Category: Palace Guard

Summer 29: scattering

Matthew ELeave a comment

Zann, my truest love,

I took my long branch and weaved as many colourful flowers as I could into the twigs at the end of it. It wasn’t easy, and I had been swearing continuously for about ten minutes before I found a technique that would work. At last I had a long colourful banner, about twelve feet, that I could wave in the air. I took it up to the downstream tip of the island, and waited for a boat heading up to Crideon.

It wasn’t a perfect plan. The river was wide, and the best currents to travel in were near the banks. Someone on a boat might see me and still not want to come out into the middle of the flow to help me. But it might work.

As it happened, the problem wasn’t that the riverboats were unwilling to come out from the bank, but that they weren’t there at all. When I was working on the docks, and later when I did guard duty out on The Tongue, I would see dozens of boats a day go past the city. The fighting must be keeping people away. I waited there for hours, seated on the sand with my flowery branch.

And a boat did finally approach! It was a trader, hugging the north bank. I jumped to my feet and flailed the branch around like a maniac, scattering flowers, trying to attract their attention. It was pretty far away, but they had a man on watch and I could tell that he saw me. He called to someone else, and another fellow joined him, and they both watched me bouncing about waving my branch. The boat stayed on its course, though. When it was drawing even with the island, the first man waved back, finally, and pointed at me with both hands, and then pointed downwards, pointing at my feet. He gave me a little salute-like wave and the boat passed behind a point on the island.

He meant something, but I didn’t know what. What about my feet?

Maybe he meant that I should stay here and wait. I could do that.

I waited, for hours. The island was far enough from the city that the afternoon mists were all a thin white that didn’t do anything but smell like trees. It didn’t help the sailing visibility, though, so I had almost given up on any boats coming by when I heard, “Hoy! The island!” from out on the water.

“Hoy!” I called back.

A large dinghy sailed into view. A bearded man was at the rudder. “Do you mind getting wet?” he said. “I don’t know how close I can come.”

“That’s fine,” I said, wading out. “Thank you!”

He grinned, and a woman near the mast threw me a wooden ring on a line. The boat was coming around the island, but I had my arm through the ring and it pulled me along. I swam out, trying to work my way up the rope. The boom swung past the two of them, and the woman helped me aboard.

“Thank you, again. I’m Ybel.”

“Ybel. Glad to help. I’m Coy and this is my husband Lasl. What were you doing on that island?”

“Oh. It’s a long story. I don’t mind telling you, but it’s a really long story. I’m a Rosolla Guard, at the Palace, and I’ve been out of the city for a while, doing all kinds of crazy things. Someone who dislikes me stranded me on the island. What’s happening in Crideon now, do you know?”

“Rosolla Guard, eh? Hm,” Lasl said. “That’s interesting. As far as I know your people are all sealed up in Cas Crid with Lord Clear and a brown glow around the whole area keeping everyone out. So you’re coming back to the city… to do what?”

“A brown glow? Oh. I’m coming back to, well, to try to put things right. I don’t know how. But I can’t just let everything fall apart the way it’s doing.”

“Because of your oath?” Coy asked.

I thought about it. “No. The oath is nice too. I just have to do this.”

I was lying on my back in the bottom of the dinghy. I could have sat up, but every now and then Lasl and Coy felt it necessary to do a sailing thing where the boat changes direction a little and it yanks the boom over top of the hull and everybody has to duck. I never know when to duck. So I just stayed down all the time.

“Brave of you,” Coy said. “I say ‘brave’. Do you prefer ‘foolish’? ‘Suicidal’? ‘Simple’? Or should I stick with ‘brave’?”

I laughed. “Any of those. I don’t know. I’ve been in a lot of unusual situations. I don’t know what can be done. But it doesn’t feel like I have much choice about it.” I paused. “And, there was a time when I let a couple of people down. I cared about them a lot. I still do. But I wasn’t there for them when they needed me, and now it’s too late. But it isn’t too late for the people I know here.”

They nodded. Still keeping their eyes on the water ahead.

“And I count you two in that. You’re really helping me here, and I owe you a debt. And I’ll make good on it.”

Lasl waved it off. “We just did a bit of sailing. We sail all the time. A little run downriver because a fellow on a trader told us that some other fellow was caught on an island? It’s no great thing.”

“In that case, I’ll forget your names.”

They laughed. “There’s still a place near the docks that the laurans and gangs haven’t discovered,” Lasl said. “Come have a drink with us, and we’ll talk about some items of interest, and we’ll say it’s even.”

