Alphabet of Thorn

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “The scholars are wrong.”

  “About what?”

  “When the poetry was written.”

  “It was written in countries that didn’t exist when Kane—”

  “Then they’re wrong about when Kane died,” Nepenthe argued.

  “When did Kane die?” Bourne asked. “I have only the vaguest knowledge of anything to do with Axis and Kane. They lived; Axis conquered the known world; they died. I get lost any time before my great-grandfather getting his head cut off for treason against Raine.”

  Laidley thought, ruffling at his thin hair. “I remember when Axis ruled, but I don’t remember when either of them died.”

  “Why don’t you go and find out?” Nepenthe suggested, sitting on her stool again.

  “All right,” Laidley said, to her surprise.

  She turned pointedly to Bourne. “Unless you think it’s dangerous knowing such a thing.”

  “It doesn’t sound so,” he admitted. He lingered over the thorns, as though listening for all they did not say, all that they kept hidden behind their words. But he heard nothing. Still troubled, he bent to pull a kiss from Nepenthe’s mouth before he left her.

  “I wonder what it sounded like,” he murmured, “that barbed spiky language they spoke to one another.”

  “You won’t tell the librarians, then?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. Not until I know more.”

  He stepped away from her; she watched, expecting to see him melt into time, into a distant moment. But instead he caught up with Laidley in his pursuit of history, leaving Nepenthe to stare at both their backs.

  “We’re all obsessed,” she said, astonished, and then picked up her pen and forgot about them.

  ELEVEN

  Tessera slid wearily off her horse in the torch-lit courtyard after the endless hunt, thinking of the bloody hare in her saddlebag that her arrow had accidentally hit. It had screamed at the arrow’s bite; the memory still made her eyes swell.

  I’m sorry, she told it soundlessly. I am sorry.

  Much it cared now, on its way to have the fur ripped from it, its bones tossed into the stew pot to feed the hordes at her table. Stablers led her horse away; a torch, looming over her head, made her start.

  Her father’s aging commander, who lived with Vevay in their airy tower, bowed his head and smiled kindly at her. “A long day, my lady,” he observed. “May I escort you inside?”

  “Yes,” she said unhesitantly; she liked him and trusted him instinctively, as her father had.

  “I feel every hour of it in my bones,” he commented as he lit her way out of the yard into the palace.

  “I’m tired, too,” she told him softly. “I never much liked hunting.”

  “You’d think,” he murmured with sympathy, “that being queen meant that you wouldn’t have to do the things you disliked.”

  “Yes, you would think. But I have not found it so at all. Especially not after the hare screamed when I killed it.”

  “No,” he said after a moment. “I never got used to that sound, either, my lady. Not even after years on the battlefield.”

  “All I killed was a hare,” she answered, and felt his flash of surprise at her perception. “I hope I never have to listen to anything worse.”

  “I hope so,” he breathed, “for all our sakes.”

  Guards opened doors for her; he dropped the torch into a holder as they entered the hall. Her ladies came to meet her, drew off her cloak and her boots, eased her cramped feet into slippers. She watched Gavin unbuckle his heavy sword, yield it with relief to his servant. He rubbed an aching muscle, then caught her glance and smiled again, ruefully, at his aging bones. His smile changed purpose and focus in the moment; she turned her head to see where it was going and found Vevay coming toward them.

  Her own smile faded; she felt a sigh she did not express. Vevay wanted more and more, always something, and she seemed never pleased with anything. Vevay had loved and understood the dead king, Tessera knew; the king’s daughter left the mage completely baffled. Gavin seemed unafraid of Vevay. He did not irritate her with his obtuseness, nor inspire in her exaggerated calm, or forced patience. Perhaps I must grow old and gray, Tessera thought, and learn to use a sword and even grow a mustache, and Vevay will finally grow fond of me.

  The mage had a peculiar look on her face, Tessera saw when Vevay stopped in front of her. No: it was more of a peculiar emanation, for in public Vevay’s unruffled expression rarely changed. She seemed unsettled within, Tessera felt, as she gazed mutely at the mage, her own expression one that usually inspired Vevay with acute exasperation. The mage, Tessera decided finally, felt like someone who had stepped with confidence onto a stair that wasn’t there.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked before Vevay spoke, and Vevay stared at her with utter astonishment.

