Work Text:
“What is this?”
A man in brown robes and tonsured hair blinks at me in the candlelight. “What is what, your Majesty?”
“This.” I wave a sheet of parchment in his general direction.
He peers at it. After a few moments, he says, “The Ordo-Arvan Chronicle, your Majesty?”
I raise an eyebrow born of two decades of carefully-cultivated diplomacy. “Is that what you call this?” I half-growl. I peer at it myself for effect and note the name Odo Bayeux half-hidden in a lower margin. “You penned this?”
“I did, your Majesty.”
I point to something on the page, three collections of five blotches amid the thorny vines and serpentine figures twining about the margins. “You did exactly one thing right.”
“Majesty?”
“The cat walked across it.”
“The...the cat?”
“The cat.”
“But...” he begins and I cut him off with an imperious glare.
I tilt the page toward the paltry light and take a breath. “’And then did Pendergast the Green gird himself and take up sword and mount his mighty steed and lay siege to the Forbidden Mountains and the Witch Queen Maleficent whereupon he did mighty battle...’ It goes on like this.”
“But...” he tries again and again I cut him off.
“First and foremost, I specifically told you never to use my husband’s other name. Second...well, I can condense this entire page into one word, merde.”
I step toward a raised brazier offering the only meager heat in the room aside from a half-dozen candles. I hold the page out toward the glowing coals and ignore Odo’s squeak of alarm as the edge begins to smolder.
He takes a step toward me, hand reaching toward the parchment. I pin him to the floor with a glance and he lurches to a stop as though hitting a wall.
I give the smoldering parchment a mental nudge and the whole thing bursts into flame with a satisfying WHOOSH. I drop its curling ruin into the brazier and turn back to Odo.
He stares in horror at the charred remains of a day’s work, mouth hanging open. After a few dozen heartbeats, he lifts his teary gaze to mine. “Why...why?” he manages.
“I just told you,” I say. “Were you not listening?”
“Your mother the Dowager Queen...”
“My mother is not dowered,” I snap.
“But you said...”
“I know what I said. And I’m well aware that she commissioned the Chronicle. I was in the room when she said it, if you will recall. I also distinctly remember, as should you, that she directed you to, how did she put it, ah yes, consult relevant witnesses of the events. And did you?”
“Of course,” he squeaks.
I point to the remaining stack of parchment. “Then explain that.”
“It’s the best we could do,” he whines.
I glare at him. “Losers whine about doing their best. Victors return home and bed the Harvest Queen.” I soften somewhat. “Odo, I’ve seen your work. It’s otherwise exemplary. Explain yourself.”
“I...we...what your mother the D...Queen...instructed us to do...well, to be quite frank, your Majesty, it was boring.”
I cock an eyebrow. “Boring?”
He nods. “We wanted something more...entertaining.”
“Entertainment belongs in the theatre, Odo.”
“The...the theatre!” he half-snarls. “Abomination!”
My eyes narrow. “Odo,” I nearly whisper, “when you have faced legions of eldritch horrors that make Maleficent’s goons look like kittens, when you have gazed upon an inky void where a face should be, when you have stared into eyes blacker than the void between stars, when your ears have endured screams that make nails on slate sound melodious, when you have smelled putrescence fit to curl the beak of a carrion crow, then, and only then, may you speak to me of abominations.”
I step over to a trestle table, lift a page off the tall stack, and peruse it, keeping an eye for salient details. “Merde,” I say, and drop it onto the floor. I pick up the second. “Merde.” It joins the first. “Merde...merde...merde...you can keep the illuminations on this one...and half the ones here...merde...your account of my wedding is spot-on, so surprise there. But my first joust? My acquisition of Fluffy? Merde...and that’s just the beginning.” I look at the cleric’s horrified face.
“Now,” I say, “this is what you will do. You will scrape every word of text from every page and you will start all over. You will collect as many sheets of papyrus as you need to take notes. Say, two score and fifteen to begin? And several pencils. No need to use up ink and quill. It will be faster anyhow. I will dictate and you will take notes. When you have a page of working text, I will approve it before you take pen to parchment.”
“But Majesty, that will take days! And all that work...it...I...we….”
“And stop stammering!” I bark. I take a couple more steps toward him until I’m practically breathing on him and lower my voice to a near-whisper. “I did not fly all the way back from the front only to face needless editing, but apparently I must. I will return tomorrow afternoon. And when I do, at least three of those parchments had better be gleaming. And for the love of the Gods, get some heat and real light in this place!”
I spin on my heel in a flurry of leather and steel and march out of the room as imperiously as my Gifted grace will allow.
I find my mother pacing the parapet on the northern wall. A few shocks of her pewter hair escape the wimple framing a lined face from which a pair of dagger-sharp eyes pierces my own. Even so, the weight of the news I’ve brought has stripped from her another few years she can scarce afford.
For several moments, she gazes up at me, her bearing noticeably less regal, the strong woman I met on my sixteenth birthday outwardly all but gone. I pull her into a gentle embrace, mindful of the hard edges of my armor. At length, we draw apart and I wipe a tear from her cheek. Together, we lean against the battlement, the cold stone seeping warmth through my gloves, and gaze out across a landscape bathed in the last rays of the day’s warmth.
In the far distance, trees that were already old when Arvern was ruled by the Volsci still cling in tatters to the slopes of the Forbidden Mountain that Maleficent had otherwise cleared to fuel her war machine. If I know where to look, and I do, I can spot the wide swaths of young forest that’s been slowly healing those scars and devouring her fortress for the last twenty years. Between here and there spread fields of ripening grain, sheep and cattle pasture, expansive truck gardens, and a few vineyards, all separated by hedgerows of hawthorn and ash. Newly re-thatched cottages dot the land. Between the castle and city walls nestle the hundreds of shops and homes of the residents of Collier, a nascent metropolis ready to burst its seams.
Less than half of it had existed in the last days of Maleficent. Even that had been all but trampled by the legions of Goons swarming out of Maleficent’s stronghold. It had taken years of rain to cleanse the land of whatever poisons Maleficent had inflicted upon it. This evening, I can barely tell any of it had ever happened.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper.
“For what?” she whispers back.
“For not being there to stop it.”
“Could you? Have stopped it, I mean?”
I close my eyes but for a moment. But in that moment, my father’s last hour on this earth plays behind my lids in all its excruciating detail.
The memory passes like gossamer. I finally shake my head. “No. But I still feel responsible.”
“You were a quarter of a league up when it happened, so you said. And you yourself killed the Sorcerer King.”
“I know. It just...it’s like it all went wrong.”
“It’s war. Your father would be the first to tell you that. Still, I wish I’d been there to say good bye.”
“No you don’t. The things I saw at Baker’s Field would give you nightmares.”
“Then I suppose it’s a good thing you don’t sleep.”
I chuckle ruefully. “Everyone else does. We may have won the war, but everyone who fought it, or helped, paid for it with their lives or their sanity. Those who stayed home or went with the Gods, they were the lucky ones.”
“That’s why we have to remember them.”
“That’s why I went to see Odo. To have it all put down in writing as part of the Chronicle.” I snort. “I didn’t know I was going to have to rewrite the damned thing.”
“You commanded him to start over, didn’t you?”
“No, I arranged a string quartet.”
She shoots me the look I’ve seen her direct at Father’s sarcasm more times than I can count.
“You read that?” I ask.
She nods. “It’s...not bad.”
“Not bad? Not bad! Mother, it’s at least three-quarters merde and that’s being generous to what issues from the hind end of a cow.”
“You exaggerate.”
I snort. “Hardly.
“You were off at war, my dear.” She sighs heavily. “And frankly, I’ve had more to worry about than your husband being referred to as ‘Pendergast’ in a document that might very well fade into historical obscurity in a century or three.”
“If it’s to be done, it should be done right. And what Odo has produced is...”
“Nothing of the sort, I know.”
“I hope you’re not expecting an apology.”
“From you? About that? Not so much.” She leans in and adds softly, “Between us, it needed doing. And I lack your forcefulness.”
“You’re not upset, then?”
“Well...slightly displeased, perhaps. That’s an awful lot of work to be re-done.”
“A pity I was unavailable to set him straight from the start. But, as you said, I was a little busy. And I told him to warm the place up and shed a little more light on the subject, as it were.”
