The Sword-Edged blonde elm-1

by Alex Bledsoe

She frowned. “Eppie,” she repeated, as if it were some strange greeting. “Do I know you, sir?”

  “Epona Gray,” I said in the same blank, astounded tone.

  Her eyes looked around the room, as if to make sure I was speaking to her. “Is that a color? Are you here to paint?”

  I dropped heavily into the chair. All my careful theories and concepts vanished. “No,” I said.

  After a long moment she pushed self-consciously at the tunic’s hem and said, “You’re staring at me, sir.”

  “Yes, I am,” I agreed.

  “It’s rather rude, don’t you think?”

  I continued to stare for a long minute before I finally asked the only question I could. “Don’t you recognize me? I’m Eddie LaCrosse.”

  She nodded. “Philip’s friend from childhood. The one who was there when his sister was killed.”

  “No!” I exclaimed. “Cathy Dumont’s friend! Thirteen years ago, remember?” I spoke more quietly, although I still felt like I was shouting. “You and I got to know each other very well, remember?”

  She looked me over, then said, “I’m sorry, sir, I have no memory of you. Perhaps without the beard-”

  “ I had the beard then! ” I shouted for real, and she backed away from the bars.

  “Please, sir, you’re scaring me,” she said, and wrapped her arms around herself. “I swear I don’t know you. Could you possibly be mistaken?”

  Even the voice was the same, with that slight trill of amusement under everything. “Maybe so, if you don’t have a horseshoe-shaped scar on the inside of your left thigh, and don’t enjoy having the back of your neck licked.”

  She blinked, startled. Now she was politely outraged at my insolence. “Sir, I assure you, I have no memory of you.”

  “But I’m right, aren’t I?”

  She turned away from the bars, and a red shine crept up her face. Only the best actresses, or con artists, could manage a blush on cue. “About the scar, yes. About the other… I don’t feel it would be polite to say.”

  My heart began to return to its normal rhythm, although I was sure it had burned a good six months off me in those brief moments. “So the name Stan Carnahan doesn’t ring a bell? Or Andrew Reese?”

  She shook her head and looked down. “Didn’t my husband tell you? I’m an amnesiac, Mr. LaCrosse. My life began six years ago. I recall nothing before that.”

  The woman I’d known as Epona Gray sported straight, dark hair, and as they say, I was mighty damn sure it was her natural color. This Queen Rhiannon had cascading, wavy hair the color of sunbeams. Moreover, if this was Epona Gray, she didn’t look a day older than when I last saw her. Could this be a relative? A daughter, perhaps?

  But no, the resemblance was too close, too identical. Every instinct told me this was the same woman. “So you never went by the name Epona Gray?”

  “I can’t say for certain.” She met my gaze with those big, innocent eyes that could probably convince the devil he needed an extra blanket. “I suppose it’s possible. The name Rhiannon just came to me shortly after I awoke. I assumed it was my own, but I could be wrong. No one’s suggested another one until now.”

  I took a moment to regain my composure, and began again. “All right. We’ll assume for the moment that I’m mistaken, although the resemblance is astounding. I’m here to help Phil, who wants to know the truth about what happened the night your son died.”

  The confusion and queenly reserve were instantly-almost as if on a well-rehearsed cue-replaced by a touching vulnerability. “You have to believe me, Mr. LaCrosse, I’m innocent. I didn’t kill my son.”

  I was on firmer ground now, questioning a suspect. “Then who did?”

  “That’s just it, he’s not dead,” she said urgently, and stepped toward the bars. She caught herself just before touching them, apparently remembering the rules. “I’d know if he was. I’m his mother, I’d be able to feel it. But no one believes me. They’re too busy convicting me to make any effort to find him.”

  “ I believe you,” I said.

  “Do you?” she almost cried.

  I nodded, my practiced cool bouncing off her histrionics. “The body in that coffin was not your son. It wasn’t even human, probably a monkey or something. But that doesn’t get me much closer to knowing who’s behind this, or what to do about it.”

