The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Page 12

  They had to follow the enemy, and they had to get within signal range of the Eryn Muir, whichever came first. He knew what his cousins knew; when they did, he was going to sound that horn.

  Whether it brought the yrch down on them or not.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dùthchas of the Clan McClintock

  (Formerly northern California and southern Oregon)

  High Kingdom of Montival

  (Formerly western North America)

  May 16th, Change Year 46/2044 AD

  “It’s always sort of awkward meeting a former lover,” Órlaith murmured quietly, inhaling the scents of pine and cold spring water trickling over moss-grown stone. “Especially when you haven’t told him it’s former yet.”

  The track still had fragments of old asphalt in it. That showed as gray-white flecks when dapples of light penetrated the swaying branches high overhead. It had been shored up in perilous spots with smooth rocks and logs but mostly it was a forest track now, kept open by hoof and paw as much as shoes or wheels. Up ahead Edain winded a horn, a long low sonorous huuu-huuuu-hurrr sound repeated once and twice and again, which was manners hereabouts—if you didn’t signal and come in by plain sight when you approached a home-place, by McClintock law you could be treated as hostile.

  There were still outlaws around here, and until well within living memory there had been the odd Eater band filtering up from the death-zones of old California. The Royal party were expected and so it was a formality, but her father had always been punctilious about respecting local custom. The infinite varieties of which he’d also said was a large part of what made life interesting.

  “Former lover?” Heuradys said, raising a brow.

  Diarmuid Tennart McClintock had his holding near here, and he had been her first man. Five years ago, almost exactly, at a Beltane festival in Dun Juniper, far north of here in the Mackenzie dùthchas. They’d met every once and a while since, and enjoyed each other’s company, in and out of bed.

  The Royal party came out into a hillside meadow with only scattered oaks, dropping away towards the river northward. Órlaith blinked in the flood of light after the deep green gloom of the forest of Douglas fir and Jeffrey pine and ponderosas; to east and west mountains lined the horizon, and some of the peaks of the Cascades on her right were still snow-clad. The bright green grass of the mountain spring was thick and starred with blooms: the last blue camas, the flower called farewell-to-spring with its four pink petals, a scattering of orange paintbrush and the purple blossom-balls of ookow nodding on their tall thin stems. It was cropped by a mob of three-score shaggy but bare-legged Icelandic sheep under the guard of a kilted shepherdess with a bow and two collies who ran silently to bunch the flock before they faced the strangers suspiciously, crouched belly-down.

  Their mistress waved, but stayed near the ewes and the lambs that stopped their play to huddle close to their dams, pointing upward in explanation.

  “Former lover, now, yes. Sure, and something tells me. Not in the mood anyway, of course.”

  Órlaith glanced upward herself. A pair of Golden Eagles were turning in the updrafts overhead, their great wings stroking the air like caressing hands. She thought they were the most beautiful of birds, and they were her totem, the spirit she’d found in her dreaming quest. There was no denying they loved lamb, though. Of course, she did herself. Her stomach rumbled slightly at the thought of roast spring lamb with mint, and she suppressed a—totally senseless—stab of guilt at the way the body’s needs went right on even when fathers died.

  Da would have laughed at her, and said Leave the guilt to the Christians, poor spalpeens . . .

  “He’ll understand that,” Heuradys said. “And if he didn’t, his leman would explain what his dense male sensibilities couldn’t grasp. Caitlin’s a girl with her wits about her. He should get off his backside and marry her.”

  Órlaith smiled a little; it helped to think about someone else. “Speaking of backsides, I’ll be just as glad to get mine out of the saddle for a day or so.”

  They’d been winding through densely forested mountains for days, and not taking any more time than they must, gobbling trail-rations and falling into instant sleep every night. Her own retainers and escorts had borne up well, though the knights and men-at-arms had left their tall coursers behind to be brought on in easy stages when they passed the courier station at the north end of the Central Valley near White Mountain. Everyone was on hardy sure-footed rounceys now, and the gear and supplies on pack-mules. Except the High King’s Archers, who’d left their mounts and just trotted afoot up hill and down dale at a pace that could have killed the horses and even the mules if Edain hadn’t taken pity and ordered a rest now and then.