“Glad to,” I said, and we came around a bend, and there was Crideon, with the sun setting behind her, and the afternoon mists blue and green in her streets.

All my love,

Ybel

Summer 28: leafslime

Matthew ELeave a comment

Dearest Zann,

I tumbled through the hole in the darkness, and landed on mud. The sunshine was bright here, and I squinted as I stood up. Somehow I was still wearing the same clothes from when Ellewen and I had entered the laur. How long ago? I couldn’t tell. I checked that my coin was still hanging around my neck: it was.

Greenery was all around me, long reeds and big leaves coming down from somewhere above. I was on the shore of some water… probably a river. I knew this place, actually. I could see houses on the opposite shore, and the shapes of the hills… this was one of the islands in the Crideon River, some miles downstream of the city. I had never been here before, but I had seen the islands from the land. I tried to remember, did anyone live here? Had I ever seen smoke or farms or anything here?

I took a step and slipped in the mud, plastering river muck and leafslime all over myself. Tried to get up, slipped again, and completed the job of bedaubing myself from head to toe. I laughed and stood again, more carefully. I felt pretty good, unexpectedly. I was healthy. Wande and Jhus were fine, wherever they were. And, whatever kind of wars and intrigues were going on in Crideon, it didn’t have anything to do with me. I was just taking a nice walk around an island. Could I even get off the island? Who knew? Maybe I could swim it. I could just walk away from everything.

It sounded good. The greenfolk didn’t know how to rule in Crideon, and the people of Crideon didn’t know what they were dealing with in trying to drive the greenfolk out. The Rosolla Guard was a snakepit inside the larger snakepit of the palace. Ellewen and Ambe and my other friends could all take care of themselves. And I could go somewhere else. North, maybe, back to the Boltmarch.

I sat down on a rock and chewed on a blade of grass. If I did leave, it would mean that I was giving up on ever tasting the Sauce again. And that would leave a large hole in me. Right then, though, with the sun shining on me, and smelling the wind off the river, that didn’t seem so bad.

My fingers found the coin on its old leather thong. Of all things, that little pissard Ran was on my mind. Did I remember right, that his whole neighbourhood had been destroyed by all the fighting in Crideon? Was Ran dead? It might have been something that I imagined. But.

He did live in Crideon. He was in danger. A lot of people were in danger. And somebody had to do something about it. And that somebody was me. I couldn’t just sit on this island eating reeds. I had to, I had to, well, I didn’t know what I had to do. Just that I had to do it. I started looking around for a branch.

Love,

Ybel

Summer 27: maw

Matthew ELeave a comment

Dearest Zann,

After that, there was a long period of nothing. I wasn’t really conscious, but once it was over, I could tell that I had experienced some kind of time. Eventually I became aware of… a place, that seemed dark and looming, like Ambe’s lair beneath the palace. At first I remained still, dreaming. I didn’t feel ashy. I felt normal.

I looked up, and there she was: Jhusdhe, sitting there, scowling at me and kicking her legs.

“Jhus!” I said. “I mean, I’m sorry, Jhusdhe. Are you all right? Where’s Wande? Is she all right?”

“Be silent. It is the great failure of my mater that I cannot pretend not to know you. But I wish to hear no words from your savage maw.”

I straightened, and rose to an awkward sit. “I know you don’t like me. That’s not important. But what happened to you? I was looking all around–“

“I will have silence from you.” She was wearing a green playfrock I didn’t know, not ripped or dirty or anything. That was a good sign. It meant she and Wande were somewhere that their comforts were being seen to. And she seemed, well, not happy obviously, not Jhus, but lively. “You are an ill-bred puppy who has been bumbling through the snow, and now you are here.”

“Where are we? I can’t tell. I was in–“

“You are too stupid to understand. But you cannot stay here. There is a way out, there.” She pointed. “Go. And stop looking for us. You don’t deserve to find either of us, and my poor mother does much better without you.” And she looked away in that infuriating way she has, where the conversation is over and you don’t exist anymore.

I looked where she had pointed, and there was a long spoon, lying silver against the darkness. For a long time I didn’t dare go near it, with Jhusdhe there. What if she knew? She would never keep my secret, I knew that. But I had to do something. I leaned over, reached out. Touched it. But my fingers went in, it wasn’t a spoon, it was a spoon-shaped hole in the world and I was reaching through it. And then I was falling through it. I closed my eyes against the sudden brightness.

When I opened them, I could see that I was no better off.

