The Chestnut King

by N. D. Wilson

“And Anastasia hates you.”

  Richard’s eyes grew, making him look even more fish-like than usual. “You don’t think she’s covering another emotion?”

  “No.” Henry bit his lip, trying not to laugh again. “No, I don’t.”

  “So, then, you recommend your sister? Wouldn’t you mind having me for a brother? I’ve never been sure if you’ve cared for me.”

  Henry sighed, and all temptation to laughter was gone. Henry had felt oppressed by his adoptive parents. He had felt bubble-wrapped, closeted, and ignored. But his life had been nothing compared to Richard’s—a runaway mother, a dead father, and servant-trustees to keep him curtained, contained, pale and sickly, but alive while they controlled the estate. And his clothes—velvet suits and button boots. Henry had never felt bad for bringing him into Kansas and then to Hylfing. At times, he did feel bad for how annoyed he was by him.

  He looked into Richard’s big eyes. “Richard, if my sister wanted to marry you, I would be happy to be your brother.”

  Richard grinned. His eyes sparkled. Henry didn’t know what he’d do if Richard started crying. Hopefully, he wouldn’t want to hug.

  “Would you talk to her for me?” Richard asked.

  Henry grimaced. “No.”

  “Would you talk to your father for me?”

  “No. Richard—” Henry’s door opened and Mordecai stepped into the room. The raggant followed between his legs. “Talk to him yourself.”

  Henry looked up at his father. “I was dreaming. I jumped off the bed on Richard.”

  Mordecai nodded. “Your mother told me about your dreamings. I’m sorry I haven’t been here to talk with you about them.” He looked at Richard. “Would you mind if I spoke with my son?”

  Richard scrambled to his feet and stood poker-straight. “Sir, before I leave, I need to ask for an audience myself. Soon if possible. It’s regarding your daughter Una.”

  For a moment, Henry saw confusion on his father’s face, and then amusement. “I’d be happy to speak with you, Richard. When things have quieted.”

  Richard bobbed his head, said, “Thank you, sir,” in his most proper voice, hurried out the door without so much as glancing at Henry, and then shut it quietly behind him.

  Henry stood up and sat on his bed. Mordecai nudged the broken chair with his foot, and then sat down beside him. The bed dipped, and Henry had to scoot away to avoid sliding into his father’s side.

  Mordecai reached across him, turned the lantern up, and then shifted so he could face Henry. The raggant scrambled up onto the bed behind them.

  His jaw was unshaven; his skin, normally sun-dark, was even darker in the lantern light. His eyes shown. He only lacked Caleb’s temple scar and the trail of white hair that it left on his brother’s scalp.

  “Are you and Uncle Caleb twins?” Henry asked.

  Mordecai smiled and nodded. “Separated in birth by less than one hour. He the sixth son, I the seventh. We have grown more alike in our age.” He lifted his hand to Henry’s face, just as his mother always did, and touched the burn on his jaw. Henry felt a tingle, and then scratching heat. He blinked, but he did not move.

  “The rot is growing,” his father said.

  Henry licked his lips and nodded. He could feel his throat constricting. “I don’t know how to stop it. I try sometimes.” He held out his right hand and flattened the palm. His eyes shifted, and he sat, with his father’s hand on his face, watching the twisting of the fiery, living, changing word, the gold and green and gray of dandelion life and dandelion death. “Do you know how to stop it?”

  Mordecai lifted Henry’s face and stared into his eyes. He shook his head slowly. Henry’s eyes were still dark. He was seeing all of his father, the green man, Mordecai West-more. Thick strength twined around him, forming his arms, guiding his eyes. His father was a human tapestry, held together with the strength and glory of grapevines. Henry shut his eyes and waited for a moment. When he opened them again, his father was still, no longer a cacophony of twisting life.

  “What do you see when you look at me?” Henry asked. “I’ve tried in a mirror, but I can only see the spiderweb things twirling out of my face.”

