She stared, astonished. It was not a troll. It was the missing prince, walking barefoot up the cliff road, his lank copper hair littered with bracken, his grey eyes no longer haunted, but very tired, and beginning to blink at her incredulously.
She whispered, “I thought you were dead.”
He tried to speak, cleared his throat. “Is it—It is the Princess from Dacia?”
She got to her feet then, backed a step warily. “Are you Ronan? Or Not-Ronan?”
His mouth tightened a moment before he answered. “Ronan. Despite that wizard you had travelling with you.”
She closed her eyes, felt a long breath ease out of her, and realized then how much knowledge could weigh until it was shared. She looked at him again. “I almost married him two days ago. Your father threw him down the cliff.” She stopped, bewildered suddenly by their twin faces. One had made her feel his longing, his trust of her. This Ronan’s eyes saw nothing when they looked at her; they did not know her at all.
But they had glimpsed something familiar, in memory. “So that’s who it was. I saw him fall. How did my father recognize him?”
“He didn’t. It was your mother who recognized him as a spell. He said something to her about graves, she said, when he should have known—he thought you had buried your wife and child. Instead of—Instead.” She finished with a gesture, appalled at the sudden turn of their talk. But Ronan’s eyes remained cool. She added quickly, dropping down beside him again, “They thought it was some spell of Brume’s that your father’s fire had blown out the windows. They don’t know that it was Gyre. I only guessed it myself.”
“How?”
“I could not figure out how the spell I nearly married knew things that you and I had said and done when we met in the forest. Then, earlier tonight, I woke myself up suddenly remembering that Gyre had been there with us in secret; he saw and heard everything.”
Ronan was silent. He glanced behind him down the road to the deep shadows around the foot of the falls which the moon had not yet touched. Sidonie felt her skin prickle again, as though the invisible wizard had trailed a finger down her arm.
She shifted more closely to the prince and asked softly, “Is he down there?”
“The last I saw of him, the firebird had enticed him into the witch’s cottage. She told me that she wanted his bones for the magic in them.”
Sidonie blinked at the idea. “Gyre’s bones? Can she really do that? Surely he wouldn’t let her have them.”
“I think not.” The prince’s head was still turned away; she couldn’t see his face. But she heard the sudden tautness in his voice. “He told me he would take my face. My name. My memories, my heritage. And you.” He turned to look at her finally, his eyes clear as glass and as expressionless.
“Did you plot this together, you and the wizard? To take Serre for yourselves?”
Stunned, she sat down hard on the road again. She felt the blood streak back into her face. “No.” Her voice shook badly. “I came here in good faith to marry you. You were the one who ran from me.”
He shrugged slightly. “I was bewitched. I had to ask you.”
“No. My lord Ronan, you did not.” She stood up, brushed her nightgown straight around her, and started down the road again, so furious she could barely see.
He called after her, “Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“We are betrothed. This is your home.”
“I find, my lord, that I do not wish to marry you. I’m going back to Dacia.”
He caught up with her. “In your nightgown? In the middle of the night? Why,” he added, when she only strode down the road without answering, “were you running down the road in the middle of the night in your nightgown?”
“Because,” she answered between her teeth, “your father keeps me prisoner. It was the only chance I had to escape. I am terrified of Gyre and I thought you were dead. There was no reason for me to stay.”
“But I’m alive.”
“I am not going to marry you just because you’re alive.”
“But you are.” His hand closed above her elbow, but not tightly; it was the certainty in his voice that stopped her, held her motionless, staring back at him. “According to such agreements as our fathers negotiated, that’s all I have to be to marry you: alive.”
She saw every nightmare she had had of him standing in front of her. She pushed her hands against her eyes and cried at him, “I liked that other Ronan so much better. The one who was not you.”
She felt his hold tighten. Her hands slid down; she looked at him again, bewildered at where they had suddenly found themselves, somewhere on a precarious road between love and hate and no clear sign in which direction either lay. His face had shut like a door. Only his eyes, hard and suspicious again, warned her that she did not know this prince at all; he had thrown off all enchantments, even those of memory.
