Waking beauty, p.2
Waking Beauty, page 2
“All right.”
Lunch was over too quickly, and he picked the sword back up again. “A distant cousin of yours is King of Rosaria now, but once he confirms your identity, he can transfer control of Sentre Forest to us. I was thinking we’d rule out of Castle Estepel, but now that I’ve seen these briars”—he hacked at a leathery vine—“I’m dubious. This property may not be the most conducive to launching a new kingdom. The budget may be tight our first few years of marriage, until we can manage our exports more effectively, but overall, it might be wiser to build a new place instead of investing in this old one. I imagine you have sentimental attachment to the place, though. What do you think?”
“All right.”
“All right we move or all right we stay?”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
“I want you to be happy, too, Princess.”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
That was the way the rest of the day went. He shared with her his long-cherished dreams for their life together, and she shrugged. Maybe she was still tired, but wasn’t her complete lack of interest in her own future a little—odd? Was there something wrong with him—or with her? He was relieved when the dimming daylight gave him an excuse to quit chopping and talking. His arms, tongue, and mind ached.
“Time to go to sleep,” he said.
“All right.” Was that amusement in her voice? Too dark to read her face.
Now that he’d stopped moving, his body cooled enough to feel the chill spring air. “Are you warm enough? I did plan for this, at least.” He pulled a wool cloak from his pack. He’d ordered it from Conquisan’s finest weavers and toted it around the entire eight months since he’d left home. Even on snowy nights in the mountains, he’d resisted taking it out for warmth. He wanted his first gift to her to be new and unspoiled, the finest Conquisan had to offer.
In this, at least, her reaction was everything he’d anticipated. She drew it around her shoulders and marveled at the colors, the slightly felted texture, the lightweight but warm weave. Blue and green zigzags played tag with each other, and her slender fingers traced the intricate pattern. She thanked him with a pretty curtsey.
The fading sunset cast her face in an attractive glow. Or maybe it was the fact that she was at last showing some animation. It made Arpien want to try that wake-up kiss all over again, and this time do it differently. He steeled himself to play the gentleman. Luckily, he was too tired for fantasies to keep him awake.
He was awakened by a growling beast. He leapt to his feet and drew the vademecum sword. The briars had grown up around them overnight. Whatever was hiding in the thicket—he could feel eyes upon him—would have them at a serious disadvantage.
Princess Brierly sat up and stretched. “What are you doing?”
He motioned for silence. “I heard a bear.”
“No bears out here. No animals at all in this thicket.”
“Shh.”
A low guttural growl came again, close by. Brierly grinned. “It’s your stomach.”
Arpien lowered the sword. “I thought I saw something move. Probably the vines.”
“The vines are dangerous enough in themselves, Arpien.” She said this last with a lift of an eyebrow, as though to verify she’d gotten his name right. Was he so forgettable?
He didn’t silence the beast in his stomach with breakfast. Only four slices of bread left, and just the smell of the grandmother pickles made his stomach turn.
They didn’t talk so much today. Er, he didn’t talk so much. He needed to concentrate on hacking a path through the briars while he still had full strength. Finding his way out of the thicket was much harder than finding his way in had been. On the way in, it’d been easy—just head for the spindly sandstone tower rising out of the briars. But the gate in the wall that surrounded the property was only ten feet high and obscured by the briars from here. He could cut his way to the outer wall but miss the gate. Although she was moving more fluidly today, Princess Brierly didn’t look quite ready to vault thirty-foot walls yet, so the only way out of Estepel was through the hidden gate. And by every five feet he missed the gate, it would add another hour to their escape.
His sword might be as effective as a wooden spoon against the briars, but it had other uses. He stepped back from the briars, held the blade in front of him, and closed his eyes.
“What are you doing?” Princess Brierly said.
“Finding the gate.”
“Your sword is a compass? Handy.”
Truth be told, the vademecum sword wasn’t a much better compass than it was a hedge-pruner. Sometimes it pointed him where he wanted to go, sometimes it ignored him, and sometimes it sent him in the wrong direction entirely. Today it tugged him forward without any pother. Another three hours of chopping and he could see the end of the briars. Another three hours after that, and the pair broke into a sunlit clearing.
This wasn’t the gate. This was a gravesite.
Two gravestones lay at the center of a twenty-foot patch of grass. They were surrounded by a perfect circle of briars, as though an invisible wall held back the thicket. Arpien flung the vademecum sword on the ground and himself beside it. He hadn’t run across any graves on the way into Castle Estepel, so this meant they were going the wrong way. If he didn’t find the right path immediately, his strength would give out before they reached the gate.
Princess Brierly drifted around the clearing and admired the scenery.
“Well?” Arpien said. “What poor fools will we share our graves with?”
“Read for yourself.”
He read the names on the tombstone. “Justin and Golda Steward.” Her parents. Thorns and thistles. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to remind you—though I guess this is new to you, them being dead—”
Bite your boasting tongue, hero.
She turned her head away.
Good job, rescue the princess and bring her to tears.
