Elizabeth Ann Scarborough - Argonia 04 - The Christening Quest

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The Christening Quest
v1.0
September 2006
The Christening Quest
Elizabeth Scarborough
ATTACK OF THE LOVESICK DRAGON
The spirit’s voice broke off with a screech. A glowering rider mounted on a froth-
flecked black steed bore down on them, glaring at them from dark eyes burning
above a black face covering. He drew his saber, driving them towards the water. As
Rupert stepped backwards, drenching himself to the knees, the sky suddenly
darkened, the rider’s horse shied, and the rider, not giving full attention to his
mount, slipped sideways.
Grippeldice’s front claws grazed the part in Carole’s hair as the dragon overflew
them and landed in front of them, flaming. The horse reared, screaming, and bolted,
rider clinging desperately to its inane, streaming cloak trailing smoke and sparks as
the terrified mount galloped heedlessly off down the trail.
The dragon beat her wings once and started to take off after it, but Rupert cried out
and Carole, translating, stopped the dragon with a word:
“We must reach the desert before they discover we are coming. Otherwise, I fear we
will never find Miragenia or the child again.”
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The Christening Quest
contents
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER X
CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XIII
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The Christening Quest
THE CHRISTENING QUEST
A Bantam Book
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1985 by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough.
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by
mimeograph or any other means, without permission.
For information address: Bantam Books, Inc.
ISBN 0-553-25122-8
Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the
portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada.
Bantam Books, Inc., 666 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10103.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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The Christening Quest
For David Michael Ruthstrom, Minstrel Extraordinaire and Stalwart Questing
Companion, with abiding affection.
Also for my parents, Don and Betty Scarborough, my brother, Monte Scarborough,
and Greg Herriford, Jeannie Jett, and Charles and Karen Parr for their help and
inspiration. Special thanks to Tania Opland for listening, and to Tim Henderson,
songwriter and minstrel, for his special insight into gypsies.
I would also like to acknowledge Scottish songwriter & singer Archie Fisher whose
song “Witch of the Westmereland” inspired the initial meeting between Rupert and
Carole.
CHAPTER I
^ »
Banshee shrieks and shuddering moans pealed from the stone walls, bouncing from
buttressed arch to arrow slot, lending the whole north wing all the peaceful charm
of a dungeon. Rupert Rowan, prince and diplomatic trainee, winced and recrossed
his long legs, sinking back into the velvet padded chair and trying to maintain his
carefully cultivated serenity despite his sister’s anguished wails from the other side
of the iron-hinged door. He had wearied of pacing hours ago and now had settled
down to present a good example to the occasional subject who passed by him in the
corridor. Most of these subjects were women, and many of them pretended not to
hear Bronwyn’s caterwauling, which Rupert thought very decent of them. Bronwyn
was supposed to be a warrior. Why did she have to choose a time when he was in
earshot to give up stoicism?
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The Christening Quest
A buxom wench with a pert face and a corona of golden braids smiled warmly at
him, masking the expression he frequently saw in female faces with one of
sympathy. “There now, Your Highness, don’t worry. The hollering relieves the pains
some, see? Every woman does it in labor. She won’t even remember this when she
holds the little one in her arms. You’ll see.”
He smiled at her, a bit pitifully, striving to present a visage that would inspire her to
clasp it to her bosom. “You’re very kind. Will it be much longer do you think?”
She smoothed the clean, white towels over her arm with one shapely hand. “Not
much, I should think. Though the first always takes longer. Is it an Argonian custom
to have a male relative in attendance, Your Highness? Forgive me, but we were
curious, we girls, if you were here because Prince Jack couldn’t be, being in Brazoria
as I’m sure it’s needful he be, though very hard on our young lady, your sister, it is.
We think it ever so sweet that her brother should come be near her in her husband’s
stead. None of his folk offered, not even the women.” She blushed a pretty pink and
covered her pretty mouth with her fingertips. “No disrespect intended, milord.”
“None taken, I’m sure. We all know what gypsies are like. As a matter of fact I—”
A particularly blood-curdling bellow emanated from the royal bedchamber. The girl
started, gave him an apologetic smile and a half-curtsy, and scurried off, banging
through the door hip and shoulder first.
He had been about to explain to her that the last thing he intended was to be at
Bronwyn’s bedside for her birthing. He had, in fact, only been stopping off on the
way from his fostering in Wasimarkan, where he was learning diplomacy at the
behest of his Royal Mother, Queen Amberwine. The Queen had rightly pointed out
that with an elder sister as Princess Consort of Ablemarle (having lost the title of
Crown Princess of Argonia when her brothers were born), elder twin brothers (one
of whom, Raleigh, would be King, the other of whom, Roland, would be war leader),
there was very little else for her fourth child to do that would be useful.
