Magic Three of Solatia (7 page)

“The third question is not a
blague.
Those two were just to tease. This one will separate the men from the lads.”

Sian spoke then for the first time. “Say on, sire. For I think this be a man.”

Blaggard with an angry motion lifted his flute as if to strike the old man. But Sianna turned in her chair and glared at the king with such ferocity that his hand faltered and he remembered himself. He lowered the flute and pulled a smile across his features, and then began to recite:

High as a tree,

Weak as a feather,

Yet all of my men

Pulling together

cannot pull it down.

A child cried out from the crowd, “I know that.” But before his voice had time to reach the ears of all, his mother had clapped her trembling hand over his mouth, so hard that her fingermarks could be seen there for a day.

Sianna and Sian leaned forward. Sianna’s golden hair fell loose from the seaflower crown, and she twisted a lock of it so violently in her hand that she snapped six strands at once.

The black knight looked around him, at the men and women and the children who waited for his answer. At Flan, his hands clenched at his sides. Sian, sitting stiffly forward in his chair. At Sianna, her hair in disarray on her shoulders. At Blaggard, standing with a small smile of triumph beginning to show on his face.

“Smoke!” said the black knight. “And one to finish.”

A shout went up from the crowd then, a shout that died as it was born, killed by the look from Blaggard’s eyes. His hands made a magic sign over the heads of the people with his bone flute, and all froze. Whether by magic or by fear, no one to this day could say.

“Those were three childish riddles made up by my ministers,” Blaggard sneered. “Ministers who shall be beaten for their lack of wit. A whip does much to make a man smart.” He laughed at his own joke, but no one laughed with him. “But this last riddle is mine own. Answer it if you can.

“It ventures forth upon the earth,

Upon four legs it comes from birth.

At noon, on two it climbs upon

Until its earth time is ’most gone.

At evening walks about on three,

The fiercest creature this must be.

Name it!”

As the last syllable died, the crowd took life again. The people swayed and clasped their hands. They sighed and looked down to the ground. But no one said a word.

Sianna sat unmoving, the only one so statuelike. Sian put his face in his hands and silently wept. The look on Blaggard’s face was fully triumphant.

“That is indeed a difficult query,” said the black knight slowly, as if stalling for time.

“Speak now,” said Blaggard, “or be silenced forever.”

Sianna moved then, a small hesitant motion as if trying to catch the knight’s attention. Her hands fluttered like leaves at her sides. Her pointing finger stretched toward her father, toward the king, toward the knight, toward Flan. But if the black knight noticed, he paid her no mind.

“It is a difficult query,” he said again. “But, Blaggard, it is
not
wholly your own. I am a reader of ancient tomes. And I recall a similar riddle put forth by a great beast in a faraway land.”

There was a sound like
“Oooooh”
in the crowd. Hope for the knight, for Sianna sprang up again.

“Speak now,” boomed Blaggard. “Your time is up.”

The black knight dismounted his horse. He stood by the beast’s side and raised his hand. His finger pointed straight at Blaggard. “The answer is
man
!” he said.

“Man,” echoed the crowd.

Blaggard fell heavily to his throne. His hands clutched the arms of the chair. “Show your face,” he commanded. “That I may look on it and know my enemy.”

“Show it yourself, O king,” said the knight.

Blaggard rose again and stepped down the three levels of the platform. He walked through the crowd and stopped before the knight. As if in a tableau, Blaggard remained motionless in front of the knight for fully a minute. Then he reached forward and threw the visor back.

The armor was empty. Only blackness, deep and hollow, was within.

“Why, you are nothing but a hollow man,” said Blaggard with a loud laugh. “Come, Sianna, and meet your hollow groom.”

S
IANNA PUT HER HAND
to her head and set the seaflower coronet firmly in place. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair. Then she stood up, came down the steps to the courtyard, and quickly crossed to the knight.

Blaggard pointed disdainfully to the hollow armor. But when Sianna looked into the helm, she saw a shining shadow there. She turned and smiled at Blaggard.

