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Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/28298409.
Fandom: Patricia C. Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles
Rating: General audiences
Relationship: Morwen/Telemain
No warnings
Published 2020-12-24 as a treat in the 2020 Yuletide exchange.
Words: 7,826
Every once in a while, Morwen found herself having a terribly unproductive day. She intended to work in the garden, but the weather didn’t cooperate; she tried working on a spell, but it wouldn’t come together; something failed in her bread dough and it refused to rise.
She found herself having one such afternoon about a month after the wizards put their shield up around the castle. The spell she was attempting to design should have been simple, but it kept finding new ways to fail. After she managed to spoil all the milk in her kitchen, Trouble suggested she go out and hunt something to take her mind off it.
Morwen, unlike her cats, did not find it soothing to prowl through the Forest looking for vermin. But she did think it was probably a good idea to get out of the house.
A brisk walk did not clear her head as effectively as she had hoped. When the path took her toward Telemain’s tower, she thought she might as well stop in; maybe ask to borrow a book, so that she didn’t seem to be showing up uninvited for no reason. It was difficult to tell whether Telemain wanted company these days. He hadn’t gotten in touch when he moved to the Forest; she only found out he was here when they ran into each other by chance. But out of the people she might talk to, Kazul was busy establishing a defensive encampment of dragons around the castle; Cimorene was grieving and didn’t need to listen to anybody else’s troubles; and her cats had told her to leave the house. She could do worse than bother an old school friend.
Telemain was surprised to see her but didn’t seem displeased. He offered her a cup of tea; Morwen found herself sighing and asking if he had anything stronger, which is how they each ended up with a mug of cider containing a shot of whiskey.
The conversation inevitably turned to the subject of wizards, and Mendanbar, and the bizarre situation the forest was in. “Of course it wasn’t anybody’s fault,” Morwen said. “Nobody’s fault but the wizards, that is. But Willin seems to be dealing with it badly, and it especially wasn’t his fault. If he could have defeated the Society of Wizards through a knowledge of royal protocol I’m sure he would have.”
“Hm?” Telemain apparently hadn’t been listening, which made Morwen feel a little less guilty about telling him how she had found Willin having a rare emotional moment the last time she stopped by the castle. Normally she didn’t tell on people like that, but the whole situation had her feeling uncharacteristically sentimental.
“Willin,” she said. “I think he feels guilty.”
“Individual responsibility is an inadequate heuristic for interpreting international conflict,” Telemain said vaguely.
Morwen blinked at him. “What’s happened to us? I’m getting sentimental, you’re getting political.”
“Sorry.” He waved a hand over his head like he was brushing his thoughts away. “I suppose you weren’t around when I spent a year reading about statecraft.”
“Whatever provoked you to do that?”
“Oh, it was after I failed to gain access to the academy of wizardry and was feeling hopeless about magic as a career path.”
Morwen raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t expect anything could deter that single-minded focus.”
“Yes, well.” Telemain found something interesting to look at in the bottom of his cider mug. “We all have our vocational crises at one point or another. In any case, politics was interesting as far as it went, but it didn’t go that far. Not locally, at least; you can travel to places where they’re experimenting with popular rule, but I think those countries are in less thoroughly magical locations and without the multi-generational enchantments that have secured…royal…”
He trailed off. Morwen frowned. “Telemain?”
He shook himself and looked at her. “What is wrong with the royal family?”
Morwen decided not to act patriotically offended and just waited for him to continue. He drummed his fingers on the table. “Mendanbar had to go through a trial with the sword to become King, but who else was there? How is it possible that there’s now no one else living who could possibly wield it?”
“Good question,” Morwen said slowly. “He was an only child, but I think his father had siblings.”
“None of whom showed up at the wedding? I can’t recall Willin introducing anyone as having a title connected to the Forest at all.”
“I suspect they all emigrated or married out.” Morwen took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes. The whiskey was not precisely helping her recall who Mendanbar’s relatives were. “Any family on Mendanbar’s mother’s side wouldn’t have a blood connection to the Forest. I think a second cousin came for the last sword trial who was already queen consort of some islands somewhere. There used to be a great-uncle who had gone through the trial twice…maybe more? And eventually just stopped coming. There were other cousins, though.”
“And they’ve never come back?”
“I suspect they weren’t close to begin with, or much attached to the Forest. You have to admit, Telemain, this is a confusing and dangerous place even for magical practitioners, and usually worse for everyone else. They were probably just as glad to go off and rule kingdoms of human beings.”
“One could perhaps admit that,” Telemain said, sounding a little absent again. “And the Forest probably isn’t eager to recognize anybody as royalty who’s sworn it off. But…”
“But if we’re really going to try everything,” Morwen said, warming to the idea, “then in between spells and cantrips and rituals, we should at least attempt to find out who the other claimants to the throne were, and if they might be of any help.”
