The ride to Evil Castle was interminably long. Autumn realized that she didn’t actually know how large the forest was, or how wide the land of the Wizard King. Most of the maps she had seen in her life had taken the attitude of ‘well, here is the Evil Bad Place. Don’t go in.’
She didn’t even know if there was something behind the wizard’s kingdom. Obviously she could see the mountains in the distance; but did his domain stretch all the way to the foot of them? Was it all forest, or did he have his own private bit of prairie to enjoy? She supposed that if she did marry him — in the unlikely event of that happening — then she would have to learn all of that. It would be her kingdom, too. Talk about upward mobility, she thought with a smidge of hysteria. As the third sister, Autumn had never expected to either inherit the throne of Veld or marry into another royal family. How wild would it be if she did manage to score the Evil King and become his queen? She would brag about it at every family dinner for the rest of time, she decided. She would have more than earned that right.
The forest was an insanely creepy place to be in. Even though it was mid-day, the dense canopy of the trees covered the sky, casting them in deep shadows. The vegetation rustled unnaturally in front of them, opening a path, and then shook itself closed behind their carriage as if they had never been there at all. A fine mist curled lazily in between the trees, making it difficult to see more than ten steps ahead. Autumn wasn’t too interested in the view, anyhow. Shapes kept moving in the periphery of her vision and she was terrified that she would turn her head and see a spirit coming towards them.
Up until that point, Autumn hadn’t been really scared of the spirits. Certainly, they could kill her. But so could a bad fall, a nasty head cold, or a particularly determined raccoon. Taking the proper precautions, like not wandering out of the castle after nightfall, had always been more than enough to protect her. But she was no longer protected by the castle, here. She was entirely in the spirit’s domain, and protected only by the word of an evil, untrustworthy wizard. The architect of Esternia’s first betrayal.
She pulled her cloak tighter around her shoulders and tried to think of anything else. Mathematics. Poetry. Diplomacy.
“So what’s your name?,” she asked, tilting her head back to look at the knight with the deer antlers.
They weren’t quite sitting back to back. They’d both unconsciously huddled a bit on the left of their bench, so that their shoulders pressed side to side over the low backrest. It was almost intimate. Stretching her neck backwards like this, Autumn could get a good look at his face. He was looking straight ahead, monitoring the horse. The underside of his jaw was fuzzy, and his throat worked as he seemed to need to think about her question.
“I don’t think that I have one,” he said after a moment. “I’m a construct.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a creature made of magic. I’ve been grown from a deer’s heart, made to serve the King and obey his commands. There are a few of us, in the castle.”
“Why a deer?”
He shrugged. The hard lines of his pauldrons rustled against the embroidered velvet of her sleeve.
“I don’t know. Deers are noble, I suppose, and perhaps the King didn’t want to scare you off by sending a wolf for a guard.”
Autumn made a vague agreeing noise, even though she thought it was bullshit. The Wizard King had probably just grabbed whatever he’d had lying about after a hunt.
“And the King didn’t name you?” she asked, bothered by this information for some reason that she couldn’t quite figure out. “He made you, but he didn’t name you?”
A shrug again.
“Do you want one?”
The knight glanced at her in surprise. “What, a name?,” he said. “I… I don’t know. I guess I haven’t really thought about it.”
He was silent for a few seconds. Autumn realized that she’d been staring at him, and shifted around until she was kneeling on her bench. She crossed her arms over the backrest and watched the forest endlessly part in front of their horse.
“I don’t think so,” eventually decided the knight. “I think names are so you have someone to be when you’re not working, right? That way you don’t have to be a — a knight, or a princess, or a king all of the time.”
She hummed. She’d never seen it like this before, but it was true that sometimes she had to be Autumn the princess, and sometimes she was Autumn the woman, and neither of them were really quite the same person. She wondered how many more Autumns there could be. She thought about being ‘Autumn the Evil Wizard Queen’, and figured that it had a nice ring to it, despite being nothing more than a fantasy.
“But the thing is,” he continued, “I haven’t really been anything yet. I’ve only just got made. I think that I’d like to try to be the knight that I’ve been created to be, first. Then we’ll see.”
