The Summer of Youth
Until she reached the age of seventeen there were four certainties in the life of Dion ferch Alawn.
The first was that her parents were always wise, always right.
The second was that her life would always fall into the same orderly rhythms as it had thus far.
Thirdly, she had no doubt that she would one day be queen.
The fourth thing of which Dion ferch Alawn was absolutely certain was that the tall, ebony-skinned man she saw in her bedroom mirror meant her no harm.
As it turned out, this was the only thing in which she was entirely correct.
Dion was three when the Fae arrived. She watched the first stately audience from the Upper Gallery as the Fae swept gracefully through the Audience Hall below, tall, graceful people with beautifully tragic faces. She felt her nurse’s fingers pinching at her shoulder and knew she was being reminded not to gape and point. Dion knew dimly that it was a Very Bad Thing for the Princess Heir to gape and point. She wished she could be as free as her twin sister Aerwn, who didn’t care about the nurse’s pinching fingers, and gaped and gasped and bounced to her heart’s content.
The Fae came in small numbers at first, fleeing from a peril in Faery that was talked about in hushed tones. The Guardians were said to be Fae of the worst kind; beast-like warmongers who had already taken over much of Faery. Dion heard the whispers, but never much more than whispers, despite her awe-struck observation of the Fae who arrived from week to week. The homeless Fae each asked for and were granted an audience with the King and Queen, and most were settled in Harlech. Dion also heard the mutters around the castle when it became known that the Crown—and by proxy the people—were paying for their resettlement and daily food.
Before long there was a steady stream of Fae arriving every day. Some of them settled in Harlech, some in other Llassarian cities, and still more of them moved right in the castle itself. Soon the maids were all Fae, swiftly and gracefully performing their duties. The footmen morphed from a group of well-trained and orderly men into a regiment of perfectly starched, perfectly beautiful Fae.
By the time Dion and Aerwn were five, their tutors were all Fae. Aerwn, naturally graceful and quick to learn, blossomed beautifully under their tutelage. Dion, who always felt clumsy and awkward around the Fae, felt herself becoming even more stiff, careful, and silent. Despite that, she discovered that the Fae had a great deal to teach even her. She didn’t find that she grew more graceful or more silver-tongued, like Aerwn, but she did begin to learn that there were other things in which she could excel. The Fae, upon learning that Dion had a decided talent for magic, patted her on the head and gave her spells to learn. She applied herself assiduously, and had the pleasure of feeling that she had surprised her tutors when she effortlessly performed the spells for them. Dion thought that they were a little more careful with the spells they gave her to learn after that, but they didn’t stop giving her spells, and before long she had her own Instructor of Magic.
Dion had become so used to the constant presence of the Fae in her life that when the tall, black Fae first appeared in her oval dressing mirror, she didn’t think more of it than to feel in a vaguely embarrassed way that she was the one who was intruding. After all, Fae were free to come and go wherever they pleased, and Dion knew not to question or challenge the Fae rudely.
Fae thoughts are high and wise, she knew. A Fae always has a reason for what the Fae does. It is not for mortals to question or upbraid.
So Dion hurried past her mirror whenever she was in her suite, hastily averting her eyes whenever she saw that the tall Fae was back. She was so used to being observed and tested by then that being watched even in her suite didn’t seem unusual. And the Fae, apart from the fact of his actual presence, wasn’t intrusive. He didn’t do much more than stand there, though sometimes he seemed to be talking. Since no sound came through the glass, Dion assumed that he was talking to other Fae on his side of the mirror, and still abashedly avoided it as much as she could.
A few months after her seventh birthday, Dion sprained her ankle. If she was really honest about it, thought Dion, as with most things in the twins’ lives, it wasn’t so much that she had sprained her ankle, but that Aerwn had sprained it for her. It was Aerwn who had bullied her into climbing into the saddle of their father’s horse; Aerwn who confidently asserted that she could and would climb on right after you, you scardy!; Aerwn who had opened the stable door for them both; Aerwn who seized upon Dion’s foot when their father’s horse charged grimly for freedom, dashing herself and her sister to the unforgiving paving-stones of the stable.
And of course it was Dion who finished the day in bed, her face whiter than usual and her sprained foot very carefully elevated. The Fae were too sensible to heal human injuries quickly without reason—Dion herself had been taught how dangerous it was for the human system to be brought to rely upon magic for its healing—and she had been put to bed for the afternoon with the promise that she would be better tomorrow.
It was only after the solicitous rush had dissipated and Dion’s nurse had withdrawn to the next room that Dion saw her dressing mirror had been angled so as to give her a reflected view of the outside world. Or it would have done, if the tall man wasn’t reflecting still more strongly from the glass. Someone must have done it in a spirit of kindness, but Dion wished they hadn’t made the effort, because it meant an agony of embarrassment in her attempts not to look at it. First she gazed at the gauzy sweeps of her canopy, then toward the window; now at her bedposts and then at her toes. Looking at her toes had the unfortunate result of bringing her into direct eye contact with the man in the mirror, however, and Dion looked away awkwardly. At last she settled on pretending to read a book, her face carefully shielded from the mirror; and began to feel the stiffness in her cheeks relax a little. Dion liked reading, though if poetry were excluded, there weren’t really many books to read for pleasure. Previously popular books, with their old prejudices and ancient enmity, were frowned upon by the king and queen. The castle had once had such books, Dion knew, but with the Fae had come the Cleansing: the washing away of all previous conflicts and anything that could be used to incite unrest. It was necessary. But Dion remembered some of the tales that had been read to her only a few years ago, before the Cleansing, and the new, correct books didn’t hold quite the same sense of wonder or adventure.