She shook her head slightly. “He won’t like that. He values his asceticism.”
I snort. “His asceticism means about as much to me as a festering bowl of dog snot.”
“So tell me how you really feel.”
I tip my head back and laugh.
“That’s better,” she says.
“You sound tired,” I say once my laughter subsides.
“I am.”
I glance at the just-set sun. “Then off to bed with you. I’ll even tuck you in.”
She chuckles. “And what are you going to do all night?”
“Prepare for tomorrow morning.”
I stride into the priory with fire at my heels and gaze around the room. Coals glow in an additional brazier, cutting through the chill a little better than before. Half again as many candles bathe the stone walls with flickering light.
Two of the monks wear haggard faces, as though they haven’t slept. Which, I suppose, they haven’t. I make a mental note to give Odo a thorough talking-to about his damned asceticism.
I stop in the center of the room. I could cut the stillness with a knife, a stillness pregnant with expectation. My gaze moves from the additional candles to the second brazier to the drawn draperies and their sunlight spilling across the floor to the several men awaiting my command.
At length, I say, “I suppose this will do for now.”
Each of them visibly relaxes.
“Let us begin,” I add. “Starting with the morning following Maleficent’s defeat.” I wait until every pencil is poised before beginning my account, the true account. I speak slowly and deliberately, resisting the urge to postulate, pontificate, and commentate on the events.
I consider omitting most of my childhood, but decide against it. Instead, I include what I consider to be the salient events. How much of this makes it into the Chronicle and how much will have to wait for an account of my reign specifically remains to be seen.
It doesn’t help that I was comatose during Philip’s epic confrontation with Maleficent. Be that as it may, he’s told the tale so often, I may as well have witnessed it myself. Even so, my memory has some gaping holes, holes fillable only by Flora, Fauna, or Merryweather. Never mind that their accounts lack a certain reliability for reasons neither I nor my mother have quite been able to grasp. Only that it has something to do with the typically fairy concept of Truth.
Between pauses to allow Odo and his staff to catch up, interruptions for clarification, and the occasional privy break, relaying the account of my life from the time of my birth until the lifting of Maleficent’s curse takes the remainder of the day. Indeed, by the time I’m finished, the last ruddy rays of sunset have painted the clouds in pink, orange, and violet.
Several growling stomachs punctuate the point and we adjourn for a midday meal.
A waxing dawn chased the night that held me in its embrace. Shapes appeared in the dimness, shapes that turned from familiar objects I’d known for years into edifices.
My lumpy pile of straw barely contained by a coarse linsey-woolsey shroud became a cotton mattress stuffed with lamb’s wool supported by a plank frame bound by four stout posts carved with floral vines. My rough-hewn box became a finely-sanded maple-wood chest. My rough plank table with its legs of axe-cut branches became a sandal-wood table with lathe-turned legs. Bare wooden walls became stone blocks hung with a few tapestries.
I lifted my chin from my knees where it had been all night and let the loose blanket draping my legs slide away. I tipped my head back, took a deep breath, and let it out. I slid my legs over the edge. Instead of bare wood, my feet touched the woven rug beside my bed.
The sun’s first rays spilled through my window and fell upon part of a tapestry, one depicting, so I was told, the uplifting Calling of Joan, another the deeply disturbing Prophecy of the Sorcerer-King of Khortum. A few score heartbeats later, the sun shattered what remained of my nocturnal illusion.
I took a deep breath and held it until I began to feel light-headed before slowly releasing it.
I pulled on a pair of leather turn-shoes died to match my eyes and tied their thongs around my ankles before crossing the room and picking up the indigo diupioni skirts I’d hemmed up the previous evening. I held the garment out at arm’s length and peered at it in the light of day.
I could barely see the stitching. While the extra fabric might have bunched up around the hem, the lightness of it didn’t add much weight. Clearly, silk was going to take some getting used to.
I slipped on a loose saffron-dyed tunic of fine linen and cinched the cording on a brown leather bodice. I looked at myself in a full-length looking glass that must have cost a fortune. I turned first one way and then the other. The best reflection of myself had always been in the still water of a pond, or my wash-basin back home. Still, I had to admit, the look was close enough to my erstwhile normal.
My door opened silently on well-oiled hinges. I pulled it gently closed, turned about, and nearly collided with a young woman.
She half-stifled a near-scream and I yelped.
She began to stammer, curtsy, then curtsy while stammering.
It took me a few moments to recognize my maid-in-waiting. “Sybil?” I said.
“Y…y...highness?” she said, gaze averted.
I placed a hand on each of her shoulders. “Sybil?”
“Highness?” she squeaked.
I placed a finger beneath her chin and gently lifted.
Her head tilted up and a pair of bright blue eyes met my own. They watered terribly, as if she were on the verge of tears.
I released her chin and asked, “Sybil, what’s wrong?”
She began to open her mouth, then clamped it shut again.
I sighed. “Let me guess, my father insisted that you be seen and not heard, that you do not speak unless spoken to, is that correct?”
She tipped her eyes downward again and nodded.
“Nonsense,” I said.
Her gaze snapped up to mine. “Highness?” she squeaked.
“You’re assigned to me for life, is that correct?”
She nodded again.
“Then how you and I relate to each other is our business, yours and mine, and not my father’s. Is that clear?”
“But the king commanded...”
“I don’t give a rat’s left bollock what my father commanded,” I interjected.
Sybil seemed to choke on her own spit.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
She recovered with a force of will and nodded.
“Good. Then my first command to you is this. You will relax in my presence. Which means, among other things, that you will look me in the eye when we’re speaking to each other.”
Her gaze again snapped to meet mine, her eyes quivering in a bewildering mix of fear, anticipation, and hope.
“Sybil, I need a friend other than my soon-to-be husband. And you’re it.”
“F...friend?” she half-stammered.
“Yes, friend. You don’t have a problem with that, do you?”
She shook her head.
“I didn’t think so. Now, let’s go see about breakfast, shall we?”
She made a half-curtsy, spun about and strode off down the corridor, her single plait swinging gently where it hung from beneath her kerchief. I scurried to catch up, and fell into step beside her.
“We should get to know each other,” I said at length.
She nearly missed a step, cast me a glance, and recovered her pace. “Know each other?”
“Isn’t that what friends do?” We reached the top of a spiral stair and I paused to let her precede me. “That’s not to say that I’ve had many friends. Well, no friends, actually. The animals I’ve played with each year don’t really count. And my aunts...fairies, really...they were more like mothers to me. Except Merryweather. She was...perhaps like an elder sister? At least, that’s what Mother...my birth mother the queen, that is...said to me. Am I babbling?”
“No, your Highness,” she said over her shoulder.
“Are you saying that because you’re supposed to agree with me, or because you truly do agree?”
She stopped mid-step and craned her head around to pierce me with a quizzical look half-seen in the torch light filtering down from behind and below us and the still-dim daylight spilling through an arrow slit in the tower wall beside us.
“Sybil,” I said, “unlike my father, I will not do unspeakable things to you for disagreeing with me.”
Her stomach growled and her expression changed to horror.
“Nor for being hungry.” I rolled my eyes. “Sybil, please remind me to give my father a piece of my mind, would you?”
“He...has a temper, your Highness.”
“His temper is my problem, not yours. Especially since you will be coming with me to Ordovice. And call me Rose.”
Her brow furrowed. “R...rose?”
I nodded. “Food now?” I said.
She nodded and we resumed our descent.
Before long, the scents of freshly-baked bread tickled my nose. Sybil led me first one way, and then other, and despite my best efforts I soon found myself thoroughly lost. At length, we ducked through yet another small door and came out into a space not much higher than the main living area in my erstwhile cottage and at least four times the floor space.
Several long wooden tables, worn with years of use, stood in the center of the room. On them lay cutting boards, knives, ceramic canisters, and the morning’s harvest, onions, aubergines, and a few small, unfamiliar fruits with red skins. I lifted one half the size of my own closed fist and peered at it.
“I don’t know this fruit, erm…?”
A woman standing across the table said, “Mathilda, your Highness. Those are tomatoes, your Highness. Grown from seeds from the Orient.”
I picked up a smaller, thinner one. “Does that mean this is a fingermato?”
She frowned. “Finger...mato, your Highness?”
