by Terry Brooks
She wondered if there was any chance for rebirth. After years of this endless winter, could other seasons come again to Skaarsland? Would that machine the old man created be able to reverse the effects of this bitter cold and bring back new life to her homeland? Or was it all wishful thinking—a desperate but doomed attempt at recovering what was already irretrievably lost?
She wished she had the answer. She wished she had something positive to tell her mother, something hopeful to offer. But all she had was the knowledge of her own sad condition—of her fall from grace and her dismissal, of her forced return and her determination to save them both from the pretender. She had Dar Leah now and she could speak to her mother of him, but she didn’t know that she should. Dar was not who her mother would have wished for her. Had circumstances been different, he was not who Ajin would have been looking for, either. But life gave you what it chose—a random and often unexpected series of selections that sometimes turned out to be better than what you would have chosen for yourself.
For her, this was Darcon Leah.
Still, look at what she had been reduced to. She was a princess in name only. She was a soldier without an army. She was the daughter of a king who only wanted to use her for his own purposes. She had been cast adrift. The future she had envisioned had been stolen. All she had were her determination and her courage, and they would have to be enough to see her through.
She reached the edge of her home city by midmorning, its snowcapped parapets and towers stark against the gray sky. Once so beautiful, it had become a shadow of its former self. Smoke rose from chimneys and watch fires, and sentries patrolled the walls, but the silence was unnerving. So many of its people were dead or dying. There was so little joy or hope remaining. The lack of laughter or raised voices was distressing. She remembered when it had been otherwise, but ten years of winter—fostering sickness and hunger, loss and despair—had sapped it all away.
The strongest among them had gone west with her father to find a new homeland. Those who remained did so because there was nowhere else for them to go. All of Eurodia suffered the fate of Skaarsland, and no place within its considerable collection of countries and cities offered an escape from the cold. Any hope of a better life waited in the Four Lands, and it was there that those who remained of her people would eventually have to travel.
She shifted her thoughts away from memories and speculation and refocused on what she had come to do.
She would not pass through the main gates; she did not want to announce her coming just yet. She would enter another way and slip unnoticed through the streets until she reached her home and her mother. After they were reunited, she would decide what to do next.
First, of course, she had to figure out how to get inside the city walls. She approached from the west, choosing to avoid the main gates in the south wall. There was little trade these days, so not all the gates were opened. But there were refugees from all over the island, and more arrived every day as food and clothing ran out and shelters succumbed to the wintry cold. She should be able to find a way in with them, if she was quick enough.
She made her way to the edge of the trees and stood waiting for the better part of an hour for the arrival of a band of refugees. When one finally appeared, it came from the north and looked to have made a long journey. Those on foot were all but staggering. Flatbeds that had seen better days were piled high with furniture, small children, and old men and women. The wagons rumbled along unevenly, wheels creaking, pulled by oxen. She waited until they were at the gates, where they offered various forms of identification or, in some instances, simply gave their names and hometowns. The process moved along quickly, the sentries no longer turning away anyone who looked as if they needed help.
By the time the procession was starting to pass through the gates, Ajin had already pulled up her hood and wrapped her coat tightly about her. As a final touch, she reached down for a handful of loose soil and rubbed it on her face and hands. No one was likely to recognize her now, and she joined the crowd of refugees all but unnoticed. She moved to the back of the line, sidling into their midst, and stayed close until she was safely inside. Then she peeled off to one side and ducked into the shadows.
Traversing the city was second nature for her by now, but it still required effort to avoid discovery. She had to work hard at finding ways to stay hidden. It pained her to have to do so—to have to hide from her own people—but she did not know whom she could trust.
She stood where she was then, thinking about how to go on. She knew how to reach her destination, but she didn’t want to make a mistake by being overconfident. To reach her mother’s home, she would have to work harder than she ever had at not being seen by anyone who was in league with the pretender.
The snow was falling again, more heavily now than before, and the skies were darkening, building up new cloudbanks that were heavy with moisture. She had to get moving. She was cold and tired, and she wanted to see to her mother.
She glanced around, but no one was paying any attention to her, though sentries stood at the gates and patrolled the streets. Before she had departed for the Four Lands, there was already a marked increase in break-ins, looting, and any sort of thuggery you could imagine, and now it appeared that nothing had changed. That would explain the increased presence of soldiers and the hunched and beaten look of the people who passed by.
But much worse was evident. Beggars were everywhere, huddled in corners of buildings and doorways, wrapped in blankets in narrow alleyways, and, if drunk or ill, staggering through the main thoroughfares in search of anything that would relieve their suffering. Children, too. Abandoned, lost, cast off, or runaway; there were dozens to be seen.
