Bronwyn's Bane Read online

  “And I’ll thank you, young lady, to keep your vulgar hands off my chariot.”

  “I didn’t know it was yours. I was only borrowing it to help Bronwyn. I can’t just let her drown, can I?”

  “I don’t see why not,” the swan replied. “And anyway, she appears to be doing so regardless of your wishes.”

  Carole switched her gaze from the top of Bronwyn’s forehead and then, helplessly, back to the swan. “It—oh, dear—it’s her armor, you see. Don’t ask me why a princess wears armor but she does and—”

  “A princess? I believe you did mention that before.” The hiss simmered down. “Well, now. That’s rather different. I myself am of royal blood.” The swan’s little eyes glittered suddenly as the dying light slanted against them. “You silly girl, if her noble armor is weighing her down, why don’t you dive down and remove it from her? Honestly, I think the servant situation must have deteriorated dreadfully since I’ve put on these feathers!”

  Feeling half resentful at being ordered about and half foolish for not thinking of the idea herself, Carole dove. With her new-found facility in and under the water, she had no trouble reaching the leather lacings on Bronwyn’s leggings and gauntlets, and found despite the darkness and murkiness of the water she could see perfectly well. She tugged, and the sodden leather gave way. Casting the leggings away, she grasped Bronwyn by the ankles, flipped herself onto her back, and pulled Bronwyn’s legs free from the armor. Once her feet were loose, the Princess was able to get her mouth above the water, and she and Carole together stripped her of the chain mail and helm, throwing them into the swan’s strange boat.

  Instead of objecting to this further invasion of her territory, the swan fluttered around them in a maternal sort of way, looking as if she’d like to sprout hands and help them. “The poor dear must be chilled through,” she fussed as more of the newly unburdened Bronwyn popped up from the pool. “Quickly now, girl, help your lady into my chariot.”

  Resenting the way everyone was claiming to be a Princess today apparently just so they could order her about, Carole said, as drily as she could under the circumstances, “You’ve certainly changed your tune,” but nevertheless followed the swan’s instructions, half dragging, half shoving a noodle-limp and prune-wrinkled Bronwyn into the bathtub-boat. When she saw that the bottom didn’t give way beneath the bulky princess, Carole crawled in after her and wrapped the cloak, only a bit damp around the edges, about her.

  The swan, she could see now, was tethered to the peculiar craft by a long strand of something, from which various loops and buckles dangled, rather like an unhorsed sleigh harness. The swan gave an experimental heave and the boat glided smoothly toward her over black satin water.

  “Hmm. Yes. Works nicely. I don’t seem to have lost my touch,” the swan said, preening herself a little.

  “Could you pull us out of here?” Carole asked. “Not that it’s not nice meeting you, but it’s almost supper time and we can’t go back the way we came and—”

  “I, for one, am perfectly h-happy h-here,” Bronwyn said through chattering teeth.

  The swan’s eyes glittered again and she spoke sternly to Carole. “Your lady says…”

  “I heard her,” Carole replied tightly. But the swan had started to help them only after learning how noble Bronwyn’s blood was. It probably wouldn’t be smart to reveal the less noble things about the princess right now. “But, well, she’s a great joker, Princess Bronwyn is. Aren’t you, cousin?”

  “Me? Oh, yes. A very great joker. Why, shortly after I was born, all the court fools quit in protest, so witty were my gooings and cooings…”

  “She actually wants to leave as badly as I do,” Carole interrupted quickly, “but she’s just trying to keep my spirits up, you see. She’s far too well-bred to complain of her own accord. But really, we can’t possibly stay here.”

  “Why not? I have made this my home for quite some time now.”

  “But there’s nothing for us to eat and nowhere to sleep!” Carole wailed, suddenly overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her dinner, which must be at least cold by now, if not gobbled up by Bernard, who ate anything that didn’t try to eat him first.

  “I eat plants from the bottom of the pond and find them quite succulent,” the swan said with a superior air. “Surely you could do the same. But then, oh no, I have forgotten what it was like almost… no, no, of course not, and you have no wings under which to tuck your heads for sleep, poor things. Dear me, it was so very long ago. Naturally, you must leave. This place is far too exposed for a delicate creature like the princess in her featherless state.”