Beside me, Sybil unsuccessfully stifled a giggle.
I glanced at her and she recomposed herself. I smiled and she smiled in return.
I returned the fingermato to its place and turned my attention to a stoneware bowl filled with pieces of something that looked like bent tubes of some hard, yellow-ish substance. I picked one up. “And this?”
“That,” said a man across the table, in accented speech, “is my invention. I call it pasta.”
“Pasta,” I say.
“It requires some additional preparation before it’s ready to eat, your Highness,” he added. “We dress it with a sauce made from the tomatoes and a few Tyrhennian spices.”
Sybil said softly, “We call him El Beau. He’s the son of Aaron the Scotsman who married a Tyrrhenian woman.”
“El Beau MacAaroni,” I said. “I’m pleased to meet you.”
Beside the bowl of pasta sat several pies filled with bits of meat suspended in a gelatinous substance.
I peered at it. “What is that?” I asked.
“Aspic,” said Mathilda. “It’s quite popular in the courts.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “Whose courts?”
“Why, everyone’s.”
I peered at the concoction again, and poked at it with a finger.
“Would you like to try some?” asked the woman.
“Oh, I don’t mind if I do.”
She presented a small dish half-filled with the same stuff. I stabbed some with a fork and slid it into my mouth. I grimaced and forced myself to swallow.
“It’s not too bad, is it?” she asked.
“No,” I said, “it’s three bad.”
Sybil groaned.
MacAaroni laughed.
Mathilda frowned. “What?”
“You know...two bad...three bad? Never mind.”
“It’s to be served at your wedding feast today,” Mathilda said.
“I see. Do I want to know what else is to be served?”
“We did come here for breakfast,” Sybil interjected.
“Of course,” Mathilda said. “Your betrothed made a specific request and further requested that you join him.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see. Do you know when he’ll be here?”
“I believe,” came a familiar voice from behind me, “that I’ll be here when I’m here.”
Everyone but me bowed and curtsied.
“As you were,” he said.
I turned to see Philip smiling at me. My heart fluttered, my skin tingled, and my breathing quickened.
“Good morning, my dear,” he said to me, “you look lovely this morning.” He leaned down, I instinctively tilted my chin upward and our lips met. What felt like lightning surged through my body.
At length, we pulled breathlessly apart.
He stood aside and gestured toward the door. “Shall we?” he asked.
“Don’t mind if I do,” I managed.
I slipped my hand into the crook in his elbow.
“So, Philip,” I said as we left the kitchens, “Sybil and I were just discussing how she and I should get to know one another. And it occurs to me that you and I don’t know each other either. Now...” I trailed off and looked around. “Uh...where’s your...maid I guess...in waiting?”
He chuckled. “I don’t have one.”
“Your...boy-maid...wait, is that a thing?”
He chuckled again. “Squire, you mean?”
“Um...I have no idea. Does a squire do the same things that a maid-in-waiting does?”
“Your father was serious.”
“About what?”
“You really know nothing about the lives of royalty.”
I shrugged. “I know nothing about anyone’s lives but my own. I thought I knew about my aunts, but then it turns out they’re fairies. So...assume I know nothing.”
He grunted assent. “Squires do some of the things that maids-in-waiting do. Sort of.”
“Sort of?”
He went on to explain it during the short stroll to the Great Hall. At one end stood a sturdy table draped with madder-dyed linen. Beside it stood five wooden chairs and before each sat a silver plate, fork, spoon, table knife, and chalice.
Philip pulled one of the chairs away from the table and nodded at me. I stared at him. He nodded again and I furrowed my brow.
He smiled and chuckled softly. “Ah, of course,” he said. “I forgot. It’s customary for a gentleman to hold a chair for his lady.”
My frown intensified. “But Philip, I’m perfectly capable of handling my own chair.”
“I didn’t mean to imply that you’re not. It’s just that it’s the custom.”
“Why?”
He opened his mouth, paused, then said, “Actually, I’m afraid I have no idea.”
“Then why do it that way?”
“Because?”
“That makes no sense at all.”
He rubbed his chin and said, “You know, you’re right. After all, this is the fourteenth century.”
“I only see five chairs,” I said.
“I will stand,” Sybil said.
I frowned at her. “Won’t you eat with us?”
“No, your Highness.”
“But you haven’t eaten?”
She shook her head.
“Oh, dear,” I sighed. “Be sure you eat at your earliest convenience. No, on second thought, share mine.”
“Oh, I couldn’t.”
“I insist.”
Male voices floated through a door at the far end of the hall. Presently, my parents, Philip’s father, and a woman I assumed was Mother’s lady-in-waiting emerged, the men engaged in animated conversation, their words half-drowned by the space and the room’s appalling acoustics.
“Philip!” King Hubert exclaimed.
“Good morning, Father,” Philip said.
“Aurora,” said Mother, “I trust you slept well?”
It took me a moment to realize she mean me. “Oh. I...no. No, I didn’t.”
“Tossed and turned, did you?” said Father.
“No, I just wasn’t tired.”
“New place? I remember my first campaign…”
Mother cleared her throat.
“No,” I said, “I just wasn’t sleepy.”
“And the night before I wed…”
Mother jabbed an elbow into his ribs. She stepped up to me and placed her lips beside my ear. “We’ll talk about it later,” she whispered. “Now,” she said drawing back, “let’s talk of more cheerful things, shall we?”
The others quickly sat their own seats, the man handling theirs, Mother’s lady-in-waiting manipulating hers for her.
“We have a little something special planned for your wedding celebration,” Father said. “Between the ceremony and the feast.”
“A joust!” Hubert said.
“Joust?” I said. “What’s that?”
“You’ll love it,” Philip said.
I peered at him across the table. “Yes, but what is it?”
He placed each of his hands on either side of his plate, fingers down. “Two men on horseback,” he said, “ride toward one another.” He wiggled his fingers like legs as his hands drew nearer. “And they use lances to try to knock the other off his horse.” He punctuated it by smacking his hands together.
“Oh, dear,” I said. “That sounds dangerous.”
“Both men, and their horses, wear full plate armor.”
“I see,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I did. “And this plate armor, it’s made of these?” I asked wiggling my dinner plate.
Philip chuckled. “More or less.”
Hubert cut in. “Stefan was just telling me about the new steel alloy his armorer has been working on. He mixes small amounts of Siberian red lead into the smelt. It resists rust, he says. Can you believe it?”
“Well,” said Philip pensively, “this IS the fourteenth century. Anything’s possible. Even this stainless steel, this, more colorful steel, this...chroma-steel.”
Presently, the door through which we’d come opened and five people filed through. Each of the placed a dish before each of us. On a silver plate sat a disc of hearty bread with nooks and crannies on which lay a slice of ham, an egg fried over-easy, and drizzled with a pale yellow sauce garnished with parsley.
I peered at it.
Sybil whispered over my shoulder, “It’s called eggs Benedict, your H...Rose.”
I saw and ignored Father’s glare. “It looks delicious,” I said. “What’s the sauce?”
“Hollandaise,” said Sybil.
“You know,” I said pensively, “perhaps this should be served on a disc of that new stainless steel.”
“Why?” Hubert asked.
“Because there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.”
Four sets of eyes stared at me. At length, Sybil began to snicker. Then Philip. Then his laughter built and before long, he tipped his head back and let out a great belly laugh.
“Aurora,” he said, “I think you and I are going to get along famously.”
“Aurora. Aurora? Aurora!”
I started at my mother’s voice. It took me a few moments to recognize my birth name. I turned and blinked at my mother. “You know I prefer Rose.”
“I know,” she said. “Walk with me?” Without waiting, she spun about and strode off.
I scurried after her, Sybil on my heels. “About what?” I asked.
She said nothing, but continued to weave her way through the castle, and eventually out into the gardens.
I nearly slid to a halt. About a marble fountain spread an expanse of marble slabs cut into hexagons and fit together like honeycomb. In the cracks grew a creeping thyme peppered with little pink flowers nestled in fuzzy little leaves. We crossed the pavement in a score of strides and set off down a three-pace-wide path of crushed white rock, one of many that radiated from the pavement and divided the expansive gardens into dozens of separate beds planted with more kinds of plants than I knew could have existed.
