The Knight of the Red Beard by Andre Norton and Sasha Miller

The Knight of the Red Beard is the fifth book in the cycle of Oak, Yew, Ash and Rowan. Several years have passed since the defeat of the Mother Flame Dragon and her brood, and now Ashen and Gaurin's children are coming into their own.

With the Nordorn Kingdom prosperous and at peace with Ashen and Gaurin, known as "Their Maimed Majesties" at the helm, their eldest son and heir, Bjaudin, keeps an eye on his studies and looks to woo a bride. Middle child and only daughter Elin has plans for herself that involves her becoming heir to the Dowager Ysa, and applies all her intelligence and cunning into gaining Ysa's favor. Youngest son Mikkel, bored with the infighting between Bjaudin and Elin, dreams of somehow escaping their endless bickering and becoming a man on his own terms.

And when his uncle Rowance decides to finally marry his leman Mauritja, he sees his chance. His close friend, Tjórvi, is the son of the head of the Sea-Rovers, and they have a tradition of running away to sea when they feel they are old enough. Nordorn's newest ship, The Ice Princess, will soon be going for sea trials, and another ship, the GorGull, will be going a-raiding. Tjórvi plans on stowing away on the GorGull and becoming a man. It would be simple for Mikkel to come with him.

And so they do. But their stowing away has some far-reaching effects. For one, the boys are introduced to the actual hard work that comes in the sailing of a ship. For another, when a Wykenig force attacks the GorGull, Mikkel is captured in the raid, while Tjórval manages to escape, mainly because the captain of the Wykenig vessel, Holger der Forferdelig (or Holger the Terrible) sees that he has a trained warkat accompanying him, named Talkin. He wants the boy because someone able to train a Warkat at such a young age is special, so he sends Mikkel back to his steading and turns him into a servant there.

Meanwhile, back at court, Elin falls under Ysa's tutelage and practices her skills at entwining young men around her finger by playing with several noble's sons, nearly bringing them to blows as they fight for her favors. At the same time, Ysa pushes for Elin's betrothal to the boy she wants to marry and achieves it while at the same time stirring up unrest against Ashen and Gaurin in their kingdom with rumors that they sit on a huge cache of firestones while letting their kingdom lack for money.

Bjaudin also finds a girl to marry at this time, and is betrothed to her in the same ceremony that betroths Elin to her own choice. Back at the Steading, Mikkel falls under the authority of Askepott, a wysen wyf the same as Madame Zazar back in Nordorn Kingdom. She looks after Mikkel and begins corresponding with Zazar, sharing herbs and a ritual that will allow them to meet. But when Mikkel runs afoul of Holger's wife, Gunnora, by taking up too much of his time for her liking, she turns foul magic on the boy, causing him to age at an accelerated rate and to forget who he really is, thinking Holger his father.

But when the time comes to release his warkat Talkin to seek a mate, one of his fellow prisoners, Petra, asks to accompany him. He lets her, and she convinces him to take off her iron collar of servitude. When he does so, she seems to grow taller immediately, and she reveals she is a rock-maiden, literally made out of living rock, like marble. She takes him to the city of the rock-maidens and wants to help him get revenge on Holger for imprisoning them both.

When Holger realizes that Mikkel is gone, he blames Askepott, and she leaves for Nordorn lands after taking all her herbs and things with her, and steals a magic sled to make the trip in the bargain. Once there, she works with Zazar and Ysa to try and find Mikkel. But as they seek him, Ysa's meddling comes back to harm both Ashen and Gaurin as they try to deal with Gunnora, the daughter of the sorceress who raised the mother ice-dragon. Now that her mother is dead, Gunnora means to have her revenge on their Maimed Majesties, and their kingdom. But can they prevent her rage from falling on them all?

I rather liked this series, but as an ending and supposedly the final volume in the cycle of Oak, Ash, Yew and Rowan, it felt curiously unfinished. At the end, Gunnora is still alive and Mikkel's fate is in limbo. With the aging spell on him halted, he's effectively immortal, but no longer remembers his old friends, his parents or his siblings. And for all that he's an adult in body, in his mind he is still very much a child, in love with Petra but not really understanding what love between a grown man and woman is.

Holger, too, is still alive and free at the end. In fact, none of the people who cause trouble in the novel are in any way conclusively dealt with. Ysa, Elin, Gunnora and Holger are all alive and free, and even if Elin now dislikes Ysa because Ysa's meddling caused the death of both her parents, Ysa suffers no real punishment for this act. In short, this volume calls out for another, one that brings a real ending to the threat of Holger and Gunnora, one that this book just didn't have.

Being that Andre Norton passed away a few years ago, it's entirely possible that this book was cobbled together out of some preliminary planning by Norton and co-writer Miller. In the end, though, it disappoints as far as being a satisfying story goes. I'm glad I read it, but it isn't really an Andre Norton story, in my mind. It just doesn't have her authentic touch, and while I might purchase the book to be a completist, I wouldn't read it again, even as part of the series.