Jack nodded and described the pomegranate as he had heard it described by the merchant. Dogs scattered in all directions.
Bronwyn grinned at him in the torchlight, and with a sigh sank to her heels, the floor being covered with dog excrement. Carole was oblivious to that, however. Sometime in the course of negotiations, she and a gray-muzzled oldster had found each other, and in an equal state of weary disregard for interspecies politics had collapsed, the dog’s head in Carole’s lap and hers resting on its furry back, both fast asleep.
* * *
“They are different than you would think,” Jack said, telling Anastasia of the dogs. “Proud and smart, and—well, that bitch reminded me of my Grandmother, Queen Xenobia. She had them dig up the whole cellar, and they searched every crack and crevice, but no fruit. And still raisin-face will not tell us where the pomegranate is, but insists we do his gardening for him. Meanwhile, we need more bones and the bitch says they must have meat. I think perhaps I will forget training animals and learn to read the tarot.”
“Well, I should think you would leap at the chance to do some gardening, though I must say,” she glanced at the leaden early morning sky and at the snow-frosted weeds and rocks surrounding the castle, “it seems a bit late to start landscaping.”
“It is not here in the outdoors, Loefric’s garden. It is on the level below the dogs. His pleasure at seeing us alive and whole at breakfast was not keen. If I do not acquire some bones to take back with us, he will be less disappointed tonight. Bronwyn plans to garden alone until I can join her.”
Bronwyn nodded gravely. “Not that we don’t have all the time in the world, but I am very bored in this luxurious palace, with nothing to do.”
Anastasia almost inquired what Carole intended to do while her socially superior cousin was toiling like a peasant, but Carole hung back, listless, leaning against the door frame. These lowborn children seemed to have little stamina. The swan knew by looking at Jack that she would have to allow him to ride upon her back to the forest. Not only was his customary cockiness notably absent, perhaps because the idea of being a dogsbody to dogs was less than appealing to him, but like Carole, he seemed depleted.
Only Bronwyn remained herself, though an impatient and twitchy version of herself, and the enchanted Princess of the Nonarable Lands could well imagine how trying it must be for her to play these senseless games with the malicious madman who controlled the keep while her own family and kingdom were under attack and she prevented by him from aiding them. So far she had shown great restraint in not skewering the wicked old man. That was not only honorable but wise since her tormenter was also the brother and vassal of her newly sworn ally. Anastasia saw no harm in reinforcing Bronwyn’s prudence, in case the impetuous young swordswoman should be tempted to change her mind.
“My dear Bronwyn, I should like to give you a piece of advice,” the swan said as she and Jack prepared to fly away.
“I’m quite sure I know all I need to and have everything under control,” Bronwyn replied, a lost and rather pleading note in her voice. “But if it will make you feel better, go ahead.”
“Very well, I shall. And bear in mind I say this not to hurt your feelings, but to aid you.” Bronwyn nodded. Anastasia proceeded, struggling to express herself delicately. She did not wish to mention directly the possibility of Bronwyn attacking Loefric, not only to spare Bronwyn’s sensibilities but to keep from giving her any bad ideas. “You are—ahem—often all too ready to rely on that sword of yours, my dear, and I believe that would be a mistake in this instance, as well as in other, shall we say, affairs of statecraft. Bear in mind that many of the Kings and Mages murdered by that scoundrel within were once great swordsmen too, and they did not prevail. It occurs to me that if the power of the fruit could be overcome by hacking, those men would still be among the living. Also, on the subject of your latest task, remember that a lady of high birth must always conduct herself in a manner befitting her station within the bounds of the situation. I would say, on the whole, that in a garden of any sort, it is always wiser to get to the root of things than to whack at them.”
