Behind him, east, the forest had gradually turned greener the further back he went. To the north and south, the farmers struggled to keep their farms growing. But, traveling west again, he’d seen nothing but empty farmhouses, barren fields, and leafless trees. The people here had abandoned hope; very few were on the roads. There were no wild animals whatsoever.
His good mood dashed, he’d continued on for another hour. The road he’d been following curved north, slicing through bleak land that stretched as far as he could see. He smelled fresh rain on the ground, but it would take a lot of rains to erase the damage he saw. It sobered him. While he’d been living in the thick of a farmer’s riches, these people had been starving. Graves dotted the hillsides as a testament to that.
The road led to what looked to be a small village of six or so buildings. He was about to fly past it, but he spied a tiny sign in the shape of a horse on one of the central buildings. An inn.
He hesitated, considering. The parched air had made him thirsty.
Efar pulled his wings behind him and dove for the wooded ground outside the village. He’d need coins and clothing. He rarely had trouble finding something to wear. As for coins, he didn’t know a single inn in the world that wasn’t open to a small game of chance. Though, as a dust cloud surrounded him at landing, he thought he might find the pickings a little thin for most gambling.
He shifted to human form and began looking for shirt, pants, and shoes. He couldn’t very well walk into the inn naked.
The first cottage he approached had a woman visible through the windows. He skirted wide around it. It was at the second that luck blessed him. No one was home. It was a single room dwelling and, by the corner bed, he found a pair of carefully folded dark brown pants. Further investigation brought him a heavily worn shirt from a mending basket. It gave his conscience a pang to take clothing from people so destitute. But, he’d only be using them a short time.
He could go without shoes. No one would take a second glance at it; most farmers could only afford one pair per person, if that. But, he wasn’t quite willing to give up yet. Checking first to see that no one was watching, Efar crept out the door and around the side of the cottage. He checked the next building to find it a blacksmith shop. The smith was working at the forge, striking his heavy hammer against a piece of white hot metal on the anvil. The scent of burnt dust and singed hair hung heavy on the air. An extra pair of muddy boots sat just inside the door.
When the smith turned and dunked his creation in his bucket, murky, stagnant water slopped onto the boots he wore. Efar reached his arm inside the doorway, snatched up the spare boots, and snuck into the woods where he dug the dried smith clay off with a stick. The boots were a bit too big, he shrugged, but it was better being than too small. He bounced on his toes experimentally and, nodding, strode toward the inn, slumping his shoulders to blend in.
* * * *
Fiera raised a shaking spoon filled with briny Oxblood soup. Putting it to her mouth, she slowly sipped, energy pouring through her body. Her ears rang with each shot of adrenaline and her mouth sweetened with the taste. Her pulse quickened. There was only one way that the soup could work so quickly: magic! But there had never been rumor of another witch so close to her home.
She surreptitiously searched the faces of those seated at large round tables in the dim room, mostly men in small groups, all with long, sad expressions and tankards of thin ale. The matronly woman who had helped her stood near the door to the kitchen and held her coin up to the light, staring at it with narrowed suspicious eyes. There was one other woman, young and flirting dangerously with a fat man seated in the corner. Other than a few curious glances, they all ignored Fiera now that the excitement was over. None of them gave the slightest bit of acknowledgement of her abilities, nor did she feel any magic among them.
Someone in the kitchen, then?
Voices rose from the table behind her. The first was gruff and old. “Look, I’m just saying that having water won’t make that much difference. We’d still give almost everything we raise to our Lord Baldric.”
The second, young and impetuous. A snort. “Of course it will make a difference. We’d be able to raise enough to pay our taxes. You know as well as I that during fat years, the taxes don’t hurt as much.”
“We have more lean years than fat.”
“Lately. You’re right.” Then a whisper. “I can barely feed my family. And yet that girl…”
“Where do you suppose she got that gold coin and a horse like that?” The voices fell into sullen silence. Their stares bored holes into her back.
Time had run out quickly.
Captain, can you hear me? Where are you?
I’m here. In the stable behind the inn.
We need to leave.
Already? What did you do?
The door in front of her darkened as a hulking man, bent from years of hard labor, probably in the fields, paused to let his eyes adjust from the brightness outside to the dim interior of the inn. Fiera, sensing her best chance to escape, lifted her bowl and swallowed the last dregs of the soup. With energy surging through her blood, she stood and stumbled across the floor, feigning the weakness that had been upon her just moments ago. As one, the eyes of every occupant in the room followed her progress. She said to Captain, I’ll tell you later. Just be ready.
And exactly how do I do that? I can’t saddle myself and I can’t unlatch this stall.
The farmer stepped off the door lintel and, as he moved into the room with heavy steps, all eyes shifted from her and followed his progress. The matron tucked the shiny coin in her waistband and jovially stepped forward to greet him, leaving her post.
Fiera, already halfway across the floor, had a choice now. She could leave by the main door, where she’d come in, sneak around the outside of the building to where Captain was stabled, or she could go through the kitchen, which she felt fairly certain would have a back door.
Mind made up, she dropped all pretense. With the magic-induced energy coursing through her body, she slipped behind the woman’s back into the kitchen.
