Fairest (21 page)

“I'd let you out if I dared, sweet. I'd unbind your mouth and have a kiss. I'd make you …”

Izzi and others like him were to be my companions from now on. My life had begun with abandonment—from a castle, like as not. It might end in a castle prison. As a babe I'd been thrust out. Now I was being kept in.

I started a new melody in my mind, the song of a river, coursing down from Mount Ormallo, overflowing its banks, racing where it would, carrying away sheep and houses and people. No prison for this river. It was free free free.

After a while, exhausted by rage and fear, I fell asleep. I woke with a start and an idea, an ogreish, persuasive idea.

I was gagged, so I couldn't sing, but I could hum. I began to hum the Sweet Sleep Lullaby, which every Ayorthaian mother sings to every Ayorthaian babe.

“Singing to please me, are you, sweet?”

I hummed and worked my wrists behind my back, trying to stretch the rope that bound them.

“It's that ogre blood, I warrant. Does your hearers no good. Does them …” Izzi continued to talk. My wrists burned. I kept humming.

It seemed to take hours, but I freed my hands. Unfortunately Izzi was still awake. He even sang along with my humming.

I slowed my humming and made my voice as honeyed and resonant as I could. Sleep, Izzi, sleep. You are in your mother's womb, and her voice surrounds you.

Let me do this, I prayed, before the guard changes and they discover that my hands are free.

Izzi hummed along for an endless while, but then his head nodded. Soon he was asleep and snoring. Victory for the ogre.

I untied my gag and pressed against the upper left corner of the cage door, where I'd felt the weakness. There it was again. The pin was halfway out of the hinge. Could I pull it out?

My transformation had made my fingers thin enough to slip between the iron bars. I reached the pin with my thumb and forefinger, but it was greasy and I couldn't get a firm grip. I tried to grasp it with the gag. However, the cloth did nothing to improve my hold. Frustrated, I let it go, and it fell outside the cage.

The bottom of the cage was dirty and gritty. Still humming, I rubbed my hands in the filth, hoping to absorb the grease. I tried again to draw the pin out, but again my fingers slipped off. I pulled once more and was able to grip it, but it didn't come. I pulled again and again.

I wondered how much time I had.

At last I felt the pin move. I yanked, and it came out in my hand.

I pushed against the cage door and it gave, spreading wide enough to allow my arm through. I could almost reach the bolt that opened the door, but not quite.

I sat on my haunches, considering. My humming was automatic now.

The cage's lower hinge was intact. The cage walls were impenetrable. There was nothing but the bolt. I strained, and felt the cloth in my armpit tear. I strained more. The metal corner pressed into me.

I touched the bolt!

I clenched my teeth and stre-e-e-tched. I felt heat. I knew I was bleeding, but I pushed the bolt and it moved. The lock scraped open with a whine and a creak.

Izzi continued to snore.

I tottered out of the cage. At last.

I raised my arm. The cut was trifling. I picked up my gag and the rope that had tied my hands. Then I circled around Izzi to gag him and tie him up.

But why gag him? Who would hear his shouts? Perhaps I should just grab his arms and push him into a cell. I took a deep breath. My heart was pounding wildly.

He mumbled something in his sleep.

I let the breath out. Why not leave him asleep?

I grinned. If I left Izzi asleep, they wouldn't know how I'd gotten out. They might think it magic.

But would he stay asleep when I was no longer humming? I lowered my voice and readied myself.

His head lolled to the side.

I stopped humming.

Izzi slept on.

I took a lamp from its sconce. My hand trembled so, the light wavered. I pulled the door open.

A guard faced me, holding a lantern and a knife.

H
E LOOKED ASTONISHED
to see me, too. He fell back a step. I surged forward. He blocked my way and put a finger to his lips. I recognized him. He was Uju, Ivi's favorite guard.

“Come,” he whispered. “I have horses saddled.” He eased the dungeon door closed.

I thought of charging past him. I didn't know why he would help me. It might be a trap, but why trap me? I was believed to be in a prison cell.

I needed help. I hadn't thought beyond the dungeon. I followed Uju through the tunnel. At the turn, instead of continuing toward the Great Hall, he veered right. After a few yards we ascended half a flight of wooden steps to a door, which opened smoothly, as though in frequent use.

