He kept his misgivings to himself. Princess, knowing his moods, did not inquire into his long silences. He contained himself for several days, until at the end of an afternoon of cold, drenching rain he erupted in a wild tirade. Princess let him go on, and when he was out of breath she patted his hand and said sweetly, “You’ll think of something.”
The next morning was dry and sunny, almost summery in its warmth. The leaf-paved trail was misty, the forest curtained in gray, and Princess laid her cloak over her saddle and flew above the treetops to scout out the way. It was pleasant to escape the closeness of the lower world, and stimulating to exercise her wings. She swooped, and turned, and dipped, and circled, and then quite unexpectedly she came speeding back to Kedrigern’s side.
“Three armed men ahead!” she cried breathlessly.
“Robbers?”
“Don’t think so. They’re dressed . . . as guardsmen.”
“That’s a good sign. All the same . . Kedrigern brandished the black staff. The air rang, and in his hand was Panstygia, Mother of Darkness.
“Is there any trouble?” she asked.
“It’s possible,” Kedrigern replied.
“I saw three armed men on the road ahead. They may be friendly, though,” Princess explained.
“I thought they’d be a lot friendlier if I were carrying a big black sword,” Kedrigern further explained.
Panstygia sighed. “If you absolutely must use me, you’ll be the greatest swordsman in the world, but I do hope you can avoid violence. I don’t enjoy hewing and smiting.”
“I’m not fond of it myself,” the wizard assured her.
Princess flew back to her horse, mounted, and drew up close behind Kedrigern. They rode on slowly, alert for any sign of the guardsmen. As they passed into the shadow of a pair of giant oaks that rose like sturdy columns on either hand and formed a shaded vault overhead, a figure loomed before them and a voice called out, “Halt, if you please, travelers.”
Kedrigern, in the lead, drew in the reins and his black steed was still. Princess rode to his side before stopping, and said confidently, “He’s too polite to be a robber.”
“Let’s hope so,” Kedrigern replied; then, raising his voice, he addressed the figure in the road. “What business have you with us? Speak, stranger.”
“None, if you are ordinary travelers. My lord and master, King Ezrammis, is sore afflicted,” said the man, starting toward him. “A curse has come upon him, and he seeks the aid of a . . of a . . . a wuwuwu . . .“ His voice shrank and was still. He stopped in his tracks, his eyes displaying much white. His mouth hung open.
“A wizard?” Kedrigern asked gently.
The man nodded. He looked at the slitted red eyes and beaded silver horn of the black steed that towered over him, and the black blade resting on the rider’s shoulder. The rider himself seemed quite ordinary. He was dressed in simple garments of homespun stuff, neat but not gaudy, and his features were alert but not particularly striking. The woman beside him was dressed rather better than he, and wore a circlet of silver. She was breathtaking in her beauty. She was on a horse that seemed to be only half there. These people were no commonplace travelers.
The guardsman stood gaping. Two others joined him and were transfixed in their turn.
“Perhaps we can help your king. I am Kedrigern of Silent Thunder Mountain. This is Princess, my wife. We have some knowledge of the subtle arts,” said the wizard.
“Quite a lot, as a matter of fact,” Princess added.
With a sigh of relief, the first guardsman said, “My master and mistress will be pleased to see you. You will be richly rewarded. If you care to follow us, it’s just—”
“No tricks!” said a clear ringing voice, and the three guards jumped back and huddled together. “I am Panstygia, Mother of Darkness, the great black blade of the west. No army can stand before my wrath!”
“You heard her,” said Princess.
“No tricks, I swear! Honest, no tricks!” the guard cried.
“Very well, then. Lead on,” Panstygia commanded.
lt was a bit pushy of her, Kedrigern thought, but he kept his opinion to himself. Princesses, he had found—with the single happy exception of his wife—were spoiled and willful creatures. In their way, they were as bad as the princes he had known, and the princes were impossible. And kings and queens could be much worse. He could only hope that King Ezrammis, of whom he had heard very little, was not like most of his class.
A short ride brought them to a tidy castle on a hill, with a pleasant garden and a lovely view to the south. They were brought directly to the throneroom and presented to a small gray-haired woman with a sweet, sad, motherly face. She was almost spherical in shape. She cast an envious glance at Princess and burst into tears, but recovered herself quickly.
