Heir of Scars I: Parts 1-8 (25 page)

Fury of Wind and Light

S
omehow, something changed in what and how Adria was permitted to study. A young page knocked upon her door one morning, silently delivering a message to Kaye. Kaye read it with some interest before refolding it and returning it to the boy.

“Hm,” she said simply, then turned to where Adria sat finishing her breakfast toasts. “It appears your highness is summoned to the Hall of Arms this morning.”

This was to become an occasional, if not common occurrence. One page or another at the door with a message, Kaye shaking her head frowning, and Adria following the boy down the stair and halfway across the keep.

And though Adria was not permitted to openly practice general arms among the courtier’s sons, she nonetheless was allowed a chair set upon the gallery above. Of course, she ignored the chair, and instead spent this time in imitation of the boys in their drills and sparring.

After a couple of weeks, she found the chair had been removed, replaced by a straw dummy in the shape of a man, and beside it a small rack with an assortment of wooden swords and shields, staffs, bows and blunted arrows.

Adria was pleased, and though there was no allowance for a true sparring partner, her vantage point allowed her to see and hear everything which happened below, and prevented those below from having much of a view of her own lonely education.

She particularly took to archery, and in this proved a great benefit, for she needed no partner, and in fact the bow had become an acceptably fashionable diversion for female nobility in Heiland, at least so long as it was associated with the hunt.

Of course, Adria took to it with rather more zeal than noble whimsy, and became so focused that she often practiced beyond the hours allowed for the boys below.

“A fair shot.”

She started at the voice of Brother Rodham just after her arrow struck her distant dummy squarely in the chest.

Without thinking and just as the boys did, Adria saluted the Knight Sergeant, who flashed a smile and bowed low in return.

“A fair shot, Highness, I mean to say.”

Adria smiled and inclined her head in return.

“I have a theory to test.” Brother Rodham eyed the dummy at the far side and held out his hand, askance.

Adria laid the bow in his hand, and he took up an arrow from the quiver stand between them. He tested the draw twice, then set the arrow and took aim. “I’ve been watching now and then, and…”

He let fly, and the arrow struck the shoulder of the dummy. He frowned and nodded, raising the bow to eye level, turning it one way and another to get as much of a view as he could along its length.

“As I thought,” he sighed. “I must apologize, Your Highness.”

Adria leaned in over the table, and Sir Rodham held the bow so she could see. “I’m not…” She hesitated.

He rotated one way, and then the other.

“It has a bend…” Adria realized.

Sir Rodham placed the bow on its rack and nodded. “Just so. You are learning to shoot on a bad bit of wood. You’re adjusting your aim to account for it, but this will serve you poorly in the end.”

“Surely I can have another?”

He was nodding, and pulled one of the arrows out of the quiver. “You must, and must have true arrows to learn the proper weight.”

Adria swallowed, smiling. “Thank you, Brother Rodham.”

He nodded, then shrugged. “It is not my thanks you owe, Ma’am. It seems your name has been entered in the lists for the Squires Tournament this year.”

Adria only blinked, disbelieving.

“You have attracted greater notice than mine, M’lady. I only wish to make certain you are best equipped to not bring shame upon your House and station.”

He smiled, and Adria nodded happily, regaining her voice.

“Thank you for this at least then, Sergeant,” she answered. “I will bring no shame to you, nor my father, nor to the name Idonea or the flag of Heiland.”

Although it was said that the Squires’ Tournament could not compare to the one held for the Knights and nobility proper, the youth of Windberth anticipated it as the event of the year, for this was the only tournament held within Windberth itself. Both the court and the city itself eagerly prepared for both the lists and the celebration surrounding the contests.

Citizens came and went more or less freely in the days preceding. Banners were hung, choice food prepared, and participants readied their skills and their appetites for the day.

Adria had, of course, attended the event in prior years, but it was rather another matter for her to find herself upon the field of the outer bailey rather than in the royal box of the stands. In fact, there was some stirring in the stands when the horns produced the royal fanfare and her name was announced alongside her brother’s as “Their Royal Highnesses,” to avoid any indication of precedence.

If any may have objected at her presence, Matron Taber herself gave no such indication, presiding over the formal opening of the event by invoking the ritual words of trial by combat. Such trials now rarely existed in the actual practice of law, and the words had been heavily modified to include the specific doctrine of the Sisterhood.

The Matriarch was the only one to attend the Royal Box, for Adria and Hafgrim were obliged to remain within the competitors’ square. Father, moreover, was nowhere in attendance, a fact which disappointed Adria but appeared to go without particular notice by others. He had attended the tourney two years previous, Adria remembered, but not the last. In fact, he had been seldom in evidence at court lately, and Adria had not been invited to see him in some time. Still, she had harbored some hope.

Adria had learned the ceremonialism of the event with the others, and had practiced the archery events with all of her free time the past several weeks. Still, she was nervous under the eyes of so many spectators and more than a few disapproving frowns and whispers.

