Briarheart Read online

  Brianna smiled. Viridity nodded as if this was entirely what he had expected. Clarion chuckled with satisfaction, and Lobo wagged his tail.

  We all went inside and settled in the cottage’s single room, which now had enormous cushions for Viridity, Lobo, and Clarion to recline on, and a cloud-soft not-exactly-a-chair thing for me. Brianna sat on a soft pouf. We each had a little table with refreshments at a convenient height, and other than that, there wasn’t a splinter of other furniture in the room. I told my tale (and the butter cake was every bit as good as Clarion and Lobo claimed), then I asked a question that had been preying on my mind for some time.

  “Lady Brianna, I’ve read all the official records of the last time you acted on behalf of Tirendell—and you didn’t do half so much as you’re doing now.”

  “Well, I did supply a stronghold to hide in and guides to get everyone there. But you’re right. I’ve been much more… present in the current situation. And I expect you would like to know why.”

  I nodded eagerly.

  “We Light Fae are not precisely ruled by the Council of the Elder Fae, which is what it sounds like, a council of nine of the oldest Fae among us, but they are very important to us. We’ve always had such a council; it is in charge of dealings with the Dark Fae, humans, and all the magical creatures who are not Fae.”

  “Like us,” Lobo said helpfully.

  “They assigned me to you, Aurora, and Tirendell as soon as we realized that the appearance of the uninvited Dark Fae at the christening had to have been carefully planned,” she said, with a frankness that astonished me. “And the more that has happened since, the more certain we have become that this time we must intervene in these affairs. The Dark Fae are bending and evading the Rules, and we think Tirendell is a test to see if they can get away with it. If the ploy works here, they can try it in larger, more aggressive kingdoms. This does not bode well, and if we are to survive, we must do the same as they and find ways to get around the Rules as well.”

  “I never heard of a council that governs the Light Fae!” I said in surprise.

  “Not governs, precisely. They act more as advisors. If I had chosen to act against their recommendations—which I most certainly would have once I knew you were Fae-blooded, my dear—nothing would have been done to stop me. But nothing would have been done to help me, either.”

  That took me rather aback as well. To cover it, I went on to describe what we’d done this morning with the guards—and how suddenly eager they all had been to have a spell cast on them after I used the Cradle Song to defeat the Wraith last night.

  “That is excellent news,” Brianna said, and there was real relief in her voice. “It’s not going to be easy for you, being Fae-blooded, but having the backing of the Royal Guard is going to help you a great deal.”

  “I don’t care what the Court thinks as long as the Royal Guard trusts me,” I said stoutly.

  Brianna raised an eyebrow but made no comment. I suppose she thought that I would probably change my mind, but as long as I had the Companions, I really didn’t care what the Court thought about me because I could never be sure who was sucking up to me for Mama’s favor. But maybe Brianna didn’t understand that part of my life.

  Or maybe she didn’t understand human rulers and Court politics at all. It’s sometimes easy to forget that the Fae aren’t like us; they look so much like us, and yet, I don’t think even Gerrold knows much about how they live day-to-day. What do they do when they aren’t swooping in to rescue humans from their Dark kin? I have no idea. We see them only when they choose, and we see only what they choose.

  I guess I should just be glad they’re on our side.

  “I was going to wait until I was certain you had mastered Fae magic before allowing Wizard Gerrold to teach you human magic, but I am having second thoughts about that plan,” Brianna said, though she sounded very dubious. “I think the sooner you start learning human magic, the better.”

  But I shook my head. “Except for the christening, the Court hasn’t ‘seen’ me do any magic until last night. It’s all been rumor and gossip until now. I don’t think they could even tell the difference between human and Fae magic.”

  Brianna laughed at that. “I’ll take your word for it, my dear. Very well then, we’ll just go on as we have been.”

  That sounded very good to me. I was only now getting used to how I was being trained!

  After we’d settled that, and Lobo, Viridity, and Clarion were stuffed full of treats, Brianna sent them off and it was back to work for me. By the time she let me go for the day, I had worked so hard, I was starving again.

  One day passed, and nothing horrible happened. Two days. Then a week. It was almost midsummer and time for the great Midsummer Faire in the town. I hadn’t been but a handful of times; first, I was too young, then Father went off to war; and after that, we were in mourning and it wouldn’t have been appropriate. Then Papa proposed, and things were too complicated for me to go.

  But I had hoped (before the christening, when everything got complicated again) that I might be able to go this year. The christening certainly put an end to that hope. So now I just listened to the squires rattle on about when their knights were going to give them a morning or afternoon off, and what they planned to do, and how much (or little) pocket money they had to spend, and I tried not to feel too envious. Even my friends were pretty sure Sir Delacar was going to give them leave to go at some point during the seven days of the faire.

  I kept reminding myself how privileged I was. I mean, I had not just one kind of magic but two! And I was Fae-blooded! And I spent significant amounts of time with the Fae! Surely I should feel as if I were living in a wonder tale, right? And we were already taking turns to guard Aurora, so I could scarcely expect to be let off from that duty.