Some I knew from my meandering through the forests. I recognized the rose, of course, though the ones came in dozens of shades of red, pink, and white, many of the flowers sporting all three colors in what seemed like every possible combination. I also recognized irises, but those, too, came in a veritable rainbow of colors and a range of heights. In other beds grew flowers I’d seen in the hedgerows and forest clearings—bluebells, violets, snake’s head fritillary, daffodils. Others still were totally alien to me.
When we’d gone about as far as I thought we could go before running into the far wall covered with trellised plants I never knew could be trellised, Mother stopped and turned around. She waited for several pregnant moments before beginning what I could only have described as a halting speech of sorts.
“Aurora, dearest, there are some things you must know. I was nervous the day I married your father. I couldn’t sleep either.”
“That’s not why I didn’t sleep,” I said.
“Oh. I see.”
“Do you?”
“Of course. I’m your mother.” She cleared her throat. “Between a husband and wife, there are...things. Feelings and...things. Tomorrow night, when you and your husband are, as you will know, and you know, alone, certain other...things...will arise. And your husband, he will desire to do his duty on you...to you...with you. And when he does, he will put his...aubergine...against your...peach and...do his duty. And when he does...well, it is best that you simply lay back and think of Arvern. I’m so glad we had this talk, dear. Now I have things to go, places to see, people to do.” She spun and practically pranced back across the garden.
I blinked as she strolled out of sight, then looked quizzically at Sybil. “Oh, dear,” I said.
“Whatever do you suppose she meant?”
I sighed. “I’m beginning to suspect, Sybil, that my birth was a miracle in more ways than one. And now, I suppose I have a wedding to prepare for.”
I turned my head first one way and then another, examining my face in a large looking-glass.
“Well? What do you think?”
I cast a glance at Sybil standing expectantly to my right.
I considered her question for a moment. “Well…”
“Oh, do be honest, your Highness.”
“I look like a drawing of a Djinn I saw in a scroll my aunt…one of the fairies, I mean...once showed me.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Whose idea was this, anyway?”
“Your mother’s?”
“No, I mean cosmetics in general.”
“The Gods, I believe.”
I frowned. “Nonsense.”
“It says so in the Writings. Enoch, if I recall rightly.”
I snorted. “Well, either this Enoch was greatly mistaken, or one of the Gods deserves a very long, very hot poker up their backside.”
Sybil’s eyes rounded.
“No, I mean it. Do all women wear this?”
“Not all,” she said. “But I’m given to understand that it’s starting to become a fashion statement.”
I grimaced. “I will never understand what seems to pass for civilization. How can women stand it? It’s oily, smelly, and generally icky.”
Sybil shrugged.
I sighed heavily. “Take it all off, please. Philip met me without all this on my face and he obviously liked what he saw. No, I’ll go to my husband as I am, or not at all.”
Every man in the room look expectantly at me like children awaiting iced cream in midsummer, pencils poised. “What? You know what weddings are like. They’re all the same.” They blink. “No,” I say. “I will not say a word about my wedding night.” They all visibly deflate. “It’s all in my diary, and I’ve left strict instructions to release that the morning after I go to the Gods. Perhaps it will make a particularly racy play. Now where were we? Ah, yes...”
I thought there had been a lot of people at my wedding. When that door had opened, just the sight of them had nearly knocked me off my feet. I’d had no idea that many people existed in the whole world, let alone one city in one kingdom. I’d wanted to think that they all faded away once I’d noticed Philip standing at the far end of the room waiting for me.
I’d been wrong. The people who had filled Ebbetts Chapel were nothing compared to the throng gathered about Tuolumne Meadows and its permanent jousting ground. Their conversational babble alone was deafening. And when they cheered, which was frequent, I thought my ears might burst.
Especially when Philip and I first arrived. The noise of it hit me like a thunderclap. It had only calmed somewhat. Or perhaps I was growing used to it.
We sat on a set of high seats, Philip, our parents and retainers and I. To either side stretched ranks of plank seating and the same across from us, capable of accommodating a thousand people at least, with more standing between one another and packed in like acorns in a squirrel’s nest.
A chest-high fence ran down the center of the field from one end to the other. Presently, a rider emerged at either end. Colorful barding hung from each horse. Each rider wore plate armor from head to toe.
A man across from us, a herald I was told, announced each contestant. Sir Payne de Spencer, and the Marquis de Nabel.
At a word, both horses began walking toward one another. The walk became a trot, which became a canter, and by the time they’d reached us, they’d reached a full gallop.
At almost the last moment, their lances swept downward. They collided with a tremendous crash. Wood exploded, shards pinwheeling in all directions. Both riders swayed back and one looked like he nearly fell off his horse. The crowd went wild.
I found myself on my feet.
“That looks like so much fun!” I squealed. I turned to Philip. “I simply must try that!”
His brow furrowed. “Aurora, dear,” he said.
I swallowed the urge to correct him.
“That,” he continued, “might be difficult to arrange.”
“But not impossible.”
He regarded me pensively for several moments, then leaned over the other direction and muttered something in his father’s ear. King Hubert visibly jerked, looked past Philip, half-glared at me, then muttered something in return.
From my other side, my mother said to me, “Aurora, honey, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, I can tell you exactly what your father would say.”
“I thought you said I could bat my eyelashes at him and get whatever I wanted,” I replied.
From Philip’s other side, Hubert bellowed, “Out of the question!”
“I don’t think you have the authority, Father,” Philip said.
“Stefan!”
“What’s that?” Father said.
Mother leaned over to him and muttered something.
“What?!” he roared. “Absolutely not!”
I leaned out past Mother, caught Father’s eye, and batted my lashes. “Please?” I said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
“Plenty,” said Philip.
Presently, a second pair of combatants took the field. The herald announced one as “Grendall, the Belligerent Cook,” which by Philip’s chuckle I took as some kind of inside joke, and Bubba Wolfsnot, apparently not a joke. At the signal, Grendall and Bubba surged toward each other.
When they met in a flurry of Grendall's black-and-red barding and Bubba's patched wool and fur, I half-saw Bubba twist slightly, a move, I was later to learn, known only to practioners of the joust and even then attempted only by the most skilled. A moment later, Bubba’s lance shattered against Grendall’s chest. Time seemed to slow as Grendall tilted backward and to his left. His entire body went over as though he were a child’s toy, and a moment later, he hit the ground with an audible thud-crash I could feel.
The crowd’s cheering suddenly died to silence broken only by the drumming of two sets of horse’s hooves. Even that quickly slowed and stopped. I found myself on my feet, with no memory of having risen, my hand poised near my chin.
“Is he…?” I whispered.
Two men rushed to Grendall’s side and knelt, their purposes mysterious to me. A moment later, the herald joined them. Between their bodies, I could see the intermittent twinkle of sun on steel and hear muffled clanking sounds.
Momentarily, the pair began to hoist the fallen man to his feet and the herald trotted over to us and bowed. “Majesties,” he said, “he lives. But his squires report that he is not now in a condition to continue.”
“Will he recover?” Father asked.
The herald twisted around and briefly regarded the three men hobbling off the field, Grendall’s limping weight supported between his squires, and said, “They don’t know, your Majesties. But Grendall himself could speak enough to say that he does not yet wish to withdraw.”
Father nodded. “He has...how many rounds?”
The herald consulted a scroll and said, “Six, your Majesty.”
Father nodded again. “Very good. Please extend our sympathies and our hopes for a speedy recovery.”
The herald nodded. “Of course, sir. Majesties. Highnesses.” He bowed again, whispered something into the ear of a page who took off at a brisk trot, then again took his place across the field. “The tournament will continue!” he announced.
Time crept delightfully by in a seemingly endless progression of horses, unfamiliar names, kaleidoscopic heraldry, impacts, the waxing and waning roar of the crowd, shattered lances, and the occasional toppling of a combatant.
At some point, a server arrived with a small platter of something called charcouterie. I perused the selection of cured and sliced sausages, honeyed barley wrapped in grape leaves, several cheeses, two kinds of long narrow biscuits called biscotti, green olives, and pickled gherkins. Later, another server appeared bearing small pasties filled with turnips, green onions, beets, and saffron.
The sun hung only a dozen diameters above the field when the final round was announced between Bubba and Sir Payne. They tilted at each other a full dozen times, each nearly toppling the other at least once, and each shattering several lances. In the end, for reasons I didn’t understand, Bubba was declared the victor.
