Summers at Castle Auburn (5 page)

Bryan was on his knees, furiously repacking his saddlebags. “Well, it's not enough for me,” he said hotly. “I came to hunt aliora, and I'm going to
hunt
them, not lie here tamely waiting for them to fall over my sleeping body. I'm going to cross the river now, that's what I'm going to do, and I—”

Jaxon opened his eyes and gave Bryan a single level look. “No, you're not,” he said.

“Well, I will,” Bryan said, but his hands stilled in their packing. “I never saw anyone like you. A hunter, you call yourself. You're a lazy coward who doesn't even bother to set a trap. If you catch any game, it's through sheer luck—or because your prey is stupid enough to walk over and beg you to take it captive.”

Jaxon continued regarding Bryan with steady eyes. “If you cross the river,” he said, as if Bryan had not spoken, “I will leave you there, do you understand? You will never find your way back to the riverbank, let alone to the track that brought us through the forest. You will be lost on the enchanted side of the river, and you will either be taken captive by aliora or you will starve or you will break your neck on a fall over some hidden root. If you cross the river, I will say goodbye to you forever.”

Bryan stiffened. His face took on that rigid, bony look it acquired when he was trying to be regal in the face of great fear. “My uncle—” he said.

“I don't much care what your uncle says, at this point,” Jaxon said softly. “If he wanted a nephew who would live to be king, he should have raised one with better sense. I've told you the dangers. You're a young man with some rough intelligence. Make your own choice. I'm taking a nap.” And he closed his eyes again and, to all appearances, fell instantly asleep.

The rest of us all stared at Jaxon's still form because we couldn't bear to look at Bryan. The prince sat absolutely motionless, ready to explode or ready to weep, we did not know. No one liked to be talked to in such a tone of voice—in effect, dared to be stupid enough to die—and Bryan was not used to such treatment from anybody. I did not for a moment believe that Jaxon would allow Bryan to die witlessly in the enchanted forest, but he had certainly made it sound as if he would. Bryan was hotheaded and brave, but he was not a fool. He did not want to be lost here on this silly, romantic pleasure jaunt. He sat still as a forest tree, and said nothing.

It was Roderick who broke the tableau, shouting, “Pheasant!” and streaking off through the forest. Kent followed him instantly,
and I went crashing after them though I had no idea what any of us hoped to gain. Certainly not a meal for dinnertime, since we made so much noise that not even the most oblivious bird would loll around for us. But Roderick surprised me. I had not realized he had a small crossbow with him, which he had snatched up upon his cry; and in two swift shots he had brought down two good-sized birds.

“Well, now I am impressed,” Kent said, fetching the downed birds and inspecting the shots. The arrows had gone cleanly through, and there had been no wasted ammunition. “I don't suppose you could teach me to shoot like that?”

“Maybe,” Roderick said, with that habitual slight smile. “Depends on your eye. Depends on your aim.”

Kent gave the slightest laugh, seeming to measure Roderick for a long minute. “Probably not as good as yours,” he said slowly, “but I'll wager I could improve, at least.”

“Wager what?” the guardsman asked.

“What would you learn in return?”

“My letters.”

Kent's eyebrows went up, either surprised that Roderick could not read or write—or surprised he wanted to. “Done,” he said. “As soon as we return to the castle.”

We loitered in the woods a while longer, loathe to rejoin the others at the campfire. Roderick found two more dayig and let another half dozen pheasant fly by unmolested. I showed them some of the herbs I knew, reciting their formal names and their healing properties.

Roderick squatted by a scrubby tiselbane bush, all hunched and scraggly in the insufficient sun of the forest floor. “For headaches and other pains, you say?” he repeated. “But it's a spice, too, isn't it? For chicken stews and such.”

I shrugged. “That I don't know. I don't cook much.”

He looked up at me from his crouch on the ground. “Don't cook?” he asked. “All girls can cook.”

