by Kate Elliott
“Do you think the elves called up the dragons?”
“Dragons offer allegiance to no creature but themselves. When the castle does not collapse they will grow bored and fly off to make trouble elsewhere. Linden has knights ready to follow when they give up. It’s still strange they came so far from their remote caves. So I do wonder if someone, or something, stirred them up. Yet we will see worse if the Realm falls apart and the Wilds take over.”
Worse. It was harder than she’d expected to turn her back on the castle and all who sheltered there. But she’d been waiting months for someone to find her father. If no one else could manage it, then she would.
The path led through trees in the other direction from Glass Tarn and Beckborough. Snow filtered down to cling to the horses’ heavy winter coats. Hooves crunched through the snow. No footprints marked the path before them. The storm’s reach faded the farther they got from the castle, and it stayed quiet as the days passed. They took shelter each night in a village or town, or in one of the way-stations constructed along the roads for questing knights, stocked with firewood and supplies. At every night’s halt, local people gathered for news and to bring people in need of healing to Cerise. Children clustered around for the chance to pet patient Sophos. The locals reported redcap raids, blights of faeries plaguing chicken coops and pestering guard dogs, and rumors of witches who drank the blood of infants. Always they complained about how much more peaceful things had been before the High King’s disappearance.
“Is he dead?” they’d ask in a nervous whisper, or with tears, or after a stoic sigh.
Cado would reassure them the high throne still stood, since tradition held that, on the death of any high ruler, the throne the individual had sat in would crumble to dust.
One night they took shelter in an isolated village at the far border of Ardenvale, given quarters in the carpentry barn. By lamplight the carpenter and her apprentices were hard at work shaping poles for a reinforced palisade. They happily accepted the aid of Rowan, Will, and Titus while Cerise tended to people who needed a healer’s services. An old farmer was using an enchanted spinning wheel to weave a strength spell into the finished poles.
“We’ve not needed this manner of protection in years. If the High King cannot be recovered the elves will return to rule the Realm with their cruel and capricious ways.”
Here comes some village superstition. Rowan glanced toward Will, hoping to exchange a roll of eyes, but he was busy with an adze.
“Every midwinter they will hunt down prey from among humankind to cow us into submission. That’s what my grandmother said her grandmother told her they used to do in her grandmother’s time.”
“That’s a lot of grandmothers,” said Rowan as a jest, hoping to move the subject on to something more practical the way her mother would.
The woman frowned, then said to Cado, “These are young sprouts to be sent out on quest in such perilous times.”
“Young sprouts must be strong to break through their seedcases,” replied Cado.
“Are you their keeper?”
“I am also on a quest. I will not rest until the High King is found.”
Beyond the village the road had not been cleared. In the morning the horses plowed forward on the snow-drifted road with evident enjoyment, although Cado’s griffin, Hale, protested with outraged squawks every time he had to land in the cold white stuff. The woodland grew patchy with sumps and mires. Tall stands of darkling forest—ominous spurs of the Wilds—rose in the distance. They’d reached the forlorn nether lands of Vantress. The birds here did not sing but cried out with mournful warnings. Clouds shrouded the sky.
Hale skimmed low over them as Cado shouted. “Refugees ahead!”
The refugees were a group of twenty adults shepherding twice as many children. They huddled to one side of the trail to let them pass. “Bless you, Knights. May your blades strike true. A few defenders remain.”
“Defending against what?” Rowan asked.
“An ogre in our village! We sent word to Castle Vantress but no one came.”
“An ogre!” Cerise pulled her bow from its case, eyes lighting with a fierce glee usually concealed beneath her healer’s calm façade.
Titus said, “Your arrows can’t pierce its hide.”
“I can shoot it in the eye!” retorted Cerise. Sophos snorted with an eager toss of his head. Rowan was sure his horn began to glow with excitement.
She urged her own horse forward, lightning humming in her hands. Shouting clamored ahead, followed by an enraged roar that shocked her with its intensity. For an instant her heart quailed. She’d never faced a real foe, nothing but those seven redcaps. What if she wasn’t up to it? But Titus was already casting his magic, a net of confidence that was amplified the more fighters it cloaked. They were ready! They could do this!
