Roane whirled, the Princess clutching at her for support. Recklessly she turned the beamer on the opening to the outer world. But that door was no longer there. Instead the harsh glare of the beam showed a curtain of rocks and earth, with bits of splintered bough and torn leaf caught in it.
Crying out, Roane pushed aside the Princess, ran to tear at the fall which had corked the entrance. She was able to scrape out some of the rain-slicked clay, pull at the branches in it. But underneath was a boulder she could not move. Though perhaps she could use the power of her tool to undercut it. “Are—are we trapped?”
Roane had gone to her knees, was holding the beamer steady on the boulder. In one way her own problem was solved. For both their lives now depended upon help from outside—from the camp. Only the men there had the equipment to handle this easily.
“Yes. I do not have power enough to undercut this. I shall have to call for help.” Should she warn the Princess of the results of that? Or continue to wait, always hoping that something might happen to make a hard choice easier?
“This could be Och’s Hide. If we must wait for help, need we
remain crouching here? For if it is the Hide and I can find the Crown—” She drew a deep breath. “For me, for Reveny, this could be the greatest day in a hundred years!”
“What crown do you seek?” Roane thought of the many forms that Forerunner discoveries had taken in the past. There had been a few times when such had consisted of objects which could come under the age-old designation of treasure—gems, weird art forms of precious metal, and the like. Though what were more important by far, and what they had come to seek here, were machines, records, and the clue to such a find had been enough to make them risk search on Clio.
“Our crown—the Ice Crown of Reveny.” The Princess answered almost absently. She no longer watched Roane but gazed into the shadowed passage. Then she did turn, and her face was stricken with a shadow of fear and her hands went to her mouth, covering her lips. When she spoke again it was in a very low and shaken voice.
“That is a great secret, Roane Hume, one that only two people know—my grandfather the King, and I. And I have sworn by that which is most sacred to our people not to speak of it. Now I am forsworn.”
“But I am not of Reveny, and I shall swear as you wish to say nothing.” Roane, made uncomfortable by the bleak look on the other’s face, was quick to answer.
‘If this is Och’s Hide, then the harm is small, covered and forgotten in a greater good. But I must knowl Come, use your light and let us look—”
If they stumbled on Forerunner remains and the Princess saw them— But what did that matter now? Roane had to do what she should have done long ago.
“Let me first call for help to free us.” She fingered the com, moving its button in the camp call. Waited—and saw the answering code flash on the dial, demanding— But she interrupted with her own terse signal, of where she was and what she might have stumbled upon. Though she made no mention of the Princess.
The answering flash was a jubilant series of dashes, promising all speed. She had forethought enough to add then a warning of people in the forest, thinking of the searchers which might be combing there.
She half expected some question from Ludorica, but the Princess said nothing, only turned the beamer on the passage. “Can you not tell me more of what you seek?” Roane asked as they started on.
“Knowing a part, there is no reason now for you not to hear it alL The Ice Crown is the crown of Reveny, given by the Guardians at the far beginning. Just as the Flame Crown is for the rulers of Leichstan, the Gold Circlet worn in Thrisk—but surely all this is known to you. My grandfather, King Niklas, came to the throne while he was yet a boy and his stepmother-under-second-rights, Queen Olava, was regent in his name—though she was no true kin, not even of the Blood Royal, having been taken in a marriage on the left hand by my great-grandfather when he was well into his dotage. She was of the line of Jarrfar. They once held this hill country and tried twice to make a kingdom of their own. However, having no crown power from the Guardians, they of course failed.
“But it was in their blood to rule and they did not lose that desire, even when their lands dwindled and they held only a stead keep and two villages. Olava had great beauty, and it became the plan of her people that they might achieve by an ambitious marriage what they had not been able to do by force of arms. So they gathered their resources and brought her to court, humbly presenting her as a handmaiden.
“The King had long been a widower. Oh, he had had his ladies during those years, but they were only passing fancies, and he chose shrewdly such as would be easily satisfied with small favors and not beg for greater. But though Olava seemed of a like sort in the beginning, she was not! And—well, it is said she had had occasion, before she came to court, to visit a certain wise woman who dabbled in things better left alone. But then such is always
40 whispered of a woman who rises rapidly in the favor of a highborn man. As time passed she became first a wife of the left hand and minor law, and then the Queen—though she was not allowed to touch the Crown lawfully, for all her pleading and intrigues. My great-grandfather might be besotted with her, but he was royal bom, and it is very true (though some today think this is also a legend) that the crowns choose who will wear them. And once they have so chosen, that king or queen cannot surrender them during his lifetime. It is a protection the Guardians set upon them. Though sometimes it has led to death for the proposed wearer, he being killed that another might present himself to the crown.
“So Olava had to bide her time until death reached for the King, hoping that before his son might confront the Crown for its choosing, her own candidate might take it. And he was her son—though the King would never let him drink from the kin-cup and thus acknowledge him as a true blood son before the Court, since he was not fully of the Blood.
“When the King died, they went to fetch the Ice Crown for the choosing. Though Olava tried to prevent my grandfather from standing before it, the choosing went as it has always done and he was proclaimed king. However, he was but a child and there were great lords enough favoring Olava to say that the old King had named her regent with them as a council to advise her. “A common enough tale, one which has been told before. But what had not happened before is that when my grandfather came of an age to put on the Crown and thus assume all power, the Crown, brought from safekeeping for the ceremony, disappeared immediately thereafter before it could be returned.
“For Olava dared what never had been dared before. She took the Crown, meaning thus to defeat my grandfather. And the power of the Crown blasted her as it always does those handling it unlawfully. But before she died, my grandfather finding her privately, she laughed and said that it had gone to Och’s Hide and that only chance might now find it Her clan, she said, would guard the way to it, and only when it accepted one of them would to appear again. ,
“Since then there has been this hidden darkness in Reveny. We dared not let any know of the loss. And since it has not yet been needed to hail a new king, the secret has been kept. My father died during a hunt in these very hills, but what he sought was no animal of the chase, but Och’s Hide. Two of my uncles also died young. The third disappeared. And now—King Niklas is very old, and it has fallen on me to take up the search. For if I cannot stand before Reveny with the Ice Crown when death claims him—then our line comes to an end. And Reveny itself will be overrun by Leichstan or Vordain, where true wearers of crowns rule. A land without a crown is a land without name or being. So the Guardians decreed in the far beginning.”