I was tempted to reply “All men know their letters,” but that seemed too cruel. Besides, unlike Kent, I knew it wasn't true. “
Elisandra can't cook,” I said. “Greta can't cook. None of the fine ladies of the court can cook. What you mean is, all village girls can cook.”

He rose to his feet, brushing his hands together to loosen the tiselbane's distinctive smell. “Maybe that's what I meant,” he said cautiously.

“Corie's not a village girl,” Kent said, with more heat than I expected. “She's a nobleman's daughter.”

Roderick spread his hands. “I apologize.”

I gave Kent a stern look; he had no reason to jump to my defense. “I don't have any interest in learning to cook,” I said. “I want to be a healer.”

Now Kent moved his frowning gaze from Roderick's face to mine. “You could have a higher goal than that,” he said.

“It's my goal,” I said. “I'll make it as high as I like.”

After that, we continued through the forest for a while in silence. Eventually, by common consent, we turned back toward our campsite. Jaxon appeared to be sleeping still, and Damien lay on the ground a few yards from him, eyes also closed. Bryan was standing waist-deep in the river, a fishing line in his hands and his eyes steady on the racing water. Three gleaming silver trout lay on the riverbed nearby.

“Oh, Bryan, how clever of you! You've been fishing!” I cried, running down to the river to exclaim over his haul. At first he seemed annoyed that I had interrupted his concentration, but at my words, his face relaxed into a smile.

“I thought to add something to our dinner table,” he said.

“Oh, yes! And Roderick's shot some pheasant and we've found more dayig—it will be the most wonderful meal! I'm so impressed! I shall never starve if you're with me in the forest.”

These words pleased him as well, though he cautioned me, in a friendly voice, to be quiet or risk scaring the fish away. So I knelt on the muddy riverbank for the next hour, as motionless as I could become, and watched him pull in two more trout. I regretted now that I could
not
fry up the meal. I would have liked to impress him as much as he had impressed me, but it was a little late to be gaining accomplishments that I had for so long resisted.

Soon enough it was dinnertime, and a fine meal it was. Bryan ate more than his share of the trout, which no one minded since they were, after all, his trout—and I noticed that for once he did not require Damien to taste them before he ate. I supposed he realized that, with his hands alone touching them, he was completely safe.

After dinner, as night drew on, we settled around the fire and began to tell stories. Well, Jaxon told stories as only he could, in that lilting, seductive voice that made far-off cities and exotic princesses seem so real and so magnificent that you ached to see them for yourself. Kent then told a few stories of his own, tales which he claimed he had read in the history books about past kings of Auburn. Roderick surprised me then by raising his quiet voice to repeat old bits of folklore about brave woodsmen and ensorceled maidens and strange dark villains who lurked in mysterious towers. My grandmother had told me similar stories when I was a child, and I had loved them then. Now, lying under the indolent stars and listening to the murmuring race of the river, I loved them even more.

By this time, the fire had died down and everyone was trying to smother yawns. Jaxon looked at us all and laughed.

“I think it's bedtime for this group of adventurers,” he said. “But one word of caution! Make sure all of you wear your gold bands as you seek your beds, for aliora love to creep up upon sleeping men and steal them away in the night.”

“We're safe,” Kent said, extending his hand to display his ring. Roderick lazily flexed his hand to show off the band on his wrist, and I held mine up to the firelight. Damien tugged on his gold chain to prove its existence. After a moment, Bryan did the same.

“Good!” Jaxon said. “Now, who's sleeping where? I'm at the fire again tonight. It's such a fine night.”

Kent shrugged as if to dislodge a clammy palm along his back. “I woke up to find a spider in my hair,” he said. “I think I'll try the tent tonight.”

“I'll bunk with Damien,” Roderick said. “Perhaps the two of us together will be able to fight off any aliora who come sneaking up on us in the night.”

