“I know. And Elda’s told me many times how rulers agree that no one can rule a kingdom and be a mage. That Mama had to sign a certain type of treaty, and cannot rule after Papa dies. All just because of that emperor.” Rhis sighed. “That doesn’t sound romantic. It sounds nasty.”
“Wars and fighting and using magic for coercion are always nasty.”
“Well, I don’t want that. Since I have to marry anyway, I just want, oh, to fall in love, or have a wonderful prince fall in love with me. And no terrible fighting,” she added hastily. “Just something exciting! Like in a ballad. Maybe a duel or two, or some chases, but nobody gets hurt.”
Sidal laughed, a soft and sympathetic sound. “Sounds like you want a stage play sort of life! And there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as you remember what I’m sure Mama told you as many times as she told me when I first went away to magic school—”
“I know.” Rhis recited:
“Fall in love
with heart, not head,
to trouble you’re led.
Fall in love
with heart and mind,
then true love you’ll find.”
She couldn’t help but feel a little impatient, for she’d already endured last-lectures from Elda all during supper, and even afterward.
Sidal got to her feet. “Then I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time, and that’s what I want most for you. But . . .” She twisted a fine opal ring off her finger, and slid it onto one of Rhis’s. “Just in case. No one need ever know. If you do find yourself in trouble, and need me, then touch this stone and say my name three times.”
Rhis glanced down at the ring, and closed her other hand over it. “Thank you, Sidal,” she said. “Do you foresee trouble?”
The tall princess-mage bent down and kissed Rhis on the forehead. “No one ever foresees trouble, unless she is looking for it,” she said. “So if you don’t use the ring-magic, I will know that you are having a wonderful visit and that you don’t need it. It would be terrible if trouble found you, and you had no one to help you. Never mind. Just wear it and think of me when you are dancing.” She caressed Rhis’s cheek, then left.
Rhis clapped off her glowglobe and snuggled under her quilts, thinking about the ring, and about Sidal. Did her serious sister have a romantic side after all?
Feeling very confused, Rhis let her thoughts drift into her own dreams, and then into sleep.
She woke up to streaming sunshine and a promising new day. Remembering her trip, she raced out of bed and into her dressing room where Keris, the new maid, had her new traveling gown all laid out and ready for her. The rest of the room looked empty, with all her trunks packed and gone downstairs to the stable.
After a hasty breakfast, she danced into the audience room to kiss her father good-bye, for he was already at work. The rest of the family accompanied her to the courtyard to see her off. She embraced them all, winning a smile from her mother when she gave Elda a spontaneous hug. “Thank you for bearing with me, Elda,” she said happily. “I’ll do my best to make you proud.”
Elda’s cheeks flushed red, but she smiled a little. “Dignity, Rhis. Remember, a worthy prince looks for dignity and dedication to duty above all in his future queen.”
That sounds just like my boring brother, Rhis thought, but all she said was, “I’ll remember!”
Then Rhis climbed into the coach, waved from the window, and they were off.
Rhis watched her home until the road down the mountain took them around a great slope and the mighty stone castle slid from sight. It was not a handsome castle, Rhis thought, watching the last tower disappear from view. In fact, most would probably consider it gloomy, for it had been built to withstand weather and marauders. Elda, who had grown up in the more peaceable Gensam, had once said, “A palace is quite different, child. Built not just for beauty but for comfort.”
Rhis grimaced, for the first time thinking about what those words meant. She’d grown up with all those narrow stairways and stone rooms and cold slate floors, so she was used to them. Would a visitor think them barbaric? Maybe it was better that no prince had shown up to court her!
Anyway, now she’d see a real palace. Impatience gnawed at her when she realized just how long a trip lay ahead of her. Though Nym was small on the map, it would take several days to wind down through the treacherous mountains. If the weather held. If the weather turned truly severe, as it sometimes did, she could be held up a week or more.
She wished that she could travel about by magic, as Sidal and her mother did. But people other than mages seldom traveled by magic, because apparently it was dangerous, and sometimes had nasty effects. And you could only go one at a time, to specially designated destinations—either a place, or, more rarely, a person.
Rhis looked down at her ring. Would it be dangerous for Sidal to transfer directly to Rhis, wherever she might be? Rhis considered her sister, who had professed not to like dangerous circumstances—but who was obviously ready to face them if necessary.
