It wasn’t until a deep, rough voice said: “Good technique,” that Dion was sure it had worked. The curlicues disappeared, and for the first time she got a really good look at the Fae, unfestooned by gold or seen as a flicker in the corner of her eyes. He was very tall and broad in the shoulders, with a badly scarred face and a huge greatsword that was bigger than Dion. It occurred to her, belatedly, that despite the colour of his skin, he didn’t at all look like a Fae. She’d thought of him as Fae by default, for what could an ordinary man be doing in her mirror, after all?
“Your magic is very strong,” he said.
Dion, both embarrassed and hot with pain, said: “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “You’ll regret it, in time.”
Dion didn’t like to contradict him, but she was quite certain she would always be glad for her skill in magic. Since that thought verged on rebellion, she quickly pushed it away and said: “Are you here to protect me?”
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
“Are you here to teach me?”
“Yes. And no.”
That was certainly very Fae-like. Dion, daring one more question, asked: “What will you teach me?”
“Two things,” said the Fae. “How to use your magic. And how to die.”
Perhaps the Fae saw her shivers. He said: “You’re not going to die for a long while yet, Dion ferch Alawn. And when you do, it will be for your people.”
“Oh,” said Dion. She straightened her shoulders, though she didn’t stop shivering. “That’s different. That’s all right.”
The Fae studied her, frowning. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Dion said, because it was true. But she did hope that when the time came to die she wouldn’t feel so sick and weak. Aerwn had always been the brave, heroic one. “That’s an honour.”
“I'm Barric,” he said.
Dion, who knew how unlike the Fae it was to offer a name at first meeting, was surprised. She made the Curtsey of High Respect that she had been taught to give the High Fae and pretended that it didn’t hurt her ankle.
Barric took it expressionlessly and said: “We’ll start with the base elements of raw magic. You’ll need to get a book from the library.”
Dion couldn’t help the small, disappointed ‘oh’ that escaped her. She had been attentively studying magic for the last two years, and book spells were easy. It was the freeform doing of magic that she had hoped to be taught. Her Instructor of Magic was reluctant to depart from assigned spells, though Dion didn’t know why.
It was difficult to say exactly how he did it, because he didn’t actually smile, but Dion had the impression that Barric was amused. “Disappointed, Dion ferch Alawn?”
Politeness dictated that she should politely lie. Fae rules said that you didn’t ever lie to the Fae. At length, in an agony of fear, she said: “Yes. Sorry.”
He said: “It’s not a spell book. Book magic is not the kind of knowledge you’ll need.”
“What kind of book is it?”
“Poetry,” said Barric. Dion thought he might be laughing at her again—the Fae were fond of teasing her in small, cutting ways—but there wasn’t a smile in his eyes as there had been before. “The Song of the Broken Sword. Take it early in the morning and put it back before nightfall. Come to me again when you’ve memorised the second canto of the third song.”
He disappeared without another word, and Dion was left to her thoughts and a painful struggle back to bed. The library was patrolled once in the morning and once at nightfall. Dion knew this, but she wondered how Barric did. If he was telling her to make sure the book was back before night patrol, The Song of the Broken Sword must be one of the Forbidden Books: illegal to read but too valuable to destroy. There were still a few of those, despite the Cleansing. A Fae always has a reason for what that which he does. It is not for mortals to question or upbraid, but Dion wasn’t at all keen to break the law. Still, Fae commands are to be obeyed absolutely. Though human eyes may not see to the conclusion, the winding path leads to the same end as the straight path.