Willin had taken up residence in a cottage near the castle, and when Morwen and Telemain knocked on his door he answered it with his hands full of paperwork.
“I’m so terribly sorry,” he said as he ushered them in, “I wasn’t anticipating—that is, I’m finding jobs for the palace staff, and it’s quite a significant endeavor, since we were the largest employer in the Forest. So things are a bit mad in here, I’m afraid.”
Mad, by Willin’s standards, meant that there were tidy stacks of parchment on his desk and some unopened letters on the table by the front door. He snapped his fingers once and Morwen heard a fire starting in the cast-iron wood stove; a second snap, and a tiny rain cloud appeared over the stove and filled the teakettle. Morwen nodded, suitably impressed, but didn’t offer a compliment; it seemed like it would probably distract him.
It didn’t take long to explain the idea. Willin brightened at the suggestion of finding someone who could wield the sword, but then his face fell again. “The genealogical records are all inside the castle,” he said sorrowfully. “They’re very thorough, so they take up a lot of space. When we fled the castle I was only able to save what I could carry, and I didn’t make it to the archives at all.”
This was an unfortunate setback, but Morwen wasn’t ready to give up. She drummed her fingers against the arm of her chair while Willin served tea. “Do you remember the last set of trials?”
“Of course. I’ve been steward for—”
“Yes, I know,” Morwen said, and then because that was perhaps a little rude she added, “Which is why we need you. How are you conducting this employment search for your colleagues?”
Willin frowned. “Just what you would expect. Writing letters, calling in favors, keeping lists, giving references…”
“If I could set up a process to help you—say, put a spell on the lists so they update themselves with the responses you receive, and make a template for the references that replicated itself upon demand—do you think you could clear enough of your schedule to help us?”
Willin seemed surprised at the offer. People accustomed to helping, Morwen reflected, sometimes got out of the habit of asking for help. He accepted, though, with apparent relief, and Morwen was feeling quite satisfied with herself as they left.
“That was well done,” Telemain said to her.
“Thank you,” said Morwen, “I try. Anyway it’s an opportunity to practice some organizational spells I’ve been wanting to put to work.”
“You could advertise. Most organized witch in the tri-kingdom area.”
“I’m not going to advertise, Telemain, that only gets you customers.”
“What do you call the stream of people you keep casting spells for?”
“Friends, adventurers, uninvited guests?”
“It’s a distinction without a difference, if you ask me.”
Morwen halfway wanted to argue, but she wasn’t really angry—the impulse to argue with Telemain was almost nostalgic. Back at school the two of them used to bicker about their intended career paths and never settled anything. Making her case often turned out to be useful, whether or not she convinced anybody else; if nothing else, it got her thoughts straight in her own head.
Telemain must have realized that she wasn’t going to pursue the subject any further. “Well, anyway,” he said. “Shall I transport you home, or are you flying?”
“I have my broom.” Which was true, but the whole situation had her feeling a bit out of sorts, and one way or another she found she was reluctant to let him go. “Actually, though, I was going to check in on Cimorene. You could come, if you like.”
He raised his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t want to intrude.”
“It’s not intruding. She needs friends. I can stop at home for a jug of cider and meet you at Cimorene’s in, say, half an hour?”
“All right,” he said, still looking surprised. It seemed possible that Morwen was pushing her luck, inviting him along too often. But if he was going to disappear again, she’d find out soon enough, and there was no need to anticipate it.
They had to tell Cimorene about their idea, of course, but Morwen was careful not to pitch it too optimistically. This could very well fail. After all, the relatives they knew about were all people who had tried to use the sword before with no success. Cimorene was pragmatic enough, and perhaps also tired enough, that she didn’t get excited, but she did consider the possibility. “It’s worth a try,” she said. “Nobody really understands the sword, especially with Mendanbar…away, so I can’t say it won’t work.”
Morwen nodded. “Precisely. In another kingdom I would worry we were inviting potential usurpers, but the Forest has a very decisive way of dealing with those, so I think the political risk is low.”
“What do you mean by that?” Cimorene asked. She seemed interested, so Morwen told her the sordid story about a past prince who was so resentful of not inheriting the throne from his father that he sent his cousin, the rightful queen, into exile and tried to rule without the sword’s consent. He ended up encased in a block of perpetual ice, and his partisans lost the ability to tell right from left for the rest of their lives.
It seemed like that story rather cheered Cimorene up. She was coping bravely, for the most part, but Morwen could tell she was glad to have company, and they stuck around for a while discussing lighter topics. Telemain wasn’t as close with Cimorene as Morwen was, but he did a surprisingly decent job at dropping in contributions on accessible, if not particularly relevant, topics—what the Goldwing-Shadowmusic elves were planning for the lunar new year, an update on that dwarf Herman with all the kids, and, surprisingly, a letter from an old classmate.
