by Kate Elliott
“Excellent shot,” he said to Hazel. Then to the children, “Have you seen more?”
They shook their heads. Toy horses and monsters scattered the floor where they’d been interrupted playing at quest.
“How would faeries have gotten inside the castle?” Hazel asked nervously.
He glanced around but saw no more of the spiteful winged creatures flitting along the gallery walk intent on mischief. If they were hiding in the shadows of the ceiling beams he’d never see them unless lamplight reflected off the metal of their stolen weapons. The circle-and-flame banners hanging from the gallery’s railings stirred in an icy draft. Had the faeries cut a way through mortared walls and closed shutters?
“Shouldn’t we tell Mother?” she asked, digging another stone out of her pouch.
“She doesn’t need to be bothered with this. Ro and I will figure out what to do. Come on.”
He shepherded the frightened children down the stairs and made sure they scurried into the great hall with its familiar scent of bodies and wool and the reassuring buzz of many people murmuring in solemn voices. When his father sat on the high throne, there was always laughter to be had. Now the mood was glum and fearful.
With Hazel still at his heels he kept descending. The barracks were on the floor below, and since he was headed for the storerooms carved one level deeper into the bedrock he meant to keep going. But as he reached the landing for the barracks level, low voices caught at his ears, pitched in the tight whispers of complaint and conspiracy.
“…convenient for the queen, isn’t it? It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”
“What are you saying?”
Will halted on the steps, pressing Hazel against the wall as two soldiers walked past along a main passageway. One held a lamp whose light cast wavering stripes through the gap and briefly illuminated Will’s boots, but neither of the speakers looked into the stairs’ shadowed well.
“She wanted to be High Queen, not just consort. Now she rules in his absence. Too convenient he disappeared, if you ask me.”
“It is strange she never completed the High Quest,” remarked the second speaker. “Do you think it’s true she murdered the twins’ real mother to get Kenrith, and power, for herself?”
Will burst into the corridor, grabbed the man’s shoulder to haul him around, and punched him in the face. The man stumbled back and slammed into the wall.
“Don’t you dare speak of the queen with such disrespect,” Will spat. A skin of ice rimed his hands.
The other man stepped out of reach, palms out. “You can’t blame people for wondering how Kenrith vanished for months—”
“They both would vanish into the Wilds for months at a time. That’s how questing goes.”
The man kept on, not taking the hint. “How Kenrith vanished for months, and everyone thought he was dead, yet she’s the one who returned carrying twin babies he obviously had sired with a different woman.”
“Queen Linden is my mother. But go ahead, explain to me why you think she isn’t.”
The one he’d hit tested his jaw, saying nothing. The one holding the lamp mouthed words under his breath. Will studied them: They both had gray-streaked blond hair and bland faces. They might have been kin or just two undistinguished older men who looked alike. Both wore a soldier’s tabard and boots but neither had a knight’s badge. How badly he wanted to meanly point out neither had ever been deemed worthy of even a single knighthood. But his mother would be so disappointed in him if he stooped to childish insults. Still, there were ways to poke sideways to reach the same target.
“Perhaps you’d like to tell me which of Queen Linden’s four knightly honors weren’t earned, in your opinion. Or why the Questing Beast saw fit to send her on the High Quest in the first place. Perhaps you think you know better than the Questing Beast?”
They wanted to fight; he could tell by their clenched jaws and flaring nostrils. But they wouldn’t.
The man who’d been hit said to his companion, “Let’s get out of here before we offend the High King’s blond son. Can’t have that.”
“You’ve already offended me,” Will snapped.
As they began to walk away the other man cast a retort over his shoulder. “Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean people don’t think it. They just talk where you can’t hear.”
Their footfalls, and the lamplight, faded around a corner, leaving Will and Hazel in darkness. He had to slow his breathing to stop himself from running after them and wrapping them in flesh-burning ice. In the castle, magic may only be wielded while training or if the castle is under attack from the Wilds. That was an iron-clad rule.
