Spellbreakers (5 page)

Daria smiled dreamily.

Leal pulled the dildo out of her own body and then the
second one out of Daria. She observed them full of curiosity, comparing their
size, shape and weight.

“Next time,” she said, “I will have the thick one.”

Daria nodded sleepily, and smiled.

For tonight at least her princess had stopped worrying
about the challenge, no doubt.

****

Dee was waiting for Leal, in his library, the morning
after. He admitted that his plan was very far-fetched, and he had ordered her
to think thoroughly about it before taking a decision. He himself was not sure
whether to believe in its feasibility or not. The ancient lore regarding the
Faded people and the ways to communicate with them were almost forgotten now in
Escarra, and only some old, obscure, crumbling scrolls recorded any details
about it.

When the doors of the library opened, and his valet,
bowing, announced Princess Leal, he was half annoyed and half amused to hear
the voices of both Leal and Daria in the corridor outside. He glanced at the
two girls as they walked in his room. Daria was uninvited yet brash and bold,
with a boyish swagger in her hips, as always. He tried to look stern and
reserved, and inevitably ended up smiling.

In fact, he was not at all surprised.

Daria! The girl had been Leal’s servant, groom,
confidante, and, Dee suspected, her lover, for these many years. They were
inseparable.

When Dee thought of those two girls, he always thought
of Daria as “the tall one”, and then he was always mildly surprised to notice
once again that in fact she was a good two inches shorter than Leal. Leal was
the quiet, thoughtful one, who, when the two were together, tended to fade in
the background and somehow managed to look smaller. There was as much
determination in Leal as in Daria, but it was of a different, subtler kind.

“So, have you considered my idea?” he asked when the
two girls sat down in front of his desk, like they had so often done for their
history lessons.

“Yes,” said Daria. “And, boy, does that sound like a
load of ... well, with all due respect, manure.
Very magical
manure, of course.”

She had thrown a leg over the armrest of her chair,
defying him to correct her, which he didn’t. There was a Mistress of Etiquette
for that sort of thing. If she had not gotten Daria to sit prettily in all
these years, he would certainly not bother to try.

“But however,” said Daria, “from manure roses are
born, or so they say, and we can’t really think of anything better, so we will
go with it.”

“We?” asked Dee raising an eyebrow.

“Yes, we.
We’ll
need help, Dee,” said Leal. “I’ll never get out of the castle without people
noticing, not for a whole day, or even more. And you say this place where we
might be able talk to the
Faded
people is too far up
the hills to ride there and back again in one night.”

Dee acknowledged this with a little bow.

“So Daria will take my place here.
We will put out the news that I am unwell, and will
keep to my room for a day or two. People are still afraid of the White Death,
and they’ll steer clear of my room, you can be assured of it. Daria can come
and go from my room with food and potions, as is but natural as my maid.” This
got her an icy look from Daria. “And in between she will sit in the oriel with
my clothes on, stitching and reading, and being seen from the bailey. They will
not be able to tell the difference from down there.”

“You are all right with this?” asked Dee to Daria, who
was not at all the kind of girl who enjoyed sitting in a window all day, least
of all stitching.

“No, I’m not. First, the idea of Leal riding off at
night with a mere bookworm like you as only guide and escort makes my flesh
creep. And second it’s hardly fair that you two have all the fun while I sit
there all day with nothing to do but looking blonde and pretty. Still, I admit
that it is the best solution. But you bring her back in one piece, Lord Dionis,
or I assure you it will go ill with you.”

“Just so you know, my dear girls,
I
was riding
and strolling in the forests of Escarra long before you wore your first smock,
or in your case,” turning towards Daria, “breeches. The princess will be
escorted most carefully, fear not.”

“How will you get out of the castle?” asked Daria,
perfectly undaunted by Dee’s prickly, nettled formality.

“Oh, as for that, this castle is drilled with secret
passages all over.
Passages that a Master of Enchantments is,
by tradition, entitled to know and use at his own discretion.”

“Drat,” said Daria. “I knew you’d never told us half
of all the fun stuff you do.”

Chapter Three

They left the castle at sunset, through a maze of
narrow staircases and passages where Daria and Leal would have been wholly lost
in a minute. It was unsettling to see how the apparently solid walls of Castel
Argell were actually drilled in every direction with these rat holes. Leal
hoped the ancient architects of the fortress knew what they were doing. Daria
had come along to see them off and because for no reason would she miss seeing
the secret passages. The last tunnel emerged in a perfectly normal little
cellar with rough stone walls. Many of the houses in Argell were half built
inwards, in the natural caves of the hill-side, and half outward, like ordinary
buildings, so this was not surprising. The door of the cellar opened on a very
commonplace corner of Argell, high up under the castle walls, but well outside
them. There was a small courtyard with a wide stone tub for washing laundry,
fed by water that trickled down the face of the steep hill on top of which
Castel Argell was built. The place was deserted. On one side there was a tiny
grass-grown alley between the walls of two houses, and on the other side a
breath-taking view on the Val d’Eran below, with the river Llobregat looping
around the foot of the hill in a shimmering golden horseshoe. Only one small
window overlooked the courtyard.

“That,” said Dee pointing at the house with the
shuttered
window,
“belongs to me. This is my private
way out of the castle. Now you know. You will keep this secret. Will you find
your way back through the streets?”
This to Daria.

“I will,” she said “Be careful, you two. Don’t do
anything ... too weird.”

She embraced Leal briefly and tipped a little bow to
Dee before sauntering off. She would go back openly, through the gates and the
castle’s courtyard. Nobody ever remarked much on her comings and goings. She
had been raised and educated with the princesses to a certain extent, but she
had always been at the very edge of the court, not quite a servant, but
definitely not a noblewoman either. Her strange in-between status had given her
unthinkable freedom, and she made use of it whenever she felt like it. Leal had
always envied her.

