The Christening Quest

by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

  “Evil, vengeful woman,” His Brilliance cried in a voice that echoed off the back of the giant’s throat. “It will do you no good to destroy the sacred stone. You are doomed and all who are with you are doomed.” But the time for threats or bargaining had passed. Effluvia grabbed for the stone. Rupert grabbed for the child with one arm, for Jushia’s foot with the other. Jushia dropped the pendant.

  It swung wide and shattered on the far side of the giant’s throat, its shards like shooting stars. The baby squirmed against Rupert’s elbow and let out a great squalling cry as its blood spurted onto his hand. He saw that one of the shards had hit the baby’s forehead, lodging just above her nose, but even as he looked the wound sealed and the bleeding stopped. Behind him he felt the crowd pushing forward, thrusting through the sea and over the boats, into the mouth of the giant. It would soon push them all into the gaping throat.

  But the excitement was too much for Effluvia. For so many years, she had had but one response to threats of any kind that it was automatic now. Her tail flew up, her essence striking His Brilliance squarely on the belly of his rainbow-hued robe, filling the mouth of the giant with a cloud of putrid noxiousness and driving the crowd back into the sea, driving His Brilliance, the priests, and Rupert—still holding onto Jushia and the crying child—back toward the giant’s teeth, panting for air.

  The mordanting bottles were overturned, and many were broken. In the bay, people coughed spasmodically, some hanging onto the sides of boats where they had been knocked in the scuffle. His Brilliance, himself wracked with coughing, gave the sign that the mordanting bottles were to be disposed of, the agent-collecting ones set up.

  The priests in charge of this procedure stalled a little, taking their time gathering the bottles together, hoping the brisk wind that had risen would cleanse some of the stink from the giant’s mouth.

  “NOW!” His Brilliance roared, and the bottles were set in place in the giants mouth so fast none of the priests had need to draw breath again until safely back in the empty barge.

  “Get that slut of a nurse off the God and throw her down the hole!” the High Priest commanded, turning away from the mob of worshippers. The words were not out of his mouth before a scream erupted from the bay. More screams were followed by thrashing, splashing, and the splintering of wood as boats wrecked upon each other in their haste to escape the streaking bands of color descending vengefully upon the crowd.

  “That’s my property!” Alireza screeched, her voice roaring over the tumult of the crowd. She realized her mistake almost at once as the bands of light converged upon her in a single whirling mass. She dove overboard.

  Everywhere people followed her example. Rupert thrust the baby into Jushia’s arms, pulled Carole away from the hole, and began untying her hands.

  In the bay Timoteo leapt from boat to boat, shield in one hand, knife in the other, cutting the bonds of his fellow gypsies and sending them into the sea. He somehow managed to avoid the streaking entities. He was scaling the ladder to the lower lip when the High Priest regained control, arms lifting, body swaying, chant rising high as the rainbow streaks abandoned their assault on Alireza Mukbar and whirled angrily toward the mouth of the giant.

  The High Priest exalted as the entities flew toward him, but his exaltation wavered and died as they converged—he was not drawing them, they were attacking. He fell upon the bottles in the gutter of the giant’s mouth and was enveloped in a buzzing blizzard of color. Another blizzard knocked Effluvia against the teeth. Still others went for the minor priests and the prisoners.

  Carole jerked the gag from her mouth and blew a piercing whistle that escalated into a wild reeling song. Timoteo landed in front of Jushia and the child before the first note, covering them with the shield. The entities gathered themselves into an angry cloud, leaving behind the prostrate bodies of the priests and Effluvia, and danced out to sea just beyond range of the whistle, where they hovered like a cloud of wasps. The High Priest crawled to his feet, unharmed and infuriated. The priests from the boats swarmed up the ladder, pikes at the ready. Timoteo struggled with the first one, but his knife was knocked from his hand with the pikestaff.

  The High Priest seized the baby away from Jushia again and held it aloft. To Carole he said, “You may live if you keep the wild agents away from us. But the sacrifice must go on. This child has caused much trouble. She shall be the first.”

