by Kate Elliott
“You must have seen us at the castle,” she said hastily, not wanting him to feel uncomfortable, not after he had so nobly saved their lives! “Perchance you are on a quest of your own, seeking the Cauldron of Eternity. Although in that case I don’t know why you would stop at Castle Ardenvale. Unless to join the Grand Procession. But I don’t remember seeing you in the forecourt. I’m sure I would have remembered seeing you there.”
Will stepped on her foot. He said, in the polite tone he used when speaking to people he was trying to get rid of, “We were out scouting and need to return to the Grand Procession. We’d best be on our way before the day comes to an end. People will be wondering where we are.”
Oko nodded with a wise smile. “Yes, Castle Ardenvale and the Grand Procession. That is exactly the answer. But allow my companion and me to accompany you, if you will be so kind. The creatures may run now but I sense they will lick their wounds and gnash up their courage soon enough. You are only two. We four together should have no trouble.”
He raised a hand to indicate the forest’s edge. Rowan tore her gaze away from his charming smile to look toward the trees. The big hunter had returned. How anyone that big could move in such silence she could not imagine. For all that he stood in perfect stillness he seemed ready to move at an instant’s notice, lips slightly parted and head cocked to one side as if he relied more on hearing and smell than on sight. No wonder Oko had called him “Dog.”
“I mean no offense, but can we trust your companion?”
“Dog, by no means harm these two.”
“Yes, Master,” said the hunter.
While Rowan knew perfectly well people could say anything and have it mean nothing, she sensed a power underlying the exchange that made her believe the big man would obey. “All right,” she said.
Will pretended to clear his throat in that ridiculous awkward way he had when he wanted to get her attention without other people realizing he was interrupting her. “We should get going, Rowan. We still have to clear the Wilds and trek down to Beckborough before—” He coughed, as if she didn’t remember perfectly well that they needed to arrive in the town before the Grand Procession did.
“I believe the trail is this way,” said Oko, gesturing toward the rocky landmark of Crown Crag. He set off.
Rowan hastened to fall into step beside him as he blithely walked into the trees along a game trail she hadn’t noticed in their rush out.
“I didn’t hear your companion return,” she said.
“He is quiet like that. An exceptional skill, don’t you think? I feel so much safer with him around.” The trees whispered around them like gossips at court, but he didn’t lower his voice or seem in any way intimidated by the impenetrable vegetation and eerie atmosphere. “When were you last at Locthwain, Rowan?”
“I’ve never been to Locthwain. Or to any of the other courts. Will and I aren’t allowed to go on quest or even travel outside Ardenvale until we turn eighteen.”
“How tedious to have to wait on rules others have made. I am sure they say the rules are for your own good or some other intangible benefit that by a reckless coincidence seems always to aid those who make the rules more than those who must obey them.”
The words stung. She was still mad at her mother for never allowing them the slightest step outside the rigid boundaries of propriety and expectation. When the promise of lightning hummed in her hands, she glanced around in alarm but saw nothing in the undergrowth, no sign of redcaps sneaking back to ambush them. It was her own anger and frustration trying to break free.
A branch snapped. She glanced back but it was only Will tromping along like a big clumsy beast. The hunter might have been a shadow gliding over the uneven ground for all the noise he made.
The trees gave out onto a verge of tall grass and flowering shrubs. They emerged onto the high prominence of the ridge, the sun so bright she had to blink. The heat abruptly reminded her of the burning pain of the wound on her arm. She examined her forearm, peeling back the torn cloth of her tunic to reveal a ragged red gash across the skin. The trickling flow of blood was already beginning to clot and dry.
“Injured?” Oko asked solicitously.
“It’s a shallow cut. But redcaps sometimes poison their blades.”
“Ah, yes, redcaps. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”
“The healers will look at it. I’m not worried.” Then she worried that she sounded boastful, but he merely nodded and turned to admire the magnificent view.
The lower slopes of the ridge were covered with trees whose leaves were gilded by the silvery aura of Ardenvale’s calming magic. The great vale rolled out to the horizon. Peaceful hamlets and villages lay scattered amid ponds and streams and orchards and tidy fields. Off to the right the wide expanse of Glass Tarn shone under the afternoon sun. Wind blew scallops of waves atop its glittering surface. The angle of light made it impossible to see the main road from here, but the procession would be getting close to Beckborough’s stout walls.
From up here she could see how a sprawl of new settlement had been built up outside the town’s battlements over the years of the High King’s reign. The tourney field, also outside the old walls, sat empty, which meant the procession hadn’t yet arrived to set up camp.
A well-marked switchback path headed down into the tranquil woods. She started down, Oko beside her.
“Tell me about Locthwain,” she said.
“What do you want to know about Locthwain? Don’t be shy. I sense there’s something you want to say but aren’t sure you should say. Let me assure you I’m a merry sort of fellow and take no offense.”
