The Azure Rider Ch. 07

Agatha set about divesting herself of the crown, losing a sizable chunk of hair in her haste, and nearly threw it down the privy. But then, her newly discovered circumspect self caught up with her and she laid it down by the sink, intending to return it to Sira when opportunity presented itself. Agatha started scrubbing her face methodically to wash off the last remnants of the vile paint that she had started to associate with royalty and lies. Once she felt reasonably clean, Agatha busied herself in inspecting the cloak Orion had put around her last evening. It was made of a shimmery green woven fabric, and it flowed between her fingers like an unearthly liquid. The cloak sat around her shoulders in a snug fit, as though it had been expressly tailored for her, and despite the fineness of the cloth, it was deceptively warm. In fact, it was warmer than anything Agatha had previously worn. Suddenly she was certain that the cloak was of a magical origin.

The longer Agatha stayed, the worse her dread seemed to grow. Orion had said that he would be back soon, and she had no intention of waiting for his return. She reached out for Elpis with her mind, and found her soaring joyously over the woods that surrounded them. The woods grew around and into little farm houses similar to the one she was presently in, and Elpis's expanded view offered Agatha clarity: she was possibly in Orion's childhood home, in the northern fringes of the Great Plains, like Fred Webster had mentioned.

'Come down here,' Agatha called out with her mind. Elpis folded her wings into her torso and glided into a nosedive. Once she landed in front of the house, Agatha marched out and clambered onto her back, huffing and slipping ungraciously. The biting cold numbed her fingers and did not help her cause, but a forceful desire to escape propelled her to overcome any hindrances that nature offered.

However, once she was settled over Elpis's back, Agatha winced painfully. Elpis's scales were deceptively sharp and it felt like sitting on a bed of blunt, old daggers. Elpis chortled.

'Are you sure you don't want to wait for a saddle, little one?'

Agatha reached out and seized one of the burnished wedges that ran down along Elpis's spine. 'No,' she thought firmly. 'Take me to Rubenstraad.'

***

In hindsight, their journey had been doomed from the beginning. Barely an hour had passed before the pain in Elpis's flight muscles was too sharp to bear. Agatha's leather breeches were torn asunder from the repeated chafing against the scales and Elpis's back was soon slick with her own blood. Belatedly, Agatha realized that riding a Dragon was not as easy as she had presumed and that there had been considerable truth in Orion's warning about wind resistance. Just as horse riding, it was a skill meant to be developed with time and patient practice.

Elpis touched down in a deserted, treeless part of the Great Plains where the land stretched out monotonously on all sides. Fortunately, the snow had thawed around this part of Lohenstraad and Agatha crawled under one of Elpis's wing, resisting the urge to whimper as her wounds healed themselves. The sun hung low over the horizon and the prospect of being lost in the darkness loomed terrifyingly at the edge of her consciousness. Agatha cursed the shortening length of the day and conjectured hopefully that between the heat radiating from Elpis and her ostentatious, magical cloak, she would probably survive the night.

'Do not worry,' Elpis said, drawing her closer to her heated midsection, 'someone is coming.'

'A shepherd?' Agatha asked hopefully.

'No,' Elpis thought cheerfully, and through her superior vision Agatha could see the tiny blue speck on the horizon.

"Please no," Agatha groaned audibly and buried her face in the grass, huddling closer to Elpis as though hoping to become invisible in comparison.

Orion did not speak as he disembarked from Ice and knelt in front of her. Agatha stayed curled up in a ball for as long as she dared, then without looking at him, repeated a question she had asked a few days ago.

"Have you come to gloat?"

Orion did not answer, so she raised her head and sought his face, and discovered that he was struggling to contain a smile.

"Where were you trying to go?" He asked.

"Rubenstraad."

"Well, you seem to have traveled a hundred miles in the opposite direction. You would have crossed the borders of Vandan in another hour or so," Orion supplied helpfully, abandoning all efforts to hide his smirk. "It appears that Elpis is as directionally challenged as you are."

Elpis snarled at him.

"I wonder," Agatha said cuttingly, "if Elpis bites your head off at this moment, will you die or will your body grow a new head?"

