Wing of Earth, Wing of Air

By Jay Klokker

With the eighth full moon of her pregnancy rising, Queen Athersalk walks from the palace at sunset with her masked court women, their green robes gold-embroidered with leaves to match the robe she'd had made for the occasion, up the white gravel road to the Dream Grove, surrounded by servants and food bearers, guards, flute players, singers, and a pair of bird priests, one a famous mixer of scents, the other a summoner known for the carrying distance of her calls.

Thus begins In Wing of Earth, Wing of Air, in which Jay Klokker weaves a gripping tale of high fantasy out of dreams and awakenings, treachery and intrigue, blood, and reconciliation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hamilton Stone
• Release date: Nov 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215167106

Book preview

WING OF EARTH, WING OF AIR

By Jay Klokker

Copyright Ingrid Blaufarb Hughes 2023

Published by Irene Weinberger Books, an Imprint o Hamilton Stone Editions

At Smashwords

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

This novel is a work of fiction and any resemblance to living or deceased individuals is accidental.

Also by Jay Klokker

First Stars

Table of Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

AuthorNote

WING OF EARTH, WING OF AIR

By Jay Klokker

BOOK ONE: THE WAR OF DREAMS

With the eighth full moon of her pregnancy rising, Queen Athersalk walked from the palace at sunset, as many before her had walked, trudging up the white gravel road to the Dream Grove flanked by eight masked women of the court, their green robes gold-embroidered with leaves to match the robe she’d had made for the occasion. Around them flocked servants and food bearers, guards, flute players, singers, and a pair of bird priests, one a famous mixer of scents, the other a summoner known for the carrying distance of her calls.

The women took turns supporting Athersalk’s elbows, not because she needed help—heavy as she was, she could have outrun or outdanced the lot of them—but because they vied to be close to her ear. All shared a hope that the first fruit of her womb might bear the name of some dear-departed aunt, long-gone-but-beloved uncle or never-to-be-forgotten grandparent, thus forging a link between the power and prestige of the royal family and theirs.

They knew better than to make outright suggestions. Even if the queen took a fancy to a name, she’d never just hang it on her child. That was for backcountry folks who couldn’t afford a trip to the Dream Grove or for those with secrets a dream thief might steal and turn to advantage. Such people made do with names of no more substance than the ones they gave their horses and dogs. For everyone else, from the seventh daughter of the poorest muck-sifter in Gluvna to Queen Athersalk herself, there was the Grove, where a mother-in-waiting could join the bi-monthly pilgrimage and learn her child’s true name by sleeping with a Hrrska beside her and opening herself to its dreams.

But the women of the court were resourceful. Though they couldn’t appeal directly, they found ways of planting the seed of a name that might, if fortune smiled, grow to fruition in her dreams.

This dropping of names was a traditional part of the walk to the Grove, but Athersalk was amused by how far the women carried it. One of them mentioned her Aunt Rarshta six times in half as many steps, and another began every sentence, As Grandfather Furshlo used to say…

Oh, really? Arantuck kept saying as the names droned on and on.

Far more engaging were the masks. Stitched together from rags, feathers, seedpods, dried flower petals and autumn leaves, they transformed her friends into creatures from the undergrowth of dreams. She could, she supposed, have guessed which face was concealed behind which mask, but why break the spell of concealment when going along with it made the night seem larger and more wondrous?

Just now, for example, her hand was being held by what looked like a cross between a red-leafed sapling and a sunflower, while a matted mass of lichen and pressed rosebuds brushed her cheek.

Lichen-face was whispering of a cousin who went into labor in the middle of her naming dream. As she talked, her wrist brushed Athersalk’s belly, whether by accident or on purpose wasn’t clear.

Athersalk caught her breath.

It took her all night, the woman said. But by dawn she was the mother of twin boys. She fed their umbilical cords to the Hrrska with her very own hands.

The woman kept going on about the boys’ naming dream and how they grew up, as predicted, to be bird priests, but Athersalk barely heard. Her attention had shifted to the sky, where something darkened the face of the moon. She told herself it was probably a stray wisp of cloud, but couldn’t help hoping for something luckier.

Then for a heartbeat, the moon was blotted out.

Athersalk was stunned. She’d seen Hrrska often before, but even the dominant females were seldom much larger than an eagle. By that standard, the creature she’d just seen was a giant. She thought of the legendary Hrrska of old, said to be powerful enough to bring down a stag or carry off a struggling buffalo calf.