A short time later, I sat Samson at one end of the field, a lance balanced in my right hand.
“I still think this is a horrible idea,” Philip said.
“A slow walk,” Father said for at least the dozenth time.
I nodded, also for at least the dozenth time, then nudged the horse forward. Philip walked beside me while Bubba walked his own horse toward me. Philip coached me, and half-dozen strides away from Bubba, I let the lance swing slowly down and managed to tuck its butt end under my arm just in time to meet Bubba. My lance tip tapped his shield with a soft thud and he saluted fist to chest with his off hand. The crowd cheered.
“Well,” I said, “that was...”
“Exciting?” Philip said.
“I was going to say a good start.”
“Start?”
“Again,” I said, “but a bit faster.”
He blanched, exchanged glances with Bubba, and said, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. Your father barely agreed to this run.”
“Run?”
Philip sighed. “If you can convince your father, I’ll arrange for some armor. And no, you’re not doing this again unprotected. And those gloves hardly count,” he added, gesturing to the blue leather gauntlet gloves I’d received as a wedding gift from a Viscount whose name I’d already forgotten.
“Very well,” I breathed. “But we may need some sort of diversion. You know how protective he is toward me.”
Philip nodded, exchanged words with Bubba, who jerked visibly upright, one thing led to another, and almost before I knew it, I again sat Samson at one end of the field, clad cap-a-pied in the smallest armor Philip could find. I half-expected Father to return at any moment from the wild goose chase Bubba had arranged at the last minute.
“Well,” I said, “let’s do it!”
I reached out my hand for the proffered lance and a familiar voice said, “Hold! What’s this?”
I recognized Father’s voice immediately.
“Your daughter,” Hubert began.
“What?!” Father said.
“Hello, Father,” I said. My voice echoed inside my helm.
“ABSOLUTELY NOT!” Father bellowed. He snatched the lance. “Stop this at once!”
“I’m already armored,” I said, “This won’t take...”
“Now,” he growled.
I reached for the lance. “Please?”
“No,” he said, and grounded the butt of the lance on the ground for effect.
I felt my eyes narrow. I reached again for the lance. It quivered, jerked, wrested itself from his grasp, and flew across the intervening space to smack into my palm. The weight of it, and the surprise, nearly pulled again from my grasp.
Everyone stared at me, mouths agape. I wasted no time. Before my wits could leave me, I wheeled Samson about and set off down the field toward Bubba. He spurred his own horse into motion. We’d reached what I guessed to be a half-gallop by the time closed on each other.
I tucked the lance and aimed it at his battered shield a moment after he did the same. An instant before we met, I shoved, more with my mind than with my lance. His lance point thudded into my shield, the impact traveling up my arm and into my shoulder. Bubba himself hung in the air long enough for his horse to leave him behind. His lance slipped from his grasp and cartwheeled out of my vision while he bounced off the dividing fence. I heard him thud to the ground.
When Samson had finally come to a halt, I dropped the lance, dismounted with a grunt, and clanked back the several dozen paces to where Bubba lay on his back, his squires already at his side. I arrived moments before Phillip. The man lay on his back, helm already off, blinking at nothing in particular.
“Oh, dear,” I said to Bubba, “I didn’t hurt you, did I?”
His eyes drifted toward mine. “Only my pride, your Highness,” he grunted. “And I have it on good authority that it could do with a beating.”
“I see,” I said, though I wasn’t sure I did.
His squires helped him sit up, and then to his feet. He raised an armored arm to the crowd and a brief cheer. I raised my arm for no other reason than that it seemed the thing to do, and the crowd erupted, the noise of it nearly ringing against my armor and reverberating inside my helm.
Bubba turned to me and asked, “I trained against upland trolls and I have never seen anything like what you just did. How did you do that, if you don’t mind my asking?”
I shrugged, the motion completely lost under the armor.
Moments later, Father’s voice rolled across the field. “That will be quite enough!” he roared.
Bubba and his squires took a knee.
“Oh, but it was fun,” I protested.
“Not on my field, it isn’t. I will not have the future mother of…”
Mother raced up behind him and tugged on his arm. “Stefan,” she hissed, “not here. We’ll discuss this all later.”
He glared at her, then at me and Philip, and said no more.
Philip turned to the crowd. “For the Princess Aurora, three cheers! Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!”
A heavy mist rose from the River Coquille, speared by shafts of morning sun spilling through the ash and poplar lining the far bank. Above, the whitewashed walls of Castle Collier gleamed so brightly I could scarcely look on them and the twinkle and glare of glaive, maille, and plate only made it worse.
My parents barely seemed to notice, for all that they, too, squinted, and I couldn’t tell if their tears came from the brightness or my parting. Probably both. I just looked right back at them, only vaguely aware of the activity going on around us.
Despite sixteen years of ignorant absence and barely a week since my birthday, I could think of nothing to say that hadn’t already been said, some of it several times over.
“We’ll miss you,” my mother finally said.
“I’ll miss you, too,” I managed. Though I wasn’t sure I would.
“Will you really?”
“I...I don’t know. Perhaps I’ll miss what my childhood might have been.”
My father only nodded. I couldn’t begin to imagine what my absence had been like for either of them, though he still looked like someone had died. I supposed it still bothered him deeply.
My mother placed a palm against my cheek and smiled. “Don’t forget to write.”
“I won’t.”
“And do visit once in a while.”
“I will.”
At that, I stepped away and made my way across a narrow gangplank onto a small ship still tied to the dock. Barely half a dozen paces across, it rocked terribly when I dropped over what I learned was called a gunwale.
The first boat had already pulled out into the current, its banks of oars churning at the water, one man singing a rhythmic song, the words swallowed up by the distance. Workers cast off the ropes, men pushed our boat away, and soon others strained at the oars. I stood on a small platform and watched what could have been my home slowly recede.
Astern, the boat carrying my father-in-law King Hubert pulled out a four lengths behind. Before long, we rounded a bend in the river and the castle vanished behind the trees.
I breathed deeply, held it as long as I could, and slowly let it back out.
“Are you alright?”
I turned toward Philip, his face full of concern. “Yes. No. I don’t know.” I turned away again to watch the trees slide past.
“No,” he said, “I wouldn’t imagine that you would.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, my eyes still on the riverside verge.
“You were taken from your home twice in the same fortnight. That’s more than enough for anyone.”
I twisted around and gazed into his eyes. “You understand?”
He stared at me for a few moments, then said, “No, not really. But I have ancestors who would.”
“Ancestors,” I snorted. “I’m sure it’s no small matter for a fairy to call them forth, but that sort of magic is so far beyond me, it defies description.”
“Not yet, perhaps. But in time.”
“In time, I’ll have figured it out for myself. I feel adrift, Philip. Like a leaf on a stream, caught in the current and carried inexorably and helplessly to the Gods know where. That’s how I feel. And I don’t expect that to change any time in the near, or even the not-so-near, future.”
“I wish I knew how to help.”
I wrapped my arms around his middle and half-buried my face in his chest in the hope of stifling the tears that threatened to rise up from within me. “Just hold me,” I murmured.
A moment later, I felt his strong arms about me. “Does that help.”
“It does, Philip, it does.”
Long before I could see the coast, I could hear, feel, and smell it. The chattering of other sea birds joined the mewling gulls that had followed us all afternoon. The air took on a distinctive sort of chill brought by a shift in the breeze. A breeze that carried both a briny tang I knew from pickling and a fetid odor I couldn’t quite place. Over it all were the scents, and eventually the sounds, I’d first encountered in the expansive town at Collier.
The sun hung a mere half-dozen diameters in the west by the time we’d rounded the final bend in the river where the port of Malheur slid into view.
It looked like the docks at Collier, only many times larger. I counted at least eight docks jutting out from the southern side of the bay. Between them stretched more docks parallel to shore. Dozens of vessels in a wide range of sizes nestled up against the planking in a small forest of masts. Men and horse-drawn wagons bustled about, intent on errands unknown to me.
Beyond them huddled an unbroken row of buildings. Half their windows glowed with early candlelight and smoke drifted from nearly every flue tile.
Across the bay, a long bar of sand stretched from another cluster of docks and buildings off toward the west and out of view.
