A Strange and Ancient Name

by Josepha Sherman

  “No. You know the only human tongue I speak is of my mother’s folk. I doubt the boy is even from her Realm, let alone her land. And stop staring at me!”

  “I only meant—”

  “I know what you meant. And I know what you want of me.” Hauberin threw up his hands in defeat. “Since the boy is, after all, under my protection, I suppose I can find the time to pay him a visit.”

  ###

  Hauberin eyed the small human dubiously. What a scrawny little thing it was! All unlikely lengths of arms and legs—too thin, surely?—with those enormous dark eyes peering out from beneath that wild mass of black hair.

  Did I ever look like that? I hope not!

  But the boy seemed to see a resemblance, in coloring if in nothing else. He left the bed on which he’d been huddling and approached the prince with a wild animal’s wariness that struck an unexpected note of purely human sympathy in Hauberin and left him standing stock still and ill at ease.

  And what was he supposed to say to the child. “It doesn’t matter, does it, boy? You can’t possibly understand a word I say.”

  The human stopped, blinking, uncertain. After a moment he spoke, a rusty, hesitant string of sounds. Hauberin listened dutifully, then sighed. “No, boy. I don’t understand you.” He tried an experimental shift of languages. “And I don’t suppose you know my mother’s tongue, either? No. I thought not.”

  So. Surely this satisfied Alliar and the maternally beaming Aydris? The prince turned to them—but in a little flurry of those gawky limbs, the boy caught him, clinging to him desperately. The startled Hauberin froze, confused and embarrassed, thinking with a moment’s wild gratitude, At least they managed to bathe him, not quite certain how to free himself.

  “Hey now, boy, let go. I’m not your kinsman after all.”

  No reaction.

  “Let go, child.”

  Ridiculous. If some presumptuous adult had dared seize him, Hauberin would have loosed his magic. But of course he couldn’t use magic now, not against a child!

  “Come now, enough.”

  If Aydris was so maternal-minded about the boy, let him go cling to her! Or Alliar, who was fairly choking with laughter. Hauberin glanced down at his small, determined captor, wondering if he could peel the boy off bit by bit. Like a limpet.

  But all at once Hauberin glimpsed the boy’s eyes, and suddenly it wasn’t funny anymore, because where they should have been dark, they glittered a cold, familiar sea-green—

  Serein!

  No wonder he’d surrendered his slave so meekly. No wonder he had made no outward attack during all this past moon-cycle. He’d needed none. This child was his weapon!

  The child who was armed with iron. Hauberin twisted desperately as he saw metal flash, but he couldn’t pull free from the tangle of limbs in the instant of time before—

  With a wild, unfocused blaze of will, Hauberin hurled the boy from him, not quite in time. Something white-hot seared his side and he cried out in anguish, hearing Aydris’ terrified scream like an acho. Then a frantic Alliar was at his side.

  “Let me see! Oh Winds, did the blade cut you?”

  If it had, he was already dead. “Let me be.” The boy still had the knife and was about to strike again—“Alliar, let me be!”

  This time the surge of will was controlled, a lance of light flashing from Hauberin’s outflung hand. The boy screamed, falling back against a wall, knife dropping from numbed fingers, and the prince lunged at him, catching the thin shoulders in a fierce grip.

  “Link with me, Li.”

  “My prince—”

  “Link with me!”

  He felt Alliar’s consciousness, cool and clear as wind, obediently touch his, then reached out to catch the boy’s mind with his own, brushing aside the unskilled, frightened attempts at defense, searching—There! As elusive as shadow, there was Serein’s presence, the merest trace, barely enough to say, I am, slipping, sliding away from him . . .

  In the next instant, it was gone. Only the boy was left, trembling so violently only Hauberin’s grip on his shoulders held him upright. Sick with guilt, the prince gently touched his mind again in an attempt to soothe him, only to recoil in disbelief. There was nothing of the child-essence to be read, nothing save shadow.

  That’s impossible, Hauberin told himself hurriedly, it’s only that he’s exhausted. He’ll recover, and prayed he was correct.

