Дэйв Дункан - Magic Casement

for Janet, sine qua non

Since long before the coming of Gods and mortals, the great rock of Krasnegar had stood amid the storms and ice of the Winter Ocean, resolute and eternal. Throughout long arctic nights it glimmered under the haunted dance of aurora and the rays of the cold, sad moon, while the icepack ground in useless anger around its base. In summer sun its yellow angularity stood on the shining white and blue of the sea like a slice of giants' cheese on fine china. Weather and season came and went and the rock endured unchanging, heeding them no more than it heeded the flitting generations of mankind.

Two sides fell sheer to the surf, pitted with narrow ledges where only the crying seabirds went, but the third face ran down less steeply, and on that long mad slope the little town adhered as grimly as a splatter of swallows' nests. Above the humble clutter of the houses, at the very crest of the rock, the castle pointed black and spiky turrets to the sky.

No mere human hand could have raised those stones in a land so remote or a setting so wild. The castle had been built long centuries before by the great sorcerer Inisso, to serve as palace for himself and for the dynasty he founded. His descendants ruled there still, in direct male line unbroken… but the present monarch, good King Holindarn, beloved of his people, had but a single child—his daughter, Inosolan.

Summer came late to Krasnegar. When inhabitants of milder lands were counting their lambs and chicks, the brutal storms still rolled in from the Winter Ocean. While those lucky southerners gathered hay and berries, the wynds and alleyways of the north lay plugged with drifts. Even when night had been almost banished from the pallid arctic sky, the hills ashore stayed brown and sere. Every year was the same. Every year a stranger might have given up hoping and assumed that summer was not about to happen at all. The locals knew better and in patient resignation they waited for the change.

Always their faith was rewarded at last. With no warning, a cheerful wind would blunder in to sweep the ice floes from the harbor, the hills would throw off their winter plumage almost overnight, and the snowdrifts in the alleyways would shrink rapidly to sullen gray heaps sulking in shadowed corners. A few days' rain and the world was washed green again, fair weather following foul as fast as a blink. Spring in Krasnegar, the inhabitants said, had to be believed in to be seen.

Now it had happened. Sunlight poured through the castle windows. The fishing boats were in the water. The tide was out, the beaches were clear of ice and obviously eager to be ridden on. Inos came early down to breakfast, busily spinning plans for the day.

The great hall was almost deserted. Even before the fine weather had arrived, the king’s servants had driven the livestock over the causeway to the mainland. Others would now be outside attending to the wagons and the harbor, cleaning up the winter’s leavings, and preparing for the hectic work of summer. Inos’s tutor, Master Poraganu, was conveniently indisposed with his customary springtime rheumatics; there would be no objections from him, and she could head for the stables as soon as she had grabbed a quick bite.

Aunt Kade sat at the high table in solitary splendor.

Momentarily Inos debated the wisdom of making a fast retreat and finding something to eat in the kitchens, but she had already been noticed. She continued her approach, therefore, practicing poise and trusting that a regal grace would compensate for shabby attire.

“Good morning, Aunt,” she said cheerfully. “Beautiful morning?”

“Good morning, my dear.”

“You’re earlier than—ooof!” Inos had not intended to make that last remark, but her breeches tried to bite her in half as she sat down. She smiled uneasily, and her sleeves slid quietly up her wrists.

Aunt Kade pursed her lips. Aunts could be expected to disapprove of princesses arriving at meals in dirty old riding habits. “You appear to have outgrown those clothes, my dear.”

Kade herself, of course, was dressed as if for a wedding or a state function. Not one silver hair was out of place, and even for breakfast she had sprinkled jewelry around her neck and over her fingers. In honor of the arrival of summer, she had donned her pale-blue linen with the tiny pleats.

Inos restrained an unkind impulse to remark that Kade appeared to have outgrown the pale-blue linen. Kade was short, Kade was plump, and Kade was growing plumper. The wardrobe she had brought back with her two years ago was barely adequate now, and the local seamstresses were all at least two generations out of date in fashioning attire for ladies of quality.

“Oh, they’ll do,” Inos said airily. “I’m only going along the beach, not leading a parade.”

Aunt Kade dabbed at her lips with a snowy napkin. “That will be nice, my dear. Who is going with you?”

“Kel, I hope. Or Ido… or Fan…” Rap, of course, had long since departed for the mainland. So had many, many others.

“Kel will be helping me.” Kade frowned. “Ido? Not the chambermaid?”

Inos’s heart sank. It would not help to mention that Ido was an excellent rider and that the two of them had been out six or eight times already recently in much worse weather than this. “There’ll be somebody.” She smiled thanks at old Nok as he brought her a dish of porridge.

“Yes, but who?” Kade’s china-blue eyes assumed the tortured look they always did in these confrontations with her willful niece. “Everyone is very busy just now. I shall need to know who is going with you, my dear.”

“I’m a very competent horsewoman, Aunt.”

“I’m sure you are, but you must certainly not go out riding without suitable attendants. That would not be ladylike. Or safe. So you will find out who is available and let me know before you leave?”

Restraining her temper, Inos made noncommittal noises to the porridge.

Kade smiled with relief… and apparently with complete innocence. “You promise, Inos?”

Trapped! “Of course, Aunt.”

Such babying was humiliating! Inos was older than Sila, the cook’s daughter, who was already married and almost a mother.

“I am having a small salon this morning. Nothing formal, just some ladies from the town… tea and cakes. You would be very welcome to join us.”

On a day like this? Tea and cakes and burgesses' fat wives? Inos would rather muck out stables.

Disaster! There was no one. Even the youngest and most inadequate stableboy seemed to have been assigned duties of world- shattering importance that could not be postponed. A frenzy of activity possessed everyone still remaining in the castle, and there were few of those anyway. The boys had gone to the hills or the boats. The girls were busy in the fields or the fish sheds. There was no one.

No one of her rank! That was the real problem. All of Inos’s friends were the children of her father’s servants, for Krasnegar possessed no nobility below its king, and no minor gentry either, unless one counted the merchants and burgesses. Her father counted them; Aunt Kade did so unwillingly. But servants and gentry alike, the boys were vanishing into trades, the girls into matrimony. There was no one around with leisure to escort a princess, and the prospect of that spirited gallop along the sands began to fade like a mirage.