Summers at Castle Auburn (4 page)

Jaxon pointed. “There. We'll put the tents around it. Corie, let me set up my tent first, and then I'll help you with yours.”

“I can settle myself, thank you,” I said, and proceeded to unstrap my bags from my horse's back. Jaxon could set up Bryan's tent if he was so eager to be helpful.

In fact, I was the only one of the group to have a tent to myself, since naturally none of the men could sleep beside me and the maid was back at the castle. Bryan had not been happy to learn that he would have to share his quarters with someone else, though he had agreed to allow his cousin to join him. The other three would crowd into a third tent, unless Jaxon slept under the stars, which he expressed an interest in doing. I didn't mind sleeping in the open myself, unless it rained. In my experience, a tent did very little to
keep away insects or shield you from the cold, so you might as well settle on the hard ground and stare up at the fizzing night sky. But a tent had been provided for me and a tent I would use, and in fifteen minutes I had it snugly pegged in place.

Just as I had turned to offer assistance to the others, Roderick materialized from the trail behind us. He had three game birds slung across his saddle, tied together at the feet, and a pair of rabbits over his shoulder.

“Had a little luck,” he said, when Jaxon admired his kills. “Should feed us all.”

Bryan looked miffed, but Damien and Kent crowded around Roderick to help him dress the game. That left me to set up a spit across the fire and see what else Jaxon had brought in the way of food. Despite the frequent breaks for refreshment along the way, I was suddenly starving, and the smell of the roasting meat made me nervous with hunger.

Although it seemed like hours later, it was really not too long after the fire started that we were ready to sit down to our meal. We all ate like barbarians, devouring bread, meat, and dried fruit without saying a word. Only Bryan ate with caution, ten minutes behind the rest of us, after Damien had tasted his food. Even I thought this was a little too cautious, since only the five of us could have had a chance to poison the food before he ate it, but perhaps we were among the people he suspected of having designs on his life.

Well, he had already as good as accused Jaxon of considering such treachery. Kent had admitted to me that he would inherit the throne if something happened to the prince. And who knew anything of the young guardsman, so fresh from Veledore? Perhaps he was right to risk nothing, even at a campfire in the middle of the woods.

Jaxon was the first to finish, emitting a loud belch and leaning back against his saddlebag in loose satisfaction. “Ah, that was a good meal,” he sighed. “Hunger is the spiciest seasoning.”

Kent raised his canteen in my direction, since we had nothing so fancy as wineglasses at our disposal. “A splendid job done by the chef,” he said, although all I had done was turn the meat on the spit.

I gestured at Roderick. “And the hunter.” Roderick grinned, shrugged, and said nothing.

Jaxon reached behind him and pulled up an oddly shaped fruit or tuber, something that glowed deep red in the tricky light of the fire. “Found this earlier as we were riding along,” he said. “Any of you know it?”

Kent took it from his hand, examined it, and passed it along. “No,” Kent said. “Is it edible?”

Bryan gave it a cursory look and handed it to Damien, who almost immediately laid it in Roderick's palm. The guardsman looked at it curiously, turning it over and hefting it to gauge its weight.

“Nothing I've seen,” Roderick said, and gave it to me.

“It's edible,” Jaxon said, answering Kent, “but worth your life to eat it if you aren't careful.”

I smothered a yelp and dropped the smooth, waxy globe on the ground before me. Jaxon laughed.

“This dayig fruit's the sweetest you ever tasted—like honey and strawberry and melon all packed in one,” he said. “You could gorge yourself on it and not care if you ate another thing in your life. Only grows a few places in the eight provinces, this being one of them. But nobody farms it and nobody harvests it, because you can't sell it. Everyone's too afraid to eat it.”

“Why is that?” Kent asked.

Jaxon held out his hand, and I laid the dayig in it. He'd pulled out a pocketknife, and now he slit the fruit in two. “See that?” he asked, holding up one of the halves. The inside was feathered with oblong white seeds too numerous to count. “Poison, every single one of them. Eat just one of these seeds, and you'll die in ten minutes. Fifteen at the most.” He shook his head. “Pity, for the fruit is the most wonderful thing I've ever tasted.”

Kent took the dayig from him and studied its interior structure, holding it closer to the fire to get a better look. “If it's so dangerous to eat,” he asked, “how is it you know how it tastes?”

Jaxon's laugh boomed out. “Because I ate it several times before I knew what the risks were, and obviously the meal had been
prepared by a careful hand. But let me ask a question of all of you. Say you wanted to try a dish of dayig fruit—but you knew the seeds were poison. What would you do? How would you avoid the chance of death?”

