The Summer's King Read Online Free Page A

is a murmur of satisfaction. The Winnstrand lords are rebuked. Sharn, still furiously angry, asks Aidris for the ending of the ceremony, and she nods. He gestures to the trumpeters, and they blow up “The Daindru Goes Out.” The Dainmut is at an end. The king stalks perfunctorily through the closing ceremonies; he disrobes so hastily that the floor of the robing room is covered with scattered seed pearls and scrapings of felt. He leaves the meeting hall down his private corridor at the double; his horse guards are thrown into confusion when he appears.
    Still the king strides on without a page or an esquire, let alone a courtier. Seyl and Denwick, seeing how things have gone, are trying to extricate themselves from the hall. Sharn, already at the stabling park, setting the grooms into confusion this time, mounts Redwing. Behind him he leaves cheering citizens, cursing guardsmen and grooms, disturbed horses. His two closest followers continue to fight their way after him, and indeed they catch up on their own horses, trotting back to the Zor palace followed by a demoralized guard escort.
    Inside the meeting hall Aidris Am Firn bids the trumpeters sound the call for order and has the heralds cry out for a peaceful departure. She and her consort Bajan stay an hour or so longer, talking to those greater or lesser landowners who have come from a distance.
    The city of Achamar now prepares for a great feast. The tables are being decked in each of the royal palaces for a hundred nobles and their servants. In the meeting hall itself, as soon as the merchants and citizens have made place, the trestles are flung up and food brought in from the High Reeve’s Hall nearby to feast three hundred lesser lords. Merchants of any worth provide a banquet table in their houses, and in every city square oxen or sheep are roasting and barrels of apple wine are tapped.
    â€œWell, Zilly,” says the king, close to home, as they catch a whiff of roast meat. “Are you for the feast? Are you, Seyl?”
    Someone must preside at the banquet table in the palace, but the king cannot be reminded of his duty. Seyl says with a smile, “I will dine, my king, and so will Iliane.”
    â€œTake the head of the table then,” says the king. “Zilly, bring me some good company to the bend in the path by the old elm. I’ll get out of this rig.”
    He goes by swift and devious ways to his chambers again. Yuri and Prickett await him, panting a little. They have run and jostled through the crowded streets while the king rode home on the ringroad. Sharn Am Zor begins to strip off his clothes; again beads jingle on the polished floor. He splashes his face in a bowl of perfumed water held by Yuri.
    â€œI will have a tray,” he says, “and the stirrup cup . . .”
    â€œThey are ordered, Sire,” says Prickett.
    Sharn begins to relax, to smile as he dons his Lienish hunting breeches and is helped into his most comfortable boots. When the tray of hot meat, bread and greens together with a few sorbets and sweetmeats arrives, he eats sparingly. Prickett covers the dishes. He and Yuri will clear the tray when the king is gone.
    There is a moment’s disturbance when a party of nobles including the Countess Caddah present themselves at the outer door of the royal apartments. All the screens are up however, and Prickett could hold the doors against an army. No, there will be no audience, and no, the king will not dine, and no . . . no one may ask to accompany the king if he rides out.
    Sharn sprawls in the chair, eats a lamb chop and picks his teeth dreamily. Then with a new burst of energy he springs up, dons cloak and hat, takes his gauntlets. With only two guards, he returns to the maze of corridors and comes to his own stable yard by the lower eastern hall. He must play hide-and-seek once or twice with parties of nobles struggling to reach the banquet table in the great hall. The stable yard has been kept very