They charged into sight of a village large enough to have its own mill. The ogre was big and blocky, with a head like a wedge and standing almost twice the height of a man. With its massive club and meaty hands, it had torn apart many of the buildings lining the main road. It was now bashing at the barricaded entry to the mill, trying to reach a man scrambling up the mill’s icy outer wall with the aid of a woman’s long, thick braid that he clung to as if it were a rope. She was half hanging out from open shutters on the highest floor, people holding on to her to keep her from falling out. Seeing the new party riding in, several of the people stranded inside shouted and waved bright banners. The ogre’s roar shook the building as it caught sight of Cado and Hale circling above. Hale was noisy in protest, wanting to land and fight.
With the ogre thus distracted, Titus lowered his lance, urging his horse to a gallop. Cerise loosed her first arrow in an arc over Titus’s head. The shot hit but bounced harmlessly off the monster’s thick skin. With a growl the ogre lumbered toward them.
Rowan shouted, “Will!”
He cast a skin of ice over the ogre. She poured lightning into a javelin and cast it. Even though the point couldn’t penetrate the ogre’s thick skin, the contact was enough for her electricity to jolt through its body. The ogre staggered backward but with a furious bellow caught itself and thundered into a run. Titus reached it first. His lance struck low on its chest, then caught in the elaborately braided belt of knives and scalps it wore around its torso. The force of his blow, and the torque of the point getting stuck, flung him right off his horse. He rolled, coming to rest with arms sprawled out, unmoving.
As the ogre veered toward the helpless Titus, Cerise launched a volley of arrows to pepper its back, trying to get it to turn toward her. Cado and Hale thumped to earth between Titus and the ogre, the griffin’s wings whomping with thuds like drums. The ogre reeled away from the griffin’s ferocious size. With an ear-splitting roar the creature thundered toward Cerise. Sword in hand, Rowan urged her horse forward, with Will swinging out to come in on the other side.
The ogre was faster than she had imagined, bearing down on Cerise and her bow like a juggernaut. Sophos broke stride and lurched to a halt in the middle of the road. The unicorn braced himself and lowered his head just as the ogre reached him. The brute impaled itself on the shining horn, clawing toward the unicorn’s head as the point of the horn pierced out from its back. The impact hit so hard Cerise was thrown off. But the ogre shuddered as an aura of fierce magic blazed from the unicorn. With a groan, the creature died.
By the time Rowan pulled her horse around, Cerise had gotten shakily to her feet and Sophos had dragged the ogre to shake it free of his horn. The limp carcass oozed blood and stinking fluids over the churned-up snow.
A trumpet call rang out, accompanied by the sound of approaching riders. A party of armed individuals cantered into view from the far side of the village. They wore the blue and gray surcoats of Castle Vantress. Seeing the body of the ogre, the woman riding in the lead pressed forward while gesturing for the others to search through the village and fields. She gave Hale a long look and then called, “Is that you, Cado? Back agai
n for another useless attempt to speak to Indrelon?”
Cado had been kneeling by Titus, but he rose and came over. “Ah, Elowen. I might have known you’d get here too late to be of any use.”
“Ha! That’s told me. Yet what loremage was it who saved your handsome bacon that time the lich knight had you cornered at Malice Rocks? Did you see any others?”
“Any other loremages? At Malice Rocks?”
“No, fool. Ogres. This is the fourth ogre that’s rampaged out of the Wilds in the last month. It’s odd to see so many all at once.”
“No ogres, but there are dragons wandering beyond their usual territory.” He started to describe the magical storm above Castle Ardenvale.
She interrupted. “Who are these youngsters? That boy looks barely old enough to shave.” She pointed at Will, who flushed, and then at Rowan. “Did you bring the ogre with you?”
Rowan bristled. Loremage or not, the woman had no right to make such an outrageous accusation. “We did no such—”
“Ro.” Will’s glance was enough to remind her to close her mouth. “Loremage Elowen, we are from Castle Ardenvale, questing to find the High King. We helped kill the ogre. Why would you think we brought it with us?”
