Disenchanted (11 page)

“Whatifying the what now?”

“Think of it this way: what would you do if you wanted to say something to someone on that ridge over there?”

“I’d yell.”

“And if they didn’t hear you?”

“Yell louder.”

“And if they still didn’t hear you?”

Boric thought. “Cup my hands around my mouth.”

“Exactly! So I just need to find a way to make the mirror louder. And find a way to focus the transmission, the way you do when you cup your hands around your mouth. The principles are quite simple; I just need time and equipment and manpower.”

“In other words, you need money.”

“Yes.”

“How much?”

Milah bit her lip. “A hundred thousand gold pieces would get me started, and say, another forty thousand a year for the next ten years or so. Plus a large supply of zelaznium, which would require — ”

“
A hundred thousand gold pieces
?” Boric asked, amazed at Milah’s presumption.

“Yes, well, now you understand why I’ve been going from kingdom to kingdom. Only the monarchs have that kind of money. First my brother went to King Rapelini of Avaress, but Rapelini is a paranoid miser. He turned down my brother’s request but kept the prototypes he had been carrying so that he wouldn’t be able to get funding from any of the other monarchs. My brother, who had no interest in the mirrors himself but knew they were my passion, demanded that King Rapelini return them. Rapelini refused. My brother made some foolish remarks about making another set of prototypes and aligning with another, more farsighted monarch and getting his vengeance on Rapelini. He was tried for treason and hanged.”

“I’m sorry, Milah,” said Boric.

“Me too,” said Milah, shrugging. “That was three years ago. Fortunately, Rapelini assumed that my brother was the brains behind the mirrors, so he didn’t bother going after me. I spent the two years making another set of prototypes — the pair I am carrying — and then applied for a position as a Peraltian messenger under my brother’s name, Milo. I had no money; everything I had was spent on making the prototypes. My only hope was to make enough money as a messenger to travel to the other capitals and convince one of the other five monarchs to fund my laboratory. I had naively thought that in general kings were wise, or at least more or less sensible, and that Rapelini had been an exception. What I found over the course of a year, traveling across much of Dis, is that Rapelini was an exception all right: he was the only one who saw any value in the mirrors at all. Not only did the other four kings refuse to fund my laboratory; they didn’t even bother to try to steal the prototypes. King Skerritt of Blinsk called them ‘worthless trinkets.’ Of course, they knew me only as a poor messenger boy; I can hardly blame them for not taking me seriously. But if we can go to your father and convince
him
of the value of the mirrors, and then
he
can talk to King Toric…”

“Hmm,” replied Boric. “There are no guarantees, of course. I mean, it’s true that my father and the king are close, but I’m sure the king has a lot on his mind these days, what with the threat from the Skaal — ”

“I know, I know,” said Milah. “But I have a good feeling about it. I just know that the king will see the value of the mirrors if only we can get your father to present the case to him. He would do that, wouldn’t he?”

“Milah…” began Boric. This was getting out of hand. He had been convinced in a moment of weakness to let Milah accompany him on his return journey, but he had it in mind that they would part ways once they got to Brobdingdon. At some point he was going to have to tell her that his father was the king and that it was unreasonable to expect him to introduce her to him so that she could try to sell him on some crazy scheme to make magical mirrors. Boric was going to have his hands full with his scheming brothers when he got back; he couldn’t be championing the futile causes of some woman he had just met.

“I know, one thing at a time,” said Milah. “I’m just a naturally optimistic person. I’ve had to be, to survive the number of rejections I’ve received. I just can’t believe that meeting you was an accident. There has to be a reason. Anyway, let’s get going.” She got back on her horse and Boric, not knowing what to say, mounted his.