  Carole wasn’t listening. Her whistle had died on her lips even before the entities had departed. She turned to look at Rupert. Unshielded, he nevertheless was not dancing. Instead he stood near the back of the mouth where he had rushed to save her. He alone remained still in the midst of the turmoil. A glow emanated from his body. It brightened more the longer he stood there.

  Her first thought was that one of the entities had harmed him in some way, but when the High Priest carried the child Romany to the back of the cave, Rupert spread his arms and walked forward, driving the High Priest before him.

  “What are you doing to me, man?” Rupert demanded in a voice as great as if it indeed came from the crystal head his own calm face resembled. “Go away. Send these people home. Give that baby back to its mother. Do you think I want you to murder little children? Fah! You don’t think me a god, you think me a monster. Leave off then and be gone with you. You’re giving me a headache.”

  “The Grand Prismatic has spoken!” the crowd cried. But while he was speaking, Carole was not whistling, and the streaking entities attacked again, flying toward the giant’s nostrils this time. Carole tried to pucker, but the giants tongue slipped out from under her and she fell. The crystal head quivered, as if in pain, and a long crack opened in one cheek.

  “Quickly, go,” Timoteo said, handing Jushia down to Murdo, who waited with a boat whose former occupants now inhabited the sea.

  “The Princess!” she cried, but the colored streaks dived at them, knocking her to the deck and Timoteo into the sea.

  Carole grabbed for him, but the head quaked again and a cavern split it from chin to nostril. Carole rolled to avoid it. Rupert grabbed the baby from the High Priest just as the entities shoved him off the back of the tongue, to fall screaming down the giants craw. Another rent and the skull cracked apart. The entities did a jackknife turn in midair and swooped down upon Rupert. He dropped the baby into Carole’s arms. “Swim!” he yelled.

  She stayed for a moment and tried to whistle them away again, but by now the din was too loud for her to be heard. Before the crack that split the crystal head ear to ear and dumped her into the sea, she saw the jewel embedded in the child’s forehead, as harmless-seeming as a pasted ornament. Taking up the shell comb, she managed to comb the fine red locks just two short strokes before they were forced to dive.

  They had to dive deep because wreckage and bodies were everywhere, but finally Carole found a place to surface: near the boat containing Timoteo, Jushia, Murdo, and several other bedraggled gypsies. She tried to hand the baby to Jushia but the child flipped her tail and jumped like a porpoise from between Carole’s hands. Jushia squealed and fished for her. Romany leapt up into her lap. Carole caught the glitter of the crystal above the baby’s nose once more before diving again.

  The giant calved like a glacier, pieces of his crystal shell crashing into the sea, exploding tons of water upon the remainder of his hapless worshippers. On a portion of lower jaw, Rupert fought the entities, flailing at them while his own mighty blows threatened to unbalance him as they struck through nothingness.

  Damn, Carole thought. She should have taken the rowan shield from Timoteo. She tried to swim and whistle at the same time, but the water was boiling now. The rest of the giant began disintegrating. The part beneath Rupert trembled. The colored rainbows regrouped for a final assault.

  A wave threw Carole backwards and swept over her. When she looked up, the sky was black, with something shooting down from it. At first she thought it was another bolt of lightning, but then she heard the roar of the dragon, mightier than all other s
ounds, and saw Grippeldice, who knocked the entities aside.

  “Desist, nasty things!” she cried, “I told you to find him, not kill him. Haven’t you any manners? Now depart before I turn you all into steam!” And with that she swooped down to retrieve Rupert, who flung himself gratefully onto her neck just as the last piece of Rowan the Recreant crumbled away beneath him.

  In the dragons wake, a great streak of white light rose from the sea, to join the scattering entities. Winding around them like a ribbon, it gathered them together and rose with them toward the clouds. Thunder rolled a black cloud across them and when the lightning next flashed, they were gone.

