Prince of Fools (The Red Queen's War)

by Lawrence, Mark

  “When you become a father, it changes you.” Snorri spoke towards the fire’s glow. “You see the world in new ways. Those who are not changed were not properly men to begin with.”

  I wondered if he was drunk. That’s when I tend to speak profundities to the night. Then I remembered that Snorri was a father. I couldn’t picture it. Wee ones bouncing on his knee. Tiny hands tugging at his battle braids. Even so, I understood his mood better now I could guess what he might see amongst the embers. Not this unborn child, but his own children, fleeing horrors in the snows. The thing that drew him north against all sense.

  “Why are you still here?” I asked him.

  “Why are you?”

  “I passed out.” Mild exasperation coloured my voice. “I’m not sitting vigil! In fact, now that I’m awake I’ll find a better place to sleep.” Perhaps one with more interesting contours and a snub nose. I stood, aching along my side, and stamped to get some life back into my legs.

  “Can’t you feel it?” he said as I turned to go.

  “No.” But I could. Something wrong. A sense of brokenness. “No, I can’t.” Even so, I didn’t step away.

  With one breath the insects ceased their chorus. A deep noise reached me, rumbling up through the soles of my feet, still bare. “Ah hell.” My hands trembled, with the customary terror of the unknown, but also with something new, as if they were full of fractured light.

  “Hel’s about right.” Snorri stood too. He had his stolen sword in hand. Had he held it all the time or gone to fetch it while I slept? He pointed the blade towards the baby’s grave. The noise had come from there. A burrowing, a scratching, the sound of roots pushing blind paths through soil. The headstone to the left tilted as the ground sank beneath it. The one to the right toppled forwards, coming to rest with a dull thud. All around the child’s mound the soil cracked and heaved.

  “We should run,” I said, having not the least idea why I was not already doing so. The word quarry repeated over and again behind my eyes. “What’s happening down there?” Perhaps a sick fascination kept me there, or the immobility of the rabbit beneath hawk’s claws.

  “Something is being built,” Snorri said. “When the unborn return, they take what they need.”

  “Return?” I sometimes ask even when I really don’t want to hear the answer. Bad habit.

  “It’s hard for the unborn to return. They are not like fallen that rise from the deaths of men.” Snorri began to swing his sword left-handed, blurring it around him in fire-glow glimmers, making the air sigh. “They are uncommon things. The world must be cracked open to admit them, and their strength is surpassing. The Dead King must want us very badly indeed.”

  I found my feet at that and ran. As the ground heaved and some dark thing rose, shedding dry clods of earth and shrugging off gravestones, I raced five full steps before tripping on an abandoned wine jug—possibly one I’d brought with me—and sprawling face first.

  I rolled and saw, edged by the radiance of stars and the faint light of embers, a horror still knee-deep in the earth and yet towering above the Norseman, a thin thing of old bones, tattered cloth, encompassing arms with talons built from too many finger bones to count. And about these dry and creaking remains, something wet and glistening, some vital freshness running along a golem built of long-dead grave litter, knitting this to that, bleeding quickness into the construct.

  Snorri bellowed his wordless challenge, but he held his ground: No charging against this foe. It overreached him by a yard and more. The dead thing extended an arm, talons questing for Snorri, then snatched the hand back. A grey skull, filled with new wetness, craned down on a neck that was once the entirety of a man’s spine. And it spoke! Though it had no lungs for bellows, no tongue to shape its words, it spoke. The unborn’s voice squealed like tooth on tooth, grated bone on bone, and somehow carried meaning.

  “Red Queen,” it said.

  Snorri took a pace back, sword raised. The skull swivelled and those awful wet pits that served for eyes found me, barefoot, weaponless, and scooting away on my backside.

  “Red Queen.”

  “Not me! Never heard of her.” The strength went from my legs and I stopped trying to escape, although it was the only thing I wanted to do.

