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Oliver had not ever expected to need to fight, despite the required training. “I can sing tavern-ballads for a black knight until he gets tired and goes away.”
“It wouldn’t work, he’d stay to listen…your first idea might not be a bad one.”
“What, sketching a basilisk or whatever to death?”
“Making bargains.” Tir shrugged. “A lot of fairies like art. Creative pieces. Not because we can’t, we can, but human art is different. Quicker. Vibrant. I’m just saying, you might be able to please a mysterious stranger and they’ll do us a favor.”
“Huh.”
“Or you might not.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Any time.” Tir tossed him an ironic salute. “No, honestly, I think you’re good enough to make it work, but anyone we encounter this far up will have an agenda; they might take offense on purpose. Nothing to do with the quality of your art. Did you get around to submitting that piece for the University showcase before we left?”
“Yeah, it’s under the Vertir Rioli name, like always.” Oliver, while not technically a student, had been using that pseudonym for several years; he’d not wanted anyone to look at his work and think of the Crown Prince. Tir had listened patiently to his complaints about his own recognizability, way back then, and had gone to talk to the University’s arts Masters, and had come back and told him to send that first piece under a name only the two of them and Master Stephen would know.
Of course Tir had. Solving problems. A solution Oliver should’ve thought of, and hadn’t. Because Tir had done it for him.
He didn’t have enough time to devote to the art, not really. Not enough time to study, to practice. Never truly going to be great. Too many demands: the throne, the kingdom, his people, learning all he could. His family. He’d accepted that.
He was decent enough, though. He’d accepted that too. He didn’t have to be a brilliant master. He wanted to make people smile: with watercolors of village life, with quick sketches in a pub, capturing life and jokes and laughter. The piece he’d sent in last year’d come second, which had both surprised and embarrassed him: a riotous color-drenched scene of the tavern framed by the doorway, seen by someone standing on the brink of coming in.
This year he’d told Tir he’d sent in something different, a quieter more pensive study of the castle’s library, leather-bound jewel-hued spines and solid wood furniture; that’d all been true. But last-minute he’d decided he wanted a figure in the scene, interacting with the stories; he’d impulsively painted Tirian in, a slim dark curl of person in an overstuffed chair, no detail but simply a bent head, absorbed in a tale.
“Good,” Tir said, “because the deadline’s tomorrow, I forgot to remind you…I’ve no idea how long we’ll be. Some Quests have finished in three days. Some in three weeks. I brought extra food. And a lot of honeyed cakes.”
“You always think of the important things.”
The sun came and went, flickering palely through misty clouds above them. The air got more icy, and bit at bare skin, but uneventfully so.
The first of the challenges finally appeared around mid-afternoon, out of nowhere.
This one proved to be more inconvenient than insurmountable: an invisible barrier across an otherwise unremarkable plain that refused to permit horses through. People seemed to be allowed, both human and fairy, but not animals. Both Sprite and Carrot stopped dead in their tracks, and snorted indignantly at their riders, objecting to commands.
A half-hour’s exploration in either direction uncovered no change or loophole. Ollie and Tir met up back in the center, where they’d started; Tir dismounted, strolled across the imperceptible line, came back, and shrugged.
“So we can’t carry as much,” Oliver summarized. Stripping them of supplies, then: that’d be the first test. “Take what’s most essential, I guess. Any idea how far we are?”
“Specifically, no. That’s impossible. But…” Tir shook hair out of his eyes again; it was coming loose from its knot at the nape of his neck. Like Oliver, he’d dressed for Northern weather; unlike Oliver, he’d brought an extra coat and a scarf, because he tended to feel the cold more to begin with. Ollie wondered idly why—his fairy was from the North—but got distracted because his fairy was also talking, getting out a map, pointing and waiting for him to pay attention. “No past Quests have gone further than here—that’s the blue dot—and I do know where we are; that’s this ridge. It shouldn’t be too bad on foot.”
“I trust you,” Oliver agreed amiably. “What do we do about the horses?”
“I’ll send them home,” Tir decided. “I might be able to help direct you more clearly, if it’s not some sort of unfair navigational advantage. The headache’s a bit worse if I think about going northwest, which likely means more magical defenses and closer to the border.”
“You’re allowed to help.” Fairy-companions could do whatever they wanted; might turn out to be why they’d come. “But don’t if it’s going to hurt.”
Tir folded up the map. Both he and the parchment wore a long-suffering look. “I can’t exactly turn it off. We may as well use it.”
“I don’t like it,” Oliver protested, and made sure the medical supplies ended up in his pack. Tir breathed a word or two into attentive horse-ears, fingers stroking necks, ruffling manes; their mounts headed merrily and safely home without them.
They walked northwest, through narrowing stone-slab canyons and tufts of sparse wild grass. They walked cautiously.
The second obstacle, later that same day, turned out to be acid quicksand.
That’d been on the list of possible dangers. Deceptive tiny pockets that resembled regular swampland until boots started dissolving, and shortly thereafter flesh.
Tir saw it first. Put out a hand. “Stop walking.”
