by Ellyn, Court
“Nah, the lady went out for a ride,” the cottar added. “Of course she wasn’t alone. Ladies never go anywhere alone, you know. Weak constitutions and all.”
“What’d her chaperone see?” asked the companion.
The cottar drained his mug, slammed it down again. “Nothing. The girl was there one minute, gone the next. And her horse had been gutted. I found the tracks first, I did. Like bear tracks, they was. And man’s. Never heard of men leashing bears to help ‘em abduct pretty ladies, though.”
“Not highwaymen?”
“Highwaymen demand ransoms, man. Far as I know, His Lordship’s received no such demand.”
“You followed these bears?”
“Bloody hell, no! Them tracks didn’t lead nowheres. His Lordship nearly knocked me head off when I tol’ him so. Tracks got to lead somewheres, says he. But, I swear upon the Mother’s sweet bosom, the earth herself swallowed that girl and the bears, too.”
The truth was undeniable. The disappearance of the dwarves and the abduction of Rhogan’s granddaughter were connected after all. But what was the tie between a pair of iron merchants and a highborn’s granddaughter?
The tavern door burst open, smashing into the potbellied stove. A man caked in mud staggered inside. “Help us!” he cried. “Aw, Mother, ‘elp us! Me boy. Me boy’s gone!”
The bartender dropped his polishing rag, ran around the bar, and gripped the cottar by his shivering shoulders. “Breathe, cousin. Have a dram and tell us what happened.”
“I don’t want no bloody dram, Del! There’s no time. I sent him out last night. The heifers was raising a fuss, waking up the whole ‘ouse, so I sent me boy to quiet ‘em. When the beasts shut up, I rolled over and went back to sleep. But me boy … he wasn’t in bed when I fetched him for the milkin’ this morning. The wife and I looked all day, even into the marshes o’ the Heath. But he’s gone, and it’s me own fault. You gotta help us.”
In moments, the bartender had roused the outrage of his patrons. They divided into two parties and stormed from the tavern. The room fell into abrupt quiet. Even the young bar wench had been swept away by the excitement. In the loft, the bard slapped a wide-rimmed blue hat atop his head, calmly packed his things and slung his lute over his shoulder. With his audience gone, what was there for him to do but travel east to Ilswythe and try his hand at more promising prospects?
Only one man remained in the great room below. Could this be the bard’s unexpected benefactor? The cloaked figure deep in the corner clutched his mug and watched the front door swinging in the cold, damp wind. The bard decided to have a talk with the man, but by the time he descended the narrow flight of stairs, the corner table was empty.
Thorn waited for the bard to leave the tavern before he rose from the table. He placed an extra silver coin under his mug, hoping the bar wench would find it and add it to the trove she’d earned that evening. At the far end of the town’s only street, two dozen torches weaved through the dark. Thorn would see these bear tracks for himself. “Saffron,” he whispered.
The fairy’s soft glow coalesced near his shoulder.
“Any thoughts on the matter?”
“The boy was avedra,” Saffron said.
“You’re sure?”
“The boy’s guardian fled to Linndun to report his kidnapping to the Lady.”
“Did the boy know he was avedra?”
“Of course not. Nor that he had a guardian.”
Thorn leveled a vicious glare at her. “Why didn’t the boy’s fairy save him?”
“We aren’t capable of fighting an army single-handedly.” Her willowy arms gestured sharply in her defense. “A small army is what that guardian was up against, I assure you, and deadly magic besides. Lucky he was that he wasn’t stolen with the child.”
“How can anyone abduct a fairy?” The fay could skip space in a blink of time. Surely it was impossible for someone to close a fist about such a transient creature, like trying to capture wind or sunlight. The idea was ludicrous, which made it that much more disturbing.
“That which limits your magic limits ours, my Thorn. We are not invulnerable.”
