Meanwhile, the last ball of fire flew in a high arc. Scylla watched it reach its apex and begin its descent, almost directly towards her. Without thought, she reached out and hauled Jay out of the way. But the mage’s fire found a mark—it hit Browny high in the side and knocked the horse down with a breathy oomph! Her head flailed into the ground with a thud, and her legs kicked wildly. An acrid stink rose, along with the smell of burned hair and flesh. Then the heavy body settled into an ominous stillness.
“Oh, no… no,” Scylla whispered in horror. “Browny…”
“Browny!” wailed Jay, on his knees in the grass where Scylla had thrown him.
“Oh… Princess!” came Coltic’s shocked voice, from where he stood with the book of magic forgotten in his hand.
Scylla looked around, her heart slowly hardening to ice within her. The torches flared and the night beyond them grew darker.
The physician-mage lay on the ground, with Renold’s sword skewered through him. Renold and Coltic stared across the clearing at Browny’s dead body. The soldiers who remained stood like stone statues. Only their eyes moved.
The kings were dissolving, the darkness showing through their bodies. Wisps of them floated free like tendrils of mist.
Destroy the Book of Magic! Belrin’s parting rumble sounded like a distant roll of thunder. Hear me, sorcerer… son of the wizard! And you, Scylla, scion of Rellant’s kings, take your place as sovereign queen… hear me! Destroy the Book of Magic!
One shadow came floating across the grass toward Scylla… her father, King Tobin. His gory wounds were even worse when seen close up. He looked sadly into Scylla’s eyes. He clucked and reached out his hand, and a shadowy horse’s form rose up from Browny’s body to go with him.
Scylla saw the hint of Browny’s sweet face and heard her throaty nicker, just an echo of it. Then her father vaulted to the ghost-horse’s back and urged it into a trot. Within a few steps they vanished, along with the rest of the kings. Scylla felt a sharp pang of grief for both of them… her happy-go-lucky father, gone again after such a brief and painful glimpse, and the gentle horse who had done nothing to deserve her fate.
The only sounds in the yard were of Mako moaning in pain.
He had collapsed to his knees on the grass. “Where?” he spat out. “Where is a cursed physician when you need one?”
“A physician could not help you,” said Coltic, approaching him. “Where did you put the Spell-Book and the other books of notes?”
“In my saddlebags,” Mako groaned.
“There should be instruction on treating a fireball burn. Soldier! Bring up the chancellor’s horse.”
Coltic searched the saddlebags, found the three books and pulled them out.
“How long will this take? I am scorched!”
“Like the two soldiers we lost yesterday,” Coltic said grimly. “We are lucky you are alive, Chancellor. Princess! Can you look through these books with me? I do not recall the instructions, but they should be in here.”
Scylla realized she was still holding tight to the dead horse’s lead line. She dropped it to the ground and did not look back, crossing the yard to where Coltic stood. “Is it in the Book of Magic?”
Coltic suppressed a shudder. “Not likely. We will none of us study the Book of Magic. We would run the risk of… no, Princess. Look through this one.” He handed her a book of notes.
“Did someone call for me?” a rasping voice spoke up, drawing everyone’s attention.
The bent old crone who had appeared earlier in the evening shuffled into sight. She came around the end of the hunting lodge leading a placid but pretty white horse by an old frayed rope over her arm. In her hand was a cracked bowl. A few paces back, an old merle sheepdog followed.
“Mother Tercue! I am glad to see you again… did you not go back with the others?” Coltic asked.
“What others?”
“The kings.”
She stared at him with disdain. “The kings are a-rot in their various graves… Does this man look for relief? Or does he prefer to go on suffering?”
Coltic said, “He begs for relief. I will beg for him if he cannot.” Or will not, Scylla thought, seeing Mako’s skeptical glower at the hag with her knobby stick and heavy clothing.
“Mud and honey mixed with straw,” Tercue said tersely, as if she had better things to do. “It is not just any kind of mud. I have it here. Pack it on the wound and leave it.” She held out the bowl to Coltic.
“I thank you, Mother Tercue.” Coltic hesitated for a moment, then took a handful of the sticky mud and slapped it on Mako’s shoulder wound before the chancellor had a chance to recoil.
