Once upon a dreadful time

“I’ll go as well,” said Camille.

“Go where?” asked Liaze from above.

“Duran is hiding,” said Alain.

Liaze smiled. “The little sneak. I’ll help look.” Alain turned to Celeste. “You and Liaze search the rooms above, while Camille and I take this floor.”

“All right.”

As Celeste started up the stairs, Camille called after her,

“Make certain that Raseri hasn’t hatched some jest of his, for he can be sneaky as well.”

Alain roared in laughter.

When Camille turned toward him and cocked an eye, Alain smiled and said, “I merely find it peculiar to think of such a whopping big Drake as being ‘sneaky’ at anything.” Camille made a moue and said, “Oh, Alain, you know what I mean,” but Alain kept on grinning.

. .

A candlemark later no one was smiling, and all were now involved in the search, even Scruff, the small sparrow swiftly flying from room to room. Yet of Duran there was no sign.

“Oh, Love, do you think this awful castle has done something with him?”

Desperation shone on Alain’s face as they hurried down from a high turret. “I don’t know, Camille.” Borel’s face was grim and he said, “Mayhap the castle has done something to him.”

“Oh, don’t say that, Borel,” protested Saissa, nearly in tears.

Echoing from somewhere else in the castle, they heard Raseri’s roar of frustration at finding nought, followed by words from Rondalo, but what the Elf said, they could not hear.

Saissa stepped into a junction between corridors, and she looked this way and that. “Oh, my little Duran, where have you gotten to?”

Valeray and Liaze popped out from an adjoining hallway, and Valeray growled, “I swear, this wing is empty. He is not here.” Camille burst into tears, and Alain took her in his arms.

After a long moment he said, “Love, go back to the great chamber, while we work our way down. If he is somehow running before us, he will have to pass through.” Wiping her cheeks, Camille nodded, and she disengaged herself from Alain’s embrace. And as they divided and headed back up to the turrets, Camille stepped to the stairs to descend.

And when she came to the great hall, there was Duran on hands and knees clip-clopping his Asphodel across the floor.

With a shriek, Camille flew to him and scooped him up and rained kisses upon his face. “Oh, Duran, my baby Duran, where have you been? We’ve searched everywhere.” Duran scowled and declared, “I’m not a baby, Maman.”

“Oh no, oh no, you’re not a baby, but you’ll always be my baby.”

Duran frowned in puzzlement, trying to work his way through her contradiction. But ere he could do so-

“Alain! Alain! I found him,” cried Camille, hoping her call would be heard in the far turrets away. And then she hugged Duran tightly and kissed his face once more, and he pursed his lips and kissed her in return.

As if reluctant to let him go, she slowly set him down to the floor. “But where have you been, Duran?”

“Out on the bridge, playing with Asphodel.”

“Out on what bridge?”

Duran pointed toward the arch filled with shadowlight.

“That one there.”

Camille’s eyes flew wide. “You went through the. . through the door? There’s a bridge beyond?”

“Oui, Maman. Come, I’ll show you.”

Duran took Camille by the hand and led her to the crepuscular arch, where. .

. . they stepped through and Camille found herself on a torchlit bridge with nought but a great black void all ’round.

Camille gasped and turned about, and there before her looming up into the blackness stood the castle, with its turrets and towers and ramparts dimly lit by the torches along the parapets of the bridge.

Once again she turned ’round, and some fifty or so paces away, the bridge came to an abrupt end, as if it had somehow been severed in two by the stroke of a monstrous great axe.

Where the missing part of the span was, she could not tell nor did it matter.

With her mind racing, she lifted up Duran and spun him about, laughing gaily, and then she crowed, “Lady Urd said,

‘The least shall set ye free,’ and, oh, my Duran, I think she must have meant you.”

“Meant what, Maman?”

“Meant that you were a key to this dreadful place.”

“I’m not a key,” protested Duran, frowning. “I’m a boy.” Camille laughed with joy and said, “Mais oui, my sweet, you are my precious boy. Come, let us go back in and tell the others.” But when Camille came to the archway, every time she stepped into the shadowlight she found herself and Duran back on the bridge.

“Oh, child, I can’t get through.”

“Put me down, Maman. I’ll take you in.”

Camille set Duran to his feet, and he reached up and took her hand and. .

. . led her inside.

“Alain!” Camille called out again, for clearly he had not heard her the first time, else he and the others would be here by now. “Alain! Papa, Maman! Borel, Liaze, Celeste! Raseri, Rondalo! To me! To me!” she shouted, her voice echoing throughout the great chamber.

Celeste poked her head across the railing of a balcony high above. “What is it, Cam-? Oh, I see, you’ve found him.” She turned and called to someone behind, and soon Borel looked over the parapet.

Shortly, all were in the great chamber, including Scruff, and Duran was now in his father’s arms. And Camille said, “Duran can get us free.”

What? exclaimed several at once.

Camille retrieved the child from Alain and set him to his feet and said, “Take me to the bridge.”

Duran reached up and took her hand, and led her out to the torchlit half-span.

“Now, my little prince, go and get your father.” Within moments, Alain stood on the bridge. “But why?

How?” he asked Camille.

“I don’t know how ’tis done, Love, yet perhaps Urd’s rede explains all. She said, ‘The least shall set ye free,’ and here we are, outside the prison.”

Alain knelt and hugged his child and said, “Duran, you must bring everyone out here.”

“Raseri, too?”

Alain nodded. “Raseri, too.”

“Scruff?”

“Oh, indeed, Scruff.”

“And Asphodel.”

“Yes, Duran, especially Asphodel.”

And one by one Duran set them all free of the castle, and Camille and Alain were giddy with joy. And they laughed as Duran duckwalked out leading Scruff by a wing, the tiny sparrow querulously chirping yet hopping along by the boy’s side.

Finally he led Raseri out, holding onto the tip of one of the Drake’s saberlike claws. But then, before any could stop him, Duran darted back in to the castle, and Camille despaired, for none could go and fetch the child. But moments later, Duran came clip-clopping his Asphodel out.

As Camille caught the child up in her arms, Raseri said, “I deem I can bear half beyond the Black Wall of the World, and then return for the other half.”

“Ladies first,” said Rondalo.

And Celeste said, “Rondalo, give me your bow, for we know not what waits on the far side, and I am the best of us four.” The slim Elf nodded, and strung his bow and handed it and the quiver of arrows to her.