Author's note: Apparently a chapter every six months or so is my sweet spot for this story. Sorry for the slow updates... I hope you enjoy!

-x-

Chapter Two: Roadblock

There was no fanfare when they crossed the border and entered Taye. Nothing felt any different; everything looked much the same as it had for the preceding weeks. In fact, contrary to all her fears, Trini wasn't even sure when they crossed the border at all. They made the crossing far enough out in the wilderness that there wasn't a single border marker. When they finally veered back toward the highway, it felt like she could breathe easily again. She knew the hardest parts of the journey still lay ahead, but at least she could set aside the fearsome specters of the past and move forward.

As they rejoined the main highway and veered south again, the villages they came to began to look more and more different from the ones back home. Buildings here were in the Tayene style, with gracefully sloped roofs and intricate woodworking on doors and shutters.

They had decided in advance not to hide their purpose from the Tayene people, but Trini still felt uncomfortable riding at the head of the long column of guards and supply wagons. The time had come to take on the role of princess, and she felt anything but ready. She felt much more comfortable fading into the background and letting Kimberly and Jason take the lead — and all the attention. That was no longer an option. A true princess must not follow. She must be ready to lead.

Kimberly had managed the transition. Trini only hoped she would be as lucky.

Her companions were in good spirits, and their cheer buoyed her. Zack, especially refused to let her succumb to her worries and what-ifs. It seemed she was more thankful to have him along every day.

They followed the main highway south for several more weeks, until Trini began to wonder just how large the kingdom of Taye really was. She'd seen maps, of course. But seeing it in person was altogether different. How could one person possibly hope to rule all of this?

Because they were not making any attempt to disguise their purpose — or Trini's identity — it wasn't long before word began to spread ahead of them. Trini wasn't really sure what that would mean. It made her a trifle nervous, but Isabella seemed convinced that it would only help their cause. Trini could still envision a hundred ways it could all go wrong. The kingdom had been sealed to outsiders almost as long as Trini had been alive. To judge by the abundance of food and trade they saw along the way, things had been going along just fine since then. All these years with no king or queen… who was to say anyone at all would welcome the old king's foreign-raised daughter? Especially when that daughter had so little in the way of evidence to prove her identity.

One accident on the road was all it would take for it all to be lost. One "accident" on the road was all it would take for whoever was ruling in Taye to get her out of the way permanently. She hated to think that way about her own people, but she couldn't forget that they'd been perfectly willing to marry her off to Emperor Zedd of Phaedos in exchange for his protection. Now that they were free from the threat of Zedd and Ivan Ooze, what might they decide to do with her?

She knew what she hoped, of course, but it was better to be prepared for anything.

Nothing could have prepared her for the city of Taye.

It sprawled in all directions, nearly as far as the eye could see, dwarfing all she had ever known. Home had always seemed just right, but now she realized just how tiny the city around Kimberly's castle really was. By comparison, Taye was enormous and ungainly.

At first all she could do was stare at its immensity.

The city was like nothing she had seen before; she had not thought so many people could live in all the fabled vastness of Phaedos, or perhaps even the entire world. And yet the truth was spread out before her. She could not deny the truth, even if she'd wanted to.

A part of her panicked. How could she ever hope to gain the trust and support of even a fraction of the hordes that lived in this one city? In all likelihood, she knew she need only convince the nobles, but even that seemed an impossible feat.

Then Zack was there, cutting through the sense of overwhelming inadequacy. "Kimberly's going to be pretty unhappy when she finds out about this," he observed. "Can you imagine how many shops are in this city?"

Although she didn't find the situation all that amusing, she had to laugh. And she did appreciate the attempt at humor after all.

Angela picked up on what Zack was doing. "We'll have to find some really impressive Tayene fashions before Kim makes any official visits. Won't we, Trini?"

