by F. E. Greene
It didn’t work. Pearl had learned this early from the festivals her family did attend. Everything about them was tradition and sentiment, overindulgence and fun. But those diversions never brought contentment. Only home did that.
Unless someone did rescue her, Pearl would be forced to leave Hollycopse. What Hieronymus offered her wasn’t true rescue. It only delayed her loss. But she couldn’t wander the Fourtlands alone, and she couldn’t save the farm without help.
People, not places, made a home what it was. Her mother said that so often, and with such zeal, Pearl wondered who she was trying to convince.
It made sense, though. While some had the luxury of dying where they were born, many left home at least once in their lives. And if people did make a home what it was, then Pearl hadn’t been home for five years.
A castle would make a lovely home. And if the king was real, he might still rescue Pearl. All she had to do was ask.
Encouraged, she drifted down the narrowest road toward the fallen bridge and the empty hill. Stopping midway, Pearl closed her eyes. She could make the castle her next home if it wasn’t already too late.
“Pearl Sterling?”
Startled, Pearl jerked as she opened her eyes. Cider sloshed past the mug’s rim and onto her new slippers. As its wetness soaked her toes, Pearl let fly a curse – something she never did – while a wild anger surged inside her. Even Hieronymus knew better than to scare her witless.
The woman who didn’t belong at the dance now blocked the fallen bridge. Up close she was no less indecorous. She wore no rouge or jewelry. Her trousers were wrinkled, her fingerless gloves worn and scuffed. Holding a bow, with arrows strapped to her back, she looked more ready for a clann war in Ungott than a Rosperian festival.
“You frightened me,” Pearl complained.
The woman didn’t pretend to care. “Do you see the castle?”
Too stunned to lie, or tell the whole truth, Pearl just shook her head.
“But we counted three bells. You don’t see it now?”
Pearl insisted she didn’t.
The woman’s keen expression grew tense. Her unmade face could have been pretty. Her tousled hair might be nice with more length. But the woman seemed as savage as any Pearl had met, and her accent proved she wasn’t from Rosper.
Then Pearl noticed her eyes. They were unabashedly gold, as rich and authentic as the market’s trimmings were false. Gold eyes were also rare, a trait bred into Illiate females who never carried weapons or wore trousers much less showed their faces, plain or otherwise, in public. Intrigued by what she was seeing, Pearl forgot to feel annoyed.
The woman drew an arrow from her quiver. “Go back to the festival, Pearl. Stay near the market arch until a man comes for you. He’s Orldic, and the left side of his face is all scars. He’ll protect you until you enter the castle.”
Pearl’s indignation resurfaced. “A man from Orld in Castlevale? That’s ridiculous. And hardly safe. I don’t even know you. You really expect me to do what you say?”
“Only if you want to live. Varrick won’t harm you. Other things will.”
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“Yes.” Her gold eyes scanned the sky behind Pearl. “But I’d rather you believe me. Whatever you do, don’t believe him.”
Pearl looked back to see Hieronymus marching toward her. He appeared no more pleased than she felt.
Heaving a sigh, Pearl shifted to find the woman gone. The bridge was in shambles. The mump sat bare. As she stared, frowning, Pearl felt deceived. She needed help from a king, not a misplaced Illiate, and the next battle was apparently hers to fight alone.
Hieronymus fired the first salvo, loudly, before he reached her. “What are you doing, Pearl? You’re not going home, are you? Because that would be the worst choice you’ve ever made.”
She mimicked his injured tone. “I thought you said you would wait for me.”
“I never thought you’d take this long!” He snatched the mug from her and tossed it to the ground. “I promise to settle everything, and here you are still staring at that useless hill. There is no castle, Pearl. There is no king waiting to save you. Your parents aren’t coming back, and as of tomorrow you’ll be homeless and alone if you don’t agree to our deal.”
Pearl stiffened. “Don’t you mean to say entreatment?”
“Of course. Our entreatment. I’m sorry.” Hieronymus reached for her arm. “Pearl, I love you. You mean more to me than my father’s fortune.”
