Thornspell Read Online Free

golden thrones with pages and ladies-in-waiting sleeping around them, while courtiers leaned against walls or sprawled on the floor. The only person he could not visualize was the princess herself. Every time he tried to imagine her, he saw a spiral staircase instead, with its wrought-iron balustrade winding up, and then up again, into a shimmering golden mist. But there was never any sign of the princess, or what lay at the top.
    It was very odd, Sigismund thought, almost as strange as the idea of a whole palace falling asleep at all. He found it hard to imagine his own gray castle falling into an enchanted sleep, especially when he listened to its bustle. People were constantly going in and out of its many doors, pursuing all the work that kept the household running: the food growing and preparation, the cleaning and dusting and laundering. Servants called out to each other, clattering up and down stairs, banging doors open and closed and jeering at the men-at-arms, who of course jeered back when they were not drilling in the courtyard or patrolling the walls. It would take a very powerful spell indeed, Sigismund thought, to make a whole castle fall asleep.
    He said as much one afternoon when Sir Andreas came to visit him. He was feeling drowsy and the words were out of his mouth before he realized their implication. “Now who,” the steward said, “has been telling you stories of a sleeping castle? Was it the lady you met at the gate?”
    Sigismund frowned with the effort of remembering the lady at the gate. It all seemed hazy now, lost somewhere on the far side of his illness, but he remembered her eyes and the sweetness of her voice. She had tried to give him something, he recalled, remembering how it flashed and glittered as it spun into the dust. He thought there might have been someone else there too, and the image of bare brown feet beneath a ragged skirt surfaced briefly in his mind. A shadow, perhaps, watching from the hedgerow, but Sigismund could recall no more than that. He sighed.
    “I don’t think so, but I can’t really remember her very well. It was the other lady, the one who came when I was sick.”
    “And what lady was that?” Sir Andreas asked. His voice was calm, but his eyes had narrowed.
    Sigismund stretched out one arm and let his hand drift down the plastered wall, watching the fall of shadow beneath it. “You said she must have been part of my fever dream, but I don’t think she was. She had cool hands, and she gave me something to drink that made the fever go away.”
    “Did she now?” the steward said. “And you’re sure that she was the person who told you this story?”
    “Mmmm.” Sigismund looked up and was startled by the intensity of Sir Andreas’s gaze. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
    “I’m not sure,” Sir Andreas replied. “Tell me more about this lady.”
    So Sigismund told him, while Sir Andreas leaned against one post of the four-poster bed and watched him closely. He would nod occasionally or ask a question, but Sigismund thought he seemed more thoughtful than worried. “Interesting,” he said at last. “But may I ask you a favor, Sigismund? If you meet this lady again, even if you just dream of her or think you have been daydreaming, will you let me know at once?”
    “She seemed kind,” said Sigismund, feeling that some defense was required.
    The steward’s expression softened. “She may well be. But all the same, I should like to know.”
    “Alright.” Sigismund continued to watch him. “And the other lady, the one on the road?”
    Sir Andreas’s face hardened again. “I don’t want you to talk to anyone beyond the gates. Will you promise me that too, Sigismund? Not anyone!”
    “Alright,” Sigismund said again, taken aback by the rasp in the steward’s voice. “But I would like to know why.”
    Sir Andreas sighed. “It’s because your father has enemies, and they’re not all in the southern provinces. That’s why he sent you here after