Distracted, she looked up in surprise. “Of course not!” And before I could ask her what manner of container they were, she was waving me along the flowerbed. “Fen, begin over there - the red flowers with the purple centres - just the dead flower heads, please, as many as you can - and be careful, don’t touch the -!”
Pale blue puff-balls grew next to the scarlet flowers - I had though I heard a sound, and picked one.
“Fen, that’s Freeflite! Drop it at once…!”
“It tinkles!” I held the little specimen close to my ear and shook the little round ball of blue fluff on its stem; it rang and rang like the sound from a silver triangle in the hands of a child. And then -
I was covered with blue powder, and my ears were still ringing from the bang that had exploded somewhere close to my right ear. I was confused. I sneezed, and gasped, and was only just aware, through my ringing ears and watering eyes, of the Princess Aninn running down the path towards me.
And then the most wonderful thing happened. I had decided that the taste of the odd blue powder in my mouth was just like honey, or perhaps treacle, and was just about to tell this to Aninn, when I found myself floating away from her. Floating with my lame leg and my good leg both, off the ground at least three feet, and then four feet…
“What’s happening?” I asked no one in particular, for oddly enough, I was not frightened. It was rather funny, when I thought about it. When I looked at the Princess and the expression of comic dismay on her face as she lunged for my feet, I couldn’t stop my laughter.
“Fen! Reach for me!”
“What is happening? I’m light! I’m light as air! I waved my arms a little and actually floated higher. “Look at me!” I called down to Aninn, “I don’t need my silly lame leg! I’ll never use it again! I’ll fly everywhere! I’m flying! I’m flying!”
The Princess grabbed for my feet, caught one but lost her grip - one of my shoes came off in her hand. I should have been outraged with her for spoiling my fun, but she was a dear, if a grown-up, and simply didn’t have a clue.
“Fen, stop wriggling! Don’t flap your arms! Reach down for me!”
“I can fly higher than the castle! I can fly off and see my mother! My father!” I added. “I can go search for my father!” and I knew I would find him from my new vantage point, I just knew it! If only the damnable tree had not put itself in my way.
I was so light that I was a little at the mercy of the breeze, that was the problem - and now I seemed to be entangled in leafy branches and unable to give myself a good kick-off, for every time I did, I hit my head on a branch.
Below me, the Princess Aninn was behaving like a spoilsport and had hold of my tights by the toes. They were beginning to stretch alarmingly. “Let go!” I yelled down to her, having to clutch at the waistband to avoid a complete loss of dignity.
“Come down, Fen! Use the tree branches and pull yourself down…!”
“Arra, Aninn, let go of a fellow’s tights, can’t you!”
“Come down, Fen, you must!”
“In a minute! In a minute!”
“It won’t last, Fen - don’t you see? You’ll fall! People have died from Freeflite! You must come -”
I heard a noise, but it took some seconds to penetrate, Aninn had tripped over a tree root or a stone and had fallen, thankfully losing her hold on my tights; I clung one-armed to a branch and began hauling them up, grumbling all the while, until -
A dark shape had appeared, there below, and I stopped, and stared. Aninn was sitting where she had fallen, in a bed of what looked to be lavender, except that she was covered with silvery-mauve pollen, and I had never heard of lavender behaving like that.
And the dark figure standing directly below me was Lord Bress. I swallowed and suddenly did not feel nearly as light as I had a few seconds before. As I watched, he walked over to where Aninn sat, sneezing a little, and stood over her.
For a long moment he did not speak, and then he said, “To think I came looking for you. To tell you -” He stopped. Then, in a different voice, “You betrayed my trust.”
“No, My Lord.” It was amazing how much dignity she possessed, sitting there in a lavender bed, covered in pollen. Only a true Princess Royal could have carried it off.
His voice was pitched low, as if under strict control, “Of all places, this is sacred to me. And you stole the key and trespassed here.”