They rode the next several miles in silence. Whenever Boric looked over at Milah, she was smiling. It made Boric want to smile too. The women he had met at Kra’al Brobdingdon — mostly the daughters of other Ytriskian noblemen — possessed the intellectual curiosity and verve that came from spending one’s days being schooled in important matters like which fork to use for eating fish as well as the bland homeliness that came from generations of inbreeding. A general rule seemed to hold throughout the Six Kingdoms that the more notable one’s family was, the more plain looking and dimwitted one was likely to be. This axiom was so reliable that no one was surprised when a local idiot who appeared at the gate of Kra’al Brobdingdon one day, wearing an ornate horse blanket that he had stolen and fashioned as a sort of toga, was admitted into the castle by the guards, who assumed that he was an important member of the royal family. Boric and his father, being both clever and handsome, were exceptions to this rule, but his brothers took after their mother Gulbayna, a dull-witted, barrel-shaped hag with hands like ham hocks and teeth like the moss-covered boulders strewn about the bed of the River Ytrisk. Toric had married her in an attempt to secure the support of the semicivilized barbarian tribe known as the Vorgals, the chief of which was Gulbayna’s father. Whatever credit Toric deserved for introducing some fresh blood into the royal line by marrying a barbarian’s daughter was more than blotted out by his choice of a wife who was the result of an even more unrelenting regime of inbreeding than his own. Among the Vorgals, chieftains were selected on the basis of the number of different ways a man could trace his lineage to Stengol the White, the semilegendary seven-fingered albino forefather of the tribe. Gulbayna’s father could trace his bloodline to Stengol through no fewer than seventy-two paths, making him his own uncle, brother-in-law, and nephew. Gulbayna was the fruit of Stengol’s marriage to his half-sister/cousin, and the entire tribe was relieved when Toric offered to take her off their hands. When Gulbayna’s father died, the Vorgals enthusiastically endorsed Toric as their king, having realized that they had pushed their own system of selecting leaders about as far as it could go.

Boric eschewed the advances of the homely and simple-minded daughters of nobility, favoring the sturdy, supple, and quick-witted (if not exactly well-read) daughters of farmers and fishermen. There was no question of him marrying one of these girls, of course — if he was ever to amount to anything more than overseer of the pumice mines of Bjill he was going to have to marry a woman with at least some small claim to nobility. His brothers teased him that as the youngest prince of Ytrisk he would be forced to marry some toothless daughter of the chief of another barbarian tribe — or perhaps even Princess Urgulana of Peraltia, who was rumored to be seven feet tall and possessed of both the complexion and personality of a tree trunk. Boric shuddered at the thought. Yet another reason to make certain his father honored his pledge to make the son who killed the ogre his heir. As the future king, of course, Boric would face an even narrower pool of eligible candidates. He supposed he’d end up with Princess Jaleena of Avaress or Princess Schmuske of Blinsk. But that was all in the future. There was still time to play. Milah was as hale and pretty as any of the farmers’ daughters he had met and precocious as well. Yes, she talked too much, but he could overlook that.

They arrived at the town of Tyvek, halfway between Plik and Brobdingdon, just before sundown. Milah had reapplied her beard and pulled her hood low to avoid awkward questions. Messengers often traveled in pairs for safety but they never traveled with female companions. The fact that Milah was herself wearing a messenger’s uniform would only provoke more questions. Best to continue the ruse that she had started.

This decision prompted another awkward exchange, however. Messengers were notoriously thrifty; they rarely had two silver coins to rub together. Generally during a layover they slept in the common room of the local inn, although it wasn’t unheard of for a messenger to pay for a private room. Boric wasn’t about to spend the night in a crowded room packed with drunks and ruffians, and he could hardly expect Milah to. But two messengers traveling together and sleeping in separate rooms would definitely seem an anomaly. This close to the capital it wouldn’t be inconceivable for someone to recognize Boric if he called attention to himself — and that would raise questions about his companion. All he needed was for his brothers to get hold of rumor of him fornicating with a commoner while on an important mission from the crown.
^[8]
So in order to avoid drawing attention to himself, Boric paid for a single room, assuring Milah that he would sleep on the floor.

He needn’t have bothered. He had barely closed the door when she had pushed him onto the bed, unstrapped his sword, and began pulling off his boots.

“Milah, wait,” he protested. “I have something to tell you about my father…”

“I don’t really want to hear about your father right now,” said Milah, removing her cloak and shirt. Underneath was a laced bodice that seemed to be padded below her bosom, making her shape more mannish. She appeared significantly less mannish with each loosening of the laces.

“It’s just, what I told you about my father…”

Milah paused on the verge of removing the bodice. “Did you lie to me?” she asked, with sudden sternness.

“No!” cried Boric. “But I didn’t tell you everything.”