She dismounted and, as if reeling in an invisible line, walked over to Will. Her blue and gray surcoat had keyhole shapes embroidered into its billowing fabric, but as she got closer, he saw the cloth was badly worn in spots, carefully mended, a garment that had seen a great deal of adventure. A circlet wrapped her brow, wedged over the curls of her short hair, and she wore a chain of glittering triangular gems around her neck. Most startlingly, a gruesome raised scar wrapped her throat.
“I smell a witch’s hex in you,” she said, inhaling deeply. “It’s faint and old, and it’s been overlaid with Ardenvale’s magic. Do I know you?”
“Why would you know us?” Rowan demanded, liking neither the woman’s intrusive manner nor her rude assertion. “We have nothing to do with witches.”
“Maybe not, but hexes are my particular study. I had one cast on me as a child, you see. How interesting. You two don’t look much alike but you are linked at the deepest level as if you share a life between you. Twins, and both hexed! Fascinating! What can you tell me about yourselves?”
“We are riding to Castle Vantress to speak to the Mirror,” said Rowan. She caught Cado’s eye and pulled a desperate face. “We’re in a hurry. It was pure coincidence we arrived in time to deal a death blow to the ogre.”
Cerise came to her aid. “Loremage, if you will, please assist me over here.”
“With the pretty boy! Of course!” Elowen hastened over to help Titus sit up.
He rubbed his head, trying not to groan. Shaking off any additional help he got to his feet, testing all his limbs and his jaw with a stoic grimace.
“Nothing broken,” Cerise announced.
“His head is too hard to break,” said Rowan. “Do you need any other help, Cerise?”
Cerise hurried over to her mount, patting the unicorn’s flank. “I’ll clean the gore off his horn.”
“I had no idea unicorns did that,” said Rowan, eyeing Sophos with admiration.
The loremage chortled. “No one ever does until they see it for themselves. Unicorns are seen as beneficent, peaceful creatures. But in truth they once lived in the Wilds and impaled anyone unwise enough to try to capture them. Though I can’t blame them, considering the knights of those ancient days hunted them for the horn, which they would saw off and grind into a powder that was said to aid virility.”
“That’s disgusting!” Cerise threw an arm protectively over Sophos’s neck. Fluids dripped off the horn onto the ground at her feet.
“We need to get moving,” said Rowan, cutting off whatever the loremage might say next.
The villagers had dismantled the mill door’s barricade and flooded out onto the road. Rowan found their praise and tearful thanks peculiarly bothersome. The ogre was dead, and that was all very well, but since she’d had nothing to do with it she just wanted to get on. But when they brought out mugs of warmed cider, and buckets of water for the horses, she was grateful.
Elowen gave the soldiers instructions to dismember, burn, and bury the ogre, then trace its trail back to its exit point from the Wilds.
Afterward, she addressed Cado. “I’ll escort you to Vantress myself. Is the pretty red-headed boy able to ride, or do we have to leave him behind to be cosseted by some love-struck village beauty?”
“I can ride!” Titus sputtered.
Rowan choked down a laugh, enjoying his discomfiture. But while Cerise cleaned off Sophos’s horn, Rowan fetched Titus’s lance from the ground where it had fallen and returned it to him.
“Bad luck it caught like that,” she said.
He shook his head. “Maybe good luck for me. That ogre would have torn off my head. Did you know Sophos was a killer?”
They both studied the beautiful unicorn, his softly gleaming silvery-white coat, his wispy beard, his gentle eyes and calming aura. Unicorns were healing creatures whose magic worked in concert with their riders, everyone knew that. Yet Rowan’s gaze drifted to the spatters of blood and viscera on the road, and the messy smears streaking the cloth as Cerise rubbed the ivory clean.
They made faster time past the village as the snow cover lessened. The woodland gave way to marshland covered with pools of standing water that hadn’t frozen over.
Elowen fell back to ride beside Rowan. “I’ve figured it out,” she said cheerfully. “You two must be the High King’s elder children.”
