He opened his eyes. “You should hear Rumble scream. It gives me nightmares.”
“That can’t work all the time.”
“But it works enough. Enough for peace.” Mickel hesitated, giving her an uncertain look. “You ran from the man you thought I was. You were so desperate not to marry me, you were willing to enter the Tangleroot.”
“And you agreed to marry a woman sight unseen.” Sally frowned. “You seem like too much a free spirit for that.”
“Our mothers were best friends. Growing up, all I ever heard about was Melisande and how brave she was, how good, how kind. How, when there was trouble, she was always the fighter, protecting my mother. And vice versa.” He reached beneath his leather armor and pulled out a pendant that was an exact mirror of her own. “I never knew. I never imagined. She was devastated when she learned of Melisande’s death. I think it hastened her own.”
“I’m sorry,” Sally said.
He tilted his shoulder in a faint shrug. “She told me that Melisande had borne a daughter, and that one day… one day she would like for us to meet. And so when your father advertised the fact that he was looking for a husband for his daughter—”
“Advertised,” she interrupted.
“Oh, yes. Far and wide. Princess. Beautiful. Nubile. Available to big strong man, with even bigger sword.” Mickel thumped his chest. “I was intrigued. I was mortified. I thought I would save the daughter of my mother’s best friend from a fate worse than death.”
“And if I had been a loud mouthed harridan with a taste for garlic and a fear of bathing?”
“I would have been the Warlord everyone thinks I am, tossed her aside like a sack of potatoes in a white wedding dress, and asked for the hand of a peculiar redheaded woman I met on the road.”
Sally smiled. “And if she said no?”
“Well,” Mickel said, kissing her hand. “I may not be the Warlord of the Savage Belly Ache, but I am exceptionally brave. I would fight for her. I would battle magic forests and sleeping queens for her. I would plunge into icy waters—”
“—and be rescued by her?”
“Oh, yes,” he whispered, no longer smiling. “I would love to be rescued by such a fair and lovely lady. Every day, every morning, every moment of my life.”
Sally’s breath caught, and Mickel touched the back of her neck and pulled her close. “You, Princess, are far more dangerous than any Warlord of Raven’s Teeth, or Ravisher of Dandelions.” Again, uncertainty filled his eyes. “But do you still want me, knowing all this?”
“I never wanted a warlord,” Sally said. “But you… I think you’ll do just fine. If you don’t mind having a witch as your bride.”
“Queen Magic and Warlord Illusion,” he whispered, and leaned in to kiss her.
Sally placed her hand over his mouth. “But I want another name.”
Mickel blinked. “Another?”
She removed her hand and grinned against his mouth. “Well, the Warlord must have a wife who is equal to his charms, yes?”
Mickel laughed quietly. “And what will I call you? War Lady? My Princess of Pain?”
“Just call me yours,” she whispered. “The rest will take care of itself.”
And it did.
The Wrong Bridegroom
SHARON SHINN
1
The Beautiful Princess
This was the proclamation sent out to all corners of the land: I, King Reginald, have decreed that I will wed my daughter, Olivia, to the man who passes three tests that prove he is brave, strong, and clever. All men are invited to Kallenore Castle to compete for the very fairest prize.
Sounds romantic, doesn’t it? I thought so at first, until I started appraising some of my suitors. They didn’t arrive armed only with weapons, courage, and intelligence. A good number of them also brought lust, greed, ambition, and a few other unsavory traits. For Kallenore was a lush and prosperous land, and I was my father’s only child—and people have been telling me since the day I was born that I’m beautiful. I have to admit I secretly believe it’s true. My hair is black, my eyes are blue, and my skin has been free of those appalling blemishes for four years.
After the first round of competition—a standard if very energetic joust—eliminated more than half of the contestants, I began to think seriously about what it would mean to be married off to someone I didn’t know and might not like. I was particularly worried about two of the combatants who had survived the rounds of fighting. One was a large, brutish man who looked like he could tear apart the palace’s foundation stones with his thumb and forefinger. He had bulging eyes, greasy hair, and a beard that might not have been trimmed since the day it first started to show. I comforted myself with the thought that he didn’t look bright enough to pass the test that relied on brains.
But the second contestant who caught my eye most assuredly was that intelligent, and I didn’t want to marry him, either. In fact, my refusal to be betrothed to Sir Harwin Brenley of Brenley Estates was what had precipitated this whole not so-romantic-after-all competition in the first place.
I had known Harwin my whole life. His father, Sir Milton, was the most significant property owner in the kingdom, a lord who by turns was my father’s greatest ally and chief adversary. The day I was born, our parents decided that Harwin and I should marry. Harwin had never seemed as horrified at the idea as I had.
Well, he wouldn’t. He was too dull to whip up an emotion like horror. He was placid and stolid and measured and practically bovine in his level of insensate calm. He could be quite stubborn in failing to yield a point or change his mind, but he never argued; he never shouted or threw things or stalked from the room spitting curses. He wasn’t, I suppose, hideously unattractive, for he was tall, and athletic enough to acquit himself on a jousting field, and his face didn’t have any scars or squints or disproportionate features. He just was—this big, solid, boring clump of a human being.