The room was smaller than most kitchens; she could cross it in four strides. The hearth was nothing more than a tiny bricked up hole in the wall where a pot simmered above low red coals while an old woman slumbered in a close-by chair. A few pots and ladles hung on the walls, but the two expansive sets of shelves were empty but for a couple of withered root vegetables. The center table was also tiny, just big enough for a chopping block and a butcher’s cleaver. On it sat a loaf of bread, mold on one end.
Fiera felt no quickening of her magic in response to any in the room. Somehow, she’d missed someone. The scrape of chairs came from the main room of the inn, announcing that she didn’t have any more time to hunt for the person who had doctored her soup. Grabbing the loaf of bread, rock-hard, she bolted around the center table and out the open back door into a small courtyard. To her left was an open shelter with two stalls, Captain in one and a broken-down, grizzled black in the other.
She rushed over and opened Captain’s stall door: a simple board slid through a gap. Snatching up her saddle and bridle, she laid them on his wide back, willing them to be fastened in their proper places. In a snap, they were where they belonged. She smiled grimly; it had been a long time since she’d been strong enough that her magic had worked like it should.
As several shouting men burst through the door from the inn kitchen, Fiera sprang into the saddle with her stolen bread and Captain reared, lunging into a gallop. They raced past the men, all with gaped mouths, around the corner and up the narrow urine-stinking space between the inn and the next house, toward the main square.
Ahead of them, at the end of the alley, a young girl stepped out, a traveling cloak wrapped around her shoulders and a heavy bag hanging from one shoulder. She stared straight at the oncoming duo.
Fiera’s magic surged within her, answering the same call from the small body in front of her.
The girl raised her arm straight up, hand open. As they rode past, and without any hesitation, Fiera reached down from Captain, grabbed hold of the girl’s hand and pulled her aboard, behind the saddle.
Two small arms slid around Fiera’s waist as Captain broke onto the center square of the village. He dug his hooves into the hard-packed dirt and turned north in an explosion of dust, leaving Midden.
Chapter 3
Efar turned in a circle. With the exception of a dapper, large-bellied man in the back of the room who struggled to his feet with the bar girl’s help and followed the action, the room was empty.
He frowned. Someone had shouted, “She’s gone!” and every man had coursed through the kitchen door after the disappeared girl, chairs falling to the inn’s rock floor with sharp bangs. He knew to whom they referred. He’d seen her, thin as a reed, probably no more than twelve or thirteen, when he first came in, shuffling across the floor. Of course, he’d inadvertently helped her escape, drawing every eye after him as he entered into the room, while she slipped away behind him.
He didn’t like mobs, and this group had given every indication of becoming one. With the griffin’s extra-sensitive ears, he’d heard the murmurs of dissent before he’d pushed open the door of the inn. Even the caged whispers had been audible to him, though not the words.
It had come as no surprise, then, to see the desperation written so plainly in the girl’s green eyes when he’d finally stepped into the building. The malevolence on the faces of four of the six inhabitants had shocked him, though. Why would they want to hurt a small starving girl?
Efar shrugged. It wasn’t his problem. And, it worked in his benefit. His family was all too well known, and he didn’t really want to be recognized.
He smiled at the bar girl, and then reached for the pitcher of ale sitting on the shelved wall. As he turned his attention back to her, he crooked his finger, beckoning her to join him. She swayed her hips as she strolled up to him with a seductive smile, as he knew she would. Not many women resisted him. The barmaid took his hand, and let him lead her out the front door.
Hoofbeats thundered out of town, a giant cloud of dust billowing in their wake. Efar slipped away with the barmaid.
Strolling through the bare trees and scuffing in the leaves, they came to a wide fallen oak where they sat. Efar gulped from the tankard of ale, watching the barmaid out of the corner of his eye. He put down the ale, smacked his lips, and smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Dulcette, sir.” She leaned toward him. In the light of day, he now saw that she was nothing but a child. Bits of cloth peeked out the bosom of her dress and the hip that rested against him was too soft to be real flesh and bone.
“Well, Dulcette, what’s your age?”
She leaned closer. “I’m fourteen, sir.” She sat quietly, waiting on him, as she probably had other customers of the inn, waiting for him to decide how he wanted to use her. Her promising smile guaranteed him a night’s distraction, but he wasn’t sure he wanted that any longer. His heart wanted more. It wanted to be in love. Taking her had been an impulse, something he had done many times. A habit.
Men of the area had the saying “Old enough to wed, old enough to bed.” While it was true the Church sanctioned marriage for twelve-year-old girls, Efar wanted someone with more curves, someone who knew her own mind and wasn’t afraid to speak it.
Abruptly, he stood, took Dulcette’s hand, and pulled her to her feet. “I have no money to pay you. Go back to your mistress.”
She stared in his eyes a moment. “I could stay…”
He shook his head firmly, now more certain than ever. He didn’t want her. He wanted someone he hadn’t met yet. “Go back to the fat man. He’ll pay well for you. If you treat him kindly, he may decide he can’t do without you.” He gave her a gentle shove in the right direction.