  The storm cleared remarkably soon. From Grippeldice’s back, Rupert and Carole hunted among those still left in the bay, searching for some sign of the gypsies, Jushia, and their small charge. Overhead a brilliant rainbow decorated the sky as if a disaster had not just occurred within its arch.

  Carole dived repeatedly but was unable to go near the center of the bay because of the vast disturbance created by the destruction of the giant.

  The rainbow had fled by the time Carole slung herself across the back of the floating dragon one last time. Rupert reached down and finished hauling her upright. She collapsed with her back against his chest and he almost collapsed under her weight. He was not in appreciably better shape than she was. Both were exhausted, shaken, and bitterly disappointed at having come so far and undergone so much for the sake of the child only to lose her again. Grippeldice alone was cheerful. She growled at them in what was meant to be a comforting fashion and rose, circling the bay again.

  From the rocky precipice where hundreds of spectators had stood a single arm waved slowly back and forth. Grippeldice swooped towards it.

  Timoteo basked in twilight as if it were the sun of noon and smiled at them. “Welcome, friends. I trust you had a pleasant swim.”

  “Where’s the child?” Carole asked. “Where’s Romany?”

  “Safe,” he said. “At her nurse’s breast and well away from this wretched country under the protection of many fine fellows almost as splendid as me.”

  Rupert snorted most undiplomatically.

  “Prince!” Timoteo sounded wounded. “Was that nice? You doubt I am a splendid fellow? I am such a splendid fellow I came back to let you and the witch lady know the little baby Romany is safe, so you should not worry, so her mama should not worry. And this is the thanks I get?”

  “Timoteo, we’re really not very concerned with your feelings right now, if you’ll pardon me for saying so,” Carole told him. “The child was wearing a fish tail and had a head wound when I entrusted her to you. It’s a bit difficult for me to blandly accept your assurance that she is safe.”

  “You will take us to her now,” Rupert said bluntly, “or I will instruct this dragon to burn you to a crisp.”

  Timoteo bobbed his head and scratched his whiskers in a meditative manner. “Yes, I thought of that. I said to myself, Timoteo, if you are a good fellow and go back there, that royal gentleman is apt to set his dragon on you. But then, if he does, he will have lost himself a very good friend, the only person in all the tribes who might let him know something about the child from time to time.’ I would feel so sorry for you if that happened, Prince. And then, I am a brave kind of man, you know, so I decide to risk your dragon.”

  “You can’t mean to keep her,” Carole said flatly. “She’s a Princess, entitled to a good education, a permanent home, good food—”

  “Ah, lady, there is no education as good as the road. Nothing so enlightening as lacking occasionally for food. As for a permanent home, have I not been telling you that travel is broadening?”

  “She was wounded,” Carole insisted. “And half fish.”

  “Lady, you told us yourself that the comb only makes her a fish while she is in water. As soon as she dried off”, two little pink girl legs again, poof, just like that. As for the piece of crystal in her head, it doesn’t seem to be hurting her. She acts no different than she did before. And it’s kind of pretty. Gypsy girls like jewelry.”

  “That particular piece of jewelry was the one that the priests used to attract lightning to them, to harness its power for trapping souls,” she said. “I have a hard time believing that it hasn’t harmed her in some way.”

  Rupert kneaded her shoulder in a restraining way and said, “At any rate, she’ll need special watching during thunderstorms. The piece that hit her is only a fragment of the original crystal, but who knows how much power may still be in it, or how it may have changed? She really should be back with her family where it can be studied and she can be properly protected.”

  “Protected as she was protected when the Miragenian soul-slavers stole her right out from under your nose, Prince? She is safe with her family now, with the part of her family who saved her. And that piece of stuff in her head is better hidden by her kerchief when among nobility than studied and prodded. Your nobility, Prince, would make her feel like a freak, a bear to be baited. With us she will be raised as one of our own, her little extra eye of no more interest than a cauliflower ear or a gold tooth.”

