by Helen Lowe
Sigismund stepped back when his reverse chant was finally completed, breathing hard and looking round for Rue, who clapped her hands before pointing again to the fiery opening. Sigismund nodded and saw that the serpent was being pushed further back now, receding into whatever dimension of earth and stone had brought it forth. He shuddered, avoiding the baleful stare, and felt the pull of the flames from Rue’s opening, reaching out to engulf him.
Rue must have already gone through, for she was nowhere to be seen as he turned and stepped toward the fire. He snatched another quick glance back, in case he had missed her, and stopped short as a huge red and golden dragon soared out of the twisting streams of energy and reality. Sigismund stared, sure he must be delirious—or really dreaming now—and then the dragon and everything else disappeared as fire roared around him. He stumbled forward into a warm, tapestry-hung chamber where two men were standing on either side of a large fireplace. Their somber, weary expressions were replaced by astonishment as Sigismund burst into the room, but it was the more familiar of the two who stepped forward.
“Sigismund!” exclaimed Master Griff, while the other man frowned at his shoulder. “How on earth did you get here?”
The Dream
Sigismund stared around the room, blinking at the rich colorful tapestries and the inlay of dragons above the door. They were worked in gold and bronze metal, inset with scarlet enamel, but Sigismund could not recall seeing either these particular dragons or the room before. He guessed that he must be in the Royal Palace and he looked hard at Master Griff’s companion, who was still watching him from beneath frowning brows. This man’s expression was grim, with lines carved deep into the bridge of his nose and around his mouth, and there was calculation in his eyes, as though he was accustomed to weighing men and their motives. The lines went deeper than in the portraits, and there was more gray than gold in the hair and beard, but Sigismund recognized his father’s face.
The King looked past him into the corner of the room. “I take it,” he said, “that despite his somewhat unexpected appearance, this is my son?”
Sigismund turned and saw Balisan standing in the shadows, although he was sure that the master-at-arms had not been there when he first plunged into the room. It was a moment later again before he recognized his own saddlebags slung across Balisan’s shoulder. “So it was your voice I heard,” he said, “in the belvedere. It must have been you they meant when they talked about an intruder.”
“It was,” said Balisan. There was a hint of a smile in his expression. “But you didn’t seem to need much help, so I collected these and followed you here.” His eyes gleamed as they rested on the red and white sword, but he said nothing more, just stepped forward and dropped the saddlebags onto the table.
Sigismund looked down at the sword in his hand and remembered the court etiquette that forbade anyone to come armed into the presence of the King. Reaction to the night’s events, together with the shock of coming face to face with his father so unexpectedly, was starting to set in and his hands shook a little as he sheathed the sword and then unbuckled the belt, propping the weapon against the table. He shot a quick, covert glance at his father as he did so, wondering whether he should offer to embrace him, as father to son, or bow, as prince to king. The King’s forbidding expression had not changed and he made no gesture of welcome, so Sigismund chose the safest option. He bowed low.
“I apologize, Sire,” he said, “both for my unexpected arrival and for bringing a sword into your presence.”
The King’s answering nod was curt, his eyes narrow on Sigismund’s face. “So,” he said, but still offered no word or gesture of welcome. His eyes flicked back to Balisan again. “Is this really Sigismund?”
“It is,” said Balisan. “But he would not know that an interloper, wearing the illusion of his face, came back to us from the forest of Thorn.”
“An imposter,” said Sigismund, remembering what the Margravine had said to Flor in the Faerie hall. “Let me guess—Ban Valensar?”
The King nodded. “It was a strong illusion, but fortunately Balisan saw through it.” He shut his mouth hard on the last word, plainly reluctant to say more, and made no move away from the fire, just continued to watch Sigismund, the frown heavy on his face. The pause extended, becoming awkward, and was filled by Master Griff.
“It helped,” he said, “that we had already become suspicious. Balisan found the body of your intended fencing master, buried in the lane between the herb garden and the old palace.”