“I shall be honored to wed this noble knight.”

The look that passed between Sianna and the king was long and hard. And Sianna knew that though she had won for an instant, the battle was not yet over.

Blaggard turned his back to Sianna and announced to the crowd, “This day, as I promised, shall end with a wedding. All are invited. You shall be happy for Sianna because I the king command it, though she weds a man of no substance.” Then he stalked off toward the palace, his ministers in a flutter behind him. They knew that whenever he played with words his anger was raging within him and he was not to be gainsaid.

The black knight mounted his horse. Then he reached down and grasped Sianna’s strong hand in his glove. He pulled her up behind him, and she slipped her hands about his waist. Though the armor was cold to the touch, she felt a strange warmth.

The knight made a small clicking sound, and the black horse began to move. They galloped once around the castle courtyard to the cheering of the crowd. Then the horse picked its way slowly down the gentle slope of Castle Hyl into the sea. It waded along the shore until it came to the village. Then it paced to Sianna’s door.

“Why, how did you know that I live here?” Sianna whispered into the knight’s helm.

“There are many things I know, dear lady,” said the knight. “And not just answers to foolish riddles.”

“Then you know that I must go in and make myself ready for our wedding,” Sianna replied.

“If you do not wish that wedding to take place,” he answered, “I shall take you away to my kingdom as a sister.”

“I must wed you,” she said, “for Solatia’s sake.”

“If that is the reason, it is no reason,” he replied.

“And for my own sake as well,” she said.

“Then I am content.”

Sianna slipped from the black saddle and went into the cottage. The knight stayed outside in the gathering shadows, rubbing down his horse and bringing it water from the well. But not once did he remove his armor or his helm.

Inside, Sianna brushed her hair with long vigorous strokes. She took off her dress and petticoats and washed herself slowly, as in a ritual. Then she put the petticoats on again, checking the last silver button to see that it was still secure, as was her wont.

Suddenly she put her head in her hands and began to weep. She had spoken bravely to the black knight, but here, surrounded by her familiar things, she did not feel so brave. She felt unsure and alone and wished her father were there. But he was still at the castle.

She wondered if marrying a stranger was to be the consequences of her act of magic. If so, it was perhaps a small price to pay for saving Flan’s poor head from the sword. Yet this knight in black armor seemed so strong, so good, so understanding, so wise. And it mattered not at all that he was a shadow, for she knew that the old meaning of the word meant “protection.” They still said in Solatia that if a man were in the king’s shadow, he was well cared for. And protection was what she most desired now. Too, she could not help feeling, under her fear, excited and even happy by the prospect of wedding such a man. For never in all of Solatia had a woman ever had such a groom. She wondered if a happy wedding could be considered “consequences.”

“What nonsense, Sianna,” she scolded herself, and looked in the mirror that was set in a large iridescent shell. “You fear where there is nothing to fear. You have saved your powers. You are to wed a noble man. You have not capitulated to that wicked king. Smile then, and go out and greet your knight.”

She quickly put her dress back on, pinched her cheeks to coax the color back into them, and braided purple and red anemones through her hair.

Then she walked outside where the first evening star shone down on her and her groom.

A
LMOST EVERYONE IN SOLATIA,
neighbors and friends, fisherfolk and farmers, craftsmen and kingsmen, came to the wedding. They crowded into the king’s chapel and joined in the wedding feast. But Blaggard did not come, neither to the wedding nor to the feast nor to the wedding dance that would last until the dawn.

Instead, he sent a minister to bid the guests depart early, against all Solatian custom. Then he called his counselors to him.

“This Sianna must be mine,” he said, though he did not tell them why. For to tell them was to halve his power; to show them the extent of his need could rob him of his rule.

“She will not long be happy with a hollow man,” said one minister.

“Remove his armor, which is all that holds him together,” said another, “and he will be blown away by a passing breeze.”

“Then he will drift off like smoke and leave her before morn,” said the third.

Whether they believed what they said did not matter, for they were used to telling Blaggard precisely what they felt he wanted to hear.