"Neither," Orion winced. "I do not wish to recount that experience."

"Please remind me to offer my commendations to the person or creature that attempted this."

"You can't, he's dead."

Agatha sighed and rose from the bed of grass to sit on her haunches. Orion noticed the sorry state of her breeches and kindly offered, "why don't you allow me to take you back to the farm so that you may rest and I can make a saddle for Elpis? You need to stay hidden for a few days and I... owe you an explanation. After that, you may go wherever you please and I shall not attempt to change your mind."

"I will not go anywhere with you, Orion."

Orion untied the ward from his wrist and pitched it towards Agatha, who caught it, surprised. She had never seen him without the ward.

"To be clear, please do not lose that, as Eustace is indisposed and I do not have an easy way of replacing it. Now, will you please come with me?"

Agatha pocketed the ward and allowed Orion to lead her towards Ice.

***

In the subsequent days Agatha discovered a different side to Orion, which, though did not redeem his actions in her eyes, elicited an understanding of them. He spent most of his waking hours in the shed adjacent to the house, working on carving out a saddle with his father's tools. He obtained the wood from a cedar tree that he had felled the day after their arrival. When Agatha wondered at his dexterity in woodwork, Orion informed her that he had been training to be a carpenter under his father's tutelage when Ice found him. Even after Ice claimed him, he had continued to stay with his family and help out in his father's trade, and when he grew frail, Orion had spent a considerable number of years in the profession to keep his family afloat.

"Did you make these?" Agatha asked, clearing cobwebs from multiple wooden sculptures of eagles and owls, and one impressively lifelike rendition of Ice.

"Yes," Orion admitted sheepishly. "That is where my creative streak ends, I'm afraid."

"Orion, these are... beautiful," Agatha said, unable to mask the awe in her voice.

"Yes, yes, it's all pretty, but art does not put food on the table," Orion said impatiently, rhythmically tapping the end of a broad bladed iron chisel with a mallet. "Why don't you chop up some firewood for tonight?"

When he was not working in the shed, he cooked for the two of them, and at night, he stretched out on a spare mattress by the fireside, leaving Agatha alone in the bed. On the nights when sleep eluded her, Agatha peeked at him from under the covers, drawing comfort from the familiarity of his sleeping form, at the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. It was on these nights that she had to battle with herself to keep from curling up against him, the way she used to back in the camp in the Disputed Corridor. She remembered how she had fancied with the overactive imagination of a naïve young woman that one day, he would wake up and decide to keep her with him forever, that he would perhaps marry her like Penelope. Agatha curled her fingers around the mason jar she had procured from the kitchen and resisted the urge to laugh when this memory occurred. She could not recognize that woman anymore; their time spent at the camp seemed like a distant, ill-formed nightmare, and the childlike, insecure woman once infatuated with the seemingly great, faultless Azure Rider had faded away into oblivion over the course of the past month. Instead, Agatha now saw him for what he truly was, a faulted, lonely human who simply tried to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders.

On the third day, Orion explained the rationale behind his decision to hand her over to Fredenand. They had hiked to the top of the little hill behind the farmhouse and Orion talked for nearly an hour while the sun dipped behind the leafless trees in the horizon. Agatha listened calmly, already having gathered most of the information herself during the past month, but she sensed that the explanation was more for his catharsis than for her enlightenment. The information about Siegel was the only part of his plan that she had not already known, and she was not pleased at the prospect of having to face him so soon.

"I do not expect your forgiveness, Agatha," Orion said quietly in the end. "But it is my responsibility to see you through the aftermath of the traumatic events that I put you through, and I would be grateful if you allow me to do that."

He was referring to an episode the night before where Agatha had woken up screaming and flailing in her bed, her heart hammering and her body drenched in cold sweat. The shivering and the palpitations had continued for a while after she woke up, and Agatha would not allow him near her at that state, sobbing hysterically if he came too close. In the end, Orion had knelt at the foot of her bed and had entreated her to breathe through her nose, and had counted for her benefit while she did it. This slowed her heart and the pressure on her chest eased up, and it was a while before either of them fell asleep again. Orion had kept her busy with menial, physically demanding tasks for the most part of the morning, determined to wear her out so that another incident like that did not happen. Even after she had chopped firewood for lunch and drawn water from the well, he had not been satisfied, and had dragged her along on a hike to the top of the hill behind the farm.

