Excerpt:The Night of One Hundred Thieves

FOREWARD



Some call it the night of thieves and others call it the night of a hundred thieves. There were not one hundred thieves, as you shall soon see. There were exactly thirty-two thieves. But to call it the night of thirty-two thieves would be to suck the magic from the thing, and magic is what the night was all about.

The point is, there were many thieves; many more than is usual—or useful—for thievery. There was one object to steal: a ring. The ring was comprised of interwoven, rare and beautiful metals, chips of manifold, precious gems, and one giant ruby-colored stone. The stone was of unsurpassed beauty, and it was said to have been magicked into being by The Queen’s Alchemist and contained one half of an extremely powerful magic seed. Thirty-two thieves. One ring. Ah, now we see where the story is becoming interesting.

The story is a legend, although when told, it is usually done in a quick session around a campfire or as an addendum to either the great long drama of The Queen’s life and times, or the weaving history of the ring itself. We are going to respect the story here, let the whole mess of the thing be what it was. Remember: thirty-two thieves, one ring.

But perhaps we should lay out the history, too, just in case you are unfamiliar. (Most people skip the foreward, anyways, so you could do that). Where to begin?

The magic seed existed before The Queen, and its earliest known history is with the Mysterious Hag, which is where The Angel apprehended it and delivered it to The Queen. The Queen (a powerful, benevolent and wise ruler, an only, unmarried child) left her kingdom in the thick of its War to the Death against the Dark One and the Demonis, to undertake a magically mandated and extraordinary journey to procure an unnamed power that would save the kingdom of Northwyth. She met The Angel in the middle of a vast desert when she was exhausted almost to death, and they fell immediately and irrevocably in love in the moments between her arrival, their brief telekinetic conversation, the handing over of the seed in a leather pouch, and a crash of sand and heat that consumed The Angel into disappearance.

During the final battle of the War to the Death, The Dark One struck The Queen, slicing through the ivory flesh of her arm, but not before slicing through the pouch and the tiny seed, cleaving the seed in half and releasing an behemothic blast of power that—in great confusion and a reckless disregard for the laws of physics—would defeat the Demonis, kill The Dark One, and end the war.

One half of the seed The Queen gave to her alchemist to magically encase in a red gem and then to her jeweler to set in a placement of astonishing brilliance. The other half of the seed was enclosed in a golden locket which was sealed with a lock which had no key, and engraved with an “A.” The Queen wore the ring for her long lifetime, and was buried with it. The locket disappeared.

The legend does not end there, and the Northwyth story doesn’t even begin there. But for our purposes, that is what happened, plus or minus human flight, a dragon, an eerie magician, and some mind-reading. The locket will surface, the storykeepers will keep on, the destinies of nations and the fates of a woodsboy, a maid, a midwife, a dog, a punk rocker and an academic will hang in the balance, and The Shadow will make off with the ring.

Who is The Shadow? Now, telling wouldn’t be half as much fun.

 









TWENTY YEARS BEFORE



Cecily stood in the mud where deep ruts crested at the side of the road and hardened into long, false hills, stony underneath but slick on the top. A drizzle had persisted until the afternoon, when the sky broke open to the blue beyond, washing a glistening world in golden sunlight.

She shuffled her leather clogs without notice of the mud, her long dress spattered and stained with old offenses at the bottom. She strained her head out on her neck, held her grocery basket tightly to her breast in the crowd. Was it coming? Would she be able to see? Was it possible the sky always turned blue and reflected heaven ahead of The Queen?

Cecily heard tales of The Queen tittered in the streets of Northwyth. The puppet shows peppered with spectacularly ugly Demonis told unbelievable tales of The Queen, of King Jaden, and of a time before peace, even back to the times of The Sage. Mothers leaned over beds to whisper to their children—flickering lamplight casting shadows up from their chin—about The Angel, hinting with understated lewdness at the affair and the missing love child.

But Cecily could no longer believe those tales, because you outgrew those things, didn’t you? The other girls would laugh at her. No man would want her. She would become part of a story herself, part of the gossip like Berenice the Healer and the odd Triplets and Conwen the Storykeeper, the others who were spoken of with pity for childishness, for oddity, for the profound touch of magic. Things that lived among you but were really nothing more than words and laughter.