“I didn’t know you were still in touch with Karlina,” Morwen said.
Telemain looked a little guilty, which was interesting. “Not close touch, but she’s practicing out on the other side of the mountains and it’s interesting to swap notes sometimes. I only mentioned her because she’s experimenting with—” He glanced at Cimorene and adjusted his tone. “Spells of concealment. Which you might find interesting, Cimorene, if you’re going into hiding.”
Morwen had been moderately good friends with Karlina when they were getting their basic magical education, before they embarked on their separate paths—Morwen to witchcraft, Karlina to sorcery. They hadn’t communicated for a long time, which Morwen attributed to the fact that people always wanted things from sorceresses and it didn’t leave them much time. It was odd to hear about her now, but Morwen put it out of her mind. There were many more important things happening.
When she got home, Morwen went to her library and looked for anything pertaining to the history of the Forest. Mendanbar’s relatives, she discovered, were even more scattered than she had remembered. Each one of the possible claimants was descended from a ruler of the Enchanted Forest, but many of them weren’t really royalty now—they were too many generations removed from the throne.
But she saw some reason for hope. Mendanbar had inherited directly from his father, but his father had inherited from an aunt, and history showed that the throne had sometimes moved along a very erratic path to get from one ruler to the next. It had gone to adopted or foster family at least twice, which was especially encouraging.
She commented on this to the cats. Fiddlesticks looked like he was listening but was quickly disappointed when he realized that she was still researching and not about to get up and give him fish. Miss Eliza Tudor paid attention, though, and said, “Well, that makes sense. Your magic knows that we’re family, Morwen.”
“That’s true,” Morwen said, and she scratched Miss Eliza behind the ears. “Spells can work all sorts of ways, though. And we don’t really know where the sword came from. I’m happy it isn’t bound to something in Mendanbar’s blood. If the sword had clear rules, we’d just have to follow them. If it’s being fickle and mysterious, we might as well try things and see if they work.”
Miss Eliza leaned into the hand scratching her. “Is your magician helping?” she asked, on a yawn.
Morwen looked down at her, surprised, but Miss Eliza curled into a ball and fell asleep before Morwen could decide how to answer the question.
The first person to make an attempt at wielding the sword was Mendanbar’s second cousin, the current queen of the Caddis Islands, whom Morwen half-remembered from the last trial. She traveled with a large retinue: a bodyguard, and someone to look after the luggage, but also someone to announce her arrival, someone to inspect the surroundings for safety (apparently a separate job from bodyguarding), and someone to take constant notes on everything that happened. They traveled by carriage as far as the edge of the Forest, and Willin arranged an escort to take them from there to the castle by magic. As soon as they appeared on the grounds of the palace the whole group started doing their jobs very energetically.
Cimorene greeted Queen Sorella and had a polite conversation with her. Kazul introduced herself as well—she had decided quite calmly that she had a role in this process, and that role was making it clear that the missing king had powerful allies with pointy teeth. Sorella and her retainers were all given various guest rooms and guest houses, and the next day they all gathered in a small clearing adjacent to the palace. Cimorene brought out the sword and laid it on the ground, and when she had backed off, Sorella bent over and touched the handle.
“So far, so good,” she said to her notetaker, who took a note. “It hasn’t stung me yet.”
Cimorene bit her lip, looking nervous.
Sorella picked the sword up. It looked like she was still feeling all right. She hefted it for a moment, like she was learning its weight, and then she motioned to her retinue to take a few steps back. Everybody gave her some room. She swung the sword around a little, feinted toward the trees, and then got into a crouch and made a huge swing, like she was really trying to bring an opponent down.
Morwen felt an itch inside her ears—minor at first, but increasingly irritating. It was followed by a high-pitched keening sound, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere in particular.
Morwen was just wondering if she ought to intervene when the sword disappeared from Sorella’s hands and reappeared next to Cimorene.
Cimorene looked down at it and back up at Sorella. “Did you mean to do that?”
Obviously the answer was no; Sorella looked embarrassed, and she was only just straightening up from her fencing stance.
“Mendanbar doesn’t fight with the sword very often,” Cimorene continued, covering up the silence. “He did when we first met, but he didn’t really understand it back then. I still don’t understand it particularly well, but these days he generally just holds it and works his magic and then puts it down again.”
Sorella’s servants gathered around her, apparently concerned, and she brushed them off, although one stayed nearby and gazed at her through a crystal disc. “I’m sure that’s very appropriate. We all have our own approaches; I am not much of a magician, myself, and I approached the sword as a sword. I think it has given me its answer.”
