She asked, “What was that thing?”
“A whip made from a wyvern’s tail. It is the same thing that struck down Morgain.”
“A whip? Impossible. How could it hold me?”
“If its master wills, it can hold forever to what it has caught or until that will is broken. When the Rider returned to his own place and time, the wyvern whip no longer had anyone to obey.”
“What about the horse?” Clarice asked, and he smiled down at her for it was a question no one else would have asked.
“It has returned to the stable from which it came.”
“Wherever that may be.”
“Wherever that may be.”
“How do you know so much, Mr. Knight?”
“I have studied,” he said. Bowing slightly, he raised her hand to his lips. He very gently kissed the mark of the whip. “If I could have done, I would have spared you this.”
“It—it isn’t your fault,” she said, slipping her hand from his. “I should have taken your advice and returned to the house when you said we should. I apologize for not listening.”
“I should have asked more politely, perhaps.”
Her eyes held a glint of returning humor. “If it is all the same to you, we can argue over that issue later. Now, I feel strongly that we should go in.”
“That is wise.”
She reached up to his face with the corner of her shawl and patted his brow, wiping away a little of the drying blood. “How do I explain that my guest comes in so much the worse for wear?”
“Don’t say anything. I’m sure your servants are too well-trained to ask any questions.”
“Rest assured, Mr. Knight, that I am not so well-trained. However, those questions will have to wait until we are somewhere warm and considerably drier.”
“You called me Dominic before.”
“Did I?” she asked, and blushed faintly. “I’ve no recollection of it. Which way to the house?”
Ordinarily, Dominic could rely on his sense of direction, even among the shifting fog. But the frenzy of battle and the heavy blows he’d taken had shaken him more than he liked to admit. The tracks of Clarice’s heels as she’d been dragged by the whip gave him his start.
He drew her cold hand under his arm, feeling that she could use the reassurance of a human touch. This time, she did not try to withdraw it. It warmed him to be able to give her even that much comfort.
“I think you’ll need another glass of Burgundy,” he said as a joke.
“I’ll drink it to your good health.” After a moment, she said, “I haven’t thanked you.”
“There’s no need. I did what I was trained to do.”
“Trained? By whom?”
“Trainers.”
“You might as well just say that you aren’t going to tell me anything.”
“Very well. I’m not going to tell you....” He laughed as she pinched his arm.
But there was no answering laughter in her voice when she said, “Surely we should have reached the brick path by now? I know I was not dragged so far as this.”
“It’s difficult to judge distances in the fog, Clarice.”
“I know that. But I also know Hamdry. We’ve walked a long time and the gravel path is only a few yards wide. Perhaps we have gone the wrong way and are now walking around the garden.”
“Very well. You stay here and I will—
“No. If we go, we go together.”
They tried making one sharp turn and then walking forward a ways. But neither brick path, nor wall, nor house, nor even grass underfoot met them. They made another cast, with no better result. The gravel path seemed to have grown wider, despite all Clarice’s protest that it was at most nine feet across. They wandered on until even Dominic, with all his strength, began to feel weary. She must have been nearly exhausted. No complaint escaped her lips; indeed, she was ready to joke.
“What a pity we haven’t a better day for a stroll,” Clarice said. Her lips were pale, with a blue shadow underneath. At some point, he’d stopped walking with her hand on his arm, taking her hand in his instead. All the same, her fingers had grown steadily colder. His clothes were as wet as though he’d been swimming and she was in no better case, her hair streaming with collected moisture.
A little while later, she said, “Perhaps I should, after all, wait here while you find the house. Or we could try shouting. If we are close, Camber or someone might hear us.”
Dominic stopped in his tracks. “I should have thought of it before.”
“What?”
“This isn’t the path around your garden, Clarice.”
“Yes, it is. Please don’t start talking like a crazed lunatic. I—I don’t think I could stand it.”
He cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Halloa! Oyez, the king!”
Faintly came an echo in reply. Clarice raised her face from her hands. She breathed in deeply. “What is that fragrance?”
For the fog no longer smelled of damp and mire, but of flowers. It no longer hung in impenetrable folds, but thinned, changing from heavy curtains to tattered veils. Where it parted, flashes of brilliant colors could be glimpsed, but her mind did not move swiftly enough to put names to them before they were gone.
Clarice stepped close to Dominic, taking his arm again. Though she did not trust him completely, he was the one familiar thing in a universe suddenly altered. He smiled down at her, and for once she did not mind the hint of patronage in his eyes.
The breeze that stirred the fog also dried her clothes or so she thought until she looked down. Her bedraggled dress of black silk had changed without her even being aware of it. She wore a white satin gown of an antique cut. The neck was square and low, the waist just under her breasts. Full flowing sleeves were pulled in tight above the elbows by ribbons of gold whose ends fluttered in the sweet-smelling breeze. Fitted sleeves of cloth-of-gold peeked out beneath the others. These were embroidered over in scarlet thread, strange, complex patterns that seemed to both reveal and conceal vast mysteries.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Dominic said. “No one means you any harm. Whatever else you believe, believe that.”
