Aelic led Antoinette again through the market. Brindle bounded along behind them. Many of the shops were closing for the day, and there were fewer goods to see. But those Glimpse merchants selling food were very active and had lines waiting to be served. One Glimpse merchant stoked a mound of glowing embers till it cracked into a fire beneath dozens of hunks of meat turning on iron spits. Juices dripped from the roasts and fell with a hiss into the fire. The smell that wafted from that place was almost overwhelming, reminding Antoinette she had not eaten since the scones early in the morning.
“Do you think we could get a bite to eat?” Antoinette asked. “After we get my side taken care of. The final test took a lot out of me.”
“Ah, you also have fallen prey to the scents of the marketplace, eh?” Aelic said, and he laughed. “There will be food in plenty at the gathering this evening. I think a morsel could be arranged prior to that. I know someone who makes a remarkably good stew—”
“Elspeth, right?”
“Oh, she told you about my insatiable appetite for her savory stew, did she?” Aelic grinned. “I am not surprised. Once Elspeth begins to talk, there is no telling when she will ever stop.”
Antoinette laughed and then winced. “Owww,” she said, clutching her side. “This stings! Stop making me laugh.” She said nothing to Aelic, but blood was seeping through her tunic.
“We had better get to Oswyn’s quick,” Aelic replied. “For I do not know if I can restrain my jovial nature!”
“Ouch!” Antoinette said, coughing through a laugh. “Yeah, we better hurry.”
They turned a corner and came at last to a little gray house with a thatched roof and an etched mortar-and-pestle sign hanging from its gables.
“Sir Oswyn!?” Aelic called, leaning inside the door. “Sir Oswyn, are you here?” There was no answer at first, so they walked in. There was no one in the shop, but there were candles burning.
“Wow!” Antoinette said, looking around. The square room they had entered was absolutely stuffed. Arched alcoves recessed into every wall were lined with shelves and stocked with ceramic or glass jars of every imaginable size and color. In the middle of the floor, turned this way and that, were several six-foot-high cabinets. And each of those had innumerable tiny drawers, each labeled in the same flowing script. No doubt for herbs, Antoinette thought. Brindle raced around the shop, stopping now and again to sniff at something.
Antoinette looked up. Larger ingredients webbed in fishing nets, strings of dried plants, and various vines hung even from the ceiling! At the back of the store was a wide counter made wholly of dark maple. Aelic approached and called out again. “Sir Oswyn!? Sir Oswyn, if you are here, I need you!”
“A moment!” a deep voice sang out from somewhere behind the counter. There was the sound of a door slamming, and a tall Glimpse appeared. He flung back the long, dark bangs of his thick mane, revealing bushy eyebrows and startlingly bright blue eyes. He saw Aelic and Antoinette and grinned broadly. Scores of wrinkles and dimples from a lifetime of smiling appeared, and his face took on the look of the happiest of souls. There was also, in the gleam of his eyes, a hint of mischief. He reminded Antoinette of a classical composer gone mad with laughter, and she wondered what sort of doctor he could be.
“Sir Aelic,” he said, still grinning “what brings you to my humble apothecary? Oh-ho! Unless I have gone utterly mad, this must be Lady Gwenne’s twin from the Mirror Realm! And her name is Antoinette.”
“How did you know?” Aelic asked.
“Aelic, you should know by now that I never forget a name, and since her feats of yesterday in the arena, I daresay most of Alleble knows of Antoinette.”
Antoinette smiled slightly and then winced. Oswyn immediately saw her wound. “A pox upon us, Sir Aelic,” Oswyn said, and he ran around the counter to examine Antoinette. “For we have bandied words while a noble lady waits for treatment.”
“Tell me, Antoinette,” he said, looking up from the wound. “This knave here . . . he did not do this to you, did he? Practicing his beloved moulinet?”
“No,” Antoinette said. She winced as Aelic held up the backplate.
“Ah, I see,” said Oswyn. “Be at ease. It is not more than a scratch, though it bleeds more than it should. I have just the thing for that. I tended that very herb in my gardens this morning, as a matter of fact.” Oswyn disappeared behind the counter. A door slammed, then slammed again, and Oswyn returned. He carried a long green plant with feathery leaves and tiny flowers of pale lilac blooming at its top.
“Yarrow,” Oswyn explained as he laid it on the counter. “Most deem it a weed, and so it is—an aggressive one at that! Given the chance, its roots will spread beneath the surface until it takes over a garden! But yarrow has a virtue that few now remember: it stops a wound from bleeding and prevents infection! Staunchweed, some call it—an apt name. A little of this, and you will be as good as new.”
Oswyn took out a ceramic mortar and began mashing the yarrow stalk. Every now and then, he poured a small amount of a milky liquid from a small dark bottle into the bowl. An acrid smell filled the air.
“This will sting a little,” Oswyn said, daubing a clean cloth in the ointment. He pressed it into the wound and held it there for a few seconds. Antoinette grabbed Aelic’s shoulder, and were it not for his armor, she would have made more wounds for Sir Oswyn to heal.
