Books of Bayern Series Bundle

by Shannon Hale

  “Have you seen Talone?”

  “I tried. They won’t let me go to him, saying that he’s fine and resting and doesn’t need overconcerned friends bothering him out of his sleep.”

  “But you worry still,” said Enna.

  “I want to see him well. I can’t get certain images to rest easy in my mind, and one of those is Talone, and Ungolad’s sword is in him, and he’s on the ground.” Ani shook her head.

  “It was a horrible day,” said Enna. “I’ve never seen such things and don’t care to. Maybe I never should’ve come inside, but all I could think of was getting to you. I was horror-struck just thinking that you were alone again, and after all I’d promised.”

  “Thank you,” said Ani. She fingered Enna’s thick locks. They were as smooth as wet clay between her fingers. “I always wanted black hair. I thought it was exotic.”

  Enna laughed. “Now you’re the exotic one, with your hair longer than a horse’s tail and yellow, even.”

  A knock sounded, and Ani jumped up to admit a prim little man in shiny boots who called her to the king.

  “I’d hoped to see my friend,” she said. “Talone, who’s wounded. Last night the physician sent me away to let him rest.”

  “I hear your friend’s in no danger. The king’s call’ll be heeded first.”

  Ani shot Enna a look of lighthearted terror and followed the man out.

  He introduced her into the conference room, a small but brightly lit space. The air was tense. Several men sitting at a great wood table covered with maps and letters rose as she entered. Geric’s face was flushed, as though he had been shouting before her arrival, but she was relieved to see him sitting up and looking well. The prime minister’s face barely buried a glower. The king motioned for her to be seated.

  “Good morning, my dear,” said the king. “We’re sorry to have neglected you so long and to greet you now with the grim details of a war meeting in place of a banquet and procession. All in its course.” He cleared his throat, and his expression seemed unsure, but when he spoke again the words bore all the power of the throne. “We beg you to give us reason to believe there’s no war preparing in Kildenree.”

  Ani’s head bent back slightly, as though pushed by the king’s words.

  “I don’t understand, sire.” Ani swallowed a laugh. “You’re still contemplating war?”

  “Unless you can give us evidence.”

  “Evidence? Of what? Of peace? Teach me how to give evidence of peace and I will.” She paused to check her anger. The men still stared. “You must know that Kildenree will not attack Bayern.”

  The prime minister rose, exuding authority with one exact gesture of his hand. “This, my dear, is evidence.” He picked up several papers before him. “Letters given to us by the Princess Anidori-Kiladra, or this Selia, if you will. They’re written and signed by the queen of Kildenree and detail inimical intentions, with dates, numbers, places, all stamped with the royal insignia.”

  Ani grabbed a parchment and had to absorb its aspect for only a moment before understanding. “This isn’t my mother’s hand. Forgery. Selia’s mother is the key-mistress of the palace, a woman with access. She might have found a way to steal my mother’s crest ring to make the seals.”

  The prime minister glanced at the king’s thoughtful face and turned back to Ani with new ardor. “Evidence. Show evidence and we’ll believe. It’s another ploy, Your Highness, to keep us unwitting and unprepared while our enemies move to crush us in our sleep.”

  “Oh, stop it.” Ani covered her face in her hands and breathed in the momentary darkness. She dropped them and stood up, anger prickling her fingertips. “This is ridiculous. You want evidence? History will show you that Kildenree hasn’t warred with any of its neighbors in over three hundred years. Numbers will prove that Kildenree is far too small to attack a kingdom like Bayern. And the girl who gave you the only evidence you have to the contrary is a fraud, a deceiver, and a murderer. You should already know these facts.

  “But in a country where you hang your dead up on walls and pride whether or not a man bears a javelin more than his character, how am I to persuade you out of a war? It would be suicide for Kildenree to war on Bayern and butchery for Bayern to attack Kildenree. If you don’t believe me, then send me back. Or if you don’t trust me to leave, I’ll return to my little room on the west wall and tend your geese, and you can be sure that on my watch no thieves will touch my flock.”

  Ani walked to the door but stopped and turned around. “Did you know that there’re workers in your city who aren’t allowed into shops and taverns because they’re from the Forest and therefore don’t hold a javelin? And men who call themselves peace-keepers, obeying their own code of law and not the king’s, sworn to keep the streets safe because the king’s soldiers do not or will not? And areas so crowded that children live on the refuse of others?”

  While the prime minister’s look remained indignant, Geric’s eyebrows raised and the king looked up from his study of his hands.

  “I see from your faces that you don’t think much about these things. Maybe I know more about your city than you do, and I certainly know more of Kildenree. Believe me, there is no war. If you want evidence, explain why a mother would send her first daughter into her enemy’s camp. I’ll be your evidence.” She shut the door behind her.

  An hour later, Geric found her sitting on the steps to the kitchen in the shade of the tallest chimney. Her anger had worn down into a righteous indignation that was fraying into embarrassment when she saw his approach. She knew it was Geric from a distance, and she felt spots of heat on her cheeks. She covered her face with her fingers. He smiled at her, and there was real humor in the lines of his smile. He sat beside her and after a moment released a short laugh.

