Chapter 7 - Royal Children

"Enough! Enough, I think!" With the next break in the music, Snow White stepped out from the circle of dancers and pulled up her hand to release her fingers from Sir Mark of Midwald's grip. She bobbed a curtsey, smiled at his fleeting look of startlement, and offered her hand again with a sweep that pointed him firmly towards the fireplace corner where her chair had been set. Yes, pretty knight, you may show me to my seatand do not look so surprised, that I am not yet too dizzy to know where it is!

She could not claim to feel even a princess yet, despite the fact of her now being Queen. No sense of that royalty which had drained from her through the long years locked away, had so far been able to make itself felt through the urgency driving her these past few days, from the freezing darkness of the courtyard at Hammond's. I will become your weapon. But there was an echo of familiarity in being handed gracefully through a cheerful crowd of dancers scattering from a cleared circle in the centre of a hall. They were only taller now, and her court dress tighter and heavier, and so too the crown that bound her brow. Destiny or accomplishment, she might ask later. For now, if she had inherited a darker hall and a less glittering court than for the fêtes of her childhood, with only a few bright dresses and cloaks to brighten the company, tonight she could not care. It was warm here, and she saw no one unhappy, or not at least at peace and well-wishing.

Now, though, it felt time for the whirlwind to set her down. She drew her hand free again—"Thank you, Sir Mark, I am ready to sit a while—" and swung round to accept his sweeping bow in retreat. She shook out her skirts before settling again into the large gilt cross chair set for her on the dais, and looked up as Catherine appeared at her side to offer a cup of wine. "No, thank you!" She gave the girl a minute headshake. "Any more of that, and my head will spin tomorrow."

She sat studying the hall as pipes and bodhràn and flute struck up the next reel, and the circle re-formed into a doubled line of couples. This time the pattern was one she didn't recognize, and she shook her head at a murmured question from Lady Helen of Llandrin Wells. Now manageress of the Queen's personal household, as her husband Sir Peter would be her minister for treasury matters, Helen was one of the few women Snow White could remember meeting as a child. Then a tall, slender, older girl who had impressed her as clever and pleasant, she had proved to have changed little despite now being a woman with a child of her own.

"These were just becoming fashionable the year my mother died," she said, "and I never learned this one. Too quick! I couldn't hope to follow at this hour." She met Helen's bright brown eyes, so nearly matching her gold-trimmed brown dress. "Even with Sir Mark's masterful guidance, which oddly I do remember from when we both were babes."

She cast a glance at Duke Hammond, seated aside and a step lower beside her, and the Archbishop beside him, risen at the moment to speak with one of his companions nearer the fire. "I think I am near to having enough of this evening, my lord Duke, but if I am hostess, how seemly is it that I be the first to leave my guests?"

The Duke smiled, and in it she saw a touch of his own fatigue. "As queen, my lady, you need only leave your servants to attend them. There are enough of us for that."

"I think I will, then." She drew a sigh that turned into a yawn and hid it quickly behind her hand. "Is there anything more I need do, then, before calling the night over? I think I have remembered all who should be thanked for their aid today, and done as much as needs to be done for anyone to whom I owe duty—"

"I can imagine nothing more," he said. He turned to beckon William from the table behind them. "Give us a few moments to collect your guard of honour, Your Majesty, and when this dance is done, we shall have the trumpets blown to announce your retiring."

"The same to gather your women and send them ahead to your chambers," said Lady Helen. "Marjorie and Greta should follow with you, Your Majesty, and we need someone to take Catherine and Lisl before. It has been an orderly enough evening, but I shouldn't want them going unescorted through the crowd in the second courtyard, at the moment."

"We can have Lisl's lad Matt go with us, my lady," said Catherine, and nodded towards the dancers. "They're out dancing at the moment, but it won't be for long."

"Well enough," said Snow White. She settled back and stifled a second yawn. "Oh, dear! I'll hope not to fall asleep, before time."

