by Jane Yolen
“If I thought that would buy Snail the time she needs, then I would do it in an instant.” Aspen shook his head. “But it will not. No, Mother, give me some credit. I have a different idea.”
And suddenly he did.
“Balnar, also rig a carriage for Mishrath. Our wizard will be coming with us.”
“Of course, sire,” Balnar said. “But I fear he may not survive the journey.”
I fear none of us may survive the journey, Aspen thought. But he didn’t say it aloud. My people need a brave and confident leader if we are going to live through the next few days. He almost chuckled. Unfortunately, all they have is me.
Drawing a deep breath, he thought: I am going to have to fake it.
For some reason, he thought of the skulker in the cave. The man had seemed confident. Aspen remembered the single sword stroke that had taken the heads off of all three crones. Evil, but confident. I wonder if he was a leader? And if he was, whom did he lead?
10
SNAIL AND THE GIANT SPIDER
The two dark riders came closer and closer, then suddenly split apart, one on either side of Snail. Before she could react, she’d been scooped up like a package wrapped for delivery.
“Let me go, you boggarts!” she cried in her fiercest voice. She tried to kick but was securely held. Her arms were bound to her side by the rider’s strong arms, so her knives were useless.
“Shut up, m’lady,” said the one who’d grabbed her. “And stop struggling. It scares the horse, and he needs to concentrate on speed.”
“Snaggle?” She was astonished.
“Who else was you expecting? More of them Badder Lords?”
Snail was so relieved, she didn’t bother correcting him and didn’t mind his hand on her waist. Instead, she leaned forward over his horse’s neck for balance, trying hard not to lose either of the knives.
They galloped on till they reached the path that went down into the valley, both the horses laboring mightily.
By this time Snail had managed to sit up a bit, and she saw something large, black, and long-legged straddling the way about a quarter mile down.
“Them demned spiders,” Snaggle said, and spit off to one side as if to curse them.
“I don’t like the looks of it, this close up,” Snap called over. “Iron you said they was. Cold iron.”
They pulled their horses to a stop.
“Don’t worry,” Snail told them, checking behind to see if anyone was following them, but there was no one in sight. “The spiders know me. Or at least their smaller mommies and daddies did.”
“Not much of a coddler, are you?” said Snaggle. “Don’t want to give us false hope.”
“Even false hope would help,” added Snap.
Snaggle kicked the horse forward. Not being long-sighted, the horse had only now spotted the spider and needed a second kick as inspiration.
All Snail could think as they rode ahead was the old kitchen saying: Jump out the skillet, you fall in the flame, which Nettle—her only friend back at the Unseelie Court—used to say whenever something was about to get worse.
Instead of telling them that, she said, “Trust me.”
But she really didn’t know how the spider would greet them. If they were extremely lucky, perhaps the spider would run away.
But the spider didn’t move.
Maybe it’s died, she thought. Even luckier. But it was a made thing, and their life spans were incalculable.
The horses began to speed up as the downhill steepened.
Suddenly Snail realized that there was going to be a disastrous crash with horses and fey coming out the worst, unless she did something. And quickly.
Turning, she shouted into Snaggle’s face, which was set prune-like into dark wrinkles, “Halt! Hold it. Let me go first. They know me.”
At least she hoped they did.
He sawed at the reins, and his horse struggled to slow. But Snap and his horse swept by them. They could feel a wind off Snap’s steed as it passed, a damp wind smelling of sweat and fear, a powerful combination.
Snaggle cried out, “Stop, you fool!” and his voice was a thunder that broke through the cloud of Snap’s fierce concentration.
Snap’s horse skittered, stumbled as the reins sawed at its mouth. Then it slid to a stop, its rider all but tossed over its head.
Snap looked over his shoulder. “Are ye mad?”
“M’lady’s orders,” Snaggle said.
Snail thought, I hadn’t meant it as an order. More like a prayer.
Quickly they caught up to Snap and his mount, and the three confabbed for a moment.
“I’m a changeling, and the spider will sniff it on me. Then I’ll tell it who I am,” Snail said, hoping it was enough to hold Snap and Snaggle at this distance.
“And just who is that?” Snap asked before Snaggle could.
This close to the iron spider, the horses were beginning to tremble, their skins looking like earthworks in a quake.
“I’m a friend of Professor Odds, my birth is of humankind, and I was the doctor who patched up all of the downed changelings at Bogborough.”
“That should do it!” Snap said sarcastically.
Snaggle clearly didn’t believe her. Worry was written plain on his face. “If that thing gives ye time to say it. And if it understands changeling speech.”
His concerns were hers, but she refused to share her fears. “Stay here, and if everything is all right, go back and report to Alith, who knows what we’re to say to the professor, in case I forget some of it.”
“Alith . . .” Snaggle began, then his voice broke.
“. . . will not be coming with us,” Snap finished for him.
Snail felt her unshod foot start to wobble as if it hadn’t enough support to stand up on its own. What Snap said wasn’t a complete surprise. Otherwise, why hadn’t Alith ridden with them? Still, Snail’s body treated the news like a shock. It took all her concentration to straighten up.
