Thornspell

by Helen Lowe

He sounded very certain, but his tone was flat, a sign that Sigismund had already learned meant that he would get no more answers on that subject.

  In time, Sigismund learned to see and follow the lines of magic that ran through the world, to recognize the places where the fabric of reality was thin and others where it was thick with power. He knew now that the Wood was dense with it, and even the West Castle rested on its own small shimmer of magic. By the time another autumn came and went, he could merge his awareness into the energy flows around him as easily as he picked up a sword. It became easy for him to see the barrier that was his great-grandfather’s interdict and he also learned that it had no power over him.

  “In part because your power is drawn from the same source,” Balisan told him, “but also because the interdict is linked to Syrica’s counterspell—and you are the chosen prince. That is why you were able to step under the forest eave and speak with the witch of the Wood.”

  “Auld Hazel,” murmured Sigismund, and smiled, remembering the flat-bowled pipe and the blackbird stare. In a way, he thought, that encounter had been a beginning, although he hadn’t realized it at the time. Shortly afterward he had met the Margravine, and then Syrica, and begun to dream of the sleeping palace and the dark, menacing forest.

  With Balisan at his side, Sigismund also began to reenter the realm of dreams. The inner mind, the master-at-arms explained, never fully slept, so the sleeper could still remain aware while in the dream realm—and connected to the world of power that surrounded the dreaming body. It was simply, he added, ignoring his pupil’s groan, a matter of training and practice, building on the first meditations that Sigismund had learned. But despite his groans, Sigismund applied himself to this as well and learned to step into dreams through conscious choice, and to assert his awareness whenever a dream crept up on him un-sought. He would have liked to return to the enchanted palace and perhaps see the sleeping princess this time—but despite the increasing strength and scope of his dreams, he could never find it again.

  Balisan only shrugged when Sigismund asked him why. It was spring again, one of those days of mild skies and the first green like a mist over Wood and fields. “The Margravine may be walling you out. Then again, the palace is built on one of the strongpoints between this mortal world and Faerie. It may have reasons of its own for not letting you in, quite aside from any spells and counterspells of the faie.”

  Sigismund wondered how Balisan always knew so much about the interface between the mortal world and Faerie, but the master-at-arms shrugged again when he asked. He was reading in one of the deep armchairs in the library and did not seem disposed to answer questions.

  “I read books,” he said pointedly, when Sigismund pressed him, “and it is one of the branches of learning that the Paladinates specialize in. Hero-knights like Gawain and Parsifal, whom you used to esteem so much, need to know about such things.”

  Sigismund scowled, watching him turn a page. He had begun to study the dispatches sent by his father and these had drawn his attention to the wider world. They were full of the troubles in the south, which dragged on year after year, bleeding the kingdom of soldiers and gold, and made Sigismund feel restless and cooped up. He scowled at Balisan for a moment longer, then flung himself down onto the window seat and frowned out into the sunlit garden. When he finally turned around, it was to find Balisan watching him, one eyebrow raised.

  “I’ll be fifteen soon,” Sigismund said, answering the unspoken question, “and I’ve lived here over half my life. Surely it’s time I rejoined my father?”

  Balisan laid the book aside. “There are many,” he said, “who will seek to strike at your father through you.”

  “But that will always be the case,” Sigismund pointed out. “Besides, I’ll still have you, won’t I?”

  “For a while,” Balisan replied, “but not forever.” He smiled at Sigismund’s expression. “Even masters-at-arms must give way to other companions when a prince grows up. But I will write to your father and see what he says.”

  The King, however, had just embarked on a fresh campaign in the south, and he wanted Sigismund to stay where he was. It was winter before he sent word that the rebels had finally sued for peace, and spring again when the next messenger came. This man was mired from head to foot in mud, but his smile gleamed as he handed Sigismund his father’s letter.

  At last, thought Sigismund. The writing danced before his eyes, but he forced himself to read the message through before turning to Balisan. “My father writes that he will be returning to the capital before the first of summer and bids me join him there.” Sigismund shook his head. “I’ll be sixteen by the time I arrive.”

  “Obviously,” said Balisan, without even a hint of a smile, “we had better leave at once.”

  In the Royal Palace

  The Royal Palace was a vast maze of stone built on a rock overlooking the great river that ran through the heart of the kingdom. In his first few weeks there, Sigismund was disoriented by the sheer size of the place and bewildered as to why even a palace should need quite so many levels and hallways and doors, all opening one onto the other. He was sure there must be rooms that no one had penetrated for centuries, and the whole place was filled with a cool ancient smell. Master Griff said it was because the rock the palace was built on had its feet in the river below, but Sigismund felt sure that the smell came from years of layered memory, all held in long corridors where the sun never shone.

  It did not help that his father was not there to welcome him. Implementation of the peace agreements in the south had taken longer than anyone expected, and the King was still detained in the southern city of Varana, famous for its twisted spires. It was possible, the chamberlain told Sigismund on his arrival, that he could be there until the winter—but in the meantime a suite of rooms had been made ready for the prince in the old part of the palace.