  “You carry her purpose,” it said. “And her sister’s magic.” It swung its head towards Snorri and I could breathe again. “Or you,” it said. “And you?” The unborn returned its gaze to me, now on my feet. Under that inspection I started to die once more. “Hidden?” The skull tilted in query. “How is it hidden?”

  Snorri attacked. As the unborn’s attention pinned me he leapt forwards, sword in his off hand, and hacked at its narrow waist of bone, dry skin, old gristle. The thing lurched alarmingly, recovered itself, and slapped him away with a lazy backhand that lifted the Norseman from his feet and sent him sprawling, his sword flying past me, lost in the night.

  Battles are all about strategy, and strategy pivots on priorities. Since my priorities were Prince Jalan, Prince Jalan, and Prince Jalan, with “looking good” a distant fourth, I took the opportunity to resume running away. I find that the main thing about success is the ability to act in the moment. A hero attacks in the moment; a good coward runs in it. The rest of the world waits for the next moment and ends up as crow food.

  I made it ten yards before nearly slicing my foot off on Snorri’s sword, which had ended its trajectory point first. Nine inches of the blade lay buried in the hard earth, the rest jutting up dangerously. Even in my terror I recognized the value in three foot of cold steel and paused to haul it clear. The action spun me around and I could see the unborn looming over Snorri, ghostly in the starlight. Weaponless, he refused to run and held what looked to be a gravestone above him like a shield. The stone shattered beneath the unborn’s descending fist. A thin hand of many bones encircled the Viking’s waist—in another moment he would be gutted or have his head torn off.

  Something huge and dark and wailing like a banshee swept towards me from the camp. Rather than be flattened beneath its ground-shaking bulk I ran, selecting the direction I happened to be pointing in. I needed all my speed to keep clear of the massive pounding feet behind me, and screaming, I charged directly at the unborn, desperately trying to find the extra legs to veer to the side.

  At the last moment, with pants-wetting haste, I dived left, narrowly missing Snorri, rolled, rolled again, and somehow avoided skewering myself on the sword. I rose to watch in astonishment as Cherri bounced past atop an enraged elephant. The unborn went down with the sound of a hundred wet sticks snapping, ground to pieces beneath blunt feet the size of bucklers. The elephant thundered on into the night, still bearing the girl, and trumpeting loud enough to wake the dead, if any had still been asleep.

  Snorri landed close by with a thud that made me wince. He lay without moving for five beats of my heart, then levered himself up on thick arms. I held his sword out to him and he took it.

  “My thanks.”

  “Least I could do.”

  “Not every man would run off to recover a comrade’s weapon, then charge an unborn single-handed.” He got to his feet with a groan and stared off into the night. “Elephant, eh?”

  “Yup.”

  “And a woman.” He went to the fire and started kicking embers over the unborn’s remains.

  “Yup.”

  Circus folk were streaming towards us now, dark shapes against the night.

  “Think she’ll be all right?”

  I considered the matter, having spent some time between her thighs myself. “I’m more worried for the elephant.”

  TEN

  By first light the circus camp had been half packed away. None of them held any desire to remain, and I expected Dr. Taproot would have to find a new stopover the next time they passed this way.

  Cherri returned with the elephant as I waited for Snorri by the field gate. Th
e dwarf had returned to his post and we were both trying to cheat each other at cards. I stood and waved. Cherri must have had to wait for dawn to find her way back. She looked worn out, her face paints smeared, dark streaks around her eyes. A gentleman pretends not to notice these things, and I hastened over to catch her as she slipped from the creature’s back. She felt good enough in my arms to make me regret the need to leave.

  “My thanks, lady.” I set her down and backed away from the elephant’s questing trunk. The beast made me seven kinds of nervous and smelled of farms to boot. “Good boy!” I slapped its wrinkled flanks and dodged towards the gate again.

  “She’s a girl,” Cherri said. “Nelly.”

  “Ah. What else could she be called?” Saved by a dancing girl on a female elephant. I wouldn’t be adding that to the tale of the hero of Aral Pass.

  Cherri took the elephant’s halter rope and led her off into the camp, shooting me one last wicked glance that made me wish for another night, at the least.

