Paladin's Oath

by M. H. Johnson

  Those, Jess thought, had been happy days. Life had been better, when all she had to worry about were her vegetative friends. And as quickly as it had come, those flashes of memories left her once more, allowing her to focus on her beautiful dream of being a tree, embracing the wordless, yet vital task of reaching ever deeper into the rich loamy soil for her delicious nutrients, even as her newly budding branches yearned for the wondrous sky far above.

  51

  Twilight yawned and stretched, giving himself a thoughtful grooming even as he carefully took in the changes that had occurred. He nodded to himself, hardly surprised. One gaze at his peacefully sleeping mistress, covered in a protective blanket of brown and green, assured him that she was well cared for, unlikely to suffer from hunger or thirst anytime soon. He gave her cheeks an affectionate lick before leaping off the foliage that had covered them both, landing gracefully upon the grassy rug at his feet. He gazed thoughtfully at the great oaken door before him, resonating with the same strength and solidity it always had, possessing a resilience that would surprise many. He gently placed his paw against the door. I’m leaving the room now, Jess, he thought aloud, and felt a gentle easing. As if thick, impassable foliage blocking the hidden ways he normally took had somehow receded, allowing him to slip through the doorway, lightly pacing down paths only he and those like him could follow.

  Eyes twinkling brightly from the shadows under the main dining table, Twilight gazed upon the Calenbrys with a bemused smile.

  "By all the gods, Mother, what has Jess done this time?" Appolonia, armed with naught but her lavender dress and an outraged expression, seemed ready to declare war, so exasperated she looked.

  "I don't know, my dear." Agda gave her head a tired shake. "Arthur! Get your daughter out of bed, and tell her to stop whatever it is she's doing, right this instant! Her actions are not going to make things any better."

  “It's no good, Mother,” a sheepish looking Geoffrey confided sometime later. “She won’t open the door, no matter how much we yell and plead.”

  Agda’s face became one of steely determination. “Very well, then. We break the door down.”

  “But Mother, you know how she loves that door!” Geoffrey snapped his mouth shut quickly when Agda focused her steely gaze upon him. “I’m sorry, Mother. At once.”

  “Your sister has harsh lessons to learn, Geoffrey. She’s been allowed to run around like a wild thing for far too long, and it could cost us all dearly. No one regrets the measures I must take to break her more than I, but by Justice, this willfulness ends here!”

  "Yes, Mother," Geoffrey agreed hurriedly, seeming all too happy to retreat for the far less fierce obstacle of his sister's ornately carved door than risk his mother's wrath even a moment longer.

  Twilight grinned, retreating back to the shadowy pathways from which he came.

  Once again leaping softly upon Jess’s foliage laden bed, he gently rested his paw against Jess’s chest. “Your family is going to try to break the door down. You love them. Please try to refrain from strangling them with vines, thorning them to death, or taking other measures of extreme prejudice.”

  Jess whimpered in her sleep, the leafy vines atop her rustling in mild agitation before settling once more. She sighed then, content, and slipped back down into a deep sleep. Twilight nodded, and headed back once more to enjoy the play.

  "By the gods, Father, the relief isn't even nicked!" Geoffrey looked on at amazement at the door, in pristine condition, the elegantly carved paneling with its satin smooth finish showed no evidence of having been subjected to repeated blows by the axe held in the heaving young lord's hands.

  His father, a practiced safe distance away, sighed and nodded, stepping over to examine the axe. The recently sharpened edge was now pitted and dulled, as if it had been swung against the hardest of stone. Arthur chuckled softly. “It seems your sister’s gifts with plants go far beyond assuring healthy crops.”

  Geoffrey nodded. “She was so confident no one could ever break into her rooms, or any of our chests. We always indulged her eccentricities. After all, who would dare break into the baron’s lock boxes? Well, it appears she wasn’t exaggerating. Not in the least.”

  Arthur smiled, giving a rueful shake of his head. “Our home will know no peace, as long as those two are at odds.”

  Geoffrey sighed in agreement even as Agda quickly made her way to husband and son, a look of puzzled frustration upon her features.

