Bronwyn's Bane Read online

  Carole didn’t know what genuflect meant, but she didn’t like the sound of it. Still, she thought maybe Bronwyn only seemed unfriendly because she was tired from the coach ride, so with a patience admirable in a Brown witch, Carole minded her manners and asked, “Would you like to inspect supper first? I think it’s about ready.”

  Bronwyn sheathed her sword with another clattering display, then stopped, staring at Carole suspiciously. Surrounded as the stare was by the Princess’s helm and chain mail shirt and the rest of her martial paraphernalia, it was tantamount to a threat. “You have an odd, familiar yet somehow foreign look to you, wench. Are you a spy, perhaps, sent by my father’s enemies to poison me? If so…”

  “Oh, come off it, won’t you?” Carole cried, exasperated. “I look familiar because I look like my mother. Well, sort of. I do have my father’s nose, Gran says. And of course you know my mother because she’s been living at your castle taking care of your mother. Come to think of it, if anyone doesn’t look like her own mother, it’s you. You’re nothing like the tapestry of Auntie Amberwine in the guest chamber. You get to sleep there, by the way, and it’s the nicest room in the house. You can see the ruins of the ice castle out the back window.”

  Thinking the girls were leaving, the coachman threw down Bronwyn’s trunk, to the top of which was strapped a small shield, and jumped from the driver’s seat. He handed a sealed scroll to Carole, and followed the retreating skirts of the most curious of the village wives, now off to her own supper. Carole began stripping the wax from the seal and started after them, only to be jerked back when Bronwyn’s metal-fingered hand clamped down on her shoulder.

  “Hold, wench,” the Princess commanded. “None dare deny the royal resemblance without consequence. Take it back. Say I do so look like Mama.”

  “I can’t do that,” Carole said reasonably. “That would be telling a lie and telling lies is wrong.”

  “Take it back,” Bronwyn repeated, biting off each word, her fingers digging more painfully into Carole’s skin.

  “Hey, stop it!”

  Bronwyn looked as if she was about to cry but her voice was hard and angry. “I said take it back, and kneel while you’re about it.”

  “Or what?” Carole demanded. Enough was enough. Cousin or no cousin, the Princess just wasn’t a very nice person.

  “Or I’ll—I’ll thrash you, is what,” Bronwyn said. Obviously she could, though she’d never thrashed anything but jousting dummies before. Carole was less than half her size and skinny to boot.

  “Hmm…” the country girl said. “Will you now?” She didn’t seem frightened. In fact, she looked pleased. She was even humming to herself. Perhaps it was her family’s battle song? It sounded vaguely military. Yes, definitely a march. Good beat, that. Couldn’t keep the feet still. One had at least to mark time to a lively tune like that. Bronwyn loosed her cousin’s shoulder to watch amazed as her boots stomped the beat of their own volition. What a march! Why, if father had such a song in the field, his troops would be undefeatable. With a neat about-face, she strutted away from the manor house and from her grinning cousin, hearing the tune in her head long after Carole had ambled back towards the kitchens.

  Down the single street of the village she marched, past the blue-white face of the glacier and the half-melted towers of the castle carved from it, through the thin woods and straight towards the river. The talking one, she thought to herself through the one-two beat pounding in her brain. So Aunt Maggie hadn’t been telling her children’s stories about that after all. She could clearly hear the river saying all sorts of words now, words that became even more easily discernable as she neared the swirling waters. She heard them very clearly indeed as the march swept from her brain when her last step from solid ground plunged her into the chattering flow, which began protesting loudly. As the cold water clamped over her scalp, she belatedly remembered that Cousin Carole was supposed to be a witch in her own right. Evidently it was more than a wild rumor.

  * * *

  “And so, my love,” Maggie of Wormroost’s letter to her daughter read, “I’m sure you’ll try to make Bronwyn feel at home, and will be as tolerant of the little problem she has with what folk here call her ‘fanciful ways’ as we are tolerant of yours. In her case, there’s a curse involved, and she really can’t help herself, so I know you’ll be fair-minded enough to ignore it. The Mother only knows the child needs friends. I’ll write more later. The coachman is loading Bronwyn’s trunk now and Winnie’s call bell is jangling at me. Be a good girl and give my love to your dad if you see him before I do. Love, Mum.”

