Once In a Blue Moon (61 page)

•   •   •

T
he Steward went looking for Van Fleet at the sorcerer’s private rooms. He stood outside the closed door, studying the mystical signs and uncial runes carved deeply into the wood, and called out the sorcerer’s name from a safe distance. When he couldn’t get a reply, the Steward stepped reluctantly forward and banged hard on the door with his fist, doing his best to avoid the more dangerous-looking carvings. Finally, a voice from inside said, “Who’s there?” in the tone of voice that made it very clear the owner was not kindly prepared for visitors. When a sorcerer speaks like that, most people have the good sense to run for their lives, but the Steward didn’t have that option. He was far more scared of his King—or what his King had become. So he stood his ground, announced himself in what he hoped was a calm and even commanding tone . . . and after a worryingly long moment the door unlocked itself and swung slowly open before him. The Steward walked into the sorcerer’s room as confidently as he could manage, and did his best not to jump as the door slammed shut behind him.

He didn’t like the look of the sorcerer’s room. The Unreal had been here, and not in a good way. Every single piece of alchemical equipment, every bit of cunningly fashioned glassware, had been smashed. Shards lay everywhere, and fluids dripped from every surface, pooling on the floor. All the animal specimens were dead. Most seemed to have just exploded, leaving bloody gobbets all over the insides of their cages. Others had been altered, by some unknown force, into shapes that could not survive. And some had simply aged to death. The Steward hoped it had been quick, for all of them.

Van Fleet sat slumped on a wooden stool in the middle of the wreckage, wearing a basic alchemical smock spattered in blood and chemical stains. He seemed a small and broken thing, stripped of his usual power and mystery.

“You know what’s been happening?” said the Steward after it became obvious that the sorcerer had nothing to say.

“Of course I know,” said Van Fleet. “That’s why I wasn’t there, at Court. The King has let loose the old god, from inside the Standing Stone. The Red Heart has come among us again, and through him the King has awakened the Unreal. The poor damned fool.”

“The Red Heart?” said the Steward. “What’s that?”

“I don’t know!” said Van Fleet, wrapping his arms tightly around him, as though trying to hold himself together. “I thought I had an idea, but . . . it’s not what I thought it was. Not what anyone thought it was. The God Within . . . and now it’s out.”

“What kind of deal did the King make with this Red Heart?” said the Steward.

“I don’t know that either,” said Van Fleet. “And I don’t think I want to know . . . He should have talked to me first! I could have told him no good can come of this. But, of course, that’s why he didn’t talk to me. He didn’t want to be talked out of this. He’d already made up his mind what he was going to do, and to Hell with the consequences.”

The Steward looked round the devastated laboratory. “Why . . . ?”

Van Fleet grinned crookedly. “‘Thou shalt have no other God but me’ . . . The Red Heart has no room in it for rivals. What are you doing here, Steward? What do you want from me?”

“The King sent me,” said the Steward.

“Did he, now?” Van Fleet laughed softly. “Better late than never . . . And what can I do for him?”

“The King requires that you provide me with another dimensional door,” the Steward said firmly. “To take me back into the hills, where I was before. So I can bring Prince Cameron home again.”

“I wonder if the Broken Man will even recognise his old home, now the King’s made so many changes,” said Van Fleet. “Don’t suppose it’ll matter. He won’t be here long . . . before the King sends him out again. Yes, yes, I know; you want a door. You wouldn’t, if you knew what it really was.”

He gestured briefly, tiredly, and a door appeared out of nowhere before the Steward. It looked exactly like the last one: a simple, ordinary thing, standing upright on its own. It opened smoothly before the Steward, revealing the same view of the far hillside. Only now, it was night.

“Don’t take too long,” Van Fleet said roughly, “or you’ll end up walking home.”

The Steward stepped quickly through the door, and it closed quietly behind him.

•   •   •

T
he night was dark and shadowy, under a full moon and a deep dark sky full of shimmering stars. The Steward was standing right outside the cave entrance. He hesitated, and looked quickly about him. It was cold, with a gusting wind. There were sounds in the surrounding undergrowth. And when he looked back at the closed door, standing so still and so silent . . . he couldn’t be sure, but it felt like the door was watching him. And not in a good way. The Steward turned his attention back to the cave mouth, mostly so he wouldn’t have to look at the hillside. He didn’t like the countryside at all during the day, but he liked it even less at night. There were too many shadows, far too many dark places where anything might be hiding. Anything at all. Things were moving at the edges of his vision, and the light from the full moon wasn’t nearly enough.