She did not speak, The Dark Lord looked about. “Where is the boy? You bewitched him, didn’t you? He would never willingly betray me.”
“Yes.”
He was surprised, I think, by her speed in agreeing with the accusation. “Yes, I bewitched the boy,” she repeated, and only then did she rise to her feet - he did not make the least effort to help her up - and face him.
“Do you have no conscience?” he asked, furious. “You used me, you used that boy -”
“I was promised my plant specimens. I took what was promised to me!”
“All that I had was yours - and you choose to lie and steal from me!”
“You can’t hide these plants from the world! They are here to help everyone! Especially mortals - and you have a responsibility,” she almost shouted, “to share them!”
“Do not dare to lecture me on responsibility! Do you think I don’t know how dangerous they are if they fall into the wrong hands?”
“That is nonsense and you know it!”
“Crorliss said -”
“You know more than Crorliss will ever know! Why do you pretend not to?”
In the angry pause I looked down; my tights had been stretched badly and were blowing about in the breeze beside and a little behind where the Dark Lord stood. I tried to make myself more comfortable on the branch and began, very slowly, to haul them up, hand over hand, like a fishing line, worried, every moment, that he would turn and find them, floating there before him like strange bunting.
Lord Bress was saying, in a low voice, “I will not be used by anybody, not you, nor your father.”
Aninn flared, “My father has nothing to do with my coming here! He thought me foolish to even try to have a sensible and mature dialogue with you - and he was right!”
He walked towards her slowly, with what seemed like grim determination. I took advantage of the pause to zip the last of my tights up into the branches.
“I have played your little games for weeks, now,” said Lord Bress, “but this escapade marks the end of my patience. The truth of the matter is that Tiarn is an old and sick man and he’d tired of this War. He sent you to flatter me, to make a fool of me, to trap me into a marriage that would force a peace!”
“How dare you! My father had no such intention!”
His voice was lower as he moved closer to her, “He wanted to gain the best possible terms of truce…” And, as the Princess went to speak, “…and for you to have your precious plants.”
They were standing very close to each other indeed, there below me. For some reason the Princess seemed to be having difficulty retaining the edge of anger to her voice. “You’re wrong, Bress…”
She stopped, inhaled sharply as his hand came up and brushed some of the pollen from her bare shoulder, at that point where her neck rose. She was not meeting his eyes.
His hand touched her hair, very lightly. It was very odd behaviour, considering the gravity of their argument and the international repercussions it represented.
“What terms is he offering, Your Highness?” Bress asked, almost gently.
“He… he didn’t…” she half-inclined her head towards his hand as it brushed her neck, her jaw line.
“What terms?”
“None.”
There was a moment’s pause, and his hand stilled. “None?”
“Yes. He… my father did not mention any terms to be discussed between us.”
“Tiarn wants a truce that’s unconditional?”
“Not a truce, no.”
“You don’t mean to tell me that he expects Geeragh to surrender?
” And I shivered at the tone of his voice.
I do not believe the Princess cared for it, either, for she faltered a little as she met his gaze and answered him, “Oh, no. I’m quite sure he didn’t expect that. I mean, no. that’s not it. He didn’t mean that at all.”
“what does he mean?”
“Well… one can’t… My Lord, must you stand so close? It would appear that you are attempting to intimidate me.”
“Are you so easily intimidated?” but he did not wait for her to answer; he moved back a little, and leaned against the trunk of the tree, my tree, at just that spot where, a few minutes before, my leggings had been waving in the breeze.
“And for your information,” she seemed a little more confident, more assertive, now he was not so close to her, “Father would never dream of arranging a marriage between you and me. Even if I were to wish it.”
“Of course you’d wish it.” He scoffed a little.
“I would not.”
“I would not ask you. But if I did…” He was moving towards her again. “Your father would give anything, anything - even hand you over like any goods and chattels, willing or no - if it meant an end to this War.”
