Dennis McKiernan: Once Upon a Winter's Night

Camille took Alain’s hand. “Perhaps the same someone who cast sleep upon you, my love, or so I do think happened the night you held my note, and most likely the night before.”

Alain’s grey eyes turned grim. “If it is true that a mage aided the Trolls, we need search the citadel for him.”

Camille frowned. “Search we should, yet I think no mage is here, for surely he would have attended the wedding were it so.”

“Mayhap you are right,” said Alain, “yet if there is no mage here now, he may one day return, and we must be ready.” He paused a moment and then added, “I’ll ask Big Jack and Kolor and his crew to help me search the castle, and if we find no mage, then we’ll stand ward against his return.”

Camille nodded and said, “When we search we must be alert for someone streaming tatters and tendrils of shadow, for that is what I saw when the Goblins came to Summerwood Manor, and again when I believe you were bespelled by sleep.

“Yet, heed, a mage is not all we need to seek, for Lord Kelmot told me there were seven Seals of Orbane. Two were used to curse you, Alain-one by Dre’ela and one by Olot, all to gain control of the Summerwood-but what of the other five? Surely those we need to find.”

Alain said, “Agreed. And if any are found, they must be destroyed.”

Raseri growled. “I wouldn’t be so quick to destroy them, Prince Alain, for they do have some good uses.”

“How can anything that curses be good?” asked Camille.

Raseri turned his yellow eyes upon her and said, “Two were needed to trap Orbane in the Castle of Shadows; I know, for I was there.”

Camille’s eyes flew wide at this bit of news, but Alain said, “Then that leaves three.”

“I would help you search,” said Rondalo, “but the iron-”

Camille laid a hand on the Elf’s arm. “I would not have you nor Raseri be anguished any longer. Alain and Big Jack and the iron-bearing Dwarves and I can deal with that which is yet to be done, and I would ask you to go away from here and to a distant place of comfort.”

Raseri gazed at Camille and Alain and said, “But I would fly you both back to the Summerwood.”

“We will sail back with Captain Kolor on the North Wind, ” said Camille.

“Then I would suggest, my lady,” said Rondalo, “that you sail around the Sea of Mist rather than across it. They say there’s a monster within.”

“There is,” said Camille, grimly. “It took thirteen of Kolor’s best down into the sea.”

“One day you will have to tell me that tale,” said Rondalo. “It sounds like one the bards should sing.”

“I would hear it as well,” said Raseri. “But not here amid the twist of iron.” Then he looked at the Elf and shifted a wing. “Rondalo?”

Rondalo reached out and took Camille’s hand and kissed it. Then he bowed to Alain and said, “You are fortunate indeed.”

Alain nodded, then gripped Rondalo’s hand, and said, “Come to Summerwood Manor, my friend, for, as a bard, you must hear her sing.”

Rondalo quirked a smile and winked at Camille and said, “He’s not yet heard your tale, eh?”

Camille laughed and said, “Not yet, Rondalo, but soon.” Alain looked at Camille and then Rondalo, once again reservation in his gaze.

Then Rondalo strode up the ramp and mounted Raseri, and the Dragon said, “I, too, will come to Summerwood Manor, when it is time.” Then Raseri looked at the stone castle and a small lick of fire curled from his mouth. “It’s been long since I did battle with one of magekind, yet I will return now and again to see if a mage is about.”

Rondalo grinned and his hand went to the pommel of his sword. “I will accompany you, fell Drake.”

“Done and done,” said Raseri. Then he looked down at Camille and Alain and said, “Shield your eyes.”

Camille and Alain each put a hand to forehead, and with thunderous flapping of his leathery wings, Raseri took to the air, dust and sand and small pebbles swirling and pelting about in the courtyard below.

Raseri circled once and again, then came swooping in low o’er the wall, and he called out, “Had I known that this was the place east of the sun and west of the moon, you could have been here much sooner.”

Booming with laughter, up he flew and up, spiralling into the sky, and then he arrowed away and was soon lost to sight.

When the Dragon was gone, Big Jack and Kolor and the Dwarven burial crew came in through the gate. And Kolor looked at Camille and Alain, and asked, “What did he have to say?”

Alain took a deep breath and then exhaled. And he replied, “He told us this was Orbane’s stronghold, and three of the cursed seals are missing, and there may be a mage about.”

That night, Camille and Alain took to one of the abandoned houses in the small seaport town, and they lay down together for the first time in a year and a day and a whole moon beyond… yet even as they kissed, even as a wee bit of fire kindled in the heart of each, both Camille and Alain fell asleep of weariness.

The next dawning, though, after grain and a cup of water had been set out for Scruff, Alain took Camille gently in his arms and kissed her long and deeply, she returning his ardor. And they explored one another most thoroughly, Alain quickening, Camille softening, fire running through their loins. He slipped inside her, and she rose to meet him, and in the sharing did they complement and fulfill one another and become complete themselves.

Scruff paid no heed to the gasps and moans of either, nor of Camille’s calling out of “Oh, Alain. Oh, Mithras, sweet Mithras.”

A moon altogether they searched the citadel-Orbane’s former stronghold-with the Dwarves tapping on walls and floors and lintels and mantels and stairwells and corners and book-cases and desks and other such, looking for hidden panels, secret doors, disguised caches and catches and levers, without any success. Yet in some chambers in the towers they discovered scrolls and tomes and alembics and astrolabes, and containers of minerals and powders, and boxes of dried plants and flasks and vials of liquids, and crystals and stone tiles marked with runes, and jars of various animal parts, many suspiciously like those of Humans and perhaps of other beings, and five decks of arcane cards somewhat like those Lisane had used, though these held symbols and depictions that to Camille seemed somehow obscene. In a room far below, past the dungeons deep, they found more scrolls and tomes, pamphlets as well, along with mortars and pestles and mineral salts and burners and the like. Too, there was evidence-water and a sleeping pallet and food partially eaten, food gone stale but not moldy-that this room had of recent been used, yet by whom, none could say.

But of shadow-streaming mages and clay amulets-the Seals of Orbane-they found nought whatsoever.

In that same moon the citadel itself was cleansed of all traces of Goblins and Trolls, the former slaves discovering a large and unused supply of soap with which to wash down the floors and walls and tables and counters and all other surfaces the Trolls and Goblins had defiled. Much of the bedding had to be burned, as it was clearly beyond redemption, though stores of cloth were discovered, and the Summerwood seamstresses set about making new sheets and coverings.

In that moon as well, the former slaves declared Alain and Camille to be the new prince and princess of L’Ile de Camille, for that is what they now called it.

Finally, Alain decided that they had searched all they could, and he gathered together the populace, and he asked them what they would.

“My lord,” said one of the former slaves, “I and mine would stay, for in spite of ill memories the isle itself is quite pleasant, with rain aplenty and good soil and fair weather for the most. With its bountiful sea and plentiful crops, we could find no better were we to return whence we came.”