She looked up just in time to see him leaving. “Where are you going?”
“Out for a bit. Meet me at two this afternoon at our library table. I found her trail. The name is spelled differently, but the story fits. The pages are on the desk.”
“But …” The door closed.
Cadence thought about Osley’s mercurial tendencies. If he were a playing card, he’d be the One-Eyed Jack. She needed to see the other side of that face. Before she left, she would find the moment to corner him and flip that face card over.
She stacked a foursome of oreos and picked up the scrawled yellow sheets. As she munched and smiled, she felt as if she sat right next to Ara as they blended into the torch-lit Great Room of Prince Thorn’s castle:
“Hwat!” announced the crier, and the banquet began. Threescore gentlemen and ladies, amidst laden tables and bustling servants, spread down the axis of the vaulted room.
Ara, seated at a side table of minor guests — most appearing to be wanderers and emissaries from distant lands — tried to match the nobles with the wild tales and earnest warnings given to her by Lady Bregan. In those few hours since she entered the castle, the Lady had provided a short oral history of the realm. “A place where, by the patronage of my father the king, the arts of verse and tale have grown strong and bold. It is such great irony,” she sat at the main feasting table and looked past Ara, “that we huddle here next to the Great Blackness and yet are allowed to idle and make merry. So long as we muster no army, and pretend to neutrality, we are overlooked.”
“And where is your king?” Ara asked.
“Gone. Perhaps lost to us.” She paused. “We have neither tidings from him nor demand of ransom. In our world, that means ill. Even were he dead by someone’s hand, they would seek our treasury as bounty for the return of his bones.”
She shook her head and looked to her hands, as if they were little dead birds. “We warned and pleaded, but he said that the arts are vital, even as woe and fear spread through the lands. He was asked to come to the north. Our troupe would perform for a great stipend. We last heard that he was en route, entering a domain at the far end of the Northern Road. Then all has been silence. Each visitor we politely interrogate. Have you heard any news that may help?”
Ara knew a truth here, and decided to reveal it. “My lady, you have been most gracious, and I must tell you that there are no longer any domains north of the few villages that huddle where that road ends to a mere track. I have been there not two months ago, and I know those lands by my own reckoning. If the king journeyed there, he was misled for some ill purpose. But of his specific journey, I know not.”
“This confirms the worst. I fear I have no father and we have no king.”
Ara realized the sadness she had now given in return for kindness and hospitality.
“I am sorry, my lady. Perhaps he journeys here by paths unplanned, as many are forced in these days. But what of the Prince?”
“Prince Thorn,” said the lady, “though he is my brother and is dear to me, has fallen under the influence of a certain dissolute and disreputable knight. They drink and revel and squander the thin coin of safety by which we survive. We are on a precipice, and they jest and pimp the emissaries of the very hand that can destroy us.”
Ara, sensing that this hole was getting deeper and that the ear was the best instrument of policy, nodded with empathy. Lady Bregan then revealed more, “I must tell you, that there have been questions, raised at our borders, subtle inquiries, as to whether any of your size and appearance has ever entered our realm. Thus far, we have had the luxury of truth and could say ‘None.’ Now that you are here, I know not what our policy will be.”
Ara was totally alert now. “Were the questioners of fell mien? Wraiths on black horses?”
“I saw them not, but their inquiry was relayed to the prince as one more signal of our failing sovereignty. He no doubt will speak to you.”
“When?”
“Perhaps now, as the banquet begins. Do you hear the cry?”
Ara listened as a voice from somewhere on high, echoed through the castle.
“To sup and be merry! To sup!”
The lady whispered, “Be attuned. Much will unfold as the evening grows. We are a nation that lives in theatre and, I fear, at times cannot tell our own lives from the tales we spin. Let us go”
The prince, fair and tall, stood and eyed the room while roasted meats and root vegetables on steaming platters were served. His eyes stopped on Ara, as if he knew much of her already, and then moved on.
As of one great voice on queue, the assemblage of actors roared, “Hail to the Prince!”
“Hail, yes!” answered Thorn. Ara watched his careless swagger.
After a further filling of flagons, he stood.
“Our first toast,” he said in voice loud and clear, “even before we hear a tale, is to our king, Lady Bregan’s and my father, and to his safe return!”
The entire hall duly stood and, to a loud “Here, here!” all drank their flagons to the last drop. Other toasts followed in close order. A noble of dubious lineage but definite girth rose, unsteady as if that were his steady state, and intoned in voice deep, resonant, and intoxicated.
“Now the sun is in her retreat. A fair hot wench, but not of our time. Our mistress is the moon, under whose countenance we do plot. We that live as good neighbors to the Dour Eye should do him a favor. He is too downcast and graceless. ‘Cheer up!’ I tell him, by his minions’ ears. ‘Come and drink with us, and let us conspire together to wind a bawdy tale, and much redeeming will be done. What of passion, and lust, and gentle grace, and the good gift of irony at our fate? Or do you, Red Eye, know only of the hunger to complete your darkness and then blow out the torch?’ There’s no irony there, and perhaps that’s the crux. His minions may yet visit us this eve, and we shall once more give it a try. My prince.”
At this, the servants all grabbed the torches from the walls and with wet skins extinguished them all at once. Only the flickering light from the huge hearth illuminated the hall, now washed in yellow glow. Four players in outlandish minstrel costumes vaulted into the hall, one from each direction, and landed as one, each upright on a separate table. They spoke in turn, back and forth, full and clear across the hall, the crowd turning to each voice:
Cadence stopped reading for a moment. The day had grown to noon. She would have to go to the Library soon. She settled in the overstuffed chair and picked up where she left off:
“A tale to be told at every feast! And of a good tale none can foretell where it may lead. For each is but a setting out on a road that may reveal a hidden gate.”
“Our tale is of our times.”
“A Prospect of This Middling Earth is our humble title.”
“Though its very prospect may deal with its end.”
“An end to be commenced on strands far remote, with furious close of butchery!”
“With great losings and findings. As of our noble King, lost in lands beyond our horizon.”
“And findings of a token precious, that does awake great strategies and cause this very age to shake and convulse with self-inflicted change!”
“As the lantern doth signify that night has fallen, so this token, despite its scale as but a coin pence in the hand, tells us that a night has come from which this age may not awake.”