“My exact thoughts,” said the king. “And since he must remove his armor to retire, we shall remove it for him for good while he sleeps.”

And they all laughed.

So when all else in the kingdom was asleep, and even the village crier had gone to his rest, the king sent his three strongest guards to remove the armor from the chamber. This they did and reported that Sianna had slept soundly throughout.

“And was there a man by her side?” asked the king.

“My lord, there was nought but a hollow in the bed where her husband ought to have been,” the one called Rolan replied.

Blaggard smiled slyly to himself.

But on the morrow, when Sianna moved about the castle with a bloom in her cheeks, talking and laughing with the shadows that danced around the sunlight, Blaggard was annoyed. By noon, as the girl spoke softly to sunbeams and conversed with empty corners, he was angry. And by evening, when Sianna looked to be as content as any new bride, Blaggard could scarce contain himself.

“Woman,” he bellowed, “you talk to phantoms. You speak to shades. I hear nothing. Therefore there is nothing to hear.”

“My lord,” she said softly, and the very softness of her words was a threat. “You sought to remove my knight from my life as easily as you removed his armor, but it is not done so easily as that.”

“I have removed him,” said Blaggard. “There is nothing there. You mock me, woman. I shall not be mocked.”

“Nay, my lord. I mock no one. You heard him before because you
thought
he was a man. I hear him now because I
know
he is one.”

Blaggard could give no answer. And so Sianna continued, “But give us leave to return to my father’s house, and we will trouble you no more.”

“Never!” said Blaggard. For he knew that even though he was not himself wed to Sianna, his magic could still overpower hers as their lives touched day by day. Besides, he had decided upon a new course of action, and he needed Sianna and her shadow man in the castle in order to carry it out.

“You shall remain here with your hollow groom,” he said. “You shall remain until I command otherwise.” He said it slowly and deliberately, his fingers playing silent tunes on the bone flute.

“It is you, my lord, who are hollow. For hatred and fear eat up the insides of a man and leave nought but a hollow shell.”

“Out of my sight, woman!” he shouted. And so great was his wrath he might have struck her, but he feared the silence of the shadows beside her and the magic that she herself contained. So he turned quickly and strode away.

But that night, when all was quiet again in the castle, Blaggard called his three guards to him. “Tonight we shall see what it is Sianna sees,” he said. “I had a potion placed in her dinner wine. She shall not wake until morn. Go you to their chamber, and where the hollow lies by her side, toss a bucket of colored water. When you see the outline of this man, strike for his heart. Strike quick, strike true, and you shall be well rewarded.”

Then the king paid each man the gold coin which kept them in his service, and went to his own chamber to slumber deeply until dawn.

I
N THE MORNING, THE
three guards returned to Blaggard. Their hair was disheveled and their clothing torn. There was fear in their eyes.

“Your Majesty, we did as we were told,” reported Rolan. “Past the hour of one, we crept upon their chamber with a bucket of blood-red water. The woman slept as still as death. And by her side was a deep hollow as if some creature lay there. We tossed the water and a form did indeed take place. But it was no man, my lord.”

“No man?” asked Blaggard.

The second guard, Andel, broke in. “It was a mer-creature, a giant fish, a veritable whale.”

“A whale,” said Blaggard. He began to smile. “A whale!”

“Yes, sire,” said the third guard, Bran. “And it so pitched and tossed and leaped about, and blew hot air and cold breath upon us, that we were near to fainting. And when we tried to spear it as you commanded, it broke our swords in two with its terrible teeth.”

“And like to break us, too,” put in Rolan.

“We barely escaped to tell you,” they all three said together.

“A whale!” said Blaggard, and he showed his teeth with such a laugh that the three guards stood amazed. Then they too saw the humor in it and, for the sake of the gold coins they hoped to collect, joined in the laughter.

Blaggard was suddenly calm, but the three guards were caught in their laughs and their mouths shut quickly and they hiccoughed.

“Tell my ministers,” said Blaggard, “that they are to call Sianna a ‘fishwife’ today.”