Arpien didn’t like tears. On the few occasions he’d tried to ease a maiden’s tears, she inexplicably started producing more. How to fix this? He assumed the Sixth Stance of Deep Mourning and flourished the Bow of Esteemed Members of Foreign Nation-States. “My condolences on the loss of your—”
“Pickle?” She offered him one from the clay crock.
He aborted the bow and shook his head no.
Brierly plopped down beside a headstone. She bit into the rejected pickle herself, her eyes as dry and unaffected as though she were sitting at a tea table, not on her own parents’ graves. The lack of tears disturbed him more than real ones would have.
“I hink you eading us the ong ay.” Cucumbery munching obscured her words.
Courtesy was becoming difficult. “Where would you have us go, Your Highness?”
She gestured with the pickle to something behind him. “I wager he knows.”
Arpien readied his sword as he whirled and looked into a pair of brown eyes. Living eyes, not the mummified hollows left behind in the dried-apple faces of other would-be rescuers he’d found trapped in the briars.
“What is that?” Arpien asked.
“The Thorn King. One of Voracity’s servants.”
Arpien had only read about Voracity, the evil fairy who’d laid the Curse on Princess Brierly. Seeing one of Voracity’s minions made her seem more real, a threat that snaked from one century into the next.
“He’s a king?” he said.
“I just call him that because he can get the thorns to obey him. Watch him.”
The creature crept through the thicket. The vines directly in front of him split apart and rejoined as soon as he passed through. His path was diagonal to their position, bringing him neither closer nor further away. As he passed through more sparse parts of the thicket, Arpien discerned more of his form. He had a reddish-brown pelt. At first he appeared to walk on all fours, but observation proved he walked on two feet, his back stooped as though under a heavy load. Not all of him was covered in the brownish pelt. When he passed through patches of sunlight, Arpien caught flashes of skin like his own, only striped in red. The stripes were irregular, uneven, almost smeared.
Not natural stripes. Gouge marks outlined in blood.
Arpien swallowed. “The thorns don’t obey him very well. Look how many times he’s been cut.”
“I think he must be clumsy. Voracity never orders him to attack me. Perhaps he’s inept. I’ve seen him in dreams before, but the only thing he does is spy from a distance.”
“Is he human?”
“If he was once, he doesn’t look much like it anymore.”
Arpien might have described him as a living corpse. No human who had received such wounds would survive. Thorns pierced his flesh so deeply it was hard to tell whether the thorns had fused to his skin or had grown out of it. What Arpien had taken for a pelt was a cloak on his back. It was mottled brown, maroon, and a bruised rose color, as though it had sopped up blood, dried, and sopped up more blood, layer after layer. Even his eyes spoke of pain so deep Arpien was amazed he could stand at all. Had Voracity killed some man and then reanimated him? Did fairies have that power? If he was not dead, he would be soon. His very repulsiveness made Arpien want to stare and avert his glance at the same time.
The Thorn King didn’t come any closer to them, but dragged himself in a wide arc around them. At a certain point in the circle, he turned around and began retracing his steps. Was he guarding them? The creature didn’t have to attack if he could keep them there long enough for the evil fairy to arrive.
Arpien considered their position. The briars covered the entire lawn from the castle walls to the gate, with the exception of this twenty-foot diameter clearing around the graves. At best, Arpien could chop through enough briars to progress maybe five feet an hour. The Thorn King, even injured as he was, could move that same distance in a matter of seconds. Plus, inside the thicket Arpien wouldn’t have enough room to maneuver his sword and body in a fight. The gravesite was the best defensible position. What would be easier—to engage an injured Thorn King and his briars or to wait around for the more powerful adversary?
If the Thorn King controlled the briars, they’d have to go through him to escape. Could they negotiate?
Arpien splayed his feet and lifted his chin in the Stance of Military Threat Lightly Veiled by Decorum. “Excuse me.” Arpien walked to the edge of the clearing and tried again. “Pardon.”
The Thorn King took no notice.
Arpien turned to Princess Brierly. “Does he understand speech?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never wanted to get close enough to talk to him. He’s one of hers.”
Arpien straightened his shoulders, tried not to feel ridiculous, and addressed the briars at large. “We know who you are and whom you serve. That need not make us enemies, if you do not act against us. Grant us safe passage through the briars.”
The Thorn King altered his path to move straight toward him. The vademecum sword buzzed in warning. Arpien tightened his hand on his sword but held his ground.
A gouged hand reached out from the thicket as though asking for payment. Arpien dug in his pouch for one of his last coins.
The Thorn King shook his head. “No,” he rasped. “Give me your thorns.”
Couldn’t he find his own? He lived in a briar patch. Maybe he was inept. Arpien pulled down a vine and hacked at the base of a thorn with the vademecum sword.
“No. Your thorns,” the creature said.
“I don’t have any thorns.”
“Then I can’t help you.” The Thorn King limped away.
Arpien took a step after him. “Come back!”
There was one path and one path only through the thicket, and it was rapidly closing on the Thorn King’s heels. Arpien grabbed Brierly’s hand and darted after the Thorn King. All around them the vines stirred in hunger and reached out to taste their flesh.
Short-lived negotiations.