As his thumping heart and ragged breath eased, his hand began to ache. He uncurled his bruised fingers. The gleam of faerie magic clung to the metal of the sharpened nib. Had the tiny weapon, clutched in his fist, inflamed his anger?
“Why would they say such awful things?” Hazel asked in a trembling voice, clutching Will’s arm. Since their father’s disappearance, his confident little sister seemed always on the edge of tears.
He put an arm over her shoulders. “They’re envious men.”
“I’ve heard people whisper things when they don’t know I’m there,” she murmured, looking at the floor as if she feared to see what emotions would flash in his eyes. “About you and Rowan not really being her children. About her being a murderer and—”
“Hey!” He hugged her. “Don’t listen to the things people say when they’re scared and resentful.”
“You did! You punched that man!”
He chuckled. “I did, didn’t I?”
“Are you glad you did?”
“I am glad. I was angry, and it felt good, but I should have controlled myself. Mother and Father have always told us the truth. Rowan and I had a different birth mother. She came to a tragic end in the Wilds.”
“Was Daddy in love with her first? Before Mommy?”
Will frowned. The subject of this woman he’d never known and felt no connection to always caused him to feel vaguely ashamed, as if thinking about her made him a traitor to the woman who loved and raised him and his siblings. “Haven’t Mother and Father sat you down and told you this?”
“No. I asked, but they say I’m still too young.”
“If you’re old enough to ask, you’re not too young.”
“Will you tell me?” She looked so hopeful and so distressed as she bit at her lower lip.
“All right, but just between us two.”
She nodded and leaned against him. Her hair, done up in the puff balls she favored right now, tickled his chin.
He lowered his voice even though he was sure there was no one around who could hear. “Father and Mother both quested for years after they were chosen by the Questing Beast.”
“That’s how they met and fell in love,” said Hazel, with a flicker of her usual smile.
“That’s right, but they weren’t always questing together. Often they had to go their separate ways. Father himself says he went through a difficult time in the Wilds, wounded and vulnerable. He met a woman who said she loved him, and for a little while he thought he loved her too. But people change their minds, or they fall out of love, or it wasn’t really love at all, or they’ve already met the person they’re truly meant to be with but just don’t know it yet.”
“Like Mommy and Daddy.”
“Yes, like that. He wasn’t really in love, but the woman had gotten pregnant and gave birth to twins—that’s Ro and me—so he stayed because that is the responsible thing to do. Then she was murdered in the Wilds by foul magic. Tragedies like this happen all too often. It’s why we fight the Wilds. Anyway, what’s important is that our mother is our mother. If they say nasty things, that’s on their heads.”
She sighed, face pressed against his arm.
After a long pause she said, in a very small voice, “Will Daddy ever come home?”
“Of course he will,” he said in too forceful a tone. “Come on, Gnat.
Let’s find Rowan.”
“I’m not a gnat!”
“Are so. Always buzzing at my ear. I’d miss it if you weren’t.”
She wiped her cheeks, smiling just a little.
But as they headed down the stairs toward the lowest level of the castle, he found himself spinning the soldier’s words through his head over and over again. He’d never truly understood why his bold, decisive mother had stopped at four knighthoods when gaining all five would have given her the right to rule as High Queen, not just as his father’s consort, however respected. It wasn’t just that she’d suddenly had infant twins to care for, although it was just like her to immediately leap in to take care of an emergency she hadn’t created. Even so, there were plenty of people she trusted, both in the castle and at her home village, who helped her raise her children. King Yorvo had granted her a knighthood at Garenbrig when Will and Rowan were about a year old, but the fifth and final knighthood—Embereth—had eluded her.