  “I see fire.” Mordecai smiled. “Near unquenchable. Your strength comes from a fast multiplying weed, servant to the sun, named for the lion. I have never seen nor heard of it rooting in flesh until I saw it in my son. To you, it is only in your hand, branding its entry. But I see that fire in your eyes, I see it winding through your bones and building a gold and green bonfever of protection in your mind.” He traced the burn pocks on Henry’s face. “Around these wounds, it burns hottest, dies, and reseeds itself. The fire there is too bright for my eyes.”

  Henry stared at his father, blinking. Mordecai dropped his hand to Henry’s shoulder, and then to the bed.

  “I won’t lie to you, Henry. You are strong enough to know the truth. If that death vintage had dripped on my face, I would already be dead. The slow, potent strength of grapes and their vines would do nothing to protect me. Monmouth’s aspens would have browned and fallen. And truthfully, if that creeping decay had rooted in your arm or leg, we would have already sacrificed the limb.” He smiled, but there was sadness in his eyes. “We cannot sacrifice your head.”

  Henry swallowed hard, processing what he’d just been told. “You mean, it’s just going to keep growing? It’s going to grow until it kills me?” Cold fear crawled through Henry’s veins. He could see himself with the burn scar sprawling across his face, spreading from ear to ear, around lifeless eyes. His stomach churned. His head sagged, dizzy. He was going to pass out.

  Mordecai lifted his head with both hands and leaned forward until he and Henry were eye to eye. “What I mean, Henry, is that what you have survived, I could not. I mean that your fire is fast and bright and finds life again when beaten down. It would be easier to crush quicksilver, that scattering and reuniting liquid, than to stamp out the flame in your veins. But the blood that wormed into your jaw is death itself; it is the devouring blood of the undying. It will die only when she dies, when death finds the immortal. No one has ever done more than entrap Nimroth’s breed, even when they were mad and gibbering helplessly in Endor’s ashen streets. Caleb and I snared her once, but only with luck and a tomb prepared for her kind. Even that would not help you now.” He leaned his forehead against Henry’s and shut his eyes. “We must do what has never been done. I will find her. She has gone to ground and left no trace that I can sense, though your uncle and I have wandered far. But she must show herself. She cannot gather strength and hide forever. And she will always gather strength. Nimiane will fall or I will.” He opened his eyes again. “Or we will.”

  Henry was numb. A switch inside him had flipped, a switch that made it impossible to feel. Somewhere deep inside, his mind had decided that feeling was not a good idea right now. “She was in my dream. Tonight.” Henry’s voice was quiet. “It wasn’t the first time.”

  Mordecai sat up. “Tell me. But in the air, beneath the stars. Come.” He stood and pulled Henry up with him. “The roof will better suit us.”

  * * *

  The night air was sharp, and the breeze tightened the skin on Henry’s arms and numbed his cheeks. He leaned on the wall between his father and the perching raggant and stared out over the recovering city, out at the harbor and the moon-glistening sea.

  Henry couldn’t retell his dreams well. He described everything he could and always felt as if he were forgetting something, something that might be essential. But his father was patient, listening, occasionally prompting when Henry lost focus, occasionally asking questions. In the telling, his dream seemed childish, and his fear unreasonable. But the horror of it remained fresh for all of that. A strange man had executed Uncle Frank. The witch had spoken to him.

  Henry stopped, opened his mouth to say more, and then stopped again. He’d said everything.

  “The witch is in a garden?” his father asked. “In every dream? Not merely tonight’s?”


  “Yes. Always in a walled garden. I think it’s the same one every time. Everything seems fake. But she’s always been alone before.”

  “No men?”

  Henry shivered and shook his head. “No. And no one has ever killed Uncle Frank before. I’ve died once. You’ve—” Henry looked up. “You’ve died.” He hurried on. “What does the garden mean? Does it tell you anything?”

  Mordecai met Henry’s eyes and then turned back to the harbor. “I’m sorry, Henry. I couldn’t say. Perhaps she hides herself in a garden, but there are many gardens in the world. The men, I expect, tell us that she is growing in strength. They may be actual servants of hers, tools to replace the fallen Darius.”

  Henry leaned against the wall beside his father, waiting for more, hoping there would be more. The sea’s chilled breath swirled around him, and he shivered.

  “In your own death dream,” Mordecai said quietly, “in what way were you killed?”