The Queen had declared with unusual forcefulness for a person of faery blood that
she was not about to have a son of hers turn into a good-for-nothing knight errant
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The Christening Quest
bullying the populace and using his royal perogatives to rape and pillage. It had
happened elsewhere, and Rupert was no less fond of the phenomena than his
mother. He was a highly peaceable and loving sort by nature—so loving, in fact, that
by the age of twenty, his frost giant ancestry caused him to be so unusually tall and
well grown and his faery blood lent him such uncommon beauty and charm that he
was a cause for alarm among the fathers and husbands in the Wasimarkanian
Court. To the men he was called, behind his back (for it would never do to offend so
powerful an ally as the Royal House of Argonia) Rowan the Rake. To the women,
into whose eyes he gazed soulfully and whose hands he kissed tenderly, almost
without regard for age, station, or pulchritude, he was Rowan the Romantic. He
would miss those charitable and generous ladies, one and all, but his mentors,
under pressure, had declared that with princesses of six major countries in a swoon
for his attentions, he would need more advanced lessons in diplomacy than they had
to offer. They referred him back to his own family for further instruction.
The stop in Ablemarle’s capitol to visit Bronwyn had been an impulse. His ship was
docking to take on cargo. He had not seen Bronwyn in several years, and she had
always been his favorite in the family. She was as good a fighter if not a better one
than Roland—at least on the practice field—and she had had marvelous adventures
when she was still much younger than Rupert. When Rupert tired of hearing of
those adventures, which he sometimes did since he always wanted to learn
something new, Bronwyn was most adept at making up tales to amuse him.
He almost failed to recognize the wild-eyed creature who greeted him and clung to
his hand, her face so pale that every freckle stood out like a pock, her wiry red hair
loose and straggling in every direction, her belly great with child. The self-sufficient
big sister of his youth all but pleaded with him to remain until her child was born, as
it was to be any day, she begged him to stay since her husband, Prince Jack, could
not. Rupert had failed to understand any more than the pretty lady in waiting why
any masculine family member should be a comfort to Bronwyn in what was first and
foremost and unarguably woman’s work, but he could not deny her. He had stayed.
A long, gasping cry ended in an ear-splitting scream, was followed closely with
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The Christening Quest
another cry, this time unmistakably the squall of an infant. Rupert jumped to his
feet and strode to the door, leaving his rowan shield leaning against the door. All the
Rowan offspring usually carried the shields made by their father as birthing gifts on
their persons, for the rowan wood was proof against magic. But he was in his sister’s
hall and far more excited than he had thought he would be at the advent of this new
relative, and three strides was hardly an incautious distance.
The door flung back against him and the girl with whom he had been speaking
bustled out, brushing against him, a whimpering blanketed bundle cradled against
her breast.
“Wait,” he said quickly. “Can I see?”
She lifted the triangle of blanket just above the crook of her elbow and showed him
a wrinkled, red little face which began to screw itself into another scream. “It’s a
girl,” the maid informed him. “Isn’t she adorable?”
“Quite,” he said, trying to sound sincere. “I’ll just go congratulate Bronwyn.”
“Oh, not yet, milord,” she said. “She’s getting her bath and then she must rest a bit.
I’ll be bathing this child to be presented to her when she wakes.”
“A bath?” he asked blankly. “Oh, of course, the baby would be needing a bath. Well,
um, may I watch? I’ve never seen a new child bathed before.”
“I don’t see why not,” the girl said with a saucy, calculating look from under her
lashes, “But you Argonians certainly have strange ways, if you’ll pardon my saying
so, sir.”
“I’d pardon you almost anything, my dear,” he said politely, and opened the door to
an adjoining chamber for her.
The baby’s bath was interesting chiefly in that Rupert thought it very convenient to
be able to bathe an entire human being in a wash basin that barely fit his two hands.
Otherwise it was rather messy. The maid herself was far more intriguing, and he
proceeded to get to know her better while his new niece slept in her cradle, carved in
the shape of a swan and newly decked with pink ribbons by the lady whose ear he
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The Christening Quest
was nibbling.
The enormous draft that blasted open the double doors took both Rupert and his
companion by surprise, as did the fact that neither of them were able to do so much
as raise a finger to lift themselves from the tiled floor where they had been flung.
Indeed, Rupert could not so much as twitch his knee from where it undoubtedly
inconvenienced his paramour, lodged in her midsection. He watched helplessly as a
rather large rug whisked in on the blast. Two gentlemen with blue robes and
bandages tied round their heads with blue cords lifted the baby from her cradle and
onto the rug and whisked back out again. They failed to blast the door shut behind
them and Rupert could hear doors banging, presumably all the way down the
corridors to the main entrance, as the rug flew through unhindered.
