The Swan Kingdom (7 page)

I saw my brothers’ faces twist and melt, saw them warped and misshapen, their skin bubbling, their bodies mutilated and broken, heard them screaming and the crack of their bones as Zella tortured them. I tried to reach into the enaid, tried to find some power to protect them, but I could not find the tide; the red power held it away. I reached out desperately and closed the fingers of my mind over my brothers’ dying bodies.

There was a burst of pale light and they were gone, hidden from me. As their voices faded to silence I saw great white things – like clouds – soaring away into the sky. Birds, I realized as their massive wings pounded the air. Swans…

In the few seconds before darkness claimed me, the wing beats seemed to echo the rhythm of my heart.

I drifted in a numbing darkness, weary beyond belief. In the darkness I heard voices murmuring, felt the touch of rain, smelled the sweet, intoxicating scent of roses and tasted salt; but I understood none of it.

Occasionally I would see light, and move painstakingly towards it. If I reached it before it disappeared, I would find myself back in my body, aching and weighed down by my own limbs. Perhaps I stirred or moaned, for whenever I forced open my eyes, indistinct faces would hover over me. But they were not my brothers. And then would come the sharp, bitter smell of herbs as something burning was poured into my mouth. I would choke as it slid down, then find myself back in the darkness.

It was the cool, sweet breeze blowing across my face that finally woke me. I was being rocked gently as I lay, and my breath ruffled the fluffy wool beneath my cheek so that it tickled my lips.

For a few minutes these physical sensations were enough; I was happy to curl into the warmth of the blankets wrapped around me and savour the good smell of the air. But eventually sounds began to penetrate my lethargy. The jingle of bit and harness, the thud and bump of wheels rumbling over the ground and the ricket and squeak of a wooden trap; and, with them, the slow seep of memory.

I lay still, my not quite alert mind turning over all that had occurred, trying to fit it together, until the importance of one question became paramount.

Where was I?

With weary, creaking movements that cost a frightening amount of energy, I wriggled over onto my back. I thought I saw something in the sky, a flock of great birds – swans or geese – their wings shadowed against the clouds; but before I could focus on them, they were gone. I reached up a leaden hand to grip the wooden rail and tried to pull myself up, my strength failed me halfway and I collapsed back onto the seat.

The sound of my efforts attracted the attention of the person driving the little wagon; the rocking motion slowed to a gentle halt, and a blissfully familiar face appeared. It was John, one of the household people, whom I had known all my life.

“Ah – thee’s awake at last. Hold there, Lady, I’ll be with you in no time.” He tied up the reins and clambered into the back of the trap.

“Where…” My voice was hoarse and gruff, and I had to stop and swallow before I could begin again. “Where am I?”

“Best have a drink and something to eat first, Lady. You’ll feel better for it.” He rummaged under the seat, pulling out a large basket from which he took cold cheese-stuffed potatoes, apple pasties, bread and a flask of small beer.

As the smell of food reached me my stomach let out a prolonged rumble and I realized I was famished. John saw my hungry look and passed me an apple pasty before slicing up the potatoes and bread.

“There now, it’s a right lovely thing to see you eating again. You’ve even got roses in your cheeks.”

I was too busy devouring the food to reply. I gulped the beer so quickly that I choked. Why was I so hungry and thirsty?

As soon as the last mouthful was swallowed, I drew the blankets close around me and fixed John with a severe look. “Now, where am I? What has happened?”

“Well, we’re in Southfield. And you’ve been ill – ‘tis no wonder you’re as weak as a kitten.”

“Ill?” I searched my memory. I remembered entering Zella’s room and finding the talisman. There had been a warning spell on it, and it had got away from me. Then everything became blurry. I could remember the flash of red light, and dreadful pain … and something white, something like clouds – but nothing else. Nothing that made sense. It was all like a nightmare. “For how long?”

“Nearly three days. You could barely open your eyes.”

Three days since that night? I took a deep breath. “What happened to my brothers?”

John’s pleasant face hardened into grim lines. “Them three.” He spat. “Don’t you be worrying about them. They won’t be troubling the Kingdom again.”