Did you see it? she asked.

Lichen-face stopped talking of the twins and looked up, but the Hrrska had already disappeared. I’m not sure—

But I did! said another woman, as she deftly edged Lichen-face aside and took Athersalk’s arm. Her mask was composed of interlocking green, red and white triangles that seemed to change places as she spoke. To see a Hrrska of such magnificence bodes well for your dream. As my great-uncle Ranj-klig used to say…

Athersalk pretended to listen but her mind was far away, caught up in the distant jangle of cymbals and the stutter of a syncopated drumbeat. Flashes of torchlight through the trees told her that they’d soon join the road from the Temple Bridge, where the festive procession was already in full swing.

She danced a shuffle-step of anticipation. King Fetharal hadn’t wanted there to be any drums, any dance. He’d thought it better to keep the Grove closed to all parties but hers. For your safety, he’d said. And for the safety of our child. She’d laughed in his face, and asked if he knew of even one person who’d been robbed, assaulted or otherwise attacked, either in the Grove or on the way to it.

Then someone else would help me to my feet. It’s not as if I’d be lying on the ground all alone. Not like my poor chambermaid the other night. I wonder what got into her? Imagine a woman as pregnant as I am mopping an unlit staircase while everyone else is fast asleep. It’s lucky she sprained her ankle instead of breaking her neck.

You’ve made your point, said Fetharal. The Grove can stay open as usual. He insisted on only one thing: that the other pilgrims be kept from sleeping close to her tree.

We wouldn’t want their dreams bleeding into yours, he said.

Why not? she teased. Are you scared of what I might learn?

She’d expected him to laugh, and he did, but the laugh came too late and sounded forced. Had she struck a nerve? No, she decided, it was only nervousness. After all, the child she was carrying was his first as well as hers. It was natural for him to feel protective.

When Athersalk’s party joined the main procession, she was greeted with a wild storm of cheers. Girls and boys blew her kisses and tossed blossoms to her feet. She was puzzled by the extravagance of the greeting until her servants mingled and came back with the news that she was seen as a hero. People praised her telling King Fetharal she wouldn’t set foot in the Grove unless it was left open to all the people who found themselves in need of the guidance that only a truth-reflecting dream could provide.

Instead of denying the rumor, which would have added fuel to it, she nodded self-effacingly and felt more than a little relieved when a trio of Hrrska swooped by, diverting the crowd. Cymbals clashed, cowbells clanged and the crowd cheered even louder than before. Starlings or crows would have been driven away by such clamor, but the Hrrska, attracted to noise, circled low, answering the crowd with piercing cries.

This was what Athersalk had been waiting for. Tipping her head back, she let her voice fly, yip-yelping louder than the shrillest young girl of the crowd. Will you listen to that! said her sunflower-resembling companion. Athersalk felt a twinge of self-consciousness, but when she heard the rest of the courtwomen joining in, vying to catch the attention of the birds, she let loose with greater abandon. No longer queen of anything, she was simply a pilgrim in quest of her dream.

The Hrrska flew away as quickly as they’d come, leaving the crowd flushed with excitement. Athersalk looked around. Behind her, the procession stretched downhill all the way to the city gates and beyond, while in the opposite direction, the first pilgrims had already reached the Grove. Balmy, moonlit nights were considered a lucky time to quest for dreams, but she’d never seen so many people in one pilgrimage.

Why had they come? What were they searching for? She wondered about that each time she went to the Grove. In the cases of the other eighth-month women and the wedding parties, the answer was obvious. But what of those who kept to themselves and didn’t smile? Were they feeling betrayed? Did they hope to recover lost property? Lost health? Lost affections? Were they desperate to save some failing enterprise? Did they despair and crave comforting? She hoped that they’d find what they were looking for.

Others needed no such concern. One party, in particular, so overflowed with joy that their good spirits were reflected in every face they passed. It was a family group dressed in white robes, at the center of which eight young men carried a battered red sedan chair where a girl—no doubt their younger sister or cousin—sat beaming. When Athersalk came of age, her parents rented just such a chair and had her carried to the Grove for the sharing of her first dream. Like that girl, she’d basked in the glow of attention and clapped with delight whenever a Hrrska winged past.

