The Dark Lord Clementine

by Sarah Jean Horwitz

  When she stumbled upon the hidden garden, Darka immediately knew it was different from the other parts of the castle. Colorful blossoms, silken-looking ivy, and forsythias in full bloom greeted her between the crumbling stone walls. She took a deep breath, savoring the surprisingly crisp smell of the blue roses, but did not linger. Unlike much of the grounds, this garden was well tended to—and not, Darka suspected, by Lord Elithor.

  She did not always feel alone. She did not know if it was the creatures that lived on the farm, or the obvious magic in the air, or even the ghosts of long-dead castle inhabitants. But sometimes, even if she knew Clementine was on the other side of the farm, Darka felt . . . watched. Watched by a gaze that was decidedly disapproving.

  Darka Wesk-Starzec began to suspect that the Dark Lord Elithor Morcerous was not as far away as she had been led to believe.

  Chapter 14

  Shelter from the Storm

  or Myths of Time-Traveling Cordelias

  Early fall came to the Seven Sisters, and with it came the rain. Darka was not sure if it was the downpour, the thunder, or the pounding on the door that woke her in the middle of the night, but she was awake all the same. She leapt out of bed and grabbed the crossbow she’d stashed under the bed frame, pointing it at the door.

  “Darka!” called a small voice on the other side. “It’s me. Let me in!” The pounding increased, and Darka had just enough time to set aside the crossbow before lightning flashed, thunder roared, the door flung open of its own accord, and a sopping-wet Clementine flung herself inside—and straight into Darka’s arms.

  “It’s her, it’s her. It’s got to be her. She’s come for me again,” Clementine babbled, tears running down her face and onto Darka’s nightshirt.

  Darka stiffened for a moment—how long had it been since she’d been hugged by anyone?—but before she knew it, she found herself patting the back of the future Dark Lord of the Seven Sisters.

  “Who’s ‘her’? What are you talking about, Clementine?” Darka put her hands on Clementine’s shoulders.

  A few seconds later, the black sheep ambled through the door, bleating and attempting to shake the water out of his wool.

  “Let’s just make it a party then, shall we?” Darka muttered.

  “Th-the Whittle Witch,” said Clementine. “She’s sent another storm. We have to . . .” Clementine’s voice trailed off with a wet hiccup.

  Darka looked out at the rain lashing the window—and in through the open door—and sighed. She gave Clementine’s shoulders an extra squeeze and moved to close the door.

  “I tried to tell her it was nothing,” whispered the sheep, “but . . .” The sheep shrugged—well, it was as close to a shrug as sheep could manage, Darka thought.

  She nodded and nudged the sheep over a bit so he could drip freely on the entry rug instead of the floor. She couldn’t see much in the driving rain, but she also didn’t feel any of that strange tingling she’d experienced in the forest. The Whittle Witch—or whoever Clementine seemed so afraid of—had likely stayed home that night. Darka closed the door with a firm yank.

  “I’m no expert,” said Darka, leaning for a better look out the window, “but I think that’s just a regular thunderstorm, Clem.” Darka winced at her unintended shorten­ing of the girl’s name, but Clementine, thankfully, seemed not to notice. Darka yanked at the handles on the windowsills, shutting them as tightly as she could, and frowned at a small leak that had just started dripping from the ceiling. Clementine stood stock-still, soaked and shivering from her run down the mountain in the rain.

  “How can you be sure?” Clementine whispered.

  “Let’s say I’ve got a sense for these kinds of things,” said Darka. “As I’m sure you do, too.”

  Clementine blushed and looked down at her boots, shifting from one foot to the other. Water oozed out of them.

  “If you like,” said Darka, choosing her words carefully, “you can stay here and ride out the storm with me. Just to make sure.”

  Clementine looked up at Darka, eyes wide and unsure. Now that her panic had passed, she looked ready to bolt all the way back to the castle.

