A Prophecy for Two, page 6
Towns and villages dwindled and became thimble-sized outposts and ultimately faded out altogether; the far Northern air became difficult for humans to survive in, at least not without being changed. Like the plants, Oliver mused, glancing at a particularly verdant clump of unnaturally sparkly sage. Fairyland protecting itself. Tir could breathe fine in the human kingdoms; this was not exactly equitable.
He ran over folklore, family history, research and expectations, in his mind. Sometimes aloud; Tir listened and contributed details when he forgot them. Preparations. Plans.
The Seeing Pool tended to move around, though it stayed on the human side of the dividing line, and it liked to protect itself. The Vision Quest, while traditional and mostly a formality these days, was and always had been a true quest; Oliver could be injured or maimed, and in a rare few cases Crown Princes or Princesses had even died, so it’d be a proper test of wits and strength and commitment, the idea being that these were good qualities for an Heir.
There’d be three obstacles, traditionally; three was a tidy number, stable as tripods, as telescope legs, as an artist’s easel. The obstacles weren’t always the same, though some repeats had turned up. Tir suggested that the magic tended to throw what it thought the Heir could or needed to handle.
“Maybe,” Oliver said, “I can wave a paintbrush at it. A pencil.”
“You’re good with a sword,” Tir agreed.
“Against our weapons-master, sure. In practice-yards.” Bellemare hadn’t been involved in external conflict for centuries. Too much nervousness about the odd unknown quantity to the North; too much demand for luxury goods moving South; too many strategic marriages and treaties, such that any diplomatic squabbling generally turned out to be a result of someone’s aunt not having been sent a thank-you note for the silver wedding-teapot. Even the Civil War, that internal conflict, had faded; everyone liked peace and comfort too much, and the kingdom was prospering.
Oliver had not ever expected to need to fight, despite the required training. “I can sing tavern-ballads for a black knight until he gets tired and goes away.”
“It wouldn’t work, he’d stay to listen…your first idea might not be a bad one.”
“What, sketching a basilisk or whatever to death?”
“Making bargains.” Tir shrugged. “A lot of fairies like art. Creative pieces. Not because we can’t, we can, but human art is different. Quicker. Vibrant. I’m just saying, you might be able to please a mysterious stranger and they’ll do us a favor.”
“Huh.”
“Or you might not.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Any time.” Tir tossed him an ironic salute. “No, honestly, I think you’re good enough to make it work, but anyone we encounter this far up will have an agenda; they might take offense on purpose. Nothing to do with the quality of your art. Did you get around to submitting that piece for the University showcase before we left?”
“Yeah, it’s under the Vertir Rioli name, like always.” Oliver, while not technically a student, had been using that pseudonym for several years; he’d not wanted anyone to look at his work and think of the Crown Prince. Tir had listened patiently to his complaints about his own recognizability, way back then, and had gone to talk to the University’s arts Masters, and had come back and told him to send that first piece under a name only the two of them and Master Stephen would know.
Of course Tir had. Solving problems. A solution Oliver should’ve thought of, and hadn’t. Because Tir had done it for him.
He didn’t have enough time to devote to the art, not really. Not enough time to study, to practice. Never truly going to be great. Too many demands: the throne, the kingdom, his people, learning all he could. His family. He’d accepted that.
He was decent enough, though. He’d accepted that too. He didn’t have to be a brilliant master. He wanted to make people smile: with watercolors of village life, with quick sketches in a pub, capturing life and jokes and laughter. The piece he’d sent in last year’d come second, which had both surprised and embarrassed him: a riotous color-drenched scene of the tavern framed by the doorway, seen by someone standing on the brink of coming in.
This year he’d told Tir he’d sent in something different, a quieter more pensive study of the castle’s library, leather-bound jewel-hued spines and solid wood furniture; that’d all been true. But last-minute he’d decided he wanted a figure in the scene, interacting with the stories; he’d impulsively painted Tirian in, a slim dark curl of person in an overstuffed chair, no detail but simply a bent head, absorbed in a tale.
