Thornspell by Helen Lowe Read Free Book Online

scratched legs and a flock of sparrows rising from a thorny ditch. He groaned and rolled away from the memory, wondering what the day would bring. He suspected that his life was going to be a great deal busier, as well as considerably more interesting, with Balisan here. But Sigismund couldn’t help feeling trepidation as well, because now he knew he had an enemy, one who had brought about his mother’s death.
    “Not just your mother’s,” said Balisan, when they met again later that morning. They were in the room immediately below the roof of the topmost tower, which Balisan said would do for their studies together—when they were not on the roof itself or in the castle’s training hall. The tower room was large and pleasant, with windows that looked out to the four winds and the ladder to the roof fixed against one wall. Sigismund noticed that there was already more furniture than there had been yesterday, and that the whole place had been swept and dusted clean.
    “You can breathe up here,” the master-at-arms said, going from one window to the other. “More importantly, we are out of everyone else’s way—as you have already discovered for yourself.”
    Sigismund thought that sounded promising, because he was full of questions: about the Margravine and Syrica, the power of dreams, and what, exactly, Balisan could teach him. He was also eager to know why his father had chosen Balisan to protect him, and if it was mainly because the Margravine had caused his mother’s death. It was at this point that Balisan held up a hand, checking the tumble of his words, and told him that it was not just his mother’s death that could be laid at the Margravine’s door.
    “There are many,” he continued, “who whisper that your line must have been cursed, for every generation has seen fewer of those born into your family survive to have children of their own.” He was taking books out of a bag as he spoke and stacking them on a long table set in the center of the room. They all looked old to Sigismund, with dark leather bindings and illuminated lettering down the spines. “It has not all been poison and daggers in the back, although there has been plenty of that, but there have been many accidents—too many, people whisper, for the ill luck to be solely chance. Belief in a curse has grown so strong that your father had difficulty finding any princess or noblewoman who was willing to marry him.”
    “Except my mother,” Sigismund put in. He was sitting cross-legged on a stone window seat and could see the green Wood and a patch of wind-feathered sky.
    Balisan glanced up from one of the books. “I wonder,” he said softly. “I suspect she may not have been willing at all, if she knew anything of the Margravine and her plans, which later events suggest she must have done.”
    Sigismund frowned. “Are you saying that the Margravine
engineered
the marriage?” His voice came out taut and a little too high.
    “I consider it quite likely.” Balisan placed the book on the table and this time Sigismund could read the title:
Of Faie and Their Ways.
“Think. Why was your great-grandfather able to place an interdict on the Wood so powerful that it has never been broken, not even by the Margravine?” Sigismund shook his head, uncertain, and an expression that could have been exasperation crossed the master-at-arms’s face. “It would take more than a royal decree scratched on parchment to keep that one out. There is power in your family line, Sigismund, an ancient bond to the land itself.”
    Sigismund leaned forward. “Like the king in the Castle Perilous, the one Parsifal heals on the Grail quest?”
    “Something like that,” murmured Balisan, weighing another book in his hand. It was the largest yet and Sigismund eyed it uneasily, wondering exactly how much he was going to have to read.
    “So why, if the interdict’s so powerful,” he asked, “haven’t we been able to fight back against the Margravine? Why