“Because it is too dangerous,” he said quietly, and when Rinka moved to speak, Kaspar held up one long, white finger. “Because I’m not sure I trust the king anymore, no matter that his family has ruled since Cane’s beginning.” He said this quietly, as if ashamed, and Rinka’s skin prickled to hear the treasonous words. “Because you are my one child, and the only family I have left since your mother’s death.”
“Nothing is preventing you from finding other wives, if you’re so eager for more children,” Rinka said, bristling. She would not be manipulated. “You really think King Alban summons us to court only to kill us once we’re inside his walls?”
“Kill us, or something worse. Who’s to say?”
“You can’t honestly believe he would force us to bind with him? Force us to serve him like the Seven mages?” Rinka scoffed, stalked away and then back. “I’m not even sure that would work. You’re beginning to sound as unreasonable as Garen. It’s a ludicrous idea.”
“As I said, I’m not sure I trust the king,” Kaspar said again, heavily. “Or at least not those around him. He is young, and surrounded by duplicitous people with their eyes on the throne. I admire your willingness to trust, Rinka, and your compassion, but in this case I fear you are misguided.”
“You don’t trust the king, and yet you send our people to his city. You’re using them as bait, to see what King Alban will do. Do you hope he proves you right?” Rinka rose. She could not believe it of him; he had always been reasonable and fair. That even he was beginning to believe these rumors was a startling truth, one that disappointed and frightened her. “You want war.”
“No one with a whit of sense wants war.” Kaspar’s gaze was fierce. “Just as no one with a whit of sense hears rumors of antagonism against his own people and does nothing.”
Rinka stepped back from him. She suddenly felt far removed from her father, as if he had been changing along with the rest of them, and Rinka had been too blind with love to notice until now.
“Garen and the others will go to Erstadt,” she said, her voice low, “and they will do great things. They’ll represent our people with honor, and when they return with King Alban’s blessing, you’ll feel foolish that you ever let yourself be convinced of these things, and you’ll regret not having sent me along with them, for I would have made you proud.” Rinka left him there, sitting straight and cold in his chair, but turned at the door. “For ninety years you’ve kept me underground,” she said, “claiming it was to keep me safe, yet you allow your prejudiced friends to turn the wheels of war and breed more prejudice in the minds of good men like Garen. He is hardly older than me. Too young to be what you’re making him into—a soldier with a craving for violence.”
Kaspar began to speak, but Rinka cut him off.
“You disappoint me, Father,” she whispered. “If war ever does come, the blood of our dead will not be on King Alban’s hands. It will be on yours.”
Rinka left, and each step she took away from her father left her feeling more unhinged. When she reached her chambers, she was a mess of hot rage and sadness, and a need for defiance.
It was not the best state of mind in which to hatch a plan, but Rinka did it anyway.
In the dead of night, as the chosen seven left Geschtohl in their feathered robes, with their attendants at their sides, their horses heavy-eyed and tired, Rinka snuck aboveground. She wore dark trousers, tunic, and boots, a fur-lined cloak, and her dark iron pendant, which Garen had given her, tied at her throat. It will help you use your magic more effectively, he had said. You won’t believe the progress we’ve been making at training, Rinka. You won’t believe the new pendants I’ve been designing. Pendants, and more. It focuses your magic. Sharpens it.
Rinka had never made time for much practice with her pendant. It unsettled her, the heaviness of it around her neck, how it seemed to buzz against her skin, eager for her to use it. But she hoped seeing her wear it would soften Garen’s anger.
Notes and maps shoved into her bag, her heart pounding with the thrill of escape, she crept out into the dew-glittering forest and followed the retinue north.
* * *
Garen was the first to discover her.
They had been traveling north for a fortnight, and had passed out of the faery lands. It seemed to Rinka that the air here was different. It smelled of humans and their rich, red blood, and of palaces stretching to the skies. She could no longer smell the sea. Though her body ached from the hard travel and she lived in constant fear of her father’s guards catching up to her and dragging her back to Geschtohl, she could not stop grinning.
