I waited for him to go on, but that appeared to be the end of his thought as he gazed at the tapestry we’d found weeks ago in the false passage, the first piece of art in our growing gallery. Priceless works were hidden all about the castle with no accompanying explanation. We had begun our little museum after I came across the first tapestry, a monstrous creation hung only after Geoffrey figured out how to rig a pulley system high up in the Great Hall’s rafters. With that mechanism and a little acrobatics, we got it up in only a few hours and spent the rest of the day sitting on the opposite side of the room, on satin-covered chair pads stolen from the head dais, staring at it.
The subject was a young boy dressed in grand cloaks and ornaments kneeling before a mysterious man clothed in water. The man looked real enough; deep brown eyes, smooth and graceful hands, full red lips, his only jewelry a wide metal band on one arm glinting with silver threads. But his hair and goatee flowed from him to join with his robes and pour into a stream that ran down past the boy’s knees into a distant forest which flourished with blooming trees and many colored sapets. Standing by one tree, far in the background just before the river disappeared, a lady, robed in night sky blue with a single red braid down her back, turned into the forest. The boy was offered a choice, held out in each of the riverman’s hands; a jeweled sword in one, a silver crown in the other. He stared up into the riverman’s eyes.
“Which does he choose?” I’d often wondered this since we’d found it and kept hoping that we would turn up the answer rug. But so far we hadn’t and now I wondered aloud.
Geoffrey straightened up and moved the ladder further down the wall to remove the shadow it had been draping across the dragon flying above the trees. He walked slowly away towards our pillows. “He chose neither."
He sat beside me and returned his attention to the queen and child. “Our new tapestry was woven almost twenty-five frseason ago, when it was predicted that the queen would bear no girl to keep the circlet. A stranger told the court that the way to peace in the troubled kingdom lay through her son, a child not yet conceived.”
“Why is it called a kingdom if you have a matriarchal society?” As long as he was feeling expansive, I thought I’d get a few basic answers as well.
“We were once ruled by kings. Before the Hike. But as a measure to prevent the perpetual wars they had endured across the great waters our ancestors declared that here the royal family would follow the female line.”
“How would that prevent wars?”
“It’s easier to keep track of a woman’s heirs.” He turned back from arranging our makeshift couch of embroidered pillows and fixed an odd gaze on me. “This is ancient history. Where are you from?”
“That’s the first direct question you’ve asked in a while.”
“But that is not your first indirect answer.”
I poured him some water from the carafe. “So is that the queen and her son?”
He smiled at me for a moment. Then continued his story, “I've never seen her pictured without her bond before. Even art of the Prediction, during which he was off with his sapets, show him at her side. But, here you see her holding the expected baby up to choose from the tree of life a seed to renew the royal garden. For it was said, that sunny winter’s morning everyone calls the Prediction that the prince alone could find the woman who would rid the kingdom of the dragon’s tyranny.”
Geoffrey took a deep breath then went on. “A powerful man, who boasted he could best anyone in the kingdom, appeared at the gates of the royal castle of Voferen Kahago one winter’s eve. He brought one guardesman to tears with tales of the guarde’s home shale from which he had just traveled. The other he fooled in a game of wits, thus besting each and earning food and lodging from them for the cold night. A vision came to him in the night and the soldiers he slept among heard him cry out in his sleep of a danger to the kingdom. They brought him at once to the court but, while waiting for the queen’s attendance, the stranger wandered out among the garden maze. None before or since has, without guidance, found their way to the silent fountain at the center of the shrubbery walls. But there, as dawn broke, they found him, weeping.
“’An old man’s memories,’ he whispered to the concerned young queen, ‘should not worry you.’
“He straightened then, it is said, and looked about the small assembly that had escorted queen Laurienel. His eyes rested on the court healer with whom the queen had just that moment been consulting.
“He spoke to her quietly, but his voice was clear and all could understand his words, ‘You are correct in your diagnosis, my lady, but this child will not carry. The queen will bear no female heirs.’ He turned then to her highness herself, ‘But you will conceive a boy. Do not discount him. This prince will mean hope for the kingdom.’” Geoffrey looked away from the tapestry, turning to look up at the shaft of sunlight beaming into the great hall. A sigh shuddered through his shoulders but it did not escape his lips or my notice. “The prince will bring hope to the kingdom.”
I shifted on the pillows, “Where’d the dragon come from?”
“It awoke eighty-six season ago.”
“Okay. Hold on. That’s four into eight. . . twenty-one years ago?”
“Yes. Good math.”
“And there’s only one?”
“Now. But there were more. We have few complete records from before the Lost Battle, but those that have survived show a people obsessed with survival beneath the great creatures. Our ancestors spread rapidly about this land, searching for a place free from the coasting shadows. Tales handed down and songs remembered by a few old Callers tell of a small, but well-traveled dragon population. All of whom apparently curled up nose to tail and went to sleep. That one has been the only one to wake up. But it has been more than enough dragon to try and cope with.
"It occurs to me that you, yourself, my lady, must have been in a deep slumber of late to not know of these things.”
