Slumber Jack
Note: This is a piece of fiction I wrote a while back. I thought of posting it here both to have an online archive of it, and to share it. It’s a bit of a long read, so have a snack and coffee or tea along with the story. Enjoy!
Once upon a time, in a kingdom now lost to the mists of time and distance, there once lived a prince with dark ringlet curls on his head and the most mischievous dark eyes a baby could ever have. The tiny tot had a stubborn chin softened by deep dimples that enhanced his toothless little grin and bracketed his gums, which was just as well, for his laughter sounded just as handsome as his dimples were. Well, all of him was handsome — for a drool-faced infant.
The king and queen, proud as all new parents could be — with the bonus of long lineages of royal pedigree and wealth that had grown for just as long — gave their wondrous boy a whole string of names (for why even choose just one or a few? They could afford the paper for the birth certificate, after all), Jacob Anderson Columbus Kirkwell Thomas Damien Evangelo Michael George Neil Andorian-Tannis, His Royal Highness and Duke of the Everland, Territory Prime of Jewel-by-the-Sea.
So proud of this boy they’d made were the king and queen that only the very best of the enchanted folk would do for his godparents on his naming day. They sent invitations to all the magick ones in their realm.
All but one got a wafer-thin card of solid gold graven with the newborn prince’s name, and theirs, in obsidian-inlaid platinum. All but one of the Enchanted Ones were welcome at the royal palace for the christening three tendays hence.
In the harshest northern steppes of the kingdom, enchanter Graem the Grim sat on a jagged rock, staring angrily down at the sea he’d churned with storms from his gray eyes. He brooded at the insult, the snub, the terrible oversight. His name, his mystical, magical name was not on that list.
He planned and he plotted, and he itemized the steps of his revenge. He visualized and cut and spliced it until it was air-tight and water-tight, and the royals who’d slighted him would have no way out of it.
Graem gathered rue and bloodthorn, cut poison-berries from their parasitic vines upon the weepy wahianne trees that grew farther inland. He uttered dark, violent whispers over his potions cauldron as he stirred an evil brew with a black-iron spoon.
With an evil gleam in his cold, unholy eyes, Graem took the potion he’d brewed and exposed it to the moon at its fullest, then bathed an exquisite master-forged longsword in it, muttering vile incantations as he spread the potion’s viscous black substance over the keen blade and its exquisitely graven hilt.
“Think they that they can exclude me? They cannot. They never will. The kingdom will be mine and none will be able to gainsay me. None of them will have even the voice to protest. I will be so much more than an enchanter. I will be king as well.”
And so it was with this last portent of his execrable evil that Graeme set out for a name-day celebration, no invitation in hand. He glamored himself as a beggar, for the cool winds of winter were still blowing through the land. Ice lay in black patches, growing from each of Graeme’s footsteps as he plod from his home’s grandly carved doorway to the carriage and four black steeds waiting at the ready upon the gravel drive.
Graem took the longsword he’d immured in the potion, chanted over in the moonless nights previous, and sheathed it in a scabbard of solid jet and silver, girded it with a fine leather belt, and wrapped it all up in the finest black velvet, uttering a final curse as he wound the bolt of cloth seven times upon itself: “Once worn, this cannot be unworn. Once touched, the blade will bite its master and all will fall silent.”
He whipped his horses and made haste. Patience never was his metier, you see. His evil laugh trailed quite insanely behind him and broadcast his glee.
***
The music in the castle rang out across the moat and cut the icy wind of the outgoing storm as if chasing it out to the sea below. The revels were well and truly merry, with the Queen sharing rapt looks with her King as she carried their firstborn out to the great hall filled with well-wishers, who shed tears of joy to see their princeling for the first time.
The line of godparents stretched on one side of a carpet that was lush and long and red banded with purple, the prince’s name inscribed upon it in flourishes of lettering laid in silver along the border.
Each godparent offered at least two gifts: One that could be held in hand and would be useful to the prince as he grew, and another in the form of an enchanted wish.
“I offer to Jacob Anderson Columbus Kirkwell Thomas Damien Evangelo Michael George Neil Andorian-Tannis, His Royal Highness and Duke of the Everland, Territory Prime of Jewel-by-the-Sea this plume of Sarimanok feather and a well of endless ink so he may pen the most beautiful words into stories and poetry that will show his innate gift for words,” said the enchantress Banawe of the southeast. “I wish upon him a quick and agile mind and a long life that will be fruitful.”
The Queen graciously accepted the plume on her son’s behalf, handing it with care to the pages assigned to carting the gifts before she spoke the formal response: “Thank you, o fair Banawe, for your blessings and your gift. We accept these with grateful hearts for our heir and son.”
The next enchanter, whose home lay to the north, gifted the prince with a molded set of soldiers — mounted cavalry, foot soldiers (spearmen, axemen and swordsmen), bowmen and cannoneers, with this blessing: “I wish upon our prince peace, and brilliance in military strategy with which to defend that peace.”
On and on went the gift-giving, until the royal family reached the beggar who stood out at the end of the line like the sorest of thumbs. The royal highnesses (well the adult ones, anyway) looked askance, but held their peace, for they would never dream of rudeness in their own home.
“I’ve brought the youngling a sword of adamant and silver,” intoned Graem as he looked intently into the King’s dark eyes. “This is the keenest blade and nothing will withstand its blows or shatter it, even as it sings in battle. I wish upon your son the highest of sword-skills, for he alone will be able to wield it. He is to open this gift when he comes of age. The sword will know its master.”
The wrapped sword was handed off to the page and the Queen was about to give her dutiful answer to Graem when the enchanter held a wizened finger up over his hooked nose: “Pardon me, your highness, but I’ve a second wish to utter.”
Drawing a deep breath, the Queen nodded her acquiescence, though her eyes narrowed slightly at the beggar’s breach of protocol.
“I wish upon Jacob Anderson Columbus Kirkwell Thomas Damien Evangelo Michael George Neil Andorian-Tannis, His Royal Highness and Duke of the Everland, Territory Prime of Jewel-by-the-Sea a sleep of eternal dimensions once he comes of age,” Graem said on a cackle as he waved away his glamor. “I wish the same upon all who love him and would stand by his side when my time to sit upon the throne of this Territory Prime of Jewel-by-the-Sea comes. I wish that you will all bow to me or sleep along with this boy I now name Slumber Jack. You may accept my gifts now, Queen Erstwhile.”
His evil smirk triggered a hysterical scream from the Queen and a flurry of angry orders from the King to the palace guard.