Mako yelped and flinched. Then his agonized expression changed to wonder.
“Better already, is he not?” The crone offered a grim smile. “I am searching for my bees… have you by chance seen a swarm, sorcerer?”
“I have not.” Coltic studied her. Scylla noted that unlike the kings, her form was solid. No transparent wisps smudged her outline, and the mud clinging to her calloused feet looked real. The dog, the white horse, and Tercue all cast shadows in the torchlight.
“My hives have rotted into the earth. I shall put new ones near the garden.” She pointed across the clearing with the stick in her wrinkled claw. “I shall take up residence here—I cannot find my previous home.”
“Oh?” Coltic squinted for a moment. “I believe it burned down in the Time of Trouble, did it not?”
She cackled with a sudden, unexplained amusement. “Hee hee! That is so… but I had another one built, did I not? I see someone has built a very large edifice here in its place.” Wheezing, she gestured at the grand stone and timber lodge with King Tobin’s single turret.
“King Tobin built it over the years,” Coltic said. “He died here as well, two weeks ago. It is large, yes… now ruined by vandals and perhaps even accursed by all these deaths! We plan to repair the damage, but are on the verge of a war. It may have to wait. This is Scylla, Queen of Rellant.”
Tercue’s head turned, and her jaded eyes studied Scylla from head to foot. “Ah, kings… queens… they come and go! Queen Scylla, you say! Scion of the House of Rellant… The long black hair is pretty, hanging like a raven’s wing. But she herself is wasting away. What is wrong with the castle kitchen these days?”
“I will tell the cook to send up more food.” Coltic shot Scylla an impish grin.
The piercing blue eyes remained fixed on Scylla a moment longer. Then she said with a start, “Ah—forgive me, I am a little forgetful. This horse is a gift to replace the one that died. Do not leave it behind!” She held out the frayed rope to Coltic, who took it with a startled expression.
“A gift… for the queen? Who from?”
She waved off the question impatiently. “I cannot say! But do not leave it behind,” she repeated, turning to hobble toward the doorway with the help of her stick. “I am too old to look after a horse.”
“Mother Tercue, you will find some stores in the cellar below the kitchen—cheese and sausage and the like. Also wine. The building itself is in a sorry state. In future we will be back to make repairs.”
“Go and fight your battles, sorcerer.” The crone’s voice held no interest. “I will find some corner to suit myself. Come, dog!” She crossed the yard and entered the dark building, shooing the old dog inside and closing the door firmly.
The moon was high, not yet full. Its light was strong enough to throw shadows. The sky was clear, with the last of the heavy clouds scudding southward. A swathe of stars showed in pinpricks against the deep dark sky overhead.
“Even the wind has died down,” marveled Jay, who was driving the pony homeward with Scylla next to him in the little wicker carriage. The Queen’s Guard rode as escort.
“I am glad, as my hair is already in knots. I shall never get them out,” she said. She had stopped trying to detangle the raven’s wing and had produced an untidy plait before pinning the hat to her head for the journey back to the ca
stle. She turned her head yet again to look at the white horse trotting beside Coltic’s horse in the moonlight.
With its large dark eyes, silvery muzzle and long mane and tail, it looked nothing like Browny. Yet every time Scylla looked at it, she felt the brown and white mare was not far away. The new one looked back at her with the same sweet expression that had drawn her to Browny, and it nickered throatily at her in the same way.
“Look,” she said, not for the first time. “Does the horse not seem to glow in the moonlight? How pretty it is!”
“Yes, Princess,” responded a chorus of voices—Jay, Coltic, and Mako. No one yet had broached the subject of who had given the horse to Tercue for Queen Scylla. And no one had found words to discuss the kings, particularly not the unexpected and distressing vision of their late king and companion with his dreadful wounds.
Mako was riding on the other side of the carriage. Now and then he would gingerly finger the mudpack on his shoulder, but otherwise the burn did not seem to bother him.
Renold and his soldiers had stayed behind to spend the night in the grooms’ quarters over the horse stable. In the morning, they would bury the remains of Browny and the physician and then ride out to inspect the passage described by the forest folk.
The books that Greyel had stolen were being transported back to the castle in Coltic’s saddlebags.
