A look of relief from all of them. “Exactly. You know this?” Belvarin asked.

“Well, yes. I thought everyone knew that. I know some of my—my former—landholders did that before ploughing or digging. We blooded our blades at the Spring Evener.”

“So you see, then, that when someone dies, they go to the land, to return to Alyanya the gifts of flesh she gave them in life. They feed the land, so the land will feed others. That’s the first ceremony, returning to Alyanya what she gave, fruit for fruit. And then, when the time has passed, they rise again, clean bone—”

A distant memory pricked. Before Aliam raised him to squire, he had been sent up in the attics to look for holes in the roof after a windstorm—there’d been broken slates in the courtyard—and as he looked around in the dim light he’d seen a gruesome face leering at him. He’d managed not to scream, but he’d fled down the ladder, shaking, only to have Estil tell him it was only a skull. Only.

“You dig them up?”

“Yes. And that’s the greater ceremony, raising the bones and carrying them to the memory-hall.”

Kieri felt the small hairs rising on the back of his neck, as if they were tiny bones themselves. “Memory-hall?” he said, keeping his voice as level as he could.

“Every village had one, once,” Belvarin said. “It would be in the appropriate place, and the elders’ skulls were mounted to the center posts—but we don’t do that anymore. After the elves came north and made a pact with our people and those of our people who came from Tsaia when the magelords invaded—the old people, this is—the customs changed.”

“I had forgotten the skulls,” Kieri said. “In the attic at the Halverics’—”

“A fine family. Very traditional. So you see, my lord king, when the time is come, your part in the ceremony of recovering King Sarnion’s bones and placing them in the palace hall of memory will be longer than this one. It is a celebration: the Lady has accepted the gift, the land has been renewed.”

“I see. And when will this be?” Kieri had no idea how long it took for flesh to peel from bone in the earth.

“Not this fall harvest or the next but the one after that: the Fall Evener.”

Since the old king’s body was already in the ground, the formal memorial in which Kieri took part consisted of a short procession in which Kieri carried boughs of the important trees, and laid them in a certain order on the grave. He did not recognize the boughs, leafless as they were, but trusted Belvarin would have made sure which was which. It did not seem enough, for a king’s recognition of his predecessor, but it was what tradition required.

Afterward, the Seneschal led Kieri to the palace ossuary. “It’s a bit different here, because it’s the royal residence, you see. In a private home, there’s just the skulls in the attic, and maybe a bone-house somewhere. But here, it’s a kingdom’s history. All except the skull of King Darien, the first king, of course, because that was mortared into the top tower.”