The Great Alta Saga Omnibus

by Jane Yolen

  The red-cheeked guard broke ranks and came over to Carum. “Never mind, sir. I’ve got an extra tam in my pocket. If it’s all right for the young prince to wear it.”

  “Give it here,” Marek said, holding out his hand. “And what are you doing with it in your pocket?”

  “These damned helmets don’t keep out the cold when we are on duty,” the man said. “My wife knit it for me.”

  “Humph.” Marek took the tam and gave it to Corrie who immediately tugged it down over his already-sodden hair. The tam was big enough to cover his ears and go partway down his neck.

  “Can I stay now, father?” he begged.

  Carum pulled a long face at the boy, but his eyes were smiling. Only Marek noticed.

  “Please …”

  “It you are quiet about it,” Marek said in a gruff voice, “and are as good as a soldier, never complaining, not even once, of the chill, the king will most likely let you stay.”

  “I never …” Corrie began. When he saw Marek’s finger up to his lips, he did not finish the sentence but stood at attention next to his father until the ship was safely moored.

  It took another hour for the ship’s mooring to be completed, the waves now furious with the storm. And another half hour after that for the small boat it carried to be let down and rowed through the angry lashings to shore. Corrie did not, of course, last at attention all that time, but he made no more complaints. Indeed, he said nothing at all but watched the whole maneuver with a rapt look.

  Carum himself waded out to the little boat as it began to beach, his red cloak black with the rain. He picked up the whey-faced, thin-lipped Garunian prince and carried him onto the shingle. Jem was not the only poor sailor on the sea that day.

  They wrapped Gadwess in Carum’s cloak. Though his teeth were chattering, he did not moan about it.

  “Nor did he on board,” the captain said to Marek, away from the boy’s hearing. “Though he was sick over the side of the ship more times than I could count.”

  “I do not like his color,” Marek said.

  “You’d best get boiled water into him, and soon. Before we leave the shore. Then a bit of twice-oasted bread and thin soup next.”

  Marek nodded. “Not what a prince might fancy for his first meal ashore.”

  “Trust me, he is less prince than sick boy at the moment. He won’t keep down anything more than that.” The captain wiped his own wet forehead with a neck cloth that was too damp itself to make a difference. “But a good night’s sleep by a warm hearth and plenty of liquids, and he’ll be all right. The young recover faster than you or I. Still, I’ve not seen one quite so sick and quite so uncomplaining.”

  “He’s a Garun,” Marek said. “And a prince.”

  “Which is all that needs saying,” said the captain.

  Gadwess was too weak to walk, but he refused to be carried. Marek sent the red-cheeked guard up ahead to commandeer a horse from the inn and a skin of weak sweet tea.

  Marek offered the skin to the prince, but it was not until Carum as king insisted he drink ten sips before they could move, that Gadwess drank. Then with a guard on either side—more to catch the boy should he start to slip from the saddle than as an honor escort—they went quickly up the road toward the castle.

  Sodden but undaunted, Corrie capered at his father’s side.

  The tam had proved useless against the wet and cold, and Corrie was put to bed the same time as the Garunian prince. Both had hearthfires blazing through the night to ward off chill, and cups of steaming broth were brought to them both at intervals from the kitchen.

  Jenna ignored young Gadwess in favor of her own sickling. She reasoned that the castle infirmarer, an old man with older ways, was certainly competent enough to treat the prince’s condition. No one died of seasickness, not on shore. But it was her guilt, not her reason, that drove Jenna to stay in Corrie’s room.

  Nose streaming, Corrie was silent in her company. He was alternately shivering and feverish, but he pushed her hand away when she tried to feed him the soup. He ignored Skada completely.

  “I’m too old to be fed,” he said, sitting up in bed. But when he tried to feed himself, his hands shook and he managed to spill the broth down the front of his nightshirt.

  Jenna helped him change it.

  “See,” she said, paying no heed to Skada’s cautioning look, “you are never too old for your mother.”

