Beyond the Gate (The Golden Queen) (Volume 2) Read Free

O’Day, but I don’t want them to know it. Call me what name you will, as long as it isn’t Orick.”
    “Of course, my dear Boaz,” she whispered.
    They plodded silently along the dirt road, Orick with his nose down, until they reached the camp under the trees. These were not grim soldiers, worn with experience. Most of them were younger men out for an adventure, strong and limber. One played a lute, and several of the fellows sat beside a campfire, singing drunkenly a rousing old tavern song,
“My lady fair, my lady fair,
was drunk as a duck and fat as a bear.
And if you saw her prancing there,
You’d lose your heart to my lady fair”
    There was merriment in the sheriffs’ twinkling eyes, and they laughed and boasted as they gambled at dice and drank themselves silly with beer, hardly noting the presence of two bears wandering into town. One young man with long brown hair and a thin vee of a beard spotted Orick and shouted at him, “Och, why, we have strangers in our camp. Would you like to work your jaws a bit on something to eat? We’ve just boiled up a pot of stray lamb stew.”
    “Stray lamb stew” was another way of saying “stolen lamb stew.” By law, a traveler could claim a stray lamb if it wasn’t with a flock and its ragged appearance made it look as if it were lost. In practice, if men traveled in a pack more than six, they tended to butcher any lamb they came across, figuring that they could intimidate the rightful owners.
    Orick sniffed at the stew from outside the circle of the campfire. It was well seasoned with rosemary and wine. Bears were notorious for begging food from travelers, and were therefore not often so welcomed to camp. “Why, I thank you, good sirs,” Orick said in genuine surprise at the offer.
    The lad got up from the rock where he sat, staggering from too much beer, went to the stew pot and made up two heaping bowls. He came and bent over, set the steaming bowls before Orick and Grits—then pulled them back.
    “Ha!” he laughed, seeing how the bears’ mouths watered at the stew. “Not just yet. You have to earn it.”
    “And how would I go about that?” Grits asked.
    “With a tale,” the lad laughed. “You’ve likely heard more news out of County Morgan than we have. What tale have you? What rumor of demons? And make it straight for me!”
    Orick was in no mood to humor the lads. Sheriffs or nor, this was a dangerous company of men, rowdy and full of themselves. “I’ll give you no rumor of demons,” Orick grumbled in his loudest, most belligerent voice, “for I’ve seen them, and what I have to tell isn’t the kind of idle gossip you’ve likely heard up north!”
    Suddenly, the lutist stopped and over two dozen heads turned Orick’s way.
    One old sheriff with a slash under his left cheek looked up and sneered, “Out with it, then. What did you see?” His tone said he was demanding an answer, not requesting it.
    Orick looked at the sheriffs. They were weary from the road, and they weren’t in the mood for any slow tales. Orick licked his lips, remembering. “Two weeks ago yesterday night,” Orick said, “I was in the city of Clere, on my way north for the Salmon Fest, when the first of the sidhe appeared. It was a man and woman who came into town, late of the night, in the middle of a storm. I was begging scraps at the tables of John Mahoney, the innkeeper at Clere, when the sidhe opened the door and stepped out of that damnable rain.
    “The woman was a princess of the Otherworld, more beautiful and powerful and fair than any woman who walks this earth. Oh, she had a face that an angel would envy.” Orick recalled Everynne’s face, and he let the memory of her beauty carry in his voice. Some of the men grunted in surprise at the sound, for it was obvious that Orick loved her, and the sheriffs seemed amazed that a bear would love a fairy woman, so they leaned closer. Orick decided to stretch the tale a bit, try to fill these men with the proper sense