  "Are we still worrying about that door? I told you not to," Agda snapped angrily, her icy gaze causing her oldest to swallow and step back. "Jess has made the choice to play the obstinate child at a time when she must learn obedience. We no longer have time for her games! It has been over three days since the they left. We can only hope they made a good faith play regarding the Trolos clan, and at this point, we dare not show even the least divergence from the expectations of our station!"

  Agda's hard gaze reflected anger and regret in equal measure. "Against my better judgment, I gave Jess a full day to come to her senses and accept what we must do to remake her. If any rumor leaks that Jess is anything other than the obedient and pliable child we need her to be, our clan is placed in jeopardy! Break in there and drum that into her head if you must, Arthur, but we have no way of knowing when Lady Verona will return, or worse, King's Men that we have no understanding with!"

  Arthur took a deep breath. “I know, my love. Rest easy, I know. But I’m afraid we’ve run into a bit of a difficulty.” Grimacing, he showed her the axe head. His wife blinked in surprise, glanced back at the pristine hardwood, the beautiful blossoming oak tree carved so lovingly in bass relief upon the door utterly unblemished.

  “By the gods,” she whispered, shaking her head with a mixture of awe and despair. She clenched her eyes tight in sudden frustration, grabbing the nicked and dulled axe out of a surprised Arthur's hands, her husband and son quickly stepping back as she carefully rapped upon the door as loudly as she could.

  “Jessica de Calenbry, Enough! Get up and out this instant. We don’t have time for your pouting. I need you dressed and presentable at once. Jessica! I am growing unforgivably cross with you! Get up and out here this moment, do you hear me? Jessica! Jessica de Calenbry! Do you hear me?”

  Geoffrey looked on at his mother, wild-eyed and yelling at the top of her lungs, banging upon the door, albeit carefully, with the blunt side of the axe head, striving to make as much noise as possible, as if to force Jess by volume alone to accede to her mother's demands, and open her door. Geoffrey shuddered, gazing at his mother with a mixture of awe and disbelief.

  Perhaps, Twilight thought, young Geoffrey had never seen his normally utterly composed and controlled mother so distressed, ever the calm master of her environment that she normally was, playing byzantine games of politics and domesticity so well that few even realized that she was the spider at the center of so many webs. Certainly not his queen, who had not a clue, willfully blind to it since Jessica was by no means stupid, yet here was the grand lady herself, the orchestrator of so many of the goings-on in rural noble affairs, now shrieking at the door like a half mad harridan, too exhausted and frustrated to even bother with pretense any longer.

  "Jessica! By the gods, you obstinate child, get up at once, or I'm going to burn this house down around you!"

  And for a moment the hallway was cloaked in eerie green light, as if they suddenly peered out from the depths of deepest wood, before the great manor began to creak and moan, the entire vast structure seeming to shudder from the roots of its very foundations. Geoffrey jumped when a loud crack echoed through the corridor.

  “She was just kidding, Jessica!” A panicked Geoffrey shouted desperately. “No one’s burning down anything! Just, angel’s mercy, please come out, Jess. We need to talk!”

  And suddenly everything was utterly still, and they were back in their rather well appointed corridor once more, the gentle glow of afternoon light from glass paned windows and magelights serving to brighten t
he hallway with a comforting warmth, the arboreal gloom of but moments before gone as if it had never been, the oaken panels not for a moment looking like the heart of an eldritch wood, ready to devour them alive.

  Arthur and Agda shared a haunted glance, as if forced to come to grips with a reality they’d rather gloss over.

  Twilight grinned. It was good that Jess’s parents were finally beginning to understand.

  "Mother!" Appolonia, eyes widened with sudden panic raced down the hallway to them. "I felt the earth shake, and the sky turned green! Is there an earth tremor? A tornado? We have to head to the root cellars immediately!"

  “Rest easy, sister. I believe the worst has passed,” Geoffrey assured, gently holding his panicked sister close, stroking her hair soothingly.

  “But that’s not all,” Apple confided in her brother's arms. “The housing staff is in a panic. Something strange has happened.”

