“Not in Astandalan magic,” Hal answered absently, his eyes riveted on the trees before us. “Water, metal, earth, air, fire. How far in is your grandmother’s place, Jemis?”
“I have no idea,” I replied, trying to remember my father’s stories, the accounts in those History of Magic classes. Surely there wasn’t anything to worry about this far from the old Border—people had crossed easily between the worlds in Astandalan days—or people who had guides had. That was one thing the people of St-Noire had been, back in the old days. They used to say the bees were so special because bees were sacred to the Emperor, symbols of the Sun-on-Earth himself, and there, in the Woods on the Border between worlds, with the Kingdom potentially just around any corner, behind any tree—
“What do you mean, you have no idea where your grandmother’s house is?”
“It’s the Castle Noirell,” Mr. Dart supplied.
I sighed. “I’ve only been there once, when I was nine. My mother presented me to my grandparents—my grandfather was still alive then—and, well, that was that.”
“Your grandmother must be seriously aristocratic,” Hal said. “Even my mother’s family didn’t keep that custom. My father’s, on the other hand ... But you don’t look at all Shaian—which side carried the Noirell line? Grandmother or father?”
I frowned. “I don’t know, actually. My mother never talked much about her family, and I never asked her. I always assumed it was my grandmother, because she’s still the Marchioness, but I don’t actually know.”
Mr. Dart looked at me, then thought better of it and asked Hal instead. “What custom are you talking about?”
“The upper aristocracy of Astandalas maintained that it was bad luck for children to be out in public, so the tradition was for them to be raised very quietly at home until the age of nine, when they could be presented to society. It wasn’t the same as coming out—that was at sixteen, same as it is now—but before then people didn’t talk about children in any specific way. It was considered very bad form even to hint you knew someone had children, and obviously women were very discreet about whether they were increasing.”
“So if Lady Olive took Jemis to meet his grandmother at the age of nine ...”
“The Marchioness must be exceedingly starchy.”
“Oh, joy,” I said. “Hopefully having an Imperial Duke with me will help with my reception somewhat.”
NOTHING HAPPENED WHEN we passed through the Sun Gate.
Nothing happened when we rode into the shadows under the trees.
Nothing happened at all, in fact.
I was obscurely disappointed.
WE RODE FOR PERHAPS half an hour in silence, three abreast with me in the middle. Hal was looking earnestly at the trees; Mr. Dart was gazing dreamily at the farther distances of the Woods; and I was looking between my horse’s ears at the smooth surface of the highway unspooling before us. After about ten minutes I realized what we were doing, and was faintly amused.
Unlike its arrow-flight straightness outside the Woods, the highway on its approach to the Border was designed to curve and twist and nearly double back upon itself. We had spent perhaps a full week on the Imperial highways in my History of Magic class, for they were the bridges between the worlds of the Empire. It was quite extraordinary to ride along and have all the features and details Domina Issoury had described come flooding back to me.
Each block of limestone was three cubits square and half a cubit deep, set into a roadbed whose layers of gravel and stone were interlaid with bespelled chains to carry the magic unbroken. The wizard-engineers had followed the armies as they conquered new lands and new worlds for Astandalas.
Once a highway was laid, resistance crumpled. Part of that was to do with all the things that came down the highways, the trade goods and money, the people and ideas and arts, the soldiers and clerks and wizards and governors—and part of it was to do with the roads themselves. They were a major component of the binding of wild magic into the Schooled magic that made the Empire the height of civilization.
We rode through a golden afternoon. The Tillarny lime trees had started to turn, though they were blossoming, their leaves green and imperial gold, and the sunlight slanted through to glitter on the limestone and the motes of dust dancing before and behind us. It was a very quiet wood, carpeted in brilliant green moss and fallen leaves, and few and unfamiliar were the birds that sang.