Love,

Ybel

Summer 26: sared

Matthew ELeave a comment

Dearest Zann,

Ellewen and I stood at the bottom of an ugly hill in a strange, pink-skied realm. Dark green clouds scuttled to block the brown sun, and we stared at a spiky fortress across the plains. Unholy, garlic-like fragrances rose from the ground about us. Ellewen stood patiently, and if he had been a human instead of an unearthly laur–I mean, instead of a greenfolk–he would have been looking at me expectantly.

I figured that I wasn’t going to get any idea of what to do from him, so I had to take the lead myself. I thought about investigating the fortress in the distance, and then I thought it would be even better to not investigate the fortress, so I started off in the opposite direction, around the hill. Ellewen followed.

“Do we have a way of going home?” I asked him, as we stepped around the rocks. “When we want to?”

“Oh yes,” he answered. “It would actually be much more difficult to remain for too long. We aren’t wanted here.”

We had a choice of paths between different withered, rocky hills. The pass to the left looked a little easier, so I took that one. Ellewen’s shadow fell beside me. It was an ugly purple colour. It looked like there had been a structure here. The rocks were tumbled blocks and walls and timbers. One of the timbers had fallen to create a narrow bridge through the area. I could see sparkles from debris in the rubble, and… a familiar smell?

A sound from up ahead: boots on the rocks. Ellewen sighed.

“Who’s there?” I called.

The most beautiful man in the world bounded up onto a scarred boulder. He had long copper hair flowing down past immaculate cheekbones to equally emphatic shoulders. His skin was the green of a stagnant pond and his eyes the grey of burned corpses. It felt like I had never wanted anyone more. “Still here, flower-grower?” he said, ignoring me and addressing Ellewen. He was carrying some kind of… I don’t know what it was. It was made of metal and wood, and he pointed it at Ellewen like a weapon.

“As you see,” he answered.

“Can you help us?” I asked the stranger. “We don’t really know why we’re here, and–” and he knocked me down.

I don’t know how he did it; he wasn’t anywhere near us. He just acted, and the air struck a sharp impact all along my left side, and I fell backward. I lay there in both pain and pleasure, trying feebly to get up.

Something was under my hand, something strange-shaped. I put it in my pocket.

“It’s nothing for me to kill you and your pet,” he said to Ellewen, “but if you go now I may not bother to try.”

“I think we’re just going,” Ellewen said. “If we–” and he looked at me. “Oh.”

“Whaf?” I said. “Elleven?”

“Ybel,” he said, kneeling beside me, concerned. The lovely man grunted in impatience and made his weapon make a noise.

I tried to push up with my hands, but it didn’t work; my hands didn’t seem to be able to make any force against the ground. I looked down. Where my lower arms used to be, there was only ash. It didn’t hurt. Some more of my right arm crumbled as I watched it. “Heff me,” I said, and ashes puffed out of my mouth. “I’m sared!” I said, and laughed. I don’t know why I laughed.

“It will something something,” Ellewen said. All the sounds went quiet. The sights were turning grey. The last I saw was a flash from the man’s weapon as the ash completed my body.

All my love,

Ybel

As I Was Saying Before I Was So Rudely Interrupted

Matthew ELeave a comment

Hi. Giving you a little peek behind the curtain as I wake up this site from its long winter’s nap.

I was doing pretty well updating Palace Guard for a while there. I had no idea where all the story was going, mostly, but I was having fun finding out. Then my son got sick. I don’t want to go into the details, but this was taking up a lot of my mindgrapes for a long time there, and I couldn’t focus on writing at all. He’s fine now, and after some resting time, I want to get back at it.

But I’m not going to be getting back to Palace Guard. I am going to do something else. I may eventually revisit Palace Guard; my motto when it comes to Internet Decisions is “never say never”. I’m sorry if that disappoints or frustrates you, and if so, I thank you for engaging with it enough to care in the first place.

What am I going to do instead? That will be revealed. Stay tuned! It won’t be long. I’m back at this now and I want to be serious about it.

And it’s spring!

Summer 25: elbows

Matthew ELeave a comment

My beloved Zann,

I had been to the laur before, though not in a long time. I remembered grassy hillsides and plashing brooks and leafy groves. This wasn’t like that.

We stepped out onto a rocky hilltop. There were other such hills and large rocks all around us. The sky, instead of its usual pale blue, was dark pink with a brown sun. Nothing grew. There was no sign of Wande or Jhus.

“What is this?” I asked Ellewen. “Is this a part of the laur that I just never saw? Or did something happen?”

“Something happened,” he said.

“What was it?” I looked around. On a plain beyond the bare hills was a tall red fortress, a tall tower surrounded by great earthworks. High blue fires burned in a ring all around it.

