The Humpback Bridge
The Humpback Bridge had stood for almost a millennium, the sole link between the nations of Rhannon and Rhylla. It was an impressive sight; at the bridge’s peak it curved over one hundred feet above the River Archior, spanning a vast body of water that flowed aquamarine in summer and gravestone grey in winter.
The bridge was made from starlight, so the stories had it, constructed in a single night by the legendary Rhyllian king Adavere Starwhisperer. They said that Adavere had fallen in love with a Rhannish woman the other side of the river, and sworn he would find a way to reach her. One night he took his Alvus wood violin to the banks of the river and began to play, until the very stars above were listening. Gradually they descended and gathered around him, bespelled by his skill, until the light spilled out of them like tears. And crafty Adavere had worked swiftly to gather up the light with his enchanted bow, fashioning a bridge from the illumination.
The stars had fled back to the heavens before he could finish, so the tale went, which was why the Humpback Bridge had no parapet. Ice-smooth and borderless, the bridge was both architectural marvel and certain death to all but the surest of feet.
And yet, it was the only possible place to sign the Peace Accords between Rhannon and Rhylla. The place the nations joined each other, entered each other, where neither side had the upper hand, or advantage of home territory.
But how could His Excellency, Harun Ventaxis, 104th chancellor of Rhannon, and First Warden of the Heart, be expected to climb it safely?
The Jedenvat – the Rhannish council – insisted that he could not cross it unless some way was found to temper the lethal stone. To which the new chancellor had coldly replied that they had better find a way, and fast. He had much to prove to his people. No bridge, no matter how deadly it was, would prevent that.
Until recently, the republic of Rhannon had been at war with the neighbouring kingdom of Rhylla, and the bridge barricaded and forgotten between them, for no general would even consider trying to send an army over it. Both countries were small, and ought to have been allies, but there were too many differences between the people that led to too many suspicions, fears and prejudices.
The people of Rhannon considered those of Rhylla to be immoral, hedonistic dreamers, while the citizens of Rhylla thought their southern counterparts were unromantic, bureaucratic and stiff. The Rhyllians pitied the Rhannish, and the Rhannish didn’t trust the Rhyllians. And that was aside from their fears about the so-called Rhyllian “abilities”, fabled to have arrived with the stars the same night the Humpback Bridge was formed.
In fact, war had simmered beneath their collective skins for so long it was almost a relief when it spilled out as blood on to cobbled streets and green fields.
But it kept spilling, and spilling, until fifty years had passed, with no sign of resolution. Citizens of both realms called it the Eternal War, with neither side believing there would ever be a winner.
Until the 103rd chancellor of Rhannon, Reuben “Windsword” Ventaxis, dropped dead during one of his numerous war councils. And just like that, change was, miraculously, in the air.
Well, as far as change ever went in Rhannon, for only the Ventaxis family were allowed to run for election. So the 104th chancellor would be Reuben’s only child: his scholarly, sullen son, Harun.
His first act in his new lifetime role as chancellor was, at the recommendation of his mother – now styled the Dowager First Lady – to write to the Rhyllian queen to end the war.
To the relief of both countries, Queen Melisia – who had tried to broker peace with Reuben, and his father before him, no less than thirty times – agreed immediately, ordering her troops to withdraw at once.
That was three months ago; and now Harun was preparing to travel to the bridge. There, at the peak, the Peace Accords would be signed, and the war would be officially, finally over.
Assuming, of course, the problem of the bridge could be solved.
It was touch and go, right up until the week before the meeting. The Mason’s Guild of Istevar, Rhannon’s capital city, had been consulted, cajoled, and the head mason even threatened with imprisonment if he couldn’t come up with some way to make their side of the bridge less treacherous. They’d tried scoring the stones with sandpaper, then with saws, but it had no effect; the lack of use and weathering had hardened the stone to a diamond-like state.
In the Summer Palace, on the bank of the Archior some five miles south-west of the bridge, Chancellor Harun paced up and down in his family’s private quarters, muttering to himself. His wife, Cerena, rubbing her belly to try to soothe the frantic child within, was exhausted just watching him. Her pregnancy hadn’t been easy, her ankles and fingers swollen constantly, the infant restless around the clock. It had been the same with her firstborn son, Mael, and he’d continued to be a hurricane child, never still for a moment.
