In the Forests of Serre Read online

  Ace Books by Patricia A. McKillip

  THE FORGOTTEN BEASTS OF ELD

  THE SORCERESS AND THE CYGNET

  THE CYGNET AND THE FIREBIRD

  THE BOOK OF ATRIX WOLFE

  WINTER ROSE

  SONG FOR THE BASILISK

  RIDDLE-MASTER: THE COMPLETE TRILOGY

  THE TOWER AT STONY WOOD

  OMBRIA IN SHADOW

  IN THE FORESTS OF SERRE

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  IN THE FORESTS OF SERRE

  An Ace Book

  Published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Copyright © 2003 by Patricia A. McKillip.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

  in any form without permission.

  First edition: June 2003

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McKillip, Patricia A.

  In the forests of Serre / Patricia A. McKillip—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-441-01011-3

  1. Princes—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3563.C38I5 2003

  813'.54-dc21

  2003041928

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Lauren and Rachel and Jackson and Arleigh,

  With a cauldron full of love

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  ONE

  In the forests of Serre, Prince Ronan crossed paths with the Mother of All Witches when he rode down her white hen in a desolate stretch of land near his father’s summer palace. He did not recognize her immediately. He only saw a barefoot woman of indeterminate age with an apron full of grain, feeding her chickens in the middle of a blasted waste full of dead trees and ground as hard as the face of the moon. It was the last place Ronan expected chickens. He did not notice the cottage at all until after the hen pecked its way under his horse’s nose. It flapped its futile wings and emitted a screech as a hoof flattened it. Startled, Ronan reined in his mount, blinking at something unrecognizable even as suitable for a stew pot. The prince’s following pulled up raggedly behind him. A few feathers flurried gently through the air. The woman, one hand still outflung, golden husks clinging to her fingers, stared a moment at her hen. Then she looked up at the prince.

  His following, a scarred, weary company of warriors, guards, servants, standard-bearers, a trumpeter or two, seemed suddenly far away and very quiet. The young prince felt the same stillness gather in his own heart, for with her in front of him, he had nothing else to fear. As in all the tales he had heard of her, there was the ox-bone pipe in her apron pocket, the green circular lenses over her eyes, the knobby, calloused feet that broadened to an inhuman size when she picked up her cottage and carried it. There, behind her, stood the cottage made of bones, some recent and still bleeding marrow, others of a disturbing size and indeterminate origin. A single circular window, its pane as green as her lenses, seemed to stare at Ronan like a third eye among the bones. The door stood open. Never, all the tales warned, never go into the witch’s house, whatever you do… Who, he wondered incredulously, would choose to enter that filthy pile of bones?

  She smiled at him, showing teeth as pointed as an animal’s. Her face, which could be sometimes so lovely it broke the heart, and sometimes so hideous that warriors fainted at the sight of it, looked, at that moment, ancient and clever and only humanly ugly.

  “Prince Ronan.” Her voice was the hollow sough of windblown reeds.

  “Brume,” he whispered, feeling a twinge of fear at last.

  “You killed my white hen.”

  “I am very sorry.”

  “My favorite hen.”

  “I wasn’t watching for chickens in this part of the forest. What can I do to repay you?”

  “Bring the white hen into my house,” she answered, “and pluck it for me. I will boil it in a pot for supper, and you and all your company will drink a cup of broth with me around my fire.”

  He swallowed. Never, never… Those strong pointed teeth had sucked the boiled bones of warriors, so the tales said. “I will do anything for you,” he said carefully, “but I will not do that.”

  Her eyes seemed to grow larger than the lenses, and disturbingly dark. “You will not pluck my hen?”

  “I will do anything for you, but I will not do that.”

  “You will not bring your company into my house to drink a cup of broth with me?”

  “I will do anything for you, but I will not do that,” he repeated, for the third time was the charm.

  She raised her lenses then, propped them on her wild hair, and looked at him with naked eyes. In that moment, her face nearly broke his heart. He would have melted off his horse, followed that face on his knees, but now it was too late.

  “Then,” she said softly, “you will have a very bad day. And when you leave your father’s palace at the end of it, you will not find your way back to it until you find me.”

  She dropped the lenses back on her nose, scooped the bloody mess of feather and bone into her arms, and walked into her house. The chickens, clucking in agitated disapproval, followed her. The door slammed shut behind them.

  The house levitated suddenly. Ronan saw the powerful calves and huge, splayed feet below it as the witch, carrying her cottage from within, began to run. Motionless, mesmerized, he watched the little house of bone zig-zag like a hen chasing an ant through the stark bones of trees until the silvery shadows drew it in.

  “My lord,” someone said tremulously. He looked around to find his entourage in chaos. She had shown the men all her faces, Ronan guessed. Wounded warriors, white and sickened by the loathsome sight, slumped toward servants and guards who were no longer beside them; they had already dismounted to trail, mindless with vision, after the woman who had, for an instant, reached into the prince to hold his own heart in her hand like a sweet, ripe pear.