“Limits my…? Ah, shit.” Shiny bars across a window. Shiny shackles on ankles and wrists. Book of Barriers. Baernavë chains. Pieces clicked into place. Thorn started up the muddy street, pursuing the torches that bobbed away across a tilled field. He nodded decisively. “Lord Rhogan isn’t avedra, but his granddaughter is, like this missing boy.” His heart leapt into his throat. “Saffron, go to Carah. Under no circumstances are you to leave her side. Alert Kelyn if danger comes within a mile of her. Got it?”
“I don’t like leaving you alone.”
“No arguments, damn it. I’ll be careful.”
Saffron’s tiny mouth pinched into a tight, thin line. “You know what killed the cat, love.” She winked out and was gone.
That summer, Thorn failed to return home for Carah’s birthday.
~~~~
She waited for him all day.
In the morning she put on her new birthday dress, securing stays around a womanish waist. She pinched her cheeks and dabbed pink dye on her lips, and Esmi carefully shaped each natural curl around her face and down her back. “So grown up,” the handmaid said with a wistful sigh. When Grandmother Alovi died, Esmi had returned to her family in town, but this winter Carah had argued that she needed a handmaid of her own. Her nurse, Grieva, had gone off to raise other children; her old hands were skilled in changing diapers but lacked the artistic flair a lady’s hair required. The duchess’s handmaid, Lura, was present only half the year and showed preference for Mother’s requests over Carah’s. Sharing no longer sufficed.
Da rolled his eyes at Carah’s insistence, but he finally sent the summons into town. Esmi was overjoyed that the young Lady of Ilswythe remembered her and desired her experience over the companionship of a younger maid.
At the moment, Esmi wore that maternal, conspiratorial smile. “I noticed Lord Longmead’s son looking your way at Assembly.”
Carah’s nose wrinkled. Chass of Longmead, the scrawny, pimple-riddled squire of Lord Tírandon, had little hope of winning her heart. “Let him stare. The Longmeads are slow-witted and uncouth and wholly unappealing.”
Esmi’s thin, penciled eyebrows darted up at the snobbish display. “And what does appeal to Lady Carah?”
Her face flared; excitement fluttered in her belly. “Sleek, mysterious, brooding.” Her excitement dulled even as she voiced the secret buried in her heart. It sounded silly aloud. “But the brooding is only pouting if there’s no brain behind it.”
Did Esmi agree? Carah couldn’t tell by her schooled expression reflected in the mirror. She deftly pinned another curl into place. “Sounds like someone I know.”
“Exactly. If I can’t find someone like Uncle Thorn, I shan’t marry at all.”
“Hnh, we’ll see what your da has to say about that.”
“Da doesn’t like to talk about it.”
That brought a tender smile to Esmi’s face. “You’ll always be his little girl.”
“That’s why I’ll find someone on my own and not trouble him with it.”
Her handmaid squeezed her shoulders. “Silly girl.”
Carah waited in the front parlor with her mother. The aromas of her birthday feast rose from the kitchens and set her belly to grumbling. Why hadn’t Uncle Thorn arrived already? He usually rode through the night to be here by mid-morning. The shadows of the curtain wall lay shallow on the ground. The hour candle on the mantel read noon. Carah flung herself into an armchair and watched her mother skim through a few missives that Aunt Halayn had sent. She even tried reading from a book of collected bard songs. Ever since Byrn the Blue arrived from Leania with a song about Grandmother Alovi, Carah had been fascinated with this way of telling stories. Etivva had pointed her to a shelf in the library lined with books filled with recorded oral histories. Her favorite so far was a song about an Evaronnan knight and the blacksmith’s daughter he
loved. The stories were supposed to be true, but Carah wasn’t fooled. If the highborn and the commoner ended up together, she’d know the bard who wrote it was lying. That kind of thing didn’t happen, not really.
After a while, the rhymes began to ring like dripping water in her ears. She slapped down the book and paced between her chair and the window. Across the courtyard, the portcullis was raised; villagers poured in and out. There was even a peddler’s wagon parked beneath the towers. Women from the household and the village flocked to the vibrant ribbons and shiny cauldrons swinging from the sides. But no Uncle Thorn.
