ROAD TO CORDIA (16 page)

     “I will give you a map,” said the Lady in her kindly voice, as if she were doing Ja'Nil a favor!

     “Oh.” Ja'Nil looked around for a distraction but all the food had been eaten and the dishes removed by servants. In fact, aside from two soldiers near the doorway, the large hall was conspicuously empty. Where had everyone gone?

     “You object to taking the message? I assure you the children will be well cared for in your absence.”

     “No, no. I’m sure. I mean, obviously you can take care of them. Better than I can.”

     “Good,” said the lady. “Then it is agreed.”

     “Well …,” Ja'Nil started to say, but the Lady hadn’t finished speaking.

     “I would consider it a great favor if you would also carry a message for me.”

     “To the children’s father?”

     The Lady shook her head. “No, to the Queen.”

     To the Queen?

     Ja'Nil only just stopped herself from laughing. “I doubt I would be able to see the Queen, my Lady.”

     “She is a dear friend of mine. I will arrange it.”

     “Oh.”

    
She had just broken her fast with a dear friend of the Queen?

      No one in the village would ever believe this. But she didn’t want to go to Cordia. She didn’t want to be responsible for the Mummer children. She had had enough of the wide world; all she wanted was to go home, back to her safe, narrow world.

     The Lady was watching her shrewdly. “Is life so wonderful in your village?” she asked.

     Ja'Nil swallowed nervously and looked away.

     “Is someone special waiting for you at home?

     “Special?”

     “Perhaps a young man?”

     “No,” said Ja'Nil. “There’s no one. I’m not…that is…I haven’t had my adult ritual yet.”

     “Ahh. That’s why you must rush home.”      

     Ja'Nil was not going to admit no one was willing to pay for her ritual. That no one would even think of marrying her as a first wife, probably not even a third wife. True Aunt M‘eer had said she could have the goods in her cottage if she went to Cordia and brought back a healer. How much were the goods worth? Enough for the ritual?

     “If I go to Cordia, of course, I will be honored to carry your message,” she heard herself saying to the Lady.

     “Good,” said Lady Fayre, rising briskly to her feet.

     “Perhaps, in turn, you could give me a hint about how I should go about obtaining the services of a healer?” said Ja’Nil, amazed at her own temerity. By the Lord, she was actually bargaining with Lady Fayre of Redbird Keep!

     The Lady smiled approvingly and sat down again. “I will do more than give you a hint,” she said. “For your service to me, I will ask the Queen for her help in finding you a healer.”

     “Really!”

     “Really. The fact that a healer was not automatically sent to your village is just one more item to add to my message.”

     Ja'Nil looked at her uncertainly. “The Queen is interested in whether or not a healer was appointed to a little Fisherfolk village?”

     The Lady stopped smiling. Her light pleasant voice suddenly became very grave. “Something is going on in the Queendom; separate little rebellions; a breakdown in the laws; disorder throughout the countryside; public officials and professional practitioners are not receiving new assignments; local elections are being canceled; warlords daring to see how far they can push out their borders, and nobody is stopping them.” The Lady was gripping her ruby colored cup so hard that Ja'Nil was afraid it would shatter in her hand.

     “Yours is not the only village that has been abandoned by the government,” she continued.

     “I thought that was just the way things are,” said Ja'Nil.

     “Everyone just accepts and believes that evil is unstoppable. Out of all this chaos, you are the only one who has come forward to do something about it,” said the Lady.

     “Me? But I just want a Healer for my village.”

     “Exactly. Listen to me, Ja'Nil. It is neither immutable fate nor random chance,” said the Lady. “No, what is happening is very deliberate. Someone is behind all this. Someone with the power to interfere with the workings of the government in both big and small ways. Even to the point of sending sorties into Dragonland, inciting them to reject the truce that has been in effect these five hundred years. The Ambassador, Bluebuya‘s father, has been denied access to the capital. In effect, an unofficial declaration of war.”

     “War with Dragons!”

     “We barely survived the last one with them. Dragons are very efficient and deadly warriors.”

     Ja'Nil tried to imagine a seething mad, fully-grown, Bluebuya. She shuddered. It was not a pretty picture. “But why? Who‘s doing this?”