“Good,” Tir said, “because the deadline’s tomorrow, I forgot to remind you…I’ve no idea how long we’ll be. Some Quests have finished in three days. Some in three weeks. I brought extra food. And a lot of honeyed cakes.”
“You always think of the important things.”
The sun came and went, flickering palely through misty clouds above them. The air got more icy, and bit at bare skin, but uneventfully so.
The first of the challenges finally appeared around mid-afternoon, out of nowhere.
This one proved to be more inconvenient than insurmountable: an invisible barrier across an otherwise unremarkable plain that refused to permit horses through. People seemed to be allowed, both human and fairy, but not animals. Both Sprite and Carrot stopped dead in their tracks, and snorted indignantly at their riders, objecting to commands.
A half-hour’s exploration in either direction uncovered no change or loophole. Ollie and Tir met up back in the center, where they’d started; Tir dismounted, strolled across the imperceptible line, came back, and shrugged.
“So we can’t carry as much,” Oliver summarized. Stripping them of supplies, then: that’d be the first test. “Take what’s most essential, I guess. Any idea how far we are?”
“Specifically, no. That’s impossible. But…” Tir shook hair out of his eyes again; it was coming loose from its knot at the nape of his neck. Like Oliver, he’d dressed for Northern weather; unlike Oliver, he’d brought an extra coat and a scarf, because he tended to feel the cold more to begin with. Ollie wondered idly why—his fairy was from the North—but got distracted because his fairy was also talking, getting out a map, pointing and waiting for him to pay attention. “No past Quests have gone further than here—that’s the blue dot—and I do know where we are; that’s this ridge. It shouldn’t be too bad on foot.”
“I trust you,” Oliver agreed amiably. “What do we do about the horses?”
“I’ll send them home,” Tir decided. “I might be able to help direct you more clearly, if it’s not some sort of unfair navigational advantage. The headache’s a bit worse if I think about going northwest, which likely means more magical defenses and closer to the border.”
“You’re allowed to help.” Fairy-companions could do whatever they wanted; might turn out to be why they’d come. “But don’t if it’s going to hurt.”
Tir folded up the map. Both he and the parchment wore a long-suffering look. “I can’t exactly turn it off. We may as well use it.”
“I don’t like it,” Oliver protested, and made sure the medical supplies ended up in his pack. Tir breathed a word or two into attentive horse-ears, fingers stroking necks, ruffling manes; their mounts headed merrily and safely home without them.
They walked northwest, through narrowing stone-slab canyons and tufts of sparse wild grass. They walked cautiously.
The second obstacle, later that same day, turned out to be acid quicksand.
That’d been on the list of possible dangers. Deceptive tiny pockets that resembled regular swampland until boots started dissolving, and shortly thereafter flesh.
Tir saw it first. Put out a hand. “Stop walking.”
Oliver saw it too. Froze in place. Safe, at the moment, on flat grassy ground. “Did that just sprout up?”
“I thought I saw something earlier—that sparkle—but it was out of the way.” Tir glared at sand-spots. They glared right back, sneaky small disguised patches of earth that looked simple until touched. “There’s so much here.”
“Can we go around?”
“How much would you be willing to bet that it’ll magically erupt wherever we are?”
Oliver muttered a choice word or two under his breath.
Tir regarded the closest pool. Bent, picked up a pebble, tossed it that way.
The pebble hissed, and shimmered, and began to dissolve.
Ollie winced.
Tir said, “At least it sparkles, a bit. We can spot it.”
“Why doesn’t it burn through the ground…? Never mind. Not important.”
“I actually do have an answer to that.” Tir paused. “Let me think about how I can say…all right, let’s see. It’s…not precisely sentient, but aware. Like certain mushrooms.”
“I suddenly have questions about mushrooms.”