She trudged back to the armchair, dropped into it as heavily as if her bottom were made of bricks. A shout from the courtyard brought her to her feet again. But it was only the peddler chasing a ferret that a stableboy had loosed from its cage. On any other day the sight of the old man leaping after his pet would drag peals of laughter from her, but today, his fruitless chase and the laughter of the onlookers made her want to cry.
“Where is he?” she demanded.
Her mother heaved a sigh. “Oh, for the Mother’s sake, Carah. He’ll be here. Find something to do, will you?”
In the manner of a summer tempest, Carah stormed from the keep. The chase for the ferret carried the peddler and a dozen shrieking children across her path. She ignored them all and hurried up the steps to the gatehouse battlement. She willed her uncle to be there, riding across the ford at that very minute. But she saw only villagers. Men scythed down swaths of golden winter wheat while their women followed behind, tying the wheat into fat sheaves that stood on end like gilded soldiers. Dogs posted along the fencerows barked to keep the crows away. The mill’s great wheel turned, grinding flour from yesterday’s harvest. Farther out, sheep leapt before their shepherds and drifted through the lush, green meadows. Cutting though it all, the King’s Highway quivered in the midsummer heat, long and empty.
“M’ lady, come back under the awning,” Captain Maegeth called from the turret. “You’ll get a sunburn on that pretty nose.”
During the summer months, the garrison raised canvas awnings atop both gatehouses to keep their chainmail cooler and to hide brief dozes from their commanders. The stone bench beneath the awning sat too low to provide Carah a view of the land below. She paced from her seat to the crenels in the same regular cycle as in the parlor. Captain Maegeth, however, was less easily irritated than the duchess and put the anxious girl out of mind.
“He finally forgot you, did he?”
Carah whirled from the crenels and found her brother topping the wall-side steps. Oh, that arrogant grin! She returned a savage glare. “Drown in the Abyss, Kethlyn. He’s merely late.”
Sweat dripped down his face, ran in rivulets down his bare shoulders. Hours of training in the sun every day had darkened his skin, and his golden hair was burnished like a coin. It clung to his face in wet tendrils. The women of the household, garrison, and village may swoon in his wake, but Carah clenched her fists, preparing for a brawl. Doubtless he had made a point to find her when he learned their uncle hadn’t arrived yet.
His laughter reeked of derision. “Late? Ha! He finally realized you’re no more special than I am.” How often had Carah thrown that in his face, that she was special, gifted by the Goddess?
She returned to the stone bench, refusing to rise to the bait. Primly smoothing her skirts against the wind, she said, “Brother, go away and pop the pimple of your ego.”
“My ego? Hnh.” He plastered on a nasty grin and patted her cheek none too gently. “Poor Carah. Welcome to the land of reality. We lowly, mediocre folk greet you.” He fled down the steps before her palm struck its target.
Chasing him as far as the top of the stair she cried, “Jackass! Bastard!”
That stung him, all right. He paused mid-stride and raised a wounded glare. Of all the names she called him, the latter always infuriated him most, though it hardly seemed the worst to her.
Lifting his chin in a cool dismissal, he retreated into the keep.
From the awning, Captain Maegeth clucked her tongue. “Such language, m’ lady.”
“I don’t care,” she retorted, but that wasn’t true. She regretted her choice of insults. She should’ve swallowed it like a lady and slipped that smelly ferret into his underwear drawer instead.
That evening, Nelda herself set the feast upon the family dining table, claiming that this roast peahen was her masterpiece, but she claimed that every year. Carah’s chair was empty. So was Thorn’s. “Where are they?” Kelyn asked, smoothing his napkin in his lap.
Kethlyn grinned behind his goblet. It was the kind of grin that suggested successful revenge.
Rhoslyn glared at her son. He tried to look contrite. Nervously tapping her fork on the tabletop, she said, “Well, Thorn never….” She concluded with a shrug.
“He’s not here?” Kelyn demanded, angry and terrified at once. The day’s routines had stolen away the time, and he had assumed by early afternoon that Thorn had arrived and that his niece whisked him off without giving him the chance to say hello. “And Carah?”
Guileless, Kethlyn said, “Main gatehouse battlement, last I saw her.”