Her face was white. “There is no War, My Lord.”
He stopped. Whatever he had been expecting, whatever I had been expecting, it was not this.
“No… War?”
“No, My Lord.” Her chin was raised, she gazed up into his face.
“No… War?”
“No, My Lord.”
“You jest.” He gave a short bark of a laugh. It fell into silence. Only the wind moved through the Garden, and the pale azure balls of Freeflite rang softly.
“For one hundred and ten years my country has been struggling, my armies decimated, my entire navy has disappeared without trace - and you stand there telling me that there is no War?”
“Your navy - if you mean the Great Sea Battle of Twelve years ago - there was a storm - just as your ships reached Foyrrian waters - most of the loss of ships and lives occurred then. As for your army -”
“I pushed the Foyrrians back from the foothills to the southernmost range of the Southern Mountains! You’re barricaded in! Your father didn’t even meet me in the field! Never! He stays hidden at High Foyrr and won’t lead his troops!”
“My father is an old man! He was old one hundred and ten years ago! And he was needed to govern Foyrr, not to thunder about playing soldier so that women could admire his figure in armour!”
“Are you accusing me of going to war to show off my wardrobe?!”
“My father is twice the man you are, and twice the ruler that you are!”
“Your father is an old drunkard who won’t move from his couch except to piss!”
“How dare you! And what are you like, making accusations of drunkenness when I remember my father telling me of a State Visit before the War and how green you were and how you drank so much wine at dinner that you fell over one of the hounds!”
“That was perfectly understandable, given the cheap wine your father serves to his guests!”
“How dare you insult my father, a true leader, a true gentleman, you… you usurper!” She stopped, abruptly, and gave a little gasp.
Lord Bress had stopped as if struck, and now he whirled away from her and yelled, “Woman, go to hell!”
The Princess Aninn vanished.
I blinked. I looked about the Garden. She was not on the path, nor on the lawns. I had not imagined it.
Lord Bress was leaning against the tree in whose branches I was crouched. He was still shouting, as if he were a soul in torment, “I wish I’d never set eyes on you! I wish you to hell, woman! Leave me alone!”
He was wasting his words. After that first, terrible pronouncement the Princess was… no longer here. I had a clear view of most of the Garden. She was not here.
I tried to call out her name. I tried to call out the name of the Dark Lord, forgetting my guilt over my actions that morning, forgetting everything.
Lord Bress turned about to face an empty path, an empty flowerbed. “You had no right to…!”
It was seeing this, that he, too, now knew she was gone, that made me find my voice. “No!” I cried, as if by denying what I had seen I could deny its reality. “No!”
On the path below, the Dark Lord of Geeragh raised an astonished face to mine - and at that moment the effects of the Freeflite wore off. From clinging to a branch to keep from flying upwards I now had no balance at all to stop myself from falling downwards - one futile clutch at the tree branch - and that’s exactly what I did.
CHAPTER NINE
My head hurt so much… the pain lessened only when I slept; but when I slept, I dreamed. And this was worse, for my dreams catapulted me back to that moment in the Garden. I had my jewelled dagger, and flew at the Dark Lord, demanding, “Where is she? Where is she!” The dagger would fly up into the tree, or be swallowed by a Snapping Dragon; the Dark Lord would leave the Garden and it would grow dark, and I was left there alone, searching in the flowerbeds, being bitten on the forehead by the savage little flowers, and exclaiming, “Where is my dagger! I must find her! Where’s my dagger?”
Crorliss, too, haunted my dreams. His broad, frowning face and black eyes moved close, faded, only to reappear, and I somehow lacked the strength to tell him to go away.
Poli came and went also, and she, of course, was more welcome; she murmured comforting things and clicked her tongue with sympathy, and placed cool cloths on my forehead.
It was Poli to whom I first spoke, late at night, when I came to myself in a strange room, in a strange bed, and found her knitting by the fire. I murmured her name and she came over to me.
