Britomart nervously clenched and unclenched her hands as she stepped into the clearing. The scent of roses hit her, hazy and intoxicating, pressing in on her senses, telling her to come closer, to breathe more deeply. She did not need to look far for its source. At the heart of the clearing stood a castle encircled by stone walls twenty feet high, walls covered with climbing roses red as blood and rich as velvet. The castle was nothing like the hulking crenelated monstrosity of the royal palace at Boemapolis. It was a soaring thing of slender spires. There was something graceful and defiant about it, some indomitable wildness not fully contained by the fixed geometry of stone and mortar.
Directly before her, an arch cut through the towering stone. No gate barred it, no door closed it off. None was necessary, Rowena had explained. The castle had its own safeguards. Beyond the archway, a stone pathway led over a moat and across a grassy courtyard to the high oaken doors of the castle itself, imposing even from this distance.
Britomart settled the heavy cloak more closely around her. It shifted in hard planes like a mantle of rock reluctantly conforming to her shape. She had watched Rowena make the cloak the day before, watched flint flowing into fabric, merging with it, reluctantly pliable. The cloak would give her two hundred heartbeats of protection: two hundred heartbeats for which it would burn, every particle alight, flint dancing with the memory of fire. Two hundred heartbeats to reach the safety of the castle door, if safety it could be called. The door merely led from one kind of danger to another. Then the fire would fail, and the cloak would crumble to dust around her.
Britomart took another step forward and thought she saw a tendril from the climbing roses creep closer to the arched entryway, as if preparing to weave its way across it. Rowena’s voice sounded in her head: “The roses have soaked up magic like most plants soak up water. Their thorns will pierce the toughest leather, find the smallest crevice in a suit of armor. They will seek your flesh until they find it. The smallest cut, and you will sleep as Alfrick does and not wake until some blood witch centuries hence takes pity on you–if such a witch should ever come. Yet there is one thing that the roses fear, and that is fire. Fire must be your armor, fire your shield, fire your refuge.”
Britomart would have much preferred for her sword to be her refuge. She took some comfort in the feel of it by her hip. She dearly hoped that Rowena was right that the heat from the cloak’s fire would not harm its wearer. She did not want to think about what would happen if the flames heated her armor.
With a deep breath, she turned and looked at Smudge. He waited beside her, eyes wide with worry. He held a piece of steel clutched tight in his hand, ready to strike against Britomart’s flinty cloak at her command. Britomart tried to smile reassuringly at him, but judging by the fact that he only looked more worried, it was not a success. She reached out to lay a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. “I’ll be alright, scamp. I’m a knight, remember.”
“Better be,” Smudge said ferociously.
“I’ll come back. I promise. And you know how I feel about promises.”
“There’s no ‘meant to.” You do or you don’t.”
Britomart really did manage a smile this time. “Exactly. Ready?”
Smudge scowled.
“Come. It’s time.” She gave Smudge’s shoulder a squeeze, and they walked towards the wall, stopping no more than a few strides away from it. The scent of the roses hit Britomart more strongly than it had before, and the sense of hazy intoxication that it had stirred in her when she first entered the clearing redoubled. She had to fight the temptation to reach out and pluck one of the roses. Surely a single one would not hurt–a single rose, and then she could continue her quest. The thought of her quest snapped her out of her growing haze. She gave Smudge’s shoulder a slight shake, and the hazy expression on his face cleared too. His scowl returned, but it was directed at the roses now. Britomart blinked. In her momentary haze, the position of the roses had changed. They had begun stirring. Some of the thorny tendrils were creeping towards her, reaching out from the wall like grasping tentacles. Others were slithering to fill the archway.
Britomart drew her sword and gave Smudge a curt nod, then pulled the heavy hood of the cloak over her head. There was a grating scrape as Smudge sparked steel on flint. The cloak rippled like an animal flexing its muscles, and Britomart heard the whoosh of flames. The edges of her vision rippled like a heat haze, dancing with fire. The tendrils of roses that had been reaching towards her drew back with a hiss.
Two hundred heartbeats of protection. Two hundred heartbeats of fire.
Go.
Britomart closed the distance between herself and the archway, her sword slicing through the roses that had formed a web across it. Their stems felt hard as bone against her blade. She sliced at them again and again, pushing relentlessly forward until the remaining roses recoiled from her and the stone pathway extended before her. And then she ran. Thorny tendrils grasped after her, hissing as they searched for an opening where thorn could find flesh. Her cloak swayed as she ran, and she felt something snake beneath its hem and wrap around her ankle, dragging her back, thorns closing around her greaves with such force that they dented the steel. She lashed out with her sword and the pressure fell away with the severed stem.
