The Oddling Prince

by Nancy Springer

  I dared not speak, for never had I felt so angry with my father.

  The king settled back into his seat next to my mother. “Only tell me this: if not for gain, then for what reason did you come here?”

  Lackwit! I barely controlled my face and kept silence, aghast at my father’s question, for how could he not know Albaric had come only to save him?

  But Albaric—my brother!—merely took up the harp again, playing and singing softly for a few minutes:

  Up the hilly northern lights

  Down midnight’s milky glen

  Fares the bonny starry road

  I shall not ride again.

  Although it was hard to tell in a place with no birthdays, he had grown much like any mortal child, because his father, the captive mortal king, was the only one who cared for him. The others had no use for him, a half-human oddling, and aside from giving the breast, Queen Theena scarcely knew what to do with him, never having been a mother or known one. But the king held the baby to hush his crying, rocked him to sleep, cared for him as he grew, watched over him, spoke with him in the language of mortals, taught him the handling of lance and sword—skills unknown to Elfinkind—and took him hawking and fishing and shared with him whatever wisdom he could.

  They were nearly always together. As the boy grew in understanding, the king told him their own mutual story, so that Albaric should comprehend why he was shunned by those around him—although truth to tell, he was not very different than the others in appearance, only in manner. He possessed to the fullest an Elf’s carefree, feckless, thoughtless beauty, yet he possessed also a heart; he knew affection and loneliness and longing. Worse, within his brilliant eyes could be seen a keen mind and perhaps even a soul. He was an embarrassment to the immortals, much as the behavior of their queen was a scandal and an embarrassment, the more so because King Bardaric’s true love of his own mortal Queen Evalin endured.

  The king told his Elf-son of his cherished wife, and of Dun Caltor his home, and of harsh, lovely Calidon his kingdom, and of Prince Aric, his son and heir. And as Albaric grew, as he became no longer a boy but the most comely of youths, a great sadness seized King Bardaric, for Albaric reminded him so strongly of Aric he could think of nothing but the family he had left behind. How he missed them, and how he had missed their lives! Were they old now, Queen Evalin silver-haired or perhaps even dead? Was Aric a goodly man with a wife and children of his own, or had life been unkind to him? Did Dun Caltor still stand, or had it fallen to the ever-threatening tribes from the Craglands? Thinking these things, the king brooded, and ceased to eat, and he—he wept. For the first time, Queen Theena saw him weep.

  And so it came to pass that she showed the extent of her love for him, how she had come to cherish him so truly that she wanted only his happiness, no longer her own.

  She set him free.

  She let him go back home.

  Because time runs differently—indeed, not at all—in Elfland, she was able to send him back to the same place, the oak forest atop the hill, and to the same time, the exact same moment. All was just the same, the hawks, the blue sky and singing wind, his son Aric on horseback at his side—only this time King Bardaric did not see the Queen of Elfland a-riding with her fair and eerie retinue.

  Such was her love and her unwonted mercy that she spared him all memory of her. He did not even know he had ever been gone from his own world.

  Nor for several moments thereafter did he notice the shimmering, eerie ring that had somehow appeared on the finger nearest his heart.

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  “SHE TRIED AND TRIED AGAIN to remove it before she returned you to your mortal world, Sire,” Albaric explained, “but it would not let go its hold of you. It is a contrary thing, and by then its power far exceeded hers. I stood by and watched her struggle and secretly hoped you might stay with me after all—but she sent you away ring and all, hoping that in the mortal world it would become only a mortal trifle, a bauble you could take off and throw aside as a matter of no moment. So in the end she said the spell, and you disappeared as if you had never been.

  “And I. . . .” Albaric faltered to a halt. His head hung.

  “How could you come here and take off the ring,” Father demanded, “if Queen Theena could not?” And little as I liked it, I followed his reasoning. Could the ring have been put on him to sicken him, then Albaric sent after to make him well and be a hero?

