Alphabet of Thorn

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  Felan shifted walls and spaces again within the school, brought her back into pleasanter surroundings. She did not sit; he did not wait for her to speak.

  “What trouble?”

  She told him about Tessera and the dreaming warrior queen, the incomprehensible warning.

  “Thorns?” Felan repeated incredulously. “What—”

  “I have no idea.”

  “She said nothing more?”

  “No. She warned Tessera of thorns and then retreated back into her moldering bones.”

  “Perhaps the queen understood it?”

  “No.”

  Felan was silent, unmoored from his tranquillity, his expressions erratic, unfamiliar to Vevay. He scratched his bald head, said finally, “I will tell the other mages, and we will examine the matter with all the power we possess.”

  “So will I,” Vevay promised, “after I examine Tessera. How could the Queen of Raine have been wandering around in that wood without even you noticing?”

  “The wood, after all these centuries of magic flowing into it, has a life of its own.”

  “So apparently does Tessera.”

  “If it was Tessera.”

  “It sounded like her. I know that pink gown.” She shook her head at her own words. “And as unlike her as anything I would have imagined. Tessera, stopping to chat with a strange young man. Laughing. And of all young men—”

  “Ask her,” Felan said again, and she did so.

  In the palace, she found the queen where she was supposed to be: at a council table with nobles from three different Crowns and half a dozen of her own counselors. They were discussing the border taxes for merchants traveling between Crowns. Tessera, sitting stiffly, was visibly trying to understand the problems. Her attempt was only getting in the way of her thoughts, it seemed to Vevay, judging by the dazed expression in her strained eyes. Taking pity on her, Vevay interrupted and extracted her, leaving her counselors to settle matters, which might soon be moot, anyway, if they were all going to war against thorns.

  She drew Tessera past a dozen importunate young nobles, into a private chamber above the sea. As always, Tessera went to the window to watch sea, sky, cloud, anything that did not speak to her in words. This time Vevay joined her instead of talking to her back. She hesitated, wondering how to broach the subject without alarming Tessera.

  She gave up, asked baldly, “Were you in the wood recently? Someone said he saw you there.”

  Tessera looked at her mutely, instantly wary. Vevay waited, trying to emanate nothing beyond friendly curiosity. The queen answered finally, hesitantly. “I went there to get out of the world. A few days ago.”

  “Did you talk to anyone?”

  “A tree. Some birds. A student. I think he was a student.”

  “He was,” Vevay said evenly. “No one knew you were there. None of the mages, I mean. They should have known.”

  “Do you mean that I should have told them?”

  “No. I mean yes. I mean that of course it’s dangerous for you to go off on your own without telling anyone, without even a guard with you—”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But that’s not what I meant. You slipped past the combined and very powerful attention of the mages as though you—as though you somehow became part of the wood when you entered it. Or it made you a part of itself.”

  Tessera was silent again, trying, the mage saw, to figure out if she were in trouble. Trust me, Vevay pleaded, with every calm line of her body, with every quiet breath. The queen’s own body relaxed a little finally; her eyes slid again to the sea. “It showed me things,” she said softly. “It changes my heart when I walk into it. My heart turns into the smells and shadows, the moss, the flowers and vines, the ancient trees. Sometimes I hear them speak.” Vevay’s throat closed; she stifled a sound, gazing, dumbfounded, at the bewildering young ruler of Raine. The queen gave a small start then, at a memory. “That’s where I first saw her. The first queen of Raine. She was riding through the wood in her armor, with the great sword at her side.”

  “She was awake and riding around in the wood?” Vevay breathed. “The Dreaming King? Queen?”

  “I didn’t see her face then, only her long fair hair. She didn’t speak, but something told my heart that the warrior was a woman.”

  “Did she see you?”

  “She turned her hidden face toward me and pointed at—” Her own voice died suddenly; her eyes grew wide again, alarmed. But for once she shifted toward Vevay rather than away.