“It’s just that Locthwain—” She licked her lips and glanced back. Will was lagging behind, so even if he overheard he’d have to rudely shout to poke his nose in, and Will hated being rude. “Of course I’ve met Queen Ayara when Father calls a council meeting of the court rulers. But usually we don’t see many elves here in the Realm. It makes sense there would be more of you at Locthwain.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I mean to say, not just living in the Wilds. I’m not saying the elves are our enemy….” She trailed off as heat flooded her cheeks, wishing as she often did that she had her mother’s black complexion or even Hazel and Erec’s browner skin tone since her own produced such easily seen and embarrassing blotches when she flushed. “I’m making a hash of this, aren’t I? My apologies.”
“Not at all. I think we should all mean what we say and say what we think.”
“Do you really?”
He laughed charmingly. “That would put the cat among the pigeons, would it not? Who did you say your father is?”
She bit her lower lip.
“Am I not to ask? Have I trodden on forbidden ground?”
Again she glanced back at Will but this time to make sure he was still in sight, that he wasn’t being lured away her, that this wasn’t some kind of convoluted trap. He tramped along in plain sight a few steps ahead of the hunter. Noticing her glance, he gave an upward twitch of the chin, their signal for “watch yourself.”
Watch herself! What did he think she was about to do wrong now?
“I beg your pardon,” Oko went on. “Let us not discuss the mysterious father, if mention of him troubles you. The subject of my sire and dam is a book I rarely open, let me assure you. There’s nothing strange in preferring to speak of your own concerns and not drag the entrails of clan business out for all to see. Tell me more about the redcaps. Are there always so many around?”
“Oh, no, the recent attacks around here are unusual. How many bands of redcaps can possibly be roaming this close to Castle Ardenvale when we have so many knights and so much protective magic? And why are they back after they were driven away from the village two days ago? We met an archon, too.”
“Did you, now? An archon!”
“It was lurking at the edge of the trees, all ghostly like a cloud. Do you suppose it lured the redcaps to dispatch us? Do the denizens of the Wilds work i
n concert? Or was this encounter just a terrible coincidence brought about by the malign and lethal nature of the Wilds?”
“Fine questions!” Oko replied enthusiastically. “What answers do you propose, Rowan?”
5
Will frowned as he watched Rowan, her head bobbing with each step as she tramped down the path through the woods. Her mouth was running the way it did when she was trying to impress their friend Titus, who was a year older and the best swordsman of the last twenty years according to everyone in Castle Ardenvale. Will fell far enough behind that he caught only bits and pieces: redcaps, questing, Embereth, sword training, more redcaps, Embereth again, and its famous tournament grounds where Rowan planned to compete as soon as she was allowed.
Oko barely spoke at all, and then usually had only follow-up questions to get Rowan going again. Maybe their new companion was just exceedingly polite, but since carefully squeezing people for knowledge was Will’s preferred mode of operation, it made him suspicious to see someone else doing what looked like exactly that. Rowan was a perfect target.
Abruptly he realized he couldn’t hear the hunter. He glanced back and almost jumped out of his skin from fright because the big man was right there, three paces behind. His ability to move silently was uncanny. Weirdly, he seemed smaller now than he had in the Wilds.
With an effort Will settled his steps back into an even stride. “My name’s Will,” he said with a friendly smile. “My thanks for saving us. We owe you a debt.”
The man’s gaze shifted to Will’s face. A flicker of emotion narrowed his eyes, but he said nothing.
“Everything went by so fast up there I didn’t catch your name,” Will added.
The lines around the man’s mouth tightened. He shifted his double-handed grip on his axe. Will eyed the path ahead, wondering if he’d have to dodge out of the way of an axe swing.
The man said in a soft growl, “He calls me Dog.”
“I heard that,” said Will, matching the softness. “If you’d rather I call you something else, let me know.”
The man tilted his head to one side, as if listening, then shrugged.
“Have you come far?”
“Yes.”
Will wanted to ask more questions but wasn’t sure how to do it without seeming rude and nosy, or without attracting Oko’s attention. He contented himself with walking alongside the hunter. It was oddly calming to have someone so large and murderous on your side. After a while, as they strode along under the gently rustling leaves, he saw a deer grazing in the dim distance of the woods. As he often did when hunting or exploring with Rowan and their friends, he reached out to pat the man companionably on the forearm to alert him without speech.
The man flinched away before Will could touch him, hands tightening on his axe. “No.”
Startled, Will took in a breath to control himself. Oko had ordered the hunter not to harm them, but even so his heart seemed to be trying to squeeze up into his throat. He kept his pace steady and began to hum soothing tunes like “The Brave Hunter of Silver Mountain” and “The Blooming Rose.” After a bit, seeing that Will meant to keep his distance, the man settled into a more relaxed walk although Will remained on edge. Something about the situation made his mind itch with discomfort.
Ahead, Rowan was still talking. Now she was discussing Castle Locthwain as if she were an expert on it and its missing Cauldron of Eternity. She had always been obsessed with how their parents had both been sent on the High Quest by the Questing Beast after a two-generation-long interregnum when the five courts hadn’t had a High King or High Queen to rule over them. To Rowan, the goal and the glory mattered most. Will wanted to know the whys and whats of the world.
Was this fellow Oko truly from Locthwain? It could be. Queen Ayara was an elf, and she’d been ruling forever. Some elves had remained at Locthwain rather than withdraw with their brethren into the Wilds after the elven courts had lost their hold on the Realm.
