Geoffrey's Queen: A Mobious' Quest Novel

by Gwendolyn Druyor

  “Of course he would.” I pushed myself up to sitting and leaned over to see his face. “He’d love it. I think. Look, Geoffrey, I know a kid needs as much love as possible to make it. Would you like to be her father?”

  “Yes.” He sat straight up. “Yes.”

  “Well, that’s settled. You’re the father.”

  I had to look away. I lay down. And shut my eyes for good measure. “Now I’m going to try to get some sleep before we head back upriver to retrieve our things.”

  Eighteen

  ∞ EdlingGeoffrey of Kaveg’s journal ∞

  November 3

  Denver, CO America

  Faite is taking Kelly away next week to see her mother. Last week, when we celebrated Nanda’s birth day, he didn’t show up. Kelly was allowed into Murphy’s after showing her ID, a school picture, and getting a big red X drawn on her hand. Faite didn’t even send an excuse, he just dropped Kelly off and drove away. She bounced in, regally condescending to undergo the teasing scrutiny of Henry the bouncer and his X. She paraded across the room singing Happy Birth Day at the top of her lungs, walked right into a five-way conversation, and demanded that Nanda open her present then and there.

  “How interesting.” Nanda dangled the small globe in the light over the pool table. “But why a compass?”

  “Uncle Faite says you’re angry all the time because you’re lost. Look, you can attach it to your keys.”

  Kelly held a hand out for Nanda’s keys and was quickly engrossed in attaching the little ball to them. Nanda supplied the keys from her pocket but she was deaf to Kelly’s explanations of how the thing worked. Staring at the worn green felt, watching as the colored balls ran into each other, the smile drifted from her face and she was back to being Nanda from Chicago. So quick to sigh here. So quick to laugh in Kaveg.

  ∞

  She laughed as we headed into battle outside Voferen Kahago. We had landed on the lakecoast because Nanda spotted a wing watching our decent and saw them separate from the main battlefield to intercept us. Nanda had her sword drawn and mine in her sheath while helping me fashion a carryall out of her skirts so I could carry Donja and keep my hands free. Donja was screaming and we were all drenched in the thin blue blood that had sprayed up when the arrow struck Annie’s haunches.

  Looking at a compass makes Nanda want to cry here but at that insane moment, she laughed. She threw her head back and roared.

  “You remember the last time you wore my skirts? You stole them from me at Forte and pinned me down with them.” She leaned over my shoulder to finish tying the ends of the skirt around my neck and I gingerly loosened my grip on the baby as a smile crept across my face at the reminder of that night and how close I had come to kissing her.

  Satisfied with the knot, she slipped her gaze back to my eyes and whispered in my ear, “You should have kissed me then.”

  Sparkles danced in her eyes, her breath warmed my lips as she moved closer to me and bent over to kiss Donja on the forehead.

  “Fool!”

  And she raced off to help Annie launch off the cliffside over the churning waves while I, unkissed, took the lucky baby through the underground passage to Mobious’ safe arms.

  ∞

  Faite did give Nanda a present on her birth day. It was on the doorstep when we returned home that night. We took it inside, using the compass to find our way up the stairs. Up equals north in Kelly’s world and is only confirmed by the fact that our steps happen to climb northward.

  Nanda teased Kelly by casually tossing the wrapped rectangle onto the kitchen counter and getting ready for bed as though she were not the least bit curious. Kelly grabbed the package and held it out to Nanda the entire while I got her ready for bed. While I unrolled the camping mattress that was her haven in our home she ran off to bug Nanda in the bathroom with the temptation. Nanda took it from her and laid it on the cinderblock table beside the bed saying she’d open it in the morning sometime. I grabbed Kelly and tucked her into bed. She went quietly but I knew she was merely feigning compliance and feared her next move.

  Sure enough, just as soon as Nanda and I were snuggled each in our own blankets carefully dozing on our separate halves of the bed, Kelly launched herself up into our bubble of serenity and threatened to keep bouncing until Nanda opened the present. Nanda countered with snores. Kelly countered with The Song that Never Ends. The gambit worked and the package was opened as fast as Nanda could rip the paper.