  “Timoteo,” Carole said, her voice grating with reluctant menace, “I don’t want to have to give you dancing lessons. Tell us where the child is.”

  “Witch, I love to dance, especially with such a pretty lady to call the tune. I will not tell you. If I tell you, you will use your dancing and your dragon and take her away from us. That would not be good for her and probably not so good for us either. You I will not tell at all because always you will have the unfair advantage of your magic power and could steal her away while making us all look like fools. The Prince here, though, he and I might work out a deal.”

  “What sort of deal?” Rupert asked. “The right is clearly on our side. The child belongs with her mother. Her mother wants her back.”

  “Her mother agreed to give her away for fifteen years to people who weren’t related to her. You weren’t even supposed to get her back, just to get her christened. She’s christened, she’s with family. Her mother can pretend she’s fostering. At least she will know little Romany is not being a slave.”

  “And just how is she supposed to know that?” Carole asked. “We have only your word and pardon me but—”

  “Don’t be insulting, lady. My word is good enough. But I know mothers. I know how difficult married sisters are. I know you and the Prince are going to have some time explaining this, that it may cause you trouble. And you are good people. So I tell you what. You don’t talk to me any more about having dragons burn me up or dancing me into the ground and I promise, once a year, on the baby’s birthday, I’ll let you, Prince, see the child. You can visit her, see that she’s safe. Tell her mama she’s safe. But you must let us come for you. You must come blindfolded and not try to find us again. And you can’t confuse the girl by telling her about her mama and papa or about being a princess. She’ll be happier just thinking she’s a gypsy girl. When she’s fifteen and old enough to decide for herself what she wants, then she can know, she can choose. Fair enough?”

  “I have no more right to make that kind of deal with you than you say Bronwyn and Jack did to deal with the Miragenians in the first place.”

  “You also have no choice. It’s the best offer you’ve had so far. What do you say?”

  “Bronwyn will send armies, spies.”

  “She would be foolish to do so. Xenobia will explain it to her. But she can do whatever she likes. The deal is between you and me. You may act as her emissary to the baby as long as you don’t interfere and meet my terms. Answer me now, give me your word, or nobody’s going to see her or hear from her again until we’re good and ready. And we may not ever be good and ready. She’s a very nice little girl.”

  Rupert deliberated for a moment. If the gypsies were so confident they could keep the baby secreted from her mother and all the might of the combined Wasimarkanian and Argonian thrones, then perhaps she truly would be safer from the Miragenians with them.
He stared into the gypsy’s shrewd brown eyes, which met his steadily. And he knew. The man was telling the truth. He was overextending himself in fact, going beyond the bounds of what the tribe wanted, risking his own prestige, despite his nonchalant air, to ensure that the child would have her heritage when it was safe for her to do so. The Prince was shocked to realize also that the gypsy man, for all his mocking ways, admired Rupert more than he envied him, had been surprised at a nobleman who declined to be a god, and felt that perhaps such a man could be trusted even by a gypsy.

  “Very well. I accept your terms,” Rupert said.

  “Good. Then give me a ride on your dragon to the skunk-woman’s woods and I will contact you in a year.”

  Bronwyn’s reaction to their news, while less violent than some might have expected, was hardly calm. Still bedfast, she blanched even whiter than the knuckles of her clenched fists, then turned red as her hair, her blue eyes snapping as if about to explode from her face. To the maid who fidgeted beside her pillow she said, “Send me the captain of the guard, the commander of the army, and Her Majesty Queen Xenobia at once.”

  The maid tripped over her curtsy and escaped as quickly as possible, leaving Carole and Rupert to face her mistress’s wrath alone.

  “Now then,” Bronwyn said, “let me get this straight. You found my baby, you christened her, you delivered her from murdering priests to whom the Miragenians sold her, thereby breaking our agreement—”

  “The gypsies saved her, actually,” Carole corrected, somewhat timidly in the face of Bronwyns anger. “I only christened her as you requested.”