Stain

by A. G. Howard

  His pointy teeth glinted on a mocking laugh that reverberated through the trees. “Apron strings, bah. We stuck out our necks for her. I won’t let the last five years of sacrifice be for nothing.” He shifted two large leather pouches strung from his shoulder by straps. “Stain owes me a set of wings, and owes you . . . well, whatever it is you expect to gain. Redemption, was it? Come to think, you’ve yet to share the details of your misdeeds and why we’re bound by this vow of noninterference.” He tapped his lower lip with the plucked columbine, his gaze pointedly narrow.

  Crony redirected the conversation. He’d learn of her secrets soon enough. “D’ye forget? Yer wings hinge on a selfless sacrifice. Ye best be taking yer wants and needs out of the equation to meet that criterium. Aye?”

  Before he could answer, they heard movement in the house as Stain stepped from behind her curtain. Her flesh blended into the dimness—permanently tinted a dingy gray by the enchanted sun-solvent clay Crony insisted she wear, both for protection from strands of daylight and to hide her true identity. Her loose muslin tunic, burlap vest, and canvas breeches served the latter purpose, too, as did her shorn scalp. For some inexplicable reason, the girl’s long silver locks had never grown back after Luce and Crony rescued her—not past a fine fuzz. One of several oddities, for her lashes couldn’t be pulled or clipped without causing the child immense internal pain, as if they were a living part of her, formed of nerves and purest moonlight. Crony had surmised that was why they grew so long and curled upward, reaching for the sky where the moon once hung. Since they couldn’t change her eyes, they’d concentrated on making the silver sheen upon her scalp more ordinary, dying the stubble with blackberry juice and maintaining it thus to this very day.

  As a result of these changes and the abuse her body had endured, the girl was nothing special to look upon. Her only attributes were lashes and lips a mite too pretty. Those didn’t seem to matter, as people couldn’t see past her grimy, scarred, and stick-slender shell. Crony worried the transformation had been too complete. For what grand prince would find the girl marriable in such a ruffian state?

  Stain paused where the kitchen window was strung over a sink made of a discarded wine cask. She glanced up—framed by the four slats of wood—and waved to her keepers. Her sparkling lilac eyes and smiling lips lit up the dim house.

  Crony had to avert her gaze or risk responding in kind. That smile, and the depth of kindness and wisdom in those eyes, shone so bright against the girl’s plainness it was contagious.

  As if proving Crony’s point, Luce offered an answering wave and grin. Crony raised a brow and gave him a knowing look. He caught himself and cursed, tucking his hand into his pocket.

  “Let’s get a move on,” he barked to cover up his momentary weakness, gesturing toward the forest. Within the maze of trees and brambles, a winding onyx trail led to the market some quarter-league away. “Crony wants us to open shop today and carry over stock. We’re already late, and the garden still needs your attention.”

  Furrowing her eyebrows, almost transparent against her discolored skin, Stain nodded. She dunked her entire head into the sink’s water—reserves from the Crystal Lake that Luce kept filled for her. She jerked up and gasped at the chill. Shimmery streams slicked her furred scalp then ran into her face. Glistening droplets clung to her extensive lashes. Drying off with her sleeve, she left a blotch of gray from yesterday’s clay upon the muslin. After smearing on more sun protectant, she wriggled into some gloves and grabbed a handful of breakfast, opting for the dried, leathery bites of quail and shriveled apple from a cracked bowl.

  Popping some food into her mouth, Stain hastened across the threshold. An eager whinny lanced the thick air and the girl’s stunning smile returned, even brighter, as the Pegasus cantered out from the trees and into the yard.

  Ears back, the beast snorted at Luce and Crony while he sauntered over to Stain, stirring clouds of ash beneath his hooves. He halted, towering above the girl, wings folded to his sides . . . waiting. He scolded her with his eyes and she chuffed a soundless laugh before offering a few pieces of apple.

  Scorch nuzzled the snack and twitched his tail contentedly as she reached up to scrub behind his right ear with gloved knuckles. The embers in his mane cast light along her ashen complexion and his black coat, resembling stars against stormy skies. A fitting analogy, as they often seemed to be two constellations having a conversation imperceptible to those tied to earth.

