Books of Bayern Series Bundle

by Shannon Hale

  “I would’ve faced them,” said Conrad.

  Ani nodded earnestly, hoping to convey her good faith in him. He shrugged, leaned against the archway, and inspected his boots for holes. The geese were still squawking. Ani gathered them in with words of safety and calm.

  When the clouds blotted out the blue of the sky and the air shivered with an early spring chill, Ani took the geese in. As she opened the door to the hall, a cheer erupted and fists banged on the tables. Sifrid held up the pieces of her broken staff as a symbol of the battle. Mistress Ideca examined her neck and prescribed a cool pack. Though Ideca did not smile, she did not grumble, either. Ani declined to relate what had happened, so the cow and sheep boys stepped forward to relay their version, embellishing the parts they had not seen.

  “And then the goose girl knocked two down with her staff, a careful blow to the head, and the second head. Bam, crack. The third was a giant man grown in the Bavara Mountains on bear meat and raw eggs, and he crushed her staff with his fist.”

  The listeners responded with feigned and jovial gasps of horror. Ani laughed behind her hands. When she looked up again, she saw Conrad in a far corner. His face was serious and sad.

  “So the goose girl,” said Sifrid, “she tossed aside the broken weapon, and grabbed her opponent by his greasy hair and hit him with her own head right between the eyes. Bam. Down he fell, dumb as a dead tree, and shook the ground. With a word, she commanded her goose army to drive the scum from their land, and they followed their leader, trumpeting triumphantly.”

  There was laughter and applause, and four lads were sent to the pasture to retrieve the villains’ poles and bags for more mementos. Two did not return until much later and entered the hall not with poles, but with Tatto the pageboy.

  “The king’s heard of the strife for the protection of his geese,” said Tatto, “and he wishes to hear the story and thank those involved.”

  The workers cheered. Ani stayed seated. Her face felt cold.

  “I, I can’t go,” she said.

  “Oh, come on, Isi,” said Sifrid, “go brag a little.”

  “No, no, really I can’t.”

  Razo stomped his foot. “You’re not so shy as you let us think when you first got here. You can face a king. He’s just a man in a crown who eats potatoes and has gas.”

  “I bet he doesn’t eat cold potatoes,” said Bettin.

  “Well, maybe not cold potatoes,” said Razo, “but I’d bet my fist he’s as gassy as Beier.”

  “Nobody’s as gassy as Beier,” said Sifrid, dodging Beier’s shove.

  “Guess Isi’ll have to find out for herself when she goes to see the king, won’t you?” said Razo.

  Ani could see the workers were not going to let her sneak out of this. She spotted Conrad in the corner, pretending indifference to the commotion, and she went to him.

  “Will you come?” she said.

  He shrugged and stood up.

  They followed Tatto out of the hall, encouraged from behind by the cheers of the workers. When they had walked a block, Ani stopped.

  “I’m not going,” said Ani. “I can’t go. I was hoping, Conrad, that you’d go in my stead.”

  Tatto looked at her wide-eyed, but Conrad did not respond.

  “Please,” she said. “You were involved, and you would’ve fought them off yourself, but that you were being wise. Don’t even mention me. The story’s yours. Tell it how you will.”

  Tatto shook his head. “Aren’t you the one what drove them off?”

  “They don’t know that. What does it matter? Besides, Conrad deserves some credit. I can’t go to the palace. I just can’t.”

  In only two months she would have enough money and the weather would be right for a journey back to Kildenree. At this point, she knew it would be wise just to stay out of sight. Conrad shrugged and walked away with long, growing-boy strides, Tatto running after him. Ani watched their departing figures wane, two boys in a large city, and wondered if she erred in not joining them.

  In her fancy she imagined being lauded before the court, and Geric admiring her bravery and looking at her as he used to, and the king insisting on knowing her history and believing her when she told it, banishing Selia and the others far away and welcoming Ani home. That’s how it would end, she thought, if it were a bed-tale. But she knew it was useless to hope for such an outcome. If ever she was to walk into that palace without fearing for her life, she must first take the long road back to Kildenree and plead the aid of her mother.

