The Azure Rider Ch. 08

"If you lose your way, touchdown in any of the villages or towns that you pass by and ask the people to direct you towards Rubenstraad. Your status as a Dragon Rider will protect you from all harm. People in Lohenstraad treat Dragon Riders with nearly superhuman reverence. Also, I shall need my ward back."

Then he scrawled out a quick letter to Siegel, instructing him to do away with the apparition of Ice and flew to a nearby town to dispatch it. He left early the next day, before Agatha had woken up.

***

Agatha decided to hike up to the top of the hill behind the cottage that morning, because the rooms felt empty without Orion's presence. He had somehow filled the place with his quiet, assured occupation with some tasks or other; in fact, Agatha could not remember ever seeing him sit still in one place for long. Even now, the kitchen looked neatly organized, the table-top cleared and polished to a shine, his bed in front of the hearth neatly made without a single crease on the sheets. It was the meticulous arrangement of spices on the shelves that made her laugh, for she had never seen a man so scrupulous in housework or so attentive to details; once stripped off the mail and the sword, Orion was certainly a walking conundrum amongst his sex.

Once Agatha reached the top of the hill, she sat on a fallen, moss-covered, toadstool-spotted log for a while, staring vacantly at the grey skies that threatened snow. Solitude often turned her mind towards the unpleasant duties that lay ahead of her, the foremost of them involving talking to Siegel. A faint rustling amongst the trees alerted her to the presence of a living creature behind her, and not entirely alarmed, Agatha turned around to find herself facing the strangest creature she had ever seen.

She had a young girl's torso and head set atop the legs and haunches of a goat. Little horns jutted out of a dense cloud of sleek, auburn hair. The girl (or goat?) looked younger than her, barely of age and she wore a strip of fur wrapped around her torso, cinched with a string around her midsection; her shoulders were bare despite the cold.

"Who are you?" Agatha enquired tentatively, uncertain whether she understood her, but persuaded that it would have been terrible manners to ask, "What are you?"

"My mother said that you are the Rider from the prophecy," she declared, stepping out of the trees and towards her. Agatha noticed that she had a woven basket in one of her hands, made from pine needles. It was filled to the brim with pinecones.

"I suppose so," Agatha agreed cautiously. "Where do you live?"

"We used to live in the Ancient Forest, but mother said that it is now safe to migrate southwards, now that the Great War has ended." She paused for a while and added, "I thought you would be a man." Then as an afterthought, "you are pretty."

Agatha remembered a fragment of a conversation with Orion a few days ago. He had said that the Ancient Forest was teeming with magical creatures. "Thank you," she smiled, "I think you are very pretty too."

"The night is long in the Ancient Forest. And it gets very cold. I am really happy that we could come here."

"I am happy to hear that too. Would you like to sit down?" Agatha nodded towards the empty spot on the log beside her. "I would love to hear all about the Ancient Forest."

The little faun fidgeted and said, "no, I have to go. My mother is expecting me."

"At least tell me your name."

"Ciera," she blurted, then turned around and trotted away into the trees. Agatha shook her head absent mindedly and smiled a little, feeling hopeful after what felt like years.

***

Agatha had intended to sneak away into her own chamber in the Keep after landing on top of one of the many turrets that frequented that part of the Castle of Rubenstraad, but it was not to be; Cecilia from the harem met her on one of the hallways, screeched like a banshee and promptly fainted. Her shouts brought men and women from the surrounding wings (a few of whom swooned as well) including Lyla, who ran towards her and threw herself into Agatha's arms, sobbing hysterically. Agatha ran a soothing hand over her back until Lyla's sobs subsided, and led her through the crowd into her bedchamber by the infirmary. Before she had managed to exchange more than a few commonplace niceties with her, Sir Blaxton appeared at the doorway, surprise and shock written over his young face. He was swiftly followed by Henry Baldric, who wanted to know all about the circumstances of her escape from Regstone. And Agatha narrated her experiences like a well-groomed parakeet, telling them all about Finthalion and about her short sojourn with the Elves.

"We must inform Orion of this," Henry Baldric declared at once to Sir Blaxton, who informed him that Orion had joined Sir Alexander in his journey to Vandan to provide support to Princess Sira.

