Magic Three of Solatia (8 page)

Quickly the word was spread. And when Sianna arose at last from her drugged sleep and moved about the castle, she heard ministers as well as scullery maids calling her a fishwife. But she held her head high and gave them each such a sweet smile in return that even the bravest amongst them stopped at once and smiled back.

When Blaggard heard this, he was angered anew. He called the three guards to him again and told them that they would have to creep into the chamber once more that very night.

“But the whale, sire,” said Rolan.

Blaggard did not tell them that the whale was but the result of magic. That the water had called to kind, and so the knight had
seemed
a whale. For in magic, fully a half is seeming. He did not tell them, because he did not want to share his knowledge with them, for he believed that sharing diminished his power. But he swore to them that there would be no fish this time.

“
This
time,” he said, striking his thigh with the bone flute, “you shall not throw water on the creature. This time carry with you a silken net.”

The following morn, the guards returned to the king. Rolan had a great gash in his leg. Andel was holding his arm. Bran had a blackened eye.

“Your Majesty, once more we did as you commanded. Past the hour of one we crept upon the two in their chamber with the net of silken weave. The woman slept in her deathlike sleep, and by her side was the hollow. And though it fair made our blood run ice in our veins to look upon that cursed hollow, we flung the net onto the bed. A form did take place, my lord. But it was no man. And no whale, either.”

“What, then?” asked Blaggard. “What form?”

Andel spoke in a harsh whisper. “It was a creature of the air, sire. A giant bird. A veritable gander.”

Blaggard laughed out loud. “Ha, ha! A gander!”

“Yes, sire,” said Bran. “And it rose up with its wings making broad strokes in the air. The great webs of its feet and the strong bill ripped the weave in a moment. It laid about with such great shrieks, I thought it would call in the whole castle. It fair broke Rolan’s leg and Andel’s arm. And near put out my eye.”

“A gander,” said Blaggard as if he had not heard the rest, or cared. He showed his teeth. The guards laughed with him then, in spite of their wounds, for when the king laughed it was always best to join in.

Again Blaggard quit at once and said, “Tell my ministers to spread the word. Sianna is but a ‘goosegirl’!”

And so the word was spread by morn. As Sianna went about the castle and out of doors and down to the village to visit with her father, she was mocked by friends who, though they might fear her, feared the king’s magic more.

“What does this mean, Father?” asked Sianna when she was alone with Sian.

Sian looked carefully about at the shadows as if to make sure the black knight did not lurk nearby. “Alas, they say you are married to no man at all but a giant bird. They say I will have no grandchildren but goslings that the king will cook and eat for dinner. They say…”

“Then they say foolishness,” said Sianna. “Dear Father, do not fear. For my husband is a man, though I do not know his name or his land. And though he was but a shining shadow at first, each day that I love him he becomes clearer in my eyes. He is tall and bearded, and black are his eyes and hair. There is a strange reticence about him. He will not speak of himself and has cautioned me not to question him. But for all his secrets, he is a good man. And I love him dear.”

“Then why do the people say all these things?” asked Sian.

“I do not know,” she replied. “Except that it be magic. And magic is mostly seeming. Perhaps he
seems
a bird to those who do not know him. Or perhaps the king would have it
seem
that way.”

“I do not understand this
seeming
,” said Sian, taking her hands in his. “Except that you
seem
content, and that is all that matters to me.” And he kissed her cheek.

Then he looked at his daughter sternly. “Still, if your man is as good as you say, he will tell you what all this
seeming
is about.”

Sianna looked down. “I dare not ask him anything about it,” she said. “It is the one condition he has laid upon me.”

“But then what is to be done?”

“I do not know that,” she replied. “But this I do know. For two nights I have lain as one dead and have not seen the stars. I fear that I have been made to sleep by a potion too powerful to resist. But tonight I shall wear this amulet upon my breast.” She showed the small stone to her father. “I have blessed it with words the seawitch taught me. It shall keep me awake, though I seem to sleep.”