  A grumpy frown clouded Luce’s features. “Well, so much for her not getting distracted. What . . . does he sleep in the trees now?’ He looked up at the branches. “Surely there’s a horse-sized nest up there somewhere.”

  “If so, we be in good fortune. Poached Pegasus eggs be a delicacy.”

  Luce rolled his eyes.

  Crony laughed within herself. She couldn’t decide if the sylph’s dislike of the winged horse stemmed from having to share the attentions of their ward, or if he envied Scorch’s wings. She imagined a bit of both. Either way, Luce’s discomfort provided her hours of endless amusement.

  Many in the ravine had tried to capture the stallion, but he always broke free, leaving behind a trail of fire-crisped corpses. In deference to their lives, the denizens had finally learned to let him be. Only Stain could get near him. She’d told Crony that deep within Scorch’s coal-black heart thrived a gentle diamond, precious and rare, and she would one day mine it.

  Pulling away from Scorch, Stain made a sign for the sun aimed in Luce and Crony’s direction.

  Luce nodded. Crony had taught him the language—how to read the letters and signals Stain formed with her hands. Crony knew it from centuries before, when Nerezeth and Eldoria had been allies. It was a lost language, once universal to both kingdoms—a way of communicating silently across short distances. Back then, drasilisks consumed the night skies. The nocturnal creatures were half-blind and like bats, and relied upon keen hearing and echolocation to find their human prey. The two kingdoms had combined their infantries and used hand communications for strategizing and at last defeated the winged, serpentine plague by working together.

  Few knew how to cipher the signals now, just as few remembered a time when Eldoria and Nerezeth coexisted in harmony. But Crony remembered—as only those who were dead or immortal would.

  Someone in Eldoria had thought to teach the princess the old language, and Crony was grateful. It was the only way she’d managed to gain the girl’s trust.

  After making another sign for water, Stain knelt at the horse’s ember-fringed fetlocks and ran her gloves across the drooping flowers as the Pegasus stretched his neck to nibble the wetness from her scalp.

  Luce crouched down. Swatting at the swish of ash stirred by Scorch’s pawing front hoof, he took the waterskin from his waist and held it next to a limp sprig of larkspur.

  Stain wrinkled her nose, preparing herself. Removing a glove, she dug her fingers—tips lit to a golden glow—into the ashes. Then she called up the dormant seeds of columbine, larkspur, and bleeding heart left over from centuries before.

  Scorch shook his mane, graceful legs and silver hooves dancing as the sooty groundcover blinked with a flash of light. Luce added water from the canteen and four new blooms burst from the ground while the existing flowers grew bigger and brighter.

  “Well done, child.” Crony patted Stain’s tense shoulder.

  The girl snapped her head in acknowledgment, too intent on riding out the pain to meet the witch’s gaze.

  The princess’s ability to rouse life from seeds buried far beneath the earth, so far below they should’ve been dead long ago, was inexplicable in the beginning. Crony couldn’t understand how someone, formed and revered by the night, could harbor sunlight in her hands. But after watching the girl’s memory of when she opened a very special letter written in gold on black parchment, the witch had a hypothesis that involved the prince himself. And if she was right, there was a connection between the two already in place.

  Taking a measured
breath, Stain gathered a bouquet of the fullest blooms and held them up to Crony. Fresh, for the vases, she signed with her shimmery-gilded hand.

  Crony cupped the girl’s chin. “Thank ye, wee one. Always nice to have some frippery for me windows.” She took the flowers and limped toward the doorway, then turned. “Ye both should be on yer way.”

  Stain stood and dusted off her palm, allowing Scorch to nuzzle it. The glow faded from her fingertips, as if he absorbed it. Crony had never asked, but it was clear. Somehow the horse was able to ease her pain.

  Luce offered Stain a leather pouch for market. Not to be forgotten, Scorch nudged between them, wings spread high—each feather’s barbs studded with orange cinders.

