The Prince of Morning Bells

by Nancy Kress

  “But not a scribe’s error, and that’s all this probably is! Of course it is! After all, a parchment that old, and variant spellings do—”

  “The hell it is! If you think I’m going to let you discredit this just so you can keep your own research intact when—”

  “All you really want is to discredit my research, isn’t it!” Slee shouted. Color had come back into his face; it was the purple of rotting plums. His pudgy fists clenched and twitched at his side. “That’s all you ever really wanted! You no more care about the ramifications of the Model on—“

  “How dare you say that to me when it was I who—not that you haven’t oppressed the true cause of scholarship all the while you’ve pretended to—”

  “Stop it,” Kirila said, and the sword edge of generations of kings cut in her voice. She stood up, trembling.

  “You two can finish your power-jousting later! But if there is one thing that’s been left out of the Model, then there could be another. Don’t you see—magic could exist, and you just haven’t yet—“

  “Magic!” Slee sneered. He was so angry he quivered, like a melting snowman. He wasn’t totally aware of what he was saying. “That’s all you can think about, you ignorant girl—ancient superstitions! You would bring down all my work, all the hard-edged rationalism I’ve fought so hard for, the future implications—you can’t even—give me that!”

  He grabbed the manuscript. Kirila clutched it tightly and stepped backward. Her knees struck the window ledge, and amidst the protesting crackle of ripping parchment she tumbled clumsily backward out the window. Ap lunged forward and made an anguished grab at her disappearing boots, uselessly shouting, “My Lady! My Lady!” in a perfect plump frenzy of fear and guilt, but he was knocked aside as Chessie, howling like a wind tunnel, hurled himself out the window after her.

  Kirila hit the river head first and plunged under, swallowing water. She kicked hard, but her boots were heavy and her lungs screamed by the time she broke surface, spitting and gasping. Something heavy crashed next to her and sent spray exploding upward, so that it was a moment before she could see anything but the surging water and the green noise and her own wet hair. Her vision cleared and she had just a glimpse of the white cliff, its face dotted all the way to the top with red and blue and green Quirks leaning out of windows like so many fat, crazily-tilted figureheads on a stone ship. Then the rain-swollen river pulled her under once again and swept her away.

  It seemed delighted to have someone to boom at, and whirled her madly through eddies and rapids, skipping and singing and rushing. Kirila yelled back with sputters and curses. It was impossible to grab the passing rocks; her fingers slid over their wet slime-green surfaces and closed on nothing but more surging water. Something snapped at her leg and she kicked hard, yelling furiously. Water streamed out of her eyes and nose only long enough for her to glimpse the black rock directly in front of her before she hit, and after that she saw nothing at all.

  ●●●

  The world was red, the dull red of the nursery fire after Nanny had banked it for the night. But instead of Nanny, nodding over her knitting, the fire was occupied by black shapes that swam toward her, howling, and under the red was water, evil-smelling and cold—how had the moat flooded the nursery? Kirila groaned and opened her eyes, and instantly the fire shrank and contained itself along her left arm, and the world turned gray and wooly.

  She was lying in a marsh in two inches of water, looking up at the overcast sky. A few feet away the river flowed demurely, broader and shallower, with the distant bank rising in steep wooded hills blurred in gray mist. Under her, mud squished as she tried to sit up, and something small splashed quickly away. Her arm dangled limply.

  “Kirila? No, don’t try to sit up—lie back a little and rest. I think your arm is broken.”

  She turned her head. Chessie loomed over her in front of a clump of cattails, which appeared to be growing out of his head. His top half was stuccoed with dried mud; the bottom half, where he had been lying next to her, dripped softly and smelled of mildew.

  “I owe you allegiance, my Lord,” she said formally, “for the saving of my life. It was a noble deed, nobly done.”

  “Oh, hang the nobility,” Chessie said. “Are you all right, apart from your arm? There’s a bump on your head.”

  Awkwardly she felt her forehead. There was a swelling crusted with half-dried blood on the left side, but she didn’t have a headache until she tried to sit up. The gray sky swung crazily and turned pea-green, but she made herself sit, her legs stuck straight out ahead of her in the muck. The sky went from pea-green to emerald to a subtle shade of leek, and she realized dimly that she was not all right.

  “I’m all right,” she gasped.

