The Knight of the Red Beard

by Norton, Andre

  For answer, Zazar arose and went to the shelf, moved a couple of jars aside, and retrieved the bundle that held the item under discussion. “This is a very insecure hiding place, but the best I could think of until something better cropped up.”

  Askepott glanced around the room. The implements of a Wysen-wyf’s trade were everywhere. Zazar couldn’t have chosen a better spot, even on this temporary basis. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. At least not yet. Put it back and let me stow my goods before we go back down those stairs again to dinner.”

  True to his word, Gaurin ordered that the two Wysen-wyves be seated directly across from their chairs at the High Table where he and Ashen could talk with them. One by one, the members of the Court came to be presented to the newcomer before taking their seats as well. Askepott found herself more than impressed by the deference showed to Zazar and, by extension, to her.

  The NordornPrince, Bjaudin, occupied the position of honor, to the King’s immediate right. A dark-haired man, dressed in the Court color, dark blue, sat at the Queen’s left. This, Zazar informed Askepott, was Duke Einaar, and he and the Prince did most of the work involved in managing the kingdom. Next to the Duke sat his Duchess, a frail young woman who seemed very shy. A woman well along in years was placed next to the NordornPrince. Zazar identified her as the Duchess of Iselin, Ysa, the one they would most likely need to unlock the secret of the bracelet. Then came the powerful counts, Svarteper and Tordenskjold, whose positions as Lord High Marshal and Admiral-General dictated that they live in the city, if not permanently in the castle. A parade of other nobles followed in close order.

  Names without faces, faces without names. “I am not used to this,” she muttered to Zazar, “all this deference. At Holger’s village, I was just Old Askepott, a little soft in the head, good for nothing but running his household.”

  Zazar laughed shortly. “Just wait until someone asks you to dance.”

  Askepott pulled back a little and stared at Zazar. “What?”

  “You heard me. They’re great for dancing to ‘The Song’ around here.”

  “Well, I don’t know how and I don’t propose to learn, either.”

  Zazar laughed again. “That’s what I said. But one does not say ‘no’ to Gaurin NordornKing.”

  “Then I’ll plead fatigue when the music begins.”

  “Good plan. Too bad we’re here at the High Table. We’ll have to nod and bob our way out through the crowds. But everybody knows what a testy old crone I am anyway so we won’t be hindered. Royance isn’t here and Gaurin’s leg is bothering him.”

  “Royance?”

  “An old, old friend. He married recently after being a widower for many years. . . .”

  The two Wysen-wyves continued to chat quietly through the meal—real meat, Askepott noted, and bread almost as good as what she made back in what used to be her home. No björr but a choice between ale—which seemed to be a paler, lighter björr—and hot wine mixed with snowberry juice.

  “You’ve got us beat with this, at least,” Askepott said as she drained her goblet. “We have never thought to cultivate snowberries to make them taste better.”

  “Both our cultures have much to share with each other, if only the day will come when they do not consider themselves enemies.” Zazar wiped her platter with a piece of bread and stuffed it into her mouth. “Here come the musicians. Better pretend you can’t keep your eyes open another minute. We’ll get up to the tower and I’ll give you a tot of brandewijn. I brew it myself. It’ll help you sleep and tomorrow we’ll start fresh to unravel the mystery of that item and how to find Mikkel and bring him home safely.”

  With the brandewijn warm in her belly and the fire in the main portion of the tower room banked for the night, Askepott was ready for sleep. The sound of snoring was already coming from the other side of the curtain—Zazar and Weyse, curled up together.

  Despite the wall hangings, the shutters over the windows let enough cold air into the portion of the tower set aside as a sleeping chamber that she could see her breath. A chest sat against the wall, lid open, and inside was her bundle of goods, untouched. That was good. Tomorrow she would unpack it and arrange things to suit herself.

  To her astonishment, she discovered that these people actually wore special clothing to bed, and also little hats that tied under the chin. Well, silly or not, she would go along with their custom. The night garment was thin but generously cut; it seemed to be made of a variety of snow-thistle silk.