  But he had to do something. If he couldn’t touch the boy’s mind, maybe he could at least reach him with words. “Poor child. Between us, my cousin and I have used you cruelly. But you’re safe now, little one. And the Lady Aydris will see that you remember nothing of this.”

  His voice faltered. The woman quickly took the boy from him, and the small human fell helplessly against her, still shaking convulsively. Hauberin, feeling the onset of shock, fought his own shivers, straightening slowly, biting his lip at the movement.

  “Now you will let me see the wound,” Alliar ordered grimly, parting the slash in the gray tunic with gentle hands. Hauberin glanced down in time to see the iron-scorched fabric crumbling away into little black flakes, and hastily looked away, stomach protesting. “Winds be praised,” he heard the being murmur after a time. “Not the slightest break in the skin.”

  “I knew it.” When I didn’t start to die, Hauberin added silently in dark humor. “An iron-burn, no more.”

  It was enough. It was beginning to hurt sickeningly, as though someone had pressed a fiery brand against his skin, and the pain was making him dizzy. But he waved off his solicitous friend, mind racing.

  “He’s finally done it. Finally declared himself.”

  “Serein?”

  “Of course.” Hauberin closed his eyes for a moment, struggling to will his shaken body under control. “Oh, monstrous, to use a child as assassin!”

  “And I am witness,” Alliar said sharply. “That’s why you had us link minds.”

  “Exactly! Serein, Serein, I have you at—”

  But Aydris’ scream of sheer horror slashed across his words. As Hauberin and Alliar turned to stare, the woman, white-faced, backed away, arms falling to her sides. The boy’s body sagged briefly against her, then slid slowly, bonelessly, to the floor.

  “Winds protect,” Alliar gasped. “What . . . ?”

  Hauberin reached out with his will, searching frantically for any sign of life. There has to be something, anything, he can’t be . . .

  But then he knew the truth. The prince staggered back, this time glad of Alliar’s supporting arms.

  “Nothing,” he murmured to the being, shuddering helplessly. “Alliar, there was nothing, not even a fading essence, nothing but that . . . shell.” The prince wanted to do something, cover the body, comfort poor, weeping Aydris, but his legs refused to obey him. Limp within Alliar’s support, Hauberin heard himself chattering feverishly, “I should have guessed. There was shadow in the boy’s mind before, I mean, when I touched him, shadow where there should have been—should have been life, but I never suspected, I—”

  He broke off abruptly, struggling for self-control. “Oh, Li,” the prince said softly. “Serein’s magics ruined the child’s mind, tore it apart. When my cousin fled me, he destroyed what little essence-spark remained. There was nothing left, nothing that could cling to life for more than the few short moments we saw. “My cousin is a murderer. Serein has murdered a child!”

  IV

  “WHO WAS YOUR MOTHER’S FATHER?”

  Hauberin, clad in light, supple Faerie mail, astride a sleek white Faerie stallion, glanced back over his shoulder at the grim-faced royal war troop following him. As was to be expected from his independent people, none of them wore anything that could have been interpreted as livery—their armor was covered by cloaks and tunics in a wild range of color, from subtle pastels to flaming yellows and reds—but they had answered his summons quickly enough. The prince wasn’t vain enough to think it had all been for love of him or concern about treason against him; no, they had
been as shocked as he by that most horrifying murder.

  The troop rode in silence, the only sounds the thrumming of hoofs against the ground, the flapping of a cloak or clink of a sword hilt against mail, or a snort or whicker from a nervously prancing horse. Hauberin ran over in his mind yet again the complex spells of attack and defense he would surely need (so much more difficult than any everyday magic, so much more dangerous to the magician), and tried to shut out his uneasiness.

  Uneasiness, ha! Hauberin thought. Downright fear is more like it.

  Not fear of Serein, never that. But . . . he had never ridden to battle before. What if something went wrong? What if he misspoke a battle-spell? He had never actually used one, after all. Powers, what if he did misspeak one, and the backlash killed him? He had no heir (save Serein, of course, and no one was going to follow Serein now). There would be civil war, chaos—

  Enough of this! As fiercely as any magician mastering a spell, Hauberin forced doubt from his mind.