“My point is, it knows where to…” Tir stopped again, made a face, annoyingly pretty when exasperated by words and restrictions. “The way my magic, Fairy magic, works…oh, drat, how can I…the land—I mean the world, the air, every breath, like an extra sense…it knows what it…needs. What’s needed. Where everyone ought to be. Everyone including trees and stones and acid sand and the people you call fairies, which isn’t really right, by the way, because we’re all fairies, even if some of us look like rocks or salamanders. When I was sent—” He stopped, hissed softly, shook his head. “I can’t say that part. About the sand, though, it…knows where to be. Where it and the ground can survive. And also where it’s supposed to be, just now.”
“In our way.”
“One of your challenges.”
“What, making sure I know what sand looks like?”
Tir was looking at the vicious sparkles. “Making certain you’re paying attention. To your surroundings, the land…where you’re supposed to be…”
“And to you. You saw it first.”
Tir stopped studying Fairy-touched ground. “Knowing when to listen is an excellent quality in a future monarch.”
“You’re allowed to help, then?”
“Of course.”
“I just meant…” What had he meant? “If this’s my Quest, my future…most of my family’s done it without, y’know, help. Am I supposed to?”
Tir stared at him for a second, said, “No,” and swung around and started walking. Avoiding, neatly, patches of danger.
Oliver ran to catch up. “Did I say something wrong—? No, wait, never mind, I did. Of course you can help. You do.”
“You’re allowed friends. Companions. People who want to assist you. Also normally a good quality, in a monarch.”
“I don’t have that many friends—”
That made Tir freeze in place. The smoke-grey of his eyes held something like shock, finding Ollie’s face. “Of course you do. Everyone loves—”
“I’m good at art. I’m good at buying rounds in a tavern. I like people. In general. But not close.”
Tir opened his mouth, shut it, shook his head. “Oliver…”
“Siblings don’t count.”
“I’m your friend.” Tir hesitated. “Aren’t I?”
Oliver said, out loud, “Maybe my only real friend, honestly,” and heard the truth of it echo from canyon walls and bare-branched bushes and shaggy spots of green.
“But,” Tir said. “But…no, Oliver, that’s not true, that isn’t…your people love you, and I—you know if you asked any of them, from University masters to village cheesemakers, they’d say you were a good person…”
“Not the same, and you know it.”
“But I…” Tir shook his head again. “I think you’re wrong but I don’t know how to argue. Either way, though—you have me. If that means something. I’m here.”
Ollie eased a step closer. Hand on Tir’s arm. He couldn’t not, just then. “It means a lot.”
“Oliver—oh, fuck, your boots—come here—!”
Right. Acid sand. And a very badly placed step.
His feet weren’t burning yet. They were good boots.
“Sit down,” Tir said sharply, not panicked but taking charge, and shoved him onto a convenient log. Oliver’s feet tingled. Hot.
Tir swore to himself. Yanked off Oliver’s left boot. Bare-handed.
And Ollie, who had barely processed events so far, entirely processed that. “What the fuck—Tir, you can’t, you’ll die—that’ll eat right through—”
“I’m a fairy, idiot.” Ollie’s right boot went next. Tir was kneeling at his side, on a tuft of grass. Oliver hoped it was safe grass. Would Tir have cared?
Tir said, sitting back, “How’re your feet? I think I got your boots in time.”
“Me? Tir, you—”
“It’s not—”
Oliver lunged forward, onto the grass. Grabbed his fairy’s arm.
Tir’s hands had not been eaten away to bone. They had not seared and scorched and melted.
But the burns were real. They laced those long musician’s fingers. They discolored skin, violent and angry.
Tir’s hands trembled. Only a fraction. But for Tir to show that much—
Oliver swore. In his head, in his heart, aloud. “You—don’t move, stay still, I’ve got the medical supplies, we have burn ointment—why would you—what the hell, Tir—”
“It’ll heal.” Tir sounded distracted, unfocused, too unworried. Shock, Ollie thought. Shock and acid burns and nerve damage and—
It was healing. Both hands. Blisters beginning to shrink, already visibly less vicious. “Don’t worry.” Tir exhaled, shaky but more present. “It’s not bad. And you still have feet.”
