Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic)

by Phoebe Matthews

  His expression changed from angry to confused, and I could see him trying to think how to say whatever it was he wanted to say. I stepped away from him, freeing my hands. Something in his look warned me we were on the edge of our worst argument and I might not win it.

  He spoke slowly, watching me closely, as though he wanted to avoid angering me but could barely contain his own distress.

  “Every other thing in this land belongs to me, every stone, every hut, every horse, every person. But not you, Stargazer. You make your own laws. I cannot rule you and I know it. But look on matters this way. When we are wed, you will rule with me. You will have anything you ask for.”

  Did he think I would marry him for a castle and a crown? Did he think he could win me with a bribe? Oh, he was right, he had certainly angered me. I had helped him save his city and given him advice and stood by him, and he saw in me a loyal servant, someone clever enough to be of use to him. And that made it all right in his view to use me as easily as he used Nance. We were no more than bargaining chips to him. He would give away Nance to an ally and he would keep me as long as I was useful.

  My fury burned in my mind, blinding me to any caution.

  “Oh yes, marry me and then go off to battle, princeling!”

  “Stargazer! I have no choice. I cannot ignore my father's murder. This is a blood-debt.”

  “So you will fight your uncle, and if you defeat him, you will then go on to another war with someone else. Oh lucky me, I have always wanted to be a widow!”

  “You think I can't win?”

  “I think you can't always win.”

  “I can if I have you to advise me, and rule for me when I am away.”

  “You would leave me alone to rule your city?” I shouted at him. “You trust me that much?”

  “I want you that much!” he shouted back.

  I stared at him, speechless. He looked equally shocked. But he did not back down. He stood a breath away from me, his face tight with anger and glared at me, daring me to question him.

  I had thought I was an amusement to him, company when he was bored or lonely, someone near his own age in a castle of older guards and warriors. Also, I came up with advice that worked.

  Sure I knew he thought me pretty and enjoyed the idea of playing protector, me Tarzan, you Jane stuff. I thought it was a game with the usual teen male sex drive tossed in. Stupid me.

  I saw then what I should have seen these past months, saw what Ober had seen and what Nance had teased might be. And also, I recalled the painting on the wall in his bedroom. I had ignored what I really didn't want to believe.

  Tarvik loved me.

  He didn't love in the same way I loved, perhaps, or he would hardly have offered a bribe to win me, but he loved in his way, which was to see and want and attempt to own by whatever method appeared most promising.

  Our two horoscopes popped up like instant visions. I had been too busy searching for danger in his chart and had paid little attention to the rest of it. Now I remembered one important bit. My moon was on the same degree of Leo as was Tarvik's sun. All else aside, it attracted us to each other.

  And what did a barbarian do after he captured what he wanted? Oh yes, he started right in planning his next campaign elsewhere. I could ask him, but that would only encourage him and it really didn't matter. I knew I didn’t want to get stuck in his world for the rest of my life.

  Our angry voices echoed in the stillness we had drawn down between us. How could I tell him that I could not stay with him?

  I couldn't say “No, honey, sorry, it isn't you, it's me. I'm not ready to settle down” as I would have said to a guy back home, and probably added something stupid about hoping we could be friends forever. I could not say I'd rather panhandle than be a ruler. He thought he offered me the highest possible honor.

  But if Tarvik didn't understand my way of thinking, I was even less up to figuring out his. A life of ruling a people whose existence centered on killing or capturing others would be hell for me, an imprisonment more terrible than anything the magician had faced in the underground cell.

  I said the only thing I could. I took a deep breath to calm my voice and said, “Let me think about this.”

  “You will have whatever you want, Stargazer. Now and forever.”

  “And Nance? Will you let Nance stay with me, whether I marry you or not?”

  “Until you wed me, Nance is my possession.”