     The Lady shrugged her elegant shoulders. “Someone with unbounded ambition.”

     “Why doesn’t the Queen stop them?”

     “She will, if she knows who it is. If she is aware of how fully the country is being undermined; how her people are being neglected, abused, even slaughtered.”

     “Isn’t it her business to know? How can she not know?”

     “Communications have also broken down,” said the Lady. “If the Queen is informed of as many specific incidents as possible all at once, not scattered over months, she may be able to identify the traitor. That’s why the message you carry to her will be so--” She stopped suddenly as if realizing she was saying too much. “You will go?”

     Ja'Nil nodded, ‘yes’.

* * *

     The next morning, after she had broken her fast and was packing the extra tunic, leggings and blanket Lady Fayre had provided, along with a freshly baked ham roll with two pickles, all wrapped in thick linen, the Lady came by to wish her, “Clear roads and haste in the Lord.”

     “Oh, by the by,” she added, as she casually removed a thick green and gold ring from her forefinger. “When you see the Queen, give her this as a token of my affection.”

     Ja'Nil held it in her hand. It was very heavy and not very pretty. The Lady also handed Ja'Nil a rolled parchment sealed with a pictograph of the Redbird Clan.

     “This ring is proof that the message comes from me. It’s something the Queen and I have been doing since we were children. You know, secret messages, mostly about boys we liked, or girls we were jealous of.” She laughed, no doubt remembering the passions of her youth that had been of life and death importance then, but seemed so silly now.

     Ja'Nil looked at her in amazement. What the Lady was describing was so foreign to her that she might as well have been talking Dragonese. Ja'Nil clutched the ring in her hand. What if she lost it?

     “It’s all right for you to wear it,” said the Lady reassuringly. “I am fond of it, but the world will not end if you lose it. We used to call it our courage ring. Whenever one of us wore it, we swore we had the courage of a Trytore.”

     “What’s a Trytore?” Ja’Nil asked.

     “Unfortunately they have died out.”

     “Doesn’t sound like courage is a survival trait.”

     The Lady leaned forward and took Ja’Nil’s hands in hers. “It is,” she said. “Believe me, without courage there is only servitude. Put it on and tell me if you don’t feel as if you could conquer the world.”

     Carefully Ja'Nil slipped it onto her forefinger. It was heavy and ugly. Did she feel braver?

     “A perfect fit,” said the Lady. “When you give it to her, say to the Queen, ‘Lady Fayre has wired you the truth.”

     “Wired?”

     “Just an expression,” laughed the Lady. “One of our secret words.”

     “Oh.” The whole thing was beginning to seem very childish to Ja'Nil.

     “Another thing,” said the Lady. “Try not to get it wet. It is made of parchê and will not survive in water. A silly thing really. Now, do you have everything?”

     “Yes, thank you.”

     “Just follow the map I’ve drawn. You should be there in a day or two.”

     The children, along with Bluebuya, the baby dragon, stood watching. Now she turned to say good-bye to them. Little Piet sucked his thumb and looked worried. Jari got tears in her eyes and hugged Ja'Nil as if she would never let her go.

     “What if you don’t come back?”

     “But Sweet your Da will be coming for you. And Lady Fayre will take good care of you until he gets here. Which,” she hurried to add, “will be just a few days from now.” Lord, she hoped that was true.

     “What if you don’t find him?” asked Jari. At this, Little Piet began hiccupping and crying.

     “Of course I’ll find him. Surely Cordia is not so big that I can’t find someone.”

     Now Sa’Ari began to look worried. “Cordia’s pretty big,” she said.

     “I will find your Da,” said Ja'Nil firmly. It was true that she had never been to a city, but after all, how much bigger than a Fisherfolk village or Redbird Keep could a city be?

     “Remember,” said Sa’Ari, “he goes to the White Trytore tavern on Wolfbane Street or maybe you’ll find him at the Mummer’s Hall in Hangman’s Bindle alley.”

     “I won’t forget,” Ja'Nil assured her.

     “It’s okay if ya tell him that--”

     “We love him,” shouted Jari.

     “Yeah, we do,” said Sa’Ari.

     “I’ll tell him,” promised Ja'Nil.