“The wizards are here, Your Highness,” said the guardsman, bowing low.
“Oh, good dear kindly wizards, can you help us?” asked the queen in a voice to wring the heart of an ogre.
“I trust we can, Your Highness. In cases of cursing, the main thing is to determine the· facts. Can you give us a complete account? It’s particularly important that we know the exact wording of the curse.”
“Oh, I can tell you that,” said the queen. “Let’s just introduce ourselves, and then we’ll sit down to a little snack, and then get to business.”
Her name was Queen Pensimer, and her idea of a little snack was enough food for a healthy family of twelve. While Kedrigern and Princess ate moderately, the queen wolfed down dish after dish, stuffing herself indiscriminately with fruit and bread and meat and butter and cake and pudding and fish and gravy and nuts as they came within her reach. When the meal was completely consumed she sank back into her oversized chair, gasping, and covered a queenly burp with her pudgy hand.
“I never used to eat like this. It’s all part of the curse,” she said despondently.
“Perhaps you could tell us more about this curse,” Kedrigern said, leaning forward, placing the tips of his fingers together and peering intently across the table at her.
“Well, I don’t know exactly how it all started. I walked in while Ezrammis—that’s the king, my husband—was in the middle of a bitter quarrel with the wizard Ashan. They’ve been friends for a long time, but they’re both getting cranky, and they argue a lot these days. Apparently Ashan had threatened to put a curse on our children for some reason, but when I entered he changed his mind and cursed Ezrammis and me instead. It was terrifying. He raised a skinny hand and pointed at my poor husband and began to recite:
‘May your teeth drop down like hail,
One each month, and never fail;
While you live on whey and bailer,
May your wife grow ever fatter,
Eating double lunch and dinner
Every day, as you get thinner,
Till at last you vanish utterly,
And she’s round and fat and butterly.’
That was three months ago. Since then, Ezrammis has lost two molars and a bicuspid, and I’ve doubled my weight,” said the unhappy queen.
“I think we can do something about this, Your Highness,” Kedrigern said with professional solemnity. “It’s a straightforward curse, and though I’ve never met Ashan personally, he’s known in the profession for being an impulsive sort—not a man likely to plot out a complicated curse in advance and brood over it for years. May we see your husband?”
They were shown at once to the royal bedchamber, where King Ezrammis, a sunken-cheeked, gray-bearded man late in his middle years, lean as a lath, was sulking. Kedrigern reviewed the situation with the king, who remained silent, communicating in nods and gestures of varying degrees of emphasis. When all was clear, Kedrigern had the royal couple sit side by side on the royal bed while he worked the appropriate counterspell.
When the last word was spoken, King Ezrammis looked up. Cautiously, he ran his tongue around his mouth. He tried a front upper tooth against the ball of his thumb, and gr
inned at the result. Very carefully, he gritted his teeth. With a whoop of glee, he shouted, “Solid as the dungeon walls! Well done, wizard! Now let’s get some decent food in here. Three months on milk and mush could kill you!”
“Ugh! Please don’t mention food, dear. The very thought of food revolts me. Isn’t that wonderful?” Queen Pensimer exulted.
· Kedrigern and Princess bowed graciously and withdrew to leave them to their rejoicing. Later that evening they were summoned to the royal presence. King Ezrammis was cheerfully picking his teeth after a snack of cold fowl, celery, nuts, and apples, while Queen Pensimer, already looking a bit thinner, sipped a small glass of water. A faithful old retainer sat by the king’s side, dozing.
“You do nice work, wizard. Very nice,” the king said in greeting, underscoring his praise by holding out a hefty purse of gold. “And you, too, my dear lady,” he added, taking Princess’s hand and slipping onto her finger a ring containing a diamond the size of an acorn. “I don’t know how things got out of hand, but I appreciate your help. It’s
not like Ashan to hold a grudge. I expected the curse to last a few days, maybe a week . . . but three months! I’m glad you came along.”
“You never explained that to me,” Pensimer said. “You never said anything to me at all.”
