A Dragonbird in the Fern

by Rueckert, Laura

  Raffar called to Matid, who signaled for three guards to accompany him. Moments later, they returned with Aldar’s corpse. They lay it at the queen’s feet. Blood covered his throat and soaked his tunic. Freyad’s javelin had been removed from his neck.

  Jonas gestured to Aldar’s corpse as he spoke with his mother. He nodded.

  “Raffar,” I said, “Scilla’s plan had been to offer Anzgar’s lands in the south in exchange for the Stekk Ilens islands. Is it all right with you?”

  He sighed. “We’d have to work out the details. But you can suggest we begin discussions.”

  I turned to the Stärklandish delegates. “Please tell your mother that we do not want war. We would be honored to begin the same discussions you once had with my sister. Officially now.”

  The corner of Jonas’s mouth twitched, and he spoke with the queen. They discussed back and forth. Jonas’s expression grew agitated. And all the while, that mighty army behind them looked ever readier to crush the Farnskagers. Except, we Farnskagers weren’t alone.

  I cleared my throat. “Jonas, both Loftaria and Azzaria are our allies. They have been informed that we may be requesting military support. I’m sure your mother would prefer to avoid war with all three countries along your entire eastern border.”

  A kind of hopelessness washed over Jonas’s eyes when he heard that, but he translated for his mother. After a few seconds of conversation, he said, “Like King Raffar, our queen also wishes to avoid bloodshed. Since you punished the man who orchestrated the execution of our diplomatic party, she agrees to the suggestion of further talks.”

  For a few seconds, Raffar and the queen met each other’s gazes. Raffar let his sink first, and she nodded, accepting his admission of grave error. Then she turned her back on him, like she had absolutely nothing to fear. Jonas nodded at me and followed her. She gave orders to a few of the guards at her end of the bridge. As one, the hundreds of Stärklandish soldiers turned their backs on us, too, and began to march away.

  Chapter 34

  In the three months since I’d returned Jonas to his mother, Raffar’s diplomatic talks had taken him back and forth between Baaldarstad and the border to Stärkland several times. As of last week, an agreement was signed by both sides. Aldar’s father had passed away the day we’d left Gluwfyall, and the remaining family members had readily agreed to give up their property—their attempt to wash the family name clean of betrayal. The three Stekk Ilens islands belonged to Farnskag, and Stärklandish pilgrims could visit them any time.

  The threat of war had blown away, like storm clouds over the sea when the wind changed direction. Never had the northern continent lived in such safety.

  Now, after weeks of aligning with Raffar and the other leaders, I put the finishing touches on the agenda for the first ever summit involving the leaders of Azzaria, Farnskag, Stärkland, and Loftaria. I handed it to an aide, who would make copies of it and ensure it was delivered to each country. It was amazing how much I could get done when I wasn’t worrying about Scilla showing up and hurting someone, and especially without Aldar scheming to hold me back. And it was gratifying how even the most skeptical of Farnskag’s citizens had begun to trust me since they’d heard about the events at the Stundvar River.

  For a second, I was transported back to a time when I’d been certain I’d never come this far, to when the idea of learning Farnskag was unbelievable, to when my subjects likely considered me not very bright. I smiled, because Raffar might be advised by the Grand Council officially, but he now referred to me privately as his First Council.

  “I was just given a message for you too,” the aide said, as she passed me an envelope.

  I steeled my back at the thought of reading, or asking the aide to read it to me. But when I opened it, my discomfort was replaced by an excited smile. Only three words were written.

  “Thank you! I have to go!” I whirled around, my heart pounding as I hurried to Greggr’s office, the translator’s brief message clutched in my hand.

  I have it.

  While recovering from my injury, I’d continued studying the book on Watchers, alone in small palatable chunks, but also with Greggr. I was determined to find an explanation for my miraculous fourth survival. Eventually, I’d discovered something intriguing: a reference to a much older book—about how people change if they’ve been chosen by three Watchers.