Human country. Her thoughts went to the maps rolled up in her bag, which she studied every night by the light of the moon. The faery lands were vast, but human country was even more so, and she itched to know every mile of it.
She laid out her bedroll close enough to spy on the others’ camp. They would rest for a few hours and begin again at dawn, and Rinka would follow. This was how she had proceeded since leaving Geschtohl, and this was how she would proceed until they reached Erstadt. What would happen then . . . well, she hadn’t quite planned that out yet.
Then Garen found her.
She had been trying to disguise her presence as best she could, but apparently not well enough. As she withdrew her maps from her bag, she heard a twig snap, felt a shift in the air near her.
She whipped around and saw Garen, half-hidden in the shadows, his expression stern.
“Rinka,” he said, and then came a weary sigh. He approached her in the gloom. “I was hoping it wasn’t you. Surely she wouldn’t dare to sneak out after us, I thought. What were you thinking? Kaspar will be furious. He probably is furious.” He shot a frustrated look into the trees. “No doubt he’s already sent someone out after you. Do you know how silly I’ll look, to have taken this long to notice you?”
Rinka flashed him a hard, smug smile. He wasn’t yelling at her, as she’d imagined he would, but talking down to her, as though she were a child, and that riled her. It wasn’t her fault he’d been careless.
“Father can be as furious as he likes,” she said. “I’m not afraid of him.”
“I’m sure he told you how dangerous this is. He wasn’t joking, Rinka.”
“Garen, I know the danger, and I crave it. All my life I’ve yearned to travel to the human country. To see Erstadt. To see any human at all! Father wants to protect me, and he has done so all too well. I’ve had a narrow life. I hardly know anything about my kingdom other than what I’ve experienced in Geschtohl. Am I to live out the rest of my years there, sheltered and coddled for centuries, without ever seeing anything of the world I love?”
“But why do you love them?” Garen pleaded, a sullen note souring his voice.
“Because it’s my destiny,” she said simply.
He laughed. “Rinka, there’s no such thing.”
“The humans think there is. Some of them, anyway. And I like the idea. It’s poetic. I feel the weight of it when I think of humans. I feel the weight of purpose unfulfilled.”
Garen brushed the hair from her face, and Rinka allowed him that, though her instinct was to smack his hand away.
“You are a foolish romantic,” he said at last.
“And you are going to help me. Aren’t you?”
“Yes.” He sighed again and rubbed his face. “Do you know, it’s actually rather perfect? Stanzya didn’t want to come but she didn’t know how to refuse the Council. We could send her home to the shore, and you could take her place.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m saying these things.”
As he spoke, Rinka felt a surge of rightness sweep through her. She felt ready to take to the skies. “Don’t you see, Garen? It is destiny. I was meant to join you after all.”
Garen shook his head, and then began talking through how they would word the letter to Kaspar: Stanzya had fallen ill, Rinka had graciously volunteered to serve on her behalf, and yes, of course Garen would ensure nothing would happen to her�
�even though, Rinka pointed out, she was capable of taking care of herself. But she allowed it; anything to placate her father. When they returned to the faery camp, they drafted the note and sent it off with one of their attendants.
Once this was done, Rinka felt a sudden great affection for Garen’s rational, newly humorless self. She felt a sudden great affection for everything. She gazed far to the north, where she thought she could see the luster of Erstadt’s white towers in the moonlight.
I will be there soon, she thought. And then she imagined sending her love winging through the night sky to Erstadt, like a bird to its nest, like arrows to their mark, like a prayer to the seas.
3
SURROUNDING THE CITY of Erstadt were miles of farmlands, spotty woodlands, and tiny villages, connected by a network of first dirt roads and then roads of white stone nearer the city itself. It was fertile country here, not as temperate as the faery lands in spring, but still pleasant.
Not so pleasant, Rinka was devastated to discover, were the humans who watched their progress.
