by Matthew Berg
Even knowing that only through muscle and sweat could they overcome this obstacle, and that, according to the giant, time was of such essence that these efforts were necessary due to the great peril facing the world, Breeden still did nothing but watch. Granted, he didn’t have an axe, and even if he did, his efforts would have paled alongside those of his father’s friend. Regardless, he was humbled by the giant—and at least as much so by his spirit as by his physical might. The giant obviously believed Breeden’s father and believed that the threat to the world was real. Further, he must have believed Breeden himself was worth the effort it might take to bring him to his father for the battle ahead.
It was beyond intimidating to Breeden. It was a terrifyingly heavy burden to consider. All of this to bring him along. As if Breeden’s meager abilities were worth the effort. As if the powers Breeden didn’t understand and couldn’t fully control, but seemed more often to take him over and control him, could make a difference in a battle against a god!
Breeden felt unworthy. And as his steps took him near to the landing where they had left the boat, he even considered walking back home. It wasn’t far. Another great irony. One bend in the river closer to Ridderzaal, and Breeden could have seen the turrets of the castle.
Thoughts of the castle reminded him that he hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to his mentor, Cedric. Arriving at the boat at last, Breeden leaned against the hull and considered the events that had brought him here.
He regretted not speaking with Cedric, not apologizing for missing the rest of his lessons, and not thanking him for what he had learned so far. But Aegir hadn’t given him much opportunity. At least Janelle could tell Cedric what had happened—as best as she understood it, anyway. Breeden had regrets there as well. He had been too evasive with Janelle. He wished he’d had time to confide in her fully before he left. His words had sounded so flat and feeble to his own ears. But Janelle had been in no condition to catch on to what he wasn’t telling her. She was too sad and confused and uncertain to pick up on what she normally would have.
Then he thought of how sad his parents had been at his departure, of how difficult saying goodbye to his mother had been. He considered the fact that he was abandoning the search for Kestrel. And that the king was dead. It was overwhelming. It felt as though Breeden’s whole world were crashing about him. How could he leave everyone while all of those things were going on? And all because a giant he had met only once before in his life had told his parents he was needed. How could it be? How was there any chance he could actually help? How badly did it speak of their chances that they were hoping to rely on him to help save the world? The world? Him?
How much better a choice Laudan would have been! Laudan could have been swinging an axe alongside the giant. He couldn’t have matched the giant physically, of course, but then if any human could come close, Laudan would have to be the only one Breeden knew. Or Kestrel. Kestrel was a hunter, a tracker, a scout. And he was much cleverer than Breeden. He would have been a far better companion for the giant than Breeden. Even Oskar, who had demonstrated time and again his appreciation of the subtleties of politics and human nature, would have been a better choice than him.
Unwilling to entertain the thoughts that jumbled around in his head any longer, Breeden realized he needed to occupy himself. He looked for something to cook with, rummaging through the many canvas bags within the boat.
He found a sack of potatoes, another of carrots, and a hard block of something like bacon among the giant’s store of foodstuffs. And in an adjacent sack, he found a set of enormous cookware, which for some inexplicable reason made him smile in amusement. There was a stock pot in which Breeden could nearly have taken a bath! Chuckling to himself, Breeden kept looking for a pot of a more manageable size. The smallest pot still looked huge to Breeden and made him realize that he likely needed to prepare more carrots and potatoes than he’d originally estimated.
It was more than an hour before Breeden had sufficient water, drawn from the river in multiple trips using a large wooden bowl, boiling on a makeshift campfire. And it was another hour after that before Breeden had a fish stew ready to eat. Breeden was now ravenous. And he wondered how the giant could possibly still be working. The moon had been low on the horizon as night came on, and had disappeared a few minutes earlier. And the stars were hardly bright enough for the giant to follow the path. With the moon gone, Breeden became more and more concerned as the minutes slipped away. And it was nearly half an hour before he felt the thump of the giant’s approaching footsteps. Or so he hoped that was the source of the noise.
Breeden was making a show of sharpening his workman’s knife when the giant stepped into the firelight. And at sight of the giant, he allowed a low sigh to escape his lips. “I wasn’t sure you weren’t going to work through the night!” Breeden tried to make his voice light and remove all trace of urgency and fear.
Aegir appeared to understand the situation, and he apologized. “Young master, I am very sorry to have left you so long. I became somewhat caught up in my work. I will not let it happen again.”
Breeden was grateful for the words, though ashamed at the same time for being so. “It’s okay. I had my knife. And we’re really not all that far from my home. If I had to, I could have swum across the river. I made you some stew. I . . . I’ve already eaten. So you can have as much as you like.”
“Thank you, Breeden. A hearty meal is just what I need to restore my strength. It will be an early morning for me, I’m afraid. But before I eat . . .”
The giant surprised Breeden then by walking into the river and dunking his head to his shoulders. His head looked like that of an aurochs as it rose from the river, massive, wet and messy. Water poured down his body. He lowered his face to the water and took a long draught. And another. Then he scooped up a handful of sand and gravel from the river’s edge and used it to scrub his hands and arms from his fingers to his elbows. He dunked his arms again to rinse off the sand and then stepped back up onto the riverbank.
