Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn
2
In 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 I was irritable, Kent was taciturn, Damien was withdrawn, and Bryan was downright sullen.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 ri
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.”
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;
“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.