  Albaric flung up his head, not in defiance but in a wild sort of whimsy. “Why, Sire, shortly after sending you away, my mother became a stranger to me, changing back into what she had been before she knew you, the puissant immortal ruler who cared not a whit for anything, least of all her child. All of Elfland rejoiced to have its queen back. But great was her vexation that she had lost the ring, when with her returning powers she realized how she could have kept it.”

  “So you came to get it back for her?”

  I could not bear more misunderstanding. “My father,” I burst out, “when he set foot on the ground, his horse turned to air. When he took the ring off you, his fire went out. His light is gone. He cannot return whence he came. He has thrown in his lot with mortals now, and he will someday die, and he has made this sacrifice to save you.”

  The king looked at me sharply. “Aric, how do you know whether this is true?”

  “He knows, Sire,” Albaric answered for me, “just as I knew you had need of me. From the moment I set foot in Dun Caltor, Aric has shared a sympathy with me such as. . . .” He hesitated but said it. “Such as I once shared with you. Even from Othergates, I knew that the ring had turned against you, I knew you lay ailing, and I—I was frightened of what might befall me in this world, knowing I could not return to my own—but in the end I came to you.”

  “Frightened,” Father said.

  “Yes. I am frightened still.”

  “It takes courage to admit of fear. I commend you, Albaric, but still my own fears bid me beware, for I know not what is true.”

  For the first time, my mother spoke. “Dearest, this much at least is true, that Albaric came here to save you, for he brought with him the device he needed remove the ring.”

  “Device?”

  She went on to explain to him how Albaric had forced the ring to move by winding a filament behind it. “It seemed as fine as floss yet stronger than any human hand, with no end to its length. Although I could not see it in the night, I judge that it was no ordinary thread.”

  “Wise Queen, you judge rightly.” Reaching into his tunic, Albaric brought forth a sizeable coil of some filament that seemed to glow with an inner life, like fire, like gold flowing red from the furnace. Albaric held it with ease in his hands, but had he asked me to touch it, I think I would not have dared. That uncanny glow—it was glamour. This thread came from no mortal hand or land.

  “What is that?” Father asked hoarsely, and I saw that he and Mother had drawn back.

  “It is a strand of my mother’s hair.”

  I know my eyes widened, and I think I gasped, glimpsing within my mind the immense grandeur of the Elf Queen.

  “It is fey,” Queen Evalin said in low tones of judgment. “It belongs with the ring.”

  “Please, no.” Albaric shook his head as he tucked the fiery filament back into his tunic. “It is all I have left.” Although wistful, nothing in his tone asked for pity; he spoke merest fact.

  “The ring,” I blurted, startled by a twinge of alarm. “Where is it?”

  My father knew not. Even a king will forget, I suppose, what he does not wish to believe. Nor did anyone else remember more than I did, that he had laid it aside in his bedchamber. In a manner that, I am sure, caused comment throughout the castle—it is uncommonly lacking in dignity for royalty to scuttle hither and yon—but trusting no servant to run the errand for us, we all hurried to the King’s Tower and up the stairs, into the chamber lit by its window of glass from which sometimes one could see the dragon-prowed longboats of the Norsemen sailing by.


  In the king’s chamber, plain to see in the daylight, an old woman scattered fresh rushes—every bedchamber floor is strewn with rushes for the sweet smell, for softness underfoot, and for the discomfiture of fleas. Frightened by the sight of Albaric when we stampeded in like so many royal cattle, she gasped, dropped her basket, and fled. But as she scuttled past me, something caught—not my eye so much as my breath. It was a sense of the ring’s presence, or at least a sense of the presence of something not from my own world. I hastened after her and overtook her on the stairs, placing a hand on her arm to stop her, touching her gently—but I could feel her quaking, and she looked up at me with her toothless mouth agape, incapable of speaking.

  “The ring,” I said to her in a whisper, not wanting my father to hear, for the servant’s sake.