Sigismund looked from one to the other. “The one who never turned up, the day I met Flor?” He whistled softly. “They went that far, having him murdered so Flor had an excuse to draw me into his circle?” He frowned at Balisan. “But you were already suspicious. Wat said so just before he died.”
Sigismund didn’t ask why Balisan had let him go, if that was the case, but the master-at-arms seemed to understand the unspoken question. He shrugged, a very slight movement of his shoulders.
“We agreed, did we not, that you must live in the world? I knew the Margravine would move against you sooner or later, but not how soon—or where. I could not be sure that she would use the Thorn hunt, and if I had held you back, or accompanied you myself, she would only have found another opportunity. But once I found the body in the lane, I knew that she was moving.”
“Besides,” said the King, his voice still harsh, “who would respect or follow a prince who never stepped outside the Royal Palace, or needed a nursemaid when he did?”
It was not, Sigismund thought, a question that required an answer. He frowned again through his weariness. “And you suspected Flor?” he said to Balisan.
All three men nodded. “Although it seemed hard to believe,” said Master Griff. “The Langrafon family has an unimpeachable record.”
The King’s laugh was short and hard. “No one is unimpeachable,” he said. “The incentive has to be right, that’s all.”
“And the Margravine zu Malvolin,” said Balisan, his tone meditative, “is a skilled purveyor of incentives.”
“Flor called the Margravine his grandmother,” said Sigismund. The firelight was blurring before his eyes and he found it hard to stand without swaying. He tried to focus on what Master Griff was saying, which seemed to be that he knew of no link between the zu Malvolin and Langrafon families. Besides, Balisan added, they only had the boy’s own word that he was a Langrafon, given that all his kin were in the southeast. A Langrafon scion had been expected at court and a lad had turned up with a retinue, claiming that name and place, but who would even think of asking him to prove his identity? Balisan shrugged, leaving them to draw their own conclusions.
“Unfortunately,” the King said heavily, “the Valensar whelp couldn’t throw much light on the matter. All he knows is that Flor Langrafon asked him to masquerade in your place, pretending it was a jest that the two of you had planned together. And Langrafon, of course, disappeared after the hunt.”
Sigismund forced himself to concentrate. “But that’s what I don’t understand,” he said, looking to Balisan. “How can you know any of this, when the hunt was only yesterday? How could you possibly have discovered Ban’s deception so soon, or known to come after me?”
He caught his father’s headshake from the corner of his eye, but it was Master Griff who answered, his voice quiet. “Not yesterday, Sigismund. It’s been almost two years now since the hunt of Thorn and your disappearance. Balisan has been gone nearly as long, searching for you.”
Sigismund put out a hand, touching the reassuring firmness of stone and wall. After a moment he slumped into a high-backed settle. “Two years?” he whispered. “How is that possible?”
Balisan sank onto his heels beside the settle, so that their eyes were level. “The house in the forest was built where the mortal realm and Faerie overlap, and you were taken into a Faerie hill. Time does not move at the same speed on both planes, which is why two years could pass here in what seemed less than a day to you. But,
” he added quietly, “it could equally well have been twenty years, or two hundred.”
Sigismund closed his eyes. “So I was lucky then.”
“No,” said Balisan, “you made your own luck. You resisted the Margravine’s spells and fought your way clear. The way the realms function, that would tend to make the overlap work in your favor.”
“Oh,” said Sigismund. His bones felt like lead and he wondered if he could sit there forever and not move. Probably not, he decided, and opened his eyes again, focusing on Master Griff. “But you don’t believe in magic,” he said.
The King snorted, but both the other men smiled. “After the business with Ban Valensar,” the tutor answered, his smile becoming a little wry, “I found I had to rethink my views—and then your father was so good as to take me more fully into his confidence.” He made a little bow toward the King.
The King’s smile looked as if it did not get much use. “Only because I had to,” he said in his abrupt way, “to try and prevent more rumors of a curse at work. We gave it out,” he added, with a quick glance that didn’t quite meet Sigismund’s eyes, “that you had gone on a tour to meet those who would be your fellow monarchs one day.”