Thus it was, a week later, that Dion ferch Alawn committed her first act of deliberate law-breaking. She trembled all the way to the library, started at every curtsey and greeting along the way, and felt so sick once she arrived that she almost disgraced herself behind one of the padded reading benches. She collected a pile of books in which to hide her misdeeds, and then draped the fluffy morning shawl she had brought along around that, wending a carefully aimless path through the stacks to the back corner where all the Forbidden Books were housed. She was especially careful to keep out of sight of the Keeper of the Library, who had a bad habit of treading so silently across the boards that he could be behind a careless patron before they were aware of it. Fortunately, the only other person in the library was one of Dion’s old tutors, the Duc Owain ap Rees. She had always liked Owain, with his wiry, red beard and fierce, bushy eyebrows, though he often frightened her with the sharp fierceness of his eyes. Dion inclined her head to him as he stood and bowed, felt his hard old eyes focus on her, and scuttled away again, taking the long way around to the Forbidden Section.
The Song of the Broken Sword was on the top shelf of the section. Dion, settling her pile of books on the floorboards and tucking her knit wrap back around herself, stared up at it in dismay. She couldn’t drag one of the large book ladders around to the shelf: the Keeper would be sure to notice. Aerwn would have climbed the bookshelves without a second thought, but Dion had never been particularly good with heights, and she began the necessary climb with hands that were even damper than before. The shelves were quite slick with dust by the time she reached the higher shelves, and for every gritty, slippery hand-hold Dion gained, she felt a little sicker. When she was finally able to reach the top shelf, shivering and sticky with sweat, it was some time before she could bring herself to stretch out a hand to take the book. Clinging tight to the shelf with one hand and puffing dust into the air with her quick breaths, Dion used the other hand to tip the book from its place and frantically seized the shelf once again. Now what? The book was thin enough to slip beneath her chin, but Dion wasn’t anxious to let go of the shelf again. She wasn’t even sure she could relax the white-knuckled grip of her fingers enough to climb back down.
Dion took in a shaky breath, let go of the shelf once again, and made a frantic grab for The Song of the Broken Sword. There was the soft swiiip! of dust slipping beneath the fingers that still gripped the shelf, and then she was falling backwards. Dion had no time to cry out, no time to consider that when she hit the floor it would be impossible to hide her perfidy in all the clatter. Someone wiry caught her around the knees and neck as she fell, the book slapping against her face painfully before Dion caught it again. She found herself looking up at Duc Owain ap Rees, who looked back down at her from under beetled, orangey brows, reminding her irresistibly of a large, angry owl.
He hefted her into a more comfortable position and said: “That is a dangerous book to be playing with, Dion ferch Alawn.”
Dion, her face white and stiff, said, “Um,” but the Duc wasn’t listening. He was already striding for the opposite end of the library, Dion still in his arms and The Song of the Broken Sword pressed between them where it had fallen. She thought for a terrified moment that he was taking her to the keeper of the library, but he swept her right out the library doors and didn’t stop walking until they were in one of the upper smoking rooms. There he deposited Dion on a tobacco-scented footstool in front of the fire and stood back with the book in one hand and the other folded behind him as if he were preparing to lecture her.
“Do you know what this book is, princess?”
“Poetry,” said Dion, clutching her fingers together through the holes in her knit wrap. Aerwn wouldn’t have been caught. Aerwn would have slipped in and out like a ghost, eluding both the keeper and Owain ap Rees. Oh, wouldn’t Barric be disappointed in her!
“There are only two copies of this book in existe
nce,” said Owain. “This one was very nearly destroyed in the Cleansing. Do you know why?”
Hesitantly, Dion suggested: “It has sub– subversive themes?”
Owain gave a tough old grin beneath his beard. “You could say that. It’s a special kind of poetry.”
Dion felt a little fizz of excitement in her stomach. “It’s prophecy?”
“Not all of it,” said Owain ap Rees, flipping pages with his thumb. Even before he found the place and opened the book properly, Dion was quite sure where he would open it. Sure enough, one gnarled finger tapped a page on which the second canto of the third song began. “The Avernsian enchantresses wrote this many years ago.”
“What is it about?”