  More wonders awaited. Instead of a bed of honest straw covered with a blanket, she saw she was expected to sleep on a kind of cushion atop the straw. It seemed to be made of blankets such as she was used to, though of a finer weave, and stuffed with something soft. Feathers? Perhaps. Another cushioned cover awaited, turned down neatly. This one was stitched in a lozenge design. With a certain disdain for these soft people living in what they called the NordornLand and the way they pampered themselves, Askepott crawled into the bed and covered herself up.

  To her surprise, she discovered how chilled she had been when her own warmth was returned to her almost instantly, even to her feet. Her feet were always cold but now even they were getting warm. The silly cushion turned out to be amazingly comfortable, holding her as if cradled, and the cover acted to hold in the warmth so that she would not shiver no matter how cold the chamber became.

  Perhaps, she thought, this isn’t as ridiculous as I first thought. And then she pulled the cover up to her chin and slept without dreaming until the morning awakened her.

  Fascinated, Mikkel watched as Rock-Maidens built a crystal bubble surrounding the sunken ship. As far as Mikkel could tell, they simply pulled the city dome out and stretched it until the edges met, encompassing the wrecked vessel. Then they removed the water from the bubble, leaving the ship to dry out enough so that the necessary repairs and modifications could be made.

  When Mikkel entered the bubble through the door that sealed behind him, he discovered that the air inside was considerably cooler than that inside the city. This, one of the Rock-Maidens who had a smattering of the common tongue told him, was to keep the ship happy and healthy.

  “Ship has been cold very long,” she told him. “It must like cold. Too warm, make ship sick.”

  It made sense, as much as anything in this underwater existence made sense. Though he had no knowledge or experience in how such things worked, he was nonetheless impressed with the way the Rock-Maidens—or, perhaps, Rock-Men in some long-ago period of amity—had harnessed the fire cauldron that their city was located in and made it yield up its warmth without destroying everything in its vicinity.

  When he tried to find out how it all worked, all he got were blank looks as if he were slightly mad to ask.

  “This is how it always has been,” they would tell him. “We have always had the heat pipes and the lights from magical bones. Why do you question this? Is it not enough for you that these things exist?”

  And so, though his curiosity was not satisfied, he stopped asking. More important matters now occupied him, for actual work had begun on the ship.

  Mikkel reasoned that, since ships were built from the keel up, he should start with the keel and work up as well with the replacements and modifications.

  He was pleased to discover that most of the ship’s hull had been put together with wooden pegs instead of nails. This meant that the ship was even older than he thought, and that his chore wasn’t going to be as difficult as he had feared.

  In what had once been a weapons locker, besides iron-tipped arrows and spears, he found a copper tube and missiles carefully stored in a watertight box—signal rockets, undisturbed for possibly centuries. They might come in handy, so he set the tube aside to be cleaned and returned the box to the locker. The iron weapons he removed personally, to be replaced with those the Rock-Maidens favored.

  As he explored, he found some sad remnants—bones of sailors who had gone down with their ship. The Maidens carefully removed the bone
s for burial in the sand outside the crystal walls.

  One of these sets of bones had, apparently, belonged to the ship’s carpenter, for Mikkel discovered them in a small locker where various tools of the carpentry trade had been stored. Some of these—hammers, axes—could be reclaimed and put to use, but the best find was the long-dead carpenter’s chest. Watertight, as was prudent for the preservation of these tools, the chest yielded plumbs and levels, cord and chalk, spare nails and a roll of putty, and, best of all, an iron pry-bar.

  Rock-Maidens, politely but carefully avoiding the iron, worked with him to locate places where, here and there, repairs to the ship had involved using ancient iron nails. He pried them up with the iron bar and the Maidens replaced them with either more wooden pegs or stone nails they precisely shaped to fit.

  Within a week, he had reached the deck of the ship, where the work of replacing iron increased sharply. Every block, every stanchion, every place where iron lurked had to be searched out and stone or hardened wood substituted. At the same time, Maidens replaced the broken planks of the hull. These were overlapped in such a way that caulk was almost unnecessary. When the Maidens had finished, the repairs scarcely showed, and would be completely invisible once the hull had been painted.

