A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess (26 page)

Love him!
comes the reply in her other ear. For a brief instant she sees the luminous, sardonic face of Spikenard hovering in front of her own, supported by the kaleidoscopic aurora of his wings.

“I can’t!”

He’ll be gone soon!

“No!”

Gone forever this time. Look! He’s going . . . going . . .

The baron holds his hands out to her, bright with dancing beads of light, dripping sparks like jewels, his eyes like silver, like pearls, like lodestones. His long figure seem to diminish, seem to sublime, seem to recede, shrinking like a departing locomotive or ship, seeming to transmute from base elements to the quintessential, from the worldly to the ethereal, from here to there.

“Oh, Baron! I’m sorry!” she cries, suddenly stretching her arms toward him. “I can’t . . . “

She is too late; the baron is gone.

Bronwyn awakes then, disturbed and puzzled by her dream; depressed and saddened as well. She tries to ascribe the dream and some of the strange mood that results to how much she misses the baron, but cannot explain why that seems so inadequate. Why, she argues with herself, did she feel so much guilt? The golden day, now brassy, is spoiled for her.

Rykkla is still in the water, playing with her huge . . . friend. Bronwyn finds herself hesitating to place any other appellation upon the relationship.
Why?
she wonders. Is the idea that the girl and the giant might actually love one another so abhorrent? Is it so grotesque or perverse that she refuses to admit to its possibility? Or is it, her contrary little reptile whispers huskily into her inner ear, merely jealousy?
Jealousy?

Bronwyn had never seen Thud without his clothes, though she have once speculated upon what it might be like when she saw the virtually nude Kobolds, subsequently deciding that she would never be
that
curious. Yet, now, seeing the big man wallowing and thrashing about in the water like a sportive manatee, or drying himself in the sunlight that enwraps him like butter melting over a hot loaf of bread, his transformation is vividly underscored. He is still big, of course, but somehow not as big as she remembers him. All the changes are of that same indefinable order: nothing so specific that she can readily identify them, yet cumulatively so disturbingly different. His vast body is no longer as huge and swollen as a barrage balloon; it has instead the firm-looking bulk of the professional wrestler, and there is something inexplicably
rearranged
about his proportions. His face is still moon-like, but its simple, unaffected kindness has been joined and seasoned by a new worldliness (and Bronwyn remains absolutely dumbfounded by Thud’s new and unexpected facility with speech). As she lay on her rock, propped up upon her elbows, she is suddenly struck by a thought so strange, so weird, so bizarre in its wild unexpectedness, that it almost frightens her:
Thud looks positively handsome.

Dizzied by this uncanny revelation, she turns her gaze upon Gyven, who lay on his back less than an arm’s length from her. He looks like part of the rock upon which he is lying, the nearly flat planes of his body looks like a sculptor, using a broad knife on his clay, has made a rough cut of an heroic statue.
Reclining Warrior,
perhaps. His skin is the same color as the iron-stained sandstone. She extends an arm and touchs his chest with the palm of her hand; he feels as smooth and warm as the stone. He does not move. She brushes her fingers down the long, undulating muscles of his sandstone stomach, like the petrified ripples of a prehistoric beach, and then into the thick black hair below. She moves further and his hand lazily raises and grasps her wrist. He rolls to face her, his eyes open and glittering at her like amused moonstones. “What are you doing?” he asks, smiling.

She laughs. “What’s wrong with Thud?” she asks, irrelevantly, to throw him off balance.

“Pardon?”

“Why has Thud become so . . . different?”

“Oh. I thought you would’ve known. I hadn’t thought to say anything myself. You remember what King Slagelse told you about the Kobolds?”

“He told me a lot of things.”

“You remember his version of the creation of human beings?”

“I think so. He believes that we are the descendants of Kobolds who have come up to the surface world. That the sun and open air and whatnot gradually and eventually . . . “ she looks toward the big man with sudden, if unrecognized, comprehension. “Are you telling me that . . . ?”

“That Thud is turning into a human being? I don’t know. It’d all been purest legend to me until now. Can it happen to one Kobold in his or her own lifetime, or does it require generations? I have no idea.”