“Who could talk? If I tried, it sounded like I had a mouthful of dominoes. Besides, you were always too busy eating to listen to me.”
Kedrigern, puzzled, said, “Then it was all a misunderstanding?”
“You could say that. I never realized how sensitive
· Ashan was about his cursing. He was telling me how he laid this curse on some no-good knight and his whole family, gave all the sons indigestion and the daughters bad breath, and I laughed. ‘This is a curse?’ I said. ‘This is family history! When my sons gather in the courtyard after dinner, it sounds like an earthquake in a thunderstorm. My boys eat a crust of bread and sip a mouthful of water, and for two hours they rumble like volcanoes. And my daughters can etch glass just by breathing on it.’
“I wish you wouldn’t talk about the children that way, dear,” Pensimer said, frowning.
“Am I lying? Anyway, Ashan got very touchy and said that my kids’ troubles could be cured by an apprentice alchemist, but the knight’s family would need a first-class wizard to straighten them out. One remark led to another, and first thing I knew, Asban was climbing out the window, my teeth were waving around in my mouth like shirts on a clothesline, and Pensimer was eating everything that couldn’t run away.” Ezrammis paused, sighed, and shook his head sadly. “I hope Ashan is all right. It’s not like him to stay away so long.”
“Where did he go?” Kedrigern asked.
“The guard said he headed west. Nasty country out there.”
“Is there anything particularly nasty we should know about? We’re heading that way ourselves.”
“Must you? Nice people like you don’t belong out there,” said Queen Pensimer primly.
“We’re seeking a lost kingdom for a friend.”
“Well, be careful,” Ezrammis said. “You’ve got that big green idiot to watch out for—some crazy giant who leaps out at travelers and forces them to answer riddles.”
“What if they don’t answer?” Princess asked.
“He eats them. And there’s an enchanted patch of forest, too. You want to watch out for that. And the Moaning River. Depressing place, they say.”
“Does either of your majesties know of a Kingdom of the Singing Forest out there anywhere?” Kedrigern asked.
“Never heard of it myself, but I’ll ask around the castle. Maybe old Jossall knows something. He’s been here since my grandfather was a boy,” said the king, reaching over to nudge the old retainer at his side. The man’s eyes flew open and be exclaimed in a high thin voice, “Yes, indeed, Your Majesty, that’s absolutely true. Oh, true beyond a doubt, no question at all, Your Majesty. Well said and wisely put, not a word wasted, just as—”
“It’s all right, Jossall. I only want to ask you something,” Ezrammis broke in. “Have you ever heard of a Kingdom of the Singing Forest somewhere off to the west?”
The old man looked at the king, then at the wizard, and then at each of the ladies, with an expression of growing bewilderment. His eyelids slowly closed, he nodded, and just when he seemed to be falling asleep he jerked his head up and said, “Yes! I heard the story long ago . . . a sad tale, Your Majesty . . . a treble curse . . . a bold young warrior prince and two valiant princesses . . . the malice of a sorcerer known for his vindictiveness . . . oh, a tragic story it is, Your Majesty, and a lesson for us all,” concluded Jossall with lugubrious voice and rueful shaking of his white-haired, white-bearded head.
“Do you know the way to this kingdom?” Kedrigern asked.
“No one goes there now.”
“If someone wanted to go there, could you give him directions?”
Jossall looked at him steadily with pale, searching eyes, and at last said, in a soft and distant voice, “The way lies across the Moaning River, beyond the enchanted wood, through the domain of the Green Riddler. But you are not—”
“What’s the Green Fiddler?”
“Riddler. He is a giant who forces travelers to solve his riddles. If they cannot—”
“He eats them. We’ve been warned,” said Kedrigern. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he could not fix it in his memory. Was it a name he had read, something out of a traveler’s tale, or a legend? Might it be someone he had once dealt with? He could not recall. In all likelihood it was a lot of nonsense, but the half-remembered name was bothersome.
“As I started to say,” Jossall went op, “you are not the one who is to find it.”
“I’m not?”