  She recovered herself swiftly, laying a hand on the queen’s shoulder and turning her adroitly away from her ladies. “Your mother wishes to see you before she retires,” Vevay murmured, pitching her words toward any listening ears. “To assure herself that you are alive and well after the hunt.”

  “Very well,” Tessera said obediently. Her mother, she knew from experience, would not be expecting her at all; it was Vevay’s way of assuring privacy for some momentous discussion.

  This time, however, Vevay surprised Tessera, leading her directly to her mother’s chambers, where Xantia, still prostrate in black, was ignoring the enticing smell of quail stewed in cream and brandy on a tray near her. For some odd reason she seemed to be expecting them; she was entirely alone. Sunk in a chair with her eyes closed and the back of one hand resting on her brow, she lifted her other hand heavily to her daughter. Tessera took it awkwardly. Xantia, opening her eyes at last, drew Tessera to her and examined her anxiously.

  “You are well, my child?”

  “I killed a hare.”

  “How clever of you. You take after your unfortunate father in his love of hunting…” She turned her wan face restively to the mage. “Now, Vevay. You know I need peace and quiet above all at this time. What is so pressing that you can’t deal with it yourself and must disturb me when I can barely lift a scrap of linen to wipe my tears?”

  “Raine is going to war,” Vevay said succinctly. “You won’t have much peace and quiet after that.”

  Xantia stared at the mage, her eyes, the color of rain-soaked violets, enormous, red-rimmed. They narrowed; she straightened abruptly, sending embroidered velvet pillows flying.

  “Who?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Then how—”

  “The Dreaming King has awakened. I want to take Tessera down the cliff to his cave to see if he will tell her what the danger is to Raine.”

  Tessera felt her face blanch. She tried to speak; words stuck to the roof of her mouth. Her mother, clutching a pillow to her bosom for comfort, was as mute for a moment, her face so icy pale that Tessera thought she might faint.

  Instead she rose, flinging the pillow across the room. “Who would dare attack my daughter?”

  “We talked about this. Any one of twelve Crowns.”

  “They’re all under her roof!” She paced a step or two, her lips thin; both mage and queen watched her, transfixed. “I’ve never heard of the Dreamer waking for any ruler. I thought it was just a legend. Vevay, are you sure?”

  “Without a doubt.”

  Xantia whirled, held her daughter’s eyes. “Then you must go. Without a doubt.”

  Tessera unstuck her voice; it shook badly. “I don’t want to talk to a skeleton.”

  “This was your father’s realm, and now it belongs to you,” Xantia said fiercely. “You will do what you must to keep it.”

  “I don’t know how!”

  Vevay closed her eyes. “Exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you—”

  “Vevay, there must be someone you suspect, one Crown above the others. Unless—” Xantia caught a breath, put her hands to her mouth. “Unless
it is all of them at once. But the rulers are—”

  “All here,” Vevay finished. “All but the Lord of Seale. But I don’t think that the first King of Raine would rouse his bones in alarm over Ermin of Seale.” She stared at the problem silently a moment, her pale eyes nearly colorless and very cold. They moved finally from the problem in midair to Tessera, who felt their cold like a frost in her bones. “At dawn, tomorrow, we will go down.”

  “Vevay,” Tessera pleaded, “can’t you talk to him? You’re a mage; you—”

  “You are the ruler of the Twelve Crowns of Raine. It’s you he’ll talk to if he’s awake.”

  “He’s dead! He doesn’t have a tongue!”

  “He’s sleeping,” Xantia said firmly. “Dreaming. You go down there and ask him what you should do. And you—” Her voice faltered as she looked at Vevay, the strength fading visibly again from her face. She groped, found Tessera’s shoulder. “You and Gavin—”

  “Yes.” Vevay moved quickly to help her back to her chair.

  “I want whoever it is threatening my daughter found—”

  “We will.”

  “And dropped forthwith over the cliff into the sea.”

  “Forthwith,” Vevay promised grimly.

