by Nancy Chase
She stared. “You’re not Geoffrey.” His yellow hair was tied back by a tattered blue ribbon in what had once been a true lover’s knot. Even in the dim light, his eyes were blue as skies.
“My name is Baldwin.” He squinted around the small room. “I am banner bearer to the king. How did I come here?” An ash wood spear lay on the floor near his foot. He picked it up, puzzled. “One moment the battle raged all around me, and the next there was a clap of thunder and I was here.” He touched the side of his head, wincing. “Unless that thunder was the sound of my skull being cracked, and I am now dreaming.”
“No,” Catrin said. “You are in the White Tower, on the Island of the Seven Magpies.”
He looked even more stunned than he had before. “You must be a mighty sorceress indeed, to snatch me from certain death on Forley Field and bring me to a place that only exists in the songs of the bards.”
She shook her head. “I am no sorceress, I am only a princess. I didn’t intend to bring you here at all. I thought you were—someone else.”
He heard the quaver in her voice. “Ah,” he said gently. “I am truly sorry, Your Highness.”
She bit her lip and turned aside. “No, I should have known it was impossible. Of course I should—” She broke off and stared at him. “You were at the Battle of Forley Field? Just now?”
“Yes, Your Highness. We were hard-pressed, and the king had fallen.” His voice was troubled. “I fear that I have failed my duty. Since I am no longer there to defend it, surely the king’s banner has fallen into enemy hands.”
“No,” Catrin said slowly. “It hangs in my father’s hall.”
The knight gave a small, puzzled frown. “I don’t understand.”
“The king,” she said, “the one whose banner you carried, what was his name?”
He blinked in surprise. His eyelashes were pale gold. “King Ranald, of course.”
“Ranald Rising Sun.” A brittle, giddy laugh escaped her lips. “Yes. I read about him in a history book at the abbey.” Suddenly she needed to lean on the cauldron for support. “He died six hundred years ago at the Battle of Forley Field. Although the enemy slew the king, they never took the king’s banner. The king’s heirs found it and rallied their troops to victory. Do you know where they found it?” Baldwin shook his head, his gaze fixed on her face. “Under the body of the king’s slain banner bearer.”
Baldwin’s hands clenched the spear shaft. Emotions flickered across his face like clouds in a high wind, but he said nothing. Unnerved by his stillness, Catrin babbled, “I remember seeing the banner in my father’s hall as a child. It was very old and faded of course. A blue field with a yellow sun. Ranald was a distant ancestor, you see.”
“Six hundred years.” His voice seemed to come from very far away. Blindly, he too reached out to the cauldron for support. After his breathing steadied, his gaze lit upon her again, alert and purposeful. “Your Highness, forgive me, I must—that is, if you please—” He faltered, then reached out and seized her wrist. He pressed her palm hard against his chest. “Can you feel that? Am I here? Do I live, or am I a ghost?”
Through the cold links of the chain mail, she could feel the heat of his body. His strong hand encircled her wrist completely. The hairs on his arm were gold, like his eyelashes. She nodded. “I feel it.”
“Then I am alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Perhaps time runs differently here? Or perhaps—I do not know. In any case, it is some kind of magic.” He released her wrist. “I apologize. I should not have laid hands upon you in that way.” He whirled away and paced back and forth across the small room, deep in thought. At last he stopped and smiled at her. “There is only one honorable course of action. I cannot help my fallen king, but I can protect his noble descendent.” He flung himself down on one knee before her. “Please accept my service, Your Highness.”
She took one startled step backward. “But I—I don’t know—”
His smile was dazzling. “Surely you did not come to the perilous White Tower for no reason. Let me help you on your quest.”
“My—” She gave a horrified gasp. “My quest! I was supposed to make a hundred candles the same size as the first, to get the answer to my riddle. But I dropped the candle into the cauldron, and now it’s gone!”