  Corrie turned over in the bed, putting his back to her. “Let Sil feed me,” he said, his voice muffled by the pillow. He would not turn back again and, reluctantly, Jenna called for her daughter, sending a server to find her.

  They waited near an hour for Scillia to come, while Corrie alternately shivered, dozed, and awoke to shiver again. At last Jenna and Skada went down the great torch-lit stairs, shouting “Where is she? Where is Scillia?” their voices rising and falling together. In this one thing, at least, they were united.

  Carum met them halfway. “My love, she is gone,” he said quietly.

  “What do you mean—gone?” Jenna asked.

  “Gone where?” Skada added.

  “Into the storm. Hours ago. A kitchener packed her saddle packs with several days’ provisions. She rode off. West, according to one of the guards.”

  “Provisions? And no one thought to tell me?”

  “Why should they?” Carum asked. “Jenna, you do it all the time.”

  “But I am a grown woman.”

  “You are the queen.”

  “This is not a family or a kingdom,” said Skada. “This is an anarchy.”

  “Shut up, Skada!” Carum and Jenna said together.

  Wisely Skada was silent.

  “Where will she go?” Jenna asked.

  “Where did you go at her age?” Carum answered question with question.

  “On a mission. But I was prepared. I knew the woods. I was trained in weapons and woodcraft and … By Alta! How can she do this again, stupid, wretched girl. She’ll get herself mauled this time.” Jenna’s voice shook with fury.

  “May I speak now?” Skada asked quietly.

  “No!” Jenna said.

  “Why?” Carum asked at the same time.

  Skada looked at them both for a long moment. “Because I believe I knew where she has gone.”

  “Where?” They stared back at her.

  “To the Hame.”

  “Selden Hame? But she hated it there,” Jenna said.

  “To her mother’s old Hame: high towered where eagles dare not rest.”

  “M’dorah?” Jenna said. “But it is only an inaccessible cliff. There is nothing to see. No women. Nothing. We fired the buildings when we left. Even the eagles shun it.”

  “Still, where else would she go, Jenna? Think. Think! One brother gone, her mother fostering another in his place. The other brother so excited to meet the new, he’d rather stand out in the rain and make himself sick than be with his sister. What is there left for Scillia to do but go look for her first family?”

  Carum was thoughtful. “First she will have to find M’dorah. It is not an easy or accessible spot.”

  “She is her mother’s daughter,” Skada said. “The Anna’s daughter. In all but blood. She can find it. She will find it.”

  “Send Marek to shadow her,” Jenna said. “There are more dangers than cats for a girl her age out alone.”

  Skada added, “He knows most of the way already.”

  Carum smiled grimly. “I had thought of that, of course. Leave Marek to me. You go tend to those boys.”

  Corrie was asleep again and so Jenna and Skada covered him gently with the down comforter. Then they turned as one and went to the door that connected the boys’ rooms. Just as Jenna’s hand touched the latch, with Skada’s beside hers, they heard an odd sound.

  The Garunian prince was weeping quietly.

  “He is only a boy after all,” Jenna said, pushing the door open.

  “But still a Garun,” Skada reminded her.

  The fire had bur
ned too low to throw much light so Skada never made it further than the threshold before disappearing. Jenna went over to the boy’s bed alone.

  “How can I help?” Jenna said to the lump under the coverlet.

  There was a quiet snuffle, and then a head emerged from the bed linens. “I need no woman’s help,” the boy said, his eyes dark as new bruises.

  “Some broth will settle your stomach,” Jenna said. “And if you have been sweating with a chill, I can get you a new nightshirt to put on.”

  “Out!” the prince said. “I can take care of myself.”

  The coverlet had slipped further, and his shoulders and arms showed. Even in the room’s twilight Jenna could see enough to know the child was even younger than Corrie. And painfully thin.

  “You do not even know where things are in this room,” she said sensibly. “I do. It would be faster if …”

  “Send in a man to serve me.” He pulled the covers back up to his chin and his lower lip quivered just a bit.

  “You,” Jenna said, “are in the Dales now. Where men and women serve equally.”