  “At what?” Vevay demanded, her voice rising in spite of herself.

  “Thorns.”

  FIFTEEN

  Once Axis had achieved his swift, stunning victory over Kaoldep and, by marriage and war, secured for Eben all the lands from one end to the other of the Serpent, poets began to take note of him in something other than their customary conceits. He had brought magic onto the battlefield in the terrifying form of Kane. His generals were astonished at the powers that roared and spat out of Kane’s staff. Kane, fighting for her life with Axis, surprised even herself. Love kindled her fires, forged weapons that scorched the heels of the warriors of Kaoldep as they ran. Kaoldep, hitherto a tranquil realm full of fishers and farmers and rich cities along the delta where merchant ships wandering the Baltrean Sea docked and traded, was ill-prepared for war, especially for one of such ferocity. Axis had only to threaten to burn a city before the king surrendered, pleading for Axis to show mercy to his people. Axis, having got all he wanted, including Kane, declared himself Guardian of the Realm of the Serpent, left one of his generals to restore order to his new lands, and went back home to relax.

  He grew restless quickly and summoned his counselors and generals; again Kane listened secretly.

  “The river is not enough,” he told them. “Eben encompasses the Serpent, but why should I stop there? The world does not end at the boundaries of Eben.”

  His generals, who had seen for themselves the possibilities in Kane’s power, responded with keen interest. One or two of his older counselors, who had lived through his father’s wars and had grown fond of the peaceful interim during Telmenon’s regency, expressed doubts.

  “My lord, the world, as you say, does not end with Eben; it is, in fact, a great deal bigger than your river kingdom. Beware that you don’t rouse forces against you that even Kane cannot defeat.”

  “Who is this Kane, anyway?” another murmured fretfully. “How can you be certain he was not meant to gain your trust and then turn against you and take all of Eben for Ilicia? He came here as a trickster; now he is a sorcerer. What will we find him doing next? Let him show his face.”

  “I have seen his face,” Axis said calmly. “And I have seen into his heart. He will serve me faithfully, as he pledged, all the days of his life.”

  “My lord, you are young—”

  “Yes.” He smiled at the aging counselors. “I am the young Lion of Eben and I will fight until I find the one who can stop me. That one will have to kill me. To force Kane to reveal his face would be nothing more than an act of cruelty. If you insist, I will command him. You will only hurt him.”

  They grumbled more, then left the matter at that for a while; it was obvious that sowing doubts about Kane would not hold the Lion of Eben in his quiet lair. His younger generals, their blood roused by the easy victory, produced maps, suggestions, arguments. Axis listened to them all. Then, later in his secret chamber, he asked Kane what she thought.

  They lay tangled in one another’s arms, feeding one another almonds and dates, while around them the palace slept.

  “You are King of the River,” Kane answered simply. “Why not be Emperor of the Sea?”

  “The entire sea?” Axis spat out a date pit and raised himself on one elbow to look at her.

  “There are many rich port cities all around that inland sea. Why should they not belong to Eben?”

  Axis counted kingdoms around the sea, using most of his fingers. “Seven kings would ask me why they should
belong to Eben.” He looked at her again, his tawny eyes reflecting tears of fire from the candles. “Can you fight seven kingdoms with me?”

  Kane nodded. “I will be with you at every battle, as long as I am alive.”

  She had no idea if she could win seven battles for him; he had not asked her that. They were both testing their powers in those early years; they had no idea then to what lengths they could go. As always, Kane had no real interest in war, only in Axis. If he put himself into danger, she would bring down the moon before she let him be harmed. At odd moments, she found herself missing her lazy afternoons in the courtyard, among the preening peacocks and the laughing children of her cousins, who had begun to marry, and the cheerful, incoherent comments of Axis’s toothless daughter as she crowed in wonder at Kane’s tricks. His heir, old enough to walk, had watched more soberly, his round plump face a mirror of his young mother’s. But while Kane had lost the company of children, she had finally eased the painful hunger in her heart for Axis.