“So give it up,” she insisted. “I’ll leave Hollycopse if you leave your parents. We can start over in another town, build a business, raise a family. Agree to that, and I’ll marry you tomorrow. We’ll be entrothed and on the road by lunchtime.”
He began shaking his head while she still spoke. “Don’t be foolish, Pearl. I’m offering you the best kind of life, and you want to trade it for some meritless existence? I love you, but I won’t let you ruin me the way your parents ruined you.”
Furious, Pearl lashed back. “You don’t love me, Hieronymus! You want me because you can’t have me. I’m the one thing in Castlevale you can’t buy or bully or charm.”
“At least I count for something.” Tightening his grip, he leaned close to whisper in his slippery way. “If you don’t marry me, you’ll be worth nothing. People will always remember what my family has done for Castlevale. When you’re gone, how will anyone remember you? Will they even bother to try?”
Too wounded to reply, Pearl yanked free of his grasp. She tore the Stentorian sash from around her and flung it to the ground. While Hieronymus fumbled to catch it, Pearl turned and ran, her face ablaze as she fled down Lake Trail Lane.
No one lived up to Hieronymus’ expectations, but he’d never been so blunt. To him – to all of Castlevale – she was worthless. It was a cruel truth to hear.
Worse, some part of her agreed. In a moment of crisis she surrendered herself to a man she did not love. His motives were as greedy and devious as everything else in Castlevale, and he didn’t try to disguise them.
But neither did Pearl. She had worn the sash of a family who detested everything her parents cherished – just to save the home where they no longer lived.
Halting on the path, Pearl imagined their reactions. Her father would be disappointed, his sharp chin falling against his neck, his thin lips flattened in mute dismay. That expression always made Pearl stop and think no matter what she was doing.
Her mother was much less subtle. From her Pearl would earn a lecture.
“Ask yourself why,” her mother liked to say. “You could spend your days digging the deepest hole ever made by human hands. Such a challenge might help you feel useful and safe. Folks will pay you attention, even praise your effort. But when your strength departs, and you can dig no more, you’re left standing alone in a hole.”
Some days Pearl resented her parents for disappearing. It was a constant temptation to blame them for every hardship that had landed on her slight shoulders since the night they didn’t come home. But in her struggle to keep things from changing further, Pearl could fault no one else for her choices. She alone controlled what happened next.
Pearl decided to make one more choice. Turning, she retraced her steps back up the lane until the great hill came into view. Three times that day she’d heard the unfamiliar bell – first weeping, then fleeing, and finally with desire. She wanted the castle and its king to be real. She decided to believe they were.
In one blink the castle reappeared. Its towers split the fulgent horizon. Gilded by firelight, it waited.
Pearl started forward. It was up to her to cross the bridge and climb the hill. Willingly she would pass through the castle gate, then find the king and kneel at his feet. After that, she would beg for his help. Her new plan was nothing but foolishness and the most thrilling of any that day.
When a muggy wind kicked up from the east, Pearl squinted against its fury. Leaves rattled as dust sullied the air. Slowing, Pearl felt her flesh pri
ckle.
On the path a whirlwind formed.
At first it resembled the ordinary sort that preceded a springtime storm. But this was the last day of summer, and the sky was free of clouds. Sometimes, in the fields, whirlwinds climbed past rooftops and wove ropes of hay in midair. This one didn’t drift or spread, however. It sucked no debris from the lane. It rose to Pearl’s height – and no higher.
The whirlwind folded inward. Like dough it thickened with every twist until fleshless limbs spread from its edges. They straightened into arms, fingers branching at their tips. Legs untangled to graze the earth.
Motionless, Pearl watched the whirlwind evolve. Her instincts demanded she dash for the castle since it couldn’t be less real than what grew before her. But she would have to pass by the whirlwind first, and her chest tightened with panic at the thought. All the perils from her scariest childhood dreams – monsters, madcats, phantoms, plagues – reformed before her on the lane. Pearl longed to believe she was asleep and dreaming. If she woke up, she would be safe.