  “We are the first line of defense, after all,” said Darka, gesturing to the stone walls around them.

  Slowly, Clementine nodded.

  ***

  Darka built up the fire to dry Clementine’s clothes—as well as the girl herself—and lent Clementine one of the musty but clean shirts Darka had discovered among the old guard captain’s belongings. It was black, with a silly red velvet trim. The shirt fell past the girl’s knees.

  They curled up on the bed with cups of tea while the sheep scooted as close as he could to the fire without accidentally setting his woolly behind aflame. Darka stared into the flames, wondering at the strange journey that had taken her from farmer’s daughter to traveling adventurer, to unicorn huntress—and now, apparently, to dark heiress babysitter. Which made her wonder, not for the first time, that if the Dark Lord really was away on business . . .

  “Clementine,” said Darka. “Where is your mother?”

  It was not the question either of them had been expecting her to ask. But Darka had asked it, and Clementine, even more surprisingly, answered.

  “I don’t know much,” Clementine admitted with a small sigh. “Father doesn’t . . . he doesn’t talk about her often. I know she told him her name was Cordelia, but Father had his doubts.”

  “No one knows for sure where the Dark Lords’ brides come from,” piped up the black sheep.

  Darka raised an eyebrow.

  “At least, the people don’t,” he added. “The villagers say they’ve never seen any of the Lady Morcerouses . . . Well, I don’t mean to be indelicate now . . .”

  Clementine shrugged. “It can’t be anything worse than what I’ve heard already.”

  The sheep cleared his throat. “Well, it seems no one sees the Lady Morcerouses after they give birth to the heir. And Clementine’s the first-ever female heir to the title.”

  Or the first allowed to live, thought Darka grimly, but she did not say so.

  “There are some female Dark Lords,” Clementine said. “Just not very many. And they’re still called ‘Lords,’ anyway.” Clementine twisted her lips.

  “Some say the brides come from the other side of the mountains—or even from inside the mountain itself,” said the sheep, clearly relishing the chance for a bit of unchecked gossip while Clementine seemed in a forgiving mood.

  “They all come out of the mountain. They are all sorceresses. They are all time travelers,” Clementine said with a sad little smile. She sighed. “I’ve heard all of the stories. Some of them might even be true.” She shrugged and then crinkled up her nose. “Though I don’t think Father would ever marry a time traveler.”

  Darka let out a short laugh. The conversation had taken a decidedly surreal turn. “And why not?” she asked. She might as well play along.

  “Because it’s one of the Three Rules of Evildoing,” said Clementine, as if this were one of the most obvious things in the world. She counted off on her fingers. “Never travel through time. Never try to bring back the dead. And never, ever—” She stopped abruptly and set her tea down on the bedside table with a clank. “I shouldn’t be telling you this. Either of you,” she said, with a pointed look at the sheep. “It isn’t proper. We should all just go to sleep. I apologize for interrupting yours.” She nodded to Darka and turned over on her side, yanking the blankets over her face.

  The girl had been close to telling her something important; Darka was sure of it. She set her own cup down.

  “Clementine,” she said, giving the blanket-covered lump next to her a gentle poke.

  “I’m asleep.”

  “Clearly. Sit up—your hair’s still soaked.” Darka got out of the bed and retrieved her comb from the bureau.

  “So?”
>
  “So, sleep on it loose and wet like that and you’ll wake up with a head full of knots.”

  Clementine grumbled but sat up, yanking her hair out from under the collar of the oversized shirt. The gold strands from the sunlight spell had since darkened all the way to purplish black. Though even now, the firelight’s warm glow seemed to want to stay in Clementine’s hair, highlighting it in burnished bronzes and oranges.

  “May I?” asked Darka, holding out her hand.

  Clementine looked at her warily.

  “It’s a comb,” Darka said. “I can hardly shoot you with it.”