  If, after all that, the betrothal still stood, Ani realized she would not be sorry to return to Bayern. She did not look forward to the dim-looking boy prince as a husband and a forced marriage possibly devoid of affection, but being Bayern’s queen had its appeal, and besides, the city was truly beginning to feel like home.

  Ani lay on her bed and read the end of the Bayern history by the evening light. She closed the book and put her cheek against it. There was still an odor of a library on it, of dust, leather, binding glue, and old paper, one book carrying the smell of hundreds. She opened the front cover and found Geric’s name scratched into the first page with too watery ink, the signature of a small boy. She smiled to herself to imagine Geric at eight, with the round face of youth and impatient curiosity. She ran her fingers over the mark of his name.

  Enna rapped on her door and entered. Ani shut the book guiltily.

  “I thought you’d be in here. The boys’ve returned.” She examined Ani’s face. “What’s the matter? You’re upset?”

  “Huh? Oh, no. Well, I guess, a little. I was just lovesick, a bit.”

  “Ah.”

  “But I’m recovered.” She put the book down emphatically. “He’s not mine, never was. Well, for a spell he brought me picnics and books to pass time, and once flowers, though they lost their petals in the rain. He even offered to give me a horse, a very nice one, really, and mistook me for a lady.”

  “You are a lady,” said Enna.

  “But that’s beside the point, because I wasn’t then, am not now, but he still saw me that way, as though he saw me, and not the goose girl boots, and not a princess crown. He was—he’s beautiful, enough to make me sigh like a lovesick nurse-mary. He’s a guard, to the prince himself, actually, and much too close to Selia for my own liking, and besides, he doesn’t love me, so there it is.”

  Ani shrugged her shoulders with resignation and gave a quick nod as though dismissing the subject. Enna tried to smile at her, but her dark eyebrows were pinched together.

  “Enna, you’re worried.”

  Enna nodded. “I think that you should come hear what Tatto’s telling the others.”

  When they entered the hall, Tatto was seated grandly on the end of a table, and the attention of the workers was unusually and unquestioningly his.

  “. . . and it’s all set for spring, once the pass snows melt. It’s as sure as a copper’s copper, says my da.”

  “If it’s true, peacock, why would they tell you?” said Beier.

  Tatto sniffed. “Common knowledge. Rumor can’t get there before the war, anyhow.”

  “War?” said Ani.

  “With Kildenree,” said Enna.

  “What do you mean, Tatto? Why would Bayern attack Kildenree?”

  “It’s the other way ’round,” said Conrad. He was looking at her shrewdly. She glanced away.

  “Exactly.” Tatto nodded. “Word’s out they mean to attack us, have been planning it for years. But we’ve got the mountain pass road just about finished, and we’ll be there before they can get us. I guess that princess, the yellow girl, was a decoy, sent to marry the prince to pretend all’s well. But she went against those rough yellows and told the king about the war because she likes Bayern and doesn’t like how evil her people are, or something like that.”

  “The princess,” said Ani. “The news that Kildenree’s attacking Bayern came from the princess. And the king believes her?”

  Razo shrugged. “I heard some rumors this wint
er about Kildenree and their plans.”

  “This’s her plan,” Ani whispered to Enna, gripping her shoulders urgently. “This’s her way of sealing her secret.”

  “Don’t worry, Isi,” said Tatto. “Da says our army’ll crush them like a grape between fingers.”

  “Yes, he’s right,” said Ani. “They will.”

  “I say about time,” said one of the sheep boys. “We haven’t had a good war since my da was a boy.”

  “Not that we’ll see any of it,” said Sifrid.

  “Maybe,” said Razo, “if it’s big enough, maybe they’ll need the Forest boys, and we’ll all be given javelins and shields and join the king’s army and come home warrior champions to crowds of swooning city girls.”

  Many laughed, though there was hope in the laugh. Someone started a war song, and most of the boys and some girls joined in. “The valley quakes, the long road calls—the javelins march, the young men march, the new bloods march where kings command. The mountain shakes, the mighty falls—and warriors march, the brave men march, the bloodied march with sword in hand.”