Just visible above the dockside buildings rose the stone edifice that I presumed to be Castle LeConte. One by one, the boats slid into their moorings beside a much larger vessel. I fidgeted through the ensuing eruption of activity before another man announced us.
Philip led me down the gangplank toward an armed escort two dozen strong who promptly herded us first along one cobbled street and then another. The bustle of dockside activity quickly faded behind us. Lamplight spilled from open doors beneath wooden signs emblazoned with animals, a white horse on one, a boar’s head one another, three brooms on yet another. With the light flowed songs, some I understood barely enough to know how bawdy they were, others clearly having something to do with life at sea.
By the time we strolled through the castle gate, that other life had dropped away and I was thoroughly lost.
A steward met us in the courtyard and led us into a small keep and up a spiral stair, babbling the whole time about things I nearly understood.
At long last, Philip and I strode into a small chamber lit by a single candle. I flopped down onto the bed and groaned. “I feel like my head’s about to explode.”
“Can that happen?” he asked.
I peered at him. “I don’t know. You were the first person I ever saw, other than my aunts. You tell me.”
He rubbed his chin and said, “I’ve never heard of anyone’s head actually exploding. So...I’m sure it’s just an expression.”
“An apt one. Please tell me this gets better.”
“It gets better.”
“Are you sure you’re not telling me that just to make me feel better?”
He sat down beside me and gazed at me for a moment before saying, “Well...I don’t know about that, but I can think of something else that will make you feel better.” He leaned over and kissed me.
I felt my cheeks warm. That warmth spread downward and soon I’d forgotten about even the bawdy songs and their taverns.
I watched the land slide by as the ship weathered the Lizard. The green smudge marking the shores of Normandy had faded into the sea mist two score sun-spans before. The sun hung at its zenith, bathing a choppy sea and the chalky cliffs a league off in flat light.
The land gradually sloped off westward toward the Scilly Isles. Every so often, a cleft appeared in the bluffs where a small river spilled into the sea or where a long-ago landslide had created a harbor. If I looked hard enough, I could see small clusters of buildings and tiny forests of masts amid a haze of wood smoke. The sails of fishing boats almost blended into the chalk cliffs.
The land finished diving into the sea and soon the ship swung northward. Off to the west, another smudge of green marked the Scilly Isles in counterpoint to swaths of green sloping eastward from the sea.
A dozen sun-spans later, we swung back eastward. League by league, the shorelines to the north and south drew closer, pinching the Bristol Channel between them. And league by league, the gentle rolling of the open sea changed to a staccato chop. With it, the motion of the ship changed.
I looked toward where Philip stood several paces away, gripping the rail with both white-knuckled hands.
“It’s beautiful,” I told him.
He merely grunted.
I half-wished I could understand his trouble. Almost. He’d been fine the whole way down the River Coquille. He’d endured the crossing of the river’s bar with stoic obstinacy, even while nearly half the crew had been doubled over the rail. Most of their troubles had abated within a half-dozen sun-spans, for which we’d all been grateful. A few had never fully recovered, and I’d heard of one who remained confined below decks.
That had been one reason I’d remained on the quarterdeck for the duration of the voyage. Sybil, bless her heart, hadn’t left my side since leaving the castle.
The tide seemed to take forever to turn. By the time we drifted into Taff Bay, the moon had chased the sun clear across the sky. The crew exploded into activity while we slipped in on the tide. Rowers ran out the sweeps and the ship surged across the bay.
Off to port, two much smaller vessels overtook ours, and angled toward a set of docks on the west side of the bay over which flew a large banner, a golden eagle on blue. As I watched, a crewmember lifted from the bow of each boat what looked like a dragon’s head.
“What are they doing?” I asked.
“They’re traders,” Philip answered, “from Scandahoovia.”
“Scandahoovia? But aren’t they all raiders?”
“Once, long ago. In some places they still are. Centuries ago, many of them shifted their operations from raiding to trading. Turns out the latter is more profitable. The post here in Caer Dydd was one of the first. Their outfit is still operated by many-greats grandsons Ingvar Kamprad and Eric Asorson. It’s become one of the largest trading conglomerates in the world.”
The ship made its way up the Avon Taff and presently, the fortress of Caer Dydd hove into view.
“The first Ealdorman of Butte had it built,” Philip said, “on the site of an earlier Volsci fort.”
We disembarked to great fanfare. An honor guard escorted us from the docks, along a cobbled street to a stout gate. Through it, I could see another fortress, a cylinder of stone set atop a conical earthen mound.
“That’s the original motte and bailey,” Philip said. “It’s a barracks these days, and a fallback position in the unlikely event of attack. The second Ealdorman of Butte made some additions to the grounds, including the other structures.” He waved at a palatial building. “A stopover,” he added. “Before we go on to Caer Morwen.”
“And,” Hubert added, “where you’ll meet your adoring subjects.”
Oh, dear.
I half-leaned out of my carriage. “What sort of trouble?” I asked.
“Nothing to worry your head about, Miss,” said a man sitting astride a white horse.
I blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I said...”
“I heard you,” I interrupted.
I pulled my head and shoulders back inside, opened the door, and leaped out. I barely missed a puddle and one bare foot gushed into some mud, the other struck a stone, and I nearly took a spill. Only my Gifted grace saved me from ending up on my backside.
The man’s eyes took me in, from the top of my unadorned head and my plaited hair past my saffron-dyed linsey-woolsey tunic, and shin-length skirts, to my bare feet. “Miss,” he said, “get back in the carriage.”
I frowned at him. “Most people address me as ‘Highness.’”
His face fell. “The...Princess?” he half-stammered.
“Who else would go traipsing around Ordovice in a carriage?” I demanded.
“An Ealdorman,” he said.
“Ah. Of course.” I looked past him and asked, “Now, what about that trouble?”
“It’s Caer Morwen, your Highness. It’s...um...”
I raised an expectant eyebrow.
“It’s uninhabitable.”
“Uninhabitable? But I was assured by King Hubert himself that the castle, MY castle, was complete.”
“It is...was...”
“Was? What do you mean, was?”
“Ah...it...um...”
“Out with it, man!”
He fidgeted. “There’s a dragon, your Highness.”
I blinked. “A dragon?”
He nodded.
“A real dragon?”
“Is there another kind?”
“There’s...never mind. Tell me about this dragon.”
“It’s a dragon, Highness. What’s to tell? Except that it’s residing in the...your...its...castle.”
“I see.” I suddenly realized that I wanted to see. I stood on tip-toes as though I could see over the rise. “Can I? May I?”
“Um,” he havered, “I’m not so sure that’s a good idea. It’s not safe.”
Not safe? “Even from a distance?”
“A distance?”
“Oh, for the love of...” I attempted to stomp past him, but it turned into more of a glide. I was beginning to wonder if I was even capable of stomping. I started up the road toward its crest ignoring the rider’s protestation.
I heard the carriage creak behind me and a second set of footsteps far less steady than my own. At length, Sybil fell into step beside me. At length, we reached the crest.
From there, the road fell straight and gentle into a broad valley. Across it stretched green fields through which cut the Avon Metolius. In the middle of it stood a large stone edifice with curtain walls curving up from its base and spires reaching for the sky.
“Caer Morwen?” I asked.
“Yes, your Highness,” the rider replied from several paces behind.
“It’s...enormous.” Hubert had told me about its forty bedrooms and all that, but I’d had trouble visualizing something of that scale. “Surely that’s big enough to share with a dragon.”
“It’s a big dragon, Highness.”
“How big?”
“Big.”
I craned my neck around, peered at the man on horseback, and set off down the road.
“You can’t!”
I ignored him.
“Rose,” Sybil whispered, “he might be under orders. You’re putting him in a tight spot.”
“I want to see the dragon.”
“Didn’t Philip fight one?”
“He fought Maleficent impersonating a dragon,” I said.
“What’s the difference?”
“She wasn’t a real dragon.”
“Oh, dear,” Sybil moaned.
The sun had passed zenith by the time I strode up to the front gate, Sybil and the rider at heel.
Or, rather, what was left of the front gate. Where two stout oaken doors had once been lay the remnant of a pile of ash, scattered by wind, rain, and foot to who new where. Only a little grey-white powder remained settled in cracks. The great iron hinges stuck out from their emplacements between the stones, the metal slightly warped and covered in untimely rust and scale.