I caught Damien's look of relief, as I had earlier caught his look of fear when Jaxon mentioned that particular danger. So Roderick was a kind man, in an offhand, undramatic way. That impressed me even more than his skill with a crossbow.

We all said our goodnights and settled upon our chosen beds, but I, at least, had no intention of closing my eyes. I waited till I thought the others would be sleeping, then crept from my tent, my blankets over my arms.

Jaxon's whisper caused me to leap nearly a foot in the air. “And where exactly do you think you're stealing off to in the middle of the night?” he inquired. “Crossing the river, like the young prince threatened to do? I'll have you know I won't go after you, either.”

I stifled a giggle and spread my blankets on the ground across the fire from where he lay. “Well, the regent would scarcely notice that I was missing, so you'd have no worries there. And Greta would be delighted,” I whispered back. “But no, I didn't think I'd go so far. I just wanted to sleep under the stars this one night.”

I heard his blankets rustle as he turned his big body. “I'm glad of the company. I haven't had much of a chance to talk to you these two days. Are you enjoying the trip?”

“Oh, so much! I can't imagine anything more fun!”

He chuckled softly in the dark. “It's not such a terrible thing to be the only girl among so many men, now is it?” he observed. “Keep you on the trail much longer with this lot, and you'd be choosing among your suitors.”

“I hardly think so,” I said primly, though my voice trembled with laughter. Jaxon knew as well as I did that there was no suitable match for me in the young men of this group. Bryan and Kent were leagues above my social station; because of my noble blood, bastard though I was, Roderick was below it. And Damien could hardly have been to any woman's taste, though I tried not to despise him for his wretchedness. I had long ago resigned myself to an unmarried life. I truly fit nowhere, and I was not about to try to force myself somewhere I did not belong.

Jaxon chose to misinterpret my reply as disinterest in my choices.
“Well, you're young yet. You'll meet many attractive men. One day one of them will appeal to your wayward fancy.”

“It's not the appealing that's the problem,” I said drowsily.

I heard him chuckle. “Then there's really no problem.” If he added another syllable, I did not hear him, for I was fast asleep.

I could not have said later what woke me up, for stray sounds were swallowed by the roar of the river, and the dying fire did not give off enough light to flicker across my eyelids. But one minute I was sleeping, the next I was awake, rigid and breathless on my hard bed and convinced I should not open my eyes.

I was lying on my side, one ear against the ground, so with my other ear I strained to hear any signal of danger or alarm. No night birds called, no hungry wolves sent out warning ululations; there was only the river, rumbling, murmuring, chuckling past.

Was that the faintest sound of voices overlaying the low monotonous chatter of the water—?

With infinite caution, I opened one eye—and then stared in absolute stupefaction, though I was clever enough not to move a muscle. Across the fire from me, a shadowy shape in the near-complete darkness, Jaxon sat crosslegged on his blankets. Before him appeared the most beautiful creature I had ever seen.

She had skin so pale that it glowed milky white against the darkness, illuminating the features of her face and the long, impossibly black fall of her hair. She was dressed in some sort of iridescent clothing that wrapped her in a net of silver glitter, and she looked in every way to be a thinner, sleeker, more elegant version of a human woman. When she gestured, the grace and fluidity of her long, frail arm was birdlike; when she smiled, her face seemed overlaid with tragic poetry. She moved once, turning to look at the river, and I saw that her feet did not touch the ground. She had no wings to keep her aloft, but she was so delicate that the air itself supported her; it was so enamored of her that it held her close and would not let her fall.

When I had finished staring at her, I remembered that I had senses other than my eyes, and once again I strained to hear sounds
over the rush of the river. This time, but faintly, I could catch the soft interplay of voices.

“A more than ordinarily risky venture, Jaxon Halsing,” the beautiful creature said, and her voice was as primitive and full of echoes as the voice of the river itself. “Or did you wish us to steal the young prince? Did you bring him to my riverbank just to tempt me?”