  His eyes suddenly had a liquid shine to them, like a deer in the moonlight. And then—to her heartbreak and his shame—he began to weep in front of her.

  Jenna sat down at once on the bed and pulled him to her. For a moment he resisted, then gave in because his sobs had already so unmanned him. His body shook with his sobs.

  “There, there,” she said. “No one shall ever know you cried.”

  He pulled back from her, shivering. “You will know. And you will tell. Servants always tell.”

  For a second she did not reply, and then she laughed. It was a laugh compounded of relief and delight.

  “Woman!” Gadwess said, looking as stern as an eight-year-old can. “Why do you laugh at me? In my country a servant who laughs at a prince can have her lips sewn together.”

  “I have no doubt of that, my young prince,” Jenna said, making her own face look as stern, “But if you wish to do such a thing to me, you will need a very long needle and golden thread.”

  Unprepared for such a reaction, the little prince blinked once, twice, then a third time, his mouth wide open.

  “You look like a fish caught on a hook,” said Jenna.

  “You … you will look worse,” the boy said, his lower lip beginning to quiver once again, “when I tell the king.”

  “The king will laugh as well, I am afraid,” Jenna said, “for I am no servant. I am the queen.”

  “The queen? Queen Jenna? But I thought that …”

  “That Queen Jenna has teeth with terrible points to eat the small parts of young boys for dinner? Oh, I have heard those scurrilous Garunian rhymes, even here across the sea. Gena’s tooth be very long …” She smiled at him.

  He shivered again.

  “Now get under those covers before I do bite you. I shall bring you some fresh soup, hot from the fire. And some bread from the kitchen. Myself. Like a servant. I would not subject any server in my castle to your temper yet.” As she stood, her foot kicked something by the bedside. She glanced down and picked it up. “But till I return, this bear shall keep you company. His name is Brownie.” Quickly she untied the red ribbon, crumpling it in her hand.

  “A girl’s toy,” the boy said, some of his arrogance returning.

  “Not in this country. Here it is a boy’s blanket companion. To tell his secrets to. And, like the queen, the bear keeps secrets well.” She smiled at him as she put the bear by his pillow, then pointed to her teeth. “See—no points. Believe me when I tell you, I vastly prefer boar and venison to small boys when it comes to meat.”

  She left before he could return comment, but she felt far better than she had in weeks which was odd, she thought, given that she had a son hostage in a far-off land and a daughter lost in the woods.

  THE RHYMES:

  Gena’s tooth be very long,

  Very long, very long,

  Gena’s tooth be very long,

  And she gonna bite ya.

  —Jump rope rhyme, Bewick-on-Sea

  Jenna bite de head off,

  Jenna bite de neck off,

  Jenna bite de shoulder off,

  Jenna bite de arm off …

  —Baby teaching rhyme, Krasstown

  Sleep baby, byanby,

  Sleep baby, byanby,

  Sleep baby, byanby

  Or de jenger’s goin’ ter getcha.

  —Patois lullaby collected from the

  G’run Penal Colony of Calabas

  THE STORY:

  Corrie woke slowly, the sun streaming through his window and the fire in the hearth but a bed of cold ashes. For a moment he thought there was something he should be remembering, something about the night just past. But then he sneezed three times in a row which gave him no more time for thought.

  “Lord Cres keep you.”

  Corrie sat bolt upright in bed. There, at the bedfoot, was a small, thin boy at least a year or two younger than he was, with hair the color of soot and periwinkle-blue eyes.

  “I could have slit your throat a hundred times and you not even aware. You are soft, Dales boy.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” asked Corrie, then sneezed again.

  “Do what?”

  “Slit my throat.”

  “I don’t want to. But I could have,” the boy explained.

  “Well, we don’t do that sort of thing here,” said Corrie, suddenly realizing who the boy was. The head cold was making him slow.

  “Why not?”

  “Because it’s … it’s …” Corrie tried to find the right word though the fuzz in his head, and finally gave up. “Because it’s stupid!”

