by F. E. Greene
Never breaking her pace, Carys ducked through the opening.
Pearl didn’t follow. Instead, she stopped short when her bare toes skimmed a shadow thrown by the thicket. Behind her, Varrick halted with a grunt.
Bent within the entrance, Carys turned. “Is something wrong?”
“Is this place safe?” Pearl asked.
“It’s inside the pale if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I don’t know what I’m asking.”
Carys reemerged. “Then I don’t know how to answer.”
Frustrated, Pearl turned toward Varrick whose expression out-frowned her own.
“What’s the trouble?” he asked.
“I’m not sure I should go in there,” Pearl admitted.
His face hardened like she disobeyed an order. “Darkgard cannot cross the pale.”
Pearl waited for Varrick to say something else, perhaps compliment how far she’d already come. But the Orldic only stared until his gaze convinced Pearl that she exasperated him without knowing how.
Stepping between them, Carys intervened. “Have ease, retriever. We’re not storming Thornsgorge. Let’s give Pearl a minute.”
Remarkably Varrick complied. While he backed away, shade from the forchard obscured his left side, and Pearl subtly admired what remained. The king’s retriever had been handsome once. His eyes were as expressive as the rest of him was vague, and whatever made him sullen, it wasn’t how he’d begun.
Carys took his place. “No one will force you to go forward, Pearl. It’s your appointment, not ours. But this is where the king wants to meet.”
“It doesn’t look as safe as the castle,” Pearl said.
“It’s just an overgrown orchard,” Carys replied.
“But it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like if I go in there, I won’t come out again.”
When neither of her escorts rushed to disagree, Pearl shivered. Their combined silence cradled a chilling affirmation, like a harsh northern gale or the stream in winter.
Pearl had spent the last five years of her life mired in practical things. Common sense kept her safe, and now it recoiled at the notion of entering a mysterious wood. Climbing the broch was scary, but that challenge had a visible end. The forchard promised nothing so predictable.
Varrick let out a ragged breath. “Why aren’t we moving? Either she wants to meet the king or she doesn’t. D.B.D., second.”
“H.T.L., retriever.” Returning to the archway, Carys sat down in its shade. “Pearl, what do you think might happen in here?”
“I can’t guess,” Pearl said. “That’s the trouble.”
“So you only do what’s guessable?” Carys asked.
She considered it. “I suppose.”
“Is that a rule for you? Or just routine?”
Shielding her eyes, Pearl checked the Illiate woman for any hint of teasing. The questions weren’t chiding, but Pearl still didn’t like them. “It seems like the right way to live.”
“Right or Rosperian?”
Pearl glanced at Varrick. He was listening, she could see, although he pretended otherwise. While his countenance was as bland as unbuttered bread, Pearl thought he might be fighting a smile.
At first Pearl bristled, chapped that they were having a laugh while she stood there sick with worry. She debated asking to meet the king another day. If he was a good king, he would understand. They could meet in the keep or in the hall she’d yet to see – somewhere with walls and doors and an actual roof.
“Pearl, this is your choice,” Carys told her. “No one will make it for you, but you don’t have forever to make it. The king is waiting to meet you. Here. Today.” She thrust a thumb over one shoulder.
Pearl leaned down to peer past her. Beyond its entrance, the forchard looked as murky as its threshold. “Why can’t we meet somewhere more normal?”
Carys smirked. “You’re staying in a castle no one can see. This is as normal as it gets.”
Unconvinced, Pearl slumped against one of the boundary stones. This time its marking triggered a burst of recollection, and she traced its indention with her finger. Three lines, two of them curved, sprung from one straight base.
“This is the trident crown,” she said.
With a swiftness that defied his size, Varrick joined her at the stone. “How do you know that?”
Pearl shrunk beneath a scowl that would gouge the truth out of anyone. “My father had a book. This gliph was on its cover.”
Near enough for their arms to touch, he watched her keenly. “Where’s that book now?”