  Carole rerolled the scroll, her smug smile of moments before gone. Curse? Why hadn’t anybody said so before? Trust adults to leave out the good stuff! She supposed there was no help for it but to go find the big lout and apologize for marching her all over the countryside, though the exercise was bound to do her good after she’d been sitting in the coach all that while. Not that one could expect Bronwyn to see it that way. For a peace offering, Carole stuck a few biscuits into her pockets before snatching up her cloak and trotting back outdoors. The air got nippy in the evening now. Maybe she should fetch Bronwyn’s cloak along too, but she didn’t see it when she peeked into the coach. There was the trunk on the ground, though, with the little red shield strapped to it. It might come in handy if Bronwyn was slow to accept apologies.

  She set off in the direction the Princess had marched away, but as soon as she came within earshot of the river, she broke into a run. Had the villagers not all gathered at the manor hall for supper, someone would have cried the alarm already.

  “Help!” the river screeched, boiling with indignation, “Help! Pollution! Contamination!” Carole’s lungs and legs pumped frantically as she sped past all the houses and almost into the water before she could stop herself. It hadn’t occurred to her that the silly oaf might fall into the Blabbermouth. And with all that armor…

  “You—puff—didn’t—puff—drown her, d-pant, did you?” She asked, stripping off her boots and balling her cloak between the shield and its strap to keep the garment dry. She thought wildly that if Bronwyn weren’t dead, she’d at least be in urgent need of being dried.

  “How should I know what the silly thing’s done?” the ensorcelled river demanded. “Ask downstream. I for one certainly hope not. A bloated, rotting carcass is the last thing I want to take out to sea with me.”

  “You’d better not take her out to sea,” Carole said, stepping gingerly into the shallows and wading along the bank. “And don’t you dare try to tow me under either.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the river said nastily. But even though it was in a bad mood, the Blabbermouth was at least making sense for a change, which meant a unicorn must have come out of the woods last night and purified it. When she’d gone to draw water for supper yesterday evening, the river was still yammering the gossipy nonsense that composed its usual repertoire. Not only was the river bewitched, it was also haunted by the spirit of the slightly barmy witch who’d drowned herself after listening to the mindless drivel it poured forth in response to the talkative spell she’d placed on it so it would always keep her company. Only after unicorns came to Wormhaven Valley did the river begin to make sense and answer questions, at times with great wisdom, and at other times—well, not with great wisdom.

  Having lived near the Blabbermouth’s banks all her life, Carole found nothing particularly strange about drawing her water from a talking river, and right now she could see that it had its advantages over less communicative streams.

  Burbling at her every step of the way, the river guided her farther downstream than she’d dared to venture before. Not that she wasn’t adventurous, but close to the cliffside on which the glacier hung, underbrush grew so thickly along the banks that the river was inaccessible without tangling in a lot of brambles and nettles. Though Father had taken her swimming once or twice in the summer when he wasn’t traveling on the King’s business or off to some seminar at the Minst
rel’s Academy (Mother claimed that was a lot of poppycock and just an excuse for him to fool about singing and making up silly songs with other musicians. This seemed unfair to Carole since, as everybody knew, that was what musicians did), Mother didn’t like her to play in the water. And what Mother didn’t like she had ways of preventing Carole from doing.

  The waters downstream were far more eager to assist her than those closer to the town. Probably, since they weren’t so often exposed to people, they were more entertained by the novelty of having two within them in one afternoon, Carole thought, though she didn’t think about it too long since she was intent on trying to keep her footing and on searching. It was hard to see, for in the shadows under the bushes the water was inky black, whereas in the parts that curved away from the cliff and rolled down the middle of the riverbed, the wavelets glittered brightly enough to dazzle her eyes. As if that weren’t enough to keep her mind on, she also had to try to pay attention to the river’s gurgling instructions.

