A raven cawed its lonely cry and flew over the field. A one-eyed man pushed to the front of the crowd, right behind Robin and Geoffrey.
She reached inside her tunic to grasp the broken end of her ivory-tipped arrow, but still hesitated. She would never have such an opportunity again to kill William, but still—
The one-eyed man touched Geoffrey on the small of the back with his little finger, a touch that would not have crushed a fly. But the Norman courtier fell and would have hit Robin, but she had already started forward, bursting into the clearing, where she appeared like a sprung child’s toy from between the two Ferramenta.
There was a collective gasp from the crowd as Robin slowly walked towards William. To them it looked like a poor Norman boy, a peasant, was approaching the King of Ingland and Normandy—with head held high.
“Princess Robin,” said William.
“Grandfather.”
A shriek came from the crowd as she spoke, and nervous laughter, followed by many voices calling for quiet. Aurillac started forward, and the Ferramenta moved fast, blocking his way. William made a sign and his black-clad archers moved closer, their eyes on the Bastard and his entourage.
“What is to be, then?” asked William softly, so no one else could hear. “What do you hold there? A wooden stake? Will you hear me first?”
Robin nodded, though instantly she felt that this was a mistake. Her courage and fury, pulled taut as a bow-string, could not be held so long. She gripped the arrow more tightly and told herself that a minute more would not matter. William would merely die a little later.
“Kill me, and you will die,” said the King. “Ingland will be riven by war. Everything your father held dear will be lost—”
“You slew my father!” Robin whispered hoarsely, while all the crowd leaned forward, desperate to hear what was being said.
“He died in battle, with a sword in his hand, as did your sister. I regret their deaths, particularly Merewyn’s. My death will not return them to the living, Robin. Your death will serve no purpose. Wear the crown and take my sword, and within a year or two at most, you will be Queen of Ingland and Normandy!”
William spoke fiercely and reached out to grip Robin’s shoulders. She shuddered under his touch and half-drew the arrow. He was so close, it would be so easy to punch the arrow up through his old ribs and into his heart. All the charms and protections every ironmaster wrapped himself in would be as nothing to the sharp ivory point.
Robin raised her elbow and began to draw the arrow out through the fold in the front of her tunic.
“You are my granddaughter,” whispered William. He closed his eyes and leaned forward, as if seeking an embrace. “Do what you will.”
“Seek new beginnings,” whispered Merewyn. Though her voice was nearly drowned by the sudden cawing of ravens overhead, it sounded to Robin like her sister was just behind her.
But she wasn’t. There was only her old grandfather, his eyes still closed, his hands on her shoulders. There was the crowd beyond, a great mass of excited expectation, aware that they were witnesses to a great and strange event. The three grandnephews, staring at her as if she were some strange creature. Aurillac, his stare that of an enemy, held in check only by temporary weakness.
Robin remembered grabbing the horn from Merewyn. Remembered charging down the slope. Remembered the sound of Merewyn being struck by the iron knight.
Knowing when not to attack…seeking new beginnings…Merewyn’s voice echoed in her head, as it would probably echo for as long as Robin lived.
Slowly, she pushed the arrow back under her tunic, through her belt, and pulled her hand free.
“I will never forgive you,” she whispered. “But I will take your sword.”
Then she spoke loud enough for the crowd to hear.
“Give me the crown.”
A cheer rippled through the mass of onlookers, though Robin wasn’t sure whether they were cheering her on or hoping to see a repeat of what had happened to Aurillac.
William held the crown high, and Robin felt the magic within it. It was like a seed, a container of potent force waiting for the right conditions to burgeon forth.
Robin bent her head and felt the rough touch of the holly leaves scrape through her hair. She tensed, waiting for the sharper stab of thorns, or for a sudden, shocking attack of nausea. But the crown sat comfortably on her near-shaven head, and her stomach was no more stricken with anxiety than it had been before.
“The sword!” someone shouted from the crowd, a cry that was taken up in seconds, to become a chant, several thousand voices all calling at once.
“The sword! The sword!”