Algenus Kenrith had finally completed the High Quest not long after Linden’s return from Garenbrig. After he’d been acclaimed as High King, she’d not ridden out again. Yet the idea that she’d given up, or that his father had dissuaded her from fulfilling the High Quest when they had accomplished so much of it side by side, was both ridiculous and impossible. Had there really been room for only one, not two ruling together? Or had the Questing Beast withdrawn its favor from Linden Kenrith for some other reason?
Evidently people in the castle were beginning to wonder. Or maybe they had always wondered but never had any cause to address it until his father’s disappearance.
The stones against his back quivered as a howl of wind chased down the many-floors-deep spiral of steps that ran from the top of the towering keep to a well sunk below ground level. He and Hazel hurried down toward the watch light at the base of the steps, the lowest level. According to legend, the first human chiefdom had arisen on this spur of stone. With a crude fortification the band had defied their elven overlords to lay claim to a scrap of solid ground for themselves. Down here was too deep even for the whine and shudder of the gale to reach but he heard the muttering of an argument.
He found Rowan in one of the armory storerooms, putting an edge on her sword. Titus stood in front of her, arms crossed belligerently and face creased with an imposing frown. Cerise had draped herself on a bench, a pearl-colored flame flickering from her left forefinger as she rubbed her fingers idly together. Her gaze lifted to acknowledge Will’s entrance, and she gave Hazel a nod, but otherwise she looked bored.
“Hazel killed a blue faerie that snuck into the gallery,” Will said.
Cerise sat up with sudden interest. “They’d never dare if the High King wasn’t missing.”
“Let’s see it,” said Titus in his usual bossy, skeptical fashion. But when Will opened his hand to display the nib, Titus looked startled. “You killed a faerie with your sling?”
“I did,” said Hazel with a triumphant grin. “My friends and I will go hunting now we know they’re inside. They won’t have a chance against us.”
Rowan set down her sword and came over to inspect the nib.
“Good work, sapling.” But Hazel’s grin faltered as Rowan’s expression darkened. “The Wilds are getting bolder, but with Father gone the courts aren’t coordinating their efforts to fight the rising tide of attacks.”
“They don’t respect the queen the way they ought, given all her accomplishments,” said Will. “But that means none of this will end until we find Father.”
“That’s why I’m going, and you’re coming with me.”
“Going where?” Hazel asked.
Will shook his head. “But Ro—”
“Did you forget today is our birthday? Who’s to stop us?”
After the exchange with the soldiers he wasn’t sure he wanted the date and thus the circumstances of his birth bandied about. “That’s all very well, but there’s a proper ceremony to follow when a youth leaves on their first quest.”
“Do you care about some hidebound ceremony? All these rules are made to control us.”
He rubbed at his head. Ever since their father’s disappearance, Rowan had muttered and complained a great deal about “the rules.” Sometimes it did seem people cared more about what looked just and right than what actually brought about justice and peace. But at this very moment, the soldier’s ugly words still ringing in his head and his knuckles still aching, he wanted to say, I don’t want Mother to look bad by having us run off without a traditional leave-taking. Yet he could not bring himself to say so in front of Titus and Cerise, even though they were his oldest friends.
“This is our quest,” Rowan said. “We are going to find our father.”
“Plenty of people have been looking for months now,” remarked Titus. “What you do think you have that all those experienced knights don’t?”
“Knights like you?” Rowan’s sardonic smile was a challenge.
Titus took in a rough, angry breath.
Cerise tsked. “Temper, Titus. Anyway, she’s right.”
Titus exhaled. “Very well.”
“Very well, what?” demanded Will.
“We’ll all go,” said Titus. “Loyal friends forever, just as we pledged that day we fell into the moat and never told anyone.”
“Children aren’t allowed to climb on the moat wall!” announced Hazel with a look of alarm followed by a sly pinch of her eyes as she contemplated what her siblings might have gotten away with.
“Have you really not climbed it yet?” Rowan asked her.
“Hazel, don’t listen to her because it’s very dangerous and we were fortunate not to drown,” said Will. “Anyway, we can’t leave because of the storm.”