Graem was ushered out at the points of staves and spears and gleaming halberds and, as he backed away the evil enchanter roared out a crazed laugh. He paused at the threshold of the open great room doors and cut his thumb with a small silver blade embedded in one of his rings and nodded as his blood dripped to the very verge of the carpet beneath his feet: “It is final and it cannot be taken back. I will see you in twenty-one years.”
With that he turned and strode out of the castle, his black cloak trailing behind him like an ill omen.
Silence fell upon the great hall. Even the flute player stopped his melody. A heaviness set upon the hearts of all the revelers and the infant prince cried sharply, as if feeling the curse sink into his little body to stay.
“You shall keep the blade away from my son,” the King told his Captain of the Guard with a barely-leashed fury that was interlaced with deep fretting as he thrust the sword at the man. “You will not train him with this treacherous blade, whatever it is. You will not train him with swords at all.”
“Yes, my liege.”
Fighting for composure, the Queen held her son tightly to her breast, cooing out a lullaby to soothe him (and herself, and her husband, too) as a tall lady clad in red silks stepped forward, her pale skin shining in the light of the hall’s chandeliers and her night-dark hair trailing in a magnificent mantle almost to the carpet.
“I have not yet given my gift and my wishes,” the enchantress Mag-Wa-Ien of the Wandering Spirits said. “My foresight afforded me the time to craft this rune-graven mirror. It has given me time to make this vest of bloodvine fiber woven under the fullest of full moons that will keep my godson safe no matter what. It will bring him my goddaughter, who will save the prince from himself and Graem the Odious. I wish upon my godson the purest of loves, the strongest of maidens. I wish upon him happiness everlasting in a kingdom of peace and prosperity. I wish that all that may be taken from him will be restored magically and irrevocably.”
***
The King and Queen put the bad memory of Graem’s visit and curse aside, locked it away so even they could forget it had happened. They spoke not of it at all and banishment was the price to pay for any who would utter words of it at all, in any way. So the years passed and little Jack (they liked that nickname for the prince anyway — it had been his maternal grandfather’s, after all, and it was a perfectly good nickname) grew into a fine youth who excelled at all things he turned his mind or body to achieving.
He grew into a most handsome man whose learned and well-considered words earned respect from his elders and his peers alike. Jack learned the intricacies of ruling in peace and the complexities of restoring peace in times of war. He studied philosophy well and knew his sciences and math well enough to match every erudite thinker in the kingdom. He wove poetry that could make people weep for its beauty and stories that pulled at the heartstrings — even the Palace Bard could not compete. He played the most ethereal music and sang so beautifully the birds would pause before singing and trilling along.
He told the wittiest jokes and kept the Palace Staff on their toes for his harmless but unexpected pranks, and he charmed each punked victim into forgiving him each trespass. He pretty much got his way in practically all things, for the entire kingdom doted on the likable, lovable, adorable royal heir.
Yet, no matter how many butter-laden cookies disappeared from the Royal Cookie Jar, or how many golden apples he filched from the Palace Orchards and ate, the young prince did not fatten, nor even grow spoilt. He was the ideal of ideals and, for all his hijinks, an obedient son whose parents’ every investment of time and effort brought such amazing gains. That, and he could dance like a dream — a must for the Royal Balls and fetes of the nobility that he would grace with his presence.
Prince Jack’s body grew tall, developed lean, strong musculature, and his handsome face drew the eyes of every woman. His smile drew answering smiles (those dimples did it, for sure), and his princely carriage made everyone stand straighter and prouder of their royal heir as he passed them on his daily walks. He was a beautiful specimen of royal maleness, the symbol of all his subjects dreamed of in a king.
In the training yard, dark-haired Jack learned to handle all the weaponry of his kingdom’s soldiers, approaching mastery with spear and bow, but he was ever denied the mastery of swords, for the Captain of the Guard refused to let him handle any of the castle swords.
“That is the decree of the King, my prince,” the Captain of the Guard would say over and over again, no matter how the prince asked or commanded or looked at him in appeal.
With a sigh each time he was turned away from the sword-racks, Jack nodded acceptance and moved on to the next weapon rack and the next after that until he mastered the staves, halberds and daggers, the axes and the rams.
When his twenty-first name day dawned, Jack tried anew.
“But, see, sir, my father and his father and his father before that, they all learned mastery of the sword,” Jack argued earnestly, so earnestly that it tore the heart out of the Captain of the Guard to refuse him yet again. “Why, even my mother can handle swords with a dancer’s grace and the poise of a warrior born!”
“Ah, my prince, what else can an old soldier say but this: I follow your father’s dictum, for he is my king and it is not my place to naysay him.”
“Will you at least tell me why? Think of it as a present for my name-day.” The question and the light-heartedly reasonable addition to it chilled the Captain of the Guard like a foreboding, for he heard the persistence beneath the words.
“Nay, my prince, I cannot do that,” the old soldier said, his head bowed. “For it is an act of treason to even think of telling you why.”
Jack bowed his head, too, and drew in a patient breath, for he did not want to lose his temper at this old friend who had taught him so much.
While his head was bowed, Prince Jack saw a small sliver of black cloth peeping out from a crack in the ornately-tiled floor beneath the sword racks.
“Ah, this old argument is a wound, my Captain, but yet again, I must yield to you.” Jack breathed deeply and met the old soldier’s eyes before he straightened his back to ramrod stiffness and turned to leave. “Peace be upon you this day, may you be well.” Thus did he take his leave.
The Captain of the Guard sighed in relief as Prince Jack strode out of the training yard. Another day’s victory, his heart whispered. Another night to sleep.
***
For the first time in his life, Prince Jack thought truly disobedient thoughts. “I cannot just let the argument lie where it has all these years past,” he whispered in the darkness of his princely bedchamber as he moved his enchanted soldiers about on their board of mother of pearl and hardwood. “I must have a sword and, if I must train alone and in the dark of night, I shall.”
Unhanding a mounted swordsman, he thought again about the sliver of black cloth he’d seen beneath the verboten sword racks and decided then and there to have another look. Nobody would be at the training yard so late in the night, and he would only be looking to see if he’d not been mistaking it for a blemish in the tile.
So back to the training yard he went, and made a beeline for the sword racks. There it was, a dull gleam of midnight against the terracotta mosaics: The very tip of a velvet wrapper.
Prince Jack touched the cloth scrap lightly with his forefinger and the tile parted to reveal the whole of it: A long, thin cylinder of velvet, about the right length for a longsword. He gently took the bundle in hand and drew it out of the cavity it was ensconced in and put it against his lap where he knelt, unwrapping the velvet shroud slowly so as to make no sound.