Robin reached up to steady the crown and was startled to find her fingers touching flowers and green shoots rather than dried sticks and wizened berries. She was even more startled to find that the stubble on her scalp was no longer harsh and fuzzy. Her hair was growing back impossibly fast, and was already as long as the first two knuckles on her little finger.
“The sword,” said William. Robin couldn’t hear him, the chanting was so loud, but she knew what he was saying. She dropped her hands from her new-found hair and the flowering crown, flexed her fingers, and stepped up on to the stone.
The sword radiated iron magic like a miniature sun. Robin felt the heat wash across her face and breathed hot air through her mouth. But she knew this was not real heat, and it would not burn her unless she feared it would.
Without hesitation, she gripped the hilt of the sword with both hands, accepting the heat and the magic, letting them flow through her body, taking in the strength of the iron to add to her own.
She felt no conflict from the crown, but rather an acceptance that this too was part of her. Her heritage was of both the green forest and the hot stone that lay deep beneath the earth, and they did not clash within her.
The chant grew louder and more frenzied as Robin bent her knees and focused both her strength and her will upon the sword in the stone. She could feel how William had meshed blade and rock, but it was no easy matter to undo what he had done. But slowly she compelled sword and stone to separate, and with a screech like some tormented beast of legend, the weapon came free, an inch at a time.
Sweat poured from Robin’s face, and pain coursed through her lower back and forearms, but with one last outpouring of strength and determination, the stone gave up its prize. Robin whipped the sword around and held it aloft, too breathless to shout or even speak. Not that even her shouts would be heard above the noise of the crowd.
William held up his hands for silence, the Ferramenta booming and clanging to punctuate his demand. As the crowd stilled, William turned to the stone and started to walk the few paces over to Robin.
At that moment, Aurillac and his men suddenly charged, the Bastard himself leaping up on the stone, sweeping his great sword out of its scabbard as he jumped.
Robin ducked under his first blow, Aurillac’s sword-point skittering off the stone in a spray of sparks. She parried the next, but the blow was so strong that William’s sword was smashed out of her hand, and her fingers were suddenly numbed and useless.
Three arrows bounced off the Bastard, repelled by his charms, as he struck again. Robin jumped backward off the stone, landed well, and backed away, the crowd receding like the tide.
A sweeping glance showed Robin that William, his bowmen, and Ferramenta were wreaking bloody havoc amongst Aurillac’s men, and that this stupid battle would not last more than a few minutes.
But that was all the Bastard would need to kill her.
He jumped from the stone and charged towards her as Robin tried to pull out the black arrow with her left hand. She tensed, ready to try and dodge, the arrow still stuck in her clothes. But as Aurillac raised his sword, he was suddenly struck from behind by a huge lump of snarling brown fur that was either a dog or a small bear that had jumped from the fringes of the crowd straight on his back.
At the same time, more than a dozen unarmed men—townsfolk or
simple peasants—charged in front of Robin. One fell beneath Aurillac’s sword, but the others leaped on him as the bear brought the Bastard bellowing down. More men and women surged from the crowd to form a human shield-ring around Robin.
All were shouting the same thing.
“Ingland! Ingland! Ingland!”
Then Robin was being lifted up, onto the shoulders of the taller men of those about her. Aurillac lay dead nearby, or good as dead, as eight or nine people hacked at him with small knives, hatchets, and even their hands. The bear that had felled him sat up on its haunches, the crowd giving it space as it licked its paw and muzzle clean of blood.
Robin looked at the bear and it met her gaze with a human understanding.
“I thank you, Jack,” said Robin softly.
The bear got up and stood on his hind legs. Then he slowly sank onto one knee and bowed his head. All around him, the people followed suit. It was like the wind pressing down a field of corn, as heads suddenly lowered and men, women, and children all sank to one knee. The peasants and townsfolk were first, but then the Norman men-at-arms followed suit, then the knights and lords and ladies, into the bloodied mud where Aurillac’s followers lay dead or wounded.