Bronwyn tried to befit her station as she strode past Loefric, who sat in his chair and followed her with his eyes, a wary lizard on his rock. She stomped down the stairs and stooped into the tunnel, and held out her hand for the waiting hounds to sniff. She gave as a peace offering two bones Jack had cleverly retained for that purpose. She carried a fresh torch in one hand, and her shield and sword hooked to her belt. Once past the canine welcoming committee, she stepped from the tunnel into the wide corridor of the second level, squishing her way through the odiferous floor covering, past what had once been sumptuous bedrooms, and still showed rags of velvet bed hangings and draperies at blank, earth filled windows. Torch sconces occurred at regular intervals in the wall, many of them still holding torches, giving the hall, despite its ruined condition, a semblance of everyday ordinariness, as if servants would soon emerge and light the torches, clean up the muck, and throw out the dogs.
A dark gap in the south wall indicated the descending staircase. Bronwyn noted that the dog droppings did not foul the stone stairs past the landing, and wondered at that. She wished she spoke dog, as Jack did, so she could ask them, but then, she’d probably be as bad a liar in dog as she was in Argonian.
Weeds wound up the staircase to meet her, catching in her boot heels and snagging on her ankles. Holding her torch higher, she saw that weeds grew everywhere, thicker than a forest. Somewhere too, she heard a rushing, and smelled water. She devoutly hoped Anastasia’s serpents and alligators and insects hadn’t sunken right along with the castle. She would not like to encounter an alligator here, or fall into quicksand, though the Mother only knew she should have no trouble, in the latter event, in locating vines with which to pull herself out.
The light from her torch fell on one wall, and she saw that here too torches were still in place. Wading through the weeds, she made her way to the wall and began lighting each torch as she came to it, devoutly hoping she would not set the place on fire and incinerate castle, dogs, herself and all in the process. In the improved light, she could see that the weeds twined through and around and even penetrated the rotting furniture that would normally adorn a great hall.
The rushing and babbling grew louder and the smell of water stronger as she edged along the wall, trying to clear weeds as she went, though they seemed to grow back twice as thick and fast as before every time she cut a swatch through them. Her feet slipped, and when she cleared the plants away momentarily she could see that mud had drifted well up the walls. The cause of this was soon apparent, when she found herself standing on the banks of a swift river, dashing its way roughly south by southwest through the great hall and into what seemed, from its high ceiling and giant iron lamps and ornate pillars, to have once been a ballroom.
If the pomegranate had been where the river now ran, she was out of luck, but at least she understood where all the dirt had come from. The river must have carried it in when it poured through the walls. Any cellars or dungeons were no doubt flooded and destroyed by now, which was a blessing. Bronwyn thought that she would not like to see the dungeon of a castle in the shape of this one.
Since she couldn’t go forward, she tried to start back toward the stairs. She thought she had seen another doorway, on the other side. But the weeds she had cleared had grown back thicker and stronger than before and when she raised her sword to them, they grew up to snatch it. She held on and pulled back and they tripped her feet and wound rapidly around her wrist. She stopped hacking long enough to catch her breath, and abruptly the weeds wilted back.
She didn’t know what to make of that, but since she didn’t wish to be trapped in this jungle for the rest of whatever life she might have left, she started hacking again, only to be re-entangled immediately. By this time she was thoroughly panicked, and hacked and whacked until she was entirely mummified in a wrapping of weeds, all save the hip that held her shield. She started
to weep and curse simultaneously, furious at her own immobility, but as soon as the weeds held her immobilized and she stopped trying to wield her sword, they once again melted back.
They weren’t green, these weeds. More of a pale mushroom color, their leaves were spiky and brown, as if they were already dead, an appearance robustly and conclusively denied by their activity. These must be the plants from which the gruel was made. If so, harvest time must be rather trying. How did the Frostingdungians manage to collect a plant that fought back? But of course, that was it. The more they collected, the more this plant grew, which was why they had so much of the gruel and so little of anything else.
She stared at the weeds with new interest. What manner of plant was this, anyway? Whatever it was, she was going to have to master it if she was ever to find her way back to the surface again, let alone find the pomegranate. Stop hacking and get to the root of things, Anastasia had said. Well, then. The first part of the advice had proved sensible. Perhaps the second would too.