“I would have my taster eat several bites first,” Bryan said instantly. “Only if he survived would I try the food.”

Jaxon nodded. “Fair enough. What about the taster—eh, Damien? Suppose you weren't eating on Bryan's behalf. What would induce you to take a bite?”

Damien looked pale and defiant by firelight. “Nothing,” he said. “I would not take the chance.”

“Even for the most delicious forkful of your life?”

Damien shook his head vigorously. “Not even then.”

Jaxon looked at me. “Corie? I know you've got courage.”

I took the dayig back from him and tilted it this way and that. Under my grandmother's tutelage, I had learned the names and properties of a good number of poisons, and this was not one I was familiar with. I half-suspected he was tale-telling, just to watch our reactions, but I intended to show some caution nonetheless. “I'd want to know if any antidotes existed before I risked the poison,” I said. “If I had the remedy at hand, I'd probably sample a portion.”

“There's a good answer,” Jaxon approved. “Kent? What about you?”

Kent laughed. “I'd eat it,” he said, “if I prepared the recipe with my own hands. I would trust myself to remove every last seed.”

Jaxon liked that answer best of all, though Bryan snorted. “Cook for
myself
,” the prince said. “I never expect to see that day come.”

“Well, then, resign yourself to the services of a taster the rest of your life,” Jaxon said pleasantly. “But I do think every person's answer illustrates something about the individual.”

“
You
haven't answered,” Kent pointed out, but I spoke up before my uncle could.

“Neither has Roderick,” I said.

Roderick looked over at me in surprise, though a smile quickly gathered up the corners of his mouth. “I can't imagine anyone going to the trouble of preparing a fancy dish to kill me off,” he drawled.
“I'm more likely to die with a sword in my belly or a knife in my back.”

Jaxon roared with laughter and the rest of us smiled. I urged, “But if you
were
offered such a concoction—”

He merely shook his head. “It will never happen. I don't fret over things like that.”

“So how about you, Jaxon?” Kent asked again. “What would you do presented with the dilemma of the sweet and bitter fruit?”

Jaxon took the dayig half from me and balanced it in his hands. “Why, what I've done before,” he said, and crammed the entire portion in his mouth. The rest of us gasped with horror as he chewed noisily and swallowed. I half expected him to fall dead at our feet within the minute, but the instant his mouth was clear, he began laughing again.

“I've never seen such faces,” he said. “If I only had a mirror so you could stare at yourselves.”

“Uncle
Jaxon
!” I burst out. “The seeds—the poison—you'll die—!”

“It was a lie, meant to test us,” Bryan said loudly. “Your uncle Jaxon makes a game of all of us.”

“Not so. The poison's very real, as you'll find out soon enough if you try it,” Jaxon said. “It's just that I've a hardy dislike of being at somebody else's mercy. So over the years I've fed myself the fruit a little at a time, seed by seed by seed, till I grew immune to its toxin. Now I can eat a whole one and its hundreds of seeds and suffer no ill effect. But more than one”—and his grin gleamed through his beard—“and I am sick for days. I have learned to be content with that little taste, though that I am determined not to give up.”

“Nothing could taste that wonderful,” Damien said with conviction.

“Oh, but it could,” Jaxon said, and caught up the other half from where it lay on the ground. With his pocketknife, he scraped all the seeds out, then cut a sliver of the ruby fruit and offered it to Damien.

The taster shivered and leaned backward. “No. Thank you. No.”

Jaxon offered the slice to Bryan. “A taste? It's safe, I assure you.”

Bryan came fluidly to his feet. “I think this game has gone on long enough,” he said. “I'm for bed.” And he stalked the few yards over to his tent.

Jaxon watched him go, then shrugged. “Anyone else?” he asked.

“I'll try a piece,” Kent said, holding out his hand. When he put the dayig in his mouth and chewed, an indescribable expression crossed his face. “Ah,” he said finally. “I understand why you would risk so much.”

“Let me try some,” I demanded, and Jaxon peeled off a piece for me. I ate it, and everything Jaxon had said was true. Honey and wine and late summer flowers and the special cake that your grandmother bakes to celebrate your birthday—these things and more were rolled into the taste of this one small piece of fruit.

“Let's pick some more,” I said, when my mouth was free for more mundane things, like speech.

“We'll look for it tomorrow,” Jaxon promised. “But be very careful when you bite—”

“I'll have another taste right now,” Kent said.

“Give Roderick a piece,” I suggested.

