by Kate Elliott
Will laughed. “Fair. Do you think it’s strange he’s so cheerful all the time?”
“It is a little disturbing.” Rowan tried to make a joke of it, but her chest felt too heavy. “But I wouldn’t think it strange now. I’d be so relieved to have him back.”
They rode a ways in silence. She wiped moisture from her eyes.
Finally, she went on in a low voice. “Will, what do you think she means about—”
“The hex? She said herself she has a hex on her. Maybe she sees hexes everywhere even where they aren’t. Or maybe she just said it to make us uncomfortable. She clearly has bad history with Cado, so maybe she has bad history with Mother and Father too. Since she loves to pontificate, it will bother her more if we don’t ever ask.”
Rowan chuckled, but her heart wasn’t in it. “It bothers me to think Mother and Father kept things from us. It’s like they still treat us as children. Or don’t really trust us. Or there’s something they don’t want us to know.”
“In their lives?” Will snorted. “They’re the only two people the Questing Beast has found worthy in a hundred years.”
“Then why have they never told us how our birth mother died? Just that it was tragic and in the Wilds. What if there was a hex involved? That would be really creepy, though.” She touched gloved fingers to her face as if expecting to discover worms crawling beneath her skin.
It began to drizzle, kisses of ice on their faces. Rowan pulled up her hood, brooding as the day turned gloomier. The once tall and noble trees of Ardenvale’s grand forests and woodlands grew snarled and stunted as dry ground gave way to murky ponds and noisome bogs. Mist rose in threads like the wailing arms of ghosts from the shallow watery flats. Ahead loomed what at first glance looked like a spiky stone hill streaked with pennants of bold sky. They had reached Castle Vantress.
The castle rose as an island above the gloomy waters of the Lochmere. Patches of fog drifted along the surface of the lake, which was cut here and there by rock islets like a giant’s stepping stones tossed across into the wide expanse. The water might have been shallow enough to wade or deep enough to swallow Ardenvale’s keep. Rowan couldn’t tell.
Pillars shored up the outer rim of the castle, wrapped by mist and spray. Towers and roofs were draped with pennants and flags and banners that fluttered in a wind lifting from beneath. The constant movement gave the castle the look of a place that can never be still, like the questing minds of its loremages, riddleseekers, and chroniclers.
A walled and warded compound stood on the shore, with an inn, a barracks, a substantial stable, and warehouses for goods waiting to be ferried over to the castle.
“I can stay behind with the animals,” said Titus unexpectedly.
Elowen said, “Ah, I recall your handsome face now. You came with a large and noisy group from Ardenvale a month after the High King’s disappearance. If I recall correctly, and I always do, Indrelon refused to see you.”
“It’s true.” The tight way he glanced toward Rowan and then away shamed her. He thought she was going to gloat about it, when really Elowen was just causing trouble.
“You should still come, Titus,” Rowan said.
He cut her off. “This is your chance, not mine.”
“More clever than he looks after all,” said Elowen.
“Titus is the best of us,” snapped Rowan.
With a look of exaggerated surprise, Cerise murmured, “First time I’ve heard you admit it.”
“Well. Almost the best. Sometimes the best.”
Titus cast Rowan a grateful smile, and she flushed.
Cado said, “I’ll fly over.”
Elowen cackled. “I am sure you will fly rather than risk the water. Your sweetheart will miss you, though. I’ll give her your respects.”
Cado hissed out a word too softly for Rowan to make it out.
Elowen pointed at Cerise, Rowan, and Will. “Come along, young ones. No crossing the mere after dark unless you want your toes nibbled off by night warks.”
“What’s a night wark?” Will asked.
“Do your own research, lad.”
She led them through a gate and down a cobblestone path to the shoreline. A stone gatehouse blocked the entrance to a wooden pier. The door into the guardhouse was unlocked and the interior rooms empty.
“Don’t you have sentries?” Rowan asked.
“Don’t need them,” said Elowen. “It’s not so easy to invade the castle by water.”