“You’re hurt.”
“One of us can recover,” Tir pointed out, exquisitely dry, more so with pain, “and one of us is human. It seemed the fastest way to get your boots off. Would you like spare socks? I also packed your spare boots.”
“I have spare socks,” Oliver said, because that was easier, the back-and-forth was simpler, more familiar, than the gaping yawning treacherous pit that’d opened up in his gut. Tir’s hands, that tremble of agony—
He insisted on winding bandages and burn ointment around Tirian’s fingers. Tir looked away while he did it.
Oliver didn’t know what that avoidance meant. He couldn’t count how many times Tir had saved his life—literally and metaphorically, every time the Crown Prince got drunk in a tavern or started hyperventilating before a public audience, soothed by the weight of one of those hands on his arm, his shoulder—over the years.
He wondered how many more times he’d get. How their lives might change, shift, alter. A Quest, a destiny. Would he have Tir at his side?
What if someday he didn’t?
What if someday Tirian had—had done whatever he’d been sent to do, and then turned and walked back into magic and left him, Oliver, behind?
He couldn’t imagine his life without Tir in it. Marriage to an unknown Prince or Princess, a promised happily ever after? Himself guiding and steering and caring for his kingdom? Without those wry silver-thorn eyes? Without those elegant—and damned self-sacrificial—hands?
“Thank you,” Tir offered, yanking Ollie back into the present and out of the melancholy future. “We should bear west a bit more. Not a lot, but a bit.”
“How do you—oh, never mind, of course you know.” He released Tir’s left hand reluctantly. Belatedly. Well-bandaged. Tir said nothing, but curled his fingers very slightly inward, as if checking the fit and flexibility of wrappings. “Are you…is that…too tight, or…”
“It’s fine, Oliver. Thank you.”
“Yeah? Um. Good.”
“We’re good, yes,” Tir concurred. Getting up from the grass, which meant Oliver did too. Steady as a compass-point, even when injured. Right there at Ollie’s side. “We should find the next campsite—or at least the spot I was thinking, for that—soon. It’s not too far.”
“Um. Okay. And you can rest. I’ll take care of camp.”
“Oliver, I really—”
“Please.”
Tir sighed, but his smile emerged, tucked into a corner of his expression like a long-known story. “If you must.”
“I must,” Ollie said. “I really must.”
And he walked through the cruel and beautiful wild territories next to his best friend, spare boots on, sand glittering, thinning, having played its part. The Quest was perilous, but fair: a challenge dealt with would pass away.
And he wished—not for the first time, but the most ferociously—that he did not have to go and seek a One True Love in a Seeing Pool. That he could turn around and never rescue a prince or princess he’s never met. That he could…
What? Not fulfill his obligations? Defy thousands of years of tradition?
Tir was here for him. Tir was here because this was Oliver’s Quest. His family legend, obligation, ongoing tale. And Tir was family. Or something like family. Something like…
He wanted to touch Tir again. He wanted to check those bandages. Just in case. Healing, yes, he’d seen it for himself. But maybe not fast enough. Maybe the healing hurt. He wanted to know. He wanted to take the hurt all for himself and guard Tir from harm.
Tir’s face was turned away, remote: maybe some kind of fairy pain-management, maybe resolutely ignoring another headache, maybe only contemplating their path ahead.
Oliver sighed inwardly, tried to stop thinking anything at all, and plodded along over rock and sand beside him.
Chapter 6: Heartbreak
They camped that night in a pool of emerald grass surrounded by silver-barked trees; the green was a bit too green and the trunks too silver, to Oliver’s artist’s eye. He couldn’t decide whether he wanted to paint the North or back slowly away from it. Either way he wasn’t certain he could ever do a description justice.
He handled wood-gathering and fire-building and roasting potatoes. Tir offered to help; Ollie scowled at him until he sat down meekly and got out a book. Bandages remained around slim fingers, catching light under distant stars.
