by Sam Austin
"You don't agree with Sir Angus's judgement, do you?" Neven asks in a small fearful voice.
She's glad he's the one to ask. She's not sure she could get the question out without sounding just as scared.
"Angus is right not to tolerate witches," the King says, glancing back at them. "But I trust Mattis's judgement. If he says you haven't performed magic, then you haven't performed magic. I think it more likely this witch you talked about was behind the skill. No doubt she planned to use the dragon herself, but you got there first. I wonder if she used the same spell to subdue the golden dragon, or if the barbarians alone were responsible for that one."
Boone's not so sure, but she keeps her mouth shut. The witch didn't seem to know anything about the dragon. And if she did, and the King was right, then why was she all the way out in the middle of the dark forest? If she was waiting for the spell to take effect, then she should've stayed on the edge of the forest, near the tower.
Unless she needed to get back to Timon, but if that was the case, then would she have risked leaving the boy in the first place?
Boone mentally shakes her head to rid it of the distracting thoughts. All she needs to know is the King doesn't believe them to be witches. He's not going to burn them.
He even went as far as going down into the cellars to fetch them himself. A King leaving a feast to fetch a couple of farmer's boys. The thought should be comforting. It shows he needs them. Instead, she feels that unease creeping in again. What exactly does he need them for?
"Sir Julius will have an opinion I'm sure." The King walks briskly, but not as fast as his long legs could go, nor she thinks, as fast as he wishes. The pace keeps him roughly at level with them. "It was his opinion that prompted me to find you as swiftly as I could, before you disappeared and took the dragon with you."
The dragon. That's why he wants them so badly. She relaxes. Gelert makes a good weapon. She understands that.
Then she tenses again. "Sir Julius?"
"Yes." The King smiles. "He'll be happy to see you."
***
Sir Julius doesn't look happy to see them, but Boone doesn't feel too bad because he doesn't look happy to see anyone. He sits on the King's table, directly on the man's left, staring down at the food on his plate morosely. The wound on his throat is healed into an ugly strip of scar tissue, thick and corded.
"It tastes like wood chips," he says, dropping his fork to the table.
"Then pass it over here and I'll have it." Sir Angus eyes the pork on Sir Julius's plate appreciatively from where he sits on the man's other side. He hasn't so much as glanced at Boone or Neven since they'd entered the feasting hall.
Boone doesn’t try to catch his gaze either. He may be in a better mood now that he is now a he again, but she doesn’t dare chance it. He may have his body back, but that doesn’t mean he’s forgotten the panic he must have felt, and that she and the world saw it.
The hall is giant. Bigger than the throne room. Its walls are white marble, curved to form a circle, that rises to a domed ceiling edged with gold and painted with half naked giants slaughtering cowering men. The bloody scene is disparate from the happy mood of the room.
The King's table is curved, and is exactly the same shape and size to every other table in the room. They sit end to end, forming a ring, much like the one formed by the benches in the throne room. The marble ground in the middle of the ring is worn. Used for dancing she thinks, and other entertainment. Today though it contains a small round table on which sits Alice, eating her meal still and polite, her handmaids seated next to her.
The dancing moves to the outside of the ring instead. Experienced and new soldiers alike drink mead and wine, slopping the liquid down their chests as they attempt to move to the instruments. Occasionally one of the serving women is called to join in, and the men still sober watch carefully to be sure nothing inappropriate happens. What a man does to his property is his own business, but that's not the case for unowned women. At least, it isn't in a place as respected as the King's feasting hall.
"Let him be, Angus," the King says, moving Sir Julius's plate closer to him. He peers into the knight's face, looking as anxious as a new mother with a sickly babe. "It's honeyed pork, Julius. The choicest cuts. Won't you eat a little more? The cook made it specially."
Sir Julius stares up at him as if out of a long dark tunnel. He blinks, then shakes his head slowly. Shoulders slumped forward, he leans on the wooden table as if holding himself upright takes too much energy.