I was stunned. My brothers had always been friends to this man, helping him in the barn from toddling age. He’d put them on their first mounts. That he should speak their names with such dislike…

“John, tell me what has happened.”

“Now, Lady—”

“Immediately, John!” I hit the bench with my hand, making an unimpressive thud. Ancestors, I was so weak!

“It’ll pain you to hear it, and I’m sorry. They were caught in Lady Zella’s room. They were trying to hurt her. Poor girl – nearly beside herself with fright, she was. Dreadful.”

“What happened to them?” I demanded impatiently.

“Banished, Lady. The king exiled ‘em. Course, I weren’t there myself, but there was all that commotion up at the Hall, and the next thing we knew there was you and Lady Zella both taken to your beds and the king storming up and down saying that if he ever set eyes on any of your brothers again he’d kill them himself. Can’t say as I blame him.”

I can, I thought bitterly. Banished his own sons – his own blood. The stupid, blind fool. I bit my lip. They were all right. They
were
. I’d know in my heart if they were gone; know in my flesh and bones. Besides, Father would not have taken the trouble to banish them otherwise. So they were out there somewhere, and if they possibly could, they would find me. It might take time, but they’d search until we were together again. They’d never leave me alone. Never.

“Are you feeling well, Lady? Would you like some of Lady Zella’s medicine?”

I blinked and looked at John again. He had taken a stoppered bottle from the basket, and uncorked it as I watched. The bitter scent of half moss and crowberries reached my nose. It was the smell of a powerful sleeping draught, a potion to dull the mind and befuddle the senses.

“Medicine?” I murmured.

“Lady Zella made it for you with her own hands. She gave it to you herself too, even though you didn’t wake properly. Ever so concerned for you, she was.”

Oh, yes – very concerned. That devious witch. No wonder I was as weak as an invalid. Enough of that potion and I would never have woken. For a fleeting moment I wondered why she hadn’t done just that – fed me the stuff until I died. But perhaps she only needed me out of the way for a short while.

“No, John, thank you. I don’t need any more medicine,” I said absently as he offered me the bottle. What was Zella up to? “Where are we going, John?”

“Didn’t I say, Lady? I’m taking you to Midland, to stay with your aunt, your mother’s sister.”

“Who – what? My
aunt
?”

My mother had hardly ever spoken of her elder sister and I’d certainly never met the woman. Long before I was born she had married a nobleman from the neighbouring kingdom, Midland, and she had never visited her old home.

“Why?” I asked incredulously.

“For you to get better, Lady,” said John. “Lady Zella said that you needed peace and quiet to heal, and what with all the hustle and bustle, you’d never get it at the Hall. So the king said he’d send a messenger to your aunt and you could stay there until you were better.”

A thought crystallized in my mind. “Hustle and bustle?”

“Yes, getting ready for the wedding.”

Ancestors – the wedding! “John, quickly, turn us around.”

“Now, don’t fuss yourself—”

“John, please, I have to get back before the wedding. It’s vital.” I
have
to stop it. Somehow I have to stop Father before he marries that woman.

“Well now, I’m sorry but I can’t do that.”

“John—”

“No, no, Lady, I don’t blame you for wanting to be there. But ‘tis too late for us to see it now.”

“Too late?” I whispered, my blood icing over.

“I’m afraid so, Lady. The wedding was the day before yesterday – the same day that you and I set out. Lady Zella will be our lady by now, all right and proper.”

I slumped back against the rough sacking seat.

Too late.

Zella was my father’s queen. Now the whole Kingdom would pay the price of my failure. I could do nothing.

I heard John’s words of concern distantly and waved them away. “Yes, yes,” I muttered. “I am well. Drive on; let us be gone.”

As John climbed up behind the horse and we rumbled into motion down the rough track, I turned to look back over the rippling grey-purple grasses. Somewhere beyond these fields and trees lay the Hall. Where Zella now ruled in my mother’s place.

I could not return. I no longer had my brothers to protect me and Zella would not have wedding plans to distract her now; she would squash me as easily as a fly. Left to my own devices I was worse than useless. All my hopes rested with David, Robin and Hugh. They would know what to do, how to wrest our home from the grasp of that creature.