“You know,” he told me gently.

“I do? Did… did we do this to you? With our snowballs?” It didn’t seem likely, but…

“I think we should go back,” he said. “Soon.”

The air smelled of smoke and metal. “I have to find Wande and Jhusdhe. If they’re here, I can’t leave them here.”

“I know you came here for a purpose. But we don’t know that purpose. Let us achieve what we can quickly, and depart. And I doubt your leman and her heir are here.”

I didn’t see anything but the fortress that looked like it ought to be looked at, so I started in its direction. “You do? Why?”

“Why would they be here?”

“It’s a good question.” The hill was steep, and I jumped and skidded to the bottom. Behind me, Ellewen stepped lightly and easily.

“Your wizard’s augury, I mind, was about what you should do next, not about what you should do next to find Goodwife Wande. Unless I misremember?”

I couldn’t remember for sure. “No?”

“Then let us act with speed. There is great danger here.”

“But to do what? If Wande’s not here.”

“I don’t know. We will have to be alert. I was hoping the crossroads would provide a different answer for our quest. I don’t know why you needed to come here.”

We walked on, dodging the elbows of the barren hills around us.

Love,

Ybel

Summer 24: fourth

Matthew ELeave a comment

Most beloved Zann,

Ellewen and I walked down a long country road, side-by-side. We hadn’t seen much other traffic, wagons or riders or trudgers. I had lost track of time. How many times had we stopped to eat or sleep or make love? How many nights had there been, or afternoons when the mist stood away from us? I couldn’t tell. I thought Ellewen seemed gloomy, though.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

He smiled, but it didn’t reassure me. I thought he seemed more resigned than content.

“You can tell me, you know. Maybe I can help.”

“We’re here,” he said, and stopped.

I looked around. There was a lane stretching away from our road to the left, but only scrubby woods to the right. “No, we’re not.”

“We are,” Ellewen said, peering down the lane. “This is the crossroads in your drawing.”

I tried to remember what I had drawn. It didn’t seem like this at all.

“Stand over there,” Ellewen advised, “and don’t worry about the fourth road.”

I crossed the lane and turned back to regard the scene. I tried to fit what I saw into my memory of my drawing. If this road was the one that I drew up-to-down, and the lane branched off this way, yes, there was the tree with the overhanging branch, and there was a rotted post where I had put a sign… I had drawn that rut… “It is the same!” I said. Had I been here before? Or someone else in my family?

“Yes.”

“But what about the fourth road?”

“Look again.”

I looked again at the tangle of bushes, to see if there was anything there that looked like a road. There wasn’t. It was just scrub. And then a slight breeze fluttered through, and I saw it. The leaves and twigs of the trees and bushes, in their motion they described the lines of a road matching the one in my mind, one that led out of this world into another world that we knew.

“Can we go?” I said, stepping toward it. I knew I could walk that road.

Ellewen didn’t move.

“Ellewen?”

He started to say something, stopped, tried again, stopped again. Obviously he didn’t want to. But why?

“Ellewen, Wande and Jhus may be in there. You don’t have to go, but I do, and I will.”

He sighed, and followed me. “It isn’t that I don’t want to go,” he said.

I took his hand, closed my eyes, and stepped onto the fourth road of the crossroads. I could feel the leaves under my feet, and we entered the laur.

Love,

Ybel

Summer 23: secrets

Matthew ELeave a comment

Beloved Zann,

I didn’t pay close attention to my surroundings as Ellewen and I hiked to the crossroads. I wasn’t even sure where we were going; Ellewen was vague about the details. North of Marifall, or south, or, somehow, both.

Mostly I was just enjoying Ellewen’s company. I’m cautious about using the word “love”, but… was I falling in love with him? Such a long time since I last had that feeling. Probably the last time was when Acea and I had started keeping company. I had been so young, and was so different now. Acea had loved me for my fury. I didn’t have that fury anymore; just a lot of schemes. But Ellewen certainly liked me well enough anyway.

“Ellewen?”

He glanced at me questioningly.

“Do you know all my secrets?”

Ellewen grinned, but didn’t say anything.

Silly of me, of course; how was he supposed to answer that? But I needed to know and I couldn’t find a way to ask him. Did he know that I was after the Sauce? What would he think about it if he did? Would he care, would he kill me? Were his feelings for me deep enough to make a difference in that? To say nothing of my other secrets, which were… well, I cared about them, even if he probably didn’t.