People are surprising, she thought, settling back in the cold coach, and pulling a soft woolen quilt up around her chin. Even the ones you think you know.
o0o
A long series of days followed, each much alike, as the coach made its way steadily northward. The journey out of Nym did not take weeks, for the weather stayed relatively mild. They descended steadily through the fir-dotted heights, down into pine forest, then at last reached the Common Road along the coast of Arpalon. They sped along smoothly paved roads through the rolling hills, under a variety of trees Rhis had only seen drawings and paintings of.
The inns they stayed at were comfortable, but after the first exciting night of sleeping away from home, she found that the inns blended into a series of big wooden buildings with nice beds and fine meals, supervised by the quiet, efficient staff that Elda had sent to protect Rhis. These servants also kept her from talking to anybody on the road, nor did they tell anyone who she was. The days when Nym’s royalty were routinely kidnapped for fabulous ransoms if they left the protection of the mountains were not all that long in the past.
Rhis knew these things, but she still found traveling to be very dull. She caught glimpses of people who looked interesting, from far-away places, as she was conducted straight to her room at night—and then to her carriage in the morning, after her lonely breakfast.
She had begun the journey resenting the fact that Elda had arranged for her to meet her younger sister, Princess Shera of Gensam, at the border. By the time Rhis had made her way north without speaking to a single person except the quiet Keris, she was looking forward to Shera, in spite of how boring her letters had been.
Shera was a year older than Rhis. When Rhis turned six, not long after Elda married Gavan, Elda had insisted that it would be seemly for the two princesses to start a correspondence. She had supervised each of Rhis’s letters, saying, “It’s as well you learn early how royalty carry on a correspondence, for you never know when you might need it.”
So Rhis had had to write, in her very best handwriting, formally phrased letters describing her studies—and not much else. Just once she’d said something about her favorite ballads, but Elda had been horrified. “You have to remember that to the rest of the world, Nym is a country full of wild people. No one in those old songs was the least bit civilized.” So Rhis had had to recopy the letter, leaving out her favorite subject.
The letters she received back were neatly written, and very, very uninteresting. Elda had obviously told the truth: civilized princesses really did just brag about their studies, and proper interests, like growing flowers. Rhis was always glad when winter came, preventing messengers from getting through too often, which slowed down the tedious exchange.
When at last her cavalcade neared the border of Arpalon and Gensam, Rhis was so looking forward to seeing Shera she felt she could talk about roses and starflowers all day, if only she could talk.
They were to meet at the ancient Royal Inn on the bo
rder, where many treaties and royal marriages had been negotiated in the turbulent past.
The word ‘inn’ was misleading, Rhis decided when she saw the huge building with its numerous windows and fine columned archways. A great many well-dressed people strolled about, and for the first time she was glad of her entourage when they rolled up the carriageway to the splendid courtyard. Nothing in Nym was this fine! People stared so when she emerged from her carriage, but no one smiled.
She walked inside quickly, glad to follow Mistress Ranla, her father’s courier, who was the leader of the entourage. A brief glimpse of a spacious area full of fine furnishings and handsomely dressed folk strolling about was all she got before she was conducted up a grand, sweeping stairway to another story, and then to a suite of huge rooms where nothing was made of stone. The walls were smooth wood painted a warm cream color.
She sank down onto the nearest chair, as servants and retainers curtseyed and moved about arranging things. A few moments later a girl her own age approached with a cautious, uncertain step. She was much shorter than Rhis. She had a round figure, a moon-shaped face, and the honey-brown skin common to their end of the continent, with a rosebud of a mouth. Her hair was a rich chestnut brown, glinting with red highlights, and it had natural wave that made long bouncy curls that Rhis envied at once. Her gown, light green trimmed with pearls and dark green ribbons, was at least as fine as the finest of the gowns in Rhis’s trunks, and it made her brown eyes look greenish, contrasting delightfully with her reddish hair.
She gave a correct nod as Rhis rose to her feet. “Princess Rhis?” Her voice was high, with a slight lisp.
“Princess Shera?” Rhis said, giving the same nod.
“My parents bid me welcome you to Gensam,” Shera said in a carefully modulated voice. “I trust our journey together will be pleasant.”
