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THE GREEN KNIGHT
Ridha
Three days she cursed Sirandel, snarling obscenities with every galloping step of her mother’s horse. In Paramount, in Low Vederan, the bastard tongue born of centuries on the Ward, and in Pure Vederan, the voice of Glorian, the voice of a realm she had never known. Ridha, princess of Iona, heir to the Monarch, only child of Isibel Beldane and Cadrigan of the Dawn, rode with a fury. The sand mare kept on, bred to endure, but even she began to tire. Ridha did not.
Cowards all, the foxes and the stags,she thought, despairing of her home and the enclave now miles behind her. She cursed the Sirandels’ palace of trees and rivers, their forest meadow halls and root vaults. Their city of immortal splendor, hidden deep in the Castlewood, grown as much as it was built. As the daughter of Iona, the Monarch’s heir, they feasted and celebrated, her presence cause for great interest. But it did not last. Her tidings were dark, her requests unthinkable. Ride to war, after centuries of peace? Fight the man who could bring them home, even if it meant losing the Ward to What Waits and the jaws of Asunder? Spill Sirandel blood where Iona would not, for a cause so deadly?
Your mother is wise, the Monarch of Sirandel had said, his long face grim. His hair was more gray than red, silvered by time.We will follow her judgment. Glorian calls.
Ridha wanted to spit in his face. Instead she nodded, drank the spirits offered, ate the food given, and stole away in the night.
Even the wolves knew to avoid her, slinking away from the deer path as she urged the mare through the forest. She no longer felt the armor slung across her body, gleaming green, worked with antlers and the stag she now lamented.Is it raining?she thought after a long moment, breathing in the damp air of the Castlewood. Indeed, water streamed down her face, working through her dark hair with cold, wet fingers.How long have I been soaked to the skin?
It was not the Vederan way to feel such things, but a chill stole into her all the same.And not because of the rain.
Again she cursed in rage. At herself, mostly.
I sent Domacridhan into the world alone, seeking assassins and Cor heirs, seeking a blade, seeking revenge if not death.She saw her cousin in her head, burning as hot as an iron in the forge. All anger, all grief. He was no philosopher or diplomat, or even clear-headed.And now, with the fall of the realm on the horizon?She tightened her grip on the mare’s reins, her knuckles white beneath her gauntlets.Have I sent him to his doom?
Worse even was the more selfish question:
Have I already failed?
As the trees blurred past, green-leaved and black-trunked in the downpour, a white figure rose. It was fixed but following, unmoving but always keeping pace. The image stung, near blinding, and Ridha shut her eyes, letting the mare choose her path. The figure remained. It was no stranger. Ridha would have known her mother’s face anywhere, even in a sending, where all was mist, unreal and real, rippled and distant.
“Come home,” Isibel said. “The Sirandels have refused. So will the rest.” Most of her was as ashes, the edges of her pale skin and silver-gold hair flaking. The sending was not strong, but Ridha was her own blood. It would not take much will to connect them. “Come home.”
The princess galloped on.I will not.She set her teeth and her resolve.Sirandel is only one enclave, and they are not the only immortal warriors upon the Ward. I need only choose, and choose well. If I do not...
Another smiling refusal could be the difference between life and death, for all she loved and knew. Though he had no skill in magic, she saw Domacridhan again, his face torn and bleeding, his eyes filled with the horrors he had witnessed in the foothills.
The Spindle temple was some days northwest, not far by her measure. Cortael’s brother could still be there, flanked by his wizard and his army, vomiting out of the torn Spindle.How many would there be now? Domacridhan suspected that more than a hundred came through in the first minutes, enough to overwhelm them. There could be thousands by now. Many thousands.
The cold in her deepened, until she felt made of ice instead of bones.
The edge of the Castlewood came sooner than she’d expected. But then, it had been decades since she passed this way, and mortals were apt to tear down what they could not tame. The forest dropped away around her, leaving only a barren belt of stumps and root holes. She could hear mills a half league off, churning on the banks of the Great Lion, cutting lumber to be sent downriver to Badentern and eventually the trade port of Ascal. Gallish oak and steelpine were famed across the Ward, fetching high prices in all seasons. Used in everything from water barrels to ship masts to shields. Steelpine was fire-resistant—Spindletouched, some said. Once, this forest had been as riddled with Spindles as with holes in a burrow. They’d left only hollows and clearings, hot springs that varied between water and gnawing acid, flowers that could heal or poison. Mortals with strange eyes and a tremor of magic, running thin in the later centuries. Such was the way of the Spindles, leaving blessings and curses in their wake, memories of the doorways that were and would never be again.
The sand mare was named Nirez, the Ibalet word for a long winter wind that cooled the unforgiving desert. It blew for days on end, signaling the turn of the season and the dawn of the new year in the south. That wind flagged now, and Nirez’s fluid gait lost its rhythm. Only a half step off, but Ridha felt the shift.
She was not her cousin. She would not ride the horse to death. Largely because she would never procure another sand mare in these parts, and Gallish ponies were dull, dumb, and fat. She passed many as the field of stumps gave over to farmland and pasture, gold and green as the lion flag. Hedges cut the landscape, lining the gentle hills to separate wheat from barley. It was a blue, clear day, the sun warmer than it was in the thicker forest. Her armor shone like a mirror, and many farmers stopped their work to watch her ride past. Though Ridha was prepared for bandits or highwaymen, her sword ready at her side, there were none to be found. The belly of Galland was a sleepy land, well patrolled and protected by the vast kingdom.
The first village was small but had an inn and a passable stable. It was only noontime, so the yard was near empty when she trotted through, Nirez blowing hard, her black flank foaming with sweat. The stable hands, a boy and girl barely older than ten, were slow to act. They clopped heavily into the yard, their faces freckled and red with heat.
The boy sneered at her, a woman in armor, but the girl gaped, her pale eyes going round.
“It’s three pennies to stall your horse,” the boy spat, wiping at his nose. “Another one for hay and water, another for grooming.”
“My lady—sir,” the girl added, jumping into a bow that was more a squat. Ridha guessed she had never bowed in her life.
In reply, she tossed a round silver coin in their direction. The girl snatched and caught it first, turning it over in her grubby hands. She wondered at the image of the stag.
“That’s not a penny!” the boy shouted, but Ridha was already walking toward the adjoining inn, her pack and saddlebags slung over one arm. She’d paid more than three times what they’d asked, in coin not diluted by a treasury in a city they would never see.
Though a princess of an immortal enclave, Ridha was no stranger to inns. Unlike most of her kin, she’d seen many in her four centuries upon the Ward, across many corners of the northern continent. Tavernas in Tyriot, the brewhouses of Ascal, Jydi ale lodges, the wine-soaked sedens of Siscaria, Treckish gorzka bars with clear liquor that would blind you if given the chance. She squinted at the faded sign hung over the inn door, unmoving in the still air. The name was worn away.
The interior was dark, the windows narrow and small, a fire barely embers in the hearth. Her immortal eyes swept over the inn quickly, needing no time to adjust. Most of the ground floor was the common room, set with a few tables and a long bar against the far wall. There were stairs to her left, marching up to the few cramped bedrooms, and a door to her right. Someone was snoring behind it—the innkeeper, perhaps. A single maid stood at the bar, most likely his wife. Ridha suspected the boy and girl were her children. They had the same freckled face, sandy hair, and curious disposition.
Two patrons occupied the far corner, tucked between the hearth and the wall, well settled with pewter tankards before them. They had knives at their belts and steel-toed boots, but they were ruddy, beaded with drink sweat, missing hair and teeth. Of little threat.
