Authors: Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Uncle Fearchar had told them the trip from Dragon Bay to his castle on Evil Island would be novel, as it was. His boat was not propelled by means of the wind, but was elegantly pulled by three giant swans, black as the pupil of an eye, the same that Maggie had seen flying over the Northern Woods.
Hugo had met them at the dock and helped them aboard and made them comfortable, but in spite of what she now knew, that the peddler was her Uncle’s major-domo and confidante, she still disliked him. There was the mysterious matter of the rabbit and the arrow he saw being fired at her father that hadn’t yet been explained to her satisfaction…perhaps she’d have an opportunity to talk to Uncle Fearchar about it privately. Twice the peddler touched her, once in helping her to climb into the boat and another time in settling a soft velvet robe over her shoulders to keep off the chill from the bay. Both times she failed to suppress an involuntary shudder.
As the swans pulled them noiselessly through the water, Uncle Fearchar pointed out the barge load of animals making its way across the Bay in a course that was at an oblique angle to their own. “Ah,” said Fearchar. “There’s a colorful local sight for you. Our beast barge on its way to the feeding grounds.”
“Why’s that?” the bear asked. “Do you take it upon yourself to feed the beasts the stockmen have no food for?”
“Hardly that,” he laughed. “The animals are part of my Dragon Days program.” He waited modestly for them to ask about it, but when they didn’t, continued. “Dragon Days is a little project of mine, you see, to rid the area of the marauding of the monster. All it took was having a heart-to-heart chat with him.”
“It seems to me, heart-to-heart chats with dragons could be a little risky,” commented His Highness.
“I am fortunate enough to be exceedingly brave,” admitted Fearchar, “and just happened to have along at the time a powerful sleeping powder, in case he proved nasty.”
“So how does this Dragon Days business work?” Maggie asked.
“It’s a simple arrangement. I persuaded the dragon that it would be less trouble all around if we, the citizens of Dragon Bay, supplied him with a diet filling and nutritious enough to meet a dragon’s requirements, to be delivered to a certain place every month in time for his feedings. That way, he ceases snatching children and prize livestock, and we are no longer subject to his depredations. He also doesn’t have to risk getting skewered by some knight errant abnormally strong and abysmally stupid enough to try to beard him in his den, as it were.”
“Brilliant,” agreed Maggie and the bear in unison, watching both Fearchar and the disappearing barge with such avid new interest that they failed to notice when the boat landed.
“You must get a lot of exercise climbing up and down this path just to get to your own front door,” observed Maggie. Although she was used to the rigors of travel, or so she told herself before undertaking new ones, she found the almost perpendicular trail from landing to castle gate severely taxing.
“As I recall,”said the bear, who had shed the pilgrim’s robe and dropped to all fours for more comfortable climbing, “that’s the way of castles. You must keep in mind, gurrl, one usually wants to keep one’s own folk in, while discouraging the rowdy element without. Wouldn’t do to make it easy, would it?”
“I seldom use this route, actually,” said Fearchar. “Generally one of my familiars,” he indicated the swans, now unharnessed from the boat and gracing the Bay, “flies me wherever I wish to go. Since Dragon Days takes place so close to home, however, I feel that when I go to the village to act on its behalf as the event’s sponsor, it is incumbent on me to travel more or less in the mode of the local people.”
The bear nodded gravely. “The common touch. Very wise of you. My father used to tell me that was a very important asset to a king.”
Maggie murmured between labored breaths that it must be lovely to fly through the air like that, though she recalled the similar flight she and Colin had taken on Grizel’s back with something less than relish.
The path went up even more steeply at that point and their breath was required for climbing.
The front gate was surrounded by carved stone, and its wood was embellished with carvings as well. Fearsome creatures scowled down at them, goblin guardians frozen in stone, permanently, Maggie hoped. She was considerably taken aback by its ugliness, but the bear sniffed appreciatively the work on the door, a pictorial panel dramatizing the exploits of several of the horrific creatures.