By and by, Dion began to notice a golden glow to the edges of her book. It haloed the wrist and the hand that were holding the book aloft, a soft, magical luminosity that made her reach out to touch it with her other hand. It was ethereal but somehow heavy in the air. Dion caught a breath in her throat and dropped her book, her eyes flying at once to the man in the mirror. He was looking right at her, and on the mirror was an embossing in the same gold that formed curlicues up and down the glass. Dion, her mouth as wide open as her eyes, watched in fascination as the curlicues gained form and structure, and became words.
The words in the mirror said: Don’t they teach you about sound?
“Sound is vibration,” said Dion doubtfully, sitting up with difficulty. She wasn’t unsure about what sound was: she was unsure why it mattered. She had been right at first: this was a test. “I haven’t seen– that is, the magic is beautiful. How do you– do you mind telling me how you’re doing that?” He waited so long to respond that she had flushed and added hurriedly: “I’m sorry! Of course, you can’t hear me. How silly of me,” before the golden curlicues reformed to add: What does that tell you?
“You c– can hear me!” said Dion foolishly.
The words in the mirror swirled apart and then together again. I can read your lips. Face the mirror, please.
Dion turned her head a little more. “Well, vibrations. You speak, which makes the air vibrate, and then those vibrations play against– oh! Oh, I know!”
The glass in the mirror was stopping the vibrations from coming through and getting to her ears. That’s why he seemed not to make any sound though his mouth moved. Dion wriggled painfully toward the edge of her bed, a pale reflection of herself grimacing and haltingly stumbling forward in the mirror. The Fae, who somehow seemed more real than she did in that reflection, simply waited. Dion’s ankle ached and throbbed, but she continued doggedly on until she could place her palm on the mirror. She wasn’t yet proficient enough with magic to affect things she wasn’t touching, and she regretted it more than ever now.
The Fae waited for her without impatience. He didn’t seem to be concerned with her pain, though Dion thought that he watched her very carefully, and when she at last laid her palm against the mirror, damp with sweat, he gave her a single, short nod. It said well done, though the mirror didn’t.
Vibrations, thought Dion, and sent a tracery of raw magic into the mirror. In the mirror, the Fae spoke, and she felt the vibration of it against her vein-work of magic. The mirror was too thick to allow the vibrations through, and Dion was wary of softening it. Fae though he might be, she wasn’t sure she wanted him stepping through the mirror along with his voice. She left her tracery of magic where it was, and opened up the thread that linked his side to hers into a small spider-web on her side of the mirror.
It wasn’t until a deep, rough voice said: “Good technique,” that Dion was sure it had worked. The curlicues disappeared, and for the first time she got a really good look at the Fae, unfestooned by gold or seen as a flicker in the corner of her eyes. He was very tall and broad in the shoulders, with a badly scarred face and a huge greatsword that was bigger than Dion. It occurred to her, belatedly, that despite the colour of his skin, he didn’t at all look like a Fae. She’d thought of him as Fae by default, for what could an ordinary man be doing in her mirror, after all?
“Your magic is very strong,” he said.
Dion, both embarrassed and hot with pain, said: “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me,” he said. “You’ll regret it, in time.”
Dion didn’t like to contradict him, but she was quite certain she would always be glad for her skill in magic. Since that thought verged on rebellion, she quickly pushed it away and said: “Are you here to protect me?”
“Yes,” he said. “And no.”
“Are you here to teach me?”
“Yes. And no.”
That was certainly very Fae-like. Dion, daring one more question, asked: “What will you teach me?”
“Two things,” said the Fae. “How to use your magic. And how to die.”
Perhaps the Fae saw her shivers. He said: “You’re not going to die for a long while yet, Dion ferch Alawn. And when you do, it will be for your people.”
“Oh,” said Dion. She straightened her shoulders, though she didn’t stop shivering. “That’s different. That’s all right.”
The Fae studied her, frowning. “Is it?”
“Yes,” Dion said, because it was true. But she did hope that when the time came to die she wouldn’t feel so sick and weak. Aerwn had always been the brave, heroic one. “That’s an honour.”
“I'm Barric,” he said.
Dion, who knew how unlike the Fae it was to offer a name at first meeting, was surprised. She made the Curtsey of High Respect that she had been taught to give the High Fae and pretended that it didn’t hurt her ankle.
Barric took it expressionlessly and said: “We’ll start with the base elements of raw magic. You’ll need to get a book from the library.”
Dion couldn’t help the small, disappointed ‘oh’ that escaped her. She had been attentively studying magic for the last two years, and book spells were easy. It was the freeform doing of magic that she had hoped to be taught. Her Instructor of Magic was reluctant to depart from assigned spells, though Dion didn’t know why.
It was difficult to say exactly how he did it, because he didn’t actually smile, but Dion had the impression that Barric was amused. “Disappointed, Dion ferch Alawn?”
Politeness dictated that she should politely lie. Fae rules said that you didn’t ever lie to the Fae. At length, in an agony of fear, she said: “Yes. Sorry.”
He said: “It’s not a spell book. Book magic is not the kind of knowledge you’ll need.”
“What kind of book is it?”