“Much better. Now I am suitable company for dinner!” He smiled and reached into the boat, removing a large, heavy towel and wiping his hands and arms dry before giving his head a quick pass as well.
“Better to leave my head mostly wet. It will cool me down faster.”
Aegir forwent using a bowl and ate the stew straight from the cooking pot with the ladle. “Delicious. Thank you.” And after another bite: “The bacon was a good touch with the fish.” And a few moments later: “I have a packet of spices somewhere in the bag of utensils. No offense, mind you, but by the quality of the stew, I judge you likely know their use.”
Breeden was pleased—and his mother would have been too. The giant liked his cooking.
In a matter of moments, the entire pot was empty, and the giant had tipped it upside down to get the last few drops into his mouth. “Marvelous. Thank you again.”
Seeing how quickly the giant had finished, Breeden felt bad. “I’m sorry if I didn’t cook enough. I’ve never prepared food for someone as big as you are.”
“Oh, no. That was plenty. Really. Just right.” Aegir grabbed a woolen blanket from the boat that would have served as a tent for Breeden. And without further ado, and with only a deeply rumbled “Thank you again for supper,” the giant lay down in some coarse grass at the river’s edge, rolled over, and quickly fell asleep.
Breeden was disappointed. He’d imagined that he would be listening to Aegir’s wonderful tales of home by firelight each night of the voyage. But Aegir hardly seemed the same person he had met that night nearly a year before. Or giant, Breeden mused, wondering whether it was proper to call a giant a person!
In any event, he knew the giant must be exhausted, and he wanted to be understanding. But he couldn’t help but feel sorry for himself. He was lonely. He missed his mother and father. His missed the smell of his father’s pipe. Once again he considered walking, or swimming, home. But if he truly were needed, as the giant was confident he was, then
he’d never be able to look himself in the mirror. And he’d never consider himself worthy of hearing another of the giant’s tales again.
Breeden rose from his seat by the fire, still hot and nicely blazing from his efforts, and he began cleaning up the cookware. When he had everything ready to go for breakfast, he thought of one other thing he wanted to do, and he set to it. It would be another hour yet before he finished that task and was ready for sleep. The work exhausted him—more than he’d thought it would.
He finished up, grabbed his bedroll from the bottom of his pack, and prepared a bed for himself within two arm lengths of the sleeping giant. Despite his nervousness, homesickness, and outright fear, he fell asleep quickly.
34
Search
Janelle literally cried herself to sleep the night Breeden said goodbye. She didn’t understand why he had to go, but she understood that he and his parents had believed it was important. So she had accepted it. What else could she do?
But would her life ever be the same again? Breeden and the princess had both abandoned her, and with the latter’s rise to queen, all hopes Janelle had had to rise above her station were lost. A long tenure with the princess as her handmaiden had been the one chance Janelle had to become more than a merchant’s daughter. Had the king still been alive, Janelle might have returned with the princess to Arlon after they completed their studies with the monks. But because Lorelei would become queen so soon, Janelle never had the chance to become indispensable to her.
Janelle slept in late the next morning. Not uncharacteristically, her mother had had to wake her. But Janelle was even more difficult to rouse than usual. There was nothing for her to do. No classes with Cedric. The princess was leaving—and Janelle had officially been dismissed from helping her any further only the day before. Breeden and Kestrel were gone. Kestrel! It hit her then: she could find out what had happened to Kestrel!
Kestrel had been abandoned, just as she had been. Worse, nobody was there to notice or even care that he was missing.
His parents were back in Pretania. Breeden was gone. Laudan was distracted and unlikely to be of much help. And Derek didn’t care. In fact, he was probably pleased Kestrel was gone. Could he have had anything to do with the disappearance? Now that she thought about it, the two had always been at odds. And Derek seemed to be the kind of boy who might torture small animals. Maybe it had been Derek! But no, if it had been Derek, why would the princess’s minister have tried to cover up her friend’s disappearance?
She couldn’t focus, and she realized that in her tattered emotional state, she distrusted everyone.
The only other person Janelle thought of who might be able to assist her was Oskar. He was smart and knew his way around the city. And he had also become friendly with nearly everyone who ran the castle. Maybe one of them had seen something. She would start at the bakery, since Oskar was frequently known to show up to class with a heel of bread or something sweeter he had charmed off the girls who worked the ovens.
With renewed purpose, Janelle got out of her bed.
She was heading past the kitchen to ask for Oskar at the bakery when she saw something that caught her eye. She wasn’t sure why the sight was remarkable, but there were two men-at-arms, in the princess’s livery, standing as if on duty and awaiting a platter of food from one of the cooks. Something about their carriage was odd. It was as if they were uncomfortable standing there. No, that was not quite it. It was as if they were trying to be nonchalant. That was it.
