The Everlasting — Chapter 5

5

DAYS PASSED, AND they were each the same.

I would wake alone. You would greet me with grim silence, and I would search your face for some sign of renewed faith or divine awe. Only your eyes changed, sinking deeper into their sockets; I suspected you of avoiding sleep.

Later you would hunt, or tend the bay, rubbing handfuls of dry grass over his scarred hide, speaking in the low, honeyed voice you reserved exclusively for him. I had learned not to approach you at these times. For an animal of his size (prehistoric) and age (also prehistoric), your horse moved very quickly, and still retained enough teeth to leave a crescent of yellowing bruises on the back of my arm.

You had said, quite harshly, “Stay away from him.”

“It’s alright, no real harm done,” I’d said, and understood from your expression that, this time, you had been speaking to me.

I gave your horse a very wide berth thereafter, and did not miss the hopeful way he lifted his hind leg as I passed.

At first, I was afraid to wander out of sight of the hut, but I never got lost, or even slightly turned around. The land was familiar to me, though I had learned it as a boy, twenty years ago and a thousand years from now. I knew every slope and dale, every bare crag and narrow stream. I knew where the rabbits denned and where the yew stood, already ancient even here at the beginning of everything.

I sat among the roots sometimes, head tilted back against the tendons of the trunk, and understood why you ran here, when you ran. It was a place apart, a secret kept from the world: There were no queens or ministers

beneath the yew, no wars or quests. There was only the slantwise light and the gently moving air and the wild, cold smell of the earth.

In the evenings we would huddle in the remains of the hut, talking softly. Or, at least, I would talk—asking questions or complaining about the cold or describing my attempts to brew oak-gall ink—and you would suffer in stoic silence.

Sometimes you would tend your tack or armor, working oil into the leather joints; sometimes you would lay your blade across your knees and polish the metal with long, even strokes. I would fall quiet, then. I liked to watch you—the easy competence of your hands, the pull of muscle in your wrists—and I liked to watch the sword.

There were so many stories about it: They said it could cleave stones and fell trees, that if it broke in battle it would appear whole and perfect again the next dawn, that it had been forged long before Dominion was born.

Horseshit, according to Professor Sawbridge. She’d become an archaeologist, she always said, because words lied and bones didn’t. She’d shown us the actual swords she’d dug up from this era—rough, lumpen things, with horn hilts and bog-ore blades.

Yet: Here was Valiance, with a hilt cast wholly in metal, a grip wrapped in fine leather cording, and a blade of such pure, coruscant steel that it shone blue in the firelight.

After your work was done you would bank the coals and settle in the doorway to keep watch, your cloak pulled tight around your shoulders. The knot between your brows would ease then, and you would stare out at the star-pocked wood as if you would be content to live out the rest of your days here, in the dim margins of history.

I would feel restless then, almost guilty, and turn to the book instead.

My pen was a hollow reed, clumsily cut, and my ink was gummy brown, but the words came easier than I expected. Like the lines of a poem I’d memorized as a boy, or a story I had told before and would tell again.

UNA AND THE CROWN

They say that when the Brigand Prince dragged Yvanne into the woods, having stolen her from her father’s lands, she was weeping.

They say that when Yvanne rode out of the woods, with the prince’s head knocking wetly against her saddle, she was smiling.

They say the common people fell to their knees and pressed their brows to the earth as she passed, for they had long suffered under the prince’s tyranny, and the girl who rode with Yvanne— a wild and strange creature, with matted hair and a huge blade bound across her back—did not look down at them even once.

She had eyes only for the queen-who-was-not-yet-queen but would be soon.

I could not say the truth of it; I did not know her, then. But I will tell it to you as it was told to me, much later.

Yvanne saw the tears of the peasants and knew it was time to claim her heritage, for Yvanne was of course descended from an ancient line of kings who had ruled the continent before it was divided by creed and tongue.

So Yvanne rode to the prince’s seat at Cavallon and asked his people to swear new oaths to her service and to God-the-Savior.