"Oh, so has he decided to leave his tower then?" Henry Baldric sounded surprised.

"Apparently so," Sir Blaxton shrugged. Agatha kept her face carefully inscrutable and played along with the charade.

Two handmaids were unleashed upon her shortly afterwards, who scrubbed the grime off from her person and dressed her in the full ensemble of a chemise, corset, dress and a stiff ornamental cloak and she was produced before the court soon afterwards. Archibald Mannering and Algernon Rhynster were called upon to verify her identity and then it was swiftly decided that she would sit for lunch with the royal family. Over lunch, Queen Avelina asked her whether she would like to marry Prince Tristan Constantine. Agatha, who had a premonition that this would happen, set her silverware down on her plate and with all the firm graciousness expected of Princess Esmeralda De Clare, told her that she was overcome with happiness at a proposal like that, but for the time being, she intended to remain unwed. To her great surprise, Prince Tristan himself came to her rescue, reprimanding his mother for pestering a woman who had been widowed but a day ago. To add to her amazement, the Prince turned towards her and winked, and later, when his parents were engrossed in conversation with Henry Baldric, he leaned towards her and whispered, "do not mind me, madam, I am in love with a nobleman's daughter, and simply do not care for another woman. I assure you that you are quite beautiful and any man would be indeed fortunate to have you as his wife, but I only have eyes for Catelina."

Agatha smiled at him and said, "I wish you success in wooing her over, then."

"Oh, it is not so much a matter of wooing her over than convincing my parents about her. You see, she is not of a high birth."

"Let me know if I may be of assistance in your endeavour to win over His Highness."

"Of course," Tristan flashed her a smile, "I hope we can be friends."

***

Agatha settled into her new life fairly quickly following that. Unfortunately, the marriage proposal from Tristan Constantine was not the only one that came her way, he was quickly followed by Archibald Mannering, Lyon Rhynster and a score of other lords she was not previously familiar with. Agatha turned them all down graciously, and internally heaved a sigh of relief as her refusal was taken in stride every time. Her status as a Dragon Rider ensured that she was possibly the only human woman to have ever existed in recent times whose free will was respected. Nonetheless, Archibald Mannering turned out to be fairly persistent, and every evening, Agatha returned to her newly allotted wing to find an ostentatious bouquet of flowers left by him. She did not broach the subject in front of Lyla but she learnt about it soon enough, after noticing the ever-increasing floral arrangements in her visitors' hall and enquiring persistently about it. Lyla laughed disdainfully when Agatha told her about Archibald Mannering, and warned her not to fall for his entreaties. Agatha assured her that she would not.

Lyla was not as tactful as Agatha had been when it came to enquiring her of a traumatic past, and when Agatha displayed a reluctance to talk about the particulars of her time with Fredenand, Lyla frowned at her and argued, "I think you are forgetting that I have been through that too." Agatha could not come up with a rational objection to this statement, and for a few nights the two friends lay side by side on the sprawling bed in Agatha's chamber, with one of them talking and the other one listening faithfully. Agatha discovered that talking about her ordeals of the past month eased some of the pressure from her chest, and the purgation brought some relief to the constant terror that dogged her steps nowadays. Lyla held her in her bosom and wept profusely, Agatha breathed methodically through her nose, her eyes dry and her outlook placid, and wondered if she would ever feel anything ever again.

To keep herself occupied, Agatha resumed her infirmary duties under Meister Erwan, who, she was pleased to find, remained as irascible as ever, and treated her exactly the same as before. He called her 'Agatha' instead of 'Princess Esmeralda,' ordered her about and called her a blithering idiot or an ignorant buffoon whenever she failed in the decidedly easy task of reading his intentions clairvoyantly and carrying them out before he had a chance to utter them. Surprisingly, this offered her a modicum of consolation, and she found herself looking forward to his effusive criticism when she woke up in the morning. Lyla, who now worked alongside her in the infirmary, often took offense at his behaviour towards the two of them, and subsequently, it fell upon Agatha to stop them from shouting at each other.