  Xantia, half-falling into her chair, burst into tears again, searched among her skirts for the crumpled linen. Vevay summoned her ladies from the next room. Tessera, rigid with terror, thought: I will run into the wood tonight. The trees will hide me; they know my name. No one will ever find me…

  Vevay, fixing Tessera with a probing eye as she closed the door on the distraught dowager, said softly, “We will go now.”

  They left most of the palace at supper, and Gavin to tell those who questioned the queen’s absence that she sat that evening with her grieving mother. For Tessera’s sake, Vevay brought a torch to light the queen’s path down the worn, slippery steps. She might as well not have bothered, for Tessera, her teeth chattering with cold and fear, barely saw anything but the vision behind her eyes. The vision was of a crowned skeleton sitting on a stone, whose armor hung loosely here and there, clanking as the skeleton moved. Its skull was sometimes raw bone, sometimes sagging pleats of flesh and withered, angry eyes that stared incredulously at the waif in front of him.

  I dreamed of you and woke, the first king told her, in a voice that boomed and weltered like the waves through his tomb. You puny, helpless, powerless grub, how did you become the ruler of twelve Crowns? You yourself are the threat to Raine…

  The wind took up his words, growling and whining and worrying at the clouds. Some spell of Vevay’s kept it from blowing Tessera off the stairs, though she thought wistfully, once or twice, of jumping. Surely the deep, wild water would be kinder to her than the dreaming warrior wakened to battle. But Vevay would never let her fall. Down and down they went, Tessera mute and trembling and half-blind with terror, the mage following inexorably, holding the torch over her head. Finally, after what seemed a nightmare walk into forever, she heard the first delicate sough of the waves, far below, breaking against the cliff.

  She stopped, her eyes closing, her knees almost refusing to hold her up.

  Vevay said from some other time where she no longer remembered what fear was, “Don’t be afraid. You are Queen of Raine. He will recognize that in you. He will want to help you.”

  Her voice was as implacable as ever. Tessera opened her eyes again. There was no going back, with the mage behind her, herding her like a sheepdog toward a dead king in a cave. Her hair hung lank with mist; she wiped water out of her eyes with a damp sleeve. I don’t feel like a queen, she thought. I am the hare in the wood, trying to run all directions at once to get away…

  Not bothering to answer Vevay, she forced herself to move again. The boom and break of water grew louder, waves tearing at the cliff, trying with each crash and flight of spume to reach higher, higher, touch the last stone step, flow into the Dreamer’s cave. Vevay’s hand closed on Tessera’s shoulder, and she stopped, staring ahead, not even seeing that she stood on the last step; her next would be into airy nothing.

  Vevay said nothing. After a moment, Tessera turned her head, looked at the face of the cliff. The torch light spilled through solid rock, showed her the narrow path she must take into stone to speak to the dead.

  She could not go back; she could not go into the sea instead; she could not hang there between earth and sea forever. “Go on,” said the streak of wind and fire that was Vevay. “I cannot enter. You must go alone.” Nothing to do but face the dead. So she turned her back to the sea and walked into stone.

  The armed figure stood waiting for her.

  She stopped, frozen, at the open threshold of the tomb. The cave was a hand-hewn bubble of air and dark; the torch light illumined the armed warrior within it. The visor was down; she could not see a face, either skull or ravaged flesh. The warrior was very tall, armed from head to foot, and crowned with a band of gold molded into the helm. The sword slung at its waist looked nearly as tall as Tessera. Uncut jewels glowed darkly in the firelight along the crosspiece, and tiny fire-white stones inset on the backs of the gauntlets glittered fiercely. Long hair flowed from under the helm across the straight shoulders; it was as pale gold as corn-silk.

  Tessera felt a lump in her throat. It dissolved, left her voice free again. How long she stared at the tall, armed figure she had no idea. When she finally spoke, she had forgotten Vevay, forgotten the endless, terrifying walk down the cliff in the night. She felt she had, in entering the Dreamer’s cave, become part of the dream.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered.