  Relief, fear, desperation and finally cagey intelligence played over her exquisite face. I’d seen that same sly look on Eppie Gray, too, and it took all my concentration to stay on topic. The breeze through the window blew a strand of golden hair in her eyes, and she absently tucked it behind her ear. “Then what may I do to help you, sir?” she asked.

  “Here’s what I think happened. Somebody hates either you or Phil an awful lot to go to this much trouble. And since this couldn’t have been a spur-of-the-moment thing, it was probably someone who’s had a grudge simmering for a long time. Maybe even further back than six years.”

  Her eyes met mine, and there was no denying their candor. “Let me tell you my version of how I met Philip, Mr. LaCrosse. I awoke in the woods, lying in the sun in a patch of clover, naked and with no memory of anything except my name. Philip was hunting, and he’d broken away from his guard, and found me.” She held my gaze. “And that is truthfully my earliest memory, as ludicrous as it may sound.”

  “Phil always knew how to meet the girls. So were you injured?”

  “No. I seemed to be fine. I always seem to be fine. I’ve never even been sick a day since. I was only in labor for an hour with Pridiri. I can’t explain it.”

  Epona’s voice rang in my memory. Ripping myself open reminds me there is life. “Maybe you’re just living right. So have you pissed anyone off in the last six years?”

  “No one of whom I’m aware. We lead a very sedate life, for royalty. And I don’t really participate in the government, I’m more of a public relations person.” She smiled, but her eyes remained sad. “There are schools named after me, did you know that? They’ll probably change that now, though.”

  If this was genuine, her real personality showing through, then I was baffled. It was like she had none of the skills everyone else in the world had developed to mask her emotions; whatever she felt came through as pure and clear as sunlight after a summer rain. I felt bad questioning her, like you might feel kicking a puppy. And that annoyed me. If she was Epona Gray, she was reeling me in like a suicidal bass.

  “Then let’s try something different. On the night of the, ah, incident in question, why did it take you thirty minutes to get from the dining room to the nursery?”

  She blinked in surprise. “It did?”

  “People know when you left, other people know when you arrived. I could crawl that distance in half an hour, so why did it take you that long to walk it?”

  “I don’t know.” She seemed genuinely surprised by this information.

  “Nothing unusual happened? No one accosted you or spoke to you or anything?”

  “No. In my memory, I went straight to the nursery. You’re right, though, it couldn’t possibly take that long.”

  She overdid the sincerity just a hair, but it was enough for me to catch it. She knew something she wasn’t telling me. I decided to change tactics.

  “Look,” I said, resting my arms on my knees, “I don’t know what the hell to do here. I want to help Phil, but I’ve got jack to go on. Nobody hates him, nobody hates you, so why the hell would someone go to this much trouble? And if they did get into the nursery undetected, why fake a murder? Why not just go ahead and kill the little bozo? No offense.”

  I watched her closely, but the only thing she let show was confusion. With all apparent honesty, she answered, “Mr. LaCrosse, I don’t know.”

  I sat back. So much for polite tactics. “You’re lying to me.”

  “You think I’m this Epona person,” she said.

  “I don’t know. I do think something scares you so bad that you’d actually prefer people to think you’d killed and eat
en your son.”

  “That would be insane,” she said to the floor.

  “If you’ll be honest with me, I promise I won’t tell anyone else. Not even Phil. And if he’s told you anything about me at all, you’ll know that’s true. I keep my word.”

  She looked down at her bare feet for a long moment, one elegant toe tracing idle circles on the stone floor. Finally she asked, “Are you helping Philip because of what happened to his sister?”

  Epona knew about it, and it also made sense Phil would tell his wife. However she found out, though, it was still a low blow. “I want to help because he’s my friend,” I said through my teeth.

  I stood. I really wanted out of that room, and a big drink, in that order. When I reached for the door, she cried, “That’s all? You’re leaving?”

  I almost laughed. “You either can’t or won’t tell me what I need to know, Your Majesty, so this is pointless. I’ll have to do this without you.”

  “You’re going to find my son?” Now she sounded hopeful.