“Are you sure?” Cimorene asked wistfully. “It was such a short trial, and you came all this way. And it would accomplish a great deal if you were able to use it.”
Sorella shrugged. “A diplomat knows when she’s been rejected. I’d hate to press the subject and make an enemy of the Forest.” She spoke so firmly that not even Cimorene could argue.
The delegation stayed for a polite but rather uncomfortable dinner with Cimorene and the dragons. Morwen didn’t attend, but she got a report later. “The whole group were jumping out of their skin all the while we were eating,” Cimorene said. “I don’t know if they were scared of the dragons, or the sword, or an attack from the wizards, or just the Forest.”
Morwen frowned. “Was the sword there? Isn’t there a risk that the wizards will come after you, if you’ve got the sword with you?”
“Oh, no,” Cimorene said, “I hid it again. Honestly, though, I worry that I’m going to use up all my good hiding places, or someone is going to find it.”
“We’ll have to be inventive,” Morwen said thoughtfully. “I don’t think the Forest ever really runs out of places to hide something. That’s one of its favorite things to do. Though based on the trouble that heroes are always getting into, I wonder sometimes if the Forest isn’t just thrusting long-lost secret items at whoever seems likely to do something interesting with them.”
Cimorene went a little pale at that suggestion. “Never mind that,” Morwen said in a hurry. “It won’t happen with the sword. The Forest wants to protect it much more than some enchanted bauble that got dropped in a lake. Who’s the next relative—has Willin found someone yet?”
Cimorene nodded. “He’s been very efficient. The new person is an enchanter, I think. Not a wizard, fortunately, but not a magician either, if I’m understanding right. So I don’t really know what to expect.”
That was interesting. “Enchanter” could mean a lot of different things. All it indicated for sure was that the person didn’t belong to the Society of Wizards and also, probably, had a more dramatic sense of self-importance than someone willing to hang out their shingle as a magician.
That prediction turned out to be true. That is, the enchanter, when he arrived and introduced himself as Fenbalar, wore midnight-blue robes and had a lot of jewelry on his hands, wrists, ears, and general person. He didn’t carry a wizard’s staff, thank goodness, but he did have a very interesting-looking crystal ball in one hand all the time, and when he wasn’t doing anything else he rolled the ball between his hands, or up his arm and over his shoulders and down to the other hand. It all seemed very gaudy to Morwen, but when he caught her watching him he actually blushed.
“Sorry,” Fenbalar said. “I’ve got a lot of nervous energy. This is a big deal, isn’t it? Freeing a wrongfully imprisoned king! It’s the kind of thing I used to read stories about, but in those the king had usually been trapped for centuries. Or millennia, even! It’s a neat twist that this one is still young and people remember him and everything.”
Morwen blinked. “Don’t you remember him yourself? You’re a member of his family.”
“Oh, well, I guess I am, but we’ve practically never met. I mean, when you’re the youngest son of a second-youngest daughter of a half-sister of the current king’s grandmother, you’re not actually a Royal Highness or anything. Honestly, when I tried the sword last time it was a relief that it didn’t pick me. I like the career I’ve got.”
Morwen hadn’t expected Fenbalar to be so chatty, but Telemain was delighted, and the two of them jumped into quite a lively conversation about their work. Fenbalar’s business model seemed to consist of living in a tower atop a high mountain to avoid small-time petitioners, publishing broadsheets full of forbidding and freighted messages, and then going out of his way to be accommodating to anyone who dared actually approach him for help.
“Doesn’t that create some confusing word-of-mouth?” Morwen asked. “It seems like half the people in your kingdom would think you’re very intimidating, and half would think you’re friendly and helpful.”
Fenbalar shrugged. “It is confusing, but that’s all part of it. I seem more like a legendary and mysterious enchanter if there are conflicting reports about who I really am and what I’m like.”
Telemain looked thoughtful. “What does that get you? The mysterious-and-legendary thing, I mean.”
Fenbalar grinned. “It gets you brave clients with important tasks that they think are worth going to great trouble for! I get a lot of interesting work. Last fellow who came to me had a problem to do with turning gold back into straw.”
“Oh, I know him!” Telemain said, looking pleased. “He thought it would help him stop accidentally adopting children. How did the reverse enchantment work out?”
“Poorly,” Fenbalar admitted, but that was as much of the story as they got to hear before Cimorene returned with the sword. She eyed the three of them a little dubiously. “Thanks for coming,” she said to Fenbalar. “The last person who tried this swung the sword around like she was going to attack someone, and it really didn’t seem to like that. So maybe don’t try that first?”
“I wouldn’t,” Fenbalar said. “I don’t really know sword fighting anyway. May I?”
