Chosen Sister (16 page)

The Gold Wizard sighed and sat down on a rock near the opening to the outside. The wet air misted over him. “I’ll wait here then.”

“You’re not coming?” Austyn asked, looking concerned.

“There’s nothing in there you can’t handle on your own,” the Gold Wizard replied. “You don’t even need your sister with you. All that will happen is you’ll be asked to behave with chivalry.”

“What’s chivalry?”

“Honor,” Reina said at the same time the Gold Wizard said, “Bravery.”

Austyn looked more confused than ever. Reina glared at the Gold Wizard to make him shut up. “It has two meanings. On one hand, it can mean acting with kindness, honor, and respect to others. It can also mean being brave in battle. But I doubt that you’ll have to fight anything. I think the test will test your honor.”

“How do you know?” Austyn’s face paled. “What if I have to fight something like that horrible dragon you did?”

That dragon was pretty horrible, but not the way he thinks. It had a horrible attitude,
Reina thought, but all she said was, “It didn’t hurt me. It just asked me to do something that took courage: to walk right under its legs.”

Austyn’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “It did?”

“Yes, and I did it, too—what else was I going to do? But see, it was just a test—it wasn’t actually going to hurt us.”
Or me, anyway.

Austyn took a deep breath. “And you’ll stay with me the whole time?”

“Of course.”

“Okay, then I think I can do it.” He held out his hand to her, and she took it. Still annoyed, she didn’t look back at the Gold Wizard. They walked through the marble arch.

“Remember your prom—” The tail end of the Gold Wizard’s words cut off as they entered the building, and silence wrapped itself around them.

They stood in a long, white marble hall. The walls reflected light throughout the passageway, but Reina couldn’t see where it came from. They were much nearer the surface here, perhaps even above ground, and maybe the light came through the translucent walls. She wasn’t sure. At the end of the hall rose a high-ceilinged square chamber. In the center was a marble block, and on it sat a beautiful woman.

She was perhaps the Gold Wizard’s age, only she had long golden hair that hung around her face in waves. She wore a white dress and cloak with gold trim. A thin gold band wound around her head, and Reina wondered if she was a princess. When she saw them, her brow gracefully wrinkled in an expression of puzzlement.

Reina released Austyn’s hand and gave him a little push forward. He took a few steps towards her, and then stopped. Reina wanted to tell him to ask about the sword, but she didn’t dare. She had promised not to interfere, although she didn’t see how telling him what to say would really harm anything.

“You are here searching for the Sword of Chivalry?” the woman asked in a puzzled tone.

Austyn nodded, his curls bopping up and down.

The woman laughed. “Surely, you are joking! You’re only a little child!”

“I’m not.” Austyn’s voice took on that stubborn tone Reina knew so well.

The lady giggled. Austyn took a step closer. “Can you tell me where it is?”

“But you’re only a little boy!” exclaimed the lady. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. What could you possibly want with it? Who are you, that you should need such a thing, little boy?”

She admired herself in a hand mirror for a moment and adjusted her golden curls before dissolving into another fit of giggles. Although tempted to say something rude, Reina kept her mouth shut.

“I’m exactly who I am,” Austyn said. “My name is Austyn, and I’m searching for the Sword of Chivalry.”

Reina frowned, unsure where he might have gotten that response from.
Why didn’t he just say he’s the Child Warrior?
Perhaps Eleia had taught him such a thing. She was tempted to tell Austyn to let the lady go about her own petty business and get on with finding the sword, but this was Austyn’s test, so perhaps he had to do something here first.

The lady sighed dramatically, brushing bangs from her forehead with a look of long-suffering patience. “Well, this seems so silly, but I suppose I must get on with it. Sir knight, who seeketh the Sword of Chivalry, I pray, do for me a favor first, and the sword shall be thine.”

Austyn glanced back at Reina, who shrugged, and then turned back to the lady. “Okay, I’ll try.”

She started giggling again, but covered her mouth with her hand. “Well, then, Child Knight, let us move forward. Sadly, the favor I must ask is that you carry me across the river with you to the fountain.”

Austyn looked her up and down. “How heavy are you? I’m kind of small.”