We entered a storage cellar and walked down a narrow aisle lined with casks of sesame-seed oil. The casks gave way to crates. I smelled tarragon. I heard a chirp, then another, then a trill. Some birds had found refuge here.

We passed through another doorway into a room of furniture shrouded in canvas. Uju crossed to a door. He threw it open, and we stepped into the gray world before dawn.

He stared at me, then whispered, “You're so comely.”

Don't waste time!

The lists were on my right, the stables straight ahead, across an exercise yard where two horses waited. I mounted a dun-colored stallion, he a piebald mare. Instead of riding past the guardhouse and over the drawbridge, we crossed the moat, which was low and gave the horses no trouble.

I looked back at Ontio Castle. It hadn't been my home for very long.

The air was warm and moist. I refused to think, and I held sorrow and rage at bay. I smelled the grass in the field we cantered through, felt the soft wind on my face, heard the birds wake up, and admired the grace of my hands on the reins and the shapeliness of my knees through my skirts.

After an hour of hard riding, we reached the foothills of Mount Ormallo. We rode in the waters of a stream to confound pursuit. From there we entered a ravine, where Uju said we would spend the day.

He tethered the horses to a poplar. I sat, leaning against the ravine wall, where I was least likely to be seen from above. Uju sat near the ravine wall, too, several yards away.

I rose and went to him. “Why did you come for me?”

I'd never seen him anything but quiet and stern, and he remained so. He took more than a minute to answer me. Then he shrugged. “Her Majesty commanded me to.”

Ivi! I retreated to my spot against the ravine wall.

“Where are you taking me?”

He shrugged again. “Far—” A listening look came over him.

I heard hoofbeats and the baying of a hound. Our horses! They'd see the horses!

The hoofbeats receded. I began to breathe again.

Why had Ivi sent Uju to me? Might Skulni have persuaded her to rescue me? It was possible. I hadn't learned what he could do or what his designs were.

More likely she'd wanted my beauty as far from her as could be.

The day wore on. At dusk Uju went to his saddlebags and produced a thick slice of bread and sausage for each of us. When the sky was dark, we left the ravine. Uju headed north and east, keeping to the Ormallo range. The Featherbed was north of the castle, too, but far to the west.

I couldn't go home. They'd look for me there. I had no home.

The wall I'd built around my feelings crumbled. I wept as we rode. A song rang through my mind.

We passed the next day in a shallow cave and rode again through the night. At dawn we entered a landscape even more strewn with rocks and boulders than Mount Ormallo. We were riding along a narrow path on the edge of a mountain when Uju swerved behind a boulder. I followed. He slid off his mount and pulled me off mine. He clamped his hand over my mouth.

He was going to kill me!

I struggled. Then I heard loud footfalls, labored breathing.

Ivi's guards!

Why were they on foot?

I heard an angry voice and an angry answer—but not in Ayorthaian. Uju's eyes were bulging in terror.

“ROOjiNN sesh.”

“MyNN eMMong aiSS.”

Ogres!

Uju crept to the boulder. He waved me back, but I followed. I lay flat and peered over the rim of the path.

They came around a low tree and into view about fifteen yards below us. There were four of them, bigger than I ever was. One was female, the others male.

Their path forked only a few feet ahead of them. If they took the right-hand fork, and if the wind was in our favor, perhaps they would go on their way none the wiser.

They took the right-hand fork. Uju and I grinned at each other. I'd never seen a happier face than his.

The ogres continued up the mountain, arguing and joking. Their laughter was half snort, half bray. Were they my cousins? If they'd met me in my old form, would they have eaten me or embraced me?

I saw a red ribbon in the female's matted hair. Had it belonged to one of her meals?

Uju's mare neighed.

“UFF vahlwa!”

Uju and I scrambled back from the path. He pulled out his dagger.
Run!
he mouthed at me. I saw him prepare to attack.

He'd die! They'd
persuade
him before he could strike.

I illused a whinny, coming from the other side of the ogres, somewhere down the mountain.

Uju turned toward me.

“AflOOn vahlwan!”

I illused an answering whinny, also down the mountain.

The ogres babbled and squabbled. I wished I could see what they were doing.

I got my wish. A head rose above the ledge.

U
JU HURLED HIS
dagger into the creature's throat. I caught the ogre before he could fall back among his pack. Uju and I hauled him onto the path.