Still kneeling, he took her hand and vowed, “You brought me here through death and time. If there is a way to finish your task, I swear I will help you find it.”
She snatched back her hand just as he bent to kiss it. “Don’t!” She hid the withered hand in the folds of her sleeve.
Baldwin drew back and rose to his feet. “Forgive me, Princess,” he said stiffly. “Naturally you need not accept my service, if it displeases you.”
“What? Oh! No, Baldwin, it isn’t that. Of course I accept your service. I’m sorry. It’s just that my hand is so old and ugly, I can’t bear to look at it.” Without meaning to, she found herself pouring out the story of her predicament.
When she was through, he said, “That is a strange and sorrowful tale. But if indeed you now have a witch’s hand instead of your own, it could solve the problem of how to make the hundred candles.”
“What do you mean?” She held the hand up, displaying its crooked fingers. “It’s horrible.”
“No. It’s magic.”
That was something she hadn’t considered. Perhaps there was still magic in the witch’s hand. Perhaps it could help her somehow. “Even so, it’s still no use. I lost the candle.”
“Are you sure?” He raised one golden eyebrow and nodded toward the cauldron. The fathomless dark void was gone. The cauldron now seemed to be no more than a large but otherwise ordinary iron pot. In the bottom lay her candle, melting into a glowing pool of something that did not look quite like wax.
“It’s there! I thought I’d lost it. Maybe I can complete my task after all.” The candle continued to melt and the level of the strange, radiant liquid rose higher. “What should I do?”
“Start at the beginning,” Baldwin said. “How would you normally make candles?”
She struggled to think back to her time at the abbey, watching Kae do the chores. Had she ever seen how Kae made the candles for the chapel? “Someone must stir the pot.”
Baldwin retrieved his spear. “This will do.” He lowered the shaft into cauldron and stirred in slow, broad strokes. “What else?”
“Someone must dip the candlewicks into the pot until they are coated with the wax, or whatever that stuff is. But what shall I use for wicks?” If only Kae were here, she would know what to do. She’d have the candles made in no time, without even pausing for breath in the story she was telling. “Maybe—” Catrin bent to examine the hem of her dress. Sure enough, one edge was torn, snagged by a branch during her wild ride through the forest. She pulled a thread loose and broke it off at the proper length. “Maybe this will work.”
The glowing liquid nearly filled the cauldron now. Holding the thread with her left hand—the witch’s hand—Catrin leaned over and lowered it into the center of the brightness. The makeshift wick kinked, sizzled, and disappeared in a tiny puff of ash. A thin, foul-smelling curl of smoke wafted toward the ceiling.
Startled, Catrin stepped back just as some of the bright liquid spilled over the cauldron’s brim. It splashed onto the floor where its glow vanished, leaving it as colorless as water. She knelt, dipped her fingertips in the small puddle, and brought her fingers to her lips. It was seawater, as cold and brackish as any tide that ever smashed a ship. More spilled out, pattering to the floor like rain. The light from the cauldron was almost painful to her eyes, but on the floor the spreading puddles looked dark and ominous.
She dragged her gaze away from the overflowing water. “What now?” she asked Baldwin.
“Anything. This is magic.”
“I told you, I’m just a princess. All I know about magic is what I’ve heard in stories.”
“Then use that,” the knight insisted. “If this
were a story, what would you do?”
“It isn’t a story,” she snapped. “It’s my life!” She brushed back a strand of damp hair from her forehead, then froze in mid-gesture. “That’s it! My hair! In the stories Kae used to tell, princesses were always weaving their hair into ladders or spinning it into gold coins or something, to try to win some prince. Perhaps I can make candle wicks from mine. Only I’m doing it to avoid marrying a prince.”
Baldwin paused in his stirring. While he watched, she plucked one long hair and, with her left hand, held it above the cauldron. “Are you ready?”
Baldwin nodded. “Ready.”
