Authors: Sean Stewart
Then the dreamy world split like meat around the iron dagger and Mark pitched sprawling onto the bank.
A great wind sprang up. For the space of three heartbeats the air was a storm of blossoms, a thousand years of cherry petals bursting from the bud, flowering, dropping in an instant.
When they settled to the ground, the moat was only a grassy ditch. Here and there the sun’s first rays glinted on what might have been metal, or bone. The walls of the Red Keep were stone, sagging and moss-eaten. The Tower roof had fallen in. A shadow passed off the Forest like a ghost at cock-crow, blown to tatters by the wind.
Quickly Mark jammed the black dagger back in his sheath.
You did it.
You did it! Did what all the high born bloody heroes failed to do, the princes, the kingdom’s greatest sons for a thousand years. Four-fingered Fhilip and Devid that Dared, lightfingered Silverhand and Stargad the Shrewd: you kicked their arses all
! Delight filled Mark again, hot as rage, sharp as steel.
You showed the bastards
!
He would be a great man and ride a great horse and live in a manor with five hundred men. He would be a Duke and live behind stone walls high enough to keep out an army, thick enough to baffle any wind. He and his would be
protected
, where no war could come. No more would loneliness creep in to take his family away.
He started down a thin path where once white stones had lain. Far underfoot now. He imagined a wave of time sweeping across the Ghostwood, washing away old dust and old dreams, leaving the Forest glistening and ready for life, eager for the sunrise.
Oops.
Shite
. No pack. He’d left it behind when he fled from Stargad.
He faltered. So much for his food, his tent, his spare pair of socks. They were all gone now, lost a thousand years ago.
Husk’s little hut was long empty, its branches blown apart. A few cherry stones still remained beneath an ancient oak, and a pile of tiny bones at the bottom of a black metal pot that might once have been a helmet.
Husk… Thoughtfully Mark took out his two medallions, one cedar and one silver. Two serpents hung about his throat, swallowing their own tails. Who was that old moon-mad woman? A woman, maybe, who had died a thousand times one night: and lived once, wreathed in squirrels.
Like a fierce blaze that falls to embers, Mark’s exultation dimmed; he was filled instead with wonder. He was happy, yes, happier than he had ever been, but it was the happiness of a child. He looked back at the shattered Keep with new eyes.
He, and the boy he had been, had fled together from the Red Keep’s ruin. That boy sat inside him, waking from a long sleep, remembering what it was to see marvels in a spider web, to hoard up secrets and run from witches.
Steady on
. Mark settled himself on the grass and waited for sunrise. He was too full of feeling to go. Not now, not yet.
Besides, the incomparable Sweetness lay just across a grassy ditch. He’d never have a better chance to get a sword worthy of a Hero; and he wouldn’t even have to make up its name!
Mark remembered the way the sword had sung to a hollow place in his heart. He shuddered, recalling Stargad’s crushed face.
“Well, he won’t miss it,” he growled.
What a bloody joke
, Mark thought a fortnight later as a pair of beefy men in livery started forward to throw him out of Swangard Palace.
What ever happened to happily-ever-after
?
It had taken him two weeks to trudge back from the Ghostwood: two long, cold, hungry weeks without his pack and blankets. Each night he had eaten just a morsel of daydream to fill his belly, and warmed his hands over the thought of his triumphant reception before the Crown.
But after getting to Swangard it had taken him all day just to get inside the Palace and up to the Spring Room where the King was holding court. By now it was beginning to occur to Mark, as the guards drew their broadswords, that things weren’t going to get any easier for a dirty country boy in this rich man’s world.
‘Art tha not cloddish, I’ sooth?’… I guess this means no parade.
Bastards.
Mark was hungry. Weary. Filthy. Enraged. And really tired of beefy men in livery. “Stand back, damn your eyes’” he swore. Then he drew Sweetness.
For one eternal instant, time stood stiller in Swangard Palace than it ever had at the Red Keep. Across the room the King froze, halfway out of his chair. Beside him the Queen’s fleshy face sagged in shock. Her eldest daughter recoiled, her second gasped.
The youngest princess grinned.
On the King’s other side his two councillors, gaunt Anujel and stout Vultemar, glowered in outrage. Behind the throne Sir William, the King’s champion, looked on, greying eyebrows raised with interest.