  “You look more tired than I’d have expected,” Heuradys said. “You’re sleeping well enough . . . something else?”

  Órlaith suppressed a stab of irritation. Heuradys was concerned as a friend, and moreover it was her job, as Órlaith’s liege-knight.

  As much as possible they’d followed the King’s Way—what the ancient world had called the I-5. Those works were proof of the awesome powers of the old Americans, who’d carved the bones of earth as if it were a Tillamook cheese. But half a century of wind and water, snow and frost and earthquake and the slow inexorable grip of growing roots had shown that the Mother was stronger still. A lot of the journey had been on rough trails. The light cavalry scouts were nervous; most of them were from the dry open ranching country of the interior beyond the mountains and found all this forest oppressive. Usually Órlaith loved being in the woods, but . . .

  “Bad dreams,” she said quietly. “Not . . . not about Da. In fact, when I dream about him it’s happy. I keep getting this . . . I’m not sure. I don’t remember much of it, but there’s something to do with a desert. Not one I remember from the waking world, but it’s desperately important in the dream. And then there’s this castle . . . odd-looking castle, distorted . . . and eight heads . . .”

  Heuradys frowned. “Well, you remember something.”

  “A little more each time, actually.” Órlaith grimaced. “Probably it’s not important.”

  Heuradys’ shrug was non-committal. They both knew that dreams could mean something, particularly the dreams of a monarch. Which didn’t mean they necessarily would; she’d dreamt of her first dog for years after the poor beast took his final illness, and all it had meant was that she missed him and had had to put him out of pain herself.

  She shifted her attention to their guests. The Nihonjin were keeping up; they were reasonable riders if not expert by her standards, and they were as hardy and uncomplaining as any Scout or Dúnedain Ranger.

  “Though I get the impression that they’re not used to trips this long,” Heuradys said when she mentioned it. “They looked a bit stunned when I told them how many weeks we’d been on the road, and how long it will take to get back to civilization. Then wrote notes to check they hadn’t misunderstood. Twice.”

  “Which makes sense, to be sure,” Órlaith replied.

  “Why?”

  “All the islands of Japan together are barely the size of Westria Province, and they only live on the smaller ones the now. Just starting on resettling the rest, from what they’ve let drop. At that, there are more folk alive there than anyone I know who considered the matter thought they’d have. At the Change they had four times the numbers of old California packed into the same space, and the flat land fit for tillage a smaller proportion—and look what California was like.”

  Heuradys shivered. “It’s a miracle anyone’s left in Japan but Eaters.”

  “The geography helped. Islands are easy to defend, so, and there’s a mort of tiny and not-so-tiny ones about the place there, with nobbut a few fishers and farmers on them when the Change came. Britain was the same, with Wight and Mona and the rest, from what I hear. Still, I’ve no doubt it took luck and hard fighting and careful organization. They’re not used to living any place else, though. Little islands like pim
ples on the sea’s broad backside.”

  “Ah,” Heuradys said, then with a chuckle: “A day’s travel at most and then you hit salt water and have to take a boat. Hard to imagine. Sort of like being locked in Little Ease in Todenangst, actually.”

  Órlaith winced slightly even as she made a gesture of agreement at the metaphor; Heuradys was an Associate noble, and even now they tended to be a little . . .

  . . . hard-edged, she decided.

  Little Ease was a dungeon cell under the Onyx Tower at Castle Todenangst up in the Protectorate, carefully designed to make it impossible to stand, sit or lie comfortably in the chill damp blackness. Designed by her maternal grandfather Norman Arminger, the first Lord Protector, in fact, in imitation of one his hero William the Bastard had built into the Tower of London. Though he’d outdone the Conqueror in many respects, as warlord and builder both. There were times she’d wished she could have met him, but mostly she was glad he’d died in battle more than a decade before her birth.