"Not exactly the life of the party," Sir Angus grumbles, before pushing himself to his feet to yell at a new soldier getting too hands on with one of the women.
"Forgive Julius," King Robin says, patting the man on the back gently. "Bringing a man back from the other world is a brutal business. It's made to go one way only, so the soul often gets torn when it's pulled back through. The further away, the more damage. Our Julius didn't have time to wander far. His damage is light. It will heal, given time."
"What about?" Neven freezes as if unable to believe he'd spoken. Then looking right to left along the now sparsely filled table, he stutters on. "I heard when you bring someone back, sometimes things come back with them."
The King takes a honey cake from the heaving platter between them. "No fear about that child. Spirits, demons, manes. Whatever you call them, they're like fish in a dark lake. When you first splash into that water, all those fish swim as far away from you as they can. But if you were to lie there and wait, curiosity would eventually overcome fear, and those fish would be all over you trying to find out what you are. Julius wasn't in there long enough for anything to get comfortable enough to follow him out."
"I wouldn't have let them come." Sir Julius shivers despite the warmth of the hall. "But I could hear the whispers. There were so many. More than I'd imagined. I think the good ones move on faster. That's why there was so much evil there. The bad ones stay and rot."
Boone fights a shiver herself. She doesn't pray to the ancestors as much as others, but it still makes her uneasy to think of evil ears listening, evil hands taking trinkets to pay for favours. It's far different to the benevolent spirits she'd imagined might be guiding them from danger since the day she chopped off her hair as payment. And it's a universe worth of miles different from the childish image she'd conjured of her mother and father watching over her.
"Try not to think on it," the King says gently. "You're here now, and here you'll stay for many a year if I have any say in it. We've already lost too many knights I swore I'd keep by my side forever. I will not lose you too, and I won't have to if the dragon is as loyal to the boy as you say it is."
Boone perks up, glancing over at the window where she's sure she'll see a distant flash of red if she leans out. She hasn't heard him for a while, but she knows in her gut he's out there. "You mean Gelert?"
"Yes," the King says, leaning over the table toward them. "Gelert. A curious name for such a beast. A hope he'll live up to the loyalty of his namesake perhaps?"
Boone shrugs. "Perhaps." She doesn't want to say it was a name she'd heard from one of Jack's tales. A statement of the loyalty she knew he had, not a hope.
The King points a finger up at the ceiling. "What did you think of my father's artwork?"
"It's-" Neven begins.
Boone doesn't let him finish. She's fed up of these games. "I hate it. It's bloody, and brutal. The soldiers have no mercy."
The King blinks for a moment, seeming surprised. Then he laughs. "Julius. You were right this one has spirit."
Julius offers only a grunt, not looking up from the table.
"Some would say mercy is a weakness. That the path to power is paved with scenes as bloody as the one above us." The King inclines his head upward, but she notices he doesn't look at the paintings.
"Those people have no honour." Crossing her arms in front of her, she keeps her gaze on the King's bright green eyes. "A good man protects those who can't defend themselves. He doesn't slaught
er them. He doesn't take their women and children as slaves." He doesn't burn children like Neven and Timon, she adds silently.
His eyes soften, looking past her to where she knows Alice sits. "Maybe you're right. Women and children need to be protected. But whatever morality we believe in, the fact remains that my father had power. So I too have power. A thousand years after erecting the barrier, the outside world still pays me tribute with gifts. Gold and a silver plated horn from the Kingdom of Hungary. A fascinating bird called a peacock from Sind. Even a dragon egg from whatever strange title they've given to the leader in the north. They fear me even now.
Look around you. Look at the walls. I don't forget those that are loyal to me. I have power. Magic beyond comprehension. If I wish it, you could live forever without knowing the decline of age. Your sons would be strong, your daughters fair. Nothing would be outside your grasp."
