by Jane Yolen
Aspen stopped, the rushing water making him sway a little as he held his balance against it.
There is really only one thing left to do.
“Sire?” Croak said, suddenly by his side.
“Keep running, Croak,” he said wearily. “Get your men and my mother. M’lady Snail if you can find her, and just keep running.”
Turning, Aspen saw that just as he had thought, the Border Lords were charging into the water. There were dragonlings and drows on horseback pacing the far bank, content for now to let the Border Lords get wet. And get their due.
The Border Lords will want vengeance for their fallen.
“No, sire, I—”
“Croak,” Aspen said, absently surprised that Croak was trying for a sentence long enough for him to interrupt. “That was my last order as your liege, and I expect it to be obeyed.”
He looked back at Croak. The old warrior nodded gravely and wasted no more time. He splashed toward the far shore, where the rest of Aspen’s troop were just now realizing that their monarch wasn’t coming with them. Some of the civilians argued briefly, but Croak and his soldiers shouted them down and kept them moving.
They think I am trying to fight to buy time. The Border Lords were almost on him, and he drew his sword. The sword of my father and his father and all our fathers back to before the worlds were separated and the courts split and mortal and fey lived as one under an endless sun.
He smiled grimly at the approaching men and dropped to one knee, balancing his sword sideways on the palms of his hands. “Sorry to disappoint, Lords,” he said. Then he raised his voice so the drow on the far bank could hear him. “Daw! I surrender!”
I could have fought, he thought as the Border Lords approached, swords still upraised. But fighting would only have bought a moment or two for my friends—my family—to escape. Aspen could see that the Border Lords were weighing their desire to lop off his head against the danger of robbing Old Jack Daw of the opportunity to gloat before killing him.
Gloating can take a long time. Much longer than fighting.
Aspen bowed his head, not wanting to make eye contact with the Border Lords and possibly goad one of the wilder ones into striking him unwisely.
He will probably let you strike the blow that kills me anyway. Just let him gloat for a while.
“A long while,” he whispered.
“Hold!” came the shout Aspen had hoped for. He looked up. The drow were kicking their horses reluctantly into the stream. At their head rode Old Jack Daw, grinning like a king who had just seen all his dreams of conquest come true.
As I suppose he has.
“Daw,” Aspen said again, “I surrender. Call off your hounds.”
Old Jack Daw nodded at the Border Lords, and they sheathed their swords but kept their hands on the pommels.
Well, that is one danger past, Aspen thought. Then added grimly, I am still going to die, but at least it will take a while.
“A long while,” he whispered again. The sound of his own voice was not comforting.
The Border Lords waded around behind Aspen, cutting off any retreat.
Not that I was going anywhere.
The mounted drows moved forward slowly, the horses stepping gingerly along the rocky streambed.
Take your time, my lords, Aspen thought. More time for my friends’ escape.
Aspen prayed that Croak had gotten his people safely away. He desperately wanted to turn around and see if they were over the hill yet and gone but was afraid Old Jack Daw would figure out what he was doing and send riders to run them down. To his right, the creatures that had been pursuing the changelings had stopped to watch what was now happening in the stream.
They can kill humans anytime. Watching a king die is a once in a lifetime experience, Aspen thought. Then he corrected himself. I will be the third king to die in about as many weeks. He wondered if they kept accounts of such things in the Wizard’s Tower. I may be about to set a record.
It was almost funny.
Almost.
He comforted himself with the thought that with his death he could save a few lives that day. He began to make a list in his head: Mother, Snail, Croak . . . then stopped. He had to focus. Not dream.
“Aspen,” Old Jack Daw was saying. “Prince Aspen.” He sat his horse a few yards away at the center of a loose semicircle of his mounted companions. “Drop your sword.”
Aspen looked down at the sword of his fathers and hesitated. He realized that Jack had not addressed him as king. That is a good thing. It puts him off guard, thinking of me as that weak boy he taught, the one he made a fool of.
“Come now, boy. Do not try anything heroic and force me to kill you.”
Aspen snorted. “You are going to kill me anyway.” Just keep him talking. The more time we spend in this stream, the more time for everyone else to escape.
“Kill you?” Old Jack Daw said expansively. He put a hand over his heart. “I would not dream of it!”
“Dream of it?” Aspen scoffed. “You make a habit of it.”
Old Jack Daw kicked his horse forward a single step. “If I kill you, the land would just pick another king. Another Seelie king.” He leaned forward, speaking softer, as if for Aspen’s ears alone. “Perhaps one not so easily beaten.”
I was not that easy, Aspen thought petulantly. I got the best of you here. For a while.
Old Jack Daw sat back up and looked pointedly at the fleeing changelings, then over Aspen’s head to the hill behind him, where Mishrath’s army was surely rapidly disappearing. “Though I do not know what any monarch can do with what I have left him. But still,” he said, chuckling, “I am going to keep you alive for a long, long time to make sure no new king is chosen.” He leaned forward again, sharing another secret with his defeated enemy. “It has been done before, you know.”
Aspen dropped his father’s sword. Not because Old Jack Daw had told him to, but out of shock.
