In Which the Team Buries a Village
The count had given them more clothes for the journey; thick tunics, woolen pants, and boots thick and sturdy. Despite the cold morning, West insisted on wearing nothing else but his fur cloak, which he had tied around his neck, though he finally agreed to put on pants after Zoe had drawn him aside to insist. More supplies had been added to their horses’ packs: small tents, first aid kits, a few basic utensils. The map they requested had been provided and, by unspoken agreement, entrusted to Loki for safekeeping.
The horses whinnied with delight upon seeing Ken. They cantered out from the stables one by one, bending front legs and dipping their heads to bow.
“I’m surprised you all still remember me,” Ken murmured, patting each fondly on the neck. He caught the astonished look on Tala’s face and grinned. “Mum’s ranch breeds them all over Avalon, and they don’t easily forget a face.”
“You understand them?”
“Not in the same way we use language, no. It’s just the little things you pick up if you spend enough time with them. I grew up on a farm, so that’s basically been my life. Got riding experience? No? You ought to get Lass, then. You’ll take care of Tala here, won’t you, Lass?” The mare, a pure white thoroughbred, neighed her agreement.
“Can you really recognize a horse by face?” Zoe asked, interested.
“Can you recognize people by face?”
“That’s different, Ken.”
“Not to me.”
“May the promise of spring speed your path, Nephew, and those of your companions.” The count was tired and pale, and the dark clothes he wore made his expression sallow. “Even with all this frost, it shouldn’t take you more than two weeks to reach Lyonesse. The sooner you reach Maidenkeep, the sooner the frost will lift from the land. The Dame predicted hard roads and cold nights for us all. For once, do not let her foretelling come to pass.”
“We’ll do our best,” West promised, tears in his eyes.
“Lady Fairfax told me about this Emerald Act that the Royal States of America had passed. That they might gain the most powerful of our spelltech is a frightening thought. That was what King Ivan feared most of all.”
“They’ll never get it,” Alex said. “Not while I’m alive.”
Surprisingly, it was Cole who had the most trouble with their mounts. The horses began to bray uncontrollably, rearing up in terror when Cole stepped inside the stables, and it took several minutes after he’d stepped back to pacify the group. One of the larger stallions selected as his ride, an intimidating and experienced warhorse who had, according to the count, seen his share of hard battles, refused to go near him, his eyes rolling up in fright whenever the boy approached.
“I apologize. I can’t seem to understand why…” the count began, but Cole shook his head.
“Horses don’t like me. I can move faster without one.”
“The woods in these places are dangerous on foot, Sir Nottingham. Especially with winter about.”
“Woods don’t frighten me, Lord Tintagel,” Cole said, and a faint half-smile crossed his dark, normally stolid face.
“Will you be needing anything, then, Sir Nottingham?” Alex asked politely.
For a moment, something passed between them—mutual understanding, or a silent acknowledgment of their previous agreement, perhaps. Had Tala not borne witness to their pact from the night before, she would not have noticed the odd formality. Cole shook his head. “All I’ll be needing is this.” His hands strayed to the scythe tucked into the scabbard at his hip. “I’ll catch up eventually.”
“No water?” Zoe asked dryly. “I’ve heard that the Nottinghams could go months with nothing but the dead to power them, but I didn’t realize it was meant to be literal.”
“Ice is good enough a water source for me,” the boy said calmly. “And if there is any game left in these woods, I’ll find it. If I find some to spare, I’ll send them your way, Carlisle.”
“You can freeze to death for all I care,” Zoe grumbled, turning to saddle her horse. “Unfortunately, I’m in charge. We don’t know what else is in those woods, and I’m not explaining to the Cheshire why we abandoned you without good reason.” She paused. “Whether or not he sent you in the first place. We’ll wait till all the horses grow accustomed to your presence before riding out.”
Cole shrugged.
“How about a compromise?” Ken handed Cole a small vial. “Here. Add a few drops of these to your clothes. It’s a calming spell with some chamomile mixed in. It calms horses down quickly.”
“It smells like flowers.”
