by Peter David
She smiled sweetly.
I rose then and said, “It would be my honor to make the princess’s acquaintance.”
“I thought you would say that,” Queen Bea said. “Finish your tea before it gets cold. It’s good for you.”
I finished it … because if there was one thing I knew, it was what was good for me.
No one knew anything about her.
I couldn’t understand it. Not only did Umbrage know nothing of the princess, aside from her name, but everyone I asked about her greeted me with shakes of the head, shrugs of the shoulder, and unvarnished ignorance of the subject at hand. It seemed most puzzling to me. How could it possibly be that the princess of the realm, the heir to the throne, was an enigma to all concerned?
As near as my inquiries were able to determine, the princess had been kept apart from everyone else at the castle, starting at quite a young age. A special suite of rooms had been set aside for her, and there she had resided. There was speculation about her. Some opined that she was so ghastly to look upon that no one could stand to do so. That she had some sort of considerable deformity, or that she was an imbecile and in all ways an embarrassment. But no one knew for sure. They couldn’t even lay claim to having seen her even once.
I had been endeavoring to acquire information so that I would have some inkling of what to expect, but I found the dearth of knowledge about her to be almost alluring in its way. Apparently we had a genuine mystery girl on our hands. There were few enough things in my life that could fall under the heading of “intriguing,” but this was definitely one of them. The only thing I could ascertain for sure was that she had tended to pass tutors in the same way that others pass water or gas. During the time that she resided in her private quarters, teachers would come and go. No one lasted terribly long, and there was a widening gap of time in finding a new teacher every time that an old one resigned … usually looking several years older and considerably more wan and wasted than when they had first arrived. Then one day the parade of teachers ceased, and a casual query to the king had revealed the fact that Princess Entipy had been shunted off to join the Faith Women at the Holy Retreat. “It will do her good” was all the king said. He was not forthcoming with any further information, and that more or less ended the matter, since, really, one cannot exactly start grilling a monarch for information, particularly about such a sensitive subject.
The night before we were to depart, however, I was busy brushing down Titan and preparing him for the journey, when I heard a soft laugh from behind me. I turned to see Mace Morningstar there, leaning against the doorframe, his arms folded. Instinctively I reached for my staff, which was leaning against a post, but Mace made a dismissive gesture to indicate that such defensive tactics were not necessary. “I’m just here to wish you goodspeed on your journey, Apropos,” he said. “Will you have a mount of your own?”
“A small steed is being brought in, so I’m told,” I said cautiously. I still didn’t trust him.
“Well, that’s good. That’s good.” Morningstar’s insufferable grin didn’t diminish one bit, and he said with a snicker, “Well, good evening to you then, squire.”
“Wait.” It occurred to me that I had not asked Morningstar if he knew anything of the princess. Obviously I endeavored to avoid Mace whenever possible, but he was the one who had approached me this evening. What had I to lose? “Do you know anything of the princess?”
“I? What would I know of her?” But he said it in such a way as to practically shout at me that he was indeed cognizant of some information.
Naturally, given the situation and my knowledge of the way such buffoons as Morningstar thought, I said the only reasonable and logical thing: “Nothing. You’d know nothing of her. It was foolishness of me to inquire. My pardon, Mace.” I bowed slightly and returned to grooming the horse.
It worked like a charm, of course. Oh, Mace didn’t come out with it immediately, of course. He picked up a strand of straw and began to chew on it idly, clutching it between his teeth. Then he sauntered over to me, leaning against the wall, his arms folded across his chest. I barely afforded him a glance as I asked, “Oh, are you still here?”
“She’s beautiful,” Mace said.
“Really. When did you see her?”
“On a dare, some years back, on my first visit to the court. It was before I became a squire. Some other boys challenged me to climb up the side of the castle after I’d boasted that I could scale any surface.”
“And you did it, of course.”
“Of course,” Mace said matter-of-factly. “I climbed halfway up the side of the castle. Heights didn’t bother me; nothing did, or does, really.”
“I’m happy for you.”
“Anyway,” continued Mace as if I hadn’t spoken, “I found myself at eye level with a window. Naturally I peered through it.”
“Hoping to catch a female undressing?”
“That’s right,” Mace said, unabashed. I think he was incapable of feeling any sort of shame. Granted, so was I, but at least that was a conscious decision on my part. I think he was just too stupid. “What I saw instead was this young woman—hair the color of an early autum, eyes like a raging sea, and when she spoke, a voice like a southbound breeze …”
“Is she a person or a weather report?” I asked.
“She was speaking with a tutor, a fairly heavyset woman with a brutish accent and a mole on her chin that had hair growing from it. She asked a question of the woman, and when the tutor turned to a particular reference volume to check the answer …”
“Yes?”
“She stabbed her.”
My eyes widened. “What? Who stabbed who?”
“The princess stabbed the tutor. Oh, nothing lethal, mind you. She used a quill pen that was to her right. She just took the thing and drove it into the top of the woman’s hand which had been resting on the table.”