Again, the smiling look of surprise on the guardsman's face. “You don't have much left,” he said. “I wouldn't want to deprive you.”

I leaned across the fire to lay the slice in his hand. “I'm a country girl myself,” I said with a smile. “I know what it's like to have a rare treat. Eat it.”

He thanked me and ate, then his eyes widened with astonishment. Wiping his mouth he said cheerfully, “I know what
I'll
be hunting for tomorrow,” and we all laughed.

There was a sliver left, and it was in my hand. Once again, I turned to Bryan's taster. “Damien?” I asked. “The last piece?”

But he shook his head and, like Bryan, climbed hastily to his feet. “Not tonight,” he said. “I'm tired. I think I'll go to sleep.” And he headed to the other tent set aside for the men.

So we cut the remaining slice into four tiny pieces and each took our final share. But even the wonderment of the dayig fruit couldn't keep me awake much longer, for I yawned through my final swallow.

“Bedtime for me, too,” I observed, rising. Then I laughed. “Snug and comfortable in my own roomy tent. The rest of you will be a little crowded.”

Jaxon shook his head. “I'll be sleeping by the fire,” he said. “I prefer it.”

Roderick nodded. “Me, too.”

Kent glanced at the two of them. “Then so will I,” he said. “Bryan will prefer the solitude anyway.”

Jaxon hauled his sleeping blankets out of his saddlebag. “Whoever wakes in the night, throw another branch on the fire,” he said.

The others also began unrolling their blankets and looking for flat places to spread them. I stooped over to kiss my uncle on the cheek.

“Goodnight, Uncle Jaxon,” I said. “Goodnight Kent—Roderick. I hope you all sleep well.”

Five minutes later I was curled in my own blankets, not entirely comfortable on the cold ground. I wondered if the others would stay awake a few hours, talking idly around the glowing fire. I wondered if they would send me back to my tent if I ventured out to join them, laying my blankets alongside Jaxon's for additional warmth. I wondered if we would really find more dayig in the morning, and if there would be enough to have a whole one for myself. I fell asleep.

I
n the morning, some of the glamour of the adventure had worn off. Nothing like insufficient sleep on a damp and rocky bed to dim your excitement on a journey. We all thrashed about for privacy in the woods and wished we had more water for washing. The men had kept the fire burning all night, so we were able to have a hot meal for breakfast, but only Jaxon was made truly cheerful by this fact. I was irritable, Kent was taciturn, Damien was withdrawn, and Bryan was downright sullen. It was hard to tell if Roderick had any sort of mood upon him; he did not seem like the type to inflict his humors on his companions.

We were all just as happy to leave the camp behind when Jaxon gave the signal to march out. Once again we went on foot down the pathway, in single file even when the trail was wide enough to accommodate two. No one particularly felt like talking. Once again, Roderick disappeared for brief periods of time, departing and returning with so little fuss that I was never sure when he was with us and when he was not. The great trees dripped incessantly upon us—drops of water from ancient dews, bits of bark and dead leaves, curious insects, feathers, seeds. The sky, barely visible through the thick mat of branches overhead, looked faraway and mournful. In the distance, birds called and unidentifiable animals chittered and
growled. My feet stuck in the mud with each new footfall and had to be pulled out with a conscious effort. I considered flinging myself like a rolled saddle blanket over my horse's back, head flopping down on one side and legs down the other, and cursing away the rest of the journey.

We traveled awhile, stopped briefly, traveled on. I lost track of time and distance, so I had no idea how long we had been on foot before I caught the faint, distant rumble of rushing water somewhere before us. I glanced around to see who else had noticed. Roderick, directly behind me, smiled when I caught his gaze.

“Rapids, do you think?” I asked.

“Sounds too loud for rapids,” he said, and I realized that he had not only caught the noise long before I had, but assessed it automatically. “Falls, probably. Didn't know there were any on this stretch of the river.”

“Do we cross the river?” I asked.

Roderick shook his head. “Not this party,” he said. “Maybe if your uncle was by himself.”

“And, anyway, it's dangerous to cross this river,” I said a little breathlessly. “Aliora on the other side.”

“Aliora on this side, too, if the stories are right,” Roderick said, looking a little amused. “Though I doubt we'll see them. We're safe enough.”

“Safe!”
I exclaimed. “
We
have come hunting
them
. It's they who ought to worry about being safe.”

He looked at me a moment as if he had some contradictory thought in his head, but he made no answer. Just then, Bryan brought his horse to a stop. As he was following directly behind Jaxon, he brought the whole line to a halt.

“What's that? That rumbling noise?” Bryan demanded.