And so Trini rode into the city of her birth surrounded by her friends' banter. It wasn't until they were well into the city and had passed the first checkpoint that she realized she'd been afraid it would all end here. They'd made no secret of her identity all this time. She couldn't imagine that the council that had ruled Taye for the last decade would allow a claimant to the throne to pass into the city, but that was exactly what happened. No one stopped them. No one even seriously questioned them. The checkpoint guards looked at her dubiously when Isabella announced her, but they waved her through without comment.

As she waited for Isabella to negotiate passage for their armed escort, Trini wondered for the first if her claim wasn't going to be taken seriously. How many girls might have come here claiming to be the long lost princess over the years? It hadn't occurred to her before, but now it seemed not just likely but obvious.

"How am I going to convince anyone that any of this is true?" she asked.

Angela chuckled. "What? That you're a princess? Well, you've already convinced all of us, or we wouldn't be here."

"Says the woman who chased us down to be with Zack," Trini shot back.

Angela mimed taking an arrow to the heart. "Nobody warned me you were so heartless," she teased.

"You should ask Kim sometime," Trini told her, trying to keep a straight face. "I'm truly awful. I just hide it well."

When everyone was finally through the checkpoint, Isabella guided them to an inn that was well-appointed but not opulent. Most of their escort would be staying in cheaper lodgings nearby, but it would apparently not do for the princess of Taye to be seen cutting corners. Thinking that Kimberly would never have felt out of place staying in a place like this while her companions made do with less, Trini did her best to accept it.

"It's still so strange not to think of myself as a handmaid," she confessed to Zack and Angela over dinner. Thankfully, Isabella was out in the city, scouting out potential options for gaining access to the Tayene Council to present Trini's case. Trini loved Isabella Scott, who had taken her in as a child and made her feel welcome in a strange and confusing land, but the lady's insistence that Trini never doubt her identity was sometimes tiresome. Her life had been turned upside down. It wasn't that easy to just ignore everything she had ever known.

"Still?" Zack asked. "You know you were never really a normal handmaid to begin with. We just didn't realize it…"

"Because Zordon's magic suggested — strongly — that we not question it," Trini finished glumly. It seemed so obvious now! But back then, magic hadn't even seemed real; she'd never thought Zordon was an actual sorcerer, much less that Kimberly and her mother possessed powerful magic passed down from a noble Phaedan line. Noting the look of dismay on Angela's face, she asked, "How much did you tell her, Zack?"

"All of it!" he swore.

She wondered.

"He did," Angela assured her. "I just didn't believe any of the stuff about magic."

"But you saw the dragon," Trini protested.

"And Zack's magic ring and armor," Angela agreed cheerfully.

Trini shook her head. Zack just laughed.

-x-

Six days later, Isabella had made very little headway. She had verified that Taye was indeed ruled by what had once been the king's advisory council, now the Tayene Council, and that any claimant to the throne would need to win their approval, but she had not been able to get much further than that. Trini was beginning to suspect that the Tayene Council's plan was simply to deny and delay. If they made her wait long enough, she would run out of patience or money and be forced to abandon her claim. That way they would never have to deny — or acknowledge — her at all. They could just deny her access to them and their ability to legitimize her claim. She might never get a chance to resume her lost place.

"Maybe that wouldn't be so bad," she told Zack. "I'm not even sure I want to be a princess. It's hard work, and so tedious! And I'm only just starting to really learn about Taye. There's so much I don't know —"

"Are you done doubting yourself?" Zack asked. His tone was jovial but there was steel behind it. "Even if you do decide you don't want to pursue this, you know you deserve to be heard."

They were conversing in the slow, halting Tayene that was the best either of them could manage. It was frustrating, but Trini knew she needed the practice. She'd hardly spoken her native language in the years since Uncle Li (or rather the bodyguard that had posed as her fictitious Uncle Li) had died. Before she could face the Tayene Council, or any of the nobles, her Tayene must be as flawless and effortless as she could get it.

"I know, but…" she hesitated. He waited her out, letting the bustle of the street around them fill the silence. "I wonder if it's going to be worth it. I never wanted any of this."

