by Rain Oxford
“I’m here to take the prince for his bath,” she said.
“I can take a bath on my own,” I insisted.
“Nonsense. Princes don’t bathe themselves.” She grabbed my arm, causing me to wince with pain. “I’m sorry,” she said, obviously not sincere, and continued pulling until I had to stand.
“Merlin, do something!”
“It would be wrong to stand in your way. You two have fun.”
“What? No! Merlin, help!”
Just before she pulled me out the door, he sighed. “Very well. For every minute she spends on you, spend ten minutes on her, use protection, and whatever you do, do not cry.”
I was not amused.
* * *
I stopped fighting the woman and let her lead me to the bath, which was a huge room with a stone floor. In the middle of the floor was a massive hole filled with crystal clear, steaming water.
“Who keeps the water warm?” I asked.
“I heard it had something to do with the planet’s natural heat. Now, get naked.”
“No.”
She laughed. “You’re going to take a bath with your clothes on?”
“I’ll get undressed when you leave.”
“I’ve seen the male form before.”
“Well, you haven’t seen mine.”
“What are you talking about, Prince Yuri? I’ve seen you naked many times.”
At that point, I started to doubt my decision to play the part of the prince. It wasn’t like I could stay. I would eventually have to tell the queen her son was still missing. It would upset her, but the prince needed to be found and he wouldn’t be if they stopped looking. Then again, he had been missing for five months. There was a good chance he was no longer alive to be found.
“Fine,” the woman said. “I will turn around, but I’m not leaving until you’re clean. It’s my job, after all.”
She turned and I got undressed. The queen was the first one I needed to confess to, and I needed to break it to her gently. I got in the water. It stung scrapes and scratches I didn’t know I had. “I’m in,” I said.
She turned, set her bag down, and pulled out a sponge.
“I really don’t need help.”
“Would you rather me be on the street without a job?” she asked.
I sighed and let her scrub my arms and shoulders. “Do you know… me well?” I asked.
“Not as well as I’d like to, but better than you think.”
“Right.” That was supremely unhelpful. “You heard that I lost my memory, right?”
“Yes. The servants talk. What are you going to do about it?”
“I guess figure out what happened and try to…” I trailed off, not sure what to say. I hadn’t realized that was my plan all along. Something happened to the prince. I could either face his mother and break her heart, or I could find out myself and possibly save him. The queen was a stranger to me, but she loved her son and that was something I didn’t want to get in the way of.
“You’re going to save the prince, aren’t you?” she asked.
“What? Did I say that out loud?”
“No. I guess you’re a hero after all. I thought I was special.”
I turned to face her, to ask her what she was talking about and apologize for offending her, but she kissed me. It was amazing, for some reason I couldn’t fathom. It was soft, innocent, and promised nothing more, but it was perfect.
I broke away. “Kalyn?”
She smirked and her appearance changed to fit the one I was familiar with. She was about my height and age with long, dark red, curly hair and eyes the color of honey. The outfit she wore didn’t do her justice.
“Now I’m flattered.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Trying to repay a favor.” She pulled out a letter and handed it to me. Cautiously, I unfolded it. The first thing I noticed was a blue hawk painted on the paper. It was subtle, though, so it could be written over. I ran my finger across the paper, feeling no paint. Except for the hawk, it was whiter than any paper I had ever seen. It was definitely strange. Unfortunately, the letter itself was even stranger.
Kalyn,
I need you to come to the Romanus castle on Ademora and convince everyone that I’m the prince. You’ll understand more later. And because I’m going to forget to say so at the time, thank you.
Ayden
“I didn’t write this.”
“It looks like your handwriting.”
“How do you know what my handwriting looks like?”
“Well, it’s kind of pretty and it certainly sounds like something you would write. I got here a few days ago and I’ve been learning as much as I can about the prince.”
I agreed that the handwriting was identical to mine and it was something I would say, but I didn’t write it. Someone else wanted Kalyn here, and knew me enough to send her a letter in my name.
“Ayden, focus. The prince wasn’t taken.”
“He wasn’t?”
“Three servants saw him leave. He even took his favorite horse with him.”
“So, he doesn’t need help?”
“He probably does. The sorcerer that attacked the castle didn’t take Yuri; he took a specific item which the king and queen treasured. It was a magical object. The king and queen were supposed to protect it and that had something to do with why Yuri was born. I couldn’t learn much.”
“You’ve learned a lot more than I have.”
“When the sorcerer stole the treasure, the king and queen were afraid, so Yuri left in the middle of the night to go after him.”
“Why sneak away?”
“Because they would have stopped him.”
So, he thought he was doing what was best for them.
“He never came back. No one thinks he just ran away; that wasn’t like him. Something went wrong.”
I nodded. “A lot could have gone wrong. A wizard should never have gone after a sorcerer himself. He has defensive magic, but what can he do against sorcery?”