  Henry laughed. It seemed almost comic now. “I was eaten by dandelions. I mean, they rooted all over me. I yelled and screamed, and they grew out of my mouth and nose. I suffocated, and then I was dead, watching my body shrink away, burning up with dandelions. When I was gone, they all went to seed and blew away like ash.”

  Mordecai’s profile was stark in the moonlight, set against the bottomless sky. His brows were down.

  “What does it mean?” Henry asked. “Is it bad?”

  Mordecai looked at him and smiled. “It means that you had a dream in which you were eaten by dandelions. I can tell you no more than that.”

  Henry was confused. “How do I know when a dream means something?”

  His father sighed. “Men rattle bones and bathe in smoke and blink at the stars, hoping for an answer to that question. I will tell you some part of what I know.” Mordecai turned and leaned his side against the wall. “Some dreamings are visions, pictures rooted in reality as it is or as it could be. Your dreams tonight may be of this sort. Others are nothing more than the imaginings of a wandering, uncontrolled mind and are built on exhaustion or wine or overspiced meats. These, too, may have some role in your restless nights.”

  The raggant snored, and his head dipped and sank. Mordecai, smiling, reached in front of Henry and grabbed the loose skin between the animal’s wings, kneading it slowly. A long, low, sputtering groan rumbled in the creature’s chest, and it seemed to go limp, wobbling in enjoyment. Henry wondered if it would fall.

  Still kneading, Mordecai continued. “A dream-walker may study visions of their own, or, if they are strong, they may enter the visions or sausage dreams of another mind. If they do, their own mind tends to meddle and interfere.” Mordecai rubbed the raggant’s ribs, sliding thick skin over the bony washboard, and then he slapped the animal’s side and straightened. “Most difficult, Henry, is what you did in the faeren mound. You dream-walked free of your body around the waking world, listening to the conversations of traitors, and leaving a weed sprouting from the clay of a faerie wall. It is not your mind that wanders. It is your soul, and once wandering, it can be kept out. It is dangerous but powerful. You should not try it again, not unless another danger is greater.”

  Henry shivered once more, and this time, his teeth clacked sharply together before he muffled them with his lips.

  “A cloak?” Mordecai asked. He had none and seemed unaffected by the wind or its bite.

  Henry shook his head and stepped closer to his father, hoping for a shadow in the breeze.

  “I must leave again,” Mordecai said suddenly. “Tonight. I cannot wait for the witch to play her hand. But I will speak to my mother. She will watch your dreams.”

  “What can Grandmother do?” Henry asked.

  Mordecai filled his lungs and slowly released his breath back into the night. “Your grandmother’s eyes are not blind. Her mind is not addled. For twelve years, she sent her soul searching for her son, every night while she slept.” He paused. “In the end, she found me in my prison sleep. She struggled to worm into my walled mind, and she succeeded, but only by tearing away from her own. Your grandmother found me, but could tell no one. She wandered too far, and there are rifts between soul and body that cannot be healed. She stayed with me. I returned, but she could not. She stays with me still. When her eyes are closed, they see. She will be with you now, my son, and she is a true comfort when the night’s mares come calling.” He put his hand on Henry’s head and let it slide down to his shoulder. “A quieter time will come. I would learn your game. I would walk with you in that other world. But now, Caleb and I must hunt on.” He looked down at Henry. “I may miss your birthday. Thirteen next week’s end.”

  “It doesn’t feel like my birthday. I always thought I was born right after Christmas.”

  Reaching down the neck of his shirt, Mordecai lifted something over his head. He held it out in the moonlight for Henry to see. A polished metal square twisted slowly on the end of a thick string. Diagonal notches had been cut into the square’s corners.

  “The leather thong is from a common cow. As for the rest”—he slipped it over Henry’s head—“the shard is the last remaining piece of a sword carried by the Old King, and after his sleep, carried by our family through the wars of generations. With it, your grandfather took the witch’s eyes before she took his life. It was with me in Endor when we entombed the witch.”

  Henry rubbed the smooth metal between his fingers and for a moment forgot the cold breeze.

