Briarheart Read online

  “Wha? Wha?” he managed to say, and I spoke up very loudly and clearly.

  “It’s just me, Wizard Gerrold. Miriam. Your raven thought you should wake up.”

  He shook his head, dislodging the soft cap he had on it, which was probably his nightcap. “Bloody bird,” he muttered, and shook his fist at it. Then he turned to blink at me. “Oh, you’re all right again. Good. Don’t need another sick little girl for a good long while, thankyouverymuch.”

  “I just needed some rest. Did you find what made Aurora sick?”

  “Aye. Told the King already. Waiting for Brianna to help me trace it.” He motioned toward a drift of white silk lying on a stool pushed up against the wall. “Don’t touch it!” he snapped as I made an abortive move in that direction. “Don’t even get near it. It’s not the cradle curtains themselves, it’s in them. A little white thorn. When I found it, the residual magic must have affected the maids because they couldn’t keep their hands to themselves, and I very nearly had to slap them to keep them away. We’re just lucky neither of them came to harm, though likely the curse was meant only for Aurora.” He looked very annoyed, but I couldn’t tell if he was annoyed at the maids or himself. Maybe both. “It’s probably spent, but I don’t want anyone finding out the hard way.”

  But that set my now-rested mind going. “Could it be that the reason they tried to touch it was because one of them put it there?” I asked slowly.

  He frowned. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Because you were drunk with lack of sleep?”

  He started to get up, then sank back down on his stool. “No use in going after them. If one or both of them are guilty, they’ve already fled the palace. And if they aren’t, it won’t matter.”

  “I’ll tell Belinda; she’s in charge of them now. She’ll be better at questioning them than you will. She won’t let them get away with bursting into tears and wringing their hands. If they know anything, she’ll have it out of them.”

  But it really troubled me, as it obviously troubled Gerrold, to think that the Dark Fae might have agents among our own staff.

  “Bloody hellfire,” he muttered. “There’s no hope for it; I’m going to have to bring in help. Whatever is going on that makes the Princess so important, it’s obvious the Dark Fae have taken to using other races to do their work for them to get around the Rules. Aurora should have been safe for years as soon as the christening was over.”

  “What do you mean, ‘bring in help’?” I asked, not liking the sound of that.

  “Call on some of my former apprentices to come back here to help me. I’m going to have to—”

  “But can you trust them?” I shook my head. “How can you know that the Dark Fae haven’t subverted one or more of them?”

  He groaned. “I can’t, of course, you’re right. Bloody hellfire.” He took a deep breath. “Right. Don’t panic. Don’t go haring off in all directions. Get some sleep. See what Brianna says.”

  Since it was clear that he was talking to himself, I kept my thoughts to myself. He finally realized that I was still standing there and smiled at me. “That’s all the information I have for now, Miri. I’ll make sure you know whatever else I find out.”

  “Thank you, Wizard Gerrold. And… until Brianna gets here, maybe you’d better get some sleep on something other than your workbench.”

  “Good idea.” He sighed and went to his favorite hearthside chair, putting his feet up on a pile of books. Within moments, he was asleep again. I put one of his discarded robes over him as a makeshift shawl and left. I had just enough time to dress for dinner, which I desperately needed to do, because I was still in the tunic and trews I’d thrown on when Aurora started wailing. I’d slept in them, and they looked like it. But I intercepted Belinda first and told her what Gerrold had said about the maids and what I suspected. For the first time ever, she didn’t tell me that I was a silly girl and that I was imagining things. Instead, her mouth went into a thin line that didn’t bode well for the maids. “I’ll look into it, my lady,” she said, giving me the very first “my lady” I’d ever gotten from her. “If they’re naught but silly girls, no harm. But if they’ve been up to mischief in this matter, the King shall know about it.”