The jet and silver scabbard gleamed in the light of a gibbous moon and the prince clutched the bundle to his chest as he rose to bring the longsword and its wrapper to his room in light-footed haste. Once in his domain, Prince Jack laid the unwrapped longsword upon his bed and lit another lamp so he could study the weapon he’d spirited from the training yard floor.
A soft sursurrus arose from the bed as the prince’s back was turned. It was a wordless calling, an onomatopeic claim of abandonment and a command for attention all in one.
Graven on the hilt were fingerprints that matched those of Prince Jack’s right hand, and they glowed in the light of the room’s fireplace, which was merrily popping with the blaze and filling the room with wafted traces of pine resin and fragrant smoke.
Prince Jack laid the lamp on his bedside table before he took hold of the hilt and scabbard with both hands. His right hand’s digits aligned with the prints graven on the hilt just below the crossbar the longsword’s hand-guard and he drew the blade from its sheath.
“I should name you,” he whispered as the gleaming black and silver blade came to light. “I shall call you Night’s Bane,” he decided, staring in wonderment at the swirling pattern of silver, gray and black upon the finely-smithed sword.
Prince Jack raised the sword above his bed and slowly swung it in a high arc above his royal mattress, then moved in a feint and parry as he’d seen the swordsmen do in the training yard. For someone who had never been given a sword to wield, Prince Jack did quite well with Night’s Bane: He wobbled at first, nearly piercing his bed with the sword tip before he found its balance and righted his stance to complement it.
He weaved martial patterns in the air with the sword he’d called his own and began to dance with it as he gained familiarity with it. The sword, in turn, moved with him, silently urging him to try this move or that — not that Prince Jack could tell if the movements were his idea or not. The sword was insidious that way, for it sounded to Prince Jack just like the young man’s own mind.
As the night crept to its zenith, the prince practiced with Night’s Bane, his shadow dancing against the wall as he thrust, parried, feinted and blocked. His heart sang as he began to move with his precious, stolen sword as if he’d spent all his life with the weapon in hand until he tired, and slipped, and, as the clock in his room rang the midnight hour, cut his left palm on the blade’s keen edge.
Prince Jack looked down at his cut palm and dropped Night’s Bane onto the royal bed’s purple counterpane, a drop of his blood followed the blade down and trickled off the sword’s blood groove to weapon’s pointy tip, and onto the pillow at the head of the bed.
The young prince dropped to his knees, feeling lightheaded all of a sudden, and his face fell to the bed, right cheek first. He began to slip into a dark forest of very nasty dreams and, just before all went still, his right hand gripped Night’s Bane’s hilt, bonding the graven prints to his own fingerprints.
The entire palace fell into a limbo of silence. The chambermaids on their way to the servant’s quarters slumbered against walls, slowly dropping to the stone floors as they lost consciousness. The soldiers at the portcullis and gate, even the watchtowers, fell asleep at their posts.
The King slumped against the royal desk, his seal still in hand for he was in the middle of crafting another proclamation his people needed for trade. The Queen fell asleep in her solarium, needlework still in hand.
Even the field mice and the birds fell asleep where the spreading curse caught them and a mist spread across the kingdom of Jewel-by-the-Sea, from the center of the Palace, where the prince’s room was, all the way to the kingdom’s shores and land borders. All the way to the northern steppes where Graem the Grim, also known as Graem the Odious, watched and waited, his gray eyes lit with unholy fire and glee.
***
“Ah, at last,” Graem said to nobody in particular. “I have my wish.” His evil laugh rang out over the stepped and down the moors leading to the royal palace of Jewel-by-the-Sea. “I can take what is mine now, won unfair and unsquare, as it should be, if won by me.”
The evil enchanter made his way to the palace, tweaking the sleeping creatures of the kingdom on their ears and noses as he went. He tipped the slumbering cattle over and kicked the sleeping dogs. He trod on the tails of the somnolent cats and flicked unconscious birds from their perches, cackling as their little feathered bodies bounced off the hard ground.
All the lovely lakes and ponds Graeme passed showed not a ripple, for even the fish and creatures of the waters slept in magical stasis — so he did what he was wont and plucked a few out and laid them on the shore to die for lack of water.
Once at the Palace, Graeme drew out a black blade of his own: Nightshade, his evil dagger, wickedly curved at the tip. He drew this knife across the throats of those he passed, moving them from the land of the sleeping to the land of the dead with cold flicks of his wrist.
Graem cut the King’s throat in the royal study and left him to bleed all over the unfinished proclamation. The enchanter did the same to the Queen in her solarium, and chuckled gleefully.
Then Graem made his way to the center of the Palace, to the room of the royal heir.
“Should I? Or maybe not yet.” Graem looked over the sleeping prince sprawled with a total lack of dignity right beside the sword he’d gifted twenty-one years ago. “Perhaps I should make this all last, for the spirits have their uses and I really shouldn’t be a glutton for destruction. Well, at least not yet.”
So Graem entered the Royal Treasury and plucked up the King’s ceremonial crown, walked to the Throne Room and put it upon his head as he decided to kill one person in the realm a month, to entrap their spirits and grow his power, of course, and not for anything else. Well, all right, perhaps he’d enjoy the process just a wee bit, because he was evil, after all. He’d start with the Captain of the Guard.
***
Merra Linda Janolyn Ruby Juggernaut Apple June, Warrior Princess and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of the Southern Reach of Gladhandland — called Merry June for short — was wearing down the twenty-third soldier of her father’s Elite Bodyguard with sword and dagger when her mother, Her Serenity Queen Serendipity entered the warrior’s keep yard.
“Merry June!” Queen Serendipity said, her tone anything but serene. “You were to be at the Royal Outfitter’s Tower this morn, young woman, to have your wedding gown sewn!”
“Wedding, schmedding,” the Warrior Princess grumbled under her breath as she parried, blocked and disarmed the soldier with whom she sparred before sheathing her sword and dagger fluidly in their scabbards and giving the gasping man a curt bow. She schooled her face from its fierce concentration into something that got as close to calm and cool as she could before facing her mother.
“Merry June, you must be fitted properly, if you’re to make your journey tomorrow to Jewel-by-the-Sea,” Her Serenity tutted as she brought her petite, curvy self to the princess’ rangy frame. “I’d just as soon make you wear my wedding gown, but you’ve outgrown me, my sproutling.”
“Please, mother, stop calling me that,” Merry June said as she took a kerchief to her brow to mop up the sweat royal princesses were not ever supposed to ooze. “I will go to the Royal Outfitter’s Tower after I get out of my training clothes.”