“All the better to go now since no one will be expecting us to leave,” said Rowan. “Will, you have to come. I need you, and you need me. We can find him. I know it.”
“Do you have a plan?” Cerise asked, letting the pearlescent light of her healing flame wander down her forefinger to dance on her palm.
Will said, “We’d have to go to Vantress first.”
Titus rarely flushed but when he did he turned rosy with it. “Do you honestly think a hundred knights have not offered a secret to the Magic Mirror in the hope of being told where to find the High King? And been rejected?”
“Yes, but I have a better secret.”
Cerise rested a warm hand on his arm, her touch bringing heat to his face. “Do you, now, Will? What would that be?”
“That would be telling,” said Rowan. She gave Hazel a firm hug, then gestured toward a neat pile of gear. “Will, I packed for you. We’ll go while the court is preoccupied with the latest disasters. Hazel can let Mother know we’ve gone so she won’t worry.”
“She will always worry because worry is a burden mothers carry with every breath of every day.”
They turned, startled to hear the queen’s voice from the passage. Linden stepped into the chamber, assessing the assembled gear and Rowan’s defiant expression. She was alone, no courtiers treading at her heels.
“You can’t stop us from going!” cried Rowan, chin coming up.
The queen smiled wryly. “I won’t stop you from going, no more than I stopped myself when I was your age. The day I turned eighteen is the day I left my village to test myself. To prove myself. I expect nothing different from you two. But I am sad you would have left without allowing me to say farewell.”
Rowan stood frozen for several breaths, then embraced her mother. Will heard a few telltale sniffles—from Rowan, of course, not from the queen. He held back, allowing the queen to give Cerise and Titus her blessing. Only when they had left the chamber did he say, in a low voice, “Before I go, I want to warn you I’ve heard people talking about you.”
“My dear Will, do you think I don’t know what they say? But it is so like you to be worried about me.” She took his left hand and tucked it between her own hands. “Now. Cado is waiting at the postern gate. Please allow him to
accompany you at least as far as Vantress.”
“Didn’t he just return from searching? Is he not going to rest even for a day?”
“He feels responsible for not being with your father that night.”
“It’s not his fault.”
“Nor do I believe so. But he and your father have ridden many leagues together. They are loyal friends. Cado feels the weight of Algenus’s disappearance most especially because it’s clear a mage or a witch stole his shape to fool your father. Let him accompany you for his sake. Maybe a little also for mine so I know an experienced eye scouts your path. Not that I think you and Rowan aren’t ready to go, because you are ready.”
She kissed him on the forehead in the comforting way she had done when he was little and feared bad dreams. Then she stepped aside, with Hazel stifling tears beside her, so he could follow Rowan out of the walls that had shielded them for all their childhood and into the teeth of the unknown.
7
They emerged from the narrow postern gate into howling wind and blowing snow. A causeway crossed a shallow wetland beyond the moat, with the stones slickened by a rime of ice. Rowan had to keep her gaze fixed on the causeway as they led their mounts single file. When they reached the gatehouse at the far end, she was surprised by how quickly the blizzard slackened. She looked back at the castle. Currents of snow swirled above the keep like a rising whirlpool trying to drag the castle into the sky. She gasped. Two icy-blue dragons flew in a circle above the castle, each chasing the other’s tail to form a ring of magical force that would have uprooted any other building from its foundations. Castle Ardenvale stood firm.
Titus, Cerise, and Will had already mounted and were hurrying into the relative shelter of the woodland. Titus rode at the front, as always. Cado’s griffin waited patiently to one side, watching the horses with an alert gaze that made Rowan wonder if it was hoping to eat one.
The knight slapped her on the shoulder, shouting to be heard above the wind. “You may stand and stare all you wish but your horse needs to be moving, and so must we if we mean to reach shelter by nightfall.”