  “This way now. Do hurry. Look out for that hole, there. Clumsy child, aren’t you? Try to be more careful in the future. I daresay I can do without another of your sort muddying me up. Look sharp! Yes, there, you see, she struck that rock there and made the most dreadful clamor. The rock will never be the same. You can see where a big chunk’s knocked off. Ah, yes, here we are. Right around this next, bend and…”

  “And what?” she demanded, after negotiating the prescribed turn and coming face to face with the cliffside again—and no more river, much less any sign of her cousin. “Hey, that’s not fair. Where’d you go?”

  “Down here!” the voice bubbled up, seemingly from within the glacier.

  “Uh, uh,” Carole shook her head emphatically and backed off. “You have drowned her, haven’t you? And now you’re trying to get me too.”

  “Don’t be tedious,” the river said. “I think I’ve made my feelings on that subject perfectly clear. Now then, are you coming or aren’t you?”

  “I can’t just walk into a glacier,” she said, a whine creeping into her voice in spite of herself as she eyed the driftwood clogging the immense dirty white base stretching into woods on either side of the river.

  “No, but you can float,” the river replied.

  “You are trying to drown me!”

  “Don’t be such a baby. Would I have warned you about the holes and whirlpools if I were trying to drown you? I’m shallow here, except right at the bottom, and I’ll sweep you past that. Just keep your head down so you don’t bump it on the overhang, and hold onto that thing in your hand so you can keep adrift if you capsize.”

  “You make it sound easy,” she said doubtfully.

  “I do this all the time,” the river replied. “Down with you, now. That’s it. Here we go! Budge your bottom a bit. You’re stuck. There now—WHEEEEE!”

  That was all very well for the river to say, Carole thought, panicked, as she first slid downstream. But her fright was soon replaced by elation as she realized that she was not cold and uncomfortable as was quite reasonable to expect in a glacial river in late autumn. In fact, sliding along with the water was tremendous fun. Thrusting Bronwyn’s shield inside-up before her, she flopped forward on her stomach and sluiced down into the darkness.

  Entrance to the glacier was a shallow slide of water over stone and ice smoothed with centuries of the Blabbermouth’s passing. As first her head and then her stomach slid beneath the opening in the ice, Carole closed her eyes for fear she’d strike her head on a rock. She hoped the shield would protect her.

  No protection was necessary, however. At the foot of the slide, she knifed straight ahead into a deep pool, stopping abruptly when her momentum deposited her against a squishy, clanking object.

  “Mission accomplished,” sighed the river. “Get her out now, will you, before she rusts or something?”

  Chapter 2

  The eddy swirling around them giggled and Carole couldn’t blame it. High overhead, several huge round holes piercing the roof of the glacial grotto showed a struggling, swearing Bronwyn performing all manner of contortions and gyrations with the portion of her that remained above water. Setting her own feet down, Carole immediately started sinking into a deep layer of mud. With her leg armor on, Bronwyn was unable to kick loose, as Carole herself did only with great difficulty. She swam to Bronwyn, grabbing her arm and tugging.

  “Let me be,” the Princess said in a mournful and thoroughly frightened voice. “I’m doing perfectly well by myself, thank you.” Any idiot could see she wasn’t. For that matter, Carole wasn’t doing so well either. The pool covered the entire floor of the grotto and its icy rim was little more than a slick, narrow ledge, with nothing to hold onto and no place to pull herself and Bronwyn to dry land if and when she succeeded in unsticking her.

  “How do we get out?” Carole asked the river.

  “Out? Out? You just got in. How should I know how you get out? You asked me to find your cousin, as if cousins were important! Pshaw! I, for instance, had a cousin once, runny little sort, thought it was the deep blue sea but really, it was scarcely more than a mud puddle, ‘and I’ll brook no contradiction on that, let me tell you,’ I says to this puddle, says I—”

  “Oh, no,” Carole wailed, and would have stomped her foot under other circumstances.