  “Somehow, I think that if anyone could commit murder with a comb, it would be you,” mused the black sheep. Darka shot him a glare, but Clementine merely shrugged and scooted around to sit in front of Darka. That was probably a compliment in her world.

  Darka was careful with the comb—it had been years since she’d had hair long enough to braid properly, and even longer since she’d done this for her younger sisters, and she didn’t want to irritate Clementine’s head wound. But after a few minutes of gentle strokes, she saw Clementine’s shoulders relax, and she thought the time might be right to open up their earlier conversation.

  “I was wondering about something,” Darka said as she tied off the end of the braid. “Clementine?”

  But there was no answer. The poor child had fallen asleep sitting up. Darka sighed and tried to shift Clementine over, but the girl merely lay down where she was, settling with her head in Darka’s lap. She stirred only when the thunder gave a distant rumble. The storm was leaving.

  The black sheep was dozing off, too, in front of the slowly dying fire, but Darka was far from sleep.

  “Where is the Dark Lord Elithor?” Darka whispered into the growing darkness.

  One of the sheep’s yellow eyes flicked open. He shut it again when he saw Darka watching him.

  “Where is he really?” Darka asked again.

  “Away on business,” croaked the sheep in his tremulous voice. It was hard to understand his throaty whisper. “As the Lady Clementine said.”

  Lightning flashed, and Clementine scrunched up her face in her sleep but did not wake. Darka changed tack.

  “You seem to know a lot about the local legends,” she said conversationally, stroking the ends of Clementine’s hair. “Are you from the valley as well?”

  But the sheep seemed even less inclined to answer that question than the one about Lord Elithor, and he shifted farther into the shadows. And that, coupled with all of the strange things that had happened on this strange evening, made Darka even more curious than before.

  ***

  That night, Clementine dreamed of the unicorn.

  She watched it from across the mountain, just as she had the night Stan Glen came to call. But this time, they were not alone.

  A tall figure dressed in black stood on a ledge high on the Fourth Sister, arms extended. The wind whipped, and dark clouds swirled overhead. The white glow of the unicorn looked even brighter in comparison. Rain lashed the mountain, but the figure in black stayed dry, as if some invisible force were keeping the very sky at bay.

  “YOU CANNOT ESCAPE,” the figure roared. Its face was a blur in the rain. One moment it was a dark-haired man with piercing eyes and a thick black beard. Then, it was Lord Elithor, scowling, his face whole and human. The next moment, it was Darka Wesk-Starzec. Then another sandy-haired man Clementine didn’t know, who grinned against the wind as if he were having the time of his life. And finally, it was Clementine herself.

  “No!” the real Clementine cried. She did not know why, but she knew she must stop the sorcerer on the ledge, no matter whose face the sorcerer wore. She turned in desperation to the unicorn and shouted over the wind, “Run! You must run!”

  But the unicorn could not run—it was trapped, somehow, by the force of the sorcerer’s spell. And though she was half a mountain away, Clementine could feel its panicked breathing, the sweat rolling down its white coat. She could practically see its heart thundering in its powerful chest, pounding with such force it must surely be about to break through muscle and skin in its fearful quest to escape the fate that awaited it.

  And Clementine knew, just as the figure on the mountain knew, that the world had been wrong about unicorns. The key to their magnificent power was not their horns.

  It was their hearts.

  Chapter 15

  The New Normal

  or The Intellectual Property Disputes of Evil Overlords, Explained

  Clementine Morcerous awoke the next morning to discover that other than a few murky dreams she could barely remember, she had slept soundly for the first time in weeks. Sunlight streamed into the gatehouse from the high windows and the door, which had been left wide-open—presumably to dry up the remaining water on the floor from the night before. A warm breeze wafted in. Clementine stretched, yawning, and realized how warm she was already. She shucked aside the quilt she’d been lying under. She must have slept in late, if the heat of the day had already arrived. She knew she should feel panicked at getting such a late start on her chores—the demonic cows would be beyond testy—but it was hard for anything to pierce her feeling of contentment.