He had not changed. He was not even dry. The blood had stopped flowing from the cut over his eyebrow and the collected water of the fog had washed away the worst of the stains on his face. Though he wore the tattered remains of a gentleman’s attire, he looked utterly disreputable, as barbarous as a Visigoth striding through the streets of Rome.
The sun came out, catching the drops in his hair and making them glitter. She stared at him as though she’d never seen him before. When she looked around her, she realized that she had not, indeed, seen the true Dominic Knight. For he was a product of world other than her own.
She looked across a field of green so intense that the sun seemed to strike sparks from it, as though the grass were made of individual emeralds. Banners rippled like pure silk above half a dozen oblong-shaped buildings. She could not tell whether they were of stone or of cloth, for she was distracted by their roofs. Each one was variegated, a blur of pure hues that blended into a whole so harmonious that she felt the changing of one tint for any other would have thrown off the entire beauty of the scene.
Clarice found herself walking down a gentle slope, Dominic at her shoulder. She glanced back at him, finding that she had to push aside her flowing hair. He said, “Go on. You are expected.”
“What makes the roofs glimmer so?”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why, with all the untold millions of birds in the world, the earth is not waist-deep in lost feathers?”
“No, I cannot say that I have. Are you telling me that those roofs are made of feathers?”
“Thousands of them, from a condor’s flight-feather to a hummingbird’s pinfeather.”
“Incredible.”
As she drew nearer, she heard music, no more than pipe and drum, yet she found her feet dancing as her heart lightened step by step. The tune was simple, merry, and someho
w familiar. She wondered if she’d heard it at some rout-party or other, but the feeling she took from it did not seem related to the overheated elegance of a ballroom. Perhaps it was at Vauxhall, for she seemed to associate the tune with outdoor amusements, with the grass under her feet and a free breeze blowing through her hair. Some words went with it. She sought in her memory.
Her lips found the words before her mind could catch them. “In Mag Mell, the king does dwell; on his cedar throne, he sighs alone; heigh-ho the day-oh!”
“You know the words? I used to sing it when I was a boy but since I came here, I haven’t been able to remember them. Sing it once more, if you please.”
Dominic joined her as she sang it through, though he did not dance with her. He laughed and she thought that she liked the sound even more than the music. Her feet, however, obeyed only the sound of the pipe and the drum. He asked, “Are you certain it’s ‘cedar throne”? I seem to recall it being ‘silver.’"
“I have it on good authority that it is made of wood.”
“Well, yes. I’ve seen it myself many times, but I thought that in the song...”
“Blaic taught me the proper words when I was still under an enchantment. I believe I am enchanted again now.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “Don’t be confused. This land and all who serve it are enchanted, but you are not. You are a human being still. Hold on to that. Prince Blaic would say the same were he here now instead of me.”
She wanted to turn to look at him, to ask him what he meant, but the pull of the music grew as she came closer. She could not make herself circle about until the dance that flowed through her body permitted such a move. By then, it was too late. He’d resumed his stolid expression.
Clarice danced all across the field. She did not feel the least bit tired anymore. Nor was she growing short of breath or dizzy, no matter how many pirouettes, leaps, or curtsies she performed. When she became aware that quite a few persons stood about watching her progression, she wanted very much to stop. Being stared at was no more pleasant here than at home. However, she could not will her muscles to cease their motions until she’d danced up to the very entrance of the largest and most dazzling building.
This one was neither decorated with bird feathers nor richly carved. It was a mere marquee—if the word “mere” could be used to describe a tent of the finest silk. It was a pure and stainless white that glistened as the fabric billowed in the sunlight.
Once she stepped foot onto the magnificently woven carpet that led to the entrance, her dancing feet slowed step by step until they carried her with no more cadence than that lent by a very graceful walk. She drew a deep breath and turned to smile at Dominic.
Through it all, he had stayed at her side, to the right and slightly behind. Now, he stepped forward. Bowing low, he swept back the silken hanging before the entrance.
“Go in,” he said. “Don’t be frightened.”
“And what,” a voice demanded, “has she to be frightened of?”
Clarice wondered about that herself. So far, everything had been delightful. Yet undoubtedly, she felt some fear. Every tale she’d ever heard of the “piskies” had warned of their extreme trickiness coupled with a notorious level of irascibility. It would behoove her to go most warily.
“Come in,” the voice beckoned. “Come forward and let me see you. We are related, you know.”
Being inside the tent was like walking into a great pearl. The sunlight was softened through the silk, lending it a luminescence not unlike moonglow but far more alive. At the far end of the enclosure stood a man, just that instant risen from the chair behind him. As in the child’s rhyme, the chair was indeed of white cedar. Somehow, Clarice knew this throne was of great age and yet still a faint fragrance of the wood reached out to her.
The man came forward, stepping firmly on the grass. He wore no crown, no splendid robes of ermine and velvet, and no courtiers stood about him, laughing with delight at a joke or weeping with fear at a frown. Yet, on instinct, Clarice swept him the same deep reverence she would have given to George, King of England.
“But no, my dear!” The king tut-tutted like a fond uncle. “Did I not say we are related? I do not ask such things from my family, do I, Dominic?”
“No, my king.”