Cimorene held the sword out to him with both hands, and he took the hilt cautiously. He really didn’t know any sword fighting, Morwen reflected; he held the sword like he was afraid it would jump out of his hands and bite him. He swished it around a bit, and then, looking like he’d had an idea, he started tracing a shape in the air with the tip of the sword.
A rune, Morwen thought; it seems like a bad idea to draw a rune with it.
She half expected the sword to transport itself out of Fenbalar’s hands, like it had done with Sorella. Instead he started to look uncomfortable and then actually shrieked and dropped it on the ground. If Morwen wasn’t imagining things, the undergrowth curled around the sword as if to protect it.
“It burned me,” he said, sounding resentful. “That’s not what it did last time at all.”
“I don’t think it likes being treated like a wand,” Morwen said.
Cimorene frowned. “I never knew the sword had such strong opinions. Mendanbar used to use it for everything, up to and including clearing clogged sinks.”
Telemain asked Fenbalar what the sword had done the last time he tried it, and they fell into another long conversation. It seemed like Telemain was just papering over an awkward moment and leaving Morwen to comfort Cimorene, who was obviously disappointed. Morwen couldn’t blame her. It was starting to look very likely that she was going to have her baby without Mendanbar there, if this process didn’t start going better.
(Comforting someone, Morwen thought, was rather easier when she could offer material help. Or even if they just needed someone to listen to what they said and repeat it back to them more plainly. Cimorene’s situation was a lot messier. Living in her cottage in the forest hadn’t really provided Morwen much practice in being someone’s long-term shoulder to cry on.)
But later, when Telemain stopped by her house to update her, it seemed like he had actually learned something in his conversation with Fenbalar. “The Sword doesn’t respond alike to all claimants,” he said. “Colin’s Stone vibrates so hard that anyone who isn’t the rightful king of the dragons can’t stand to hold it, but there aren’t stories like that about the Sword.” Morwen wasn’t sure when it had happened, but Telemain had definitely started pronouncing Sword with a capital S. “I always assumed that there were no stories just because the trials weren’t held in public. But what I’m learning is that there is no one answer to what happens. People get burned, shocked, stung, it cuts them even when they were being careful about the blade, it becomes heavy and drops out of their hands, it evaporates, it melts. I’ve never heard of anything that could change phases of matter so readily and widely, let alone accomplish the other forms of rejection.”
“What did the sword do to Fenbalar last time?” Morwen asked. She was curious despite her lingering worry about Cimorene. She leaned a little wearily against the frame of her front door, recognizing as she did it that normally she didn’t relax her posture like that where anybody could see her.
“It made a shrill noise that only he could hear,” Telemain said. “Not the worst thing at first, but it increased in volume until he couldn’t stand it any longer.”
Morwen shuddered. She had a particular dislike for unpleasant noises. It was one of the reasons she had wanted to move to the Forest in the first place. “You might as well come in; I was going to eat soon. Isn’t there anything we can do?” She stepped back from the door, still thinking aloud, and Telemain followed her inside, still listening. “I’m starting to think this isn’t going to work. Who made this sword, anyway? Does the spell actually know what it’s doing?”
Telemain raised his eyebrows at her. “We could conduct an exhaustive research process into the origins and purpose of the Sword’s enchantment, but between you and me, how much time and effort do you think we would sink into such an endeavor, and what would the probability be of a useful result?”
Morwen laughed a little, in spite of herself. “I calculate the odds at twenty percent that we would even remember what we were researching.”
Telemain smiled at her rather more fondly than he usually did. “I think we did better than that, sometimes.”
“Yes, but that was when we had teachers and definite deadlines. Frankly, Telemain, I don’t have much confidence in either of us to keep the other one on track.” She stood in her kitchen and realized she hadn’t actually come up with a plan for what to eat. “Do you want some roast vegetables? They’re left over, but I can warm them up. Maybe fry an egg for a little more substance.”
Telemain shuffled his feet a little. “You don’t have to feed me if it’s inconvenient.”
“It’s not,” Morwen said absently, at the same time as Scorn strolled into the kitchen and said, “It is, he should go.”
Morwen glared at Scorn. “Be nice. Telemain, honestly, I’m happy for the company. Human company,” she added before Scorn could say anything else. “The cats are useful for many purposes but they’re not too solid on theory.”
Telemain looked thoughtful and said, “If you’ll allow me…” He fiddled with some of the rings on his fingers and in a moment was holding a packet in his hand that appeared to hold some sausages.
Morwen looked at it suspiciously. “You know how I feel about mixing magic and food.”
“It’s not conjured, just transported from home. Anyway, I feel awkward about letting you feed me all the time without reciprocating.”