The loremage rang a bell affixed to the eaves of the entry porch. A few raindrops struck the surface of the dark water but otherwise nothing stirred. Not at first.
Will nudged Rowan. “Look.”
About a spear’s cast out from the pier a ripple spread. Other ripples joined it in overlapping rings which turned into a wake as something arrowed for the pier, swimming beneath the water. Elowen led her three charges to the end of the pier, where a barge was tied up.
Four sleek heads popped up out of the water. The undines stared up at Elowen and the young people. The merfolks’ amber-colored hair was thick as seaweed, swirling around them like an eddy meant to catch and drown hapless swimmers. Their faces were more fascinating than beautiful, noses so flat they were more like slits, and big shining eyes like shards of polished obsidian whose gleam promised mysteries answered and magics revealed.
“Are you sure this isn’t the Wilds?” Rowan whispered.
Elowen’s smile seemed as dark as the waters and as cloudy as the sky. “This was all the Wilds once, child.”
“Ahhh, Elowen,” said one of the undines in a throaty, rumbling voice. “Do you bring us a lovely gift? They look so moist and tender.”
Will stiffened, hand coming to rest on his sword’s hilt. The undines laughed with high-pitched hoots.
“Very amusing,” said Elowen, who did not look amused. “I bring the children of the High King. If you ferry us over, you may see what you can discover if Indrelon agrees to hear them.”
“A risk, not a gift,” murmured the second undine.
“They will have secrets none other can hear,” argued a third.
“Yes, we help them, for the chance,” agreed the fourth.
The merfolk shifted the barge away from the pier and propelled it across the lake toward the castle. It was a remarkably smooth passage, barely rocking. Rowan stood between Will and Cerise at the railing, peering into the depths and trying to see the undines or indeed anything beneath the surface. The water was opaque, not silty but impenetrable, as if it devoured light.
“What happened with Cado and the undine?” she asked Elowen.
The loremage chortled in that annoying way she had, as if everything that didn’t interfere with what she wanted was terribly entertaining. “He doesn’t like to talk about it, but I think that undine was a real beauty.”
Cerise whispered to Rowan. “How would you even—?”
“As it happens—” Elowen began.
“No!” Cerise interrupted her. “I don’t need to know.”
Elowen snorted. “You’ll never earn knighthood at Vantress if you aren’t curious!”
“Sophos and I will be perfectly happy to earn knighthood at Ardenvale.”
“If you earn knighthood at all,” said Elowen. “If you are worthy. If you survive.”
Cerise looked at Rowan, turning her head away from the loremage, and mouthed, “I don’t like her.”
“I heard that,” said Elowen, who couldn’t possibly have heard.
Cerise clutched the railing as if she was deciding whether to jump into the water or punch the older woman, so Rowan said, “Loremage, if we had come without your escort, how would we have reached the castle?”
“You could fly, if you had the means. That’s the safest route. Questing knights and people hoping to claim knighthood usually swim. That’s how we know they truly desire knowledge.”
“Oh, I see,” said Will. “If you come armed with knowledge to trade then the undines will likely assist you to cross.”
<
br /> “So, there is a clever one among you,” said the loremage. “We shall soon see if Indrelon agrees.”
Rowan looked at Will. The grim set of his jaw was uncharacteristic of him. But he knew as well as she did that without the help of Indrelon, they could wander for years without finding any trace of their missing father.
As the barge approached the castle, a steady roar grew louder. The mists clinging to the pillars that supported the castle did not dissipate. They couldn’t, because the mists came from the churn rising off a vast circular waterfall. Around the pillars and the mantle of rock they rested on, which was a hollow ridge of mountains rising beneath the lake, the water poured away into a massive hole. The waterfall protected both the castle and the mirror and thus made it impossible to attack Vantress by boat.
This close the noise became deafening. The force of the water churned up a ferocious spray into their faces. Rowan gripped the railing as a current pulled the barge toward the waterfall’s cliff edge.
Cerise gulped, fastening a hand onto Rowan’s.