Sweetness murmured its grim enchantments, freezing the ladies and gentlemen of the Court who stood between Mark and his King.
Whole village wouldn’t pawn one lady’s dress or one Jack’s cloak and boots
, Mark thought, stuck between awe and anger. The men were dressed soldier-style, all epaulets and medals and braid. The monstrously thin women wore hoop-skirts with rigid hems just below their knees:
They look like butter churns wi’ legs
, Mark thought sourly.
But you must admit that all the girls are handsome, and all the fellows pretty
.
“Thanks for your attention,” he growled.
Shielder’s Mark was not a pretty young man. His brown hair was shaggy and unwashed. His long narrow jaw was covered with black stubble that looked like a boy’s bad first beard. His hands were too hard; his fingernails were blunt and dirty. His cloak was travel-stained; the leathers on his boots were parting from their soles. And frankly, he stank.
He bowed with a flourish and raised his magic blade above his head, so that every corner of the room was filled with its keening, crying song. “This is Sweetness, greatest sword of grandfather days. I picked it from between Stargad’s bones in the Red Keep, where he lies. I’ve broke the Ghostwood’s spell, and come to claim my reward. I’ve had two weeks walk, little food, less sleep, and no thanks. I’ve spent half the day trying to get past your bloody doormen and stewards and under-ministers of this and bloody that, and I’m sick of being polite.
“I will be heard, and I will get what’s owed me! If any man doubts my word, he’s welcome to come wi’ me to the Ghostwood, and look for himself.”
He dropped his sword-point, and the spell was broken; everyone started jabbering at once.
At a glance from the King, Vultemar bellowed for silence.
Sinking slowly into his throne, His Munificence Astin IV, his spare frame draped in the royal black, studied Mark with a profound lack of enthusiasm. “And do you know those harsh and rigid medicines the Law prescribes in case your claim be proven false?” He nodded at Sir William, who alone among the men in the room was plainly dressed, in brown silks without lace or military honours. “In such a case would we our champion ask to chastise your impertinence.”
“If I were lying, he could try,” Mark growled. “But can you doubt your ears? There’s only one sword as sings: Sweetness, that was lost in the Ghostwood as everyone knows.”
Eyes glanced across the chamber; whispers twittered from every corner. Mark looked slowly around the room, feeling dirty and wild and fierce. Like songbirds under a hawk’s shadow, courtiers cringed beneath his gaze.
Sir William, the King’s champion, dropped his hand from his sword-hilt. “The boy speaks sooth.”
Astin IV turned in astonishment. “William! Are you mad? One thousand years has darkness lain upon that Wood, and spilled its gloom upon our hearts, a tristeful tributary, fouling with its melancholy spring the shining Sea that is our kingdom. Stargad tried to break this spell, and thumb-less Fhilip; Silverhand and countless others. Can that blot not even Aron could erase have now been lifted, by,”—the King waved an angry hand at Mark—”By a ragged cloak and pair of mildewed boots?”
Sir William shrugged. “One sword only ever sang, Your Majesty. I must believe my ears.”
Mark’s fierce elation drained away before the older man’s level gaze; he felt like a boy, and a bragging boy at that. Sir William gave him the ghost of a smile. “Beside this, I am a fair judge of young men; my heart tells me that he speaks the truth.”
Mark looked at him gratefully.
Now that’s more like a knight should be. When you’re a Duke, make that man welcome in your castle any time
.
“We…” The King faltered. “We confess ourselves amazed. Anujel, Vultemar: advise us.” Two head bowed down to whisper in his ears, one gaunt and grey, the other pink and fat.
The Queen waved her ample arms. “Well if he must remain, at least he should be clean. Lord Peridot, your honour and your courtesy would like arise in our esteem were you to be a gentleman and give this boy your cloak.”
A courtier in fawn- and peach-coloured silks bowed, a smile quirking his thin face, and unbuckled a flowing apricot cloak, trimmed with ermine.
The Queen turned to a lady-in-waiting. “Cousin Lissa, an you will, take the mantle from this gentleman,”—her nose wrinkled—”and have it burned. Ready a chamber, and in it salvers of steaming rosewater, and a ball of soap.” She frowned at Mark. “Perhaps two balls.”
In her place beside the youngest princess, Lissa nodded.