She lowered her hand. When the hair touched the liquid, it flared like a thread of flame. Tendrils of light curled around it, growing brighter and brighter until it nearly blinded her. When she stepped back, she held a new candle, identical to the one she had carried down from the hall above. She stared at it, open-mouthed. “I’m sure that never happened at the abbey.”
“You did it, Princess.”
“Maybe.” She examined the candle doubtfully, as if expecting it to disappear. “But there are still ninety-nine more to go.” She picked her way across the wet floor and slipped the candle into one of the iron wall sconces. A tiny flame sprang up from the wick and twinkled merrily. She shook her head in wonderment. “Magic.”
On her way back to the cauldron, she stepped ankle-deep into a puddle of cold seawater. The overflow from the cauldron showed no signs of slowing down. “I don’t like this. I hope it doesn’t get much deeper.”
Undaunted, Baldwin started stirring again. “We should keep working.”
Catrin plucked out another hair. The second candle formed just as easily as the first, and after that she and Baldwin settled into a rhythm, working together in steady, efficient harmony. But with each candle Catrin pulled from the cauldron, the flooding increased. Soon they were sloshing back and forth in water up to their knees.
Catrin fought off her panic as long as she could, but it grew increasingly difficult to concentrate on the candles with the cold water dragging at her skirts. “I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this.”
“Steady, Princess, steady,” Baldwin soothed. “There is nothing here that can harm you.” She smiled, wondering if he used to speak in the same tone to calm his skittish warhorse on the tourney field. But the water kept rising, and her amusement soon vanished.
By sheer force of will, she managed to persevere. Ninety nine more candles followed the first, and the small room twinkled with dancing flames. The water was waist-deep by the time she completed the last candle and set it in its sconce on the wall. She took a deep, shaky breath. “Now it’s time to ask the riddle.”
Baldwin stepped back from the cauldron. The luminous liquid swirled into darkness, leaving nothing behind but seawater. Catrin raised her arms and tried to sound formal. “Black Cauldron, I have fulfilled my task. From a single candle, I have made a hundred. Now, I beg you, tell me what I want to know.” She chanted the words of the riddle:
“What is darker than the night
And colder than the stone?
And what light shines the brightest
When it shines quite alone?”
The candle flames paused as if holding their breaths. Something gurgled in the cauldron’s depths. The black water seethed and swirled. With a horrible sucking sound, a huge, tentacled shape rose from the cauldron, grew and spread until it towered to the ceiling. Its countless limbs coiled and writhed like a nest of serpents. Slowly, it turned in her direction. Catrin stood transfixed, unable even to scream.
Baldwin sprang forward, raising his spear. “Stay back. You shall not harm her.”
“No?” An impossibly deep voice gurgled out of the creature’s featureless face. A tentacle the size of a tree limb drifted out and flicked the knight to one side. Baldwin hit the wall and fell into the chest-deep water. He resurfaced coughing and, burdened by the weight of his heavy mail shirt, struggled to regain his feet. The creature turned its attention back to Catrin. “You are foolish to call forth that which you cannot name.”
“I made the candles. I completed the task!”
“Candles,” the creature mused, “are meaningless.” It stretched a tentacle across the room, ripped one of the iron sconces from the wall, and crushed it into nothingness.
“I don’t believe you.” Catrin backed away until her shoulders bumped against the door. It was closed, holding the rising water inside and blocking their escape. “The old woman said I must make candles, so I did.” The water was up to her shoulders now. The sodden, clinging weight of her skirts and sleeves dragged at her limbs. Her lungs heaved, but she couldn’t seem to gulp quite enough air to clear the encroaching darkness from her vision.
“There is no old woman,” the creature suggested. An inky wet arm slithered toward her and coiled around her wrist.
“There is! I spoke to her. Let me go.” She tried to tug free.
“Too late for that.” Another tentacle spilled lazily, sinuously toward her.
A hint of anger prickled her. She snatched her arm from its grasp. “I completed the task, now tell me the answer.”