Just as Cecily let her mind wander to a well-built man, a warm house and a couple of clean-faced children, the crowd around her grew louder and more agitated. She had to clutch the grocery basket tighter as she was knocked from both sides, the back and the front. Someone called out “What is it?” And someone else, “It’s The Queen!”

All eyes searched down the road to the south, where it crested a hill and then was absorbed in the Wood of Branderby. The hill was slight, but its cheerful, rounded pinnacle—flashing grasses on its shoulders and the road a ribbon of salmon brown—was all you could see before the wooly darkness of woods. Cecily noticed movement at the hill’s apex: a rhythmically bobbing twinkle of reflected light. Almost imperceptibly, it grew bigger, or really higher and more visible. The reflection came from the top of a flagpole, glinting silver in the sun. The flag rose slowly, then the standard of the House of Northwyth. Then quickly, up from the top of the hill multiplied other glints, other shapes and colors, and soon there mounted a procession of horses and riders, attendants and an open carriage, adorned with brilliant fabrics that floated listlessly on the breeze.

The sound of the procession had not yet reached the villagers that crowded into the flatland to watch. Some of the children broke free and ran up the gentle slope, along the road, to meet the train. Other townspeople—those able to get away from their chores and jobs in the afternoon—paraded from the forest with the procession, clinging to its sides and straggling behind.

Cecily heard the sound of a horn, piercing the shouts and rising intermittently on the silent gusts of wind. It did not play a melody, but blasts meant to call attention to the procession, to announce something. The crowd around her quieted some, and now they could also hear the brusque chanting of the soldiers marching fore and aft of the carriage. What they chanted, Cecily could not discern. Something to keep them uniform, to keep the pace, which sounded like “Up! Pah! Oh! Ah!” and “Up! Pah! Oh! Ah!”

The crowd lurched first one way and then the other, and Cecily moved to her tip-toes to welcome the pomp. She was a tall girl, anyhow, but was not yet fully grown. Her auburn hair she wore up loosely on her head and hidden under a lace-trimmed cap except for where wavy locks had worked free and tickled at her neck and chin and grazed her white shoulders. All her skin was white, pale, smudged with dirt and soot, and callused only at the hands and feet. She was a slim girl, shapely already, her loosely-fitted dress and wrap-around apron somehow making her feel naked in her new body. She averted her almandine, brown eyes whenever she encountered men, anymore.

But just now, her eyes were fixed on the road from the far hill, watching the spectacular show descend into the farmland and approach her. It was a sight. And the front horse and horseman were almost there! Would someone ride Son of Quicklander in the procession?

The soldiers were close enough that Cecily could hear a horse snort in a rattling gust. She suddenly remembered that she had picked flowers and placed them on top of her groceries. She looked down, frowned at a few cracked eggs, and snatched out the flowers. She worked her arm out in the jostling crowd, found a moment when the way parted before her, and flung the flowers into the road right before the wheels of the carriage churned down over them.

Cecily looked up from the flowers, yelling, “Life and Prosperity to The Queen!” and saw The Queen. Her carriage was open, meant for tours just such as these, when The Queen wanted to be seen and to see her kingdom. It was a gold and white thing, lined with midnight blue velvet, and The Queen sat alone atop it. She waved to her people, slowly and practiced. The Queen commanded awe, there was no doubt about it. She was tall and handsome, had long red hair that shone coppery in the sunlight, her skin flashed clean and beautified. She was indisputably strong and imposing, meant for warfare as much as any banquet room. Her red lips parted over the whitest of teeth, her green eyes looked steadily at all the uproar as she swayed gently, high over the road.

Cecily could not help herself. The Queen’s presence was heavy, like storm rain, and was searing, like a cattle brand. Cecily did believe the stories, every one of them. She was a child again, was telling herself she would always be a child in her heart because the stories were real, were instructive, enjoyable, important. Would she have to hide it away, then? In the presence of The Queen she could have yelled it out. But when she went back into town tomorrow to barter, then what? Would she become Cecily the Woman-Child? Cecily the Soft Head? Unworthy of progeny, unworthy of love? Perhaps she could seek the protection of the Head Saint; live chaste as a servant to the apothecaries. But then as soon as the complicated thoughts rose, they blew away again with the pomp and excitement and Cecily lifted an arm up to hail The Queen.