  Why the old? wondered Sigismund, who would have preferred the new wing, with its many windows that looked west over the capital. The old part of the castle was all narrow twisting stairs and doors that were a hand-breadth thick, banded with heavy iron. The apartments set aside for him were pleasant enough, but somber, with dark wood paneling and curtains of dull crimson velvet. The curtains at least gave it an air of richness, although the furnishings were sparse, and fires were lit all year round to warm air chilled by walls of spear-deep stone.

  There was an elongated golden dragon, with an enigmatic carnelian eye, inset above the fireplace, and Sigismund saw the device repeated throughout the old palace. It was worked into the stone above doors and hearths, carved into the backs of wooden chairs, and graced old banners, some faded with age, that were displayed on the walls.

  “Those banners look as if they’d disintegrate if you touched them,” he said to Balisan, when they had been there a week. “And you can tell the old palace was a bastion once. Look at the thickness of the walls, and these arrow slits they call windows!”

  “That was why the original castle was built here,” said Balisan, “to control the traffic up and down the river, and the pirates that preyed on it. There were raiders too, out of the north, who would travel upriver as far as the channel was navigable.”

  Sigismund ran a hand over the stone. “But that was a long time ago. Things are more settled now, at least in these middle parts of the kingdom.”

  “A thousand years,” Balisan replied, holding out his hands to the fire. “But it is tradition that the crown prince resides in the old palace, settled times or not.”

  Tradition, thought Sigismund, could be decidedly uncomfortable, and he missed the easy familiarity of life in the West Castle. It didn’t help that he had ridden ahead with Balisan and Master Griff, to be sure of arriving before the first of summer, and that Wat and Wenceslas and the rest of his West Castle household were still following with the baggage train. It was a long road and they would be moving slowly, so Sigismund did not expect to see them before midsummer at the earliest, or even—remembering the condition o
f the road—summer’s end.

  He had begun to suspect, however, that the old informal life and the rough-and-ready companionship of guards and serving men such as Wat and Wenceslas would not be permitted in the Royal Palace. The chamberlain was responsible for court etiquette and insisted that the distinction between the nobility and within the different ranks of servants be observed. Even Master Griff had been housed in a distant wing of the palace. Sigismund only saw him for lessons now, and the chamberlain’s etiquette required that the tutor depart as soon as the lesson was over.

  “Wait until your father is here before you start changing things,” Master Griff cautioned when Sigismund protested. “But I imagine he will have his own plans for you, including friends of your own age from the families of the great nobility. Who knows, he may even give you a governorship over one of the provinces, to begin your apprenticeship in ruling.”

  “When he gets here,” muttered Sigismund, but he unfolded his arms and tried not to look or feel so disgruntled.

  Balisan was the only one of Sigismund’s former companions who remained close at hand, for although the chamberlain tutted at first, and then protested more vigorously, the master-at-arms had still taken over the suite of rooms next to Sigismund’s.

  “At least until his father returns,” he said, and the chamberlain’s protests withered as he turned away, unable to meet that unblinking gaze.

  Sigismund was glad to know that Balisan was close, a familiar face amongst the many respectful but unknown courtiers and servants. It made him feel safer too, in this dark cool pile of stone with its empty corridors and many doors. It was easy, in a place so thick with shadow and memory, to remember that his mother had been poisoned at the Margravine’s instigation and to look hard at the new faces around him.

  Balisan was silent for some time when Sigismund told him of his uneasiness within the palace. They were standing on the walls, with the great sweep of the river below them on one side and the red and gray roofs of the city crowding away on the other. Sigismund had wanted to walk the palace perimeter, but it had proved to be an exhausting business and he was ready to stop for a while and take in the wider boundaries of this new world. He could see a cluster of roofs on the far side of the river, but mostly it was tilled fields, dotted with trees, that stretched to a blue line of hills.

  Sigismund found the openness of everything a little dizzying after so long in the small, walled castle hemmed about by the great Wood. He supposed he would get used to it soon enough, but he was less sure about the blank, courteous expressions worn by everyone in the palace. “Masks,” he said, leaning over the stone parapet.

  “And you,” said Balisan, “must learn to look for what lies behind them. That is part of what it means to be a prince—but we both need to remain vigilant until we know this court and its ways better.” His eyes had darkened to antique bronze as he spoke and Sigismund realized, with a mixture of relief and fear, that he was not alone in disliking the atmosphere of the palace.

  It was, he decided as the weeks passed, a very self-sufficient world, with gardens and shops, smithies and stables, all contained within the perimeter of the palace walls. There was no need for the servants or courtiers to go out into the city and few of them did, so that the palace was as shut off, in its larger way, as the West Castle within its walled park.

  Was it because his father had been in the south so long that the court had closed in on itself? Sigismund wondered. Or had it always been that way, with the sovereign and those closest to him cut off from both the capital and the rest of the kingdom? It occurred to him that such isolation would have made it easier for the Margravine to stir up rebellion in the south.

  But masks or not, these people were part of his new life and he would have to find a way to learn about them and begin to make friends. Sigismund was not sure quite how to go about that with strangers who must all be treated with a degree of caution, if not outright suspicion, but he pushed aside the fear that it might prove an impossible task. He would not, Sigismund decided, leaning his elbows on the parapet and looking out over the wide, deep river, allow that to be the case.