The ground dropped away on either side as the stone path became a bridge over a moat. A wave of horror washed over her as she realized that the moat was filled not with water but with writhing roses and gnashing thorns that slithered and reared up around the bridge as she ran. They shied away only at the last moment from the flames that engulfed her and the snick of her sword. She could feel her heart racing as she cut at one tendril, then another, dodging between the thorns of the vines that had crept underfoot. How many heartbeats had passed? Ninety? One hundred? One hundred and fifty? She fought her way across the bridge until the moat gave way to a verdant courtyard. She could hear the rose vines slithering after her, grasping, grasping. Her chest burned as she pushed herself faster. Her flame-fringed vision narrowed on the castle steps and the massive wooden door arching at their top. She raised her foot to take the first step and was jerked back as another tendril found its way under the hem of her cloak and wound around her ankle. A quick cut, and she was free. She cleared the other steps and felt her cloak crumble to ash as she laid her hand against the door and gasped the words that Rowena had taught her: “My heart is pure and–” The vine that had been snaking up the steps behind her wrapped around her leg, and a thorn slid perfectly into the join between greave and cuisse.
Britomart hardly felt the prick at the back of her knee before she slumped to the ground, deep in slumber. She did not feel the rose vines retreat, their task complete. She did not see the castle doors swing silently open. She did not hear the footsteps approaching from within the castle, nor the half-aggrieved, half-amused tones of a young woman’s voice saying, “Really, castle, did you have to let him in?”
“–my need is dire!” Britomart woke up exclaiming. She was at the castle doors, saying the words that would win her entry. Except that she wasn’t. She was lying down somewhere remarkably soft. There seemed to be bed hangings above her, and a young woman bending over her. A young woman with thick dark hair, dancing brown eyes, and the olive skin of a Corsirian. A young woman who was currently studying her with unabashed amusement.
“I dare say your need is dire,” said the woman. “Or at least it would have been if the castle had not convinced me to help you. I don’t know what you did, but the castle seemed to change its mind about you as soon as the roses pricked you. It refused to shut the door until I had brought you inside. I don’t suppose you have any magic, do you? No, I can see you do not. The castle is far too old and set in its ways to be affected by anyone else’s magic anyways.” The woman smoothed the bedspread beside Britomart and sat down on it.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Britomart croaked.
“Don’t you know? I’m the blood witch. As to where you are, you’re currently taking up one of the best beds in my castle.”
“You’re the blood witch?”
The woman arched an eyebrow. “Not what you expected?”
“No.” Thoughts chased themselves through Britomart’s head–too many thoughts. The blood witch. Amoret. Britomart had known that Amoret was her own age, but seeing the reality of it was different. The Blood Witch was supposed to be ageless as the sea and cold as the coldest winter night. But this woman looked…well…human. Human and warm and far too entertained. And Corsirian, of all things. Not like an incarnation of Northern villainy at all. “You’re supposed to seem more evil,” Britomart added, then immediately wished she hadn’t.
Amoret made a sound that was somewhere between a snort and a laugh. “At least you’re honest. Perhaps that’s why the castle likes you. If it would make you feel better, I could start mumbling dire spells and threatening you with horrible tortures. I’m sure I could make myself appropriately evil with sufficient effort.”
Britomart’s brow furrowed. “Why do you keep talking about the castle that way–saying it likes me, like it’s a living thing?”
“Because it is a living thing in its own way. It was crafted by eneidiau careg–stone whisperers, you might say–and blood witches working together, and it has belonged to many generations of blood witches since then. The castle is as much magic as stone by now. It is no more an inanimate object than its roses are, and surely you noticed how lively they are.”
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It all came back to Britomart then. The archway in the wall and the flight through the roses, the flaming cloak rippling around her, the slashing of her blade, the grasping tendrils writhing towards her, the dagger-sharp thorns seeking a breach in the flames, the courtyard of lush green, the steps ahead, the castle door, the wood under her hand, the words Rowena had taught her to open the door–words she had woken up shouting. And then blackness, and a sensation of falling.
