Crown of Three (11 page)

“I understand. You're not going to kill me. You're just going to hand me over. Well, whatever price King Brutan has put on my head, I can assure you Lord Vicerin will pay double.”

“That will not be necessary.”

Is he smiling?
Elodie felt off balance. Had she been reading this conversation all wrong?

“I demand you release me!” She knew her cheeks were burning, but she was powerless to prevent it.

“And where will you go?”

“That's none of your business!”

“You are not a prisoner here, Princess Elodie.”

“I demand that you . . . What did you say?”

“You are not a prisoner.”

Elodie stared. “But . . .”

“I promise you, when you know the truth, you will want to stay.”

“The truth?” Elodie said weakly.

“Are you sure you don't want to sit down?”

Fessan stepped around the lamp on its post. With the light playing on just the right side of his face, the scar was invisible. It occurred to Elodie that he was handsome.

“Please,” she said, “just tell me what's going on.”

Fessan took a deep breath. “Very well. We have scouts at Castle Vicerin. They've been watching you for some time. The Vicerins want to put you on the throne. . . .”

“I know that.”

“. . . but only temporarily. Lord Vicerin is ambitious, Princess, and wants the throne for himself. To get it, he will use you. Then he will throw you away. I'm sorry, I know this is hard for you to hear.”

Elodie felt her face flushing again. “I don't believe you.”

“Trident is pledged to restore the rightful heirs to the throne. Already we have you. More scouts are searching for your brothers. Once you are reunited, we will depose King Brutan and the three of you will take the throne, just as the prophecy has foretold.”

Fessan crossed the tent to a crude desk on which a green flag lay, neatly folded. He lifted the flag and let it fall open. On it was an image of a three-pronged spear. Around the spear were three crowns.

“This is our banner,” he said. “We carry it for you, Princess Elodie. For all of you. So you see, you are not our prisoner at all.” He sank to one knee. “We are your servants.”

Pain thumped inside Elodie's head. She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to ease the throbbing.

“Prophecy?” she said. “What are you talking about? I don't have any brothers.
I
am to be queen—just me! Lord Vicerin told me this; he
promised
me.”

“Lord Vicerin lied to you,” said Fessan, rising to his feet. He folded the flag and replaced it on his desk. “I am sorry. I know this must be confusing for you.”

Elodie shook her head violently. “No. There isn't any prophecy. My father would have told me. You're the one who's lying!”

“I have told you the truth.”

“So you say!”

“Forgive me, Princess Elodie. It grieves me to upset you, but I cannot see you deceived. Is it not better to know the truth?”

“Who are you to say what's best for me?”

Fessan covered the distance to her in two long strides. “You have been cruelly deceived, Princess Elodie. Can you not see what Lord Vicerin wants you to be?”

“A queen?”

“No. A puppet.”

“
What?
” Anger flashed through Elodie. “My father loves me. He would never do that—never. How dare you!”

“I'm sorry, Princess. It's the truth.”

“Will you stop saying that!” Elodie snapped.

Fessan opened his mouth as if to speak, but then his gaze passed behind her. Elodie turned to see the red-haired girl from the marketplace. A huge bear-skin cloak hung from her shoulders, a row of teeth dangling from the hood. Through the matted folds, Elodie could see a sword swinging against the girl's bare legs. She looked fit and lean.

“Excuse me,” the girl said. “I didn't mean to disturb you. Are you ready, Princess?”

Elodie didn't feel ready for anything. She straightened her dress and tried to summon the confidence she'd carried with her into the tent.

“What do you want?” she said.

“I'm Palenie. I'm to train you.”

“Train me?” Elodie's sense of disconnection grew. Was she to have lessons here now? How could she learn about history and painting, and how to walk into a room with her back straight and her head held high, from these peasants who lived in the woods? “Train me in what?”

“In the sword,” said Fessan. “The throne is yours, Princess Elodie. But I am afraid you will have to fight for it.”

  •  •  •  

Palenie's tent was even more spartan than Fessan's: just two heaps of furs and a pile of weapons. So different from Elodie's chambers back at Castle Vicerin. She felt a sudden wrench in her stomach. Could those things Fessan said about Lord Vicerin be true? Even if they were, she desperately wished she were home again.

As she'd followed Palenie across the clearing, she'd been acutely aware of the faces watching her pass, their expressions open and curious . . . and somehow possessive. Fessan had told her she wasn't a prisoner. So why did she still feel as if she'd been kidnapped?

“This one's yours,” said Palenie, spreading out a silvery blanket stitched together from fox pelts. “That one's mine.” She pointed to a heavy black fur. Like her cloak, it must once have belonged to a bear.

“I have to sleep on a dead animal?”

“Sorry. I suppose it's not what you're used to. But it gets cold out here. You'll be glad of the warmth.”

“No—I mean what do we
sleep
on?”

Palenie looked at her with something like pity. “The ground.”

Elodie swallowed the sob building in her throat. She wasn't going to let this stranger see her cry. In case her expression betrayed her feelings, she bent over and started fiddling with the rip in her skirt.

“Look, these are for you,” said Palenie. She arranged a pile of clothes on the fox blanket. “Tunic. Leggings. Boots. That dress won't last a day out here, I'm afraid.” She laid a hand on Elodie's arm. “Princess, why don't you get changed and have some rest? You'll need to be fresh for your training tomorrow.”

“Do you really expect me to use a sword?” Elodie picked through the clothes. Everything was green, stitched from coarsely woven cloth.