  Her wet old eyes calmed, and she was able to speak. “’Twould fall from me apron,” she said, “so I put it on me fist.” She raised her hands, and my heart stopped to see the ring of power gleaming darkly on one of her fingers. Dreadfully I feared she would die—but in the same moment, quite simply and easily, she took it off and handed it to me, then curtsied and hurried on her way.

  I stood there, stupefied, with the ring, the color of mud, lying in the palm of my hand.

  “It is sulking because you captured it,” said a voice like moonlight; Albaric stood by my side.

  I turned to him, demanding, “You saw? Why did it spare the old woman?”

  “Why not? No voice of command bade it do otherwise.”

  I ogled like a dolt. By good luck my parents could not see me; I heard them moving furniture in the bedchamber at the top of the spiral stairs.

  Albaric explained, “It possessed our—your father by the force of Queen Theena’s most puissant command.”

  “She wished him dead?”

  “No! No, she loved him. What happened—afterwards—I do not understand.”

  “Aric?” cried my mother from the bedchamber.

  With a sense that I must protect the old woman, Albaric, myself, everyone, I stooped to place the ring on the floor at my feet. “Here!” I called back. “I’ve found it on the stairs. Bring candles.”

  Mother and Father came back, each with a candlestick, and we stood looking down upon the ring that lay glowering on the stone step. Darkly it smoldered as if with green lightning, then turned to lustering the dull red of dried blood.

  “How came it here?” Father sounded shaken.

  I said nothing. Albaric said, “Unless restrained, it will act of its own will, Sire—”

  “Do not call me Sire!”

  We stood stunned to silence by his vehemence.

  His glare raked us all. “And tell no one anything of—of this fairy tale, of adventures in Elfland, of a supposed son or a supposed brother, none of it! Aric, Evalin, and—and you, Albaric—I command it.”

  Albaric bowed his head, I dare say I flushed with anger it would have been most unwise to express, and the ring blazed a merry scarlet.

  “Now look how the pesky thing rejoices,” said my mother in the tone of one dealing with troublesome children. “What are we to do with it?”

  “I relinquish charge of it,” said the king, “for already I have been neglectful.”

  “I do not want it,” said Albaric, “for you trust me not.” Yet his tone was level and without rancor.

  “I will take it and—” I was going to say lock it in a box for safekeeping.

  But Father commanded, “No, Aric, I forbid you! We know not what it will do to you.”

  “Oh, fishheads,” said my mother, as was her wont when vexed, and she crouched on the steps with her girdle-dirk in her hand. Picking up the ring upon its tip, rather as if removing a toad from the kitchen, she stood and strung through it the end of a chain of gold she wore around her waist. Then taking the chain, she transferred it to her neck, clipped its ends, and tucked the dangling portion beneath the outer tabard of her gown so that the ring hung hidden in her clothing, unseen.

  “Men,” she grumbled, “fuss over the simplest things. What is Albaric to call you if not Sire?”

  She and Father stood staring at each other. Standing a step above him on the stairway, she fronted him eye to eye, hers chilly gray, his blazing blue.

  “Surely you will kindly excuse us, your Royal Highnesses,” I said as formally and woodenly as a servant, with an exaggerated bow. Before either of them could react, I fled, with Albaric at my side, and once downstairs and safely in the great hall, I could not help laughing.

  Albaric stood watching me with a quizzical smile. Wondering whether he had ever laughed, I tried to sober.

  But he understood better than I knew. “Father always said you were wont to tweak his beard. You are brave, my brother.”

  My throat tightened when he called me brother, and I could not speak.

  “You are the only one here who is brave enough.” Lifting his head, Albaric regarded me steadily. “Small wonder if my—if the king wants no part of me, but what if you had thought me a rival? There is mercy in this mortal world, Aric, and it has given me you.”

  Much moved, I reached out, and we gripped hands like warriors going into battle. From that moment, I knew that my quest in life must be to find him peace.