Besides her infirmary duties, Agatha was now included in the King's Council and was expected to appear in their meetings whenever they convened, which was nearly every day in the light of the turbulence regarding the coronation of Princess Sira. Agatha received a firsthand account of the proceedings in Regstone from Orion, who faithfully sent her a missive every day, recounting the proceedings of the court. Agatha appreciated his conscious effort to treat her as a confidant instead of a subordinate but it was still not enough to earn her forgiveness.

Siegel came looking for her as soon as she was settled into her new quarters, and he swept her into a wordless embrace once he walked into her visitors' hall. Kane and Rowan, who had been assigned as her personal guards by Henry Baldric ever since her arrival to Rubenstraad, started at this intimate initiation by one they thought was a complete stranger, and made to move him away from the premises, but Agatha stopped them, assured them that all was well, and led Siegel into the privacy of her bedchamber.

"How are you doing?" he inquired, gathering her face in his hands. Agatha stared at his familiar brown eyes and kind face and felt a strange regret wash through her; the eyes were the wrong colour, the kindness undeserved. Nonetheless, she commanded her countenance and answered that she was doing well, and she was pleased to hear of Siegel's new occupation as the Chief Wardmaker of the Castle.

"What did he do to you?" Siegel asked, smoothing his hand over her hair. Agatha was confused for a moment as to who he was talking about, then realised that she was expected to recount her experiences with Fredenand once again.

"He was only a little bit worse than Walter," Agatha volunteered a wan smile, then removed Siegel's hands from her face. "There are some things that you need to know, Siegel. Would you please sit down?"

"Yes, of course," he assumed a seat by the entrance of her bedchamber, gazing up at her with an alacrity and tenderness that broke her heart.

"I have not been faithful to you," Agatha confessed, clasping her hands in front of her. "I..." she hesitated, then started speaking very fast, laying bare all of her misdemeanors in front of him, awaiting his judgement. Siegel listened quietly, his expression changing from open and cheerful to disappointed and finally, angry.

"I am going to kill him," he said quietly after Agatha had finished.

"No, please, don't," she begged. "If you kill him, Ice will die, and then there will be earthquakes and storms all over again like the last time. Please try to understand."

"Do you love him?" Siegel asked bluntly.

Agatha shook her head. "I thought I did," she murmured, "but it was the childlike infatuation of a naive woman. I did not know any better."

"Do you love me?"

Agatha took longer to answer this, and she could tell by the flicker of pain behind his eyes that he too, understood the weight of the word that she was struggling to utter.

"No," she finally whispered, hating herself as his face twisted in pain and he looked away from her, closing his eyes for a few moments and pursing his lips.

"What I fail to understand," Siegel spat, "is why you have left him alive after all of this. Did you like it when you lay helplessly under him? Did you want him to ravage you against your will?"

"I don't know!" Agatha cried out in distress. "He never hurt me, Siegel!"

"I see. So you will let anyone have their way with you as long as they do not hurt you?" His face showed the disgust that he clearly felt.

"No!" Agatha cried in anguish, "I liked it!" and then she subsided into an unnatural silence, terrified and mortified by her admission.

"Of course. Did you like it when Fredenand raped you, too? When Walter took you every night and turned you out of his bed when he was finished with you? Did you perhaps grow a taste for perversion after Walter?"

"No!" Agatha repeated, tears springing to her eyes. Siegel rose from his chair and stepped in front of her, their noses nearly touching.

"But you like it when he does it," he sneered. "Even after everything he has done, given the opportunity, you would climb into his bed and let him have his way with you." Agatha shook her head frantically at this. Siegel continued mercilessly, "if it had not been for me, you would have grown up into a whore, passed from one man to another in the Academy. But now, it seems like I intervened a bit too late."

And with that proclamation, he turned around and left. Agatha swayed slightly and seized an ornate pole of her four-poster bed, registering bleakly that Siegel had been the only man who had not hurt her...until she had denied him.