“Well,” she says, looking at her old friend with awe, “what do you know about that?”

Their arrival in Blavek, with their prisoners, is less than triumphal, which suits Bronwyn fine. The lack of overt enthusiasm is not the fault of the city, which would have loved to have made a procession of her entry, and in fact is more than a little hurt at having been denied the possibility, but rather the lack of self-announcement with which her party rode into Blavek in the misty hours of dawn, avoiding the city proper, going directly to the chambers of the Privy Council. There, the princess turns her prisoners over to an astonished Mathias, whose anger and indignation at her disappearance has to be temporarily stifled. It has been more than three weeks since she had abruptly vanished during the heat of the battle and he had frantically combed the city for her, even going to the grim length of having the river dragged for her body (and was rewarded and stupefied by the discovery instead of the waterlogged corpse of General Praxx). The only human being who had known of Payne’s plans to temporarily retire to Strabane before leaving the country is dead; the chamberlain had transferred what of his loot he had managed to move by circuitous means, through any number of intermediate steps, so no one can trace him by that means, either. The object of the entire invasion as well as its instigator have all vanished; it is infuriating.

Now the vanished princess appears, in new clothing, looking as though she had been horsewhipped, with a bizarrely normal-looking Thud Mollockle and an attractive young woman he’d never seen before, with both Payne Roelt and King Ferenc as tightly laced as a pair of sausages. But it is the princess herself that occupies his astonished, subdued attenlion. She is somehow, and the duke is too unsubtle to decipher his perceptions, somehow not at all the same Princess Bronwyn who had disappeared that fire-filled night three weeks earlier. He had been prepared to chastise her roundly, like a disobedient child, as he had always thought of her if truth be known, but finds himself holding his tongue, without really understanding why.

Bronwyn refuses to discuss anything that happened since leaving the city. “There’s something I must do first,” she says. “Do you still have the . . . box that Payne sent to me?”

“Of course,” replies the duke, strangely and inexplicably awed and subdued by this strange new woman.

“Bring it to me.”

With Thud, Gyven and Rykkla as her only companions, Bronwyn walks the short distance that separates the palace from the Great Temple. She carries the cardboard box herself, though she never looks at it. She leads the others by a few paces; no one speaks a word.

The plaza is empty in the early morning hours and the few people who are out did not recognize their disguised princess. The temple had been ravaged; it is windowless and the big bronze doors stand open. Inside, Bronwyn, who has never been particularly religious, nevertheless feels saddened at the destruction she sees. The great tapestries that date from the earliest days of both Tamlaght and the Church are gone, as are all of the paintings and statues of the saints. The once finely carved woodwork had been ruined when its gilding had been scraped from it. The chandeliers are gone and the altar is only a hollow alcove. Only the great painting of the Weedking’s Kingdom, by Ludek Lach-Szyrma, that had so frightened the child Bronwyn, remains intact. Its horrors now seem subdued and naïve. The temple is now little more than a dull cavern whose hollow echoes mechanically return their footsteps. Bronwyn goes to the long, low wall that raises the daïs of the altar. In front of it, placed in the floor, are two rows of rectangular stone slabs, faced with bronze plates, almost all of them inscribed and ornamented.

“The heroes of Tamlaght are all buried here,” says Bronwyn in a hushed voice. “Kings and queens, soldiers and poets. Thud, Gyven, can you move this lid?”

“This has your brother’s name on it,” says Gyven with some surprise.

“I know,” she says. “And this one has mine. Go on, open it.”

The two men easily move the heavy stone slab.

“Oh!” says Thud.

“What is it?” asks the princess. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I just recognized this sarcophagus.”

“What do you mean?”

“I made it, but that’s not what I meant. Not exactly. It’s the one I hid you in, remember?”

“How can you possibly know that?”

He looked at her and his little eyes blink once. He replies in the tone of an affronted artist: “I can
tell.”

“I brought this for you,” she says, handing Thud a small iron prybar. “Can you get that plate off?”