  From somewhere in the dim places of his memory where he realized he could not go, Mikkel recognized that this ship was of a type earlier than those he had seen—someplace. The hull was squat, offering more cargo space and better living quarters for the crew on long voyages. The rigging was not as complicated as he had first feared, being a lateen rig—triangular fore-and-aft sails set on a long, sloping yardarm—on two masts. This, he thought, would allow the ship to take advantage of a wind from the side of the vessel.

  As he and his iron-locating Rock-Maidens cleared a portion of the ship, others came with pumice and seawater to cleanse away what residue remained from the vessel’s underwater sojourn. Eventually the day came when the Rock-Maidens applied a coat of paint made with ground white nacre from certain shells, and prepared a place for the ship’s name to go on her stern. After that, it was only a day’s work to put up the sails and lash them in place with lines spun of thick snow-thistle fiber.

  Mikkel called Petra to come and admire what the Rock-Maidens and he had accomplished. She strode to the work area, her long cloak swirling around her.

  “It is truly beautiful,” she said. “What is her name?”

  “I thought you should have the honor of naming her.”

  “Well, then.” She thought a moment, her brows drawn together a little. “Snow Gem. That’s what she will be called. Snow Gem. And we will take her out as soon as possible.”

  “But a crew—”

  She smiled. “You have been busy here and do not know what I have been doing in the meantime.” She gestured to one of the Rock-Maidens and said something in their own language.

  Within seconds, a group of Maidens, all clad in iridescent shell breastplates over brief tunics and carrying bows and spears, ranged themselves behind Petra. One of them, Hild, loosed the cape from around the Princess’s shoulders and she, too, stood revealed in fighter’s garb.

  “Your crew, and your warriors,” she told him, smiling. “Walkyrye.”

  Mikkel examined the arrowheads and the spearheads, all formed from hard white alabaster. “This is truly a marvel,” he said. “Yes, as soon as Snow Gem has her name properly applied, we will take her out for a sea trial.”

  Seventeen

  In Cyornas Castle, Zazar and Askepott were trying to find a way to gain Ysa’s cooperation in unlocking the secret of the dragon-tooth bracelet.

  “I must have my books,” the Duchess repeated stubbornly.

  “Aren’t there books enough in the Fane?”

  “Esander won’t let me have access to them.”

  “Well, I can remedy that,” Zazar said decisively. “I’ll be back in a little while. You two can get acquainted while I’m gone.”

  She left Askepott and Ysa staring at one another uncertainly while she descended from the tower and made her way across the inner ward to the Fane, where Esander the Good could be found.

  “Yes, I do have some books the Duchess borrowed when we were trying to find the best way of dealing with the Arikarin when it should arrive at Cyornas Castle. She forgot to give them back, and I had to go to her and petition that they be returned to the Fane.”

  “Where are they now?” Zazar asked.

  A smile crossed Esander’s features. “When my lady Duchess came back here the first time, after vowing never to return to the castle, I put them under lock and key. There they remain.”

  “I need them now.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Zazar was reluctant to tell the priest that she wished for Ysa to put her hands on the disputed volumes again, but saw no way to avoid it.

  “No!” Esander exclaimed. “This is much too dangerous. My lady Duchess may do as she pleases in Iselin, but here she must not be allowed to work her spells!”

  “Please believe me,” Zazar told him, “there is more danger than you know here in Cyornas. And Ysa may be the key to disarming it. It has been this way before; she worked with me to defeat the Great Foulness. She can be capable of doing as much again.”

  “The Great Foulness has not returned?”

  “No, but his spawn—or as close as he could come to siring something to live after him—is abroad and we must find a way to thwart the evil.”

  “And you need the books of magic.”

  “We do.” Zazar stared at the priest, willing him to give over, just this once. “We must do it to save Mikkel.”

  The mention of Mikkel’s name tipped the balance.