The lady fiddled with her hair for a moment. “Yes, that’s the problem, isn’t it? But I have so longed for a drink from the stream, and it’s only a small river—let me show you.” She led the way through the arch.

Austyn followed, and Reina after that, and they found themselves on the banks of a small stream. The water was black and moving quickly but didn’t look deep. It seemed narrow enough that a lady as big as the one showing them around could probably just jump over it. Across the river and up a small hillside, the roof of the cave had vanished. The top of the hillside was lit in brilliant sunlight. A fountain glittered in the center of it, spraying water droplets into the air, turned golden by the light for a second before they rained down again into the darkness. In the center of the fountain sparkled a sword stuck into a block of stone. Reina stared for a moment, totally captivated.

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“Well, it doesn’t look really far; maybe I can do it.”

Austyn’s words made Reina drag her eyes from the sword and the fountain back to him and the lady. Here he was, almost at the sword, and he was still worried about her? If she couldn’t walk through the tiny stream, couldn’t she just jump over it? But Austyn seemed oblivious to both sword and fountain as he put his little arms around the lady and tried to lift her. He grunted, but she didn’t even budge from the ground.

The lady giggled yet again. “I’m much too heavy for a little boy like you.”

Austyn stared up at her and shook his head. “No, there has to be a way we can help you. You can’t stay down here forever. It’s not a nice place to live.”

“How sweet!” The lady beamed at him. “But I really don’t think you can.”

“I can … if Reina helps me!” He turned around and gave Reina a beseeching look.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “But the Gold Wizard told me not to interfere with your test.”

“But helping this nice lady isn’t part of getting the sword,” objected Austyn, pointing to the fountain and sword sparkling across the little black river. “You can just help me get her across so she can drink the water, and then I’ll get the sword on my own, just like we promised.”

Reina sighed, not really thrilled with the idea, but then it wasn’t the lady’s fault she was so ditzy. Maybe there was some reason she couldn’t just jump over, and the marble room they had gone through was rather cold and dull as a home.

“Fine,” she muttered, stepping forward. “I’ll help her.”

The lady seemed to notice Reina for the first time as she came up to Austyn. A frown creased her forehead, and she peered at her, looking a bit annoyed. “Who are you?”

“She’s my sister,” Austyn said. “She’s gonna help me get you across.”

“I don’t know if that’s allowed….”

“Why not?” Reina asked, unable to keep silent. “If Austyn was big enough, he’d have picked you up by himself, but why should you have to be left behind just because he’s small? You want to get out of here, right?”

“I do, but….”

“Well, then let us help you!” Austyn broke in, his face beaming with excitement. “Reina and I do everything together, and together we can get you across. If you want, you can journey with us, too, only I don’t know if you’d want to, since we’re going to go defeat the Red Wizard and save the country and that might be scary.”

“Oh?” The lady looked amused again. “Well, if you insist, but I don’t know what the consequences of it will be.”

Reina frowned again. Her words reminded her of the dragon’s. Could this lady be part of the test after all? Reina glanced across the river at the sword in the fountain. All of this looked entirely unnecessary to get to the sword; it shouldn’t hurt anything. “Sure, let’s do it,” she said to Austyn, and he smiled at her.

They each took a side, Austyn the front and Reina the back. Reina wrapped her arms around the lady. “On three. One, two, three.”

They both lifted and managed to raise the lady a few inches off the ground. Reina backed into the stream, letting Austyn be the one to walk forwards. The water tugged at her ankles, trying to trip her. She gasped at the coldness of it. The lady made her arms ache, but Reina gritted her teeth and kept moving. Now Austyn was in the water as well, and she was almost through it.

The water swirled harder around her legs, now up to her knees. Confused, Reina peeked around the lady’s body as she continued to stumble backwards. The water was rising.

“Reina?” Austyn’s voice came disembodied around the lady.

“Just keep moving. We can do it.” Reina tried to sound reassuring. The water pushed against her knees and kept moving higher. She wanted to look behind her and see how much farther they had to go, but she couldn’t and keep her grip on the lady.