“Where is she?” I managed to whisper. “The Princess Aninn, where is she?”
Poli seemed to hesitate, but then admitted, “My dear, we don’t know. Lord Bress has been out searching for her all day - you’ve been ill for a day and night - we expect him back anytime.” She adjusted the covers around me. “Lord Bress has ordered this room for you until you’re better - aren’t you pleased? Like a little prince, you look.”
I had to tell Poli; I had to tell someone. “He sent her away. The Lord Bress - he sent the Princess away.”
Poli shook her head gently, tugging at the counterpane and plumping at the pillows, “She wanted to go home, she was upset, the poor girl, so they’re searching between here and the borders.”
“But you don’t understand, he made her go! I saw her go!”
“Hush, now, hush your talk…”
“He didn’t send her to Foyrr… not to Foyrr…”
Poli was avoiding my eyes as she fussed.
I turned my face into the pillow and wept.
Poli pottered about me all that night, feeding me broth, making me comfortable, helping me on and off a commode and holding a dish as I brought up the broth. My head ached horribly, and the edges of my vision danced as if twenty Shee had decided to half-materialise in the peripheries of my world.
Crorliss arrived, and informed me I had struck my head on a branch as I fell and had “loosened my brain from its moorings”. I was still coping with this nautical diagnosis when he produced a vial of pink liquid and made me drink it down right there. I tossed it off, finding the taste quite pleasant, and didn’t care, in my grief, whether Crorliss had poisoned me or not.
“Lord Bress made the Princess go away,” I told Crorliss. “Not to Foyrr. He made her go… a long way away. He told her to go…” I could not bear to say it, to believe it, “…away,” I finished lamely.
Crorliss leaned too close to me, pushed me down on the pillows. “Rest, now,” he said. “Leave this to me.” and his face look lined all of a sudden, and the black eyes were like black stones.
I was drifting off to sleep, and wondering again, at the last, if Crorliss’s draught was curing my headache in a most permanent way. But such was my guilt and anguish - for was I not as much to blame for Aninn’s disappearance as Lord Bress? - I would
have been grateful for oblivion.
The next day I awoke feeling much better; but without the headache I could think more clearly, and the situation seemed to me to be even more horrible than it had been the night before, when I viewed the day’s happenings through a confused and painful fog.
Poli would not allow me out of the great canopied bed, and, to my questions, said merely that My Lord had not yet returned from the search. She allowed Seablite and Scabious to visit me, which meant they came, sat on the ege of the bed, drank the lemonade that Poli had left for me and told me scowlingly that I wasn’t to think I would be able to shirk my work for much more than one more day.
Even one day of inaction was more than I could tolerate.
But how would I find her?
She could not be where the Dark Lord had told her to go.
Could she?
With every clatter of hoofs in the stable yard I made Poli go to the window and report what she saw. It was never Lord Bress, never the Princess Aninn.
Go to hell, he had told her. Woman, go to hell.
She had not walked away from us. She had disappeared before my eyes. She had not gone where any human could follow.
Yet Lord Bress could not conceive it possible that he would not find her; three days later, when he did, at last, return to Geeragh, I began to understand some of the dogged tenacity of the man and why he had been able to retain his hold upon a bankrupt and hostile kingdom for so many hundreds of years.
He came riding in at the head of two hundred men, who, Seablite had informed me, had been sent out on all the roads leading south and west from the castle. They were to have rendezvoused at the Mara Woods after their searches, but no one thought they would stay out this long. All the men were dusty, dirty, unshaven. A few wore grubby bandages about wounds. Lord Bress was one of them.
I had been up and about all day, hanging around the stable yard, waiting for this moment. Others had been waiting also.
Poli appeared from the kitchens, Crorliss hurried across the courtyard from the direction of his turret. Unsure, now I was confronted with Lord Bress, shy in his obvious distress and concern, I hung back a little.
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