  I’d come to trust Greggr during my recovery, and I’d asked him to find the book. He left Baaldarstad five weeks ago, but now he was back. And he’d found it.

  I reached Greggr’s office slightly out of breath. Before I could raise my hand to knock, Raffar rounded the corner. As much as I wanted to talk to Greggr, Raffar had been working on something momentous for Farnskag too. “Is it done?” I asked.

  He let out a contented, and exhausted sigh. “The new law of succession is signed.”

  I slid my arm into his. “Congratulations.” Once he’d understood the extent of the opposition, he’d worked hard at convincing everyone that it was the right path for Farnskag, but he’d still been worried about whether the Grand Council would approve.

  “This wasn’t the way I’d imagined it, but now that Aldar and his father are gone, the council didn’t have much choice.”

  Raffar’s adopted brothers and sisters were in line for the throne. And if Raffar and I adopted someday, as was custom in Farnskag, our adopted children would be too.

  My husband took hold of my hand and squeezed it. “We’ll talk about that later. You received a note from Greggr?”

  While I nodded, I rapped on the door with my other hand. The door whooshed open, as if Greggr had been hovering on the other side, just waiting for us to show up. His bright eyes said he was as eager to get to the bottom of the mystery as Raffar and I were.

  He gestured for us to enter. In front of me, on a small table, lay an ancient tome, the dark-brown leather worn, the binding cracked. Greggr vibrated with excitement and greeted us with the words, “You’ll never guess where I found it.”

  I tore my gaze from the book that could finally explain everything. “Where?”

  “Loftaria.” He threw his hands up. “In a private collection. It was apparently stolen from Gluwfyall during the war. The owners didn’t even speak much Farnskag and had no idea what they possessed. Luckily, they were willing to part with it for a relatively low price.”

  If it was stolen during the war, it had happened two generations ago. For a moment, I was speechless at the thought of all the trouble and cost Greggr had gone through to find it. “Thank you. That means a lot to me.”

  The skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled. Then with hands clasped together, the old man leaned forward and said with barely restrained excitement, “I read it on the way back.”

  I lowered myself into a chair and ran my hand over the faded, embossed lettering of the title. My throat went dry. What had Greggr found out?

  Raffar moved to stand behind me, and his hands rested warm and gentle on my shoulders. “And?” he asked when my voice failed me.

  “A Watcher gives a person one additional chance at life,” Greggr said.

  I nodded. We knew that. I’d had three. The poison, administered by Aldar while we were in Loftaria. Scilla’s ghostly rage at the pond. Aldar’s club crushing my skull. But I should have died a fourth time, when Aldar’s blade hit my heart.

  Gingerly, Greggr opened the book to a section marked with a feather then trailed a finger down the paragraphs until he reached the passage he sought. He opened his mouth . . . and gibberish came out.

  My hand rose to my head, and it felt like all of my old fears about the language emerged to crash over me at once. Raffar’s hands clenched my shoulders, and I turned to see his equally confused expression.

  “Don’t worry,” Greggr said. “This book is over four centuries old. It’s written in a nearly lost dialect. Probably only a handful of us can decipher it anymore.”

  I gestured to the page with my chin, urging him to explain. />
  He focused on the script beneath his finger. “Translated, it means, ‘Being chosen by three Watchers is a rare occurrence indeed. Dying by injury and being brought back three times is even rarer, and it creates an unusual closeness to the Watchers.’ Only two cases have been documented.” He looked up, his gaze moving to Raffar. “You have heard of Grennd Orderndaag?”

  “When I was younger and studied Farnskag history. She was a kahngaad—”

  “Not exactly. We don’t have a position like hers in government anymore. She lived out west nearly five hundred years ago, not far from the Stekk Ilens islands, and was responsible for ensuring that the Watchers’ ideals of caring for the world around us were put into place in her region. She convinced the Farnskag king to sign a treaty with the people living in what is now northern Stärkland. She ended nearly a century of fighting. Later, she set up a transfer of grain when there was a drought.”

  My neck and head were hot with the pressure of comparing me to this selfless miracle worker. “But I didn’t do anything like that.”

