Chapter 5
DAYS PASSED, AND they were each the same.
I would wake alone. You would greet me with grim silence, and I would search your face for some sign of renewed faith or divine awe. Only your eyes changed, sinking deeper into their sockets; I suspected you of avoiding sleep.
Later you would hunt, or tend the bay, rubbing handfuls of dry grass over his scarred hide, speaking in the low, honeyed voice you reserved exclusively for him.
I had learned not to approach you at these times.
For an animal of his size (prehistoric) and age (also prehistoric), your horse moved very quickly, and still retained enough teeth to leave a crescent of yellowing bruises on the back of my arm.
You had said, quite harshly, “Stay away from him.”
“It’s alright, no real harm done,” I’d said, and understood from your expression that, this time, you had been speaking to me.
I gave your horse a very wide berth thereafter, and did not miss the hopeful way he lifted his hind leg as I passed.
At first, I was afraid to wander out of sight of the hut, but I never got lost, or even slightly turned around.
The land was familiar to me, though I had learned it as a boy, twenty years ago and a thousand years from now.
I knew every slope and dale, every bare crag and narrow stream.
I knew where the rabbits denned and where the yew stood, already ancient even here at the beginning of everything.
I sat among the roots sometimes, head tilted back against the tendons of the trunk, and understood why you ran here, when you ran.
It was a place apart, a secret kept from the world: There were no queens or ministers beneath the yew, no wars or quests.
There was only the slantwise light and the gently moving air and the wild, cold smell of the earth.
In the evenings we would huddle in the remains of the hut, talking softly. Or, at least, I would talk—asking questions or complaining about the cold or describing my attempts to brew oak-gall ink—and you would suffer in stoic silence.
Sometimes you would tend your tack or armor, working oil into the leather joints; sometimes you would lay your blade across your knees and polish the metal with long, even strokes.
I would fall quiet, then. I liked to watch you—the easy competence of your hands, the pull of muscle in your wrists—and I liked to watch the sword.
There were so many stories about it: They said it could cleave stones and fell trees, that if it broke in battle it would appear whole and perfect again the next dawn, that it had been forged long before Dominion was born.
Horseshit, according to Professor Sawbridge. She’d become an archaeologist, she always said, because words lied and bones didn’t. She’d shown us the actual swords she’d dug up from this era—rough, lumpen things, with horn hilts and bog-ore blades.
Yet: Here was Valiance, with a hilt cast wholly in metal, a grip wrapped in fine leather cording, and a blade of such pure, coruscant steel that it shone blue in the firelight.
After your work was done you would bank the coals and settle in the doorway to keep watch, your cloak pulled tight around your shoulders.
The knot between your brows would ease then, and you would stare out at the star-pocked wood as if you would be content to live out the rest of your days here, in the dim margins of history.
I would feel restless then, almost guilty, and turn to the book instead.
My pen was a hollow reed, clumsily cut, and my ink was gummy brown, but the words came easier than I expected. Like the lines of a poem I’d memorized as a boy, or a story I had told before and would tell again.
UNA AND THE CROWN
They say that when the Brigand Prince dragged Yvanne into the woods, having stolen her from her father’s lands, she was weeping.
They say that when Yvanne rode out of the woods, with the prince’s head knocking wetly against her saddle, she was smiling.
They say the common people fell to their knees and pressed their brows to the earth as she passed, for they had long suffered under the prince’s tyranny, and the girl who rode with Yvanne—a wild and strange creature, with matted hair and a huge blade bound across her back—did not look down at them even once.
She had eyes only for the queen-who-was-not-yet-queen but would be soon.
I could not say the truth of it; I did not know her, then. But I will tell it to you as it was told to me, much later.
Yvanne saw the tears of the peasants and knew it was time to claim her heritage, for Yvanne was of course descended from an ancient line of kings who had ruled the continent before it was divided by creed and tongue.
So Yvanne rode to the prince’s seat at Cavallon and asked his people to swear new oaths to her service and to God-the-Savior.
This they did gladly, because they saw Yvanne’s grace and wisdom—and because some of them knew the name of the sword the girl carried across her back, and knew they bore witness to the birth of a new legend.
But there is no such thing as a bloodless birth.
Before they had even laid the anchor stone for the Queen’s Keep, the first of the False Kings came calling.