“What do you know about that?” Rowan asked suspiciously.
“I know a great deal I never tell except to Indrelon and my books.”
The woman had an odd look to her eyes, a weird sense as if spider-like webs were constantly being woven through the crevices of her mind to connect all she observed. Seeing her from this close, Rowan realized the scar across her neck should have slit her throat and caused her to bleed out but had somehow failed to kill her.
The loremage added, “I’ve spent years wandering the Wilds.”
“Fighting monsters?”
“You knights and hopeful knights bash first. I talk. You’d be surprised how many of the denizens of the Wilds have stories to tell, if you can be bothered to inquire politely. They aren’t our enemies.”
“Whoever took the High King is our enemy,” Rowan retorted.
Elowen gave her a condescending nod. “Someone throwing mischief among the crows, indeed. Every day we get a new report of new trouble in the Realm. Seems each court is sinking deeper into its own problems. That meddling, secretive queen isn’t helping matters.”
“What do you mean by saying that?” Lightning crackled in Rowan’s right hand as she closed fingers into a fist.
“I’ve heard a rumor from my contacts in Locthwain that Queen Ayara sent an envoy into the Wilds to negotiate with the Council of Druids, as the elders of the remnant elves style themselves. Probably some of the old coots are her own kin. I have to wonder if she’s got an underhanded ploy for power hidden up her decorative sleeve, now that Kenrith has vanished. Or perhaps she and her kinfolk arranged his disappearance.”
“Why would she do that?” said Rowan. “For generations she’s accepted a High Ruler’s sovereignty along with the other courts. She turned her back on her kinfolk long ago by choosing to remain with the order and harmony of the Realm.”
“Turned her back on them? So she claims. But don’t people wonder where she goes every midwinter solstice for three days?” The loremage swung around to give Will a hard stare. “What about you, boy?”
Will cast a puzzled glance toward Rowan, but his manners kept him on track. “I beg your pardon, loremage. What about me?”
“Don’t you wonder about things like that? You have questions in your eyes and a secret in your heart. A bit of a hexed oddling like me, aren’t you?”
“Why do you keep saying we’re hexed?” he asked.
“I just te
ll the truth of what I see. Have your parents never spoken to you of this?” At their flat gazes, she added, “Then it’s not my place to say more.”
“But—”
“No. I really mean it. If your parents never mentioned a hex, it’s not for me to speculate. So. Am I mistaken in you, boy? Are you just a basher like your sister?”
“I hope to join Castle Vantress one day, if I can,” he admitted, stung by the description and still annoyed by her inflammatory talk of hexes.
“That would be a useful connection for Linden, would it not?” observed Elowen. “I suppose you, girl, hope to win knighthood at Embereth. It’s the one knighthood Linden lacks. Having her daughter’s voice in a position to be heard at Embereth’s council would be convenient for her. Especially if the High King is never found.”
Rowan was too stunned by this blunt speaking to respond.
“I’m not saying I think that’s how things are. I’m just warning you I’ve heard talk in Vantress’s halls.” The woman smiled, as if she had accomplished a planned disruption of their equanimity. Then she dropped back to converse with Cerise.
Rowan fumed. “Mother has done nothing but labor her entire life to make the Realm a more secure, peaceful, and just place. Rumors like this are how she’s repaid!”
Will looked back to make sure Cerise and Elowen weren’t riding close enough to overhear. Titus had taken the rearguard, while Cado and Hale scouted overhead. “If you ask me, it’s odd how everyone praises Father no matter how often he’s late or if he forgets someone’s name, but if Mother forgets herself and frowns once because she’s a bit tired that day, then there are always whispers that she’s envious or angry or ill or stole a shard of Father’s glory to become Queen. As if she didn’t achieve knighthood at four courts herself, which is more than anyone except Father can say!” His voice rose, causing Cerise and Elowen to look their way.
Rowan didn’t want the loremage to guess how much she’d riled them up, so she play-punched Will on the arm for the others to see. “Are you saying Father frowns?”