As The Queen turned her face to the opposite side of the road, her hand also moved in that direction, and a beam of light shot out from where the sun caught on one of The Queen’s adornments. A ring refracted the light into a ruby-colored gleam and it caught the crowd unawares, caught Cecily right in the eye. She could not look away, and followed the beam back to its source; an enormous, red stone set in an intricate setting on The Queen’s elegant hand.

It was not like the little reflections one saw on a sunny day, everywhere around town and on the small crests of the river water and off the tinmaker’s cart. Cecily had seen it with her own eyes: the ring had shot out a ray of red light amplified in brightness and intensity. It had transfixed her, had mesmerized her, had magicked her, and no one would ever know that she had seen it. Cecily would never tell.



* * *



Farah massaged her forehead with her fingers, pressed her fingertips into the skin and rubbed toward her hair line. Her head ached. She looked across the room and out of the pane of rippled glass beside the front door at a world of distorted passersby and diffused, grayed sun. Every note that twanged from the zither made her wince, especially the discordant ones.

Irene, her back to Farah, was unaware that Farah was distracted, wincing or rubbing at her temples. The child’s eyes were narrowed at the zither, her tongue working its way out of her lips as she wrestled with her fingers, the strings, and the song she had just been taught.

“Alright, child!” Farah brought her hand down to her side with a snap, and heaved a sigh of blasé torture. Irene stopped immediately and wriggled her posture straighter. “And pull that tongue in. We do not see ladies’ tongues unless we are being abused by them.”

It was an old saying. But for the most part, Irene had never “seen” Farah’s tongue. Farah was typically a composed, tall and willowy woman, with heaps of wavy brown hair, russet cheeks, and ruby red lips often accented by gowns in cranberry velvet or with accents of cranberry, silk ribbons or embroidery. She was content and generally cheerful, seemed not to notice that she was already getting the moniker Farah the Barren around town. It had once been Farah the Fair.

The two remained in silence for a few minutes, neither moving, like subjects in a painting of an ancient, affluent society in a bright, stony room, until Farah said, “You can be quiet; that is a great credit to you, Irene.”

“Thank you, m’lady.”

“We are done for today. I have things to attend to. You may sit on the step until someone has come to get you. Or are you far from here?”

“I will wait. They say The Queen is passing today. I love to see The Queen.” Irene had still not moved from her rigidly seated position on the stool which was placed on a hemp rug in the middle of the room. Farah still stood behind her, still looked out the window, but now with a hand rested nonchalantly on Irene’s shoulder.

“What do you love about The Queen, Irene?” Farah was curious, but not strongly so.

“The stories, I suppose. I like to think of the magic coming off her, as she passes, emanating like the heat of the sun and sinking into my skin. I look at her copper hair, her ruby ring, all the things that are part of her story.”

“The ring? It is always so interesting to people.”

“It encases the seed, and powerful magic!” Irene spoke with reverence and awe, in hushed tones.

“Well, I suppose so. Or it is a very beautiful ring, very desirable.” At this, Farah clasped her hands together over her breast and strode slowly to the window, still watching the shapes and colors passing.

Irene leaned forward over her knees, her back straight, and she said in a proud tone, “Our family has a ‘desirable’ ring, with a slave bracelet. It was a queen’s, once, too. Our family has royal blood, you know. That slave bracelet is our inheritance, the pride of our family, a symbol of our blood,” she repeated, from rote.

“Is it now? A special slave bracelet? Made all of gold and emeralds, no doubt?” She turned from the window and smiled back at Irene, a bit playful. Farah wasn’t even aware of who Irene’s family was. The courtiers and other Outer Circle families just sent their children to her with their nannies or maids or a chaperone and something to barter; a sweet cake, a pretty piece of fabric. It was her honor to pass her skill—both musical and in things less definable--on to young ladies.

Irene looked offended at her teacher. “We do, too! We’d never sell it, so we keep it hidden away. I’ve even seen it, once. And my grandmother wore it on her wedding day!”

“But is it magical?”

Irene sniffed and raised her chin. “No, it is not.”