“Then go with luck, my daughter,” Sian said.

“I will go with whatever is given me,” she replied.

T
HE NIGHT CAME SWIFT
and starless. The castle darkened and all within were held in the “little death,” for so the Solatians called sleep. Only in the king’s chamber were four men awake, Blaggard and the guards Bran, Andel, and Rolan.

The king played a languid piping on his flute, and the men listened as if caught in a spell.

Scarce the stroke of one had faded than the king nodded to the three. They got up from the seats where they had rested, reluctant and yet eager to be done with the night’s business. Only Blaggard himself seemed at ease.

“I shall accompany you this time and see that it is done well.”

Then, silent as shadows, they moved down the long, empty corridor to the wedding-chamber door.

The door creaked open, but the chamber was silent as a tomb. Sianna seemed as deep asleep as before, and only she knew that the amulet kept her awake.

The three guards crept to the great canopied bed in the center of the chamber. They stared down at the hollow that mocked their eyes. Blaggard entered behind them and stood by the side of the door, hidden by the shadows and wrapped in some strange dark magic.

“Now,” whispered Rolan, and the other two flung a sack of dirt they had carried up from the ground below.

As the dirt splattered upon the bed, Sianna drew in a quick breath, but in the tumult that followed it was never heard. For as soon as the dirt struck the hollow in the bed, a dark and bearded man, beautiful and fierce of body, took form. For the dust had called to dust, and he became fully man.

In a single leap, the black knight, the man of earth, leapt from the bed and laid about himself with such ferocity that Bran was thrown to the floor and Andel fled to the door. Only Rolan was left to defend himself with arms thrown above his head. Yet strange to tell, once the men had fled, the knight did not follow. He did not seek to press his advantage, but merely stood his ground.

Seeing this, the three guards wondered if they should charge again. Just as they were readying themselves, the king stepped forward from the door.

“Hold,” he called, and raised his flute to his lips. As if caught in a dream, all held still. The king began to blow into the flute. A song piped and snaked out of it, a band of dark music that twined round and round the room like a blind serpent seeking its prey. And then it found him, the black knight standing with his arms crossed before him on the marble floor. The dark ribbon of music wound round and round and bound him fast. And when he was fully bound, Blaggard took the flute from his lips and smiled. He walked over to the black knight and said, “Kneel.”

“I kneel to no man with a heart like yours,” said the knight. “I kneel only through love.”

“Then die,” said Blaggard, and raised his flute like a sword.

As he had taken the flute from his lips, Sianna was released from the music’s spell. She thought wildly that she must pluck the third button from her petticoat and wish upon it. But the petticoat was across the room and she could not get to it in time. All that was left was to take the blow upon her own head, and she scrambled from the bed. But she was not fast enough. For even as her foot touched the floor, Blaggard brought the bone flute down upon the knight’s head and it cut like a sword.

The castle rocked with an invisible blow. Sianna was thrown back upon the bed, the three guards upon the floor. And when the castle was quiet once more, the king was gone. Disappeared. And no one had remarked his leaving.

Rolan and Andel and Bran were weeping near the doorway, for reasons they could not quite say. Noises came from the hall as the castle folk woke to seek the answer to the shaking. Only Sianna was dry-eyed and still.

“Sianna, beloved,” came a cracked voice from the floor where no man could be seen.

She came off the bed and knelt by the side of a shimmer that began to fill the room with its light.

“Do not be sad,” said the voice. “I am returning to my own kingdom where I rule over all who have lived and will live again. It was but for the power of the button that I came at all.”

She looked down at the light that seemed at once so familiar and yet so strange to her. In the back of her mind she heard the three men weeping at their own loss. “Then I shall use the Magic Three and keep you here for good,” she said.

“Nay, for who knows what consequences that would yet call forth,” the voice replied. “Besides, it is time for me to go.”

“Then take me with you,” Sianna replied.