This they did gladly, because they saw Yvanne’s grace and wisdom—and because some of them knew the name of the sword the girl carried across her back, and knew they bore witness to the birth of a new legend.

But there is no such thing as a bloodless birth.

Before they had even laid the anchor stone for the Queen’s Keep, the first of the False Kings came calling.

He rode up the hill with ten knights at his back and demanded that Yvanne give up her title and bow before him. ‘Certainly I will,’ the queen said, ‘if you can best my champion.’ The False King looked about him and saw no one but peasants and children, wielding staves and rusted axes. The only

sword was held by a ragged girl wearing armor that did not fit her. The False King laughed.

They say he was still laughing when Valiance slid neatly between his ribs.

The second of the False Kings fell the same way, full of hubris, but the third was canny enough to be afraid. He held a tournament and offered a prize—his own weight in silver!—to the man who could best the Queen’s Champion.

It was Ancel of Ulwin who won the tournament, who rode with the last of the False Kings to Cavallon and challenged the Red Knight to a duel. And, for the first time since she drew the sword from the yew, Una faced a worthy foe.

Ancel was young and fast and beautiful. He moved like a needle through cloth, diving and rising in a perfect rhythm. Una was taller and stronger, but for a long time, she could not best him. They fought until their lungs ached, until their blood had turned the earth to slick mud beneath their boots and their shadows stretched long at their backs.

Later, those who saw the fight would agree that Ancel was the best swordsman in the land. But in the end, he was only a man.

What is a man, against a legend?

The end, when it came, came quickly. Valiance caught neatly beneath Ancel’s cross guard and sent his blade flying from his hand. Una drew back for the final blow. Ancel closed his eyes.

And a voice called, softly, ‘Mercy, my love.’ Una wrenched her sword aside at the last moment.

Ancel opened his eyes and beheld the queen, looking down at him with such gentility that his knees buckled.

Distantly he heard his False King braying, urging him to rise and fight, but Ancel found he did not care; nor did he care when the king’s voice went abruptly quiet.

He cared only about the queen, smiling wryly down at him. ‘Would you like to know why she won?’ When Ancel did not answer, Yvanne went on, ‘Because you fought for yourself. For

glory, for silver. But she…’ Her eyes found Una, who was cleaning the False King’s blood from her blade. ‘She fought for

Dominion.’ Ancel asked, ‘What is Dominion?’ Yvanne answered, ‘One nation united under one God. One kingdom, from the Slant Sea to the Northern Fallows, prosperous and peaceful. Just a dream, for now, but one worth dying for.’ She might have been a saint or a seer, she spoke with such perfect faith.

And Ancel, who had only ever served himself and other men who served themselves, felt an aching, helpless love take root in his chest.

Humbly, head bowed, he said, ‘I know nothing of dreams, my lady, but I would fight for you.’ There was a considering pause. Then he felt the flat of a blade fall heavy on his right shoulder. ‘Good enough,’ said Yvanne, and she swore a second knight to her service.

Later, they would come to call him Ancel the Good, the Knight of Hearts, for he collected so many, though he took neither wife nor lover. Later, Ancel and Una would come to trust each other as brothers, fighting side by side for crown and country.

But as Una watched Ancel take his oath in the bloodied earth of the courtyard, she felt nothing but uneasy envy. The False Kings were cast down. Ancel had joined the court of Cavallon, and he would not be the last. What purpose, then, did she serve?

She went to the queen that very night and took Yvanne’s soft white hands in hers. ‘Tell me what else I may win you, lady. Only name it, and it will be yours.’ And the queen answered, as if she had been waiting for the question, ‘A crown worthy of Dominion.’ The following morning, Sir Una rode out on her first quest. It would be three years before she returned.

She journeyed deep into the wild reaches of Dominion, chasing legends of a crown fit for her queen, and wherever she rode she left new stories in her wake. Some of these you have heard, I’m sure: the Duel of the Stone Keep, in which she bested Bodrow the Giant; the great dragon hunt, when all save one of those unnatural creatures were slain, and their ivory scales sewn into a white mantle for the queen; the Ballad of Morvain, in which a wicked sorceress beguiled Una for seven days and seven nights, until Una recited holy prayers and caused Morvain to forsake her sorcery and take the veil instead.