“Maybe he found a way. Are you saying you don’t want to save him?”
“I’m not sure he’s alive, but I will find out what happened. If he’s alive, I’ll save him. If not, at least I can explain what happened to his mother. Speaking of which, have you found your family?”
She shook her head. “How are we going to find Yuri?”
“Without my wand or staff, I can’t do anything. Do you know where they are?”
“I don’t, but I will find them. I can go where others can’t.” Magicians needed hats to focus their magic instead of wands or staffs, but Kalyn was special; she didn’t need any tool.
“Good. I will work with Merlin to find Yuri, and we’ll leave after you get my tools. When we leave, do you think you can play the prince?”
“Easily. Until then, you have to sell it, though.”
“How hard can it be to pretend to be a prince?”
Little did I know, I would be set on fire before nightfall.
Chapter 3
When I was clean enough to pass for the prince, Kalyn retrieved lavish clothes from her bag. I knew I had to wear them, but that didn’t mean I was going to be happy about it. Despite my insistence that I dress myself, the numerous folds, ties, and buttons turned out to be too complicated for me.
“I think this is prettier than a girl’s clothes.”
Kalyn laughed. “Certainly prettier than anything I have. Magicians can disguise our clothes to look as fancy as we want. I can be wearing a flower sack and fit in at a ball.”
“No, you wouldn’t. You’d stand out as the prettiest girl there.”
She blushed. “The first thing any magician learns is that looks mean nothing. Sure, I know what a sorcerer or wizard is going to do and I know them by their appearance, but I can’t know if a seer is on my side or against me. You look like a wizard, so I should be able to trust you completely. You’re not a wizard, though, which makes you… like me.”
“We’re
both Sjau.”
“That’s not what I mean, though. I do trust you, not because you look like a wizard, but because I’ve gotten to know you. I’m sorry I tore open your chest with my bear claws.”
When I first met her, she was in the form of a bear and was supposed to take me to my mother. “It’s okay. You had problems. I should have realized you were under a curse when you said you couldn’t disobey Sven.”
“I think your father was wrong, though; I don’t think it was a love spell. I hated Sven as much as I was… enamored. It makes me sick to think about it. I wanted to be with him when I was with him, but when he was out of sight, I couldn’t figure out what was keeping me there. Every day, it got worse. I was losing myself to doubt and self-disgust.”
“I imagine if there is one thing in this world Ilvera can’t do, it’s create love. After all, how is she supposed to understand something she can’t feel?”
“Well, if that was love, I don’t want to feel it again.”
“Some people believe there is a person out there for each of us that we are supposed to be with. Merlin told me about it, but I don’t think he believes it. Or if he does, he believes Nimue was the only woman on any world for him.”
“That’s too much pressure. What if her life is too different from his? Then she has to either give up everything she knows and loves in order to put his happiness first, because otherwise he’ll be miserable.”
“Maybe not. He could find someone else who makes him slightly less happy. Merlin told me something about clues to solving a mystery that seems to make more sense when talking about him and Nimue. He said, ‘just because they are two parts of the same puzzle, it does not mean they fit together.’”
“What’s a puzzle?”
“I have no idea. He explained it to me three times and I still don’t get it. I’m sorry I stabbed you with a sword when you were a bird.”
“That’s okay. I dropped you on purpose.”
By then, I was fully dressed, so Kalyn transformed into the servant disguise and led me back to Yuri’s room, where Merlin was waiting. Fortunately, he was alone. “You knew she was Kalyn, didn’t you?” I asked him as Kalyn left to find my tools.
“Of course. Did you not?”
“Not until she kissed me.”
He laughed. “I see.”
I didn’t want to know what he meant by that. “She’s going to look for my wand and staff. We need to find Yuri. He went after the sorcerer who took the castle’s treasure, and he might need our help.”
“Well, you are moving dangerously close to becoming a hero rather than a curse breaker.”
“Kalyn said something to the same effect. I don’t care. We left the castle because I was tired of helping people who deserved what they got. Yuri might really need us.”
“Why is it your job to help him?”
I shrugged. “It’s not. But… it has danger, treasure, and a powerful sorcerer. How is that not better than sitting around in a castle?”
“That, I can agree with.”
* * *
Merlin said he would need something silver, a map of Caldaca, five candles, and a slice of chocolate cake.
Suko, the same guard who had taken me to see Yuri’s mother, was standing watch outside my door. Apparently, the queen thought her son needed extra protection, so I was going to have a pretty tenacious shadow. That could be good or bad, depending on how acute his hearing was.
I told him what was needed and, although he was confused, he set about getting the supplies without arguing. I supposed there were some advantages to being a prince. When he returned with everything, I thanked him and closed and locked the door.