  “I’m going to find out the truth. Because like I said, Phil’s my friend. If I find your son in the process, great. If I find out why you’re lying to me, I’ll be sure to let Phil know so that he can decide if it’s for a good reason.”

  Of all things, that finally broke her facade. “No!” she almost screamed. “You can’t tell him-” Then she caught herself.

  But I was already across the room, clutching the bars and inches from her face. “Tell him what? ” I hissed. “I know you’re Epona Gray, or at least you used to be. You know me. Who did all this? And why? ”

  Tears rolled down her face, and she wrapped her arms around her upper body. “What I know, just as I know the sun will rise tomorrow and that a dropped apple will hit the ground, is that I’ll die if Philip doesn’t love me.”

  “Do you love him? ”

  “Oh, God, yes,” she sobbed. “With all my heart. Like I could love no other man.”

  Enough time had passed that this statement inspired no jealousy. Well, okay, only a bit. “Then who hates you? ”

  She didn’t answer, just repeatedly shook her head. She began to cry in earnest, and sank to the edge of the hard bunk, still hugging herself. I smacked the bars in frustration.

  “When I find out the truth,” I almost snarled at her, “it better be damn well worth all this shit. Eppie.” Then I turned and knocked to be let out of the room.

  TEN

  Wentrobe gave me directions to the spot where Phil originally met-or found, rather-Rhiannon. It was deep in the woods on the royal hunting preserve. I could’ve gone with Wentrobe, or Sergeant Vogel, or even Phil, but I wanted to see it alone. I needed some time away from Arentia City and the palace to sort through what I’d learned, and not learned, from the queen.

  The preserve was usually a bastard to sneak onto and off of. But I’d learned a lot of the old trails when I was a kid, and it seemed the current crop of guards knew even fewer of them than they had back then. I only had to duck off into the trees once to avoid an oblivious game warden on patrol. Poaching only became an issue when there was some famine, and Arentia was anything but starving.

  It seemed unlikely I’d find any clues after six years, but I still wanted to see the place. I was reasonably certain that the plot surrounding the mysterious queen originated in her life before Phil met her; and since she claimed to remember nothing prior to that meeting, I had to work backwards from day one.

  I found the area easily enough; a soft, low clover-covered hill in a clearing next to a stream. A good hunter like Phil would’ve checked this area for deer tracks, because the slope down to the water showed several in sharp, clear relief. I dismounted and tied my horse to a low branch; the beast looked at me with her typical equine arrogance. She seemed to have no trouble changing her loyalty from whichever border bandit owned her before, to me. Fickle tramp. I walked up the hill, scanning the ground for… I had no clue what.

  The blue and gray clover flowers shone in the bright sun, and a light breeze made them wave a little. I sat down and surveyed the stream, the forest, even the sky. They all seemed normal, as any crime scene would after half a decade. Especially when you’re not sure of the nature of the crime.

  I picked one of the gray clover flowers. I stared at it, and something went ping way back in my head. I couldn’t quite drag it forward, though, and sat there for a long moment until it hit me.

  Clover doesn’t have gray flowers.

  I bent and looked at the plant very closely. A gray one grew next to a purple one, and other than the color of the blooms they were identical. Then I stood and looked at the whole hill.

  Atop the rounded peak was a circle of gray clover about nine feet across. From one point, a narrow trail of the gray flowers led down the hill into the woods. The trail ended at the leaf litter, where the overhead branches blocked the sun.

  A large crow cawed from a limb overhead and flew away into the forest. My eyes inadvertently followed the movement, which seemed to sparkle like the birds I’d seen on Rhiannon’s window sill. On the tree he’d vacated, a trail of silver-tipped moss grew in a narrow, thick line down the trunk, in the dead center of a burn scar from an old lightning strike. It, too, disappeared under the leaves. When I kicked the litter away, I saw that the moss continued in an unbroken line along the ground, green and alive despite being covered. I followed it, knowing it would eventually turn into the trail of gray clover. It did.

  Okay, I’d found a clue. But it told me nothing. Actually, it took away some certainties, so it was more of an anti-clue. Eddie LaCrosse, reverse investigator.