  Just in time. The high white walls of Serein’s estate stood before them. Hauberin raised a hand, bringing his company to a halt, studying the estate. Those smooth white walls were pretty, but even his less-than-battle-trained eyes could tell they would never hold off a determined attack. Yet he didn’t feel the peculiar psychic tingling that meant Serein was placing magical reinforcements on them, either.

  Wary, the prince waited, alert to the slightest change in air currents that might signal magic, There was silence, such total silence that when one of the horses shook its head, the chinking of the bridle rang out startlingly loud.

  “What is this?” one of the warriors muttered. “Not even a token assault from them? Not even a little spell, or an arrow? Someone’s in there, I can sense them.”

  So could Hauberin. And they could hardly not have seen his troop approach. Serein had already declared himself a traitor by his acts; he could hardly have developed scruples now.

  For an instant more Hauberin hesitated, nerves tight, then signaled to his herald, who rode boldly forward, her gaudy herald’s robes—deliberately bright to mark her as a noncombatant—fluttering in the wind. Standing in the stirrups, she called out in a voice like a silver trumpet:

  “Open, in the name of the prince! Open for Prince Hauberin!”

  There was a moment more of silence, during which Hauberin could feel unseen eyes watching him. And then, almost in anticlimax, the gates swung smoothly open. Figures lurked in the shadow of the doorway, lowly servants, most of them the unlikely mixes found in magical lands: human sprite-woods creature hybrids and the like to judge from their greenish hair and rough brownish skin. Hauberin had always known Serein liked to surround himself with ugliness (save in the women he took to bed, of course), to make his golden elegance shine the brighter by contrast, but the sudden impact of so many warped beings couldn’t be anything but startling.

  Particularly when he sensed that much of that warping was relatively recent, and quite deliberately wrought.

  Ach, Serein, Hauberin thought, remembering mad, cruel Ysilar.

  One of the servants, a thin, wiry creature as much animal as man, moved shyly forward, peering up at Hauberin. “It is you!” the being gasped.

  With that, as though a wind and stirred them, the servants all sank to their knees. “Spare us, merciful Prince,” they moaned. “We are innocent. We had nothing to do with it.”

  “Never mind that,” the prince said shortly. “Where is your master?”

  They looked blankly up at him.

  “Serein!” Hauberin snapped. “Where is he?”

  To his amazement, the creatures all, slowly, began to smile. “Why, fled,” one said in rich pleasure. “Our once and no longer master has fled for his very life.”

  “He wanted us to help him in his flight,” a thin, ragged creature continued, its face hidden by a wild, tangled mane of mossy hair. With a sudden frantic motion, it tossed back that hair, and Hauberin realized with a shock that the face revealed was a young woman’s haggard traces of beauty still lingering. “He said we must help. He reminded us that we are nothing, only slaves. His to do with as it pleased him. So it was in the past,” she added bitterly.

  “No longer!” cut in the animal-man. “He raved at us, but we—oh, we wouldn’t help him, not that child-tormentor, not that killer of the wee little one.” The creature grinned, revealing sharp white teeth. “He could not torment all of us at once, not when he was in such haste. Follow the trail to the mountains, merciful prince, and you shall find him.”

  Stunned by the raw hatred radiating all about him, Hauberin heard his voice come out more harshly than he’d intended. “How? Is he winged? On horseback? Why are you all smiling?”

  “He thought us powerless,” they murmured. “And, one and one, we are. But the forest blood is in our veins, however weak. Together, in our deepest need and rage, together we called on it. And this once we were answered. We could not kill him, oh no, he was too clever for that. But when he would escape, we blocked his spells with forest magic, we would not let him take the air. His horse is swift, but horses tire. Follow, merciful prince, follow. Then—kill him, merciful prince!”

  The savage despair in that cry made Hauberin wince. “I . . . will do what I must.”

  That wasn’t enough for the haggard-faced woman. “Kill him,” she hissed. “Kill him for the sake of that wee little one. Kill him for those of us he raped, those of us he maimed and slew. Kill him.”