  So on the morning before the first day of the faire, when Sir Delacar lined us up (except for Giles, since it was his turn at morning guard duty) and said, “I expect you all want to be let off for the faire,” I had already made up my mind that he was going to tell us that we were doomed to disappointment.

  “I’m going to let you off two at a time every other day in the morning. And if you are not back at the table for luncheon, even if you’ve stuffed yourselves too full of faire food to eat it, none of you will ever get an opportunity for an excursion for as long as I’m your trainer.”

  He glared at all of us, which kept us from jumping up and down. “Elle and Anna, you will go tomorrow. Nat and Rob, you will go the third day of the faire. Miri, you and Giles will go the fifth day. I’ll adjust the schedules so Aurora does not remain unguarded. Now get your minds on your training.”

  I have to say that keeping my mind on my training that day was one of the hardest things I have ever done.

  Everyone else’s mornings at the faire went off without an incident, although Elle and Anna confessed to me later that they had only just squeaked into their places at the table mere breaths before Sir Delacar came in to see if they were there. Now it was just Giles and I, and we got up while it was still practically dark and snatched bread and butter in the kitchen in order to maximize our time. “After all,” he’d said, when we conferred about what we wanted to do, “we’re going to stuff ourselves when we get down there, so why ruin it by eating much breakfast?”

  So by the time the performers and stallkeepers were just getting in place, we were walking around the faire well ahead of most of the crowd. We’d followed our noses to a stand that was clearly patronized mostly by the people working the faire and had gotten fried dough twists sprinkled with salt. Then we made a quick circuit to find out where the performers everyone had raved about had their tents.

  The first ones who were thoroughly awake and ready to perform were a troupe of players who performed a comedy that involved a lot of running about and people being in the beds of other people where they had no right to be and people imagining that their spouses were doing that and getting their comeuppance for their suspicions. I thought
it was absolutely hilarious, though poor Giles was as red as a strawberry before it was all over.

  He was hungry again, and we went looking for food before finding the rope dancers. And that was when I noticed something and stopped him before he spent a penny on another snack.

  “Giles—almost everything you want to buy is just bread. There’s fried bread sprinkled with salt, fried bread sprinkled with sugar, fried bread sprinkled with sugar and spices, baked bread with onions and garlic and herbs and seeds in it, baked bread with spices and sugar in it, and dough wrapped around a tiny bit of cheese or meat or jam. This is all stuff you could make or get for free in the palace kitchen if you put your mind to it. Are you sure you want to spend money on bread that isn’t even manchet bread?”

  That made him pause a moment. “You’re right. That doesn’t make sense.”

  “There’s a fruit seller,” I said, pointing out a little old lady with a tiny stall. “If you are going to spend money, try there.”

  And she had a golden-yellow apple she called Honey-Sweet that neither of us had ever seen before. So we each got one of those, which were a bit more expensive than plain old red apples but were absolutely worth it, then we went to watch the jugglers.

  Our court jester juggled but nothing like this family. They not only juggled, they were acrobats too, which our jester was not (to be fair, Tamarline was an older gentleman, and I think his joints were a bit stiff for acrobatics). By the time the family had finished their show, bodies, balls, staves, flags, and torches had flown through the air and my eyes were as big as the apples we’d just eaten.

  And just as we left the tent, there was this huge boom that made me jump out of my skin. I thought something horrible had happened and was wishing I had worn my sword—but none of the vendors or performers even stopped for a second, and only people like us looked startled.

  Then Giles suddenly laughed. “I know what that is! Come on!” And he grabbed my hand and hauled me through the crowd. He dragged me all the way to the edge of the faire, where there were some really small stalls and people were gathered around one of them. People were lining up and coming away with cones made of woven grass full of little white puffs. There was an odd, pleasant, nutty smell in the air, and we waited our turn until we could get close to the source of the smell.

  At that point, there weren’t any more of the white puffs to be sold, just a few on the ground. A man was standing close to a very hot coal fire near a round-bottomed barrel made of thick cast iron with a crank on the rounded end and a cast-iron lid with clamps that looked as if it sat inside the barrel. He was wearing clothing like I had never seen before—not a costume, as the acrobats wore. More like something from a land quite far from here—robes of light linen or something like it and a long scarf that wrapped around his head and neck, all a sort of orangey-ocher color. We watched, I in puzzlement and Giles in anticipation, as he poured a little oil into the cast-iron thing and followed it with a double handful of wheat kernels. Then he clamped the iron lid into place and tightened the clamps down—it was a really tight fit—and lowered the barrel over the coals and turned it with the crank while working bellows with the other hand to make the fire really hot. Then, without any warning at all, he flipped the barrel off the fire, popped a big cloth bag over one end, and hammered a protrusion on the clamps that were holding the lid to make them let go.

  Boom!

  I jumped and shrieked, and I wasn’t the only one.

  The bag suddenly inflated, and when he pulled it away from the mouth of the barrel, I saw that the bag and the barrel were full of those little white puffs. He sprinkled salt and herbs over them, shook the bag vigorously, and began scooping the contents into those grass cones he had waiting.