Oh, some of them were fine enough. The occasional child would see Rinka smile and bashfully return it with his own before ducking behind his mother’s legs, and not a few young ladies arranged themselves more becomingly when they caught sight of Garen in his coat and bretzhenner’s collar. But for the most part, the reactions to the faery retinue were . . . disgruntled. Frightened, wary. Vaguely insulted, as if tolerating the presence of faeries were onerous.
“Quite the welcome,” Garen muttered, inching his horse closer to Rinka’s.
“Can you blame them?” said Rinka. “Faeries haven’t officially visited the capital in years. I expect they’re only caught off-guard.”
Garen made a noncommittal noise, and Rinka got the distinct impression he was amused at her—at her naiveté, he would undoubtedly say. What did you expect, Rinka? For them to love us as much as you love them?
Rinka ignored the Garen in her head and the one beside her, urging her horse away from the group. She searched the face of every human they passed, thirsty to find kinship with one of them. Maybe a man taken with her beauty. Maybe a woman fascinated by the pendants in her hair.
She found herself, perhaps foolishly, yearning to find a friend among them, and soon. Someone impressed by and devoted to her, to whom she could devote herself as well. Someone as eager to learn about her and her kind as she had always been to learn about theirs. Together they could prove Garen and those like him utterly wrong.
But then even these thoughts fell away, for they had passed along the main road, up a gently sloping hill, and Rinka saw what lay before them.
Along the perimeter stood a high white wall, and it was through an arched gate that the faery entourage entered the king’s city. The stories a young Rinka had heard, decades ago now, from faery travelers stopping at Geschtohl for prayer and reflection—the accounts of the city Rinka had read in her father’s books—had not done Erstadt justice. Towering and white, the city spilled across the foothills of the mountain range known as the Kingsmarch, which loomed dark and hidden in low clouds. The king’s palace, Wahlkraft, gleamed as splendidly as Rinka had imagined it—pearl-colored spires and towering gray turrets, the walls embedded with tiny pieces of glassy stone that caught the sun and made the city shine.
The sight of it left Rinka breathless.
“Is it everything you’ve ever imagined?” asked Garen blandly.
“Better,” said Rinka, as they passed through the city gates and into a great marketplace bustling with people—who stared and shuddered and smiled and scrambled at the sight of them. Rinka tried to ignore the uneasiness in the air, and tossed her braids. “And don’t spoil this moment for me, Garen, or you won’t live to regret it.”
But the moment was spoiled anyway, by the appearance of a harried-looking young—oh. Oh. Rinka felt a flutter of delighted alarm.
The young woman in brown, hurrying to meet them, was a mage. She had to be, with that dark hair and pale skin, her eyes sharp and silver like knives, and the presence of magic about her. The coldness of her power thrummed against the heat of the faeries’ own, and wavered there gently. The faeries and their horses shied away at the contact—except for Rinka.
She would not allow herself to appear so unsophisticated.
“Hello, Lady, and good morning,” she said warmly, jumping down from her horse to extend her hand. She had heard of shaking hands in human country, and assumed the mages would have adopted that custom as their own—as they had done with many others. “Have you come alone to greet us? Surely you aren’t meant to handle our horses and supplies by yourself.”
The mage let out a tiny breath of laughter. “Please, I’m no lady yet. But if you’ll follow me—”
“Oh, of course,” Rinka interrupted. “Only those mages who’ve apprenticed at court and been blessed by the king are accorded the titles of Lords and Ladies of the North. Isn’t that right?”
The mage did not seem to know how to react to Rinka’s enthusiasm, and detached herself gently. “That’s correct, Countess, but—”
Now it was Rinka’s turn to laugh. “Countess?”
“Rinka,” warned Garen, still astride his horse.
“I’m no countess,” Rinka went on. “My father is on the Council of Geschtohl, but I hardly think that awards me the title of countess. I’ve no property to speak of.”
The mage girl pursed her lips, impatient. “That’s fine, but we really must get on. The queen is waiting, and she is most perturbed at your tardiness.”
A ripple of confusion went through the faery delegation. Rinka said, dismayed, “Do you mean they’re awaiting us, at court?”