Kelyn took the steps two at a time. At the top, Captain Maegeth greeted him with a worried crease between her black eyebrows. She pressed a finger to her lips and jutted her chin toward the awning. Carah lay curled on the bench, fast asleep. Dried tears streaked the powder on her face, and the wind had whipped her carefully curled hair into a tangled mess. Kelyn knelt beside her and unstrung a curl from her lashes. “Dearheart?”
She woke with a start, and for an instant her face brightened, then she realized the face backlit by the lavender sky was not the one she’d hoped for. She flung her arms around her da’s neck and cried, “He didn’t come!”
“Maybe he lost track of the days. He could be here tomorrow instead.”
Sniffling, she shook her head. “I know he didn’t forget me. Something’s wrong.”
Kelyn’s thoughts exactly, but he dared not tell her that. He set her away, and the dejection on her face broke his heart. Better to sit beside her so he didn’t have to see it. Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he said, “Were he ill or injured he would’ve sent us word. Maybe he finally got to go on that voyage he’s mentioned. The one to that forbidden place.”
“Azhdyria?” She smeared a cheek. When the stories of Laniel Falconeye and dragons had become too fanciful for Carah’s maturing taste, Thorn began telling her of the mysteries of the Land of Exiles. He longed to see the misty cliffs with his own eyes and confessed to his niece that he had dreamt of sailing there since he first learned of it.
The explanation didn’t convince her. “No, he would’ve come to tell us in person. That’s how important Azhdyria is to him. He wouldn’t have left without bragging about it.”
Kelyn hugged her close, painfully aware that his daughter was right. Something had happened, good or bad, and his brother was in the middle of it.
Carah had one consolation. Uncle Thorn would surely come next year. He didn’t dare miss two birthdays in a row. Besides, when she turned sixteen, he was to begin her training, which meant he would stay at Ilswythe for many days, not just the usual week. She decided that made up for his absence this year, and she forgave his negligence.
But when her sixteenth birthday came and went without his arrival, Carah refused to forgive him. No message of explanation or apology ever arrived. After patching up a second broken heart, she stopped expecting him altogether.
Thorn Kingshield seemed to have vanished from the realm of man.
~~~~
12
“Every effort is being made to find our missing loved ones. Until these crimes are at an end, no man, woman, or child is permitted out of doors after sunset upon penalty of imprisonment.”
—by decree of the Black Falcon, 996. A.E.
Prince Valryk poised the sword over his head, glared at the War Commander, and lunged. Steel sang. Shields crashed. Valryk gr
unted, taking Kelyn’s pommel on the side of his helmet. He clenched his teeth against the ringing in his ears and with a swipe of his shield sent the Commander reeling. But Kelyn kept his guard up and fended off a furious assault. Valryk roared in frustration.
“Good,” Kelyn said and lowered his weapon. “But rein in your anger. Mistakes follow emotion.”
Valryk tossed the practice sword into the grass and braced his hands on his knees to catch his breath. “I can’t get past your guard.”
“That’s why I’m still alive, Highness.” People whispered it was the Old Blood that gave the War Commander his edge. That alone provided Valryk some consolation. He both dreaded and anticipated Kelyn’s arrival at court every winter, because the real training began. All spring and summer, he trained with squires and Captain Tullyk and Captain Lissah who seemed to be afraid to bruise their prince’s knuckles or knock him on his arse. Not so the War Commander.
“Am I as fast as Kethlyn?” He knew better than to hope he’d ever be as quick of hand as the Swiftblade.
“No. But you have better control, and when your emotions aren’t getting the better of you, you fight smarter than he does. Let’s try again. Look for an opening.”
“You don’t have any openings.”
“Make one.”
Valryk tried for an hour and was bested for an hour. He had to yield six times, and each time sooner than the last. It was humiliating, but the War Commander didn’t train just anyone these days.
Kelyn finally called a halt and collapsed hard on his duff. “One thing’s for sure, Highness. I no longer have the advantage of youth.”
“Let’s keep going then. I’ll wear you down eventually.” Sweat stung his eyes.
