I blinked at it. “Why?”
“So that you might feel… safe.” You looked at your own hands as you spoke, as if you mistrusted them. I did not think a letter opener, nor even a revolver, would greatly extend my life if you desired to end it, but I didn’t say so. I reached for the handle.
You nodded stiffly at my hand. “And tend to that. The blood will draw beasts.”
You turned and strode into the trees.
“It will come to you in a dream.” I threw the words at your back, a prophecy lobbed at an unwilling subject. “That’s what the stories say. God-the-Savior speaks to you in a dream, and you follow His word to the last dragon.”
You stopped but did not turn. “I have not dreamed since I came here.”
“You will,” I said.
5
DAYS PASSED, ANDthey were each the same.
I would wake alone. You would greet me with grim silence, and I would search your face for some sign of renewed faith or divine awe. Only your eyes changed, sinking deeper into their sockets; I suspected you of avoiding sleep.
Later you would hunt, or tend the bay, rubbing handfuls of dry grass over his scarred hide, speaking in the low, honeyed voice you reserved exclusively for him. I had learned not to approach you at these times. For an animal of his size (prehistoric) and age (also prehistoric), your horse moved very quickly, and still retained enough teeth to leave a crescent of yellowing bruises on the back of my arm.
You had said, quite harshly, “Stay away from him.”
“It’s alright, no real harm done,” I’d said, and understood from your expression that, this time, youhadbeen speaking to me.
I gave your horse a very wide berth thereafter, and did not miss the hopeful way he lifted his hind leg as I passed.
At first, I was afraid to wander out of sight of the hut, but I never got lost, or even slightly turned around. The land was familiar to me, though I had learned it as a boy, twenty years ago and a thousand years from now. I knew every slope and dale, every bare crag and narrow stream. I knew where the rabbits denned and where the yew stood, already ancient even here at the beginning of everything.
I sat among the roots sometimes, head tilted back against the tendons of the trunk, and understood why you ran here, when you ran. It was a place apart, a secret kept from the world: There were no queens or ministers beneath the yew, no wars or quests. There was only the slantwise light and the gently moving air and the wild, cold smell of the earth.
In the evenings we would huddle in the remains of the hut, talking softly. Or, at least, I would talk—asking questions or complaining aboutthe cold or describing my attempts to brew oak-gall ink—and you would suffer in stoic silence.
Sometimes you would tend your tack or armor, working oil into the leather joints; sometimes you would lay your blade across your knees and polish the metal with long, even strokes. I would fall quiet, then. I liked to watch you—the easy competence of your hands, the pull of muscle in your wrists—and I liked to watch the sword.
There were so many stories about it: They said it could cleave stones and fell trees, that if it broke in battle it would appear whole and perfect again the next dawn, that it had been forged long before Dominion was born.
Horseshit, according to Professor Sawbridge. She’d become an archaeologist, she always said, because words lied and bones didn’t. She’d shown us the actual swords she’d dug up from this era—rough, lumpen things, with horn hilts and bog-ore blades.
Yet: Here was Valiance, with a hilt cast wholly in metal, a grip wrapped in fine leather cording, and a blade of such pure, coruscant steel that it shone blue in the firelight.
After your work was done you would bank the coals and settle in the doorway to keep watch, your cloak pulled tight around your shoulders. The knot between your brows would ease then, and you would stare out at the star-pocked wood as if you would be content to live out the rest of your days here, in the dim margins of history.
I would feel restless then, almost guilty, and turn to the book instead.
My pen was a hollow reed, clumsily cut, and my ink was gummy brown, but the words came easier than I expected. Like the lines of a poem I’d memorized as a boy, or a story I had told before and would tell again.
UNA AND THE CROWN
They say that when the Brigand Prince dragged Yvanne into the woods, having stolen her from her father’s lands, she was weeping.
They say that when Yvanne rode out of the woods, with the prince’s head knocking wetly against her saddle, she was smiling.
They say the common people fell to their knees and pressed their brows to the earth as she passed, for they had long suffered underthe prince’s tyranny, and the girl who rode with Yvanne—a wild and strange creature, with matted hair and a huge blade bound across her back—did not look down at them even once. She had eyes only for the queen-who-was-not-yet-queen but would be soon.
I could not say the truth of it; I did not know her, then. But I will tell it to you as it was told to me, much later.
Yvanne saw the tears of the peasants and knew it was time to claim her heritage, for Yvanne was of course descended from an ancient line of kings who had ruled the continent before it was divided by creed and tongue.