“At Hollycopse. Although it’s probably been sold with everything else.”
The reality of her own words hit home. Because of the king, Pearl wasn’t traveling to some other town. Nor was she entreated to Hieronymus. But she was behaving like a spoiled Rosperian child, wanting easy solutions and convenient vows, pleading for what couldn’t be purchased or won because it belonged to somebody else.
Suddenly Varrick’s impatience made sense. Pearl would have nothing, not even her life if it weren’t for the kingsfolk around her. One night before, they had rescued her from the worst of fates, and now she made them delay at the edge of a wood they knew well. All that waited inside was a king who wanted to meet her.
Envisioning it, Pearl felt nervousness replace her dismay.
Carys held out her branded hand. “Don’t worry, Pearl. Nothing’s going to hunt you or harm you or force you to marry it. Just pretend you’re having an adventure.”
Pearl accepted the help as she ducked to avoid the brambles. “I thought I was.”
Letting go, Carys laughed. “Owyn said you were poetical.”
Behind them, Varrick said nothing.
Chapter Seventeen
As they moved deeper into the forchard, Pearl’s apprehension thickened like the trees around her. She watched for other stone markers, but none jutted from the foliage, and they might seem redundant if they did. The forest’s main trail was straight as straw and hemmed by dense bracken. Going astray would take some effort.
That certainty was also a curse. The bracken concealed what lived behind it, and without closing her eyes Pearl tried to concentrate on what she couldn’t see. Harmless creatures often sounded larger than they were, and what was deadly made no sound at all.
When the bracken parted and the trail brightened, Pearl’s eyes followed the sunshine. To her right was a pond encircled by flat-topped rocks, all broad enough to seat at least two people. The scrub was cut back, the ferns thinned, the grass flattened.
“That’s the boggy pond,” Carys said as they passed by. “The weather decides if it’s going to be a swimming hole or a mud pit. Frogs like it either way. So do the children.”
“Children are allowed to play back here?” Pearl asked.
“All the time. Why shouldn’t they?”
“It just seems so isolated. Does anyone ever get lost?”
Carys shook her head. “Every crosscut leads back to the main trail, and the main trail to the fosse. If anyone gets lost in here, it’s intentional. Granted, it’s not a bad place for that. No darkgard. No Hieronymus. Safest place you could be, really.”
Pearl wasn’t persuaded. “How many children live in the castle?”
“It changes with each season. Right now we’re hosting twenty-five or so. Owyn could give you an exact number, along with names, ages, and anchorlands – for those who know them.”
“Where are their parents?”
“Dead, mostly. But there’s also starvation, beatings, enthrallment. Children leave home for lots of reasons and not always their own.”
Tears filled Pearl’s eyes as she imagined losing her parents and Hollycopse on the same day. Had that happened, she might not have survived. “How do they end up here?”
“Same way you did. They hear stories. They decide to believe them.”
“What about those born in the castle?”
“That’s extremely rare.” Carys paused musingly like she me
ant to say more, but then the conversation lapsed, and Pearl didn’t know what would tempt her to finish.
They passed another gap in the bracken, one that led to a sizable clearing. Massive logs rimmed a shallow pit heaped with ashes. More trunks, their ends sawed clean and boles sanded smooth, stood at attention along the clearing’s edge. Every pair of columns was capped by a third trunk, and the massive arcades reminded Pearl of paneless windows. Despite its simplicity, the clearing impressed.
“We call this the ballroom,” Carys said. “It’s where we hold our festivals.”
“So when I arrived last night, everyone was out here?”
“Everyone but us,” she replied.
Pearl snuck a glimpse back at Varrick. He didn’t look like the type to kick up his heels – in a forest or a ballroom or anywhere else. Fleetingly she wondered how he celebrated festival days, if he ever joined the kingsfolk or preferred, like her, to keep to himself.
She did like predictable things, Pearl realized. Crowds of people weren’t among them. Neither were meetings with kings.