Clarice glanced back, only to see that he had dropped on to one knee and now knelt with his head bowed low. She did not like to see him so humble. Though she was loath to admit it, she would have preferred a resurgence of his arrogance.
Clarice had to clear her throat before she could speak to the fatherly gentleman who stood smiling down on her with such genial delight. “You say we are related, sire? How is that?”
“She calls me ‘sire’!” the king said to no one in particular. “One can always tell the true nobility.”
He made no grand gestures, no veins stood out on his forehead, yet a moment later Clarice found him ushering her to a chair that had just that instant appeared beside the throne. The king said, “Oh, long ago—even by my standards!—one of your ancestors married one of my house! A complicated business that no one remembers now except those of us with the longest memories. And yet, there is a nearer tie as well.”
“A tie by marriage, perhaps. Through Blaic?”
“It seems but yesterday that our former king, Boadach, enchanted him. Then your lovely sister enchanted him once again and, it would seem, even more fatally.” Forgall turned the full attention of his sherry brown eyes on her and Clarice was conscious of a shock.
The king appeared in all respects to be a human being. He had the right number of limbs, his features were bland but pleasantly arranged in the usual order. Not many men of her acquaintance wore a beard, yet there was nothing strange about choosing one. If she’d passed him in some quiet lane, she would have taken him for a farm-laborer.
Yet when she looked into his eyes, she knew without a doubt that he was not of her kind. Mists of memories floated there, shadowing deep wells of experience, created from a mixture of warm appreciation and cold, cold knowledge. Here was not some innocent creature of wood and dell as the fairy tales would have it, nor was he the devil’s tool as the ignorant would call him. He was his own master, and master of the world as well.
She could not begin to guess the limits of his power, or even if there were any limits. For the first time, she felt a whisper of a threat, like a chilled blade brushing against the back of her neck.
Forgall said, “I want to apologize to you, my dear child, unreservedly.”
“But why, sire?”
“For the regrettable incident just now with the Rider of Vedresh. Believe me, if I had not believed his escape to be wholly unconnected with you, I should have put a stop to him at once. As it is, I can see to it that you and Morgain Half-Fay shall have no ill-effects from my poor judgment.”
Clarice felt a tingling sensation about her wrist. When she pulled back the sleeve to look, it appeared quite as usual. The redness and swelling had gone away. Glancing at Dominic, she saw the cut on his head was still unhealed.
“Is he not worthy of such an apology?” she said, lifting her chin in Dominic’s direction. To her surprise, she saw a slow crimson rise into his cheeks.
The king did not glance at him. “He is my servant and was complaining not long ago of a lack of excitement in his assignment. The wounds he suffered in your defense may remind him not to question the wisdom of his king.”
“But how should they?” Clarice replied. “When it was your wisdom that placed him where he might defend me from your lack.”
She did not look at him, being busy smoothing her sleeve, yet beneath her seeming calm she was quivering, tense as a stretched bowstring. She wondered if it hurt very much being blasted by the wrath of the Fay-King. The last time, there’d been only a gentle languor that had passed into slumber. When she’d awakened, she’d had the mind of a toddling child despite her thirteen years. She doubted the king would be so kind this time.
Then he laughed, cl
apping his hand softly against his knee. “Well-answered, my lady. Come! We shall dine together.”
“With the greatest pleasure in the world, sire.”
She rose to follow him. As he passed Dominic, still on one knee, the royal hand brushed his shoulder. “Don’t be such a fool next time,” the king said.
Clarice saw the wound on Dominic’s forehead heal cleanly, as well as his bruised knuckles. The instant the king went by, Dominic raised his head and watched her come forward. His expression was grim. Clarice half-expected him to berate her in a harsh whisper for embarrassing him. Instead he caught her hand as she passed by and swiftly pressed his lips to it.
Stunned, she hardly caught his whisper, “Eat what you like; drink only water.”
As they traversed the glade between the two tents, Clarice said, “This is not, I believe, the first time you and I have met, sire.”
“Ah, no. I remember you very well. I was sorry for you and rather hated to put you under a spell, but you interrupted one of our revels, and the Law is very strict. Had you touched me or any of my People, I should not have harmed you, but you did not. I cannot apologize.”
“You permitted me to live. I took no very great harm, for which I thank you. At any rate, I was eventually freed from your spell, thanks to Blaic.”
The king’s mouth might have twisted for an instant under his beard. Certainly he made no further answer. When he entered the vast tent where the banquet was served, a roar of welcome arose from every throat. He stood with his arms raised to the sky, accepting the cheers of his citizens, while Clarice gaped in amazed wonder. What had looked like a moderately sized marquee must have held a thousand persons. Though her mind reeled at the notion, she could not deny what she saw. This pavilion was bigger on the inside than on the outside.
No meat was served at the feast, but the fruit, the vegetables and the bread had a savor like no other food she’d tasted before. She realized that she’d been eating like a Fay for several days, ever since the fog had shut the roads and the meat in her cellar had so unexpectedly vanished. The cook had created marvelous meals out of far less than Clarice would have believed possible. But here in the heart of the kingdom, everything had a rich, rare flavor far surpassing the things of the world she knew.
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