  “That was something,” he said. “I’ve never seen anyone make the king and his entire council feel like utter fools.”

  “They listened?” she said.

  “Oh, yes, thoroughly. You, my lady, have just stopped an unnecessary war.” He looked down and swallowed. “May I beg your pardon? I’ve behaved so badly to you, and I’ve been aching to explain.”

  “Is this about the ‘I can’t love you as a man loves a woman’ bit?”

  Geric grimaced. “Ah-ha, yes, that’s the very line. I, you see, I noticed that last day in the goose pasture that I’d begun to—feel—something about you that I shouldn’t, as I was betrothed and all, and I thought it best if I just stopped seeing you altogether. I was feeling rather terrible for betraying your sentiments, besides having lied to you about who I was. But then when I saw you yesterday, well, maybe you can imagine that I haven’t had a steady heartbeat since you walked into the throne room.”

  Just then, Ani could feel her own heartbeat pounding against her ribs.

  “I wish I had known somehow who you were and set things right,” said Geric, “and spared you the horrors of yesterday. When I walked in and saw that man holding you with a knife to your throat . . .”

  He shut his eyes as though against the image. Ani had an impulse to kiss his eyelids but quickly spoke instead.

  “How’s your . . .” She pointed to his side.

  Geric opened his eyes, looked to see what Ani was indicating, and put a hand over his side. “Bandaged. Pulsing with my heart like the wound is a living thing, but certainly healing. Thank you.”

  “I want to thank you for stepping in to save Talone,” said Ani.

  “He seems to be a noble man and a fine soldier.”

  “Yes, he’s been more than good to me. It was a relief for us to find each other after the massacre and not feel alone.”

  “You spoke with fire about him there before my father, and he risked a lot to see you safe.” He looked at her, and the clarity of his dark eyes struck her heart with a sensation of a wound touched. “Does he care for you?”

  “I’m sure of it,” she said. “He’s been more than good to me.”

  A wrinkle formed between his eyes. “Is it p
ossible that Talone might ask your hand, and that you might want to give it?”

  “Oh, no, he won’t, I mean, I don’t. He’s as dear as a father, and I’m the child he protects, that’s all.”

  “Oh,” said Geric with a soft exhale. He examined the hilt of his sword, and his lips appeared to fight a smile. “We’ve been friends, Isi, and I feel I know you, but I don’t want to presume anything anymore. This marriage was arranged without your consent, and if you have any hesitation about me, I will understand.”

  She took his hand. “When Ungolad fought you, it was horrible, Geric, and I thought, if he won, I wouldn’t be able to bear it. I’ve missed you these months.”

  Geric breathed out as though he had been holding his breath, and he grinned with relief. Ani could not help grinning back, and they laughed lightly at nothing. He looked down at her hand and turned it palm up, running his fingers over the creases and merging his fingers with hers. She leaned her head against his shoulder with a familiarity that surprised her.

  “You were amazing in there,” said Geric. “You were—I can scarcely believe how lucky I am. Growing up, I tried to imagine what my mysterious betrothed princess would be like, and I’d think, I hope she’s clever, and I hope we have things to say to each other, and I wouldn’t cry if she was a beauty as well. But I never imagined that I could marry a girl who was all those things and knew Bayern’s needs better than I, who would truly be a partner on the throne. What this kingdom sorely misses is a queen, and you are exactly what they, and I, what we all need.”

  Her stomach tingled pleasantly. “Am I really?”

  “You are everything and more, Isi.”

  “I’d like to be.”

  “Then,” said Geric, his brow wrinkling, his voice anxious and tender, “will you have me?”

  “Yes.” She smiled and laughed. “Yes, of course, yes.”

  He smiled slowly and broadly. “I say good. Good and good. I was afraid I’d lost you forever after I wrote you that note, and when I saw you at wintermoon, well, you know I felt as though I’d had a dart thrown into my heart. I think that Selia could tell, and she didn’t like it one bit.”

  “Nor did I.”

  “So much has happened since we last spoke, what with secret identities and a horde of animal-keepers shouting your name, and what about that, that wind? You’ve a story I want to hear, goose girl.”

  “And you have things to tell me, Sir Guard.”

  “Well then, the first thing I would like to tell you, my lady, and I’d better tell it quickly because my heart is likely to break through my rib cage any moment, the first thing is that I love you. And the second thing is that, as much as I honor your former profession, I don’t think your geese care much for your betrothed, and I hope they hadn’t any plans on sharing our bed.”

  “Oh, but think what use they’d be,” said Ani. “They’d encourage snooping maids to stay away from our bedroom, and on particularly busy days we could stick hats on them and let them receive some of our supplicants.”

  “Ah, yes, excellent point.”

  He smiled, and all signs of worry disappeared from his face. With happy enthusiasm, he stood up, his hand on his sword hilt, and shouted, “I, Geric-Sinath of Gerhard, declare right now that you’re beautiful and you’re perfect and I’ll slay any man who tries to take you from my side. Goose girl, may I kiss you?”