  He brushed a pinfeather off his knee and managed to turn them all toward home.

  The prince was a tall, burly young man with troubled, watchful grey eyes and long coppery hair. Scars underlined one eye, limned one jaw; a fresh wound along his forearm was trying to seam itself together as he rode. He had gone impulsively to war with the army his father had sent to quell a rebellion in the southern plains of Serre. Returning bruised but victorious, they had met the king’s messenger half-way across Serre. The message was accompanied by a troop of guards to make sure that Ronan did not disregard it. Come home, it said tersely. Now. Ronan was impressed with its restraint. He had not consulted his father before he joined the army; some part of him had not intended to return. Having failed to die, and too weary to fend for himself, he let fortune, in the shape of the king’s guards, bring him back.

  Fortune, appe
aring suddenly under his nose in the shape of the depraved witch Brume, baffled him. He tried to remember childhood tales. Did her predictions come true? Or were they only random curses that she tossed out according to her mood, and would forget as soon as she had added the white hen’s bones to her roof? His mother would know. Maye would have known. But Maye was dead. He felt his heart swell and ache unbearably at the memory of his young wife lying so still among rumpled, bloody linens, with their child, impossibly tiny, the size of Ronan’s hand, too delicate even to take in air, a soap-bubble child, a moment’s worth of wonder and then gone, vanished like hope. Ronan had burned his heart with them. Then he went to court death as he had courted love, ignoring the fact that he was his father’s only heir. The queen had failed, even with the aide of common lore and folk witchery, to conceive others. Ronan, understanding his father better as he got older, sympathized with her. Who would want to bear the ogre’s children?

  He pushed the terrible memories from his mind, and found again the Mother of All Witches, staring at him behind her fly-green lenses. The idea that she might have been waiting there for him was disturbing. But nobody took their chickens to feed in that benighted place. Even the insects had abandoned it. Long ago, tales said, some lovelorn maiden had drowned it with her tears and then cursed it barren as her heart. With some effort, he pushed aside the witch on the waste, too. If, he reasoned, he was to get lost after leaving his father’s palace at the end of the day, then once he got home, he would simply not leave. As for having a bad day, he doubted that the witch herself knew how bad a day could get.

  “My lord.” A guard had quickened pace to catch up with him. “Lord Karsh has fallen.”

  Ronan’s mouth tightened. The warrior had been dangerously wounded, but he had refused to stay on the plains. “Dead?”

  “It seems so, my lord.”

  So it proved, when Ronan investigated. But his death was not unexpected. The surprise was that he had endured the journey so long. His body was wrapped in blankets and placed in a supply cart. Later, when the cart lost a wheel, the stiffened body had to be taken back out and balanced precariously over his horse’s saddle. They left the cart there in the forest with the driver trying to reset the wheel. Not a good day, Ronan thought. But not impossible, and nothing out of the ordinary. Except the witch.

  There was not much day left by the time the endless trees parted around them and they saw at last the ancient palace of the rulers of Serre. Part fortress, it seemed carved out of the crags on which it stood. Ribbons of water on both sides of it caught fire from the lowering sun, poured down steep walls of granite to the broad valley below. The riders quickened their pace. Even Ronan, who had no doubt that his father was furious with him, breathed more easily when they reached the road carved into the stone face of the cliff. Ronan, gazing up at the thick walls and high towers, saw a minute scratch of light across the dark, like the path of a falling star. From very far away, he heard the trumpet speak, announcing their return. Within the formidable walls would be food and wine, hot water and fire, aid and comfort for those who had ridden in constant pain from unhealed wounds. It seemed, at that moment, a fair exchange for what awaited him.

  An hour later, he was home.

  The king did not waste time sending for him. In his chamber, Ronan splashed water over his dusty face and hair, and stood dripping while a servant unbuttoned his travel-stained tunic and drew another over his shoulders. The door flew open suddenly. The King of Serre said, “Get out.” Ronan’s servants abandoned him hastily. His father swung a hand hard and scarred with battle and slammed the heavy door shut behind them; turning, still swinging, he slapped Ronan. The prince, surprised, stumbled against the washstand. The basin careened, spilled water over his boots. He caught his balance, his head ringing like the brass on the stones. The king waited until the basin was still, until the only sounds in the room were the endless thunder of water over the sheer cliff just beneath the open casement, and Ronan’s quickened breathing.

  Then the king said, “She will be here in three days. Her messengers arrived this morning.”

  Ronan let go of the washstand cautiously, touched his bruised mouth with the back of his hand. “Who?” he asked wanly, mystified.

  “The woman you will marry.”