  She’d known and admired and loved her mother’s mother, Sandra Arminger, who’d died of natural causes when Órlaith was in her early teens. But under a smoothly amiable, cultured exterior she’d had a cold ruthlessness that could make you blink in astonishment, or horror, when it did peek out.

  Like a razor in a ripe fig, she thought.

  Órlaith had just started realizing it before her Nonni’s final illness. Common story had it that the ancients had been rather soft, but that certainly didn’t apply to the ones who’d survived the Change Year. Doubly so to the ones who’d come to power then, for the most part.

  And according to all the stories, Grandfather Norman made Nonni Sandra at her worst look like a loving auntie with a tray of cookies always in her hands. Da called him a bold bad man and said it was fortunate for his reputation he died when he did, when he talked about him at all. Mom rarely does mention him aloud; I think she loved him, but then she was only ten when he died and it wasn’t until long afterwards anyone talked truthfully to her about his deeds.

  Her mother was Lady Protector now—it was a separate title from the High Kingship, specific to the Association territories, and she’d been that rare thing, an only child, and hence sole heir. She didn’t use Little Ease nearly as much as Nonni Sandra had, or the prerogative Court called Star Chamber that met in secret to send people there. . . .

  Perhaps when John becomes Lord Protector he can abolish it. It’s convenient, sometimes . . . but that’s just the point, it’s too convenient. What’s that old saying Grandmother Juniper likes? “Boys throw stones at frogs in jest, but the frogs die in earnest.” It’s so easy to break things . . . break people . . . if you’re a monarch.

  “I notice you haven’t been pushing our guests much for information,” Heuradys said thoughtfully, looking over her shoulder. They’d clumped together where the road came out of the forest, looking down over the vast tumbled stretch of hill country ahead that vanished into blue distance. “Not even about how they ended up here on the other side of the Pacific.”

  Órlaith nodded. “Yes, and that’s no accident. They’ve been honest”—she touched the hilt of the Sword—“but a little close-mouthed about some things. Sure, and in their position, alone among strangers, even friendly strangers, I would be too until I had my feet beneath me. And until I knew what and who were where and what.”

  “No hurry, I suppose,” Heuradys said. “But eventually . . .”

  “Yes, we need to know the details. But they’re here and they won’t be leaving any time soon, so.”

  Heuradys raised her brows. “Not interested in getting a ship from Portland straight back home?”

  Órlaith smiled through her weariness; there wasn’t a real question there, despite the way it had been phrased. She had been raised at Court, and so had her friend.

  “I think some of them would like nothing better. But not Reiko; she has something she wants to do here, wants very badly. Let their trust in us ripen. And let them see something of our land. It’s very strange to them, the size being not the least of it but by no means all, either.”

  Montival was big—well over a million square miles, counting the wild lands—and many of the inhabited portions were widely scattered clumps separated by stretches empty of human-kind even now. It might well be the largest single realm on earth, though with well under five million people not nearly the most populous. That was almost surely distant Hinduraj, which might have ten times that number, and its storied, fabled capital of Sambalpur was the greatest of all cities now. People and the work of their hands were the wealth and strength of any kingdom, but she sincerely hoped Montival never had that many.

  Both the young women had traveled with the peripatetic Royal court for many years, by horse and carriage and railway and ship, traversing thousands of miles, from the edges of glaciers to the fringes of the lowland deserts. Órlaith’s parents had made a point of spending some time anywhere there was a significant clump of people, to let them see the High King and Queen in person; monarchy was a personal thing, the living breathing persons of the Royal kin, not some bloodless bureaucratic abstraction of laws and regulations. Traveling about gave the rulers perspective too, and it also meant you met plenty of dwellers who did not travel much. Most common folk never went more than a few days’ travel from where they were born unless war called or disaster struck.