Water splashed up against them, soaking Reina and getting the lady’s feet wet. She shrieked like she was dying, and Reina half-felt, half-sensed Austyn would lose his grip. She hurtled backwards, stumbling out the water and falling backwards on the ground, the lady on top of her, and Austyn on top of that.

“My feet, my feet!” the lady wailed. “I can’t walk!”

Reina pushed her off of her and got up. The lady lay on the ground, wailing, although her feet looked just fine to Reina, or at least the fine little white shoes with gold embroidery didn’t look anything but slightly damp. Austyn’s face was the picture of concern; he knelt by the lady.

“You’ll be okay,” he soothed. “It’s just a little water—you only got a little wet.”

“But it means I can’t walk up the hill and reach the water,” she wailed.

Reina ground her teeth together to prevent herself from muttering that she thought the lady had done it on purpose. She caught Austyn’s beseeching expression and shook her head. “We barely moved her three feet—we couldn’t possibly carry her all the way up there.” His face fell, so she didn’t make the heartless suggestion that they leave the lady there on her own. “We’ll have to find some other way,” she told Austyn instead.

He looked around frantically for a moment, and his eyes brightened. “Lady, if you take off your cloak and sit on it, we can pull you up the hill.”

The lady quieted, nodded, and undid her cloak. She dragged herself on it, and Reina wondered if perhaps the water had really hurt her somehow. Her pity, however, was short-lived. The lady was as heavy as a pile of rocks, and dragging her upwards exhausted her. Covered in sweat, she wiped the hair out of her eyes and glanced up at the fountain behind them, the sword still glinting in sunlight. They’d only gotten halfway up the hill.

We’ll never make it at this rate. What happens if the sun goes down here? We won’t be able to see a thing!
Still, leaving the lady here did seem a bit heartless, no matter how tempting it was. She took a deep breath and nodded to Austyn for him to start tugging on the cloak again. Finally they reached the top.

The fountain sprayed them in a cool mist, and Reina shut her eyes a moment, savoring the wonderful cool of the water as it gently sprayed her face. She opened them to stare at the fountain in wonder. The light had deepened, making her guess it was evening, and everything shimmered in red-gold light. The sword, stuck in a white granite block in the center of the fountain, had jewels set all throughout the handle; it sparkled and sent colored lights all over the water. Water sprayed out from all sides of the marble block, arching upwards into the air and raining back down in the marble basin of the spring. On the other side, the water reached a low point where it flowed over the edge and down the other side of the hill.

If we’d only known that, we could have dragged her around the hill instead of up it
.

“Oh, if only I could but drink of it,” moaned the lady.

Austyn hung onto the woman’s arm as she continued to moan and groan.

“Please.” His big brown eyes pleaded with her.

Reina sighed, thinking this pushy woman wasn’t worth it, but somehow, Austyn seemed to turn the whole thing around and make it about him. She grabbed the woman’s other arm.

“On the count of three, let’s haul her up to sit on the side of the fountain,” she grumbled.

They hauled her up, but she leaned expectantly towards the water, pushing them all off balance, and all three of them fell into the water instead. The Fountain of Eternal Pouring was cold, but not a bone-aching cold like the black river, which had felt like it wanted to suck her life out. Instead, it invigorated her. Reina sat up with a laugh, ready to forgive the annoying lady anything.

She was nowhere to be seen. Puzzled, Reina stood up and searched all around her. It was as if she had vanished into thin air. Then it occurred to her that the Unicorn Sword might be wet. Her hand flew to her side, but somehow, the scabbard was already drying off, and when she drew the sword it was completely dry. Reina shrugged and sheathed it.

“What’s this?” Austyn asked.

Reina noticed him still sitting in the fountain, his wet curls plastered to his head. He lifted a sword out of the water, the golden drops falling off it as it glistened in the evening light. It had a handle of white and gold, and unlike the Unicorn Sword, Austyn didn’t seem to have any trouble picking it up. He held it out, his face showing wonder and confusion at the same time.

Reina glanced at the fountain. The jeweled sword still glistened there. She waded over to it and, when she touched it, realized that it wasn’t real at all, but stone sculpted to look just like a sword! The sparkle of the jewels had distracted from the reality that what showed of the “blade” wasn’t really reflecting light like metal, but just polished gray stone.