“We must have it for the Profit of all,” the uncle reiterated piously.
“I must say, despite all the mumbo-jumbo, I agree that it’s a very good idea. Old Fric isn’t what he used to be, and I daresay a dangerous morsel like that would be safer in less unpredictable hands,” Loefwin said. “But I still don’t see sending children for it. Why not go yourselves if you don’t trust me? I’ll give you my seal to show Fric—”
The merchants looked at each other nervously and Mashkent said, “What? Risk the liquidation of our chief assets when this excellent young lady needs to earn the price of her steeds? That would be not only ungenerous of us, but foolish as well.”
From beyond the doors a high-pitched whinnying sounded, and the merchants jumped to their feet and ran out into the courtyard.
The black djinn writhed in the snow, his eyes popping and his chest heaving frantically as he tried to dig the thongs of one of Droughtsea’s senyaties from the flesh of his neck. A winged stallion soared above the walls and over the town. Droughtsea and Belburga clung tightly to his back.
“So much for the Duke and his palace coup,” Rusty said. “Good thing Mama’s not afraid of heights.”
* * *
The Miragenians finally agreed that Bronwyn, Carole, and Jack could ride the flying horses to Loefric’s domain, as long as they dismounted and released the animals at the border of Western Frostingdung and walked to the castle from there. Once the children were on their way, the Emperor would use the horses to gather the army. Warning that they would be overseeing the use of their valuable property from the pool of visions, the merchants loaded their injured servant between them and flew away.
Bronwyn and her companions were mounted and ready by first light, after the shortest possible delay to provision themselves, for the merchants had warned that they must eat or drink nothing that came from Loefric’s castle. Jack and Carole rode double on one of the horses, while Bronwyn rode another and Anastasia flew alongside.
The trip took most of the day, and had all the gay holiday air of a forced march, what with Bronwyn staring grimly ahead, Anastasia anxiously circling beyond the others in private little scouting forays, and Carole alternately making crabby, pessimistic comments and nodding in the saddle. None of them had had the time or inclination for sleep.
Jack supposed he too ought to act very serious and try to worry. Both his father and grandfather were with King Roari. But they were gypsies; they had been in tight spots before, and wet ones too, for that matter. Were they in his place now, they would not be worrying about him when they could do nothing—they would instead be enjoying a thrilling ride on the back of a magnificent beast. Never had he traveled so far so fast and on such a beautiful animal! If he couldn’t somehow contrive to take one of them back to his tribe with him, perhaps he could arrange to breed one to a gypsy mount—the foal of such a union ought to be worth enough to earn the gold required to fulfill his manhood test. He was uncomfortably aware that time was growing short. How sad it would be to help save the kingdom only to remain a perpetual boy.
By late afternoon the sun disappeared, fading into a sky of blank, colorless uniformity. Soon the forest thinned to a few trees and those dwindled to shrubs, then those too vanished into a vast gray expanse of parched wasteland.
Anastasia flew with her head angled downward, her sharp eye scanning the empty landscape. Just when Jack had convinced himself she was merely looking for something to eat, she descended from the sky in a dizzyingly swift spiral, as if she had suddenly grown too heavy to stay aloft. The horses followed suit, landing in a somewhat less abrupt manner, and the children dismounted.
“What is it?” Carole asked the swan, who stared incredulously into the gray land beyond.
“It is—it is as I feared. We are now in what is left of my own dear home, the Nonarable Lands.”
“That can’t be so,” Bronwyn protested. “The Emperor distinctly said that this was where we would find West Frostingdung.”
“Nevertheless these are the Nonarable Lands, more nonarable than ever, but I would know them anywhere. Ours must have been the first Kingdom to succumb to conquest, if Loefric implemented his fiendish plot from here. Poor Father! I knew someday our inability to raise archers would be the end of us.”
“Well, wherever we are, I suggest that we find the Prince and the castle and get indoors before the hide-behinds and monsters come out for the night.” Carole shivered.
“I think there is nothing so vigorous as a monster in this land,” Jack said, regarding the surrounding featureless aridity sadly. “There is no cover to conceal anything.”