Morwen opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again upon realizing that, however accustomed she was to treating Telemain’s quirks as a problem, nothing was actually wrong. “Thanks,” she said instead, and he smiled at her a little tentatively.
They toasted the sausages, served them with the leftover vegetables, and chatted for much longer than Morwen had anticipated. They managed, with some effort, not to get distracted by potential research questions. Or, not too distracted. That is, not so distracted that Morwen had to get up to consult her library more than twice.
The third person to try the sword was a thoroughgoing commoner, someone who worked as a gardener four kingdoms west. Morwen tried to size her up on first seeing her, but she decided that she would need much more evidence to draw any conclusions. The newcomer was a slight person dressed in drab colors, whose distinguishing characteristics, assuming she had any, were obscured by a floppy wide-brimmed hat. Willin said that her name was Ilassa.
She peered out from under her hat. “Thanks for having me,” she said in a soft voice, as if she had been invited for dinner, and not roped into a magical scheme to save a kingdom.
Willin seemed to interpret this softness as deference. “We are very much obliged to you for coming,” he said—practically recited. “You are familiar with the protocols pertaining to the Sword?”
Ilassa nodded. “I mean, I did try it once before. And I’m familiar with the stories. Or, family lore, I suppose.”
She seemed a little uncomfortable. Morwen, attempting to ease the situation, asked, “What happened the last time you tried it?”
Ilassa considered the question. “It was complicated, actually. For a little while it grew warm, which was kind of nice. And then it got cold, but it wasn’t that bad. And I think I heard music? But then everything got weird. It’s kind of hard to explain. But then I just—well, I realized I had dropped it, so that was the end of that.”
“It sounds like it was a close call,” Morwen said.
She shrugged. “That’s a good term for it. Not to be disrespectful, but I work with plants, not politics. It was pretty weird even remembering that this branch of the family was ruling a kingdom. Not that—I mean, I’m happy to help. But you’re not looking for a new ruler, are you? It’s different.”
“Quite different,” Willin said a little stiffly. “If you’re ready?”
Ilassa nodded and held out her hands, which were covered by thick leather gloves, and Cimorene, looking more worried and heavily pregnant than ever, laid the sword across them.
Cimorene, Morwen, Willin, and Telemain all stood back. So far no bystanders had been hurt by the sword at one of these events, but the more ways it found to reject someone, the more everyone discovered they preferred to keep their distance from it, even when it was resting quietly in Cimorene’s hands.
Ilassa looked down at the sword for a long moment without doing anything and said, “Well, it hasn’t rejected me yet, so that’s progress.” She looked up toward the sky and seemed to be thinking very hard, searching the branches and leaves above them for some kind of clue. Morwen found herself holding her breath. The wind blowing through the branches died down, until it felt as if they were all covered by a canopy of quiet.
It was unnerving, and it became stranger when Ilassa laid the point of the sword against the ground and started scratching at the dirt with it. Willin seemed as if he would like to call this whole thing off—he kept glancing toward Cimorene as if for permission to intervene, but she waved a hand in his direction as if to say never mind. Everyone held their tongue while Ilassa scratched tentatively, and then scraped more decisively, and then actually put her back into it and started to dig with the tip of the sword, turning up little heaps of moss and the rich black soil underneath, then further, until the earth seemed to tremble slightly and they were all standing around a hole in the ground much deeper than the sword could have dug.
Morwen started to ask a question, but she bit her tongue. The quiet around them was still so powerful that it felt wrong to speak.
Ilassa set the sword gently on the ground and jumped into the hole. It was tall enough to obscure her up to the shoulders when she was standing inside it, and she soon disappeared entirely when she bent down. A moment later she popped up again, one hand holding a golden key.
“I don’t remember this being part of the trial at all,” she said in a mild tone of voice, as if she was either unsurprised by everything that had happened, or trying not to startle a dangerous creature. “Does this belong to you, ma’am?”
Cimorene looked a little shocked. She drew closer to the hole and let Ilassa reach up and drop the key into her hand. Cimorene looked down at it curiously. “Is this…Willin?”
Willin looked rather awed. “It’s the Key to the Castle, Your Majesty.”
Cimorene tapped at her lip with one finger. “Morwen, what did you say, earlier, about the Forest turning things up?”
Morwen thought for a moment, and then she remembered: “It likes throwing powerful items at people who seem likely to do something interesting with them.”
Cimorene squinted at Ilassa. “What interesting thing would you be likely to do with this key?”
She looked surprised. “How many interesting possibilities are there? I’d look for a lock.”
As soon as it became clear they were going to try the sword on the castle, everything proceeded rapidly. Kazul’s encampment of dragons gathered and prepared to drop their shield. Morwen conferred with Cimorene in a hurry about how they would proceed. The dragons would fend off any wizards who showed up when their shield was breached; she and Telemain would be the next level of defense, for anyone who slipped by the dragons and made it into the castle.