We coiled our way through the Woods, the white road ahead and behind us, no sign of any passage on the highway, no sound but the soughing of the wind in the canopy above us and the chiming clatter of our horses’ hooves on the stone. The limes were blooming, the scent of their blossom reminding me irresistibly of my mother, of the honey that had been sovereign remedy for every minor ailment of my childhood. After a while I started to feel less tense, and said so.
Hal looked at me for a long moment. “Do you really?”
I felt immediately as if I should be defensive, but the wind was warm in my face and the air smelled of good things, and I said, “It seems wonderfully calm.”
“Indeed,” said Hal.
I shrugged—and then, off to the right, I saw the flicker of white movement, and even as I reined in Mr. Dart said: “It’s a deer—”
The deer bounded silently between grey trunks and green moss, white as a handkerchief, somehow finer-boned and longer-limbed than ordinary deer. She was pursued by a rider in full armour.
His horse was enormous, hands larger than our riding hacks, and his armour was antiquated, dull, even rusty in places. The visor on his helmet was worked into the shape of a snarling wolf, and both his tattered surcoat and his dented shield bore a wolf’s head on white as his device. The white deer canted sideways suddenly, towards the road. The knight thundered in pursuit, lowering his lance even as he came out of the trees and onto the narrow band of moss that bordered the highway.
The deer gathered speed and with a superb thrust leaped the highway, and three things happened:
Even as her front hooves touched the ground on the left-hand side of the road, she disappeared.
The rider hauled back his horse to a halt so fiercely that the great animal reared, neighing loudly, before it quite touched the road.
And my ring flared hot on my finger.
“The Emperor!” said Hal.
The rider—the knight, if not exactly in shining armour—stared balefully at us through the visor of his helmet. At least, it felt a baleful stare; and I assumed it was a man; but both could well have been the effect of the snarling wolf.
Because I had been well-raised on a diet of adventure stories, I doffed my hat politely. “Well met, sir knight.”
I felt, rather than saw, my friends’ surprise. The knight continued to stare. His horse shook its head so bits of slobber flew off. The bits that landed on the road made a strange hissing noise.
“We are seeking the Castle Noirell,” I went on, gesturing vaguely at the basket tied to my saddle. It contained the wine and cakes we’d bought from Mr. Inglesides’ bakery on our way out of town for want of any better gift-offering. “I have something for the Marchioness.”
“You’d do better to stay clear of that accursèd house,” the knight replied, in a gravelly voice matching his appearance.
“The Marchioness is my grandmother,” I replied with an attempt at insouciance.
“Then twice cursed are you,” he declared, “once in the blood and once in the land that once was host to the golden bees of fair Melmúsion.”
I could think of nothing else, so I said, “I beg your pardon?”
But with a sharp cry he yanked his horse up rearing and then set it snorting and plunging back off into the woods in the direction from which he’d come.
I realized my jaw was agape, and closed it.
“I feel quite disappointed that my family has no intriguing mystery about it whatsoever,” said Mr. Dart.
“It’s not mysteries that are the problem,” I protested.
“No
? An accursed castle!—pray excuse me: accursèd. A knight out of an old ballad. A disappearing hind—and not just any hind, mind you, but a white one—I am full of astonishment and delight. How could you have even jested that you were uninterested, Jemis, I cannot imagine.”
“Can’t you?”
Hal looked sharply at me, brows drawn together. “What’s the matter with you, Jemis? You seem positively plunged into gloom and cynicism.”
Mrs. Etaris had also called me a cynic. It was not a school of philosophy I had hitherto admired.
“And what of it?” I replied lightly, looking ahead to see if I could see anything besides the trees. I couldn’t, which felt as if it should be of some symbolic assistance, but it wasn’t.
“What of it?” Hal repeated, scowling even more ferociously. Mr. Dart, riding on my other side, gave him a meaningful shrug out of the corner of my eye. Hal ignored it. “Should I not be concerned that you have changed?—that you are more courteous in mortal danger than you are to your friends—that you are cynical and sarcastic and grim—when you used to be full of laughter and energy and delight and—”
“The Jemis you knew was a delusion composed of lies, stolen magic, and drugs,” I said, and nudged my horse into a trot.
