The Sleeping Prince

by Melinda Salisbury

  She pauses, apparently giving the question real thought. “Yes,” she says. “I do. Someone has to. Your people won’t, unless he brings the war to you. Merek is dead. If not me, then who? Besides, he won’t be the first monster I’ve faced.”

  “What do you mean? What monsters have you fought?”

  She ignores my questions, looking instead to the window. “We won’t get out of here tonight. The track will be too dangerous.”

  “We?” I ask hesitantly.

  She nods. “I told you, I’ll help you if you return the favor. Be my apothecary. Make cures that will heal the soldiers I muster. Make poisons we can use on his people—on this Silver Knight and the traitors that follow him.”

  I stare at her. Who is she? How could she muster people? How could she save the Lormerians? How can she help me? “Your people? How are they your people?”

  “The people of Lormere.” She waves her hand. “My countrymen. Seeing as yours won’t do anything to aid them, I will. For Merek. And your brother. I’ll rally whomever I can in Lormere, and anyone else that’s willing, and I’ll find a way to fight him.” In the glow of the fire there is something regal about her, something in her eyes like iron. She means it.

  “Do you know how to fight a war?”

  “No,” she says, flushing in the firelight. “No. I don’t. But I suppose to begin with I’ll try to find people who want to fight, or could be persuaded, and take it from there. And I’ll have you. Maybe all it will take will be poison in his wine goblet, like in the story. Isn’t that how he ended up becoming the Sleeping Prince, in your stories—your histories?”

  I nod, frowning.

  “Good. It’s a start, even if not the right one. So, what do you need from me to complete my end of the bargain?”

  I take a deep breath. “I need to get my mother out of the asylum in Tressalyn, and I need to get her somewhere safe. And isolated. I need to get the potion for her. And I need to stay away from the Tregellian army for a while.”

  She blinks rapidly. “I can’t help you with the potion. But I think I can help you get her back.” She walks over to the mantelpiece and reaches into the chimney. I hear the chinking of coins before she draws the bag into view. It’s fat with coins, bulging. A king’s ransom. “I’m assuming I’ll be able to persuade someone to release her into the care of her dear, long-lost cousin?” I nod, dumbstruck. “Good,” she continues. “As for isolated, this cottage is quite apart. And it’s by the sea. I imagine that’s useful for healing.”

  My eyes widen. “You’d let us live here? In your cottage?”

  “I doubt I’ll be using it while I’m at war. We’re quite far from Lormere here.” She smiles wryly. “You could use the kitchen as a workroom to create the poisons and healing potions I’ll need, while you care for your mother. Of course, once the battles begin you’ll have to be a lot closer to our base camp. But that’s some time away, yet. I’ll need time to find and organize my people. If she’s not better by the time we need to fight, you can engage a nurse for her while you’re gone. You won’t be out on the field, so you needn’t worry about that.”

  “She won’t be better. She won’t ever get better. Her illness is very unusual. If anyone found out what it was …”

  Dimia hefts the bag so it clinks again. “I’m sure we could find someone discreet enough for the task. You’d be surprised, I think, what people will do for money.” She looks at me, her eyes searching mine. “Or perhaps not. What do you say? Do we have an agreement?”

  “Why?” I ask. “Why would you do this? I’m a stranger to you; why would you do this for me?”

  She opens her mouth, staring beyond me to the rain lashing against the window. “Because you remind me a little of myself.”

  Then I turn to the rain, too, watching it slide down the windowpane. “What did you do, at the castle?” I ask.

  Her eyes slide to the side. “I served. I was a servant.”

  I’m about to ask for specifics when I stop myself, the pieces slotting into place in my mind. A servant who calls the king by his given name. A servant with a bulging bag of coins. A servant confident she has sway over men, enough to call them to muster. To inspire them to fight. I think I understand now. I remember the knowing look on the soldiers’ faces when Kirin said I was a camp follower. I deliberately don’t think about her knowing my brother.