-o0o-

Once the doors to the hall thundered shut behind them, and the sounds of cheering dimmed, she counted eight steps into the torchlit gallery and stopped dead in her tracks. At her shoulder William all but walked into her; he caught her elbow and huffed in surprise. Behind them on her left, Sir Gareth of the Vale pulled up short with a gasp, treading on Marjorie's skirts. Ahead of them, both tall Mark and his shorter cousin, Sir Michael of Midwald, got two strides further on before they realized no one was following them. Only Greta, following at her right, and James of Anglesey, following after her, quite managed to stop where they needed.

"Snow," William said under his breath, and let her go. "What are you doing?"

She sighed. "Just beginning as I mean to go on."

Turning slow, in the space opened around her, she took in their faces.

"I accept," she said, "that I must live with being guarded. I accept that on public occasions where I am in my state as Queen before all the world, an honour guard of four and one or two of my women may be as little as I can afford." A flicker of movement behind them, in the darkest corner near the hall doors. "Not counting the rest of the troops, or any of my less...regular defenders." She focused on the shadow and smiled. "That is you, isn't it, Col? So I imagine that's Duir by the arch through the passage through to the second courtyard."

"Aye," said the smallest of the dwarves, and stepped out where they could see him, pickax hanging easy in his grip. "Quert's about here someplace, too."

"An' ye don' be giving your position away like that!" scolded Duir, from the passage. "No' even to her, if you're in cover!"

"Sorry," muttered Col, but made no move to fade back again into the shadows.

"I'm not worrying about them," Snow White continued, "because they're not going to be in danger of my falling over them at every turn!" She let her gaze circle their faces again. "Before the world, I accept! But once we step from that general regard, matters must be simpler.

"Within my own home, among my own people," she said, "It's my wish to stand on ceremony as little as possible. So I'll grant two men to guard me at such distance as I may ask, within a few arms' length, and ladies, we shall learn how many or few of you it may be sensible to have attending me. I'd as soon not waste your time with keeping me company, when there's no need. Beyond that, I need to be able to go as I will." She stared at each, deliberate, in turn, ending with William. "I will not be made a prisoner again, only in a larger cage."

"No one should be looking to do that to you," he said, but he glanced at Mark and Michael and hesitated. "Look," he went on,"can you tell me what it is you want, right now? Because you can make any speech you like, Your Majesty, but I promise, tonight there's no way you're going anywhere with fewer than four of us."

She lifted her chin, and he sighed, and drew in a breath and glanced around. "Not when it's after dark, and we've too many people loose within these walls tonight of whom we can't be certain, against too few we can. Not at the end of a long day, when no few of both groups have been drinking." He faced her and shook his head. "Not happening. Not you—even if I doubt there's any here would wish to harm you—and not these ladies either."

"What I'd like—" She let her gaze fall for a breath, then sighed and met his eyes. "A walk along the castle walls, to clear my head." She glanced at Marjorie and Greta. "Not knowing how long it will take, I'd have you two go along to my chambers with your own guard, and perhaps—" beckoning, "Col, Duir, would you go with them? I think none will disturb them if you go before, looking fierce with your pickaxes."

"Sir James, would you escort them?" asked William. "I can make the fourth here, in your place."

"I will do," said Sir James. "I may take up another armsman or two, passing through second court." He smiled at Greta's nervous expression. "None should wish to harm you either, ladies, but Lady Greta's pearls alone could tempt thieves."

"And if you wish, Your Majesty" said Sir Michael, "Sir Mark and I can go a little further ahead to make the way clear for you. We shall still see you guarded, but we may be less formal about it."

-o0o-

"If I'd been thinking," she said, as they climbed towards the level of the throne hall, "I would have asked the sergeant overseeing the stairs to be sure the throne room doors are closed when we pass." She looked up, following the light of Mark's torch, and those of the sergeant and his armsman above them. "I must see Ravenna to her pyre in the morning. I'd as soon feel no duty to visit before then."

"You needn't," said William, at her heels. "The doors have been chained shut, and she's not there now, in any case."

"What?" Snow White stopped and stared at him. "What do you mean? Where is she?"

"We took the stretcher from there last night, to one of the undercrofts," he said. "There was an alarm, and we judged it best to keep the body where we could seal against intruders."

"What alarm?—what intruders?"