  “Oh by the gods, what now?” Agda looked near tears.

  Apple shook to see her mother in such a state, gazing somberly at her feet. “It’s the house. It’s… well, it's sprouted, mom.”

  Agda blinked. “What do you mean by… sprouted?”

  “Well, when the milkmaid panicked and screamed, the head chef rushed to me and insisted that I come with her at once.” She took a deep breath. “All the sides of the manor are covered in leaves.”

  “Leaves?” her mother appeared dumbfounded. Apple solemnly nodded.

  "Yes, Mother. Leaves. And bark. And branches. Lots of leafy branches are now sprouting from all the walls. at about what head height would be on, well, Jessica."

  Agda gaze a shudder and collapsed, sobbing into her husband’ arms. “Oh by the angels above, Arthur! This is too much. Just too much.”

  “That’s not all, Mother,” Appolonia warned, features pale, gazing at her mother in naked wonder. “The top of the house… well, it sort of looks like a tree now. A gigantic, massive, mixed up tree. All types. Huge trunks rising up from every corner of the house, all the various branches knotting together. Everything is in bloom. Everything at once! Blossoms like you wouldn't believe.”

  Agda froze in her husband's arms. Her voice, when she spoke, was a terrible haunted echo down the long corridor. “Our house. Our great house which has been in this family for generations has, you are saying, of a sudden turned into a gigantic… tree.”

  Apple nodded solemnly. “And it's in full bloom. Flowers and fruit everywhere. Apples, pears, chestnuts, walnuts, all ready to drop from the branches. I was just staring at it, you know, unable to believe what I was seeing, then, and then, it was like everything shifted. Like I was somehow in a great forest. Then the ground started to shake, and I raced back inside.”

  Apple turned to her brother, curious, too numbed perhaps to bother with the impossibility of it any longer. “Are trees supposed to do that, Geoffrey? Blossom and carry ripe fruit on their branches, all at the same time?”

  Geoffrey just shrugged and gave his grave looking father a helpless glance, even as their mother sobbed in his arms.

  “I fear, my wife, that perhaps we have pushed our Jessica… too far,” Arthur said softly.

  “Don’t tell me how to raise our daughter, Arthur! You know damn well we have no choice but to take the hard path!” Agda’s retort was bitter, but she made no move to leave her husband’s comforting arms, even as tears rolled freely down her cheeks.

  "My lady! Good sir! There you are, thank the angels above." Rushing towards them was their seneschal, looking as close to panic as Twilight had ever seen him. At that very moment he was nervously running his hands through his thinning hair, a gesture he normally kept well under control, being the epitome of refined decorum at all times. His presently flustered state was enough to give the entire family pause.

  “Rest easy, Gibbons.” Arthur spoke with calm authority which served to quickly reassure their chief servant. “Take a deep breath. There now, that’s better. Tell us then, what is the issue which has you so out of sorts?”

  Reassured, their man, dressed impeccably as always, bowed his head and spoke. "My lord, the Crown Agent, Lady Verona, and the Guild representatives, Del Morlekai and the bard Alexo, all are awaiting your pleasure in the main audience hall."

  Agda shuddered, and indeed, had Arthur not been holding her, Twilight would have expected her to collapse in a complete faint. “Not now, of all times. Not now!” Agda sobbed, even as her husband soothed her with his gentle words.

  Gibbons sighed, dipping his head once. “I am sorry, my lady. I did take the liberty of offering them apple brandy and pie, though I am afraid we might have trouble accessing the basement larder from this point on.”

  Arthur frowned. “Dare I ask why?”

  “Well, my lord, it appears to be full of…roots.”

  Arthur raised an eyebrow. “Roots?”

  Gibbons nodded solemnly. “Yes, my lord. Roots.”

  Agda gave a helpless laugh that bordered on tears. “Of course, why not roots? My mad daughter has transformed our centuries old house into a great tree, after all. And what is a tree without roots?”

  “Well, my lady, there is perhaps one small bit of good news.”

  "And what would that be, dear Gibbons?" Agda asked with a long-suffering smile.