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

  WE WERE BOTH ABASHED, I think. We walked outdoors in silence, and by happenstance we passed through the walled garden. Seeing the harp still lying on a bench, I picked it up, because, even though the sun shone, at any moment clouds might blow in from the sea and it might be soaked in rain, so changeable was our weather in this far northern kingdom called Calidon. It was not uncommon here to host sun, thunder, rainbow, sleet, and windstorm all in one day. Such as the day Father and I had last gone riding.

  I blurted to Albaric—my brother!—“Would you like to see the horses?”

  He nodded, smiling, so harp in hand, I led him toward the stables. The grooms stiffened to ashen silence as we walked in, but the horses thrust their heads eagerly over the half-doors of their stalls to welcome the newcomer. And my favorite, my shining red-gold Valor, whinnied in greeting to me.

  “Beautiful,” Albaric murmured.

  “You think so? Not one of them can compare to the steed you rode hither.” A thought struck me. “Do you miss him?” I would have missed Valor.

  “A steed of white wind? Nay, it was a thing of no significance, no heart.”

  He stood by as I stroked Valor’s tawny face. Then I led him down the aisle, showing him Father’s war horse, Invincible; Mother’s gentle palfrey, Marzipan; and Trueheart, Daisy, Black Diamond, many others.

  “You like them all,” Albaric remarked, rubbing the forelock of an old skewbald cart-horse, “whether cob or pony or charger.”

  “True. Am I boring you?”

  “Boring?” He did not understand the word or, I suppose, the concept, being unaccustomed to time or pastimes.

  I was spared trying to explain, for men shouted from the training yard outside, and we heard a scream all the more frightening for not being human. A horse’s cry of fury or despair, it struck me like a lance, sending me dashing to see what was the matter, with Albaric at my side.

  The horse trainer had already found safety atop the tall, stout fence, but the massive blue stallion still reared and struck with his deadly forehooves, outraged. A rope lay in the dirt. The blue steed bore not a stitch of harness.

  Blue?

  Blue roan, really, its mane and tail black, but on its body the dark hairs blended with white so that in certain lights it looked blue—so I told myself. But never had I seen a horse so blue as the one inside the fence.

  Nor had I ever seen this horse before. “Whence came that?” I exclaimed.

  At first no one answered, for those standing nearby edged away from Albaric and me or found sudden reason to return to tasks inside the stable. But the horse trainer, Todd, dropped from atop the fence and limped over to speak with me. It came to me that he must be getting old, for I had known him all my life. He had
taught me to ride. I knew his temper to be patient and his skill to be great. “Are you all right?” I asked, for he moved as if in pain.

  “’Tis but a blow and a bruise, my lord Prince.”

  “Where did he hit you? Are you sure there’s nothing broken?”

  “On the shoulder. Nothing that hasn’t been broken before,” Todd said with a wry look that gave me to understand I should stop fussing. Todd greeted Albaric with a bowed head but no show of fear; indeed, he looked him over, taking his measure, as if he were a colt. Then turning back to me, he said, “As to whence came the wild beastie yonder, Prince Aric, the week before last a peddler of horses stopped by. I thought it best not to trouble you about him.”

  “You thought rightly,” I assured him, for at that time my father had lain abed and seemingly dying. “What sort of peddler, to sell steeds like this?”

  “An ordinary swindler, my Prince, with ordinary nags, except for this one, hobbled all four feet in chains. Given up by a grand lord of the southlands, the fellow said, as impossible to train.” Todd smiled ruefully. “I rose to the bait like a fish to a cricket. And now I could have lost my life for the sake of my daring, trying to put a rope on him.”

  We looked at the blue stallion pawing the earth, all shining with sweat like—

  “That is sweat, is it not?” I murmured.

  Albaric said quietly, “I think yon windflower-blue stallion and I might understand each other. May I borrow the harp, Aric?”

  I passed him the instrument, and cradling it, he walked to the gate, raised the latch, and slipped into the training pen while we stood watching him as if in a trance. At the last moment, Todd cried out and would have prevented him, but I held up my hand.

  “Strange chance brought us here with a harp,” I told him. “Watch.”