She left unsaid all the things she’d learned to keep quiet about over the last twenty-one years. Having no brothers and only three extremely frivolous sisters, Merry June had had to be the silent one, the tough one, the one who had no problem sitting a horse or learning to defend the borders of Gladhandland when trouble came. Diplomacy was not her strong suit (that would be the youngest princess’ claim to fame, for she was the one with the silver tongue). Her gift was for strategy and battle, decision-making and judgment calls, not pretty conversation or tact.
“Do that, dear and, please, stop clouting your father’s soldiers about so,” Queen Serendipity said with an arched brown eyebrow. “You know that’s not something royal princesses are supposed to do. Oh, your father’s silly ideas for naming you and look how that title stuck.”
Shutting her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose to ward off the headache that threatened, Merry June took in a deep breath, and another and another until she could walk with some semblance of royal dignity to her chambers to change from her well-worn and slouchy leather boots, padded armor, trews and practice undershirt into a gown of lace and fine-spun wool and satin and heeled slippers to match, so she could be deemed presentable to the Royal Outfitter.
“I am about be poked, prodded, turned, trussed like a turkey — and all for a prince I’ve never seen,” Merry June muttered to her reflection in the Princessly Mirror of cheval glass and runes as she re-braided her long, red-brown hair, her amber eyes stormy and ringed with long, dark lashes that softened her glare. “This prince better be worth it, or, upon my word, I will so be asking for a dissolution of our match ere I find myself saddled with a weakling.”
She picked up a hand-painted miniature on enamel, a locket that she would wear on her journey. It showed the face of a man of an age with her — one whose eyes seemed both mischievous and kind, dark as they were. She ran a forefinger lightly over his chiseled square jawline and one of the irrepressibly, irresistibly appealing dimples bracketing his well-shaped mouth and drew in another breath.
“I do hope the portrait does not lie,” she said to the mirror, “because I’d hate to find that the painter was unusually creative with this Prince Jack’s features. More to the point, I hope he has more than this extremely pretty face to commend him, for that isn’t going to convince me that this wedding is a good thing.”
Merry June turned, slipping the miniature portrait locket into a cleverly-hidden pocket of her gown’s skirts before she stalked out of the room and to the Royal Outfitter’s Tower to face her wedding dress fitting with as much grace as she could muster.
“Oh, yes, he is,” Merry June’s reflection in the mirror replied in a confident voice, “and you will have quite the fight on your hands, Merry June, Warrior Princess. But my gifts will see you through, as will yours.”
The reflection transformed into the face and form of Mag-Wa-Ien of the Wandering Spirits, Merry June’s name-day godmother, and smiled at the closing door of the now-empty Warrior Princess’ Bedchamber.
***
“Can you make the dress a bit more practical?” Merry June’s query of the Royal Outfitter was polite enough, but it had a sharp edge of impatience to it. “I will be wearing this as I travel across a border from one land to the next and it would be so very good to be able to move in it, kind madam.”
The plump little woman dressed in demure gray silk tsked from behind the fixing pins in her mouth as she sent the princess an admonishing look and adjusted some more loose flaps on the wedding dress with the pins in her mouth, jabbing Merry June in the left hip (perhaps accidentally on purpose, perhaps not) with a pin before she replied.
“You are getting married, not engaging in battle,” the diminutive Royal Outfitter said in a voice that indicated just how thin her patience was wearing. “Not setting out on a royal quest to rid the world of yellow-livered varlets and halting the spread of their cowardly jaundice through the realms.”
“But you know I have to be prepared, Madame Madgalena, and I don’t even have space for a sword belt or shoulder scabbards for Gambit or Flick with this outfit, nor can I ride astride with skirts like these,” Merry June repeated for what felt like the thousandth time in the year the Royal Outfitter had been making wedding gown after wedding gown for her (she kept rejecting the ones Magdalena made). “What if I need to ward off bandits on the road, or, magick-forbid, malicious creatures that have no care for travelers? How would I fight then? You wouldn’t leave me defenseless in a dress, would you? At least allow me thigh sheaths for my throwing knives, woman, or a loop for holding a quiver of arrows. Please. I’ll be wrapped up like a bundle of dried fish bought at the market, yet feel naked for want of my weaponry.”
“Warrior Princess, you were always a hoyden and I have told your father he spoils you far too much,” the Royal Outfitter said with her nose in the air. “I have been dressing you from the day you came into this world squalling like a banshee, naked and uncivilized. You would think that you’d have changed as you grew up, but, no, you are still that infant full of fight and fury. Look, you are getting married, not going to war. Now, settle on the dais and let me pin you into this gown properly, please. I knew Mag-Wa-Ien of the Wandering Spirits should not have added ‘Juggernaut’ to your names. Look at what she’s done. Tsk.”
Hours later, the fitted wedding dress, matching silk shoes and wedding finery of coronet, neck band, earrings, rings and bangles were carried to Merry June’s chambers and carefully arranged on a valet stand before the Princessly Mirror’s cheval glass and runes.
In a fit of pique, Merry June moved her private weapon rack beside the dress, along with good, sturdy boots and a fresh quiver (or three) of perfectly-fletched arrows for her recurve bow, Zinger. No, this princess was not going to just be turkey trussed without a peep. No, siree.
***
Mag-Wa-Ien of the Wandering Spirits looked upon her sleeping goddaughter who was sprawed across the Princessly Bed, half in and half out of the Royal Princess’ blankets, her face peaceful, for once over the last year. The enchantress stepped through the mirror glass and into the Warrior Princess’ Bedchamber.
“Now, all I need is to make a few adjustments to the outfit,” Mag-Wa-Ien said to no one in particular, amid Merry June’s soft little snores. “She’ll be needing armor rather than just a corset, and she will need to be able to move her legs…”
The enchantress began scribing runes into the air above the two racks before the mirror, melding things here and matching things there, Making little tweaks that would amount, if used properly, into a lot.
Hair ornaments were weaponized, and the pretty shoes made as sturdy and supportive of joint and muscle as the boots Merry June favored. Her coronet’s ruby diadem radiated with a magical glow now, one that would shield the Warrior Princess’ head as surely as a full helmet and neck-guard of adamant could.
She took the beautiful silk jacquard girdle and made sockets lined with thin, but tough, leather and steel rings to which Merry June’s dagger and longsword scabbards could be secured. She even created a discreet loop through which Merry June’s quiver of arrows could be hooked and fastened.
Mag-Wa-Ien added a cloak lined with fleece that had hidden slits containing sheaths for Merry June’s collection of throwing knives and magicked the wedding dress further to make riding astride not just possible, but comfortable for both Merry June and her white steed, Lightning.