  “Well, it appears that those areas of the larder we still have access to are filled with nuts.”

  “Nuts.”

  “Yes, my lady. The cook’s aid says they are literally sprouting and falling into their assigned bins before his very eyes.”

  Apple tilted her head. “We have assigned nut bins?”

  Gibbons nodded solemnly. "Yes, Lady Appolonia. Lady Jessica had organized fruit and nut bins quite some time ago. The system had seemed quite eccentric, but she was most adamant, and given her station and affinity with grow ing things, none of the kitchen staff saw fit to argue, or to trouble your family with such trifling matters."

  Apple grimaced. “Of course. Jessica. Why am I the least bit surprised?”

  Agda took a deep, shuddering breath, giving her husband's arm a grateful squeeze as she gently came out of his supportive grip. "We can address that another time. For now, it is best if your father and I spoke to our guests, and see if an understanding has been reached."

  Apple's gaze turned hard. “You mean see if they’ve managed to intimidate or threaten or find enough dirt on Kipu so that he is too afraid to start rumors about what a madwoman Jessica is. And to make sure that they haven’t changed sides on you.”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I mean!” Agda hissed. “Too much is riding on this, Appolonia! I will brook your insolence on these issues no more than I have tolerated your sister's! It is time for both of you to grow up and cease acting like children, do you understand me? The stakes are too high!”

  “Yes, Mother.” Appolonia gave a chastened dip of her head. “We may fight in private, but we stand united in public against all who look on. I know.”

  Agda gave her daughter a curt nod. “You understand that much, at least.” She turned to Arthur, solemnly taking his hand. “Come, my love. Let us see Lady Verona and find out what the verdict is.”

  Arthur gave his wife a slow nod. “Of course, my dear.” He turned to Geoffrey. “I think it is best that you and Apple join us. On your best, most solemn behavior now.”

  Agda gazed at her husband thoughtfully a moment before nodding. "You are right, of course. Come, children. Let's let our friends know exactly what hangs in the balance, and the gratitude we have for those we hold dear."

  “I feel like I’m going to the executioner’s block, Geoff,” Apple confided with a squeeze of his hand as they proceeded down the corridor. “My heart is racing so fast, I feel like I’m going to be sick.”

  Her brother flashed a sympathetic smile. "Yes, the anxiety does bite. Let us hope we will have the means to ameliorate the damage, and that the cost for silence will not be too dear a price to pay."

  Apple gazed up at her brother in surprise, their parents ignori
ng them, in their own quiet whispered counsel. “You mean Mother and Father are going to bribe Kipu and his father?”

  Geoffrey gave his sister a bemused rub on her forehead, earning him an angry glare. "Of course, dear one. It was the agreement underneath the words. First reconnaissance. Is there any dirt on your former beau that we can use as leverage? Then the confrontation between Crown Agent and the Trolos Clan. Even the threat of a formal inquiry could well make them social outcasts in certain circles, and thus the entire matter becomes an issue they would wish to keep quiet, no matter how gravely Jess had offended Kipu. And finally, the honey to replace the implied vinegar. Apologies are made, offers to make amends for any…misunderstandings. A figure is quoted, all is understood, and we settle the issue." Her brother sighed. "It's a dirty game, I know, but this is how things are handled between Houses. Frankly, had our own clan not been in such a precarious position with so many dukes hungry for Father's lands, Lord Trolos wouldn't even think of causing trouble, as any other baron would find pretext to crush him as soon as spit, after Kipu brought four armed men to our gala. Really, Apple, Jessica is the one with her head in the clouds, you are far more firmly grounded. I would have thought that the path before us was an obvious one."

  Apple nodded solemnly. "Yes, I gathered all that, after Mother's first conversation with that agent. But Mother has just been so… shaken. I feared things were worse, that Jessica had placed us on much rockier ground."

  Geoffrey sighed. “That is the other color to this portrait of events, I’m afraid. Jessica touched upon something wild, in that adventure that to everyone save the Guild bards seems more like dreamspice induced delusion than reality. Yet certain things were mentioned in their stories such that even the Royal Clan had to take notice."