Magic Three of Solatia (6 page)

“And four Elemental Questions must be asked and answered, old man?” said the king.

Sian nodded.

The king thought a minute. Then he laughed out loud. “Yes, there shall be questions, old man. But you did not say who shall ask them. And
I
shall ask them. Yes, I shall ask the questions. Of anyone else who would try to marry your daughter. She shall have till the last day of The Seven to find someone who can answer
my
four questions. At the castle fair she may invite as many as she dares. If there is anyone who can answer
my
questions, he shall marry your daughter and live in fine style with her here at my own castle. But I do not think there will be any who will be able to guess my riddles. And those who try and fail—shall die.”

Sian gasped. Things had not happened as he and his daughter had planned, and he did not know what to say to make things right.

But the king dismissed him then. As Sian was led to the castle door, he heard Blaggard saying, “Come, my ministers. With your wisdom and my wizardry we shall make four Elemental Questions that even Sianna of the Song cannot answer.”

F
OR ALL THE SOLATIANS,
The Seven had been a success except for Sian and his daughter. The merrymaking had been added to by the free casks of apple wine sent down from the castle. And not one of Sian’s neighbors had thought to ask why the button maker’s cottage was dark and Sianna and her father did not take part in the holiday. But, as Sianna herself had remarked to her father, “It is difficult to see another’s pain when one is brimmed up like a wineskin.”

But on the seventh day, Sianna and her father were summoned to the castle for the fair, and they could not refuse. Indeed, Blaggard sent guards to escort them, carrying pikestaffs twined with garlands.

Slowly Sianna and her father, flanked by the guards, made their way up the hundred steps. Neighbors and friends greeted them lustily. They were offered leather bottles half full of wine and joints of meat still warm from the spit. But Sian, dressed in a clean linen shirt, and his daughter, in a long white linen dress with yellow lace and crowned with seaflowers, looked neither left nor right. They marched stonefaced to the castle door, where they were greeted by the king himself.

“Come, my lovely,” Blaggard said to Sianna and took her hand. “I shall have you dressed in silk like a queen. For queen you shall surely be before The Seven’s last eve is out.”

Sianna raised her head and stared into Blaggard’s eyes. “I shall be wed in this dress and no other. I made it with my own hands after my mother’s design. I wove the cloth and tatted the lace. The buttons are my father’s work. What I came in, I shall go in. It is the Old Way. It is my way.”

Sian was astounded. He had never heard such firmness, such power in her voice. At last he understood why Blaggard might fear her, and he wondered if Blaggard might not be right to fear.

Blaggard looked away from Sianna’s strong gaze. “As you wish,” he said, and forced himself to shrug.

The king led the two to a platform that had been constructed on the castle grounds. It had three steps. Blaggard sat on a throne on the topmost part. Sian and Sianna sat in carved chairs on the next. And guards and counselors stood on the bottom part of the platform.

A blare of trumpets greeted their arrival. The merrymakers at the fair bowed, and a group of dancers began to leap and twist, the bells at their ankles and knees making a merry company to their steps.

At the moment of the trumpets’ sound, posters were hammered onto doors and pasted onto walls around the kingdom so that all at the fair and in the countryside could read at once:

BE IT KNOWN

that Blaggard the King

will wed the maiden known as Sianna

unless

there is a man who can answer the

FOUR ELEMENTAL QUESTIONS

before fall of night at The Seven.

To try and fail in answering the riddles will mean

Death by the Sword.

“You certainly do not encourage any who would try,” said Sianna when she read a poster the king thrust into her hands.

“I do not want such a prize as Sianna of the Song to escape me,” said Blaggard.

“And what makes me such a prize, sir?” she asked.

“Your beauty, your voice, your wit,” he replied. His mouth spoke the words, but his eyes were cold and gave the lie to his mouth.

“My power,” said Sianna quietly. But though she spoke as softly as a creature of the sea, Blaggard heard.

“You have no power,” he replied. He looked down at the bone flute he wore at his belt. His hand touched it lightly. “In this kingdom, only the king has power.”