Mael, who would turn three on the day of the Peace Accord signing, was currently sleeping, and Cerena had hoped for an hour or two of peace, to rest her legs and mind. Her husband, it seemed, had no such needs.
“Harun, you shall wear a hole in the carpet if you continue,” Cerena finally snapped.
The chancellor looked down at thick red pile out of reflex, but his rebuke died on his lips. He rushed across the room and gave Cerena the kind of kiss that threatened a third son in her belly before the year was out.
Taken aback, the first lady blushed. “Whatever was that for?”
“Carpets,” Harun beamed. “Carpets.”
In Rhylla, on the morning of the meeting, the pewter-eyed prince consort, Caspar, smiled at his wife, Queen Melisia, over breakfast. He waited until the serving staff had left them to their privacy before he spoke, in a voice pitched low and loving.
“All well?”
Melisia’s hands moved to her stomach, and she returned her husband’s smile. Cerena was not the only one with child, though Melisia and Caspar’s pregnancy was still a secret they alone shared. Melisia thought of the child inside her, and how good it was that there would be a peaceful world for her to grow up in.
Her half-brother, Vespus, had pushed her to press on, to defeat the Rhannish while they were in chaos after Reuben Windsword’s death, but she’d been glad when the warlord had died and his son had reached out to offer peace. It wasn’t cowardice that had made Melisia want peace – the queen herself was an excellent fighter – but the war had gone on for long enough. Now was the time to rebuild, and rejoice. To grow and nurture and create.
“All well, my love,” she replied. “All well.” She leant across the table, eyes fluttering closed as her lips parted. Caspar moved to meet her in the middle.
An hour before noon, the Rhannish and the Rhyllian leaders approached the Humpback Bridge. It was a midsummer day, the hazy sun already promising higher temperatures to come, the air thick with the scent of jasmine and sandalwood, masking the greenish smell of the water. On each side of the river, young men and women threw flowers into the paths of the nobles as they walked, pink moonstar blossoms on the Rhyllian side, white windflowers on the Rhannish.
Both parties paused inside the fortified towers on their respective sides of the bridge. At the top of the Rhannish tower, in the stateroom, an aide handed Harun his copy of the treaty. As Cerena fussed with Mael, Harun smoothed his moustache again, blotted a bead of sweat from his temple with a silk handkerchief, and looked down at the scene. On his side the red carpet lay exactly halfway along the bridge. And on the Rhyllian side, it was bare, glittering in the sunlight. Queen Melisia was already in place at the foot, Caspar beside her. How small she looked, Harun thought, from so high up.
A tall Rhyllian man, his hair the same shade of blond as the queen’s, dressed in shimmering robes of lilac and green, joined them. As Harun watched, the man stepped forward and raised his hands. From the road beside them vines moved, winding out over the stone, covering it, and when the man gestured earnestly to them the Rhyllian court laughed, loudly enough to reach where Harun stood. Melisia tried to look stern as she rebuked the man and he waved his hands again, commanding the carpet of vines to retreat, but her face was too full of mirth for the frown to take.
Harun, meanwhile, was burning as crimson as his own silken carpet. He looked again at the bridge, the one half carefully covered, and the other still bare and deadly. The Rhyllian queen needed no aid to climb it…
“Pull the carpet away,” Harun snapped at his advisors.
“Your Excellency?”
“Do it.”
With a worried glance Harun’s advisors rushed from the room, and Harun watched as they conferred with the guards. Then the carpet was stripped away, to the shocked murmurs of the gathered Rhannish people.
“What is it?” Cerena asked.
“If they can climb with no carpet, I can too,” Harun insisted.
“But—”
“I will not be made a fool of by that needle-eared baggage,” Harun bellowed.
He stormed from the room, tearing down the stairs and out, the trumpeters stuttering the beginning of the fanfare, so fierce was his haste to get on to the bridge.
As the clocks in both towers simultaneously began to ring the hour, both leaders stepped on to the bridge. It took three steps before Harun’s feet began to slide from under him, and he was barely able to right himself. A glance back at his wife showed her displeasure, and he dared not look up to see if Melisia already awaited him at the top. Slowly, bent at the waist to keep from tumbling, he mounted the bridge like a crab to greet his former enemy.
Queen Melisia made no indication she’d seen the carpet rolled away, nor his struggles, allowing Harun his dignity. The Peace Accords were signed, to the cheers of both crowds, and Queen Melisia and Harun clasped each other’s forearms in respect, Harun clinging to Melisia as he lost his balance yet again. When Melisia nodded to Caspar to approach, he climbed the bridge, sure-footed as a goat, and waited.
