Love's Labor's Won (51 page)

And then she’d cast a powerful ward and held it in place long enough to force everyone to calm down. A ward so powerful that even a Lone Power would have had problems holding it in place for more than a few minutes.

Clearly, everything had been an act.

The girl hadn’t been nervous at all; she’d been amused, laughing at them. And no wonder! She’d been able to shut them down with a single ward.

It was galling, but the Ashworths were grateful. A fight in such close quarters, no matter the cause, could only end in mutual slaughter. Fulvia had never lost her hatred of Felix and his descendants, and she would happily have cheered if they had all died, but the prospect of losing her entire family staggered even her. Who would have
thought
that Melissa, obedient little Melissa, would have dared to fall in love with an Ashfall? And who would have thought she would have resisted her entire family for love?

Cold hatred prickled along Fulvia’s spine. Melissa was not important. If she managed to retain control of the family, her son could always marry again and churn out a few more children, if Iulius was unsuitable. And if she didn’t, the future of the family hardly mattered, not to her. Melissa had been right, even though she hadn’t known it at the time. Fulvia had not been born into the family.

But all that mattered, right now, was revenge.

A figure stepped into the light, entering from a passage so old that only Fulvia and her closest allies knew of its existence. She looked up, then nodded slowly as the figure bowed to her, then sat down without being asked. He treasured his independence, or at least the appearance of independence, but he would do as he was told.

Fulvia had seen to that, over the years. A favor had to be repaid...

“There is nothing to discuss,” she said, simply. “I have given you the opportunity. Lady Emily must die.”

The figure eyed her for a long moment, then rose, bowed, and slowly retreated from the chamber.

Behind him, Fulvia smiled coldly. She had been ruined, perhaps, but she would have her revenge. Lady Emily would die...

...And then, once again, power would be hers.

End of Book VI

Emily Will Return in:

Trial by Fire

Coming Soon!

Afterword

When I was first forced to read through the script to
Romeo and Juliet
at school – I was the Friar – it annoyed the hell out of me. Romeo and Juliet were such
idiots
! They meet each other, fall in love and get married within the space of a very short period of time (depending on the producer.) And they don’t tell their families, with the net result that Juliet is nearly married to someone else, Romeo loses his best friend and then kills one of his new kinsmen...and the young lovers (assisted by the Friar) stage an elaborate plot to fake their deaths, which turns tragic when they actually die. The only good thing about the whole affair is that it finally brings the feuding families to their senses.

I thought they were being stupid, as I said, for several reasons. First, they only just met; they certainly didn’t have time to
know
if they had anything more than lust. Romeo seems to have a habit of lusting after girls, as demonstrated by his moaning over Rosaline (which stops abruptly once he sets eyes on Juliet), while Juliet is evidently a sheltered and virginal daughter. Second, they don’t bother to tell their parents they’d married, which leads to disaster – Juliet’s parents tried to push her into marrying Paris, unaware she was already married. And third, they killed themselves.

The problem with interpreting Romeo and Juliet is that we look at the play through the lens of our society. We see Romeo and Juliet as adults, free to make their own decisions and able to decide to marry without parental permission. Nor do we see them having problems telling the truth to their parents. Maybe their families are upset at their marriage, we think, but does it really matter to their children? Romeo and Juliet had every right to arrange their own marriage, sleep with each other and build a life together. Or not. Whatever happened would be their choice.

But
Romeo and Juliet
is a product of its time and place.

Romeo and Juliet were
young
. In Elizabethan England, girls could get married as young as twelve. Romeo was almost certainly underage too, by our standards; I rather doubt he was any older than fourteen. The whole play centers around the decisions made by two very young teenagers, below what we consider to be the Age of Consent, allowing their hormones to lead them into a deadly trap. To us, this is thoroughly unpleasant at best and so modern-day producers tend to imply that Romeo and Juliet are definitely over eighteen. But how can one reasonably expect thirteen/fourteen year olds to think logically?

There were other problems. It was expected that Elizabethan parents would organize the weddings of their children, choosing husbands who would benefit the family as a whole (as Juliet’s father chose Paris). Boys got some latitude; girls were expected to remain virginal right up until the wedding night. By marrying without her father’s consent, Juliet effectively disgraced herself (as well as rendering herself unmarriageable) and sleeping with Romeo afterwards only made matters worse. Juliet could not go to her parents and tell them that she was already married without ensuring her eviction from the family. And, to some extent, Romeo would have the same problem.

Their marriage could easily have made the feud a great deal worse. What if Juliet’s father assumed that Romeo had deliberately set out to make his daughter unmarriageable? Or what if Paris had demanded satisfaction? He’d been promised a bride – and one would not be forthcoming. The two lovers might have been exiled or murdered (Juliet’s mother plotted to kill Romeo after he fled the city) and then the fighting might resume, with the eventual destruction of both families. The Prince had threatened to execute both of the family heads, after all, right in the first act.

The Friar is, in many ways, the villain of the piece. His decision to marry Romeo and Juliet (I have no idea if this was actually legal, but the young couple clearly believed it was) was a bad mistake, setting off the chain of events that eventually led to disaster. There were, I think other options than faking Juliet’s death. He may well have believed that their marriage would end the feud – either that, or he was an evil old bastard – but I honestly don’t see how he could have reasoned that to be true. It was far more likely, as I note above, that all hell would break loose. I do not consider him a holy man.

Most productions, I think, miss this point. To us,
Romeo and Juliet
is a story about a love affair and focuses on the romance. But the play is, in many ways, a warning about the
dangers
of unfettered feelings.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

Five Things That Could Have Happened To Emily

As a Christmas gift to my readers, I allowed myself to speculate on what might have happened if things had gone differently for Emily and offered five snippets giving a brief insight into five separate alternate worlds. None of them, of course, are canonically within the storyline...except one. Any guesses as to which?