  It was a book. Blank like this one. But Faite had inscribed inside the front cover, “Let them come and you will fight till from their bones their flesh be hacked but do not die by your own sword, rather with laughter let old wrinkles come.”

  Kelly was disappointed in Nanda’s calm reaction. “I told him that your book was almost finished! So he got you a new one and started it for you! Don’t you like it?”

  “I love it, Kelly. It’s great. But I’m not going to use it right now. My old one isn’t full yet. So STOP BOUNCING and GO TO BED!” They growled at each other and Kelly fell off the bed giggling.

  The next morning, or rather later that same morning, I got up for a glass of water and found Nanda on the porch spinning her little round compass/key chain in the clear yellow dawnlight. The screen door slammed lightly and she looked over her shoulder at me.

  “Water?” I held the glass out.

  She shook her head and a smile ran briefly across her face, “No, thanks.”

  We stood silently and watched the ball spin inside its globe, too dizzy to find north. The sun had barely risen, the mountains glowed red at the tips, and our flowers still had dew weighing down their petals. A car splashed through a puddle down on Sixth and I noticed that it must have rained last night after we got in or before we left the bar. A breeze blew through the screen and Nanda’s hair, free from its usual braids, danced on her shoulders. I smiled and sipped the water.

  “I don’t smile much,” she muttered.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a question or a statement. “You smile when you have reason to.”

  She turned her sad eyes to me, the compass dropped to her side. “Give me a reason to smile.”

  I stalled. I looked out to our oak for inspiration. I sang. “Caldonia, Caldonia, what makes your big head so hard?”

  She laughed, her shoulders shaking and her smile bursting with no sound other than the occasional intake of air. Then her eyes caught my triumphant gaze and the laughter faded. Her smile faded and my smile faded and my stomach churned.

  And a little voice behind me said, “Why don’t you kiss her. That’d make her smile I bet.”

  I shot a murderous glance at the giggling Kelly in the kitchen as Nanda dashed past me and dragged our subtle houseguest back to bed.

  Now for nine sunrises she’s been avoiding me again; working long hours and refusing to let me catch her eyes. Last night, despite the warm weather Denver has been experiencing, she wrapped herself completely in her blanket and slept on the very edge of the bed. I left her and joined Kelly in the front room. When Kelly asked why Nanda was being weird I tried to explain loneliness to the four year old. She nodded her head sagely and has since been more enthusiastic about including Nanda in our games.

  Surprisingly, Nanda has been more game in playing along. We had a snowball fight in the park and the two of them actually teamed up on me. Kelly taught me how to lie down and make angels in the snow while Nanda was off ‘resting.’ But as soon as I was waving my arms and legs, they both jumped me and buried me in the cold. Snow got down my pants and melted and then my pants froze to my body. But they took me home and made hot chocolate with lots of the sweet puffy marshmallows. I do not understand Nanda Junior.

  For most of the week, Kelly has been ours. Her days of course are at school, but her evenings are spent at our Emerson Court since Faite has been so busy. But then today, Nanda picked up Kelly after Musketeers rehearsal to take her to Faite. She came home after and I brought some tea to her on the porch where she was curled up on the skeleto
n couch staring at the mountains. It was quiet. No thumps from pillow wrestling. No heated debates over bathroom rights or beverage intake. No soft breathing in the background. No quiet tinkling off in the distance of glass breaking. Just us. All alone. By ourselves.

  I took a chance and sat down. I was about to tell her one of Kelly’s latest knock knock jokes when she turned to me.

  “What is it? Why do you look so sad?”

  “I’m really sorry.” She reached over and put her hand over mine, “Kelly is going away. Faite is taking her to stay with her mother for a while.”

  “How long?”

  “He said I wouldn’t see her again for months.”

  “Where?”

  “He didn’t say, just that it’s pretty far and he won’t be back for like three weeks. I get to cover all his work. You can help if you want. It’ll keep you busy.”

  “When does she go?”

  “Three days.”

