by Jane Yolen
A blare of trumpets greeted their arrival. The merrymakers at the fair bowed, and a group of dancers began to leap and twist, the bells at their ankles and knees making a merry company to their steps.
At the moment of the trumpets’ sound, posters were hammered onto doors and pasted onto walls around the kingdom so that all at the fair and in the countryside could read at once:
BE IT KNOWN
that Blaggard the King
will wed the maiden known as Sianna
unless
there is a man who can answer the
FOUR ELEMENTAL QUESTIONS
before fall of night at The Seven.
To try and fail in answering the riddles will mean
Death by the Sword.
“You certainly do not encourage any who would try,” said Sianna when she read a poster the king thrust into her hands.
“I do not want such a prize as Sianna of the Song to escape me,” said Blaggard.
“And what makes me such a prize, sir?” she asked.
“Your beauty, your voice, your wit,” he replied. His mouth spoke the words, but his eyes were cold and gave the lie to his mouth.
“My power,” said Sianna quietly. But though she spoke as softly as a creature of the sea, Blaggard heard.
“You have no power,” he replied. He looked down at the bone flute he wore at his belt. His hand touched it lightly. “In this kingdom, only the king has power.”
“Then why do you fear me?” asked Sianna.
“The king fears no one. Perhaps I love you,” he said. But there was loathing in his voice.
“It is a strange love that seeks to destroy.”
Hate flashed brightly between them, and their words were a deadly game they played.
Bartering and bear baiting, horse racing and wrestling, juggling and jongleuring, and singing of songs went on all day at the fair, but no man came forward to try for Sianna’s hand.
From all parts of the castle came the sound of laughter. Sianna could not remember having heard so light a sound in Solatia before, and each laugh seemed a knife in her heart.
The sun was near setting, and the smile on Blaggard’s face grew broader and cruder. “Look, lady,” he said to Sianna, “how the sun sits heavily on the horizon.”
“Not as heavy as my heart in my breast,” she replied. Then she gave a start as a familiar figure moved toward them. It was Flan, the simple fisherlad who had long loved her.
“Oh, no, dear Flan,” she said to herself, as a single tear filled her eye and moved down her cheek. “It is useless for you to try.”
5. The Magic Two
FLAN MARCHED UP TO the throne escorted by guards. He smiled brightly at Sianna to calm her, but the sweet innocent look on his face served only to encourage her fear.
“I shall answer the Four Elemental Questions,” he said. Then he quickly added, “Your Majesty” when he saw a frown begin to form on the king’s mouth.
“Fool,” said Blaggard.
“No fool, but a fisherman,” said Flan. He turned his smile on the king, for he had not the wit to fear.
“It is said that there is no fool like a fisherman,” replied the king. “And I suppose it shall be proved out. Very well, here is the first riddle. Your head sits so lightly upon your body already, you will not feel its separation keenly.”
“Do not worry, your Majesty, I shall not fail,” said Flan brightly. “I already know the answers. My father found them for me in a book of my great-grandfather’s. Though all the other books of the Old Way were burned, my family kept this one out of respect for the old man.”
“So you know the answers,” said Blaggard slyly, playing with Flan as though he were a fish on a line. “But what if my questions are not your questions?”
“But that is not the Old Way…” began Flan.
“Silence!” thundered Blaggard, suddenly bored with the game. “It is my way.” He turned and nodded at Sianna, then motioned the guards closer to Flan’s sides. For the first time the fisherlad felt fear.
Blaggard leaned over and looked into Flan’s eyes. With a careful gesture, he moved a misplaced curl to one side. “Here is a riddle for a fisherman,” he said with disdain. “Answer if you can:
“A water there is which you must pass,
A broader river there never was,
Yet of all rivers that you might see,
To pass it o’er is least jeopardy.”
Flan stared back at the king. Sweat beaded his brow. Finally he whispered in a hoarse voice, “My great-grandfather’s book said the answer to the Elemental Water Question was ‘the sea,’ but I think that is not the answer to yours.”
“You are right,” said Blaggard.
Flan said with surprise, “I am?”
“You are right,” repeated the king. “You are right that it is not the correct answer.”
“Let me guess anew,” begged Flan.
But the king dismissed him by raising the bone flute. “Kill him,” he said.
“Wait,” said Sianna. “Please.” She laid her hand on the king’s arm.
He drew away quickly. “Do you wish me to spare him?” he asked.
“Yes,” Sianna said in a whisper.
“For my queen I would.”
Sianna drew her hand away and clasped her skirt. She knew the danger began here. If she were made to beg, made to give in, marry the king by her own wishes, her power would start to slip away. She looked down.
“Sianna, do not wed this monster,” called Flan as they dragged him away. They took him to the top of the sloping hillock that led from the castle to the sea. Castle Hyl it was called.
The fisherlad’s sudden courage spurred Sianna to action. “I will not,” she whispered. “I dare not.” She reached down to the bottom of her skirt and, slowly and carefully, pulled off one of the buttons she had sewn to her petticoat. She had hoped not to use it, to try every other path. But every other path seemed to lead to the king. Sianna straightened up.