     They all heard the sounds of the soldiers opening the heavy gates. The Lady had been standing to one side, listening to Ja'Nil and the children. Now she said, “Time to go.” Ja'Nil, nodded, gave Little Piet one last hug, picked up her pack and started for the gate. The Lady walked beside her.

     “By the by,” she said. “If you run into a man called Lord Raptor, avoid him if you can. A nasty sort, but not, I think, the ultimate evil.”

    
Not the ultimate evil?

CHAPTER 18

     Lord Raptor would have been insulted. Not that he thought of himself as evil, of course. No, not evil, just immensely capable and underappreciated. Was he not the head of Clan Raptor, master of Raptor Keep and the most important and influential of the Queen’s ministers? Of course he was. Then why did the damn Queen oppose him at every turn?

     At the very moment Ja’Nil was passing through the gates of Redbird Keep, he was in conference with Ten’Aj, Queen of all Cancordia. Not only in conference, but if she only realized it, he was fighting to save her silly life. All she had to do was follow his carefully worded suggestions.

     The Queen had been ruler of Cancorida, Empress of All The Midlands and titular head of the Cloud People (which included Lord Raptor) for more than half of her thirty-six years. But with all that power and experience behind her, could she make Lord Raptor go away and stop nagging her? No. She was too polite and… sigh…too savvy a politician to tell him to just please shut up!

     The queen was an almost perfect example of her race. Her skin was a very pale, creamy green, her eyebrows a slightly darker green. Her hair was pure white, thick and straight. Today she wore it in a no-nonsense style, pulled back from her thin face and fastened neatly with a green coral clasp. Her clothes were of the simplest style, designed more for comfort than display. As was usual with the Cloud People, her neck was long and graceful. Her large dark eyes looked out at the world with intelligence and, considering the people who usually surrounded her, a surprising amount of empathy. Right now she needed all the empathy she could muster.

     Lord Raptor was like a terrier with a rat. He just would not let go. A Cloud Person, like the Queen, he was short with a stocky build. He wore his white hair in a single thick line from the front of his head back down to his shoulders, where it was cut off abruptly. On either side of the line of hair his head was shaved. Ten’Aj thought it made him look like a startled woodpecker,  but he was very vain about it and lately several of the courtiers had begun to follow this fashion. His skin was a darker green than the Queen’s, and slightly pockmarked, but for all that, he was a good-looking man. Like all greens, as the Cloud People were sometimes called, he had a longish neck. He was something of a dandy and wore red and gold beads woven into the front of his hair and dangling over his forehead. The beads were woven into his family’s crest. Again, some of the court people had started copying this style.

     So as Queen Ten’Aj sat on her throne, really just a chair, the actual throne was in the Throne Room on the first floor; this was her personal office where most of the real work of the Queendom was done;   Lord Raptor paced around and around. She had long since stopped watching him; he made her dizzy. And he talked and talked and talked. Finally, good manners be damned, she had had enough.

     “Lord Raptor,” she said. “Your views are well known to me. You are repeating yourself.” Then she added under her breath, “Ad nauseam.”

     There was nothing wrong with Lord Raptor’s hearing. He turned razor-quick to glare at her. But the Queen was watching a servant, new to her, carefully laying out a bottle of wine, two of the Queen’s own goblets and a plate of dainties. New servants did not usually serve the Queen. Lord Raptor frowned and coughed to regain her attention. As she turned, his frown vanished to be replaced by a benign, avuncular expression.

     “I simply want to be sure you fully understand the ramifications of such a…a womanly response to the threat.”

     “You mean Queenly response, don’t you?”

     “I assure you, no slight on Your Majesty’s abilities was intended,” he said smoothly.

     The Queen gave up. Lord Raptor was a male chauvinist par excellence and nothing was ever going to change his belief system.

     “The home guard moved out this morning,” she reminded him. “They carry food and means to purify water for drinking. They will repair any dikes and levees that need repairing. It’s a flood, not an invasion. What else would you have us do?”

     Raptor had been waiting for just that question. “More troops,” he said. His sharp nose almost quivered with eagerness, the pale green of his skin darkened to the color of his eyebrow, giving his face a naked and very hungry look.