  Ani watched them, and every word of the song felt like the blow of a hammer. The hall shook with their voices. Then suddenly the singers stopped, leaving the silence heavy with images of Forest boys as men and warriors. The fire in the hearth popped and flamed.

  That night, Ani could not sleep, could not even lie down. She paced in her tiny room, a new plan taking uneasy form. She had told Enna once, “Even if some of the workers were willing to go to battle on this, I don’t think it would be right to endanger their lives just to get back my name.” But now there was war. This was no longer her battle, not just a spat between two former friends or bad blood among countrymen. Now Selia was pulling all Bayern into her viciousness. The massacre in the Forest had not been one separate, brutal act—it was the first brawl in Selia’s personal war for power. And Ani was the only person with the knowledge to stop it.

  Tomorrow, she would tell the workers the truth and beg them for their aid. With a guard of friends, she had a chance of making it to the king alive, and there she would have to tell her tale. The thought of exposing herself like that was frightening. She had no evidence, just her yellow hair and her story. But Selia had a story, too, and false witnesses, and behind it all the convincing power of people-speaking.

  The squeezing in her stomach would not allow her to sleep that night. She walked off restlessness by striding to the goose pens. Jok and his mate nestled near the gate, and he raised his head when she entered.

  Ani greeted him and sat for a moment, wondering at the beauty of white birds in the dark. Jok nuzzled his mate sleepily, and the goose prodded his feathers with her beak.

  I am alone, Ani said to Jok. Come rest the night in my room.

  The two birds followed her, silent but for tiny, distinct flaps on the cobblestones. The walk was not far, and soon the pair nested in a disarrangement of her blanket, their stout bodies filling most of the space. Ani sat beside them awhile, a hand on the warmth of their feathers. Then she paced again. There was no room for her in the bed, and she did not care. She mumbled to herself—war, Selia, wind, the king, and war.

  Her cheeks were hot from worry and movement, and she sat below her window, her back to the street, and let the crack under the door move air over her hand and up to her face.

  She awoke perhaps an hour later. She was lying on the hard cobblestones of her floor, her cheek resting on her outstretched arm and her loose hair over her face. There was another noise coming from outside. The first noise had awakened her. She held perfectly still and listened.

  The creak of a boot sole. A small stone freed from its mortar by a careless foot. A hushed, heavy breath. Ani, moving only her eyes, glanced up to her little table where sat the mirror Enna had given her at wintermoon. Its face tilted toward the window, toward the slit in her curtains where they never fully closed. Stooped outside was a form, one eye peering in, a bit of cheek, part of a long, pale braid.

  The door opened slowly, the noise as slight as the breath of a sleeping bird. Ani did not move. Nothing seemed clear, as though she were still sleeping and seeing the strange images in a fragmented dream. The door opened wide, separating the corner where she lay from the intruder. Ani rose slowly to her feet. The rustling of her skirt was masked by his step. His step, she thought. His. Ungolad.

  As the name entered her mind, fear jolted through her frame and woke her blood and widened her eyes. She could see his back now and the glint on the tip of his bare dagger. He crept toward the bed where two geese slept, indistinct pale shapes in the dark blanket. A too small draft curled around her ankle. No way out. The window was sealed. She would have to slip out the door.

  Ani took a step. And another. Another. She held her skirt in her right hand, softly, to keep it from touching the door. Her toe crossed the soft line of moonlight that fell through the doorway. He was at the bed. His hand touched the blanket. Ani took another step and entered the light of night.

  The two geese squawked when roused by a stranger’s hand. Ani started and then ran. She heard Ungolad curse and the trumpeting calls of the geese—attack, enemy, danger, bite, beat, protect! Her boots pounded against the stones, and the impact beat her joints and shook her vision. The horrible thuds of boots on rock echoed behind her. She thought she heard doors opening to the right, and still, farther behind now, the honking of geese. For months she had been practicing fleeing from Ungolad in her nightmares. Now she could think of nothing but how to run.