While Thud works the bolts from the corners of the tablet, Bronwyn places the cardboard carton on the bottom of the sarcophagus and then steps back a few paces. She can not define how she feels; she has never experienced this particular emotion before, or, if it is not a new emotion it is an unfamiliar combination of old ones. It is a dry, empty feeling that scrapes at the bare and barren recesses of her heart. Her face looks as cold as the gargoyles that leer blindly from the tops of the grey columns. She watches as the lid is slid back into place, with a glassy, grinding sound that is thin and hollow in the vast, empty space of the Temple.
It is empty. Empty of Musrum, empty of triumph, empty of emoti on, empty of sadness.

* * * * *

The next morning finds Bronwyn before the Privy Council and what remains of the baronage. She explains, succinctly and with little detail, what had transpired since her voluntary exile two years previously. She concentrates on the crimes perpetrated by Payne and her brother, one by commission, the other by omission, and on the plans Payne had for the ultimate betrayal and destruction of Tamlaght. The elderly men of the Council are horrified at her descriptions of the attempts upon her own life, to say nothing of the actual injuries she suffered either at the hands of Payne Roelt or by his order, and they twitter among themselves like shocked and scandalized old women. The barons, on the other hand, are angry, infuriated by the personal suffering and loss they and their families have endured; more than half the baronage, families, servants and all, had been murdered by the insanely greedy Payne Roelt. Tamlaght has meanwhile been left exposed and vulnerable to invasion from Crotoy, and they unanimously expressed concern that it may be too late to prevent that final disaster.

“I have an answer for that,” says Bronwyn. “I wish to abdicate my right to the throne of Tamlaght . . . “

She has to wait patiently for the noisy, confused turmoil of shocked protests to die down before she can continue. “You can take a vote, for form’s sake, but elect as regent one of my Uncle Felix’s nephews. They’re all of Tedeschiiy blood, the line will continue. But what’s most important is that his nephews, and I’d think that Prince Rupert would be the best choice, are all loyal to Felix. Their blood ties are no stronger than my own, but their political bonds certainly are.”

“You’re suggesting that we sell out our country!” cries one of the barons angrily.

“It’s not what I’m intending, but even so, what are the alternatives? Payne Roelt has bankrupted Tamlaght. Some portion of his loot is abandoned here when he fled, but I understand that it’s mostly in the form of artworks and other nonliquid assets. To the best of my knowledge, almost all of the accumulated monetary resources of Tamlaght, all of its gold, silver, jewels and whatnot are gone without any hope of recovery. We can’t feed or equip our army, what’s left of it, let alone operate the government. The hurricane and the drought have laid iste to our farms; people are starving everywhere and there is not a poenig to import a single grain to feed them. If what you say is true, and Crotoy intends to invade, what’s to stop them?

“Londeac and Tamlaght were once a single nation, both are ruled by members of the same family, we speak the same language and share the same culture. Londeac has also made advances in science, engineering and culture that we would automatically share in. We would immediately come under the protection of King Felix, who can easily dissuade Crotoy of its plans. If you wish to think in these terms, a Tamlaght allied with Londeac can not only quickly recover from this disaster, but can evolve in a short time into one of the most powerful nations on the planet.”

This is an argument, logical or plausible or not, that appeals to her listeners, and she sits on the hard wooden bench while they heatedly discussed her proposition.

“Your Highness,” says the Prime Minister of the Privy Council, “we will continue to consider this suggestion . . . “

“Consider all you like,” she interrupts. “But my mind is made up.”

“ . . . Meanwhile, what shall we do with the king . . . that is, your brother, and Payne Roelt?”

“Why ask me? Aren’t they subject to the laws of the land?”

“True, but their crimes are so extraordinary, the situation so unprecedented, that we don’t wish to operate either hastily or without due consideration.”

This ambiguous statement creates an uproar among the barons, who seem to have no doubts as to what they would like to do to the villains, differing among themselves only in the matter of detail.

“In so many ways,” speaks up one of the barons, after quieting his fellows, “our beloved princess has been the one fated to have suffered most at the hand of our enemy, both corporeally and symbolically, that we must ask her what is to be done with Roelt and Ferenc. This matter is above the law now, because these crimes have been beyond any common law. There’s no provision in your books for what these men did!