She couldn’t wait any longer; she had waited too long already. Someone would approach her if she kept standing there.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she began walking along the building walls, keeping to one side and staying out of the center of the road. When she reached the street she was looking for, she followed it to its far end before shifting to a less busy road to continue in the same direction. Several times beggars approached her, and each time she made a sharp, dismissive gesture. Her heavy coat and the shadowed look of her face within the hood projected the look of someone you did not want to challenge.
Her journey took her no more than thirty minutes, and then she was standing across the roadway from her mother’s home. It was situated among a grouping of six, bracketing a narrow lane that dead-ended at the south city wall. These were homes provided by the crown for those personages who had fallen from favor but did not warrant exile. The homes were small but well kept. Their windows revealed interiors that were mostly dark—either because their residents were gone or because it was only midday.
She stared at the third cottage on the left—her mother’s home.
Boards were nailed crosswise over the doors and windows. Warning signs suggested that trying to get inside would be a mistake. The building had an unmistakably empty look.
Every fear she had harbored about her mother’s safety surged to the fore, followed by a wash of white-hot rage. Her father had been so sure the pretender would never harm her mother, so delusional about the witch he thought would not dare to cross him. Although, given what had happened with Ajin’s messages and the pretender’s interference, shouldn’t he be thinking differently by now?
She beat back her anger and fear and tried to think what to do. Her mother had been looked after by the daughter of a couple that lived next door. She had volunteered to do so, and her parents had acquiesced. Ajin’s father had agreed to pay the cost—one of the few times he showed any concern for her mother’s welfare. There were lights on in the house, and no one about. It seemed safe enough that Ajin decided she had to chance it. But still she hesitated. Anyone could be watching from hiding, so it would be better to err on the side of caution. She would wait until dark to go to the nei
ghbor’s door. By then, no one would be paying much attention to a visitor.
She found shelter in the doorway of a building that was closed and waited impatiently for nightfall. When it arrived with sufficient darkness to mask her approach, she crossed the road to the cottage and knocked on the door. Kle’Ebin, the daughter who had cared for the former queen, answered. She gasped when she saw who was standing before her and took a step back.
“May I come in?” Ajin asked and, without waiting for an answer, moved inside, closing the door behind her.
“Doesn’t make sense for me to stand around in the open just now,” she said, quickly scanning the interior. She walked into the kitchen, looking about. No one appeared to be there. Quickly, she washed the dirt off her hands and face. Another look as she turned. She heard no one moving about. It was just the girl. “Where is my mother?” she asked.
Kle’Ebin walked in from the living room, shaking her head. “I don’t know. They took her two weeks ago, and she hasn’t come back.”
Ajin managed to stay calm. “Who took her?”
“Palace guards. Six of them.” The girl was rooted in place, but her hands were shaking. “They just marched in, and when they came out again your mother was with them.” She paused, her blue eyes bright with sudden tears. “I wanted to stop them. I wanted to ask what they were doing. But I was afraid.”
“As you should have been. So, they took her and she hasn’t come back?”
The girl nodded. “Some workmen came and boarded up the house a day or so later. They made it look abandoned, put up warning signs, made it clear no one was to go inside. And no one has. Not even me. And some of my clothes are in there.”
“There have been no rumors about my mother?”
“None. What are you going to do?”
Ajin was already turning away, moving back toward the door. “Find her and bring her home.”
She went out the door, closing it softly behind her. Kle’Ebin was terrified, but Ajin was pretty sure she was telling the truth. So the pretender had decided to keep her mother where she could do nothing to help Ajin or herself. Her mother would be a prisoner somewhere in the palace cellars, where the royals had locked away enemies and left them to rot since the beginning of the dynasty.
She felt sickened.
And she needed somewhere to go.
A glance across the road gave her the answer to the problem. Where was the last place anyone would look for her? In her mother’s house, all boarded up and posted. She looked around and saw no one in the lane, so she moved over to the abandoned building and walked around to the backside. She found the rear entry boarded up, as well, but she had the barriers clear and the door open in less than five minutes.
It was cold inside, but the bed was still made and there were plenty of blankets in storage. She felt drained by the physical and emotional stresses of the day and craved sleep. She did not bother with washing up or eating. She did not bother to take off her clothes. She simply fell on the bed, pulled up the blankets to her chin, and fell asleep knowing she would be safe until morning.
* * *
—
She was wrong.
The beasts came for her sometime during the night, creeping through the house on soundless paws, crouching down in the manner of the wolves they so closely resembled. There were only four of them, but they were huge creatures—monsters born of some errant nightmare, mutations of man and beast. They slipped into her room and surrounded her, and it was only at the very last minute she sensed their presence and reached for her knives.
Too late.