  Darka was gone, but a note had been left on the small kitchen table, along with a glass of milk, a nonpoisonous apple, and a roll with a generous slice of cheese.

  Thought you could use the sleep, the note read. I’ll take care of the cows. —D

  Clementine was busy eating her breakfast when Darka returned. Darka paused in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

  Clementine daintily wiped her lips with her napkin. “Thank you for the breakfast,” she said, “and for . . . letting me stay. When I was frightened.” It all seemed terribly foolish now, of course. But the thunder had been so loud and the wind so strong it was like being right back in the woods the day the Whittle Witch’s storm had attacked. Clementine hadn’t known where else to go.

  “It’s your house,” said Darka gruffly, stepping inside and brushing dust off her trousers. She rinsed her hands in a bucket and dropped down to the table for her own breakfast. She cut herself a slice of cheese with a knife drawn from her belt, but then proceeded to tear the cheese—and her roll—into several smaller, bite-sized pieces. Darka glanced at Clementine, who quickly realized she was staring, and dropped her gaze.

  “Does that . . . make it easier to eat?” Clementine asked. She figured that if she was going to stare anyway, she might as well just ask.

  Darka paused only briefly, nodded, and popped the piece of bread into her mouth. After they had both eaten, she filled Clementine in on the chores she’d completed that morning, as well as the slight damage the farm had sustained from the storm. (The stable roofs had lost a few shingles, and what remained of the chicken fence had fallen over completely.)

  Despite the prospect of even more work, Clementine’s to-do list suddenly seemed far more manageable, with an extra set of hands around. It wouldn’t solve everything—only a cure for her father would do that—but it was certainly a help.

  Clementine started. Her father! She’d forgotten to check on him and the Brack Butler this morning, as she usually did.

  “I’m sorry,” said Clementine, “I just remembered . . . something. I’ve got to go. We’ll discuss the rest of the repairs later.”

  She folded her napkin and hurried for the door. She paused only for the briefest of moments to look up at the castle. It loomed dark and foreboding, a stark contrast with the clear blue sky behind and the warm breeze dancing through the valley. For the first time, the thought of returning there offered Clementine little comfort.

  “You know,” called Darka from inside the gatehouse. Clementine turned around to see her standing in the doorway once more. “You could stay here in the guards’ quarters for a bit, if you like. Much easier to keep an eye on things around the farm from down
here, in case that witch of yours really does attack.” Darka shrugged. “Unless you’re really enjoying the trudge halfway up the mountain ten times a day.”

  Darka had a point. Of course, she’d still have to return to the castle to help the Butler and her father, but perhaps . . . perhaps it wasn’t such a bad idea. And if Clementine stayed with Darka, she could keep an eye on the traveler, too, and keep the woman’s attention away from the castle while her father continued his search for a cure.

  “I’ll think about it,” said Clementine.

  By that afternoon, she had returned with her toiletries, a few changes of clothes, the Gricken (which had insisted on following her), and the black sheep in tow.

  ***

  Sebastien Frawley took the longest, most rambling route he could through the Seven Sisters Valley on his way to Castle Brack. Perhaps part of him hoped that more time would give him more chances to change his mind and turn around, but instead, he’d gotten distracted by the many interesting aspects of the mountains that he’d never dared explore before, from the babbling brooks rolling down the Fifth Sister to the fields upon fields of wildflowers that had sprung up at the foot of the mountains. He could almost forget that his ultimate destination was a cursed castle home to the daughter of an Evil Overlord.

  It was only right that Sebastien should check on Clementine after that thunderstorm, after all. All of that wind and thunder had reminded him of their terrible time in the woods, the trees snatching and grabbing at them. While last night’s storm seemed normal enough, even the memory had certainly made him hide under his covers! And if Sebastien, a young man destined to be a brave knight, had been scared, then Clementine must have been terrified. He was only doing what any chivalrous knight would do for a lady.