  The armed warrior lifted a gauntlet, raised the helm. Tessera, staring at the young, beautiful, powerful face, felt her heart untangle itself then, as though it had been wound in a knot around itself for so long she had stopped noticing. The warrior smiled and unsheathed the great sword.

  “Save our realm,” she said in her deep, sweet voice, while the hiss and clang of metal echoed through the cave. “Queen of Raine. Save the Crowns of Raine.”

  Tessera nodded, her heart pounding, her lips dry and bitter with brine. “How?”

  “I will fight with you. When you need me, I will be with you in your heart. Beware. Beware.”

  “Beware what?” Her voice came without sound, but the Dreamer heard it.

  “Beware the thorns.”

  “Thorns?”

  “They must be destroyed before they destroy us all.”

  “What thorns?”

  Wind gusted into the cave, howling, laced with spume or rain, and spun Vevay’s torch fire into a thin, fluttering thread of light. Emen, Tessera heard, the word melting away in the force of the wind. Eden, Egen… When she could see again, the armed figure had slumped onto a rough throne of stone. Its helmed head sagged onto its breast, the face invisible again behind the visor. The long hair, like the parched, golden grasses of summer, looked brittle and sere, as though it would turn to dust at a touch.

  Light spilled like tide over the walls as Vevay finally found her way in.

  “Did he speak?” she asked, looking doubtfully at the ancient sleeper. “What did he say?”

  The Queen of Raine turned away finally from the dead. “She.”

  “What?”

  “She. The first king of Raine was a woman.”

  Vevay’s mouth opened; nothing came out. Her long hair tangled with the torch fire; she twitched it free impatiently, holding Tessera’s eyes as though searching for the reflection of the warrior queen within them. “She,” she whispered. “What did she say?”

  “She said to destroy the thorns before they destroy us all.”

  “Thorns.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure she said—”

  “Yes. Thorns.” She took a step toward Vevay, feeling the cold again, beginning to tremble. “What does that mean?”

  Vevay’s fearless and exacting voice wavered suddenly, as erratically as the torch fire in the wind.

  “It means w
e are in very deep trouble, because I have no idea at all what it means.”

  TWELVE

  Axis fought his second battle with his father’s brother, the regent Telmenon, who was lord of a great swath of land in Lower Eben. Having ruled Eben for nine years while Axis grew up, Telmenon resented yielding his power to a boy. When Axis turned sixteen, three days before his wedding, he was crowned King of Great and Lower Eben, and Lord in the Name of the Serpent of all who dwelled within the river that divided the kingdom. Telmenon had seen that day coming for many years and planned for it. A month after the wedding, after the queen’s family had gone home, Telmenon rode at the head of the army from Lower Eben to attack the boy-king. Telmenon’s army would cross the Serpent by night and be massed around the royal palace by daybreak, giving Axis no time to gather his own forces. So Telmenon planned, and so it might have been but for the wedding gift from Ilicia.

  As far as anybody knew, the tall, mute, faceless figure did nothing besides entertain the young queen and her courtiers on lazy afternoons with his tricks. Kane pulled doves out of empty goblets and pearls out of flowers. He made wine flow out of his staff and danced on the water lilies in the pool in the courtyard. Nobody wondered at the extent of his powers. Even when he walked on water he was only the deformed, gangling, gifted servant who did tricks. If at times his tricks were inexplicable except by magic of a complexity that should have been suspect, no one questioned it. He did always as commanded; if he had a thought of his own he never indicated it; when he was not wanted, he was not seen. Indeed, he might have been invisible, insofar as anyone but Axis remembered his existence then.

  Which she actually was: invisible, many times. Kane had been watching the regent for years. Like Axis, she had known him since they were children. After he became regent and Kane learned to seem invisible, she tested her new powers everywhere in the palace, even under her mother’s nose. Thus she chanced upon a seedling meeting between Telmenon and one of his generals, and learned that he had no intention of relinquishing his power over Eben. That seedling, encouraged, spread secret roots of rebellion throughout Lower Eben. Kane did not tell Axis until she knew his heart, until she knew by his secret love for her that he could keep a secret. His face, at once beautiful and feral, revealed no more than the lion’s face, which says nothing at all as the lion crouches and waits. It speaks only when it springs.