They were on top of her before she could free her weapons, pinning her down and wrapping her tightly in the blanket, their hot animal breath on her face, growling and snarling. She saw them for a few seconds, flashes of fur and teeth and gimlet eyes, wolves save for their human arms and hands, with some mix of both species in their nightmare faces. Jaws snapped and teeth flashed, but they did not rend her, as she feared they might. After all, they had her pinned and did not need to do much more to secure her.
She fought back valiantly, driven by her anger and her fear, but it was no use. They were too strong and too many—even at only four—and she could find no way to break free.
So here was Ajin—who was always so prepared, so ready, so difficult to catch off guard—made a prisoner in less than a minute.
Still she fought as they lifted her up and wrapped ropes about her body. She fought, and then she screamed for help—a last desperate cry when she realized all was lost.
But a blow to the head silenced her, and she tumbled into a black nothingness.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Ajin.”
Her mother. She heard her voice as a whisper, reaching out to her from far away. In a dream, perhaps. But Ajin was locked in a black cocoon, and she did not think she could escape. She stirred within the darkness, but her limbs and body were limp and unresponsive. She thought she might be imagining her mother, but she wasn’t sure. Her thoughts were sluggish and clouded. All her efforts at trying to regain some semblance of control were failing.
“Ajin, please.”
She sighed; the sound of her mother’s voice, speaking her name, was so wonderfully reassuring. But no, it couldn’t be her mother. Her mother had been taken by the pretender’s soldiers and spirited away. This was no more than a dream, albeit a pleasant one.
Nevertheless, whether from need or out of habit, she answered. “Mama?”
Arms encircled her, and she was being lifted and cradled like her mother had cradled her as a child.
Her eyes opened slowly and she saw the arms holding her close and felt the press of a cheek against her own. She did not need to see the face of the person holding her to know who it was. Her familiarity after a lifetime of such embraces was undeniable, and she gave herself over to the comfort it offered. “Mama, you’re safe!” she whispered.
Her mother’s arms squeezed more tightly. “Oh, Ajin, why did you come back?”
Ajin shifted so she could see her mother’s face. The older woman looked worn—haggard and pale—but her expression was calm. Ajin remembered the misfortune that had befallen her—the midnight attack by those wolf hybrids who had wrapped her in blankets and secured her with rope, and silenced her with a single blow when she had tried to cry out.
All of which brought her fully into the moment—which wasn’t a dream at all, but a reality she had not expected. To be with her mother, even under the worst of circumstances, brought a momentary smile to her face. “Mama,” she repeated. She took a steadying breath and exhaled sharply. “Mama, how long have you been here? Where are we? Are we in the palace cellars?”
Orestiana d’Amphere shook her head. “We are not in the palace. We are somewhere else, but I don’t know where. This place, wherever it is, belongs to Agathien d’Amphere, your father’s new wife. She is responsible for bringing me here, because she was afraid I would be seen and rescued by those still loyal to me if I was caged in the cellars of the palace. So here I am. But you—how did you end up here?”
“I was looking for you. Kle’Ebin told me you’d been taken prisoner. Word of my return must have gotten back to the pretender, I suppose, so I was taken, too.”
Her mother shook her head. “She has grown bold in your father’s absence. She consolidates her power, keeping those who pledge their loyalty close while removing everyone else. Your father doesn’t understand, but I think she intends to replace him on the throne. Replace us, too, now that she has imprisoned us. I do not think she intends to keep us here for more than a couple of days. After that, she will probably have us executed.”
“Publicly? But everyone will know.”
“I think she wants them to know. I think she wants to demonstrate her power.”
“It won’t work. Word will reach my father, and she’ll lose everything.”
&nb
sp; “If he lives that long. But I think she has other plans.”
Ajin stared in shock. “She must be insane! How does she expect to make all this happen? People won’t stand for it.”
Orestiana d’Amphere smiled. “I am afraid they will stand for more than you think, given their present situation. Starving, homeless, hopeless people are willing to listen to many things they would not consider in better times. They are willing to listen to lies—and to believe them. And Agathien is good at spreading lies.”
Ajin straightened and stood, testing herself. Everything seemed to be in one piece. She patted her clothing—the same clothing she had worn on leaving the airship—searching for weapons. But even the throwing stars she had concealed were gone. She did not have a blade of any sort.
She glanced around. The chamber in which they were housed was a large, spare, stone-block cube, windowless and layered in shadows. A single torch burned inside their cell, but that was the extent of the light. The cell sat in the middle of the floor, unconnected to any of the walls of the cube. An excellent way, Ajin thought, to keep them under easy surveillance at all times. There would have to be a door leading out of the chamber, one they could use to escape were they in a position to go anywhere, but she could not detect it in the poor light.