unbelievingly at the little nanny-goat standing there looking intently
at me with her mischievous golden eyes.
‘Somebody had to feed the baby, Pol,’ mother’s voice explained. ‘I
thought it might be best to keep it in the family.’
I gave up entirely at that point and burst out in a sort of rueful
laughter.
‘What’s so funny, Pol?’ father asked me in a puzzled voice.
‘Nothing, father,’ I replied. ‘Nothing at all.’
EPILOgUE
IT WAS A GREY, THREATENING sort of winter day on the Isle of
the winds. his royal highness, crown prince Geran o a spent
the day up on the battlements of the Hall of the Rivan King making
snowmen – or snow-soldiers, to be more precise. Wolf was with him,
as always. Wolf didn’t really contribute very much to the project, but
watched quizzically with his chin resting on his crossed paws
instead. There were a lot of things that went on in the Hall of the
Rivan King that Wolf didn’t understand, but he was polite enough
not to make an issue of them.
It was about noon when one of mother’s ladies in waiting brought
Geran’s four-year-old sister, Princess Beldaran, up to the
battlements. ‘Her Majesty says that the little one needs some fresh air,
your Highness,’ the countess – or whatever she was – told Geran.
‘You’re supposed to watch her.’
Prince Geran sighed. It wasn’t that he didn’t love his baby sister,
but he was currently involved in a work of art, and no artist likes
to be disturbed when he’s afire with creativity. Princess Beldaran
was bundled up in furs to the point that she could barely move her
short little arms. Beldaran didn’t contribute much to her brother’s
masterpiece either, but made snowballs instead, gravely inspecting
each one as it was completed, brushing off a few protruding lumps
with one mittened hand, and then throwing it at her brother without
so much as a change of expression. She didn’t hit him very often,
but it was just often enough to distract him. He ground his teeth
together and ignored her. He loved her, but he did ignore her a lot.
He’d discovered that it was quieter that way. Beldaran’s voice was
very much like mother’s. ‘Expressive’ was father’s word for it. Geran
had some other words he used to describe his sister’s penetrating
voice, but he was very careful not to use those words around mother.
He was much relieved when the Countess – or whatever – came
back up about a hour later to retrieve Beldaran. He was getting into
putting the final touches to his art-work, and he really wanted to
concentrate. After much consideration, he decided that the carrots
he’d used for noses were just too comic-looking, so he replaced them
with turnips. That was much better, he decided. He’d been working
on these snow-sculptures for a week now, and they seemed to be
coming along splendidly. Seven fierce, though bulbous, white
soldiers already lined the battlements to glare down at the harbor, and
Prince Geran was confident that if winter just lasted long enough,
he’d have a whole regiment to command.
‘Isn’t that one bully, Wolf?’ Geran asked his companion after he’d
put the finishing touches on the seventh sentinel.
‘One does not see the purpose of this,’ Wolf noted politely. Geran
thought he detected a note of criticism in his friend’s observation.
Wolf was so practical sometimes.
Prince Geran fell back on his grandfather’s suggestion at that
point. ‘It is a custom,’ he explained.
‘Oh,’ Wolf said. ‘That is all right, then. Customs do not need a
purpose.’
Grandfather had taught Geran the language of wolves during the
summer the boy had spent in the Vale. It had really been necessary
at that time, since grandfather and grandmother spoke exclusively
in wolvish. Geran was rather proud of his command of the language,
though Wolf sometimes gave him peculiar looks. Quite a bit of
wolvish is conveyed by movements of the ears, and Geran couldn’t
wiggle his ears, so he moved them with his fingers instead. Wolf
seemed to think that was just a bit odd.
Geran was very proud of Wolf. Other boys on the Isle of the
Winds had dogs, and they called them pets. Wolf, however, was
Geran’s companion, and they talked together all the time. Wolf,
Geran had noted, had some strange attitudes, and it was sometimes
necessary to step around him carefully to avoid giving offense.
