The Oddling Prince

by Nancy Springer

  “What are we here for really, Aric?” he asked.

  I took a deep breath. “You know a few nights ago, I requested counsel of the ring.”

  “The ring?” Marissa’s gaze forsook Albaric for me.

  “This ring.” I pulled it out from under my tunic, a glowing white circle that made Marissa gasp—but she did not pull away.

  Indeed, she leaned toward it. “Whence came that?” she whispered. “It is fey!” Without waiting for an answer, she cried, “That should be Albaric’s, not yours, Aric!”

  It was as I had hoped and trusted; she was undismayed by strangeness. With a quizzical tilt of my head, I asked her, “Albaric’s ring? Why?”

  “Because his name starts with Alba, which means white, and it is white, and fey like him!”

  Albaric sucked breath as if he had been struck, dropping his bread on the ground.

  “She saw you truly the first time she laid eyes on you, my brother,” I told him, “and may I point out that she has always befriended you?”

  “Your brother?” Marissa cried.

  Albaric spoke to me only with his eyes.

  “It is needful that she should know everything,” I answered him, “every single detail.”

  “The ring told you so?”

  “It showed me so.”

  “May I see it more closely? May I hold it?” Marissa asked, rather timidly for her.

  “You must not put it on, or even let the tip of your finger slip into it. There is no telling what might happen if you did.”

  “I can quite believe that.”

  “Very well.” I gave the ring into her hands without further hesitation. “Now, my brother.” Moving to sit closer to him, I leaned against the tree. “Shall you tell her about it, all of it, right from the beginning, or shall I?”

  “Whence came this ring?” asked Marissa again, holding it up between thumb and forefinger but nearly dropping it in astonishment. “It’s changing colors!”

  Indeed, it had turned into a lovely sort of circular rainbow, with the light shining through it, limpid.

  “It likes you,” Albaric and I said in unison. “But beware,” I added. “It is a trickster.”

  “How so?”

  So with that start, piecemeal for the next few hours, while chits and pipits and sparrows held their own conferences amid the oak boughs overhead, we both by turns told her the story of the Queen of Elfland and King Bardaric, the ring of power, how Albaric had come to Dun Caltor, and most of what had befallen him since. She listened with attention that never once faltered, draping her hair over one shoulder and watching both our faces, speaking little unless she needed to question us, putting the tale together like torn fragments of parchment. With the fun gone out of her candid brown eyes for a while, a hungry intelligence showed through. That, and sometimes emotion. Once she reached out to touch Albaric’s hand, saying, “My parents do not love me, either.” And once she turned to me. “I adore your mother, Aric. And she says your father used to be much the way you are now.”

  “Really?” I asked in genuine perplexity. “What did she mean by that?”

  “That he was kind, and gallant, and brave, and great of heart.”

  I lowered my eyes and did not tell her my father had almost cut my head off in a rage. That, and the way I had wept afterward, was a tacit secret between Albaric and me. But otherwise, I cannot think of anything we kept from her.

  On towards the end, as the silences began to lengthen while we tried to think of more to tell, she said in a low voice resonant with emotion, “You are my heroes, both of you.”

  “We are honored,” Albaric replied. As for me, I was dumbstruck, and she saw it.

  “I look more often on you, Albaric, because you are mysterious, melancholy, and passing fair.” she said, but her eyes were on me. “But you, Aric—if only I could have had a father or brother like you. . . .”

  “Say no more.” Dew was forming in her brown eyes as fair as those of a roe deer. I took her hand in both of mine, but I looked at Albaric. “We have said enough.”

  “And for what reason?” He spoke sharply, for I had made his heart heavy with the weight of his memories. “Could you explain, please?

  “Only in one way. Marissa, would you give the ring back to me?”

  She placed it in the palm of my hand, and as I held it, at once it turned opaque shining white again. “Now, Albaric.” I handed it to him. Still snow white, and somehow without moving, it seemed to whirl, eddy, spin. Then it edged toward me in the palm of his hand. Albaric took the hint and returned it. Yet even as I held it, its pure white agitation increased.

  “My brother?” I prompted.