  “What am I gonna do?”

  “Fight with me.” She tried to distract me the way she would distract herself, with work, “We’ve got a lot of work to do with the Musketeers cast and you’ve been rehearsing all the fights. I’ll also need an assistant in his classes.”

  I stood up and walked to the screen. Staring out at the setting sun, I imagined my life without Kelly. It felt like my very heart was being taken away.

  “I can reschedule some classes. We could go to the mountains.” Nanda put a hand on my back and leaned against the frame.

  “A nice idea.” I thought a change of scenery would do her good as well, “Let’s go back to our butte? our bluff? our ledge?”

  “Our campsite.”

  “Our campsite, then. After Kelly leaves.”

  She smiled up at me. “Okay.”

  Then she looked away at the low moon, the smile disappearing into a memory. She breathed in deeply and I watched a sigh forming in her chest.

  I jumped it, “Caldonia!”

  Giggles exploded from where the sigh had been and she turned twinkling eyes up to me, “What was that?”

  I turned to her and kept myself from wrapping my arms around her waist, “You were not smiling again.”

  She looked into my eyes and I held my breath. She took a deep breath and began, “I...” then she ran her tongue along her front teeth and lowered her eyes, “have work to do.”

  The door closed quietly as she went in.

  She’s sleeping. The moon is gone. Our oak is waving at the stars, making them blink in and out through his branches, nature’s disco Nanda would say. I know why she’s scared. But love seems so much more possible here. Life is ordered and simple. It’s not like we’re hiking over a pile of sleeping dragons with a dead uncle and a forty-frseason dTelfur teenager looking for the murderer who, according to my uncle, didn’t really char my parents thirty-seven seasons ago. Then, I was scared. I was dragging my severely pregnant love into my revenge after almost killing her at the river. How could love survive that?

  ∞

  After Nanda found him, I worked on Ko’s mangled leg and eyes far into the night and when I slept, I slept fitfully. I thought about my parents, the legendary Laurienel and Stedon. I wondered if they would still be alive if Ko had been able to get back to Kahago. I thought about the people of Kaveg and wondered what good getting myself killed by the dragon would do them. I worried about Nanda and her baby, everything about the pregnancy seemed wrong somehow. I thought about taking some of the potion I had given Ko to help him sleep soundly, but I unfortunately knew that it wasn’t the drink so much as nature’s calming darkness that would encourage dreams of healing and rest. I couldn’t fool myself with herbed water.

  Yenay and I had found a path into the village. We had gone in and found nothing but a small garden. There were no houses, no ruins, nothing. It looked, in fact, like nothing had ever lived there. The trees were grown wild and thick. A few large patches of young trees indicated that perhaps once they had been clearings. I saw nothing else that might have been a village. The ‘dTelfur village’ was just an area clear of dragon bodies, a space which had once been at the top of a significant hill which now we’d had to climb down into.

  Yenay failed to tell me that the dTelfur slept underground in burrows. He didn’t tell me that the great gardens which provided most of their food were buried beneath the dragons. He kept his council because he knew my purpose. Yenay was there to renew the historic dTelfur bond with the dragons or at least the dragon. I was there to kill it.

  He spent every moment we were in the village insisting that we leave it and go back to tell Nanda or get some rest or renew our provisions or wait till daylight or any of the many other excuses he came up with. I put it down to fear and out of fear myself, I finally heeded him and we returned to find Nanda nursing Ko.

  Once back at the safety of camp I couldn’t sleep for wanting to get back to the village to find the dragon and end this quest. At dawn, and dawn came late in the Dormounts, creeping unevenly over scaled backs, I was up, fixing a traveling breakfast for everyone. But Nanda slept long and Yenay, when he woke, fixed a warm breakfast from his packs for Ko, which I did supplement with some herbs and words of Nature.

  When Ko had eaten and begun testing the strength of his leg on Yenay’s arm and Nanda hadn’t emerged yet from our tent, I became worried. I went in to her and laid a hand on her belly. It was harder than yesterday and despite her protestations, it must have been heavy for her. I laid an ear on the swelling and felt the kicking that was fairly constant these days. She had a little messenger in there, ready to run the villages as soon as he got out.