It is only the final story that matters, anyway, when Una took to the Slant Sea in a humble fisherman’s boat.

She was following the tale of Sinclair, the Saint of Smiths, who had long ago crafted a crown of such surpassing beauty that he had buried it on a hidden isle rather than see it sit on an unworthy brow.

The smith had set his sons and their sons to guard it against the day a true champion would come to claim it.

At the time Una came to the isle, there were three brothers remaining. They had spent the whole of their lives training together, and the beach was pocked white with the bones of their enemies.

Una buried the brothers side by side in the sandy soil.

When she returned to Cavallon, Yvanne bent her head, and Una placed upon it the Crown of Dominion: a golden circlet, set with three rubies red as pigeon’s blood. It fit her brow as if the Saint of Smiths had crafted it for her alone.

When Yvanne rose, Una said again, ‘Tell me what else I may win you, my lady.’ And the queen answered, ‘A kingdom worthy of this crown.’ The following morning, Sir Una rode out with Valiance in her hand and an army at her back, and made war on the world.

Later, they would name those bloody years the First Crusade.

Historians would call it the beginning of Dominion, when the

people were freed from the rule of petty lords and tyrants and united under one flag at last. The bards would sing of glorious battles against insurmountable odds, of desperate victories and tragic defeats and always, endlessly, of her: Sir Una, the Drawn Blade of Dominion, who fought so well and so long that her enemies ran from the meanest glimpse of her red-painted shield, the merest rumor of a pale-haired woman upon a blood-bay steed.

It was during that time that people began to believe she was not a woman at all, but a demon or an angel. They said no mortal could fight as she fought—perfectly, without pause, as if she knew the arc of each blow before it fell—or survive what she survived. More than once she was carried from the field, her sword shattered, her shield split; more than once the queen kept vigil at her champion’s bedside. But always, Una rose again: her wounds healed, her blade whole and unmarked.

I cannot say the whole truth of it because she will not speak of those times, even to me. But I have seen the scars that run over every part of her, biting deep into muscle and tendon, and I can tell you with certainty that she is mortal.

And I can tell you what any map would: Una swept across the continent like a scouring wind. She took the salt marshes of the south from the Nornish heathens; she slew the Lords of Gall and had their idols defaced, the mark of the Savior scratched into their stone brows; she fought the Hyllmen last, those stubborn, savage kings of the Northern Fallows. She drove them behind the high walls of their Black Bastion, which had never before fallen to any invader. Una took it in only three days.

And when the battle was over, the dream of Dominion was true: one God, one flag, one nation.

Una returned to Cavallon in triumph, showered in rose petals and songs. And—though she was older now, and some of her wounds were the kind that never quite healed—she knelt again before the queen.

She said, ‘Tell me what else I may win you, lady.’ The queen stroked her hair as if she were a girl again, and the Drawn Blade of Dominion closed her eyes, overcome with love. ‘Rest now,’ said the queen, and Una did as she was bade.

For a year and a day, she lived peacefully, giving herself to prayer and silence. The kingdom flourished and the joints of her armor grew stiff with rust.

Until the time came when the queen fell desperately ill.

Yvanne, a woman of God, did not fear death—but she feared for Dominion, for the dream she had brought into the world. And so she called out—ah, so weakly!—for her champion.

There was one thing still left to be won.

—Excerpted from The Death of Una Everlasting, translated by Owen Mallory I chewed at the splintered end of my pen. “Could you describe the scene for me, when Yvanne’s messengers came to you?”

You paused in the act of adding wood to the fire. “I thought you knew everything that had ever happened to me.”

“Well, I know versions of it. Your story has been—will be, I suppose— written down a dozen different ways, by a dozen different authors.

