The Hostage Prince by Jane Yolen

Author:Jane Yolen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2013-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

ASPEN AT THE TOWER

They exited the dark corridors and found themselves by the Great Midden Heap. It steamed into the morning, curlicues of stench and smoke intertwined. Nearby were long, thin patches of furrowed gardens with giant vegetables overflowing the rows.

The smell, Aspen thought, is indescribable. And unbearable.

He glanced around. Except for the gardens, nothing grew on this land and it sloped away to the great, rushing river about a mile down hill from there. Nowhere to hide on this open border, he thought. A very vulnerable spot. He wondered if any of the Seelie weapons were trained on this place—the catapults and other siege engines that his father had been so proud of—the catapults especially, which could sling huge boulders across great expanses.

Squinting, he tried to look at the other side of the river, but it was too far away. Besides, the midden smoke was much too thick for him to see anything but the dark water with its occasional whitecaps of waves showing where rills and rocks lay.

Jack Daw made a hand signal at Snail, squeezing his thumb and pointer fingers together, and she nodded, showing that she understood he wanted her to extinguish the candle before they crossed the gardens. Aspen nodded, too, at how quickly she had caught Jack’s meaning, immediately pinching the light out, so that its single smoke curl faded into the larger midden cloud.

Then, in single file, they followed after the drow, stepping over huge ungainly turnips and carrots and marrows that all looked more like enormous orange-colored sausages than the elegant vegetables served up at the king’s table cut and molded into fanciful shapes like dragons and chimerae and other creatures of the Unseelie bestiary.

Though the vegetables were huge, they were only huge for vegetables, and provided no actual cover for Aspen or his two companions on their short journey from the midden heap to Wester Tower. He knew the tower by the description Jack Daw had given him, but he was glad to have the old drow lead them to it. Mistakes at this stage could cost him his life.

The tower was not all that tall aboveground, but it went a long way down into the ground. It was never a good idea for the Unseelie folk to march across great stretches of land in the daylight; their eyes were meant for darkness. So when they were forced to cross this expanse, they’d had captive Seelie slaves build the tower and its tunnel system. It had been a boon for their sorties into Seelie land. Jack had once told him that when the Border Lords had become a part of their armies, the Unseelie Court had finally an overground as well as an underground troop.

“Made us stronger,” Jack had said, in that flat way he had of speaking. “Though getting them to follow orders is like herding sheep. It takes dogs and a good whip hand.” Aspen remembered how the drow had laughed at his own witticism, a kind of harsh cawing.

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