“Oh,” said Milah. “Well, there will be time for that.” She pulled off the bodice and climbed on top of Boric.

“Okay,” said Boric. “If you’re sure you don’t mind…”

“Shhh,” said Milah. “You talk too much.”

[8]
Boric was always very careful not to let his brothers find out about his dalliances in Brobdingdon, knowing that they would use any evidence of fornication against him. This was sheer hypocrisy, of course: his brothers, not possessing Boric’s good looks or charm, were well known by the proprietors and staffs of all the local brothels.

THIRTEEN

Solace eluded Boric even in the stillness of the grave-like cellar. Lacking breath and a heartbeat, he found it difficult to gauge the passage of time, and meaningful rest — to say nothing of actual sleep — was an impossibility. Boric did not tire and he did not recuperate. He simply
existed
, forever.

No, thought Boric. Not forever. There had to be a way to break the enchantment. He wracked his memory, trying to recall everything he knew or had heard about the seven Blades of Brakboorn. He had spent some time after returning to Kra’al Brobdingdon researching the swords, but much of what he had found was — it seemed at the time — superstitious nonsense. He wasn’t interested in fairy tales about magic spells and curses; he wanted to know how the swords had been made. What strange alloy — lighter, stronger, and more resistant to corrosion than even the best steel made by the master swordmakers of the Old Realm — were these blades made of? Who had made them? How had they been forged? When had they been created and why? To most of these questions he had found no satisfactory answers. According to legend, the swords had been designed by the Elves of Quanfyrr and forged by the Dwarves of Brun, but no one knew why, when, or how. Boric had dropped the matter when concerns of state became more pressing, content with the knowledge that Brakslaagt was a damned good sword. He didn’t even know how old the swords were, or whether Brand had commissioned their creation or had simply come into possession of them after they had been created.

He was still pondering how little he actually knew about the Blades of Brakboorn when there was a knock on the door. “Boric?” came a voice he recognized as Chad’s. “It’s dinnertime.”

“Not hungry,” replied Boric.

“Erm,” said Chad. “It’s just that, well, the mayor is throwing a dinner in your honor. You should probably ought to be there.”

Boric cursed to himself. “Where is it?”

“In the town center.”

“I can’t…”

“The sun has just gone down.”

“Oh.” That meant he had been in the cellar for, what, ten hours? It could have been minutes or days for all he knew. “All right, I’ll be out in a moment.”

The town center was, in a sense, the inverse of the town hall: it was a large bowl-shaped impression in the ground ringed by several massive oak trees. The center of the bowl was roughly flat and covered with a littering of straw. A dozen or so tables and chairs had been set up in the flat area. One of the chairs, a rickety assemblage of twigs that seemed to have been thrown together in haste, was nearly twice the size of the rest. Next to the makeshift chair—presumably custom-built for Boric—sat the mayor, and the rest of the table was occupied by the other New Threfelton functionaries he had met.

Dinner was not completely intolerable. Boric didn’t eat, of course, but the light was dim enough that he didn’t have any trouble pretending to eat while tossing his food to the stray dogs — some of them as large as threfelings — that ran unchecked beneath and between the tables. The threfelings ate as ravenously as half-starved dogs themselves, and soon the meal was over. Boric was about to slink off to his cellar when the mayor clapped him on the shoulder. “Wait till you see the entertainment, Boric!”

Boric groaned and made to sit back down. Visions of threfeling dancing girls appeared in his mind.

“No, no,” said Chad. “You should ought to get up. They’re moving the tables.”

Indeed, the tables and chairs were being carried away and the crowd was fanning out, the attendees sitting in a circle on the grass slope surrounding the flat area. Boric went with Chad to the top of the amphitheater so that he could sit without blocking the view of any of the other spectators. When the flat area was clear, a sort of mobile stage, maybe two feet high and thirty feet in diameter, was wheeled into the center. A curtain hanging from a wire frame concealed the platform. When the crowd had quieted down, the curtain fell, revealing a small figure dancing gaily about the stage. It was about half the size of a threfeling and wore brown trousers, a green cotton shirt, and a leather jerkin, and carried a wooden bucket. It pranced around a cluster of small bushes, pantomiming berry-picking.