Heir Apparent

by Vivian Vande Velde

  Uldemar sniffed. But when he spoke, his voice—though deep and elegant—was no longer intimidating. "So pleased to meet you," he said.

  "Good to see—" I started, my mouth a full syllable ahead of me. How could I be so thoughtless as to bring up seeing to a person who was obviously blind? If somebody else had said it, I would have kicked her. I was tempted to kick myself. "I mean," I corrected myself) feeling my face go all hot and red—but his eyes were the most disgusting things I'd ever seen, and my stammer came back, "I—I—I—" which I realized sounded like "Eye, eye, eye." For something to do with my hands, which had developed a sudden tendency to flutter, I folded them and went to place them on the table in front of me.

  Except that I banged the edge of the table, and when I jerked back, I knocked one of the gold coins onto the floor.

  I leaned down to get it, but it was too fir under the table, so I pushed the bench back. Wood on stone made a loud screeching like fingernails on blackboard. Xenos leaped to his feet to get away from me, and Uldemar—who couldn't see what I was doing and had felt the bench beneath him move—grabbed for the stability of the table. The bench stopped so suddenly, I nearly slid off.

  Again I reached under the table, this time smacking my forehead loudly against the wood. Before my eyes cleared, I accidentally latched onto Xenos's ankle—which was as hairy as his ears.

  He shook me loose impatiently.

  At last I located the coin, put it back on the pile, and folded my hands on the table in front of me, though at this point the bench was so far back I had to stretch to reach. But I figured I better leave well enough alone. I didn't want to draw any more attention to myself by touching the bump I could feel already swelling over my left eye.

  Eye reminded me of Uldemar.

  He was still waiting, a pained look on his face.

  "Hello," I said.

  "Oh, I see what you mean, Kenric." Orielle giggled. "She is all that you said."

  Well, excuse me. We can't all be naturally gorgeous, polished, and coordinated.

  Abas gave a tittery laugh. He was carving his initials into the table with a dagger about the size of a small garden hoe. For all that I had chosen him to be my ally, I was aware that he could just as easily carve his initials into me.

  Andreanna sighed. "Well now that she's here, I suppose we'd better ask her what she wants to do."

  "About what?" I asked, sure I'd come in during the middle of something.

  "About new drapes for the windows," Andreanna purred, then snapped, "About the threats to the kingdom, of course, you absurd little ninny. Have you been too busy twiddling your thumbs to be aware that the kingdom is in danger on several fronts?"

  "No," I said. "I mean, yes. I mean, I have been busy, and I have been thinking about our problems. I just didn't know what particular problem you were discussing before I came in." Stop trying to excuse yourself to them, I told myself. "OK," I said, "what are our problems? First—"

  Uldemar interrupted, "You smell of the dead."

  "Yes," I said, "I know." I didn't point out that he'd told me so already. "First," I repeated, "the drawbridge."

  "What are you talking about?" the queen demanded.

  "The drawbridge—it keeps getting stuck on open."

  The lovely Orielle said, "It worked when I came through this morning."

  Xenos, biting off a centipede's head, grunted and nodded, Which I took to mean that he'd had no problem, either.

  Abas said, "It worked fine when I went to let in Uldemar."

  "It gets stuck," I insisted. "Ask the guards." I sounded pathetic, begging to be believed. "It got stuck when I came in at dawn, and again when I left a little bit later, and just now when I came back. It gets stuck, then it suddenly works again. Just like these doors."

  "You mean the Great Hall doors, which worked perfectly well for the rest of us?" Kenric asked.

  "You saw," I protested. They couldn't deny seeing it, when the broken rubble Abas had generated still cluttered the way. "You saw that the doors wouldn't close."

  "I did," Kenric agreed. "I'm just wondering why both the drawbridge and the Great Hall doors stick for you, and only for you."

  Uldemar said, "She carries the dead with her."

  "Enough already with the dead!" I yelled at him. (All right, all right, I yelled at a blind guy.) "I know I stink. I haven't had a chance to bathe yet. Surely you can put up with it while we discuss more urgent matters."

  Uldemar said, "I didn't say that you stink. I said that I could smell the dead about you."