“Hmm, interesting. I say, Brown, this is quite old, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid so,” said Uncle Fearchar with a put-upon sigh. Hugo opened the door and they started up a flight of stone steps that lead through myriad carved archways. The shadows in these arched passages seemed to harbor chill and gloom. “It was built before Argonia was properly settled, I believe, as an outpost for the ancient Drumclog civilization. That’s all I can get out of it.”
“All you can get out of it?” Maggie asked, continually astounded by the sheer breadth and miscellany of what proved to be her uncle’s magic. “You mean you can talk to the walls?”
He led them through a dank gray hallway and to another carved door. “No,” he said, “but there are these runes, as you see here.” He indicated the characters on the carving. “Shortly after I took up residence here I noticed them and, as soon as I was able, secured wax impressions. The princess was able to—er—enlighten me regarding their meaning.” Their steps made hardly a patter on the bare stone floor of the great, high-ceilinged entrance hall.
Maggie looked up, turning on her heel to catch the last rays of sunlight shining on the walls high above them. The windows were set high and narrow, a wonderful source of light for the dust motes and any possible bats, not much use for people. At least she couldn’t see any bats in the plaster-work.
“You know the princess?” she asked, belatedly tagging after them.
“My goodness, yes, child.” He ushered them ceremoniously through a hall, a sharp left turn, and at last they found themselves in a room the size of Maggie’s village.
“My study,” said Fearchar. “Drafty at times, but it has enough space for my projects.” His projects, the ones they could see displayed, included a complete dragon’s skeleton, maps of every imaginable place made into tapestries and hung from the walls, a model of the capitol city and the palace, complete with pull away walls to display the rooms’ interiors (“I’ve been planning how to decorate—just in case”).
Another entire wall was composed of pigeonholes containing scrolls and parchments, presents from the princess, “all beautifully illuminated, of course.” High above the scholarly materials, metal cases shaped like men caught the bear’s attention and Fearchar explained. “Those were given to me by the wizard who originated the spell for turning you into a bear, Highness. Met him at the World-Wide Wizard’s conference right after I moved south. We’ve corresponded since, and I’ve visited him swanback once or twice. Those cases are used to protect the bodies of the soldiers in his country from their enemies.”
“Ingenious,” exclaimed the bear. “What won’t they think of next?”
Maggie was running from one table to another, picking up things and putting them down again, turning them over and examining them. It was the most exciting room she’d ever been in.
“We’ll spend lots of time here together, you and I, my dear,” said Fearchar indulgently. “Right now, come along and see the rest of my diggings, and greet your sister.”
A second door led them to a dining hall, which was cozier than the study, but still enormous. “This was formerly a foyer leading from the great hall to the kitchen and the tower,” Fearchar explained, “but I needed the space in the great hall for my study, and the food arrives here much warmer without having to travel the extra distance.” For a foyer, it was an elegant dining hall, Maggie thought. The table was made of a massive slab of mirror-like wood, red as wine, and the legs were great beams of the same wood intricately carved and polished. Tapestries covered the walls and upholstered the matching chairs, which looked more like thrones with their high backs and arm rests. A heating stove, lavishly decorated with black and gold tiles, wrapped around one corner of the room and provided extra seating space beside itself, comfortably tiled to bring the warmth of the stove to the lounger on chilly days.
“The stove is my own addition. A suggestion of the wizard I was telling you of. Now then, Your Highness, Hugo will have a nice den prepared for you in the room next to my own, upstairs, where it’s warmer.” He indicated a flight of steps that led to a long, narrow landing forming a balcony high above them. “Maggie, dear, I presumed you would wish to share Lady Amberwine’s tower chamber. We live simply,” his sweeping arm took in the lavish room carpeted not with reeds but with the pelts of many different varieties of fur-bearing animals, “but I trust you’ll be comfortable here.”
“Thank you, Uncle,” she said, turning toward the staircase.
A clatter from the room beyond and Hugo came bustling out, carrying a tray full of candles. “I hadn’t time to put these in the rooms, master. Perhaps the prince and Miss Maggie would be so kind as to carry them up with them?”