They dismounted and slapped the horses on the rumps, sending the steeds winging back to their masters, and set out on foot.
Anastasia flew alongside them over what looked to be flat land, but what felt to the walkers as if it was one long upward slope. “Who would think all this gray, weedy gravel once was a garden of quicksand and bog, a home for the insect swarms, a haven for the playful serpent and slothful alligator?” the swan mourned. “Oh, my kingdom, what have they done to you?”
Whatever it was, it wasn’t pleasant. The walking was vile. Small stones, just big enough to make the footing difficult and cause rock bruises, littered the ground. The sluggish sky bestirred itself now and began to boil, lashing out with a bitter cold wind that whipped through the few stickery weeds thrusting through the gravel and stung the travelers’ eyes with cold and flying dust, snapping right through the fine cloaks they’d borrowed at Loefwin’s palace.
When they came upon a deep scummy pool that looked as if it had been sitting there since before Loefwin’s war, Anastasia landed in the wind-rippled water, which sloshed up and down, leaving, when it receded, an unsightly green-brown ring around her sleek blackness. Her wings she kept folded fastidiously up over her back. “Is this all that is left of my lovely river?” she asked softly, and said to her friends, “Once there flowed a great river right here, where we are walking. It fed the swamps. No wonder they have vanished.”
“It has been many years since you saw your home,” Jack said kindly. “Perhaps this is not it. Perhaps you are mistaken.”
“No—I knew we were bound for my father’s lands from Loefwin’s directions. But never did I dream of this devastation. How I wish I’d followed my heart and fled in the opposite direction! The unspeakable wretches, that they should despoil my country so.” And without waiting for them to catch up, she flew away.
But they had only to walk a few paces beyond the pool before they topped a rise, and saw that a path stretched up to meet them. On first sight, it seemed to be made of broad stones, once white, now dirtied and stained to a slightly paler gray than the surrounding gravel. When Carole paused for a rest and sat on one of them, she found it even more rounded than she had thought. Since it wasn’t very comfortable, she reached down with her hand to rearrange it. It wouldn’t budge. Squatting, she pried it up with her ringers. Her hand slipped—under the rock, so she thought—but when she gave a long pull to loosen it she found she’d run her fingers through the eye sockets of a skull.
A rustle of wings announced Anastasia’s return. Carole quickly shoved the skull back into its niche. After all, it might be a relative.
The swan had scouted ahead. “I confess I grow almost as curious as I am distressed,” she said. “The central keep is right there, though shorter than I remember. But the rest of the castle is not there. I cannot think where it might have gone.”
They soon saw what she meant, and discovered the solution. The keep was centered in the customary fashion on a man-made mound, and had suffered less from what appeared to be a cataclysmic settling than had the rest of the castle. All that remained above ground of the outlying structures were the toothy merlons and the tops of some of the towers. Since these were as unrelentingly gray as the landscape, they had escaped Anastasia’s notice when she’d first flown over them. A wide ditch outlined the perimeters, but contained not the slightest drop of moisture. The path of skulls led stra
ight through it to the door of the keep.
“The old place has certainly gone downhill,” Anastasia said with a pathetic attempt at levity. Carole glared at her, and wished the creature would stop dwelling so tiresomely on how painful it was to return home and find it ruined. While it couldn’t be easy for the swan to face such changes, she could at least have the good grace to do so in silence. Carole for one didn’t want to think about the subject and she certainly didn’t want to hear any more bad jokes about it.
Jack, hearing the catch in the swan’s voice and watching Bronwyn’s suddenly stricken face and Carole’s angry one, found that Argonia was not so distant as he had earlier felt. While a gypsy had no permanent home to return to, he had a sudden vision of himself flying his flying horse all over his native countryside looking for his people and finding them nowhere, their campfires dead for good. But again, he could do nothing about that now. As protector of these helpless females, it behooved him to think instead of their welfare and of the task at hand. “Your Highness,” he said kindly to Anastasia, “perhaps it would be a good thing for you if you returned to the palace—”
“And risk being stung to death by fliers again?” the swan said and sniffed. “No, thank you.”
