“Well, after this journey it will have been a lot. Do you have any other clothes?”
“No, Morgain took everything.”
“Go to the tailor. Saer will show you the way. Tell him you each need two thick tunics, trousers, and a warm cloak. When you are done there, go to the armory and get each of yourselves a small blade.”
He turned away from them. “Saer, come here,” he called out, waving his hand. A boy on the other side of the stable ran over to them.
“Sir, I do well with a cudgel,” Savaric said. “Could I have one of those too?”
“Do ye?” Gawaine nodded approvingly. “By all means then, get a cudgel as well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Gawaine smiled at him thinly.
After trips to the tailor and the armory, the pair understood their way around the castle better. They returned to Savaric’s room and plopped down on the bed.
They pulled their new blades out of their sheaths and admired them. They had both picked fierce-looking blades about eight inches long, and belts to go with their tunics that the sheaths attached to. The handles of the knives were crafted from a strange-looking metal so finely made it appeared painted instead of forged. The attendant in the armory had said they made good choices.
“Do you really think it is elven-made?” Elias asked.
“That’s what he said. And I believe him. After all, he would know, being the armory man.”
Elias held his blade above his head, admiring it from where he lay on the bed. “I never believed I would be looking at my own elf-made blade, lying on a bed in King Arthur’s castle.”
Savaric didn’t respond.
“You can’t tell me that you expected this. Did you?”
Elias looked over at Savaric. He had fallen asleep.
“There’s a good idea. I think I’ll try that myself.” Within minutes, Elias drifted off as well.
Rough hands shook him awake again. The old man with the shock of gray hair stood over them.
“Wake again, ye waifs. Your journey begins, and the party awaits!”
Savaric and Elias pushed themselves to the edge of the bed.
“But our clothes—the tailor.”
The old man nodded toward a chest that stood in the bedchamber. He turned and left the room. The new clothes lay folded in two piles on top of the chest. Someone had stealthily brought them in as they slept.
The boys hurriedly pulled on all the new clothes. Savaric put his old cloak on and the new one over it. The warmth that came from having the proper number of layers felt heavenly after weeks of being perpetually cold in the cell. The belt, knives, and sheaths came last, with the last buckle being secured as they rushed down the hall.
As they reached the courtyard, twenty men stood next to their horses, who stamped their feet impatiently, their shoes clanking against the cobblestones.
“At last! I was beginning to wonder if you had decided not to go. Saer, the ponies,” Arthur said.
Saer led the ponies over to the boys. Savaric’s was a bit larger and more spirited. He mounted up confidently; the pony fit him perfectly. Elias followed but hesitated. Saer held the pony’s head still for him and reached over to steady the stirrup as well. With this help, Elias mounted up, just as all the knights around him mounted up as well.
With no fanfare, the knights, a king, and two boys rode out of the courtyard, first at a walk and then in a steady trot. The fields that cradled the castle soon turned to thick woods that a steady gaze couldn’t penetrate for more than a few feet. The road was wide enough that the group could travel two or three abreast, so Elias and Savaric rode next to each other. The sun’s weak rays shone thinly through the clouds to the bare branches of the trees, the light promising warmth but failing to deliver on its promise.
With the midday start, it promised to be a chilly, but thankfully short, ride. Elias looked steadily into the woods, looking for the eyes he could feel on him. Moving shadows of branches and rocks turned into Morgain floating white through the trees, the sheriff standing on a rock, arms folded and staring at them defiantly. Elias shivered and pulled his cloak around him closer, thankful for its warmth.
“This is a terrible forest, isn’t it?” he said.
“Terrible?” Savaric replied.
“Yes, can’t you feel eyes drilling into you?”
“I’ve felt that since we left the sheriff’s house. Luckily, we are now in the company of the bravest men in the land, and our king.”
“Yes, but it doesn’t make the feeling go away.”