Sensation returned to him as the last distant door slammed back again, and he
jumped up, still stunned. The whole incredible event had happened so fast he
thought perhaps he had been napping in his new love’s arms. But the cradle was
empty and when he ran to the arrow slit in the corridor outside, he could make out
the outline of a flat flying object with two figures on it. Behind him, the girl
scrambled to her feet, clutching her bodice together, and scampered into his sister’s
chamber. Rupert sagged against the arrow slit for a moment and watched the rug
disappear over the city, over the masts of the boats docked in the harbor, and far far
out over the line of greenish-gray that marked the vastness of the Gulf of Gremlins.
When no outcry erupted from Bronwyn’s chamber even after several moments, he
cracked the door, expecting to see her in a swoon. Instead, she sat up in bed, her
hair splashing like blood upon the pillow, her eyes staring straight ahead. The ladies
around her started nervously, but she quieted them with one look and bade Rupert
enter with another.
“Bronwyn, sister, I don’t know what to say,” he began. “I was helping your nurse
with the baby’s bath and we had only just put the dear little one to sleep and were
chatting when—”
She took his hand in both of hers and pulled him down to sit beside her, then
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The Christening Quest
wrapped her arms around him. She sobbed wearily and almost noiselessly, her face
against his chest, her tears soaking his fine embroidered tunic. His own tears wet
her hair, and he held her and rocked her until she was so quiet he thought her
sleeping. Then she disentangled herself and lay back against her pillows, her face
full of grief and something else that he could have been imagining as a reflection of
his own shame at having been caught dallying when those who depended on him
were threatened. The look on her face undid him, so that his own tears flowed anew.
Her eyes turned outward, toward him, again and she reached up to mop his tears
with the edge of her sheet.
“By the Mother, Bronwyn, I am so sorry. I had no idea—”
“I know, Ru. I know. I had no right to involve you without telling you but I thought
they wouldn’t strike so soon, that they’d wait until she was a little older, until after
her christening—though why I imagined Miragenians respecting anything but their
wretched Profit—”
“You know who they were?” he asked, incredulous.
She nodded.
“You knew this would happen?”
Another nod. “I never told you the whole end of the affair with the magic
pomegranate I won from the sunken castle in Frostingdung. I had promised it to the
Miragenians, in exchange for their help for our father in the Great War. They
fulfilled their end of the bargain so readily I knew that the pomegranate must be of
great importance. I learned that it had the power to undo all magic and sow
disenchantment and despair in its stead. I could not, simply could not, place such a
hideous weapon in the hands of those who care only to reap more profit than their
competitors. As I told you, I disposed of it, or rather, Jack did, flinging it into the
deepest crevasse of the highest glacier he could find. But the Miragenians
demanded, as honorable payment of my debt to them, possession of my first-born
child. Jack bargained with them until they agreed to keep her for only fifteen years
—”
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The Christening Quest
“Only fifteen years? Great Mother in the Ground, Bronwyn, how could you live with
such a bargain?”
She shrugged, a mere hopeless twist of her mouth and clenching of her shoulder.
“One never knows what will happen. We thought perhaps we would not marry, Jack
and I, as we had planned, but even if we had not loved each other for so long, the
alliance was necessary for both Argonia and Ablemarle. Then we hoped I would be
barren, and tried to see that it was so but—” She rolled her eyes and sniffed,
disgusted with herself for her failure to keep from her husband.
“I understand,” Rupert said quickly.
“That’s why Jack’s away now, I know it. He couldn’t bear to be here when they took
her. He’s been strange ever since I told him I’d conceived. And in truth, I don’t
blame him. I wouldn’t be here either if I could help it. But I can’t even ride after
them and offer myself as my own baby’s nurse. For the honor of Argonia, the
bargain must be respected, hard as it is, and I cannot hope to see my child again
until she’s almost a woman. But, oh, Rupert, I did think they’d let me see her
christened first, protected by the gifts we could give her. There wouldn’t be many, of
course, considering the circumstances. We’ve both been in secret disgrace all these
years among our families because of it. The gypsies, except for his father and
grandfather, are scarcely speaking to Jack—”
At that a black-haired maid who had been scrubbing the floor beside the bed
slapped down the wet cloth, wiped her hands on her skirts, and with a passionate
and unreadable look from coal-dark eyes fled the room.
“Oh, dear. I forgot about her. Gypsies are so sensitive.” She collapsed into the pillow
for a moment, then suddenly sat straight up, swinging her legs over the side of the
bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, restraining her.
“I know. I’ll disguise myself as a man and go after them. I don’t know if I can find
Miragenia again but I did it once. I’ll take the christening gifts with me so that even
if I’m discovered, my daughter will have her birthright…”
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