The Oddling Prince

by Nancy Springer

  No. It bore no more thinking of, none of it, not Father or Escobar or what to do, not now, not in daylight. Later, tonight, I would judge, decide, and act. Meanwhile, I would claim this one last day for joy.

  Mentally, I thrashed my way out of a stormy ocean within me that would not let me breathe, and I turned my back on it. My young love rode by my side on her white pony, and on the other side rode Albaric, who had no doubt sensed the tumult in me and was wondering if I needed his help. I gave him one quick touch of the hand, then turned to Marissa, smiling for her sake and at the sight of her. I told her, “Let us speak no more of it now.”

  Riding ahead of us, Mother turned and spoke sadly. “Even the heather is dry and dying.”

  “But not yet dead.” We had reached the place where the shoreline cliffs lessened. “Look,” I told Marissa, “above the crest of the heather, you can just catch sight of the sea.”

  She looked, and her eyes answered the sea, wide and shining.

  A path to the sea opened, and we turned to ride down to the very spot where Albaric and I had first reached the sea that desperate night when Domberk had taken Dun Caltor. The salt-scented wind lifted our hair, and Albaric sang two lines very softly:

  I would follow you to the end of the land.

  I would follow you to the coldest sea strand.

  “Oh,” whispered Marissa, “is it really so sad, so foreboding? To me it seems beautiful.”

  “It truly is beautiful,” I said.

  Indeed, in sunlight, the place was all peace and loveliness. We took saddles and bridles off the horses and turned them loose to graze on the moor, and then Mother sat in the sunshine while Albaric, Marissa, and I ran down to the black gravel shore. I watched Marissa with pleasure, as if watching a lovely wild creature, a bird, a deer, while she studied the sea, approaching as close to the vast, splashing water as she dared, then running away as a wave washed in, looking back over her shoulder as a gray swell turned to white foam. Albaric laughed: I laughed and took Marissa’s hand. Three in a row, we stood as close to the waves as we dared, the salt spray in our faces, the sea wind playing with our hair. A tall wave threatened to drench us, and we fled, shouting and laughing. Again and again, we played tag with the waves, and more than once, hands in hands with Marissa, Albaric and I swung her clear off her feet to save her skirt from a soaking. But we were all more or less moist, boots sodden, and breathless with mirth, when we returned to the top of the seaside slope. It gladdened my heart to see the queen smiling at us as we plopped down to rest on the heather, which still smelled sweet even after weeks of drought.

  “Have you packed us something to eat, Mother?” I asked, jesting to tease another smile out of her.

  She did smile, although barely, and she rolled her eyes at me.

  Grazing nearby, Bluefire lifted his handsome head, looked back toward Caltor, and snorted.

  I, for one, forgot about smiles. We all stood up, shaded our eyes, looked, and saw: there, all alone on Invincible, came King Bardaric riding along the top of the cliffs toward us. Plovers ran crying away before him, the black-clad king on his black charger.

  Very softly, Mother said, “I rue this day that I never thought would come, when I am not gladdened by the sight of my husband.”

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-THIRD

  AFTER THAT, none of us spoke, for what could we say? As Father reached us, although nothing in the sky had changed, a dark cloud seemed to chill the sun. He halted Invincible and stared down at us, stony of face, stone silent.

  Dangerously silent. I dared not let that silence go on, so I bowed my head and said, with courtesy that sounded false even to myself, “Greetings, Sire.”

  “Hah!” he barked, and I raised my eyes to see him raking all of us with his glare. “I have come to show you I am not a fool. What treachery are you plotting? A way to rescue your darling Escobar? I assume, Marissa, you have told them he is to die at dawn?”

  I felt the news stun Albaric like a blow, while Mother gasped and swayed as if she might fall; I reached out to steady her.

  “Hah!” The king’s bark this time had a different tone. “I see that you did not tell them, little Lady Marissa. Come here.”

  She walked forward to stand at his left stirrup, gazing up at him with no fear, only wonder, in her face.

  “Why not?” he asked not too harshly.

  “Liege?”

  “Why did you not tell them?”

  “I saw no good to come of it, Your Majesty.”

  “You look for the good, do you?” His face still stony and unreadable, the king contemplated her for a moment—but then quite suddenly, his glare swerved to me. “You!” he shouted, pointing an imperious finger my way, beckoning.