Jaxon looked back over his shoulder. “The Faelyn River,” he said. “You'll see it in a few moments. Come on.”

We all picked up the pace then, for ahead of us we could see a dazzling white expanse of blankness that must mean a break in the interminable wall of trees. The river ahead, yes, but at the moment we were even more interested in seeing sunlight.

In another ten minutes we were free of the woods, which splintered into smaller stands of trees as the land sloped down toward the water. The banks were both mossy and muddy, so we skidded a bit, but we didn't mind that. All of our attention was on the river.

It wasn't particularly wide, as rivers go—I had seen broader, more impressive waterways in Cotteswold. The things that held our attention were the current, racing along so quickly that it foamed joyously past every rock and submerged log, and the color, a brilliant blue that at first we mistook for a reflection of the sky. But the sky overhead was a milky white, strung with filmy clouds and leached of color. The river was a jewel of its own making.

Kent took a deep breath. “I've never seen—down by the castle, it doesn't look like this.”

“No, and nowhere else that you come across it,” Jaxon agreed. “But these are enchanted waters, running across magical ground. Taste it here and it'll taste strange to you. You won't be able to say why—but you'll never forget its flavor.”

Roderick was glancing up and down the small stretch that we could see before the river curved out of sight and back into the forest. “Where are the falls?” he asked.

Jaxon gestured upstream. “Quarter of a mile that way. Sort of a rough hike, though the sight is magnificent. Think it's loud now! You can't talk over the sound of rushing water.”

Bryan, too, was looking around. “So, where are the aliora?” he wanted to know.

Jaxon laughed and pointed across the river. The woods grew instantly thick on the other bank, crowding down toward the water and stretching away limitlessly into darkness. “Somewhere over there,” he said. “How far from the river is a matter of some speculation, for no hunter has gone that far—and come back.”

There was a short silence. “No hunter has found the aliora settlements and come
back
,” Kent repeated. “What makes you think they went looking?”

“Well, we all went looking, one time or another,” Jaxon said. “I've tried more than once to find the fabled home of the aliora. Never came across it, though I went fifty miles into the forest once.
Who knows how I missed it? Perhaps it was just a mile to the east of me, or ten miles to the west. Perhaps I strolled right through it, but the aliora had taken on fabulous disguises and looked to me like nothing so much as a stand of trees and a fall of ivy. Perhaps Alora is a hundred miles beyond where I made my final camp. All I know is that I could not find the place the aliora call home.”

“So? Then none of the other hunters found it, either,” Kent said.

Jaxon tilted his head to one side, as if he was unconvinced. “Did they not? Cortay was a hunter every bit as good as me, not a man likely to get lost in the woods. He set out to find the aliora one summer, and never came back. Same with Fergus and Elliot and five others I could name you. Brave, smart, strong, ruthless men, all of them. Went looking for the aliora and never came back.”

As always, when Jaxon spoke in that slow, lyrical storyteller's voice, I felt my heartbeat race and my throat close with tension. “What happened to them, Uncle Jaxon?” I whispered.

He shrugged. “Who knows? Twisted an ankle and fell to the forest floor, unable to walk for help, and died there. Got eaten by wolves or lynxes. Fell sick of a fever. Tumbled into the river and drowned. There are many ways a solitary man can perish in the forest.”

“But?” Kent said.

Jaxon shrugged again. “But I think some of them found Alora and were prevailed upon to stay. Perhaps they were thrown into chains and bound into slavery. Perhaps they succumbed to the glamour of that place, the bewitchment of those aliora voices, and they threw down their weapons and petitioned for admittance. I only know that, once lost, these men have never been recovered—and Fergus, at least, has been missing for fifteen years. A long time to be gone for a man who meant to come back.”

I put my hand on my uncle's arm. It was the hand with the golden fetter. “Perhaps he was not careful,” I said in a small voice. “Perhaps he did not wear his gold charm when he went hunting. But you'll be safe—you'll be careful, won't you, Uncle Jaxon? You'll wear a gold band always, you'll not stir a step without gold around
your wrist? You won't let the aliora mesmerize you and carry you away?”

He laughed down at me, covering my hand with his big warm one, and the brief spell of the story was broken. “I'm safe,” he promised me, but I noticed he did not answer the question. All of us had been forced to wear gold into the woods, but not once had Jaxon showed us a talisman of his own. Did he fear that wearing the gold would prevent him from getting close enough to an aliora to catch one? Or was he, like Bryan, so sure of his prowess that he scorned to stoop to the measures that would keep him protected? I vowed right then to stick closely beside him while we were in the woods, to guard him with my own body, my own gold, whatever weapons I had.