  And, “Kill him,” the others chanted, all the while Hauberin, not quite trusting these not-quite-sane wild things, had his warriors search the entire estate. “Kill him,” they chanted when, not having found the slightest hint of Serein-in-hiding, the prince and his troop turned their horses towards the mountains. As he urged his mount on, Hauberin, chilled, could still hear that joyous, savage litany, and thanked all the Powers the hate behind it wasn’t aimed at him: “Kill him. Kill him. Kill him.”

  ###

  Whatever primal Power Serein’s slaves had roused, it had done its work well. Serein had tried to erase his trail, but his magic was plainly working only sporadically; Hauberin, extending his senses to their utmost, could track his cousin as surely as hound tracked prey.

  The forest thinned with Faerie abruptness, the land all at once becoming rocky and rough. Then suddenly Hauberin and his troop were out of the trees altogether, seeing a great wall of mountain looming up before them.

  They found Serein’s horse wandering loose at the mountain’s base, still sweating, its flanks still heaving. Faerie horses had their own strong animal intelligence, and this one, pushed to the point of exhaustion, must have simply refused to move.

  “That means the traitor can’t be too far away,” an archer said, fingering his bow uneasily.

  Hauberin nodded, craning his head back to look up and up the mountainside. “He didn’t reenter the forest; I would have felt it. He could only have gone up.”

  Yes. There amid the crags was a metallic glint—Serein’s armor, or his golden hair.

  “Within range,” the archer muttered, fitting arrow to bow.

  “No!” Hauberin hastily struck down the man’s arm, then had to wonder at himself. A well-placed arrow would have been such an easy, logical solution. Now it was too late; Serein had heard or sensed them, and was scrambling out of range. As his warriors stared at the prince in bewilderment, all Hauberin could answer was a simple, “He is mine.”

  ###

  Halfway up the mountainside, Hauberin realized what a fool he was. All Serein had to do was drop a rock on him, and his people would be searching for a new ruler.

  But Serein didn’t do anything at all, possibly out of the same misguided idea that they should meet (and maybe kill each other) with honor. Or at least suitable drama.

  Or maybe he just can’t find a big enough rock.

  It was a rough climb, and not getting any easier. Maybe he should have shape-shifted—no. Flight would take just as much effort. More, probably, since he’d have the added
weight of mail and sword. Besides, he was gaining. He could hear Serein somewhere just ahead of him, scattering tiny avalanches of pebbles as he hunted for a better place to make a stand. Suddenly inspired, Hauberin left the rugged trail he had been climbing, scrabbling up the bare mountainside instead by fingers, toes, and sheer will, struggling to get ahead of Serein, somewhere off to his right, succeeding by being smaller and lighter than his cousin. Spread-eagled against the mountainside, struggling to catch his breath, the prince glanced back down over his right shoulder, and saw Serein reach a relatively flat, relatively wide ledge.

  There isn’t likely to be a better place.

  Resisting the urge to yell a melodramatic war-cry, Hauberin pushed oil from the mountainside and sprang down to confront him. The impact left him winded. Fortunately, Serein was just as breathless from his climb. And so it came down to this: not elegant prince and noble, not kinsmen making claims on memory, only two tired warriors on a mountain ledge, clad in dust-stained mail.

  For a long time they faced each other in tense, weary silence. Then Hauberin said softly, “It’s over.”

  “Not quite.”

  “Face facts! You failed. Now you’re cornered and alone.”

  The sea-green eyes were bitterly amused. “For which you’re so pleased to take credit.”

  “It wasn’t difficult!” Hauberin snapped. “I knew there wasn’t any well-planned revolution behind you.” Remembering those desperately hate-filled slaves urging him to the loll, he added with a shudder, “Powers above, you couldn’t have expected even those maltreated servants of yours to cleave to you!”

  A shrug of elegant shoulders. “I confess, I never thought it would come down to my needing an army. After all, there was the boy.” Serein’s smile was a slow, chill thing. “Ah, the boy. These six long years struggling to find a weakness in your shields, and then to chance upon him—my little human truly had you off your guard, didn’t he? Granted, I never expected you to steal him from me. But that only made my task easier!”