  “Then you shall have the books. But you must also promise to return them once—once Mikkel is safe again.”

  “They will be returned as soon as possible, by me.”

  The priest opened the locked cabinet and began taking the volumes out one by one. Zazar wrapped them in her shawl for transport back up the stairs. They made a sizable bundle.

  “Will you need help, Madame Zazar?”

  “I can manage. And I’d rather that nobody else knew anything of what’s going on.”

  “I understand.”

  Despite her protestations, he carried the package of books across the ward, into the castle, and as far as the door that led to the tower staircase. There he handed the package to her and she began the long, arduous climb.

  She was puffing and completely out of breath by the time she reached her door. She paused a moment, listening. No voices raised. Maybe that was a good sign.

  She managed to open the door wide enough to get an elbow in and pull it open so she could enter. Askepott immediately jumped up to help her. Ysa, Zazar noted, stayed where she was, in the chair closest to the fire.

  “All right,” she said as she dumped the books onto her work-table, “here they are. Now show us what you can do.”

  “I can’t say that I like your tone,” Ysa replied. Nevertheless, she arose from the chair and moved to the table where she began sorting the volumes by type and subject matter. Two books she set aside at once as being of no use in the present project. Three more she stacked in front of her. “These have to do with summoning, and if I remember correctly, there is a passage in one of them that has a spell for bringing dragons out of the mist and into our world. Perhaps it can be modified—”

  The Duchess, Zazar noted, had become more animated than she had seen her in quite some time with the prospect of working some inventive mischief. Almost, she regretted the necessity of bringing out the bracelet for Ysa to examine and, perhaps, to say a spell over. Nevertheless, making sure that Ysa was too engrossed in her reading to notice what she was doing, she retrieved the little bundle from its hiding place and put it on another shelf.

  Presently, Ysa looked up from her book and closed it, holding her place with her finger. “I need the bracelet now,” she said. “But there’s more. You and I have different magics; we learn
ed that long ago. I must assume that Askepott has your kind of magic. I also need the kind of magic Ashen possesses.”

  “Ashen is not well.”

  “I know that, Zazar. Nevertheless, I—we need the magic that is inborn. I suspect that Elin has it as well. The weather has abated, for the moment. We could all journey to Iselin and enlist Elin’s help in solving the problem. Or, better, bring Elin here.”

  “Iselin?” Askepott asked. “Where is it?”

  “A few leagues distant. It is my duchy.”

  The kettle and the castings from the Weavers’ Web had revealed to Zazar that the child Ashen had been carrying at the time she and Gaurin had faced the Mother Ice Dragon would also be affected by the magic that had enveloped her in a blazing fire. “Without fire there can be no Ash,” the canting pun of her family motto declared, made manifest in that desperate moment. And then Zazar had told Ashen how unclear it had been as to whether this was for good or for ill. She had not been exactly candid with Ashen; her health and well-being had been far too fragile to encompass the indications that Elin would be ever drawn to the darker side of Power.

  “I’m not sure of the wisdom of letting Elin substitute for her mother,” Zazar said.

  Ysa airily waved Zazar’s objection away. “Oh, don’t be such a stick. She’ll be glad to help. After all, it was she who brought the bracelet to my attention in the first place.”

  “My point exactly.” Zazar stared intently at Ysa, as if willing her to acknowledge an evident truth. “The Princess filched it from her mother’s jewel chest. She is far too interested in this article of Power.”

  “But—” Whatever her rebuttal, it was never spoken. Ysa sat quietly, obviously thinking hard. Then she straightened up, removed her finger from the place she had marked in her book, and folded both hands over the volume. “Elin very likely does have the magical ability that we will need for this undertaking. But she is young, untried and—” She marshaled her thoughts, choosing her words carefully. “Elin does not have the experience necessary to ensure that she does not unknowingly use her abilities for less-than-noble purposes. Therefore, we will neither journey to Iselin nor send for the Princess but will call upon Ashen instead. In spite of her frail health, I think she will be able to muster enough strength to do what must be done.”