They left Argell by one of the steep goat paths that
went down the side of the hill. The paths were useless for any horse, but they
were handy shortcuts for any fit person on foot. The road made a long bend
through the town, which was strewn like a long ribbon on the top of the cliff,
and then took the easy western slope of the hill down to the valley. The green
Val d’Eran curled round the feet of the steep hill of Castel Argell, a valley
of fields, orchards, and rich pastures. Leal had read about castles built on
the plains of Andalou and Hassia with a water-filled moat around their curtain
walls. She could not imagine such a thing. Castell Argell needed no moat. The
Val d’Eran itself was its moat. The sheer cliff on top of which it was built
rose like a wall from the bottom of the valley, perfectly impregnable.

In time of peace, few animals were kept in Argell,
high up on the stony hill, aside from the most valuable war horses and hunters.
Most of the stables were down here, at the foot of the hill, where a new
village had risen made up of all the things that didn’t fit anymore within the
narrow walls of Argell.
 
Dee led Leal by
a little lane among warehouses and workshops to a discreet stable tucked behind
a walled orchard. He had arranged for two horses to wait for them, saddled,
equipped and ready to go.

The stable hands were clearly used to him. They called
him “m’lord”, but no name was mentioned. They took no notice of Leal. In her
breeches and leather jerkin, with a hooded cape and her hunting dagger at her
side, she probably resembled a skinny young valet more than a princess. She was
used to wearing boy clothes, because she seldom rode in a lady’s saddle, and
much to her mother’s distress she had taken to wearing breeches most of the
time, like Daria did, but she was not used to not being recognized. She liked
this anonymity. She liked not being constantly addressed with the formality due
to a member of the royal family. It felt strangely like freedom. Until that
day, she had only ever felt that freedom in bed with Daria.

They crossed the river by the ancient stone bridge and
trotted away north and west. It was a direction that Leal had seldom taken,
because the royal hunting grounds were all to the south and east, where the
moist sea weather clothed the hills with dense dark forests.

They rode for perhaps four hours, never very fast,
because they were going up and up into the Llers hills, the ancient heart of
the kingdom, where every desolate, barren height had a ruined tower or fortress
slowly crumbling in majestic isolation. It was a mystery how the ancient lords
of Escarra had built and provisioned these vertiginous castles on the bare
steep peaks of the Llers. Magic, some said.

This was a sparsely populated land, windswept
year-round, withering cold in winter and baking hot in summer. It was covered
in dry, scrubby
garrigues
, interrupted by stretches of spewy pastures
only good for sheep and goats, and here and there, in the lee of a ridge or
dry-stone wall, low growing vineyards. These would be full of people in the
autumn, or even in winter, when the vine-cutters came to trim the vines to
gnarled, wind-bitten stumps, but it was silent and desolate now. Leal wondered
how there could be any magical ancient place up here.

All the castles were dead and deserted.

 
Yet, as the
hills grew higher, deeper valleys also came into view, greener, sweeter, more
sheltered. They climbed yet another ridge, up and up, and then came to a wide
vale. From the top of the crest Leal could hear the rustling of tall woods deep
down in the valley.

“We are almost there, Leal. How are you doing?”

“Fine.
But
this horse is dead tired with all these ups and downs. If I had known the path
was so rough, I’d have asked them to saddle a pony.”

“We’ll soon have to dismount, and then he can rest.
There is good grass up here, and water. The last bit we’ll have to do on foot.”

Leal thought with a grimace of her butt and thighs,
aching after the long ride, but stretching her legs might be good. After
perhaps half an hour again, they reached a sward of sweet grass by the banks of
a rushing stream, and Dee dismounted, a bit stiffly, from his tall grey mare.

 
“Hobble the
horses, my dear, since you are such an accomplished huntress. I don’t fancy
coming back and finding them gone. It would be altogether too unpleasant to
have to walk all the weary way home.”

Leal was not as accomplished as all that, since Daria
took care of this sort of things usually, but she hobbled the two horses
without complaints. It took more time and pulling and huffing than she liked,
with the horses so tired and hungry, but it was done finally, and they set out
on foot, following the stream as it plunged deeper into the winding valley.

A path of sorts followed the stream. It was overgrown
and weedy, and yet it must have been well trodden in the past, because it was
often cut into shoulders of rock and it was easy enough to follow, even in the
dark. The stream was soon burbling far below, as the valley grew steeper and
deeper, ever narrower. The path descended more gradually, clinging to the side
of the valley.The woods grew darker and damper. The deeper parts of the gorge
must be screened from sunlight all day, Leal thought, because the very air was
damp down here, and when she put a hand to steady herself on a stone or tree
trunk, she always found it soft with deep live mosses.

The path wound down, ever downward. Leal’s breeches
and sleeves were sodden with the dew beading the thriving vegetation that
feathered the sides of the gorge. The further down they went the wetter and mossier
the terrain became. The air smelled green and lush. There was no sound of night
birds. Only the faintest hint of moonlight fell on the fronds of lustrous ferns
glittering with condensation. The place sang and warbled with a thousand brooks
and bourns that pattered down the moist sides of the gorge towards the dark
bottom.

“This is the place. Look at the ferns,” whispered Dee.
Leal could hardly see anything in the darkness and shadows, but the old
magician seemed well accustomed to walking a forest path in the darkness. Leal
wondered what sort of secret life he led, and how often he left his tower by
night to wonder the wilderness, ever looking for the lost secrets of the
Ancients’ magic. And surely this must be one of those magical places somewhat
removed from the flow of ordinary time, because something here felt different
from the everyday world they had left behind.