  “Grennd died four times in battle before the treaty was signed, protecting people, especially innocents.”

  I bit my lip. Dying four times and being brought back fit. But the rest sounded so much more dramatic than what I’d done.

  “And the other person?” Raffar asked, oblivious to my anxiety.

  “Their given name was Finnar. No family name on record.”

  I looked to Raffar, who shook his head to say he didn’t know any details about this person.

  Greggr’s shoulders rose. “No one knows much about them. I assume they lived even earlier. Six, seven hundred years ago? All it says here is that they were a good person who dedicated their life to protecting animals and children, and that they also died and came back four times.”

  “I see the similarity, but I don’t see how that really explains why I came back the fourth time.”

  Greggr clasped his hands together. “Then let me tell you the other thing these two people had in common. He flipped to another page of the book. “It says here that anyone who wore an amulet presented by either one of these people were protected in case of an accident.”

  Raffar leaned forward. “Protected?”

  “Brought back to life. It is rumored that the amulets contained a lock of Grennd’s or Finnar’s hair.”

  “But . . . that would mean they were Watchers,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “Human Watchers.”

  “I didn’t know there was such a thing,” Raffar breathed.

  Greggr closed the book. “No one I’ve talked to had ever heard of it either.” He patted the faded leather cover. “But it is all in here. Being chosen by all three Watchers fundamentally changes a person deep inside, brings a nearness to death, to the realm where the Watchers exist. A person chosen by all three Watchers, and brought back by all three Watchers, becomes a Watcher themselves.”

  My head spun at the thought. I was supposed to be able to save people? How could that be when I felt exactly the same?

  I smoothed a strand of hair from my face. The mere idea was preposterous . . . but if there was even the slightest possibility it might be true, I’d have to try. A disbelieving breath escaped my lips as I remembered being afraid I’d have to cut my hair when I first came to Farnskag. I’d shave it all off to give everyone I cared about lockets if there was a chance to protect them. Raffar. Freyad and Linnd. Greggr. Matid.

  My family. Pia and her family.

  The children who played Capture the Queen on the training field with me.

  The more I considered it, the more people I wanted to protect.

  But then I had a terrible thought. “These human Watchers. They weren’t immortal, were they?”

  “No. According to the histories, Grennd died an old woman surrounded by children and grandchildren. And Finnar seems to have died of lung fever.”

  So, not immortal. I exhaled in relief. The thought of continuing on forever while my loved ones left our world made my stomach cramp. But all that didn’t matter if it wasn’t even true. If I were a Watcher, wouldn’t I feel different? I pushed back my chair, stood and paced to the door and back. “What you said doesn’t fit for me. I haven’t changed deep inside. I’m still the same Jiara.”

  Raffar caught me mid-pace and put his arms around me. “But you have changed. What you told me about talking to your sister. You were close to death, just like Greggr said.”

  “There’s no way I can do all of these things Grennd did!” I cried. It was like a fairy tale. Too unbelievable. And too much pressure.

  “You don’t have worry about that,” Raffar said. “You don’t have to be anything but who you already are.”

  “But Grennd was this amazing woman who ‘ensured the Watchers’ ideals were put into place.’ I’m just . . .” Just a girl who still employed a translator because she couldn’t read and write well, who would probably still be wandering the halls of her mother’s palace if Raffar hadn’t offered to marry her.

  Raffar leaned back and tilted his head to the side. “Mmm . . .” The sound tickled the pit of my stomach, like it always did when he used the Farnskager non-word. Then his arms crushed me in a hug. “Don’t you see? This always thinking you should be doing more . . . it’s exactly why you were chosen in the first place. There is no ‘just’ when it comes to describing you, Jiara.”

  I nuzzled against Raffar’s leather tunic and shook my head at his confidence in me.

  Me? A Watcher? It was unbelievable.

  Greggr cleared his throat. “When it comes to the Watchers, there are few things we can truly know. But in this case, there is something you could do to test it.”

