Chapter Thirteen
You don’t have to wait with me,” Ostvald said. “It’s cold, you’re shivering. You go on into town. I’ll wait for Robert.”
“He’ll be here soon. I just wanted to say good morning, and see how he’s… you know, doing.” Elfrieda was indeed trembling with the early chill, her teeth chattering uncontrollably, and Ostvald wanted to wrap his heavy old leather coat around her shoulders, but he knew better. She looked around the crossroads—there were no other folk in sight, and only one fresh grave—and smiled, a little wistfully. “When you think of all the times we three have met here—since we were children. How long ago it all seems.”
“We’re all eighteen,” Ostvald pointed out. “No, you’re not even that—you’re still seventeen. How long ago could anything be?”
“Oh, you,” Elfrieda said, as she said to him so often. “You don’t understand, you never do.” She took a few impatient steps in the direction from which Robert would be coming. Ostvald turned away.
The hoofbeats coming from town startled them both, and they whirled to see Prince Reginald cantering toward them on a bay mare Ostvald knew from the castle stables. Reginald himself he hardly recognized at first: the splendid swaggerer had given way to a weary, sad-eyed man, disheveled in his dress and shockingly aged in his bearing. When he reined up to speak with them, they saw that his eyes were heavy and red-rimmed, as though he had not slept in days; when he spoke, his voice sagged like his shoulders. He said, “I have a message for your friend the dragon-boy. Will you carry it for me?”
Ostvald nodded silently—even despondent royalty made him uneasy—but Elfrieda answered eagerly, “Indeed, lord, that we will, on the instant you impart it.” Her own reverence for crowned heads rivaled Odelette’s; and besides, this was something involving Robert. She held out her hand for a scroll or a parchment.
“No, girl, there are only a few words to this. Tell him that I have gone to make a lie come true. Can you remember that?”
“Yes,” Elfrieda whispered, overawed by his somber manner. The Prince clicked to his horse and started on, then turned back briefly to say, “You may tell the Princess Cerise the same, should you see her.” He thumped his spurless bootheels into the horse’s sides and was gone, leaving Ostvald and Elfrieda to gape after him: the one in bafflement, the other in speechless alarm.
The speechlessness lasted only until Robert appeared, a few moments later. She recounted the meeting and the message to him, her words stumbling over each other, while Ostvald shuffled from foot to foot, occasionally muttering, “We ought to get going, before those wyvern eggs hatch at the Gerhards’.” Neither Robert nor Elfrieda heard him.
“I don’t like this,” Elfrieda was saying, as she had said it three times before. “I don’t like this, Robert. Something bad’s going to happen, isn’t it?” She sounded like a frightened little girl.
Robert was standing by the cart, looking down one road and then down another, plainly caught between impossible choices. He looked at Ostvald, seemingly becoming aware of him for the first time since his arrival. “Ostvald, you’re going to have to deal with the eggs by yourself. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Refusing an order of Robert’s was as foreign to Ostvald as saying no to Elfrieda would have been. He said in a small voice, “How soon is that?”
“I don’t know,” Robert said. For the third time he asked El-frieda, “He really said that? Like that? About making a lie come true?” She nodded miserably. Robert was looking around him with a distracted, unfocused air, speaking more to himself than to his friends. “I’ve got to borrow a horse. Who’s got a horse?”
“Don’t go,” Elfrieda said. Ostvald, speaking louder, said simultaneously, “Walter’s got a good one. Walter the brewer, not Walter at the tannery. Bought it at the fair last spring—it’s a stallion, so it might give you some trouble, but it’ll run all day.”
Robert winced. “Walter hates me. I told Jarold he was using cheap hops and coloring his mash. He was, but still. He’ll never let me borrow his horse.”
Ostvald looked at his feet and mumbled, “I just said he had a horse. I didn’t say you should borrow it.”
Robert began to smile slowly. He thrust the cart’s shafts into his old friend’s hands. “Thank you, Ostvald. I won’t be long, I promise.”
He set off toward the village at a run, veering off toward the brewery while he was still in sight, but vanishing quickly beyond a clump of trees. Elfrieda looked fiercely at Ostvald and said, “Oh, you!” in a way she had never said it before.
The Princess Cerise caught up with Robert well before he even sighted Prince Reginald.
He turned at the sound of hoofbeats behind him and saw her pounding after him with her red cloak and her uncombed hair flying alike. He swore silently and reined up to wait for her.
She was shouting as she rode, but she was breathless by the time she reached him, and Robert was able to speak first. “Princess, this is mine to do. We both know that.”
