The King's Name by Jo Walton
Emer stood a little apart, as if unwilling to touch it. Rowanna was fussing around and wiping her eyes. Her sister Ninian was not there, and clearly not invited, although she had been at the coronation. Ninian ap Gwyn was there, casting very uncertain looks at Elenn and at the piece of wood. I got to see her hair, which was as red as Alswith’s. It looked strange with her darker skin. I have heard people call Ninian a beauty, which seems to me too kind of them. All the same, her looks were certainly striking when she was young.
Alswith was still wearing the grey overdress she had worn at the coronation. The others were all wearing very splendid clothes and whatever gold they had. For a moment I felt out of place in my armor. Then I reminded myself that Urdo had given it to me after Caer Lind and that it was fit to wear anywhere.
The log on the bier both was and wasn’t Urdo. Sometimes it could look like him to me, and other times it was only the wood. He was a hero of the land now. He could look however he chose and make any part of the land resemble him. When we were done to Elenn’s satisfaction the other six of us picked up the bier and carried it out. Emer and I had the front, Ninian and Alswith the center, and Veniva and Rowanna took the end. Elenn walked in front, carrying a bunch of flowers tied up with hair of all colors which people had sent.
In the citadel Darien and the kings waited to see us carry it by and then followed us down through the streets of the town. Many armigers joined in behind, and many people of the town. It was like a procession. People opened their doors to see us pass. Some of them were crying. Some called out farewells to Urdo as if they thought he could still hear.
“Where are they taking Urdo?” I heard a little boy ask his mother.
“They’re taking him away to a magic island where he can be healed,” his mother said, mopping at her eyes.
The bier wasn’t heavy, nothing like as heavy as it would have been if we had really been carrying Urdo’s body. We came at last to the wharf. Elenn directed us to lay the bier in the center of the boat on a prepared box. Then she stepped in and went and stood at the prow. Alswith went to the steering oar. Emer and Veniva and Ninian and Rowanna stepped away, back into the crowd. I hesitated. Nobody had told me what to do next. I looked at the bier, and it was Urdo, unquestionably Urdo. He looked as if he were asleep. I remembered a night journey long ago, going to Derwen after Morien’s death, when Urdo had fallen asleep crossing the Havren. He had looked just like that. I stepped into the boat and stood in the stern, near his feet. If I could guard him in death, as in life, I would do it.
There were people lining the wharf. The sun was setting, and I thought that they would sing the Hymn of Return. They did not, they just stood there, some weeping, some waving, and all watching.
Alswith steered out into the center of the stream and let the current take us. We slipped downstream fast. We had not discussed where we were going, or what we were going to do when we got there. We did not talk now, not even when we were away from the city and the crowds. We just let the boat drift on, as if for as long as it was doing that we did not need to think of the length of time stretching ahead down the dark stream that would be afterwards.
Life went on, of course. We kept the Peace. That is the important thing.
Darien was a good king, and Ninian a good queen. They had children, and their son is High King of Tir Tanagiri today, uniting in his veins the blood of Emrys and of Hengist and of Gewis and of my own family, who have been Lords of Derwen back to the trees. Darien died twenty years ago, the way my father did, finding a cure for a plague. He never learned that Urdo was not his blood-father, or if he knew he never told me. He had a stone put up for Ulf at Caer Tanaga, which says just what is proper.
The Council was a matter of great tedium for me, but also a way of keeping the kings from open war, so it must be accounted a blessing. Angas and I sat and glared at each other across the table, even when we were agreeing, for thirty years. He did a lot to promote the stability of the kingdom, and he is probably the best king Demedia ever had. He was my good friend, and I never forgave him.
There have been no more wars. Most Jarnsmen who come to Tir Tanagiri now come to settle in Tevin, Nene, Aylsfa, and Bereich, where they know they will be welcome. Instead of spears and knives they bring their wives and families, their plows, and their good woodworking tools.
The priests of the White God are everywhere. It is unusual not to wear the pebble. But worship is still free as it always has been, and it is still allowed to swear an oath by any god you choose. More kingdoms have followed Munew, but the whole land has not been given into his hand like Tir Isarna-giri.
Once Morthu was dead, the charm against the weapon-rot worked again. Those who had been sick got well, and the world was restored to the way it should be. There has never been any trouble with it since, or with any other charm I know.
Elenn went to Thansethan, becoming a sister, and later the leader of the community. So at last she came to sit on the Council in her own right and in her own name, and I saw her again. I never spoke to her of it, but I think from the way she spoke of other things that she found trust and healing with the monks.
I ruled Derwen and bred horses, and sat on the Council until I grew too old and yielded my place to my great-nephew. Gwien died in an accident in practice when he was barely fifty. I have lost my health and my strength slowly. I kept them longer than most; I rode until I was over eighty. It seems to me now that I never valued as I should the days when I could wake in the morning and train all day, then fall easily asleep and do it all again the next morning.
I miss Urdo every day. Sometimes I see him still in a fall of leaves or a fold of the land. Sometimes even now he will put a brush into my hand when I am in the stables, or push the ink across the table to me as I sit here writing in the shaft of sunlight. We never talk, I don’t know why; there is too much to say and it doesn’t feel right. I miss my friends of those years, but, as I said, life does go on. I have other friends. Ap Lew is king of Dun Morr. She rides over to see me often. She understands the way my mind works. I trained her in the ala when she was a girl, and she went on to be the greatest armiger of her generation. She had to go to Varnia to fight her wars, for there were none left at home. Now that we have both grown too old to fight we sit and push pine cones and scraps of parchment about a table and tell each other how it was.
What it is to be young is to wake up in the morning with the belief that today can be better than yesterday. I never had that until I caught hope from Urdo and the ala. Now that I am ninety-three I spend a lot of time looking backward at my life. We kept the Peace. We preserved civilization, whatever Veniva said. We have cities and libraries and waterwheels and scythes and plows and bathhouses. What more could Vinca offer? For my farmers to come and go in peace is a great thing. The world has changed and changed again, and the world I remember is like an age of legends. I tell myself this is a good thing. We won the Peace. Holding it is less exciting, but just as necessary. Keeping the taxes fair and building a highroad from Magor to Derwen and from here up to Nant Gefalion is not the stuff of stories. I am old, and I look backward very often. But when I look forward I do have hope for tomorrow.
So sometimes I say that I am still young, and nobody understands me. They don’t want my thoughts on how they should teach their children to read. They want me to tell them stories of the days of King Urdo. But sometimes, when I hear them telling the stories to each other, it is the rumors that are remembered.
So I have set this down, even the things that I have never told anyone. Urdo would have said that only the Peace mattered. But I care also that his name is remembered and the truth is not entirely forgotten. It was a fine truth, and it is a good Peace, and a better world that we made.
I stood there in the back of the boat as it drifted down the stream. Elenn was staring straight ahead. Alswith had one hand on the steering oar, looking for a place to bring us ashore. She was always good with boats. I looked at Urdo’s face, sleeping, dead, there, elsewhere. Alswith
“Now sleep, my lord, and I will guard thy rest.”
That is the last word my Great Aunt Sulien wrote, who was the daughter of Gwien Open-Hand. She was last seen on the tenth day after midwinter in the sixty-fifth year of Urdo’s victory. I have had three fair copies made of her writing, and one I shall seal up and place in the wall as she wished.
Of her passing, and the tale that a tall black horse came to her gate caparisoned in the colors of iron and gold, that she mounted it with the grace and vigor of her youth, and that its third step touched no ground nor none saw them after going away, I can say only that none pious could believe it.
Jo Walton, The King's Name