  Luce grumbled something under his breath that made Stain shake her head affectionately, then the three started toward the thickening trees bordering Crony’s plot.

  Stain absently tugged at the talisman around her neck. It was the girl’s ritual, to touch it each time she ventured away. May-let she sought security, reassurance that the key to her skeletal home wouldn’t vanish like the past and family she couldn’t remember.

  Stain believed her amnesia was a result of the abuse someone had dealt her when they left her for dead inside the ravine. Crony nurtured the lie, though oft wondered if the princess would forgive them if she ever learned the truth of her guardians’ contributions to the ills that had befallen her family—of the roles they had played in her personal tragedies. Then Crony would ask herself when it was that she had started to care.

  Stain waved good-bye before stepping with Luce along the glittering trail of embers left within Scorch’s trotting wake, into the brambles and trees, leather pouches dangling from their hands.

  Crony buried her serpentine nose in the flower bouquet, inhaling. Soon, she would be seeing the girl leave for the last time, if she could find a means to get her to the castle. The true princess must be there to greet the prince so all could fall into place for the prophecy. But Crony couldn’t convince Stain to go, nor could she have Luce do the same. It had to be Stain’s own decision some way. Yet she feared it was dangerous for the girl to make the journey and face Griselda alone without her memories. The Eldorians believed they already had their princess, and Stain no longer fit the description. The impossibility of the riddle vexed Crony’s ancient mind.

  She stepped into her bedroom and bent over the cedar chest at the base of a black elm’s trunk, where she and Luce kept their stolen weapons and enchanted items. Opening the lid, she searched for a small, scaly box with black hinges. She’d chosen to craft it of drasilisk hide due to its indestructible quality. The words princess - resolution were scribbled across one particularly large and pale scale in black ink. As she searched, a needle, partly embedded in a dead man’s tunic still needing hemmed, pierced Crony’s thumb. A driblet of dark blood welled at the site.

  The witch cursed. There was a time her hide would’ve bent something so benign as a needle in half. Upon blotting the wound to steep the flow, she found the box she sought, but a drop of blood had fallen upon the “s” in the word resolution and smeared it to resemble revolution.

  She decided it didn’t matter. Luce would know what the box was for when the time came. She lifted the lid and drew out the princess’s glass book of memories. Crony knew every aspect of her childhood now, and Luce knew all that the witch had chosen to share.

  She opened a page to watch the fragmented pieces of a scene play across in muted shades of whites, grays, and blacks: Stain’s memory of standing upon her kingly father’s shoes and learning to waltz. As Crony had yet to enliven the images, they could be viewed only by her eyes.

  It was time to lock up the precious moments, until the princess’s future aligned itself. Returning the book to the box, Crony whispered an incantation over the lid. The magical sealant would glue the box closed until the moment the princess regained her crown and earned the fealty of both kingdoms.

  Setting the box in the trunk, Crony dug deeper, drawing out the note she’d started shortly after she and Luce first saved Eldoria’s heir. She had procrastinated finishing it far too often. The words forced her to admit her mortality, something she didn’t like to think upon. However, with the prince coming, final arrangements must be made.

  She unfolded the note to reread what she had scripted thus far:

  Luce,

  If ye be reading this, I be gone. May-let yer angry how I left. Ye must understand, had ye known, it would have lent unwelcome complications. But I still aim to help ye, as ye have always aided me. I have the means for ye to claim yer true form again. But first, I ask one last grand gesture. That ye deliver the princess’s box to Madame Dyadia, the royal sorceress of Nerezeth. It be locked shut, unable to surrender its contents until our girl wears the crown that once sat upon her queenly mother’s head. After that, Dyadia can return the memories to their rightful owner. I shared the knowledge when our kingdoms stood as allies, long afore the division of the skies. Dyadia will tell ye all me secrets then, if ye still wish to know. The box marked for Griselda, it be yers. Therein lie the regent’s many sins. May-let it can be a tool to free ye and our ward from Griselda’s poisonous hold, may-let her contrition will be yer claim to those wings ye been missing so long.