The whirlwind awoke instead. Its eyelids slid open. Breath lifted its chest while gravity dragged it to the ground. As the east wind died, it shuddered and stretched. Then its whiteless eyes fastened on Pearl.
Pearl shuddered, too. Her mind scrambled for how to react. Flee. Scream. Fight. Hide. No choice seemed like the right one, so she stayed where she was.
With a forked tongue the creature plumbed its mouth. Hinged jaws opened and closed. Inhaling, it offered one savage word, unmistakable and grave.
“Peaaaaarrrrrrl.”
Pearl turned and ran for Little Bridge with no better plan to escape. Aided only by moonlight, she halted when her slippers hit wood. Two planks in, the bridge went missing, its middle consumed by a sooty fog. But the fog didn’t billow and drift as fogs should. It hovered, and it writhed.
Pearl gripped the rail to keep from fainting. More creatures made the fog, more of what snarled her name and chased her down the lane. But unlike the whirlwind, the fog remained silent while each of whirlwind’s rasping barks sounded closer than the last.
In her horror Pearl clung to one thought. She had seen the castle. She couldn’t die now. Sinking down, she felt the bridge shake beneath her as footfalls jostled its planks. Clasping its rail, Pearl wondered what else came for her. The whirlwind was more than enough.
A lone man burst through the fog. Pearl flinched when he ran past her to intercept the whirlwind. If the fog had hurt him, Pearl couldn’t tell, but the man didn’t slow to hurt her. He carried a broomstick – or what resembled one until, with a flick of his arm, metal slid from its tip. Clothed in black, he looked as dangerous as what hunted her.
The whirlwind hissed. The man swung the stick. As its blade carved the air, the whirlwind retreated, loping back up the lane on all fours.
Pearl felt a burst of hope. The man pursued the whirlwind until it spun and crouched and growled. Fiercely they gauged each other. Against the shadowy path the whirlwind seemed to wither and shrink while the man held his place, waiting – for what, Pearl couldn’t guess.
The whirlwind leapt. Its hinged legs propelled it up and over the man. Landing in the stream, it scuttled toward Pearl. One limb breached the rail to hook her skirt. Another chopped the beam beneath her feet.
“Move!” the man ordered.
Somehow Pearl found the courage to obey. She heard her dress rip as she scrambled across the bridge. The man shouted while he sprinted down the path.
“Second?” When silence replied, he called out again. “Second!”
Pearl didn’t see the arrow slide from a nearby grove, but she heard it hit with a penetrating thwack. The whirlwind shrieked and listed. It withdrew into the water. Its pained eyes locked on Pearl, and again it leapt.
So did the man. With his bladed stick raised, he vaulted onto the rail and met the whirlwind in midflight. Impaling its belly, he plunged with it into the stream.
Water splashed Pearl’s face. Then everything settled. When the whirlwind didn’t stir, and the fog didn’t attack, Pearl made herself crawl forward on quaking limbs.
Her rescuer lay on his back in the stream beneath the whirlwind. Both stayed prone until, with a grunting heave, the man shoved himself free of its deadweight and stood. Clapping a boot to its midsection, he retrieved his weapon. With one chop he cleaved the whirlwind’s head from its body. All of it dissolved into greasy bits that swiftly washed downstream.
The fog abandoned the bridge to track the whirlwind’s remains, and Pearl wondered why the man didn’t give chase. The fog was as evil as the monster it trailed.
Instead the man approached her. Despite what he’d done, he didn’t look exultant. Scowling, he peered down at Pearl who held tight to the bridge’s railing like she might otherwise drift away, too.
As he loomed above her, Pearl cringed. A ghastly scar ravaged the left half of his face. From brow to chin the damage ran deep in furrows discolored and rough. His left eye had been spared, astonishingly, and even within the stingy moonlight his acute gaze was vividly blue.
Reassured by its confidence, Pearl stared back. Without his scar the man might have been handsome. Certainly he was tall and strong, toughened inside and out by whatever had left him disfigured. In his eyes, however, Pearl saw something divine, and her heart raced for a different reason when the man extended his hand.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “I serve the king.”