“Well, I’ve done all I can,” Mag-Wa-Ien of the Wandering Spirits said as the sky lightened to a deep purple from midnight black. She waved a graceful, long-fingered hand over the sleeping princess and cast a spell to protect her from the worst of Graem’s evil as a final touch. “The rest is up to my godchildren, I guess. Well, at least I know this one is unstoppable. It is one of her names, after all.”
***
Merry June donned her wedding finery while the cold sky began to lighten. Her distaste was ill-disguised as she dried off from a bath made smelly-girly by flower petals and essential oils the chambermaids insisted on pouring into the tub. Her trip would be short enough, perhaps just a three-hour ride to the border. And yes, she was sure Prince Whatshisface would smell her coming from miles and miles away.
Merry June had threaded her swords into the sockets she’d found in her girdle and added her throwing knives to the hidden sheaths of the cloak that went with the dress. She’d managed to slip a quiver of arrows into the girdle too and, when she beheld herself in her mirror, all she saw was a bride in a wedding dress, not a woman armed to the teeth.
Ah, good, she thought to herself, mistaking Mag-Wa-Ien’s magical additions for Magdalena’s acquiescence to her demands, at last. She finally had a dress that did more than merely look pretty.
Why tradition dictated she had to arrive at her betrothed’s kingdom in a wedding dress after traveling for over several hours just to get to the border where her homeland ended, she had no idea. Once she became Warrior Queen, however, that would have to change. No other woman should have to put up with such tomfoolery as traveling unarmed, not even in the fairy tales the bards so loved to spread far and wide. It wasn’t as if royal status would stop an arrow from punching through her princessy hide.
Common sense was anything but common in the world now, and all the realms were suffering for it, Merry June thought as she chewed on her breakfast of buttered honeybread and scrambled eggs. Oh, yes, changes would come. She’d swear by her favorite sword and by her father’s trusty shield on that. She’d make sure of it herself. Meanwhile, she strapped Zinger to Lightning’s saddle, where she could reach it quickly and easily, and put a spare quiver of arrows by it for good measure.
Her last breakfast with her parents and sisters was an exercise in civility: All of them were so painfully polite that Merry June just had to hug them before they parted, much to her parents’ discomfiture. “I won’t be seeing you for a while,” she explained, “so I really just need to hug you all right now. Even if you do drive me crazy, every one of you.”
Merry June’s father and mother permitted the outburst, hugging their eldest daughter tight.
The younger princesses did the same, with Zelda Infanta, the youngest and most fashionable princess, whispering encouragement in her eldest sister’s ear: “If they don’t treat you right in Jewel-by-the-Sea, I will write the most scathing words about their clothing sense and have that copied and posted against every town billboard in the land after you knock them senseless. I’m in your corner, sister, always.”
Zelda Infanta always did know exactly what to say to make Merry June smile, and smile she did. “I’ll gift you with the best new cloths from there once I am able to visit you or have you come over,” she promised. “I’ll bring the best books and bobs for our sisters, too.”
With those words, Merry June bid everyone goodbye and walked to meet the dawn.
Out in the Regal Driveway, Merry June mounted Lightning in a swift, practiced move, patting the tall white combat-mare on the neck affectionately as she did and checking the horse’s armored head harness and flank guards after that. “You’ll have apples of gold and the sweetest carrots I can find once we reach Jewel-by-the-Sea, my love,” Merry June promised her horse, “just let me get us safely there, dearest friend.”
Merry June called out to her private guardsmen and their supply wagon’s driver, instructing them to move out after she’s waved her farewells to her parents standing at the Royal Parapet outside the Ruler’s Majestic Bedroom and gotten their slow nods to proceed with her journey.
***
Graem was getting bored, what with three months of no opposition to his rule whatsoever, and all that cacophony of snores — low rumbling ones and high-pitched squeaky ones, snores like puffs of air, and snores like whistling off-key. Snores galore and nothing he could do but slit throats to stop them —that were slowly driving him insane.
The Evil Enchanter Overlord, Ruiner of Dominions, Sword-Curser and Destroyer of Royals (et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, for even he was bored with all his self-proclaimed titles without someone awake into whose face to shove them) had overdone his spells and even the ones he’d slain left ghostly snores long after he’d dispatched them with Nightshade. Their spirits, it seemed, remained asleep and would not go into the AfterLife Place as they normally would.
No matter. Graem now had an entire realm in his hands, with all the treasures the Palace and the lands around it held. He had the power of royalty and the impunity granted by a total lack of sentient opposition.
He was ruminating on all of this when the sweet scent of attar of roses and night-blooming jasmine with an undertone of sandalwood began to make his nose itch unbearably.
“Trouble is arriving, I take it,” Graem said out the window from which the incredibly heady (and headache-inducing) smell had come. “I guess I need to go greet a bride who comes to seek her slumberjack groom.”
Graem donned the gray cloak that had glamored him into a beggar twenty-one years ago and snatched up a handful of dun gray seeds that he poured into a black pouch he fastened to his belt.
The enchanter leapt onto the back of a massive black stallion and clicked his tongue to instruct the beast to canter, then trot, in the direction of the sickeningly sweet scent that had sent him out of the Palace in the first place. He was strewing the seeds before him as he rode.
The seeds sprouted as they hit the soil, pushing down rapidly thickening roots and sending up coils of vines thick around as a horse’s torso, and throbbing like beating hearts, swelling at the nodes as they grew skyward.
***
“I tell you, Lightning, it is too quiet,” Merry June said as she and her steed passed the border between her kingdom and Jewel-by-the-Sea. “Every creature we’ve passed sleeps. It is just not normal.”
The horse whickered in agreement, tossing her head up in a horsey nod before neighing long and tremblingly. “Yes, I know, it feels creepy, as if some evil is waiting for us to find it. Let’s keep going. Whatever it is, we’re finding and fixing it. After all, I do need to get to Prince Jack and see if we’re a good pair or not, right?”
“Princess Merry June,” one of the guardsmen called once they’d crossed to a clearing from which the road to the Prime Territory of Jewel-by-the-Sea could be seen, “you’ve got to look at this.”
The Warrior Princess stopped Lightning, dismounted and plucked Zinger off the saddle before walking to the guardsman who’d called her. He was standing off to the side from a merchant’s closed wagon, pointing to a trail of blood coming from the wagon’s open door. The four horses at the head of the wagon and the wagon driver all looked like they’d fallen asleep in the middle of the road.