  Snorri arrived moments later. “Hell of a thing.” He shook his head. “Elephants!”

  “You could take one home,” I suggested.

  “We have mammoths! Even bigger, but in fur coats. I’ve never seen one, but I want to now.” He looked back into the camp. “I paid my respects to the mother. There’s nothing to say at such times, but it’s better to say something than nothing even so.” He slapped an overly familiar hand to my shoulder. “We should go, Jal, our welcome’s worn thin. Unless you wanted to barter for horses?”

  “With what?” I pulled out my pockets. “They sucked me dry.”

  Snorri shrugged. “That locket you’re always fiddling with would buy ten horses. Fine ones.”

  “I hardly ever touch it.” I blinked at him, telling myself to remember his sharp eyes. I didn’t recall looking at it once since we met. “And it’s of no value.” I doubted the old man on the road would have swapped his donkey for the locket and a silver crown.

  The Norseman shrugged and made to leave. I nudged his arm as he passed. “Taproot’s come to see us off.”

  Dr. Taproot approached. He looked uncomfortable in the open air, removed from his desk. Two men flanked him, leading their horses, a pale gelding and a dun mare. The first the lion tamer we met in the blueness of Taproot’s tent, the second a hugely built man who was obviously occupying the strongman job that Snorri had initially been taken to be an applicant for. I wondered if the good doctor was expecting trouble of some kind.

  “Taproot.” Snorri inclined his head. The stolen sword hung at his hip now, depending from an arrangement of rope and leather strips.

  “Aha! The travellers!” Taproot looked up at his strongman as if weighing him in the balance with Snorri. “Heading north now. Watch me!”

  Neither of us had an answer to that. Taproot continued. “Dogged by ill fortune perhaps? The kind of misfortune that fills and empties graves. Watch me!” His hands moved as if performing each task while he described it. “That would have been valuable information. At yesterday’s noon that information would have earned its keep.” The sorrow on his long features seemed almost too perfect, almost caricature. It worried me that I couldn’t tell if the baby’s death had meant anything to him or not. “In any case, the milk was spilt.” He trailed off, then turned to go but caught himself and spun once more to face us. “Unborn!” Almost a shout now. “You bring unborn into the world? How—” He found his control once more and carried on, his voice conversational again. “This was not well done. Not well done at all. You must go far from here. And fast.” He indicated the two horses and his companions stepped forwards, holding the reins out towards us. I took the gelding. “Twenty crowns on your debt slate, my prince.” Taproot inclined his head a fraction. “I know you will be good for it.”

  I looked my steed over, patted his neck, felt the meat over his ribs. A decent enough nag. Snorri stood woodenly beside his as if worried she might bite him.

  “My thanks,” I said, and swung up into the saddle. Twenty in gold was a fair enough price. A touch steep, but fair under the circumstances. I felt better mounted. God gave us horses so we could run away faster.

  “Best be quick on your path—you’re at the centre of a storm, young prince, and no mistake.” Taproot nodded as if it had been me talking and him agreeing. “There are hands aplenty in this matter, many fingers in the pot. All stirring. A grey hand behind you, a black hand in your path. Scratch a little deeper, though, and you might find blue behind the black, red behind the grey. And deeper still? Does it go deeper? Who knows? Not this old circus-keeper. Perhaps everything goes deeper than deep, deep without end. But I’m old, my eyes grow dim, I only see so far.”

  “Um.” It seemed the only sensible reply to his outpouring of nonsense. I could see now who trained up the circus fortune-teller.

  Taproot nodded at my wisdom. “Let us part friends, Prince Jalan. The Kendeths have been a force for good in Red March.” He held out his thin hand and I took it quick enough, for I guessed it pained him to keep it still so long. “There!” he said. “I was sorry to hear of your mother’s death, my prince.” I released his hand. “Too young—too young she was for the assassin’s blade.”

  I blinked at him, nodded, and nudged my new horse on down the lane. “Come on, Snorri.” Over my shoulder. “It’s like rowing a boat.”

