The Usurper's Crown (20 page)

Ingrid felt her heart begin to pound. Her mind raced off in a hundred directions, trying to guess what would happen next, and how she should prepare for it. At last, Avan leaned his scythe against a tree trunk. He stared at it for a moment, and turned to face her.

“Ingrid …” he began. Ingrid felt her throat tighten, and tried to tell herself she was being foolish. There was nothing to fear. This was what she had hoped for. The fear, however, would not leave. “I have some things I need to say to you,” he went on. “I …” He stopped again, running a hand through his bright hair. “I am blundering very badly. I must ask you to have patience.”

“Of course.” Ingrid hoped he did not hear how her own nervousness choked her.

“Thank you.” He looked around, saw nothing but tree roots and pine needles and shrugged irritably. “Will you sit awhile with me?”

In answer, Ingrid sat in the cleft formed by the roots of one of the ancient pines, smoothing her skirt down across her knees, and silently cursing her berry-blackened fingers and disordered hair. She wanted to be beautiful. She wanted to be calm and poised. Instead she was sweaty, disheveled and frightened to her core that Avan was about to ask her to marry him, and equally frightened that he would not.

Avan sat in front of her, crossing his legs tailor fashion. “Ingrid,” he said, as much to the ground as to her. “Since we laid the ghost that troubled your sister, you have not asked me about my magics, or about how I came to possess them.”

Ingrid swallowed hard, willing her throat to open so she could speak normally. “I thought you would tell me in your own good time.”

“And I thank you for trusting me so far.” The heel of his heavy boot scuffed the needles. “Will you hear a story?”

“Yes.”

“Very well.” He looked up at her and took a deep breath, like someone about to speak a parlor piece they had memorized with great effort. “Imagine if you will, that this whole world is like Sand Island, a single point of land in the midst of a vast sea. Imagine that it is not the only such island. There are others, an infinite number of others, each separate and complete in the sea, each alone without knowledge of its neighbors.

“Now imagine that one might sail that sea. If one had a chart and the proper knowledge of boats, one might travel from island to island. It would not be an easy journey, for that sea is cold and treacherous, and the way is very long, but it could be done by one who was trained in its ways.”

Ingrid felt herself begin to stare. What was this? Was Avan mad after all? No, she could not believe it. This was a true thing he spoke of, like the ghost had been true, and the net he had made.

Ingrid cleared her throat. “And on one of these islands there is a place called Isa … Isav …”

“Isavalta.” Avan’s voice caressed the word, and Ingrid saw how loneliness dimmed his eye. “Yes. It is a vast and northern land. Bigger even, I think, than your United States. Some call it grim and wild, but it has its beauties.” He bowed his head for a minute, remembering. It was that remembrance that wiped all thought of madness from Ingrid’s mind. This was true. Every word of it.

“It is ruled by an emperor, and an empress. They had several children, but, as happens sometimes, two of them died, leaving only one, a girl, to inherit the throne.

“The girl, whose name was Medeoan, had been born a sorceress as well as a princess, and her parents wished her to be instructed in the ways of magic, and the powers of the spirits and the unseen folk. They summoned one of the masters of such knowledge to them, but he was an old man, even as sorcerers measured their years, and knew Grandfather Death waited nearby for him. So, he begged them to take his apprentice instead. It was thus the emperor and empress bound to their daughter a tutor who was a young man with more learning than wisdom. His name was Avanasy Finorasyn Goriainavin.”

Ingrid felt herself grow very still. Avan wasn’t looking at her. He stared at the needle-covered ground.

“The young man was proud of his new post, and did his best, studying as well as teaching, advising and making friends in the court whenever he could. Soon, however, he found that his student was gravely troubled by her destiny. She did not want to rule. She feared the responsibilities of her birth. He tried to be a friend as well as a teacher to her, and so the years passed.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She was most fair as she grew, and powerful in her magics, and the tutor came to realize that in his secret heart, he was in love with her.”

Ingrid suddenly found it very hard to breathe.