Only William still stood. Even the men who carried Robin had sunk to their knees, so she was seated on their shoulders. Her hair had grown long and now framed her face, and the holly flowers of her crown had grown and spread too, to make a mantle that fell down her back like a rich, royal cloak.
William walked to her. Halfway, he held out his hand, and his sword flew into it. He reversed it to hold the blade. Then he proffered the hilt to Robin, and she took it in her left hand and held it high.
So the Princess Robin came into the inheritance she had never sought; amidst blood, but not of her choosing; welcomed by a grandfather she had always feared and hated; hailed by the Normans she looked like and the Inglish that she felt were her true people.
Overhead, two ravens cawed once in disgust and flew north-east, biting and snapping at each other as they flew. As they fled, a one-eyed man coughed and died where he lay on the ground between two of Aurillac’s dead men, the arrow that had chance-hit him buried deep in his chest.
Color Vision
MARY ROSENBLUM
When wizards are involved, sometimes a lot more than beauty can be in the eye of the beholder…
One of the most popular and prolific of the new writers of the nineties, Mary Rosenblum made her first sale, to Asimov’s Science Fiction, in 1990, and has since become a mainstay of that magazine and one of its most frequent contributors, with almost thirty sales there to her credit. She has also sold to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sci Fiction, Science Fiction Age, Pulphouse, New Legends, and elsewhere. Rosenblum produced some of the most colorful, exciting, and emotionally powerful stories of the nineties with titles such as “The Stone Garden,” “Synthesis,” “Flight,” “California Dreamer,” “Casting at Pegasus,” “Entrada,” “Rat,” “The Centaur Garden,” “Skin Deep,” “Songs the Sirens Sing,” and many, many others. Her novella “Gas Fish” won the Asimov’s Readers Award Poll in 1996 and was a Finalist for that year’s Hugo Award. Her first novel, The Drylands, appeared in 1993 to wide critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Compton Crook Award for Best First Novel of the year; it was followed in short order by her second novel, Chimera, and her third, The Stone Garden. Her first short story collection, Synthesis and Other Virtual Realities, was widely hailed by critics as one of the best collections of 1996. Her most recent books are a trilogy of mystery novels written under the name Mary Freeman, and a major new science fiction novel, Horizons. A graduate of Clarion West, Mary Rosenblum lives in Portland, Oregon.
I’M staring at Mr. Beasley while Mrs. Banks drones on about fractions.
He’s some sort of python, I can’t remember what kind. Mrs. Banks is my teacher. Her words come out a dull, dirty sort of blue-green, like the ocean right before a storm comes in. Fits the fractions. Mr. Beasley hisses purple at me. I don’t think he likes me. But then, I don’t like him either. He has fun when he squeezes the poor little mice Mrs. Banks feeds him. Snakes aren’t supposed to have fun.
“Hey, what color am I now?” Jeremy’s leaning across the aisle. “I’m trying to talk green.”
Jeremy’s mom is the school counselor. But I like Jeremy anyway. “Shut up,” I tell him, because Mrs. B is just looking for a reason to stick us both with detention. It occurs to me that she has fun, too, when Mr. Beasley squeezes those mice. “You’re always yellow,” I whisper to Jeremy to shut him up. Which he knows, because I told him how synesthesia works about a hundred times. But he thinks it’s cool, so I don’t care. It scares my dad, I’m not sure why. I think he worries that I’m like my mother. But this doctor said it was just a brain thing, that I’m kind of cross-wired and sound turns into color for me. But it still scares him. I liked the doctor, but his voice was a yucky, puke green color, and we moved again right after. We move a lot. Even if I don’t talk about synesthesia.
“You can put your books away now.” Mrs. B is staring at the clock, and her hands are kind of fluttering. “We’re going to have a special visit from the new principal. Mr. Teleomara ran a very successful private school in New York and we’re incredibly lucky to have him.” She pats her hair and glances at her reflection in the glass of Mr. Beasley’s aquarium. Is that lipstick? I can’t believe it, but yeah, she’s smearing it on, real sneaky, with her back to us like we can’t see. And she has to be a hundred years old. Well, fifty anyway.