“Poetry,” said Barric. Dion thought he might be laughing at her again—the Fae were fond of teasing her in small, cutting ways—but there wasn’t a smile in his eyes as there had been before. “The Song of the Broken Sword. Take it early in the morning and put it back before nightfall. Come to me again when you’ve memorised the second canto of the third song.”
He disappeared without another word, and Dion was left to her thoughts and a painful struggle back to bed. The library was patrolled once in the morning and once at nightfall. Dion knew this, but she wondered how Barric did. If he was telling her to make sure the book was back before night patrol, The Song of the Broken Sword must be one of the Forbidden Books: illegal to read but too valuable to destroy. There were still a few of those, despite the Cleansing. A Fae always has a reason for what that which he does. It is not for mortals to question or upbraid, but Dion wasn’t at all keen to break the law. Still, Fae commands are to be obeyed absolutely. Though human eyes may not see to the conclusion, the winding path leads to the same end as the straight path.
Thus it was, a week later, that Dion ferch Alawn committed her first act of deliberate law-breaking. She trembled all the way to the library, started at every curtsey and greeting along the way, and felt so sick once she arrived that she almost disgraced herself behind one of the padded reading benches. She collected a pile of books in which to hide her misdeeds, and then draped the fluffy morning shawl she had brought along around that, wending a carefully aimless path through the stacks to the back corner where all the Forbidden Books were housed. She was especially careful to keep out of sight of the Keeper of the Library, who had a bad habit of treading so silently across the boards that he could be behind a careless patron before they were aware of it. Fortunately, the only other person in the library was one of Dion’s old tutors, the Duc Owain ap Rees. She had always liked Owain, with his wiry, red beard and fierce, bushy eyebrows, though he often frightened her with the sharp fierceness of his eyes. Dion inclined her head to him as he stood and bowed, felt his hard old eyes focus on her, and scuttled away again, taking the long way around to the Forbidden Section.
The Song of the Broken Sword was on the top shelf of the section. Dion, settling her pile of books on the floorboards and tucking her knit wrap back around herself, stared up at it in dismay. She couldn’t drag one of the large book ladders around to the shelf: the Keeper would be sure to notice. Aerwn would have climbed the bookshelves without a second thought, but Dion had never been particularly good with heights, and she began the necessary climb with hands that were even damper than before. The shelves were quite slick with dust by the time she reached the higher shelves, and for every gritty, slippery hand-hold Dion gained, she felt a little sicker. When she was finally able to reach the top shelf, shivering and sticky with sweat, it was some time before she could bring herself to stretch out a hand to take the book. Clinging tight to the shelf with one hand and puffing dust into the air with her quick breaths, Dion used the other hand to tip the book from its place and frantically seized the shelf once again. Now what? The book was thin enough to slip beneath her chin, but Dion wasn’t anxious to let go of the shelf again. She wasn’t even sure she could relax the white-knuckled grip of her fingers enough to climb back down.
Dion took in a shaky breath, let go of the shelf once again, and made a frantic grab for The Song of the Broken Sword. There was the soft swiiip! of dust slipping beneath the fingers that still gripped the shelf, and then she was falling backwards. Dion had no time to cry out, no time to consider that when she hit the floor it would be impossible to hide her perfidy in all the clatter. Someone wiry caught her around the knees and neck as she fell, the book slapping against her face painfully before Dion caught it again. She found herself looking up at Duc Owain ap Rees, who looked back down at her from under beetled, orangey brows, reminding her irresistibly of a large, angry owl.
He hefted her into a more comfortable position and said: “That is a dangerous book to be playing with, Dion ferch Alawn.”
Dion, her face white and stiff, said, “Um,” but the Duc wasn’t listening. He was already striding for the opposite end of the library, Dion still in his arms and The Song of the Broken Sword pressed between them where it had fallen. She thought for a terrified moment that he was taking her to the keeper of the library, but he swept her right out the library doors and didn’t stop walking until they were in one of the upper smoking rooms. There he deposited Dion on a tobacco-scented footstool in front of the fire and stood back with the book in one hand and the other folded behind him as if he were preparing to lecture her.
“Do you know what this book is, princess?”
“Poetry,” said Dion, clutching her fingers together through the holes in her knit wrap. Aerwn wouldn’t have been caught. Aerwn would have slipped in and out like a ghost, eluding both the keeper and Owain ap Rees. Oh, wouldn’t Barric be disappointed in her!
“There are only two copies of this book in existence,” said Owain. “This one was very nearly destroyed in the Cleansing. Do you know why?”
Hesitantly, Dion suggested: “It has sub– subversive themes?”
Owain gave a tough old grin beneath his beard. “You could say that. It’s a special kind of poetry.”
Dion felt a little fizz of excitement in her stomach. “It’s prophecy?”
“Not all of it,” said Owain ap Rees, flipping pages with his thumb. Even before he found the place and opened the book properly, Dion was quite sure where he would open it. Sure enough, one gnarled finger tapped a page on which the second canto of the third song began. “The Avernsian enchantresses wrote this many years ago.”
“What is it about?”
“A fabled broken sword: a relic from the days when Faery and the human world were kept safe from each other. It was said that its forging combined the strongest of Fae and human magic, and that its guarding power was what kept Faery from overgrowing its bounds and taking over the human world as well.”
“How did it break?”