Savaric nodded sympathetically and made a wry expression. “Just look at the backs of the knights in front of you instead of the shadows and mysteries of the wood. You’ll feel better.”
Elias shifted his shoulders uncomfortably and complied, but still snuck a glance at the wood every once in a while.
They continued on their journey north, following the Roman roads toward the wall of Aelian. Not long after nightfall, they came around a bend in the road and saw lights in the distance. The forest was cleared, and fields surrounded a castle much like the one they had left hours before.
The knights picked up their pace as they covered the last distance, then cantered proudly through the gates of the castle. Lord Talbot welcomed them and ushered them into the great hall for food and warmth. Great platters of food piled with pheasant, mutton, and other wonderful-smelling foods were placed on long tables in the hall. After the boys stuffed themselves, servants showed them to bedchambers where they quickly fell into a peaceful sleep.
Fortunately for Elias and Savaric, they were awakened with plenty of time to prepare and eat and weren’t embarrassed by being late again. Their ponies knew them from the ride the day before, and mounting up didn’t present a problem. There was little talk as they began their day’s ride, just a spirited shout by one of the men who called “Northward!” as they left the courtyard of the castle.
As they left the confines of the castle and the fallow fields that surrounded it and once again traveled the road through the wood, Elias again felt evil eyes watching him. He shuddered but kept quiet.
The forest moldered even more thick and damp here, and the path began to rise and fall over hilly ground. They passed no one on the road. Besides a few raven calls, the forest remained silent.
At midday they stopped to eat and rest the horses. The kitchens of Lord Talbot had been very kind, wrapping a traveling feast almost as good as the one they had the night before. After eating, Savaric wandered over to the small pond where their horses had been tethered to drink. His pony stood tethered a bit too far to actually reach the water, so he loosened him and brought him to the water’s edge for a drink. The pony lapped up the water eagerly.
Savaric gazed off into the distance, wondering about what would happen when they reached Banna. As he daydreamed, he didn’t notice a ripple in the water and a moist sucking sound that came from the muck at the pond’s edge. What he did notice was at first a tentative tug on the bottom of his trousers, and then a very strong yank on both legs of his trousers. Caught off guard, he crashed down, landing partway in the muck and partway on dry ground.
As he hit the ground he came face-to-face with the most loathsome creature he had ever seen. The small, stunted body twisted slightly like a piece of aging driftwood. Though it seemed to have pale white sickly flesh, it was so covered with green algae that it was hard to tell which was which. The creature had small beady eyes and a mouth large and gaping with tiny sharp teeth. Its stringy hair was tangled with ribbons of cattail leaves and more green algae.
The creature snarled and pulled at his legs, dragging Savaric into the water. He screamed and kicked at the thing, his heart in his stomach with fear. He grabbed at the ground searching for something, anything, to keep him from being pulled into the watery domain of this horrible thing. With nothing to grasp, Savaric slipped into the water up to his thighs. He kicked at the creature and made contact with its jaw. Its head snapped back and it paused for a
moment, but came back with the same snarling ferocity. Savaric slipped further into the water. He looked down at the thing, and their eyes locked on each other.
Suddenly, from behind him, a sword thrusted into the center of the creature’s body. Slowly its grip on his legs loosened, and it fell forward onto him. Savaric felt himself lifted into the air by strong hands on the back of his tunic. He kicked off the body of the creature in midair and dropped on the ground a few feet from the pond’s edge. Gasping for air, he looked back at the white body bobbing in the stirred-up mud and mucky water.
“What IS that thing?”
The bemused voice of Arthur said behind him, “That, my young friend, is a water fairy.”
“A fairy!” Savaric sputtered. “I thought fairies were pretty … and kind… and didn’t have sharp nasty teeth!”
Arthur laughed. Savaric’s rescuer, a knight beside him, splashed through the water and retrieved his sword with the fairy still skewered on it.
“Not all fairies are the same. This is a Gennora Greenteeth and … well, you can see what she looks like.”