It was clear to all that Cerena would not be able to do the same.
“It’s all right,” Melisia said in accented Rhannish.
Humiliated, Harun looked at his heavily pregnant wife and made another decision.
Begging Melisia’s pardon, he slid and stumbled back down the bridge and held his arms out for Mael.
“It’s too dangerous.” Cerena was pale and shrill. When her voice carried, Harun’s olive skin flushed again and he snatched his son from his wife.
His face taut with determination, he began the climb back towards the Queen of Rhylla. Mael wriggled in his father’s arms, his sobs turning to screeches, and Harun, beyond embarrassed, decided to return Mael to his mother and get as far from the bridge as possible. Harun inched his way down, and Cerena stepped forward, reaching for the child.
Harun slipped.
Cerena lunged for the boy, but Harun twisted, hoping to break Mael’s fall with his own body. As Cerena crashed into her husband’s back, Harun let go of his son.
Mael made no sound as he tumbled into the aventurine waters of the Archior.
Guard after guard vaulted over the sides after him; the first lady had to be restrained to prevent her from doing the same. Harun turned wide, disbelieving eyes on the retreating backs of Melisia and Caspar, hurrying away from him as though his calamity was contagious.
Harun hauled himself to his feet, stood like the eye of a storm as chaos exploded around him: Rhannish and Rhyllians moving and calling and crying. He was frozen, a statue, his gaze dull and unseeing.
“Your Excellency?” The blond Rhyllian man, the same one who’d summoned the vines, was there, watching him.
Harun turned slowly, as though every inch must be paid for, felt, and borne like a great weight.
“How?” Harun’s voice was soft.
“I’m sorry?” The man spoke in lightly accented Rhannish. “I don’t think I understand you.”
“How did they cross it? One of your so-called abilities, the ability to cleave to stone? Tell me.”
The Rhyllian looked at the collapsed figure of the first lady, the wailing retinue on her side of the river. Below, in the Archior, men were drowning, begging for help that would not come.
Harun, though, was staring at him, his face slack, his hands spread wide.
“Gum,” the man said finally. “Not an ability. Just tree sap, on their shoes. It makes them sticky. Gives traction.”
Harun nodded. When he descended the bridge, he did so with no problem at all.
The first lady’s scream when she was told the body of her son had not been recovered shattered the mirrors in the Great Hall of the Summer Palace, the glass cascading to the floor and lying there, reflecting sunlight all around the room. Harun killed the messenger himself, stabbing him in the throat and then cutting out the tongue that had carried the news.
The windows of the Summer Palace were covered, and the surviving mirrors turned to the wall. Through the palace’s grief they all clung to one thought: Mael’s baby brother. All hopes rested on the new child, a new Ventaxis son.
She was born a month too soon. And she was born a girl.
Cerena went into labour the night of Mael’s disappearance, and it became obvious the baby wouldn’t come easily. She laboured a whole day and night, before the midwife finally confirmed the baby was breech and needed to be turned. She tried, and then a nurse tried, but it was no good. The baby wouldn’t turn.
Cerena was finally rushed by carriage to a small hospital in the North Marches, swearing she was being torn in two. The Dowager First Lady remained by her side, telling her to breathe, commanding her to live. Harun remained at the Summer Palace.
Despite the best efforts of the midwife and nurses at the hospital, the child came out feet first, the cord around her neck, grey-skinned from the lack of oxygen. As Cerena collapsed back against the bed, a battalion of nurses trying to comfort her, the midwife cut the cord but made no move to loosen its death grip on the child’s throat, frozen by the terror of what it might mean for her if the baby died.
The lifeless infant was snatched by the Dowager First Lady and hurried away from the careless midwife and heartbroken mother. The midwife did her best to make Cerena comfortable, but the blood wouldn’t stop coming, no matter what she did. It seemed that poor Harun was to lose his entire family in just a few short days.
Then the Dowager First Lady appeared in the doorway, holding the babe. Still a little grey, still scrawny, still small. But unmistakably fighting to survive, thin legs kicking frantically.
The same could not be said for the first lady. Too many heartbreaks, too many disappointments. As she lay there, the stink of death in the air, the Dowager First Lady asked her what she would name the baby.
“Sorrow,” she’d said. “For that is all she brings us.”