.
I didn’t have anything other than what I carried anyway, so I simply curtseyed while giving a quick goodbye to those who were paying attention and followed the rapidly departing Lady Serera. A few seconds later, Kiki had dropped onto my back for her free ride. I think she actually curled up into a ball and took a nap, from what I could tell.
Feraen caught up very soon after.
Relador is a land of mountains and valleys. Robert had traveled in the Rockies a number of times, but this country didn’t look like that at all. Deep gorges formed the beds of rivers on after the other, some with amazing waterfalls, and steep slopes ascended to jagged peaks. Below, dark greenery and mist hung in the valleys. Clinging to the valley walls, high-flying rope bridges spanned ravines and houses with colorful clay tile roofs clung to precarious perches on narrow farming terraces cut into the slopes.
Serera kept turning us one way or another, guiding us through one valley after another, as if it weren’t possible to fly over the ridges. Sometimes we actually flew under the bridges, when they were high enough, and several times I glanced upward to see someone on a terraces waving down at us.
I found this circuitous ground-hugging path more than a little mysterious. There wasn’t any obvious reason we couldn’t go to sufficient heights to travel in a straight line. I don’t believe there exists a mountain on the continent of Baris too tall for a fairy to fly above. Despite that, we only occasionally ascended, to surmount some mountain pass and dive into the valley or highland forest beyond and then eventually end up in yet another deeply cut river valley.
I wanted to complain, but the other knight traveling with us wanted to convict me of villainy, and the last thing I wanted to do was turn Lady Serera against me as well. I stayed quiet and flew.
The town of Royses came upon us very suddenly as we followed a bend in a little mountain river. It was hard to believe that this was a capital of any kind. It appeared to be smaller than Cara Ita. But unlike that crowded hell, it was a neat cluster of tile and thatched roofs as colorful as the ones in Sulador, clinging to the sides of the narrow valley… or at least that was what I thought until we surmounted the top of that pass and the rest of the town spread out before us.
Okay, so it was bigger than Cara Ita. It was still tiny compared to Atius. Or, compared to a number of other cities on Huade, like Bray. The bowl valley before us was packed with colorful tiled roofs on buildings of two and three stories, sometimes four, lining cobblestone streets which for a few of them became stairways in some places, with temples scattered here and there.
Dorian temples are not distinguished by lofty spires or domes but by orderly gardens, ponds, and carefully arranged groves, placed around simple, neatly designed wood structures that blend into their carefully sculpted ‘natural’ surroundings. Here in this cityscape, they stood out as spots of green amongst the crowded spray of buildings covering all the slopes surrounding the small lake at the center of the bowl.
The city had two other ‘arms’, similar to the one we had just entered through. One marched up the slopes of another pass and the other followed the narrow river channel flowing out of the lake. I could not see if either of them led to more city beyond, as we weren’t high enough altitude to see beyond the mountainsides.
A wide structure that put me in mind of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, only with a much larger diameter and surrounding a wider yard, rose near that lake. This appeared to be where we were headed.
Royses is a city of the mortal inhabitants of Relador, but just like at the border, a small patrol of fairies similar to Serera’s squad approached us as we drew closer. We came to a halt mid-air, not far from that building, and waited for them to meet us.
“Fele Serera, ” the leader of the squad greeted the captain. She was raiment-clad like her comrades, rather than wearing the panoply of a fairy knight. My guess was, neither she nor any of her soldiers were fairy knights. I assumed as a working theory that they were lesser fairies employed by the local government.
“Fele Feraen and Her Highness, Enel Tiana have arrived to meet with the Legate at Royses,” Serera declared.
The leader raised an eyebrow and turned her head toward me. I guessed, her reaction was to Serera calling me Enel, Princess. Even a lesser fairy’s magical senses were telling her enough to see the miasma that identified me as a monster. I simply returned her a nod of my head.
She frowned, but didn’t question my legitimacy. I suspect the thought process was something like, If Lady Serera is escorting her, it’s probably true.
“Please go ahead,” she said, pulling back and waving us through the hole that her team created by pulling aside. “We shall escort you.”
As we proceeded down toward the circular building, Serera told me, “This is the Great Hall of the Council of Royses, which governs Relador. We have no business with them, but it happens to also be where the Legate keeps his office.”
“Who is this Legate?” I wondered.
“He’s something like an ambassador of the Fairy King to the Council of Royses,” Serera explained. “The Fairy Court communicates its will concerning Relador through him. And he is also the one who has the final say on issuing you a travel seal to Tëan Tír.”
As we descended into the yard, which was paved with flagstones and had a fountain at the center, I asked, “Isn’t it the King who has the final say?”