It has been done before.
The sword sank to the bottom of the stream, carrying that piece of the sun within that only glowed for the trueborn ruler of Faerie.
“That is better, boy. Now, I want you to . . .”
Old Jack Daw kept talking, but Aspen was no longer listening.
How do you keep the land from choosing a new king? he thought. Why, you keep him alive. Forever.
And suddenly Aspen knew the answer to all three of the Sticksman’s questions.
If only I had figured this out before. I could have traveled to his shack below Wester Tower. Could have restored him there. But there is no way to reach him now.
Aspen stopped. Looked at the swift water bubbling past him. Heard his mother’s voice telling him, “All the rivers in Faerie are one, and so are its people.”
He leapt to his feet and heard the metallic hiss of the Border Lords drawing their swords. Old Jack Daw’s horse skittered back a few steps, and the other drow closed in front of him.
“Sticksman!” Aspen shouted, knowing he had only seconds before he was cut into pieces. If this doesn’t work . . . “Sticksman! I know the answers to your questions!” If this doesn’t work, at least my death will ruin part of his plan.
Aspen saw a shadow on the water and heard a grunt behind him, and he threw himself forward, avoiding a sword stroke that should have chopped him in two. The world went dark and cold as he plunged into the waters, but he popped back out of them immediately.
“Sticksman!” he shouted again, then dove away from a Border Lord who was coming at him from his left. The water was waist high now, soaking the Border Lords’ plaids and slowing them. He had not a moment to worry about carnivorous mer, only hoped that this being a side stream—and only newly deep enough for mer—they would not be here.
At least not yet. And a good thing, too, or I would already be dead twice over.
When he surfaced this time, the water was nearly to his chest, flowing fast and strong. The Border Lords were now more concerned with not getting swept away than with trying to kill him, and the drow were backing their horses to the shore.
“What trickery is this, Seelie?” Old Jack Daw shouted at him. “You have surrendered! I demand you stop this!”
Aspen knew he had surrendered, and honor demanded that he cease hostilities. But he also knew he was not taking any hostile actions.
Not really . . .
“My apologies, Jack,” he shouted, not sorry at all, “but I have a favor to repay before I can go with you.”
Any reply the drow might have made was drowned out by a crashing roar as a great waterspout bubbled out of the center of the stream. And atop the spout was a long, thin boat being poled by a long, thin creature in a black hooded robe.
“Sticksman!” Aspen shouted, and the Sticksman turned his wide bug eyes toward him. He shifted his grip on his steering pole ever so slightly, and the waterspout died. The boat rode the dying wave to Aspen, slowing to a stop before him.
“Your Majesty,” the Sticksman said, extending a clawlike hand down and helping Aspen aboard.
Aspen flopped into the boat, bringing back memories of his escape from the Unseelie Court.
But this time I will not cower in the bottom of the boat. This is a thing I should face on my feet.
Tired and wet, and a little shaky, he stood.
“Sticksman.”
The Sticksman sketched him a small bow. “You have my payment?”
Aspen nodded, looked briefly behind, where the Border Lords were dragging themselves onto shore.
There Old Jack Daw fumed at them, fist raised, urging them to charge again into the river where the boat floated, magically still against the increasingly swift and rising current. The drow’s voice rose over the sound of the water. “You cowards, you faerie-fearful, plaid-wearing turncoats. Go back! Go back! Fetch him to me. Fetch me that boy, that quaking hostage, who would be king.”
But the water was uncrossable, and possibly the Border Lords feared the mermen who even now might be swimming into the stream. So they ignored the Unseelie king and wrung out their plaids. But they said nothing, not a word of complaint. To do so would mean an instant battlefield execution.
The rest of the army—dragonlings, Red Caps, goblins, ogres, and more—ranged along the shore and simply watched the proceedings. Silent, every one of them.
Good, Aspen thought, I want an audience for this next part. But I don’t want them to hear what we say.
“What is the Sticksman?” the Sticksman asked.
Aspen remembered what Mishrath had told him. “A creature both of and not of the Unseelie Court.”
“How does one become the Sticksman?”
“By taking up his staff.”
The Sticksman raised the bony shelf above one eye where a brow should have been. “How does the Sticksman come not to be once more?”
Three neugles dipped their hooves into the water upstream. Aspen saw them as they hastily stepped back out as if the water was too cold. Or too hot. Or bubbling with merman bile.
Before he could answer the Sticksman’s third question, Aspen heard a commotion toward the back of the army, and a small group of Red Caps came through with a bound prisoner walking between them.
Snail!
She looked up as if he had spoken aloud. Their eyes met, and he read confusion and anger in them. She glared at him.
There must always be a Sticksman.
He lifted a hand to wave, then instead reached out, palm up, toward the Sticksman.
Goodbye, Snail.
“He gives his staff away.”
The Sticksman blinked once but didn’t hesitate more than that. He placed his poling staff in Aspen’s hands.
There was a great shout from on shore and then a clash of arms. But Aspen paid it no mind. His staff was in his hand, and he could feel the waters pushing his boat, trying to send it downstream. Some of the black water splashed into the boat and draped itself around him, becoming a long, hooded robe.