“According to legend, it was believed that pieces of a broken sword would be safer and easier to hide.” The Duc’s moustache bristled with irritation, and he added with something of a snap: “None of our ancestors seem to have thought that a broken sword would lose something of its power in the breaking, and even as the Broken Sword began to fade from history to legend, its power was discovered to be less than hoped. Doors were forced open. Rifts were torn.”
“–and the Guardians began to rise against the Fae,” Dion said, eager to show her knowledge. She had been well-taught in Faery History.
Duc Owain ap Rees stared at her in silence for a moment, his brows lowered. At last he said: “Hfm. Well, perhaps it’s best not to rail on the stupidity of our ancestors. We’ve enough of our own mistakes to lament.”
Dion hunched her shoulders a little against the Duc’s fierce eyebrows, unsure of his meaning and not quite sure if he were angry at her or the Llassarians of time past. She asked: “May I read the book?”
“Of course, Dion ferch Ywain,” said Owain, giving Dion her ancestral name. She looked at him wonderingly and took the book. Her ancestral name was not often mentioned, and she always had the feeling that her parents were ashamed of it. Ywain had been a great persecutor of the Fae. “Read. It’s your right.”
Dion looked down, made uncomfortable by the Duc’s steady regard, and read the second canto of the third song.
Then the borders shall rend
And darkness shall rise
Stealing heat from the sun
And light from the skies.
Yet Ywain’s young daughter
And Coinneach’s son
In forging and binding
the sword shall be one.
The lost shall be found,
The broken rebound.
Then does Coinneach’s son
The broken remake
His hammer and anvil
Consumed for its sake;
And Ywain’s young daughter,
Sword in her hand, gives
her life in the binding
To seal up the land.
The forging made new
Unbroken and true.
So this was what Barric had meant. She was Ywain’s daughter—many, many generations back—and this was how she was to die. Saving the people of two worlds. The thought was less shivery than it had been last week.
“Isn’t it lucky there are two of us?” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud.
Owain’s eyebrows shot up and lowered again. “Do you understand what this means?”
Dion nodded. “When I am queen I will die for my people,” she said. “But Aerwn will be queen after me, so it’s all right.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Owain ap Rees dropped to one knee as he had when he was first presented to Dion, and, taking her hand in his, he kissed it. It was homage due to a queen, not a Princess Heir sitting cross-legged on a footstool with a book in her lap.
“It’s all right,” Dion said again, leaning forward to put her other hand on Owain’s shoulder. “Aerwn will be a better queen, anyway.”
The Duc harrumphed and stood again with a slightly arthritic lurch. “Perhaps. You’d better give that to me when you’re finished with it. You’ve run enough risk for one day: I’ll take it back to the library after lunch.”
“Thank you!” said Dion gladly, her heart buoying up again. She had not been looking forward to going back into the library.
When Barric appeared that night Dion was already waiting for him, her legs crossed and her elbows on her knees, attention brightly fixed on the mirror. Barric took her in, his dark eyes flicking from her toes—curled to stop them from wriggling—to her rumpled curls—a mop that had been pushed so often out of her eyes that it was slightly sideways—and she saw the scars on the right side of his face twitch slightly. From Barric, that was tantamount to a chuckle. Dion didn’t mind Barric laughing at her. It never had the sting she felt from the amused, glittering eyes of her Fae maids.
“I s-stole it!” she said breathlessly, but she couldn’t help the way her eyes flickered nervously around the room. Barric’s scars moved again, and the faint suggestion of lines appeared by his eyes. Dion, aware that she had been indecorously loud, added self-consciously: “I memorised it and it’s back in the library, just like you wanted.”
Barric folded his arms and said: “Repeat it.”
Dion said it back to him with barely a halting word. She loved to be certain and sure of her way, and as dreadful as it was, the certainty of her death when she was queen was almost a comfort. When she was finished Barric gave her a short, slow nod: it meant well done, Dion knew, and she flushed with pleasure.
He asked: “Did you read the rest of it?”
“A little bit of it,” she said uncomfortably. Barric didn’t look angry, but the rest of The Song of the Broken Sword had been less than complimentary to the Fae, and Dion had skipped over large portions of it with a rather scared look around. It was no wonder the book was on the Forbidden shelf. “I read the bit where they used the Broken Sword to seal up the border between Faery and our world. Is that what I have to do?”
It made sense: the Fae fled from the Guardians in their own lands, and by all accounts the Guardians were not a people that would stop at murdering humans as well. If Dion could seal up the border between the two once all the fleeing Fae were safe in the human world, it would save not only the Fae, but the human kingdoms as well.
“When the time comes,” nodded Barric. “It won’t be easy: the shards are spread across the human kingdoms, and you’ll need to find them first.”
“They should have kept them together,” said Dion wisely.
Barric’s dark eyes were amused. “They’re safer apart until the Sword can be reforged. Not everyone has your high ideals, Dion ferch Ywain. There are many ways in which the shards can and have been misused.”
“But when will I know it’s time? If people are being hurt now–”
“You’ll know the time when it comes,” said Barric gently. “You’ve much to learn before you can hope to seal up the land. Don’t be so eager to die for nothing.”