  I paused to work this out. "You mean, like..."

  "They must have followed you," Uldemar said. "From the catacombs."

  So much for assuming I was the victim of an overactive imagination.

  Sister Mary Ursula picked that moment to come climbing over the debris of the doors. "Ewww, dead people walking around, following live people. Have you been performing more of your necromancy, Uldemar?"

  "Not me," Uldemar said. "Simply ghosts."

  "I don't like ghosts," Sister Mary Ursula said. "They hang around watching you when you can't watch them, and they make rude comments. Everybody's fat from the perspective of someone who's been dead a hundred years."

  Well, that put a whole new perspective on taking a bath.

  Sounding put out, as though I'd invited the ghosts to follow me specifically to annoy her, Queen Andreanna asked, "How many are there?"

  Uldemar leaned closer to me and sniffed. "Several hundred," he estimated.

  "Are they dangerous?" I asked.

  "If they're all standing on the drawbridge so that it can't be closed while we're under attack, yes," Uldemar said. "Mosdy they're annoying—howling at night, rattling chains so that it's impossible to get a good night's sleep. As Sister Mary Ursula pointed out, they do have a tendency to watch when people don't want to be watched, and to make rude remarks. The majority of the living can't hear them unless a whole bunch of ghosts are yelling together, but it isn't fun to know that people—even dead people—are sniggering at you."

  As the queen of all sniggerees, I could empathize.

  Kenric flashed that distracting smile of his at me. "They do seem to have developed a fondness for you," he pointed out. "If you stay away from the drawbridge so that they don't cluster on it, we should be fine." He gave just the slightest emphasis to his "we." They would be fine so long as the ghosts concentrated on harassing me.

  "How do we get rid of them?" I asked.

  Xenos made a noise halfway between snort and laugh. When he saw me look at him, he pulled his hood down farther over his face, and he jammed a centipede into his mouth to stifle the sound, but I could see his shoulders shaking with his silent glee.

  I assumed this did not signify good news.

  Uldemar said, "Understand, ghosts get bored. They don't sleep, they don't eat—day after day, year after year, sometimes century after century. If they've decided that it will be fun to haunt you—"

  I squealed as a bony finger that I couldn't see jabbed me in the ribs.

  Xenos shook with silent laughter.

  Uldemar finished, "—it will be difficult to distract them."

  Queen Andreanna said, "We don't have time for this nonsense."

  "I once had to do battle with an undead ogre," Abas said, but before he could tell us the details, Sir Deming entered the room.

  "What's she done now?" Deming demanded, making a big show of looking at the broken doors—as though I could have knocked them in.

  "Ghosts," Orielle told him, and blew him a kiss.

  Deming sat down next to her, where he could get a good look down the front of her dress. He said to me, "You didn't need to bring ghosts; I said you could bring the sheep with you if you got lonely."

  Deming, I thought, would make a fine ghost.

  "All right," I said. "Let's get the meeting started. Sister Mary Ursula, why don't you have a seat."

  "Oooo, no," she said, shrinking back. "I could never sit down next to a wizard or a necr
omancer or a witch. They are not One with anybody or anything. They are like buttoning your coat and not noticing till you get to the bottom that you're one button off, or a hot ember that burns your skin, or a piece of doo-doo that you step in while you're wearing sandals."

  Xenos pulled back his hood to make kissy-lips at her, and she shrank farther away.

  "All right," I said, trying to regain control of the meeting, "we have to decide what to do about the barbarians."

  "What about the barbarians?" Uldemar asked.

  "I killed three of them," Abas said. "First—"

  "Abas," I interrupted, "later." To the three magic-users, I explained, "The barbarians sent a raiding party into the courtyard, and Abas did kill three of them."

  "Saving your life," Abas emphasized.

  "Saving my life," I agreed. "Before the last one died, he said that one of the others had been their king, and that the reason they were attacking was because King Cynric had taken a crown made for their first chieftain, Brecc the Slayer."

  "Won the crown," Abas corrected. "You're not very good at telling stories."

  I ignored his criticism and turned to Xenos. "Did you make that crown?"