  “How understanding you are,” Bronwyn said, buttering the old bird up.

  “That is true,” the swan agreed, “However, willing as I am to aid you in quitting this cavern, I fear I shall be unable to do so.”

  “Why?” both girls wailed at once.

  “Because, my dear ladies, the chariot will not pass through the opening and I am bound to the chariot. Were it of a more convenient size, I would have been able to tow it through myself and might have enjoyed a greater variety of scenery long before now.”

  “Can’t you try?” Carole pleaded. “Oh, please do try. Maybe we can help.”

  “Very well, but I fear I cannot hold out much hope.”

  Carole crossed her fingers and wished she knew of a shrinking tune to whistle them through. As it turned out, Bronwyn’s natural endowments rather than her cousin’s supernatural ones solved the dilemma. What with her great weight added to Carole’s, the princess sufficiently lowered the boat in the water so that with only a little maneuvering it squeezed through the opening and shot to the other side.

  They felt the swiftness of the river beneath them and heard it far better than they would have wished, but they saw nothing. They felt no impediments, nor could they feel the walls on either side of them, so they surmised the cave must have broadened again. The glide of the boat, the darkness, and the river’s boring monologue, which discouraged conversation, all reminded the girls that it was past their bedtime. Even without the benefit of the wings the swan found so useful, both of them were soon asleep.

  * * *

  Bronwyn was disappointed that no iceworm writhed through the ice to challenge her to battle while they traveled through the mountain. She was sure she could manage to best one, which would make Mama and Papa proud and show Carole that Aunt Maggie and Uncle Colin weren’t the only ones who could become legends in their own time for their adroit dispatching of monsters. Though no one had mentioned it, she felt sure the light holes in the grotto were made by worms like the one lying dormant above them in the ice castle.

  But they emerged from the tunnel a few hours after they awakened, unthreatened by worms, dragons, trolls, chasms, tricky side passages or even serious inconveniences. Quite an anticlimactic ending for what Bronwyn was beginning to regard as a promisingly perilous adventure. Having survived her terrifying plunge into the river and missing her dinner, she felt pretty cocky about taking on the next danger and was only afraid that none would materialize. No doubt, since the tunnel was so determinedly dull, the best course was the one on which they seemed inevitably set—onward! In the company of a witch cousin and a giant talking swan, surely something at least moderately thrilling would soon occur.

  She must be alert as a hawk watching for its prey and miss no detail of the terrain. She must note each nuance in the behavior of her companions and in the character of the countryside. Hmm, yes. She congratulated herself on deducing the approximate time from the straight up position of the brilliant autumn midday sun. Very good, Bronwyn. What else? There was the swan, of course. Much more magnificent than she had first appeared as a black creature wrapped in darkness. She was as big around and as long as the chariot she pulled and her feathers were so shiny that a small perfect rainbow was reflected from each. Her neck was as long as Bronwyn’s arm and she carried her beautiful head as proudly as a rosebud in first freshness borne on its long stem by a knig
ht to his lady. Being pulled by such a creature was a bit like being attached to the feathered tail of a giant arrow, so swift and sure was her forward propulsion. The river beneath her was cloudy with fine white dirt that gave Bronwyn the feeling of floating on a broad flat stream of potato soup.

  Thinking of soup made her wish missing her dinner and her breakfast as well hadn’t been the first valorous hardship she’d been called upon to endure. One should probably break into these adventurous things gradually, and certainly not on an empty stomach.

  The swan’s mind was on higher things. “Ah, me, sunlight!” she exclaimed in her slightly accented voice, which was husky and rather sibilant. Spreading her ebony wings, she pulled the chariot into a little circle in the middle of the river, coming to a stop so abruptly that the vessel barely missed her tail. Arching her neck back over her right wing, she asked them soulfully, “Do you know how long it has been since I beheld sunlight in the fullness of its glory? Many years, my dears, oh many, many years. How blinding is its radiance!”

  “Yes,” Carole agreed. “Too bad it isn’t a bit warmer.” Then, not wishing to seem as rude and churlish as her companions seemed to think her, she added, “I suppose it must be very nice for you to be out of that cave, swan, after all that time you said you’d been in there.”