The curved walls are a stark difference to the bloody chaos of the ceiling. Half of the circle is plastered with pictures, the other half blank, ready for pictures from the next thousand years. Men and boys stare out at her from the paintings,, the thick paper fixed to the wall.
The style has some similarities to the ones on the ceiling, but it's clearly by a different hand. The paintings on the ceiling are dark and vibrant. The ones on the walls, soft and warm. Faces on the ceiling have the mere suggestion of features, changing little from person to person. Those on the wall are carefully etched. Each face could be matched to their owner and no one but them.
The King did this, she realises. He'd drawn everyone that meant something to him. Every single person for a thousand years.
"What do you want him to do?" Neven's voice brings her out of her contemplation of the pictures. His tone is wary.
"Do what he's been doing already. Control the dragon. Win the war. I realise things have changed since the day I locked my daughter away in that tower. Back then, I thought the man who killed the dragon would be able to protect my daughter and the kingdom. Now I see things differently." He turns to Boone, his green eyes intense. "Use the dragon. Free the circle of the barbarian scum. Then you'll have my daughter's hand, a knighthood, gold, and one day when you're ready, the kingdom."
Boone opens her mouth, closes it again.
"He'll do it," Neven says quickly. "Of course he'll do it."
Boone wishes she had his confidence in the matter. Gelert is part of her now, just as when she'd been a child, but she doesn't know why he's being loyal, let alone how long it will last. "I want Sir Julius to give me my knighthood, only when he feels I've earned it."
"Of course you do," Sir Julius mumbles down at the table. He sighs. "Stubborn."
"And I have a friend injured from battle." Ness. How could she forget about Ness until now? Neven surely wouldn't. "Could you use magic to heal him?"
"Sir Julius will keep you on as his squire, but there's little I can do for your injured friend. Magic costs, and I need to save as many resources for the upcoming battle as possible. Not to mention the golden dragon if it continues this way. I'll send Mattis to see if there's anything he can do without using magic, but if things are bad, your friend's best chance is for you to end this war as soon as possible. Once the circle is safe I can lend you my resources." The King leans back in his chair, snagging another honey cake as he does so. "Is there anything else?"
Heat rises to her cheeks. She twists in her chair to glance at Alice, sitting still as a doll at her small table. The women look so lifeless. It's a stark contrast to the dancing and music carrying on outside the circle of tables.
"Yes." Boone clears her throat. "I don't have to marry Alice. I mean, she's pretty and all, but she should marry someone she wants to marry. And I don't need the kingdom. A knighthood and some gold. I'd save the circle for that."
The King pauses with the honey cake part way to his mouth. "If her beauty doesn't please you, I can change her looks after the battle."
"No. She's beautiful enough already. It's just-" How to explain without giving herself away? A knighthood is one thing, but marrying a princess - or a girl of any kind for that matter. It's impossible. She doesn't know much about the private lives of husbands and wives, but she knows part of it involves less clothes than she's wearing now. She may be a boy in every way that matters, but under her clothes, she's still very much a girl. Mrs Moore had to take her into the woods part way along the road in order to teach her how to bind her breasts. A wife would notice those things.
And there's another reason to refuse. Neven. "What if I'm not the one she loves. Her true love."
"She'll fall in love with any man who is kind to her, and strong enough to protect her. I sense you can grow to do both things. And if she never loves you, that's none of your concern. She'll do her job as a wife dutifully enough." The King sets the honey cake on his plate, ignoring it for the moment. "Now what's this really about? No man would turn down the hand of a princess as beautiful as my daughter. Are you worried about taking on the kingdom one day, because I don't intend to drop that burden on you fresh from your wedding. You'll watch me rule for a few centuries, and I'll move on when I think you're ready. Or is it that you don't think your dragon is up to the task?"
"Gelert is more than capable." Her voice drops to a growl. He may be the King, but he'd still insulted her by implying she was scared. "As am I."