Agatha learnt why the houses around them seemed deserted and overgrown over dinner that night. Orion explained that the people of his village had migrated to the nearest town looking for work when crops failed during the last famine, and they had not returned since. He had continued to return to his home sporadically, when the proceedings in Rubenstraad grew to be too exhausting for him, and had worked on keeping the forest from encroaching on the house during those visits. Agatha fell asleep on the table soon afterwards, worn out from the exhaustion of the day, and when she woke up in her bed the next morning, she felt better rested than before. Of course, Orion pulled the blankets off from her when she attempted to snuggle in for a little longer and virtually pushed her into the privy to ready herself for another day of back-breaking work.

At Orion's behest, Agatha wrote a letter to Sira, confirming what the maids and guards in Regstone on Orion's payroll (which tallied up to an impressive number, to the extent that Agatha was forced to ask where Orion was procuring the coin to maintain such an elaborate network of spies) had already been saying: that she had been rescued by two Elves, one riding an Azure Dragon and the other an Imperial Dragon, and that her father was an Elf named Finthalion and she had no intention of returning to Regstone. She enclosed the circlet with the letter and Orion travelled on Ice's back to a town considerably far away from their present location and to post it.

Over dinner the next day, Agatha asked him about her parents.

"What do you want to know?" Orion asked, picking at his salted fish and scratching his jaw in a preoccupied manner.

"How did they meet?"

Orion smiled and started talking.

"Fin and I went to Regstone looking for the Chains of Damnation twenty six years ago, as you already know by now. We stayed in one of the guest wings of the castle, and Queen Estrilda insisted on meeting the new guests when she learnt of our arrival. At first, Fin wouldn't; he was very shy of humans at that point, but then, at Andebert Olbrecht's entreaties, he agreed, and Queen Estrilda came to visit us. The idiot gaped at her like a blowfish," Orion grinned, "and when Estrilda asked him his name, he stammered and said, 'You're very beautiful,' and subsided into an embarrassed silence. We were supposed to leave Regstone the day after, but Fin insisted on staying, and I had no business meddling in the affairs of a love struck Elf. It was winter and I was in no hurry to return to Lohenstraad either, you see, so I stayed with him, enjoying somewhat of a little vacation away from the snow and the wind.

"Two weeks later, he walked into my chamber, looking stricken and angry. He said that he had asked Estrilda to return with him to Ost-in-Edhil, and she had refused. He asked me to talk with her to see if I could change her mind, since I was the only human to have resided in Ost-in-Edhil until then. Accordingly, I visited your mother."

Here, Orion paused to drink some water.

"What did she say?" Agatha asked.

"When I tried to tell her about the virtues of the land of the Fair Folk, she asked, 'well, then, why did you leave?' and to that, I answered that I had shirked my responsibilities for long enough and wished to resume my duties in Rubenstraad. To this, she smiled sadly and said, 'then why can't you understand why I want to stay? Is it so difficult to imagine the same reason for me because I am a woman? If I leave now, there won't be anyone to carry on my responsibilities.' I had no answer to that, and left for Rubenstraad soon afterwards."

Orion paused for a while and asked, "have you given any thought to whether you will go to Ost-in-Edhil with Fin when he returns?"

Agatha did not answer his question, instead she asked, "what does the land of the Fair Folk look like?"

"It is quite beautiful," Orion nodded, "Finthalion had not been exaggerating that. The woods are alive with dryads and tree nymphs, so if you go very near a tree, you might receive a playful swipe by a branch. The Ancient Forests are teeming with magical creatures: fauns, pixies, unicorns, you name it. But the best part of the Land of the Fair Folk is up in the skies. During the long winter nights, the skies pulsate with green, red and purple streaks of light. The Elves call them the Dancing Lights. No one quite knows what causes it to happen, the Elves claim it's a magic of a superior origin to theirs, some say it is from other-worldly beings."

They finished their dinner in silence afterwards, each immersed in their own thoughts.