He spoke to the river. Quiet waters, he said, slowing the current. I have a passenger.
He turned to his passenger, a tall, thin creature who was just beginning to glow with a golden light, and asked, “East shore or west? And I require two pennies for each passenger and a silver for the Sticksman.”
The glowing creature took out a purse that had been hidden somewhere under his cloak and pulled out the requisite coins. He gave two pennies and a silver to Aspen. “Put me on shore here.”
Aspen felt fuddled for only a moment, then he put his pole in the river and prepared to ply his trade.
32
SNAIL SINGS
Snail saw Aspen in the boat and couldn’t understand what he was doing there or why the Sticksman had handed over his staff. Then she shook her head, wondering if she was losing her sight, because the Sticksman’s head seemed to have a golden aura around it.
As she continued to watch, transfixed by the sight, the Sticksman took off his dark robe and stood there, unmoving, in the bow of the boat, like a great golden statue. The boat, making no sound at all, coasted majestically to shore.
Though Snail wanted to run to them, she couldn’t move because the Red Caps had bound her hands, hobbled her feet, and held her tightly by a leash.
The minute the boat touched the grassy verge, the Sticksman stepped out, his long, golden insect legs bending at strange angles that the robe had always disguised. Not alien, Snail thought, not awkward, just different. Noble. Even regal.
For a moment, wherever the Sticksman set foot on the grass, it turned gold as well, spreading a thin gold color ahead of him, like a carpet.
The Border Lords waited in the path of the golden figure, their wet plaids dripping river water, their swords raised. However, they didn’t charge, for there was confusion in their midst, and they looked over at Jack Daw for orders.
But the other Unseelie folk—dragonlings, goblins, gremlins, ogres, hobs—suddenly bowed their heads or knees or both. They looked, Snail thought, not reluctant, but ecstatic.
“The king,” ran a murmur though them, “the king has returned.”
The Border Lords as one all turned suddenly and cried, “Up the Daw!” and raced in a single body to guard Jack Daw, though it was, Snail thought, more of an unruly mob than a trained troop.
They’re shaken. I’ve never seen the Border Lords shaken.
The Sticksman raised his hands, and a shiver ran through the crowd. The drows’ horses nickered and pawed at the ground. The Border Lords’ knuckles were white on their sword grips. The Sticksman looked pointedly at the crown Old Jack Daw wore on his head. He had yet to say a word.
Dropping the leash holding Snail to them, the Red Caps scattered, mixing into the horde gathering around the Sticksman.
For a moment Snail stood forgotten, yet she didn’t move because she had no idea what to do. And then, without willing it, indeed without knowing why, she began to sing. Her voice—never strong before—emerged, booming out with overwhelming power. At first she was terrified, then shocked.
The knee bends, but does not yield.
The sword’s strong blade, the wooden shield,
The cry goes round, so turns the wheel.
The king comes home, the king comes home.
The book of eld we must now burn,
Our place in history we must now earn,
And celebrate the king’s return.
The king comes home, the king comes home.
And now, as she sang, she recognized who was singing. It wasn’t her own reedy voice but Maggie Light’s singing some sort of spell. It wasn’t one she’d heard Maggie sing before. So how could she know it? Yet the song poured from her, the two verses repeating and repeating.
As she sang, the Border Lords stood still, mouths open, transfixed the way the Seelie king’s guard seeking Aspen had been transfixed so long ago. They could move neither forward nor back. It was as if they’d been bespelled into a deep sleep and were dreaming, though their eyes were wide open.
The song took moments, but the spell of it lingered long enough for a group of goblins, gremlins, and hobs to rush forward and dispatch the ensorcelled Border Lords with large oaken cudgels and wicked little knives. Snail watched as the kilted company died, one after another, those difficult men who had chased her across two kingdoms. She felt nothing for them. Not hatred nor fear, not satisfaction at their deaths. Only a soft kind of relief.
At the same time, the dragonlings charged forward, singeing the hooves of the drow horses. When the drows were thrown off by their frightened steeds, this so startled the ogres that they lumbered forward, smashing every fallen drow in their paths with mammoth fists, every drow except Old Jack himself. Feathers flew up into the air before settling down into the pools of blood.
Then the three greatest ogres knelt, not to Jack Daw, the pretender, but to the golden one, the Unseelie king, come home at last.
The king comes home. The king comes home.
The song dwindled to its conclusion.
And Jack Daw stood alone.
The King Who Returned began to speak then, but Snail no longer cared. She was done with every toff who wanted to be king of this or duke of that and connived and killed to make it happen. There was only one toff she wanted to talk to, and he was poling the Sticksman’s boat into the middle of the river that had been a stream just moments ago.
“Aspen!” she shouted.
He paid her no heed, though she was certain that he could hear her.
He’s not that far away.
“Aspen!” But still, he poled on, ignoring her. Then a horrible knowledge hit her, and she shouted one last time, hoping that he would ignore her again. “Sticksman!”
Aspen turned and looked toward shore. Toward her.
Snail’s heart sank into her shoes. “I require passage,” she said, too softly for him to hear.