  All at once, I felt the pressure of the knife strapped to my leg. Greggr was right. I could test his theory, right here and now. I pushed Raffar an arm’s length away, withdrew my knife, and sliced off a chunk of my hair. Greggr understood my intention immediately, jumped up, rushed out of the room, and came back with a leather string. I wound it around the hair and stood before Raffar, my heart thundering in my chest. I couldn’t believe I was trying this. After all this time in Farnskag, it felt blasphemous.

  But it was the only way to be certain.

  “Raffar, will you accept . . . this?”

  He blinked at me, once, twice. “Of course,” he said, his voice hushed.

  I reached up to put it around his neck. Then I held my breath as he did the final check, taking hold of the string and pulling it back over his head.

  He dropped his arms to his sides.

  The leather string remained around his neck.

  Raffar fingered the lump of hair, his jaw dropping slightly.

  It couldn’t be.

  “Try it again,” I said, although I’d seen it with my own eyes.

  Raffar grinned, pulled it over his head, and gestured to it still around his neck. Then he pulled me close for another crushing hug.

  “It seems we have our answer, Skriin Jiara,” Greggr said with a soft smile. “You are a Watcher.”

  I shook my head, over and over. It was impossible. “But I’m just a person.”

  “Ah. I think you have to look at it this way. Watcher of Stone doesn’t stop being a stone. Watcher of Sky is still the sky, and Watcher of Water remains water.”

  I started to shrug, but he went on, “Grennd and Finnar and you may have become Watchers, but that doesn’t mean you stop being human. You are a person who was given extra chances by the Watchers—and you managed something great for our country. What happens now? You will keep living and working and sometimes succeeding, and sometimes failing. Being a Watcher doesn’t make you infallible. Grennd was not successful in all her endeavors; that’s well documented. And if none of us have ever heard of Finnar, perhaps they did absolutely nothing of importance?” He shrugged, then shuffled around the table to close the ancient book. “At least not on a grand scale making them worthy of note in the histories. They might very well have made a difference in many individual lives. A
nd that is also a worthwhile thing, is it not?”

  “Of course.” I wasn’t sure if I could accept Greggr’s explanation. But either way, it still didn’t answer my original question and the reason I’d sent him to find the book in the first place. It didn’t explain why Grennd or Finnar or I would be saved a fourth time.

  Unless . . .

  A Watcher gave a person one additional chance at life.

  For me, that had happened multiple times. First—Sky, second—Stone, third—Water.

  I took a deep breath and dared to let myself believe that the only explanation we had was actually the correct one.

  Fourth—Me.

  I was the final Watcher.

  My hand rose to my chest because it went against everything I’d ever believed about myself. I was the girl given up on by one tutor after the next. I was the girl who’d rather have gone swimming than study politics and history and languages, who’d been whispered about in the palace halls as the one who wouldn’t amount to anything. I was the princess who would have been jilted by lesser nobility if fate hadn’t intervened.

  But at the same time, something bright and new, deep in my heart, told me it must be true.

  I was the final Watcher.

  And when Aldar threw the knife at my heart, I’d saved myself.

  Epilogue

  My old turquoise zintella dress stretched across my back as I bowed before Scilla’s memorial stone. It had been two years since I’d worn the traditional Azzarian dress. It was tighter across the shoulders than I remembered.

  The ocean still sparkled in the distance, but the air in Glizerra was warmer and more humid than my skin chose to recall. The stacks of shells we’d placed so carefully on Scilla’s memorial stone had long since fallen to the grass below. I couldn’t make out Llandro’s pearl in the grass. The dragonbird feather and the flowers must have blown away. Only the cup with dirt from Scilla’s place of death still rested at the base of the stone. A hardy tuft of grass grew up from it.

  A breeze swept up the hill from the sea and whipped at my expertly twisted hair, as if Gio had grown used to me wearing it down and wouldn’t tolerate the complicated married woman’s hairstyle. After all this time, my heart agreed with Gio. I breathed in the wonderful, salty sea air in thanks.