Athersalk remembered that feeling, that yearning to know which of the Hrrska was hers, and what dream the two of them would share. That girl must have felt the same. Perhaps the dream would give her a glimpse of the boy she was to marry or the places she’d travel and the lifework she’d do. Athersalk wished her well. But nothing prepared a first-time dreamer for the shock, the strangeness of the grsk, that moment of disorientation when Hrrska and human exchange each other’s dreams. The grsk would mark the end of girlhood, when fantasies are replaced by dreams blooded with truth.

Make way! Make way! The shouts were the first jarring note of the night. They came from a handsome young man riding through the crowd mounted on a black and white charger. He waved a riding whip and flicked it against the shoulders of those slow to step aside. People grumbled but complied. At any other time, his behavior might have gotten him pulled from his saddle and given a thrashing. But not tonight, when a brawl would have scared away the Hrrska and spoiled a trip to the Grove.

The only people to hold their ground were Athersalk’s guards. As soon as the rider made it clear he had no intention of reining in his mount, three of them moved to block his path, raising their fighting staffs warningly.

The man on the horse, far from intimidated, leaned against the neck of his mount and spurred it on until he reached Queen Athersalk and with startling quickness brought it to a stop. Many pardons, he said, smiling as if his charging of the guards had been a joke.

Athersalk nodded. Your name, sir, she demanded.

Zigstrug, my Queen.

There are children on the road, children and invalids. Someone might have been hurt.

But no one was.

She stared at the man. She wasn’t used to such insolence.

I fear I’ve offended you. That was far from my intent. What I meant to convey was relief that no one was injured by my thoughtlessness.

Zigstrug’s words were unimpeachable, but his gaze, the way it locked with hers, then dropped, sliding across her breasts to her swollen belly, and lingering there, brought fire to her cheeks. She wanted to have him seized and made to explain himself, but when he asked if he could go, she stammered yes.

May your dreams be fruitful, he said.

And so too may yours, she replied stiffly, letting the formulaic answer conceal her unease.

After Zigstrug had gone, the masked courtwomen began gossiping walked. They couldn’t tell Athersalk much, only that Zigstrug was some rich family’s outlander relative who’d been in Gluvna less than a year, and that he’d already made a name for himself as a swordsman. It was rumored that the king looked with favor on the man and had relied on him to resolve problems requiring discretion and steady nerves.

They might have said more, but the girl on the sedan chair drowned out their gossip with a squeal of delight. The Magpies! she screamed. The Magpies are here! Everyone around her laughed and joined in: Hide your jewelry while there’s time! Put your purses away!

Athersalk craned her neck and stared down the road. Though she saw nothing but pilgrims, she felt a familiar tingle of excitement. She always loved how the Magpies appeared, tumbling out of trees, doing handsprings and belly flops and pratfalls. They sought out the self-important and found countless ways of tricking them out of their valuables.

She felt a tap on her shoulder, but when she turned to look, no one was there. Then it happened again, and turning more quickly, she saw a black and white blur. When she was tapped a third time, she didn’t move; she’d tried outspinning a Magpie before and all she’d gotten was vertigo. No fourth tap came. The dancer was searching for someone easier to fool.

Perhaps it was one of the pair playing leapfrog in the road. Though their bodies were covered, in true Magpie fashion, with no scrap of clothes, only stripes of clay stuck with feathers the Hrrska had shed, the two were so lithe and fast-moving that Athersalk couldn’t tell their sex. Others, equally androgynous, were making human pyramids, mock flying out of trees and staging battles with imaginary swords.

Such antics distracted the crowd while other Magpies darted from the shadows, grabbing whatever caught their eyes. They were particularly drawn to what glittered or shone, but Athersalk remembered seeing them trip a man so that they could strip him of a pair of old boots. She also recalled twists of generosity: a friend of hers had a handkerchief snatched away, only for it to be replaced with a jewel-encrusted comb.

Queen Athersalk, said the woman whose mask was all triangles, I brought you some blisscake. She held out a slice of dark bread that smelled of nutmeg and cloves. A Magpie with a mouthful of this will forget about stealing a thing. My Cousin Lis-furl learned the recipe in a dream.

Athersalk thanked her and carried the blisscake over to where the Magpies were still leapfrogging each other’s backs. The one whose turn it was to leap had small apricot-shaped breasts and the other a penis that puckered the curtain of feathers at his groin. When she got close, the leaping dancer landed in a crouch at her feet, while the other snatched the slice from her palm and crammed it in his mouth.