  “Errin,” she says softly, and I look at her. Her face is solemn. “It won’t stop. The Sleeping Prince won’t stop at Lormere. Your Council knows that. He’ll come here next. And he’ll do to the people of Tregellan what he’s done to mine. Your people slaughtered. Your people’s heads mounted atop poles. Your people running.” She puts her goblet down and crosses the room, pausing, before she reaches for my hands.

  “I’m not saying I can beat him. I know the odds, and as you said, he has golems as well as his human forces. But I have to try. If I can get word to Lormere that they have reason to hope, and fight … You know, in the last war, they were losing against your people? And then … they rallied. They were given cause to hope and it made them fight harder. I would give them that. Help me do it. And I’ll help you.”

  Kirin said Lormere’s greatest weakness was that they didn’t try to fight back. And now here is this girl, this Lormerian servant, who wants to make it happen. Who believes that she can.

  I pull my hands from hers and stand, moving past her to the window. I press my forehead against the cool glass, watching as new drops of rain merge with older ones until they become tiny rivers that run down the pane. Flashes of lightning illuminate the horizon; I can see where the cliffs must begin. Where the land ends. The philtersmith isn’t here, and without her, I have no chance of finding the Conclave or getting the Elixir. Perhaps she was never here at all; maybe Ely was wrong, delirious with pain. How could I be sure he knew what he was saying? The only way I’ll know for certain is if Silas shows up, looking for her—and then what? Do I try to follow him, reason with him, beg him again? I huff quietly, my breath fogging the pane as I imagine it. No. That bridge is well and truly burned. The one thing I’m certain of is that I have to get Mama back; she’s all I have. She’s my responsibility.

  I try and sort through it all, taking quiet, deep breaths as the minutes pass, each one like a decade. What choice do I have?

  “Well?” Dimia says behind me. “Will you join me?”

  I turn to face her. “You’ll help me keep my mother safe? No matter what you hear about her?”

  Her eyes narrow briefly, but she nods. “I swear.”

  “Yes, then. I’ll be your apothecary.”

  A dark look crosses her face. “I need you to swear it, too, Errin Vastel. No blackmail, no double-crossing, no betrayal.”

  I blush and hold out my hand. “I swear it. I won’t betray you. I just want to keep my mother safe.”

  Her eyes bore into mine for what feels like an age. Then she nods, clasping my hand between both of hers. “And so it is done.” Her words send a thrill through me, as though someone has walked over my grave. “Thank you. Tomorrow, we’ll leave, go to Tressalyn straightaway. I’ll buy your mother’s freedom and then we’ll bring her back here. But for now we should get some rest,” she says. “There is another room that could be used for sleeping, though it’s presently unfurnished. I’m afraid I’m not used to living with so much space. Before we leave tomorrow I’ll engage a carpenter to see to it for when we return with your mother. But tonight you’re welcome to take my bed.”

  I shake my head. She doesn’t insist; instead she gathers blankets and cushions, trying to make a kind of bed.

  “Good night, then,” she says, pausing in the doorway to what I assume is her bedroom. She looks as if she might speak, then closes the door firmly. I shed my cloak and bed down in the pile of blankets she’s created for me. In my new home. And I think that out of all of the absolutely impossible things to have happened to me in the past week, this is the strangest.

  * * *

  In the dream I’m dre
ssed in armor, and part of me knows that it’s because of the promise I made to Dimia. I look down at myself, at the cuirass covering my chest, the vambraces on my arms. I know it should be heavy, but it’s not, and I swing my arms, raising them as though I’m holding a sword.

  “What’s this?”

  The man is standing behind me in the doorway, his mouth a pout, his eyes covered by his hood.

  “I beat you here,” I say. “I’m with Dimia.”

  “Dimia?” He smiles.

  “She’s not the philtersmith. The girl you want isn’t here.”

  “Really?” His tone is careful.

  “Well, if she is, she’s hiding from us.”

  “Clever girl. And now what will you do, with this Dimia?”

  “Rescue my mother. Then we’re going to war.”

  “With me?”

  “With the Sleeping Prince. I’m going to help her.”

  The smile falls from his face. “Are you?”