Dion was appointed a new tutor when she turned eight. It came as a surprise to her, surrounded as she was by history tutors, policy advisors, dancing teachers, and civic responsibility instructors. This tutor was Fae like the rest of them, but there the similarities ended. Where her other tutors were cold but reasonably respectful, Tutor Iceflame was cruel, cutting, and entirely merciless. Her purpose seemed to be to teach Dion to look cool and aloof even when she wasn’t cool and aloof. Unfortunately for Dion, she blushed when she was embarrassed, stumbled over her tongue when she was nervous, and hunched her shoulders inward when she wished to be unnoticed. Tutor Iceflame noticed all of this, and took swift, merciless steps to ensure that it was corrected. Dion learned a series of carefully constructed expressions that she practised into front of her mirror under Tutor Iceflame’s cold, narrow gaze, while the tutor snapped questions, insults, and instructions. Her shoulders were bound to a wooden frame that chafed her skin and forced her to stand with her shoulders back, her chin high and graceful. In time she became used to the insults and questions that Iceflame threw at her, and no longer blushed at either. It was more difficult in everyday life, where Dion was never quite sure what to prepare for, but with Iceflame it was possible to arrange herself mentally and put on the right expressions. And so long as Dion was ready for Iceflame every day, she was reasonably certain that nothing worse could happen. She learned to use faces #1-5 for varying degrees of polite interest (and interest was never to appear anything more than polite), faces #6-11 for differing levels of polite surprise, and #12-50 for a range of other approved emotions. She grew weary of her own face in the mirror as it segued between false emotions, but when Tutor Iceflame swept out of the room every day, her glimmering train of satin flying behind her, there was always Barric. Barric with his blessed silence and almost monosyllaballic commands as he taught her the very warp and weft of magic. Barric and his harsh, scarred face that belied his kind eyes. Barric teaching her how to clean a sword. Barric making caustic remarks about Tutor Iceflame. Most of all, Barric listening to Dion’s short, muddled, and unhappy woes. He didn’t become impatient with her like Aerwn did, nor did he mock her fears and sense of duty. He simply listened. And by the time Dion muddled to the end of her troubles, she always knew it wasn’t as bad as it had seemed before. It was Barric she went to when Aerwn first started sneaking out of the castle, Barric who taught her the steps to the latest impossible Faery dance by teaching her several opening footwork gambits of Faery swordplay, Barric who listened when Dion’s first sweetheart preferred Aerwn to Dion.
Dion’s Faery tutors pinched, pulled, ordered, sniffed, and sighed. They were—understandably, Dion knew—impatient and sharp with her shortcomings. They were moulding a queen, and what else was to be expected? But Barric was never short, had a comforting way of saying nothing at all, and occasionally even smiled. Dion grew to love his huge silence.
The year Dion turned eleven, she accidentally let slip that she often talked with a man in her bedroom. It caused a furore in the breakfast room that startled Dion by exploding through the whole castle as guards, magicians, and Fae were sent running to her suite. Dion was kept by the frightened king and queen in the breakfast room until her room was declared to be entirely free of enchantments and men alike. Nevertheless, the king and queen murmured worriedly back and forth out of hearing of the twins at one end of the room. The Fae were less worried. The tutors, their eyes dark and glittering, questioned Dion, and at last pronounced the conclusion that the intruder was a Fae. High Fae, they said, their eyes glittering all the more when they learned that Barric’s skin was as dark as the rich soil of Llassar. A prince in Faery, no doubt: only the Highest of Fae could broach the barrier between the Human World and Faery without help. And only the Highest of Fae had skin of any other colour than the usual, translucent, moonlight white.
Dion didn’t contradict it, but she was quite sure by now that Barric wasn’t Fae. He was too big and solid, and his face was too honestly harsh. The Fae were much more ethereal in their good looks. Besides, Barric had a long, ragged scar that ran across his face from below his left eye and across his nose to pull up the right side of his mouth. None of the Fae Dion knew could bear to leave their faces so: the Fae had a horror of mutilation. But she didn’t tell her questioners any of that, nor did she mention the prophecy or her fated death. She didn’t want to sadden her parents. More importantly, she was aware in a deep, certain kind of way that it was something not to be spoken of, even to the Fae or her parents.
The King and Queen were at last satisfied by the Fae: and why wouldn’t they be? It was an honour for Dion to be so singled out by the High Fae. But Dion noticed that Aerwn, who had grown slightly quieter as she grew older, stared at her with a slight frown between her eyebrows. Aerwn obviously didn’t think it was an honour. Dion herself was merely glad to have the fuss over and done with.
The year that Dion and Aerwn turned thirteen was a lonely one for Dion. She and Barric quarrelled badly and unexpectedly at the start of the year, and she didn’t speak with him for most of the year.
Dion had always known that The Song of the Broken Sword was forbidden and probably treasonous, but although she was certain Barric was no Fae, it had still come as a shock when he began to insinuate, carefully and gently, that the Fae had come to Llassar with overthrow in their minds. Dion had at first felt uncomfortable, and then repulsed. Finally, when Barric went on to point out, even more carefully and gently, her parents’ part in the overthrow, she had become very angry.
Her painstakingly learned expressions forgotten in a flush of anger, Dion stood abruptly and said: “You’re a l-liar! You won’t say those things about my parents! I w-won’t listen!” She had heard him calling after her, and she still saw him briefly every now and then—even heard a word or two before she hurried away—but she had never stayed for long enough to be sure.
