The door handle rattled, and then the knocking continued. Elayne sat up, noting the deep blue of the sky out her window suggesting the sun would peek out from over the horizon soon, too early for anyone but servants to be up, and they wouldn’t be daft enough to knock now.
“I know you’re awake in there. Let me in!” a voice hissed from the hall.
“Ro?” Elayne hopped out of bed, and Rosalind practically fell inside when she opened the door, whipping it closed behind her in a hurry.
“I have something to show you.” Rosalind had never been a morning person, but her voice was full of all the enthusiasm she normally reserved for horseback riding and training with sticks against tree trunks. In the dim predawn light, Rosalind was almost frightening, her hulking figure swathed in a great cloak with a hood that fell over her eyes.
“You turned your bedsheets into a robe?” Elayne took a step back to grab the seeing stone on her bedside table. With a gentle but deliberate tap, it brightened, and she held it aloft to light the room.
“Sort of!” She flung the cloak open. “Look!”
Of all the lessons they sat through, embroidery, harpsichord, flower arranging, the only one Rosalind seemed to be able to stand was basic sewing. She was quite adept at it too which was as unfortunate as it was ironic as there was little demand for a lady to pose as a seamstress.
But then there was Rosalind, standing in Elayne’s chamber and wearing pants. Dresses had never suited her, but up until then they were all Elayne had ever seen her in. And now she stood before her in well-fitting, dark leather trousers tucked into high riding boots, a belted tunic of creamy linen tied across the chest completing the look. Hands on her hips, she rocked forward on her toes and back, utterly pleased with herself. She’d even detailed the sleeves, or at least one of them, with what looked like a rose, thorny stem and all.
“You made these?”
Rosalind nodded, giddy. “Well, not the boots, got them from that dwarven merchant who came by last spring, but everything else is all me!” She spun around, sweeping the cape away from her shoulders, then stepped up to Elayne and pressed a package into her hands. “I’ve been working on them forever. The top was easy, but this is the third version of the pants.”
“Wow.” Elayne tucked the package under her arm and bent over, holding the stone out to see the stitching up her leg. The trousers moved with her in exactly the way a dress never did. “I’m really impressed.”
“And that’s not all.” Rosalind threw back her hood, and Elayne gasped. Where the woman once had a long, knotted braid, her hair had been chopped into messy spikes, barely long enough to cover her ears and the back of her neck. “What do you think?”
Elayne could only stare back, mouth agape. Clothes you could change, but there was no coming back from that.
Rosalind yanked at the leftover pieces, her fingers barely disappearing into it. “I didn’t exactly mean to go this short, but I kept having to even out the sides.”
“What’s happening?” Elayne stood a little straighter, squinting at the shadowy corners of the room. “Am I dreaming? Did I eat some bad stew last night?”
Rosalind laughed, crossing the room to a disused mirror in the corner and pulling the old linen off of one side. “Well, I think I did a pretty good job.”
“But, Ro, why?” Elayne sat back on her bed, watching her friend admire herself. Nothing about Rosalind’s new choices would garner her compliments. They would, in fact, do the opposite, and people were already cruel enough.
Rosalind cleared her throat, her eyes flicking to Elayne’s reflection in the mirror and then back. “For the quest, of course.”
Elayne blinked at her. She couldn’t have heard right. “For the what?”
“I mean,”—Rosalind peeked back at her—“I can’t very well fight off bandits in a dress.”
Elayne screwed up her face. “Are you going somewhere?”
“Yes. And you are too.” Rosalind tilted her head. “I didn’t have time to make you much, but I managed to throw that together overnight.”
Elayne looked down into her own lap, forgetting about the package until Rosalind gestured to it. Carefully, she unfolded the fabric, the same heavy, dark brown of Rosalind’s cloak. Inside, there was another garment in a blue-grey linen, lightweight but with heavy hand-stitching. She held up the dress from its capped sleeves, expecting it to unravel all the way to the floor, but to her surprise it was nowhere near the length it should have been. “What is this?”