“You can either stink of daisies, or learn to run faster than a stallion, mate. Your choice.” Ken trotted back to the rest of the group. “We could have gotten rid of some very unwanted baggage if you’d just set him loose, you know,” he said quietly as he prepared to mount his own horse, a dappled gray stallion.
“I’d rather keep a close eye on him here than have him stir up trouble once he’s out of sight.”
“I knew you’d say that.” Ken sighed. “The horses aren’t going to like it.”
“They’ll get used to it in time. Have them stay upwind of him.”
“If he seriously thinks he can outrun us on foot, I’ll eat my horse,” Ken muttered, swinging up on his mount with practiced ease.
The stallion nickered, looking offended.
“It’s just a figure of speech. You haven’t been hanging around Loki, by any chance?”
“Thanks,” Loki said, droll, from atop their own horse.
“No charge.”
The stallion neighed.
Lass was docile enough, but it would take Tala a while to get used to the saddle before they could even start cantering. Like Cole, the firebird made the other horses skittish, though to a lesser degree. It took some more coaxing from Kensington to finally calm the mounts, and a little longer for Alex to convince the firebird to stay inside his saddlebag, safely hidden from view.
The firebird disapproved of these new arrangements and sulked inside the large burlap sack, making small noises of discontent every now and then to let Alex know just what it thought about the whole matter. “We don’t want people running around screaming about firebirds coming to burn their villages and kidnap their virgins,” Ken told the bulging saddlebag, which was quivering with indignation.
“Firebirds don’t burn villages and kidnap virgins, Ken,” Zoe said. “That’s a dragon. The stereotype of a dragon.”
“You know what I mean. To the average villager, firebirds are just dragons with feathers and better-smelling breath.”
The firebird snorted.
“If there are any surviving villages left,” Loki corrected soberly. “It doesn’t look good.”
“Did that happen a lot?” Tala asked. “Dragons attacking people, I mean.”
Zoe nodded. “Hundreds of years ago. Though I’d say they have more reasons to attack us than we have to attack them. Dragons are lonely creatures, and they avoid human settlements whenever they can. It’s people who keep wanting to hunt them down. Avalon tried to start dragon sanctuaries in later years, but by then it was too late.”
“My ancestors used to offer handsome rewards for dragon bone,” Alex added. “Usually in exchange for their daughters’ hands in marriage. Their fangs and teeth would be grounded down to powder and sold for their medicinal value, and for a while it was prized more than gold. By the time laws were instituted to protect dragons, most had already been hunted down to extinction. The British even started a war with Avalon, trying to get them to lift those restrictions.”
“We kicked their buttholes,” West affirmed.
Alex smiled briefly. “They were fresh off the success of their second opium war, but unlike China, we had certain advantages. We haven’t always done the right thing in the past. We were good at protecting Avalonian magic from outsiders, but not always the creatures we were supposed to care for.”
“I blame us,” Ken said. “Wanna be known far and wide as a great warrior? Slay a dragon! Wanna impress the princess two kingdoms down from yours? Slay a dragon! Wanna show you’ve got better claims to the crown than the despot in power? Slay a flipping dragon! Genocide, all packaged up as feats of bravery—sometimes people can be pretty hateful, you know? No one’s seen any of them since the Burn.”
“The Burn?”
“Huge fight, between Peter Pan and Hook, a long time ago. Twelfth century or something. No one’s really sure what happened, but it caused a magical explosion that killed them both and left a desert that separated Esopia from all the other regions of Avalon. It’s why the Scourge was able to destroy Neverlaaaa…” Ken sputtered and coughed, looking ashamed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…”
“That’s okay,” Tala said, despite flinching herself. “What happened next?”
“Well, most dragons used to reside in Neverland. They went missing after that. The fires are still burning around that isle since the twelfth century, and no one’s been able to cross it.”
“That’s the problem,” Zoe said dryly. “To be a hero, you need a bad guy. And when there are no bad guys available, you wind up forcing that role on something or someone people already irrationally fear. If you need a villain, sometimes all you need is a good long look in the mirror—but most people aren’t that self-aware.” She looked down at Alex’s bag. “And while I don’t think anyone’s going to freak out at the sight of a pretty firebird, I agree we shouldn’t advertise having it around, to be on the safe side. You fine with that?”