Instinct took over. Britomart sat up frantically in the bed, nearly banging heads with Amoret as she tried to pull herself free of the blanket, scanning the room for her sword. There, propped against the wall beside her armor. Her armor! She looked down and realized to her horror that she was dressed in a thin linen shift embroidered with roses. She heard a murmured word, and a hand stopped her as she tried to swing her legs over the side of the bed and lunge towards her sword. It was a slender hand. Britomart should have been able to ignore it easily. Instead, she found herself unable to move. It was even worse than when her legs had been encased by stone. Every muscle from her neck down had simply ceased to obey her. She stared down at the hand on her shoulder and saw a small red stain seeping into her shift from under it. “What have you done to me?” she growled, her voice tight with fury.
“I have stopped you from doing something foolish,” Amoret placidly replied. Her voice lost its placidity as she continued, “More than that, I have broken the spell that bound you, a spell that no blood witch has broken in over three hundred years, though many sleepers have come under its sway. I had to spend hours in the library looking for the counterspell, it had been so long since anyone used it. Had I not, you could have slept for eternity and been none the wiser. Which would have been no more than you deserved, for all the thanks that you have given me for saving you.” Amoret removed her hand from Britomart’s shoulder and wrinkled her nose as she studying the shallow gash on her palm. “And now I’ve had to reopen the cut from waking you. It stings, you know, even when you’re used to it. I don’t suppose you thought of that.”
Britomart felt herself blanch. “You used blood magic on me. Twice.” She could hear the fear in her voice. Fear and something else: the beginnings of hatred.
Amoret had begun to rebind her palm in the dark red handkerchief that had fallen to her lap, but she looked up sharply at that. “Should I instead have let you bolt out of bed and grab your sword? I saw the instant that you noticed it behind me. Your face changed. Did you come here to kill me? I wouldn’t have thought the castle would have let you in if that were your intent.”
“I came here to talk to you,” Britomart replied through gritted teeth. “I would just prefer to do it with my sword in hand.”
“Customs must be very different in Galbrica if one talks to one’s host with sword in hand.”
“We are in Galbrica.”
“Are we? Will the trees outside this castle follow your king’s command? I assure you, they will follow mine.”
“That is because you are a blood witch. It has nothing to do with who rules the land.” Even as Britomart said it, though, she could feel that it did not ring true. She hastened to change the subject. “Why did you save me anyways? Why not leave me like the others?”
“Ah, you know about the others. Then perhaps you know that the others sleep in a cavern an hour’s ride away where they do not bother me. My godmother tends to them.” Amoret’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I don’t suppose you have met her too?”
Britomart nodded grudgingly.
“I should have known. Rowena is always interfering. Well, when somebody pricks themselves on the roses and falls into the slumber, Rowena comes and collects them. It’s quite simple because nobody ever makes it past the walls. You, on the other hand, practically fell into my entryway, and the castle seemed determined to have you. I had no wish to have you taking up one of the castle’s bedchambers for the remainder of my years, so I woke you. Also, I have to admit, I was curious.”
Britomart blinked in surprise. “Curious?”
Amoret shrugged. “I’ve never seen the castle take to someone who was not from the Shadowed Wood–not without the command of its owner. And when I took your helmet off and saw that awful mess of a braid…well, I’ve never seen a woman dressed as a knight before either, except in the histories. I don’t suppose you would care to explain who you are?” she added hopefully.
“I will tell you nothing until you let me go.”
“Will you swear not to lunge for your sword if I do so?”
Britomart nodded curtly. Then, in response to Amoret’s waiting look, said, “I swear.”
“Nor to attempt to harm me in any other fashion while under my hospitality.”
Britomart hesitated. Everything in her screamed that she must not let a blood witch live–a blood witch who had worked magic on her, who had openly denied the rule of Galbrica. But the thought of actually killing the young woman beside her…Britomart looked into those dancing eyes and looked away. She could feel the slight dip in the bed where Amoret sat by her side. She could feel the warmth coming off her.
It was with a surge of relief that Britomart remembered that killing Amoret would doom her quest. Really, she had a knightly obligation not to kill her. She swallowed hard and said, “I swear not to harm you in any way while under your hospitality.”
Amoret gave a small, satisfied smile. “Good. Let us hope that you hold to your oaths better than your ancestors.” Britomart hardly had time to open her mouth for a retort before Amoret had once more unbound her hand and was reaching towards her. Britomart flinched. The flinch traveled no further than her face. Even such an inadvertent movement could not stir her bespelled body. Amoret lowered her hand in annoyance. “I need to touch you to reverse the spell.”
Britomart felt a flush of shame creeping up her neck. Knights did not flinch. “Fine,” she said stoically. Amoret’s touch on her shoulder was firm but not ungentle. Britomart looked away so that she would not see the fresh bloodstain on her shift. She heard a few murmured words and heaved a deep breath as she felt control return to her limbs. As soon as she could move, she scrambled as far back on the bed as she could, stopping when her spine jarred against the headboard. Her muscles protested against the hurried movements. For the first time, she became aware of all the aches and pains from fighting her way to the castle.