  She answered by standing and kissing him first and held his cheeks and closed her eyes and felt sure as bones and deep as blood that she had found her place.

  Their embrace was interrupted by a young page clearing his throat. Ani looked down, but Geric did not seem embarrassed at all.

  “Are they ready?” he said as though he had been expecting the interruption.

  The pageboy nodded and bade them follow, taking two steps for their every one like a short-legged dog. He stopped before the door to the dining hall, his hand gesturing that they should enter. Geric was grinning madly.

  “What is it?” said Ani.

  “You’ll see.”

  The doors opened.

  “Welcome, daughter,” said the king.

  There was a kind of silence in the room because no one spoke, but a silence that betrayed the truth of one hundred hearts beating, one hundred mouths breathing, one hundred hands that held themselves, fisted, before their chests. The king’s guard and the captains of the royal army and of every hundred-band stood at attention, their fists showing loyalty, their heads inclined respectfully.

  “Captains,” said Geric, “Princess Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, first daughter of Kildenree, she who ended our war before the javelin was thrown.”

  The captains banged their javelins against the ground.

  “Oh, my,” said Ani.

  “We’re supposed to walk among them,” said Geric.

  She placed her hand on his forearm and they walked past the lines, and Ani noticed with relief that there were mostly the signs of gratitude in their eyes and not the bitterness she had feared for this girl who had stopped their war.

  In the center of the room, between two groups of worn and experienced captains of hundred-bands, stood a strange group of soldiers. They held javelins firmly in right hands, and on their arms hung freshly painted shields bearing the images of two trees—one green and one yellow.

  They looked forward with proud and stoic expressions, but Finn smiled so broadly that his lips slid tight to show his teeth, and he looked at Ani and grinned wider. Razo stared ahead, his eyes unblinking, and cried freely. Offo was solemn, but his javelin trembled in his hand. Ratger stood by also, his palace guard tunic worn openly, and Conrad’s calmness was betrayed by a slim smile. Enna and the other girls stood at their far end, each holding a larger shield in both hands.

  “We’re debating between calling ourselves the Forest-band or the yellow-band,” said Enna. “What do you think?”

  Geric and Ani spoke over each other. “The yellow-band, definitely,” he said.

  “Oh, the Forest-band, for pity’s sake,” she said.

  They strolled through the rows of captains and bade them relax, and the presentation became a supper. Talone left his sickbed to sit at Ani’s right for a while, and they drank to his health. After a drink he showed some vigor and related the story of when he had first met Ani, a child asleep on the shore of the swan pond who had tried to run away.

  The captains ate and laughed and traded stories with Geric, so content as to never leave. One taught Razo how to throw a javelin straight and far, one taught Enna the song of a tale she had never heard. Ani tried to teach them all how to greet several different species of birds in their own tongue, and they clicked and trumpeted and moaned in their throats until they thought they could never stop laughing. The hours stretched out and the kitchen-hands brought new trays of hot food and then, at Geric’s insistence, the kitchen-hands stayed and ate as well. The light from the windows faded to the pulsing blue of evening, and no one left.

  There was no hurry. There would be time for the captains to announce to their troops the end of the unfought war and bid them all home with their wives. There would be time to return to the workers’ settlements in the city and see them all with javelins and shields, and to see Talone, healed and well, commanding a hundred-band of the king’s own. And a wedding in the market-square in the Thumbprint of the Gods where the javelin dancers came at festivals and where all could witness, noble and city-dweller and Forest dweller alike, the marriage of their future king and queen. Gilsa, too, there and at last rewarded.

  There would be time to take down the white horse head from the west gate and have a burial, belated and quiet, Falada laid to rest under the beech tree by the goose pond, and over that spot a monument laid, a carving in white stone of a colt and a girl seemingly too young for such adventures so far from home.

  And there would be time to spend in the stables in late spring, befriending the loose-gaited stable-master and aiding a mare to foal. And when the colt, nothing but a bundle of legs and we
t fur as black as Enna’s hair, fell into her arms, Ani might hear a name.

  The End

  Copyright © 2004 by Shannon Hale

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in September 2004

  by Bloomsbury Children’s Books

  Original paperback edition published in April 2006

  New paperback edition published in July 2017

  www.bloomsbury.com

  Bloomsbury is a registered trademark of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Hale, Shannon.

  Enna burning / by Shannon Hale.

  p. cm.

  Sequel to: The goose girl.

  Summary: Enna hopes that her new knowledge of how to wield fire will help protect her good friends Isi—the Princess of Anidori—and all of Bayern against their enemies, but the need to burn is uncontrollable and puts Enna and her loved ones in grave danger.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-58234-889-6 • ISBN-10: 1-58234-889-8 (hardcover)

  [1. Fairy tales—Fiction. 2. Fire—Fiction. 3. Nature—Effect of human beings on—Fiction.] 1. Title.

  PZ8.H134En 2004 [Fic]—dc22 2003065817

  ISBN 978-1-68119-317-5 (new edition) • ISBN 978-1-59990-408-5 (e-book)

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