  He wasn’t going to give an inch on that one. His stubborn mind overrode any hesitations of his heart. He would keep his promise to me because his word was his own law as well as the law of others. If I refused him, he would still want me as his advisor. But he would give Nance to a man with breath like swamp water.

  As for accepting him, out of the question and that didn't have anything at all to do with love. He'd be easy to love and then what? If he survived his campaigns he'd soon be like his father, murdering innocents as well as enemies, turning into someone I would hate.

  In that moment, knowing I would never see him again, I loved Tarvik so much I had to fight tears, bite back all the things I wanted to tell him.

  As for warning him that his next battle could be his last, I had warned Kovat. Like his father, Tarvik would ignore me. He wanted to be a warrior.

  I traced lightly with my fingertips along his hard jaw, from gold earring to stubborn chin, and looked carefully at him to memorize him. Lord, I loved that face. Actually, the whole package was terrific and was nothing I wanted to walk away from. But I had to do exactly that. I caught his face between my hands and I kissed him, felt his warm mouth move against mine. I didn't want to pull away. But I did.

  He stared at me, startled, his eyebrows raised, his eyes wide.

  I said, “You are probably the sweetest guy I've ever met,” because he was.

  I knew he wouldn't accept goodbye for an answer. Tell him I was leaving and he'd toss me in a dungeon or lock me in a room with guards at the door.

  Huh. That's what I had figured the Deckos would do, find a way to control me, keep me prisoner. But they'd have to do it in a modern city where there are cellphones and 9-1-1 and I would have a much better chance of escaping.

  No better than the Deckos? Did I believe that? There were two big differences. Tarvik really wanted to do the right thing. Too bad his take on right was so different from mine. And second, Tarvik really loved me. And that laid a big dumb guilt trip on me. Time to go before I did something stupid.

  In my mind I saw Kovat turning away from the temple courtyard gate, looking from the back like Tarvik, the same graceful walk, the same yellow hair flaming in the morning sun on the day when he left on his last campaign. No way could I stay here and watch Tarvik collect battle scars and grow bitter and cruel and follow his father's fate. I didn't want to be waiting in this cold lonely castle when his guards returned to tell me he was dead.

  With Nance I didn’t waste time on hints since nothing less than a full explanation would convince her to help me. As soon as I returned to the temple, I sat her down and told her.

  “He wants to give me to that smelly old creature?” Nance screamed. “I would rather die!”

  “Let's try to avoid that. What we have to do now is send word to Tarvik, tell him we're closing the temple for three days of private prayer. He'll think I want time to make a decision and he won't argue. That should get us out of here.”

  “I suppose Lor could take us to his home village,” she agreed. “He knows pathways even the cleverest of Tarvik's scouts won't find. But I cannot believe what you say. Are you sure Tarvik would do that, close the temple and give me to that dreadful man?”

  “Do you think he didn't mean what he said?”

  Nance let out a shriek, bent double and pounded on her thighs with her fists. “He did! I know! He would do that! I do not want to believe this of him, but I do! How could I ever have cared if he lived or died? We should have gone away earlier and let Erlan capture Tarvik! But, what of you, Stargazer? Do you leave
only for my sake? Or is it that you know you could never in a thousand lifetimes love that wretched boy?”

  Way too complicated to explain so I said, “We don't have a thousand lifetimes. We have three days. We better get moving.”

  We sent a temple guard with a message to Tarvik. We said we were closing the temple for three days of prayer. Then we slipped into the stable to tell our destination to Lor.

  When I mentioned Tarvik's plans for Nance, the old man didn't argue. He said only, “He is not his father, that one.”

  First job, sort out what to take. That was easy because traveling light was necessary. I didn't know how far I would have to walk, so I put on my old tee shirt, then picked my warmest wool pants and hooded cloak and the sheepskin boots once made for the Daughter. They were very warm and laced snugly up the front. Gloves. Scarf to wrap around my neck.