Labouring under Tutor Iceflame’s instructions without even the quiet comfort of Barric’s companionship afterwards was gruelling work, and Dion saw her own face reflected hollowly back at her as she practised in the mirror, growing thinner and more solemn as the year progressed. Despite that, she made sure that she was away from the mirror when Iceflame left. She didn’t want to run the risk of seeing Barric again. She had the feeling that she would forgive him if he asked her to, and she didn’t think it was right to do so.
Adding to Dion’s loneliness was the fact that Aerwn was gone for most of the year. She had begun it by running away from the castle and had been caught trying to sneak out of Harlech at the changing of the watch that night. Why she would do such a thing puzzled Dion exceedingly, but she wasn’t given the chance to ask her sister about it. The King and Queen sent Aerwn away quickly and quietly, though Dion was never told where.
“Somewhere quiet,” said the Queen, when Dion finally got up the courage to ask. “She needs peace and quiet, darling. Her mind is disordered. She always was inclined to be excited, and the Fae know what they’re doing.”
Wherever it was that she went, Aerwn was gone for the better part of ten months, and when she came back Dion found that her sister wasn’t quite there, exactly. Not right away. Their parents wouldn’t allow Dion to see Aerwn alone, and when she saw her sister at meals, Aerwn was pale and silent, refusing to look anyone in the eye. She wouldn’t respond to conversation, and after a little while Dion stopped trying to talk to her.
At last, when it seemed that Aerwn was never to emerge from her suite unaccompanied by two Fae maids, and that Dion was never to be allowed in to see her, Dion took matters into her own hands. Perhaps it was the corrupting result of book-stealing that made her so willing to consider disobedience. Perhaps it was simply Aerwn’s shuttered eyes, which had once been so bright and open. Whatever the reason, Dion rose from her bed one morning and methodically made a back door through to her sister’s suite. It was a simple enough matter: their bathing chambers shared a common wall, through which Dion sometimes heard faint noises when Aerwn was being particularly difficult. The practical magic she had been learning from Barric had been so well absorbed that it was the work of only a few minutes to convince part of the wall that it wasn’t quite solid, and to construct a doorway to hold up the rest of the wall around the weakened part. Dion, moving carefully through the softened part of the wall, found herself in Aerwn’s ablutions chamber without feeling that she had done something so very unusual.
Aerwn was sitting in her window when Dion stole softly into the main room of her suite. Aerwn’s feet were bare and she was dressed only in a shift, her side pressed against the glass and her eyes unfocused on the vista below.
“You’ll get sick,” Dion said, fetching her sister’s slippers.
Aerwn’s head jerked around in swift, sharp fright, her feet shifting beneath her in a moment. She looked ready to leap for Dion’s throat. Then a flash of recognition came to her eyes, and they brightened in the first sign of real emotion Dion had seen from her sister in the month since she’d returned home.
“You shouldn’t be in here,” Aerwn said, tugging on her slippers. “I’m delicate, didn’t you hear?”
“Delicate,” said Dion. “Is that what it is?”
“No,” said Aerwn, and Dion wasn’t quite sure whether she was serious or laughing. “I’m addled. You can see it in the whites of my eyes. They’ve magicked my windows, Di.”
Dion glanced at the windows, but they were simply glass and filigree. She didn’t like to tell Aerwn that, because it was this kind of talk that had led to Aerwn being sent away in the first place, and she wasn’t quite sure that Aerwn was looking well again, despite her smile.
Aerwn slipped down from the window-embrasure, her feet light on the carpet, and clutched at Dion’s hand. “You see it, don’t you, Di? I can’t open ’em. They’ve magicked ’em shut so that I can’t get out.”
“I can’t see anything,” Dion said reluctantly. She was beginning to think this visit was a rather bad mistake. “There’s nothing there, Aerwn.”
Her sister looked at her narrowly for a few charged moments, and then, to Dion’s relief, nodded. “All right,” she said. “If you say so, I believe you. You’re the one with magic, and you wouldn’t lie to me.”
Dion let out a tiny breath of relief. “I missed you,” she said. “You’ve been gone for so long.”
“I think I missed you,” said Aerwn, her eyes losing focus. “Things got a bit cloudy for a while in the middle, but I remember thinking about you. Dee, I can’t get out of the windows. They’re still playing tricks on me. Maybe it’s me. Did they put a spell on me?”
Dion started to say “There isn’t a spell on you”, but stopped. There was a spell on Aerwn. It was clinging and beautiful and almost invisible. It looked a little like the misdirection magic that Barric had taught her. She said: “Show me. Try to open the window.”
Aerwn, her eyes blessedly attentive again, tried to open the window. Somehow her hands managed to slide past the latch every time she tried to turn it, and even when Dion turned it for her, she couldn’t manage to press her hands against the glass to shove it open.
Dion, who had been watching with a deep furrow between her brows, said: “Who did this to you?”
Aerwn shrugged. “Any one of ’em could have done it. They like playing with me. For all I know, it could have been one of the maids.”
“We should tell Mother and Father,” said Dion, a shaking anger growing in her. “Have both of your maids dismissed.”
Aerwn grew pale. “No!”
“But if–”
“I said no!” Dion took a step back, feeling slapped, and her sister said gruffly: “You don’t understand, Dee. They’ll just send someone worse.”
“Who is they?” demanded Dion in despair. It was so like Aerwn to inflate a nasty joke into something frightening and fictitious.
“Never mind,” said Aerwn, her eyes once more shuttered. “Can you get it off me?”