Chapter Nine
Fingers trembling, Pearl took the hand offered by the man with the scar. He didn’t give a name or ask for hers as he helped her stand. With one arm he caught her waist and ordered Pearl to breathe.
She did her best to obey. Her thoughts were muddled. Her fears were lucid. Not far from where they stood, a pair of creatures broke free of the fog to dart and skirt above them, and Pearl could sense their malice. The whirlwind’s death left them enraged. They hungered for vengeance. They hated the man.
“Those things won’t harm you,” he told Pearl. “The one that would is gone.”
She tried to believe him. “What are they?”
He gave their name in a blur of vowels and clicks that Pearl didn’t understand.
“At birth each of us is marked with one,” he explained. “They make trouble in the upworld by stoking emotions, but they can’t do any real damage. Not until we see the castle. Yours is dead. Don’t let the rest upset you, and they won’t.”
He spoke so decisively, Pearl knew he was right. Soaked to the bone, the man didn’t twitch while she swayed like a sapling in a storm.
But apart from his scar, which was difficult to ignore, something else bothered Pearl about her rescuer, even with his splendid eyes. He spoke with an accent rarely heard in Castlevale. Still, Pearl recognized it – the brogue of an Orldic man.
Men of Orld were soldiers. Warmongers, her father called them. Barefaced bullies always picking for a fight. While this Orldic was alone, and had saved Pearl’s life, his presence made her uneasy. If she were to choose her own hero, he would not be from Orld.
Then again, she almost chose Hieronymus. For a very brief time, she did.
As Pearl kept hold of the man’s shoulder, her dress grew wet. She knew she ought to let go and step away, put some distance between them and let decorum prevail. But she still wasn’t certain she could stand on her own. The man didn’t seem convinced either. Consoled by his touch, Pearl dug for the courage to ask for his name.
He offered one gravelly word. “Varrick.”
“I’m Pearl Sterling,” she replied. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
He smiled like he knew it wasn’t true. Which it wasn’t. Not entirely.
“We should get you to the castle,” he said.
Pearl’s heart swelled at the thought.
The man – Varrick – retracted the blade of his weapon, reducing its appearance to a harmless stick, and secured it in a pair of loops at his belt.
Pearl hadn’t seen that sort of weapon in any books or paintin
gs – not even those from Before. Weapons weren’t something she cared about, and all munitions, even the ornamental sort, were outlawed in Rosper where people gained power through commerce, not combat. An Orldic would know plenty about them.
As they ascended the knoll together, Pearl’s heart hammered like it meant to dash ahead. Atop the mump, the castle persisted as if it hadn’t aged a day since its cornerstones were mortared and stacked. Beacons simmered along battlements. Moonlight illumined the rest.
In Castlevale’s market the festival continued. The south entrance was clogged with townsfolk who danced and sang wherever space permitted. None paid any attention as the Orldic and Pearl veered away from the mayhem and toward the fallen bridge – which now led to somewhere. Its planks were solid, its rails flawlessly straight. Acrid smells gave way to earthy freshness, and when Varrick glanced back, Pearl grinned.
Peering past her, he didn’t return the smile. Once again he seemed as dour and tense as he’d been on Little Bridge, and Pearl hoped she hadn’t done something wrong. Orldics weren’t known for their patience.
Like her rescuer the castle’s main gate fell enormously short of Pearl’s stories. Sturdy and tall, the gate was also plain, its iron bars no thicker than twigs. Where Pearl expected to see threadgold crests, fragrant vines grew untamed. The gate had no place for finials, no portcullis to lower or arrow loops for defense. Without an anchoring gatehouse its hinges sunk into the broad outer wall. Half of the gate sat open, and nobody stood guard.
When Varrick halted at its threshold, so did Pearl. With an arm he blocked her path.
“Before you pass through, Pearl Sterling, I must ask a question. Are you willing to enter the castle?”
Nervously Pearl played with the cuff of her sleeve. “Yes, of course. It’s all I want.”
“It’s not only about what you want.” He spoke in a way that made her stop fidgeting. “There’s more to this crossing. We need to know, will you serve the king?”