  “Some dire event is at hand,” he said, low.

  I nodded. “Something is going to happen, and it is likely to include Marissa.”

  Gravely, she agreed. “The king is kind to me, but I see just the same that his mood, like the drought on his kingdom, worsens with every passing day.”

  “He tries to be kind to me also.” Distress stretched Albaric’s voice. “Why is he seething like a stock-pot of shame and rage beneath?”

  Looking off into the distance, Marissa slowly said, “He is king. He wishes to be a good king. He knows that the throne should be Escobar’s and he hates the knowledge, for everything he does that is less than royal shames him. He covets the throne and sees treachery everywhere. He resents the sun for outshining him. He hates his own resentment. He feels great guilt, Aric, for having hurt you, and he feels certain that illness would not have attempted to claim your life had anyone else given you the wound.”

  My jaw dropped. “Marissa, who told you? Surely not Mother?”

  She heard my dismay. “No, of course not your mother.”

  “Then who?”

  “No one.

  “But—how did you know?” I had forgotten that my father had once called her a young seeress.

  “I just know. I hear things in shadows and silences.”

  “The way you knew I was fey from your first sight of me,” said Albaric.

  “I suppose so.” She turned to him. “King Bardaric also feels qualms of guilt, Albaric, for failing to love you.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. But he hates the guilt and wishes to be rid of it.”

  “How so?” I was the one who asked. Albaric had gone white.

  Marissa answered slowly, “By any means.”

  A silence took hold of us, for we dared say no more. Without a word, we folded the remnants of our food within its cloth. Then with help from Albaric on Bluefire, we caught Valor and Cherub, saddled them, and started on the long ride back.

  Marissa’s hair streamed straight down her back and rippled like brown water. In similar wise, all around us, the dried-up meadow grasses billowed like the waves of a yellow sea, while above them a spindrift of small bright creatures with wings caught the light, swooped and darted, appearing and vanishing, spirituous. We saw their beauty and smiled at one another, yet rode silently, sunshine on our shoulders, but also fate.

  CHAPTER THE THRTIETH

  THE VERY NEXT MORNING, although closer to noon than dawn, we rode forth again, this time with Mother, as was her wish. Of the day before, we had told her only that Marissa had galloped Cherub, but it was enough; Mother herself was smitten with a desire to ride out with us. And we were glad enough to oblige her.

  Villagers cried greetings to us as we swept by, a pretty cavalcade: Albaric bareback on Bluefire, I on my golden Valor, Lady Marissa in her favorite yellow dress and hat on her white pony, and Mother on her tall, almond-colored palfrey, riding sidesaddle with her oak-green gown trailing almost to the ground.

  We debated whether to turn toward the hilltops or toward the sea, because Marissa had never had a close look at that endless water; she had never seen it at all until the day she had entered Dun Caltor. But once we passed the cottages and their hedged gardens, we decided to leave the sea for another day; we turned our horses’ heads toward the highland meadows so inviting
for a gallop.

  And gallop we did, far beyond pastureland and clear to the spreading copses where swineherds roamed and peasants gathered deadwood for their hearthfires.

  “Let us cool the horses by walking them beneath the trees,” I said, for these were tame forests, not wilderness where outlaws roamed. Be it on my head, this decision. But it was midday at the height of summer, the horses were not the only ones sweating, and the greenshadowed paths into the woodland looked most invitingly cool.

  “Bluefire has only begun to run,” Albaric objected, fun in his voice and a gladsome light in his eyes. “I’ll join you a bit later, shall I?” The question was merely for form. Already feeling my assent, he and Bluefire wheeled away to skim the meadowland in a wide circle once more.

  The rest of us took to the shade, letting the horses walk loose-reined, choosing the widest path, although it was not quite wide enough for three to ride abreast; Mother trailed a bit behind. Overhead, the small, fluttering leaves of ash trees whispered in a woodland breeze that ruffled our hair and cooled our faces.

  “That feels heavenly,” Mother said.

  Marissa demanded, “How parlous long can Bluefire run?”