  I strode forward to stand beside Marissa, looking up at my sire. His eyes—what I saw there, I hated to call hatred, but never had I seen darker rage in him, and he bespoke me as if he loathed me.

  “If you wish me ever to call you my son again,” he said, spitting out the words as if he had bitten each one off with steely teeth, “you will marry this wise young lassie. Forthwith.”

  My jaw might well have dropped open, I felt so dumbfounded, dizzied with the strangeness of having my fondest wish granted in so ugly a way. Something felt badly wrong, but I tried to make it right. Turning to Marissa, I lowered myself to bended knee before her.

  “I love you, Marissa,” I told her, feeling my shy passion for her blushing in both my heart and my face. “Will you marry me?”

  “Dearest Aric, of course I will.”

  “I know you are too young. I will not ask it of you until—”

  “Forthwith!” thundered the king.

  “I am not a child, Aric!” Marissa burst out at the same time. “I am more woman than you know. Please,” she added impatiently, “stand up.”

  Doing so, I saw Mother actually smiling, while Albaric gave me such a glad look that I felt all the warmth of his hope for my happiness, despite the shadow over everything.

  King Bardaric’s shadow.

  He looked down on Marissa and me, his very face in shadow, his voice still harsh. “Lady Marissa, you make this decision on your own, as a woman? You will marry Prince Aric?”

  “Yes. Utterly. I have dreamed of him since the first night I met him.” Her hand sought mine, and mine met it swiftly.

  “That cannot be true, young lady. All the world knows your passion is for Albaric.” The king’s voice grew a sharper edge with each word. “You cannot keep your eyes off him.”

  “I never speak untruth, Your Majesty. Albaric is a wonder to me, and I marvel when I see him. But what I feel for him is not the love of a woman for a man. My true love is Aric.” Her hand tightened on mine.

  “You would be faithful to him?”

  “Completely!”

  My heart should have been bursting with happiness, yet I felt a strange foreboding that my “trying to make it right” had been folly.

  “False wench.” The king’s voice struck like a weapon, a sword.

  “Bard!” Mother cried, “What are you saying!”

  “I say false wench, and I say it also to you! Be still!” he thundered at her, and then, to Marissa, “You lie. But eyes do not lie. Your eyes look always to Albaric. When you wed my son, all the world will think him a cuckold, and I will not have it.” His glare turned on me. “I will not have it, Aric.”

  And I stood as if turned to ice on a hot summer’s day. Even my hand felt cold in Marissa’s warm grip, for in my sire’s glowering eyes, I saw triumph, gloating triumph, and something even worse. I did not at first recognize it, so unfamiliar in my sire: malice.

  I could not speak.

  The king spoke. Not even loudly, and not even turning his head to look at—at his son, his other son! The king ordered, “Albaric, go away.”

  “Albaric,” I whispered, for I could not live without him. “Albaric!” I cried, my eyes searching for him, frantic, as if he might already be gone. But not far from me, he stood, white-faced, staggered by the
battle-ax force of the king’s decree. Our eyes met.

  “My brother,” I babbled to him like a child, “I have been befooled, tricked, trapped.” For now I was pledged to stay and wed Marissa; I could no longer go with Albaric in exile.

  “Silence,” the king ordered, still enthroned on his high horse above us. “Albaric, heed my command. Go away. At once.”

  “No! Slay me!” Albaric strode forward. With his head high, his eyes wild, he stood at the king’s right hand. Father turned toward him with a sneer of distaste, his hand strayed toward the pommel of his sword, and Albaric challenged, “Draw that great heavy sword of yours and smite my head off. Do it!”

  I could not help him; I could only back away, taking Marissa with me, out of danger.

  With perilous patience, Father told Albaric, “Just go. I care not where.”

  “There is nowhere for me to go! My mother cares naught for me, nor does my—my father. I have no family, no country, no liege lord, no clan, no friends but the ones you would part me from.”

  “Take heed and go,” said the king in a dreadful tone as flat as the cold sea’s far horizon. “Obey me now, or there will be more than one head cut off at dawn tomorrow.”

  Albaric faced him feral and stricken, like a deer with an arrow in its heart, for a moment longer, then turned to me. Speechless myself, I reached out to comfort him, hold him, stop him, keep him somehow—but my fingers just touched him as he whirled and ran past me, dashing straight toward the sea, down the slope, and across the narrow strand into the endless water.