“But see what this brother of the Emperor’s has done to your castle! I would not like to think what he would do to one of the people who used to live in it, and in your present form you could hardly defend yourself. You cannot handle weapons or maneuver well in a closed space and we—we might not be able to help you.”
She was silent for a moment, then said tiredly, “Oh, very well. I suppose procuring that so-unfortunate fruit must be the first priority and my presence might well be a detriment. I shall wait at the pool and if monsters of either the landlocked or flying sort attempt to trifle with me, woe betide them. Besides, I can always dive. Surely nothing can be alive in that water.” She started to take off, but turned back for a moment. “Before I go, pluck out one of my feathers. If you need me, burn the feather and I shall come immediately.”
Jack did so and she flew away.
Bronwyn had unsheathed her sword. Now, using the hilt, she pounded on the top portion of the door, which had sunk halfway into the gray and gravelly earth.
Jack was not perhaps quite ready for so much action, so quickly. Making the sign against the evil eye, he ducked back behind Carole.
“Oh, really,” the witch said reproachfully. When Bronwyn’s knock failed to bring a response, and the big Princess retreated a step with a puzzled, helpless expression on her face, Carole strode boldly forward and knocked smartly, three times. On the third knock the door gaped open on creaky iron hinges, one of which broke, and the cracked oaken slab skewed crazily aside, falling half off its frame to land inside the keep with a whoosh and a bang and a gust of musty, unclean-smelling air. Clouds of gray dirt billowed up and they all broke into fits of sneezing.
When they had recovered, Jack asked, “Do you think we should go ahead and enter?”
“I don’t see why not. He mustn’t mind visitors too much if he doesn’t even have a proper front door,” Carole said tardy. “Maybe he isn’t even home—”
“It does have that lived-in look,” Bronwyn, who had removed her bracelet at the beginning of the journey to conserve its power, agreed.
Another icy blast of wind cut across them, and this time it carried the first pellets of a hail storm. They ducked into the keep, stumbling on the sunken steps. Jack and Bronwyn pushed the door to and shoved it back into place as far as they could.
Inside it was dark, and outside the wind had taken up whistling, the hailstones rattling a fast tattoo against the walls. A long anguished baying echoed through the building. It seemed to come from beneath them, and Jack could have sworn the floor shuddered with the vibrations.
“Did you hear that?” Carole asked.
“Hear what?” Bronwyn asked through determinedly clenched teeth. “That was nothing.”
“A werewolf, at least,” Jack, whimpered. “We have been sent to our doom.”
“Nonsense,” Carole said, shaking herself. “Besides, there is iron on the door. We’re p-perfectly safe. Do you have that new tinderbox we got from Loefwin’s kitchen?”
“But of course.”
“Try to kindle a flame then, and perhaps Bronwyn can find a torch. There should still be one on the wall somewhere.”
Bronwyn edged back towards the door and followed along the wall with her hands. She took only two steps before barking her shins on something sharp, and several objects clattered, banged and rolled across the floor causing her to trip and flail about a great deal before she was able to regain her balance. But while she was flailing, her fingertips scraped across something that at least felt like a torch, so she grabbed, and when she had regained her equilibrium, held it out for Jack to light.
It blossomed with a light more comforting than the sun, at least for a moment, though it cast disfiguring shadows over everyone’s features. Jack made a face and said, “Oooh ha ha,” in a mock frightening voice, but then realized he really was frightened and making matters worse so he shut up.
As soon as his eyes adjusted to the light, however, he let out a low whistle. The torchlight, dim as it was, sparkled off the facets of thousands of gems embedded in mountains of treasure heaped all over the room. Gradually he could define the outlines of jeweled chairs, tables, dishes, chests, cabinets, clothing, weapons, armor, and all sorts of other articles stuffed into the room in careless piles.
“Anastasia would just love the way her family silver is being treated,” Bronwyn said in what was supposed to be a light tone.
