by John C. Adams
in Issue 93, October 2019
Bored, Crown Princess Riley thought, fighting the urge to kick her heels against the wooden chair.
The young wife gazed around the great hall at Liosmor. Her new father-in-law, Padraig o’Eira, snuck a stern glance at her out of the side of his eye and Riley sighed.
Nothing escaped the king’s eagle-eyed attention. And he was unlikely to sympathize if a young married woman under his roof proclaimed her life dull. In the opinion of an old man like Padraig o’Eira, a crown princess’s life was full of interest – embroidery, care of her dress, serving her husband at table, serving him in other ways upstairs later, singing, and of course welcoming a never-ending stream of guests to her father-in-law’s halls.
When Padraig raised an arch eyebrow, Riley blushed and stared at her pale little hands, demurely clasped in the lap of her green-silk dress.
This wasn’t what the captivating Lady Riley had expected from marriage when Nolan had stolen across the border into South Eira and helped her escape from the confines of her father’s castle. Nolan had eloped with her right under the watchful eye of Lord Finial, days before her formal betrothal to King Jerome van Murkar was expected to take place. Whatever excitement Riley had anticipated as she and Nolan galloped across the verdant fields of Eira to his father’s capital, marriage so far hadn’t lived up to those expectations.
The queen pursed her lips and sat up spine straight, her lower back arched primly. Riley copied Her Majesty’s posture as faithfully as she could, and Padraig’s craggy face softened into a smile. Riley chanced a glance at Nolan. Her young husband sprawled easily against his chair back, elbow drooping over the side of the armrest. He winked nonchalantly at his bride, and Riley blushed furiously at the memory of the lovemaking that had thrilled them both this morning and delayed their arrival downstairs until almost eleven o’clock, when the king’s daily audience was due to begin.
When Padraig caught a hint of the thoughts passing between his eldest son and brand new daughter-in-law, he slapped his knees and belly laughed at what had caused their tardiness.
“If being late down produces an heir for my boy soon enough, you’ll hear no complaints from me,” he said.
*****
As the royal household was rising from the dinner table that evening, Nolan fumbled his way through an even less convincing excuse than the one that had gained him a couple of hours’ grace to visit his current mistress – the daughter of a shopkeeper in a market town on the road to Bui – yesterday evening. Riley didn’t bother to enquire. Nolan would tire of the young woman in the same way he tired of all the women he bedded. Tonight, the gossip flying around Liosmor was that he would be riding out in the other direction, not to visit Bui but towards Carn, to sleep with the wife of the chieftain there.
The king frowned at the sight of his son flailing his way through the flimsiest of excuses, but as Padraig rose to his feet the queen caught his sleeve. Riley attempted to present as stoical a face as possible.
She loved Nolan with all her heart, but although he’d been a stranger to her when she eloped with him, she’d known already what the crown prince was. Feckless, most certainly. Unreliable, to be sure. But charming, too, and delightful fun to be around. The hours they spent alone together riding, singing, or playing the flute and fiddle were never dull.
Riley let Nolan go without attempting to lure him back upstairs instead. There was no point. In the early days of their marriage, she had soaked her pillow with bitter tears, hurled recriminations peppered with fruity curses and expletives, and finally exhausted herself into stony silence. None of it had done any good. Nolan merely shrugged off the complaints of his bride and visited his mistresses anyway. And the hours they were forced into each other’s company by royal protocol weighed far more heavily on them both when he did return.
Padraig offered his daughter-in-law his arm and suggested a walk on the ramparts. He processed with Riley out of the great hall and up the wooden steps. The evening air was cool and refreshing after the heat of the day. The king lit his pipe and puffed away until the burn was established.
A heron brooded on the far end of the ramparts, but when one of the guards went to shoo it away, Padraig called the lad back.
“Leave it be! The sacred bird of Eira is always welcome on my walls. Far grander than the mangy old raven of Murkar, eh, Riley?”