  Thank heavens this was one of those nights when I ate with the squires. People were babbling about the unicorn and how he had miraculously cured Aurora. The same people didn’t seem to realize that I was the one who had found and brought him; they all assumed it was Brianna because she had left and returned about the same time I had. I decided that I would keep my mouth shut about that. But over the course of the meal, I managed to signal to the rest of the group that we needed to meet up in the practice yard again.

  I left first, claiming that I was tired, and since I actually was, it wasn’t a lie. Elle and Anna came with me, and we hurried to the practice yard before anyone could intercept us. It wasn’t too many more minutes before Rob turned up, then Nat and Giles together. It was almost midsummer now, and it was still light out here, making the meeting seem less clandestine. As shadows filled the bowl of the practice yard and the upper walls of the palace turned softly red gold in the light of the setting sun, I told them about the thorn that had sickened Aurora.

  “We need to tell Delacar,” Giles said immediately. “One of us needs to be watching Aurora all the time now, which means skipping lessons now and again.”

  I nodded, because he was right. “We are still young enough that we could easily be overlooked, especially if we get our hands on pages’ tabards. And I think I have an idea.” Because my Fae magic was stirring again, I knew what I needed to do. “I hope this isn’t a nuisance for you all, but I need to give you the ability to see magic and magic creatures that are generally invisible. Like ghosts and will-o’-the-wisps.”

  “You can do that?” Elle said incredulously.

  “Why?” asked Giles.

  “I think I can. I need to do this because there are more magical things out there than just the Dark and Light Fae, and the Rules don’t bind them. They can be coerced, or bribed, or… well, some of them are just evil and only need turning loose to wreak havoc.” I shrugged. “It won’t do us much good to watch if we can’t see what we’re watching for.”

  “Then do me first,” Giles said, clenching his jaw as if he didn’t like the idea much but was going to do it anyway. Which, if he really didn’t like the idea, was awfully good of him. So I did, and it was much, much easier than I had thought it would be. It was as if my Fae power and my human power both agreed with what needed to be done and how to go about doing it. I just had to put my hands on either side of his head and will him to be able to see what was otherwise invisible. And the test, of course, was that when I had finished and moved on to Elle, Giles exclaimed that he could see the magic lighting up my hands while the rest saw nothing.

  When I was done with them, I was just a little more tired than I had been when I started. “You’re probably not going to like this until you get used to it,” I warned them. “Because anything that has even a little magic about it is probably going to look like it’s got a light inside of it.”

  “Well, that sounds easy enough,” Giles said, and stretched and looked up at Gerrold’s tower, which was just catching the last red rays of the sun. “Well, we’ve done what we can for now. Let’s all get back to where we’re supposed to be before anyone misses us.”

  “The best thing we can do right now is not be noticed,” Nat said. “Why is it that this is never part of adventure tales?”

  “Because it’s not exactly adventurous?” Elle said. “Don’t worry, when they make up tales about us later, I’m sure they’ll add a heroic speech for you.”

  “Just what I want to be known for,” Nat grumbled. “Making speeches.”

  But I noticed that he didn’t object.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SIR DELACAR HEARD US OUT THE NEXT MORNING, AND I GOT the impression he was listening to us seriously. I explained about the thorn, the specul
ation that it could have been a human or some magical creature who was an ally of the Dark Fae rather than one of the Dark Fae themselves. Giles pointed out that if the Dark Fae were bending and going around the Rules like this, we needed someone keeping watch on Aurora all the time and that this someone needed to be a person who could actually see magic creatures and objects. “And Miri made sure we all could last night,” he said, causing Sir Delacar to raise an eyebrow. I shrugged.

  “Have you heard anything more from Wizard Gerrold?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. “No, but I didn’t expect to. He was asleep when I went to see him before dinner, and I left him sleeping again and waiting for Brianna so he could show her the thorn. If he and she worked all night, like I think they did—”

  “He’s not going to wake until dinner, obviously,” Delacar said, and rubbed his head. “Damn the man. Why is he so stubborn about taking another apprentice?”