"Ravens," he said, "Just past first light, four or five big ravens flew in through the dome of the oratory roof. They seemed confused at first, flew into the throne hall and ah—around a bit, and then a pair of them tried to strip the covering from the body. We'd shrouded her in one of those grubby red banners from the hall. I gather they managed to pluck it back from her face before the guards drove them off, and then they all fled, and the guards sent to report to my father."

"Who said nothing of any of this, to me," said Snow White. "I hope that isn't him beginning as he means to go on, as well..."

"He wasn't about to wake you for it." William sighed, his expression more tired than troubled, she judged, and waved her on, upwards. "Not on your coronation day—and there surely wasn't time, later."

"So where is she now?"

"In an undercroft below the garrison barracks. In a room a mouse couldn't make its way in or out of, with at least three men on guard against trouble," he said. At her eyeing him, he sighed again. "Such state as she shall deserve, until her pyre on the beach in the morning."

"Yes." She pulled her shawl around her, gathered up her skirts, and began to climb again. "I'll be there for that. That much I feel I owe her." And myself, that I face my handiwork.

"In the meantime," he said, "the throne hall doors are staying locked until we get some sort of grating over the vent in the oratory roof."

"Another thought," he added, as they came out at the head of the wide stone steps. "When you come before that pyre tomorrow, don't be surprised if there doesn't seem much to burn. The guards who saw Ravenna last night, after the birds pulled back the banner from her face, said the body seemed to be drying out...a husk falling in on itself, into something much smaller."

"Like Finn," she said. "Giving up her stolen life, perhaps." Hand resting on the balustrade, she stopped. "If she were truly old beyond our imagining—if all the years she stole to keep her young were only bound to her by magic—might they not be released when she died? Might that life force be freed to flow back to any she'd taken from, who still lived?"

"I suppose it's possible," he said. "Those three old women you found hiding in her chambers—"

"Now three quite young women again. Also thinking of Greta, who only saw her hair come back to its colour in the last hour she was locked up—after Ravenna was dead—and the rest of the women from her village recovering, too."

"It makes as much sense as anything." He held out his hand toward the doors into the last gallery before the throne hall, where Mark stood waiting with his torch. "No need to stop here, now, at any rate."

"No." She followed, letting him circle again behind her, and nodded to Gareth, taking up the rear again at her left. "None..."

But another thought occurred, and she paused again in the passage outside the throne hall. "Wait. William, what's been done with the mirror?"

"Mirror?" He stared at her, his expression going blank. "You mean the one in the oratory, on the altar? I think Father wants the Archbishop to see it in place. Why?"

"I don't know," she said, and glanced back at the throne room doors. "The Archbishop is one thing. I'd like him to see it, too—the dwarves as well, I think—but I'd as soon no one else. I'd like it out of there before anyone goes in to work. A locked room in the library, perhaps, and covered, until we know more of what it is."

"I might regret asking," he said, "but are you wanting to see it now?"

"No!" She shook her head, and turned again to where the postern passage now stood open. "I'm not even sure why I should think of it now." A knot seemed to bind feather-light, in the centre of her forehead, and she pressed a fingertip hard to the spot, rubbing it. "I'd prefer no one be let near it, unless there's a chance they may be able to tell us anything about it." The stricture faded, and she let her hand drop. "I'd prefer no one be let to be alone with it, either."

"D'you think it's evil then, Your Majesty?" the sergeant asked.

"And are you all right?" asked William, stepping closer.

"N-no," she said, then blinked. "No—yes!" She rubbed her forehead again in irritation. "That's to say, William, I'm fine! And as regards the mirror, sir, I don't know, but anything my stepmother prized so highly as to give it the place of reverence she did, I suspect we will be safer to treat as more than it seems." But not, perhaps, urgently. "One more thing to be dealt with in the morning."

-o0o-

When Snow White emerged from the gateway into the flagstone square before it, where the walls stood closest, Michael and Mark were waiting again, and she gave them a rueful half-smile.

"I hadn't thought of this before," she said, "but I know these walls stand emptier tonight than they may ever do again, because tonight we have not the men fit to hold them. May we not continue being informal?"

"We may," said Michael, "as soon as we all know which of us stays close enough, to bear one torch to light your way."