  I felt, inwardly, the force of his will to die, and it staggered me like a blow, so that for a moment I could not move or breathe. Then, with a gasp, I ran after him. Father cursed and roared at me to stop, but nothing could have stopped me from trying to save Albaric. Already he had reached the breakers and let them take him when I plunged into the waves.

  The sea is a cruel thing; its vast water pretends clarity yet will not show what it has swallowed. Too frantic even to shout, scanning wildly, I thought I would die also in the sea, for my heart would break. But then a golden glint caught my eye, a shining circle uncoiling on the surface—Queen Theena’s hair! I lunged toward it, saw fair flaxen hair floating nearby—Albaric’s!—and seized it. I yanked his head out of the water—sputtering, trying to pull away from me, he yet lived! Despite his struggles, I hauled him up by his shoulders and stood him on his feet in the waist-deep water, one arm wrapped around him tightly, pressing him to my chest. The mere fact that he still lived, that he was not yet lost to me, gave me strength to keep my footing as the breakers washed over us. I tried to reach for the Queen of Elfland’s red-golden hair swimming into the waves, but I felt Albaric shake his head.

  “Let it go,” he muttered.

  Then I knew utterly that he had let go of his life.

  “Death’s dark strand,” he murmured as if he had heard me thinking. “Not for you, Aric. You must not follow me.”

  “My brother,” I told him, “there is another way.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, there is. The ring showed me.”

  At the mention of the ring he lifted his head, ceased resistance, and took the slight weight of his body onto his own feet.

  “In a dream,” I explained, “that one night I wore it to sleep.” I reached under my tunic and drew out the ring—that circle of light still gleaming white—and impatiently I snapped the thong that held it.

  Both of us stared at the white ring I held in my fingers.

  “I am to put it on you,” I told my brother softly, “which is nearly as desperate as drowning, for I truly do not know what it will do.”

  “But it will do something.”

  “Yes. Let us get out of this confounded smother.” Together, we made our way back to the shallower water, knee deep when the waves washed in. On the nearby moorland, I saw, the king had dismounted from his charger and was flailing his arms and shouting at me. Keeping their distance from him, my mother and Marissa clutched each other and watched, their faces two white ovals that neither moved nor spoke.

  I gave the three of them only one brief glance, then faced Albaric, and I am sure he knew the salt water washing down my face came not from the sea, for I could not bear the thought of being without him. But even worse would be prolonging the pain of his despair. In my dream, I had seen him flying away, a white bird, or swimming away, a silver fish, free and happy. He would not miss his mortal body; he wore it lightly—an Elf, or even a half-Elf, can be many things. But I would miss the touch of his hand for the rest of my life.

  “We know the ring is a trickster,” I told him—the thing pulsed like a white heart as I held it—“but this is what I will tell it: that I wish it to take you someplace where you are no oddling but where you belong, where you are assured of peace and joy, where you are well loved.” I looked to him for assent.

  He nodded, unable to speak.

  I bespoke my formal command to the ring, then hugged him close, my beloved brother, my Albaric—we hugged each other one last time as I placed the ring on his finger—and even as I embraced him, it took charge of him.

  And something took charge of the sea, whether the ring, fate, or some power even greater, for at that moment it sent up a wave like a white fountain to drench us and hide us.

  To those watching from shore, I supposed it looked for a moment as if my brother had disappeared, gone in a great splash of light such as the one that took the horse he had ridden into Dun Caltor that first night—but as the wave receded, it was he and I both who threw back my head, raised my arms, and cried forth a wordless shout of surpassing joy to sea and sky. I knew where Albaric had gone. As if I had hugged him into myself, as if the salt water of the sea had washed him into my skin, I had felt my second self dislimn to come in where he truly belonged.

  Into me.

  And now that we shared one mortal body, I felt his ecstasy redoubling mine. He lived in me and he was me, cherished as I cherished my soul, loved by me and all who loved me. His heart and mine, now one. His mind and mine, now more than ever one. His soul and mine, now ineluctably one. His music, now mine. His scars, his sorrows and angers and betrayals now mine, even as my happiness was his. His ring, the white ring of power, on my finger as I turned toward shore, where my family stood stunned and staring.