In her first event she performed rather poorly. It was a distance event, and though she managed a good arc with her steel-tipped violet-ribbon arrows, the draw of the bow, given the strength of her arms, was not enough to reach the inner circles of the large target drawn upon the field. She was applauded, nonetheless, and one of the other contestants remarked favorably upon her consistency, the four violet ribbons in a much closer bunch than the others had managed, even if not as accurate.

Hafgrim came from his own first event, a horseback race, with similar mediocre marks, but to Adria’s surprise was remarkably nonchalant.

“Worried over the first rounds?” he laughed, smacking her on the back as he might one of his attending pages. “Really, you’re taking this too seriously, Highness.”

His use of the title forced Adria to smile.

“I was fourth out of six myself,” Hafgrim sighed. “So that, when I am their lord, most of the nobility will think they can outrun me when I grow angry, at least if on horse.”

His rare display of good humor made all those around laugh, and helped Adria relax. And Hafgrim had some small reason for pride, Adria remembered, for he had at least fared better at horsemanship this time than he had the two years previous.

Adria improved a good deal in the second event, a simple mid-range vertical target shoot. Without the handicap of long distance, and with her anxiety diminished, her hands were steady, and she managed a third place finish, to increasing applause and murmurs of approval. Even with her poor standing in the first event, she suddenly found herself above the middle in standing, and was awarded several congratulations from the other contestants and their parents during a break for midday refreshments.

She and Hafgrim sat at the high table alone, feasting upon a young pig who appeared to have just plucked an apple from a tree when he was slaughtered, for it remained between his teeth. They enviously watched others among the young contestants and other celebrants, who played at backgammon or tenpins or bobbed for apples themselves. This dinner held other duties for Hafgrim and Adria, as a number of the Peers brought their similarly aged sons or daughters before the prince and princess to allow for formal introductions.

“We’re a little young to marry,” Hafgrim said to Adria during a lull, realizing the likely import of the ritual.

“But obviously not too young to be introduced,” Adria sighed. “And unfortunately not too young for parents to entertain thoughts of betrothal, certainly. Marriages have been arranged for princes younger even than we.”

Hafgrim’s eyes widened at the thought. “They must be disappointed that the king is not in attendance, then. I haven’t a clue what your dowry should be.”

Adria kicked him beneath the table, retorting “Well, if anyone asks me for 
your
 hand, I’ll let you go for a suckling pig and a wink...”

Hafgrim made a most unpleasant expression at this, though neither of them knew what the phrase exactly meant. Adria was saved a response by the introduction of a southern baron’s second son, a suddenly shy ten-year-old with slender hope of rising so far above his station by wooing a thirteen-year-old princess.

Seeing this, Adria took some pity upon him and them. “He seems to have a wise demeanor. You must have pride in his thoughtful nature.”

They left with slightly less embarrassment than they might have, and Hafgrim grinned. “You, my dear sister, are far too kind. Now they will be emboldened at every court function until your finger has a ring.”

“Perhaps,” she shrugged. “But is it wrong to have better hopes for your younger sons than the Brotherhood? That young man seems ill-destined for Knighthood.”

Hafgrim sighed, likely considering his current ranking in the tourney. “Well... that is true enough.”

Adria found her stride after dinner, excelling in ways she had not even known to practice.

“Shoot as quickly as you can, but be accurate,” Sergeant Rodham had simply instructed for the speed competition. Drawing more quickly seemed hardly to matter to Adria, and she took third place.

In the final list, roving marks, the targets were of varying sizes and set to float upon the water this way and that, all in motion, but Adria again found little more difficulty in finding the marks, particularly with a bow that bent in only the right direction. When her final arrow struck center for a first placing, there was now much surprise and then applause, and Adria reflexively looked to the royal box in the stands, hoping her father might have decided to watch the final events.

And then she felt foolish, knowing the events would have been stopped for the king’s arrival, and that there would have been more fanfare.

But within the box with its three empty chairs sat Matron Taber, regal and still, with several officiates of the kingdom, the Sisterhood, and the Knights of Darkfire in the boxes about her.

Adria could not read her expression because of the distance and the obscuring sun.

Hafgrim had fared better later in the day as well, also taking a first place in one of his lists — an ax throwing. Though it was considered a somewhat peasant sport, Hafgrim and Adria nonetheless took real pride in his proficiency — for hers was, in truth, not so different.

Before a sumptuous supper banquet began, the winners were all announced, and Adria was surprised to find she had finished second in her age class for the archery events, above many in their second or third year of competition. The winner, Atrius, son of the Earl Eastwick, took her hand in congratulation, and bowed. “Excellently done, Your Royal Highness.”

Unlike the earlier introductions, Adria found herself flushed at the manner of the Earl’s son, and her discomfiture only increased as she took her prize to the crowd’s applause. It was by no means the greatest honor of the tourney, a second placing in a sport the nobility tended only to play at, whose wartime use was preferred for the peasantry.

Still, Adria’s pride was undiminished as the Brother Marshal of the Knights of Darkfire, hesitating with an uncertainty of protocol, knelt before her to place a violet and black ribbon pendant around her neck.

Again, she looked to the stands, and finally beyond, where she could not possibly hope to make out the form of her father in a window of his tower. Still, she imagined it so, and determined that when she had the chance, she would remember to ask him if he had stood there.