Gradually the trees changed from fallow to flowering. As syrupy air replaced oaken musk, branches traded acorns for apples, pinecones for pears. Brambles bent from the weight of their berries. What shouldn’t grow together did so brazenly, with new blossoms swaying alongside ripe fruit, evergreens mingling with deciduous trees.
The king’s forchard obeyed none of the usual rules. Still, somehow, it thrived.
It also enticed. Pearl wished they would stop long enough to sample a few of the riper fruits. When her stomach growled in agreement, she hoped neither of her escorts noticed. They didn’t seem the sort to suffer any weakness, least of all hunger.
“Who tends the forchard?” she asked. “It must need some cultivation.”
“The gardeness.” Carys yanked a bundle of plums from a branch. “Jeron says she has a home on the grounds although I’ve never seen it. Everything around the castle is hers to cultivate.”
“Does the king usually meet people out here?”
“He’s the king,” Varrick said. “He meets you wherever he likes.”
Reaching back, Carys offered Pearl one of the plums. “What the retriever means is that the king doesn’t stay hidden in the castle. He spends a lot of his time in other places. That’s why he has inkeepers.”
“When I meet him, what should I do?” Pearl asked. “Is there some protocol he prefers?”
“The king doesn’t like ceremony,” Carys replied. “Not the boring sort we invent.”
Pearl’s confidence dissolved further. “Should I have brought a gift?”
“He’s the king,” Varrick repeated. “What’s yours is his.”
“But it’s a kind thought,” Carys added. “You’ll have to forgive our retriever, Pearl. Varrick patrols all night and rarely finds a bed before sunrise. At this time of day, he’s still waking up. Early starts make him more Orldic than normal.”
“I can hear you, second.”
“Good thing,” Carys said.
To stop herself from asking anything else, Pearl devoured the plum. In spite of her misgivings, she felt strangely eager. She was about to meet a king.
Carys, too, seemed enthused by the idea. While Varrick’s temperament soured more with each stride, his second had begun to bounce down the trail, snatching loose fruit from low-hanging limbs. She spun around to lob a plum at Varrick, then offered Pearl a tiny pink apple.
“How did your father come to have a book with that gliph?” Carys asked. “Was he a biblogian?”
“A schooler by trade. A transtographer in his spare time. He redrafted maps while my mother managed the farm.”
When Varrick cleared his throat, Pearl said nothing else, thinking he meant to comment.
Carys filled the gap. “Were they from Castlevale?”
“My father came from south Rosper. Mother never spoke about her home. I’m not even sure of her birthland. Thank goodness we didn’t live in Illial.” Catching herself, Pearl fumbled to clarify. “Not that Illial is a bad place. It’s just that family means everything there, like fortune in Rosper.”
“Or discipline in Orld,” Carys added.
“Something you could show more of,” Varrick snapped.
If he didn’t sound so angry, Pearl might have kept speaking. Already she’d told everything to Jeron, but her desire to share continued to ripen like the fruit around her, and after years of dodging the subject, she suddenly wanted to discuss nothing else. Since the kingsfolk knew only what she revealed, Pearl could revisit her history without defending its events. The old presumptions and judgments were gone.
Unlike her, Carys wasn’t deterred. “Why did your parents settle in Castlevale?”
“Second!” Varrick barked the word like a curse. “No more questions. That’s an order.”
To Pearl’s surprise, Carys complied. She kept her eyes forward. She asked nothing else.
Disappointed, Pearl began to wonder how far they had walked. She knew the length of the Barrowfield road and how much time it took to reach the bounds of Castlevale – maybe half a bell if she dawdled. They’d been moving through the forchard for at least that long. While the path ran straight, it looked endless, and Pearl worried they’d gone too far.
Just then Carys slowed. Ahead, a shallow bower enveloped a secondary trail. The passage was laden with flowering plants, and petals doused the ground when the breeze increased.
“And here we are.” Carys stopped at the bower’s mouth.