“The blood is relatively fresh, your highness,” the guardsman said as he stood aside for her to peep into the wagon. “The man inside and the woman with him both have slit throats, my princess, but I still hear them snoring, for the snores come from inside the wagon and not from outside.”
Knotting her brow, Merry June blinked and gave the guardsman a second look. She poked her head into the wagon and definitely heard snoring. She pulled her head back and the sound of the snoring softened, as if muffled. She did it again and found the same results. But the pool of blood outside the wagon and the slit throats of the people in it spoke a different language from the snores she was hearing, too.
The princess uttered a quick prayer for the people of the wagon, and their horses, too, before turning to her guardsmen and shaking her head. “There isn’t much we can do, for magick is afoot here — and not anything I can solve with my weaponry, or yours, just yet. Do not touch them, for now, and let us move down the road and into Everland, where we will seek answers. Mount up and ride, men.”
They traversed the road, riding on into the capital of Jewel-by-the-Sea, carefully passing the scattered slumberers on the street, along the verges and just inside the doorways of the kingdom’s shops and homes.
Merry June took this all in, including the town square’s fountain where jets of water were frozen in a crystalline sculpture. She dismounted to have a closer look and touched the unmoving water to find it wet, but not icy, and surveyed the surrounding area to find not a trace of rime or frost. In fact, it was a warm day, with all the promise of a harvest season still approaching, though the cold had set in across the border in Gladhandland. Strange, yes. Unsettling. She put herself on a higher alert, her mind racing to piece together all these things she’d seen so far.
The Palace was in her direct line of sight now and a rider on a black horse approached, with large, strange-looking trees bare of any kind of leaves sprouting rapidly behind the horseman in the gray cloak.
“Men, move on foot now, tether the horses here in the square,” she said, then addressed her personal guard captain directly. “Carlos, tell your men to move in clusters of six, formation eight. Fan out and be ready to fight magic as well as melee. Follow me.”
Merry June drew an arrow from her hidden quiver and nocked it into Zinger as she walked to meet the gray rider, arrow-point down, bow at the ready and her feet braced for shooting.
***
Monsters began tearing their way out of the strange trunks and bursting from the swollen nodes grown from Graem’s scattering of seeds. Some were wolf-like, but massive and slavering and covered in quills rather than fur. Others stood on two feet, their huge, bulging legs lumbering and solid, their chests like rainwater barrels and their small heads grotesque and inhuman, for all their humanoid shape.
The manlike ones tore up paving stones from the road and began to hurl them at Merry June’s contingent of guardsmen. The canine ones stalked, shooting quills off into the Gladhandland soldiers who were unfortunate enough to be within range.
Merry June took aim with her recurve bow, picking off the canine abominations with calm precision that she was definitely far from feeling. Her men began engaging the enemies they could, their war-cries shredding the morning’s eerie quiet and drowning out whatever snores were coming from the sleeping residents of Jewel-by-the-Sea.
The gray rider made a leaping dismount from his still-galloping horse and landed just feet away from Merry June with a cackle and a snort.
“So, you are the woman who comes to claim her Slumber Jack? Funny, but I expected a much bigger creature, not you, Your Slender Shortness,” Graem taunted the Warrior Princess, his arrogant, nasal tones belying the sharp flicking of his eyes between her sword and dagger as he drew a gnarled short staff from behind his cloak.
“And who,” Merry June asked while she circled warily about the beggar before her “might you be, mendicant?”
“Oh, just a traveler who is down on his luck. I used to be an enchanted jester, you see, but the king up there and his queen, they turned on me. They did not like my jokes and they turned me away and here, you see me fleeing for my life, for they would hang me.”
“You still have not told me your name, strange man,” Merry June kept as constant a distance between herself and the beggar as she could. “I don’t believe your yarn. You dress poorly, true, but that horse you rode is a rich man’s steed — and you rode it like you’ve ridden it for years. You are no poor jester, sir.”
Around her, the clashing of rock and weapon, of flesh against flesh and the screams of monster and man alike made a weird accompaniment to the equally surreal conversation she was having with the cloaked beggar.
“Then let me tell you the truth: I am Graem the Grim, and I was gravely offended by this land’s monarchs so I have brought to fruition a curse I laid on them years ago. This land, and all in it, belongs to me now,” Graem said, baring his teeth in a snarl as he brought his gnarled staff down on Merry June’s head. “Since you’re here, you are mine, too.”
The Warrior Princess parried the staff with her dagger, Flick, slowing the staff’s momentum enough for it to merely bounce off her head. She’d braced for a hard blow, nonetheless, and was just as surprised as Graem when the staff slid off her head harmlessly.
That small pause was enough for Graem to recover and pull his staff back to reverse and attack on the upswing, but Merry June was quick, too. She dodged to the side, kicked her opponent in the shin, and brought Gambit to bear. The longsword clashed along the staff’s knobby side and shaved quite a bit of wood off it.
The enchanter and the princess traded blows with their weapons and feet in this fashion, circling each other and taking what openings they could get, for several long seconds, until Merry June lunged forward with both weapons leading.
She caught Graem’s staff between sword and dagger as she stepped into his attack, reversed, and pulled both weapon hilts up and under his chin, snapping his jaw up with the force of the blows.
The enchanter sank to the road, stunned, and fell face-first into the remains of one of his canine constructs, out cold.
Merry June would have finished Graem right then and there when the captain of her guardsmen gave out a long scream of pain. One of the humanoid monsters had him by the groin and was lifting the man up off the ground. Merry June rushed to his aid and laid a long cut across the abomination’s back. Carlos, breathed deeply and stood his ground, wincing in pain but still holding enough pluck to fight with sword and shield.
Working together the two warriors decimated the monster before them, then progressed through the melee to kill off the rest. The monster carcasses melted into the pavement, revealing them for the illusions they truly were, if illusions could harm and kill as they did. Only ten of the twenty guardsmen Merry June had set out with still stood and fought. She looked upon the fallen of her ranks and prayed they were not dead, as they looked to her.
The Warrior Princess turned back to the spot where she’d left her gray-cloaked opponent only to find he, too, had vanished. The skirmish was over and she needed to make it to the Palace to find Prince Jack. For she doubted that the Prince would be well — if he were well, then that man would not have ridden out of the Palace as he did, would he?
“Carlos, tend the fallen. Bind their wounds, even if they seem lifeless. There is magick afoot and I will get to the bottom of it. Follow me into the Palace when you’re done here.”
“Aye, ma’am, please be safe.”
“Aye, Carlos, I’ll do my best. Keep your eyes peeled for that gray-cloaked coward. Don’t let him cast any spells if you can help it. He is more spellcaster than warrior, I think.”
