Briarheart Read online

  Papa had agreed and said that he’d make sure it happened before I started training. And, as always, Papa kept his promise.

  Just then Sir Delacar came strolling out of the Knights’ Tower toward us. He was going to be my trainer? My heart fell. He was the fattest knight we had, and as far as I knew, he didn’t do much or ask much of his squires. Even Belinda looks more like a knight than he does.

  But then he opened his mouth, and when he spoke, the authority in his voice startled me so much that I found myself obeying him automatically.

  “Squires!” he barked. “Form up!”

  And we all jumped and arranged ourselves in a straight line. He nodded with approval.

  “You cubs are too young to remember,” he said. “But I was the squires’ trainer until I gave the job over to Sir Larimer. I trained your father, young Miriam, and I trained the King. The King asked me to do the same for you.” He paused significantly. “But I won’t.”

  I gaped at him, and I wasn’t the only one. Was he defying Papa’s orders?

  “I’m going to train you all differently,” he continued. “The way I should have trained young Geniver in the first damn place.” His voice got a little rough, as if he was holding back emotion. “I made the mistake of training him like a knight. Honor and rules and chivalry. Pretty jousting and swordplay meant for tournaments, not the battlefield. We hadn’t had a war in decades, and I never thought—well, leave it at that. I didn’t think. Jousting manners are all very well for people like His Majesty and me, but it won’t do for you. It will not do. I’m training you like fighters. Every trick and no rules. Miriam, you asked for companions, and I’ve asked these five if they would volunteer, and they’ve agreed; I believe they are all smart and quick to pick up on training. You’ll all be trained in the filthiest of dirty fighting because Aurora’s enemies will be; they’ll give you no quarter, and you should learn to fight like cornered badgers. I made a mistake in how I trained Geniver. I am never making that mistake again.”

  His voice caught for a moment and he blinked rapidly. Then he straightened and went back to being the authority he’d been when he walked out of the Knights’ Tower. “The King has charged me with making the six of you into not just good fighters but a unit, people who know how to fight together. And together you’ll be called Aurora’s Companions. Now let’s go to the armory. The first thing to do is get you all fitted up in your practice armor.”

  So off we went in a straight line, following Sir Delacar like chicks following a big fat hen. When we got to the armory, Delacar took us to the part where all the practice gear was and opened three chests. From these, he took heavily padded canvas tunics and loose trews, held them up to us, and shoved them in our arms when he was satisfied that they were going to fit. Then he went rummaging in a box on a shelf and handed us girls each a long canvas band that looked like a bandage.

  “What’s this for?” I asked.

  But Elle was already wrapping it tightly around her chest while the boys were pulling on their padded leggings. I copied her, and so did Anna. When we were all dressed, Delacar found battered helmets that fit us, gave us each a quarterstaff, and paraded us out to a part of the yard where none of the squires were practicing or polishing their masters’ mail or otherwise doing chores for their knights.

  “Have any of you learned quarterstaff yet?” Sir Delacar asked, with the air of someone who expected us all to say no.

  But Giles and Elle both held up their hands. Sir Delacar blinked in surprise, then quickly recovered. “All right, Giles, please pair up with Miriam. Raquelle with Robert, and Susanna with Nathaniel. Raquelle, you and I will demonstrate the first exercise, then everyone will do it with their partner—slowly.”

  The exercise was pretty simple. One person would use the upper third of the quarterstaff to strike at the partner’s head from the right, and the partner would intercept the blow. Then the striker would do it again from the left. Then he or she would try to strike for the knee from the right, then from the left. Then it would be the partner’s turn to try the four strikes. Then it would go back. We all watched closely, then followed Delacar’s orders. “I didn’t know you knew quarterstaff,” I said as Giles and I took turns going through the moves.