“Alith . . .” she whispered, then made herself breathe more slowly. “I’m a doctor, take me back to her.”
“There’s nothing for you to do,” Snaggle said, and Snap nodded in agreement.
“We can’t just leave her. . . .” Snail knew that in fact they could, and had to leave her. It was just what Alith herself had ordered.
But as to what had happened to Alith, she didn’t want to know. If she knew it all, she feared she wouldn’t be able to go forward.
“And the Border Lords?” she asked. That much she had to have recounted.
“All dead,” said Snap.
“All that we know of,” amended Snaggle. “Two to our arrows. And three to the captain’s sword.”
With Alith gone, Snail felt no need to keep the secret longer. “The Greens were following us, and Mums after them. But staying out of sight. As a precaution.”
“Of course,” said Snaggle.
“We spotted them early,” Snap added.
“That’s why we’re the best,” Snaggle said. “They’re doing the cleanup.”
“And I’m the best at this,” Snail told them. “Leave me to it. But stay ready.” She spoke as Alith might have. The word cleanup had undone her. She turned and began to walk down the hill.
Clutching the boot knife in her left hand, Alith’s knife in her right, she stumbled toward the waiting spider. She knew Snap and Snaggle wouldn’t follow. They might be warriors, but they were soldiers first. And she’d barked out orders to them that—missing Alith—they had to obey.
THE SPIDER WAS as large as one of Professor Odds’s wagons. It hadn’t moved in all the time they’d been heading toward it, though it looked—Snail thought—preternaturally alert. If made spiders could be alert. Its jointed iron legs seemed locked, but ready.
She ignored the legs, staring instead at the carap
ace, or whatever that rounded thing on top was called. It seemed to sparkle, as if lit from within. She’d seen a large iron spider before—during the awful battle with the Unseelie folk—but that spider had only an iron top. This top appeared to be made of glass. Not the stained picture windows of a chapel, but a rounded half globe of glass big as a troll’s wine cup.
If trolls ever had wine cups!
Snail wondered briefly if this spider was a second generation. Or a cousin.
As she neared the bottom of the hill, the unbooted foot was still giving her problems. She stopped to pull a thorn from between her toes. Then she started walking again, this time at half the speed. She didn’t want to appear threatening, though she doubted that, limping and small, she looked like a threat to such a large creature.
When she was almost within reach of one of its legs, she stopped and held both hands up, the knives glinting in the now fully risen sun. Bending over, she placed both knives on the ground, then stood fully erect, hands raised to show that she was now unarmed.
She heard a strange sound from the spider, not exactly a voice, more like a rasp of metal on metal. She tried to see if anything was moving, but the spider seemed as still as before.
Turning her head, she checked behind her. Snap and Snaggle had their bows up, arrows notched, waiting. As ordered, they hadn’t followed, but they were ready.
Suddenly a silver door in the spider’s belly flopped open with a loud creak.
Is it going to give birth? Pee? Do something unspeakable? She reminded herself it was a made thing. It shouldn’t have bodily functions.
A rope ladder dropped down from the belly door, long enough to pool on the ground. She saw a face peering down but couldn’t make out the features, as it was shadowed by the door.
“Are you crazed, skarm drema? Never give up yer weapons without a fight, or ye’ll be fighting without yer weapons.”
“Annar!” Snail finally recognized him, one of the dwarf brothers in the professor’s very odd troupe. Relieved to see him, she ran over thinking to give him a hug.
“Yer weapons, girl!” he cried. “There are madmen behind you with arrows.”
“No, no,” she said, going back to pick up the knives, “those are my guards and guides. Sent to protect me by the Seelie king. You know—Prince Aspen.”
“Prince Aspen?”
She laughed, remembering they knew him by another name. “Karl the minstrel.”
“Ah, the bad singer we took into our hule. A prince? I always thought he was a toff. Spoke like one, smelled like one, looked down his nose like one.”
“Toff indeed,” she replied, “but he’s not like that now.”
“Not dead, then?”
“No, he’s king.”
“Same difference,” Annar said.
She gave him the quick version of how Aspen’s father and brothers had been killed, and how the gold aura of kingship had descended upon Aspen—Karl the minstrel—changing him completely.
“For the good, I hope,” Annar said. “Could not be for the worse.”
“For the good,” Snail said, hoping she was telling the truth.
By then, of course, Snap and Snaggle had gotten to them, and there were difficult introductions, and the scouts refused to ride in the spider.
“Not natural,” said Snap.
“Nor comfortable,” added Snaggle. “Not like a horse.”
There was no arguing with them. And because Snail had only one boot and no pony, they accepted the fact that she would ride with the dwarf, and Snap and Snaggle would follow.
As she and Annar were climbing up the ladder, Snail heard Snaggle say, “I’ll do the talking from now on, and no arguing. I’m senior now.”
“Yes, sir,” Snap had replied, but there was an air of unripened rebellion in his voice.
Annar heard it, too. “Trouble ahead,” he told Snail as he locked the spider’s belly door.