  “Because he’s afraid he’ll die and leave the apprentice half-trained?” said Nat quietly. From the way he said it, I got the feeling that he wasn’t just guessing. I decided to ask him about that later.

  “He wanted to try to call back some of his former apprentices, but I pointed out we have no way of knowing if the Dark Fae have gotten to any of them,” I said.

  He sighed. “All right then, I will compromise with you six. Miri, I want you to work your magic on some of the regular guards so they can see magic too. I’ll have them stationed in the nursery at night. In the dark, we can find places where they can watch the cradle without being seen. I’ll also have a guard there during the day, but you six will take turns spending half the daylight hours there as pages.” He looked up at the palace. The nursery window wasn’t visible from here. “And we need a way for you to sound an alarm if you see something.” He rubbed the back of his neck as if it pained him. “And what the hell all of this will do against something that can move through walls, I have no idea.”

  I didn’t quite know what to say, but it was Giles who spoke up. “Maybe we should wait until Gerrold is fit to talk, then you and he and the captain of the Guard can figure out what to do?” He stated it as a question, but it was really good advice—especially since people, including me, weren’t thinking all that clearly after yesterday.

  Sir Delacar nodded. “That’s good sense. Miri, do you think you can repeat that magic of yours on all the guards?”

  “Maybe,” I said, feeling a bit doubtful about the “all the guards” part. “I don’t know if it will work on ones who don’t like magic. I mean, trying to put a spell on someone who doesn’t want it is coercion, isn’t it? I don’t actually think I can do that.” And I had no doubt that there were plenty of the guards who didn’t like, or distrusted, magic. And who could blame them? Magic was something they had no means to counter or control, and why should they trust some girl who was said to be Fae-blooded to be able to do what she claimed to be able to do without harming them?

  I wouldn’t trust me, either, if I felt that way.

  Delacar passed his hand over his eyes. “Let’s all just stop and think a moment. We’re haring off in all directions.” By “we” he meant mostly himself, since the Companions hadn’t actually done anything so far, but point taken. “We have both too much information and not enough. I’m going to arrange a meeting with the King, the wizard, and Brianna if she’ll come. I’ll make it for this afternoon.”

  “I can take care of that last part. She’ll be waiting for me after luncheon at the cottage for lessons.” Was this the day for lessons alone or with the group? I couldn’t remember and it didn’t really matter. “I’ll bring her back with me.”

  “Good. I want you six there, but Miri will speak for you.” He looked around at all of us, but no one appeared to have any objections. “We need to pool our information before we can have a plan. And for now… business as usual. Warm up, then pair off; for the first part of our exercises, you’re going to do drills back-to-back.”

  Returning to drills almost felt normal.

  Almost.

  But then again, not much was normal around here anymore.

  We were all seated at a table in the Royal Suite that Papa used when he needed to speak privately with his councilors. Gerrold was awake and in his full wizardly regalia. Brianna had been quite willing to come back with me. Because of her wings, someone found her a stool to sit on instead of a chair. Papa had dropped everything to attend this meeting and sat at the head of the table. Sir Delacar and the captain of the Royal Guard sat in the fifth and sixth seats, and my five friends had decided to make themselves useful as pages.

  I just listened as Gerrold and Brianna spoke first about the thorn and how it got into the curtains around Aurora’s cradle. The thorn carried a curse. The curse, as Viridity had said, was a disease. Brianna suspected that Aurora had been pricked with it before it was placed in the curtains, although she could not say that beyond a shadow of a doubt. She was certain that one of the maids had been under a spell and done the dirty work. Gerrold was just as certain that one of the maids had not and that it had been some other creature, even a perfectly normal bird or animal under the Dark Fae’s control. They argued back and forth for some time before Papa stopped them with a look.