  Ronan stared at him. He and his father were much alike in their height and strong build, though the king, massively boned like an ox, stood nearly a head taller. Ronan had also inherited his coppery hair. The king let his grow in a fox’s pelt over his mouth and jaws. He had lost one eye and one front tooth in battle long ago. The scar seaming his face from his brow had pulled his upper lip open in a perpetual snarl. But it was the puckered, empty skin where his eye should have been that was more chilling. It seemed, Ronan had decided long ago, as though he had a hidden eye there, that could see into secrets, thoughts, invisible worlds. His visible eye was a deep, fuming black. He had been born on a battlefield, tales said, and had spent his life there, in anticipation when not in deed. In the last few years he had been attempting sorcery to make himself and his kingdom even stronger. Occasionally, to strengthen his son’s defenses or to let Ronan know he was displeased, the king would conjure an explosion out of the air and fling it at Ronan. This time the explosion was silent, and Ronan, dazed, thought he must have swallowed it. He felt the shock of it finally all through his body, as something jagged and drenched with color burst where his heart had been.

  “Marry.” He was shaking suddenly with rage, with pain, with grief. “I can’t marry.”

  “You will marry.” His father’s powerful voice had a deep, feral resonance; it drove the words into Ronan like an ax into wood. “In four days. The youngest daughter of the King of Dacia has been travelling toward you through much of the summer—”

  “I will not marry!” The force of the shout tearing out of Ronan startled him; he did not recognize his own voice. But the king only matched it with a shout of his own.

  “How dare you?” He was suddenly too close to Ronan, dangerously close, turning the puckered eye socket toward his son; it seemed to search mercilessly into his most private thoughts. Ronan stood still, too furious even to blink. The king did not touch him, but his voice roared over Ronan like wind or water, held him in the grip of some elemental storm. “How dare you pretend to fight battles for me while you try to kill yourself? Your life is mine. How dare you even dream of stealing it from me? I made you; you belong to me and to Serre.” He moved abruptly again, crossing the room to fling the window wide. Ronan had chosen the chamber, in a tower flanking one of the foremost corners of the outer wall, after his wife and child had died. It overlooked the exact place where water as clear and silent as blown glass fell off earth into air and roared down a thousand feet to the ground below. Ronan had cast himself over the falls countless times in thought. His father’s words seemed to bellow at him out of the surging water. “I will call up your drowned ghost and curse it every hour if you leave me with no one to inherit my kingdom when I am dead. The princess from Dacia will be here in three days; you will marry in four. The negotiations were completed, the documents signed and sealed even before you began your journey home from the south. Her name is Sidonie. Love her or hate her, you will give me heirs for Serre. Dacia is tiny, nothing. It would be lost within the forests of Serre. But it is wealthy, and its kings have been renowned for their sorcery. Your children will inherit the vastness of Serre and the powers of Dacia. My kingdom will be invincible.” He reached out, in another swift, unpredictable move, and closed the casement; the wild, urgent voice of the water receded. “Get dressed. You will not spend another night listening to this. You will be under guard until your wedding.” He came very close to Ronan again, laid a hand on his shoulder. What might have seemed a gesture of reconciliation weighed like stone on Ronan’s shoulder, weighed like the rough, massive walls of the tower itself, as the king summoned his private strength. Ronan yielded finally, loosing a cry of despair as he fell to his knees. Hands clenched, head bowed to
hide tears of fury and humiliation, he heard his father cross the room, open the door, then stop.

  Someone spoke a word or two. Ronan raised his head slightly, recognizing the soft, mourning dove voice. The door closed again; his mother, Calandra, crossed the room quickly, knelt in front of Ronan.

  He felt her hands frame his face, coax him gently until he lifted it finally, showed her his angry, defeated eyes. He saw the stark relief in hers, and realized that she had not expected him to return.

  But, he thought, getting wearily to his feet, he did not seem to be good at dying. He had offered himself in battle and, beyond a scratch or two, had been rejected; a witch had invited him to become her next meal and he had refused. He began, clumsily, to push buttons into loops down the front of his tunic. His hands shook. The queen drew them into hers, kissed them as though he were still a child.

  “Let me,” she said, eyeing the haphazard hang of hem. “You started wrong.”

  He watched the braids of chestnut and gold crowning her head drop lower, button by button. Her hair had begun to lighten since he had seen her last, lose its rich lustre. But the ghost of her fine, delicate beauty still haunted her: the memory of what she had been before she realized what, in marrying Ferus of Serre, she would become. When Ronan was very young, she had still known how to laugh. He remembered her fury more easily, her tears, her cries of outrage and pain. Those, like her laughter, had become less frequent in later years, when Ronan grew old enough and strong enough to decide for himself what he could bear. In his early years, after his father had driven them both to tears, she would hold him in her arms and tell him stories.

  He remembered that now. She turned her face briefly, to look at him, working at the last of the buttons. He whispered numbly, “He wants me to marry.”

  “I know.”

  Still his voice would not sound. “He can’t see—he can’t see that it is impossible.”

  “No.” She reached the hem and straightened. She was quite tall; her gaze was almost level, grey and still like an autumn sky. “He can’t see.” She touched his face again. “You came back. I didn’t think you would.”