“And behind, too.” She filled him in on what had just happened in the meadow, though not what she was going to say to Professor Odds. That, she reasoned to herself, is between the two of us. Annar’s not to be trusted with such a secret.
“At least . . .” she added under her breath, “not yet.”
11
ASPEN LEAVES HOME
They gathered at the great gates to the castle. It was a pitifully small contingent compared to the grandeur of the castle gates: three dozen horses, no more than twenty-five of them mounted with real soldiers and scouts, which included boys and girls from the Toad Clan who had been training for combat. The rest of the horses held old men and several youths from the palace. Aspen recognized the dog boy, a young footman, the chef’s second apprentice. A single house brownie had volunteered.
There were also two kitchen maids gamely holding on to the manes of their ponies, and a queen’s lady dressed in boys’ trews and shirt. The queen’s lady had a lance, the bottom of which she kept jammed down in her stirrup, though as it was only a jouster and not a war lance, Aspen knew it would break on contact. He hoped the enemy would not know that.
The moat troll, who had grown fat and slow under the bridge, was there as well, looking eager and wet. He was the only one who did not ride a horse.
Hopefully he will not eat one! Aspen thought. And it would be nice if he could keep up. He’s the only creature of any size we have. Suddenly he longed for Hulda, the troll who’d died in his last battle, defending the humans and dwarfs.
Aspen nodded at them, all fools willing to follow their young king on his mad advance, all believing that he had a plan good enough to save most of them, if not the kingdom itself. A small contingent of soldiers, six in all, were left to guard the gates and keep watch in case the castle itself was attacked by outliers, three of them riders who on swift horses could be ready at a moment’s notice to race after Aspen to bring him news.
There was no provision wagon. They dared not cook hot food. Cook-fires would give away their position and their numbers. Besides, there was plenty to live on in the forest. Mushrooms, bushes groaning with berries, wild garlic and onion. Each fighter had been issued a leather pocket full of oats that were drowned in goats’ milk and smothered in blueberries. There were some skins of wine as well, but only for the dying.
That should do for the troops, Aspen thought, then reminded himself to send someone for the goats. The troll is on his own. Though if I see Jack Daw, I will offer him up to the troll as fresh meat.
Balnar and the dowager queen were there to see them off, along with the castle cook, two cook boys, the gimp-legged hostler (both his helpers were riding with Aspen and in charge of the horses), and the elderly nanny who hadn’t had anyone to care for since Aspen had been sent away as Hostage Prince.
Balnar had pleaded to go along, but Aspen needed him to keep the castle running.
“And to keep the queen alive,” Aspen said, which immediately changed Balnar’s demeanor. “Plus, I plan on returning,” he added, “and will want a hot meal when I do.”
Balnar looked ready to weep, but, of course, that would have been improper, so he did not.
On the other hand, the queen wept freely. “You had best return, my dearest son. I have already lost you twice. I cannot lose you a third time.” She took something from her cloak and pressed it into his hands. It was the napkin from lunch, stuffed with leftovers. “And do not forget to eat.”
Aspen just nodded and tucked the food away in his pouch. He didn’t trust himself to speak lest he, too, burst into tears. A king must not cry twice in one day!
Then two oxen were led to the gates, pulling behind them a cart piled with straw. Mishrath perched atop the straw like the wizened cap of a toadstool. He was smiling, though. Three goats were already tethered behind.
Balnar, Aspen thought. He is a gift.
“Good evening, sire,” Mishrath croaked. Still in his same grey robe
and crumpled grey hat, he smiled at Aspen, though the smile was merely a broad wrinkle amongst wrinkles. He waved a three-fingered hand. “I hope your trip to the tower was informational?”
Aspen thought about it and returned the same answer he had given the Welcomer. “I am not sure.”
Mishrath chuckled. “We get that a lot.”
Aspen determined that if he had time, he would tell Mishrath what he had seen with the Archivist. Maybe the old wizard could make sense of it. But for now, he had to get their small party moving.
“We ride till dark,” he said in a loud voice. “We should be safe enough till then, though we shall still set a strong watch.” He spun his horse around and motioned to the few soldiers to form up. “We ride hard the next day to get into position.”
Swiftly the soldiers cajoled the civilians into a semblance of a martial column and spread themselves along the line. Aspen nodded his approval. Then he walked his horse to the front of the column. Where a king must ride. “And that night we stop their advance.”
The soldiers and old men looked at him doubtfully. The young men and the two kitchen maids stared as if he were a hero from legend. The queen’s lady seemed ready to change her mind, except it would show her a coward.
They all think me either heroic or mad. Or possibly both.
Looking down from his cart of straw, Mishrath cackled as if mad kings leading minuscule armies to certain doom were things he had seen a thousand times in his long life. And perhaps he had—there or in the backward history of the tower.
“Companions!” Aspen called out, touching heels lightly to his mount and starting it forward. “We ride!”
They rode out the great gates, all silent except for the clip-clop of the horses’ hooves and the racking sobs of the dowager queen, his mother, standing at the gate.
12
SNAIL IN THE ENCAMPMENT
The iron creature lurched from side to side as if drunk on the Border Lords’ Whisk of Life.