With a furious-sounding squawk the other Magpie launched herself after him and chased him in circles while he ducked and dodged. When she saw that she couldn’t make him share his prize, she got down on her knees, licked her fingertips and poked them into the gravel to pick up fallen crumbs.

They just can’t resist, said the woman who’d made the cake.

The Magpie stopped gathering crumbs and looked up. More blisscake? she said. But then she spotted Queen Athersalk’s belly and began gabbling in perfect imitation of a mother Hrrska delivering meat to a nestful of chicks. Jumping to her feet, she scurried close to the queen and dropped to her knees. In years past, Athersalk had often seen Magpies fussing over dreamers who were pregnant. It was a spectacle she’d always found amusing, unlike now when hers was the abdomen against which the still-gabbling creature was pressing a cheek. What nonsense to be frightened of a Magpie! But nonsense or not, Athersalk couldn’t shake the fear that this trinket-loving prankster might steal her child away.

Athersalk caught a fresh whiff of blisscake and saw another masked courtwoman approaching, breaking apart a small loaf as she walked. The kneeling Magpie saw the cake as well—and ran to get a share.

Athersalk felt safe again and slightly embarrassed for having felt afraid.

Blithcay! mumbled the Magpie as if his mouth were unaccustomed to human speech.

The woman who’d crumbled the loaf came to help, but when she waved a piece of it under the nose of the Magpie, he jumped away, reappearing a moment later in front of Athersalk’s face. Blithcay! Blithcay! Blithcay! he kept repeating as he planted his mouth against hers and parted her lips with his tongue. She lifted her hands to push him away, but too late. He was gone, leaving a taste of nutmeg and cloves in her mouth and a thick clot of sweetness dissolving down her throat. Blisscake.

For the first time that evening, Athersalk felt shaken. Though the night was almost sultry, she began shivering. The eight courtwoman clustered protectively around her. She was grateful for the attention, but the more they nattered on about how the Magpie’s behavior had been shameful, unheard of, deserving of harsh punishment—the surer she became that the Magpie had meant to communicate something of importance, if only she could figure out what it was.

One of the women was saying that the Magpie had had an erection. I’ve never seen one looking so purple, she said. I bet some trystwort got mixed into the blisscake. The other women laughed, and so did Athersalk, but just for the sake of release. In truth, she was certain there’d been nothing sexual in the Magpie’s attentions. He’d been feeding her the way a parent bird would feed one of its nestlings.

Your earring! said the sunflower-masked woman.

Athersalk automatically reached to pat her ears. The wing of gold filigree still dangled from her right, but its silver companion had disappeared. King Fetharal had given her the pair when she’d told him he was going to be a father soon. Her dream wings he called them. He wouldn’t be pleased to learn that one of them was gone.

We’ll get it back, said the woman with lichen on her mask. She beckoned two of the guards and described the missing piece of silverwork. The Magpies haven’t had time to go far, she said.

The men looked at Athersalk to see if this order had her backing, but she shook her head. It’s bad luck to interfere with the Magpies, she said.

But what about the king? asked several women at once. They seemed more worried than Athersalk was. She knew he would be disappointed, but he wasn’t an unreasonable man. Like her, he took a special delight in the Magpies and would never risk starting a feud with them.

She groaned and made a face. Quit kicking and I’ll sing you a lullaby, she said to the baby inside of her. There had been no kick, but her ruse made the women drop the subject of the earring and listen as she sang:

There was a little bird in a nest, in a nest.

There was a sleepy bird in a nest…

As the song was finishing, the group had reached the Grove. They skirted the thickest clusters of dreamers and spread blankets beneath the huge central tree reserved for them. The servants put out the sharing bowl and heaped it with freshly killed songbirds that the scent mixer sprinkled with a musky infusion while the summoner whistled and crowed to each of the five directions of flight. Athersalk waited a moment to give the others—courtwomen, servants and bird priests alike—time to lie in a circle with their feet towards the bowl before taking the place they reserved, where she lay curled on her side with her belly almost touching the bowl.

She closed her eyes and tried to relax. It was hard. Despite the best of preparations, there was always a chance no Hrrska would come. Or it might come—and she might not fall asleep. That had happened to a market woman, who’d hidden her failure by making up a dream about slicing a turnip that changed into a talking mouse. No one was fooled, and none of the parents in her neighborhood stopped their children from pelting the poor woman with turnips or taunting her with mice.

These worries were interrupted by a loud whoosh of wings. Half-opening her eyes, Athersalk felt like a child pretending to be asleep.