  “I’ll walk a little first,” he said, and followed on, leading his nag by the reins.

  I’ll admit some regret in leaving the circus behind. I liked the people, the air of the place, even on the move. And of course the dancers. Despite that, I had a small smile on my lips. It was good to know that even Taproot’s vast stock of information failed him from time to time. My mother died of a flux. I touched the lump made by the locket under my jacket, Mother’s picture inside. A flux. The contact made me uneasy all of a sudden, my smile gone.

  • • •

  We got to the main road and turned back along the path we’d first taken, guided by directions from the midget cardsharp at the gate. Neither of us spoke until we reached the pile of elephant dung that had first alerted me to the circus’s proximity.

  “So, you can’t ride, then?”

  “Never tried,” he said.

  “You’ve never even sat on a horse?” It seemed hard to credit.

  “I’ve eaten plenty,” he said.

  “That doesn’t help.”

  “How difficult can it be?” he asked, making no move to find out.

  “Less difficult than jumping onto bears and off again, I suspect. Luckily I’m the finest horseman in Red March and a great teacher.” I pointed at the stirrup. “Put your foot in there. Not the foot you first thought of—the other one. Step up, and don’t fall off.”

  Lessons continued slowly and to his credit Snagason did not fall off. I did worry that he might cave in the horse’s ribs with those oh-so-muscly legs of his, but in the end Snorri and the horse reached an uneasy truce where they both adopted a fixed grin and got on with moving forwards.

  By the time the sun had passed its zenith I could tell the Norseman was suffering.

  “How’s the hand?”

  “Less painful than the thighs,” he grunted.

  “Perhaps if you loosened your grip a little and let the poor horse breathe . . .”

  “Tell me about Rhone,” he said.

  I shrugged. We wouldn’t reach the border until the next evening and the last mile would suffice to tell him anything worthwhile about the place, but it seemed he needed distraction from his aches and pains.

  “Not so much to tell. Awful place. The food’s bad, the men surly and ignorant, the women cross-eyed. And they’re thieves to a man. If you shake a Rhonish hand, count your fingers afterward.”

  “You’ve never been there, have you?” He shot a narrow look back at me, then lurched to keep his place in the saddle.

  “Did you not listen to
what I said? Why would I go somewhere like that?”

  “I don’t understand it.” He risked another glance back. “Rhonish kings founded Red March, did they not? Wasn’t it the Rhonish who saved you from Scorron invasion? Twice?”

  “I hardly think so!” Now he mentioned it, though, it did trigger a faint memory of too-hot days in the Grey Room with Tutor Marcle. “I suspect a prince of Red March knows a little more about local history than some . . . hauldr off the frozen slopes of a fjord.” I’ll admit to sleeping through most of Marcle’s history lessons, but I probably would have noticed a thing like that. “In any event, they’re a bad sort.”

  To change the topic of conversation, and because every time I glanced back my imagination hid monsters in the shadows, I brought up the topic of pursuit.

  “When I ran into you, the fissure, the crack that was chasing me . . . it came from the Silent Sister’s spell.”

  “You told me this. The spell she placed to kill everyone at this opera of yours.”

  “Well . . . it would have killed everyone, but I don’t think that was the reason she cursed the place. Maybe she wasn’t out to destroy us all—maybe she had her target and the rest of us were just in the way. Could whatever she was after have chased us to the circus?”

  Snorri raised his brows, then frowned, then shook his head. “That unborn was new-formed, from Daisy’s child. It didn’t follow us there.”

  That sounded a touch more hopeful. “But . . . it didn’t just happen by chance, surely? Aren’t these things supposed to be very rare? Someone made that happen. Someone trying to kill us.”

  “Your Red Queen was gathering tales of the dead. She knows Ragnarok is hard upon us—the last battle is coming. She’s drawing her plans against the Dead King and likely he’s drawing his plans against her. The Dead King may know about us, he may know we’re headed north, dragging the witch’s magic with us. He may know we’re bound for the Bitter Ice where his dead are gathering. He may want to stop us.”