The knight put his foot on the back of the fairy for leverage and pulled his sword out of its body. The body flopped onto the ground like a lifeless fish. Green blood oozed from the wound.
“The only thing that is the same about all fairies is that they serve Morgain. This water fairy and probably all the others in this pond were watching for us. So she will know where we are and which way we are traveling,” Arthur said.
Savaric scrambled further up the bank away from the pond. Elias helped him to his feet.
“Others?”
“We’ve lost any possibility that we might surprise them. We’d better keep moving,” he said grimly. He turned away and walked toward the horses.
Savaric stood shivering, his trousers sticking to his legs and covered in bits of algae. He stared at the back of the water fairy for a few moments, then turned and followed everyone walking back to the horses. He stopped and pulled up his trouser leg to look at his knee. Part of the scab had broken open again and oozed a bit of blood. For the most part it was okay, but breaking it open again smarted a bit. He kept walking over to the horses with a little hitch in his step.
As they continued riding through the forest, the trees grew further apart until they were finally out in the open again. As the day progressed on, the ground grew more and more hilly until the hills rose on each side in softly rounded green peaks.
Savaric was surprised when King Arthur broke ranks and paused his horse by the side of the road. The king waited until Savaric caught up with him, then nudged his horse in step with Savaric’s pony.
“Your majesty,” Savaric said reverently with a nod of his head.
“Savaric, I wanted you to know that tonight we’ll be staying somewhere special.”
“They are all…”
Arthur raised his hand and tilted his head, interrupting him with the gesture. “Of course they are, but tonight we will enter the courts of Uther Pendragon.”
Savaric’s mouth dropped open a bit, his face registering shock. Nana had told him stories of Uther Pendragon and his castle. Now he would get to see it himself!
“Thank you, your majesty. It will be an honor.”
Elias nudged his pony up alongside Savaric’s. They looked at each other and grinned without saying a word.
CHAPTER 24
The castle of Uther stood like a sentinel in a valley, a river snaking through the valley floor.
“That river is called Eden. My father tried to divert it from its course and make it serve the castle as a moat. Fifty men and teams of donkeys dug for weeks to make the channel. Finally, the muddy job was done and water was released to fill the moat. A few days later a terrible storm blew up and dropped all of its water in the hills upstream. The water rushed through and left the moat, and the river left mud behind that filled the channel. It was dug too shallow. The river returned to its course. So now all the people of this land say, ‘Let Uther Pendragon do what he can, Eden will run where Eden ran.’” Arthur laughed. “Even the mightiest kings can’t fight the gods of nature.”
As Savaric listened to the king, he looked up the valley to the castle in the distance, large and square with three stories, where it sat on the land like a fist beating the ground, defiant and strong. The top of the building was scalloped with battlements for armaments. Triangular flags flew high above bearing the crest of Arthur, three golden crowns on a field of blue.
As the company rode up to the castle and past its empty moat, trumpeters heralded their approach. The herald continued for a long time as the company entered the wooden fence that surrounded the outer courtyard. All the inhabitants of the castle poured out, from children, dogs, and knights to cooks from the kitchen. And, last of all, Queen Ygierne, her fair hair flowing past her waist and a crown of woven gold on her head holding back her hair. She wore a long dress with a train trimmed in silver thread that was curiously colored.
Savaric looked away for a moment to glance at the trumpeters as they finished their herald, and when he looked at Queen Ygierne again, the dress that appeared just a moment before to be white now shimmered silver in the dull light of the winter afternoon. He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his eyes of whatever clouded them. By the time he opened his eyes, the queen was already raising her voice to be heard by all who gathered there.
“Welcome, my son and his knights and honored guests. You travel far on the path of a difficult task, and you are honored in this place for your quest. Tonight you are safe in the home of your father. Eat heartily and sleep well, for soon your task will befall your swords.” The queen nodded gracefully and turned inside to lead the way to the great hall.
