“Aye, Your Grace. Like a hawk.” Erlig moved his pack to sit on beside her.

  “Where is Artur?” Leogane asked.

  “Speaking to the warrior elf, Rina.”

  “Good.” Leogane hoped Artur could learn all he could about her.

  When the meal was done, the princess would not eat, rolled onto her side, and pulled Leogane’s blankets around herself. After he’d eaten, the king carried her inside the hut, and lay her in the bed.

  Opening her eyes, she stared at him when he pulled the blanket up to her chin.

  “You will sleep in here where it is more comfortable. There is only one bed, no sense in letting it go to waste. We will find no dwelling for the next night. Rina, Artur, Erlig, and your maid will stay inside with you to protect you.”

  She nodded and closed her eyes. The other knights took turns guarding the hut or sleeping outside.

  Twice in the middle of the night, the princess cried out, the men grumbled, and Rina quieted her fears. Twice more she walked in her sleep, though at first he thought she was trying to escape, then realized she was sleepwalking like Leogane’s sister did when she was overly tired at night.

  The next morning, his men served porridge, and the party remounted for another day’s journey, only this time Leogane intended to ride much longer, or at this rate, they’d never make it to Castle Grande.

  Because the princess had such a restless night, she looked half asleep, her blond hair braided, but half of her silken tresses undone. She still seemed distraught, incapable of noticing she hadn’t properly fixed her hair. Her maid never offered to help her. When he had looked in Rina’s direction, she had thrown up her hands as if to say a warrior did not braid a princess’s hair.

  Mirabella had also waved away the morning meal.

  Leogane glanced back at the maid, who watched the woods, probably fearing more attacks, but he couldn’t help feeling annoyed that the woman, who was being paid to serve the princess, wasn’t doing her job. When they stopped to eat later, he would insist she braid the princess’s hair, and he wouldn’t allow Mirabella to miss another meal.

  For now, though, he kept his eye on the princess, who appeared ready to fall asleep at any moment. Twice she nodded off, and he reached out to wake her, not wanting her to fall from her horse and risk injury.

  The third time, he reached over, and pulled her from her saddle, startling her.

  “What—”

  “You’re falling asleep, and we can’t afford to stop after we’ve only just begun our journey. Rest.”

  Jeremka rode up from behind, his blond hair flying, and he grabbed her horse’s reins, then dropped back.

  Artur and Rina rode side by side behind them, Erlig and the maid in front of them.

  Mirabella sat stiffly in Leogane’s arms for a good half hour, then slowly sank against him. The next thing he knew, her head was planted against his chest, and she was sleeping soundly. He told himself he had no feelings for the woman, yet he had never held a lady so close, and he couldn’t help but enjoy the feel of her against his body, fitting nicely like the soft leather gloves he wore when he hunted with his bow.

  Erlig rode up beside him. “She’s like your mother was at night, eh?”

  “Sleepwalking. Aye. The man who weds her will have to tie her to his bed if he wants her to remain there.”

  Erlig laughed. “I know you have an obligation to her uncle, and Callie understands this as well. Think nothing of it if you decide to take the princess for your wife.”

  Leogane took a deep breath. “I do not know what to think of the woman, but she is not the one for me. If she is a magic user, she should be with her people.”

  “If she is a magic user, why doesn’t she use her powers?”

  Leogane looked over at his advisor, realizing at once the gravity of the situation. “Did the healer imposter fight you?”

  “No, it was as if she had been ordered to be a sacrificial lamb.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand. Unless these people aren’t magic users.”

  “Or unless they don’t want to reveal their powerful use of magic, just yet.”

  “Something’s not right. I can’t pinpoint what, but something’s not right.” Leogane turned to his advisor. “When we were in the hut, could you smell if the boar was finished cooking?”

  “I was making sure the imposter was killed.”

  “Aye.”

  “Why do you ask, Your Grace?”