Lazamon is the most complete and popular version, but it’s also the most recent. My old adviser—uh, that’s sort of like a liege lord, except instead of beheading you she can make you rewrite your thesis chapter—says the material evidence is even more contradictory and varied.” I adjusted my spectacles, which had developed a tendency to list to the left. “Personally, I always liked the one where they find you at prayer, and you break your vow of silence to answer the summons. ‘I would deny God before I deny my queen,’ you say, and then—”

“I told them to fuck themselves.” You settled the log on the coals and added, almost chattily, by your standards, “I was drunk as a dog, when they found me.”

“… Oh.” I chewed my pen some more, and then wrote: When the queen called, Sir Una answered, as she ever had. There was no need, I thought, to

burden the reader with unnecessary detail.

I wrapped the book carefully in a scrap of hide and burrowed under the furs, watching you. You sat very upright, but there were bruised hollows beneath your eyes, as if someone had pressed their thumbs hard into your

face.

“Do you ever sleep?”

You shrugged. “Fire needs tending.” I’d noticed by then that you were uneasy around the fire, approaching it reluctantly and feeding it warily, as if it were a dog that had bitten you once before.

But I didn’t think it was the reason you never slept. “You don’t want to dream, do you.”

Another tectonic shrug, as if the earth itself rested on the bend of your shoulders.

I watched you for another few minutes. I thought of simply telling you where the dragon’s bones were found, but I didn’t think you would believe me. And even if you did—I had decided to believe in God as a very young man, mostly to annoy my father; I was not so faithful that I could turn down the chance for proof.

I crawled out from under the furs and crouched by the coals. “Let me mind the fire tonight.”

Your eyes flicked to me, then back to the flames, uncertain. I reached— very slowly—for the stick you used as a poker, taking it from your hand without touching your skin. “Look, if you collapse from exhaustion, I will starve almost instantly. Or be murdered by brigands or, more likely, your horse. Surely even a madman deserves better.”

I could tell I’d hit some deep-set nerve, some fundamental instinct that caused you to come when you were called, to serve when you were needed.

Yet your queen needed you, and here you were, hiding where fate couldn’t find you.

You didn’t lie down, but you unbent enough to lean against the mud wall, swaddled in the muddy folds of your should-be-red cloak. Your eyes narrowed to dark gold slits.

You slept, eventually, brows low and knotted, as if you dreamed and did not like it.

I pulled the furs over you with a tenderness that was almost an apology, although I didn’t know what I was sorry for.

Fate always finds you, in the end.

“How did you know?” Your voice woke me, trembling with some great emotion.

I tried to jerk upright in answer, but I’d fallen asleep in an awkward huddle beside the ashes of the fire, and my muscles had fossilized overnight. I made a feeble flopping motion instead. “Know what?” My voice sounded like two knives scraping together.

“The dream.” You were breathing hard, air rushing through the bellows of your chest. “Last night I saw the dragon, dead before me. I saw the cup.

And I heard a voice—a terrible voice. It said—”

“Cloven Hill.” I had achieved an approximation of sitting up, but my neck seemed to have several extra angles in it. “The remains were discovered there by a shepherd’s son who was looking for a lost lamb, apparently. The papers loved it. The skeleton hangs in the Royal Museum now, of course.”

I managed to turn my head the five degrees necessary to look at you.

Your face was so pale that the scars were a garish pink. That misshapen pupil was huge and black, almost spilling the bounds of your iris. “It’s true, then.” Nearly a whisper, full of awe. “You knew what would happen before it came to pass. You’ve come from … the future.”

“I did mention it.” I was rubbing my neck with one palm, to no effect at all, resisting the urge to whoop with awe and triumph only because I thought it might leave me permanently crippled.

You glanced at the corner of the hut where you kept your kit. A bright flash of silver winked beneath the leathers. I hadn’t seen you fully armored since the day I arrived; it struck me now as strange that you’d been wearing it at all.

You said, “Tell me how it happens, then.”

I wished I’d thought to rehearse in all these long, silent days. I wet my lips. “You follow God’s voice north. You find the last dragon in its lair. The

battle is long and bitter, but you prevail, and in the dragon’s horde you find the grail. You carry it in triumph to your queen. And then…” The final twist, the heroic last stand. The tragedy.