  The valley below was cradled in heights rising blue-green all about, in a sky where the distant snowpeaks seemed to float disembodied on the horizon under the noonday sun. Wildfowl rose like a twisting spiral of air and smoke from the water, and the first faint trace of the scents of damp turned earth and burning fir-wood hinted at men’s dwellings. It was a new note in the intense green freshness of the springtime forests, a benediction of that purity rather than a violation.

  Reiko brought her horse up by theirs and paused to look east and west along the stretch of river. The far faint rumble of fast water over rock reached their ears from the willows and ash that grew in dense thickets along the shore. Below, field and pasture and orchard made a subtle patchwork of shades of green and textures of growth. It was an island amid the wilderness. A gust of wind scattered a last swath of white blossom from pear trees like distant white mist, and trailed smoke from a scattering of chimneys set in roofs of flower-bright turf.

  “Yugen,” she said.

  “Beautiful,” Órlaith said softly in her own tongue.

  Koyama and Egawa nodded agreement behind their jotei. Then Reiko went on: “Yugen, that is beautiful, yes, but also it means . . .”

  Órlaith was a little surprised when it was the scar-faced soldier Egawa who recited:

  “To watch the sun sink behind a flower-clad hill.

  To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return.

  To stand ashore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands.

  To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds.”

  Her father had been fond of saying that even a horse or a dog might always surprise you, and that the true inwardness of any among human-kind was like a forest at night, mysterious and full of the unexpected, with much hidden even from the self that dwelt there and walked beneath those trees. And prone to poking you in the eye if you moved heedlessly.

  She blinked; the beauty of the view merged with the pain of missing him.

  I will never share this with him, or anything like this, ever again.

  She looked over at Reiko for an instant; their eyes met, shared a moment of communion across all boundaries of people and custom, then looked aside.

  “Yugen,” Órlaith agreed.

  They crossed the sloping pasture and headed into the valley of the Rógaire River on a track that switchbacked down a rocky slope overrun with purple-flowered deerbrush. The name of the stream was post-Change, bestowed during the years of chaos and violence when the Clan McClintock had taken form in these comely but rugged lands south of the Willamette Valley. Their first Chief, the McCli
ntock Himself, had been a man of odd skills, esoteric knowledge and strong will who ended up founding his own small nation. One that modeled itself on him and his first core of helpers, as a saturated solution crystallizes around a seed; that part of physics hadn’t changed with the Change, and her instructors had demonstrated it in her chemistry lessons. It was much like what Órlaith’s grandmother Juniper had done in founding the Clan Mackenzie.

  Only in a manner rather less sane, she thought.

  One of the first McClintock’s many obsessions had been slapping names from the tongue of his ancestors on any piece of local geography that didn’t actively fight back, and by now many of the older terms had dropped out of living memory. Though he hadn’t quite been able to get his new clan to speak that language, if only because it would have taken too much time and effort when both were at a premium.

  But they do mine it . . . or pull plums out of the pudding.

  Diarmuid’s grandfather had been one of the first McClintock’s right-hand men, what they called a feartaic or tacksman, and Diarmuid had succeeded to this land when his father had demonstrated the risks of tackling a grizzly with a boar-spear several years ago.

  Reiko came up again as the way broadened out from the narrow track into open oak-savannah, accompanied by her two closest advisors. She untied the chin-cords of that curious straw hat shaped like a flat-bottomed bowl and fanned herself with it for a moment; it was noticeably warmer in this sheltered hollow than up the mountainside.

  “This man Di-ar-mu-id is . . . your . . . vassal?” she asked, in her own tongue and then in much-improved English that had even acquired a very slight Mackenzie lilt.

  Órlaith nodded a little reluctantly; the knowledge she’d gained through the Sword warned her that vassal and fudai weren’t exactly the same thing. It wasn’t anything explicit, more a matter of a slight mental stumble, as if on an uneven pavement.

  “More or less,” she said. “Through the McClintock himself, himself, Colin, the ceann-cinnidh. Clan chief,” she added, again frustratingly conscious that shi and clan weren’t exactly the same thing either, nor was ichizoku.