  Erlig had been his devoted advisor once the king’s father had died from a fever. He trusted him with his life, never having kept any secrets from him, yet now, Leogane couldn’t reveal what concerned him most about the lady. He shook his head. “’Tis nothing.”

  His advisor looked at the lady sleeping in the king’s arms, and he was sure Erlig figured the lady was either some sort of sorcerer, or something they knew not what, just as he suspected.

  Erlig looked ahead and waved his arm at the cliff faces banded in green, gold, and red strips of clay as if a master painter colored the whole cliffs in his spare time. “We are nearly to the pass.”

  “Aye, and I suspect they will attack us there again.”

  Jagged outcroppings of rocks covered with bushy fir trees provided perfect brigand hiding places, while they waited for the unsuspecting to travel through.

  Leogane’s scouts returned to the king to report before they ventured into the pass. “Your Grace,” one of the men said. “We heard nothing. Shall we venture into the pass?”

  Mirabella lifted her head from Leogane’s chest and shook it. “Nay, they are waiting for us there.” She pointed to the right of the pass. “Behind those rocks that look like my uncle’s enormous beak.”

  His men stared at the princess in disbelief, and Leogane wondered the same thing. “How do you know this, my lady?”

  “Did you not hear them?” she asked, her brows raised and her eyes wide with disbelief. “They were counting our numbers, having assumed you might have lost some of your men in the earlier battle. Did you not hear them?”

  He didn’t know what to think about her now. “Could you tell me how many there are?”

  “Three, I think. Unless there are more who didn’t speak. But I heard three distinctive voices.”

  “We can easily take them if there’s only three of them,” the scout said.

  “What if she’s wrong?” Erlig asked, his voice concerned.

  What his advisor didn’t say was what if the woman had lied?

  “You, Artur, Rina, and Jeremka stay with the princess.” Leogane would have included the maid, but he didn’t fear that the maid would run away or that Vladek’s men would care anything about her. “Guard her well.” If he decided to turn the princess over to Vladek, he wanted it on his terms, not on hers. And he wanted to make sure Rina didn’t slip off with the princess either.

  “Aye, my lord.” Erlig helped Mirabella from Leogane’s horse, but instead of putting her on her own, he kept her on his saddle.

  She objected at once. “Shouldn’t—”

  “I will protect you better this way.”

  Leogane nodded. His advisor knew his thoughts well without having to speak them. He motioned to the rest of his men. “I believe a force of at least three men are at that first outcropping of rocks to the right. We’ll send them back to the devil from where they came.”

  With his sword raised, he led his men to battle, and hoped the lady had not sent them into a trap.

  9

  Artur knew his place was protecting the princess, though he wanted to remain with his king. He also knew Leogane wanted him to keep an eye on Rina, should she decide the princess and she would do better taking off on their own.

  He listened for any trouble around him, as much as he wanted to watch straight ahead and see what his king was getting himself into. But since Artur was with the princess, he couldn’t let his guard down in case they were set upon here.

  “You suspected the healer was an imposter, Rina,” Artur quietly said to her.

  “Aye.”

  “How did you come to that conclusion?”

  “She kept eyeing my sword. Her smiles were not genuine. But mainly because she didn’t make any sense when she spoke to me about the men coming to see her if they needed healing when they disintegrated upon death into dust. If she knew of Vladek and seemed to be in touch with him, why wouldn’t she also know about his men and their strange condition that would not require a healer? Also, because she was on Vladek’s side.” Rina glanced at Artur. “Why did you not defend the king’s honor?”

  “It is for him to defend himself, and not up to me. He will get an alliance if he weds the lass and he will get a dowry, her lands, and money. So he has much to gain. The healer was right about that. But he would not kill the princess after he wed her. I figured everyone in the hut would assume the healer was lying about that so there was no need to defend the king. If the princess died, he could very well lose his alliance with her uncle, so why would he do that?” Artur shook his head. “King Leogane is the most honest of men.”