A foot-long thorn bit Arpien’s sleeve. Brierly yipped behind him. Had she tripped over those long toes on her shoes? Arpien saw a vine snap around her ankle. He walloped the vine with his sword, severed the empty cloth toes off her pointed poulaines, and yanked her forward. They had to follow the Thorn King closely or they’d be trapped in the briars. Just like all the other princes who’d tried to rescue her and been swallowed by the thicket. He’d always thought those other princes idiots, to blunder into plants and die. Wasn’t the power of Voracity’s Curse supposed to be broken now that Princess Brierly was awake? Or perhaps it would not be broken until they killed the Thorn King. Her jailor.
The passage narrowed and they fell further behind. They had to turn sideways and sidle through shoulder-first. There was no helping injury now. They’d just have to run and hope the scratches wouldn’t dig deep. If she stayed close his body would take the most damage.
“Cover your eyes,” Arpien said, “and run.”
He shielded his own face with his forearm as they ran. Positioned like that, he couldn’t see the Thorn King, only a few feet in front of him where the Thorn King’s feet left a vanishing path. Brierly slowed—a hundred years of sleep would leave anyone out of shape—and Arpien dragged her forward. Thorns nipped at his clothes and dragged their pace even more. He heard the ripping of fabric as he broke free of the vines, again and again. Arpien pushed forward with all the strength he had left.
All resistance vanished. They tumbleweeded over each other through long dry grass. He released Brierly’s hand for fear he’d crush her. The princess rolled some feet beyond him.
As soon as he could move again, Arpien pushed his nose out of the dirt and looked for Brierly. She’d landed in a much more graceful position than he had. She sat with her legs stretched in front of her and supported her weight on the heels of her palms. She might have been lounging at a picnic. Blue-green eyes studied him, then the scene behind him. She gave another tiny, high-pitched, “Hm.”
He flipped over to see what she saw: an open gate of twisting iron rods set in an archway in the sandstone outer wall. It was a good thing he’d lost track of the Thorn King. In fighting to free themselves from the briars, they’d stumbled through the gate. He must have inadvertently used the vademecum sword to find the way out, and this time it decided to cooperate.
Brierly leaned forward. “I broke something.” Arpien rushed to her. She dangled a broken piece of crockery between brine-soaked fingers.
“You brought the pickles?” he said.
“I like pickles.”
As weak as the one hundred years of sleep had left her, she’d expended the strength to lug a thirty-pound clay crock. And he’d had to drag both her and the crock.
“THOSE PICKLES COULD HAVE COST US OUR LIVES!”
The longer the announcement hung in the air, the stupider it sounded.
A corner of Brierly’s mouth twitched. Thistles, he hadn’t made her cry, had he? But the woman who shed no tears at her parents’ graveside wasn’t going to cry over a little royal bellowing. “I’ve never died by pickle before,” she said.
Arpien exhaled. Now that they’d made it out, it was a little humorous to think of death by pickle. “You still haven’t.”
Brierly peered at him. “You haven’t, either.”
“Uh—no.”
“Hm.”
She smelled of spice and vinegar and her ankle bore some scratches from the vine, but otherwise she was unscathed. “I have Fleetsome Feet. It was a christening Gift from a fairy godmother.” She wiggled her toes. Arpien could see them through the holes in her poulaines.
Nor were the shoes the final clothing casualty. The beautiful cloak, his first gift to her, bore a twelve-inch rip down one side. Arpien sighed. Third sons, even third sons of kings, didn’t have a lot of money, and he’d spent a good deal of his savings on that cloak. It touched him to see how Brierly took it to heart, too. Until he noticed she mourned more for the single rip in her cloak than for the multiple rips in him. This was why you shouldn’t wear your best doublet to rescue princesses. Arpien wove a hand in and out of the strips of his sleeves. He could imagine what his older brother would do if he saw him now. Cryndien would thump him on the back, too hard, too jovial. Well, Fumbleshanks, I guess I did tell you the ladies like a man in a well-cut outfit.
Arpien had left the bulk of the supplies—utensils, maps, letters of introduction—outside the castle gate. “Fearless!” Arpien whistled. “My horse,” he explained to Brierly.
“What does he look like?” Brierly asked, as though he’d lost a ring or a shoe and she could help him search while she lounged on the grass.
“Large, white, very intimidating.”
Brierly leaned forward so her weight rested on her fingertips, not her flat palms. “You own a Conquisani Bleacher?”
Arpien nodded. “Since I was thirteen.”
“Who would give a boy a Conquisani Bleacher?”
He bristled, although he’d heard the objection since the day he’d gotten Fearless. A cavalry of the renowned Bleachers could shake down a mountain.
“Don’t you think I could handle him?” He didn’t tell her Fearless turned out to have the temperament of a friendly collie.
“I’m just surprised. That warhorse’s bloodlines are probably more noble in the horse world than yours are in the human world, Herren.”
“Arpien.” He whistled again. He’d trained Fearless better than to mosey off at a little delay in adventuring. The Peerless White Steed was not only a hero’s best tool, it was his best accessory. “He was a birthday present from Cryndien, all right?”
“Who?”
“The king. My brother.” It seemed odd to have to tell her, but why should she know who Cryndien was?