  “There’s no dwelling for at least two miles; I checked. But there’s a road that looks reasonably worn, leading away from the river.” His burnt-sugar eyes were crinkled with anxiety.

  “I can—travel.”

  He looked doubtful, but led the way as Kirila pulled herself unsteadily to her feet and stumbled after him. They waded through the morass between stands of cattails and clumps of starwort and spiked bottle hedge. Each time Chessie lifted a paw out of the mud there was a little splurgling sound. Slowly the swamp dried out as the land rose away from the river and a path began to emerge, winding around patches of bog and gradually becoming a hard-packed trail rutted with wagon tracks.

  Kirila staggered after Chessie, once falling and crying out when her arm touched the ground. But she struggled up and again put one sodden boot ahead of the other. The world became less and less distinct, until she no longer knew if she stumbled through forest or meadow. Chessie ran ahead every few minutes to scout the territory, while she continued blindly in whatever direction he had set for her without noticing that he was gone.

  Once she thought she saw Ap sitting on a fallen log by the side of the trail, shouting, “My Lady! My Lady!—“ and, without breaking her stumbling stride, she began to earnestly explain to him how Prince Lepton had put a hex on the Model. As she talked, Ap floated along beside her, still astride the obliging log. Another time she seemed to hear Chessie say, “Not vanilla—I was wrong. Black walnut, with all those tough little chips hidden in the cream,” but his voice seemed to come from a long distance away and in any case the words made no sense. She didn’t answer.

  They had reached an open pasture where the ground rose more steeply, and where they were stared at mildly by a few cud-chewing sheep, when Kirila abruptly stopped. She didn’t fall or stagger, just stood still, blankly. Something was happening inside her head.

  The meadow and the sheep disappeared and in their place was a magnificent city of tents, rising on a grassy plain. They were made of silk, brocade, velvet and other rich fabrics impractical for tents, striped and watered and flocked and embroidered with lions passant and chevrons d’argent and tiny fleurs-de-lys of gold thread that sparkled in the clear sunshine. Before each door hung a tapestry, Arachne-woven with silver-horned unicorns and jewelled crests and caroling angels so alive that their song floated on the crystal air. A gay, warm breeze fluttered the flags and banners and pennants that lightly crowned the city, and the same breeze billowed the sides of the bright pavillions gently in and out, like breathing.

  “The Tents of Omnium,” Kirila said in a strong, matterof-fact voice, and toppled to the ground.

  Seven

  Kirila awoke in a bed too short for her, in a small clean room with dark polished beams overhead and a plain white quilt covering her. Sunshine streamed through the leaded-glass casement in the single tiny window and made diamond-shaped patterns on the oak floor. There was the smell of fresh thatch and furniture oil and frying ham.

  She sat up cautiously and was pleased to find that nothing ached too much. A plain white shift that was too big in the waist tented around her body, and her left arm hung in a clean white sling. There was no sign of her clothes in the bare little room.

  Sitting up in bed, feeling bewildere
d and at a disadvantage, she tried to think what to do next. Nothing occurred to her. From somewhere beyond the closed door came the rattling of pans and a rhythmic thunk-thunk that, after a moment, she identified as the dash of a butter churn being worked up and down.

  “Chessie?” she said tentatively. At the sound of her voice a spider suspended in the window scrambled hastily back to his nest in the roof thatch, but no dog appeared.

  She was trying to stand when the door opened and a middle-aged woman entered on tiptoe.

  “Oh, no, my dear, no—don’t try to stand up; it’s far too soon. Just lie down there, you can’t rush the body’s healing, you know. Rest is what you need, rest and time, and you’ll be just fine. Only a simple break, and the midwife set it clean. No need to worry at all.”

  “Thank you,” Kirila said helplessly. “My dog?”

  “Right outside, dear.”

  Kirila leaned gratefully against the pillow. “I’m afraid you’ve been to a great deal of trouble.” She hesitated, two spots of color high on her cheeks, then added, “I’m afraid I can’t pay you. All my belongings either got lost in the river—I fell in it—or left on the other side.” It was surprisingly difficult to say these words; she had never before not been able to pay fairly for things.

  “I wouldn’t want any pay,” the woman said quietly, opening the casement. A fragrance of primroses wafted in the window. “What’s your name, my dear?”