“Tell you the answer!” It took Catrin a moment to understand that the beast’s roar was a bellow of cold, burbling laughter. “Is that what the witch promised you? Foolish child! I am the answer. You summoned me. If you cannot guess my name, you and your friend are mine!”
An arm snaked out and seized her ankle, its suckers biting like a hundred little mouths. She tried to kick, but it only coiled tighter, pulling her toward the cauldron. More tentacles snatched at her arms and coiled around her neck and waist. She floundered, swallowing water, and sputtered up, choking. A tentacle smashed several more sconces off the wall, sending the candle flames hissing into the dark water.
Baldwin charged forward. “She is not for you! While I live, you shall not take her!” He hurled his spear into the center of the creature’s dark bulk.
The spear struck home. The beast shrieked and flailed, knocking one whole wall of candles and releasing Catrin. She floundered once more toward the door. Groping through the water, she seized hold of the door latch just as a tentacle slapped against the rocks beside her. A dozen more candles tumbled into the water. She yanked on the door, but the weight of the water held it shut. “Baldwin! Help me! The door is stuck.”
Shoulder deep in the churning water, the knight grappled with several more tentacles. “Don’t run from it, Princess. That only makes it stronger! Turn and face it. Speak its name. If you do that, it cannot harm you.”
His clarion voice rang through her. How fine he must have been on the battlefield with his king’s banner waving above him, how gladly men must have followed him to glory! Or to death, she reminded herself, recalling his final battle. Still, almost against her will, she turned to face the dark thing that pursued her. “But I don’t know its name.”
“Yes, you do!” he shouted. “You must!”
Most of the candles were gone, smashed by the beast or doused by the turbulent water. Huddled against the door, Catrin watched Baldwin struggle to unwind a tentacle from around his throat. The beast’s grip tightened, the knight’s knees buckled, and the rising water swallowed the last candle.
She could see nothing but darkness, hear nothing but splashing. “Baldwin!” He had vowed his life to protect her. She thought of him upon the battlefield, defending his king and banner, with a ribbon tying back his yellow hair. She wondered what sweetheart had tied it there for luck, and what the girl had thought when he never returned. She thought of her mother, and of Geoffrey. Now another person would die trying to save her Story.
“No!” She flailed against the pressing flood, trying to go to him, trying to untangle her clinging skirts so she could move. Her hand brushed against the soft lump of something in her pocket. She snatched at it and recognized the shape and texture of Kae’s good luck charm. In her mind, she heard Kae’s voice saying, “You’ll never be without light….”
In that first gleam of light, when she saw Baldwin caught in the roiling, serpentine arms of the sea beast, she could almost imagine them as a picture painted in the pages of her golden book. The hero and the monster, a mighty battle of opposing powers. And herself, overcoming her terror to light a single candle against the forces of darkness. In her mind, she heard the old woman on the beach saying, “The answers will be both black and white. Just like a Magpie.”
Then she knew.
She shoved herself forward into the tangle of slithering tentacles. “Stop! Let him go. I know the answer.”
The creature turned to meet her. Several of its arms slipped away from Baldwin and slid in her direction. Baldwin stumbled free, dragging his spear behind him. Everything seemed strange and far away, and Catrin wondered if she was going to faint. There was such a knocking in her ears that she could barely hear her own voice. From a great distance, she heard the creature command, “Speak.”
Raising her candle high, she replied:
“Fear is darker than the night
And colder than the stone.
And courage shines the brightest
When it shines quite alone.”
The tentacles convulsed, and the foundations of the tower groaned. The beast dissolved into smoke, and the smoke shriveled in on itself until it became a Magpie. Catrin had the dizzying sense of falling through a vast, bright space. Baldwin and the dungeon vanished; all that remained was light. When she opened her eyes, she was in her own bed in her father’s castle, squinting at the morning sunlight that streamed through the open shutters. Perched on her windowsill was the Magpie, black as night and bright as stars.