Jaxon patted my hand once again, then turned toward his horse. “Let's make camp here. Strip down the horses, have something to eat, clean ourselves up in the river.”

Kent glanced from Jaxon to the water and back to Jaxon. “But—the river,” he said cautiously. “If it's enchanted, as you say, are we safe to step into it?”

Jaxon nodded. “Oh yes. Swim in it, drink from it, it's just water. Sweeter and purer than any water you'll ever taste again, but there's no harm in it. I've drunk from it many times.”

We all hesitated a few moments, covering our uncertainty by unloading the horses and setting up a rough camp. But, now that we were free of the dismal overhang of the trees, we began to grow hot in the summer sun, and the turquoise water looked unbelievably enticing.

“Oh, fine, I don't care if I
am
bewitched,” I said finally, and began stripping off the outer layer of my clothes. I hadn't exactly packed for swimming, but I was wearing a dark shirt under my man's jacket, and it hung to my knees.
Modesty enough with my uncle as chaperone, don't you think, Greta? Yes, I think so, too!

I was the first one in the water, Kent and Roderick right behind me. The river was not as cold as I'd feared, so it must have lain quiet in the sun a mile or so before it raced down the falls, but it
was frothy as a cauldron bubbling over the fire. It boiled past me with a delicious tickling effect, and I squealed with chill, sensation, and delight.

“Careful! Don't go too far in!” Kent shouted, splashing over beside me and spraying water everywhere. He had stripped to his breeches, and as he strove with the river, his pale chest seemed more well-muscled than I had expected. “It's probably deep farther in.”

“I can swim!” I called back.

“Not in this current!” he replied.

So I was careful to go no farther than my feet could find a purchase on the sharp rocks of the riverbed. Roderick had instantly dived for a handful of those same rocks, and now he came up, his sandy hair sleeked back from his face. The sudden severity of the hairstyle threw his broad cheekbones and strong chin into relief; he looked like nothing so much as a model for good, sturdy, yeoman strength. I watched him as he began skipping rocks into the lively water. The current swallowed his first two stones on his first two throws, so he adjusted his stance and sent the next one skipping downstream, along the face of the moving river. This time the rock leapt back into the air, two times, three, four. He had got the trick of it already.

Jaxon and Bryan joined us in the water, both of them splashing around mightily. Damien hung back on the shore, watching somewhat plaintively but afraid to jump in. Myself, I was delighted with a chance to get clean, and I ducked under the water again and again so that my thick hair would let go of its day's store of dirt and twigs. Every time I surfaced, I found Kent nearby.

“I'm not going to drown!” I informed him over the steady roar of water. “You don't have to be ready to snatch me to safety!”

“You look so small—like the current could sweep you away!” he called back. “I'll just stand right here.”

We played in the water till we all started shivering, then climbed back out to warm ourselves in the sun. By this time we were all starving, so luncheon was the next item on the agenda. It was only then it occurred to us that there wasn't much else to do but wait.

Bryan was the one who brought that up first. “So, now what do we do?” he wanted to know. “How do we find the aliora?”

Jaxon lay back on his blanket with a sigh of pure contentment. Roderick had found three dayig during his foraging that morning, and those of us who weren't afraid to try them had split two for lunch. “We wait for them to find us,” Jaxon said. “We stay here very quietly, and watch for them to come to the river. Usually one will come alone, first, to make sure all is safe. Then they'll come in twos and threes, and splash in the water just as we did. Eventually, they'll come over to this side of the river, searching for food or fruit or—who knows—maybe even for dayig. I've never asked. I've just taken them unawares.”

Even I could see that a raucous party of six, which had just cavorted loudly in the river, had little chance of catching aliora unaware. Even if none of us moved a muscle from now until the next century, we were a hard group to overlook by anyone with reasonable caution. I smothered a sigh, for I had always known we were unlikely to actually capture an aliora, but I had hoped. Bryan, on the other hand, seemed to realize for the first time that this trip might all be in vain.

“They'll never be fools enough to cross the river while we're all camping here!” he exclaimed. “If there were any aliora for miles around, we've scared them off by our shouting! I thought we would press on across the river—I thought we would track them down in their own territory.”

“Well, we won't,” Jaxon said sleepily. He shut his eyes. “It's possible that none will be brave enough to cross the river while we're camped here—but you may yet see an aliora in the wild, drifting through the forest across the river, or even coming down to the water to take a drink. That's a sight that most men cannot boast of. That's a thing to make the whole trip worthwhile.”