Autumn leaned her head on her arms and glanced up at him again. He had such a handsome face, it was hard not to look at him. “You’ve just got made? Really? You look all grown-up to me.”
The knight shrugged again, a delicate blush rising up on his cheeks. “Thank you. I remember being a deer, although less and less by the day. But being a construct is new. As I understand it, I was made for you.”
She blinked. A cold shiver rolled down her spine, like someone had just poured ice shavings down the collar of her dress. “What do you mean, you were made for me?”
“Constructs exist to obey the King’s commands. But I’ve only got the one command, and it’s to protect you. It’s my reason for being, inscribed into the very fabric of the spell that created me. It will remain so until you either leave, die, or until He un-makes me.”
“Protect me? From what?”
There was only one thing that was a danger to her here, and it was the Wizard King himself. The knight kept his eyes on the horses but bent his head towards her. His cheek was only a few inches away from the top of her head, now.
“From the specters, my lady. They’re everywhere, and they’ll kill any living thing that comes in here unless they belong to the King. They’re only being kept at bay, now, because you’re with me.”
She blinked. If he meant the spirits, then didn’t the King control them? Couldn’t he just order them not to attack her?
“How to you mean, belong to him?,” she asked. The word left a bad taste in her mouth.
“Because of his curse,” explained the knight, matter of fact. “The Wizard King cannot have that which does not belong to him. It means that no one can live on his lands unless they tie themselves to him in magic and blood. Otherwise they’re fated to die a horrible death.”
Autumn blinked again. That was new information. Since when was the Evil Wizard King cursed? From the way that the knight had said it, it didn’t really sound like something that he’d done to himself.
“Who cursed him?” she asked, bewildered.
“I don’t know,” said the knight. “All I know is that I’m here to protect you from the consequences of that curse until you belong to the King properly.”
She didn’t particularly want to belong to him, but now Autumn could see why it might become necessary. She glanced at the darkness between the trees again and shivered. Maybe the King had been cursed as a punishment for creating the specters, or for calling them from whatever place they came from. Cannot have what does not belong… Maybe it explained why this land seemed to be all dark forest as far as the eye could see. Autumn had never been in a forest before that she couldn’t walk from one side to the other in less than an hour. But these woods seemed to go on and on. This place wasn’t a forest that had a name and could be mapped. It was wilderness pure and proper, and she was quickly coming to the realization that it could swallow her whole if she let it.
“Does anyone live here?,” she wondered quietly. “Aside from the King and the other constructs?”
“No one else, no.”
“What, no villages or cities?,” she cried in astonishment. “No peasants or nobles? Really? The Wizard King is a king of none?”
“That doesn’t mean that he’s not powerful,” he was quick to warn her, his voice stern and cutting.
Autumn reared back. The knight was looking at her properly now, twisted in his seat, and he was scowling. “You have no reason to fear him, your highness, but do not underestimate him. He’s the Wizard King. As long as you’re on his lands, he gets to preside over your life or death.”
His gaze on her was intense, burning with a wealth of emotions, and Autumn felt liquid fire curl it’s way down her spine. Her breath caught and she had to look away lest she did something ill-advised, like admit to herself how attracted she’d suddenly become to this serious knight that had apparently been created for her. She wished that she had met him under other circumstances. Her eyes landed on his large hands clenched around the horses’ reins. They were shaking.
“Are you scared of him?” she inquired quietly.
The heat of his stare finally slid away from the side of her face. He looked forward once more. The side of his arm, pressed to her shoulder, was still as tense as an iron rod.
“Of course I am. The King made me, and can un-make me at any time,” he replied just as quietly. “If I don’t displease him, then he’ll send me to meet the armies that constantly try to invade. I will be forced to kill his enemies before being killed myself. And sometimes, he just gets bored. Constructs that haven’t done anything wrong disappear with no warning. He makes new ones and he doesn’t say anything about it, leaving us to wonder.”
Autumn felt sick. She sat back down on her bench, properly back to back with the knight once more, and huddled into her cloak. They journeyed the rest of the way in thick silence.
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