Dion struggled with words that wouldn’t come, and finally said: “Yes. Yes, all right.” She studied the enchantment in all its clever, glittering beauty, her fingers curled in the soft weaving of her morning wrap. It didn’t seem to have a beginning or an end, almost as if someone had made a fine diamond-net and thrown it over Aerwn in passing. Dion lifted it carefully, wary of the sharp diamond edges, and threw it fastidiously into one corner of Aerwn’s suite when it had cleared her sister’s head. It glittered there for a moment and then seemed to melt away. Aerwn, aware from Dion’s tossing motion that she was free, immediately turned back to the window and opened it. When the breeze sneaked in, cool and wet, she smiled. Dion felt rather sadly that she’d been forgotten, but then Aerwn put her back to the window to smile at her. It was a real, lively, familiar smile.
“Well now!” she said. “I feel much better!”
“If someone is playing tricks on you, you really should mention it to Mother and Father,” said Dion, willing to give it one more chance. Aerwn always did as she pleased, of course, but it couldn’t hurt to try again.
“Never mind that now,” said Aerwn. “I’ll just have to be more careful. You’ve been learning more magic, haven’t you? Is your imaginary friend still visiting you?”
“Not more, just different,” said Dion, and added uncomfortably: “He’s not imaginary.”
“I’ve never seen him,” Aerwn said, her eyes dancing. She was becoming swiftly more like the Aerwn that Dion had grown up with. Dion wondered exactly what else there had been in that spell, and regretted that she couldn’t now examine it properly. “Just who has seen him, I’d like to know? Apart from you? And they say I’m crackers!”
Dion couldn’t help laughing. “No one says you’re crackers!”
“Not in so many words,” said Aerwn cheerfully. “No, they’re cleverer than that. Just a little word here and there and off you go to have your head fixed. Oh, don’t get that disapproving look, Dee; I’ll be good. Look, if you’ve been practising your magic, d’you think you can make me a handy little spell?”
“What sort of spell?” Dion said cautiously. She knew Aerwn too well.
“Nothing naughty,” said Aerwn. “Do you remember those fighters we saw when we were four? The ones they rubbed down with oil so that they could barely grapple?”
Dion chewed her bottom lip, her thoughts turning and sparking. “I can make a spell like that. It’ll take a few days.”
“All right,” Aerwn said. “Oh b– I mean bother! That’s the maids at the door: if you stay here they’ll tell Mother. I suppose you can get back in again when the spell’s done?”
Dion nodded.
“All right. Don’t forget about it,” said Aerwn. She hugged Dion briefly, and Dion felt her tremble slightly as she said: “Thanks, Dee.”
It would have been easier to make the spell that Aerwn wanted if she could discuss it with Barric, Dion knew. She didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she very much missed him—had done so since her anger had died the first day—and it was only by remembering the things Barric had said about her parents that she held firm to her conviction and avoided her mirror. She wouldn’t be friends with someone who spoke of her parents in such a manner. She wouldn’t ask such a person for help with a spell, and she certainly wouldn’t keep looking over at her mirror and wondering why she hadn’t seen scrap nor shadow of Barric in it for the last few days. He had been trying to catch her attention for months now, and though Dion was quite determined that she wasn’t going to associate with him any longer, she felt somehow abandoned; as if Barric and not she had been the one to break things off.
Dion pushed away the thought and went back to her spell. It was useless to think about Barric, and worse than useless to miss him. She would create the spell by herself, and then she would attend her lessons like a proper heir: living as well as she could until the time came to die. Surely if she kept practising, she would be prepared when the time came to reforge the Broken Sword. If only there hadn’t been a fire in the library last year! Dion would have liked to read the whole of The Song of the Broken Sword, not just the bits and pieces around second canto of the third song. Beyond the certainty that there were seven shards to gather and the almost-certainty that the Binding would need to take place in Avernse where the original Binding had happened, there was still a great deal she didn’t know about the Broken Sword. Dion found, amongst all her regrets, one that Avernse and Llassar were not on better terms: the king would never allow her to make a visit to Avernse. There was no chance that Dion would ever be able to study the only remaining copy of The Song of the Broken Sword in existence. If Avernse had been willing to succour the Fae, there would have been no impediment. Unfortunately, she couldn’t even visit Montalier, which was rumoured to have strong ties to Avernse, because the Montalierans had also refused to help the Fae by so much as a house in which to stay. Alawn ap Fane had waxed loud and eloquent in his disapprobation of both countries. No, Dion was on her own.
The next day, Dion took herself to the gardens. While Aerwn took to the exciting and forbidden streets of Harlech to sate her dissatisfaction with life, Dion found peace and solace in the castle gardens. No one but royalty was allowed in the copses and carefully maintained hedges between the hours of noon and early tea, and when Dion was feeling particularly put upon she tended to escape into the quiet greenery. It was the only place she could depend upon being thoroughly alone: even the Fae didn’t visit the gardens. In fact, unusually enough for a people who loved nature in all its forms, they avoided them assiduously even in the allowed hours. The gardens, in fact, were a lot like Barric: large and quiet and peaceful.
“No!” said Dion aloud, startling herself. Here she was thinking of Barric again! And her carefully constructed spell still wouldn’t work! She simply had to try harder.
A shadow fell over her, cool and sudden, and Dion sprang from her stone seat in some confusion. But when she turned to see who had approached her, it wasn’t, as she had expected, either her mother or her father. It was Barric. Barric in flesh and blood, and far bigger than she’d ever realised. In person, she could fairly feel the power of his magic, distinctly unfamiliar. It wasn’t Fae, but neither did it seem quite human.