  “I am the Princess Kirila, of the Kingdom of Kiril, on a true-sworn Quest.”

  “And my name is Polly Stark. Would you like a cup of tea?”

  “Yes, please.” She studied Polly Stark frankly. The woman was dressed in the gray wool gown and kirtle and the white apron of a yeoman farmer’s wife, but she seemed neither awed nor interested to learn that she was housing a princess. She looked as though nothing ever astonished her much. Above calm gray eyes her graying brown hair was pulled into a bun that was neither soft nor severe—it was just hair, in a bun. Her round cheeks were not wrinkled, but they seemed to be sagging a little from underneath, like a pie cooling. She was plump but not soft, and stood a little taller than the Quirks. For a moment Kirila had the odd sensation that the woman smiling at her with calm civility wasn’t actually present in the little room at all. “How did I get here, Mistress Stark?”

  “Your dog came howling to the farm, my dear, and tugging at the men to follow him. They carried you here and the midwife and I, between us, we got your arm set. You’ve been dark now for a whole day.”

  “It was very kind of you.”

  Polly Stark smiled. “I’ll get your tea. Could you eat some ham?”

  “Please, it smells wonderful.”

  The woman was almost out the door when Kirila called after her, “What happened to my clothes?”

  “They were too badly torn to mend, my dear. Velvet is so unserviceable. But your boots are under the bed, and this was on your belt.” From the small oak chest she drew a jewelled dagger. Kirila laughed delightedly.

  “I didn’t lose it!”

  Polly Stark smiled again, a calm smile inlaid with a subtle pity, and closed the door.

  Kirila lay on her pillow, testing the heft of the dagger in her left hand and thinking haltingly about the Quirkian Hold. She turned the golden hilt this way and that—the dagger had been a present from her father on her eighteenth birthday, and there were eighteen small jewels on the curved quillons—and the picture of Ap’s face turned this way and that in her mind. Ap, writing with earnest excitement in the Book of Order, absorbed in creating the Model; Ap, nervously watching Chessie sing/howl; Ap, shouting at Slee by the window, his face shining with demonic glee at a chance to wreck the Model. She worried the pieces anxiously, trying to make them fit, like a child putting together a puzzle who knows that this corner of the blue sky has to fit next to that piece of the sun, but can’t quite get the orientation right. She reached absently for a lock of hair, began to chew on it, and then spit it out. It tasted of brackish swamp water. At Castle Kiril, she remembered suddenly, she had always washed her hair in fresh rain water.

  The casement rattled and there was a sound of something heavy falling to the ground outside her window, followed by a muffled “Damn.” After a moment the thumping sound was repeated, this time against the wall, and Chessie’s muzzle flew in the window in a grand majestic leap that ended abruptly when his shoulders proved too wide to fit through the opening. A terrible cursing and muttering followed, and then two purple forelegs crawled cautiously over the ledge, heaving the rest of his body behind them, barely scraping through the wooden jamb.

  “Chessie!”

  “How do you feel?” he grunted, dropping heavily to the floor and then climbing up on the foot of her bed. “Does your arm hurt?”

  She flexed it a little and winced. “Not too bad. Where are we?”

  “A little farming village, name of Rhuor. There doesn’t seem to be any manor house.”

  They regarded each other with pleased expressions, smiling shyly. After a moment Chessie stopped smiling, looked at the floor, and said awkwardly, “I asked around while you were sleeping. There’s a ford down river, and even though the other side is difficult country, we could reach the Hold with a week’s travel, if you want to go back for your horse. Or pack. Or anything.”

  Kirila thought again of Ap’s face as he snatched at the crumbling parchment, and of the complex mingling of Forces and Flavors in the Model. She put her hand on Chessie’s neck. The muscles were hard and taut.

  “No,” she said slowly. “No, let’s go on.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “It wasn’t there,” she said, with a painful difficulty that should have made Chessie look away but didn’t. “The Heart of the World—it wasn’t really there.”

  The Labrador waited.

  “The Hold was too...too small.” Kirila felt that she hadn’t really explained what she meant—if she knew what she meant—but Chessie nodded and smiled thinly, as if to himself.

  “Tea, dear,” Polly Stark called, and entered with a pewter tray laden with fresh-baked bread, dairy butter, slices of smoked ham still sizzling around the edges, and steaming fragrant tea.