“Sword. Spear. Bow and arrow.” Palenie's voice was soft. “Look, Princess. I'm sorry. I know this is tough, but taking the throne is going to be hard. You need to be able to handle yourself.”

Somehow the kindness was worse even than what Fessan had said to her. Fighting against the tears, Elodie pushed past Palenie. She pulled back the tent flap, waiting for her new chaperone to block her way, just as Sylva would have done. Instead, Palenie just said:

“Be careful out there.”

“Aren't you going to stop me?”

“You're not a prisoner.”

“So you're just letting me leave?”

“I'm telling you not to stray far. Whatever you do, don't go into the trees.”

“I suppose you're going to tell me they're full of bears?”

“Where do you think my cloak came from? But it's not that. There are worse things than bears in the Weeping Woods.”

Something trickled down Elodie's spine: a touch like icy water. But she swept out of the tent. “I'll take my chances!” she called back.

In the clearing the fires still blazed, but many of the people she'd seen earlier had vanished. She supposed they were inside their own tents, perhaps eating. At the thought of food, her stomach growled. She ignored it. There would be time enough to eat once she'd made her escape from this forsaken place.

Tall trees surrounded the clearing on all sides. In the dusk they looked almost black. The sun had sunk out of sight, but the western sky was still flaming red. Elodie set it to her right, so that she was facing south: the direction she'd come from. That way lay Ritherlee. That way lay home.

How far is it? Is it even possible to walk such a distance?

She marched to the tree line. On the way, she passed a tent in which she heard two people arguing.

“What does he know about being commander?” a man grumbled. “He's barely older than a squire. I don't trust him.”

“Be quiet, Stown,” said a woman. “You don't want him to hear you talking like that.”

“I hope he does. He keeps telling us it's time to fight, but what does he know? That girl is just going to get in the way.”

He means Fessan
, Elodie thought.
And me. Well, I won't be in their way any longer. I never asked for any of them to fight for me—and I don't want them to.
Pulling her torn dress up from around her ankles, she stepped into the Weeping Woods.

A
lmost immediately, Elodie lost all sense of direction. Dense firs enveloped her, rearing up on every side like silent giants. The darkness intensified, shadows transforming into thick black forms, as if the night itself were coming alive. The noises of the camp died away, leaving Elodie alone with the soft sounds of her own footfalls.

The ground was a mossy carpet that rose and fell in a series of shallow ditches and low ridges. In the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw it rippling, like the surface of the great river she'd crossed earlier that day. Questing needles snagged her dress, and branches seemed to move of their own accord, reaching out to block her path.

Except there was no path.

Elodie stopped. She looked left. She looked right. Every direction was the same.

“The road leads where it will.”

The voice came from behind her. She whirled around, heart racing, eyes wide in the darkness. There was nobody there.

Trident had carried her far from home, far from everything that was familiar. Yet even here in the Weeping Woods of Isur, the wretched voices were still with her. Would she ever be rid of them?

“Oh, be quiet!” Elodie snapped at the trees.

She stumbled on, using her hands to force her way through the mass of hanging needles. Thick bracken rose up, as if it were trying to hold her back. She waded through the undergrowth toward an opening in the trees, and broke through at last into a small glade.

She stood, panting, her dress in ribbons, her hands scratched and bleeding, head tilted back to look up at the stars. Was she still facing south?

In the glade, someone was sobbing.

But of course nobody was there.

Despair crept over Elodie. She sank to the ground as the sobbing grew louder. Another voice drifted down from the branches over her head, chanting what sounded like a marching song. A third voice hissed something in a language she didn't understand. More voices joined in, until Elodie was surrounded by groans and sighs, whispered taunts and pleas.

The noise built and built until she couldn't stand it anymore, and she got to her feet, running across the glade and back into the forest. If only she could run fast enough, maybe she could leave them behind.

“Shut up!” she shouted at the branches as she crashed through them. “Just leave me alone!”

Elodie ran blindly, driving her way through the trees, until she could run no more. She stopped again, her breath like a knife in her throat, her scratched face wet with tears. Around her, the firs had given way to trees that were older and more gnarled. Giant, twisted oaks loomed over slender stands of hazel and willow. In the tortured bark of their ancient trunks, Elodie thought she could see faces.

One face moved.

She shrieked, stumbling backward. The face's two eyes blinked. A man stepped out from behind a holly bush. He wore a battered leather jerkin with a dagger hanging from his belt. His face was covered with grime.

“Stay away from me!” Elodie yelled. “My father will kill you if you don't!”

She looked frantically for an escape route, but the forest was as pathless as ever. The trees loomed, trapping her with this sudden stranger.

Then she saw it wasn't quite a man, but a boy about her own age. Beneath the dirt, the line of his jaw was smooth and, perhaps, handsome.

He looked as shocked as she felt.

Elodie took a deep breath, then another. Slowly and deliberately, she smoothed her hands down her dress and over her hair, which had fallen from its braids and hung tangled around her face. What must she look like?

“Will you help me?” she said, still gasping a little for breath.

The boy said nothing.

“I was taken by the people who call themselves Trident. Do you know them? I've . . . decided to leave. I want to go to Ritherlee. Can you show me the way?”

Elodie bit her tongue. Had she said too much? Yet the boy's face was kind.

At last the boy spoke. “I cannot leave the woods,” he said. His voice was thin and somehow musical.

“Oh.” It wasn't the response Elodie had expected. “Why not?”