"Me," said William. "Unless you object, Snow." He waited until she shook her head, and returned her a touch of a smile. "I think I know how to hang back. Far enough and you may forget I'm there."

"You have had the most practice." She stepped clear of the circle they had once more made around her. "Place yourselves around me as you must, but forgive me if I do seem to forget you are there, afterwards." She gathered acquiescence in a glance that took in each of them, then turned aside and laid her palm against the stone. "I am no longer well-used to having friends. Until I escaped here two weeks ago I had been alone half my life with no more than a young girl's memories for company. Only sometimes sight or speech with others, who I was soon made to understand might suffer for any word I spoke.''

None of them spoke now and she risked looking back, not quite meeting their eyes. "Now it seems I may never be alone again, I cannot promise always to seem at ease with the change."

"We shall respect that, Your Majesty, as we can." Michael gave her a careful smile. "I would not now fear anyone coming upon us from behind, so the rest of us may go on ahead of you. You should see only whoever hangs back a little, so you are not at any point let out of our sight. Will this serve?"

"Yes, I think so. Thank you." They shared a nod in agreement, and he stepped past her with a gesture to the others, drawing them on.

She let her gaze drift across the parapet wall, then up into the clear vault of sky above them. With the last of the light now fading over the walls to the west—except where it still reflected hints of gold through the windows of the cathedral and throne hall—it was darkening from streaked amber and blue-green into darkest blue, and the stars were coming out.

There was none of the chill tonight, though, that she had felt in the courtyard at Hammond's. The air was soft, and the scents in the night wind blowing off the land were now more complicated than the tang of the sea breeze this morning. There was still something of water and seashore in it, blowing across the bay from the southeast coast: hints of salt and the kelp that draped the rocks at the base of the seaward walls. From the north and west, across the twisted outline of the Dark Forest, she caught mustiness, a less savory drift of rot and damp. The scent of the forest amid its blighted lands, where memory still said there should be marshland, meadow, and flourishing greenwood. Though even this, tonight, seemed cleaner, like a promise of new life.

"We can go now, if you wish," William said, an arm's length behind her. She took in where the torchlight fell, and turned to the edge of that flickering circle. Lifted her head; past the acrid bite of the smoke from the burning rock oil, she caught a breath of something now, whispering of green-growth and spring. Brushing her fingertips against the dressed stone beside her, she turned to follow it.

By the time they reached the steps where the wall met the side of the North Tower, darkness had fallen so the land was no more than a shadow beneath the night sky. The moon was rising, but as yet only a slice of its waning disk shone past the roof of the High Keep. As that light fell little further into the body of the castle than the tower's soaring walls, here—once past the courtyard where the fires of the Duke's camp provided both warm light and a haze of rising woodsmoke-the walls were dark. They climbed more slowly here, Snow White setting her hand firm against the stones of the tower, to anchor herself at each step. Despite the width of the shallow stair rising before them, and the walls still flanking them shoulder-high on its inner side, there was a feeling to the whole of walking out on a bridge over water. A sensation of floating, of swaying, or that with each next step one might drift upwards higher yet, feet no longer touching the ground. A gamble she could not choose to take now, even in a dream: too much now, I am needed to do. But she could as surely neither stop nor go back, with the breeze freshening now before her, stronger with the scents of warm earth and greenery, and something which might be lilacs, and beyond that, the white flowers of the Hart's tree.

When she stepped round the last curve of the tower wall, into the first reach of the parapet walk, it washed over her like a season's blessing, and she sighed in release.

"Oh, that is better!" She pulled her shawl from her shoulders and stepped into the walkway, and breathed. A step further, carrying her to the gap between two merlons, and she held out her arms to draw it in. Closed her eyes and turned in place, step and step and step, letting the wind catch her hair.

"If I didn't know you could do that without getting dizzy, you would have me worried," said William. He caught the end of her shawl as it flew from her arm, and she stopped to accept it back.

"Your tone says I do, anyway," She smiled. "You have no idea how warm a lined velvet gets, indoors by a fire. Or dancing, or climbing stairs."

"I'd sooner expect you'd be cold," he said.

