Limits of Power by Elizabeth Moon

Author:Elizabeth Moon [Elizabeth Moon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2013-05-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Chaya, Lyonya

Midsummer. A year ago, Kieri had waited here for his grandmother, for the ancient rites that the human and elven rulers of Lyonya performed, singing the sun up. Now … he had no idea what to do. The Lady was dead; Orlith was dead; Amrothlin swore he did not know of equivalent rites. The old human rites would do for humans, but for elves? And besides, under that flower-strewn mound lay the remains of a mysterious settlement he still knew nothing about.

He started up the hill in the King’s Grove two days before the ceremony, leaving Arian below with the Squires. Though the path marked with small white stones still led straight up, he stepped aside at an urge he could not have explained and began walking around the hill instead, climbing slowly in a spiral … but not a spiral exactly, for sometimes he turned back and sometimes paused, baffled. It felt almost familiar, and yet not familiar. It was midday when he finally reached the flattened summit where the Oathstone stood, where he had been crowned, where he and the Lady had pledged their commitment to the land and taig.

“And now what?” he asked aloud. “What am I supposed to do now, with no elf to sing the song with me, no way to repair the elvenhome?” He put his hand lightly on the Oathstone.

You came.

Was that the voice of the skull he had found at Midwinter?

“I am here,” he said.

They are gone.

“If you mean the Lady and the elvenhome, yes, they have gone. That is not a good thing, I deem.”

It is almost Midsummer. Come, then, and sing your own song, and see.

Kieri shivered despite the warm sun. “I will be here at the rising of the sun,” he said. “And I will sing.”

You will see. The King’s Justice will restore us.

“This king wants justice for all,” Kieri said. “Not just for a few.”

Fair deeds must match fair words.

That was clear enough. Kieri bent and kissed the stone, then walked back down the mound, once more in a spiraling pattern.

On Midsummer itself—had it been only one year before that he had first sung the sun up with the Lady, and first encountered the elf-maid who wanted to marry him?—Kieri followed all the rituals he had learned then. Dressed in the same white robe, he led the procession into the King’s Grove and went up the mound alone, his followers forming a circle at its foot. He watched the stars move across the sky, waiting until the moment the Summerstar touched the oldest blackoak’s crown.

At that moment, he began his song. To his surprise, Arian—below in the circle—sang the responses. The sky lightened, color returned to the trees; he felt the taig’s response as well as his own. Relief: he was doing the right thing; all would be well.

Then—as the sun cleared the treetops and the first ray of light struck the Oathstone—the ground shivered. The Oathstone itself sank slowly, finger by finger, into the green grass.

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