He only said, “You will have to make the best of me. My father wants heirs.” He turned her, not roughly but inflexibly, led her back up the road toward the summer palace.
“I have no powers,” she told him desperately, trying without success to twist free of his big fingers. “No gift for magic. I was born without it.”
He paused only briefly before he answered. “Our children may inherit what you did not. One way or another, all the powers of Dacia will belong to Serre.” He stopped walking when she still struggled, and turned her to face him again. “It could be worse,” he said with chilling simplicity. “Unlike my father, I am not violent. You will be Queen of Serre one day, and all I will ever ask of you in return is that you bear my children. Nothing more.” He sighed a little as her tears ran suddenly, noiselessly in silver streaks across her upturned face. “Most women would be grateful.”
Sidonie felt the cliff road tremble beneath them then, and saw, rounding the higher curve of road, what the shouting falls had hidden: a small army of the palace guards riding too fast for safety down the cliff, led by the one-eyed king.
Ferus reached them in another moment; the guards pulled up raggedly behind them, shouting with surprise, one or two nearly sliding over the cliff. The king drew his sword as he reined in front of the prince. The blade stopped an inch from Ronan’s eye.
“Are you my son? Or are you some trick of the witch’s?”
“He’s yours,” Sidonie said succinctly. The king’s eye rolled at her, startled, then back to the prince.
“The wizard Gyre is with Brume,” Ronan said. “She gave me my freedom in exchange for him.” Sidonie, still in his grip, felt him shaking; he looked too worn suddenly to stand.
Veins surfaced and throbbed in the king’s face; he roared incredulously at Ronan, light shivering down the sword in his hand, “You gave Gyre to the witch?”
The prince’s voice remained remarkably even. “If there is justice in the magic of Serre, he’ll be nothing more than soup stock by now. Who did you think wore my face to that wedding?”
The king, swallowing words, looked as though he might choke on them. He let the sword fall finally and managed, “Then how—Then who will fight for us?”
Ronan, his eyes locked on his father’s, swayed a little on his feet as though some force behind the words had struck him. “Fight what?”
“That thing. That thing out of Dacia.” The sword swung again, this time at Sidonie. “Ask her what she was on her way to meet at the end of the road.”
She felt her mouth go dry; her skin seemed suddenly too small as though it were trying to disappear under the king’s wrath. “I was running from you,” she told him, her voice trembling. “All the guards left me when you shouted like that.”
“What thing?” Ronan asked. His haggard face looked moon-pale, but he still spoke steadily. “What were you shouting about?”
The king began to answer; again his voice failed. The sword moved away from Sidonie, pointed down the side of the cliff to the road below where it began, a hollowed rise carved out of the barren face of the cliff. “I sa
w it,” Ferus said raggedly, “in my mirrors.”
Something stood there in the moonlight, its face turned toward them. Even from that distance it seemed huge. It did not move, it simply looked up at them. Sidonie felt something sweep through her like the coldest of winter wind, hissing and stinging with snow, that killed everything it touched, and then laid waste to the earth beneath the dead.
She felt Ronan’s fingers slacken, grow cold around her arm. “What is it?” she breathed, her lips numb with the fear she felt all around her, even from the king. Nobody answered. It melted away under their eyes, left a frozen memory behind.
“To the palace,” the king snapped. A guard leaped down to give Ronan his horse, then heaved himself up behind another. Ferus reached down for Sidonie’s wrist, hauled her ungently into his saddle. The king fumed at her all the way up the cliff for trying to run away, for bringing Gyre into his land, for all the useless powers she had carelessly left locked in a casket and hidden even from herself. Still numbed by the terror the nameless stranger had cast about him like a mist, and by Ronan’s even colder heart, she scarcely heard a word he said.