  He smirked. “There’s a lot you don’t know about me.” He was teasing me, but I didn’t rise to the bait. Which is just as well, because a moment later, Sir Delacar began pounding his quarterstaff on the ground, setting a beat we were supposed to follow. And he kept speeding up. I was using all sorts of muscles I wasn’t used to using, and the faster we went, the harder I had to concentrate to keep from being whacked. This was like dancing lessons—except the dancing master had never whacked me as hard with his little pointy stick as Giles would if either of us slipped up.

  When we were starting to fumble and dripping with sweat and Elle had caught poor Robert a sharp rap on the forearm by accident, Sir Delacar called a halt. “Go get a drink and come back and practice on the poles.” He pointed to a row of poles with targets marked on them in chipped red paint. We each had a turn at the bucket and ladle, then followed his orders. Once again, Delacar waited until he thought we had the pattern down, then began setting a pace for us.

  By the time he let us go, my clothing and armor were sodden, my hair wringing wet, and my arms so sore that I could barely lift them. We left our padding in a soggy pile to be taken away, rinsed out, and dried; and we went our different ways. I would have thought that all the work in the kitchen would have given me better muscles!

  I stopped at the kitchen and asked for food, and someone thrust something to eat into my hands and shooed me out. It was a couple of legs of cold roast chicken, some warm bread with jam stuffed into the middle, and a handful of radishes, and by the time I reached my room, I had eaten the lot. It was a good thing that I’d stopped down there because Belinda was still in a mood and my sweaty state did not do anything to change it.

  She made me strip to the skin and rubbed me down with a rough wet cloth—which I could have done myself, but she was clearly not going to miss the chance to scrub me thoroughly, as if by doing so she could erase all my ideas about being Aurora’s Champion. When she was done, she waved her hand at the gown and underthings she’d laid out. While I was putting it all on, she was carrying out my morning clothing to be dealt with by the laundresses and wearing an expression of extreme distaste on her face.

  But instead of going to eat the noon meal with Mama and Papa and the rest of the Court, I flopped down on my bed with my arms outstretched to ease them. Right now, an hour or two of rest sounded better than food.

  Belinda came back in and looked at me, still wearing the scowl. It was clear that her feelings about what was right and proper for a young lady were running roughshod over any concern for how vulnerable Aurora was. I don’t know what she expected me to do. Maybe wear a Fae gown and wave a wand prettily? “You asked for this,” she said accusingly.

  “Yes, I did,” I replied. “It’s worth it. It will get better.” I didn’t say it would get easier because it was pretty clear that Sir Delacar was not going to make this easy on us. But squires had been doing this for a very, very long time, and I figured that I could do what they were doing. I’d never heard of a squire who died of too much exercise.

  Belinda sniffed and stalked out. But just as I started to doze off a little, a servant arrived with a big wooden tray with a bowl of soup, more bread, and a pitcher of watered wine. The wine was extremely welcome even if Belinda’s idea of what someone should be eating after a heavy bout of quarterstaff training left something to be desired because I could probably have eaten an entire baron of beef by myself. At least it was a nice thick soup, not a broth. I ate very slowly, both because my arms hurt and because I knew that if I lay back down, I would fall asleep.

  When I had finished eating, I knew it was time for me to meet whichever Fae had either volunteered or been ordered to teach me. I managed to stagger down to the kitchen stair, and by the time I was at the
bottom of it, my muscles were a little less sore and no longer stiff. The directions I had been given yesterday had been very explicit. I was to go to my favorite ancient oak in the overgrown part of the garden. I couldn’t imagine why I would be going there instead of someplace outside the palace, but I assumed that the Fae would transport me from there to somewhere else. How? No idea. They were Fae.

  I was very much hoping that the Fae teaching me would be one of the ones I recognized.

  Through the vegetable and herb garden, then into the pleasure garden, and then into the overgrown section I went. Not moving briskly, may I say, but not crawling, either. And when I pulled aside a vine curtain and revealed my oak, who should I see waiting there for me but Brianna Firehawk, and I sighed with relief. Here was someone who had proved that she had a deep connection to the Royal Family in Tirendell. That was a definite point in her favor, but I had some other notions about her based on all the discussions that had gone on in Mama’s solar after the christening. I trusted her, and I felt that I could count on her to be thorough and practical.