  “We are twins,” he told her more than once. “Twin thoughts, twin hearts, twin powers. I have more ambition, but you have better ideas.”

  She had, that day: none of his generals had suggested expanding Eben to include all the kingdoms around the Baltrean Sea. One of them, as his counselors would have hastened to point out, covered as much territory as the six others together. But it was poor and scruffy, an old lion. Its harsh soil and steep, and mountains made it an unrewarding battlefield; its single port city was its only asset.

  “Attack the most dangerous and best fortified first,” Kane suggested. “If it falls, the others will be afraid and more easily subdued.”

  “And Kirixia?”

  “Save the largest for last. Your fierce and unconquerable army will close on it around both sides of the Baltrean Sea like a crab-claw. It will not even bother to fight,” she promised recklessly.

  He laughed, excited by the notion. “Then I shall be the Emperor of Water. And after that? What? The Emperor of Air?”

  “The Emperor of Fire,” she said, her voice growing husky as she watched the candle fire melting across his golden skin. “The Emperor of Night.”

  He became her nights, long before he conquered night itself. They did not have many alone in those first busy years. Axis’s discretion guarded Kane from suspicion. No one could have connected the masked, scarecrow figure of the sorcerer with a secret lover of the king, especially not after Kane’s face was finally exposed.

  She had anticipated an assault from the first, out of mistrust, or jealousy, or simple curiosity. But two years at court had lulled her, and Kane’s reputation on the battlefield should have been enough to cause any attacker a second thought. So she was prepared, when attack came, but had long forgotten the need to be.

  Kane had been summoned to the courtyard gardens by the queen. So she had been told, to her surprise, for the queen had not permitted Kane around her children since the battles of Kaoldep. She felt watched as she made her way beneath an arched trellis of flowering vines toward the inner courtyard. But Kane had always been watched, every moment that the strange, faceless figure moved through the palace. The silence should have warned her. She heard the play of the fountains, the rustle of peacock feathers; she should have heard what she did not: the entwined voices of women and children. As she emerged from the end of the archway, what felt like a brick from the garden wall fell on her head.

  She almost cried out, but she was too astonished to make a sound. In that moment she could not imagine what was happening, other than that a star had fallen out of the sky and now her head was pulsing fire. Then someone wrenched the staff from her hands, and she remembered that she was the mute, dangerous Kane. Someone else pulled a cloth tight against her eyes, wrenched her head back to tie it. She gasped with pain and tried to fight; she heard one or two muffled words. Her gauntlet hands were pinioned behind her back. Someone struck her face; she reeled, slumping against the trellis, smelling the sweet, crushed citrus-flowers under her. Big, rough fingers began pulling at the veils around her face.

  She struggled, but weakly, only enough to be convincing. A man snapped, “Hold him. Be careful—Don’t let him see us. We’ll see for ourselves what you truly are beneath that sorcerer’s mask.”

  “The veils are tied around his body, beneath his robes,” another man grunted. “I can’t pull them up without—”

  “Cut them.”

  Kane felt the blade at her throat and froze. Silk ripped, fluttered away. For the first time in nearly two years she felt sunlight on her mouth.

  Kane’s mouth. The courtyard was suddenly very quiet, as though even the peacocks were dumb with horror. Then one of them screamed, a distant, fading sound. She heard the men breathing heavily as they stared at the grotesque, deformed face.

  They dropped him without a word and ran.

  She lay there, waiting to be found rather than picking herself up and going off alone and invisible to care for herself. She had recognized the voice of one of Axis’s aging counselors, who was clearly looking for a reason to curtail the king’s exhausting impulses for war. He would not expect the sorcerer to remember him from a glimpse or two in the council-chamber. He did not realize that Kane had listened, mute and invisible, to everything he said to the king within that chamber.