"Not tonight." She held out her hand, letting the air stream over it. "The air is soft tonight."

"Spring comes at last," said a voice from the shadow, smiling, and for a breath they both froze. Shared a glance and turned where the end of a staff scraped, and cloth and leather dragged against stone as the speaker slid down from a further gap . "Your doing, Lady."

"Muir?" William got it out first, and swung his torch forward to reveal the eldest of the dwarves standing a few feet away.

"Aye, Lord William?"

"How on Earth did you come here?"

"By the stair from the royal garden, on toward sunset." Muir tilted his head to give William a sidelong stare. It was a look, Snow White thought, which came closer to meeting his eyes than one would expect a blind man to manage. Reason enough for William to glance back at her, his expression unsettled, before moving to stand his ground.

"So how did you pass the three men ahead of us?"

"I didn't. They passed me." The little man glanced up to where the moon had now risen past the bulk of the High Keep. "In justice to them, it was darker at the time."

"Would light have helped them?" Snow White asked.

Muir turned his sightless gaze to her and smiled. "It might've done. I was only sitting in this low spot between the stones." He patted the edge of the gap beside him. "I guessed you would be here, soon enough."

"You did." She didn't quite smile. Perhaps she should, but she could not be any more certain than she was, of his hearing her affection. "Do you mean to make me a riddle of how?"

"Not a great one. Do you understand what brings you here, tonight?"

Understand? If he had come to meet her, that might pose a thornier question than she had any clue how to answer.

"No." Snow White held out her hand to the night. "Shall I say Fate, if you knew I would come?"

"No," he said, "Not when that isn't your answer."

"Then all I can say is that I needed to clear my head." He did not move, and she sighed. "Muir, I have nearly enough not slept in four nights." She let her hand fall and turned aside again to face the breeze. Drew in a breath and sighed as it filled her like water meeting thirst. "I should be falling on my face." Not so near flight instead, or drunkenness, as the breath of land and water flowed over her, and into every empty place within. Yet I think I have not drunk enough of anything, strong enough that I should feel like this... Distracted, she set her hand to the top of the merlon beside her, and brought the other to rub her forehead again, frowning.

"I've felt as though I could," she said, "and tried when I could, both on the road here, and in the day and night since.

"Either I start awake at every sound or smell—real or imagined!—or simply at the movement of people through all hours—or when all is quiet I find myself sitting up afire, mind and heart overflowing. Coming here, it was with my need to come here and see this done. That or else my certainty of what I must do, and my uncertainty of how I should do it, and being torn with imagining everything which might lie between then and now. Then yesterday, it was full with the knowledge that it was done. Since then, possessed with all my thoughts and questions and uncertainties and hope, and being again afire with every need for this day."

She pulled herself straighter and stretched her free arm back, to drink a deeper breath. "All being done, an hour ago I might have said I had some hope. I rose, and found myself circled by my guards and attendants, and the cry went up again, that all should hail me to my rest! And now my mind is spinning once more, and all I can think is that in accepting I should be crowned, I may have made the worst mistake of my life."

"Mistake?" William shifted the torch in his hand, and stared at her. "I hope you don't mean that!"

"It's only a thought!" He was a good deal easier to worry now, she thought, and shook her head. "I only wish I could be more sure of having done the right thing."

"You have!" He glanced at Muir, then back to her, his distress plain. "You couldn't have done anything more right. Because in case you hadn't noticed it, Snow, you are the rightful heir, and the only one we've got!"

"I had noticed! And I'm not sure that shouldn't worry you as much as anything," she said. "I'm not sure being my father's daughter mightn't be the last and poorest reason left, for me to rule."

"Do you believe that, in your heart?" Muir asked.

"I think I hardly know!" Her shawl slipped again and she pulled it around herself, catching it on the jewelled pin still thrust through the top of her sleeve. Still holding it, turned again to gaze out at the moonlit water.

"As King," she said, "my father so failed this land...and in the end, he may have suffered less for it than any of us. As his heir, I owe it to make right what I can! But coming to rule so unready, beyond wanting all to be made right?"

"Is that what you were thinking, earlier?" asked William.

"What?" She swung back to look at him. "When?"

