line was safe – for another generation, anyway.
Geran and Eldara had decided – after much discussion – to name
their new son Davon, and I think that disappointed Hattan, who’d
been holding out for an Algarian name for his grandson. Personally,
I was just as happy that the baby had been given a more
commonplace name. Algarian names tend to be just a trifle over-dramatic,
and under the circumstances I didn’t really want anything about
the little boy to stand out.
Eldara’s delivery had been a fairly easy one, and she was soon
back on her feet again. I debated with myself at some length before
I sat my little family down to have a talk with them. Despite Hattan’s
reservations, I’d come to the conclusion that it would be best if the
heirs to Iron-grip’s throne, and their wives, should know just exactly
who they were and what dangers were lurking around out there.
So after supper one evening in the early autumn, I asked Geran and
Eldara to come to my library ‘for a little family conference’. I
prudently ‘encouraged’ our servants to become very sleepy, and then
I took Geran and his wife and baby to my library and closed the
door behind us. ‘How much have you told your wife about us,
Geran?’ I asked my nephew rather bluntly.
‘Well, I didn’t lie to her, Aunt Pol, but there were a few things I
sort of glossed over.’
‘You kept secrets from me?’ Eldara asked accusingly. ‘I didn’t
keep any from you, Geran.’
‘He was obeying my orders, Eldara,’ I assured her. ‘We’re talking
about a family secret here, and Geran’s been forbidden to reveal it
to anybody without my explicit permission.’
‘Didn’t you trust me, Aunt Pol?’ she asked, sounding a little hurt.
‘I had to get to know you a little better, Eldara. I had to make
sure that you knew how to keep things to yourself. Your father’s
very good at that, but now and then I’ve come across young ladies
who just have to talk about things. I’ve noticed that you’ve got very
good sense, though, and you don’t blurt things out. You’ve probably
noticed that your husband’s not a Sendar.’
‘He told me that he was born in one of the Alorn kingdoms,’ she
replied. ‘We were sort of busy when he told me, so -‘ she stopped
and blushed.
‘I don’t think we need to go into that, Eldara. Actually, Geran’s
a Rivan, and he’s a descendant of a very important family on the
Isle of the Winds.’
‘How important?’ she asked.
‘You don’t get much more important. It was about eleven years
ago when Geran’s family were all murdered by a group of Nyissans.
My father and I managed to save Geran, but we were too late to
save the others.’
Her eyes went very wide at that.
‘Does it help at all to know that you’d be the Queen of Riva if
certain things hadn’t happened, love?’ Geran asked her.
‘You don’t act all that much like a king.’ She said it almost
accusingly. ‘Are kings supposed to snore the way you do?’
‘My grandfather did,’ he replied, shrugging.
‘I’ll let you two discuss the finer points of regal behavior when
you’re alone,’ I told them. ‘Let’s stick to the point here. Geran has
some very determined enemies who’d like nothing better than to
kill him – and to kill your baby as well.’
She drew her sleeping infant closer to her breast. ‘I’d like to see
them try!’ she said fiercely.
‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ I said firmly. ‘Geran’s enemies are very
Powerful, and they can hire murderers by the dozen and spies by the
hundred. I’m sure they’re out there looking for us right now. The
safest thing for us to do is to see to it that they don’t find us. There
are two ways to do that. We can go way out into the mountains
and hide in a cave, or we can stay right here in the open and be so
ordinary that when they look at us they don’t even see us. We’ll
try that second one for right now. I’ve talked things over with your
father, and the first thing tomorrow morning, Geran’s going to start
out on his new career.’
,What career is that, Aunt Pol?’ Geran asked me.
‘Your father-in-law’s going to take you into the cattle business,
Geran.’
‘I don’t know anything about cows.’
‘You’re going to learn, and you’re going to pick it up very quickly.
Your life depends on it, so you’ll have lots of incentive.’
And so it was that the heir to the Rivan throne started getting up
early so that he could go to work every morning. He was totally
confused at first, but Hattan brought him along patiently, and, more
importantly, introduced him to the Algar clan-chiefs. It wasn’t too
long before Geran was pulling his weight in the family business,
and Hattan was quite proud of him.
‘He’s very good, Pol,’ Eldara’s father told me after Geran had
struck a bargain with one of the Algar clans that involved driving
a herd of cows north along the Tolnedran causeway that crossed
the fens to Boktor instead of over the Sendarian Mountains to Muros.
Everyone did well on that venture – except for the Tolnedrans. They
provided the highway, of course, but that was the total extent of
their involvement. I’m told that the screams in Tol Honeth echoed
for ten miles in either direction along the Nedrane River, and the
next year the causeway became a toll-road.
When Geran was at work, he was surrounded by Hattan’s men,
who were for the most part transplanted Algars, and so he was
quite safe as he roamed around out in the cow-pens. This gave me
the opportunity to get to know Eldara better – and to play with the
baby. of course.
Young Davon was cut from the same cloth as his father, and his
father was very much like my sister’s own son, Daran. Certain
characteristics have always bred true in the Rivan line. For the most part,
they’ve all had that same sandy blond hair, for one thing. Iron-grip’s
black hair showed up only occasionally. Moreover, they’ve all been
very serious, earnest little boys with a wide streak of good, solid
common sense. Of course, that could be cultural rather than
hereditary, since most of them have been born and raised in Sendaria.
The seasons turned and the years went by, and Davon grew like
a well-watered weed. By the time he was twelve, he was quite nearly
,,as tall as his father. I’ve never really liked Muros all that much,
given the perpetual dust and the smell of the stockyards, but we
were happy there.
Then, a few days after Davon’s twelfth birthday, Hattan stopped
by, and he and I went into my library to have a long talk. ‘Do you
remember that chat we had before Geran and Eldara were married,
Pol?’ the tall Algar, whose scalp-lock was turning iron grey now,
said to me.
‘Very well, Hattan. We’ve been following the course you laid out
for us quite well, haven’t we?’
‘All except for the fact that you’re not visibly aging,’ he said.
‘Could you possibly use magic to make your hair turn grey? That
Should put a few years on you.’
I sighed. ‘Someday we’re going to have to have a talk about what
you call magic, Hattan,’ I said.
‘Do you mean you can’t?’ He sounded startled.
‘Oh, I could,’ I told him, ‘but grey hair isn’t really grey, you know.’
‘It looks grey.’
‘Look a little closer, Hattan. Your scalp-lock looks grey because
it’s a mixture of black and white hairs. I’d have to turn half of my
hair white – strand by strand.’
‘That might take a while,’ he conceded.
‘Quite a while, actually. There are some chemicals I can cook out
of certain common weeds that’ll color my hair. It won’t look quite
the same as yours, but it should get me by. There are a few cosmetics
I can use to make myself appear older, too.’
‘Wouldn’t it be easier to just move on? Go to Sulturn, maybe?
or Darine?’
‘Are you trying to get rid of me, Hattan?’
‘Of course not. We all love you, Pol, but we do have to put the
safety of the children first.’
‘There’s an easier way to take care of it,’ I told him. ‘Since I’m so
old now, I’ll just become a recluse and stay in the house. We old
people do that fairly often, you know.’
‘I don’t want to imprison you, Pol.’
‘You aren’t, Hattan. Actually, I rather like the idea. It’ll give me
a chance to catch up on my reading. I’ll still be right here in the
event of an emergency, and I won’t have to endure all those endless
hours of mindless gossiping.’
‘Oh, one other thing – before I forget,’ he added. ‘How does the