***
Merry June pulled her white cloak about her as she entered the Palace. The chill inside the stone walls of the portcullis and crenellations, beneath the shadows of battlements, it meant she needed the cloak. The dark corners meant she’d have to keep her weapons on hand, for the darkness could hold more monsters and even a warrior princess had to tread with care and alert awareness.
She made her way across the courtyard, eyeing the arrow slits facing it with measured looks as she stalked inside, to the massive doors that stood wide open. Through the entryway and great room she walked, to the grand staircase and landings leading to the state rooms and living quarters.
Merry June checked the rooms systematically, finding candles and lamps still bright, their flames not flickering at all, though cold breezes blew in from below, down the corridors, through open windows.
She came upon the King, with his throat slit from ear to ear, laying at the foot of his throne in a most un-royal disarray. She passed through the door behind the throne room to the solarium where the Queen was slumped against her sewing chair, her blood upon her embroidery.
Finally, she found her way to the Prince’s bedchamber, the fire frozen in the grate still illuminating a black blade on the bed beside her betrothed’s head.
Merry June’s heart fell as she approached Prince Jack, thinking that he, too, had been murdered (what else is one to think when the deaths were caused by cut throats?) when she saw the fog of respiration on the gleaming black and silver of the sword beside Prince Jack’s face.
At the foot of the Prince’s purple-covered bed stood a mirror, a gleaming cheval glass that was just like hers. Beside it was a valet stand upon which a blood-red vest hung, its woven patterns changing in the firelight where everything else in the room seemed frozen in time.
Merry June’s hand went up to the ruby in her coronet diadem as she puzzled over what to do. There was no combat in this chamber, and her skills as a fighter were not needed now. Her hand came off the ruby as it began to glow unnaturally, something she beheld while glancing once more at the mirror.
***
Merry June saw her reflection, and the ruby’s intensifying glow, illumination that blinded her for the barest of moments before fading to show not her image, but that of Mag-Wa-Ien in a blue gown that flowed like the deepest seawater about her.
“Godchild, you have arrived.” Mag-Wa-Ien’s greeting was an upraised hand and a smile. “You must work quickly, for the evil Graem the Odious will be there soon. You must wake your betrothed. Bind his cut hand. Remove his other hand from the sword — and do not touch its blade. Put the red vest on him to wake him. Quickly. Graem ascends the stairs now.”
Recognizing Mag-Wa-Ien from her annual name-day visits, Merry June hastened to obey the enchantress. The Warrior Princess put her field mediker skills to use on the prince’s injured hand. She wrapped the black longsword’s blade in a portion of the thick purple coverlet and took firm grasp of the handguard before prying the Prince’s fingers from the hilt. She pulled him back to lean against the nightstand by the bed and wrestled him into the vest.
Prince Jack’s eyelids fluttered and opened slowly, as if he was coming out of a dream he could not abandon. He beheld Princess Merry June with the bemusement of a man presented with a nymph’s smile and asked her the stupidest question: “Are you an angel?”
“I am your betrothed and no angel, Prince Jack,” Merry June said with a sharp tone to her voice. “I suggest you shake whatever dreams you may still be dreaming and get yourself up off the floor. We’ve a fight on our hands. Your honored parents lie murdered, and their murderer is coming up to this room as we speak.”
With that, Merry June dropped a few throwing knives down on the nightstand as Prince Jack stood. She double-nocked Zinger and took aim at the chamber door as she nudged him with a foot. “Enemy at the door, Prince. Look sharp.”
A loud boom slammed the door open and Graem stood amid splinters and smoke with his hands held out front and a sinister grin on his face. “Ah, I now get two for the price of one, excellent,” he said as he reached into a belt pouch with one hand and made arcane gestures with the other.
Graem’s arcane gesture was interrupted by a throwing dagger that embedded itself in his upraised palm and an arrow in his shoulder. Prince and Princess both had excellent aim and more knives and arrows followed, none of them lethal hits, but every single one of them so painful the enchanter could not recall the spells he’d prepared.
Defiant still, the evil enchanter grinned. “Then just kill me. Have your revenge and seal my fate you royal bastard. I killed your parents and almost a hundred of your subjects, including the Captain of the Guard. I don’t deserve your mercy, but your anger will seal my spell. Shall I tell you what I did to your mother before I slit her throat? Shall I tell you what you’re going to see before you bury her?”
Graem’s voice dripped venom, calculated and pure, and Prince Jack would have let loose a killing throw had he not taken a deep breath and thought over Graem’s icy, disdainful tone. He laid a hand on Merry June’s shoulder just as she, too, was going to release an arrow into the enchanter’s eye.
“Don’t kill him yet,” Prince Jack said to Princess Merry June. “I can’t allow him to die until he can tell us how to undo the murders he’s committed, for I still hear my father’s roaring snore. His spirit is here yet, and I am sure my mother’s is, too. Something about his words tells me he is provoking us into doing just what he wants.”
“You lucky dolt,” Merry June said as she loosed another arrow to pin the evil enchanter to the wood paneling of the hall wall. “I’d just as soon have killed your nasty hide, but the prince has a point. I have men lying as if dead out in the town square and damned if I’ll have to tell their widows they’re truly gone. You will bring them back if I have to shoot the rest of your body full of arrows and not finish you off.”
Carlos and Merry June’s remaining men arrived at the Palace then, and followed the sound of voices, to the Prince’s Bedchamber. Graem couldn’t do much more than groan.
“Secure the enchanter Graem the Odious, Carlos, if you please,” the princess said in her most royal tones. “He’s the one with arrows sticking out of his body. Take his cloak and his pouch and if you find any weapons on him, take those, too. Leave the arrows and knives in.”
The princess strode up to the enchanter while the prince went about the rooms nearby, binding what wounds he found on the people there. His heart pounded in anger at what he saw, but he kept a hold on it as he went about his grim work.
Merry June took hold of one of the arrows she’d shot into the enchanter’s shoulders (she’d shot three), and twisted the shaft: “Tell me what it will take to reverse the deaths, spellcaster, or you will hurt even more than you already do. Talk.”
A scream rose from the depths of Graem as Merry June yanked out the arrow she’d twisted, tearing his muscle and sinew. Shafts of fiery pain shot up and down his chest and arm as he gasped like the fish he’d plucked from the water months earlier. But he clamped his whitening lips shut defiantly, staring down at the Princess even as his vision blurred.
“A tough guy, I see,” the princess muttered wryly. “Let’s see how you like it when I pull another.” And she did, yanking a high-pitched wail from Graem along with the second arrow pulled from his leg.