  “Indeed it is, miss, and a tribute to my hardihood and steadfastness of purpose that I did not perish in the darkness but stayed by my post long after my sisters had turned totally fowl and flown away. I have always been the lead swan, you see, being the eldest, and my harness was more difficult to slip than theirs. Still, they might have tried to help me, silly geese, or at least returned for a visit now and again.”

  “That was pretty foul,” Carole said primly. “But it isn’t really nice to say that sort of thing about your sisters.”

  “Fowl, girl, birdlike! And it is not very nice of you, either, since we are lecturing each other on deportment, to address me as ‘swan’ when I am at least as nobly born as your own lady cousin. However, I shall overlook your boorish lack of courtesy since you have assisted in my deliverance. Perhaps, if you are pleasant, I shall even deign to share with you my secret.”

  “I’m ever so good at keeping secrets,” Bronwyn bragged.

  Carole mumbled something to herself, but the swan didn’t hear it, since she had already begun to have her say in a voice loud enough to be heard over the river, which was on this side of the mountain no louder or less sensible than the regular sort of river.

  “Know then, Princess, that I, like yourself, am a King’s daughter. My father was King Niconar Nettletongue of the Nonarable Lands, an unprofitable but fiercely independent kingdom to the south and east of Middle Frostingdung. I am My Serene Highness, Crown Princess of the Nonarable Lands, Duchess of the Frozen Fjords, Marchioness of the Miserable Mires, Anastasia Ilonia Vasilia Gwendolyn Martha Nettletongue, at your service, though actually, you understand, that is only a figure of speech.”

  “Your Highness,” Bronwyn said civilly.

  “Tish, tush, my dear. We Royal colleagues need not be so formal. You may call me by my sobriquet, Anastasia the Alluring.”

  She didn’t tell Carole to call her anything, but Carole had a few ideas of her own and barely stifled an impulse to tell the haughty creature she could call her Honorable Lady Carole. Although traveling in the company of two beings with such inflated ideas of their own importance as Bronwyn and the swan was probably going to be unbearable, there was no sense in antagonizing the transportation. On the other hand, she wasn’t about to sit through what seemed to be another typically boring Argonian story. Bewitched animals, her mother always said (and she should know, she’d met a lot of them in her adventures before she became a mother) never knew when to be quiet and stick to the point of a problem. They always had to regale one with some rambling sob story about how they became bewitched and how totally unfair it all was that someone like them should be turned into a whatever. One would think to listen to them that witches had nothing better to do than to go about harassing innocent bystanders by transforming them into livestock. Carole wasn’t about to listen to any of that.

  Interrupting adroitly, she summarized what she suspected the swan was about to say. “So you and your sisters were turned into swans, huh, and somebody hooked you up to that boat only they left and so did your sisters and you didn’t and here you are, right? Wonderful! So are we. So now that we’re all here, how do you think we can get back home again, er, Your Highness?”

  Bronwyn gave her a murderous glance. Just when things were getting interesting, the witch had to open her big mouth. “My aunt’s daughter is far too polite to want to delve into your personal history, Princess Anastasia,” she lied in apology.

  “The Alluring,” the swan amended testily. “Anastasia the Alluring.”

  “Princess Anastasia the Alluring,” Bronwyn said, all in one breath, “I, however, being the heroine of many valiant exploits, have naturally had similar experiences myself. For instance, just before we dropped in on you, I believe my cousin was attempting to turn me into a swan, weren’t you, Cousin Carole? Otherwise, I can’t think why she would have witched me into the river.”

  “Well, I’m sorry, I’m sure,” Carole said indignantly, “But how was I to know you were under a curse and couldn’t tell the truth if it walked up and bit you on the ankle? I thought you were just weird and nasty!”

  “Curse?” the princesses asked together.

  “You know—the curse you had put on you when you were a baby.”

  “Oh, that curse,” Bronwyn said, still obviously puzzled.