  “Give me two pennies,” Giles demanded, as he pulled two more out of his own belt pouch. Two pennies was pretty exorbitant for faire food—but I had never seen anything like this, so I figured it was worth it. Besides, watching the man work had been a one-penny show all by itself.

  Giles got us both cones of puffs before the man ran out and started the whole thing all over again. Some enterprising souls had brought their own containers, and he measured out the same amount into them that went into a cone. I waited to try the puffs until we were outside the crowd.

  They were tasty, although I couldn’t have said what they tasted of besides salt and herbs. I liked them, though, and the novelty and show were more than worth the cost. “Where does he get the grass cones?” I asked Giles, figuring that since he’d known about the treat in the first place, he’d know about the cones.

  “Nat says that he has two wives and six children in a tent outside the faire and that they spend their time weaving the cones from grass they collect at the roadside, then clean and dry,” Giles explained as we headed for the rope dancer’s tent, slowly munching our—well, I am not sure what to call them. Wheat puffs, I suppose. I finished my cone and found myself wanting more.

  The rope dancers were just as good as Anna had said they were—and when we left the tent, we didn’t have a lot of time left before we had to be back up at the palace. I was about to suggest that we start strolling up there so we didn’t have to run when I felt someone pulling at my elbow.

  It was a young girl. Like the man with the puffed grain, she wore a costume I didn’t recognize: a blue knee-length tunic with embroidered cuffs, a little standing collar with embroidery around it, and an asymmetric opening in the front. This was worn over leather trews and knee-high boots. Her black hair was done in two braids.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect. She looked at me with large, slightly scared eyes and said, “The lady will come with me? Puri Daj says I am to bring you to her.”

  Giles eyed her suspiciously but said nothing.

  “Puri Daj sends me, most urgently!” the girl insisted.

  “I think I should go with her,” I told Giles.

  “All right,” he growled. “But I’m coming too.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  WITH GILES TRAILING A LITTLE BEHIND ME AND WATCHING everything and everyone as if he expected an attack at any moment, we left the faire proper and entered the section of common land where the performers and stallkeepers camped at night. And I didn’t argue with his attitude at all because this was exactly the sort of scenario I could imagine being used as a trap.

  Of course, if it was a trap, that meant that there was someone up at the palace who had known Giles and I were coming down to the faire this morning and had informed whatever miscreant wanted me. After everything the captain of the Royal Guard had done in verifying the loyalty of our servants, that seemed unlikely, though not impossible. And if we had been really clever, both of us would have feigned indifference. Giles, unfortunately, was not that good an actor, so I was left to pretend that all I was interested in was finding out who this Puri Daj was and what she wanted with me while Giles glared murderously at anyone who even looked at us.

  The young girl took us to a part of the camp where her people had set up their traveling wagons, which stood out like proud pheasants among their drabber brethren. Each round-topped wagon was carved and painted on every available surface. Exceedingly colorful but not gaudy, to my eye at least. This area, like the rest of the encampment, was relatively empty. The women were mostly dressed like the girl, although some had a longer gown-like version of her tunic. The few men I saw were dressed as she was and wore an odd sort of round cap with a pointed top. A few old women looked after the smallest of the children like hens with big broods of chicks. The little mites were hardly what you’d call “clothed” at all, but it was a warm summer day, and I personally didn’t see the harm in letting them run about mostly naked in the sunshine.

  Seeing nothing but peaceful people going about their business, Giles stopped scowling as much, which was just as well, as I really didn’t want him frightening the children.

  The girl led us to a caravan right in the middle of the encampment. The back door was wide open, and beside it, sitting on a chair
that looked suspiciously as if it had been carved to resemble a small throne, was a tremendously old lady.

  She was bundled up in so many shawls that it was hard to tell how big or small she was, but I got the impression of fragility, which was immediately contradicted by her sparkling, shrewd dark eyes under a pair of snow-white eyebrows.

  I curtsied to her as I would to a lady of rank. This amused her no end. “The forest is full of tales of you, Companion,” she said in a reedy though not unpleasant voice with a trace of accent I couldn’t identify. She gestured for me to sit on the ground next to her, so I folded my legs under me and did just that. Giles, she ignored.

  “I certainly hope not, Puri Daj,” I replied. “I am much too young to have tales whispered about me.”

  She slapped my upper arm with the tail of one of her shawls, but she smiled as she did so, so I was pretty sure she was pleased with my reply. “Give me your hand,” she ordered as she grabbed it. She studied my palm with great care.

  “You will lead but never rule,” she said, and I got the sense she was testing me.

  I shrugged. “I never want to,” I replied honestly.

  “You are not a chosen one. Instead, you made the choice to act out of love and that propelled you into the course you are now on.”

  Now she bent over my hand in earnest. “You will face many trials,” she said, after studying for so long that I began to feel uncomfortable. “But there is one thing that unites them all.” She looked up at me. “Love, compassion, and kindness are the strongest weapons you have. Stronger than magic, stronger than steel. Never doubt that and never lose hope. And when you have a choice—choose kindness and compassion.”

  I felt an odd sort of chill when she said that—not the scary sort of foreboding chill but the chill that felt as if she had said something very, very important.