“Good lord,” I murmured. Then I said suspiciously, “Wait a minute … if you’re making this up …”
“On the life of my father, I swear it so,” said Morningstar with enough sincerity that I couldn’t help but believe him. “Jammed the thing straight down. I have to admit, I wasn’t aware that one could drive a quill that far down into someone. A good inch or so it penetrated. Tutor started screaming like a stuck hog, and a string of invective in her native tongue poured from her throat, and in ran the queen all in a dither, asking what’s happened, and the tutor who, by this point is in agony, pointed helplessly at Entipy. And there was our royal princess, as cool and calm as you please, and she looked up from her text and said, ‘She’s clumsy, mother. What can I say?’ “
“And you saw it all happen. With your own eyes.”
“With these very two hawk-eyed orbs you see before you. Her mother and the tutor left in a lather, and then I began to climb down. Just as I started to go, I thought I saw Entipy glance in my direction. But I was already starting down, and so figured that I was in the clear. So what happens? I’m halfway down the wall, and suddenly an inkwell dropped—nay, hurled—from overhead caromed off my skull. It knocked me clean off the wall and I fell the rest of the way. Broke my leg from the fall. Took six months to heal properly, and even now I still have a barely noticeable limp. That minor impediment is why I feel some slight sympathy for you, Apropos, believe it or not.”
“I don’t believe it, thank you, considering you tried to beat me to a pulp after the jousts.”
“That was simply a matter of pride. It was nothing personal. If I did not feel for you, Apropos … why would I be telling you what I know of Entipy?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do, for I’ve explained it to you. Look.” He pushed back a hank of his sandy hair. I could see the trace of a scar, shaped in a small semicircle. “That’s what’s left of the place where the ink bottle struck me. It was my very first combat scar. One would have hoped for something more impressive, I should think.”
“Indeed.” I paused and then said, “I
f I am to believe you … I shall need more of a reason that you have shared this with me besides the notion that you are doing so out of the goodness of your heart.”
“It is of no consequence to me whether you believe or not,” he said with a shrug.
We stared at each other for a short time, and then he genuinely smiled at me. It was the smile that I found most disconcerting of the entire encounter.
He never did give me any further explanation as to the reason for his “warning.” Perhaps he had no other that he could truly articulate. In retrospect, I can only assume that his desire was to make me nervous. I think he wanted to see me sweat, or at the very least plant in my head some degree of apprehension about the task that lay ahead. In short: He didn’t want to take the slightest chance that I might actually take some pleasure in what was to come, no anticipatory glee in the prospect of being trusted by the queen herself to be the personal escort to the future ruler of the throne. Morningstar might very well have confused my motives with his own. I knew his type all too well from having seen it not only around the palace, but all my life. He had his own serious ambitions for social climbing. He probably thought that I was of a similar persuasion, and that I would have regarded some sort of mandated close relationship with the princess as a potential tie to the king or the throne. In that spirit, he probably didn’t want to take a chance that I might, even for a short time, be pleased about the assignment. So he thought he’d spoil my mood.
He didn’t comprehend that my mood had been spoiled the day that I was born, and it had only been downhill from there.
Chapter 13
It was comforting to know that I still retained enough of my skills in woodsmanship to smell smoke when it was out there.
The journey to the Holy Retreat had gone without incident until that point. Indeed, it had been so utterly trouble-free that I found myself getting a bit nervous about it for no reason that I could determine. Our escort party numbered about twenty, which seemed more than enough. We were under the command of Sir Nestor, one of the king’s personal guards. He was affable enough, although all business when it came to matters of security. He kept an advance party lurking about, making sure that the way was clear. He exuded a quiet confidence that I found somewhat heartening. Sir Umbrage, for his part, didn’t seem especially heartened by it at all. Instead he had a tendency to keep looking around the woods, squinting against the sun, trying to see something that did not readily appear to be perceptible. Perhaps he was trying to find random threads of fate and sort them out.
I had asked him before we set off why, if he was so apprehensive about our little mission, he didn’t simply pull some sort of stunt similar to that which had gotten him out of our war effort. “There is a fine line between unfortunate happenstance and perceived deliberate ineptitude,” he had replied.
“You’re saying you think they might have caught on.”
He nodded. He was probably right although, considering how things turned out, he might have been well advised to take that risk.
For my part, I had found myself doing the same thing during the trip as Sir Umbrage. I scoured the forests, the beaten pathways ahead of us, for some sign of pursuit or some danger that might be approaching us. None had been readily apparent.
And yet …
And yet I couldn’t help but feel that something was out there. I couldn’t determine precisely what that might be, nor was I able to figure out what might prompt me to think that. Yet I thought it just the same. I would glance deep into the woods, sometimes quickly snapping my gaze in that direction at random intervals as if trying to catch someone watching us. I never saw anything. Yet I kept having the feeling that there was something out there, just beyond my perceptions, dancing just outside of my field of vision and—worst of all—laughing at my inability to spot him or her or it. The woods and forest areas through which we traveled had none of the sheer oppressive mood of the Elderwoods, which had been my primary former haunt. My new surroundings were innocuous enough. But I still felt there was something there, and I misliked that I couldn’t begin to guess what it might be. In all likelihood, it was simply my imagination. The problem was: I wasn’t that imaginative a person. So when such things presented themselves, it tended to make me … apprehensive.