  I nod.

  “That changes things,” he says slowly. “That changes things a lot.”

  It feels as though I’ve barely closed my eyes when she shakes me awake the next morning. She’s already dressed, her hair loose around her shoulders. I sit up blearily, moaning at the sharp pains in my thighs and lower back, and reach for the cup she holds out to me.

  “What time is it?” I ask.

  “An hour before dawn, by the light,” she says, picking up a bag and reaching for her cloak. “I have to go into the village before we leave.”

  I watch her as I rise and tidy myself. She walks around the room, touching everything, stroking the back of the chair, tapping the tabletop lightly, and running a finger over the spines of her few books. There’s a ritual to it. It’s as though she’s saying farewell, and it makes me shudder. We’ll be coming back here, she said so.

  Unless she thinks she might not.

  Finally she turns to me. “Let’s go.”

  We make our way along the boggy cliff path toward the town using the old man’s lantern. As I scramble to keep up with her I feel ungainly and childlike. She’s smaller than me, but she carries herself as though she were much taller, her head held straight, her shoulders back, hair flowing over her shoulders, black as a raven’s wing.

  When we get to town, every house is ablaze with light, the shops, too, even though dawn is still an hour away. The fishermen are long gone and their women are up and about, fetching water, gossiping with neighbors, swapping food and stories in the tiny square. They all stop and turn when they see Dimia’s light, smiling and waving to her.

  The small crowd parts as she approaches, as though she’s a ship on the ocean and they are the waves. Everyone greets her and she speaks to the carpenter, a seamstress, and the grocer, all of whom defer to her as though she’s a queen. I trail in her wake back to the blacksmith’s cottage to collect my horse, not surprised at all when he gives her a funny little bow. A few swift words and he’s soon leading a fat-bellied pony around for her, saddled and bridled.

  “Not as fine as the horse,” he says, linking his hands to help her mount. She gives a delicate shrug, and, in a motion more graceful than I’d expected, puts a foot in the stirrup and swings into the saddle. She looks surprised, then pleased, arranging her skirts around her.

  “You take care of her, miss,” he says to me. “She’s one of us now.”

  “I can take care of myself, Javik.” She smiles, and he beams back, showing gappy teeth and red gums, bowing as he backs away.

  “So, how far to Tressalyn?” Dimia says, adjusting her stirrups before turning to me.

  “We have to follow the river road toward Tremayne, though we don’t have to go through it. If we go around it, we can take the King’s Road south.”

  “How long will it take?”

  “A day or two.”

  “And where will we sleep? I can hardly arrive in Tressalyn and plead for your mother’s release if I look as though I can’t care for myself.”

  “Do you have papers?” I ask.

  She taps her pocket. “And coin for food and lodging.”

  I don’t want to stay in Tremayne. “We’ll see how far we get and then make a plan. There are villages and roadside inns on the way. I have a map.”

  For some reason, she almost smiles. “You’d better lead on, then.”

  * * *

  After eight solid hours of moving, swapping between riding and walking, my back aches, my thighs ache, and my arms ache. My head aches. Dimia’s face is white and pinched and her knuckles are bloodless where she grips the reins, but as long as she doesn’t complain I won’t, either. Instead we plow on, passing mile after mile of purple and brown heathland, skirting around small woodlands and the odd isolated cottage and farm. The sky at the horizon is orange, the wind is behind us, driving us forward, there’s a fog rolling in fast, and my heart lifts because we cannot be too far from Tremayne now, perhaps three miles at most.

  I’m dozing in the saddle, rocked back and forth by the rolling gait of the horse, when Dimia’s voice cuts through my reverie.

  “What’s that?” she asks, a bite to her voice that has me whipping around in the saddle. Then I see what she’s looking at and my stomach swoops. I grip the reins tightly.

  “It’s a graveyard,” I say finally.

  “Where the dead are buried? Can we stop a little?”

  “We don’t have time,” I say swiftly.

  “Just a few moments. I’ve never seen one before.”

  “Do you not have memorials for your dead?”