“A fabled broken sword: a relic from the days when Faery and the human world were kept safe from each other. It was said that its forging combined the strongest of Fae and human magic, and that its guarding power was what kept Faery from overgrowing its bounds and taking over the human world as well.”
“How did it break?”
“According to legend, it was believed that pieces of a broken sword would be safer and easier to hide.” The Duc’s moustache bristled with irritation, and he added with something of a snap: “None of our ancestors seem to have thought that a broken sword would lose something of its power in the breaking, and even as the Broken Sword began to fade from history to legend, its power was discovered to be less than hoped. Doors were forced open. Rifts were torn.”
“–and the Guardians began to rise against the Fae,” Dion said, eager to show her knowledge. She had been well-taught in Faery History.
Duc Owain ap Rees stared at her in silence for a moment, his brows lowered. At last he said: “Hfm. Well, perhaps it’s best not to rail on the stupidity of our ancestors. We’ve enough of our own mistakes to lament.”
Dion hunched her shoulders a little against the Duc’s fierce eyebrows, unsure of his meaning and not quite sure if he were angry at her or the Llassarians of time past. She asked: “May I read the book?”
“Of course, Dion ferch Ywain,” said Owain, giving Dion her ancestral name. She looked at him wonderingly and took the book. Her ancestral name was not often mentioned, and she always had the feeling that her parents were ashamed of it. Ywain had been a great persecutor of the Fae. “Read. It’s your right.”
Dion looked down, made uncomfortable by the Duc’s steady regard, and read the second canto of the third song.
Then the borders shall rend
And darkness shall rise
Stealing heat from the sun
And light from the skies.
Yet Ywain’s young daughter
And Coinneach’s son
In forging and binding
the sword shall be one.
The lost shall be found,
The broken rebound.
Then does Coinneach’s son
The broken remake
His hammer and anvil
Consumed for its sake;
And Ywain’s young daughter,
Sword in her hand, gives
her life in the binding
To seal up the land.
The forging made new
Unbroken and true.
So this was what Barric had meant. She was Ywain’s daughter—many, many generations back—and this was how she was to die. Saving the people of two worlds. The thought was less shivery than it had been last week.
“Isn’t it lucky there are two of us?” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud.
Owain’s eyebrows shot up and lowered again. “Do you understand what this means?”
Dion nodded. “When I am queen I will die for my people,” she said. “But Aerwn will be queen after me, so it’s all right.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Owain ap Rees dropped to one knee as he had when he was first presented to Dion, and, taking her hand in his, he kissed it. It was homage due to a queen, not a Princess Heir sitting cross-legged on a footstool with a book in her lap.
“It’s all right,” Dion said again, leaning forward to put her other hand on Owain’s shoulder. “Aerwn will be a better queen, anyway.”
The Duc harrumphed and stood again with a slightly arthritic lurch. “Perhaps. You’d better give that to me when you’re finished with it. You’ve run enough risk for one day: I’ll take it back to the library after lunch.”
“Thank you!” said Dion gladly, her heart buoying up again. She had not been looking forward to going back into the library.
When Barric appeared that night Dion was already waiting for him, her legs crossed and her elbows on her knees, attention brightly fixed on the mirror. Barric took her in, his dark eyes flicking from her toes—curled to stop them from wriggling—to her rumpled curls—a mop that had been pushed so often out of her eyes that it was slightly sideways—and she saw the scars on the right side of his face twitch slightly. From Barric, that was tantamount to a chuckle. Dion didn’t mind Barric laughing at her. It never had the sting she felt from the amused, glittering eyes of her Fae maids.
“I s-stole it!” she said breathlessly, but she couldn’t help the way her eyes flickered nervously around the room. Barric’s scars moved again, and the faint suggestion of lines appeared by his eyes. Dion, aware that she had been indecorously loud, added self-consciously: “I memorised it and it’s back in the library, just like you wanted.”
Barric folded his arms and said: “Repeat it.”