“What are you doing, lady?” asked the king, suddenly suspicious.
“Wiping the hand that touched you,” she lied.
The king turned from her and signaled for the swordsman.
At that moment, Sianna held the button between her palms. She thought briefly of the consequences her act of magic must surely call forth. But the consequences, whatever they were, seemed so far away and the need so immediate, she thought of it no more. Under her breath she said the words she had heard as a child, the magic words spoken by the witch of the sea. She looked as though she were praying. And as she spoke, Sianna twisted the button in her hand, left, then right, then right again. “Magic Two of Magic Three, grant the boon I ask of thee.” And the button twisted by itself under her fingers.
Spare the lad whose name is Flan,
Replace him with another man,
One whose strength lies in his wits
And can these riddles all untwist.
There was a sudden clap of thunder, though the sky was clear of storms. Then the button ran like quicksilver through her fingers and was gone.
It had all taken but a heart’s beat to happen. The headsman was drawing his sword, the bright metal flashing in the rays of the setting sun.
But in its silver blade a sudden black reflection formed. A knight all in black armor on a horse so dark it seemed a shadow rode up the slope of Castle Hyl.
“Hold,” he called. And so powerful and deep was his voice that the headsman held his sword.
6. The Questions Asked
“HOLD YOURSELF,” ROARED BLAGGARD, jumping to his feet. “In this land no one calls hold unless he be king. And I am all the king here.”
“I did mistake you, sire,” said the black knight when he had ridden up to the raised platform. But he did not bow or even nod his head. Nor did he lift the visor that hid his face. He acted as though he were a king himself. His voice seemed to come from deep down within the midnight armor and echo there. “I did mistake you, for I have never
known a king to so forget his own royalty as to behead a simple man for the crime of love.”
Blaggard sat down carefully. “He is freed,” he said, and waved the headsman away with his hand. “It was but a blague, a jest.”
“You shall not jest so with me, sir. Say on your riddles, for I have their names in my head.”
“Then you shall keep your head—and keep the lady, too,” said the king. “But I do not think you shall long have either.”
“Say on,” rambled the black knight. He was as impatient as Sian with wasted words.
“Your mouth is mighty anxious to part company with your body,” said Blaggard. He was relaxed again and smiling.
“I am mightily anxious to part company with you, sir king.”
“By my flute, I should have you beheaded for your tongue,” said the king. “But I think one parting from it will be enough. Answer this, then, if you can:
“A water there is which you must pass,
A broader river there never was,
Yet of all rivers that you might see,
To pass it o ’er is least jeopardy.”
“Dew,” said the knight. His voice was low but could be heard all over the castle court.
Blaggard nodded unsmilingly. “That was the simplest. Even a fool could answer it.”
Flan, who had hastened back to the throne, muttered, “Alas, I could not.” He was signaled to silence by Sian, who raised a finger to his lips.
Flan was soon jostled by his friends and neighbors in the courtyard. And the merrymakers, who had been quiet since the headsman had first raised his sword, began to whisper together. They looked up at the black knight. The younger women glanced at him appraisingly. The men nodded with admiration at his horse and how well he sat the steed.
“Quiet!” roared Blaggard. “Anyone who speaks shall be thrust off the cliff. For this knight has guessed but one of four. He shall not be helped with the other three.”
“I need no help, king. Say on.”
Blaggard held out his hand. His chief minister hesitated, then climbed the platform and thrust a small piece of paper in the king’s palm. The king glanced but briefly at it as if to prompt himself, then leaned forward. “The second question is,” he said,
“What flies ever,
Rests never,
Sings as it goes,
Moans as it grows.”
The black knight was silent for but a moment. Then he laughed, his head moving its iron case a little. “A child’s blague, Blaggard. What answer but the wind.”
The crowd murmured its approval. Flan clapped his hands together, and Sianna, who had been sitting taut as a kite’s string, began to smile. She liked this strange knight, his deep voice, his brave, bold manner.
The king stood up. The crowd fell silent. Even Flan, in the midst of clapping, dropped his hands to his sides. The knight did not move except to put his mailed hand on his leg. The wind caught the blue-black feather in his helm and it danced impudently as if to mock the king.
“The third question is not a blague. Those two were just to tease. This one will separate the men from the lads.”
Sian spoke then for the first time. “Say on, sire. For I think this be a man.”
Blaggard with an angry motion lifted his flute as if to strike the old man. But Sianna turned in her chair and glared at the king with such ferocity that his hand faltered and he remembered himself. He lowered the flute and pulled a smile across his features, and then began to recite:
High as a tree,
Weak as a feather,
Yet all of my men
Pulling together
cannot pull it down.
A child cried out from the crowd, “I know that.” But before his voice had time to reach the ears of all, his mother had clapped her trembling hand over his mouth, so hard that her fingermarks could be seen there for a day.
Sianna and Sian leaned forward. Sianna’s golden hair fell loose from the seaflower crown, and she twisted a lock of it so violently in her hand that she snapped six strands at once.