“I want you on your best behavior,” she says, and pins Jeremy and me with the Death Eye. “Any disturbance and we’ll have a quiz on fractions every single day for the next week.”
Great, now everybody’s looking at us. Jeremy makes this innocent face that makes everybody laugh and I just look at my book. Trying real hard to look real well behaved. Nobody’s seen the new principal. He’s supposed to be real strict and probably eats babies. You know. I keep pretending to be really into my fractions as Mrs. B goes all high-pitched and breathy at the door, welcoming him.
“Hello, class. I’m delighted to meet you.” Deep voice.
Silver?
I blink. It kind of sparkles in the air, like glitter. Never seen that before. So I look up and he’s tall and looks like a movie star, which is why the lipstick on Mrs. B, I guess. She’s patting her hair again and smirking and her voice has this greenish tinge now. Even Mr. Beasley gets into the act, hissing purple all over the place. And I look, and then I look again. He’s now got a bright blue jewel right in the center of his head and he’s got human eyes, you know, with an iris and pupil.
And yeah, he does not like me.
Something is wrong here.
“Ah, a reptile lover.”
Mr. Beasley hisses real purple and I look back quick at my book, but it’s too late. The new principal comes over to stand right next to my desk. He’s smiling, and you know what? His smile makes me think of Mr. Beasley’s. I don’t think he likes me, either.
“Melanie has an attention problem,” Mrs. B twitters. “She’s a special ed student.”
Catherine Summers, head of the In Crowd, kind of snickers, and I can feel my face getting hot. But then I notice this ugly old dish on Mrs. B’s desk, the one she puts paper clips in.
It’s gold. With like…rubies in it.
Yeah…something is really wrong.
“I am so looking forward to working with everyone in the school.” Mr. Teleomara’s glittery silver words are kind of hanging in the air. Like fog. And that’s not how synesthesia works either. They’re drifting around me and I can feel ’em, like powdered razor blades or something. They make me itch.
Mr. Teleomara smiles even more like Mr. Beasley. “Melanie Dreyling, it has been a long time.”
Uh-oh. Dreyling is my real name.
He can’t know that. But he’s smiling right at me and that razor-dust silver is so thick I can barely see Jeremy’s surprised look. I got to get out
of here. I got to tell Dad. Better yet, I got to tell Cris. He’ll know what happened to Mr. Beasley and the dish.
But I can’t move. Can’t breathe. The silver stuff is clogging up the air.
“I know your mother,” he says. “You look just like her.”
There’s this buzzing in my ears, and I think of Mr. Beasley grabbing the poor mice and how they scream one little mousey scream before he squeezes them. There’s this buzzing in my ears and my stomach kind of turns inside out, maybe from breathing the razor-dust air. And Mrs. B is clucking about my name and I’m going to faint or…
…throw up.
All over my math book. And the desk. And the floor.
The silver goes away. Then Mrs. B is scolding ugly, storm-colored words and everybody is making yuck noises and the colors are all off and sick. I’m going to puke again, so I just bolt. Out the door, down the hall; no way I’m going back in there again.
Mr. Teleomara is having just as much fun as Mr. Beasley does with his mice.
“Hey, wait up!” Jeremy catches up to me as I duck out the fire door at the end of the hall. “Are you okay?” His voice is worried, kind of this off-orange.
“No. Yes. I’m okay.” Which I’m not. I look back but nobody comes charging out after us. “I’m going home. You better get back in there before you get detention.”
“What happened?” He doesn’t go. “How come he called you Dreyling? How come you threw up?”
“Food poisoning.” I head across the playground, waiting for somebody to start yelling. I guess maybe I could tell myself that I was imagining a weird silver voice like that…but I felt it and it hurt. And then there was Mr. Beasley and the gold dish.
And Mr. Teleomara.
I gotta talk to Cris.
“I ate in the cafeteria, too.” Jeremy catches up to me. “And I’m not puking. And what about your mom? My mom told me she was dead. She said not to talk about her because you were in denial.”
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