Alex’s saddlebag cooed, slightly appeased.
It was nearly noon by the time they made their final farewells and set off. The Dame, Tala was quick to notice, did not see them off.
The castle soon receded into the distance, tall trees obscuring it from her vision. They were moving at a faster rate than they had on foot, but after an hour of riding she was soon sore from being constantly bounced around her saddle. She’d never ridden a horse that wasn’t attached to a carousel before, and she wasn’t sure if she could last several more days like this.
Cole’s mount was still skittish as well, and required constant soothing from Ken before it finally relaxed. “He’s acting like he’s got a wolf or an ogre on his back,” the boy grumbled.
Tala turned to watch Cole, who was trailing a few dozen meters behind them. The scent of daisies wafted out from his direction; Ken had finally convinced him to wear the potion. “Are wolves nightwalkers too?”
“Are you familiar with the Red Hood legend?” Zoe asked.
Tala shook her head.
“Fierce warrior who lived around the same time as Avenant Charming. They called her the Red Hood for her red-gold hair and the red mantle she always wore in battle. She fell in love with the wolf king—they called him that because he was so good at communicating with wolves that they considered him a part of their pack.”
Tala started.
“What happened to him?” Loki asked.
“Apparently, his desire for power corrupted him.” Zoe shrugged. “He turned against the kingdoms and betrayed Red Hood, left her to die. It’s not a happy ending.”
“The Dame called Cole a wolf king,” Tala said without thinking.
“I don’t remember her saying that at dinner,” West remarked.
Tala winced, although Cole was out of earshot. So was Alex, riding up ahead with Loki. “I, uh, couldn’t sleep last night. I saw Cole in the hall, talking to the Dame.” That much was true.
“I don’t get it,” West said. “Does that mean Cole’s the traitor the Dame mentioned?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Ken frowned. “Now that I think about it, the plan did start going wrong almost as soon as he showed up, didn’t it? Like that ogre attack.”
“He killed one of the ogres.”
“That could be some kind of trick to gain our trust.”
“Let’s not speculate without proof, Ken,” Zoe said severely.
“You’re defending him now, Zo?”
“I have all the proof I need that he’s a jackass, but not enough for everything else. Let’s not make this worse than it already is.”
“But why would he want to harm any of us?” Tala asked, to no reply.
The cloak the count had provided took most of the cold away, but it couldn’t take away the bleak landscape. Nothing but endless snowdrifts and dead trees met them, spiraling on for miles ahead. Alex had been quiet when they started out, and his face grew angrier and more anguished with every passing minute. Tala wanted to reach out and reassure him, but he was riding a little too quickly for her to catch up on her placid but slow-plodding mare.
“You can probably tell that none of us trust Nottingham,” Ken said. “Most people tend not to trust the Nottinghams, anyway. Exhibit A: that ugly scythe he likes to lug around, forged from ogre’s blood and shades and all other buggers we probably don’t even know the names of. No other segen’s been forged that way, and some people think the taint could influence its wielders. Story goes that Gravekeeper can summon nightwalkers.”
“I’ve seen him fight many times before,” Zoe admitted grudgingly. “He didn’t summon any nightwalkers, but he’s just as good as Tristan.”
“Zoe’s fiancé,” West reminded Tala.
“He’s not my fiancé.”
Ken snorted. “They say the Nottinghams can talk to wolves almost from birth too. He’s always been a prat, and Dad says William Nottingham’s the same way. Always looking down his nose at everyone else. Zoe starts screeching like a barn owl every time she’s forced to share a class with him.”
Zoe glared at him.
“With good reason,” Ken hastily amended. “Nottingham being her fiancé’s mortal enemy and all.”
“For the last time, he is not my fiancé.”
“Father said the Nottinghams dabble in the darker magicks,” West said. “But Uncle Hiram seems to think they’re all right.”
