The Forge in the Forest by Michael Scott Rohan Page B

quietly and in darkness, when it could not be said for certain who held which part of the wall? The suggestion is absurd, as Bryhon must know. Yet see how he used it to color the gravest charge of all he dares to bring against me."
    Trouble passed over Kermorvan's lean features like a cloud, and his voice was stern and bleak as a cold wind from the north. "He has deftly avoided making that charge openly. But through his words I stand accused, in sum, of having sought by some means or another to use the events of the siege to seize power within this city. To set myself up as ruler, as tyrant over you all. As your king."
    Elof's first instinct was to laugh, but the deadly stillness quelled it; the crowd hardly seemed to be breathing. This was something they took with deadly seriousness. And looking at Kermorvan, he saw that his friend did also. A great hush filled chamber and gallery alike, and the silence seemed itself a clarion, calling from the deeps of time. Kermorvan lifted his head, and there was a fierce smile on his lips, a grim pride in his voice. "But why should you believe this? The child of kings I acknowledge myself. But this was never their kingdom."
    Elof blinked as if he had been struck, hardly aware of the uproar that washed over him. "I saw before Andvar that he must be some great noble," he murmured to Ils , "but a king ? Of where?"
    "But did you not know ?" hissed Ferhas in his ear, detachment forgotten in the excitement. "His name, don't the glory shine out of that, all alive? You in the north, sir, have you quite forgot them, the Lost Lands and their great city of olden times, greatest there's ever been in this land?"
    "Y-yes—the Strandenburg he called it, the City by the Waters—but his name? He called himself plain Kermorvan then!"
    "Ah," breathed Ferhas, "and he stuck to your northern tongue? That'd be when he wasn't right sure of you—if you'll pardon me saying, sir!" he added hastily, with a furtive superstitious gesture. "But you've the Sothran well enough, sir, can't you see now? Kaher , or ker , that's a walled city like this; mor , a great lake or sea, and mor ouhen , that's the waterstrand. So Kaher-mor-ouhen—"
    "Kermorvan?"
    "That was the city's name, sir, and so of its kingly line— what remains of it. The name alone's not uncommon, for there are younger branches that bear it. But Keryn, now, that's one of the kingly names, for first-born of the true line only. Put the two together, and he'd have been telling you who he was at once. It was among the corsairs you met him, wasn't it, sir, and them sothrans? He'd not risk naming himself clear in that company! T'wasn't you he distrusted, sir, t'was them."
    Ils was nodding slowly to herself, as if at a suspicion now confirmed. But Elof stared down at his friend as if he had never truly seen him before. Kings were hardly human to him, benign or frightening figures in childhood tales, remote figures of worship and majesty or wicked tyranny. This lean young fighter he had first met barefoot upon a beach, rubbing shoulders with a hard-bitten corsair crew, hardly seemed to fit either image. Yet even as Elof formed the thought, that mantle of infinite age seemed to settle about the tall young warrior once again, as it had in the courts of the duergar before Andvar their lord and had diminished even his grim presence. Kermorvan, his face mild and calm once more, advanced to the center of the floor, and the light from the windows gleamed in his thick bronze hair, so that he looked in truth a king already crowned.
    "It may be, though, that you will not believe what I say. Or, more subtly, you fear that the enmity of Lord Bryhon and his friends will force me to fight for the dominion of Kerbryhaine, whether I will or no, and so plunge the state into civil war. That indeed might come to pass…" He raised a hand to quell the swelling protests, and repeated more loudly."… might come to pass, if— - if Bryhon forced me to it, and if I thought such