“The land is empty now,” Jossall went on, oblivious to Kedrigern’s question, speaking like a man reciting the remembered prayers of his childhood, “and the royal hall stands deserted, but one day a great hero will restore the glory of ancient times. So says the prophecy. Even now, he wanders the earth, an empty scabbard at his side, in his unceasing quest for the great black sword that will enable him to undo the curse of Vorvas.”
“Vorvas? Vorvas the Vindictive?” King Ezramniis asked sharply.
“The very man, Your Majesty.”
“What did Vorvas do, go around cursing everyone he met? He put a curse on one of my great-grandfather’s sisters. You must know about that, Jossall.”
The old man was silent for a long time before replying, “I was very young at the time, Your Majesty, but I remember a period of extreme constemation. Princess Gazura was cursed with blunt speaking. All her suitors vanished.
It eventually became necessary for her to go off and live in seclusion.”
“Vorvas was a fiend,” said Princess vehemently.
Ezrammis nodded in agreement, but added, “He had imagination, I’ll say that for him. What sort of curse did he lay on this friend of yours?”
With the king’s permission, Kedrigern withdrew to fetch Panstygia, so she could tell her story in her own words. Ezrammis and Pensimer listened with growing sympathy, while Jossall was absolutely fascinated.
“This is the sword of the prophecy!” he proclaimed when she was done. “It is the sword foretold! When the hero comes, the curse will be lifted!”
Rather waspishly, Panstygia said, “I don’t plan to wait for some, hero to come along, thank you very much. If you’ll just direct us to my kingdom, we’ll see about this curse.”
“You’ve got a good wizard there. He got the curse off us like that,” Ezrammis assured her with a snap of his fingers.
Modestly, Kedrigern said, “Counterspells and disenchantments have long been my specialty.”
“Have you heard of the Desolation of the Loser Kings?” Princess asked the company. “It was a terrible conglomeration of nasty magics, all stewing and seething and breeding even nastier new magics of their own. Kedrigern cleared it up single-handed.”
Kedrigern smiled benign
ly and said nothing. The king and queen appeared suitably impressed, but Jossall said solemnly, “You may be a skilled wizard, but you would be wise to withhold your power in this matter and let the prophecy run its course. Vorvas was the greatest of them all when it came to cursing.”
“No, he wasn’t,” Kedrigern said flatly. “He’s right up there near the top, I grant you that, but Vorvas isn’t the greatest. That title belongs to Flame of the Four Fates.”
Sounds, gestures, and facial expressions indicative of wonder and eager curiosity made it clear to Kedrigern that
his auditors were ignorant of Flame’s accomplishments. He waved them closer, and as the darkness deepened outside the castle and the candles in the royal bedchamber bumed low, he began his amazing tale.
FLAINE OF THE FOUR FATES
PART I: THE CURSE
Not so very long ago, four miscreant knights spread fear throughout the land. They were very wicked and very bold. So bold were they, in fact, that they were known as Giles the Bold, Otto the Bold, Bruce the Bold, and Dennis the Bold, or the Four Bold Blackguards. Their greed, ferocity, and wickedness grew with each evil deed, and no one dared to resist them.
One winter day, as they rode back to the castle of Giles the Hold after doing something particularly terrible to a group of harmless pilgrims, the Four Bold Blackguards came upon a little cottage in the woods. The day was cold and gloomy, and they were in a peevish mood. They decided to take whatever food and drink was within the cottage and then burn it and its occupants, so they might warm themselves at the flames and take pleasure in the screaming.
Unknown to the miscreant knights, the cottage was the home of Flame, a wizard who had grown weary of the wickedness of men and retired to the depths of the forest to study and meditate. When Dennis the Bold pounded on her door, she told him to go away. When he and Bruce the Bold began to smash the door down, she cast a spell to render the cottage inviolable. Finding their plans thwarted, the Four Bold Blackguards withdrew to form a new one.
The preceding autumn had been a season of violent storms. Fallen wood was scattered everywhere. The four gathered a great supply and piled it around the cottage, then warned the occupant to let them in or they would burn it to the ground. Flame responded by summoning up a rainstorm; but Flame was getting on in centuries, and her power was diluted by the necessity of keeping up the spell of inviolability, so she managed only a brief shower. The Four Bold Blackguards were able to light the fire, and soon the cottage was surrounded by a high wall of flame.
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