“And their eligible female relatives,” murmured Balisan.
Master Griff cast him a repressive look. “So meanwhile,” he said, “I have been shut up in the West Castle again with Ban Valensar, who I might add has no aptitude for scholarship at all.” He shook his head. “But after two years we knew it was time to formulate another plan, and so your father called me here in secret.”
Sigismund was sure that he was still taking in the sense of what was being said, but their words were starting to sough around him like wind along the boundaries of the Wood. There was something missing, though, he thought, something that was being overlooked. He sat up a little straighter and peered around the room. “Where’s Rue?” he said.
They all looked at him strangely. “I didn’t escape on my own,” he explained. “Rue showed me the way here and then went through the opening ahead of me. So why isn’t she here now?”
“Who is this Rue?” the King demanded, sharp and searching, but Master Griff shook his head.
“No one else came through, Sigismund. Only you.”
Sigismund looked around the room again, half expecting to find Rue gazing back at him out of the shadows, then his gaze sharpened on the dragons above the door. “I’m sure we both went through the same opening, so where could she have gone?”
Balisan shook his head. “I do not know, but there is nothing we can do to find her, now that the opening has closed.” His voice was calm, his gaze still intent on Sigismund. “We need to talk more about your whole adventure, including the part played by the young man that we know as Flor Langrafon—as well as how you came by that sword. But not now. You are exhausted and need to rest.”
Sigismund nodded, too tired to pursue the question of Rue. Balisan stood up and turned to the King, who said something about safety.
“He will be safe,” Balisan replied. His smile was grim. “No one will come at him, waking or sleeping, except through me.”
Sigismund let his eyes close and the blur wash over him. When he opened them again he was in his own room and Master Griff was there, bending over the red and white sword and sketching the detail on the scabbard. “It’s very old,” he murmured. “And powerful, you say?”
“To Sigismund’s benefit,” agreed Balisan, from beside the fire. “The use he made of it was somewhat crude…but convincing.” Sigismund was sure the master-at-arms was smiling, but his eyelids sank down again and he did not hear Master Griff’s reply.
The next time he woke, sunshine was streaming in through the casement, with a hint of rainbow where it fell across the bed. Sigismund stretched, still half asleep, then remembered that it had been late autumn, almost winter, when he went hunting in the forest of Thorn. Almost two years, he thought, and twitched as though a fly had crawled across his skin, for both the hunt and his time in the Faerie hill were still yesterday for him. He flung an arm across his eyes, trying not to dwell on Flor’s false friendship and subsequent betrayal, but he could almost taste the bitterness, sharp as bile in his mouth.
I did not see behind his mask, he thought, so how will I dare trust anyone again?
But then he remembered Wat, who had died to save him. The memory was still raw, and Sigismund found it almost impossible to comprehend that for everyone else it was now an old story.
And what about Annie, he thought, sitting up. There had been no formal betrothal between Wat and Annie, not even an official understanding, but Sigismund had seen them walking out together in the summer evenings. She would know of Wat’s death, of course she would if Master Griff had been hidden away in the West Castle, but still—
“I must write to her,” Sigismund said, and turned to rummage in the cabinet beside the bed.
Someone, Balisan he supposed, had put his saddlebags there, still spattered with mud from the hunt. Sigismund’s hand hovered, and then he was fumbling with the buckles, clumsy in his haste to find the treatise on boar hunting. It was still there, he saw with relief, and turned to the page where the sprig of rue had been, but all that remained was a few crumbled fragments.
Sigismund touched them with a gentle fingertip while his mind flashed to his first meeting with Rue, standing amidst a swirl of brown leaves in the autumn garden. Perhaps if he went there now and plucked a fresh sprig, it would bring her forth again. I hope so, thought Sigismund. He didn’t want to think about what it might mean if she didn’t appear. But it was only when he was pulling on his tunic that it occurred to him to wonder who had placed the herb inside the book in the first place. It was Balisan who had given the treatise to him, but Master Griff who had gotten it from the palace library—but that was before the tutor had come to rethink his views on magic.