  Bronwyn was sufficiently struck by the hopelessness in her tone to look up from her own predicament.

  “The unicorn spell is wearing off,” Carole explained. “Now we’ll never get out of here. I knew this wretched river was trying to drown us both!” She had to shout above the river now, for when it was making no sense it talked constantly and more loudly than when it was sane, and had no manners whatsoever about interrupting others or talking right over them.

  “Now what?” Bronwyn managed to howl back with some difficulty, since her struggling was sinking her deeper till by now her chin was half submerged and her voice almost as distorted as the river’s.

  Carole dog-paddled around her and finally hollered back. She would have shrugged if she could have managed to do that and keep afloat at the same time. “I don’t know. Wait until another unicorn comes to bless the river so it’ll tell us how to get out of here or lead the grownups to us, I suppose. Do you think you can hold out?” The last question was more wistful than hopeful.

  “Certainly I—blub—can,” Bronwyn answered. She had sunk until she could keep her lower lip above water only with considerable effort. “Save—glub—yourself, wench. Don’t—gurgle—worry about—gulp—me. I’ll be—blub—fine.”

  Remembering Bronwyn’s curse, Carole decided that the seemingly valiant disclaimer was, coming from the Princess, a cry for help and a plea not to desert her. As if Carole could have had she been so inclined. The light from the holes overhead was fading and her eyes probed the cavern for a way out or at least an outcropping to hang onto or climb up on. After all, if the river flowed into the grotto, it obviously must go somewhere.

  But it was not until she left Bronwyn and paddled around the slippery-sided perimeter that she found the passageway and the odd contraption blocking it. She felt it rather than saw it, for it was hidden in the shadows. It was a bit like a boat and also something like a bathtub with curved sides, somewhat buckled and smelling of mold, but when she put her hand in the bottom, the wooden surface felt solid and no wetter than her own hand.

  “Aha!” She cried triumphantly, and then to Bronwyn: “I think I’ve found just the thing. Hold on and I’ll fetch it over.”

  “I was—glub—just going for a walk,” Bronwyn answered.

  Tossing the shield into the decrepit-looking contraption, Carole threw one arm over the edge and tried to kick off. Unfortunately, the rim was too high for her to be able to keep hold and still be able to swim properly. So she flipped onto her back, grabbed the side with her fingertips, and tugged.

  The craft, whatever it was, began floating with her, and she was halfway to Bronwyn when she felt a pull corresponding to her own. She tugged harder
, but the boat wouldn’t budge. Thinking it might have snagged, she raised herself against the ledge. The flapping black horror was upon her before she could dive back into the water.

  The thing hissed hideously, like water spilled on a roaring fire or a teakettle gone mad. It smacked her with something soft and yet with great force, so that she felt she was being flogged and smothered by wet draperies. It also punched her shoulder, thighs, cheeks, and back, and barely missed an eye, stabbing at her with what felt like the blunt end of a wooden spoon.

  She screamed. Bronwyn screamed. The river babbled madly away and the monster relentlessly stabbed and slapped and hissed. She dove to escape it and kicked toward Bronwyn, only to find the thing at her heels, stabbing, if not hissing, right through the water. Then it was upon her, its weight dragging her down, enveloping her in its draperies—and then it wasn’t. She clawed for the surface and saw Bronwyn, mouth underwater but eyes menacing, her sword waving just above the surface of the water, stabbing jerkily now and then at a gigantic black swan.

  “Thugs!” the bird hissed. “Thieves! How dare you?” Carole had never heard a swan speak before, but when you grew up arguing with your water supply, talking animals weren’t particularly alarming. Hostile ones were quite another matter.

  “How dare we?” she exploded. “How dare you? I’ll have you know I’m trying to save the life of the Crown Princess of Argonia and you’re impeding me in the execution of my duties.” That sounded very grand and official, she thought. Bernard always said things like that when she wanted him to play with her and he wanted to sleep against the wall, which he claimed to be guarding. “I happen to be the daughter of the lord of this land, and I’ll thank you not to bother us anymore.”