The Hrrska was a female, so large she had to be the one that had flown past earlier. Though not quite so imposing with wings folded, the creature still looked impressive as she strutted up to the bowl full of songbirds, took five or six sparrows and warblers in her beak and crunched down. She followed this meal with another of the same size, then concluded by delicately picking up a last sparrow and dropping it to the ground. Food isn’t why I’ve come, this gesture clearly said.

Athersalk sighed, and the Hrrska, responding with a gabble remarkably like the ones the Magpies had made, abandoned the uneaten birds and walked up to her face. Blood rimmed the creature’s beak and her curved talons looked as deadly as a tiger’s, but Athersalk felt perfectly safe. The gabbling reassured her, the way it resembled a lullaby, and also the matter-of-fact way the Hrrska fluffed up her feathers before she sat down and tucked her head beneath her wing. Though muffled now, the gabbling continued to do its work, setting Athersalk’s body at ease and guiding her awareness down the pathways of sleep

* * *

Blood pleasantly slicked Stoneturner’s tongue. Her stomach had been full when she’d accepted the birds, as she always accepted such offerings, not for her own sake but for the feeding of the dream. Sated now, she listened to the sleepsong of the dreamer’s breath and the beating of the two hearts, the one in the woman’s chest keeping a rhythm different from the one lower down. The one whose name was ripening. The one who would—

—who would do what?

The question rankled like the stink of fire-spoiled meat. It made her skin crawl, her quills rattle. With an alarm cry threatening to burst from her throat, she soothed herself by running one wingfeather after another through her beak. Not till she finished one wing did she begin to feel calm. This self-questioning was a habit she caught from the dreamers whenever she came to the Grove. It reminded her of lice. No wonder it awakened the urge to groom.

Or was something stronger at work? Something worse?

Fretful again, she began worrying the feathers of the other wing. But the dream that had drawn her was already taking shape and her spirit was caught in the downdraft of sleep…

…into a dream-nest of twigs, straw and honeysuckle vine where three eggs, perfectly shaped and brown-speckled, lie tucked side by side. Two of the eggs, their shells encircled by thin, widening cracks, roll ever so slightly back and forth. Any moment now they will hatch. The third shows no such indications, but its colors are changing, its brown speckles brightening, first to a dull red then to a blazing, blinding orange. Smoke rises from beneath it and the nest bursts aflame

at

precisely

the same

moment

that

a woman screams.

Standing at the base of a giant, spreading nesting tree, she stretches her hands upward into a rain of burning twigs. A pair of falling nestlings are almost in her grasp. One of them keeps flapping its naked wings. The other keeps its wings folded and drops like a stone until…

Athersalk woke up gasping for air, terrified and unsure where she was. Only gradually did she become aware of the women kneeling at her sides and the branches of the moonlit tree overhead. A cup of honey-laced water was put in her hands. After a couple of sips, she looked around. The Hrrska? she asked.

Gone, said one of the women.

Of course, thought Athersalk. The bird had been as eager to escape from that nightmare as she had been. And the dream itself? She sipped the sweetened water and tried to recall what had filled her with such helplessness and rage. Nothing came back clearly. Nothing but a bird’s nest and the smell of smoke on her hands.

And the sex of the child? asked a woman whose mask green with moss.

Athersalk resented this interruption of her thoughts, but it jarred loose a kernel of certainty. A boy, she announced. King Fetharal and I are going to have a son.

This news was greeted with laughter and cheers, then silence. The more vital question, the one they didn’t dare put into words hung heavy in the air.

Despite the lingering dread the dream had left behind, Athersalk filled with relief as she cupped her hand to her lips, silently mouthing the second piece of knowledge that the Hrrska had shared with her.

The women gleefully began to guess.

The boy’s name is Ranj-klig. It just has to be.

No, it’s Furshlo!

Yarbrego!

Fallinor!

Her hand still cupped across her mouth, Athersalk smiled to herself till the guessing game was done. Then gently she closed her fingers into a fist around the secret shape of the name. It was time to share it with her son. Listen well, she whispered as she opened her palm against her belly and began to rub. This is who you are and who you’ll always be. This is what you must know.