  “Oh, my,” she said as I used a great root as a step to get to where she was standing and winced a little. “I see your weaponry teacher has had no mercy on you.”

  “None whatsoever, Lady Firehawk,” I said, and tried not to groan. “It’s Sir Delacar.”

  She tapped her lips with her finger. “Hmm. I believe I can see why he is being… rigorous. Well, this will be your first lesson in magic,” she continued, switching subjects abruptly. “There is an ancient door in this oak, a Fae door that I have used a great deal in the past. The first thing I want you to do is find it.”

  I was momentarily distracted by the astonishing news that my favorite tree had a Fae door in it. And one that Brianna had used a lot.

  Now what on earth did that mean? Had I been drawn to this tree because there was magic here and I had inborn magic? Was it just a coincidence?

  But Brianna was waiting, and I shook off the distracting questions. I thought about feeling the enormous trunk for telltale cracks, but something told me I wouldn’t find anything that way. So I stared and stared until I was cross-eyed, but I couldn’t see a door, either. I stopped trying to spot it and closed my eyes so I could think. Then it was as if something whispered to me, Don’t think. Feel. So I let my mind drift off into a blank and stepped forward until I was right at the trunk, holding out my hand until it rested just above the bark. I moved it slowly back and forth, and suddenly I felt it! A tingle and a sensation of warmth. I traced it with my hand downward in a gentle curve across the base of the trunk and back up again in another gentle curve until I reached my starting place.

  I looked over at Brianna and saw her smiling with approval. She tapped the oak with her finger, and the outline I had just traced lit up for a moment.

  “Now I am going to teach you how to open it,” she said. “For the near future, you’ll be required to come here, open the door, and step through to have your lesson.”

  “But—can’t other Fae use this door too?” I asked in alarm, thinking of the Dark Fae.

  “Of course. But only Light Fae, and it won’t take them to my home. That destination is locked to you and me. The way into the palace via this door is also locked to you and me.” Her smile widened as she saw me take that in.

  “But… that means the door can go to more than one place!” I cried, bewildered. “How is that possible?”

  “Among many other things, that is what you are going to learn,” she chided gently. “First, you must find the place inside you where your power is. That is the same place you reached when you deflected the curse and the dark magic.”

  I closed my eyes again and thought back to the moment when I realized my baby sister was about to be struck with a magic curse that would send her to a horrible fate. I pictured it very vividly in my mind—and as I actually started to feel some of the fear I had felt then, I sensed it. It was like a snake uncoiling and rising to strike.

  And at the same moment that I felt this stirring within me, Brianna said, “Now send that power into your hand, hold it in the middle of the door, and will it to open. It might help to picture the power as a hand pushing it.”

  That was what I did, and for a while, nothing happened. But then I felt some of the power leaving me as a bright line formed around the edges of the door, and then the door did slowly swing inward!

  It opened on another garden, but it was nothing like the one behind me. As I looked past it, I saw it led to another garden that was quite clearly a garden only a Fae could create. This one was full of plants I didn’t recognize, flowers in shapes that made no sense—one was shaped like three pyramids stacked on top of one another—and with perfumes I had never smelled before. There were trees that had been somehow contorted into seats, like the roots of my oak, and bushes that had been coaxed into amazing symmetrical shapes. I had trouble taking it all in, but Brianna took my hand and led me inside through the tree. I heard the door in the tree close behind us, but I was too busy looking at the garden to worry about that. The fantastic landscape was not limited to plants. There were butterflies everywhere and a veritable chorus of birds. Listening closely, I heard frogs and crickets too.

  In the middle of all this was a sort of miniature castle. That is, it was built to look like a castle, and a very fanciful one at that, but it was about the size of the manor house Mama and Father and I had shared.