A smile lit Her Majesty’s plump face. “You swear that this is not some prank, set to tease the humour of the Court? ‘Tis very like your sense of wit, Lord Peridot, to send a cloddish knave to us, enwreathed in borrowed glories.”
Can’t you hear the sword, you daft awd sow
? “No joke, Your Majesty, though I look like a scarecrow and stink like a sty.”
The Queen clapped her hands. “Ooh! And witty to boot!”
O Lord.
Should I have bowed when she yapped at me?
Mark had felt strong and free when he despised them all, all the preening courtiers. But now his moment was slipping away, sinking between the King’s scowl and the Queen’s silly smile. He glanced at Her Highness, trying to guess if she was waiting for him to kneel or something.
… And found his eyes caught by the youngest princess, the one who had grinned when he burst into the room.
Mark had always imagined princesses as tall and willowy, with straw-coloured hair and a distant expression; rather like Lissa, the lady-in-waiting. But Princess Gail was short and stocky; she had a vixen’s face, shrewd and small, with short brown hair and gold-brown eyes. She wore tights and tunic of the royal black, belted with’ a gold sash at the waist:
Too short for the butter-churn style
, he guessed. She even had a knife jammed through her sash; no toy neither, but a good dagger like the one he’d left in the Wood, with a broad blade and a worn bone handle.
Gail looked at him like an archer staring down a target.
Mark’s heart stopped; jumped; and died, a stag shot leaping.
“What fun!” the Queen exclaimed. “Lissa, also Master Civet find, and Master Bolt,” she said, as the lady in waiting approached to take Mark’s grimy cloak. “By their craft those tasteful gentlemen must turn this Shielder’s Mark from duckling into swan, if he will paddle in our pond.”
Lord Peridot was bowing to Mark. Mark’s jaw snapped shut and with a supreme act of will he dragged his eyes off the Princess.
Peridot was a small man, and slender. As he bowed he held his right hand across his chest; Mark saw that he was missing the index finger. “My greetings, cousin. May I offer you my cloak while yours is… on its way?”
“Th-thank you,” Mark stammered.
“Is something wrong?” Peridot’s thin lips quirked into a sharp smile. “Perhaps, my country cousin, you find in my disfigurement the footprint of the Devil. Do you long to hold your fingers horned to ward against my Eye, or step so that my shadow does not fall across your own? You would not be the first to blanch at my affliction.”
“No, no, not at all,” Mark said, flushing. His eyes fled Lord Peridot’s hand.
Sir William was staring at him.
So was the Princess.
He wished himself under the earth.
…
No, goddammit
!
He had braved the Ghostwood, and broken the spell not even Aron could undo.
Is the man who holds Sweetness to piss himself before a roomful of perfume and ruffles
?
Stocky Vultemar and slender Anujel stepped back and stood quietly behind the King. The King stroked his pointed beard with fretful fingers. “Attend us, Shielder’s Mark. Perhaps you
have
done what you claim. We shall this day a troop dispatch to investigate your tale.” A smile flickered briefly across Astin’s face. “But Sir William have we trusted in farming many boys, and never found a better husbandman to harvest from them rich crops of men. If he believes you, then so will we—for now. And if you speak true, then ancient law is clear: what you ask, the Crown must give.” He laughed without great warmth. “Great will be your name, boy: it will all the honoured titles in this room outlast, including ours. The fourth to bear the name of Astin later years will know but by his gift to you. So tell him: what will you have?”
O, fine fields and orchards heavy with fruit; tall stone walls walked by men in blue and silver livery. Mark drew his breath. “Your Majesty, I thank you. An you will, I’ll take…”
He faltered, feeling a pair of narrow eyes trained on him. “I’ll take…”
Half against his will, he turned to face the Princess.
Like a spear her gaze passed through him, heart and soul, and he was lost.
“You’ll take what?” she asked, her eyes aflash with triumph.
“Hush, Gail!” the Queen fussed. “No time is this for boldness!”
“The King is waiting,” Anujel said.
Mark’s life, his whole life and all his plans, went spinning out from under his feet. He was a wild man in this Court, shaggy-haired and stinking of the road. A keen wind blew through him, lifting him up like the spring breeze under a hawk’s wing. Daring, he felt; fresh and brave as rainbows. “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing with a flourish of his borrowed apricot cloak, “I guess I’ll take your daughter.”