It was bone-jarring: of course.
Chapter Sixteen
The Doorkeeper has an Idea
ANOTHER TWENTY OR SO minutes after the encounter with the knight, the road performed a complicated sequence of curves around a series of man-made embankments and knolls before taking us through a cleft between two high banks, in the middle of which was the second sun gate.
“The gate of earth,” I said, gesturing at it.
“Ah,” said Hal, without elaboration.
“Do you have any idea how far it is to St-Noire?” Mr. Dart asked. “We may be caught here by nightfall if we don’t find the castle soon.”
Hal said, “There’s someone gathering wood over there we can ask. Hola, good sir,” he added more loudly, angling his horse over.
“Nay, halt!” cried the man. “Do not leave the road!”
Hal reined in obediently, but I could tell his curiosity was raised. Well, so was mine. “Why not?”
“By the road you came, by the road you must continue,” the man intoned.
We looked at him. He was middle-aged, with dark curly hair and mid-brown skin and a countenance that seemed more frank and concerned than anything malicious or even mischievous.
“What happens if we don’t?” Mr. Dart asked.
The man shook his head.
I rode up to the edge of the road, careful to stay within the bounds of the stone. “We are going to the Castle, sir. Can you tell us the way?”
“Why would you go to the accursèd castle?”
I sighed. Explaining about the dragon seemed ridiculous. All of this seemed ridiculous. “We are going to call on the Marchioness.”
“You’d do better to leave the Woods before nightfall.”
“What if we want to break this curse?” asked Mr. Dart, with a look at me I interpreted as you should have thought of that first. I shrugged.
The man spat on the ground. “There are those who have tried.” He picked up his bundle of faggots and turned to go.
“Wait,” I said.
He turned his head, expression skeptical.
“Do they still keep bees in the village?”
Without any hesitation at all the man turned away and hurried off into the woods, where he was quickly invisible.
“Curiouser yet,” said Mr. Dart. “Why the bees, Jemis?”
I was not at all sure why the question had passed my lips. “The lack of honey ...” I looked down at my hands resting on my thigh, reins held loosely. The golden ring felt warm. But then I had always had warm hands.
“It must be four years since my mother started complaining how expensive the honey was getting,” Hal said. “So whatever it is started a while ago. Yes, I remember now, the cook always makes this honey syllabub at Winterturn, and when I went back from Morrowlea in first year she mentioned how hard it had been to get the Noirell honey my mother wanted.”
“You had enough of a holiday to get to Fillering Pool?” Mr. Dart asked, glancing at me. “I thought it was short, since Jemis never came home.”
Hal winced, offered apologetically: “Ragnor Bella is a long way from South Erlingale.”
“I went to Stoneybridge,” Mr. Dart said, frowning. “That’s at least as far.”
I pursed my lips, then when that didn’t work, said, shortly, “I didn’t want to come back.”
“Lark?” asked Mr. Dart in a slightly gentler voice.
“What did I have to come back for?” I asked, voice sharper than I intended. I gestured around at the woods, the heady air billowing around me, motes of pollen gleaming, the silence glaring. “My uncle’s hatred? My grandmother’s neglect?”
“Your stepfather—”
“My stepfather had a new family. A—an uncomplicated new family. What was I, to him? A constant reminder that he had connected his life to a traitor, that his first marriage was unlawful, his first wife dead, his daughters illegitimate, that I was not his son.”
There was a pause. Mr. Dart said cautiously, “I always thought you liked him.”
I scrunched up my face, tried to make my voice calm. “He wanted a son to carry on his name and his business. He wanted to adopt me. He wanted ... He wanted everything I was doing, everything I was, for my father. Why do you think I’m not inheriting anything? I made it very clear to him I was always going to keep my father’s name—and so I keep my father’s inheritance. For good and for ill.”