“Your Highness,” said the man, “I can’t let you go in there.”
“Yes, you can.”
“Your father-in-law the King will have my head if something happens to you. And if he doesn’t, then your father the King of Arvern will.”
“I’ll be careful. Sybil, you’ll make sure of that.”
Sybil squeaked.
With that, I strode into the tunnel through the wall. It was wide enough for two carriages to pass with ease and thrice my own height. Even the otherwise soft tapping of my bare feet sounded loud in my ears, Sybil’s soft leather shoes even more so.
We paused where the tunnel gave way to an expansive courtyard. Scorched grass stretched between us and a central tower at least five times the size of the motte-and-bailey at Caer Dydd. All this for me? I’d barely been a princess for a month and I could already think of dozens of better uses for the resources my father-in-law had expended on this monstrosity.
I looked up and around, at each vacant window and arrow slit, each gaping door, for any sign of life. For all I could tell, Caer Morwen could have been a centuries-old ruin.
“Maybe it left,” Sybil whispered.
I took a few steps into the courtyard, and knelt down to feel the charred turf. “It’s still warm,” I said.
Sybil let out a whimper which turned into a squeak. Then the ground shook subtly. First once, then again, then again.
“Rose?” Sybil whispered. “It’s here.”
From around one edge of the keep, a dark form hove into view, its shape obscured in shadow. At length, it stepped out into the sunlight, and stepped ponderously toward us.
It regarded us with orange-green eyes mounted to either side of a catfish-shaped head half as wide as my arm span. Behind a neck the length of a horse rose a pair of folded wings, the entire body supported by four stout legs equipped with claws. Coal-black scales and dark grey fuzz covered its body.
“We should run,” Sybil squeaked.
“She’d chase us,” I said.
“She?”
I nodded toward the dragon. “No pizzle,” I said.
“How can you tell?” she whispered.
The dragon lowered its head and sniffed at me. I reached up and scritched at her snout. She grunted and opened her mouth slightly to reveal two rows of jagged teeth. She nudged my hand again and I rubbed the bridge of her snout. A low rumble rose from deep within her.
“I think she likes me,” I said.
“For supper?”
“If she were going to eat us, I think she’d be doing it by now.”
“That isn’t very reassuring. What happens when you stop, um, petting her?”
I shrugged and stopped petting. The dragon eyed me, then nudged my hand again until I resumed. “She’s like a cat,” I said.
“A cat the size of twelve draft horses, with teeth, claws, wings, and, oh, yes, fire!” Sybil hissed.
“She can’t be that bad. She just needs someone who understands her.”
“Understands?”
I stepped around the dragon’s head, and ran my palm along her neck. “So,” I said, “what should I name her?”
“N...name?”
“How about...Fluffy?”
“What? You can’t name a dragon Fluffy!”
“Why not? She’s covered in fluff.”
“You name a dragon something like Stormshadow.”
“Fluffy Stormshadow. That’ll do.”
“You’re insane.”
“Thank you for the vote of confidence.”
“I say it as I see it. Because no one else has the guts.”
I continued until I stood just in front of her wing. “I have an idea,” I said.
“Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to like this?”
I grasped the edge of her wing with one hand, planted a foot on her leg, and hopped up, landing on her back. She craned her neck around and snorted. “Oh, don’t snort at me in that tone of voice,” I said. “See? I think she and I have an understanding.”
“I take it back,” said Sybil. “You’re very insane.”
I reached out a hand toward Sybil. Her eyes went even wider, if that were possible, and she shook her head. I arched an expectant eyebrow and she shook her head even more emphatically.
“I insist,” I said. “Do I have to make it a command?”
Sybil whimpered and stepped forward. I grasped her hand and tugged her up. She settled behind me and wrapped her arms about my torso.
“Now what?”
“Now...” I thumped Fluffy on each side of her back ridge and she began to move her wings. “Hold on.”
“No,” Sybil said.
“Yes,” I replied.
Fluffy beat her wings several times, then launched herself into the sky. Sybil and I both screeched, she in terror, me in ecstasy.
“This is the best thing ever!” I squealed. Well, I added to myself, second-best.
“For the record,” she said after a short while, “this is the worst idea in the long, long history of bad ideas!”
“As my husband is fond of saying, this is the fourteenth century! And fourteenth-century problems call for fifteenth-century solutions!”
“I still say you’re insane!”
We settled at what looked like half a league up and turned westward.
“Where is she taking us?” Sybil shouted.
“Toward Caer Grugier,” I said over my shoulder.
“How do you know?”
“That’s where Philip and Hubert are.”
“I know that,” she retorted. “How do you know that’s where we’re going?”
“Fluffy and I have an understanding.”
“That doesn’t make any more sense than it did the first time you said it.”
“We’re still working it out.”
“How?”
“Magic!”
I turned my attention to the landscape below, scrolling past as though I were looking at a map drawn in vivid detail. I could see where the Avon Metolius spilled out of the Sugar-Pine Mountains in a ribbon of silver. Atop a rocky crag, I could just make out one of the Beacons of Barlow, a network of tarred slash piles intended to be set alight to summon the fyrd in time of invasion.
I lost track of time and the ever-changing tapestry of forest and farm. At great length, Caer Grugier came into view on the other side of a forested ridge. A modest castle a quarter the size of Caer Morwen, it sat at a bend in the Avon Hood. A dozen tents stood out white against a harvested field long bowshot from the gates.
Not halfway through our spiraling descent, I could see the grounds erupt in human activity like a disturbed anthill.
“They’re going to shoot us!” Sybil protested.
“No, they’re not.”
“How are you going to stop them?”
“I’ll think of something.”
“That isn’t very reassuring!”
We dropped lower until we swooped over the castle at what I guessed to be just above bowshot.
Cries of alarm met my ears and soon drowned in the wind and distance. We wheeled sharply about and I felt myself pressed into Fluffy’s hide. I waved as expansively as I could, hoping someone would notice.
We swung around the castle, lower and lower. “There!” I pointed.
Fluffy gathered her legs, pitched backward, and back-beat her wings until we came gently to rest in the middle of the old Volsci road with its tightly-fit stones.
“That was incredible!” I gushed.
“No, it wasn’t,” Sybil croaked.
“We should travel this way all the time!”
“NO!” she shrieked.
“Oh, come now. Don’t tell me you’d rather spend an entire day bumping over…”
“No!” Sybil yelled again and pointed.
I followed her outstretched arm and saw a dozen armored knights thundering toward us. I waved and called, “Good afternoon, good sir knights!”
They reined in with a clatter of hooves and clank of metal. The man in the center said, “Sir Ecbert, you and the others distract the beast, I’ll rescue the maidens!”
“Maiden?” I said. “I’m not a maiden!”
“Don’t worry, fair maidens,” he said, apparently ignoring my words, “we’ll rescue you from this foul beast!”
“Fluffy is not foul!” I protested. When the first drew his sword, I yelled, “Stop!”
He didn’t.
“I said, stop! That’s a command from your Princess!”
They all froze. “Princess?” one said, the word echoed by the others.
I let out a soft grown. Fluffy let out a soft growl. “No, Fluffy,” I said quietly.
“Ecbert,” the center man said, “inform the King.”
“At once!” He wheeled his horse and galloped into the castle.
After a lengthy stand-off, Philip and Hubert trotted out on foot. “What is the meaning of…” Hubert’s query cut off with a yelp. “Are you out of your mind?!” he yelled.
“Father,” said Philip from his side.
“Get down this instant!”
“Father,” Philip said again.
Sybil slid off, slipped, and ended up on her backside.
“Are you alright?” I asked.
She looked at me and then at Hubert. “She made me!” she protested from where she sat.
“You didn’t protest. Much,” I added.
“I said,” said Hubert, “get off that thing this instant!”
I frowned at him. “Fluffy is not a thing!”
“You...you named it?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed heavily. I slipped from Fluffy’s back, lighted with a slight bounce, and pulled Sybil to her feet. “Are you injured?” I asked her quietly.
“Only my pride,” she said.
I nodded and took several steps toward my husband, father-in-law, and their entourage, stopping at Fluffy’s head. She nudged me.
“It’s going to eat her!” Hubert gasped.
Fluffy growled.