  “The metal has no power of its own,” Mordecai said. “But much is now vested in it. It has a memory of courage and strength well used and knows the patterns both of bravery and goodness. Perhaps it shall guide you. Best of all, unlike your flesh and mine, it knows no fear in the darkest of places. It has a rich story. You shall make it richer.”

  “Mordecai?” The voice was Hyacinth’s. Henry and his father turned and watched three shapes rise out of a doorway and onto the roof. Uncle Frank stood beside Franklin Fat-Faerie. In front of them both stood Henry’s mother. She looked like her daughters. She looked like something made from trees and starlight. The breeze combed her dark hair. Her eyes caught the moon’s light and threw it back into the world.

  She walked to Henry’s father. “Caleb is in the street with horses. Three of his men ride with you.” She kissed him. “You cannot stay one night?”

  Mordecai shook his head. The faerie flopped silently onto his back and shut his eyes. Uncle Frank winked at Henry and leaned against the wall, staring out at the harbor. “Don’t care much for that ship,” he said. “Not a lick.”

  Mordecai looked out at the galley masts, stark silhouettes. Lanterns glowed around the ship’s rail. “Nor do I. But James says the captain has no ill intentions, and we live in the empire’s frontier. This is no time for petty resistance. Treat them well.”

  “What was the message James brought?” Henry asked.

  “The emperor requested that your father return with the ship,” Hyacinth answered. “He has need of his service.”

  “Is that where you’re going?” Henry looked at his father and then back to his mother. She looked up into Mordecai’s face.

  Mordecai shook his head. “I will attend him as soon as I am able.”

  “Oh, ho,” Fat Frank said suddenly. Henry had thought he was sleeping. “He won’t take kindly to that. No, he won’t, the power-drunk puppy. He’ll piddle his satin trousers.”

  “Franklin—” Mordecai said, but the faerie sat up and continued.

  “The lord of the eastern and western seas, the lord of all the fishes and the peoples and the planets. Last I heard, he was only letting God have a go every second Tuesday.” He flopped backward and splayed his limbs. “The little throne monkey.”

  Uncle Frank laughed. “Didn’t know you were an anarchist, Frank. No surprise we get along.”

  The faerie snorted. “That from the Lord Mayor of Hylfing with his shiny chain. In a fortnight, you’ll be regulating donkey behavings and tariffing figs. I’m a free creature, free as the Chestn
ut King himself, though he probably fears his mother. Free as rubbish in the road. I give account to no one.” Still lying on his back, the faerie crossed his arms. “No one will have me,” he added.

  “Franklin,” Mordecai said again. “Stand up and come here.”

  After a moment, the faerie obeyed, but slowly.

  Mordecai crouched. The faerie adjusted his belt and sniffed loudly. “You are no longer a mound member, no longer a citizen of the district, nor a subject to the queene!”

  “Do I need reminding?” Fat Frank muttered. “My spark’s been doused.”

  “Not doused,” Mordecai said. “Your strength’s not ashen yet. I must ask you to do something, but I am no longer your bonded green man. I live because of you, my son lives because of you, and many others in this city as well. And so I ask you to do something freely, as a friend.”

  Fat Frank shifted his feet and squared his small shoulders. He said nothing, and so Mordecai continued.

  “My brother and I leave in a dangerous time, looking for an even greater danger. Keep this house safe while I am gone, and my family in it. The Book of Faeren no longer constrains what remains of your magic. Use it all in their defense if you must.”

  Henry looked from his father’s face to the faerie’s. Frank gave a little nod, and his jaw crept out. His nostrils flared, widening his round nose.

  Mordecai rose, hugged his wife, kissed Henry on the head, and then ruffled his hair. “Soon,” he said. “The storm must break soon, and we will be done with the waiting.”

  Henry watched his father disappear into the black mouth of the stairs. His mother followed him. Shivering, he looked at one Frank and then the other. Behind him, the raggant snored.

  “Odd,” Uncle Frank said, “having a brother like that. Makes me feel like a hen hatched in a hawk’s nest.”

  Voices rose up from the street. Hooves clattered on cobblestones. Henry looked down at Fat Frank, rubbing his nose. The faerie wasn’t much of a replacement for Mordecai.

  “Good night,” Henry said. And he walked to the stairs.