Climbing the staircase, Maggie looked back down once to see her uncle waving her to go on up and Hugo lighting the first of the serpent-oil lamps in the huge fixture that hung from the lofty arched ceiling above the dining table. She set the bear’s candle in his chamber for him, as it was awkward for him to carry it in his front paws, and walked back down the landing to the doorway set into the rounded stonework, the tower entrance at the top of the staircase. There was another stairwell within the tower, and as Maggie climbed she lit the lamps that studded the wall to light the way.
She looked forward eagerly to seeing Winnie, and found her lying fully-dressed on top of the uncurtained bed, her hands clasped above the hillock of her abdomen.
Calling to her as she crossed the room, and eliciting no response, Maggie sat on the edge of the bed and shook her. “Winnie, do wake up. It’s Maggie. I’m here. I’ve come all this way to find you, the least you can do is postpone your nap.”
Lady Amberwine opened the startling long-lashed green eyes that matched the deep emerald of her gown. Her confusion changed to fright and she shrank from her sister’s touch. “Oh, Maggie. please don’t slay me! I know I’ve disgraced you all, and you’ve no reason to spare me or this gypsy child I bear, but for the sake of…”
“For the sake of sanity, what are you talking about?” asked Maggie, sitting sharply back. “Slay you? Box your ears, maybe, for talking such nonsense but—oh, no, now, stop that. Please stop being a goose and come back here. Of course I won’t box your ears, or slay you either. Why should I do that?”
“I—I don’t know, but I know that’s why you’re here.” Winnie’s hands twisted and pulled at the bedcovering as she clawed her way as far from Maggie as possible.
“Winnie, it’s me, your sister. I’ve ridden and walked a very long way, and risked great danger and more inconvenience to bring you home to Fort Iceworm, if you’ll come. If I wanted to be rid of you I’d hardly have gone to all that trouble, would I?”
Winnie looked at her skeptically, but edged a bit closer. “I suppose not. Still…”
Maggie reached forward to touch her again and Amberwine sprang back, whimpering “no” as though she’d slapped her.
Maggie sat back up, folding her hands deliberately in her lap as she searched her sister’s face for some clue to explain the meaning of her strange behavior. Had her difficulties, as Uncle Fearchar suggested, succeeded in unhinging her reason? Could faery people even go insane? Maggie looked at herself in the mirror opposite the foot of the bed. No, she had not changed into some ogress or ravening beast. What, then, could make the sister for whom she had forsaken unicorns and braved dragons, floods, ravishment, and starvation treat her like the proverbial wicked stepsister? A tear trickled down each cheek. Maggie continued to stare at the cowering Amberwine, brushing the tears away impatiently until they soon were too many for a casual wipe and she had to give in to clutching her face in her hands to try to stem the flow.
For all that she feared her sister for what she believed was good reason, Winnie loved her, too, and seeing her cry wrenched loose tears of Amberwine’s own. Now—long after she believed she had cried her life’s supply of them, the salty liquid flooded her eyes, nose, and mouth, and she gathered Maggie to her, both of them rocking and weeping copiously until at last Winnie dragged forth her handkerchief. She always had been the one who had the clean handkerchief and she applied one corner to Maggie’s face and one corner to her own, saying, “Do stop crying now. Come on, everything is all right and we’re together. Stop now. I really can’t bear it. If you don’t cease this minute I shall go right back to sleep.”
“It—it’s just,” Maggie began, her own teary purge slowly subsiding, “it’s just that I can’t stand it if you hate me. You’ve always been my best friend. How c—can you have changed so?”
“Hate you? Changed? Rubbish! Whatever are you going on about?” She recalled being startled on waking to see Maggie for some reason, the nerves of pregnancy probably. But she could hardly recall saying anything like that. “Of course I don’t hate you, Magpie. You’re my very own dear brave big sister and I love you, of course. I’m ever so glad you’ve come to fetch me away from here.”
“You are?”
Winnie nodded and jumped from the bed to a beautifully embroidered screen close to the door, thrust the screen aside and pulled out a dress. “We really must be changing for dinner now.” Maggie could see what Winnie, who never liked tears, was up to, but refused to be distracted.