I mean, I couldn’t possibly marry him.
What if he passed all three of my father’s tests?>
I would run away. I would. My father couldn’t make me marry someone against my will.
My father had never been able to make me do anything I didn’t want to do. Which was probably the reason he detested me as much as I detested him.
There was a knock on the door, which I ignored, but the person in the hallway came inside anyway. I glared at her. I usually went to some trouble to avoid spending any time with my stepmother, Gisele, more out of principle than because of any active dislike. Well, she was only five years older than I was, small and dainty and well behaved. Her dark brown hair always lay sleek against her cheeks; her black eyes were always watchful. She made me look like a big galumphy girl when I stood beside her, and even when she wasn’t criticizing me out loud, her expression was generally reproving. And she had married my father, which I couldn’t imagine any woman of sense wanting to do. Ever since she had moved into the palace three years ago, I had refused to respond to any of her attempts to win me over. She had mostly given up trying.
Today it seemed like she might be trying one more time. Her face wore a more urgent expression than usual. “Olivia,” she said. “It’s not too late.”
I had been standing at the window, watching the bustle in the palace courtyard, where most of the contestants had set up tents and pavilions. There were still probably two dozen remaining, and at least half of them were milling around in the warm golden light of an autumn afternoon. The whole scene of color and endless motion was amazingly inviting, and I longed to be down there with my suitors instead of up here with my stepmother.
I turned my back to the pageantry outside and said in the surly voice I usually employed while speaking to Gisele, “It’s not too late for what?”
“To accept Harwin,” she said.
I let out a gusty breath of surprise. “I am not going to marry Harwin!”
She went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Have you taken a good look at some of the individuals who
have come to the palace with the intention of winning your hand? Even if you ignore the obvious fact that they would be unqualified to rule at your side once you inherit your father’s throne, they would be nightmares to share your bed with for the next fifty years. I know you think Harwin is a charmless bore, but he is not cruel, he is not stupid, and he is nowhere near as oafish as you believe. Whereas some of these men—”
I stiffened my back. I would not let her see that her alarm was echoing my own uneasiness. “The competition has already started,” I said. “It would not be hon orable to cancel it now.”
“You’ll be thinking a lot less about honor once you find yourself married to a man you cannot tolerate,” Gisele said grimly. “You’ll be wishing yourself safely wed to Harwin Brenley, for all his bland conversation.”
I actually stamped my foot. “I do not choose to marry Harwin,” I said. “A woman should have some choice in the matter of her marriage!”
“She should, which is why she should say yes when the choice she is offered is a tolerable one,” Gisele replied.
“Is that how you ended up married to a king?” I said in a rude voice. “Because you turned down the other matches your father would have made for you?”
She watched me steadily with those dark, unreadable eyes. “Do you think your father is the person I would have married had I been given the choice?”
I hunched a shoulder. “You married him fast enough. My mother had only been dead six months.”
“My father and your father strode from the crypt to the chapel, already making plans,” she shot back. “I would have been here six days after her death if they had had their way.”
I shrugged again. What did it matter? She had been eager enough to jump into the marriage bed with a man old enough to be her father. “At any rate, you can see why I am not so interested in your advice on how to make a happy marriage.”
She continued to keep her gaze on me. “Your father wants a son,” she said. “The minute he has one, you will be shoved aside—forgotten. I recommend that you make sure you are safely married off to a man you like and admire before your father gets his son, or your life will become wretched in the extreme. There. I have just given you another piece of good advice that you will no doubt ignore.”
“I suppose it’s very lucky for me that you have so far failed to provide him that son,” I said.
“I suppose it is.”
I spread my hands in an impatient gesture. “Why do I find it so hard to believe that you have my best interests at heart?”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Why do you?”
Shrugging again, I turned my back on her and once more gave all my attention to the tumble and gaiety in the courtyard. “Thank you for your concern,” I said, my polite voice obviously insincere. “But I think I can manage my life without your interference.”
* * *
I waited till after dark. And then I put on a plain, brown cloak, pulled the hood over my head, and stole down the servants’ stairways, out the kitchen exit, and into the vast courtyard. Soon I was winding my way through the variegated tents, jostling bodies, and loud merriment that had taken over what was normally a very formal space.
It was hard to take it all in. Servants and pages were racing past the irregular campfires, carrying messages and fetching food. Some of the men were outside their tents, arguing and practicing swordplay. Some were inside; I could see their shadows leap and gesture on the cloth walls, lit from within. The smells were diverse and suffocating—smoke, meat, ale, mud, horse, leather, and excrement, from man or beast or both. Now and then I heard a woman’s laugh or high-pitched squeal over the lower rumble of men’s voices.
The sounds surprised me and I found myself frowning. I had a low opinion of any man who brought a doxy to a competition to win the hand of a princess. Shouldn’t all my suitors be pure of heart as well as strong and brave and brilliant? I would have any man disqualified if he consorted with low women while he was wooing me. If, of course, I could figure out which ones they were.