Dion, her eyes wide and startled, automatically offered her hand, and with one knee to the ground Barric lowered his forehead to her fingers in the old manner– a supplicant seeking pardon.
“Oh, don’t!” she protested.
Barric didn’t move, didn’t so much as raise his head. He said: “Forgive me.”
“Oh no, no, no!” said Dion, and threw her arms around his neck. “Don’t, Barric! What are you doing here? How are you here? I’m sorry– I’m so sorry– but–”
Barric picked her up and hugged her in return. Being hugged by Barric was like being lightly crushed in a large, warm vice. Dion had the feeling that he was trying to be careful not to break her. She said, for the second time in as many days: “I missed you.”
Barric put her back down, his big hands covering each of her arms from elbow to shoulder. “I can stay only briefly,” he said, and there was an urgency in his eyes that made Dion feel ashamed of herself. “There is too much to learn and too little time. We won’t speak of your parents again, but we must continue.”
“I will,” Dion promised. “I mean, yes, we’ll keep going. I’m sorry– but no, I’m not–”
Barric nodded, with a slight upward pull of his scar. “I understand.”
“You don’t know them,” said Dion, tumbling into speech. “You don’t, Barric, or you wouldn’t think– you couldn’t think–”
“Peace,” said Barric. “I’ve promised. I won’t speak of them.”
There was nothing to be dissatisfied about in that, but Dion found herself looking rather searchingly at him. Barric seemed to notice, and though his scar jumped a little he said quietly: “Trust me?”
“I do,” Dion said: and she did, so what was there to worry her?
Life was pleasanter with Barric in it again. And when Barric wasn’t there, Aerwn was: lovable, mad, and unexpected. She disrupted Dion’s state lessons and made faces at her when Dion was trying to look interested in what visiting princes and dignitaries thought about the rate of exchange between Llassarian pennies and Illisrian drachs. She had accepted the spell that Dion finally crafted with a wholly speculative gleam to her eye that made Dion wonder exactly why she wanted a spell that would slough off all other magic, and refused to speak any more about it. When Dion tried to make Aerwn be serious, Aerwn joked her out of her seriousness. She told dreadful stories, and Dion could never be quite certain if she was lying or not, because Aerwn had the most solemn face when she was spouting the most ridiculous nonsense. And as they grew older Aerwn’s habit of saying odd, uncomfortable things and making suggestions that made no sense to the more honest Dion grew even more prevalent. It was perhaps because of these differences rather than in spite of them that the two sisters only drew closer as they grew older. There was no one else like Aerwn.
It didn’t really occur to Dion until she was fifteen that there was a difference between Aerwn when she was with Dion and Aerwn when she was with their parents. It was just another facet of Aerwn’s slightly duplicitous nature, that need to play a part or make fun of whomever she was with. It wasn’t until the night that Aerwn climbed in through Dion’s bedroom window bleeding and bruised, with a look in her eyes that Dion didn’t understand, that she saw the difference. Aerwn had always sneaked out of the castle and into Harlech—it was one of her princessly rebellions—but she had never come home bleeding before. She wouldn’t let Dion call a Fae maid or do anything except heal the sluggishly bleeding wound. Her blood-soaked clothes and pale face suggested that she had already bled quite significantly, and by the time Dion had healed the wound with shaking fingers, Aerwn was half-fainting, half-sleeping on Dion’s bed. Confused, worried, and frightened, Dion had curled under the covers with her sister as if they were three again, and woke in the morning to find Aerwn already gone.
Aerwn was perfectly cheerful and inclined to be dismissive with Dion anxiously sought her out the next day, laughing away her sister’s fears and questions. When Dion went to her parents with the worried suspicion that Aerwn was getting into dangerous scrapes, she found that her parents were very well aware her sister still often slipped out of the castle.
“It’s nothing to worry about, dear one,” said her mother. “I was wild enough myself as a child. A second princess has nothing else to occupy her time but making mischief, and so long as she takes a Fae maid with her, she can’t be otherwise than safe.”
“She was bleeding, Mother.”
King Alawn ap Fane smiled at Dion indulgently. “She told us she’d frightened you with some prank or other, perilous child that she is! You know how she is, Dion: any mischief for a laugh. Don’t worry your mind about it. She’ll calm when she marries.”
Dion, who was absolutely certain that Aerwn had not been counterfeiting either injury or faint, tried to convince them otherwise, but her parents were not inclined to believe her. And the next time they sat together as a family she watched Aerwn more critically, not as a fond sister but as an impartial observer. Where Aerwn with Dion was laughing but sometimes sombre, Aerwn with her parents was always bright, always laughing; while with Dion she was clever and even sometimes thoughtful, when with her parents, Aerwn was always bubbling and never deep enough to have a real conversation. With Dion she talked frowningly of unrest in Illisr and skirmishes in Montalier. With her parents she mouthed frothy popular opinions and made fun of the staid old politicians of the old, pre-Fae days.
It occurred to Dion for the first time that Aerwn was playing a game, wearing a laughing, silly mask, and that if she was not being honest with her parents, neither was she being quite honest with Dion. It made her even more cautious about believing everything Aerwn said, and though she didn’t begin to love her sister any less, she did feel that some distance had been made between the two of them– and that the distance wasn’t of her own making.