“You can’t undo it. You don’t love the prince. He does not love you.” Graem’s pain tinged his voice with squeals, even if his smugness still came through loud and clear.
“Fine, then we leave you full of arrows and knives in the dungeons until I do love the prince, and he loves me.” Princess Merry June shoved the arrow in her hand back into the enchanter’s leg and nodded at Carlos. “Take this scuzzbucket full of miasma down to the dungeons and keep him there until he talks.”
***
Merra Linda Janolyn Ruby Juggernaut Apple June, Warrior Princess and Her Royal Highness the Duchess of the Southern Reach of Gladhandland and Jacob Anderson Columbus Kirkwell Thomas Damien Evangelo Michael George Neil Andorian-Tannis, His Royal Highness and Duke of the Everland, Territory Prime of Jewel-by-the-Sea met again in the hallway and sat down on the steps of the landing, the only comfortable place to talk in the plush palace full of sleeping folk.
The two decided to put the human sleepers in the palace and in sheltered parts of the grounds in comfortable beds, makeshift or not. Ditto for the animals. They, and Merry June’s troops, spent the day doing just that, and binding cut throats and other injuries as they went.
The prince, princess and the princess’ soldiers dined late that night on the loaves and jerky the princess had brought with her supplies, as well as fruit from the Palace trees. Lightning was stabled in the Great Room temporarily, with treats of oats and fallen golden apples from the Royal Orchards for her supper.
The betrothed couple talked way into the wee hours, finding common ground and liking what they saw. He was handsome after all and, for all her hoydenish ways and warrior’s mien, she was beautiful in her enchanted wedding dress.
They had begun to hold hands and flirt, in their own intellectual and warrior-like ways. They sparred with wooden staves and jousted in spirited debates. They cooked together and ate together, learning how the other liked their meals.
Their days and nights were spent tending to the sleepers and learning what made each other tick. They were growing closer by the hour and, a month and a half later, agreed that their parents had been right to betroth them while still unborn, for they were, indeed, well-matched, his mischief to her discipline and his bookishness to her questioning mind.
Oh, and it did help things along that they actually found each other very, very attractive indeed, she in her preferred outfits of boots, trews and exercise shirts (borrowed from him) and he in his soft moccasins, loose linen shirts and fitted pants. The young, after all, had all the advantage of bodies that were easy to keep fit with a training yard at their disposal — which they used every day.
Graem continued to scream his agony in the dungeons, and Mag-Wa-Ien kept her watch over him, having arrived at the Palace of Jewel-by-the-Sea weeks after he’d been shackled to the wall and locked in a cell. She’d been casting spells to keep the evil enchanter alive enough for interrogation.
“My godchildren had the best gifts from me, you old, smelly pile of goat dung,” Mag-Wa-Ien said with a smile. “How does it feel to have your comeuppance, brother?”
“I hate you so much.”
“I figured.”
“I will never tell them that all it takes to reverse this curse I laid is a kiss of true love, you useless pot of dragon piss.”
“You don’t have to. They’re right there, listening at the dungeon door, you unmitigated disaster of explosive slug diarrhea.” Mag-Wa-Iyen pulled out the projectiles left in Graem’s body. “You always were a sissy when it came to taking pain. Mother said so then and it is true now. Just you wait until she gets here. You are so going to get it.”
“ARRRRRRRRRGH! All I wanted was a kingdom of my own and for people to be as nice to me as they are to you!”
“Ha, weakling. Mom’s here and you’re in a load of trouble.”
“Mag-Wa-Ien, Graem, I told you both to play nice,” a tall buxom enchantress in a floor-sweeping gown of black velvet swept into the room, her red hair a beacon in the dim light and her eyes green with ire. “Now, Little Graem the Odious, I am going to deal with you first before I hand you over to your father for more punishment. Undo your curse or suffer more.”
“But, Mom…”
“Don’t ‘but Mom’ me, mister.”
“Why does she always get her way?”
“Because I’m the good child, you jackanapes.”
***
“So, Merry June…” Prince Jack said slowly as they sat on their spot in the middle of the Grand Staircase, “do you think you could stand having me kiss you?”
Merry June smiled and drew closer to her prince. “I could. But can you stand having me kiss you back?”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Jack put a hand gently on the nape of Merry June’s neck and brought her lips up to his for their first kiss and they stayed locked in that snog for a good long while before surfacing to breathe.
“Mmmmm. You can kiss,” Merry June said in a low, sultry voice. “I want to do that again.”
“Marry me, Warrior Princess,” Jack said when they broke their second kiss.
He just had to take the third kiss the princess laid upon his royal lips for a yes as the sleepers in the Palace began to wake up.
They ended that kiss only because two voices that were very familiar to the prince interrupted their lip-lock.
“Now, son, is that any way to kiss your princess? Sitting on the stairs like a couple of kids hiding from your tutors?” The King was pleased to see his son hale and hearty and kissing a beautiful girl and all, but there was still propriety to think about.
“Oh, son! Look at the two of you,” the Queen of Jewel-by-the-Sea said to the sound of her clapping hands. “I knew Serendipity would have a lovely daughter. But why is she dressed like a lad in training for the King’s Army, pray tell?”
The prince and princess laughed heartily and hugged the wakened King and Queen.
***
The royal wedding invitations had been sent out and no one, not even Graem the Grim, was excluded (he was there in chains, but, hey, he did get invited). The two kings and the two queens flanked their offspring and the humongous doors of the Great Hall of Jewel-by-the-Sea were opened wide to the Palace courtyard.
The castle’s portcullis gate had been thrown open and the moat drawbridge lowered so the cheering and merry-making people in the town square could witness the wedding, too.
The enchanters and enchantresses of the two kingdoms were all there, blessing the event and making merry with everyone else — well, except for Graem, who was seething silently under his mother and father’s immobilizing power.
He’d had all his magick privileges taken away from him and he was grounded for two millennia, except for this one outing from their home in the crater of a volcano at the edge of Jewel-by-the-Sea.
The bride and groom were in their wedding finery: He in a poet’s white silk shirt and close-fitting pants of fine-spun black wool shot through with strands of silver thread and she in a riding gown overlaid with fine adamantine armor.
Both of them carried their swords in gleaming ornamental scabbards of gold inlaid with matching gemstones set as mosaics of their combined heraldic patterns. Night’s Bane now belonged well and truly to Prince Jack, and obeyed him as a good sword should. It also played nice with Princess Merry June’s Gambit and Flick when they sparred.
The cleric in charge of the ceremony ended the rites with these words: “And do you both vow to live happily ever after?”
“We do.”