There was another light, flaring deep in the tunnel beyond the cave mouth. The Steward tried hard to tell himself it was merely warm and comforting firelight. A voice from deep inside the hill addressed him.

“Come in, Elias Taggert, Steward of Redhart, and be welcome. I’ve been expecting you.”

The Steward still wasn’t convinced that inside the cave was any safer than outside, but he had his mission and his orders, and whatever might have happened he was still the King’s man, so he swallowed hard and strode into the cave’s mouth as though it was his own idea. He hurried down the long, dark tunnel, heading determinedly toward the flaring light, and finally stumbled into the Broken Man’s cave. It looked much as it had before, lit by a great fire, but the Steward had eyes only for the Broken Man. Prince Cameron was standing with his back to the fire, tall and imposing, his huge warrior’s frame wrapped in full gleaming armour, with a polished steel helm under his arm. He’d combed out and braided his great mane of dark hair, and trimmed back his full beard, but he still looked every inch the barbarian fighting man he was. The leather-wrapped hilt of a great broadsword peered over the Broken Man’s left shoulder, from where the long blade hung down his back. Just standing there, he looked wild and dangerous, a mythic, nightmare figure of blood and death from Redhart history and legend. The man who never lost a fight, or a battle, because he was born to stride across the killing fields like he owned them.

“The King was kind enough to let me take my sword and armour with me when he banished me,” said Prince Cameron. “I didn’t want them, never thought I’d need them again, but he insisted. That’s how I knew, even then, that he was thinking of bringing me back one day. When his need for my talents outweighed his . . . distaste for what I am. When he needed me to kill for him again.” He smiled briefly at the still awed Steward. “The King wouldn’t have sent you to talk to me in the first place if he hadn’t already made up his mind.”

“I’m sorry,” said the Steward. “I . . .”

“Does my father ask me to return?” said Prince Cameron.

The Steward nodded quickly. “Yes. We must go. Now. Things are happening. Events are already moving at a great pace . . .”

The Broken Man smiled but didn’t move. “So. It’s to be war, then. He wouldn’t call me back for anything less. Against the Forest Land, at last?”

The Steward nodded again and started to explain what had happened, but the Broken Man silenced him with a look.

“Reasons don’t matter,” he said almost kindly. “The decision is made first, and reasons decided on later, to justify the decision.”

“Don’t you care about who you’re being called back to fight?” said the Steward.

“No,” said the Broken Man quite calmly. “I kill men, and I win battles. It’s what I do, what I’m best at. I never cared who I was fighting, or why. Never gave a damn how many men had to die so I could win. That’s part of why they called me the Broken Man. One of the public reasons, anyway. Let us go outside, Elias Taggert. So I can take one last look at the only place where I’ve ever been happy. I want to say my goodbyes, because I doubt I’ll ever be back again. One way or another.”

•   •   •

T
he Steward led the way back through the tunnel, which grew suddenly darker as the Broken Man put out the fire in the cave. The Steward hesitated, and then hurried on as he heard the heavy, clanking sounds of armour coming up behind him. He broke out of the cave mouth in a rush and then stepped quickly aside as the Broken Man emerged onto the moonlit hillside. Prince Cameron strode forward, past the Steward, right up to the edge of the cliff face, and smiled just a little as he looked out over the long drop. Little drifts of tumbling stones fell away from the hill’s edge under his great weight, but the Broken Man had eyes only for the view. He gestured for the Steward to come over and join him. The Steward shuffled forward, as close as he dared.

“Look at that moon, and all those stars,” the Broken Man said softly. “Aren’t they magnificent? How can men do evil in the face of such beauty? I shall miss all this, Steward. I never wanted to leave here. Never wanted to go home again. I only wanted to be left alone . . . Do you know why they called me the Broken Man? The real reason I was banished? Why I can never be King, no matter how many battles I win?”

“Not really,” said the Steward. “You don’t have to . . .”