At first Pearl didn’t believe her. Nothing handmade enhanced the garden – marble pillars or painted arcades, threadgold crests or gilded lanterns. No soldiers guarded its entrance. No herald requested her name. What Pearl saw contradicted all she’d read about kings, and her reliance on the last of those lingering tales dissolved like a mist at dawn.
In their absence, Pearl grasped a daunting fact. She was the one lacking, not the garden. Amid so much color, her new dress seemed drab, and the wind breathed more deeply than she did. It smelled of balsam and loam and newly mown grass. Inhaling it made her dizzy.
When she swayed where she stood, a hand gripped her shoulder. Startled by its hard touch, Pearl shifted to stare at Varrick who kept an arm’s distance between them. If he was concerned for Pearl, he hid it well. Instead, he watched the bower’s entrance like he didn’t trust where it led.
“We should leave now,” he muttered and let go of Pearl.
When Carys stepped aside, Pearl realized what he meant. “Wait! Aren’t you both coming with me?”
“Not in there,” Carys said.
“So I have to do this alone?”
“The king will be there,” Varrick reminded her.
“And I’ll be here to see you back,” Carys added.
Varrick crossed his arms. “Will you?”
Carys raised an eyebrow that, when paired with the rest of her expression, seemed almost lethal. “Did you have orders for me today?”
“None that you’d follow,” he growled.
As Varrick marched away, Carys offered Pearl a confident nod before jogging to catch up.
Pearl watched their retreating backs while distress swelled within her. Even though Carys hardly seemed cultured, and Varrick was downright frightening, she had expected their support when she met the king. Now no one could coach her or intervene if she made a mess of things. Which, undoubtedly, she would.
For the first time in five years, Pearl lost the urge to be her own best protection. She could handle most Castleveilians. A king was something else.
Feeling abandoned, she listened to her escorts quarrel as they retraced their steps through the forchard.
“Why are you being such a brute today, Varrick?”
“Why are you being such a dam?”
“Now I know why the trium never asks you to do this.”
“I retrieve,” he said. “That’s enough.”
“You’re treating Pearl like dross.”
“And you’re coddling her
.”
“Can’t you understand why?”
Distance muffled their discord. Their footfalls dissolved.
Then Pearl was alone.
Chapter Eighteen
The countless stories she’d told others of kings did nothing to help Pearl meet one.
Just one morning before, she had entertained children with accounts that oversold the castle. There were no grand processions or trumpeting sentries. No silk slippers or priceless jewels. Her breakfast had been only hardened porridge, and her lunch two small pieces of fruit.
Nor did the inkeepers match what Pearl had imagined. Each of them was distinct, and most were endearing, but all were far from proper. They teased one another. They grew impatient. They quibbled and spilled their tea.
They also weren’t afraid. They expected Pearl to climb tall towers because they’d already done so. They left her alone to meet the king because it was a privilege they also enjoyed. While they respected the castle, along with its sovereign, they feared nothing from either one.
And something better than magic did exist in the castle. Wardrobes couldn’t sew the clothes they contained. Food didn’t appear at the chime of a bell. And no matter how soaring or sturdy or stout, a stone wall wouldn’t choose what passed through it.
But nothing crossed the pale, Varrick had insisted. Not without the king’s permission. Inside the castle Pearl was safe.
She decided, finally, to believe it.
Pearl plunged into the bower. The tunnel bent inward until she had to duck to keep moving. Just as she thought she might need to crawl, the archway expanded, and she emerged into a clearing.
Fenced by a medley of trees, the circular space had no canopy. Blue sky capped its reaches. Fruits and flowers ornamented its fringe.
In its center sunlight dappled a wooden gazebo. Adorned only with flora shaken loose by the wind, the gazebo was expertly crafted from a tawny wood that Pearl didn’t recognize. Its buttery scent smelled less pungent than the everfresh timber so common in Rosper. The gazebo had two sets of steps and curved benches within. Like the encompassing woods, its simplicity was its charm.