Geran knew that wolves do play, but wolvish play is a kind of
affectionate romping. Wolf couldn’t really understand the
complexity of human play, so Geran frequently fell back on the word
custom’.
Geran seldom thought about Wolf’s origins. Grandmother had
found Wolf as an orphaned puppy in the forest near Kell over in
Mallorea, and Geran concentrated very hard on erasing all his own
memories of what had happened in Mallorea. He did have occasional
nightmares about Zandramas, though – mostly involving the tiny
points of light that glowed beneath her skin. Those nightmares were
becoming less and less frequent, though, and Geran was confident
that if he refused to think about them, they’d eventually go away
entirely. He firmly pushed those fleeting thoughts out of his mind
and concentrated instead on his snow-sentries.
Evening was settling over the battlements high above the city of
Riva when father came up to fetch his son and Wolf. Geran knew
that father was the Rivan King and ‘Overlord of the West’, but in
Geran’s eyes those were simply job-titles. Father was just ‘father’
no matter what others chose to call him. Father’s face was sort of
ordinary – unless some kind of emergency came along. When that
happened, father’s face became the least ordinary face in the whole
world. Those rare emergencies sometimes obliged father to go get
his sword, and when that happened, most sensible people ran for
cover.
Father gravely surveyed his son’s work in the gathering twilight.
‘Nice soldiers,’ he observed.
‘They’d look a lot better if you’d let me borrow some of the things
from the armory,’ Geran said hopefully.
‘That might not be a very good idea, Geran,’ father replied. ‘Not
unless you want to spend the whole summer polishing the rust off
them.’
‘I guess I hadn’t thought of that,’ Geran admitted.
‘One is curious to know how your day has gone,’ father said
politely to Wolf.
‘It has been satisfactory,’ Wolf replied.
‘One is pleased that you have found it so.’
Father and Geran made a special point of not speaking in Wolvish
around mother. Mother didn’t like ‘secret languages’. She always
seemed to think that people who spoke in languages she didn’t
understand were speaking about her. Geran was forced to admit
that quite frequently she was right about that. People did talk about
mother a lot, and secret languages, be they Wolvish or the
fingerwiggling Drasnian variety, tended to keep the noise level down on
the Isle of the Winds. Geran loved mother, but she was excitable.
‘Did you have a nice day, dear?’ mother asked when Geran and
father entered the royal apartment after dutifully stamping the snow
off their feet in the corridor outside. Wolf, of course, didn’t stamp
his paws, but he’d already chewed the ice out from between his
toes, so he didn’t really track in very much water.
‘It was just bully, mother,’ Geran replied. All the boys Prince
Geran knew used the word ‘bully’ every chance they got, and Geran
was very fashion-conscious, so he also sprinkled his speech with
‘bullies’. It was the stylish thing to do, after all.
‘Your bath’s ready, Geran,’ mother told him.
‘I’m not really all that dirty, mother,’ he said without thinking.
Then he bit his tongue. Why did he always start talking before he
considered the consequences?
‘I don’t care if you don’t think you’re dirty!’ mother said, her
voice going up several octaves. ‘I told you to go bathe! Now move!’
‘Yes, mother.’
Father flickered a quick ‘you’d better do as she says’ at Geran
with a few barely perceptible moves of his fingers. ‘You’ll get in
trouble if you don’t.’
Geran sighed and nodded. He was very nearly as tall as mother
by now, but she still loomed large in his awareness. Prince Geran
was seven years old, and Wolf considered him to be an adult. Geran
felt that his maturity entitled him to a little respect, but he didn’t
get very much of that from mother. He didn’t really think that was
very fair.
Living in the same house with mother was a constant adventure,
and Geran had long since discovered that the best way to hold down
the level of excitement was to do exactly as mother told him to do.
Prince Geran had noticed that he was not alone in making that
discovery. The unspoken motto of the entire castle – the-entire Isle
of the Winds, most likely – was ‘don’t cross the Queen’. the Rivans
all adored their tiny queen anyway, and it wasn’t really all that