SEVENTEEN
In the king’s mirrors, they watched for monsters. Ronan, so exhausted he could have dropped then and there to the stones and slept, managed to stay on his feet with his charred eyes open. The half-dozen mirrors blinked through images of a dark and tranquil forest; even the trees seemed to dream. Now and then something moved. But it was always named, recognizable: a hunting fox, an owl, a very old woman picking flowers opening under the touch of the moon.
Ferus, muttering and growling with increasing impatience, snapped finally at the princess, “We could have used your powers. If you had brought them with you instead of hiding them.”
Ronan woke a little at that, looked at her curiously. “I thought you said you had none.”
The king whirled at her, his single eye fulminating. She answered Ronan icily, “You misunderstood me, my lord. I said I have none here.”
He had not misunderstood; on the cliff road she had made herself as clear as possible. But he let it pass, presuming that she was tired of the king shouting at her. As Ronan had pointed out to her, it did not matter anyway. She was very angry with him for some reason or another. But her anger would pass; his mother’s had. As Calandra crossed his mind, a guard opened the door.
“My lord,” he said to Ferus, “the queen.”
Ferus grunted, still searching the mirrors. Calandra entered, her own gaze caught and held by the face of her son. Ronan saw the uncertainties, the fears, the questions in her eyes as she came toward him. She did not touch him; she stood in front of him, studying him, and asked a question like a test. Vaguely, through his weariness, he sensed its importance. But he could not care. He was her son. He could only tell her the truth; if that did not convince her, he did not know what would.
“How did you escape from Brume?” she asked.
He tried to remember; it seemed a season or two since he had left the witch. “Gyre,” he answered finally. “He turned me into a firebird and gave me to Brume. He left me trapped in a cage in the witch’s house, while he left wearing my face. I guessed then that he intended to return here and marry the princess in my place. I bit Brume when she tried to feed me, and she threw me out the door. The cage broke. When I freed myself, the wizard’s spell over me was gone. But not the witch’s, because I had failed to bring her the firebird. She told me then that she would set me free if I brought the wizard to her, for she had seen enough of his powers to want them for herself.
“But Gyre found me before I found him. He caught me at the bottom of the cliff road and told me that he would take me to you and my father to convince you that I was truly your son. Then he would leave Serre because his work here would be finished. But in truth, it would be I who left Serre behind forever, while he stayed wearing my face, taking my name, my memories, my past, and marrying in my place.”
Ferus, who had turned away from his mirrors, made a guttural sound; his single eye had gone flat black with a deadly fury, as it did when he fought.
“How,” the queen whispered, “did you escape the wizard?”
Ronan paused, rubbing his eyes tiredly as he wove threads backward. “Earlier that day, the firebird came to me and asked me to help her return her fallen egg to its nest. So I did that. Hours later, when I finally found the palace road, the wizard found me. I remember standing there, frozen in the grip of his mind like a hare under the fox’s eye. I could not move, I could not speak, I could not think… And then I heard the firebird sing. I saw Gyre walk away from me. She sang to him in her woman’s shape; she lured him back into the forest; he followed her without a thought.” He hesitated again, unable to comprehend or quite believe what he had seen. “While I watched them, I saw the witch’s cottage of bone run up behind her, open its door. Still singing, the firebird stepped across the witch’s threshold. The wizard followed her. The door closed behind them both. Brume ran back into the forest. She had what she wanted and I was—I was free.”
He stopped. The word sounded odd as he said it, as though it did not quite mean what he was. But free meant free; it was a simple, unambiguous word, and there he was, Prince Ronan of Serre, back in his father’s palace, owing-nothing to the witch, and safe for the moment from the wizard.
After a moment, the king said to the queen, his voice harsh with hope and dread, “Well? Do you challenge this one?”
Her face, usually so stiff and drained around Ferus, seemed to be choosing and discarding expressions like jewels. Blood warmed her skin; her eyes glittered as with tears; a corner of her mouth crooked toward laughter. “The firebird herself saved your life? Because you rescued her egg? And now Brume has the wizard?”