***

Fortunately, she did not have much time to ponder over Siegel's words. Sir Blaxton enrolled her into horse riding, running and sword fighting lessons soon afterwards, this time under the tutelage of a middle aged knight called Sir Bartelemi. It was finally during her sword fighting lessons that some of the more desirable side effects of being a Dragon Rider became clearer to her; her reflexes were improved tenfold, her hearing was enhanced, her side vision was nearly as accurate as her front, her movements were faster, her limbs more coordinated. Agatha had always been physically strong for a woman, but this was different. A week into her sword fighting lessons, she could knock the sword out of any page's hands; after two months she was seen sparring with Kane and Rowan simultaneously in front of the Armoury, dodging both men with the easy grace of a feral animal while Sir Bartelemi watched and hollered instructions from the sidelines. After about ten minutes of dodging and feinting she knocked the sword out of Kane's hand, but then relinquished victory over to Rowan by slipping on ice and falling promptly, ruefully recognizing that even Dragon Riders were not immune to the elements.

"Not bad," she heard a voice from behind her and turned around to see Orion walking towards them. "Isn't that sword a little too unbalanced for her?" he enquired of Sir Bartelemi, who scratched his head and answered that he had been looking for a lighter, shorter sword for the past month.

"You're back early," Agatha said, sliding the sword into the scabbard that hung from her belt. Sira had successfully secured the fealty of all the members of the Ministerial Council and had been crowned a week before.

"We had better weather than expected," Orion shrugged, then nodded to Kane and Rowan. "How about," he turned to Agatha, "we travel to the Forgers' Realm and find a sword for you? I daresay they would be ecstatic to be able to help you."

"Er -" Agatha glanced at Sir Bartelemi, who at once thought that this was a spectacular idea.

Accordingly they flew out on dragon back the following day, flying over the hamlets and towns they had so painstakingly crossed on horseback a few months ago. They reached the Forgers' Mountains in two hours, and Orion insisted on walking from the point where the red sandstone rock formations started, citing the reason that it was considered rude manners to touch down in front of someone's door on dragon's back. Agatha did not mind the walking, though the frozen tracks impeded their progress a little. By nightfall, they had reached the entrance to the Forgers' Realm.

King Thozomir Copperbuckle himself came out this time to invite them inside, and when asked whether the Forgers would be able to build a sword for Agatha, agreed with the alacrity of a person determined to return a favour. Their stay at the Forgers' Realm passed without much incident, at the end of which Agatha came away with a one handed double-edged sword forged from Isiyan steel, a virtually indestructible, light, black metal mined from the banks of Isiya river where it flowed through the rhyolitic lava flows in the Forgers' Mountains. The sword was exclusively customized to her arm length, stature and strength, and when she held it in her hand, it felt perfectly balanced. The Forgers named it Lazarus and offered her a simple leather scabbard to store it. After Agatha returned, she discovered that she was able to beat both Kane and Rowan in a surprisingly short time when she wielded Lazaraus.

Siegel caught up with her in the infirmary late one evening shortly after her return from the Forgers' Mountain. He apologized firmly and sincerely for his outburst a few weeks before and begged for her forgiveness and a renewal of their friendship. Agatha found herself unable to decline his apology on account of their history and graciously amended that she could be friends with him. Siegel lounged about in the infirmary afterwards, enquiring about her day while Agatha attended to the handful of overnight patients before retiring for the day. When she bade goodnight to Siegel an hour later, she felt reasonably cheerful, and allowed herself to hope for the renewal of a friendship that had been her only source of happiness at one time.

As the days passed on in a mix of hail and snowstorms, Agatha found herself becoming increasingly embroiled in the affairs of the Council, often requiring all of her self restraint to keep from voicing her frustrations with the men who insisted on putting their conceit above all else. Orion, Fred Webster and Henry Baldric were the only men in the Council who had a scrap of sense about them, Leowfin Vulfoliac, the court treasurer simply did not care, Algernon Rhynster was a blithering idiot, to quote Meister Erwan, and Vladimir Evanoff seemed wilfully intent on sabotaging every agreeable policy that was produced on the table. King Egbert, unfortunately, seemed to possess a fair share of conceit in addition to a simple mind: a dangerous and an unfortunately commonplace combination, and Queen Avelina was close to Leowfin Vulfoliac with her nonchalance. In this instance, Orion was trying to create a ninth position in the Council to include a representative from Luteri to reduce the chances of an uprising in future, and his proposition was met with all kinds of ludicrous objections. After observing the proceedings of the Council for about a fortnight, Agatha had to grudgingly admit that she could take a leaf out of Orion's book as far as exercising self command was concerned.