CHAPTER ELEVEN

Segga of Istin had eaten his evening meal and was sitting with friends when a servant informed him that there was a woman at the gates of the great hall asking for an audience with him. Another woman was with her; and there was also a baby.
Segga guessed at once who they were.
Since making his offer to Shansi to provide refuge for her, Chaldez and, if necessary the king, he had begun to feel somewhat ambivalent about it. He very much wanted to see Shansi again, and in that respect he longed for the chance to prove himself to be her protector and champion; at the same time, however, he knew perfectly well that if Morvina, or indeed Sigmar, should make a determined effort to seize them there was little he could do to prevent it. He also had no great desire to share his home with Egmar, the most obnoxious person he knew. To be told, therefore, that two women and a baby were at his gates made his heart thump. He felt a mixture of apprehension and excitement as he ordered them to be shown in, and was completely taken aback when confronted by two strangers. He gazed at them, aghast.
“The Queen of Sair Jisenner has sent you her son," said Lewvin simply. "I am ordered to give you this token as proof," and she held out Shansi's marriage ring. Segga took it and recognised the royal insignia. "Who are you?" he asked.
"I am Lewvin, her majesty's servant, and this is Dam Fatella, the child's nurse."
"Where is your mistress?"
"In Felewith."
"Why did she not come?"
Lewvin said it had not been possible, but offered no further explanation. Instead she asked if the prince and his nurse might be excused and allowed to rest. "I shall try to answer all your questions," she said, "but we have endured a long and arduous journey. Also our escort are at your gates and await instructions . . . "
Later that evening she was to tell Segga all that she knew of the situation in Felewith, and she briefly described the journey to Istin.
The following day Segga sent a spy to Felewith, who eventually returned with the news that Shansi and Egmar were both dead and that the crown had been offered to Sigmar.
Segga resolved at once to put Chaldez under the personal protection of his paramount lord, Gam, King of Eujinni.
Gam's kingdom, bisected by the great River So, lies to the south east of Sair Jisenner, the border between the two kingdoms being formed by the River Kell.
Segga told Lewvin what he proposed to do.
"I believe he will not be truly safe," said Lewvin, who had never had difficulty speaking her mind, "until he is in Theigia and under the protection of his relative, King Beune. It will be possible then for him to be looked after by his own family," and she explained that Taigram, his grandfather, was himself in exile there with his wife and surviving daughter.
Segga would not normally have entertained the notion of discussing his plans with a servant, but he had quickly recognised in Lewvin a person of rank and sharp intellect; furthermore, Shansi had entrusted her with the prince's safety, and he therefore felt obliged to take note of her opinion in all matters concerning the child.
"I lack the means," he had to admit, "of sending your charge to the Theigan islands. You must ask that of the king of Eujinni; many ships sail from his ports."
Lewvin thought of the Roe Aada ruby, which she still kept. Segga had already told her that the local craftsmen were probably not sufficiently skilled to do as she proposed and mount it within a locket to be worn by Chaldez on a stout chain around his neck. She now wanted to be sure Shansi's instruction could be carried out in Eujinni.
"Gam is ruler of a great kingdom, and among his subjects are very skilful craftsmen," Segga assured her. "My messenger will tell him all that you require."
Lewvin was reassured, but there was another, secret, deeper anxiety troubling her from which there was no relief. Her regular blood purgatives had stopped, and for several days she had vomitted after waking in the morning. She knew what these signs meant: she was going to have a baby - Kiereg's baby! Every day she was reminded of it, and because she thought she was to blame she felt ashamed; and she was frightened of what was going to happen.
To have been able to share her sense of guilt and her fears would perhaps have made them easier to bare, but there was no one in Seggar's household to whom she could turn for comfort or advice. She had never felt so alone.

* * * *

Gam, king of Eujinni, was pleased to offer sanctuary to Chaldez, the son of his ally. News had reached his court at Sorrin of Sigmar's enthronement, and it bothered him.
Volkis and Egmar, being without territorial ambitions, or any other ambitions as far as he could find out, had suited him well as neighbours, but Sigmar was likely to be very different. As a youth he had been a troublesome poacher, crossing into Eujinni from his father's kingdom to take deer and wild boar as though he had a right to them. On one occasion there had been a skirmish in which two of Gam's men were killed. Volkis had made payment in restitution, but Gam considered his quarrel with Sigmar unsatisfied, and by all accounts the new king of Sair Jisenner had run amok in Laifya, behaving no better than a bandit.
Chaldez, when he arrived in the capital, was as welcome as a gift from the gods. Gam installed him in his palace, treated him and Lewvin with every courtesy - and had no intention whatsoever of allowing him to slip through his fingers. If Sigmar proved troublesome he intended to produce him as the rightful king, and back his claim with military force, if necessary.
For the first few weeks Lewvin believed that Gam was making preparations to send her and the prince to Theigia. Only when he had them moved into more spacious quarters within the palace did she begin to have doubts; there seemed to her a permanence about the arrangement which she found disquieting. She at once sent him a message asking for information about the voyage and the preparations which were being made for it. She waited two weeks for a reply, and then sent a second, similar message. Another two weeks passed, and she sent a third and to this one she received a reply.
The king wished her to know that the voyage across the Xaffy Sea had been considered too dangerous because of pirates, and now it was too dangerous because of storms.
Lewvin resigned herself to remaining in Sorrin for the winter.
It was not, in fact, such a bad prospect; she was comfortable, well looked after and treated with respect - and she had resolved the problem of her pregnancy: she let it be known that Pemmel, the Kroyan hero, was the father of the unborn child; Pemmel her husband! The ring he had given her to signify the marriage contract had been stolen by Kiereg, she said.
The baby, a boy, was born in early spring. Lewvin named him Dan-Pemmel, son-of-Pemmel. The king sent his personal servant to her with the message that he desired to be Dan-Pemmel's protector and patron, and that he had decided to adopt Chaldez as his son.
Lewvin knew then that they would never get to Theigia, and she felt a kind of emptiness. Subconsciously she had begun to think of the islands as home, although there was nothing that she had been told about them to make them the least bit attractive. By all accounts they were cold, and inhospitable, and their inhabitants wild, ruthless and cruel. In the past they had frequently raided Kroya, some eventually settling; indeed, the royal family of Kroya was descended from a Theigian prince, and she had been told that her own ancestors, like that of many of the kingdom's great families, were Theigans, not that any of this mattered to her. What drew her to Theigia was the prospect of being reunited with Shansi's family.
Shansi, her friend since childhood, her best friend, was dead, but she felt that by drawing close to her family she might, in some mysterious way, bridge the gulf that lies between the living and the dead; that in Shansi's family she would glimpse Shansi herself.
And then there was Chaldez, for the question of his safety had suddenly become desperately urgent.
Lewvin, already uneasy about remaining so close to Sair, became deeply alarmed when she heard of Sigmar's marriage into the Eujinni royal family. His bride was the daughter of Gam's disgraced younger brother, Harrinkad who had quite recently led an abortive revolt against the king. After its failure, he had fled into exile, but Lewvin was certain that he still had contacts in Sorrin and that through him Sigmar would soon learn of the whereabouts of Chaldez. Ever looming large on her horizon, Sigmar now seemed more menacing than ever.
She persuaded Gam to send her, Dan-Pemmel and the prince to a secluded royal estate far from the Sairish border. And there they remained, receiving an annual visit from the king but for the most part living unobtrusively, the prince's identity a closely-guarded secret.