  I watched Nanda sleep, unaffected by the marathon in her stomach. Her eyes were circled with shadows. Her cheekbones stood out sharply. Her face was covered with a mist of sweat like the dew had come in and settled on her in the night and her eyelids twitched wildly in some dream. I brushed a strand of hair from her face, all thoughts of the dragon gone. She was not well. I knew that. But she had told me that it was normal in pregnancy and travel was no hardship for her. How could I argue with a pregnant woman? I hadn’t known many. It didn’t occur to me that she hadn’t known any. But then her eyes opened and their glitter brought color back to her face. She looked well enough when she smiled.

  “Hi there, sleepy. Your baby and I were just having a chat.”

  “Yes, I’d noticed. Teaching her drum-code are you?”

  I handed her the waterskin. “I’ll get you some breakfast.”

  She leaned up on an elbow, “No doubt, mixed with some special Geoffrey-ingredients.”

  “Complain as you will, my lady, you are the one who slept longer than the old man whom I drugged into sleep.”

  I slipped out of the tent and heated up Yenay’s gruel. I also grabbed a dry cloth from my pack which I sprinkled with some cooling herbs which would calm her all day. When I got back to the tent, she was up and dressed, folding the blankets into her pack.

  “I can do that.” I set the bowl down and went to take the work from her hands. “You eat.”

  She pulled the ties closed on the bag, “I can still take care of myself thank you. Don’t you start treating me like some kind of weak lady. If I can save your life from a stormy river, I can certainly pack my own bedclothes.”

  “Yes, ma’am. Shall I just let you get the tent as well then?”

  “No. You can slow down and sit with me while I eat.” She tugged at my shirt like a little girl, “Come on, we’ve only got two hours to hike today. We’ll get to the village soon enough.”

  I sat. She smiled and picked up the spoon.

  “Did you sleep well?” She blew on the steaming porridge.

  “Yes.”

  “Liar.” She took a careful taste and cooled a more generous second spoonful. “I dreamt about your guardian last night.”

  Outside I heard the thunk of wood and Ko’s exclamation of disgust. On impulse I leaned over to take my sword out to them, but Nanda stopped me, “Yenay has never held a sword before and Ko is half b
lind. I say let them spar with sticks.”

  I sat back. She took a few more bites.

  “What was Mobious’ bloodprice?”

  “What?”

  She swallowed, “You told me that before you left Voferen Kahago, Mobious took you into a room and asked you to help him pay his bloodprice. What was it? You told me he said he was responsible for your family’s sadness and he asked you to leave the castle to find the queen, but how would that pay his bloodprice and what did he do?”

  I hadn’t thought of Mobious’ request in seasons. I had almost forgotten that moment in the hearing chamber until I told Nanda. “What did he fail to do, rather. His father gave him some responsibility and he didn’t do it.”

  “What could that be? And why did he send you out to accomplish something without telling you what?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll ask him when we get back to the castle.”

  “I was thinking that maybe you’re supposed to find out for yourself.”

  I stared at her. “How?”

  “I don’t know.” She ate quietly for a while, giving me time to ponder her questions.

  I had left my castle, my responsibilities at his request and I never even found out what he had done to incur a bloodprice. I wondered at my own memory, but is it likely that he told me and I simply forgot the reason for my quest? How could I have left without knowing? Finding a queen, that was all well and good to satisfy my needs, but what good would it do him? Or those to whom he owed the price? To whom did he owe the price? My people for their fear? He said that he was responsible for my family’s sadness and for my people’s fear. I am my family. But for Ko and Kierri and, if I must admit it, Fierell, even my extended family is limited since all of my father’s people died at Forte. And I am my people. What is owed them is owed me, what is owed by them is owed by me. Mobious then, owes his bloodprice to me twice over and if I have agreed to pay it for him. . .

  “Why are we here?” Thankfully, Nanda interrupted my thoughts.

  “What?”

  “Why are we here in the Dormounts?”