“Yes,” the mage said, with an air of exasperated relief. “Now if you’ll follow me—”
Garen dismounted, frowning. “Our summons from the king said we were to meet him and the queen on the evening of our arrival. They were to feast us in welcome. He included nothing about meeting them prior to that.”
The mage paused, and Rinka saw on her face something of anger—not at the faeries, but at the queen?
“Well,” the mage said smoothly, “I’m sure, then, that the misunderstanding will be cleared up at once.”
But the mage’s words did nothing to settle anyone’s mood, and as they climbed the high, twisting road to Wahlkraft, Rinka’s dismay shifted into foreboding.
This was not the reception she had dreamed of.
She quashed her distress, and pressed closer to their mage guide. “What is your name? I was rude not to ask before.”
“Not to worry, Countess,” said the mage briskly. “I’m a mere apprentice here. I’m used to rudeness from all quarters.”
“Please, I insist.”
After a pause, the mage said, “Very well. My name is Leska, Countess.”
Rinka started to say more—How long had Leska been in the capital? What did a mage apprenticeship involve?—but then glanced ahead and fell silent. A glittering courtyard awaited them, lined with soldiers in ceremonial finery. Past that, a set of tall, narrow doors opened to reveal an entrance hall of curling staircases, gleaming floors, and a chandelier that seemed woven of stars.
Not even their company’s strange reception could diminish Rinka’s shiver of excitement.
The palace of the king.
Wahlkraft.
* * *
Leska, the girl mage, led Rinka, Garen, and the others into the throne room, where Queen Liane was holding court. It was a room heavy with opulence—tall, pointed windows shot through with colored glass, and a high glass ceiling through which the sun threw beams of heat; painted pillars inlaid with jewels, walls covered in elaborate murals; and the throne itself, high and white . . . and empty.
Where was King Alban?
The faeries fell into a line before the queen, who sat beside the throne, and Leska bowed low before her.
“Your Majesty,” she said, her clear voice ringing in this immaculate room of marble and glass, “I present to you the ch
osen seven delegates of the faery lands, as selected by the faery Council, as summoned by His Majesty the High King Alban Somerhart.”
Silence, then, as the faeries bowed. A few scattered coughs and whispers from the assembled courtiers on the sides of the room and in the high gallery, above. Rinka could feel their gazes upon her—searching, critical, curious. A bead of sweat slid down her temple into the folds of her cloak. Her cloak. Oh, blessed salt of the seas. They had not had time to change. They were dusty and rumpled, tracking mud across the king’s white floors.
Rinka dared an embarrassed look up at the queen—a young, beautiful woman, fair-haired in a gown of green and gold, with an intelligent light in her eyes and an unreadable twist to her mouth. Rinka had known the queen was only eighteen years old—roughly the same age as Rinka, in human years—but to see her youth in person, and how comfortably she wore her title even so, was startling.
“Welcome, my brothers and sisters of the south,” the queen said. The golden dragon at her neck—the sigil of the queen’s birth family, the Drachstelle family—glinted like a third, mischievous eye. “You cannot imagine my delight that you have decided to join us at last.”
Laughter rippled through the courtiers, who whispered to each other and hid their faces behind ornamental fans. They feigned boredom, but their eyes were keen on Rinka and her companions.
“My queen.” Garen went down on one knee and bowed his head. “Please forgive us for keeping you waiting. Our understanding, based on your messenger’s note, was that we were to formally present ourselves at this evening’s feast. We knew nothing of meeting you this morning at court. We certainly never intended to offend you.”
“Indeed,” said the queen. “As it is, however, I’m sorry to say we’ve concluded our business here this morning. What a pity.” The queen rose, and the others followed—the courtiers nearest the throne’s dais smiling tiny, condescending smiles that brought indignant color to Rinka’s cheeks. “At least,” the queen continued, “you will have some time this afternoon to make yourselves ready for tonight’s feast.” She gestured eloquently at their attire. “I’m sure it will be quite something for you to dine in the human tradition. Very different, I’d imagine, from your southern customs.”
Summerfall: A Winterspell Novella Page 2