I had restrained my worries, though, because we had a journey of several days ahead of us, and nothing was going to be served by my fretting and voicing concerns the entire way. All I would do was annoy Sir Umbrage, who was already in an apprehensive enough mood, and the other knights and squires in the company who seemed to regard my presence as something of an aberration at best, an annoyance at worst.
At least I had been given a horse for the purposes of the journey. That was a bloody great relief. I managed to get about well enough on my lame leg, but even with the aid of my staff, lengthy walks were not my favorite pastime. Not unless I had the opportunity to rest repeatedly along the way. The horse was nothing special. She was a relatively small, dabbled beast named Alexandra, and I doubted she was very fleet of foot. Then again, neither was I, so I could hardly condemn the poor creature for not possessing that which I also lacked.
The weather had been quite temperate, the conversation pleasant if a bit strained from time to time, and the entire trip had been fairly free of stress, aside from my free-floating anxiety that we were being pursued, watched, or in some other way being monitored. So it was somewhat jolting when I first scented the smoke. I could tell from Alexandra’s reaction that she sensed it too. There was some slight hesitation on the part of a couple of other mounts, but the puzzled looks on the faces of the other knights indicated that they weren’t quite certain what was putting the horses out of sorts.
“There’s a fire ahead,” I said.
This drew looks from Nestor, Umbrage, and several others. “I smell nothing,” said Nestor. “Are you sure? I don’t smell anything.”
“Yes, I’m sure. The horses smell it, too. Look at them.”
Nestor raised a hand, palm up, indicating that the rest of the group should come to a halt. They did so and he tilted his head back, sniffed the air. Finally he nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, you’re right. Redondo, Messina.” He summoned two of the more reliable members of the advance scouts. “Check on ahead. Report back. See if it’s a camp of some sort. If so, see if it’s hostiles.”
“It’s not an encampment,” I said with conviction. “It’s bigger than that, I’d warrant.”
“Perhaps. We’ll see.”
We waited then for what seemed an interminable time, although I doubt it was really all that long. Then Redondo and Messina returned, and they appeared quite agitated. They went straight to Nestor and the three of them spoke in low whispers. I didn’t have to see Nestor’s face to tell that he was clearly upset, and then he turned to us and said, “Full speed, lads. It’s the Holy Retreat. Someone’s torched the place!”
The announcement galvanized everyone in the group. Even Umbrage seemed inclined to drop his usual air of quiet befuddlement and called out, “The princess? Is she there? Is she unharmed?”
“We don’t know,” returned Nestor. “The squad spotted some people milling about, but it was hard to discern. No talking now! Full speed, I said, damn your eyes!”
I can tell you, there’s nothing like having someone say “Damn your eyes” to let you know that they’re genuinely concerned.
So with our eyes in serious danger of damnation, we spurred our steeds onward until we were practically thundering through the woods. Soon the smoke was strong enough that one could have smelled it through a raging head cold. We emerged from the woods then and we were able to see, in the near distance, the Holy Retreat of the Faith Women … or at least, what was left of it.
I had never been to the Holy Retreat, although I had heard that it was a simple but elegant structure which had served the unadorned needs of the Faith Women. I would never have been able to tell firsthand, however, because the place was in ruins. We arrived just in time to see one small, s
till-remaining part of the structure collapse in on itself. It simply gave up and fell with a groan of splintering wood.
Clustered around the front of the Holy Retreat were a number of forms which I would have assumed to be women. It was an assumption because the Faith Women tended to dress in rather dreary, asexual garb. Indeed, the only reason we knew for sure that they were female was because they called themselves the Faith Women. I’d spotted Faith Women from time to time, embarking on missions of mercy and such. A couple of them had more of a mustache than I, so in a way we were all more or less taking their word that they were as advertised.
We thundered across the open ground, we knights, and I fancy that we made a rather impressive sight. After all, there’s nothing like seeing twenty armed men arriving too late to do anything about a disaster that truly stirs the heart to bursting with emotion. We reined up a respectful distance from the Faith Women, who were simply standing there and staring at us. Their faces were inscrutable. We had no idea whether they were happy to see us, or distressed, or even cared one way or the other.
“Who is in charge here?” he called to the group.
The Faith Women looked at one another, and then one of their number stepped forward. We should have been able to tell that she was in charge. She was the only woman I’d ever seen who had so much facial hair, she could have braided her eyebrows. Her hands were hidden within the folds of her garment, her hair obscured by a hood. Her eyes were hard and cold. She said nothing, simply waited. That she said nothing didn’t surprise me. Faith Women tended to be a fairly conservative lot, cherishing words as if they were coins, and loath to toss them around in a wasteful fashion.