He rode up the hill with ten knights at his back and demanded that Yvanne give up her title and bow before him.
‘Certainly I will,’ the queen said, ‘if you can best my champion.’
The False King looked about him and saw no one but peasants and children, wielding staves and rusted axes. The only sword was held by a ragged girl wearing armor that did not fit her. The False King laughed.
They say he was still laughing when Valiance slid neatly between his ribs.
The second of the False Kings fell the same way, full of hubris, but the third was canny enough to be afraid. He held a tournament and offered a prize—his own weight in silver!—to the man who could best the Queen’s Champion.
It was Ancel of Ulwin who won the tournament, who rode with the last of the False Kings to Cavallon and challenged the Red Knight to a duel. And, for the first time since she drew the sword from the yew, Una faced a worthy foe.
Ancel was young and fast and beautiful. He moved like a needle through cloth, diving and rising in a perfect rhythm.
Una was taller and stronger, but for a long time, she could not best him.
They fought until their lungs ached, until their blood had turned the earth to slick mud beneath their boots and their shadows stretched long at their backs.
Later, those who saw the fight would agree that Ancel was the best swordsman in the land. But in the end, he was only a man. What is a man, against a legend?
The end, when it came, came quickly. Valiance caught neatly beneath Ancel’s cross guard and sent his blade flying from his hand. Una drew back for the final blow. Ancel closed his eyes.
And a voice called, softly, ‘Mercy, my love.’
Una wrenched her sword aside at the last moment.
Ancel opened his eyes and beheld the queen, looking down at him with such gentility that his knees buckled.
Distantly he heard his False King braying, urging him to rise and fight, but Ancel found he did not care; nor did he care when the king’s voice went abruptly quiet.
He cared only about the queen, smiling wryly down at him.
‘Would you like to know why she won?’ When Ancel did not answer, Yvanne went on, ‘Because you fought for yourself. For glory, for silver. But she…’ Her eyes found Una, who was cleaning the False King’s blood from her blade. ‘She fought for Dominion.’
Ancel asked, ‘What is Dominion?’
Yvanne answered, ‘One nation united under one God. One kingdom, from the Slant Sea to the Northern Fallows, prosperous and peaceful. Just a dream, for now, but one worth dying for.’ She might have been a saint or a seer, she spoke with such perfect faith.
And Ancel, who had only ever served himself and other men who served themselves, felt an aching, helpless love take root in his chest.
Humbly, head bowed, he said, ‘I know nothing of dreams, my lady, but I would fight for you.’
There was a considering pause. Then he felt the flat of a blade fall heavy on his right shoulder. ‘Good enough,’ said Yvanne, and she swore a second knight to her service.
Later, they would come to call him Ancel the Good, the Knight of Hearts, for he collected so many, though he took neither wife nor lover. Later, Ancel and Una would come to trust each other as brothers, fighting side by side for crown and country.
But as Una watched Ancel take his oath in the bloodied earth of the courtyard, she felt nothing but uneasy envy. The False Kings were cast down. Ancel had joined the court of Cavallon, and he would not be the last. What purpose, then, did she serve?
She went to the queen that very night and took Yvanne’s soft white hands in hers. ‘Tell me what else I may win you, lady. Only name it, and it will be yours.’
And the queen answered, as if she had been waiting for the question, ‘A crown worthy of Dominion.’
The following morning, Sir Una rode out on her first quest. It would be three years before she returned.
She journeyed deep into the wild reaches of Dominion, chasing legends of a crown fit for her queen, and wherever she rode she left new stories in her wake.
Some of these you have heard, I’m sure: the Duel of the Stone Keep, in which she bested Bodrow the Giant; the great dragon hunt, when all save one of those unnatural creatures were slain, and their ivory scales sewn into a white mantle for the queen; the Ballad of Morvain, in which a wicked sorceress beguiled Una for seven days and seven nights, until Una recited holy prayers and caused Morvain to forsake her sorcery and take the veil instead.
It is only the final story that matters, anyway, when Una took to the Slant Sea in a humble fisherman’s boat.
She was following the tale of Sinclair, the Saint of Smiths, who had long ago crafted a crown of such surpassing beauty that he had buried it on a hidden isle rather than see it sit on an unworthy brow.