The King laughs, stopping only to finally take a bite out of his cake. She's struck again by how young he looks with his polished skin, and his thick black hair and beard. Over a thousand years old and he still looks shy of thirty. That could be her. Never growing old. Staying young and healthy forever.
"We have a deal then?" He raises his eyebrows at her, the expression friendly.
Did he look at her father the same way before he betrayed him?
She glances to her right, but Neven is gone. She scans the mass of dancing soldiers but doesn't see him. Gone. Slipped away while they were talking. Because of Alice? Her heart rips in her chest, but she knows the answer she has to say. Any other answer would raise suspicion, and she can't do that for her sake, and for Neven's. "We have a deal."
***
Boone ducks into the infirmary, cursing the two hours it took to pry herself away from soldier after soldier wishing to hear about Gelert. At first the attention made her feel special, like she'd been filled head to toe with a hundred sunbeams. By the end all she'd wanted to do was take them to the city wall and toss them over it. They could meet the dragon. See what they think of him then.
Her thoughts trail off as she gets a good look at her surroundings.
The makeshift infirmary sprawls across one of the larger rooms in the cellars. A distant sound of a baby crying tells her the women and children must be housed nearby. But here it's the men who cry.
There must be at least a hundred of them. Most stare stoically into nothing from narrow cots, or piles of blankets on the stone ground. Some of them are missing whole limbs, yet remain silent, others with no injuries she can see whimper like puppies.
Women hurry around, mopping brows, or changing soiled clothes. It's a sight that takes her aback more than that of the dying men. She's never seen so many women at work before, not even in the kitchens where almost a tenth of the staff are widowed women.
She makes her way into the room. The stench of death rolls over her, along with damp and rot. She knows the stories, how King Goron, King Robin's father built these cellars so he did not lose all his people and livestock when the dragons came roaming. In the summer months hundreds of people and animals lived down here.
Now, with the smell of urine and faeces burning her nose, it's hard to believe anything ever lived here.
She scans the room for Neven or Ness. It's like looking for a needle in a haystack. One wounded body among a hundred.
Her bare foot catches on something and her legs fall out from under her. She lands on something soft, warm, human. She's apologising, scrambling away from the hurt man when she realises he can't hear her. He's dead, hi
s sightless eyes staring up at the far away ceiling. Fire from the torches hanging from the walls, dances across his face, giving him a ghoulish look.
She doesn't recognise him, and from the way no one even glances in his direction as they move past, she's not the only one.
Looking at his agonised face, and the way the flickering flames make him look alive when his eyes tell her he's not, she peers into herself, looking for fear. Instead she finds a river of pity that slowly boils into anger.
The dead man's face blurs into Ness's mother's face, the twin's faces, Mr Moore's face, her parent's faces. Why do people die, grow old, suffer, when the cure for all those things is in the hands of men? Is it right that a chosen few reap the rewards, and the rest are left to rot?
She pushes herself to her feet, shivering. The questions refuse to be shoved away. It's not like she's never had doubts about the fairness of a system where a King can live forever, and people toil and die, but the timing could be better. She's trying to be one of those chosen few after all.
She walks past the death and tries not to see it.
Her eyes find the head druid, so different from his surroundings with his withered frame and dull tunic. He's standing beside a cot, tucked away in the far corner. On it lies Ness, and beside him, Neven.
Her feet falter, causing a medic to curse loudly and duck around her.
Ness is still. From this distance she can't tell if he's alive or dead. But it's Neven who makes her legs refuse to move forward.
He's crouched beside the cot, his head buried in Ness's chest. An arm wraps around the older boy's body. It's somehow intimate in a way she doesn't have the words to explain.
The head druid is saying something, but she's not sure Neven is listening. The old man looks up, seems to look right at her.
She spins around, her heart jumping into her throat and making it hard to breathe. Her legs are stiff as they guide her out of the infirmary, out of the cellars, up into the right wing of the palace where a room awaits her. Her mind spins.