“It is very messy,” Jack agreed, and began stuffing his pockets from the nearest pile. “I will just tidy up a bit.”
Carole stopped his arm in mid-filch. “If the Emperor’s brother is still living here, we aren’t going to charm the pomegranate out of him by stealing from him.”
“Do you really think anyone would notice?” Jack asked, but sullenly began replacing the gems and coins. He could always retrieve them after the pomegranate was secured.
The clatter the jewels made sliding back into heaps masked for a moment the slow tread rising a lumbering step at a time towards them. Jack froze, listening.
The steps faltered at what seemed to be a given point, like a doorway or a staircase landing. Labored breathing rasped through the room, louder than the hail. Then, with agonizing slowness, the steps stumped closer.
The man that finally faced them was not in the least formidable, except perhaps that he was formidably depressing. Not the sort one would invite to court, or even to a party. He was bent, sour-faced, and unsanitary-looking in the extreme. His clothing, which might once have been as rich as the garments jumbled around the room, was torn, stained, and so dirty its color was grayed into nonexistence. The tarnished metallic band with the empty jewel settings that trimmed a ripped sleeve dangled to the top of one of many rents in smelly old hose that sagged down his spindly legs. He had a yellowed filthy beard half knotted into a kerchief tied around his head. His watery eyes blinked repeatedly in the light of the torch while he smacked wrinkled lips over sunken gums.
“Bloody bones!” this apparition cursed in a muffled voice, “What’re you? Not that I care. You’re where you’ve no call to be. I’m calling the hounds.”
“No, sir, don’t do that,” Carole pleaded with all the little girl sweetness she could muster.
“Why not?” he asked, though he didn’t sound interested in the answer.
“Because,” Jack said. “Because we come from the Emperor—”
“Yes,” Bronwyn said. “We’ve been sent to board with Prince Loefric. We’re from the Empress’s Orphan’s Aid Benevolent Society. We were chosen as the most benevolent orphans available to fill positions as his wards.”
“Were you now? You call that benevolent, banging about in the darkness, bothering a man? Can’t imagine what we’d use orphans for, benevolent or otherwise, except dog food. Hounds do
tend to languish on a steady diet of snake and rat.”
Carole began to get the feeling that this was not a nice old man, but one had to try, after all. “Please, sir, may we see Prince Loefric?”
The old man held his arms out, dropped them to his sides, turned his back, held his arms out again, and dropped them back again. “That’s all of ’im there is. Now you’ve seen ’im. Get out.”
Bronwyn drew herself up to her full regal giantess stature. She had been afraid from the first that, despite a conspicuous lack of family resemblance, this man was Loefwin’s long-lost triplet himself and not a servant. Had he been a servant, he would have been hanged on his own bell rope long ago, judging from the condition of the keep. To Jack and Carole she said, “How shortsighted of us, friends, not to have recognized the Prince at once by his splendid hospitality, for which he is so well known throughout the realm. I understand his last dinner party made history.”
“Did it?” the codger asked. “I’ll bet it did! Now, get out, if you don’t want to be served the same fare!”
“But it’s hailing outside—” Carole protested, and they were all quiet so he could hear the hailstones and the wind and take pity on them.
Instead he took pity on himself. “I’m too worn out to treat with brats this night. Come along if you must.” And he led them through the labyrinth of loot, picking his way back to a massive table, piled almost as high as the rest of the room with filthy golden and silver dishes caked with moldy messes. Without asking permission, Bronwyn lit four more torches from her own, and felt some satisfaction in watching Loefric cringe from the light. Then she joined Jack and Carole, who sat on the floor with their backs to a rolled tapestry.
Loefric glared at them. “Ah yes, children. One of the best of many reasons I decided not to return to the outside world. Same as ever, aren’t you, brats? Snot-nosed, greedy, and noisy.” Bronwyn wanted to point out that hers was not the nose that was dripping, but refrained and let him rant on. “Probably come to rob me, have you? Well, you’ll find nothing of interest here. Nothing. Just the dogs and me—and all this trash.”
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