Sheathing the sword, Bronwyn used her free hand to tug gently at the weed. At first it clung to her wrist, but as she did it no violence, it wilted back again, and she pulled further. She planned to surprise it, feeling along until she reached each root and then giving a swift merciful yank at the end. The plant would never feel a thing, she was sure, although she wasn’t as sure how the other plants would react. They all seemed to be in sympathy.
Soon she had a sneaking suspicion she knew why. They were either very large plants or they were all connected somehow. No matter how many times she followed a strand to the ground, flipping the passive excess back over her shoulder as she groped along the vine, she never found a root. As long as she approached the task with indifference, and didn’t let her urgency cause her to jerk at the plant, it acted like a proper vine should and just lay there, but the minute she got anxious and tried to hurry it curled tightly around her again.
Rather like her curse, in a way. The more she wanted people to like her, the harder she tried to say something to them, the bigger her lies got, and the less able she was to use humor and tone of voice, the little ways she had to say something close to what she actually meant. The harder she tried, the more her tongue felt as tangled as this stupid vine. Did Carole ever feel that way when she tried so hard to be beautiful that she ended up acting as toady as Loefrig? And how about Jack, who was at his most ridiculous when he attempted to show everybody how brave and manly he was? But that was silly. They were normal. They didn’t have curses.
They also didn’t have to wrestle with this clinging vine. Stoop, bend, and pull, stoop, bend and pull. Too much effort and it locked you in a vice. Too little and you got absolutely nowhere, and for what? A fruit that took all the magic out of everything, made everything ordinary and dull and monotonous. Made her tired just to think of it. Still, the others had already done their share. All she had to do was win a match with this singular plant and—
It certainly was singular! Never once did she find a root system, as she followed the vine back and forth, up and down, over and around and back again, all through the un-submerged part of the ballroom on her side of the river, the great hall and on further into the kitchen. What if the part of the plant that grew into the river left the castle that way and wound along underground until the river surfaced, whereupon the plant too would surface and spread its tendrils all over the land? In view of its current hardiness, she didn’t feel that was entirely impossible. And the pasty gruel was eaten all over Frostingdung. Hmmm.
Finally, she flopped down beside an all-but-concealed fireplace at the end of the kitchen. She would just give up and die. The bloody plant was omnipotent. There was no fighting it, no reason to it. And her back was permanently arched from stooping, her arm a noodle from carrying the torch aloft. If she ever did reach the surface again, she would always resemble an angry cat. Who would have anything to do with a seven-cubit tall liar who looked like an angry cat?
She sighed. Jack and Carole wouldn’t even miss her, probably. They would make new lives for themselves here in Frostingdung, when Argonia had been overrun and all their parents killed. Perhaps they would not think too badly of her and would at least remember her as someone who had led them to safety, so that they weren’t demolished with the rest of the country. She felt so noble about that, she started to cry, and so frustrated that, forgetting the weeds’ reaction to assault, she angrily jerked on a handful lying near her right hip, beside her shield. This time-the weed did not give. It pulled back, and snapped, and all around her, began to wither and die. Good. At least she’d have company.
But while she was gazing curiously at the broken end near the ground, new shoots began to sprout. She wasn’t about to let it get away with that. She pulled and tugged again, as hard as before, with the same results, in a less spectacular fashion, as she’d gotten when she’d tried similar tactics in the other room. The plant was firmly embedded in the soil and didn’t intend to give. Cunningly, Bronwyn drew her sword again, and used it like a spade, digging all around the plant. Since it was not directly disturbed, the weed didn’t fight back or accelerate its growth, though the sprouts from her first flurry of effort had instantly grown as high as her waist.
At last she unearthed a network of roots, but instead of pulling, she felt along them until she found what seemed to be a bulb. When she could get her hand around it, she brought up bulb, roots, sprouts and all.
As she had hardly dared hope, the bulb was round, and red, and the entire root system grew from a tiny neck at the top of it. She snapped it off and watched the sprouts die. Pocketing the pomegranate, she whistled a snatch of the marching tune Carole had once used to charm her and slogged back through the muck and mire.