  Crony dipped a quill in ink to complete the note, but paused, attention drifting back to the chest where a red box, the shape and size of a domed birdcage, was buried beneath cloth and other sundries. If she concentrated, she could hear the pieces of Griselda’s conscience flapping inside.

  Luce didn’t know Crony kept it hid here, or that she’d stolen it years ago while the shrouds lost themselves to a feeding frenzy. It had been meant as a gift for her sylphin companion, a means for him to get revenge. But when the princess fell into their keep, it became leverage.

  No one could have more power over Griselda than the one who held her conscience . . . the one who harbored the acrid flavor of the sins she committed while charmed enough not to choke on them herself. Should the full essence be unleashed upon the regent in one fell swoop, it would bring her to her knees.

  However, Crony didn’t have the magic to reunite Griselda’s conscience with her body and mind. Only Mistress Umbra did. It would be up to Luce to find a way to lure his past love back to the ravine . . . to throw her at the mercy of the mother shroud.

  Frowning, Crony pressed the quill to the note to commence writing, but stopped cold when the caw of a crow echoed in the distance—a distinctive wail that ended on a howl, closer to banshee than bird.

  Crony’s breath caught . . .

  It had been so long, but she would know that bleak sound anywhere. She dropped the note and inkwell in her haste to stand, a paste of ash and ink staining her cloak’s hem as she spun to look upward.

  The crow soared along the underside of the canopy: large as a vulture, one pink eye centered above its white beak, feathers as pure and pale as fresh cream. It slowed, then perched on a branch high out of reach, watching Crony intently.

  “Thana.” The crow’s name fell from the witch’s lips, a word she hadn’t spoken in centuries. It felt like music on her forked tongue, and she would’ve smiled at the nostalgia. But logic belayed any such reaction. If Dyadia had conjured her albino bird to scout with its portending eye here in this forest, it could mean only one thing: The prince had opted to journey through the ravine on his way to the castle. He was in this place already, or close at hand.

  Elation wrestled with dread inside of her. Uniting Stain with her prince would no longer be an issue. But what would happen upon their meeting, seeing as Stain looked more boy than girl and had no voice?

  Crony hurriedly scrawled her name along the bottom of the note. She dropped the note next to the box containing the glass memory book already within the chest.

  Upon closing the lid, she rushed across the threshold toward market, staff in hand. She couldn’t interfere, but nothing would stop her from watching.

  The crow lifted from its perch and followed at a distan
ce, the thud of its powerful wings raising the hair along Crony’s nape. Thana following her didn’t bode well—though there was no point brooding over it.

  The moment had arrived for Stain to claim her fate, and all of Crony’s mistakes were coming home to roost.

  11

  A Serenade for Brutal Bones

  Within the Rigamort, Nerezeth’s most beautiful mystic ice cavern, there was a passage guarded by the most majestic of the night realm’s creatures: the brumal stags—enchanted to be loyal to each successive king and protect the land’s hidden border.

  For centuries, the tunnel they guarded had been used by hoarfrost goblins who sold things on the black market, royally appointed sun-smugglers, and the occasional Night Ravager who had a secret mission, as it led directly up into the Ashen Ravine. That haunted wasteland provided the ideal camouflage for those stealing the sun or who wished to stay hidden from prying Eldorian eyes. However, none could enter Nerezeth from this same passageway, unless they belonged to the night. Brumal stags could sense their own kind, and anyone of the day realm, creature or man alike, foolish enough to attempt entry, fell prey to deadly antlers.

  It was this very tunnel Prince Vesper planned to take for his trip into Eldoria. He knew, from notes he’d exchanged with his betrothed via jackdaws, that the princess and her family had been locked inside a dungeon in Eldoria since the peace treaty—all due to their fear of a murderous witch. Not only did the imprisonment affect Lady Lyra, but every cottage, wall, and tower within her land was swallowed by barbed vines that had been meant to protect them from the same vengeful conjurer. He’d promised long ago to keep her safe and intended to see it done. It was the least he could do, for without her song and her touch, his curse would harden him to a statue of gold and burst his stony bones into a thousand pinholes of light. But with her, together, they would reunite the sun and the moon and heal both lands.