Coughing, I stood. “I’ve certainly been in another world. I’m parched. You want some water?”
Not waiting for a reply, I kicked my heels along the sun-warmed stones towards the huge open arch that led from the room out to the maze of shrubs surrounding our small Imitation Courtyard. A perfect copy of the main courtyard, this hidden one was shaped entirely from nature. The stone of the fresh well was the only non-living monument in the common. I heard Geoffrey scramble to his feet behind me as I crossed through the arch and quickened my pace. I darted through the first break in the shrub wall, but I barely made it to the second turn before he caught up with me.
“Just tell me what brought you to Battlescar exactly when I needed a sword.”
“And you’ll tell me why five men were trying to kill you?” I gestured for him to precede me around the next corner.
“Please,” a slight tilt of his head and his eyebrow, “you first.”
I took the turn and walked on to the final break in the hedge that led into the small courtyard. At intervals around the small rectangular garden, low hedges promised to bloom with splendid red flowers that would complete their imitation of the red velvet-covered benches in the main courtyard. Ahead was the pair of trees, a linden wound about an oak, mimicking the statue of two lovers that stood in its place in the larger courtyard. I traced a hand across a low scar on the oak as I passed the pair.
The stone was cold where I sat on the lip of the well, pulling a leg up under the skirt of my borrowed dress as I hugged the knee to my chest. One long, green sleeve hung down over the lip like ivy. I set the pitcher on the stone and let Geoffrey crank the bucket down.
“Have you ever heard of,” I asked carefully, trusting that two months familiarity would back me up if I sounded crazy, “America?”
Out of my peripheral I saw him look up from his inspection of the deep water. He shook his head.
“Well, that’s as I expected. And I assume there isn’t a map in Kaveg on which we could find it.”
“Is it a shale?”
“Wh
at is a shale?”
“A large village.” He answered unhelpfully.
“Ah.”
“Is it a village?”
I smiled, “Keep cranking. It’s a land.”
I looked away above the hedge to the shuttered windows in the stone walls of the castle. I followed them up to the pointed peaks that gave way to the clouds and shivered. It looked like another snowstorm was brewing. Water sloshed in the bucket as Geoffrey cranked it up, calling me back to our discussion.
“That’s where I come from. I don’t know how I arrived in that clearing. I don’t know why you call it Battlescar like it’s a town or something. Like Battlecreek, Michigan.”
“Where’s Michigan?”
“If you knew that, I’d be a lot happier.” I shivered again and squinted at him. “That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Call it amnesia, call me crazy, but I don’t know anything else. I know you. I know you have a guardian named Mobious who sent you on some kind of impossible journey. I know you don’t like to talk about anything serious, but that’s typical for a man.” I grabbed the bucket and poured the water into our wooden pitcher. “Geoffrey, I don’t know anything about Kaveg! I thought it was your last name. So, whatever it is you’re hiding, rest assured that I probably won’t understand when you tell me.”
He took the bucket from me and dropped it back into the well. Picking up the pitcher, he put an arm around me, trying to distract me from the subject at hand. “Come, you’re cold. Let us build a fire and find your instrument. I promise not to sing if you’ll give me a concert before dinner.”
“No. Huh uh. We’re going back to the tapestries. And you are gonna tell me why you were fighting those men in Battlescar.”
“At Battlescar. I was fighting them because they were trying to kill me.”
“Why?”
“I assume they have their reasons.”
“As do I. But you, I suspect, have a better clue as to what those reasons may be.”
He walked away from me with the pitcher. A wind picked up and dipped into the courtyard rustling the empty branches of the linden as Geoffrey passed the twining trees.
“Geoffrey. I told you what I know. Granted, that’s nothing, but I told you. It wasn’t easy.” His fingers trailed on the moss covered stone as he turned the corner into the maze. “C’mon. Tell me something!”
His voice carried clearly over the wall. “The larder is a much warmer spot for calling. If you do not wish to join me, then I shall be talking to myself as I make dinner.”
We were accustomed by this time to working together on dinner. We rarely decided beforehand what we were going to make, we just picked out the items we felt like eating and threw them together.
We did the same thing in our little place on Emerson, except that here we were limited to the items at hand which included a great many more spices than we ever had in Denver. One time there, Geoffrey found a recipe book and wanted to make Southwestern Cayenne Chicken. But he wasn’t familiar with cayenne. So to test it, he took a heaping teaspoonful and ate it, washing it down with a glass of water. Swear to god, I have never laughed so hard at another person’s pain. He was running around the apartment screaming his head off about magic and poison. I felt it best to limit his choice of spices after that.
But I know more about him now, so I’m usually able to keep him from judging a knife’s sharpness by running the blade across his thumb or testing boiling sauces by dipping his fingers in them or shredding his knuckles grating cheese.
He was already assembling ingredients as I reached the subterranean kitchen moments after him. He’d selected a wine first, a relatively young wheatish Emjae of the first Laurienel harvest, leaving it for me to open and pour as he went about selecting our menu. I grabbed glasses from the ice-room as he disappeared into the adjacent vegetable closet.