  She ran a path she knew, the easy road, past the settlements, not up to the pens but down, the street leaning toward the city wall. The west gate. Thud, thud, thud came the running behind her, always the sounds getting closer together, always the sounds getting closer. She could hear his breathing now, hard in his throat. Her muscles were trembling. She waited to feel his hand grasp her neck or spring for her legs and pull her down, a fox on a hen. The west gate rose before her, the empty socket of stone that spilled into the pasture, the wood, the Forest. Above its eye, the white blue semblance of Falada, guardian of the gateway. Ani looked up. The footsteps behind missed a beat. He leapt for her, to catch her before the city ended. A touch.

  Falada, she said.

  Something happened. Like lightning at her back. Like a beast tearing out her side. Like a touch of heat exploded into flame. She cried out, and her voice sounded animal in her throat, quiet and strange and frightful. It was pain. She put a word to it, and her feet stumbled.

  His dagger had caught her back.

  The footsteps behind her did not resume. She heard his body hit the ground with a grunt. He had leapt too far to meet her with his knife and must have fallen. But, she thought, he will be there when I fall as well. The thought was as inevitable as her stumbling feet.

  Princess, said Falada.

  Her feet found stones, and she kept running.

  She ran from stone to grass, and the lower pitch of running startled her, and she thought he ran behind her still, so she ran still faster, down the pasture, propelled by the pain in her back as though it were her pursuer pushing her forward. She leapt over the stream and looked back to see his form racing down the hill.

  There was a dry storm crackling in clouds darker than the sky. A stab of lightning briefly lit the face of the north horizon. The world seemed blacker at its departure. The pasture was restless with winds, tumbling over one another like bears at play, knocking against trees so hard that their leaves shook like knees. It swirled around her, a hundred different winds at once, pouncing on her shoulders, thumping against her back, hunching her shoulders against its force. And it stayed near, as though it sensed images of its own language like salt on her skin.

  The dark figure was coming toward her. With every touch of air on her skin, with the sting in her back, with her mind that rolled over itself like the storm, she bade the wind strike. She felt the rush, and then stillness. The figure fell hard to the ground and turned over twice. He stayed down, arms over h
is head, crouched low as a stone, hiding from the wind that ripped at his clothes and hair. Ani turned to the woods and ran. She did not look back again.

  The trees turned to wood and the wood to deeper wood, and she took no heed of where she ran, but away. To breathe was agonizing, yet she could not get enough air. She thought perhaps the running would go on the length of a forest, the length of a kingdom, the length of a world. When she came to the wall that closed in the royal woods and pastures, she climbed it without thought. It was low on her side and dropped two men’s height on the far. She jumped down, hit the ground, and, stunned out of breath, lay painfully still.

  The moaning noises of the woods. The buzz of a night bug’s flight. An owl. No human sounds. If a guard patrolled the wall this far in the woods, he was not near. Ani told herself to stand before a guard returned, before Ungolad leaned over the wall, looked down on her, and smiled, predator at prey. A breeze that roamed the ground along the wall passed over her neck. She tried to calm her heart and clear the fear from her head enough to listen. There were no human images in its speech. She coaxed a wind to her from down the wall and sought it for news of the woods she had left. No scent of Ungolad lingered. She must have outrun him somehow or, more likely, lost him in the wood. She lay still and listened to any breeze that came near, and their stories soothed her, and her heart slowed and her eyes drooped.

  She made a last effort to stand and stumbled away from the wall and farther into the woods. Afraid to fall asleep bleeding into the earth, she stayed standing as she tore strips from the hem of her tunic with an effort that awakened the pain anew. By the time she had wrapped her middle with the strips, the ground and trees and sky were tilting and spinning so that every direction seemed to be down. She put a hand over her eyes and found a darkness dimmer than the night. Her body crumpled onto the hard earth.

  Part Three

  Yellow Lady

  Chapter 17

  Ani walked for three days. Daylight revealed that her back was stained with the dark brown of dried blood, and when she touched the cut with her fingers they came back a fresh red. She kept walking.