  Xenos spoke for the first time, his voice as sweet and melodious as the sound you get when you accidentally telephone a fix number. "Yes," he said.

  "The barbarians want that crown back," I said. "And I'm told Cynric gave it to a dragon who was ravaging the south."

  Rather than replying, Xenos popped another centipede into his mouth.

  "We sent messengers to the barbarian camp to let them know we were willing to return the crown if we could get it, but the barbarians killed the messengers."

  Andreanna turned to Abas and whispered loudly, "Big surprise."

  "I wasn't surprised," Abas said. "If I was a barbarian, I would have killed the messengers, too."

  "I think," I said, "that we are in imminent danger of the entire barbarian camp attacking." I looked at my advisers. "Any thoughts?"

  Sister Mary Ursula said, "To forgive and to be forgiven are two sides of the coin of Harmony."

  When it became clear she had no more to say, I said, "Yes, well, anybody else?"

  Deming said, "Though yesterday's raiding party was small, they did bring an entire armed camp into our lands. Presumably that was in case the smaller group did not succeed. If they were willing to wage war to get the crown, I can't believe they'll forgive the killing of their king—regardless of how many sides of coins forgiveness covers."

  I said, "So you're saying to forget retrieving the crown, to concentrate on defending the castle."

  Deming nodded.

  "Still..." I said. I had to believe that if Rasmussem included a dragon, I was supposed to have something to do with it. "How difficult would it be to track down this dragon?"

  Uldemar said, "I could find him in my scrying glass."

  The blind guy, I thought.

  "Sure," I told him.

  Uldemar was wearing a pendant that he took off from around his neck and laid on the table. It looked like a slice of onyx—flat and about the circumference of a cross section of a baseball—in a gilt frame.

  I bent closer. It might have been glass, but it was totally black. I could see myself and part of the room reflected in it.

  Uldemar arranged his hands so that all ten of his fingers rested on the edge of his scrying glass, which left only a small area open in the middle.

  As I watched that space, a swirl formed beneath the surface, as though thick black liquid were being stirred. But the swirling got lighter, as though the invisible stirrer were adding a lighter substance, like someone adding cream to melted licorice. Then more and more cream. I glanced up at Uldemar and almost squealed. The exact opposite was happening to his eyes: His white eyes were aswirl with darkness.

  A bony finger jabbed me in the side, and I came close to becoming airborne. But it wasn't one of the ghosts; it was just Xenos, who was so pleased with himself for startling me that he practically choked up a piece of centipede.

  Still, Andreanna found fault with me rather than Xenos. "If Cynric hadn't been so fevered and delirious when he was dying," she announced to all, "he never would have chosen her."

  Finally, Uldemar's eyes and the scrying glass were reversed: The glass was smooth as white porcelain, and Uldemar's eyes were totally black, without any definition or detail at all. Unsettling as it was, I couldn't look away. After several long moments, Uldemar closed his eyes, probably for about five seconds. When he opened them, they were once more featureless white. The scrying glass had resumed its former blackness.

  He said, "The dragon is in the southern province, in a cave on a mountaintop known as the Old Hag."

  Andreanna said, "How is this little sheep-tending person going to overcome a dragon?"

  I glanced at my good old ally Abas, who could—single-handed—overcome wild boars, undead ogres, and princess-kidnapping barbarians.

  "I don't do dragons," he said.

  Of course not. Since it was my game, naturally I would be the one to have to do it.

  Orielle said, "If you can get close enough to the creature, I could give you a potion that would poison it."

  "Wonderful." Xenos chortled so hard I expected to see centipedes come flying out of his nose. "She could present the dragon with a doctored ham-and-cheese sandwich: 'Here, Dragon, why don't you eat this before you eat me?' Fast-acting is this potion? Or did you have in mind something that would be absorbed through its skin? 'Care for a massage before I die, Dragon?'"

  Orielle smiled as though she found his comments amusing even though they were derisive. Then she gestured with her finger, and Xenos's ear fell off.

  It sat, hairy and warty, on the table.

  "Put it back," he screamed at her. "Put it back now."

  "What?" She tapped her own delicately shaped ear. "Can't hear you."