“His castle’s pretty isolated,” Ken pointed out. “Heck, the whole country’s been isolated. I don’t think he knows much about what goes on beyond his borders anymore.”
“Well, I’d rather not start pointing fingers,” Zoe said. “Not without evidence, and no matter what the Dame said.”
“I want to go faster,” Alex said abruptly. They had left the woods and were now riding across wide plains, the snow piled nearly as high as their horses’ knees. He pointed at something in the distance. “That’s a village, isn’t it?”
“We need to be careful, Your Highness,” Zoe cautioned. “We don’t know what’s in there.”
“Of course I know what’s in there!” Alex exploded. “It’s a damn village! There’ll be people in it!”
“Alex!” Tala admonished.
“We’ll take a look if you’d like,” Zoe agreed. “But be careful where you put your horse’s hooves down. Loki told me earlier that they’d seen evidence of tra—”
Alex leaned forward and dug his heels into his horse’s sides. The startled stallion bolted forward, straight on toward the hill.
Ken swore furiously and took off after him, Loki close behind. “Stop!” the boy commanded, in a loud strident voice, and Alex’s steed obeyed, halting abruptly in its tracks and remaining perfectly still.
“That fool!” Zoe burst out furiously.
Both Ken’s and Loki’s horses had caught up to Alex; after a minute, Ken was leading them back to the group. Alex’s horse was obedient, but its rider was fuming. He tugged hard at the reins, trying to turn back, but the stallion refused to listen.
“What are you doing?” Zoe snapped.
“Don’t take that tone with me,” Alex shot back. “I’m your liege! You’re supposed to obey me!”
“Sure. But until we reach Lyonesse, we’re in charge. Your safety is our responsibility, and that includes deciding where and when to move. Look around you, Your Highness. What do you see?”
“An open field. Snow on the ground isn’t going to kill me.”
“No, but what’s been lying underneath the snow will. Loki found baited traps near the woods. There’s not a lot of animals here anymore, but that doesn’t mean people have retrieved their snares. Your horse could have stumbled onto one and broken its leg. Worse, it could have thrown you off, or even trampled you to death if it was spooked enough.”
“The villagers are my subjects,” Alex seethed. “They’ve waited twelve years for me to push back this winter.”
“Your High—”
“They’re my subjects!” the prince shouted. “I’m supposed to protect them! We were all supposed to protect them! I’m not going to let them wait another hour more!”
“Alex!” Tala yelled.
The boy stopped; his breath came in rapid bursts, his eyes dilated. “I can’t do this,” he spat out around gritted teeth. “I can’t… Being here in Avalon, seeing what she did to my kingdom. The destruction, the complete apathy of nearly everyone else outside of it, the absence of everything that I remember…I can’t.”
“Your Highness,” Zoe tried again. “I understand, but we have to make sure you—”
“Maybe if you’d used the time you spent dating a Locksley to come up with a better escape plan instead, we wouldn’t even be in this mess,” Alex snapped.
“That was uncalled for, Alex!” Tala burst out while Zoe looked shocked.
Alex turned away, stalking toward a nearby withered tree. The firebird poked its head out of the bag, watching him leave before turning beseeching eyes toward the group.
“He’s still not taking being in Avalon well, I’m guessing,” West said.
“I’m sorry,” Tala said. “I don’t know why he’s being an idiot.”
“It’s okay,” Zoe said quietly. “He hasn’t set foot here since he was a child, and it’s giving rise to a lot of emotions he might not be ready for yet.”
From the direction of the tree came a long howl of frustration and anger, followed swiftly by a loud bone-cracking thump.
Tala groaned, struggling to get off her horse. “Look, let me talk to him. I’ve known him longer, and he’ll listen to me. I hope.”
“Thanks,” Ken said. “But you’re staying,” he informed the firebird, who looked primed to follow.
The firebird scowled and bleated.
“Hey, don’t take that tone with me. You might be some legendary creature of myth, but you gotta learn to give people their privacy.”
Alex was still nursing his hand, glaring at the tree like it had punched him first when Tala approached. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I lost my head back there.”