Chapter 12
“I know you’re lying,” was all Loefric had to say when confronted with the fruit, the three determined children, and a pack of contemptuous but self-controlled hounds.
“I’m not saying a word,” Bronwyn denied the charge indignantly.
“She doesn’t need to,” Carole said. “You said we might have the pomegranate if we found it and she’s found it. And we’ve done all the work you’ve neglected to do in this poor castle for the last umpty-ump years and made friends of your dogs as well, so stop sniveling. And do wipe your nose, won’t you? You can’t imagine how nasty that looks on a grown man and a prince at that!”
“Now see here, girl, I—” Loefric began sneeringly, but stopped. He had run out of anything to sneer about. The dogs snarled and snapped in his direction and he edged backwards, away from them, toward the steps. The bitch snapped suddenly and down he fled, shuffling faster than any of them would have believed he could.
Bronwyn meanwhile told an abbreviated version of how she had vanquished the fruit and its perilous porridge vine, and with a few charades and the brief help of her charm at strategic points, managed to convey to them her discoveries about the pomegranate’s properties. She found talking difficult, her strength oddly sapped by her struggles, and finally, she simply pulled the red fruit from her pocket and let her friends see it for themselves. Sprouts already shot from the top. For some reason, that discouraged her more up here than it had in the depths of the cellar and she found she was almost weeping when she said, “As you can see, in spite of everything, it’s quite hopeless to fight this. I don’t know why I ever imagined myself a warrior. Not that it matters. We’ll never be able to join Loefwin in time to help father and—”
Carole, who had been listening carefully, shook her head and said, “It’s clear enough how that works. Just listen to her! Now she not only lies, she’s depressing as well.” She jumped up and ran to the swan bed, pulling out the hope chest. “Come on, you two, let’s take this outdoors so Bronwyn can put the pomegranate in it. Well, come on. You wouldn’t think the fruit of disenchantment would be so dangerous to someone who is enchanted in the first place, but obviously that’s not so.” Jack shrugged and Bronwyn shrugged back and followed him with a shamble worthy of her host.
Once outdoors, Carole wasted no time but immediately upended the box and jumped backwards as the piles and piles of treasure spilled all over the frosted heath.
“What do you think you’re doing?” demanded Anastasia, who had been perching on the keep’s roof all morning while waiting to learn the outcome of Bronwyn’s mission. “First you gather up my things, and now you treat them as so much chaff.”
“I’m sorry, Anastasia the Alluring, but your hope chest is the only thing I can think of that can protect us from that accursed fruit. Give it here, Bronwyn.”
Bronwyn sighed a world-weary sigh and dropped the sprouting pomegranate into the box. Its pale new tendrils curled as if burned the moment they touched the wood, and though the fruit’s powers to disenchant kept the box’s shrinking spell from affecting it, the vine nevertheless began shriveling even as Carole closed and latched the lid. “Should be safe to carry this way,” she said, handing the box back to Bronwyn.
Bronwyn almost protested again that protection was pointless, and a hope chest really had no chance against disenchantment, but then, she had seen tendrils shrivel. And she suddenly found she was feeling a good deal better.
“That’s all very well for you, my dear,” Anastasia said, still flapping, “But this is my home after all. I can’t stand the thought of my treasures rotting in the open.”
“They’re only things,” Carole said scornfully, “But very well.” And with a series of shrill whistles she whooshed everything back indoors. The last chair in nearly broke the leg of Loefric, who stumbled out the door and sank to his knees beside them.
“Please, stop—” he cried.
“But you said,” Carole began, intending to remind him of his promise to let them leave.
“I said no one would ever make a believer of me again, but you brats—children have,” he said, blowing his nose on her hem, and gazing up at her. He was no lovelier than usual in the daylight, but she thought she saw rather more resemblance to Loefwin than she had noticed before. The face, though ugly as a hidebehind made visible, was not so wrinkled and raddled as the shadows of the keep had made it seem. “Even if you’ve tricked me—even if none of this is real, I—I’d rather look a fool than go on as I’ve been.”
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