Fairest Read online

  But I didn’t trust him, and I didn’t want to burn up again or be squeezed again.

  “Hurry! They’ll be back soon.”

  I opened my reticule and dropped in the vial. I’d decide later.

  “When you leave this room, the vial will remain. The potions stay with the mirror. Drink up.”

  I took the vial back out of the reticule.

  “Drink.” He chuckled. “Or your love will return and see you change from fair to frightful.”

  He was too eager. I put both vials back in the flute. “Four drops will suffice.”

  What were they deciding about me in the king’s chambers? What was Ijori saying?

  Skulni said, “If you finish the vial, I can tell you my plans for Ayortha and the queen.”

  I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t care.

  I did care.

  “Tell me. Then I’ll finish it.”

  I heard voices and bustle in the wardrobe closet. I turned to face the door. I wanted to see their expressions when they saw me.

  Oochoo ran to me. She didn’t seem to notice any change. She greeted me, and I petted her. Had I reverted in the last second?

  Ijori came in first, but he hadn’t yet taken me in when Ivi shrieked. She ran past him and—before I could protect myself—slapped me across the face.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  OOCHOO GROWLED AND barked at Ivi. I reeled back and put my hand to my stinging cheek. Ivi edged away from Oochoo.

  Ijori said, “Aza …” He looked away from me and then looked back, as if he doubted his eyes. “Aza, what …”

  Princess Elainee said, “Am I dreaming?”

  “Did someone take her place?” Master Ogusso said. “She’s so beautiful.” He added, “But I think she’s still Lady Aza—Maid Aza now.”

  I was no longer a lady. No matter.

  Ivi came at me again. Oochoo lunged at her.

  “Don’t let your dog bite me!” She ran to Ijori.

  I sang, “Do you still see my ogre blood, Sir Uellu?”

  He said, “What caused your transformation?”

  I didn’t answer. I owed them no explanations.

  Sir Uellu opened the door to the corridor. The bailiff and the two guards came in.

  “She’s so beautiful,” Master Ogusso repeated. “I can’t tear my eyes away from her.”

  “She’s too tall,” Ivi said. “Like a giraffe.”

  “She’s perfect,” Master Ogusso said.

  The bailiff nodded at the guards. They came toward me, boots thudding, swords rattling, both men bigger than even I used to be. One had a grim mouth.

  Oochoo growled and barked.

  Ijori took her by the collar and pulled her away from me. “It’s all right, girl.”

  He was letting them take me.

  I tried to run, but the guards grabbed me and held me. The one with the grim mouth kept tightening his grip.

  “Gently!” Ijori said.

  “What are you doing with me?”

  Ivi came to me, brave now that Ijori was holding Oochoo and the guards were holding me. “Aza. Aza. Aza. I thought we were such friends. My heart breaks, the way you’ve treated me. I have a tender heart, and now it’s broken.”

  Sir Uellu said, “For the safety of Ayortha, the guards will take you to prison.”

  Prison after all! I sang, “For how long?”

  “We haven’t determined yet,” Princess Elainee said. “But we cannot leave you free to illuse and confuse us.”

  “What of my parents’ inn, the Featherbed?”

  Sir Uellu said, “Your family has done nothing wrong.”

  Ijori said, “The crown will be generous.”

  “Why should it be?” Ivi asked.

  “It will be,” Ijori said firmly.

  The guards gagged me and bound my hands.

  “You may take her away now,” Sir Uellu said.

  The gag tore at the corners of my mouth. I started a tune in my mind as they walked me out of Ivi’s chambers, a brave tune, with trumpets and many voices. It stayed with me through the castle corridors. I thought of Frying Pan being taken to prison.

  Isn’t it an outrage?

  Isn’t it a crime?

  My courage lasted until we descended into the cellar. The air that belched up from below was rank. The stone stairs were slippery. I might have fallen if not for the guards’ grip on my elbows. How was I to live down there?

  The stairs ended. All I could see of the tunnel ahead was a small circle illumined by the guards’ lanterns. The tunnel was hewn from solid rock, with thick timber supports every few paces. The walls glistened with slime. A rat scurried out of the light.

  After several hundred yards the tunnel turned right. My steps flagged. My legs felt as if they, too, were rock. The guards towed me along. Eventually we reached a wooden door reinforced with iron.

  The bailiff unlocked the door.

  Four tallow lamps burned in sconces near the low ceiling. Beneath one of them a ring of keys hung on a nail. Six iron cell doors were set in three walls. There was a window in each door, striped by iron bars.

  Mounted on a wall between cell doors were iron manacles and a cat-o’-nine-tails. A lunatic’s cage, big enough for a lion, stood in the middle of the floor.

  A screen in one corner gave the guard privacy to use the chamber pot. A brazier of glowing coals on a wrought-iron stand dispelled some of the damp chill.

  The prison guard rose from his wooden table. “Never had such a pretty prisoner before.”

  I’d longed for admiration. Now I had it.

  Frying Pan appeared in one of the cell windows. “Is that the innkeeper’s daughter? Did Her Maj—What happened to the wench?”

  Lady Arona appeared in another window and stared out at me.

  “I want this one where you can see her every second, Izzi,” the bailiff told the prison guard. “Put her in the cage.”

  Cage! There was a drumming in my ears. I stamped on my right-hand guard’s foot and yanked my arm free. I punched my other guard in the eye and jerked out of his grip. He staggered back. I had lost none of my former strength.

  My mind sharpened. I noticed that Izzi, the prison guard, favored his left leg and that the hot brazier could be a weapon.

  I lunged for the prison door. A guard slammed it shut. He reached for me. I made a battering ram of my head and charged at the bailiff. Head met stomach, and he went down. I bounded toward the brazier.

  A guard vaulted to the top of the cage and then leaped onto my shoulders. I fell. The others descended on me.

  The bailiff rose and dusted himself off. “Take care with her, Izzi. She’s part ogre.”

  Izzi opened the cage, and the other guards shoved me inside. They slammed the door and shot home the bolt an instant before I threw myself against the bars. My mind was roaring. But the observant part of me noticed the bolt. No key, just a bolt. And then I caught a weakness in the cage. I threw myself at the bars again. They held against me.

  I squatted—there was no room to stand—and lowered my head to my lap.

  I heard the bailiff release Frying Pan and Lady Arona. Their freedom would infuriate Ivi, but she would have to heed the council now. I heard everyone leave, all but Izzi. The door thudded shut.

  “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.

  “Wrap your toes in moss,

  drape your calves in velvet,

  smile at your dimpled knees.

  “Sweet sleep,

  pale moth

  flutters by.”

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HE 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.

  I rode all day.

  I cried all night.

  The moon didn’t glow.

  The stars didn’t rise.

  A comet blazed

  Between my eyes.

  West and south,

  Wind and rain.

  Every way is

  Just the same.

  Pray give me a box

  To hide inside.

  Pray give me a spade

  To dig my grave.

  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.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  UJU 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.

  We peeked back out.

  An ogre looked up in our direction. “InJJ? SshrEE shAA vahlwa?” The ogre took a step toward us.

  I whinnied again, but he didn’t turn. I had to distract them.

  I whispered to Uju, “Fill your mind with song.”

  He nodded.

  I illused a woman’s voice from the direction of the whinnies. “Did you hear something, Ollo?” it said. Then I filled my mind with song.