Gwyn had gotten the measure of Volodan's short bow. Again he let fly. This time the bolt found its mark in the small of the spy's back. Dropping like a stone, he pinned the little girl beneath his body.

Alcesidas and Volodan arrived in time to help Gwyn and Signy comfort the child. Great rejoicing followed. Gwyn became an instant hero and could scarcely tear himself away from the grateful parents, who called their neighbours in for a small feast of thanksgiving, which hammerfolk are wont to do at the slightest provocation. Their coming together also provided the occasion for Volodan and the other hammersons to search the outlying fields and woods, where they knew there were entry points into Nua Cearta from the tunnels and caves of Folamh.

"So Gwyn and I loaded you, sleep-ridden and all but dead to the world, onto the wagon. We took you back to Sterentref and had you carried on a stretcher here to this room. Although you remained in a daze, we managed to dress you in a nightshirt and place you in bed, letting you indulge your keen desire to sleep."

"Once again, I am deeply in your debt, Alcesidas," Kal said as he stepped from behind the screen, now bathed and dressed, having remained attentive to every detail of his friend's account. He regarded himself in the mirror. The clothes fitted him superbly well. They had been tailored for him—white hose and a deep blue tunic embroidered with silver—and he found them trim and comfortable. The hammerfolk had even left him a fine pebbled leather pouch, which he opened to find the Pyx of Roncador repaired to its golden chain. This pouch he attached to the belt of his tunic. He looked and indeed felt like a new man entirely, refreshed by his long sleep and ablutions.

The light had become somewhat dimmer now, even though Alcesidas had, while they talked, unscreened another chamber light in yet another niche in the wall. Still, the onset of night was soft and gradual, not a suddenly falling darkness, as on a winter's evening.

"Indeed, your Gwyn has won the undying gratitude of all of Nua Cearta, Kalaquinn," Alcesidas said as Kal clasped together the two ends of his cloak with the pios.

"And where is he?"

"Gone back to the home of Volodan and Signy with another of my grooms. Their daughter kept asking for him and refused to be consoled without his near presence. An altogether remarkable young man, I should say, Kalaquinn, as is your other boon companion, Galligaskin. We stand in deep amazement at his skills." As he spoke, Alcesidas opened a wooden cabinet by the window and withdrew from it a pyramid-shaped object with a hand grip atop it, the sides of it opaque. Pulling open some small metal doors on it, light poured out from its now transparent sides of glass. In the lantern an avalynn fruit, which hung on a glowing white filament, gave out a pool of brightness.

Holding the lantern, Alcesidas doused each of the chamber lights by drawing shut its sliding panel. He related how, recognizing Galli for who he was by his browmark, they had learned more of Galli's Telessarian blood through Rimut, and pressed him into service, getting him to scan Far Acres for further signs of the enemy, signs that might have escaped the notice of the hammerfolk. Galli ended up ingratiating himself with them by discovering the precise spot where the spy had slipped into Nua Cearta, a cleft that lay hidden under a small overhang of rock. Volodan and his neighbours went to work with their sturdy little draught horses, sealing this gap with a good many stoneboat loads of rock.

But now they were to the feasting hall, and, as he held open the door to Kal, Alcesidas explained how eagerly he had been awaiting this evening's festivities, already a day postponed.

 

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