“I told you, pants are hard, but you can run and jump in that too.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, and look.” Rosalind went up to her and finished unfolding the cloak, revealing a set of boots and a thick strap of leather with laces, “This will protect your middle since that’s the squishiest bit.”
Elayne, put a hand on her stomach. “Why do I need to protect any bits?”
“Okay.” The woman took a deep breath. “Don’t be mad.”
Elayne narrowed her eyes.
“I’ll take that silence as your solemn vow. So, after you stormed out of the dining hall, and I finished my chicken, and also your chicken, I went looking for Frederick—”
“You what?”
“—he was sitting out in the courtyard kinda sad looking. We talked, and, well, I accepted his offer to break the curse on your behalf.”
“You can’t do that!” Elayne jumped to her feet, her heart pounding.
“Oh. Well, I mean, I did.” Rosalind shrugged. “I asked him if he was serious about it all, I made him swear to Oh’oa, and he said yes!”
“Ro!” She threw her head back, moaning. “Are you crazy?”
“Come on, it’ll be exciting! Maybe we’ll even see a dragon!”
“A dragon?” Elayne lolled her head forward. “No one’s seen a dragon in like a hundred years, if they were ever even real. They’re fairy tales.”
“Fairies don’t have tails,” Rosalind sighed like she should have known. “And I think they prefer the term fae. Anyway, maybe a goblin then! Or a troll! Who cares? Don’t you want to break the curse?”
The curse. Elayne fell back onto the bed and covered up her face with the dress. “It can’t be done, Ro.”
“But what if it can?” Rosalind displaced the bed beside her. “And if a knight has to complete one great quest to become a senior knight, surely a lady completing a great quest would make her eligible for knighthood! This is my chance too!”
Elayne ripped away the linen from her face and glared up at her friend. She was ready to yell, but her anger was quickly quelled by Rosalind’s look. There she sat, in expertly crafted garments that otherwise would go disused and hidden at the bottom of a trunk, her lip quivering, her eyes wide and baleful. Rosalind had never once been unkind to Elayne in the three years they had known one another. Perhaps she didn’t have it in her, perhaps she was just too simple to be mean, or perhaps her heart was even bigger than every other part of her. Elayne gripped the dress in her hand a bit more tightly and sat up.
“El.” Her friend’s voice dropped lower, its vigor suddenly gone. “You’re miserable and you’re just getting miserable-er, and I just can’t stand it anymore. I want you to be happy, and I just think if we have a chance to break this thing, then we should.”
Elayne glanced across the room at her own reflection in the uncovered mirror. The skin, the hair, the teeth, all looked back at her, and for a moment she imagined what it might be like if they weren’t hers. From around her neck, the pendant she always wore lay against her skin, blue and grey, and she touched it. The voice in her mind, for once, finally did not discourage her from acting, and in its silent way told her now was her only chance. “I’m going to have to apologize to Frederick, aren’t I?”
Rosalind inhaled sharply. “You mean you’ll do it? You’ll go?”
Magic is a strange and silly thing, anyone will tell you that, but perhaps stranger and sillier are the brain and heart. Against all logic, they will often act in tandem,
one convincing the other of the best course of action all based on a look. And the look Rosalind gave Elayne quickly made her brain forget the worst of the last ten years and remember the best of the ten years before that.
“I guess.”
Of course her friend hadn’t told her that they had to leave right now before she agreed: even Rosalind was smart enough to hold back that kind of information. So in the dimness of dawn, Elayne changed and they covered their heads and scurried down into the courtyard and then out into the field behind the castle, silently passing servants and squires who were too tired to stop them on the way to their early-morning duties.
The pathway to the tourney field had a fork that led to the grandest stables, the thatched roof haloed by the bright orange rising sun, the treetops behind it still in the quiet morning air. Elayne pulled her cloak around her more tightly against the chill, her heart beating a little faster now that they were in the wide open. Rosalind, however, took big, long strides beside her, difficult to keep up with without jogging, her arms pumping merrily at her sides. Elayne wanted to tell her to tone it down, but they reached the stables quickly at that pace, and the figure inside made her snap her mouth shut completely.