  “Through day and night, if need be,” I replied, remembering the desperate time he had sped Albaric and me to Caltor. Suddenly, I felt a sense of danger, but how so? That time was but a memory—

  Mother started to say something. “That bonny blue steed—”

  Riding ahead, I heard rather than saw: branches above us crackled like lightning, something thudded down, Mother cried out. Then what I saw, as I spun Valor around, stunned me: Mother’s gentle palfrey had reared! I glimpsed Marzipan’s hooves over my head, cleaving the air. The next instant, a strong hand on the reins pulled the horse down and to a halt. But it was not Mother’s hand. It was the rough hand of a warrior, all knotty veins and knuckles, that had seized the reins, and my heart stopped beating for an instant, then hammered hard enough to shake me as I saw more: the man himself straddling the horse behind Mother, one brawny arm imprisoning her shoulders, his dirk threatening her throat.

  Marissa gasped, “Escobar!”

  Indeed, it could have been no one other than Escobar. He sat so broad-shouldered and tall that I saw him plainly past Mother, and it was like seeing my father in a dark mirror, his hair coarse and grizzled, his face much harrowed by trials or time, deeply seamed and dreadfully scarred, with fierce gray brows that shadowed his eyes so that they seemed black.

  In the same breath, Marissa cried, “Escobar, do not hurt Queen Evalin!”

  His mouth, straight-lipped, scarcely moved as he said in a low, thorny voice, “I have no desire to do so.”

  “Then why do you press a knife to her throat?” demanded a voice not nearly so deep—my own.

  “To shield myself from harm.” Escobar turned his shadowed gaze to me, but Mother did not look at me or at anyone. Whatever fear she felt, she did not show. She sat straight as a pikestaff and far more still, her face like deep water with a quiet surface, unfathomable.

  Sword in hand—I had no memory of drawing it, but I must have done so—holding my sword low for the time being, I walked Valor a few steps toward Escobar. My face had gone white; I could feel it, but as if steadying a runaway horse, I managed to curb my heartbeat, calm my body. I knew myself to be shamefully ill-prepared for such an encounter; I wore a simple tunic, no helm, no tabard. The sword and the gold-festooned baldric on which it hung were merely for show.

  But a prince must be bold. When I halted Valor, I sat nearly knee to knee with Escobar and felt all the force of his stare. Face to face, I studied him as I had studied Albaric that first night, staring into the shadowy depths of his eyes, and as I had seen honor in Albaric, so also I saw it in Escobar—not greatest honor, but something of probity. Once again I judged, decided, and took a risk.

  “I move my sword only to sheathe it,” I told Escobar, and then slowly, so as not to alarm him, I did so, and then I lifted my baldric over my head and flung it, sword and all, to the ground. “Your safety,” I told Escobar, “is assured, at least for today. I am Aric, son of Bardaric, and my word is your shield.”

  But he did not loosen his grip on Mother or move his knife away from her throat. Within the moment, I knew why. If it were not for my own heart still pounding in my ears, I would have heard it sooner: hoofbeats, galloping toward us.

  “Albaric,” I shouted even before I could see him, “halt!”

  He did so just as he rode Bluefire into view. From the corner of my eye, I saw him with drawn sword, staring, but I did not shift my gaze from Escobar.

  “Albaric,” I called, “sheathe your sword and lay it aside, please, for the sake of my honor. Then dismount, come here, and help Mother down.” Seeing doubt startle the shadows in Escobar’s eyes, I backed Valor away to let him shift his attention to Albaric.

  My brother walked up and stood offering his hand to Mother as if he saw not Escobar nor his knotty clutching fists nor his dirk hovering at Mother’s throat. Looking only at Mother’s face, he asked in the usual manner of one assisting a woman riding sidesaddle, “Would you care to alight, Queen Evalin?”

  She turned her head toward him and smiled, but Escobar tightened his grip on her. “Wait!” he barked. The hand that held the dirk began to shake.

  Fear for my mother’s sake gripped my throat with such an iron fist that I could barely speak. “Why?” I demanded, or tried to demand; the word came out more like a plea. “Why wait? I have given you my word.”

  “I must speak to the king!” Escobar’s harsh voice shook like his hand.

