CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

The next day Meryn's attitude towards him changed completely, deference taking the place of familiarity, and he was painfully aware of her parents' sudden obsequiousness. He only had to express the vaguest desire, and they fell over themselves in their eagerness to fulfil it. And then, whether it was his imagination or not, he fancied that people stared at him when he passed by; their behaviour in his presence was almost ostentatiously artificial. The men busied themselves earnestly; the women stood in groups that fell silent as he approached, and burst into chattering after he had gone.
Dan asked: "What's happened? Do they know who you are?"
So he had noticed too. Chaldez said: "I had to tell Meryn."
Dan gave him a wry look but said nothing. Afterwards Chaldez noticed that he liked to be seen with him.
They were together when the head of one of the fair's leading families approached. He was an enormously fat man with a great black beard; Chaldez had often noticed him, usually when he was giving instructions in a rather high-pitched voice to one of his lackeys. He spoke Eujinni with a thick accent and introduced himself as Kivaddabron the Soan. Then, addressing Dan, he asked if they had satisfactory accommodation.
Dan said they were managing. In fact he and Chaldez were still spending their nights on the back of the ox-cart beneath piles of cured hides with their distinctive, pungent odour in which they were by now both steeped.
Kivaddabron looked at him severely: "If I may say so," he said, "I do not think it is suitable."
For a moment Chaldez thought they were about to be expelled from the camp, but Kivaddabron had a different idea. "I have arranged for a tent to be made available for your use. May I show it to you?"
He led the way across the camp, smiling to left and right, and sometimes acknowledging a greeting with the wave of a bejewelled, chubby hand. He stopped in front of a tent made of skins and clapped his hands. A thin woman with a deeply lined face came out through the flap. He spoke to her in a tongue which Chaldez recognised as Soan, and then turning to Dan said: "Ranni will look after you. If you and your honourable companion desire a change of clothing she will arrange it, and my barber will attend you, if you wish it."
Chaldez, who preferred to be clean-shaven, had not been shaved since leaving Budenrath in Kroya and now possessed a long, somewhat straggly beard. "I would like that," he said. Kivaddabron bowed slightly and barked an instruction at Ranni, who immediately hurried off.
By mid-day Chaldez had been shaved, and both he and Dan, reclining in tin tubs filled with steaming, scented water, had been scrubbed by Ranni and another woman, and then were given clean clothes. When they were dressed, Ranni brought them a meal of meat and bread; far more than they could possibly eat.
Kivaddabron spent the rest of the day with them; he introduced them to his women and his children - he had a great many of both- and that evening he feasted them.
"You travel secretly," he observed to Chaldez. "I do not mean to inquire into your reasons, but I take it you were on your way somewhere when you joined us?"
Chaldez told him that Sorrin was their destination. "Our situation is not favourable at the present," he confessed, "but we have hopes of an improvement when we reach Sorrin. I have lived there, and we have friends whose protection we seek."

Kivaddabron appeared to be satisfied, and he asked no more questions.
The next few days Chaldez had hardly any time to himself, but when at last he managed to escape the attentions of Kivaddabron and his wives and friends he made his way to Pau's tent. Pau's wife, Tassin, was outside.
"Pau's not here," she said.
Chaldez was going to ask where he was, but she came up to him and said: "Please stay. I have some sweatmeats, just made. May I offer you some?"
Chaldez noted, with something like dismay, that even her attitude had changed.
She fetched him a small stool, and when he was sitting she said "I was born at Felewith."
He looked at her blankly.
"My father was in the king's service," she went on.
For some reason he assumed she meant Sigmar, and he was immediately on his guard. "I see," he said, and stood up.
She put a hand on his shoulder. "Chaldez, he was in the service of your father, King Egmar.
Chaldez felt a fool for having jumped to the wrong conclusion, and blushed. Tassin invited him to sit down again. "I am of a noble family," she said, and smiling, added, "though you wouldn't know it by looking at me!"
Chaldez was about to contradict her, but she went on, "my father had estates. He lost everything after the death of your father; his position, his lands. We were homeless, Chaldez. Outcasts. Sigmar drove us out of Felewith and eventually out of Sair itself. That is why you see me as I am."
Chaldez looked at her. He could think of nothing to say.
"My parents knew about you," she went on. "They always believed you did escape although of course it was said you died."
"It was?"
Tassin then told him about the official version of his death in infancy. It was news to him, for Lewvin had not told him about the wasted corpse of a beggar woman's baby which was put in the royal nursery to take his place while she and Pemmel carried him to safety.
Tassin said "My mother used to tell me that Morvina and her cronies did everything they could to hide the fact that the dead child was starved, but the corpse was seem by too many people. No-one really believed it was you, but Chaldez, you have no idea what it means to me to know that you are alive. But are you safe here?"
"I hope as safe as anywhere," said Chaldez. "Gam, the king here, was my adoptive father. I believe his son will support my cause. We did meet."
"His son! exclaimed Tassin. "His son isn't king."
"Is he not?"
"I don't know who you have been talking to, but I can assure you the king of Eujinni will be no friend of yours."
"How can you know that?"
"Patra is the king now; Patra the Rebellious. Sigmar married his sister and together they drove your friend Gam off the throne. He and Sigmar are close allies. Did you know nothing of this?"
Chaldez could only shake his head, but not so much in answer to her question as out of despair. Then he put his head in his hands and closed his eyes. His every last hope was dashed; he would have liked to weep but no tears came to his eyes. He rose silently and walked back to the tent, oblivious of his surroundings.
He lay down, and he longed for Doo. What would become of her now? What would become of him?
His hopes had centred in turn on Taigram, then on Havil, then on Gam, then on Gam's son, and now he was without any hope. He might just as well have married Meryn and spent the rest of his life with the travelling fair as a ropemaker's son-in-law.
When Dan returned, he told him what he had learnt, and then sank into silence. That evening he ate nothing and spoke little. Dan stayed with him. To begin with he tried to cheer him up; he told him that the god Arwarnhi would not abandon him; that he had survived too many dangers and overcome too many difficulties for his life to peter out in obscurity.
"We have come too far along this road for it to lead nowhere," he said. "I know it is your fate to be king and to be avenged upon Sigmar."
"How can you know that?" snapped Chaldez.
"I know, that is all. I once knew our meat was poisoned - remember? And I know for a fact that you will be king, and that Sigmar will die."
"Dream away!" said Chaldez scornfully. "Dream away."
The next day the fair was preparing to move on when, amidst all the bustle and confusion Tassin appeared. She was breathless and very agitated.
"Put your hoods up and please, come with me," she cried. "We must hurry!"
The two boys were without their swords, and when she saw that they proposed fetching them she said: "No time for that! Come, come!"
Perplexed and rather frightened, they followed her to where Pau had dismantled the tent, which was now lying in pieces on the ground. He looked up: "Underneath," he commanded. "Get yourselves covered up! They're coming for you."
Dan and Chaldez, hampered by their heavy travelling cloaks, scrambled beneath the pieces of hide from which the tent was made, and Pau and Tassin heaped their belongings on top of them.
Chaldez, his cheek pressed against the cold damp earth, was conscious at first only of the thumping of his heart. And then he heard raised voices and the thud of horses' hooves which shook the ground beneath his ear. A woman screamed, and there was much shouting. He strained to hear what was being said, and then the blood stopped in his veins. "There is someone called Chaldez here!" shouted a harsh voice in Eujinni. "We are looking for Chaldez!” It was quite close.