“Or he is the wizard,” Ferus breathed, “with all my son’s thoughts?”
“But what a tale you brought out of the forests, my son,” the queen said with wonder. She was raising one hand toward Ronan at last to touch his face when Ferus struck.
He gave Ronan little more time than the blink of an eye to evade the sudden flare of power that seemed to come out of the ruby eye in the skull. It slammed into Ronan with all the force of the water pounding down the cliff. It spun him like a leaf, dragged him across a table, and then swept the contents of the table on top of him as he fell. Blinking dazedly in the aftermath, with the skull on his chest and the poisonous toad on its back hissing furiously in his ear, he thought: A wizard would have fought. The room grew dark; he felt himself begin to slide over the falls. He cried out in terror, felt his hands caught, held tightly. When he could see again, he found himself still on dry stone, the queen kneeling beside him, gripping his hands. Her face looked wintry again, bloodless and pinched; her eyes, on Ferus, seemed cold enough to burn.
“I told you that I knew him,” she flared.
“Now,” the king said without compunction, “so do I. A wizard would have defended himself.”
“You might have killed him to prove a point!”
“I did what I thought best,” he answered, his voice rising dangerously. “Don’t question me.” He reached down, hauled Ronan to his feet. The prince caught a glimpse of Sidonie, frozen across the room with both hands over her mouth. Then, abruptly, he was on the floor again, with the one-eyed skull grinning at him.
He pulled himself up this time, beginning to feel now that the numbing shock of the power was wearing away. He might have run headlong into a stone wall, his stunned bones told him. He said calmly to his mother, who seemed unaccountably willing to drive the king to further violence, “I understand. It was a test. Like yours.”
The blood streaked into her face; she seemed suddenly close to tears again. “Not like mine,” she whispered. “Not like mine at all.”
“But it worked,” he said inarguably. “Now you are both certain.” He limped to the nearest chair, sat slumped, his elbows on the table, his hands over his eyes. He dropped his hands at the silence, dragged his eyes open again, and found them both
gazing at him oddly, as though they recognized him as more or less their son, but what was more and what was less, they did not have an inkling.
“My lord,” the queen pleaded finally. “He must rest. I will watch with you.”
Ferus nodded. “I want you to see this monstrous thing for yourself. You might recognize it from some tale.” He threw open the door, spoke to the guards in the hall. “Bring a pallet and blankets for the prince; I do not want him out of my sight tonight. Take the princess to her chamber. She is useless here. Bring her company up to stand along the walls outside the gates. If they begin to fall, we’ll know the monster has found us.”
“Should we give them back their arms, my lord?”
“No. If they argue or try to run, throw them over the falls.”
The princess turned as white as bone; for a moment she seemed to waver on her feet. But she said nothing, just put one foot in front of the other until she reached the door. There was nothing to say, Ronan thought. She seemed to be learning that. The king spoke again before she crossed the threshold; she stopped mid-step at the sound of his voice, her back and profile rigid.
“You will wed when my son and my house are safe. I will not have another ill-omened disaster on my hands.”
The princess could not seem to find her voice, so Ronan answered for them both. “Yes, Father,” he said mildly. He remembered the toad then, upside down on the floor and vulnerable to a careless boot, because such small details seemed to matter. He picked it up and put it back on the table. Then he laid his head down beside it and went to sleep.
When he woke, the tower room was flooded with light. He stirred on the pallet, aching in every bone and muscle. The king, gazing into the mirrors alone, turned as Ronan struggled to sit. The sound of cool water rushing uselessly past him seemed suddenly unbearable; he reached for the nearest pitcher.
Ferus growled, “Don’t drink that.” He raised his voice, sent a servant running for food and wine, then handed his son another pitcher, from which Ronan drank noisily and sloppily until he could finally speak.
In the Forests of Serre Page 15