"It'll be what you make of it," he said by way of assurance. "You'll find a way to make it worth your while."

She laughed lightly. "Such confidence!"

"I'll give you my favor to carry into battle if you think it'll help," he went on cheerily. Picturing him as a solemn lady sending her beloved off to battle in a great melee only made it worse.

"I'm not sure Angela would appreciate that," she fired back when she had regained some of her composure.

Suddenly she became aware of the forbidding looks that were being directed their way. The people of the city were not exactly unfriendly, but Zack's dark skin marked him clearly as an outsider and Trini's accent always seemed to arouse suspicion. Taye had been closed to outsiders for so long, the locals no longer seemed sure of how to feel about anybody that wasn't obviously Tayene.

That was another mystery she wanted to solve, now that she thought about it. The kingdom had been sealed just after the entire royal family was wiped out, but nobody outside of Taye had ever really known why either of those events occurred in the first place. One day, Trini wanted to know why her family was dead, and now why the kingdom had sealed itself away. And, though she would likely never know, she wanted to know why Zordon had spirited her away and hidden her true identity. Somehow, it didn't quite add up.

"I know that look," Zack said, switching back to the language of their youth. "What are you plotting?"

"Plotting?" she asked, allowing him to take her arm and steer her toward the cross street that would lead them back to the inn. "I'm not plotting. I'm… asking questions."

"Any answers yet?"

"No, but I haven't asked anyone yet!"

They were probably halfway back to the inn when a man stepped into their path. He was roughly of an age with Zack and Trini, and was also obviously an outlander — he would have looked more at home in Kimberly's castle than he did on the streets of Taye.

For a moment Trini wondered if they were about to be robbed, or worse. Then the newcomer said, "I'll be damned. The rumors are true."

"What rumors?" Zack asked. His stance was still relaxed, but his hand had gone to the hilt of the knife at his belt. "And do you mind telling us who in the world you are?"

Trini realized two things at once: the newcomer was dressed in fine clothes such as a nobleman might wear, and he therefore most likely wasn't here to rob them, and that he'd spoken the same language she and Zack had been conversing in. Derived from Phaedan, it was very different from the local Tayene language.

"The whole palace is buzzing with rumors saying there's another Princess Trinity in town," the newcomer explained, "only this one's way more convincing than any of the others. I can see why. You're the very picture of the princess's portrait, if I may say so, my lady."

Trini gave him a level look. "That still doesn't tell us who you are," she pointed out.

He had the decency to flush. "Where are my manners? Stopping you on the street out of nowhere and not even introducing myself. My name is Richard Everett. At your service." He said it with a flourish and a deep bow.

Zack and Trini shared a look. They didn't need words to ask each other: who the heck is this guy?

"So what," Zack hedged. "You heard some wild rumor and came running to check it out?"

Richard gave a self-deprecating sigh and gestured to the building nearest them on the street, the same one that he had most likely come out of just before he stepped into their path. "Why don't we have some coffee and I'll explain?"

A part of Trini wanted very much to scream and run at the prospect of trusting a chance-met stranger who claimed to have good intentions, but she forced herself to remain calm. Ivan Ooze was dead. This couldn't be another one of his traps. And somewhere nearby were two royal guardsmen. If anything untoward happened, help was only a few steps away.

Zack looked at her expectantly, leaving it up to her. Cautiously, she gave a nod.

A short while later the three of them were seated within the dim confines of the coffee house (and so were the two borrowed royal guards, who sat discreetly at their own table a short distance away). It was cozy inside, with small intimate tables and comfortable cushions to sit on. Richard ordered for them all, including the guards, after finding out that neither Zack nor Trini had ventured into one of the city's many coffee shops yet. Unbeknownst to Trini, it seemed that the City of Taye was famous for its coffee.

Once the coffee had been served and Trini and Zack had taken their first tentative sips of the warm, pleasantly bitter liquid, Richard began, "How much do you know about what's been going on in Taye?"