“Yeah, and you’ll be losing more things if you don’t rein in your temper. Let me see if you broke it.”
“It’s not,” he muttered, but allowed her a look. The knuckles were tinged blue, the rest of his fist reddened, but that seemed the extent of it. Alex was still staring out into the distance, at the faint silhouette of the village up ahead.
“Do you really want to go and see what’s happened to it?” Tala asked gently.
Alex’s lips twisted. “I do and I don’t. The count’s right. I…don’t know what I’m going to find there. I don’t want to be here, Tally.”
“But I thought the whole purpose was to come back?”
“Not like this. I wanted to come back as a liberator, leading an army with a bag full of spells that could beat back the frost and lift the curse. Not like this. Not like some vagabond who got past the barrier because of some unexpected fluke.” Alex’s tone was desperate. “How can I face any survivors here and tell them I still don’t have the answers?”
Tala squeezed his arm. “I don’t know as much about this as you or my parents or Lola Urduja do, but they’re a lot cleverer than us. If they or the Cheshire had gone years without knowing how to break the curse, then I think liberation is gonna take a lot longer than you think. It could be decades before we would have found a way in. Maybe the firebird brought us here for a reason. Maybe this is how we get to free them.”
Alex looked down at his hand. “Wanna know the irony? I’ve never met the Cheshire. All our communications have been through encrypted, untraceable software he’s given me. He’s been responsible for keeping me alive for this long. I don’t know if I can do this on my own without his advice.”
“We’re not exactly the Cheshire, but if it’s any consolation, you’ve got us.”
“Yeah. I’ve got you. I want to get to Maidenkeep. That’s it. Once we get to Maidenkeep, I can fix everything.”
“How?”
“Just trust me on this, okay?” A pause. “You know, there was an ancestor of mine, Queen Talia, that was hit by a death curse once. Her priestesses couldn’t undo it, so they mitigated it instead, changed it into a sleeping curse to buy them enough time to find a cure. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do, trying to mitigate all the damage here that I can see.”
“You also have to accept that you might not be able to, though.”
“I know.” He hesitated again. “Sorry. I’m gonna go apologize. But we’re going to that village. If I have to be here, then at least let me see with my own eyes what the people here had suffered through for my family.”
* * *
They didn’t stay long. What few houses had survived the storm were locked inside blocks of ice, frozen completely solid.
It was so cold that it looked like the people were only sleeping. The frost had come upon them almost a dozen years ago, Tala thought, but it could have just been yesterday.
Zoe stifled a sob. “She’s going to pay,” Ken said tersely, fiercely. “She has to.”
Carefully, Alex stepped past the fallen bodies. He stopped before a young girl who couldn’t have been more than three years old, layers of snow piling around her like a shroud. He bent down and gently brushed a wayward lock of hair from her forehead. When he took his hand away and stood again, something sparkled down his fingers and traced their way down the young girl’s face, like tiny snowflakes.
“Is there anything around,” he said, “that could be used as a shovel?”
It took a few hours. Alex had refused to bury them completely, insisted on leaving their faces and chests exposed. It was an odd request, but as it wouldn’t change anything, nobody protested. When Cole was done hefting the last of the snow into place, Alex glanced wearily at the unmoving figures on the ground, carefully tucked into the layers of snow. The firebird folded itself onto his shoulder and watched him, cooing softly. Alex reached up without thinking and patted it on the neck.
“It was quick,” Loki said somberly. “No pain. They didn’t spend years slowly starving to death.”
“It’s something, right?” Ken asked. “Guys, tell me it’s at least something.”
Loki bowed their head, tears unashamedly falling. Zoe was still crying, and Tala dashed angrily at her eyes with the back of her hand.
West sat beside one of the small graves, lifted his head to the sky, and sang mournfully for a while, in a language Tala didn’t need to understand. He had a beautiful voice and it seemed, if only for a moment, that the falling snow around them was tempered, halting long enough to listen.
When the song ended, Alex turned. His face was wet with tears.
“Let’s go,” he said.