  So, divorced from its context, what did this tell me? Something apparently came down the tree, across the ground and landed on the very spot where my pal Phil had found his bare-assed bride, and left a trail conducive to the growth of slightly off-kilter flora. Had the lightning scar been there before the moss? Could whatever left the trail have also split the bark of the tree? I’d seen burning rocks fall from the sky; I’d seen lightning. I’d encountered all manner of animals that flew. What combination could result in what I now saw? Nothing came to mind. Except the obvious idea that Queen Rhiannon herself had left the trail after she’d fallen from the heavens and crawled out into the sun. But I wasn’t ready to put my weight behind that.

  “Hey!” a harsh male voice said behind me. “Hands where I can see ’em!”

  I slowly complied. “I’m not a poacher. I’ve got authorization to be here.”

  “Not without me knowing about it, you don’t,” the voice said much nearer. I hadn’t heard any steps; the guy knew his way around the forest. Suddenly I also recognized the voice.

  “Terry?” I said. “Terry Vint?”

  “Who’s asking?” he said, now right behind me.

  I grinned. “Someone you still owe three bucks to.”

  “I don’t owe anybody any money.”

  “Not money bucks. Deer bucks.”

  He was silent for a moment. “Eddie LaCrosse?”

  I turned. Terry’s dad had been the head warden when I was a kid, and Terry had run around with Phil and me whenever he could. Now he was older, and had inherited his father’s lean leathery look along with his job. But the smile was all Terry.

  “Well, goddamn,” he said, and lowered the crossbow he’d held pointed at my back. He wore the warden’s camouflage clothes and carried a short sword at his waist. His hair was mostly white, a combination of gray and sun-bleached blond. A deep scar marked the left side of his neck. “You are the absolute last person I expected to see here. When did you get back?”

  “I’m not back, and you haven’t seen me. I’m working on something private for the king.”

  “Private?” he repeated, puzzled. Then he nodded. “Ah. The mysterious Queen Rhiannon.”

  I waved at the hill. “This is where they met, isn’t it?”

  “Yep. I was with him that day, although he’d gone ahead to scout for tracks. He’d already found her by the time I caught up.”r />
  “Do you remember anything unusual about that day?”

  “Other than finding a drop-dead gorgeous blonde laid out naked like a picnic?”

  “Yeah, other than that.”

  “No. But I noticed some weird stuff afterwards.”

  “Like what?”

  He nodded toward the hill. “See anything strange about the spot?”

  “Besides the trail of gray clover that turns into silver moss and runs up that tree?”

  “Not bad. Clover doesn’t grow gray flowers, and moss doesn’t grow silver tips, yet here they are. Like they’re marking a trail, wouldn’t you say?” Without waiting for a response, he walked over to the moss-lined tree. “And I’ve got something else to show you, that I never showed anybody. Tried to show the king once, but he couldn’t be bothered. Haven’t looked for it in a few years, so it may not be there, but let’s see…”

  He walked to the base of the tree and began kicking away the leaves. In a few moments he’d uncovered an area of bare, dark dirt about ten feet square, bisected by the silver moss. “Whadda ya think of that?” he asked, gesturing at the ground.

  He’d uncovered a line of carefully placed rocks marking the impression where something big and heavy had hit the ground. Weather and time had blurred some of the edges, but the rocks, placed soon after the initial impact, clearly showed the object’s unmistakable outline. The trail of silver moss ran right through it.

  “It looks,” I said obviously, “like a horse fell out of the sky.”

  “Yep,” Terry agreed.

  “Horses don’t do that, as a rule.”

  “Not usually.”

  “I don’t suppose anyone saw a horse fall from the sky, turn into a beautiful woman and then lay down in the grass to wait for passing royalty to pick her up?”

  “Horses generally don’t do that, either.”

  “No,” I agreed. “So Phil never saw this?”

  “ Nobody else has seen it. I marked it out after the hubbub died down, figuring some day someone might want to know, and pretty much forgot about it myself.”

  I looked at him. “It might be important that you forget again.”