"When you came out from your coronation," he said. "There was a moment when you looked as you do now. I didn't understand it." He stopped. "I never imagined you doubting this way."

"I wasn't, then." She folded her arms, brought her hand again to hold the shawl in place. However you remember me, I must break that memory... "I was only thinking, that it was done." His expression stayed wary, and she sighed. "That I'd come to this day as I was born to come to this day—" Now as then, something in her throat tightened. "—committed my self and my life as I was always meant to do—" And now I must go on, "and it had all felt right, and needful, and blessed, there in the presence of everyone who helped to make it possible."

Muir shifted, leaning on his staff. "Remember that none could have done so, if you had not come to make it possible."

She nodded. "Then, as I did know what I must do next, I went to do it."

"Now what I see is that I have seen such hope in every face tonight, and such faith, and I have no idea what comes next. It's beyond me to know how I shall ever justify it! Or whether I'm even meant to, any more." She spread her hands wide. "Muir, how do I know now, that I'm not done? That Fate has not in fact made the only use it will ever make of me?"

"Through the fact that you are here." He did not move. "Both alive, and having come to this place."

"I don't think I understand."

"You are the Queen," he said, "and the spirit of the land that we would once have called the Lady has granted you a measure of her power, that you may bear it with you in the world. You cannot change what you are.

"You grieve in the moment, and doubt, and can only think instead of know, because you are young and have given too much of yourself in a very short time. But tonight you have also done, without understanding, what you most needed to do."

He held out his hand to the night. "You came here. You came to this place by the same means I did, following the smell of water and earth and the life they sustain. You came to the one place on these castle walls where at this time, the wind could bear you the breath of the Hart's forest, and the scent of the Living Tree."

"That being how you did it." Snow White followed his gaze. "Yes, I'll grant I seem to have done that."

"Now ask what you feel, as you breathe of it."

"Renewed." She considered it. "Stronger." Stretched less thin. Feeling here in my heart the life force of the land, and the water, and all that lives. Greenwood and meadow, ploughed fields and river wetlands, and the mountains that rise beyond. People, in the scent of hearth fires, and their animals, and the creatures of the land, and birds of the air. "Also...warned." For now too, she sensed how the smoke of charcoal burning spoke of despoiled forests, and with the sharpness of metal broken from the earth, she could feel now places where the heat of furnaces burned and bled poison. Scents of ash and burnt bone, where the soil lies blackened and cursed. She frowned. "There's a deal of wrong out there, to be faced."

"Which you will no longer fear, for now you feel your heart's centre, and you know to fill it at need." Muir turned, and by the serenity in his smile, she knew he saw her. "It's a good beginning, my Lady." A breath, and his smile widened. "I think you may find now, that you can sleep."

"And I shouldn't worry too much," said William, "about what comes next." He sighed. "Fact is, Snow, that we still have to win the country back for you, before any of us can truthfully speak of you ruling it. That'll be more our business—mine, and that of my men—beginning in the morning."

-o0o-

"Are you looking for me to remain within these walls, while you're away?" she asked, as they continued along the parapet. "I have an impression your father may prefer it, and I will not be surprised if Count Cerdic backs him."

"I'd appreciate if you did," William said, "but no, I'm not expecting it." He glanced down, when she reached to take his hand, lacing her fingers through his. "I—when we get back, I'd appreciate being able to know where you are, and that you're safe, as a first thing—but I expect you'll at least be out to the village, and seeing the state of the manor here."

"With you expecting to be gone between one and two weeks—" Snow White said, "Yes. I'll expect to see quite a lot of the village before you get back. I'll hope for one or two of the closer manors, as well."

"Just don't seek to change the appearance of anything too quickly, or get too far afield." His expression went thoughtful into the distance. "These next few weeks, our foremost need is to keep anyone from realizing that Ravenna has fallen, who might be moved to come against us."

She tilted her head, studying him sidelong. "Do you think anyone will be?"

"Her governors may be," he said. "Between those who came with her knowing they must fall, and the temptation there may be for those holding the greater castles to play opportunist and seek the crown themselves, I won't be surprised. If they learn of it. If anyone tells them."

