He held up the biscuit he was eating. “When I’m finished.”
She snatched it from him and dashed it to the floor. He looked at her as if she’d killed someone, with shocked horror.
She made a noise of impatience. “Take me downstairs, and I’ll give you three more biscuits like that. With jam.”
His horror turned instantly to contemplation. “Jam.” He looked at her earnestly. “I want the blackberry.”
“Fine.” She took his arm. “The White Queen will kill us if she finds us here. Do you want that? I don’t think so. There’s no jam for dead people. Come on.” With each prompting she urged him with a tug of the arm toward the stairs. At last he went of his own accord, though not without a longing glance back at the pantry.
It seemed an eternity in the tunnels. By the time they reached the door to the room with the Ifreet, she thought she’d jump out of her skin. And now it seemed Syme had had a chance to think about what they were doing. He looked at her with new apprehension.
“Open it,” she commanded, as if she were queen after all, and he did. The Ifreet paced the cage. The only source of light in that room a poisoned green. It barely seemed to notice them come in. Its shape was like a man, but featureless and green. It muttered to itself, taking no notice of them. A small mercy.
“You control this creature, Syme,” she said. “And we have to leave. Can it come with you?”
He looked fearful. “It is always with me,” he said. A sad, serious tone unlike himself. “The cage is … the cage is for studying. Father wanted to study it. To observe its behavior, he said.”
“Well, that’s over with,” she said. “We must take it away. Before the White Queen finds us.”
“Quite a plan.”
Rianna spun around. A figure stood in the doorway. By light of the Ifreet gleamed teeth, a grin. But she knew who it was even before he stepped into the room.
His sword was drawn. “I don’t need to harm anyone,” said Etherell Lyr. “Syme, take the Ifreet as Father showed us. And then let’s be off. You and me—we’re family.” He turned his grin on Rianna. “So kind of you to open the door.”
“You followed us.” She had drawn the knife from her bodice. Was stalling for time, trying to think.
She was no match for that sword.
Etherell took another step into the light. “I knew I could count on you to put your nose where it didn’t belong. And Syme has taken a shine to you, poor Fool. That was helpful.”
“I followed you, too.” A new voice in the room. There was someone beside Rianna.
Lin. She had slithered, eel-like, behind Etherell and into the room.
“The Court Poet, I presume,” said Etherell. “I’d hoped to make your aquaintance.”
“I doubt that,” said Lin. She was, if possible, thinner and paler than when Rianna had seen her last. She looked like a ghost in black. She held a sword as well.
The women stood shoulder to shoulder now, with Syme behind them.
Without taking her eyes off Etherell, Rianna said, “You’re a bit late. Missed quite a party.”
“I saw it all,” said Lin. “A woman in black, and veiled, escapes notice during a coronation. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop it.”
“You know—”
“About Marlen? Yes.”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Etherell, “but I believe you were about to turn the jester over to me.” He advanced another step with the sword extended.
Lin said, “Ready.”
And Rianna knew it wasn’t addressed to him.
Together the women moved to strike. Side by side they advanced, Rianna with both knives out now.
Etherell dodged their blades, then launched his own attack. He was laughing. “A merry dance,” he said, even as Lin’s blade slid into his guard.
He parried it handily, his cloak wrapped around his arm to act as a kind of shield; but it was a near thing. He backed away.
“I’d forgotten,” he said, “how little I care for this dance, when not driven by hatred.” He sounded fascinated, as if at a discovery. “I … don’t care.” He shook his head. “Now, Elissan … he cared so much for power. He wanted it so much. I suppose that was his undoing.”
“You wanted it enough when it meant killing me,” said Rianna. Her heart still beating fast. “It’s only now that there are two of us that you don’t dare.” She knew she was baiting him, and it was stupid, but she was angry.
But whatever hatred she had roused in him once seemed to have dissipated. He looked at her almost with affection. “You would have been queen, Rianna,” he said. “And yet. Don’t you feel the slightest bit … relieved? To be free of him? All that intensity. All that desire.”
She didn’t know what to say.
Lin Amaristoth spoke. “Why don’t you join us?” Rianna glared in her direction, but Lin didn’t seem to notice. “We could use another sword-arm.”
He laughed. “I don’t think so. That would be more intensity, it seems to me. I feel it coming off you even from here.”
Lin smiled thinly. “You’ll find that, with poets.”
“Yes!” he agreed. “It’s exhausting. I’m ready to be done with the whole business.”
Rianna felt compelled to speak. “We can stand around talking,” she said, “or we can do what we came here to do.”
Etherell grinned at her. “We had some good times, didn’t we, Rianna,” he said. “It was interesting to think what I might do with some magic. But it might be just as interesting to see what you two do with it. My ladies.” He bowed. “I will look forward to seeing what happens now that this Queen is here. And now you, Lin Amaristoth. Should be quite a show.”
“A show?” Rianna bristled. “That Queen is a monster.”
“Perhaps,” he said. There was a private light in his eyes, not quite a smile. “I’m not one to judge.” He went to the door. “I suggest you move fast, if you mean to escape.” And with that, and without a backward glance, he slipped out. They heard his departing steps in the passageway.