Rhis knew what to say to that. “Thank you. In my turn, I am to convey greetings and thanks from my parents to yours, and from your honored sister, Princess Elda, as well.”
The conversation proceeded like that for a short time, each girl admirably formal and dignified and very, very proper. Rhis was glad of her lessons with Elda. At least she wasn’t making a fool of herself. But by the time a quiet servant had brought in hot chocolate and biscuits, Rhis was feeling the strain of so much dignified, formal conversation. At the thought of two more weeks of it, she found herself wishing that she would be alone after all.
When next Shera spoke, it was to praise the inn’s garden. Rhis half-listened to the slow, lisping voice enumerate the fine early blooms and important plants that she had found in her five days’ stay while waiting for Rhis’s arrival. Since very few flowers grew in cold, high Nym, Rhis didn’t recognize half the names she heard, and she couldn’t help her mind wandering.
She was choosing her fourth biscuit—she wasn’t hungry, but at least it gave her something to do with her hands—when she happened to look up, just as Shera started to yawn.
The princess closed her jaw at once, her eyes watering slightly.
“If you are tired, Princess Shera, it will not discommode me if you wish to retire to rest,” Rhis said politely, hoping to get rid of her for a time.
Shera’s polite expression was betrayed by a blush. “I’m not tired—” she said quickly, then she turned even redder.
Rhis stared. Was it possible that Shera was as bored as she was? How to find out, without making some terrible mistake in etiquette that would disgrace her family—her entire kingdom?
“Not tired?” she repeated in her most polite voice.
“Well, a little, maybe. There was music last night, and perhaps I stayed awake too long to hear it,” Shera said, just as politely.
“Do you, ah, like music?” Rhis asked, even more politely.
Shera’s eyes widened slightly, an expression of surprise and delight, but then her face smoothed into blankness, and she said very formally, “Fine music is a very appropriate diversion.”
Rhis almost choked on her biscuit. Elda had often said that, in just the same voice: Fine music is a very appropriate diversion—meaning, of course, that ballads and the like were most definitely not ‘fine music’ or ‘appropriate.’
“Princess Elda says that often,” Rhis said slowly, watching Shera’s face.
At the mention of Elda’s name, Shera’s little nose wrinkled slightly, then her face smoothed and she languidly picked up her hot chocolate cup, her fingers held precisely in the approved position.
Rhis took a deep breath. “I,” she said bravely, “happen to like ballads. And I know that those are not considered fine music.”
Shera hastily lowered her chocolate cup. She gulped once or twice, her eyes tearing again, and Rhis clapped her hand over her mouth in an effort not to laugh.
“Ballads?” Shera squeaked, her big greeny-brown eyes going wide and round.
Rhis nodded firmly. “Love them. All of them.”
“Do you . . . know . . . Prince Aroverd and the Snow Woman?” Shera asked, her voice high, and not at all modulated.
Again Rhis nodded firmly. “All twenty-seven verses. And I know the older version—”
“—The Snowlass and the Toadfield,” Shera breathed.
The girls stared at each other.
“My favorite part is when she turns the invading army into toads,” Shera said.
“I like that part, but my favorite is when she pushes the evil Red Mage into the swamp and stops the prince’s runaway coach before it sinks—”
“Oh, I love that part, too.” Shera gave a fervent sigh. “I used to pretend I was the Snow Lass, going on adventures, and having princes wanting to marry me.”
Rhis dared one more thing. “I can play it on the tiranthe,” she said quickly.
And again Shera’s eyes widened in delight, but this time she forgot to smooth out her face. Instead, she clasped her hands together. “Oh, I do envy you,” she said. “We could never learn to play anything.”
Rhis grinned. “Elda told me that only entertainers play. A princess might strum if a boy professes to like music, but only to look decorative, and that proper princesses summon entertainers when they want real music. But proper princesses don’t ever want ballads. So after I learned the chords from a tutor, and she sent him away, I learned in secret from the cook’s nephew, who comes home every winter from his group of traveling players. Of course I wasn’t allowed to pack my tiranthe for the trip.”
Shera grinned back. “Shall we call for one?”
“Let’s,” Rhis said, adding, “I’ll buy it for the trip, and teach you what I know!”
We hope you have enjoyed this sample of
A Posse of Princesses,
by Sherwood Smith
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Sherwood Smith, Whispered Magics
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