  “What’s stupid?”

  “Slitting throats is stupid. And threatening to do it is stupid. And … and … you are stupid!” Corrie said passionately, and then sneezed three more times, which rather spoiled the moment. Before he knew what was happening, the boy leaped on him and had him around the throat with incredibly strong hands for such a small boy. Then, just as suddenly, the boy unaccountably let go.

  “Say—what’s that on your neck?”

  “Where?”

  “There.” He pointed at Corrie’s neck with an imperious finger. “Are they scars?”

  “Oh, that.” Corrie shrugged. “I got bitten by a big mountain cat.”

  “You did?” The boy looked impressed.

  “He jumped me from an overhanging branch and we tumbled into the river and …”

  “Can I look close?”

  “Sure.”

  Gadwess leaned over and put his two forefingers on the scars. “Did you kill it?”

  “No. It got away. Downstream.”

  “Did you cry?”

  Corrie considered the question for a minute, then opted for the truth. “Yes. It hurt something fierce.”

  The Garunian prince put his head to one side. “If that had happened to me, and I cried out, I would have gotten hit for crying.”

  “Really?” Corrie was appalled.

  “Only girls cry, you see.”

  “Really?”

  Gadwess took a deep breath. “And sometimes … sometimes little boys cry. But only sometimes. And not for long.”

  “Well this happened only a few months ago and I cried good and proper. But only right after. And not when the infirmarer fixed the wound.”

  Gadwess’ eyes were wide. “Not then?”

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s all right then,” Gadwess said. He leaned back and surveyed the bedroom. “My room is bigger.”

  “Some,” Corrie admitted.

  “That’s good.”

  “It doesn’t matter. This room is plenty big enough,” Corrie said. “And I’ve got the south light.” He wasn’t really sure why that should be important, but Skada had told him that once, when he and Jemmie were quarreling. It seemed a good thing to point out.

  “It’s important, you see, that I have the biggest room, because of who I am,” Gadwess s
aid.

  Personally Corrie thought the statement was as stupid as threatening to slit someone’s throat. But he preferred the peace he had just won so he didn’t answer, only wiped his nose with the sleeve of his nightshirt.

  “So—when does a fellow get something to eat around here?” Gadwess asked abruptly. “I haven’t eaten much for two days because … well I haven’t. And I am starving.”

  Corrie stood. He was pleased to see that, despite an exceptionally runny nose, he no longer felt feverish or dizzy. It was the fever he’d been trying to remember. That and the fact that he thought he had heard crying in the night.

  “I’m starving,” Gadwess said again. This time it sounded like an order.

  “Then put on some clothes and I’ll take you downstairs to the kitchen.”

  “Put them on myself?”

  Corrie didn’t understand. “Who else?”

  “A servant, of course. I am, after all, a prince.”

  “We don’t do that here. We dress ourselves. And we don’t say servant. We say server.”

  “Why?”

  “Because to say servant,” Corrie explained in a schoolmasterish voice, “is demeaning.”

  “Servants,” Gadwess answered, “are meant to be demeaned. Like women.”

  “Better not let my mother hear you say that,” Corrie countered quickly.

  “Your mother?”

  “Queen Jenna,” said Corrie and was quite satisfied to see the Garunian prince go suddenly white. Like a fish belly, Corrie thought.

  “I … I …” Gadwess took a deep breath. “I thought you had been sent across the sea. Hostage to my hostage.” Suddenly he looked very young and very frightened.

  “That was my older brother, Jemson.”

  “Oh.” Some color returned to his cheeks. “I didn’t know there were two of you.”

  “That’s all right,” Corrie said. “I thought you were supposed to be older.”

  Gadwess looked down. “My older brother could not be sent because he is the heir. Why did they send yours?”

  “He is not the heir to the throne. Scillia is.”

  “Who is Scillia?”

  “My sister.”

  The idea was so foreign to Gadwess that his mouth dropped open.

  “You look like a fish caught on a hook,” Corrie said.

  “Do you all speak of fish, like mongers?”