A Song for Arbonne. Guy Gavriel Kay

he leans urgently forward again, almost rising from the throne, the two bright spots vivid in his cheeks and says, ‘No man has as much reason as we do, Galbert. Do not exalt yourself.’

      The High Elder gently shakes his head. Again the rich voice encompasses the room, so warm, so caring, it can so easily deceive one into thinking the man is profoundly other than he is. Rosala knows about that; she knows almost everything about that by now.

      ‘It is not in my own name that I take umbrage, my liege,’ says Galbert. ‘I am as nothing, nothing at all in myself. But I stand before you and before the eyes of all those in the six countries as the voice of the god in Gorhaut. And Gorhaut is the Heartland, the place where Corannos of the Ancients was born in the days before man walked and woman fell into her ruin. An insult to me is a blow delivered to the most high god and must not be tolerated. Nor will it be, for all the world knows your mettle and your mind in this, my liege.’

      It is fascinating, Rosala thinks, how smoothly, how effortlessly, Galbert has shifted the matter at hand. Ademar is nodding his head slowly; so are a number of the men in the hall. Her husband is drinking, but that is to be expected. Briefly, Rosala feels sorry for him.

      ‘We would have thought,’ the king says slowly, ‘that Daufridi of Valensa would share our attitude to this provocation. Perhaps when we next receive his envoy we ought to discuss the matter of Bertran de Talair.’

      Daufridi has all our land north of Iersen now, Rosala finds herself thinking bitterly, and knows that others will be framing the same thought. He can afford to tolerate insults from Arbonne. Her family’s ancient estates along the Iersen River are right on the newly defined northern border of Gorhaut now; Savaric had not been so exposed ever before. And there are men in this room whose lands and castles have been given away; they are part of Valensa now, ceded by treaty, surrendered in the peace after being saved in the war. King Ademar is surrounded by hungry, ambitious, angry men, who will need to be assuaged, and soon, however much they might fear him for the moment.

      It is all so terribly clear, Rosala thinks, her face a mask, blank and unrevealing.

      ‘By all means,’ Galbert the High Elder is saying, ‘raise the matter with the Valensan envoy. I think we can deal with a shabby rhymester by ourselves, but it would indeed be well to have certain other matters understood and arranged before another year has come and gone.’

      Rosala sees her husband lift his head at that, looking not at his father but at the king.

      ‘What matters?’ Duke Ranald says, loudly, in the silence. ‘What needs to be understood?’ It is only with an effort sometimes that Rosala is able to remember that her husband was once the most celebrated fighting man in Gorhaut, champion to Ademar’s father. A long time ago, that was, and the years have not sat kindly on the shoulders of Ranald de Garsenc.

      Ademar says nothing, chewing on his moustache. It is Ranald’s father who replies, the faintest hint of triumph in the magnificent voice. ‘Do you not know?’ he asks, eyebrows elaborately arched. ‘Surely one so free with idle counsels can riddle this puzzle through.’

      Ranald scowls blackly but refuses to put the question again. Rosala knows he doesn’t understand; again she feels an unexpected impulse of sympathy for him during this latest skirmish in his lifelong battle with what his father is. She doubts Ranald is the only man here bemused by the cryptic byplay between the High Elder and the king. It happens, though, that her own father, in his day, had been a master of diplomacy, high in the counsels of King Duergar, and Rosala and one brother were the only two of his children to survive into adulthood. She had learned a great deal, more than women tended to in Gorhaut. Which, she knows, is a large part of her own private grief right now, trapped among the de Garsenc and their hates.

      But she does understand things, she can see them, almost too clearly. If he is sober enough, Ranald will probably want her thoughts tonight when they are alone. She knows the heavy, hectoring tone he will use, the scorn with which he will quickly dismiss her replies if she chooses to offer any, and she also knows how he will go away from her after and muse upon what she tells him. It is a power of sorts, she is aware of that; one that many women have used to put their own stamp, as a seal upon a letter, upon the events of their day.

      But such women have two things Rosala lacks. A desire, a passion even, to move and manipulate amid the fever and flare of court events, and a stronger, worthier vessel in which to pour their wisdom and their spirit than Ranald de Garsenc is ever going to be.

      She doesn’t know what she will tell her husband if he asks for her thoughts that evening. She suspects he will. And she is almost certain she does know what his father’s designs are and, even more, that the king is going to move with them. Ademar is being guided, as a capricious stallion by a master horsebreaker, towards a destination Galbert has likely wanted to reach for more years than anyone knows. King Duergar of Gorhaut had not been a man susceptible to the persuasion of anyone in his court, including his clergy—perhaps especially his clergy—and so the High Elder’s access to real power dates back only to the precise moment when a Valensan arrow, arching through a wintry twilight, found Duergar’s eye in that grim, cold battle by Iersen Bridge a year and a half ago.

      And now Duergar is dead and burned on his pyre, and his handsome son rules in Cortil, and there is a peace signed in the north disinheriting a quarter of the people of Gorhaut, whether of high estate or low. Which means—surely anyone could see it if they only stopped to look—one thing that will have to follow. Instinctively, a motion of withdrawal as much a reflex as a forest creature’s retreat from a tongue of flame, Rosala turns back to the window. It is springtime in Gorhaut, but the grey rains show no signs of ending and the damp chill can ache in one’s very bones.

      It will be warmer, she knows, warmer and softer and with a far more benevolent light in the sky, in Arbonne. In woman-ruled Arbonne, with its Court of Love, its wide, rich, sun-blessed lands, its sheltered, welcoming harbours on the southern sea and its heresy of Rian the goddess ruling alongside the god, not crouched in maidenly subservience beneath his iron hand.

      ‘We will have much to speak of yet,’ Galbert de Garsenc is saying, ‘before summer draws fully upon us, and to you my liege will rightly fall all decisions that must be made and the great burden of them.’ He raises his voice; Rosala does not turn back from the window. She knows what he is about to say, where he is taking the king, taking all of them.

      ‘But as High Elder of Corannos in this most ancient, holy land where the god was born, I will say this to you, my liege, and to all those gathered here. Thanks to your great wisdom, Gorhaut is at peace in the north for the first time in the lifetime of most of those here. We need not draw axe and sword to guard our borders and our fields from Valensa. The pride and the might of this country under King Ademar is as great as it has ever been in our long history, and ours is still and ever the holy stewardship through the six countries of the power of the god. In these halls walk the descendants of the first corans—the earliest brothers of the god—who ever bestrode the hills and valleys of the known world. And it may be—if you, my liege, should decide to make it so—that to us will fall a scourging task worthy of our great fathers. Worthy of the greatest bards ever to lift voice in celebration of the mighty of their day.’

      Oh, clever, Rosala thinks. Oh, very neatly done, my lord. Her eyes are fixed on what lies beyond the window, on the mist rolling in over the moors. She wants to be out there alone on a horse, even in rain, even with the child quickening in her womb, far from this smoky hall, these voices and rancours and sour desires, far from the honey-smooth manipulations of the High Elder behind her.

      ‘Beyond the mountains south of us they mock Corannos,’ Galbert says, passion now infusing his voice. ‘They live under the god’s own bright sun, which is his most gracious gift to man, and they mock his sovereignty. They demean him with temples to a woman, a foul goddess of midnight and magics and the blood-stained rites of women. They cripple and wound our beloved Corannos with this heresy. They unman him, or they think they do.’ His voice sinks again, towards intimacy, the nuanced notes of a different kind of power. The whole room is with him now as in the toils of a spell, Rosala can sense it; even the women beside her are leaning forward slightly, lips parted, waiting.