Frederick was waiting atop a bale of hay, fidgeting with a set of reins. Still looking for the trick, Elayne came to stop at the wide entryway, sidling up to its edge and peering around inside. She was surprised to see the knight was wearing a plain tunic tucked into even plainer pants, and his sword, though inlaid with a telltale emerald and intricate scrolling on the hilt, was sheathed in a simple leather scabbard. He looked less severe out of his uniform, especially in the pink lights of pre-morning with his hair falling forward into his face and a look that didn’t quite insist he always knew what he was doing. If there were a normal that Frederick could look like, it would have been this, Elayne thought, but there wasn’t, she reminded herself, and frowned.
“Hail, good sir!” Rosalind shouted. Somewhere in the shadows of the barn, a horse whinnied back.
Frederick looked Rosalind up and down, blinked, then raised an arm in the typical salute reserved for other bannermen. Elayne scoffed and knocked Rosalind’s hand down before she could return the salutation. “Don’t mock her.”
He looked at his own hand then dropped it, stepping down from the bale. “Is that what I’m doing?” He grabbed a satchel and pulled it over his shoulder with a grin. “I didn’t know.”
Elayne continued to frown at him.
“I am pleasantly surprised to see you changed your mind.” He was still grinning, the jerk.
“I haven’t.” Elayne crossed her arms. “But Ro has convinced me nonetheless.”
“Well, then, Ro,”—Frederick gave her a little bow—“Thank you.”
“Oh, I didn’t do it for you.” She winked at him as she gave her friend a nudge.
He smiled a bit bigger at Elayne with his very nice teeth and unkempt hair and cleanly shaven jaw, and she scowled back at him. Her stomach did a flip, and she wanted very much to be out of the moment, whatever the in the godless gorge it was. “Well, what are we waiting for?”
Elayne, at least, did enjoy riding. She and Rosalind would often take their horses, courtesy of the crown, out to the small wood at the edge of the castle’s grounds where few others went and Rosalind would swing a sword-shaped stick at the trees while Elayne read in the shade. Now, they passed through that same wood on horseback in the dim light of early morning, Rosalind buzzing about how she would protect them all if need be as they headed for the castle’s high border wall.
The thick grove of trees there held older memories as well, though Elayne typically pushed them out of her mind as soon as they tried to enter. She was younger in those memories, hiding behind the trees not for fear but fun, and laughing with her friends during the frequent visits her parents made from Heulux to Yavarid. They came to the exceptionally large oak at the grove’s center, and Elayne glanced up at its sprawling branches and then down to the very spot she’d landed and broken her arm years ago. Her eyes flicked over to Frederick in spite of herself.
He was staring up at the tree as they passed too. He was much different now, taller, broader in the chest, with a linear face and strong arms. She looked different as well, of course, but not only because of time. His eyes pulled away from the tree and to her, and she quickly evaded his gaze, giving her horse a little nudge to pass through the grove that much faster.
When they came upon the largely disused side gate at the castle wall, they found a single guard, slumped over, snoring. Yavarid was indeed safe.
“Soldier!” Rosalind barked down from atop her steed, and the man jumped to attention. He scuttled, grabbing for his sword and nearly unsheathing it until he recognized the three, a familiar look of disgust as his eyes passed over Elayne. “What if we were bandits?”
“My apologies,” the guard sputtered, bowing his head. The opening in the wall only allowed for a single rider to pass at once, and a barred gate covered the opening. The soldier was, for all intents and purposes, a glorified doorman for an entryway that was likely not to be used but once or twice a moon, and he was on the inside of it, but Rosalind stood behind her words and glared at him.
But just as he began to operate the pulley to lift the gate, he gave them a thoughtful look. “What business do you have outside the castle this dark morning?”
Before either Elayne or Frederick could answer more subtly, Rosalind leaned forward with a massive grin. “We are off to break the curse of Heulux!”