  “No. They’re burned. The royal family and the lords have family vaults that they can visit.”

  “Are the ashes kept in them?”

  “No.” She looks perplexed. “They’re rooms for contemplation. They’re places for the families to go to remember.”

  “What about the, er, common folk?”

  “They don’t have the luxury of remembrance.”

  They. They don’t. Without further comment I lead my horse over and she follows. We both dismount and tie our horses. Dimia runs her hands over the wood of the entrance to the graveyard, looking up at the roof, then down at the recessed wooden benches in the sides of the gate.

  “Pretty,” she says.

  “It’s a lych-gate,” I tell her, unsurprised when she frowns. “A corpse gate. When they bring the dead to be buried they carry them in here, headfirst. The priest says a blessing and then they turn the coffin feetfirst and carry it into the graveyard while someone rings the lych-bell.”

  “Why?”

  “To confuse the spirit so it doesn’t try to follow the living back out.” It’s an old superstition. She nods and walks through the gate into the graveyard proper. My insides writhing, I take a deep breath and follow her.

  Dimia walks ahead of me, her head turning left to right and back again as she takes it all in. I notice she keeps strictly to the path. Once, when I was little, we came to leave flowers on my grandmother’s grave, and I’d been delighted by the mounds of loamy earth, running up and down them, chanting that I was the queen of the molehills. My mother had smacked the back of my legs and yanked me back to her side, her skin reddening with mortification. I hadn’t known they were fresh graves; I hadn’t really known what a grave was. The memory, though macabre, makes me smile. Mama would approve of Dimia’s careful tread.

  She pauses every now and then to read the inscriptions on the gravestones. She seems to stop especially at the ones for children, her mouth moving silently as she reads, before moving on.

  “It’s eerie, isn’t it, to know that beneath us there are bones shifting and resting.” Her voice has a strange, heavy quality to it and in the oncoming twilight it makes me shiver. I look back to the lych-gate to reassure myself the horses are still there. “All lined up, like crops, almost,” she continues. “A field of the dead.” She looks over to where the first row of mausoleums stands, leaning precariously against one another. “How strange to build monuments to house corpses.”


  I blink in shock. “It’s a monument to their lives, not their bodies. It might seem strange to you, but it seems stranger to me that you burn your bodies. Burn the arms of the mothers that held you. Burn the lips of the fathers that kissed your brow when you cried. You destroy the bodies that gave you life. We give them back to the earth. We treat our dead with respect.”

  She whirls around to face me. “You know nothing of death.”

  “I know enough,” I snap, forgetting that she holds the keys to getting my mother back. “I’ve seen it. I’ve smelled it. I’ve tried to fight it. What more do I need to know?” My eyes drift toward the row of vaults along the far wall and she follows my gaze. She nods, as if remembering something. Then she turns around and carries on walking.

  I follow, my nerves jangling, as she continues on her tour of Tremayne’s dead. Every so often we pass a grave with a circle on it, a line across the center of it. The symbol bothers me, because I’ve seen it somewhere recently, and then I remember: It was carved into the salt merchant’s door in Tremayne.

  I pause in front of one of the graves with the symbol on it and pick absently at a blackberry bush snarling out from beside it, piling the last of the fruit into my hand. I know it means something else but I can’t quite catch the memory.

  Without meaning to—or perhaps I meant to all along—I’ve wandered to the west side of the cemetery. Here the vaults are of tall gray stone with the family name carved across the top. A field of the dead, she called it. In this part of the cemetery the description is accurate, I’ll give her that. They’re like little houses; some have windows, and some have altars inside with shelves for offerings. Almost all have oak leaves or holly leaves, sometimes both, carved across the lintels, a superstitious throwback to the old gods and old ways. The tombs here are well kept, none of the stones are broken, and from the corner of my eye I watch Dimia stare at them all, occasionally trailing a long finger across the carved leaves.

  The fog has rolled in now, bringing the scent of smoke from the villagers’ fires with it. My hand has folded into a fist, crushing the blackberries so the purple juice runs out between my fingers. My eyes shift to the right and my heart begins to race.