  The very next day, he met Flor.

  Sigismund was alone in the palace fencing hall, because the man hired to teach him the new art of duello had not turned up at the appointed hour. He had spent some time waiting and then more time exploring the hall, which was large, with a gleaming sprung-wood floor. There were mirrors down one wall, so that you could study yourself while training and correct faults of style or execution, as well as life-sized practice dummies at one end of the hall. At the other end a series of large windows opened out onto a stone terrace, so that the whole space was airy and filled with light. There were orange trees in tubs on the terrace, and a flight of steps led down into a garden with clipped box hedges and gravel paths, which reminded Sigismund of his early years in the Southern Palace.

  The fencing master, like his art of duello, also came from the south, and the style of the hall might have been designed to make him feel at home—in which case, Sigismund reflected, it was churlish of him to keep his prince waiting. The chamberlain, in particular, would not be pleased, since he had spent some time explaining to Balisan how this instructor was the finest master of “the art” in the kingdom. Balisan had simply inclined his head, apparently unimpressed that an Italian fencing master had found his way to the capital, while Sigismund tried not to smile. But he had been pleased, all the same, when Balisan agreed that he should learn this new style of swordplay, which was much in vogue amongst the younger nobility.

  “Although,” the master-at-arms had said, “I wouldn’t like to rely on it in battle.”

  Nor I, Sigismund thought now, picking up a training foil and trying a few experimental passes. The blade was light and flexible, but he could not imagine it making much impression against armor and suspected that a knight’s broadsword would cleave it in two. But he knew that the rapier, as it was called, was increasingly being used for individual combat and duels of honor, dispensing with the need for heavy armor. It would be deadly in that context, Sigismund judged, making a test cut against one of the dummies. He stepped back—and then turned as he caught movement in one of the mirrors, expecting to see the fencing master and receive an apology for lateness.

  Instead he saw a boy of about his own age standing in the doorway. He was taller than Sigismund and of slighter build, with a narrow, high-boned face, hair the gold of a newly minted coin, and dark blue eyes beneath arching brows. He stood with an air, and there was a fine, yellow silk lining to his velvet cloak, and jewels in the hilt of his dagger. He was smiling as Sigismund turned, and his expression was half mocking, half friendly.

  “Hello,” he said, and strolled into the room, letting the door close behind him with a thud. “I can see you’ve never used a rapier before, or a training foil either, for that matter.” His gaze was interested, taking in every detail of Sigismund’s clothes and appearance. “You’re new here, I take it—just up from the country?”

  “In a manner of speaking,” said Sigismund. He put the foil back on the rack. “But you’re right about the sword. I’ve yet to learn this new art of fencing.”

  “If you’re staying,” the newcomer said, “then you’ll have to join our lessons with the Conte Vigiani. He’s the finest master in the city.”

  The name was Italian, but Sigismund was sure that it was not the same one that the chamberlain had mentioned when announcing that a fencing master would be coming to the palace. He studied the boy before him, liking both his friendliness and the humor that glinted in his expression.

  “I would like that,” Sigismund said, and held out his hand. “I’m Sigismund, by the way.”

  The boy extended his own hand, but raised his eyebrows at the same time. “Not that Sigismund?” he asked. “The crown prince we’ve all been expecting for so long? No one said that you’d actually arrived. I’m Florian Langrafon,” he added, clearly remembering his manners, “but everyone calls me Flor.
”

  Sigismund confirmed that he was indeed that Sigismund and had been in the palace for several weeks. Flor whistled, clearly surprised. “I wonder why the chamberlain’s keeping you such a secret? I can’t see any possible reason for it myself, but the man does love his etiquette and ritual. Or perhaps—” He broke off, glancing sideways at Sigismund as though some new thought had struck him.

  “Yes?” Sigismund inquired, but Flor looked troubled.

  “I’m probably not supposed to say anything, but I wonder—I suppose it’s possible that he believes in the curse.”

  “The curse?” Sigismund echoed, curious to hear what he would say.

  Flor’s uneasiness increased. “Some people say your family’s cursed. You know, because of your mother, and both your father’s brothers dying when they were children. I think there were a lot of tragedies in your grandfather’s time as well. The whisperers say that’s why the King never remarried, because no woman would risk the curse, and so now you and he are the last of your family line. The chamberlain absolutely forbids it to be spoken of, of course, claiming that it’s the King’s will.” He made a face. “So I’ll get in trouble if you tell anyone that I mentioned it.”

  “It’s alright,” Sigismund said. “I won’t tell anyone.” He didn’t consider it necessary to say that Balisan had told him long ago, although he could see how the existence of such a story might affect the atmosphere in the palace. But none of this was Flor’s fault, so Sigismund pushed the matter aside and tried to remember what he knew of the Langrafon family instead. They came from the southeast, if he remembered Balisan’s lessons in heraldry correctly, but had never been drawn into the rebellions that racked the provinces further south.

  “So when do you have your fencing lessons?” Sigismund asked, changing the subject. He sat down on a bench along the wall while Flor perched at the other end, folding his arms across an updrawn knee.