She shot me an indecipherable look, but then only answered with a slight curl to the corner of her lip.
The inner walls of the ring-shaped building did have porticos all around– this was part of the reason I imagined the Globe Theatre, I guess– but rather than seating, doors and windows ran all the way around the yard in three stories. It was an impressive building for a wooden structure.
A group of fairies streamed from out of an impressive set of double doors on the first floor. One thing I had noticed since coming to this land; fairies don’t like to walk. Unlike Mother, who was always on her feet, these women and the man at their lead preferred to float, even when their toes nearly touched the ground.
I heard Serera, in a low voice, noted, “This is highly unusual. Perhaps it’s your status, Your Highness.”
When I glanced over at her with curiosity, she added, “I did not expect that we would be met, much less by an entire welcome party.”
A pair of young women followed them, carrying an ornate chair. To my fairy sight, their mana suggested they were lesser fairies, but they appeared to be wearing human clothing. As the group fanned out into a semicircle and came to a stop, the pair brought the chair up behind the male fairy, who sat without looking as they placed it on the ground behind him.
His first words were not encouraging.
No, they were damned rude. And spoken to Feraen.
“Gimami mo? (This is the monster?)”
Before Feraen could respond, Lady Serera cleared her throat– loudly, with highly audible irritation– then bowed and stated, “Ëimi, Vesirle Enel Tiana Rôn pamöanro. (Excellency, I introduce Her Highness Tiana, Princess of Fairy.)”
He frowned. “The Fairy Lords do not recognize her as a princess, Lady Serera.”
Just like previous fairies I had met, they switched to the local language almost immediately. I was beginning to understand that the fairy language which Mother had pounded into Tiana’s head was like Latin or something. A language that was still learned, but not really spoken anymore.
Serera smiled and shook her head. “The King considers the Lords to have no authority on that issue. I am the King’s knight, and not yours… Lord.”
That came as a surprise. I was pretty sure ‘the King’s knight”, in this context, meant she was not just any old fairy knight. Was that border canton not her actual employer?
The tension felt just a wee bit too high, but I went ahead and made my best full Orestanian deep curtsey, while delivering the same introduction that I had given Serera at the border.
The Lord scowled down at me, then stated, with barely a head-bow, “I am Gelonhal, Legate to Relador from His Majesty the King. However, I do not recognize the status you claim. In this place you are at most a foreigner, monster.”
Frowning, I rose, crossed my arms, squared my shoulders and declared, “At the very least, I own a name and I serve a king who is your king’s ally, and that king has acclaimed me his knight, Lord Gelonhal.”
Her smile widening, Lady Serara chimed in, “My father will be quite interested in your failure to respect her Orestanian titles, Lord.”
He turned a dark glare to her, then thought better of it and turned back to me. “Very well, then. Would it be Lady Tiana then?”
“For the time being,” I answered, uncrossing my arms and relaxing. “If you are indeed His Majesty’s voice, then you are well aware that he has given my hand to Orestania as a bride. I am the betrothed of Prince Roderick.”
In other words, one way or another, you will have to call me a princess eventually.
“Lord Gelonhal,” Feraen said, “I object to any context in which this monster is allowed to approach Tëan Tír. She is a monster who has caused deep terror and attacked many young women at the Royal Academy, and My Lord has sent me to bring her home to justice.”
I answered in the coldest tone I could muster, “Based upon your actions, My Lady, I have to conclude that he commanded you to murder me in cold blood. You ran at me with a magic weapon while cloaked, clearly intending to kill me with no declaration or honor. Does Parna no longer recognize My Royal Liege’s justice system?”
“We owe a rampaging monster no honor!”
“At the time of the event to which I refer, my so-called ‘rampage’ involved flying peacefully toward Relador, over nine hundred miles from the Royal Academy. My friend Kiki can bear witness to that.”
Said friend was currently weaving around the welcoming committee, doing some sort of inspection. They were doing their best to ignore her.
Feraen retorted, “What good is the testimony of a witless pixie?!”
“That witless pixie gave a good accounting of herself against you, as I recall. She made you look pretty ridiculous for quite a while, there.”
“Enough!” the Legate barked, turning our heads back his way. “Lady Tiana, you stand accused of some serious crimes. You are in no position to demand passage to Tëan Tír while this hearing has yet to conclude.”
Looking back over to him, I narrowed my eyes.
“You say this is a ‘hearing’? As in a legal proceeding?” I asked, just to be sure. I had good reason to make sure the situation was clear.
“We represent lords of various fairy clans,” stated one of the other fairies in the semicircle, a silver-haired beauty in a raiment reminiscent of a Greek chiton. “Our number is sufficient to hold a noble trial under our law.”