Will shouted, “Are the undines going to drag us over the edge?”
Elowen gestured toward a ramp wavering into view. It angled out from the main level of the island and dropped past the pillars to meet the water well away from the deadly waterfall. With a swirl of movement beneath the surface, the undines dove, releasing the barge. Rowan gasped as their sleek forms slid over the lip of the waterfall as if it were a game. Their hooting laughter faded as they plunged away out of sight.
The barge bumped up against the ramp. Elowen tossed a line to a piling and, with an agility that surprised Rowan, easily jumped the gap. She secured the barge before hurrying up the ramp toward a gate set into the castle’s curtain wall. Cerise leaped to land cat-footed on the ramp. Will followed without hesitation, but Rowan paused. The gap between barge and ramp wasn’t wide, but the current made the barge bump unsteadily against the ramp. If she fell in she’d be sucked over the edge. Unlike the undines, she would not survive the experience.
She gave a huff, annoyed at herself, and jumped with so much force that she stumbled to her knees and slid backward until her toes touched the water. Waves lapped around her boots, tugging at her legs, and she desperately scrambled up after the others, panting as she fought to control a burst of fear. Vantress certainly was not a place she ever hoped to live, not if it meant crossing on a barge every time she wanted to leave or return!
“Ro? Are you all right?” Will called from the open gate.
A pair of sentry knights wearing blue and gray studied her with interest. They seemed about to ask her questions but Elowen swooped in, grabbed her arm, and hustled her across an entry courtyard, in and out of the shadows cast by the many pennants and banners fastened to the spire-like towers of the castle.
“No time to wait!” Elowen said cheerfully.
She led them into a marketplace with stairs and stalls and lanes where people were buying or selling. Past the market’s noisy chatter stood another sort of market, a series of meeting areas where people sat in groups debating or in stone-tiered theaters listening to lectures. Finally, they reached the central structure of the castle, a circular building whose interior was a series of short stairways linking study rooms and libraries. Elowen led them ever downward until they reached a round chamber at whose heart lay a large pool bridged by a stone pier. Cado knelt beside two pillars marking the start of a stone staircase that descended into the water. With a sigh he rose as they approached.
“Indrelon chose not to see you, eh, Cado?” Elowen’s voice seemed unnecessarily loud, echoing off the high arches and buttresses. The sun’s light angled through high windows to paint a golden sheen on the stone pavement surrounding the pool. The pool’s water was so still that Rowan could see her face in perfect detail looking back at her.
Will’s face appeared beside hers, his expression solemn but with a narrowing of the eyes that meant he was excited. “I have a secret,” he said to the water.
“Those aren’t the ceremonial words we were taught,” objected Rowan. “You’re supposed to introduce yourself, and make a polite request, and—”
“Since when do you champion hidebound ceremony?” said Will in a tone that made her want to kick him but also laugh. “We don’t have time, and I do have a secret. I am absolutely sure this is a secret even Indrelon does not know.”
“Oho,” Elowen said. “That’s done it.”
The water began to scallop in tiny waves. Slowly its level receded, sinking to reveal a lower step and one below that and the next and the next. The staircase was carved into the side of a well-like hole in the rock. Will jumped to his feet, grinning, and elbowed Rowan. He started down. She glanced back at Cerise, then at Cado, who nodded. Gripping her sword hilt, heart racing, she set her right foot on the top step, then her left on the next, careful on the slick stone as she followed Will into the depths.
The space grew narrower and ended in a rocky pit whose walls she could touch with outstretched arms. The path continued through an archway carved into the rock at the base of the castle’s foundation. They walked out onto a stone bridge spanning a circular chasm so deep she could not fathom how the castle could stand above it. The vast chamber was wreathed with a net of magic that felt like currents of alternating warmth and chill against her face. The darkness below held a denseness as if at any moment she would have to use her hands to pull it aside.