Biting her lip, she glanced back at him and then picked a path through the dead undergrowth, swaying her hips gently.
Efar shook his head. He really was a fool.
Backtracking to the cottage where he’d found the clothes, he undressed, folding and neatly laying them on the steps. Then he moved off into the woods again and shifted.
* * * *
Bartheleme stared out the open stone window at the party of dragons flying toward the castle. Centermost of those was a serpentine female the color of pine trees: the woman he’d be taking as queen. Her coloring, coupled with his brighter emerald green, guaranteed beautiful children. She was a strong woman who would support him well when he succeeded to the crown. Furthermore, her family held the English coastal lands directly north of his father’s, east all the way to the mid-mountains. It was a good pairing for everyone.
But, it was an impromptu visit. And very inconvenient for him.
With a deep sigh, he turned away, coming face-to-face with his twin sister, Cecily. As was her usual, she wore her black hair coiffed high on her head. She watched him closely with brown eyes that seemed to know every truth he hid. “You think to slip away?”
He shrugged. “I have things that need attention.” Like a meeting with his father’s agent.
She narrowed her eyes and propped her hands on her hips. She spoke in his mind. Like what, exactly?
He didn’t answer. There were things pressing in his life at the moment, but he couldn’t tell a soul. So, it appeared he did nothing. Everyone in the whole castle mocked his apparent uselessness. Except his sister.
Cecily nodded and said aloud, “Tell me and don’t lie.”
Anger flared within him. Fire leapt to his cheeks. He reached inside him, to the dragon, growing in size and girth as he shifted, gasping at the spikes of pain that lanced through his bones from changing so quickly. In front of him, Cecily shifted too. Though they were twins and nearly identical as humans, that wasn’t true as dragons. Whereas his was emerald green and thickly muscled, her body was lithe and, as the sun glinted off them, her scales were the blue of sparkling sapphires.
They stumbled back from each other, nearly dropping to battle positions. There was a reason the castle had such vaulted ceilings. Then Cecily straightened. No, Bartheleme. I won’t fight you. I’m just saying you can’t hide the truth from me.
He knew she was right; his heart spoke to the truth of that. She was always right and it normally drove him nuts. This time, however, it only left him thinking. She might be able to help him with his escape problem. Father has set me a task, not knowing these people were arriving. How can I do that, trapped here?
She rubbed her head against his. If you ask me, I’ll help you get away with no one seeing you. But don’t tell me where you go. I want to be honest with Father and his guests when he interrogates me.
Help me, then.
She jutted her nose toward the distant line of trees. Stay here until night. Then, go on foot through there. Once you're on the other side, shift and fly away. I'll tell the guests you've already left. She whirled and, in an instant, had shifted back to human. She snatched up one of the many robes strategically placed throughout the castle and rushed from the room.
He turned for one last look out the window at the final arriving guests. Leave it to his sister to be his salvation.
* * * *
Fiera pushed Captain to put as many paces between them and Midden as possible, but it was long after dark when they, at last, came to a crossroads. We should rest here tonight and pick up in the morning. We’ll be able to tell our choices better by then.
Running blind in the beginning had worked well for them, until Midden, but now Fiera realized they needed to make rational decisions. Faced with three directions to go, three choices, neither she nor Captain could decide which to take. Exhaustion numbed their minds.
Captain backtracked to a widening in the road, a small cul-de-sac. The woods there were deep and dark, with brown-needled pines and conifers mixing in with the bare hardwoods. And, as always, the ground was cracked and hard-packed with thirst. The gi
rl behind the saddle hadn’t said a word since her rescue. Fiera decided the child was near eight years old. Not old enough to be on her own. She shook her head at herself. Now she was forced to become the girl’s babysitter. She would drop her at the next city. What had she been thinking?
But she knew the answer to that: she had responded to the magic within the girl because she was tired of being alone, tired of hiding from everyone, tired of pretending to be…anything but what she really was: a witch.
They dismounted. Fiera stood tall and stretched, but the small girl laid down her bag, more of a patched cloth that looked as if it had been a hat of some kind, with two holes cut into it for handles, and scurried into the woods. Fiera eyed her speculatively and reached for the bag. What the child had in there might give a clue to her nature. But, hand in midair above the cut-out handles, she hesitated, and then withdrew. If the shoe were on the other foot, if it were her bag, she wouldn’t want anyone snooping.
The young girl returned with sticks, dead leaves, and dried pine needles, which she arranged on the ground in a kind of small, pointed structure, the softer dry stuff beneath the sticks. From a fold in her cloak, she removed a flint and a stone. She repeatedly struck these together at the base of the structure, spilling sparks onto the leaves and needles. In no time at all, they had a tiny fire burning. The child disappeared back into the woods, but returned a moment later with an armful of stout branches that she broke and laid across the fire.
Fiera fetched the loaf of bread she’d stowed beneath the pommel of the saddle for easy carrying and laid it by the fire. Returning to Captain, she reached for his bridle. Instantly, the girl was there, gently pushing at her hands. Startled, Fiera let go and stepped back. The child pulled the big horse’s head lower and unbuckled the bridle.
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