* * *

A half-month later, on a chilly moonless night when the Dream Grove was almost deserted, another woman heavy with child curled up beside a sharing bowl in exactly the same spot as Queen Athersalk had curled. An unmarried chambermaid with no family in Gluvna and no friends willing to be linked to her inconvenient pregnancy, Marmlistra was accompanied only by a pair of sedan-chair carriers, men as tight-lipped as they were burly, and by a midwife. She’d resigned herself to making the pilgrimage entirely alone, but when the father of her child—a man whose name she dared not utter, not even in her thoughts—had learned of her plans, he’d been furious. He told her he wasn’t about to have her walk off a cliff the same way she’d fallen down the stairs. He didn’t come right out and accuse her of trying to kill both herself and the child, but the implication was clear: he didn’t trust her to be on her own. She didn’t bother to argue. She could have told him the danger was past, but that would have meant acknowledging that at one time the danger had been real, which would only have served to make him more protective. And besides, being carried to the Grove was better than hobbling there on an ankle that hadn’t stopped aching since she’d twisted it sideways in her fall.

About the midwife she was much less enthused. She understood the reason for having one with her, but why did it have to be Angte-jal? A midwife of the palace, one who might soon be called to the queen’s bedside, was accustomed to serving women who thanked her with lavish gifts of jewelry and clothes. Surely she’d look down on the one who hauled away those women’s bed sheets and scrubbed birth-blood from their floors.

Marmlistra needn’t have worried. Angte-jal’s easy laughter set her at ease, and the midwife was happy to walk beside the sedan chair sharing palace gossip and telling stories that made the Dreamer’s Road seem shorter than it was. She even outfoxed the Magpies that came tumbling out of the darkness by getting them to give her a finely wrought earring for a few scraps of stained linen from her bag.

Marmlistra congratulated the midwife on her cleverness.

Cleverness had nothing to do with it, said Angte-jal. The Magpies let me have this so I could pass it to you. She handed her the earring. It was shaped like a wing. A silver wing.

Are you sure?

Of course I am. Yours is the dream that is ripening, not mine.

That had all happened earlier, on their way to the Grove. Now, as Marmlistra lay on her side beneath overhanging branches of the dreaming tree, that same earring rested in her open, upturned palm. She’d heard that dream-starved Hrrska were drawn to silver as much by its scent as by its shine. Hoping this was true, she fell asleep.

She didn’t wake until dawn, so she slept through the Hrrska’s arrival and had to rely on Angte-jal’s report to give her a picture of how the huge bird stooped to pick up the earring in its beak and shake it back and forth several times before dropping it back in her palm.

That’s when, said Angte-jal, your eyes sprang open. But of this Marmlistra had not the slightest recollection. Nor did she recall having dreamt, though she must have, because her thoughts were filled with a new, almost terrifying clarity: The child is a boy, she declared, and his name is—

Don’t say it, shushed Angte-jal. You know that’s bad luck. Wait till he’s seen the light of day.

By then I’ll be dead.

You mustn’t say that. Not even…

Not even if my dream showed me that it’s true? Marmlistra smiled sadly. He’s going to be Rashik. A good name, don’t you think? Make sure he knows it.

Angte-jal nodded.

Marmlistra started threading the earring into her earlobe, then changed her mind and handed it to Angte-jal. Give it to him to remember me, she said.

It happened as Marmlistra dreamt. Her labor was prolonged and difficult, with complications that Angte-jal, despite all her skill, was unable to resolve. She was lucky to be able to save the child.

Angte-jal intended to fulfill Marmlistra’s wishes. But a day before Rashik’s birth, Queen Athersalk gave birth to a Rashik of her own. Angte-jal felt torn. She didn’t want to betray Marmlistra’s dream, but the fatherless offspring of a dead chambermaid would have troubles enough without a name that made him sound like a usurper. Thus, when she gave the newborn to the waiting wet nurse, she said the mother had lived just long enough to say the boy’s dreamt name was Wool-jet. This appellation, Marmlistra’s fellow servants agreed, sounded most honorable. They predicted he’d become a skilled cabinetmaker or a worker in stone.

The earring presented Angte-jal with a further dilemma. It was common knowledge that Queen Athersalk had lost a similar one on her way to the Grove. For the missing object to be found in the possession of Marmlistra’s child would, at the very least, set tongues wagging. To forestall this, Angte-jal encased the earring in clay that she molded into the semblance of a Hrrska and blackened it with tar. From the day of Wool-jet’s birth, this amulet swung on a braided leather chord above his head.

* * *

The boy and the figurine became inseparable.