  Said his loyal champion, Rina thought. Who was to say it wouldn’t happen just the way the healer said? She glanced over at Mirabella who was watching the business with Leogane and his men. She seemed genuinely concerned for their welfare, not like she hoped he would be killed so she would be free of marrying him.

  “Maybe I did see you once when I visited Dracolin,” Artur said.

  “You would have remembered me better than that.” Rina knew she hadn’t seen him.

  “I saw this dark-haired elf dancing by herself when Dracolin married Persephonice,” Artur said.

  “You were at their wedding then?”

  “Aye, but there were tons of people at the wedding. Persephonice is much loved by all. As is Dracolin.” Artur glanced at Rina. “You had strings of feathers in your hair, and you were wearing a silver circlet.”

  She had been, so maybe he had been there and had seen her.

  “Why were you dancing by yourself?” he asked.

  “I wished to. There is no crime in that. What about you? I never saw you.”

  “I was visiting with the prince, who told me many a tale about Persephonice and how Dracolin’s father and the king himself had forbidden Dracolin from seeing her further.”

  “Do you see what good that did?”

  “Aye.” Artur smiled. “When Dracolin’s mind is made up, that is that.”

  “Do you ever wonder if any others of their kind will show up in our world?” she asked, quite seriously, wondering if Artur could fall for one of the women, should another turn up.

  “Possibly. They came on a ship from the sky, Dracolin said, and Persephonice had told him that there were numerous ships like that all over. That each of them were filled with more of her kind.”

  “What would you do if you ran into a redheaded woman who looked like a mermaid who could walk on land?” She raised a brow.

  “Both of the women had magical abilities. I would rather settle down with a woman—an elf woman—who is normal like me.”

  Rina laughed. He would not like to hear that she had abilities of her own that would make her far superior to him then. And what did it mean to be normal anyway? She felt she was perfectly normal. But then she wondered—when he had come to her aid before—had he not seen her disappear from the back of a dark arts knight’s horse and reappear to cut off the head of another of the enemy knights?

  “What about you? If a male from one of those ships came to our world? Could you be swayed to entertain and marry him?” Artur asked.

  Smiling, Rina said, “If he had magical abilities, it would depend on what kind. If he was truly loyal, then maybe. He would have to be a warrior like me. Some of them are not fighters, but collectors of history. One like that would not do for me.”

  Though Mirabella did not want Leogane for her husband, she did not want him murdered over her either. But now the voices swirled around in her head.

  “She has told them we are here!”

  “She is to be one of us!”

  “She will be the death of us!”

  Desiring with a vengeance to know if Erlig heard the voices, too, she crushed that notion, figuring that no one seemed to hear anything that she did. She thought at first it was that the canyon walls caused the men’s voices to echo off them, though there were no echoes, just the singular comments.

  Jeremka, Rina, and Artur and other knights watched behind them, while Erlig kept his horse and attention focused on Leogane and the rest of the men.

  The king rode into battle, his gleaming sword catching the sun’s rays as he held it high, his tall stature and broad shoulders imposing.

  “Kill the king and the rest will give her up!”

  “No!” she shouted.

  “What’s the matter, my lady?” Erlig asked.

  “They…they want to kill the king.”

  Erlig smiled. “They are welcome to try.”

  She held her arms around herself, the chill in the air seeming to intensify.

  “Do you hear them speaking still?”

  She shook her head, having said too much already.

  “Did you smell the boar cooking outside the healer’s hut?”

  “’Twas a strong scent. Anyone would have smelled it.”

  “Aye.” But the way the king’s advisor answered her, she did not think he believed her. “How long have you been able to hear so acutely, my lady?”

  She didn’t speak for fear of incriminating herself.

  “You seem surprised that you have this ability that no one else seems to have. I would venture to say you are gaining some unique abilities as you grow older. Can you do magic?”