  A servant found the dazed, bleeding Kane with the veil shredded over his horrifying face. Her shriek brought others. Shocked, babbling, they bore Kane inside, where, unaccountably, as they awaited the physician the patient disappeared. She limped outside to retrieve her staff, which one of her attackers had tossed on top of the trellis. Then she went to Axis’s secret chamber, bound up her aching head with her veils, and fell asleep.

  Axis found her there later.

  She woke to his eyes, wide and golden and unblinking, staring down at her. He leaned down, dropped a kiss as light as a breath on her bruised mouth.

  “I will kill whoever did this.” She had never heard his voice so devoid of all expression. “Tell me who it was.”

  “Axis,” she said. It hurt to talk, but she had to then, and fast.

  “Tell me.”

  “I will.” She touched his shoulder, his wrist, quick, soothing pats. “I will. But you must listen to me.”

  “Who?”

  “They had to—they had to know that Kane is not lying to you. That all his—that all my powers belong to you. They have to trust me. I let them—I let them see my face.”

  He blinked then, bewildered, and laid the back of his hand against her cheek. “This face?”

  “Kane’s face. Do you want to see it? I made it for them.”

  He gave a little, uncertain nod. Then he started as the face he loved rippled into something maimed, distorted, small eyes not quite level, one cheekbone bigger than the other, teeth wandering off in opposite directions beneath lips that could not possibly close over them. He swallowed; expression flowed back into his voice. “That is the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”

  She smiled, then winced. “That face loves you,” she told him. “It is the face of the wedding gift from Ilicia. The face of your power on the battlefield. Now they will all know that Kane is simply Kane, the magician turned sorcerer. Not someone sent to harm you.”

  “Still.” He brushed her familiar face again with his hand. “I will still kill whoever—”

  “No.” Her fingers found his wrist, tightened. “No. You do not love Kane enough to kill for him.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Not the Kane the others know. If you kill for me they will think you are somehow under my power, that you listen to me before you listen to them. Then they will fear me and plot against me. They must think only that I do your bidding because I have pledged my heart to you. That I have no power over you; all the power is truly yours.”

  His mouth tightened. He coaxed her up, untied the bloody cloth around her head, began to wash it gently until it came free from her hair. She sat quietly, leaning against his chest, her head over his shoulder
like a child’s. He spoke finally. “What do you want me to do?”

  “They did not do this to me. They did this to the Kane they know. What would you do for him?”

  He did not answer her then. By the end of the day, the entire palace knew of the attack on Kane. The mystery of his face, which had kept the court guessing since the wedding, was solved. It was every bit as hideous as he had promised. The incident also laid to rest a rumor that had come to Kane’s attention recently: that the veiled sorcerer was in truth a beautiful woman who had been in love with Axis, and who had given herself to him as a wedding present. That drifted about as one of the many possible reasons why Axis spent a night now and then in his private chamber, isolated from all and giving no reason why. The glimpse of Kane’s face would relieve the queen’s mind, Kane knew, as well as her curiosity. The sorcerer was not someone to fear but someone to pity. The reason would be clear, and very simple now, why his love and his power belonged irrevocably to the comely and fearless young king.

  Axis said nothing about the incident until Kane was well enough, in a day or two, to come secretly to his council meeting. Then, he discussed Eben’s strengths and weaknesses, and the possibilities for war, until one of his older counselors, who had been shifting restively, interrupted him.

  “My lord, despite his great powers Kane does seem vulnerable. You cannot depend on him, even though his loyalty to you may be unquestionable.”

  Axis pondered the counselor’s words impassively. Kane, standing in her customary shadow, invisible to all, recognized the voice.

  “You advise me to go to battle without him?” the king asked.

  “No, my lord—”

  “Then with him.”

  The counselor sighed. “You cannot fight all the kingdoms around the Baltrean Sea without him.”

  “I agree with you.”

  “But, my lord, he is not invincible as you have heard. He can be incapacitated with nothing more than a stone.”