  Then Mother herself terrified me by blazing into speech, she with her life at knife’s edge. “Great reeking fishheads, Escobar, what is this folly? Do you think—”

  “Mother, hush,” I begged, for I felt time stop, teetering on the cusp of tragedy. Lunging off Valor, I seized Marzipan’s bridle so that Escobar could not take the queen and ride away. Through the roaring of my own panicked heartbeat in my ears, I heard Escobar order Mother, “Be still!” and Albaric coax, “Please, my Queen, obey him,” and Mother flare, “I cannot! He is insane if he thinks he can seize me and the throne of Calidon—”

  “He is not insane, nor does he want the throne,” a wise young voice fluted through the commotion, silencing it at once. Mouths open but speechless, we all stared at Marissa seated on her pony as if on a white throne. “Not anymore, not since his unhappy scheme with Domberk,” she declared. Her brown eyes gazed at Escobar, yet through him and far past him as her visionary voice spoke on. “That attempt sickened him, as his hard life has wearied and sickened him. He has been a mercenary and faced the hacking swords of the Cragland thugs, and he has been captured and tortured, and he has escaped and been a fugitive, starving, and he has been flogged, a galley slave in the longboats of the Norsemen, and he has been many times betrayed, not only by the love of women but by men he thought were his friends. He has been bitter, hateful, murderous, but he is not so any longer. Now he has lost any heart for feud or greed, he feels old before his time, and he wishes only to return to his childhood home.” Marissa’s hazy gaze sharpened to center hard on Escobar. “Brother of Bardaric,” she challenged him, “do you really think that you can find peace and surcease by menacing the queen with your dirk?”

  All eyes turned to Escobar then, but seemingly he saw only Marissa, and his dagger hand wavered and sagged. Mother wrenched herself away from his weakening grip and dismounted with scant grace; Albaric caught her with both hands to keep her from falling and guided her several paces away; my chest heaved with relief that she was safe.

  Escobar still straddled Marzipan, but he had let go of the reins, and his hand that held the dirk hung by his side. As I watched, he threw the dirk down, sinking its blade up to its hilt in the earth near my discarded sword. Then, swinging a leg over the saddle in front of him, he dropped first to the ground, then to one knee in front of my mother. He bowed his head and kept silence.

  She let go of Albaric
, motioned him away from her, and stood like a sword, her face hard and hot with the high color of fury. With calm that bespoke peril, she ordered her captive, “Look at me, Escobar.”

  He lifted his head to face her, and through his scars, I glimpsed a man who had once been gallant.

  “I ask you again, what folly possesses you?”

  He spoke with calm nobility that reminded me of—of what, I could not yet bear to think. He said in a deep voice with just a hint of burr, “It is as the wise lassie has said. I no longer care for fighting, or killing, or least of all for the throne of Calidon. I have eaten, yet there is only a hollow sort of starvation in me, and I wish—I planned—I thought that if I entered Dun Caltor with you as my hostage, then King Bardaric might have mercy on me.”

  Watching my mother, I saw the color desert her face; she went pale, as if fraught with thoughts she could not speak.

  Only now could I bear to think it: the selfless candor in Escobar’s voice reminded me of the way Father was wont to speak once upon a time. Before he had changed.

  I imagine Mother’s thoughts were much the same, and as painful. I saw her swallow hard. Then she called to our soothsayer, “Marissa, what do you make of him?”

  My young love answered promptly. “He is not the same as when I knew him in Domberk, Queen Evalin. Something has humbled him. I no longer see bloodthirst in his eyes: he has left the ways of war behind him, and now he is lost and bereft. He seeks sanctuary.”

  I drew a deep breath, then said what no one wanted to hear. “Escobar,” I told him, trying hard to keep any bitterness out of my tone, “there is small mercy in King Bardaric of late, but great choler. Most likely, he will greet you by slaying you.”

  CHAPTER THE THRITY-FIRST

  A WHILE LATER, “Young Domberk,” said Escobar to Marissa, “I stood in the crowd and watched you ride into Caltor. Did your father know he was sending his enemy a seeress?”