“Nay, beloved, not yet. For you shall bear our son,” said the voice, becoming stronger as it faded. Or so it seemed to Sianna, though she could not think how this could be so.

“Our son,” she said in wonder, and then in hope: “How I do wish it.”

“And he shall be the one who shall avenge his father, though he must do it with no thought of vengeance but out of friendship and love,” the light said.

“Can such a thing be so?” Sianna asked, trying to hold the light in her hands and yet finding nothing to hold on to.

“It must be so,” the voice went on. “There is no other way, for vengeance destroys those who seek it. Do not teach our son of hatred and revenge. Teach him rather of friendship and love, and he will accomplish it all.”

Sianna felt the light dying as it grew brighter still.

“Call him after the first living thing you see at his birth,” said the voice.

Then with a giant bursting, like a dying sun, the light was gone. The dark was suddenly colder and deeper than any Sianna had ever known. Yet the memory of the light burned within her and kept her warm.

“Come,” she said to the three men as she stood.

They knelt to her first, then rose.

“We did not know, My Lady,” said Rolan haltingly. Andel and Bran were unable to speak at all.

“We know now,” she replied quietly. And they went down the corridor to seek out Blaggard the king.

B
UT BLAGGARD WAS NOT
to be found. Not in the castle or in the village or on the Solatian shore. For days the dogs bayed and howled down the paths of the forest and out toward the New Mountains. After several weeks, the Solatians accepted that he was gone, taking naught but his magic flute and the robes that he had worn that night.

“Did he fear your vengeance, My Lady?” asked Rolan. Since that night he had become Sianna’s self-appointed protector.

“Revenge exacts a harsher price on those who seek it, Rolan,” she replied. “For so my knight cautioned me. You heard the same as I.”

“But surely you hate Blaggard and us who killed that king you wed.”

“I sorrow. I do not hate,” she said. “For have we not all lost him?”

And Rolan knew then that she spoke the truth and understood why he had stayed to protect her. At that moment of first seeing the black knight in his own true body he had known that there was a man beyond all others whom he could follow for no pay but the pride of doing it. And he swore then that he would find that king and his kingdom or die in the attempt. He had forced Andel and Bran to swear the same. They were gone the following year and never heard of again.

It was when the Solatians were certain that Blaggard was gone for good—whether from fear of his life or loss of his powers they did not know or care—that they came to the button maker’s door.

“Sianna,” they called. And the leaders cried out, “Madam.” They would have made her queen.

“I shall not be your queen,” she answered. “For alone I do not have the wit. But with the help of four others, chosen from amongst you freely, I shall rule with what wisdom I do have.”

So three of the old wise men freed from the king’s dungeon and an old fisherwoman named Vivianna ruled with her. They met every few days in the castle’s throne room, seated about a round table so that not one nor the other was at the head. They did not count voices as had been the custom in Solatia whenever several folk got together to decide on a plan. Nor did one person instruct the others what to do. Rather, they would talk and argue and persuade until all agreed to a single way. And if it was slow, it was fair. It was soon known through all the neighboring kingdoms as “the Solatian way” and everyone praised it, though not many tried it themselves.

And when it came time for Sianna’s child to be born, she would not stay inside upon a bed as most women in Solatia did.

“Let me lie on a bed of sweet moss by the sea,” she said. “For the salt air is healthy for living things.”

And reluctantly her father agreed.

“And let only the midwife and my father be by,” she warned her friends, for she thought in that way she might look at Sian when the child was born and so name it after her father.

So it was that on an early morning in spring, she lay in labor by the side of the sea, her child being born to the rhythm of the waves. Suddenly a golden bird flew to her hand from one of the offshore isles.

“It is the golden bird from Dread Mary’s isle,” said Sianna with wonder in her voice.

“It is the
Gard-lann
,” said the midwife and Sian at once.

And at that very moment the child was born.

So he was called Lann after the bird. He was big and dark-haired like his father. But his voice was as sweet and happy and pure as any bird that sang on the Solatian strand.

Here ends Book II