“We know nothing of the kind!” The Princess was flushed with indignation, and her nose was shiny. “Reginald has gone back where—where it happened, to prove himself worthy of me, and it is incredibly, incredibly stupid of him, and if anyone needs to go and fetch him before he gets eaten by dragons—”
“It’s me,” Robert interrupted her; and then, “Sorry—it’s I,” for Odelette was a stickler for proper grammar. He said, keeping his voice as calm and reasonable as he could, “Your Highness, I do not believe that the Prince is on another dragonquest, nor would he find any if he were. Unless I am greatly mistaken, he seeks an old man we both think may be a wizard, and who may have some connection with the dragons you and I still see in our dreams every night.” He paused, watching the Princess’s eyes and waiting until she nodded slightly before he went on. “I hope to bring him safely back to you, but if he will not come, for one reason or another—”
“Then he should not be alone. Yes, I understand.” She was calmer now, even making a vague gesture at smoothing her hair. “We both know what he is, but he yet feels that he has to show me, the dear silly.” There were sudden tears in the corners of her eyes, even as she forced a laugh.
“Yes,” Robert said, after only an instant’s hesitation. “Yes, of course.”
“So you see why I must come with you. You do see how it is?”
“Yes. I do.” Robert cleared his throat and picked up the reins. “We should go quickly, then. He cannot be that far ahead.” As they set off, he added, “The King and Queen—won’t they be anxious about you?”
“My father will be. My mother…” The Princess Cerise’s dark eyes grew briefly warm with wistful affection. “Nobody ever thinks so, but my mother is very romantic.”
“So is mine.” They smiled at each other for a moment; then the Princess kicked her horse into a gallop and was off down the road, with Robert a length behind. Now and then she looked back at him, and when she did so, it was always with a curiously puzzled air, and once with a slight unconscious shake of the head. He wondered whether he was looking at her in the same way.
They did not catch up with Prince Reginald that day. The people in the village they arrived in at noon told them that a handsome rider had indeed been seen galloping through the town square an hour or more earlier, but had stopped for neither rest nor conversation. Robert and the Princess hastened on similarly but had no more success in the next hamlet, reached just before sunset. Yes, the Prince had passed through here as well, had stopped to eat, and to water and rest his horse and himself, but he had gone on long since. A nice-looking young man, but a bit preoccupied.
There was no going farther that night. Princess Cerise and Robert dined in the village’s one inn, where she would spend the night while he slept in the stable, caring for their weary horses. Over dinner they spoke primarily of Prince Reginald—or at least the Princess did—as little of dragons as they could, and somewhat of the old man whom Robert’s intuition told him the Prince was seeking. “He was in the hayloft—he must have heard me talking with Mortmain about the wizard. I mean, if that’s what he was. The old man, not Reginald.” It occurred dimly to Robert that his difficulties in speaking directly to the Princess were not lessening.
Princess Cerise leaned forward over her forgotten meal, staring at him. “And you think he really was a wizard?”
“Mortmain asked me that too.” Robert slapped the table with the flat of his hand. “I told him what I’m telling you—I don’t know, I don’t have any idea. It was just the way he kept turning up, and kept staring at Prince Reginald each time. As though he were really angry with him—”
“Because he destroyed the dragons!” The Princess meant to hit the table as he had, but only destroyed her dessert. She hardly noticed, no more than she paid attention to the dry mud spattered on her riding dress, or the tangled hair falling across her eyes. “Well, actually, that was you—but he helped.” Robert did not answer. “He was trying to help. Almost the same thing, really.”
“The dragons killed each other,” Robert said. “I don’t know how it happened. I don’t know if I had anything to do with it. Maybe it was Prince Reginald.” They regarded each other in silence across the table. Robert said, “Maybe that old man thinks it was.”
“The dragons.” Princess Cerise’s voice faltered, though her gaze did not. “You think a wizard made them? Bred them?”
“They shouldn’t exist,” Robert said flatly. “They don’t make sense. They’re bigger than the Kings—much too big to get off the ground—but those wings obviously work. The fire they breathe is white-hot, you saw that?” The Princess nodded. “No dragon in the world can brew that kind of flame in its body—or could live with it if it were possible. They’re flesh and blood, whatever else they are. My father was always saying that.”
“Your father,” the Princess said thoughtfully. “I remember your father coming to the castle. A very tall man—or maybe he only seemed so because I was a child. Was he tall?”
“Yes, he was. Taller than I’ll ever be.” It was the first time they had spoken of any family but the Princess’s—or of Robert’s life at all, for that matter—and it put both of them somewhat off-balance, half smiling awkwardly. Robert said, “Another thing about dragons. They’re smart. Nobody ever thinks so—they always think the big ones are just mean and stupid, and the little ones… well, those are just nasty little bugs—spray ’em, skin ’em, sell ’em, and be done. But they’re smart, and they have feelings, and they—” He suddenly realized that he was half out of his seat and that his voice was loud and angry enough to have attracted attention from other diners across the taproom. Looking at the table, he mumbled, “Sorry… I’m sorry,” and sat down fast.
The Princess said quietly, “You have feelings too. You care about them.”
Robert still could not look at her. He said, “The ones we… the ones who attacked us—they’re too smart. When it comes to mealtime, it’s pretty much every dragon for himself—they don’t cooperate naturally.” He thought of Adelise, Lux, Reynald, and the others making the beds at home and herding the chickens into their coop, and repeated, “Not naturally. But these… these waited in ambush for us, and then they came at us from three different angles, to make sure we couldn’t escape. Even my father wouldn’t have known what to make of that.”