Ilassa seemed much more intimidated about using the sword on the castle than she had been by trying it out in the clearing. It was a justifiable fear, especially considering how Kazul stared at her with a mirthless, tooth-displaying grin and said, “If you try to usurp the throne, or any other funny business, I have no qualms about eating you.”
“I wouldn’t,” Ilassa said, sounding a little shaky.
“On our word,” Kazul said. “Ready…set…go!”
The outer bubble around the castle dropped, and Ilassa stepped forward and touched the sword to the wizards’ bubble. There was a moment when it resisted, a little like the skin of a ripe grape being squeezed between someone’s fingers; and then the point of the sword made it through the filmy surface, and in a moment it was entirely gone.
With that, the castle stood before them, with all its doors and towers and winding stairways exactly as Morwen remembered it. That by itself was a little strange. She usually found the castle looking different from the last time she had seen it, even if she couldn’t put her finger on the difference.
“Do we…go?” Ilassa asked, sounding actually afraid now, but she was mostly drowned out by Kazul crying, “Go, go, go, they’re coming!”
Afterward, Morwen would never have a very clear memory of what happened next. Ilassa looked part awed, part terrified as she followed the sword into the castle, clearly being pulled along; Cimorene insisted on going with her, but Morwen had no time to pay attention to them because the wizards showed up shortly thereafter, and she and Telemain were throwing equal numbers of melting charms and shielding spells. Some of the attackers weren’t wizards, which was worrying—in fact they seemed to have some elves and maybe some brownies on their side—and they had shields of their own, which meant the melting spells didn’t always hit their target. What was worse, some of the elves had swords. Morwen wished wildly that they had prepared a little better for this day—but they hadn’t known what the sword would do, and waiting any longer after it accepted Ilassa would have given the wizards more time to find them—
One of the wizards threw a spell toward Telemain, and Morwen started to prepare a block, but just as she was doing so an elf closed the gap between them and stuck him in the arm with a sword.
Telemain yelped, and Morwen felt suddenly and superlatively annoyed. What an absurd waste this all was, of effort, of magical power, of—she looked toward Telemain, who was grasping his arm; it was obviously bleeding—couldn’t the wizards practice magic on their own and not impose on—
Her thoughts were growing disorganized, and a feeling this strong probably didn’t count as annoyance any longer, but she declined to examine that notion. She threw up a stronger, firmer shielding wall, and an elf—perhaps the same one, perhaps not, but she found she barely cared—tried to strike again and bounced off of it.
The attackers were still coming, and Morwen was rapidly reconciling herself to the notion she would have to actually hurt someone, when everything shifted again.
The air around the castle seemed to take a deep sigh as a cool green breeze came in through all the windows, and Mendanbar came striding out of the castle’s great hall looking extremely displeased, and the entire attacking force was transported to somewhere Morwen couldn’t see them anymore.
“The thing that bothers me,” Telemain said, “is that I can’t coherently explain what, in theoretical terms, we actually accomplished today.”
They were all sitting around a table in the castle’s kitchen sharing a pot of tea and some bread and honey. Willin was miffed that they weren’t in a parlor or dining room, but Morwen pointed out that all the staff who would have served them up there had found other jobs, so they might as well go to the kitchen and make tea for themselves. The kitchen also had a loading door connected to the outside, which was large enough that Kazul had got her front quarters inside and was resting on the floor next to the heat of the stove.
Mendanbar looked thoughtful. “I’m sure you worked hard,” he said, “and I’m grateful. But ultimately, I have to guess that the Forest finished the job.”
Ilassa cradled her teacup in both hands and took a sip. “I can at least say I didn’t do much,” she said. “It was like the sword just led me around and I followed it.”
“Which it could have done with the previous people we tried,” Cimorene said. “In my opinion. I know there were all those concerns about not picking someone who would try to take the throne, but we wouldn’t have let that happen.”
Mendanbar put his elbows on the table, ignoring Willin’s little sniff at his table manners. (Morwen suspected that Willin was just acting proper because he found it comforting. He seemed very moved by the whole situation, but he kept bustling around too rapidly for her to see much of what he was doing.) “I think,” Mendanbar said, “that the sword can do what it wants, but it needs the right person to do it with.”
Ilassa smirked a little. It was the first glimpse of real personality Morwen had seen her show. “What, it needs you weirdos from the Forest?”
Willin really did seem shocked by that one, and Morwen had the faint idea that it might be polite to show some offense at that, considering she was seated at the King’s table. But out of the people seated at that table, Mendanbar was the only native of the Forest, and he actually laughed. “You may be a distant cousin, but it seems you’re more like us weirdos than you thought.”