Between spending time with Elpis and getting used to this strange new way of life, Agatha did not have much time to devote to her thoughts, and for that she was grateful, because they often wandered to a place where Agatha's conscious mind, with its newfound dignity, did not permit her to travel. Orion stayed uncharacteristically aloof physically, and this surprised her because he had never been able to keep his hands off from her when they had been together. Perhaps it was his way of apologizing to her for his past behaviour, she reasoned, perhaps he simply did not care for used goods, or perhaps he was afraid of Finthalion. Whatever the reason was, Agatha was determined not to speculate too much on this, having discovered a degree of self respect and self assurance that would not permit her to devote too much thought to a man who had never, to outward appearances, seemed to care for her. Her resolution came to a stumbling halt whenever she walked in on him working on her saddle in the shed, (it was nearly close to finish now) his shirt taken off despite the nip in the air on account of the exertion, his dragon's mark shimmering on his shiny, sweaty skin. On these occasions, Agatha usually lowered her eyes and walked away, berating herself for being attracted to a man who had done nothing but lie to her. She was too biased against him to view his insistent attempts to put more food on her plate or to tire her out during the day as signs of affection in any case.

Her saddle was finished in a few days and Agatha spent much of the subsequent days flying around on Elpis. Elpis had improved remarkably with respect to her endurance, and could now fly for hours against a high wind without tiring. Though the days grew shorter, Agatha spent most of it outdoors now, and by the end of two weeks her limbs were lithe and strong again, her strength had returned in all its glory, her cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled. She found herself laughing often at Orion's dry comments and he, seeing her regain a semblance of the happiness and the effusive spirits that had caught his eyes in the first place, made a mistake: he asked her to marry him.

Agatha choked on a bit of sourdough bread when she heard the proposal. Eyes watering, she shook her head vigorously at Orion, and when she had recovered sufficiently enough to talk, she gasped, "I cannot, I will not, Orion."

"Still angry at me, I see," Orion muttered and returned to his food, apparently unconcerned at the rejection. It took Agatha all of her self command not to throw her dinner at his face at that moment.

"I am not angry at you," Agatha said, proud of how level her voice sounded despite the turmoil in her head. "I understand why you did what you did, but do not mistake my civility for forgiveness."

She wanted to return to her food after that, to show him that she thought as little of his proposal as he clearly thought of her dignity, but she could not, and started speaking, all the pent up anger barreling out of her in one bitter invective.

"I am a human who deserves to be treated as an equal, Orion, not because of my status as a Dragon Rider, not because of my royal lineage, but for the person I intrinsically am, for the values and the skills that I have painstakingly accumulated over the years. You would never have the alliance with the Forgers had it not been for me, for my training as a physician. And I deserve to be treated as more than a pawn in your grand schemes or a body to warm your bed."

Orion pushed his food away from him and turned towards her, his eyebrows raised in mingled incredulity and exasperation. "Do you really think that I do not see that? That I want to marry you because I need you to warm my bed?"

"I do not care what you see. From where I stand, there is no difference between how Lyon Rhynster and you treated me. Rhynster tried to sell me off for fifty gold pieces the day we met, and you exchanged me for a piece of land. Yes, you will say that it is simply not a piece of land, that it was a means to save the lives of hundreds of people, but it is your outlook that I cannot support, your tendency to keep people in the dark as long as they play their parts in your plan. For instance, I dare say Siegel does not know of what you did to me, I dare say that he still thinks that I was faithful to him until the very end, and you have used his services on the basis of this half truth, and like a coward, you have left it to me to tell him the truth."

"I can talk to him about it once I no longer require his services, which will be quite soon."

"You are reinforcing my point with that statement, Orion."

Orion stared at her with an unfathomable expression, then said softly, "you will change your mind, soon, you know."

Agatha stiffened. "Orion, if you try to seduce me now you will lose whatever redemption you have achieved in my eyes." Her voice now held the edge of a warning to it; she still had his ward but she had no wish to leave Elpis without a father. "I value loyalty above all else, and you have already forced me to deviate from that once. I should have been allowed to move on from Siegel by my own volition, not with pleasure forced upon me by you, and if you do that again, Orion...."