“Besides,” Sigismund said aloud, “even I didn’t know about the connection between Rue and the herb until I was in the Margravine’s power.”
He stared into the mirror, thinking about those two lost years, and at first saw only what he had always seen: a square, open face with a smudge of freckles across the nose and cheekbones, rough fairish hair, and brown eyes. But the reflection had changed subtly since the last time he looked. The face was thinner, the line of the cheekbones and jaw a little more pronounced, and the arch of his eyebrows seemed stronger, more sharply defined.
Ageless, Sigismund thought with a slight shiver, not unlike the faces of the dancers in the Margravine’s hall—proof, perhaps, that he was susceptible to their magic. He wondered exactly how time did move in that realm, and saw the enchanted hall again with its circle of faie dancers. And he heard the sweetness of the Margravine’s voice while something wilder and darker moved in her eyes.
Sigismund’s thoughts shifted to his father and he frowned at the eyes shadowed in the glass. The King hadn’t seemed at all glad to see him, even after Balisan assured him that Sigismund was not an imposter. Is this how it is at every royal court, Sigismund wondered, or is it something particular about him? Or is it me?
He couldn’t help hoping for a change in his father’s manner, but the King remained distant when they met later that day, his attention focused on the implications of Sigismund’s recent adventures. “I want to know everything about the part played by the Langrafon boy,” he said, “and to understand more about the lineage and history of that sword. We need to know whether you stumbled on it by chance or if it was placed in your way—and if so, whether for good or ill.”
They were in the King’s private study, which was the room with the flight of dragons above the door. His father was standing by the window with his hands clasped behind his back, staring out into the sunlit afternoon. They had been going over every detail of Sigismund’s encounter with the Margravine, from the time he realized that he had become separated from the rest of the hunt until the moment he burst through into the King’s study. It was Balisan who asked most of the
questions, patient as a hound casting for scent, while the King listened and frowned, and Master Griff scratched notes onto parchment.
The tutor looked up, however, at mention of the sword. “My research suggests that some of these weapons can be double-edged, for weal or woe or both. But the design on the scabbard is distinctive, so I should be able to find out more.”
“There are dragons on the blade as well,” Sigismund pointed out, his eyes going to the flight above the door. “And they are the symbol of our House.”
Master Griff steepled his fingertips together. “True, but so far I have found no mention of such a sword in your family history. And I understand that the dragon symbol is favored in other lands, especially as one travels further east. Nor,” he added, with a slight smile, “should we discount the possibility that the swordsmith drew on the old tales you enjoy so much—Arthur, Sigurd, and the like—simply to decorate his work.”
“Master Griff may be right,” said Balisan, checking Sigismund with a look. “Let him complete his research before we read too much into the dragons on the blade. As for this Rue of yours—”
Sigismund, out of the corner of his eye, saw his father’s frown deepen.
“It is likely,” Balisan continued, “that she is of the faie, but although she seems well disposed it is best to be careful. We cannot discount the possibility that the Margravine is playing a deep game.”
“Web within web,” agreed the King, his voice harsh, “that’s her style. But whether this Rue is part of her schemes or not, faie or some human maid, I don’t want you obsessing about the girl, Sigismund. If she had returned with you, then well and good—we would have thanked her in some suitable way. But you are the crown prince and I want to see you making friends with the other young people here, those of your own rank and station. And kind,” he added.
Like Flor Langrafon and Ban Valensar? Sigismund wanted to ask. He pressed his lips together and said nothing, still determined to go to the herb garden as soon as the questioning and cross-questioning was over. Yet when he did finally get there and pluck a sprig of rue, nothing happened. Not even a breath of air moved to disturb the garden’s peace, heavy with late-afternoon sunshine and the hum of bees.