Will shouted something to her but she couldn’t hear him above the crashing roar of the waterfall. The lake waters continuously poured a streaming curtain all around the chasm. Yet as the pair crossed the stone bridge, the waters still receded in the pit beneath. Where the bridge met the far wall of the chasm, the stairs took a spiral path, winding along the side with a sheer stone wall to the right and a stone barrier with keyhole openings to the left. Splashes and ripples disturbed the falling waters as undines wove circular patterns beneath the surface, chasing each other to the bottom. Now and again one would surface to stare at the twins with its flat, gleaming eyes, then dive with a slap of its tail.
They descended. By degrees the waters fell away to expose Indrelon, a towering arch built in the shape of the Vantress keyhole, representing knowledge that can be unlocked. When the waters had drained, all that remained was a shallow pool surrounding the mirror. Every surface gleamed, as if the sun’s light had been separated into myriad droplets. At the base of the stairs they crossed a small stone causeway and climbed eight steps to a raised platform. From here, they could address the mirror. Only now did Rowan realize the noise of waterfall was gone, swallowed by the mirror’s magic. It was so quiet she heard the scuff of her boots on stone. She swallowed, suddenly afraid. How could anything in her small little life in Ardenvale be unknown to this ancient power?
Will sucked in a breath, making ready to speak.
A thrum that of light and weight and noise pushed through the space, shoving her back one step. Will staggered, and she reached out to steady him. The open space within the keyhole arch shimmered and hardened to become a mirror in which she and Will were reflected, standing atop the platform facing themselves.
Indrelon spoke first, not in a voice that resonated in the air but with a voice that squeezed in her heart.
“Rowan Kenrith and Will Kenrith. Algenus of Kenrith Town is your sire. Linden of Kenrith Coombe is your mother. You were bred out of a witch’s hex and birthed out of a bloody death, but love and loyalty had the raising of you. What secret do you bring me?”
Rowan sputtered, hands humming with angry power. “A witch’s hex? What does that mean?”
“Is that your question, Rowan Kenrith? Tell me what I do not know, and I will reward you with an answer.”
Will pressed a boot onto her foot. “We only get one chance, Ro. Don’t ruin it.”
“Speak,” said Indrelon.
Will closed a hand around Rowan’s wrist as if he didn’t trust her to keep quiet. But when he spoke his voice sounded calm. “It’s no secret the woman
who birthed us was murdered in the Wilds. Maybe a pack of redcaps killed her, or a Wilds hunt chased her down without mercy. It was midwinter, after all. That’s when the hunt is said to ride.”
“Not the hunt again,” muttered Rowan. “Anyway, there’s nothing surprising about a bloody death in the Wilds. The mirror must know that.”
Indrelon’s face darkened until Rowan could no longer see herself in its shine. A burbling chatter of water bubbled around them as the pool began to rise. Wavelets spilled over the platform’s edge to wash over their boots. Rowan gauged the distance to the stair and wondered if they could beat it, running up.
“We’re not here to find out about our birth,” said Will hastily. “I know something you don’t know, Mirror. In exchange I want to know what became of our father and where he is, so we can find him.”
The water grew still again. Several undines slid out of the water onto rocky prominences. Their seaweed hair draped down around them rather like the long pennants that hung from the castle’s towers. The mirror’s silence pressed down with the weight of the castle above them.
Will cleared his throat. Rowan saw a flicker of doubt in the way he ducked his chin down and bent his head to one side, considering his next move as he did when he and his friends played games of chess. Which he always won.
“You can do it,” she whispered.
He nodded, standing straighter. “Here is my secret.”
A skin of standing water had been left behind on the platform. He iced it into a sheer surface and fixed his gaze on it as if to mold it to his bidding. His stance and stare reminded her of how she’d found him in the garden on the day of the Grand Procession, with a hand on either side of a frozen birdbath, marveling at strange and wonderful visions of places she’d never heard of in the lore young people learned in the Realm.
As she watched in amazement, the ice on the platform became not a drawing slate but a window through which they saw a glowering moon stretched and twisted into a grotesquely distorted shape