Rianna let out a long breath and relaxed her stance.
“He’s right,” said Lin. “We had best move quickly.”
“If you knew him,” said Rianna, “you’d never want to say he was right about anything. And they called Marlen a snake. Ha.” Their eyes met. Lin looked drained, but real, entirely herself. Now that she was here, Rianna couldn’t believe she’d ever thought the Ifreet could look like her. She said, “I have never been so glad to see anyone.”
Lin held out her hands, palms upward; a helpless gesture. “You can say that—after I’ve failed you.”
Rianna knew what she meant. It was not about the coronation of Elissan Diar.
Rianna shook her head. “Ned is his own man. Besides—he betrayed you, too.” She stepped forward and put her arms around the other woman’s shoulders. Lin was trembling.
The Court Poet said, “I’m so sorry.”
For a moment they stood there. Then broke apart. “Syme,” said Rianna. The Fool had, throughout all this, been uncharacteristically silent, and looked downcast. He came to life at her address of him. “Do what we came for, and let’s be on our way.”
* * *
JULIEN could see nothing ahead but the blaze cast by the mark on her eye. A trail of light, nothing more. To each side, the stone walls were cut into the shape of archways. But there was otherwise no ornamentation in the walls, no change as she went on. Julien found herself increasingly grateful for the cloak. It was getting colder. She wondered if she was going deeper into the earth.
She came at last to a chamber. It was bare, but for brass candlesticks set in the wall in each corner. Their light flickering and serene.
Before her was a pair of doors. They were of wood and plain, save for the symbol of the double spiral carved into each. Shapes that seemed to shift and twist before her eyes.
Now is your choice, Julien Imara.
The wind again. Julien had wondered if it would ever return. “Now is my choice
?” she said. “I thought we did that already.”
There was an arch carved into the wall between the doors. Julien noticed because it began to gather light, as if the candles fed into it. Soon the wall within the arch glowed and it was like a window: and it looked out on a landscape. She saw green hills, and cliffs, and the great open sea. The view shifted, to focus on a castle that hung from a sheer cliff. Its towers were like spikes, tall and sharp.
The view changed again, and she saw—as if she were a bird—two armies massing in a field. And then she was nearer, and saw that leading one of those armies was a woman in white, with white skin. Her lips like blood.
And then all this faded and the room was candlelit again. The wind said, The White Queen and the Shadow King are here. They will destroy everything to destroy each other.
Julien swallowed. “Why? What do they want?”
A sound like a chuckle in her ear. Little mortal, you could never hope to know. They will never cease their battle. Not until the seas devour this world and every other. Perhaps even beyond that. Beyond time.
“Elissan Diar unleashed this,” Julien said. She remembered now. The carving. The antlers. She had mistaken the spiraling skulls for what his reign would bring. When in fact … “He’s dead, isn’t he,” she said.
There is little to be done. The doom of your world nearly certain. But there is one thing you might try.
“What is it?” A knob of terror was forming in her stomach. This quiet place, this maze, was so detached from everything. Had lured her into feeling safe. She heard her own voice, breathless. “What must I do?”
We offer you the Queen’s true name, said the wind. It can be used once. That is the rule. And will only weaken her for a time.
“I’ll take it.”
The sound of the wind turned silky. There is a price.
“Name it.”
The wind played with her hair. Seemed almost to sing. Julien Imara, little Seer. You have only one thing of value.
“My harp?” Julien swallowed. “Of course I’ll give that up.” Though her stomach dropped at the words.
Yes, said the wind. The harp. The ring. Everything that goes with them.
It took a moment for her to understand. “You mean…”
Choose the door on your right, and you emerge as you are. A Seer. With all the gifts of the maze. Choose the left—you will have the Queen’s name. The Seer’s mark of Valanir Ocune will be accounted a fair exchange.
The voice was still close to her ear. Nothing is freely given or gained. The deeper you go in the Labyrinth, the more you stand to lose.
Julien stood there. This room pressed in on her senses with sudden clarity, as if every detail mattered. The doors, the candlelight, the silence. It all stood still when she did.
Standing still was a delay. Not an escape. She spoke. Her voice thick with effort. “This is the true test. Before … that was a game for you. Wasn’t it? To see if I’d harm one of my own, a mortal, for your amusement. When this—taking the one thing I treasure … that is what you were after all along.”
The wind was silent. Julien remembered riding with the white-haired Seer on the golden horse, and the green mountains. The harp she’d owned in those dreams. It was alike, she realized, to the harp she now carried. The one chosen for her, by whoever decided such things.
She remembered the night Valanir Ocune had given her the mark. His dreadful pallor when he knew he was dying. He had channeled what remained of his life into that act. All his hopes, all he knew, given into her care. And since that night she had gone forward with that, the terrible responsibility.
And pride. Oh, the pride and the delight. The music of the green mountains welcoming her to a world where she would never have conceived of belonging.
“So I must go back, then,” she said aloud. “I will be no more than Julien Imara. Invisible girl on the stairs.”