The black knight looked around him, at the men and women and the children who waited for his answer. At Flan, his hands clenched at his sides. Sian, sitting stiffly forward in his chair. At Sianna, her hair in disarray on her shoulders. At Blaggard, standing with a small smile of triumph beginning to show on his face.
“Smoke!” said the black knight. “And one to finish.”
A shout went up from the crowd then, a shout that died as it was born, killed by the look from Blaggard’s eyes. His hands made a magic sign over the heads of the people with his bone flute, and all froze. Whether by magic or by fear, no one to this day could say.
“Those were three childish riddles made up by my ministers,” Blaggard sneered. “Ministers who shall be beaten for their lack of wit. A whip does much to make a man smart.” He laughed at his own joke, but no one laughed with him. “But this last riddle is mine own. Answer it if you can.
“It ventures forth upon the earth,
Upon four legs it comes from birth.
At noon, on two it climbs upon
Until its earth time is ’most gone.
At evening walks about on three,
The fiercest creature this must be.
Name it!”
As the last syllable died, the crowd took life again. The people swayed and clasped their hands. They sighed and looked down to the ground. But no one said a word.
Sianna sat unmoving, the only one so statuelike. Sian put his face in his hands and silently wept. The look on Blaggard’s face was fully triumphant.
“That is indeed a difficult query,” said the black knight slowly, as if stalling for time.
“Speak now,” said Blaggard, “or be silenced forever.”
Sianna moved then, a small hesitant motion as if trying to catch the knight’s attention. Her hands fluttered like leaves at her sides. Her pointing finger stretched toward her father, toward the king, toward the knight, toward Flan. But if the black knight noticed, he paid her no mind.
“It is a difficult query,” he said again. “But, Blaggard, it is not wholly your own. I am a reader of ancient tomes. And I recall a similar riddle put forth by a great beast in a faraway land.”
There was a sound like “Oooooh” in the crowd. Hope for the knight, for Sianna sprang up again.
“Speak now,” boomed Blaggard. “Your time is up.”
The black knight dismounted his horse. He stood by the beast’s side and raised his hand. His finger pointed straight at Blaggard. “The answer is man!” he said.
“Man,” echoed the crowd.
Blaggard fell heavily to his throne. His hands clutched the arms of the chair. “Show your face,” he commanded. “That I may look on it and know my enemy.”
“Show it yourself, O king,” said the knight.
Blaggard rose again and stepped down the three levels of the platform. He walked through the crowd and stopped before the knight. As if in a tableau, Blaggard remained motionless in front of the knight for fully a minute. Then he reached forward and threw the visor back.
The armor was empty. Only blackness, deep and hollow, was within.
“Why, you are nothing but a hollow man,” said Blaggard with a loud laugh. “Come, Sianna, and meet your hollow groom.”
7. The Wedding
SIANNA PUT HER HAND to her head and set the seaflower coronet firmly in place. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Then she stood up, came down the steps to the courtyard, and quickly crossed to the knight.
Blaggard pointed disdainfully to the hollow armor. But when Sianna looked into the helm, she saw a shining shadow there. She turned and smiled at Blaggard.
“I shall be honored to wed this noble knight.”
The look that passed between Sianna and the king was long and hard. And Sianna knew that though she had won for an instant, the battle was not yet over.
Blaggard turned his back to Sianna and announced to the crowd, “This day, as I promis
ed, shall end with a wedding. All are invited. You shall be happy for Sianna because I the king command it, though she weds a man of no substance.” Then he stalked off toward the palace, his ministers in a flutter behind him. They knew that whenever he played with words his anger was raging within him and he was not to be gainsaid.
The black knight mounted his horse. Then he reached down and grasped Sianna’s strong hand in his glove. He pulled her up behind him, and she slipped her hands about his waist. Though the armor was cold to the touch, she felt a strange warmth.
The knight made a small clicking sound, and the black horse began to move. They galloped once around the castle courtyard to the cheering of the crowd. Then the horse picked its way slowly down the gentle slope of Castle Hyl into the sea. It waded along the shore until it came to the village. Then it paced to Sianna’s door.
“Why, how did you know that I live here?” Sianna whispered into the knight’s helm.
“There are many things I know, dear lady,” said the knight. “And not just answers to foolish riddles.”
“Then you know that I must go in and make myself ready for our wedding,” Sianna replied.
“If you do not wish that wedding to take place,” he answered, “I shall take you away to my kingdom as a sister.”
“I must wed you,” she said, “for Solatia’s sake.”
“If that is the reason, it is no reason,” he replied.
“And for my own sake as well,” she said.
“Then I am content.”
Sianna slipped from the black saddle and went into the cottage. The knight stayed outside in the gathering shadows, rubbing down his horse and bringing it water from the well. But not once did he remove his armor or his helm.
Inside, Sianna brushed her hair with long vigorous strokes. She took off her dress and petticoats and washed herself slowly, as in a ritual. Then she put the petticoats on again, checking the last silver button to see that it was still secure, as was her wont.
Suddenly she put her head in her hands and began to weep. She had spoken bravely to the black knight, but here, surrounded by her familiar things, she did not feel so brave. She felt unsure and alone and wished her father were there. But he was still at the castle.