“Then why do you fear me?” asked Sianna.

“The king fears no one. Perhaps I
love
you,” he said. But there was loathing in his voice.

“It is a strange love that seeks to destroy.”

Hate flashed brightly between them, and their words were a deadly game they played.

Bartering and bear baiting, horse racing and wrestling, juggling and jongleuring, and singing of songs went on all day at the fair, but no man came forward to try for Sianna’s hand.

From all parts of the castle came the sound of laughter. Sianna could not remember having heard so light a sound in Solatia before, and each laugh seemed a knife in her heart.

The sun was near setting, and the smile on Blaggard’s face grew broader and cruder. “Look, lady,” he said to Sianna, “how the sun sits heavily on the horizon.”

“Not as heavy as my heart in my breast,” she replied. Then she gave a start as a familiar figure moved toward them. It was Flan, the simple fisherlad who had long loved her.

“Oh, no, dear Flan,” she said to herself, as a single tear filled her eye and moved down her cheek. “It is useless for you to try.”

F
LAN MARCHED UP TO
the throne escorted by guards. He smiled brightly at Sianna to calm her, but the sweet innocent look on his face served only to encourage her fear.

“I shall answer the Four Elemental Questions,” he said. Then he quickly added, “Your Majesty” when he saw a frown begin to form on the king’s mouth.

“Fool,” said Blaggard.

“No fool, but a fisherman,” said Flan. He turned his smile on the king, for he had not the wit to fear.

“It is said that there is no fool like a fisherman,” replied the king. “And I suppose it shall be proved out. Very well, here is the first riddle. Your head sits so lightly upon your body already, you will not feel its separation keenly.”

“Do not worry, your Majesty, I shall not fail,” said Flan brightly. “I already know the answers. My father found them for me in a book of my great-grandfather’s. Though all the other books of the Old Way were burned, my family kept this one out of respect for the old man.”

“So you know the answers,” said Blaggard slyly, playing with Flan as though he were a fish on a line. “But what if my questions are not your questions?”

“But that is not the Old Way…” began Flan.

“Silence!” thundered Blaggard, suddenly bored with the game. “It is my way.” He turned and nodded at Sianna, then motioned the guards closer to Flan’s sides. For the first time the fisherlad felt fear.

Blaggard leaned over and looked into Flan’s eyes. With a careful gesture, he moved a misplaced curl to one side. “Here is a riddle for a fisherman,” he said with disdain. “Answer if you can:

“A water there is which you must pass,

A broader river there never was,

Yet of all rivers that you might see,

To pass it o’er is least jeopardy.”

Flan stared back at the king. Sweat beaded his brow. Finally he whispered in a hoarse voice, “My great-grandfather’s book said the answer to the Elemental Water Question was ‘the sea,’ but I think that is not the answer to yours.”

“You are right,” said Blaggard.

Flan said with surprise, “I am?”

“You are right,” repeated the king. “You are right that it is not the correct answer.”

“Let me guess anew,” begged Flan.

But the king dismissed him by raising the bone flute. “Kill him,” he said.

“Wait,” said Sianna. “Please.” She laid her hand on the king’s arm.

He drew away quickly. “Do you wish me to spare him?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sianna said in a whisper.

“For my
queen
I would.”

Sianna drew her hand away and clasped her skirt. She knew the danger began here. If she were made to beg, made to give in, marry the king by her own wishes, her power would start to slip away. She looked down.

“Sianna, do not wed this monster,” called Flan as they dragged him away. They took him to the top of the sloping hillock that led from the castle to the sea. Castle Hyl it was called.

The fisherlad’s sudden courage spurred Sianna to action. “I will not,” she whispered. “I dare not.” She reached down to the bottom of her skirt and, slowly and carefully, pulled off one of the buttons she had sewn to her petticoat. She had hoped not to use it, to try every other path. But every other path seemed to lead to the king. Sianna straightened up.

“What are you doing, lady?” asked the king, suddenly suspicious.

“Wiping the hand that touched you,” she lied.