Also inseparable were Rashik and Wool-jet, a name shortened to Woodge by the prince’s infant tongue. Rashik and Woodge. Woodge and Rashik. They looked so alike they might have been twins. And like twins, they shared the same bed, the same toys, the same clothes—and often gabbled together in a language all their own. Their closeness was, in large part, thanks to Angte-jal, who had told Queen Athersalk that gossip about the boys’ uncanny resemblance could be nipped in the bud by acknowledging Wool-jet as a relative, albeit a distant one, of the royal family. The queen reluctantly agreed. The alternatives—have the boy banished or admit he was fathered by Fetharal—were both unattractive: the first would have been cruelly vindictive and the second would have undermined her son’s claim to the throne. But an orphan? A baby whose mother died in childbirth and whose father was known to be the recently drowned drunkard cousin of the king’s? Such a child deserved her munificence. What better playmate could she find for young Rashik? All she asked was that Angte-jal supervise the boys’ upbringing and act as their nurse. To this the midwife readily agreed.

From then on the two became one. The boys took their first steps holding hands and said their first words in unison. They occasionally argued, but always made up by day’s end. They loved shadow puppets, mulberries, being tickled and the smell of baby rabbits, but more than anything else they loved pranks. When Woodge found a dead mouse, Rashik set it adrift in the soup pot. When Rashik lit a firecracker’s fuse, Woodge tossed it under the ambassador’s bed. And when Woodge suggested improving a tutor’s robe with a layer of glue, Rashik wielded the brush.

Such pranks were aided by the fact that few aside from Angte-jal and the queen could tell which boy was which. This confusion stemmed not only from physical likeness, but also from gestures and turns of speech they copied from each other before they were old enough to notice. Later, they cultivated this tendency and took delight in its power.

The adults of the court, preoccupied by their affairs, were easiest to fool. The servants were harder, for they paid the price of unchecked mischief. The boys’ tutors, however, presented the greatest challenge, and none more so than Master Rusham-nal, an ear-twisting sadist, who was the target of their final and most calamitous prank.

On the morning in question, when the boys were supposed to recite a hundred verses from tongue-twisting High Ministrations of Gel Ark-naful, only Rashik reported to Rusham-nal’s chambers. He said Woodge’s bowels had the flux.

In truth, a perfectly healthy Woodge stood in the hall, listening until Rashik; interrupting the passage with a groan, grabbed his gut and begged to be excused, whereupon, a few moments later, Woodge took his place, making a fresh assault on the Ministration while Rashik stifled laughter, awaiting his cue. This turn-taking continued all morning. Master Rusham-nal frowned and drummed impatient fingers on his knee, but what could he do? Though he hated to hear a text mangled, he didn’t dare thrash the king’s son for the crime of falling ill. He could have called off the lesson, but that would have violated his principle that rebellion, even that of one’s bowels, was not to be countenanced. He hoped that the recitation, despite interruptions, would be finished by noon.

The end came sooner than that.

In the thirteenth year of… Rashik was intoning. He grimaced, and when Master Rusham-nal waved him toward the door, he quickly jumped up and ran. Too quickly, for when the door opened, it framed a view of both giggling boys.

They were shocked by how fast old Rusham-nal moved. One moment he glared, and the next they were dodging his grasp, Woodge sprinting down one hall and Rashik down the opposite.

The Master wasn’t young and had never been athletic, but his legs were long and anger put wings on his heels. Past dining halls, sculleries and servants’ quarters he flew after the boy, chasing him to the top of a tower and back down again and sprinting across courtyard after courtyard. In middle of one, he made a grab for the boy’s tunic and missed, much to the amusement of a group of soldiers who were polishing their swords. Spurred by embarrassment, he ran faster than before and cornered his prey in an alcove beside the room where King Fetharal slept.

Snagging the boy’s collar, he lifted him to tiptoe. Woodge! he spat, I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget!

I’m Rashik! hollered the squirming boy.

Don’t lie to me! If I say you’re Woodge, then Woodge is who you are! He took off his shoe and pulled up the boy’s tunic, baring his rear end.

My father’s going to kill you! shouted the boy. He yowled in the direction of the chamber door, but the door remained closed.

Your name? challenged Rusham-nal as he brought down the shoe.

Rashik!

And so it went on, with the same question, the same blow, the same reply, with neither antagonist relenting, despite the purple face of the one and the purple behind of the other.

The commotion drew a crowd. Some expressed approval of a punishment long overdue; others, having suffered under Master Rusham-nal’s tutelage, sympathized