  What else? Oh, right, back to the real world. I found my backpack, dumped everything out, found my blue billfold. I pulled out my credit cards and driver's license and the few rumpled bills, stuck them inside the lining of a boot, then tossed the billfold back in the pack and kicked the pack behind the curtain.

  We left at dark.

  Lor told the guards he'd be gone for a few days because he was taking three of the horses to do some trading. As this was something he did when nomad horse traders were in the vicinity, the guards agreed they would tend the stables until his return. They presumed he was traveling alone. It would not occur to anyone that Nance and I were going with him. Not until three days passed and Tarvik came pounding on the gate.

  Lor left in late afternoon leading the horses, and waved to the guards.

  Nance and I waited until nightfall to slip out of the stable. We hid our cloaks beneath shabby shawls and looked like all the local women.

  Lor waited for us in the shadows beyond the last row of huts. Oh goody, time for a horsey ride.

  We were a night and a day from the city when we reached the plateau lands and built our first fire. Until then we rested only briefly, kept moving, ate our meals cold. Possibly Tarvik would decide, in an impatient moment, to bang on the temple gates despite our instructions. We needed a big head start.

  The first time I saw the plateau it had glowed with autumn, a tableland of dark gold waves rippled by warm breezes. Nance had floated above it like a lazy sea bird on her glider. Now moon shadows shifted on the plateau's flat face, touching silver sparks to the frozen grasses.

  Huddled into our hooded cloaks so that even in the firelight we couldn't see each other's faces, we bent toward the heat and ate slowly. Lor roasted potatoes in the coals and made tea out of melted snow.

  Now that we were past returning, I had to tell Nance my plans. I couldn't leave her without saying goodbye.

  “Do you know where Tarvik camped on that hunting trip when he found me? There was a low wide stream and a thin stretch of forest and a clearing.”

  Lor nodded. “Aye. A bit north of here, it's a favorite hunting ground.”

  “Can you find it?”

  Of course he could and without any questions, but Nance wanted to know why we were headed there instead of up toward the pass leading to Lor's home village.

  “Nance, you must listen to me and not argue with me because this is how it has to be. I want you to take me to the stream. At daybreak you and Lor will head for Lor's village. I'm going to stay and search around that stream.”

  “Why do that?”

  “Because that's how I got here and so that has to be the way to leave.”

  As I had known she would, she cried, “You cannot do that! You cannot leave me! I will never forgive you. Even if you find a way out, it won't lead where you think. You will end up in the land of the dead. Or if it goes to your world, you will still be in the mountains. What do you know of living outdoors? Nothing. You are helpless. You will die of exposure. Tell her, Lor, tell her she cannot!”

  Lor said, “There's no world but here.”

  “Where do you think I came from? Where did the Daughter come from?”

  Lor shrugged. “Maybe there's a way in. Never heard of a way out except for the dead.”

  “Roads go both ways, Lor.”

  “If that were true, the warlords of Thunder would have gone out long ago and overrun your land,” Nance stormed.

  “I don't have a choice. I can't stay here.”

  “You would rather die than stay with us?”

  “I'll miss you, Nance. But you can have a life with Lor's people. I can't. This isn't my world.”

  “You are like Tarvik!” she cried. “You are cruel and stubborn and wicked and you do not care for me at all!”

  She fell asleep angry and I thought in the morning she would argue again, but she surprised me. She moved silently around the camp, tying bundles to the horses, a small lonely figure beneath her hooded cape. When she returned to the fire to join Lor and me at a breakfast of tea and rice, her face showed a night of weeping. Her eyelids were puffed, her pale skin mottled.

  “Stargazer,” she said, her voice trembling but soft, “I have thought about it. We will take you to the stream. If the gods mean for you to leave us, then you will find the way out. If they don't, then you will stay with us.”

  Not much to argue about there.

  CHAPTER 22

  We crossed the plateau and the foothills, Lor and Nance traveling easily, both old hands at riding horses and sleeping on hard surfaces. I traveled miserably, with the chill seeping into my bruises. I had bruises everywhere.