One – Slave

Emily has no idea why Shadye kept her as a slave.

Certainly not for sex, or for what little she can do for him. Shadye shows no interest in her scrawny body – thinner now than she was before he took her – and she simply can’t do much for him in any other respect. His skeleton servants cook, when Shadye remembers to eat, and do most of the chores around his fortress. Emily spends her days wandering the extensive passageways, feeling her fragile clothes from Earth slowly turning into rags, and silently trying to understand the madness surrounding her.

He has her under a spell, she knows from bitter experience. His merest words to her have the force of law, commands she must obey. There are times when he makes her pose for him, or dance, or humiliate herself...and times when he says a word the spell takes as an order, forcing her to obey. She has tried to escape twice, only to discover that her body simply won’t walk more than an hour away from the fortress. Not that there’s any real hope of escape. Even if she could break the spell, where would she go?

She tries to read his books, to study the power he uses so freely, but she can’t parse out a single word. Shadye merely laughed when she asked him to teach her magic, then told her never to ask again. His power makes him unstoppable. She tries to kill him once, in sheer desperation, and her body does as she wants...but it doesn’t matter. Shadye calmly plucked the knife out of his chest, then tossed it to one side. The lack of punishment for her act only makes it worse. There is no hope of escape.

Shadye mumbles and rages, muttering to himself in languages she doesn’t understand. There are times when he seems to see her as a pet, something to be petted, and times when he seems angry at her for reasons she cannot understand. One day, she is sure, he will kill her...or command her to kill herself.

And if he doesn’t, she knows she will end her days in the dark fortress; lonely, starving, helpless, naked...and enslaved.

Two – Apprentice

Perhaps it is the stricken look in her eyes that makes Void think twice, after telling her she needs to go to school. Or perhaps it is the challenge she presents to him, the chance to teach magic to someone who did not even know it existed two days ago. But he changes his mind and tells Emily she can study with him.

Void is a stern taskmaster, Emily discovers. He expects her to rise with the sun, eat a small breakfast, and then study until the sun starts to set behind the distant mountains. But it doesn’t matter, because she is learning magic! Within the first few days, she casts her first spells; within the first two weeks, she learns how to string concepts together to cast several spells in quick succession. Power sparkles over her fingertips as she moves from spell to spell, learning how to use them and open the next layer of magic.

Two months after her arrival, she accidentally turns one of the maids into a toad. She calls for Void, expecting punishment, but he only praises her for her achievement. The fear in the maid’s eyes daunts her for a second, yet it fades behind the praise of the first true father figure she has ever known. They’re there to serve, Void says, and it is true.

Later, perhaps two years after her arrival, Void takes her to Zangaria. There, she sees the Queen, ruling the country with an iron hand. And yet, one look tells Emily that Queen Alassa is under a spell, keeping her nothing more than a helpless puppet.

But it isn’t important to them, so they walk on.

Three – Friend

Emily had always hated and feared girls like Melissa - and, when she was honest with herself, envied them too. Melissa is popular, the queen of first year; Emily has always been a loner and a freak. But she has no choice, Madame Razz says; she has to share a room with Melissa. All of the other rooms are taken.

She grits her teeth, expecting to have her study time interrupted constantly. But she is completely unprepared for Melissa welcoming Emily into her circle of friends. Beauty and wit are important, true, but so is magical prowess. There, Emily can do well...and, slowly but surely, she begins to come out of her shell.

It takes time for her to build up the confidence to seek out new friends, but Melissa is with her every step of the way. By the time she completes First Year, she has a whole circle of friends of her own; by the time she graduates from Whitehall, she is one of the most accomplished students in the school. And, a year after her graduation, she marries Melissa’s cousin.

And, at last, she has a family of her own.

Four – Murderer

Emily offers no resistance when they come for her.

There’s no point, she knows, as they bind her hands and march her through Whitehall, down towards the portal chamber. She is a murderer, a killer...no, a mass murderer. Alassa is dead, Zangaria will have a civil war, millions of people will die ...and it is all her fault.

The blood of the murdered princess will never leave her hands, she thinks. She was told, time and time again, not to combine her spells, not to risk something that could have fatal effects. The image of Alassa’s face, half-frozen in stone, will never fade from her mind, no matter how long she lives. Magic is a deadly weapon, not a game. She killed...and she knows that, even if she could run, she wouldn’t. She must face justice for what she has done.

It is an hour before she faces the court, nine magicians garbed in black and red. They ask her if she has anything she wishes to say, before they pass judgement. She hesitates, then shakes her head silently. The verdict is unanimous, as she expects. Guilty.

“This is the fate of a murderer,” they say, as they cast the spell.

She wants to scream as her flesh hardens into stone, but it is already too late. This is the punishment for murder, for magical crime; to remain trapped in stone forever, one of the stoned philosophers. They carry the statue to the garden, then leave her there, helpless and alone. It will be centuries, she thinks, before the statue erodes to the point she dies, her thoughts and soul released to an uncertain future. By then, she may well be completely insane ...

But what other fate, she asks herself, does a murderer deserve?

Five - Necromancer

They find her, the sole survivor, in the ruins of the Great Hall, lying on top of the bodies.

It is a week before she is able to talk, to tell them that Sergeant Miles did something that disrupted Shadye’s power. (It’s a lie.) She tells them there was a flash of white light, that he did something else to shield her, that in the end he saved the school. (It’s a lie.) And she tells them that she can’t remember anything else, save for the light. (It’s a lie.)