“It was not a feeling to which he could give voice, nor even allow himself to think much about. So he buried it deeply, and things went on as they had always been.

“Then, the emperor and empress negotiated a marriage treaty for their daughter with the prince of a southern empire with which they sought alliance. Medeoan was distraught, but only because it was another thread binding her to the truth she disliked so. She had long known her marriage would be arranged to benefit Isavalta.

“The prince, Kacha, was brought to Isavalta so that he might learn its languages and customs before they married. He was handsome enough and he set himself to wooing his bride-to-be with great care and attention. They were both scions of powerful houses, both caught up in the political necessities of their realms. As such, they had much in common.

“At first, Avanasy was pleased to see friendship, and then love growing between them. He was sad at the loss of his special relationship with Medeoan, but he cheered himself with the thought that the one she must marry truly loved her.

“Then, he found, or thought he found, evidence that the prince was a spy, and a traitor. Kacha was being used by his father to conquer sovereign Isavalta, and possibly lead it into war. But when he tried to present his evidence to Medeoan, he found himself contradicted by the words and actions of the prince himself. Medeoan grew so angry with him for making accusations which in the end he could not prove, she ordered him banished from the boundaries of Isavalta.”

Avan grew quiet then, remembering. Ingrid didn’t know what to say. She herself could scarcely remember how to breathe. She had thought the ghost the end of the strangeness in her life, now she found it was only the beginning.

“Was he, Prince Kacha, betraying the princess?”

Avan tilted his head back so he could stare at the branches and the sky overhead. “I don’t know.”

“And the sorcerer, this Avanasy, what did he do?”

“Cursed himself for a fool,” said Avan flatly. “And realized that he was further gone with his impossible sentiment than he had realized. Had he been thinking clearly, he would have gone straight to the emperor with what he knew, and the emperor could have ordered the prince watched over by all the court sorcerers. But he did not do this.” A single muscle twitched in Avan’s cheek. “Instead he tried to prove himself the better man to the princess, and so brought about his own ruin.”

Ingrid opened her mouth, and closed it again. What on earth could she have possibly said?

“When Avanasy was certain he could not convince Medeoan to reverse the order of banishment, when he saw her finally married to Prince Kacha, he left,” Avan went on. “Left Isavalta, and ultimately, left the world of his birth, because he could not stand to watch what he feared might be coming, and because he could not bear to face his foolishness and disgrace. He became a fisherman on an island in the middle of a lake a world away from anything that he knew.” Avan lifted his gaze, and for the first time since he had begun his incredible story, he looked directly at Ingrid. “He never thought to speak of any of these matters again to another living soul, but he fell in love, this time with a gracious woman whom he could court with honesty and a fully open heart, and he wished the lady to know the truth before he declared as much.”

Suddenly, Ingrid found she could not sit still. She rose to her feet and retreated a few steps. She might have run farther if she had not felt a tree right at her back. It was too much for her to take in, and yet she did not know which overwhelmed her more, Avan’s story, or his confession that he did love her.

Then, she saw how he watched her, and how his face fell at her expression of bewilderment. Ingrid shook herself. She owed him better than this. She straightened her spine.

“Thank you for telling me,” she said. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“You believe me, then?”

She nodded. “Without the ghost and all that happened then, I might not. But having seen what I have, I cannot choose but to believe.”

“There are not many who would do so.” Avan stood. “And the rest?”

And the rest? Ingrid looked at him. She remembered how she first saw him clearly in the firelight. She remembered how generously he had helped her and Grace. She remembered all the bright weeks of his patience, his humor, and his company. She felt again the ache and the anticipation that she knew lying alone in the darkness. And the rest?

“I think I loved you the moment I first saw you beside the fire. I just was not free to say so until now.”

Ingrid felt that with those words the whole world must change. Perhaps it did. Avan stood where he was, as if paralyzed by the sound of her voice. Then he took a step forward, one step, two steps, three steps until he stood right in front of her. He reached out one of his long, graceful hands and brushed it gently over her hair. Now it was Ingrid who found herself paralyzed. She felt as if she would never move again, unless he said that she should.