The hunter puzzled him, too. His passive obedience bothered Will. It felt coerced. The man had also an indefinable air of strangeness that nagged at Will, that made him recall the ice mirror he’d felt impelled to create in the garden and the sights he’d seen as if through a window onto lands unknown.
Why did the hunter remind him of places he wasn’t sure existed except in his own mind?
The slope leveled as they walked through coppiced woodland where people from Beckborough collected firewood and logs for fences and building.
Will said, “We’re almost to town so it’s safe to put your axe away.”
“Towns aren’t safe,” muttered the hunter.
Will opened his mouth, closed it again, took in and released a breath, and finally spoke. “We aren’t going into town, just to the tourney field outside town. That’s where the procession will make camp for the night. I’ll be leaving you when we get there. I’m—” The High King’s son, he didn’t say. “I’m with the baggage train. If you need anything, you can find me there. I won’t forget what you did for my sister and me.”
“No,” said the hunter, and abruptly halted.
Ahead Oko stopped. “Dog? Is there a problem?”
“No towns.”
“Ah, of course. This is such a placid, peaceful, orderly land I had forgotten how the fleas of civilization scratch at you, my loyal hound. You wait in the woods, where you are comfortable. I’ll call for you should I need you.”
The hunter faded into the trees.
Oko gestured to Rowan to allow her to lead the way. Not that she wasn’t already leading the way, Will observed with a roll of the eyes as he fell into step behind the two of them.
“I do hope my companion will be safe,” Oko murmured in his silken voice. “Those redcaps make me fear Ardenvale is not so peaceful and orderly as I have been told it is.”
“The Realm is far more peaceful and orderly now that Father…I mean now that the High King rules. I’m not old enough to remember the olden days when there was a lot more trouble.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Unsavory magic let loose unchecked. Ogres and dragons rampaging and destroying as they pleased because no two towns could agree on a joint effort to fend them off. Witches roaming wherever they wished and cursing people with evil gifts and terrible afflictions. Old people in the villages sometimes claim that long ago there used to be a midwinter hunt that always ended with a blood sacrifice because blood spilled at the midwinter solstice in the Wilds is said to fend off death itself. Do you know anything about that?”
“I do not, but it certainly sounds ominous. If you are the one being hunted, I mean.”
“No one should feed off the life of another. That’s what my mother always says.”
“A difficult position to argue against.”
“She says we are obligated to help others even if doesn’t seem to benefit us directly, because the Realm will be at peace only when everyone’s life is at peace. The courts used to squabble all the time but now they cooperate because there is a single ruler to coordinate and administrate and to make sure everything is fair and just. Don’t you think so?”
“They always intend to better the lives of all, do they not? That’s what their rules are for.”
“I guess not everyone in the Realm would necessarily agree. Queen Ayara is so old and has been around for so long she might not like being told what to do, but you would know better what people say in Locthwain. King Yorvo too. He’s so old his father was king in Garenbrig when the humans drove the elves out of the Realm. No offense to you, Oko.”
“No offense taken. I hold no grudge against actions taken long before I set foot on this land.”
“You’re from Locthwain and you don’t hold a grudge? You’d be the first!” Rowan laughed.
Will said under his breath, “Ro.”
“I said I hold no grudge on this particular point. I did not say I hold no grudges.”
“I do apologize,” said Rowan in her usual lightning-swift manner, casting Will a
narrow-eyed look to let him know she’d heard his whispered rejoinder. “That was rude of me, Oko. I’m sorry for it.”
“You’re very kind and, of course, forgiven,” said Oko so graciously that Will could not help but admire his easy ability to accommodate Rowan’s thoughtlessness. “Have you met King Yorvo of Garenbrig? I have not.”
Thus he launched Rowan onto Garenbrig’s court and history. Will slowed his pace, content to enjoy the beautiful landscape and its respite from the dangers they’d faced on Choking Drum. The ridge was forbidden ground to anyone not of age to quest, and of course they had disobeyed their mother’s direct order.
But when he searched his own heart he found he didn’t regret their adventure. He and Ro had worked well together. Fortune had favored them with the intervention of the strangers. Now he had a mystery to gnaw at: Was the hunter an unwilling servant or a willing companion? Surely his name wasn’t really “Dog.” Was he originally from the Wilds, somehow tamed, or had he grown up in the Realm?
Woodland gave way to fields and orchards. They reached the main road and the tourney field. The wide expanse was ringed with a double palisade, one marking off the lists and a second for the larger area reserved for spectators and campsites. Locals had arrived in advance of the Grand Procession with carts and barrows laden with food to sell. Enterprising folk were cooking sausages, roasting turnips, and stirring spelt porridge. In the distance a haze of dust marked the approach of the High King and his entourage. They’d made it in time.
Will caught up with the others and gave Oko his other smile, the one tinged with a hint of the knowledge that, even though his mother held strictly to the idea that you did not throw around the weight of your position, he knew exactly what his was.
“Apologies, Lord Oko. Rowan and I have to get back to our duties. We can’t thank you enough. If you or your companion need anything, please find us.”