  “It looks wonderful, Mistress Stark, and smells even—Chessie! What’s the matter? Why—Chessie!”

  As soon as the door had opened, Chessie had leaped from the bed. He was backing slowly away from Polly Stark, growling low in his throat, a dangerous, primitive sound. The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and his ears lay flat against his head. Kirila watched in amazement.

  “Chessie, what are you doing? I don’t understand, Mistress Stark, he never does that—he’s not even a dog! Chessie!”

  The dog continued to back away until he bumped into the wall, still bristling and growling. Polly Stark regarded him calmly, holding the pewter tray, her gray eyes steady.

  “You don’t see many purple dogs.”

  “He’s not a dog,” Kirila said. She leaned forward and watched the older woman closely. “He’s enchanted, under a spell. He’s really a prince.”

  “I thought so,” Polly Stark said calmly, setting the tray on the bed. “Cream in your tea?”

  “You believe in spells, then?”

  “My dear, of course.” She poured the cream, and Kirila let out a long breath she didn’t know she had been holding and leaned back against the pillows.

  “There now, dear, just close your eyes a minute before you eat; you’re still very weak, you know. Perhaps the prince would like to have some ham bones outside.” Walking around the end of the bed, she looked directly at Chessie, her gray eyes the color of the time between night and dawn, when all shapes are blurred and shapeless. She was very still, her arms in their clean white cuffs hanging at her side, doing nothing but staring. Chessie stared back. There was no sound, and then Chessie began to whimper softly. His ears drooped, the hair at his neck contracted, and he crept on his belly out the chamber door, his rounded purple tail caught between his legs, mewling faintly.
/>   Kirila opened her eyes. “Chessie’s enchantment doesn’t -did he go?”

  “Outside, to eat and let you rest.”

  “He wouldn’t ever hurt anyone, Mistress Stark. You don’t need to be afraid of him.”

  “I’m not, my dear.”

  “I just don’t know why he behaved like that.”

  “Perhaps he’ll tell you later. Eat, dear, and then rest.” She smiled as she left, a calm kind smile, and Kirila smiled back gratefully.

  The ham and tea and bread were excellent.

  Eight

  The kitchen of Polly Stark’s little cottage was too warm. A hickory-hot fire had been kindled in the baking oven, set into the fireplace wall under a row of polished kettles and pans hanging on pegs. The table, straightback chairs, and oak floor were all strewn with apple parings cut unevenly and too thick, lying in random whimsical shapes not usually associated with apple parings at all. Kirila was baking a tart.

  It was the first such project of her life, and she was finding it considerably different from spit-roasting a rabbit over a trail campfire. She had pared the apples with her dagger and her left hand, marveling at the transformation of flour, sugar, cinnamon—lots of cinnamon—and a pile of doubtful apples which were too green and should, Polly Stark said mildly, have stayed on the tree another month. The pastry crust was of uneven thickness, rising and falling like a relief map of some intriguingly varied terrain, and was much patched with doughy plateaus stuck on with egg white.

  “There,” she said with satisfaction, sealing the top crust to the bottom one with inexpert pinches, “does it go into the oven now?”

  Polly Stark, sitting on a milking stool and sewing, glanced at the lumpy dough in her shining tart pan and then at Kirila’s expectant face, which was streaked with cinnamon. The older woman looked faintly puzzled.

  “You have to cut a few slits in the top, dear, to let the steam escape,” she said and turned back to the sewing, each stitch the precise length of the others before it. She was altering one of her own gray wool gowns for Kirila: lengthening the sleeves, adding a generous portion of fabric to the hem, and cutting the full skirt into a divided one for riding, for the princess was leaving the next morning. Actually, there was nothing to ride, Kirila having discovered to her astonishment that the tiny village of Rhuor contained not a single horse. There were sheep, and pigs, and cows, and oxen for plowing, but she really couldn’t imagine setting out on a true-sworn Quest on an ox. Much more fitting to walk, more in keeping with the spirit of the thing. Rhuor also seemed to have no dogs or cats, but, oddly enough considering their absence, she had seen only one rat, circling warily around the village limits on its way somewhere else. Only slow-witted field mice had scampered across the cottage’s stone floor during the long days while Kirila’s arm had been healing.