“I came out of the womb broken,” said Prince Cameron. “Something wrong in me. It took me, took everybody, some time to discover why everyone always felt so uncomfortable around me. It turned out I’m not a complete person. Something missing in me. I can’t feel pleasure, you see. I can’t experience any kind of physical, sexual, emotional satisfaction.” He stopped, and looked briefly back at the Steward. “You thought I was homosexual, didn’t you? When they said I couldn’t be King because I could never produce an heir, you thought . . . Well, it’s what most people think. But no, I feel nothing for women or men. I have never felt love nor lust, passion nor contentment, in another’s arms. I can see it, recognise it in others, but I have never experienced even the smallest part of it.”

“But how can you be sure?” said the Steward, just a bit desperately. He didn’t think he should be hearing such things, but if the Prince was ready to bare his soul so nakedly, he felt he should say . . . something. “I mean, I thought the King put protections on all his children, so they couldn’t actually . . .”

“Oh, he did,” said the Prince. “But I found a way to break them. As I grew older, I felt a need to be sure, to confirm what I suspected. That the pleasures everyone else spoke of so freely, that ruled the lives of all my contemporaries, were nothing but a mystery to me. Several rather embarrassing intimate encounters later, I knew the truth . . . that none of it meant anything to me. The King found out, of course, and ordered me to undergo a whole series of treatments, medical and magical, to try to cure me . . . to make me a real man, a real son . . . but none of them worked. I remained . . . broken. Rumours started to spread. That was when people in the know started calling me the Broken Man. My father sent me to fight in the border skirmishes, so I could die an honourable death, at least. Only I turned out to be an excellent soldier, and then an even greater general. Perhaps there’s something about not being able to care about people that makes you a better killer. I became . . . acclaimed, if not actually popular. And my father couldn’t allow that. So he banished me. Because a man who could never continue the Royal line could never be King.”

“You never . . . cared, for anyone?” said the Steward.

“In my own small way,” said the Prince. “There are people whose existence matters to me. In that I would miss them, if they weren’t around. But I never loved anyone. Not if I understand the term correctly. My only pleasures are those of the mind. I can enjoy the sunlight in the morning and the stars at night, or a good thought in a good book. But the way of a man with a woman escapes me. There is a thing that every other man knows, that I have never known, and never will. I can see it, but I can’t feel it. My mind is full, but my heart is empty. I never wanted anyone. Probably just as well. I would only have disappointed them. There’s just enough humanity in me to know how much I’m missing. That’s why I didn’t do anything to fight my banishment.

“In fact, I would have to say I’ve enjoyed being a hermit. Left alone with my books, and my thoughts, and the views . . . I prefer solitude to being surrounded by people who want things from me that I can’t give them. I would have happily lived out the rest of my life here, abandoned and forgotten. But I do understand duty, and honour, and responsibilities. So I will come back and be your warrior again. Lead the Redhart army to victory one last time. Because it does feel good to be needed; and I will accept rank and approval and the roar of the crowds . . . if that’s all there is for me.” He turned his back deliberately on the view and nodded brusquely to the Steward. “Thank you for listening, Steward. I always promised myself I’d tell the truth to someone, someday. But please understand, Steward, if you ever repeat one word of this, to anybody, I will kill you. I am a Prince, and I have to think of my dignity.”

“Yes, of course,” said the Steward, his heart jumping in his chest. “I understand perfectly.”

He led Prince Cameron to the waiting door, which opened before him, and they both walked through it, to Castle Midnight. The door closed behind them, and then disappeared, leaving the hillside and the cave quiet and empty.

•   •   •

T
he door didn’t take them back to Van Fleet’s room. Instead, the Steward and the Prince emerged directly into the Royal Court of Redhart. King William was sitting on his throne, waiting, with Prince Christof standing at his right hand and the Champion, Malcolm Barrett, standing at his left. The Steward looked quickly around, but the rest of the Court was still empty, and full of very dark shadows. He straightened his back, held his head up, and led Prince Cameron forward to stand before the throne. If the Prince was at all disturbed by the state of the dark and empty Court, it didn’t show in his face. He stood before the throne in his full armour, and nodded to his father, but he didn’t bow to him. Christof stirred at his father’s side but didn’t say anything.