In my undergraduate courses, I’d taught your death as a narrative tool, an elegant equation about honor and valor and the cost of nationhood. Now, looking into the burnt sap of your eyes, close enough to see the ordinary imperfections of your skin, it did not seem much like an equation.

But you had already strayed far from the path of your story; if I told you how it ended, you would never return to it. You would never slay the dragon or fetch the grail. The country would lose its first queen and its greatest hero, and I didn’t think Dominion—fragile, freshly born—would survive the loss.

Your country needs you. Had Vivian Rolfe seen that version of the future, somehow? Was that what drove her, what gave her such a burning, unbending air of purpose—the terror of a world without you?

“And then?” you prompted, and I found that—though I was a coward and a deserter—I was not yet a traitor. I would not trade the past and future of an entire nation for one woman.

“And then,” I said, “the queen is healed, and the kingdom prospers forevermore.” It wasn’t a lie.

You did not look comforted. “And afterward?” you pressed. “Does she —Yvanne said this was my last quest. Did she speak the truth?”

My mouth was full of acid, burning the back of my throat. “Yes,” I said, and—God forgive me—that wasn’t a lie, either. “This is your last quest.”

For a moment, you didn’t react at all. Your face was so perfectly still it might have been a painting or a sculpture, the symbol of a person rather than the thing itself. But your features softened suddenly, animating into an expression I’d never seen you wear. Not joy, but the hope of joy, like a lost sailor who hasn’t yet seen land, but believes for the first time that he might.

The sight of it did something odd to my vision. For a moment I could see the way joy would look on your face when it finally arrived. I could see you laughing, head thrown back, throat long and unguarded. I could see a ripe berry popping between your teeth—juice running clear down your chin —my own hand reaching to wipe it away—

“Gather your things,” you said, sharply. “We leave before noon.”

My head jerked back, causing my neck to make a sound like a guitar string snapping. “Oh, thank God.” And then, after a pause: “We?” I’d anticipated a lot of wheedling and pleading before you permitted me to come with you. I had several very compelling speeches worked up, including one on bended knee and one in verse.

But you were ignoring me, already bent over your work. I hurried to gather my few things before you changed your mind.

When the camp was cleared and the gelding saddled, you mounted with fluid certainty, as if you’d been mounting this same horse for ten thousand years and would do it for another ten thousand.

In the softened light of morning, I could almost imagine him as a noble steed, rather than a bad-tempered mummy. He pranced a little, as if he, too, felt the threads of the story pulling taut around us.

I was backing awkwardly out of the way, wondering grimly how many miles my shoes would survive, when your hand appeared in my vision. It remained there, cracked and callused, red knuckled in the cold, until I realized you were waiting for me to take it.

I had noticed by then the way you held yourself away from me, as if your body was a grenade with the pin half pulled. I wondered when you had last touched someone you did not intend to kill, if you even remembered how.

Yet still: There was your hand, waiting.

I eyed it. “Are you sure you—”

“Yes.”

I eyed the gelding, who was rolling the bit in his jaw with a sound like bones in a meat grinder. “And you’re sure he—”

“Yes.”

“Why? I thought you despised bards and scribes. ‘Carrion birds,’ I think you called them.”

You did not answer. Your hand did not waver.

I took it. I set one foot in the stirrup, and you hauled me up as if I weighed nothing at all. You settled me in the saddle in front of you, where one of the furs had been folded over the low pommel, so that my thighs lay

over yours, my back against your chest. Your arms reached easily around me for the reins, which you hardly seemed to need. The long muscles of your legs tensed in some secret language spoken only between you and the gelding, and he turned northward.

And for the first time since I had lost the book, everything felt right. It was like an out-of-tune instrument finally ringing true, a poorly told tale finally making sense.

I was so overcome by it all—by the wild, fresh smell of the air and the heat of your body around mine, by the implausible fact that I was riding out on the last quest of Sir Una Everlasting, the Red Knight, in the name of Yvanne the First—that I almost didn’t hear you when you finally answered my question.

“Because it was not God’s voice I heard in my dream, boy,” you said, and I felt your breath on the fine hairs at the back of my neck. “It was yours.”

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