  “You didn’t know?” Carole asked. “I’d think your mother would have mentioned a thing like that.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, my dear young lady. Not necessarily,” Anastasia the Alluring put in wisely. “My mother never told me, for instance, of the penchant the women on her side of the family had for turning into swans until I was older than either of you, by which time it was much too late. Families do so dislike discussing the more complicated aspects of one’s heritage with one whilst one is still of such tender years, you know, and by the time one is grown, why, more than likely they may have quite, quite forgotten.”

  “Strikes me as a quite, quite large thing to forget,” Carole said skeptically. “But then, Mother didn’t tell me about your curse before she sent that letter.”

  “I haven’t got any curse, so just stop saying that!” Bronwyn told her, clasping her sword hilt and sticking out her lower lip.

  “Yes, you have, too. You know the royal tax collector? The one that my dad went with to help collect for the war? He did it.”

  Bronwyn took her hand off her sword and laughed, using the artificial twitter she had learned from the ladies at court. “You misunderstand, cousin. I know the peasants speak of being accursed by a tax collector but…”

  “No. I don’t mean he cursed you as a tax collector. I mean before, when he was a wizard. He made it so you lie all the time.”

  “How kindly you put it,” Bronwyn said.

  “See what I mean? If you could tell the truth you would have told me I wasn’t putting it very kindly at all and I—I suppose I’m not, but you’re awfully hard to talk to, do you know that?”

  Bronwyn shrank as far as possible into the chariot. “The servants and courtiers never thought so,” she said miserably as she understood for the first time their stiff-lipped silences. “They were always talking to me and playing with me. I had to play war games to scare them away so I could get some privacy once in a while.”

  “I’ll bet,” Carole said, but patted her on the shoulder and slouched down beside her.

  The swan craned her head back and fixed Carole with a hard stare. “This tax collector person. What does he look like?”

  “I—well, I only saw him once, when he came by for Dad. Mother won’t have him around, though I think he’s supposed to be related to her. He looks kind of like us, Mum and me, brown eyes and hair and cheekbones that stick out like th
is,” she sucked in her own round cheeks. “Why do you ask?”

  “Why do I ask? My dear young lady, if I were still in the guise of the gentlewoman I am in truth, I should surely swoon here and now. Your tax-collector—sorcerer is none other than my former master, the Brown Enchanter, the Dark Pilgrim, Fearchar the Fearsome.” Her gaze shifted to Bronwyn, “And you, poor child, are in very grave trouble indeed.”

  A certain amount of suppressed excitement and self-satisfaction laced her voice, and she next addressed Carole, seeming to relish being able to advise people in a situation she saw as being as grave if not worse than her own. “I think, dear girl, you had best tell us all you know of this matter.”

  * * *

  “Naturally, it all makes perfect sense,” Bronwyn snapped sometime later. “Since my father was so grateful to this he-witch for putting a curse on me that he tracked the man all over Argonia to thank him for his kind christening gift, naturally nothing would do but that the varlet had to be honored with the position of royal tax collector. And I understand perfectly why Father couldn’t be bothered to make the wizard remove the spell first.”

  “Do you?” Carole asked absently, since she’d been trying to think how they would first get back over the mountain to Wormhaven in time for supper. Bronwyn’s problem was interesting, but she had, after all, had it most of her life, whereas Carole had never had to go without a meal before and here she was missing three in a row and probably catching her death of cold besides. But Bronwyn and the swan seemed to be waiting for her to say something so she added, “I mean, you don’t see, I suppose, do you? Which is just the point. Me neither, but it would be nice if we could figure it out later. This conversation is giving me a headache.”

  The swan, who had dined more recently than either of her passengers, and who was also accustomed for much of her life to dealing with diplomats and other envoys, had less trouble adapting to Bronwyn’s involuntary mode of expression than Carole did. “While you seem to grasp the essence of the situation, my dear Bronwyn, you fail to understand that even had your papa killed my master in an attempt to remove the spell, as I seem to recall he attempted to do, such measures would have been to no avail. That spell was purchased through an agent. I should know, since I took him there and waited while the transaction was completed. One finds out a great many things when one’s employer is unsure of the level of one’s ability to communicate. I gathered that while my former master thought it a good joke to have your curse related to his own magic talent, which is persuasiveness, the spell was none of his making nor had he the power to remove or alter it in any way.”