Until then, there was nothing to be done. At least in Midland I would be safe.

The next few days passed in a weary blur. I had been through so much in the last few months, suffered so much grief and upheaval, that perhaps my emotions had worn out. Certainly I was unable to sustain such passions now. I felt flat and dull and my only real feeling was to miss my brothers – and that I
did
feel, desperately. I had never been without them before.

It occurred to me, as we rattled along, that this journey was an ill-conceived, hasty affair. A king’s daughter was usually afforded more consideration than to be bundled into a rickety trap with no more than half her clothing, untidily packed, and not enough food to last the trip. It was lucky that the land’s fruits were easy for me to find and harvest, or we would both have been hungry before long.

Why had I been shunted off with such little notice, only the day before the wedding? Perhaps Zella
had
meant to kill me and had reconsidered at the last moment. The idea of that murderous witch granting mercy to anyone – especially me – was too far-fetched to ring true. I resigned myself to wondering, and was grateful that someone had at least thought to pack bathing oil, so that on the evenings when we stopped by a river I could get properly clean.

Gradually the land began to change. As the lush green hills and fields gave way to dense forest, I began to sense that the currents of enaid were … not fading, but lessening in strength. They eddied sluggishly between the trees, without the vigorous energy I had always known.

“We’re in Midland now, aren’t we?” I asked John.

“Indeed, Lady Alexandra. We passed the border about a day back.”

I looked around me with interest – the first real feeling I had had in days. When we broke through the dense cover of forest, the land to the west soared away above us, rising abruptly into great yellow-brown hills. Beyond them, more distant peaks were smudged purple and grey against the iron-white sky and topped with raggedy clouds. To the east was rolling moorland, covered in scrubby plants with tiny purple or white flowers that grew twisted into strange shapes and rippled and jumped in the whistling wind. Here and there a jagged boulder or jumble of stones would thrust up out of the froth of plants, startlingly pale against the darkness of the moor.

It was a harsher, fiercer land than my home, and I felt instinctively that it should have been awash with untamed life. But instead of the joyful wildness I expected, there was a sense of weariness and melancholy that echoed my own.

I kneeled up on the front seat so that I could see John’s face. “Tell me about Midland,” I said.

“Well, now.” He clicked his tongue at the horse, and shifted in the seat. “I’ve not been here often with the king, you understand, trading being what it is. This is a sad land. Good fertile soil, but no one left to till it.”

“Why? What happened to the people?”

“War, Lady. They’ve only been at peace here, oh, thirty years or so. For a more’n hundred before that, there’s been nothing but fighting in this place.”

“Of course – I remember now. Mama said…” I stopped, composed myself, and began again. “I knew there was a war. It didn’t last a hundred years, though.”

“The fighting was off and on. But there was never proper peace, I don’t think. Too many brothers and cousins and uncles in their ruling family, each one thinking he ought to be the prince. They’ve all killed each other now; there’s only the one left, and he’s on the throne, so maybe the peace’ll last this time. Land hasn’t recovered yet. Too many lost in the fighting; no one left to look after it.”

I rested my chin on folded hands – ignoring the teeth-rattling bumps – and stared out over the moor. It was just as Angharad had said. That was why the land felt so sad. It was crying out for want of love.

Slowly our path began to rise. We made our way through more forests and finally began to see signs of human habitation. Tiny crofts and holdings appeared, which gave way to slightly larger houses and settlements in neat fields, though their crops seemed meagre to me. Once or twice we passed others on the road. The people nodded and smiled at us, but they looked thin and tired.

Then, as we emerged through a gap between stony outcroppings, I saw it. Sprawled across the valley floor, it looked like the skeleton of some giant winged creature that had fallen to earth, its highest point rising up to spear the belly of the sky.

“Oh, John,” I breathed. “What is that?”

“’Tis the city, Lady. That’s where their prince lives now.”

“People
live
in it?” I asked incredulously. I stared at the immense grey and white sprawl, trying to make sense of its impossibly tall towers, bright snapping flags and shiny, glassed windows. It must house more people than I had ever seen in my life.