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY-FOURTH

  HAVING SHARED ALBARIC'S HEART nearly from the moment we met, I felt not very different; I felt like much the same Aric, albeit overjoyed that Albaric had not died, after all, but lived on in me. Overjoyed that my mortal body so willingly provided him sanctuary.

  But I suppose I looked rather different.

  As I strode out of the sea, only my brave Marissa ran to meet me with just such a bounce of joy as was her wont—but when I clasped her in my arms, I felt her trembling. “My love,” I exclaimed, “what’s wrong?”

  But she stopped shaking nearly the moment I touched her. “Great silly gudgeons!” Smiling, she tilted her face like a flower to look up at me. “Nothing’s wrong, beloved; all’s better than right! Aric, you are the One!”

  Too dumbfounded to speak, I gazed back at her.

  “Lackwit,” she told me with tender exasperation, “You come from the sea, with a white cloak trailing from your shoulders, and all your clothing is dry and white, your tunic pure white lamb’s wool, and white fire encircles your head in a crown!”

  Incredulous, I put up a hand to feel my own head—dry hair, finer than before—and my face, where there ran a trace of a scar from my cheekbone to my chin. “Do I look like my brother?” I asked Marissa.

  “You look like yourself and him and more, like the prince you truly have always been, my Aric.” With sudden passion, she hugged me hard, pressing herself to my chest.

  Embracing her, stroking her hair, glancing past her, I met my mother’s wide-eyed gaze, and I smiled. “We were mistaken,” I told her. “I was not a marvel, to be so transparent like glass. I was merely incomplete.”

  “Oh,�
� she breathed, nodding, yet she did not seem to understand; indeed, she looked as if she might faint. Letting go of Marissa, I stepped toward Mother and reached out to steady her. But as my fingers closed on her arm, strength returned to her, and she stood tall, once more Calidon’s stately Queen Evalin with gray eyes that gazed upon me with tender wisdom.

  “Truly spoken, Aric.” Gravely mischievous, she tousled my hair as if I were a child, although she had to reach up to do so. “Look, my hand is not burned,” she teased. “Crown of flame, fishheads. That’s just white glamour.”

  “The ring’s not,” I said, for I felt fire on my finger. The ring blazed golden, then orange, then forged-iron red, no longer content. Very well; it had served Albaric in the best possible way. Now it wished to go, so I pulled it off.

  “Give it here,” rasped a deep voice close at hand.

  Instead, I turned, and with all the strength of an arm that had flung many stones, I hurled it far out to sea.

  “What the bloody blue blazes?” Father bellowed. “You dare to disobey me? You! The fetch that has stolen my son? Prepare to die!” Raising his sword, he lunged at me.

  “Aric!” Marissa screamed.

  “Bard, no!” cried my mother. “It’s Aric, and he’s not yet strong!”

  Indeed, I had seldom lifted a sword since before my illness. But Father was gone beyond hearing Mother call his name, far gone beyond hearing the words she spoke. I saw my death in his hooded eyes, and as he struck, I reacted the only way I could, blocking his sword with my shield arm—he sliced it to the bone—while I drew my own weapon. He stood uphill of me and bore down on me with all the weight of his black-clad rage. And despite everything he had done, I myself could not muster rage of my own to help fend him off, for I knew him to be a madman, and I pitied him. But my sword arm proved swift and strong to parry his blows. All of Albaric’s skill had increased mine, and all of Albaric’s strength, although it had never been great, had joined with mine to give me a warrior’s fair chance.

  Mother and Marissa cried out only once; after that, I felt their silence at my back, taut as harp strings and begging the fates that I would neither kill nor be killed. Stroke by stroke and clash by clash and step by cunning step, without hurting him—although myself taking a few more blows—I drove my opponent back up the slope to level ground, where I let him attack me—King Bardaric, my father, how had he become such a figure of pathos, a mockery of his former self? Bellowing, snarling, and raining sweat, he came at me with not much more wit than an animal. I was able to hold him off and let him circle me and circle me and wear himself out until he became hoarse, then silent, barely able to move for panting. Finally, his sword sagged, point to the ground, and he leaned upon it, staring at me, no longer with hatred but with what was almost worse, a bleak and hopeless despair.