CHAPTER 6
Never let them tell you that you aren’t doing magic when you’re baking for feeding the hungry may well be the only magic there is which is incorruptible.
- from The Aetherless Art of Breadmaking, Aberdeen Luc, pub. 1408 PA
Yavarid City, the innovatively-named capital of the country of Yavarid, sprawled out from the castle at its center, densely populated and bustling. When Elayne would visit with her parents years ago, they headed in from the west, and even from inside the carriage, she always knew they were close by the sounds of merchants hocking their goods and the smells of spiced drinks and roasted meats.
In just under a week the caravan could make it across the moors from Heulux to Yavarid. There were stories about how before the Aegnap it would have nigh been impossible to cross the great sea that separated the two, but no one had seen magic like that—the kind that supposedly moved whole continents—in centuries, if ever. Despite the disbelief in it, the Aegnap was still referred to by name, of course, as a marker for time, the exact dates unknown, but the general suggestion being that before, things were savage and wild, and after, people were, well, like they are now which is to say, not. Elayne, like most everyone else, was glad to live in the after.
The dry and desolate moors separating the duchy of Heulux from Yavarid mocked the stories of a wide, wet expanse. They had been flat and exhaustingly uninteresting years ago too, but then villages had at least dotted the way, devoted to raising cattle in the taller grasses. Now they were barren, once golden fields turned to brown then to grey, something like death crawling over them with clouds blotting out the sun but refusing to rain. The luckiest villagers fled, the less lucky died, and the unluckiest, well, some said they were still there, but no one ever actually saw them.
The heavy gloom had begun at the border of Heulux, but the rangers reported it growing. Those who ventured into the moors said they could feel it in the pit of their stomachs, a wrongness, and nothing good came of their attempts to cross the border. Heulux was still impenetrable, it had been since that day, and the darkness, it seemed, was spreading. Elayne hadn’t seen the place since her last crossing ten years prior, covered in a heavy cloak and fleeing for her life, but even then she could feel exactly what they’d described.
Taking the road northward, Elayne found herself in a part of the city she’d never visited before, the buildings there tightly packed and most without signage. Dawn had risen, and the villagers were already filling carts pul
led by oxen or donkeys with goods—the only horses around were their own—and there was an inordinate number of children running about. In a different life, Elayne would be arriving for Quilliam’s nameday celebration, visiting the stalls these villagers were on their way to set up on the king’s road instead of secreting herself away from them. And in that other life her parents would still be alive.
Elayne pulled the hood of her cloak down a bit farther as they passed the villagers. Courtiers were cruel enough, and they saw her every day, but her face was new to these people. Nervously, she checked for the pendant around her neck and squeezed it, but the relief that usually came with such a maneuver was dashed when she saw Frederick veer off the narrow pathway’s center and dismount.
“What are you doing?” She kept her voice low, looking over to a group of villagers who were loading a cart with linens and eyeing them.
“Supplies,” he said simply, jostling his satchel and strolling toward the open door of one of the squatter buildings. “Ro, mind the horses, will you?”
“Aye!” Rosalind pulled up next to his mare and sat a little straighter.
“Really?” Elayne started chewing on a nail.
“Come with, if you want.” He motioned over his shoulder before disappearing below a sign crudely carved with the image of either a two-wide flute or a too-thin bread loaf.
Elayne groaned quietly, then after catching the eye of a man carrying a cleaver and wearing a suspiciously maroon-smudged smock, hopped down and hurried in behind him.
The bakery—as with that smell it could be nothing else—was lit with amber seeing stones set on high shelves. It was a little place so that the yeasty, fulsome aroma immediately penetrated one’s clothes and nostrils, and would have been warm even on the coldest winter morning. With only a long counter just inside the doorway and racks of baked goods behind, there was very little space within, but beyond the counter and through a doorway, the flickering of a hearth illuminated a kitchen and figures flitting about inside. Elayne drew her hood down and pressed her back against the wall. “Quickly, please.”
She's All Thaumaturgy Page 5