  She opened her mouth to argue with him, but just then three men dressed in chain mail and the familiar black tunics emblazoned with a red rose jumped out at the king from behind the colorful clay rocks. Two swung swords at him, but when the rest of the king’s escort caught up with them, Vladek’s men were easily cut down.

  “They thought there were fewer of us left,” she said under her breath.

  “Us?”

  “Of you, the king and your men,” she quickly corrected.

  “Is that why there were fewer of them this time? They didn’t think the king and our men would be so…invincible?”

  She thought there was a hint of threat in Erlig’s words, but when she studied him, he only smiled back.

  For some strange reason, maybe because the king’s advisor had a daughter most likely near her age, maybe because he acted as her guard, but was not mean like the ones her uncle posted for her, maybe because he reminded her of her father, she felt the urge to tell this man things she’d allowed to fester deep inside her for too long. Whether he believed her or not, it didn’t matter.

  “My uncle killed my father,” she said, softly. She’d only said the words in anger to her uncle and had been whipped severely by him for the outburst. She’d told others when she was little and was locked up in the Castle Mayden tower for her indiscretions. What would it matter if she told Erlig who would no doubt disbelieve her anyway? At least she would say her mind.

  “‘Twas a hunting accident, my lady.” Though he spoke gently, his gray eyes continued to watch her as if to see her response.

  “Aye, a planned and executed, cold-blooded hunting accident. If I hadn’t been told so many times by my guardian, Phiri, that I killed my mother in childbirth, I would think my uncle had murdered her too.” She looked at Erlig to see his response to that.

  His eyes turned hard, as if annoyed she would be so confused about what had happened in the past. That she would condemn her uncle for unspeakable things. “You have it all wrong, my lady. ‘Twas a hunting accident, nothing more.”

  “Why was I locked in the tower then?”

  “I assume His Grace did so to protect you.”

  She gave a short derisive laugh, then listened to Leogane give orders to his men. As before, they examined the bodies, lifting helmets high, where only powdered dust remained, spilling from the iron masks, scattering on the breeze.

  “If King Inari had some other reason to keep you at Castle Mayden, pray tell what it was,” Erlig said.

  She watched as Leogane looked back at her, and seeing she was still with his advisor, he remounted his horse and spoke again to his men. “My uncle could not stand looking at me, seeing the hatred I had for him, knowing I knew he was my father’s murderer and stole the crown. I’ve always thought he was the kind of man who cared not a whit about what any of his people thought of his actions, but it seems when it comes to me, he feels guilty. So during the year after my father’s murder, my uncle locked me away at Mayden.”

  “But you had free rein of the castle and of the servants.”

  “Of my chamber, you mean. And no, I was in charge of no one.”

  “He wouldn’t have—”

  “Have you never seen him beat a man or woman near death before? Or murder someone just because the person disagreed with him. I have. He is a tyrant.”

  Erlig shifted uneasily in his saddle.

  “Come now, you cannot say you have only witnessed my uncle use kindness.”

  Clearing his throat, Erlig said, “He has always been fair minded and the most gracious of hosts when the king and I have visited.”

  “Count Vladek, no doubt, will not be misled by my uncle.”

  Leogane galloped back to them, sweat dribbling from his furrowed brow, his horse kicking up the dust. “We move forward through the pass now, but I want you to ride up ahead with me, Princess Mirabella.”

  So he believed her now. She wasn’t sure if this was a good thing or bad. Pursing her lips, she didn’t want the king to use her, then cast her aside when he didn’t need her any longer. Then she sighed deeply. She didn’t want her escort harmed either. For now, she would aid the king and his men, but later, she would be the sliver in his sword hand that he would soon want to be rid of.

  Jeremka brought her horse, and once she had mounted him, she and Leogane moved slowly through the pass, while she listened for any sound, any whispered words. “I hear none but your men speaking about my strange ability and how worried they are that I might attack you when you sleep.”