I stopped, the dragon’s second riddle echoing in my mind. Looked around at the Woods, ignoring the alarmed faces of my friends.
“What the dragon said ...” I said, turning my horse around in a circle. “The way of the woods has many turns and few branches. The branch of the woods has many turns and few ways. The turn of the branch is the way of the woods, for good, young sir, or for ill.”
“What are you thinking?” Hal asked intently. “Tell us your thoughts., Jemis.”
“The way of the Woods—look at the road. Many turns and few branches. But think of the words, this is like literary criticism of the Calligraphic School—”
“We’ll take your word for it,” said Mr. Dart, the historian.
“Every word is significant, means something, means more than one thing. The way of the woods—all right, the highway through the Woods. But what else could that mean? The tradition of the Woods? The customs?”
“The line of inheritance,” said Hal, the Duke.
“Many turns and few branches. It’s line of primogeniture, shifts male to female, Marchioness to Viscount, Viscountess to Marquis. But few branches—my mother an only child, her mother an only child—there were no aunts, no uncles, no cousins on that side.”
I felt dizzy, realized I was still turning the horse. I relaxed the pressure of thigh, heel, hands. The horse snorted. “The branch of the woods ... I don’t know the literal meaning, though Hal—”
“The famous trees of the Woods Noirell are the Tillarny limes,” Hal said, looking up at the green-and-gold trees all around us, the golden bracts around the creamy pollen-rich puffs of blossom. “Look at them: many turns and few ways. The silhouette is unmistakable, that upright trunk, the way the branches arch up and then down and then curve up again at the tip. Each ramification the same.”
“Unlike in most of life,” Mr. Dart muttered.
“But what else does branch mean? Scion, right?”
“Back to the question of inheritance. And your life is one of many turns?” Mr. Dart paused to consider, nodded his head judiciously. “I can grant that. You’ve had more turns of fate’s wheel before one-and-twenty than most people have in a lifetime.”
“Many turns, but few ways.”
Hal was still looking at the shape of the trees all around us, the heart-shaped leaves in green and gold, the flowers with thei
r heavy, heady scent, unworked by the bees that should have been filling them.
I swallowed. “What do you think that means?”
“A life of many turns, but few options? Few paths ahead of you?”
Mr. Dart took a deep breath. “Or the ways you choose are significant, that you have a few moments at which your choice will change things.”
“What things?” I asked intently. “I am no one important.”
Hal looked down at me, his face somewhat sympathetic. “Jemis, everyone from Yrchester south was talking about Mad Jack Greenwing’s son.”
“The turn of the branch is the way of the woods, for good or for ill,” quoted Mr. Dart. “Like it or not, Jemis, this is your inheritance: the Greenwing name and the Woods Noirell.”
“I DON’T QUITE UNDERSTAND how I’ve never heard anything much of the Woods,” Hal was saying when I once again started attending to the conversation. “You’d think that they’d be much more famous quite apart from the honey.”
“Infamous,” I muttered.
“They don’t usually get named,” Mr. Dart replied. “Most of the time they are just—the Woods.” He grinned at Hal. “You have heard one story about the Woods Noirell, I trust—and about the Castle at its heart: ‘Where stood at the window, white stone and ivy, / The silent watcher’—”
“‘In her high tower, / When we rode the high way / To the golden city / The city of roses’. That was the Castle Noirell?”
“That was Jemis’ mother!”
“I had no idea that was a real place. I always thought it was somewhere far away and long ago.”
“Long enough ago that Jemis wasn’t even a twinkle in his father’s eye.”
“But your mother is in one of Fitzroy Angursell’s songs! Wait—how do you know she’s the subject?”
“She saw the Red Company go by,” Mr. Dart said. “Jemis used to make her describe them over and over again.”
“Do you mind?” I began, half-laughing, but we had turned another corner and there before us was the village. And the villagers.
They stood poised as if to begin a celebration—or, I realized, as we sat our horses and watched expectantly, they stood posed.
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