“I want to marry you, Ingrid,” he said, his voice hoarse with emotion. “I want to build a house, a proper house, and bring you to it. I want to work with you and for you to build a good life. I want to sit beside the fire with you and sing and tell stories. I want to lie down beside you at night and wake up beside you in the morning. No,” he said as she opened her mouth and he held his fingertips just before her lips, not quite touching. “There are two more things you need to know before you answer me.

“You know that I am a sorcerer. In the world into which I was born, magic is not merely a skill one can learn. It is tied to one’s nature. There is a great deal of argument as to why that should be so, and what it means. What is known is that there are two consequences that come with the gift. The first is that the getting of children is very difficult for a sorcerer. The second is that we live very long lives, sometimes four or five times the length of other men. I do not know if these things remain true on this shore of the Land of Death and Spirit, but you deserve to know of them.” He stood back from her. “If you need some time, or if you wish to turn away, I understand.”

Ingrid stayed where she was, trying to think. Life, life could end tomorrow or go on for a hundred years for either of them. There were a thousand accidents that could put an end to a person, and she had seen many of them one time or another in her life. Happiness in life was a matter of chance. The children … not to have children would be hard. Then again, that also was a matter of chance. There were women who brought four, five, six babies into the world and lost them all one by one. There were women who died trying to give birth to even one. It was all in God’s hands, as was everything else. Had anything Avan told her really changed that?

But if Avan had told to the truth, she should repay him in kind.

Ingrid drew in a breath heavy with the scent of pine resin and all the heat of summer. “My father also came from a long ways off,” she said. “From a place called Bavaria, as you may have heard. He traveled to Chicago and ended up working in the slaughterhouses. There, he met my mother, who was very beautiful, very young, and the daughter of a good family. They didn’t approve of him. He was very poor, he was German, they were Irish.” She hung her head. “That much I know for certain. The rest of this is only guesswork, letters, and gossip.

“My mother got in the family way without having married my father. Believing love would see them through, they ran away from her parent’s anger and came up here to Bayfield, where no one knew them, and where no one was counting the days until she gave birth. I believe they worked hard at their lives, but something failed in the end. Maybe it happened when they began to have daughters, and they were afraid that those daughters might make the same mistakes that they had.” She shook her head. “What I am trying to say is that I have no family who will speak to me, except for the ones you’ve met. I have no breeding or fortune, and I am in all likelihood a bastard.” She squared her shoulders and met his gaze. Let him see her, let him look long and hard at her — rumpled, berry-stained, her hands coarsened by hard work, her clothes much mended, and her skin brown from the sun. “Can a man who has loved a princess settle for what he sees in front of him?”

But Avan only shook his head. “If I were to marry you, I would not be settling,” he said, and his voice was as grave, as honest as it had been during the entire course of his narrative. “I would be reaching so high that I might grasp the stars themselves. I have seen your bravery, your honesty, your love, your joy. It is nothing but the purest selfishness that makes me wish to bind all that you are to my side.”

Ingrid found she had no words. She could only cross the distance between them, stand on her toes and kiss him. He stiffened at her touch, startled, but in the next moment wrapped his strong arms around her, answering her kiss, her love, with his own.

When at last they pulled away from each other, Avan looked her up and down as if he had never seen so wonderful and precious a thing before. “I don’t know what the customs are here,” he said shyly, softly touching her hair, her cheek, her shoulder. “I don’t know what is expected of me now. Should I make some gift …?”

“You will have to speak to my father. He should give his consent.”

“And if he withholds it?”

Ingrid shrugged a little. “I am of age, I’m free to marry who I wish. But, it will be easier on us both if he consents.” She smiled. “As for a gift, it is traditional that you give me a ring.”

He nodded with extreme seriousness. “A ring. I will remember that.” He raised her right hand to his lips and kissed it gently. “And I shall come to the house to speak with your father tonight. Now,” he added reluctantly, straightening up, “I think I had best return you to your sister.”