  "Stop fighting," I told both of them. "We need to stick together or we're likely to all die together."

  Orielle sulked but made a dismissive gesture to the hairy ear. Xenos snatched it up and slapped it against the side of his head. It stuck immediately, and I figured it was best not to mention that he'd put it on upside down.

  "Uldemar," I said, "do you have any ideas on how to overcome the dragon and regain the crown?"

  "No," he said. "I'm mostly a finder."

  "Yeah," Xenos complained. "And mostly he's good at finding dead bodies. That's probably how he found the dragon—by the leftover bits and pieces of those who went before you to kill it."

  "That's true," Uldemar admitted.

  I rubbed my hand over my face. I was having trouble concentrating when I was so tired and no one was cooperating. "There has to be some way," I said. "But I haven't slept or eaten in ages, and I can't think straight. I'm going to take a nap and..."

  What was all that racket coming from down the hall? Probably the ghosts, I thought, already practicing sleep prevention.

  But it wasn't.

  A guard came scrambling over the debris of the broken door. "Attack!" he yelled. "We're under attack!"

  SUBJ: URGENT—Bios

  DATE: 5/25 04:12:57 P.N. US eastern daylight time

  FROM: Nigel Rasmussem

 

  TO: dept. heads distribution list

  These readouts are alarming. G. B. doesn't have much time left. Premature disconnection may be the only option, and the technologists warn this could result in severe brain damage likely to leave G. B. In an Irreversible vegetative state.

  ***The translation software garbled Japan's last message. Japan, please have something for us. Reword and resend ASAP.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Siege

  Kenric, Abas, and Xenos were fastest. I was right behind them as we ran down the hallway. From outside I could hear yelling, but when I reached the doorway to the courtyard, I could see the drawbridge was up, which was a pleasant surprise. A flaming arrow hit the doorframe inches from Xenos's head. He ye
lped and went into reverse, treading my toes.

  "Never mind," he muttered, slinking past me, past Andreanna and Deming, who were on my heels, back into the safety of the hallway. Orielle had stopped far enough back to be out of danger of stray arrows, and Sister Mary Ursula had just rounded the corner, huffing as she waddled in our direction. We'd forgotten poor Uldemar back at the table.

  Just as I was about to peek out of the doorway, Kenric and Abas came racing back from outside. I stepped out of their way barely in time to avoid a collision. Abas paused only long enough to grab the burning arrow out of the wooden doorframe and fling it to the ground, where it would burn out harmlessly. Kenric threw open a side door, and both brothers dashed up a steep spiral staircase.

  I took a moment to see what was going on in the courtyard. Some of our guards were there, lugging buckets of water to put out fires that had caught in the thatched roofs of the surrounding outbuildings—like the barracks and the well housing. But most of the guards were up on the walls. Assuming that was where the stairs led, I followed after Abas and Kenric.

  The noise of men shouting became louder.

  I came out onto the wall that surrounded both castle and courtyard. I know I'd been over it when the barbarians had carried me, but at that time, I hadn't been in any condition to notice much. Now I saw that the walls were wide enough to accommodate men running back and forth, trying to defend the castle. There was no safety rail on the castle side—which made my twenty-first-century self cringe at the possibility of injuries and subsequent lawsuits—but the side that faced out had that typical solid-then-open pattern, like a jack-o'-lantern smile with every other tooth missing, that my medieval self recognized as battlements. The guards could hide behind the upright sections, the merlons, then shoot arrows through the openings, or crenellations. The trouble was that enemy arrows also could fly through the openings. Dead and wounded men lay where they dropped, stepped over by guards intent on keeping the barbarians from scaling the walls.

  When I'd been in the barbarian camp, I'd had the impression that there were a lot of them. They looked like even more now that they were running toward the castle waving their swords, firing their arrows, and battering at the upright drawbridge with a tree trunk long enough to reach over the ditch. They had catapults, too. I was just in time to see the first bombardment, huge rocks wrapped with rags that had been soaked in something flammable. Two of the rocks landed in the courtyard, where they didn't inflict much damage; but the third landed on the battlement itself) crushing one man and burning those who tried to go to his rescue.