Dion said it back to him with barely a halting word. She loved to be certain and sure of her way, and as dreadful as it was, the certainty of her death when she was queen was almost a comfort. When she was finished Barric gave her a short, slow nod: it meant well done, Dion knew, and she flushed with pleasure.
He asked: “Did you read the rest of it?”
“A little bit of it,” she said uncomfortably. Barric didn’t look angry, but the rest of The Song of the Broken Sword had been less than complimentary to the Fae, and Dion had skipped over large portions of it with a rather scared look around. It was no wonder the book was on the Forbidden shelf. “I read the bit where they used the Broken Sword to seal up the border between Faery and our world. Is that what I have to do?”
It made sense: the Fae fled from the Guardians in their own lands, and by all accounts the Guardians were not a people that would stop at murdering humans as well. If Dion could seal up the border between the two once all the fleeing Fae were safe in the human world, it would save not only the Fae, but the human kingdoms as well.
“When the time comes,” nodded Barric. “It won’t be easy: the shards are spread across the human kingdoms, and you’ll need to find them first.”
“They should have kept them together,” said Dion wisely.
Barric’s dark eyes were amused. “They’re safer apart until the Sword can be reforged. Not everyone has your high ideals, Dion ferch Ywain. There are many ways in which the shards can and have been misused.”
“But when will I know it’s time? If people are being hurt now–”
“You’ll know the time when it comes,” said Barric gently. “You’ve much to learn before you can hope to seal up the land. Don’t be so eager to die for nothing.”
Dion was appointed a new tutor when she turned eight. It came as a surprise to her, surrounded as she was by history tutors, policy advisors, dancing teachers, and civic responsibility instructors. This tutor was Fae like the rest of them, but there the similarities ended. Where her other tutors were cold but reasonably respectful, Tutor Iceflame was cruel, cutting, and entirely merciless. Her purpose seemed to be to teach Dion to look cool and aloof even when she wasn’t cool and aloof. Unfortunately for Dion, she blushed when she was embarrassed, stumbled over her tongue when she was nervous, and hunched her shoulders inward when she wished to be unnoticed. Tutor Iceflame noticed all of this, and took swift, merciless steps to ensure that it was corrected. Dion learned a series of carefully constructed expressions that she practised into front of her mirror under Tutor Icef
lame’s cold, narrow gaze, while the tutor snapped questions, insults, and instructions. Her shoulders were bound to a wooden frame that chafed her skin and forced her to stand with her shoulders back, her chin high and graceful. In time she became used to the insults and questions that Iceflame threw at her, and no longer blushed at either. It was more difficult in everyday life, where Dion was never quite sure what to prepare for, but with Iceflame it was possible to arrange herself mentally and put on the right expressions. And so long as Dion was ready for Iceflame every day, she was reasonably certain that nothing worse could happen. She learned to use faces #1-5 for varying degrees of polite interest (and interest was never to appear anything more than polite), faces #6-11 for differing levels of polite surprise, and #12-50 for a range of other approved emotions. She grew weary of her own face in the mirror as it segued between false emotions, but when Tutor Iceflame swept out of the room every day, her glimmering train of satin flying behind her, there was always Barric. Barric with his blessed silence and almost monosyllaballic commands as he taught her the very warp and weft of magic. Barric and his harsh, scarred face that belied his kind eyes. Barric teaching her how to clean a sword. Barric making caustic remarks about Tutor Iceflame. Most of all, Barric listening to Dion’s short, muddled, and unhappy woes. He didn’t become impatient with her like Aerwn did, nor did he mock her fears and sense of duty. He simply listened. And by the time Dion muddled to the end of her troubles, she always knew it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed before. It was Barric she went to when Aerwn first started sneaking out of the castle, Barric who taught her the steps to the latest impossible Faery dance by teaching her several opening footwork gambits of Faery swordplay, Barric who listened when Dion’s first sweetheart preferred Aerwn to Dion.
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