“I no longer have any interest in these books,” Scylla had said coldly when Mako asked her to carry them back. “In fact, they are repulsive.”
“I am in agreement,” he said. “Can you carry them, Captain?”
Coltic nodded. He was wrapping the Book of Magic with a long section of vine he had gone into the forest to find. “We must destroy them once and for all. And this book in particular. Woliff shows far too much interest in the books. I suspect this one is the reason he traveled here in person. Why else?”
“Why else?” echoed Mako. “We have seen the results of the riddles within.”
“Few people have the exceptional mind that Greyel had. Ambitious and bright, he must have found kindred spirits in Queen Maris and the priests. I’m sure he chafed at the restrictions in our small kingdom. If he had not feared the sea, he would have left long ago.”
“The sea and the delta have been our guard. But Woliff will be back. We cannot allow the Book of Magic to fall into his hands,” Mako had said grimly. “Why are you winding a vine around it?”
“To contain it, until I find answers on how to destroy it,” Coltic answered. He said no more, but when he was done, he pushed the vine-covered bundle into his saddlebag with the others.
Mako watched him, then returned to his previous subject.
“With the passage open, Woliff and his soldiers could ride into our realm within days. We are at a pivotal moment. The War Council must meet in the morning—we have no time to waste.”
For much of the long moonlit ride back to the castle, Mako was silent, lost in his thoughts. But as the company slowed to a walk through a dark, silent village, he spoke up. “Captain! Explain the crone Tercue to me.”
Coltic shrugged and shook his head. “I do not have an explanation, Chancellor. Tercue was much admired in her time… she was a great beauty, a healer, and a sage. In her old age she kept bees, and a healer’s garden. Is she now caught with one foot in our world and one foot beyond the veil? I am not sure. Perhaps she was already trapped there, until the mage called her back.”
“She appears as lively as you or I. How can this be?”
“Does it matter? She throws a shadow, does she not? Your burn is healed, and the lodge has a guardian as good as any. We may return to find the garden tended by Mother Tercue and her bees, with a few sheep to mow the yard, and perhaps even the foulness cleared from the building.”
“Or not,” Mako muttered.
“Perhaps my father has provided his own caretaker, which we failed to do. If so, I approve his choice,” said Scylla, ignoring the chancellor. She hesitated for a moment. “Do you also think he has provided me with this white horse?”
Almost everyone’s eyes rolled toward the white mare beside Coltic’s mount. No one dared to speculate. They walked on and left the sleeping village behind.
Finally, Coltic said, “It is possible. Things are different behind the veil.”
Mako rubbed his face, shaking his head with something close to despair. “Someone will have to ride that horse to find whether it is suitable for you, Princess. Who will do that?”
“Who wouldn’t?” Scylla enquired with annoyance. Mako did not answer.
“I believe the chancellor thinks this could be a ghost horse or some such strange being,” Coltic said after a moment. “Do not worry, Princess. I will take care of it.”
“Ah, I see,” said Scylla. She tilted her head, considering the concept of a ghost horse for a baffled moment. She decided not to pursue the thought and changed the subject to something less disturbing to Mako. “I hope the kitchen has remembered to feed the feral children this evening… How much further to the castle, Chancellor?”
“Plenty far enough,” Mako answered, gingerly touching his shoulder. “Trot that pony on, Jay, if he has any fire left in him! And thank the Goddess for the moonlight… there is no time to waste! We must call a meeting of the district lords and make ready for battle!”
Untitled
Dedicated to Elizabeth
Thank you to my family and friends
for their encouragement and support.
The Queen and the Mage is Book 2
in a Sword & Sorcery fantasy series
spiced with fun, adventure and magic.
The Springs of the Goddess series:
A Princess of Sorts – Book 1
The Queen and the Mage – Book 2
– watch for Book 3 in summer of 2020!
For updates and new releases,
contact: [email protected]
About the Author
Wilma van Wyngaarden
is an artist and writer living on
the edge of an untamed woodland…
where she often wanders,
accompanied by dogs and horses.
The wild, whispering forest inspired
her debut fantasy series,
The Springs of the Goddess.
The Queen and the Mage Page 32