Savaric and Elias dismounted from the ponies. Elias ducked around it, keeping his hold on the reins. “Savaric,” he whispered. “What is she talking about? Difficult task, befall your swords? How could she have already talked to Arthur to know about any of this?”
Savaric busied himself unbuckling the clasps that held his saddlebags. “How am I supposed to know?” he whispered back. “I just got here too!” A stable boy approached them, taking the reins from their hands. Savaric smiled at him, remembering his time in the sheriff’s stables.
Elias ducked back around the pony and retrieved his saddlebags. The stable boy clicked his tongue and led the ponies toward the stables.
The boys threw their saddlebags over their shoulders and walked into the castle of Uther Pendragon with King Arthur and his knights. Savaric shivered, a combination of excitement and being surrounded by thick walls of cool stone.
The sunlight pouring through the passage dimmed quickly, replaced by the warm yellow glow of oil-burning lanterns hanging from pegs on the wall. Plentiful lamps lit the cobbled floor of smooth stones. They looked like they had been gathered from the river nearby, smoothed by centuries of rushing water. They passed other halls that branched off, but kept moving forward, presumably toward the great hall.
Suddenly, sunlight and warmth washed over them. Unlike other halls they had visited, the roof of this great hall was perforated with multiple slashes of openings covered with aqua and clear glass. The colored light pouring through the windows cast an ethereal, dreamy look onto the room. Dozens of tapestries depicting lords and ladies and sylvan scenery covered the walls, warming the stone surfaces. Long tables with room to feed fifty lined the stately hall, as well as dozens of chairs and stools and small tables scattered about. Woven rugs on the floor, along with the fireplaces, worked on the difficult task of keeping the drafty, cavernous space warm.
Savaric and Elias found a set of fireside chairs not far from where King Arthur had taken his place in the high-backed chair set up on a dais at one end of the room. It felt like they were watching a king at court, though this wasn’t Arthur’s official home, but the home of his father. Queen Ygierne sat in the chair next to him, and they talked quietly together, their heads close.
Elias pulled his chair closer to Savaric’s
, making a horrendous noise as it scraped across the stone floor. Savaric turned his head to hear Elias’s low voice better. “How did she know?” he said urgently. “There wasn’t a scout that went ahead of us, was there?”
“I don’t think so. Some of the other mornings a scout was sent out, but not this morning,” Savaric hesitated. “Even as we drew close this afternoon, no man was sent ahead. And even if one had been, would he have been given knowledge of our task? It seems unsafe if he was captured.”
They both stared at the queen. “But she also said that our task would befall our swords,” Savaric added. “That’s something that hasn’t happened yet.”
Queen Ygierne smoothly turned her head and looked at them steadily from where she sat, her emerald green eyes burning a cool hole in their chests. The boys dropped their stare and fumbled with tankards of drink that had been brought to them.
After a few minutes of self-conscious efforts to look anywhere but at the dais, they glanced back up to the two royals holding court. The two still talked intently.
“You don’t suppose she has something magical about her, do you?” Elias said.
“There was a time when I would have said, don’t be a silly goat, of course not. But after the things I’ve seen, I’m beginning to believe that could be true.”
“Morgain is half fairy. Who is her mother?”
“Good question. Why don’t you go ask the queen?” Savaric said, attempting to push Elias out of his chair. This push turned into a tussling match, which was fortunately understated in light of their stately surroundings.
“Ahem.”
The understated tussling had turned to ear twisting, and it continued.
“Ahem,” the servant said louder, clearing his throat.
The two ruffians froze, suddenly aware of the presence of the servant and heads turning their way, starting to notice their misbehavior.
“You are requested to approach the throne.”
Their cheeks bloomed, embarrassment setting in, as they realized the disapproving attention they had gained. They quickly stood, straightening their clothes and smoothing their hair, then walked over to the throne and bowed deeply.
The Secret Key of Pythagorum Page 15