“You care about them.” Princess Cerise rested her elbows on the table, her chin in her cupped hands, and regarded him out of the dark eyes that had no counterpart in her family. “You think about them.”
“I’m an exterminator,” Robert answered harshly. “I’m supposed to know about dragons.” He tried to match the directness of her gaze, but failed.
“But you hate it. You really hate it. You hate your job.”
“It’s not forever. I’m not going to spend my life spraying walls and hunting nests and eggs. Mortmain’s teaching me to be a valet.”
He had thought that he wouldn’t mention Mortmain’s opinion of his body-servant potential, but he might as well have, for the Princess burst out laughing. “A valet? You couldn’t… oh, you could never—”
Laughter kept her from finishing; laughter, and Robert’s outrage. “Why not? Because I’m not good enough? Not smart enough? Not well-born enough? Not mannerly enough? Not clean enough? Would that be the problem?” His eyes were wide and white-rimmed.
The Princess met him head-on, shouting back across the table, “No, of course not! I wasn’t saying that at all! You couldn’t be a valet because you’re better than that! For heaven’s sake, don’t you know”—she faltered momentarily—“don’t you know you’re a hero yourself? Just like Reginald, practically? Don’t you have any idea?”
This time the landlord came over to the table, apologetic, because of the presence of Princess Cerise, but firm. They paid their score and left the taproom. Robert did not speak until they were standing at the foot of the stairs, about to separate for the night. Then he said quietly, “I don’t want to be a hero. Heroes kill things. I want to be ordinary—never mind Vardis, never mind my mother. I just want to have an ordinary life.”
“Well, you don’t get to. No more than I do.” The Princess’s voice was no longer combative, but as subdued as his, and her face in that moment was beautiful in a completely different way than Robert had ever seen before. She said, “I’ve tried disguising myself, the way princesses do all the time in fairy tales. I’m good at it. I’ve dressed up like an old beggar lady—like a farmwife—like a street girl—all to get away from what I am for a day, for even a few minutes. It never works, no matter how I try—people always know. The same way they’ll know what you are if you spend the rest of your life pretending to be somebody’s valet. Take my word for this, Robert. I know.”
It was the first time she had ever called him by his name. They regarded each other without speaking for what seemed to Robert a long time. Then he said, “We should start out early tomorrow. Very early,” and the Princess Cerise said, “Yes,” and went upstairs.
Robert watched her until she turned out of sight at the landing. Then he shoved his hands into his pockets and walked slowly toward the stables. There was no moon, and the warm night grew increasingly dark as he moved farther from the inn; by the time he heard the two horses nickering to welcome him, he could barely make out the groom asleep with his head on a grain barrel. Robert groped his way to their stalls, made sure that both were dry and warm with full mangers and new straw; then found an empty stall for himself, found a few armfuls of reasonably fresh hay, and was about to lie down when he heard the grass rustling just beyond the door. He saw nothing in the entranceway, but he heard the rustling, and he flattened himself against the stable wall, picked up a pitchfork leaning nearby, and waited, breathing as shallowly and silently as he could.
No one entered. The whisper in the grass continued, but what alarmed him more was the fact that the horses made no sound. They were sociable animals who enjoyed human company; either they were deeply asleep, or whatever was outside… He took the thought no further. After a time, growing impatient with immobility, he began to sidle along the wall until he was near enough to the door to make a sudden rush that took him out of the barn in one bound, to crouch and turn in every direction, jabbing at the night air with his pitchfork. “Reginald?” he asked the darkness. His mouth was almost too dry to make a sound. “Prince Reginald?”
The rush came so swiftly that he never saw or heard it coming, and so hard that he never remembered much about it. There was an instant when something slammed into him with overwhelming force, lifting him off the ground—he did recall that, and he also remembered landing on the far side of the stable with the wind knocked completely out of him, barely able to breathe. Then, without a pause, there was Princess Cerise’s face, taut and white and almost old with anxiety as she leaned over him, her hands cautiously probing for broken bones. He tried to say, “I’m all right,” but could not get the words past his throat. She read his lips, however, and smiled with relief.
“I came back down,” she said. “I wanted to remind you not to give Mistral too much hay—she’s such a little pig, and then she bloats. And I saw you. Can you sit up? I’ll help you.”
With her arm around his back, Robert first sat and then, after the nausea and dizziness passed, stood up and stayed up—anyway, the second time. The Princess said, “It was the wizard, wasn’t it? He attacked you with… with a spell or a thunderbolt or something. The wizard did it.”
“I suppose,” Robert said weakly. Then he said, “No—no, it wasn’t him,” because a new memory was slowly swirling to the roiled surface of his mind. Smell of cold smoke… power beyond power, lapping around me, surging under me like the sea… great green eyes knowing me… But for Princess Cerise’s support, his legs would have failed him again. He said, “It wasn’t him.”
I’m still alive. Why am I still alive?