“Stop that,” I said to her. I glared at Hubert. “You too.”
“How dare you…”
“Father,” Philip half-spat, “you’re making things worse and you know it.”
Hubert began to splutter. Clearly my own father wasn’t the only one with a temper.
I absently stroked the underside of Fluffy’s chin and moments later, she began to purr like an oversized cat.
“See?” I said. “She’s not dangerous.”
“Not dangerous?” Hubert blustered.
“Not to me, anyway,” I added.
Philip began rubbing his chin in the way he did when he was lost in some grandiose thought or other. “You know,” he said, “this has potential.”
“Potential!” said Hubert.
“What if we could tame a dragon? Or two...or twelve?”
“Impossible!”
“Oh,” I said, “it’s not impossible. Is it, Fluffy?” I added to the dragon, who only purred harder. I giggled. “See? She likes me.”
“For dinner!”
I snorted. Fluffy snorted harder, then sneezed. Gobbets of what I first assumed to me snot burst into flame several armspans from her snout and splattered onto the pavers where they burned for several moments before going out.
“Well,” said Philip, “clearly there are a few, shall we say, logistical issues.”
“Logistical issues!” said Hubert.
“Such as,” Philip continued, “how would we feed one dragon, let alone a combat division? We’d have to occupy the Mogador.”
“Sir Cuthbert!” Hubert snapped. “Perpare to invade Mogador!”
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “Invade? Why do we have to invade anyone?”
“Well...because!”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” I growled. “Make an agreement. For that matter, southern Arvern practically sprouts sheep up from the ground. I’m sure my father could be persuaded. And why do dragons have to be used for war anyway?”
“But…”
“No,” said Philip, “she’s onto something. Perhaps...some sort of league of nations, an international agreement whereby an attack on one is treated as an attack on all.”
“Oh,” I said, “uniting the nations in ways other than marrying off their daughters?”
“Exactly!”
“But,” said Hubert, “that’s never been done!”
“Until now.”
“And,” I added, “dragons can be used for transportation. And sending messages.”
“Where my envisioned heliograph network doesn’t reach,” Philip said.
“And imagine,” I said, “places where dragons gather like ships. A sort of...air-port.”
“Impossible,” Hubert grumbled.
“Why?” I asked.
“This is the fourteenth century!” Philip declared. “And fourteenth century problems demand fifteenth century solutions!” He punctuated it by smacking one fist into the opposite palm. “Also, think of it as a little insurance.”
“Insurance,” I said, “is that the opposite of out-surance?”
Philip laughed.
Odo reads back what he’s written and I nod. “Excellent,” I say. “Commit that to parchment, if you would.”
“One more thing, your Majesty?” he said. I nod and he continues. “The battle...what was you called it? Baked earth?”
“The Battle of Baker’s Field. Trust me when I say it’s more than apt.”
In that moment, I wheel several hundred feet above the pustulent hordes, lining up for another run. I twist around and lob an arrow at another pursuer, and hear it screech to the remainder of its death amoungst its brethren clogging the Plain of the Baker's Field. Less than a mile to the north, the armies of the world and of the Otherworld rush toward each other across the same strip of defiled ground over which we’ve been grinding at each other for weeks. Between there and the Rift, the Gods’ Iron Giants and the enemy’s foul homunculi grapple with one another. Clouds of dragons, thunderbirds, and eldritch flying beasts clot the sky. Above it all hang the strange iron chariots of the Gods, with their wheels in wheels and their hundreds of blazing eyes, raining down strange lightning onto the Horde that continues to pour from the Rift with no end in sight.
I loose several arrows toward the rear of the foe, an act that warriors across the ages have long regarded as cowardly, before Fluffy disgorges another stream of her liquid fire. I pull up and moments later, something explodes, the heat of the blast nudging us upward, barely missing the feathery wing of something that passes almost too quickly to see.
Across the beaten field rolls a noise like dying swine and the mating call of a love-sick seal. Even from my high vantage point, I can see the battle grind to a screeching halt. As a whirl around, a monstrous form heaves into my sight and my blood runs cold. It lurches up through the Rift, nearly falls back into it, then claws its way over the broken rim.
My mind has trouble making sense of the forest of legs and claws and scales. But the figure riding upon it, though at least as terrible, can be none other than the Witch King himself. In each of his four tree-trunk arms he holds a gleaming weapon of war. I almost don’t notice the minions that continue to surge forth in his wake.
I close my eyes against the images, ones I wish I could forget.
“No,” I say to Odo, “we’re not going to write about the Battle of Baker’s Field. We’re going to make a tapestry. A long one. One depicting the battle in all its excruciatingly nightmarish detail. And frescoes. And stained glass. I want every man, woman, and child throughout the known world to look and know. A thousand years from now, they should know. Even if our names are forgotten, our deeds should not. I will sketch it out for you. And, I daresay this will be a years-long project. I will begin tonight. You will begin once the Chronicle is finished. But now, we should break for lunch.”
I reach up and stroke her snout. Before long, she begins an earth-deep purring. It’s hard to believe that this adorable creature rained down fire and death upon the Hordes.
My recurve bow hangs in its case. I trail a finger along the knotwork tooled into the leather.
I hear Mother step up beside me. “Well?” she asks. “How goes it?”
“Better this time,” I say.
Memories scroll through my mind. The Chariot of the Gods, with its wheels-in-wheels and its wings covered in scores upon scores of eyes blazing like tiny suns. The fire that issued from it and smote our enemies. Father laying with his wounds. The Gods Choosing him for their Taking. The aftermath of battle. The sea and land drifting below me on my way back home. My mother’s face at the news.
I shake them off and instead look out over the city. In the midday sun, I can see several holes where brothels had stood before I’d ordered them emptied and torn down, their timbers used for field engines, their erstwhile occupants trained in the ways of siege engineering, dragon-riding, archery, and the shield wall. Another fifteenth-century solution to a first-century problem.
“What is it about that man? If he weren’t so good with manuscripts...”
“Your father wants...wanted...to make Odo Bishop of Bayeux.”
I nearly choke. “Odo? Bishop? You must be joking.”
She shakes her head.
“Does he know?”
“They’ve discussed it.”
“Oh, dear.”
Mother cocks her head and gazes at me quizzically. “Why do you say that, dear?”
I choke back laughter. “Surely you jest. Odo? That man has no business doing that job.”
“He’s not so bad.”
“Not so bad? Mother, he couldn’t find his rear end with both hands if you gave him a mirror, a candle, and a map!”
“So tell me what you really think.”
I roll my eyes. “Besides that he’d succeed only in setting his own flatulence aflame?”
A hint of a smile pulls at the corners of her mouth. “There are some who might find that amusing.”
“I’m one of them.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “And I suppose you have someone better in mind?”
“Oh, please. A constipated wiener dog would be better. But since you ask, I was thinking about Violet Evergarden.”
Mother cocks her head. “Oh? I hadn’t considered her. She would indeed be excellent for the position. But there is just one problem.”
“Don’t say it.”
“She’s a woman.”
“You said it.” I sigh heavily. “How long until women stop being treated like commodities?”
She gazes off into the middle distance and sighs heavily. “I wish I knew. Centuries?”
“That’s not soon enough,” I growl.
“No. No, it isn’t. And in the meantime, we have to deal with...the situation with your father.”
I grunt. “You mean the laws that don’t include rulers going off with the Gods?”
“Yes, those ones.”
“He told me to treat it like an exile. Philip agreed. For that matter, his father isn’t dead either. The only reason we’re King and Queen of Ordovice is that Hubert grew weary of the whole thing in his old age and he wanted to watch us do the job while he was still around to do the watching.”
“Do you think Sefan is watching? From up there?”
I shrug. “I have no idea. The Gods were...not terribly forthcoming. Not about that. Nor about whether anyone would return. Only that they would live.”
Mother sighs. “I suppose I shall have to be content with that. Your father was...is...a difficult man to love. You know that, don’t you?”
I nod. “I had to work with him at the front. So, yes.” I smile. “But if he is watching, I suppose it’ll bug him when I make Violet Bishop.”
Mother chuckles. “Then I suppose he’ll have to convince the Gods to let him come back here and yell, ‘absolutely not!’”
I laugh. “We both know him so well, don’t we?”
“Indeed we do.”