Merlin switched us. It was still painful, but it was less so each time. The itchy sensation of growing fur was the worst part about it. Nevertheless, once I was in my wolf form, I realized I had missed it. There was a strange comfort in not being me for a while. I had worked so hard to accept myself, but being a wolf was fun, too.
Merlin fashioned the sheet into a dress to cover himself temporarily, since none of Yuri’s clothes would fit him and I didn’t have my bag. He insisted it was a toga, not a dress. I figured a toga was a man-dress people from his world wore and dropped it.
Once he was sufficiently covered, he got to work immediately. He unfolded the map on the floor and placed the candles around it, one at each corner and the fifth on the map over the kingdom. Then he gathered some hair of Yuri’s that he found on a brush in the nightstand and placed a single hair on each of the candles.
In a display of class I could never achieve with my wand, he blew on the candles like one would do to extinguish them. To my shock, they lit.
According to the map, Ademora was the name of a massive land, broken into the Romanus kingdom to the south, a smaller kingdom to the northeast, and what looked like free lands to the northwest. We were the farthest north we had ever traveled, about halfway between Akadema and the ice lands, and far west.
“The assassins must have used magic to get us here from Mokora,” I said.
“I was not conscious the entire time, so I suppose they did.”
While I was studying the map, Merlin sat beside it and clinched the silver coin in his fist. I desperately wanted to ask what he was doing, but I knew that was a terrible idea.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Oops.
“I am concentrating.”
I got the hint. “I’m your student.”
Again, oops.
He sighed. “Believe it or not, transformation is not as easy for me as it is for you. I am reconstructing the silver to form a shape more conductive of magic.”
“Why?”
“If you wait, you will find out.” When I didn’t argue, he closed his eyes. After some time, he opened his fingers and revealed a small, silver ball. Then he said something in another language. When he was finished, he tilted his hand. The ball rolled off, hit the map with a loud thud, and kept rolling. It rolled in circles on the map, even stopping and changing direction several times.
The longer it went, the more concerned Merlin’s expression grew. “What’s it doing?” I asked. I had an idea, but I wanted confirmation that it was doing what it was supposed to.
“It is supposed to stop on Yuri’s location, but it has never taken this long before.”
And then the ball rolled off the map, quickly disappearing under the bed.
I had a bad feeling about that. “Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it does. I don’t think I could tell his mother.”
“It means that he is no longer on this world. Either he died, or he traveled to another world.”
“Can you determine which?”
“I can find the last location he was alive on Caldaca.” He swirled his hand over the four candles around the fire and the flames left their wicks to follow his hand. When he combined the flame in the middle and then slammed his hand downward on the candle, the flame shot down and out. It didn’t burn the map, though, not until it reached the edges, which caught on fire. The map burned inward, faster on the east and south until a single spot was left of it, the size of my hand. The only label on the spot was Bloodburn Castle.
“Where is a magic mirror when you need one? If he’s in trouble, we’ll never make it to him in time without transporting to him, and I can’t---”
“It has been five months,” Merlin interrupted. “If he needed our help, we are already too late.”
“What if he’s imprisoned? They could be starving him to death slowly.”
He studied the map for a moment. “I have all of my abilities back, even my strength, but my… stamina… is subpar. It is probably the reason we reverted to our normal forms involuntarily. I am not sure whether it is because holding this form is sapping my power or if I have been without power so long that I have lost the capacity.”
“When I get my wand and staff, you can tell me what to do.”
He considered the map again and shook his head. “If using th
is much magic is beyond me, then I should remain a wolf forever. I have magic or nothing at all.” He held his right hand over the piece of map and took a slow, deep breath. When he exhaled, the room grew cold. I could sense images going through his mind and retreated away from them. It wasn’t the air that was cold. Wherever Yuri was, or was last, at least, it was a bad place.
“The castle is gone.”
“What? How does a castle---”
“No, wait. It came back.”
“If you can see it well enough, I can transport us there.” I wasn’t looking forward to it; it was far away and I had never been there, so the chance of something going wrong was pretty high.
He nodded, opened his eyes, and retracted his hand. “I saw it, but we need to switch back now before it is done for us.” Instead of immediately switching us, he picked up the slice of cake.
“How does that help with the spell?” I asked.
He frowned at me like I was insane. “This is not for spellcraft. This is for eating.” He started to eat the cake in front of me.
Without offering to share.
“Why did you ask for cake, then?”
“Do you know how long I have gone without cake?”
“No.”
“Neither do I.”
Once he was done, he sat across from me on the floor. It was much easier when the change was voluntary, and after a painful and itchy transformation, I was a person again. Someday, I wanted to break Merlin’s curse completely, but this was a definite improvement. I trusted Merlin never to transfer the curse to me permanently.
“You seem more energetic.”
“Another reason I requested cake. I am not normally a fan of sweets, but it does have its advantages.”
“Once Kalyn brings me my staff, we can go,” I said, trying and failing to redress myself in Yuri’s extravagant clothing.