I was sipping my wine and pulling down my favorite slicing knife when he returned with tomatoes, peppers, corncobs, peapods and pygmy pumpkins.
"No pumpkin." I slid them away from the rest of the vegetables with my knife, careful not to touch them.
He laughed. "You don't like pumpkin?"
I shook my head. "Deathly allergic."
He bowed and took away the offensive orange fiends. I took a deep draft from my glass.
“That wine you are drinking is named for my grandfather, Emjae, known after the birth of his son, as lord Forte or more commonly simply Forte. He supervised the brewing. The first Laurienel harvest means that it was the first wine pressed after the ascension of queen Laurienel to the circlet.”
The door banged behind him as he disappeared into the grains closet. I left my peppers and looked at the bottle. Unfortunately I had taken no care as I removed it and now the seal was beyond description, so I crossed to get another bottle from beneath the floor in front of the ice-room. But Geoffrey returned and needed to pass over the wine storage so that he could get some meat from the cold-room beyond and I went back to my cutting.
“Kaveg, that is this land, was settled in the time we call ‘Nul’ or ‘The Hike.’ My ancestors wanted to live peacefully so they ignored the shore on which they landed, broke up their boats, and traveled inland. They traveled for four seasons, moving slowly as they battled new diseases, strange natural magics, and the dragons. Many, many of them died and on the anniversary of their landing, one group broke off and decided that they would go no further.”
He stopped by his glass at the end of the cutting counter and sipped the golden Emjae. "All of the Landers stopped and helped them build the fortress of Weary out of stone they quarried from abandoned dragonbeds that pocked the area. Then they moved on traveling until they found a beautiful spot next to a lake with an even ratio of forest and field and near enough, but not too near dragonbeds. There they built Voferen Kahago and established our community. Representatives were sent out to Weary and they returned with votes for a queen. With these votes and a poll of the Voferen settlers, Chyell was crowned.”
He tossed a few earth apples in my direction.
“Chunk them, if you would.”
I caught the first two, the third hit me in the head, the fourth and fifth missed and rolled about the counter creating havoc amongst my veggies before falling to the floor.
“Think very highly of Chyell, do you?” I suppose I could have picked up the earth apples but instead I set down my knife and raised my glass to the growing bruise on my forehead. At home, Mama never let us sit on the counters. Unsanitary, she said. But with earth apples, tomatoes, and peppers on the floor, I figured my butt belonged on the butcher’s block. My butt or his neck. I hopped up.
“I'm sorry. I hadn’t intended to hit you,” he bent to gather the fallen food, “with the third one.”
I raised my icepack to the boy and dropped a handful of peapods on him.
“So, no one stayed on the coast where the mean, violent people you were running from could find you. But on your way in you found magic and dragons.”
“No,” he sliced the offending earth apple and moved my glass away to press it on the growing bruise. “The dragons found us; and after a few incidents, tried to ignore us. And the magic was just different from the old world. More like requesting favors of nature than demanding our due, I’m told.”
The slice of earth apple landed square in the scraps barrel. He brushed one last finger over the spot where the little bruise had been and went back to his boiling water.
“They had decided our political setup on the boats. I’m going to assume that you know nothing of any of this?”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is a dragonbed?”
“A dragonbed is a spot of land that has been carved down to the bedrock by a dragon for napping. The dragonbeds made it easy for us to reach the stone we needed to build castles that would protect us from the dragons.”
I started to accept his explanation, but then it struck me. I’ve never been claustrophobic or whatever you would call the fear of a castle falling on your head, but I j
ust hadn’t considered how big this place was before.
“Men had to go down into these dragonbeds, cut the rock, and drag it back here to build this castle?”
“Men and women.”
“And those immense, fire-breathing creatures just let them?!”
“Most of the dragons in this area had abandoned their beds by the time Forte was built. And Forte has been built up and changed constantly over the past hundred and sixty-five frseason. It was not a, how would you say it, not a weekend project.” He looked at me over the pot he was setting on the fire.
I raised my glass to him and nodded imperiously, “You may go on.”
“The method of succession was decided on the voyage over and during the great hike. It was decided the ruling circlet of Kaveg should be passed down through the female line, as females were seen then to be gentler and more peaceful than males. They hadn’t met you.”
I threatened him with my knife. He grinned.
“It was also to avoid the paternity disputes that come with a patriarchal succession. But to keep the balance, it was determined that each queen should choose, with public approval, a male partner to rule equally with her.”
Smells drifted over to me from the pot of spices and who-knows-what-all that Geoffrey was stirring over the fire. He had added more wood and now the simmering square which was separated from the main fireplace with the intention of keeping it a bit cooler, was glowing red all round. The bread I’d formed and put in the thin, enclosed, alley to the left of the fireplace was going to burn with that heat.
With a sigh I hopped down off my perch and grabbed a bread shovel from the basket. “So, Kaveg is continually ruled by a married couple. How, unique.”
“What is married? You said the other day that we were starting to behave like an old married couple. What does it mean?”
“Well, married is,” I leaned against the open door of the bread alley, “to be married is uh, is when two people have taken a vow to love only each other for the rest of their lives.”
Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel Page 11