  “Gerrold, on the chance that Lady Brianna is right, you will need to armor every servant who comes into contact with Aurora against such enchantments.” He turned to the captain of the Guard. “It will be your job to place men who have been fortified in this manner at the door to the nursery day and night so no one goes in or out who is not on the approved list.”

  Gerrold looked strained. “But, Sire—”

  Papa ignored him for the moment. “Lady Brianna, on the chance that Gerrold is correct, how can we prevent magical creatures from invading the castle?”

  “Well…” She pondered the question. “The easiest would be to get a very large circle of witches to bless the walls themselves.”

  Now it was Papa’s turn to look strained. “My lady, there is no such thing in this kingdom.”

  Brianna’s brow creased with annoyance, and her wings fanned impatiently. “Of course there is. They were originally called the Order of Everon Isle, but these days they call themselves the Sisters of Saint Everon. There are at least two hundred of them all told. That should be enough. Talk to your Archbishop, I believe he is nominally in authority over them.”

  Papa’s jaw fell open. Actually, everyone’s jaw dropped, including mine, because the last thing I would have called a Sister of Saint Everon was a witch!

  “But—but—but—” sputtered Sir Delacar.

  “Witches use chants, invocations, and their will to create spells, do they not?” Brianna asked tartly.

  “Yes, but—”

  “And the Sisters use chants, invocations, and their will to create blessings, do they not? Which are, when it comes down to it, nothing more than benevolent and beneficent spells.”

  Delacar had been rendered speechless. In fact, it took a very long time before anyone recovered from that shocking, even blasphemous, statement. And yet there was no way to refute it.

  It was Papa who finally regathered his wits and turned to Nat. “Find Archbishop Thomas, please, and ask him to attend this council.” Nat nodded and ran off. Papa turned to Brianna. “My lady, your suggestion will certainly be acted upon. But do me the favor of not referring to the Sisters as ‘witches.’ At least not in the hearing of the Archbishop.”

  She gave him an odd look, and I was suddenly struck with how alien she was in that moment. That it had never occurred to her that her statement would be outrageous was a mark of how little she actually had in common with humans. “I don’t understand,” she said finally. “But I will do as you ask.”

  It took a bit of time before Nat returned with the Archbishop, but it was just as well he’d taken that time since it took that long for everyone except Brianna to recover their wits and their aplomb. Brianna, of course, was still in possession of hers. She clearly still had no idea that
what she had said was offensive.

  Once I got over my shock, however, what Brianna had said made perfect sense. And I quickly thought that I knew why the Sisters—if they had, indeed, originally been a coven of witches—had decided to transmute themselves into a holy order.

  Witches had a mixed reputation, as did wizards, which made sense, since they were only human, and were good, bad, or indifferent as all people were. But here was where wizards and witches were different—witches practiced magic not up in towers at the behest of the high-and-mighty but down among the people. So if you were suspicious of magic, you were suspicious of the witch who lived on the edge of the village (as most of them did). You couldn’t do anything about Lord Something’s pet wizard if you suspected magic was at the root of some misfortune. But you could do something about that pesky witch.

  Unless, of course, you knew that she was powerful enough to defend herself if you came calling with unpleasantness in mind.

  Which only made you more suspicious of her.

  Sorceresses were like wizards, basically the female equivalent—they were very powerful individually, and they spent their entire lives studying magic rather than living among ordinary people and doing things like growing and selling herbs or weaving. And they were generally in the employ of the same sort of people who hired wizards—the rich, the mighty.

  So I could see how a powerful order of witches would decide to turn themselves into a convent of holy Sisters for their own protection. It wouldn’t even be a lie if they took the proper vows and devoted themselves to good works and prayer. And why wouldn’t they? Unless you were actually evil, we all worshipped the Infinite Light, mortals and Light Fae alike. Becoming a holy order was the ultimate form of protection. In fact, it made perfect sense because it wasn’t as if witchcraft was evil in and of itself. It just was. It was how you used it that made it good or bad.