She stopping walking and decided she would watch them for a moment to see if she might confirm her suspicions or chalk them up to being overly eager to see something that wasn’t there. The platter was filled. One guard took the tray, and the other walked beside him. They were headed in the direction of the princess’s quarters—as Janelle would have expected. Nothing unusual there. So what was bothering her? That guards were picking up food for someone, and it wasn’t a servant doing so? Yes, that could be it. So where were they taking the food? To the princess? Perhaps she feared being poisoned now that she was succeeding to the throne. But what if they were taking the food to Kestrel?
She decided to follow them and ran down the hall toward the kitchen where she had seen them last. She asked one of the scullions which direction they had taken, and they confirmed that the guards had gone through a side door that led toward the princess’s wing and tower. She slowed down her pace then and walked through the door they’d taken. The hallway was empty.
She ran ahead again in a burst and then decided she would just pretend she was in a hurry and continue to run past them should she overtake them. She picked up her pace again and continued—straight on toward the stairwell that would take her back up to the main sitting room at the base of the princess’s tower. But she never overtook them. She picked up her pace yet again and ran straight up the stairs and into the sitting room.
A startled page was about to walk down the stairs, and she stopped him. “Did you see two guards come out of this stairwell?”
He looked afraid not to answer and responded quickly, probably thinking she was someone with the authority to ask him such a question. Thankfully, he was not experienced enough to recognize that she was a commoner. “No, ma’am. N-nobody came up the stairs. Just you.”
Janelle stood where she was and allowed herself a moment to catch her breath. How could they have lost her? Had they not come up the stairs? They must not have. So where had they gone? Where had they taken the food?
She would have to retrace her steps. So she headed back to the kitchen.
There were a handful of doors and passages leading from the hallway the men had taken. And Janelle took a few moments to determine that all but two were storage rooms, some full, and one empty. The two passages that did not lead to storage rooms were stairways. One was a narrow stairwell leading up to a small chamber off the keep’s main dining hall. Hmm. Maybe the guards had taken the food up to the dining hall. Perhaps some event was occurring there, or they were bringing food to the princess herself, eating in the Great Hall.
But something told Janelle that the guards had not taken this stairway either. She returned, fear grabbing ahold of her heart, to the last door the guards could have taken. She had opened it earlier, but the darkness it exposed had prompted her to investigate the others first. She grabbed a torch from a bracket on the wall and opened the door to reveal an unlit stairwell leading down into the cellars—and hopefully the dungeons below.
She remembered the tales the boys had shared of their adventures in the tunnels below the castle, of how they had discovered an old armory, of rooms full of ancient furniture and artifacts, and of the countless empty rooms they found more often than not. She tried to take heart in the fact that they had never spoken of finding the entrance to the dungeons themselves—which were supposed to be located underneath the storage cellars. But the fear would not let go, and it continued to grow as she descended the ancient stone steps.
The stairs ended at a small landing with a door to either side, and a hallway ahead. Janelle opted for the hallway and continued ahead, not sure what she was looking for, but hoping she would recognize it when she saw it. Then she thought she heard a voice—coming from ahead of her. She panicked, swung the torch around her from side to side, and tore open the door to her right, jumping inside and closing it quietly behind her. She could only pray that whoever was coming didn’t notice her light coming from beneath the door. She held her breath and listened, waiting to hear if the voices came closer. They did, and she soon heard the sounds of jingling harness accompanying the voices. Armor, she thought. The voices were just outside her door. They had come up so quickly! But just as quickly, they had passed, moving down the hallway from the direction she had come from herself. She wondered if it was the two guards she had seen earlier.
She waited a little longer as her heart slowed in its racing, and the pumping blood ceased pounding in her wrists and temples. She carefully opened the door and stepped out int
o the hallway again. This time, she felt better at least knowing she was heading in the right direction. And she felt somewhat safer knowing there was probably a good chance those two guards might be the only ones down here.
She turned the corner and walked another twenty yards before she came to the next door. She had decided she would check every door from here on, since she knew the guards had come from this direction. The first room was small and absent any furniture but for a single empty bookcase in the center of the room.
The next was devoid of even a single item. So, on to the next. And the next. And so on for another dozen rooms. Then she came upon a door that was barred from the outside. It was the first she had seen like it. And there was a small window just above her eye level, with tiny metal bars in the shape of a cross. She tried to hold up the torch to see into the room, but even standing on her tiptoes, she could see only darkness.
Unsure, she knocked on the door and whispered, “Kestrel?”
She heard something move inside the room, and she had to step back from the door. The hair on the back of her neck was tingling. But she had come here for a reason, and she couldn’t let her fear keep her from finding her friend. “Kestrel, is that you?”
A muffled “Janelle?” came back to her through the door’s window.
“Yes! Yes, it’s me!”
“What in Mirgul’s darkest pit are you doing down here?”
“I’m here to find you.”
Janelle almost laughed when she heard her friend’s next words, from out of the darkness. “Enough of the finding. Let’s see if you can move along to the rescuing. Can you open the door?”
Janelle did as he had bade her. With all of her strength, she managed to lift the heavy oaken plank off the brackets. Then she released the catch and pulled on the handle. The door swung open almost silently on well-oiled hinges. Sitting against the back wall was her friend, looking all the more pitiful from the fitful flickering of her torch, which had begun to gutter.