“You said it would sting a little!” Antoinette complained through gritted teeth. “I feel like my whole side is on fire!”
“It is doing its work, m’lady,” Oswyn said, and he removed the cloth. “You see? There now, the wound is no longer bleeding. Allow me to put on a bandage, and you can be on your way.”
“After all you have been through today, you must be anxious to find a place to recline,” Aelic said as they left Oswyn’s apothecary. “But I wonder if you might walk a little longer with me. There is some thing I would like you to see before I take leave to bear your back-plate to the armory.”
“I’m intrigued,” Antoinette replied. “But don’t forget I’m hungry!”
“No, I will not forget. I will see to it that one of the guards at the gatehouse sends word to Elspeth to prepare copious amounts of her stew and bring it to the Guard’s Keep.”
“Aelic, I don’t think I could eat that much stew,” Antoinette said.
“Ah, but Antoinette, what you do not eat, I will.”
Antoinette laughed and noticed that her side no longer hurt. “Wow, that stuff Sir Oswyn mixed up sure did the trick!”
“Sir Oswyn is as skilled a warrior as he is a healer,” Aelic said.
They walked back through the streets of Alleble, Brindle bounding along behind them like a ball of yarn, keeping ever close to Antoinette. The streets were less crowded now, and all of the shops had closed at last. The sun had nearly set, and all but the rooftops were in shadow. Eventually they made their way to the main thoroughfare of the city.
“Now, Lady Antoinette, cover your eyes.”
“Uh, okay,” Antoinette replied, a little leery. Aelic led her a few more steps.
“Now, uncover your eyes!” he said dramatically. “And look upon the grandeur of Alleble!”
Antoinette lowered her hands and gasped. The sun was half hidden by the mountains on the distant horizon, but it spent its last rays dazzling the Fountains of Alleble. Great plumes of water and mist shot high into the air, and droplets of water sparkled like jewels thrown into the sky.
“It . . . it’s breathtaking, Aelic,” Antoinette said, and Aelic stood beside her.
“Yes,” was all he said for many quiet moments. But then, his hand brushed against Antoinette’s, and he stepped away abruptly. “I need to see to your armor,” he said, dashing off through the thoroughfare. “And your meal!”
As Antoinette walked back to the castle, she looked at her hands and smiled. She was reminded of Faethon’s words, “I believe Sir Aelic is quite fond of you.” But she wondered. Was Aelic really fond of her? Or was it her resemblance to Gwenne? Another question spoke in a tiny, mostly ignored part of her mind: And what about Aelic? Am I fond of him, or is it his resemblance to Aidan? Antoinette shook her head. Having a twin in another world sure was getting weird! Antoinette laughed quietly to herself.
Just as she reached the castle’s main gate, Antoinette thought she saw someone standing in the shadowy street behind her. She turned around to confront, but there was no one there—only the Seventh Fountain of Alleble stood behind her. Brindle raced down from her shoulder and disappeared into the gatehouse. But Antoinette was drawn to the presence of the fountain.
She found herself walking slowly up to the dry pool and peering into its gray emptiness. She put her hands on the cool stone rim, and suddenly, she began to see faces twisted in sadness and fear. And torches waiting to light the dark oil that filled the fountain.
“So, great King,” said a voice that seemed to come from both above and behind. The thin, high-pitched, frenzied voice asked: “Will you lay aside your crown for your people?”
There was terror in the eyes of the Glimpses in the reflection.
“You do not command this!” another voice, weary, but still lordly and assured, declared. “I am allowing it. And nothing will ever rescue you from the doom you have chosen!”
There came a shriek and then the sound of a sword scraping across stone. The pool in front of Antoinette erupted in fire. Flames raced around the pool, and faces turned to terror and pain. Antoinette struggled to let go of the stone, but something held her to it. Helpless, she stared into the inferno.
Then she saw two people she seemed to recognize . . . a man and a woman. They are not Glimpse-kind, she thought. In vain the man embraced the woman, trying to shield her, but the flames engulfed them. Suddenly, to her own surprise, Antoinette screamed, “Mommy! Daddy! No, please, nooo!”
A hand grabbed Antoinette’s shoulder, and as she fell backward, a single tear from her cheek fell into the dry fountain.
A Glimpse knight stood before her. He had long sandy brown hair drawn tightly back and a thin silver circlet above his restless blue eyes. “M’lady, are you all right?” he asked. Antoinette could not at first speak. She nodded weakly.
“You seemed in pain,” he said. “I thought you ill . . . that you might fall.”
“Fire,” she said. “My birth parents . . .”
“Alas, m’lady. Now that the cruel shadows of night begin to fall, we are all haunted by the black deeds of our enemy. My brother Bolt fell to Paragor’s dark army in the battle at Mithegard. But come; though some wounds do not heal, let us seek the light within the castle of our King. There we may find comfort and peace in times of trouble.”