"Not much," Trini admitted. "I was only a little girl when we left… Next thing I knew, the kingdom had sealed itself off to the outside world and no one could get past the border. Even if I'd wanted news from home, there was no way to get it." So she had just stopped worrying about it, and Kimberly's castle had become her home. She sighed. "I was just a child, so no one told me very much. All I knew was that my parents were sending me to be fostered with a princess."

It seemed like a good idea to leave out the part where she'd been magically forced to forget her true identity.

Richard considered what she had said. "As I understand it, there was an uprising within the Council, spurred by the question of how to protect the kingdom from a powerful sorcerer." Trini's coffee suddenly tasted sour, so she set her cup down. "The royal family wouldn't agree to using magical shields to keep everyone out of the kingdom, so someone in the dissenting faction had them taken care of —" he said it so casually "— and put the protection spell in place. It was too late, of course, but the Council did roust the traitors and had most of them executed…" He trailed off. "I'm sorry. You look ill. I never meant —"

"No," she said softly. "I needed to know. There's so much I still don't know."

Richard nodded. "I had a feeling that might be the case. Do you want me to keep going?"

She didn't, but she nodded anyway. After all, she had wanted to know what happened to her family and why.

"The king and queen, plus their sons and all their various other relations were all accounted for in the end," Richard told her. She really felt sick now. Brothers? She'd had brothers? She had no memory of them at all, only of her parents. Richard spoke more slowly now, choosing his words with greater care. "But nobody ever found the princess."

"So when you said this one's more convincing, you meant that girls have been claiming to be the lost princess ever since she disappeared," Zack clarified. Score one for that theory, Trini thought dourly.

"Yes. The Council typically won't even see claimants anymore. As far as they're concerned, it's a waste of time after so many obvious fakes."

This, Trini decided, was good information to have, even if it would make things more difficult. She wondered how much of this Isabella had already uncovered and kept to herself, thinking to spare Trini the harsh reality.

"What do you think my chances are? Do you think they will see me?" she asked.

Richard shrugged. "I'm an outsider even though I've lived here my whole life. I'm not exactly privy to what the Council does on a regular basis. I hear things sometimes from my friends in the palace, but not much." He paused. "I don't know if they'll ever be willing to see you."

"Then why seek me out?"

"There's been no luck finding the princess while the kingdom was still locked down, which implies that the princess got out before the shield went up. If she'd been on this side of the shielding spell, she should have turned up at some point, right? So when I heard there was a new claimant, a Tayene woman of the right age with a foreign accent… well, I admit that made me curious."

"So you came to see if I was what they said?"

"More or less. I am sorry to have imposed on your time, and for any distress I may have caused you or your companions," he told her.

She shook her head. "Don't be. You've been very helpful. I came here without really knowing what I was getting into, to see where my memories would lead me. What you've told me has been a big help."

He smiled, then. He really had a dazzling smile. "Then I'm glad. And for what it's worth, I meant it when I said you look just like the last portrait of the princess. You know, if she'd grown up."

"Aren't you going to ask where I grew up or how I got out of Taye? Or why I've come back?"

The smile widened as he chuckled. "I assumed you'd come back because the shielding spell failed about a year ago, so you finally could return… though I suppose there could be other reasons." He shrugged. "And besides, anyone can say they came from anywhere. There's no way to prove any of it ."

"How pragmatic," Zack muttered.

"Richard," Trini began.

"Call me Richie," he suggested with another grin.

"Okay, Richie," she started over, testing out the name. "This may be asking too much, but could you get me in to see that portrait?"

"Sure, but it won't have anything to do with me. They opened the old royal gallery to the public almost five years ago now, and all the royal family's portraits are there, going all the way back. All you have to do is pay the admission fee, and you're in."

Well, at least one thing was going to be straightforward. "Where can we find the royal gallery?"

With perfect innocence, Richie asked, "Why don't I show you tomorrow?"