“Right now, Father, I’d settle for being any sort of avian.”
Padraig tapped the ash out of his pipe and bent to blow it off the ramparts.
“Spread your wings, you mean?”
Riley didn’t answer. An aura of strange magic hung around the king. There had already been in the space of only a couple of weeks at least three odd, difficult-to-explain occurrences in his presence. The sort of event that was unquestionably worthy of comment, but which the royal household from queen to serving girl, from groom to valet, studiously avoided all reference to.
Padraig was legendary on the battlefield, but Riley was still left wondering whether at least some of the prowess that enabled the king to keep the Murkan foe at bay didn’t emanate from the ability to conjure spells and other mysterious powers. Eventually, she gathered the courage to speak.
“I just feel so incredibly bored. Nolan has so many ways to spend his time. What am I supposed to do night after night when he’s left me alone yet again?”
Riley bit back the words even as she was speaking, and got on further than ‘I just feel’, but the king seemed to understand, even so. He snapped his fingers and the heron flapped its wings and stretched. As it did so, it changed slowly but clearly into the form of a young man. He wore white-wool robes with long sleeves, tied at the waist with a gold-silk sash. His immaculate blond hair lay loose over his shoulders, and his blue eyes twinkled. He bowed very solemnly to the king and then to Riley.
“At your service, Majesty,” he said, with a knowing smile.
Padraig grasped Riley by the elbow and gently but firmly propelled her forward two steps. He then shrank into the background. Riley spun round to remonstrate, to argue that she had no idea what the two men intended. Was the king bored of his daughter in law already? Did Nolan regret the elopement and wish to return to the bachelor days when he could visit a dozen different mistresses a week and answer to no one but himself? But Padraig was grinning. He carelessly snapped his fingers and took on the form of a great eagle. Launching himself from the ramparts, he soared on a warm up-current and disappeared into the clouds.
“Shall we?”
The wizard held out his hand as he spoke, and Riley gingerly placed hers in his. His fingers closed around hers and she felt a strange tingling sensation run across her whole body. The world warped around her until she was standing on the ramparts rather than next to them, staring down at the woodland surrounding the fort.
Liosmor was heavily fortified to deter invasion from Eira’s longstanding enemy, the Murkans who occupied South Eira. Riley’s elopement had deepened tensions there, because running away with Nolan involved avoiding a betrothal to the King of Murkar.
Riley gazed down at herself in alarm. Her thin and gangly legs were so odd. What had Padraig done to her? Her slender arms had turned into sleek grey wings. She preened herself with her sharp heron’s beak until she felt a little calmer. Then she nodded.
“Gently, at first. A fledgling has to take its time learning how to fly when it leaves the next. This is no different.”
They took a hesitant step forward together, and Riley spread her wings as bravely as she knew how. The warm current caught her and, even though she wobbled precariously on the up-draught, the air buoyed her up. She sailed up into the dusk, the twinkling lanterns and candles of Liosmor helping her to keep her bearing. The wizard, a sleek young heron too, drifted beside her. Finally, she lost the thermal and tumbled down to land in a hayrick on the far side of the pasture.
Riley staggered out of it as best she could. The wizard was nowhere to be seen, and without his magic to help her keep her heron form she had turned back into her usual shape again.
A dark-cloaked figure on a grey horse emerged out of the gathering night and threw back his hood.
“Riley?” Nolan asked. He swung down from his horse and helped her up. “What were you doing in a haystack? Were you alone?”
Riley dimpled at the incontrovertible jealousy in his voice. “Learning to spread my wings,” she murmured.
©October 2019 John C. Adams
John C. Adams is a Contributing Editor with Albedo One Magazine and a Reviewer with the British Fantasy Society and Schlock! Magazine. Their fantasy novel Dagmar of the Northlands is out on Kindle and Smashwords. They have published short fiction in many small press anthologies and magazines, including The Horror Zine. This is their first appearance in Swords & Sorcery.