Telemain frowned. “Perhaps I’m the only person interested in the technical question, but ‘weirdos’ doesn’t answer that question at all.” His arm was in a sling that Morwen had fashioned for him. He’d seemed embarrassed by the whole process of having his arm dressed and bandaged, and when Morwen acted professional and reassuring he only got worse. “You’re to keep it completely immobilized for a week, understand?” she had said to him, maintaining firm eye contact, and his breath had seemed to catch a little. She tried to catch his gaze again now, and he blushed and looked away.
She replied anyway. “You’re not the only one interested, but I don’t think it’s a question we can answer from this kitchen table. The Forest is a network of old, organic magic, not something assembled that we could analyze from first principles.”
“Biology, not physics,” Ilassa suggested.
Morwen blinked. “You could put it that way.”
“Well then,” Ilassa said, “that’s why it liked me. It picked a gardener. Or—I don’t mean it picked me.”
“As good as,” Mendanbar said. His voice was mild, but Morwen couldn’t help noticing that he had the sword laid rather awkwardly across his lap and had kept one hand on it the entire time they were sitting there. The other hand was holding Cimorene’s, which meant that the cup of tea in front of him was going cold. “It picked you for the purpose it needed.”
“Well, that is enough of a purpose,” Ilassa said. “My family—my immediate family, I mean—always considered ourselves lucky enough to be clear of this place. But I guess some part of me always liked the idea of it. I haven’t been back since your father died, but it is beautiful, and I do kind of specialize in caring for magical plants, so it might have known that.”
Telemain looked thoughtful. “When we had other relatives of yours come and try it, the sword rejected them. It was hard to tell if it didn’t like them, or if it didn’t like the uses they tried to put it to. But neither one stayed around long enough for us to get more information.”
They kept talking for a little while longer, but Mendanbar obviously didn’t care about his tea, and Cimorene had a hard time paying attention to anyone but Mendanbar. Morwen soon made an excuse about Telemain needing to rest and recover and got them both away, with a promise to come back soon for a proper catch-up on everything that had happened while Mendanbar was imprisoned.
“Morwen,” Telemain said as they were leaving.
Morwen turned to him. There was something that had been bothering her this whole time, and this strange day was as good a time as any to bring it up. “You’re not really bad at keeping in touch with old friends, are you?” Telemain blinked at her. “I mean,” she said, “you kept in touch with Karlina; you knew about one of the people Fenbalar had worked with. But you moved to the Forest and you never tried to contact me.”
Telemain shifted his stance a little, looking uncomfortable. “I never meant...I thought you didn’t want me to.”
“Why would you think that?” Morwen asked.
She was genuinely perplexed, but he looked surprised at the question. “When you told me you were going to move to the Forest, it was the same conversation where—are you going to make me say it again?”
Morwen frowned, remembering. “It was around when we started that joint project that we worked together in our last year at school.”
“It wasn’t just the project!” Telemain looked very much as if he would like to throw his arms up in the air, but with one of them in a sling he just waved his other hand around. “I mean, I did suggest that project, but I wanted us to spend more time together. I was trying to ask—and then you said you were moving here, like that was your answer.”
Morwen was starting to understand. “Did you think that was a rejection?”
He looked away, scratching at his wrapped-up arm. “It felt like one.”
“But that wasn’t about you.” He seemed hurt by that, too, so she said, “No, listen. I didn’t mean I was moving away from you. I meant, I had a plan, and I told you about it because I was excited. I wasn’t trying to tell you what to do.”
“You could have,” he said. His face was quite pink. “Morwen...there’s some kind of talk I’m good at, and that I think—that I think we’re good at together, and there’s some I just don’t even know where to start, but…”
“Telemain,” she said. He looked at her with an expression that seemed both frustrated and hopeful. “Did you know that my cats have asked after you?”
“They have?”
“Well. Miss Eliza Tudor has. But it’s very unusual. None of them usually like outsiders very much—they’re like the Forest that way.”
“All right,” he said, still looking uncertain.
“In fact”—Morwen realized this only as she said it—“I don’t think any of this would have happened without them. Trouble’s the one who sent me out of the house, that time I came to your tower. And I don’t know if we would have thought to try this, otherwise. We could have been waiting sixteen or seventeen years for Cimorene’s baby.” But she was talking around what she really wanted to say. She closed her eyes and thought about her library on a snowy day, with the scent of gingerbread drifting in from the kitchen, the cats softly reproaching each other as they competed for space in a sunbeam, and the book that she wanted just within reach.
She thought of herself, in one of the chairs by the bookshelves. She thought of Telemain, in the other. She reached out and took one of his ridiculous be-ringed hands.
“Why don’t you come back,” she said, “and get to know them better.”