Amoret must have seen her wince, for she said, “Since you dislike my spells so much, I took the other off you as well: the healing spell that I put on you just before I woke you. It has done some work already, I’m sorry to say, but you will be glad to know that you will do the rest of your healing naturally, with all of the aches and pains that accompany it.”
Britomart fought back the urge to massage the sudden cramping in her calf. “Three spells,” she gritted out. “You did three spells on me without my permission. What sort of person are you?”
“What sort of person? I would expect you to say what sort of ‘monster.’” Amoret was once more binding her sliced hand with the handkerchief. She was remarkably efficient at it–but then, Britomart supposed you would be if you had to do it so often. “I am the sort of person who woke you and tried to ease your pain. I could hardly ask your permission for either of those, as you were in a state of enchanted slumber at the time. The third spell was against your will, true, but you must admit, it was not without provocation.”
Britomart could think of no good answer to that. “Just don’t work magic on me again,” she grumbled. Her anger still felt fresh, but the adrenaline that had stoked it into rage was fading.
“As you wish. Now, I believe you said you would tell me who you are if I freed you. I have freed you. It’s time for your part of the bargain.”
Britomart cleared her throat uncomfortably. As the adrenaline subsided, she was becoming increasingly aware of the fact that she was crouched against the headboard of a featherbed wearing nothing but a thin, flowery shift with someone else’s blood drying on her shoulder. Amoret, meanwhile, looked perfectly composed in a dress of fine burgundy wool embroidered with cream-colored vines across the bodice. Her spine was straight and her shoulders proud. The only mussed thing about her was the handkerchief that bound her hand, but even that showed no bloodstains. Britomart wondered if its color had been chosen specifically to hide such marks. “Couldn’t we wait until I’m more presentable?” she asked. “You spoke of hospitality. Surely you would not require a guest to converse in such a state.”
“Squirming out of promises already?”
“No! I just feel rather…” Britomart gestured at herself. Her embarrassment grew as Amoret’s gaze traveled over her.
Amoret’s lips quirked. “Yes, I see. Under the circumstances, I suppose a delay is forgivable. I’ll hold you to your word though, guest though you are. Dinner will be served in the great hall an hour after dark. I will expect you there. You can tell me of yourself then. The castle will expect you there too, so you’d best come. It can be very insistent. In the meantime, I suggest you bathe and dress. I’ll have a bath sent up. I imagine you’ll find acceptable garments in the wardrobe. But there is one thing I will not leave without: your name.”
“Britomart.” Then, for reasons she did not entirely understand, Britomart added, “Britomart Ameliana Boemia Cardis, his majesty’s knight and princess of the realm of Galbrica.”
Britomart thought that she saw a flash of surprise, even fear, on Amoret’s features, but it was gone as quickly as it came. A sardonic expression took its place. “Quite a mouthful. I wish I could say that I am pleased to meet you, Britomart Ameliana Boemia Cardis, his majesty’s knight and princess of the realm of Galbrica, but in truth I will have to reserve judgment. Well, your highness, let me officially welcome you to Castle Curiadcalon. I am Amoret Arundel Gwiragariad, last of the line of Morgwyyna the Betrayed, rightful ruler of the Shadowed Wood. Though I suppose you know that already if you have been talking with Rowena.”
“I knew your name. I can’t say that I know that you are the rightful ruler of the wood.”
“Yes, I see now why you were so insistent that it belongs to Galbrica. We shall have to agree to disagree. Otherwise, your stay here will be intolerable for both of us. Though I think, in time, you will come around to my way of thinking. I will leave you until dinner then, princess.”
Britomart had never known that her own title could sound so mocking. “Call me Britomart.”
“As you wish. I will leave you until dinner, Britomart.” There was something about the emphasis Amoret put on her name that annoyed Britomart even more than the mocking use of her title had. Amoret rose from her seat on the side of the bed and brushed her unbandaged hand down her dress to smooth its folds, then turned and left the room. The latch clicked as Amoret pulled the door closed behind her.
Britomart picked up the pillow beside her and hurled it at the door. It hit the bed curtains and tumbled fluffily onto the bed. Britomart cursed. She cursed magic roses and scheming godmothers and blood witches and featherbeds and bed curtains. Above all, she cursed the sound of her name on Amoret’s lips.