"I don't think anyone will," Snow White said. She studied him, measuring the abstraction in his tone. "And anyone who comes, this next month at least, we won't be letting out."

"I'm not sure that will serve." He looked around at her. "It'll only take one rider or cart coming from elsewhere—with a supply caravan, perhaps—who doesn't return again where they're expected, to bring others looking and questioning. Then God only knows what sort of force may converge on us.

"And honestly," he went on, "I don't know what to tell you, if that should happen. Part of me says we need this castle ready for a siege, and ready to shelter as many people as we can, as soon as we may have it. The same says it would ease my mind a lot, to know you safe within these walls. I could be begging you to stay close, and set every hand we can muster to finding out what's needed, and making preparations to feed and house as many refugees as may come.

"I'm not sure, though, that will serve you." He blinked, and his gaze fell. "Because if it comes to siege here, I'd sooner you run. East up the valley, toward the fens, or west and north towards Holywell. Even into the Dark Forest again. Or striking out by boat for Cerdic's castle at Pembroke. Anywhere!" He sighed. "I'd sooner know you're not trapped." A hesitant, darting glance. "It'd give me a better chance to find you again."

"Not unlike chess," Snow White said, as they walked on. "The queen's power lies in her freedom to move." She locked her palm solid against his. "I don't want to be trapped here, either."

"I still can't believe it," he said, when they had passed the last guard-post in silence, and only the final length of walkway lay before them, before the tower from which the last set of stairs would descend to the inner court. "That you're here, alive, and Queen at last."

"Mm." She smiled a little, and William seemed to brace himself.

"I thought of you every day, after we lost you. Couldn't believe I'd found you, when we did, first—when I knew it was you, and you hadn't changed."

"What? Not at all, in eleven years?!" She slipped her arm closer against his sleeve, and did not quite laugh. "All of taller, darker, all but dressed like a boy, and at night, in the midst of a burning village?"

"I knew it was you," he said. "You hadn't changed. Not your eyes or your expression, and...you've still the same light inside you."

"Well, perhaps." She gave the faintest of shrugs. "Where I was, there was nothing to make me change, except growing." His expression grew protective at that, and she gave an internal sigh. "I won't say forgetting, but with time much of what I remembered became somewhat unreal."

"Everything?"

"A great deal." The mind's mercy, perhaps, when she had evil enough to remember. But there was something left she could give him.

"I used to wonder what had become of you," she said. "Sometimes whether you were still alive at all, but mostly what you would look like. I knew by the time I was tall enough to see out my cell door, my memories of you as a boy must be useless, but I could imagine no further. I only knew you must now be grown."

"Not entirely," he said. "On the inside much the same."

She smiled, and tightened her grip. "Do you remember us fighting, as children? Arguing, and—fighting, by times?"

"All the time. " He did laugh, at that. "What? Are you going to hold that against me, now?"

"No." She considered the tower before them, where Sir Gareth, torch in hand, had come out to wait for them. "I just think it's a good thing, if someone remembers that part."


In this AU, when a magic user dies, their spells and geasa begin to break down.

Ravenna has been dead about 48 hours.

We're on our way to finding out about the villains she's left lying around under geas...the ones that used to worry her.

Snow gets to begin upsetting her subjects' preconceived notions, and acquires a new and dangerous admirer.


Glossary

Bodhràn - A small hand drum. Still used quite a bit in Celtic folk music.

Undercroft - While these could be above ground galleries, here they're either partly or entirely below-ground storage areas. Secured cellars for storing goods and supplies, in most cases.

Merlon - Most readers will have seen pictures of castle walls with jagged tops, alternating blocks of stone with gaps between them. These are called crenellated walls, the blocks-and-gaps arrangement also called crenellation(s). Each of the blocks is a merlon. The gap between merlons is also known as a crenel gap.

Geas/geasa - Compulsion or binding spells, eg., the sort of thing you might want on a mad ally, to prevent them from hurting you.


A/N

/ bangs head on desk.

Going as fast as I can, which is not always an encouraging thought. What's driving me craziest, is that I do have a substantial outline, here!-not completely pantsing it all-and still having trouble writing within it.