The king turned from her and signaled for the swordsman.

At that moment, Sianna held the button between her palms. She thought briefly of the consequences her act of magic must surely call forth. But the consequences, whatever they were, seemed so far away and the need so immediate, she thought of it no more. Under her breath she said the words she had heard as a child, the magic words spoken by the witch of the sea. She looked as though she were praying. And as she spoke, Sianna twisted the button in her hand, left, then right, then right again. “Magic Two of Magic Three, grant the boon I ask of thee.” And the button twisted by itself under her fingers.

Spare the lad whose name is Flan,

Replace him with another man,

One whose strength lies in his wits

And can these riddles all untwist.

There was a sudden clap of thunder, though the sky was clear of storms. Then the button ran like quicksilver through her fingers and was gone.

It had all taken but a heart’s beat to happen. The headsman was drawing his sword, the bright metal flashing in the rays of the setting sun.

But in its silver blade a sudden black reflection formed. A knight all in black armor on a horse so dark it seemed a shadow rode up the slope of Castle Hyl.

“Hold,” he called. And so powerful and deep was his voice that the headsman held his sword.

“H
OLD YOURSELF,” ROARED BLAGGARD,
jumping to his feet. “In this land no one calls
hold
unless he be king. And I am all the king here.”

“I did mistake you, sire,” said the black knight when he had ridden up to the raised platform. But he did not bow or even nod his head. Nor did he lift the visor that hid his face. He acted as though he were a king himself. His voice seemed to come from deep down within the midnight armor and echo there. “I did mistake you, for I have never known a king to so forget his own royalty as to behead a simple man for the crime of love.”

Blaggard sat down carefully. “He is freed,” he said, and waved the headsman away with his hand. “It was but a
blague,
a jest.”

“You shall not jest so with me, sir. Say on your riddles, for I have their names in my head.”

“Then you shall keep your head—and keep the lady, too,” said the king. “But I do not think you shall long have either.”

“Say on,” rambled the black knight. He was as impatient as Sian with wasted words.

“Your mouth is mighty anxious to part company with your body,” said Blaggard. He was relaxed again and smiling.

“I am mightily anxious to part company with you, sir king.”

“By my flute, I should have you beheaded for your tongue,” said the king. “But I think one parting from it will be enough. Answer this, then, if you can:

“A water there is which you must pass,

A broader river there never was,

Yet of all rivers that you might see,

To pass it o ’er is least jeopardy.”

“Dew,” said the knight. His voice was low but could be heard all over the castle court.

Blaggard nodded unsmilingly. “That was the simplest. Even a fool could answer it.”

Flan, who had hastened back to the throne, muttered, “Alas, I could not.” He was signaled to silence by Sian, who raised a finger to his lips.

Flan was soon jostled by his friends and neighbors in the courtyard. And the merrymakers, who had been quiet since the headsman had first raised his sword, began to whisper together. They looked up at the black knight. The younger women glanced at him appraisingly. The men nodded with admiration at his horse and how well he sat the steed.

“Quiet!” roared Blaggard. “Anyone who speaks shall be thrust off the cliff. For this knight has guessed but one of four. He shall not be helped with the other three.”

“I need no help, king. Say on.”

Blaggard held out his hand. His chief minister hesitated, then climbed the platform and thrust a small piece of paper in the king’s palm. The king glanced but briefly at it as if to prompt himself, then leaned forward. “The second question is,” he said,

“What flies ever,

Rests never,

Sings as it goes,

Moans as it grows.”

The black knight was silent for but a moment. Then he laughed, his head moving its iron case a little. “A child’s
blague,
Blaggard. What answer but the wind.”

The crowd murmured its approval. Flan clapped his hands together, and Sianna, who had been sitting taut as a kite’s string, began to smile. She liked this strange knight, his deep voice, his brave, bold manner.

The king stood up. The crowd fell silent. Even Flan, in the midst of clapping, dropped his hands to his sides. The knight did not move except to put his mailed hand on his leg. The wind caught the blue-black feather in his helm and it danced impudently as if to mock the king.