I had wound my way halfway through the courtyard when I spotted the big bruiser who had caught my eye during the joust. He was sitting on an overturned barrel, but he was so heavy it looked as though his body weight was slowly forcing it into the ground. In one hand he held a hunk of charred meat hacked off the bone; in the other, he held a slovenly woman whose breasts were so big her dirty white camisole could hardly contain them. Three comrades lounged nearby, calling out advice. I hurried on before I could quite decipher what that advice pertained to.
No. He would not be an acceptable bridegroom by any measure.
He could not win my father’s competition, could he?>
I wandered on, drawing my cloak more tightly around my body to fend off the chill of the autumn evening. I was a little reassured to come upon a corner of the camp where no one was wolfing down overcooked meals or enjoying the attention of questionable women. There were plenty of sober-looking young men sitting contemplatively before their fires, or oiling their blades or mending their tack. I even saw one reading a book. He was a tall, lean fellow who looked to be mostly ribs and elbows. I couldn’t imagine how he’d made it through the joust without being unhorsed, but I guessed he would fare well during the test of intelligence. Standing in the darkness, I studied his face by flickering firelight. He looked humorless, severe, fanatical. I would not want to be married to him, either.
Though I would choose him over the big brute with the greasy skin.
If I was allowed to choose.
I pushed away my anxiety and moved on.
At the very last tent pitched just inside the palace gate, I saw a man practicing magic.
It was difficult at first to get a glimpse of him, because he had drawn a small crowd of onlookers who ringed him about, murmuring astonishment. I found a discarded trunk with a broken lock and stood on it to get a better view. And then I, too, was gasping with delight at the show unfolding before me.
A slim, handsome young man stood in a circle of spectators, his face and body lit by the curiously brilliant flames of a low fire. But no—it was not an ordinary fire; it was a blaze made of jagged blocks of golden quartz, each tendril of flame tapered to a point, the whole thing glowing like a harvest moon. While we watched, he twisted his outstretched hands, and the colors within surged to red and hunkered down to purple. He snapped his fingers and the light disappeared completely—and then suddenly sprang back to life, crackling and leaping like an ordinary little fire.
“How’d you do that?” someone asked in a stupefied voice, speaking for all of us.
“Magic,” said the young man, and then he laughed.
He was plainly visible in the light from the natural fire, and he was adorable. His shoulder-length blond hair had a rogue curl; his face wore a rascal’s smile. The mischievous look was counteracted somewhat by deep-set eyes, a generous mouth, and a patrician nose. His hands were elegant and expressive; he reached for the sky and I swear every person in the audience looked up to see what he might pluck from the air. A bird, as it happened, squawking and indignant, who shook itself and leapt from his palm to wing back into the night. He laughed to see it go, his expression purely joyous.
“Are your tricks real or just illusions?” someone demanded.
“What makes you think illusions are not real?” he replied. He picked up a block of rough firewood and squeezed it in his hands; it lengthened and changed colors and leafed out between his fingers, becoming a switch of live greenery covered with white flowers. Just as I had convinced myself that this was a mere visual trick, he snapped off one of the blossoms and presented it to a woman in the audience, a little older and a little less debased than the one I had seen on the big fellow’s lap. She cooed and tucked the bloom into the front of her bodice, then shared a kiss with a man who had his arm around her waist.
“What else can you do?” someone called out.
“What would you like to see me do?”
“Can you
change coppers to gold coins?” another man spoke up.
The blond man laughed. “I’ve found that it never pays to tinker with the king’s coin,” he said. “So the answer is no.”
“Can you turn water into ale?”
“Make a woman love you?”
“Heal a broken limb?”
“Change a person’s face?”
It was this last request that interested him. “Whose face? Your own? Come closer and let me look at you.”
A young man broke free of the shadows and stepped into the circle of firelight. He was of medium height, a little heavyset, with an unfortunate collection of features. Droopy eyes under thick brows, a nose both large and broad, huge ears, bad teeth, the whole covered with a pocked and scarred layer of skin. “I wouldn’t ask to be made a handsome man,” the youth said in a quiet voice, “just better-looking.”
The magician studied him. “I believe I can improve you without making you unrecognizable to your friends.”
Again the crowd murmured, a little bit awed, a little bit unnerved. I had to admit my own emotions were much the same. “How long would such a magic last?” the boy asked.
The blond man shrugged. “Forever. It will be as if your face was resculpted, down to the blood and bone.”
The homely boy took a deep breath. “Then change me, if you will.”
Someone behind him called out, “Calroy, you fool, you didn’t ask him for his fee first!”
The magician laughed again. “There’s no fee. I’ll do it for the challenge alone. Hold still now.” And Calroy closed his eyes and turned motionless as a tree stump. The blond man frowned in concentration and laid his hands over Calroy’s jaws, his eyes, his unruly hair. Everyone in the audience, myself included, was leaning forward to watch, but Calroy’s back was to most of us and there was very little to see. Another flutter of his fingers and then the magician stepped back.
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