And the other problem was Wande. I didn’t know if she’d feel betrayed by my lovemaking with Ellewen. There was a culture in Crideon that men could have male lovers and it didn’t reflect on their bonds with their women. Very different from back home in the Boltmarch. And a lot of women didn’t care for the custom anyway. But that was only part of it: Wande herself had had a greenfolk lover, Jhus’s father, and refused to talk about it. What would it mean to her that I had done the same?

My pairing with Wande was… we cared for each other deeply. Her more than me, I think. But I don’t think we loved each other, exactly. It had always seemed to me like we had agreed that we liked each other so much that we could make our lives a lot better by sharing them. We were being emotionally practical. But now where was she, and what was I doing? Poor Wande and Jhus.

I owed her a lot. When I arrived in Crideon I didn’t know what I was doing. Oh, I could have found my way well enough, living in the big city, finding enough money to eat and sleep, eventually working my way closer to the Palace. But meeting her, living with her, gave me time and space to learn more about who I was now that I was awake and not at war. Ybel had changed a lot while I was taking the Great Nap and I had never learned who he was. I still haven’t!

Whoever he is, he likes Ellewen a lot. And he loves Zann.

Ybel

Summer 22: guard

Matthew ELeave a comment

Dearest Zann,

I lay with my head on Ellewen’s stomach. The lemon-coloured mists of the afternoon were all around us, but left a clearing of courtesy around Ellewen. “I still have to find Wande, you know,” I said.

“Of course,” he answered, playing with my hair. “It’s why we’re here.”

“But, I mean…”

“I know what you mean. It’s all right.”

Was it really all right? I was curst sure Wande wouldn’t think so. What Jhus would think didn’t even bear considering.

“We need food,” I announced. “Food, and some plan of where to go next.”

“I will get the food,” Ellewen said, snapping pieces off of a fallen willow twig. He handed it to me. “You, use this twig to draw a crossroads in the earth. Make it as delicate a drawing as you can.”

I sat up and took the twig. “Is it magic?”

Ellewen stretched and stood. “I’ll only be a short time,” he said, and by the time I finished listening to him, he had sidled into the trees and was gone.

There was a clear area of ground where we had been lying. I made some marks in it with the twig. A crossroads. Well, it could have a bridge here, and a tree on this side, I thought, and spent some minutes adding more details to the scene as best I could.

“That’s enough,” Ellewen said. “I recognize it.”

He had’t made a sound returning, and was now sitting under our tree. Next to him was somebody else’s hat, full of bread and cheese and honey and fruit. “You do?”

“I was hoping you would draw somewhere I knew. It’s not near here, but we should have no trouble finding our way.”

I looked down at my drawing. “I don’t know this place.”

“Some part of you must,” Ellewen said. “It may not be the crossroads we want, but I think it’s worth going to look at. Of course, we should be on our guard.”

“Why is that?”

He pointed. “Because of the murderer hiding behind the tree.”

There was a murderer hiding behind the tree in my drawing. When did I draw that?

Love,

Ybel

Summer 21: blade

Matthew ELeave a comment

Beloved Zann,

I woke slowly, midmorning, with sun on my face. Ellewen sat next to me, looking very much like he belonged among the trees and branches that surrounded us. “You slept well,” he said.

I had. It was the most peaceful sleep I could remember. I closed my eyes again and nodded.

“I wish you could see yourself as I see you,” he said.

“Nnn?”

“Nn,” he agreed, and tickled my chin with a blade of grass. “We of the green have more senses than your people do. I know things about you that you yourself don’t know.”

I rubbed my face and sat up. “I know you do.”

Ellewen smiled. “I mean, I can see things of you that you don’t have words for, that if I explained them you wouldn’t understand. Your people are fascinating, unknowable because you cannot know yourselves, and indomitable in spite of it. There’s a nobility in that, that most of my people don’t appreciate. Too many of us think that your folk can’t truly be people, persons, any more than butterflies or chipmunks can. But I think that it makes you persons more, because it is so difficult for you.” He shrugged, a flutter of his slim shoulders. “It’s easy to be a person for the greenkind. I think we often take it for granted.”

“Is this about Lord Clear?”

“It is about you, Ybel. The stripes of sound and the textures of scent that your waerd has flavoured you with. The wonderful past you are fleeing and the terrible future you are pursuing so avidly. And the virtue that you believe in less and less as you cling to it more and more. I don’t believe I can speak with authority about the best of humanity. But you are my favourite.”

I didn’t say anything, and he kissed my tears away, and I kissed him back, and we ended up not choosing a crossroads that day.

Love,

Ybel