  Then again, I supposed that a Fae could make her dwelling as big or as small as she cared to.

  “We’re going to work out here in the garden for the first little while,” Brianna said, leading the way to one of the trees that had been formed into what looked like a rather comfortable bench seat for two. “Until you gain control, I would rather not risk anyone else’s property, and to be honest, it’s safer for mine that we practice out here in my garden. Once I am certain you won’t be knocking down walls, we will practice inside my home. When your control is even better and I need not be concerned about any accidents, we will move to a spot in the forest near your own home.”

  I nodded, acknowledging the justice of that. “But why are we starting here instead of there?” I asked. “If you’re worried about accidents, wouldn’t the forest back in Tirendell be better?”

  “Magic is easier to move here in the Fae Realm.”

  “Oh.” I thought about that a moment. “Well, how do I start?”

  “You felt the magic within you when you concentrated on the peril your sister had been in, and you managed to control it,” she observed as we both took our seats on the velvety greenish-black bark of the trunk of one of the seating trees. I couldn’t help running my hand over it. I’d never felt bark like that—

  Then I realized that it wasn’t bark; it was moss, the thickest, softest moss I had ever seen.

  “Um, yes,” I said, belatedly realizing that she was still waiting for an answer. Brianna raised an eyebrow at me.

  “You mustn’t allow yourself to be distracted when you are dealing with magic,” she warned. “Human magic, such as your wizard practices, is dangerous enough. Fae magic is generally much more powerful and capricious. And you may have both; I am not certain yet.”

  I knew that there was human magic and there was Fae magic, and that they weren’t the same thing. But I’d had no idea that it was possible to have both.

  “Yes, my lady,” I responded, flushing with embarrassment.

  “Now I want you to find the center of your magic when you are not agitated,” the Fae instructed. “Take your time. Tell me when you have it.”

  I closed my eyes to shut out all the extremely distracting sights of the garden and concentrated on how that magic had felt inside me.

  It had felt like a coiled snake.

  But I want something gentler—kinder. I don’t know where the thought came from, but it was loud and strong in my head and somehow right. Righter than a snake. I wasn’t going to attack something, after all, or even defend against something. So when I finally found that
deep well of warmth and force, I thought of a flower instead of a snake.

  I imagined a flower inside me opening up, spreading its petals, filling me with its perfume.

  I felt something tickling my cheek that was not that power, and I almost lost it. But I managed to get control of it at the last second before it slipped away from me, and I opened my eyes.

  I was covered in butterflies. They clung to me everywhere, my dress, my hair, and the tickling on my cheek had been one of them trying to land there.

  Brianna smiled broadly, much to my relief. “Excellent,” she said. “Not exactly what I wanted you to do but near enough. Now send the butterflies away without frightening them.”

  What would the butterflies in a Fae garden be attracted to? Well, they came to me when I called up magic. Maybe they eat magic?

  Carefully, without disturbing them, I turned my right hand over so it was palm up. I had forced power out of my hand when I opened the door, but I wanted something gentler now. So I coaxed the power instead, moving it by degrees until it started to flow of its own accord, and I pooled it in the palm of my hand. It formed into a softly glowing golden puddle there.

  The butterflies immediately responded, fluttering off my dress and hair and moving down onto my arm. So far, so good. Now they were all competing for a spot on my hand and arm.

  I lifted my hand, imagining that the warm little pool of power was a ball, a ball as light as a bit of thistledown, then I imagined a breeze coming and blowing it out into the garden.

  And it did! It lofted off my palm and bobbed out into the garden, the butterflies following in a joyous, fluttering multicolored cloud.

  I coaxed the ball into setting down on a bush of what looked like roses and turned to see what Brianna thought of my solution.

  She watched the butterflies drinking up the magic with her head tilted to one side. “Interesting. That is not a solution I would have come to.”

  “Is it wrong?” I asked, concerned.

  “No, not at all. Just not the way a Fae would have done it.” I felt uneasy and a little anxious.