  When we reached the stream, it was winter different, wider, flowing rapidly, edged with leafless trees and dead brambles. I would never have recognized it but Lor led me to a path that ran from the stream's edge through the little forest.

  “The clearing is that way. Would have tied his horse there.”

  I turned slowly, studying everything, muddy water, muddy edge, muddy path, and tried to imagine the place hot and dry with summer.

  “That path runs to a large clearing?”

  “They always pitch their tents there, then come through here to get water.”

  “All right, then he was standing where you are and I was in that direction.”

  I walked slowly with the stream's bank on my left, kept going, reached up with my right arm and pushed aside dry branches that all seemed to stick out at the exact height to scratch my face. I didn't remember that part. The water had been still then, barely moving, full of floating leaves. Lower.

  Now the stream covered the path, reached almost to the thicket where I had scratched my arms searching for berries. The hard dry path I'd followed was now soft mud beneath the water's surface. The brown water spread up under overhangs of dead branches forcing me to turn and weave my way behind the edging thicket.

  Still, this had to be the right direction and if I kept walking, no.

  I walked straight ahead, which should have kept my back to Lor and Nance. Instead, there they were in front of me. Facing me.

  “What are you doing?” Nance asked.

  I stopped, stared at her, then looked at the stream. It was now on my right. Somehow I had turned around and was walking back toward them.

  Had I walked in a circle around a tree? Probably. My PBS nature trek skills were zip.

  Shaking my head, I turned again, held up my right arm to fend off the pesky branches, and followed the water's edge. When I reached the snarl of vines that had stopped me the first time I looked carefully in both directions, kept the silver trunk of an alder in sight, cut in around it, touched it with my fingers as I passed, walked another half dozen steps, and oops.

  “Something curves here,” I said.

  I had grown up in Mudflat and knew that seeing is no reason for believing. The Daughter and her consort, that poor couple, probably seasoned hikers because they carried a first aid kit, must have thought themselves losing touch with sanity. I knew better.

  Nance said, “You're at the end of the world. There's nothing beyond.”

  “Maybe.” Or maybe I
was insane. Maybe I dreamed that other world of paved city streets and electric lights and long hot showers, but God, I hoped not.

  I sat down on a fallen tree trunk. It was a bit damp but we hadn't brought camp chairs and I sure wasn't going to sit on a horse. Never again.

  Although the stream was wider, the distance between the lines of trees on either side seemed about right. Imagine leaves on overhanging limbs, imagine a bright sky, imagine looking up into it, add the path. Must be a thousand places in the forest that looked identical, but Lor knew this country the way I knew the bus routes in Seattle.

  If this was the favorite campsite for summer hunting trips planned to entertain the warlord's son, and Lor said it was, then this was the place I got in. So there must be a way to get out.

  The stream seemed to meander on into the distance. It didn't take any sharp turn.

  “Do you go boating on this thing?” I asked.

  “What's that?”

  “Boats. You know. Something that floats. A raft, maybe?”

  “Floats on the water? Like the leaves? What for?”

  Okay, these folks really were not Viking descendants despite nature gods, blond complexions, and numerous Scandinavian communities in the Northwest. What all those good people had in common was a love of boats.

  I thought about this, but not too hard, because while I watched the woods through half-closed eyes my thoughts darted in any number of desperate directions. I even watched birds flitting around, noticed the movement, and didn't care what kind of birds they were.

  I had been in the water. Walking? Had I taken more than a few steps? And then I waded out.

  And there he'd been, on the bank above me.

  Where had I gone in the water? How wide was the path, how far from the trees? Did it matter?

  The small flock of birds circled. I was so bored I counted them as they swooped low above the stream. Catching bugs, I guess. Or maybe practicing swooping for the next bird Olympics. Who knew? But, wait, what just happened there? I hadn't blinked, or not that slowly.