Or remain a Seer for the battles to come, murmured the wind to her. Will you sacrifice all for a small, temporary weapon?
Julien lifted the harp to eye level. Even by candlelight it shone with a fierce fire. She knew she would never see its like again. And had an intuition, in that moment, of the music that might have emerged from it at her hands.
All the might-have-beens in the world would never change what had to be.
She let the harp drop on its strap, to rest again at her side. Looked down at the smooth folds of the black and silver dress. And went forward, step by slow step, towards her chosen door.
* * *
AFTER a long while, as the sun moved behind the clouds of afternoon and the gulls called, he let himself lie on the sand and listen to them, and the waves. It had seemed a point of pride to stand there at attention with the Branch, to maintain the rigid stance of indignation, but as time wore on that seemed ever more pointless. At last Dorn Arrin set down the Branch on the sand, lay himself beside it. He meant only to rest a moment. He ended up falling asleep. His dreams were full of strangeness, and music; at one point, he himself was singing, that elegy from the night of mourning for Archmaster Myre. Mourning, mourning, as night bled away to dawn.
When he awoke it was dark and Julien Imara lay beside him. She was curled in on herself and crying. Dorn was made instantly aware that he was cold, that he had done the unforgivable by falling asleep, and that something must be wrong.
“What happened?” He sat up. “Are you hurt?”
She looked up. And he saw it immediately, as moonlight fell there on the beach. Her young face, unmarked by time and now, unmarked by enchantment. She looked younger still in that dress, with its lace collar and cuffs, though he’d never tell her that.
“I lost everything,” she said. “And I don’t even know if I did right.”
He took her hands.
She looked at him with renewed tears. “Please don’t let’s talk about what I said before.”
His heart ached. “Of course.” He had planned on saying something about being young, and being thrown together with someone, and the future she might have—a future so clear and bright to him he wished he could make her see it. But now was not the time for any of that—and perhaps it would have been presumptuous, anyway. As if he were one to talk. There was always that distance, vast as a country, between knowing a thing and believing it.
“Something terrible is about to happen, Dorn,” she said. “There’s to be a war.”
“Of course there is,” he said with a sigh. “Come, sit a minute, and tell me everything when you’re ready.”
She kept ahold of his hand, and they sat on the sands as the moon rose. The full solstice moon, its twin reflected beneath in the dark and churning waters.
* * *
THE golden-haired man knelt in the throne room on the tile. The room had been tidied; the Chosen had meticulously removed all evidence of the corpse. The air smelled of lye. Outside, a cold and silent winter night; unnaturally silent in the streets of Tamryllin.
When the man arose he hardly appeared humbled; his lips wanted to stretch in a grin. “I’d be honored to serve you,” he said. “Especially if it means leaving this castle. It’s grown too small for me, as it is for you. I admire that about you.”
The White Queen reached out to stroke his hair. “You have your own ideas, mortal,” she said. “I see that in you. There was a time when you trained with my deathless ones. But not for a long while. You are not of their number anymore.”
Etherell Lyr had stiffened at the touch. Then shrugged. “I hope your grace will accept me as I am,” he said. “A mortal with ideas. I see the appeal in being deathless … but there seems little joy in it.”
She surveyed him with a changeless expression. There was not a line in her face, as if it was ever changeless. “I can give you great power,” she said. “But first you must prove yourself. You are a hunter, are you not?”
“Indeed, your grace,” he said with a lazy smile. “And rather a good one.”
“Look here, then.” She motioned to a gold-framed mir
ror on the wall. A haze filled it, then cleared to show a face. The Queen looked to Etherell Lyr. “This mortal is mine. Find him for me.”
He raised an eyebrow. “He’s alive?”
She smiled, a look at once brilliant and alarming. “He passed through fire and many doorways and has at last returned. And he belongs to me. I’ve tried to retrieve him—even sent my hounds—to no avail.” She looked down with what might have been amusement. She stood a full head and shoulders taller than him. “Perhaps what I was missing all along was you, little mortal. With your connection to Dorn Arrin, and your skill at hunting.”
“Like as not,” said Etherell Lyr. “Of course. I’ll find him for you.”
PART III
CHAPTER
15
IT was the first day of winter when Muiwiyah Akaber returned home from the battlefield. He came with an entourage of men-at-arms and immediately demanded a bath be drawn. It had been a grueling month on the front lines, not so much because of combat—Muiwiyah seldom engaged in the fighting. That was what sons were for—his three heirs, who fell over themselves to prove their worth as heirs apparent. Especially now, when Muiwiyah was poised to become king over all Kahishi. It was useful, to have them at loggerheads and dependent on their father’s approval. So it had been all their lives—he’d made sure they hated each other. It meant Muiwiyah could trust that they would not band together against him; that each would strive to excel in battle.
The best will inherit, he had told them since they were children. Now the stakes were higher than they had ever been. The best would inherit a throne.
Despite that he had not participated in much of the fighting Muiwiyah despised the front lines, where the food was hardly up to standard and comforts few. The chill and rains of winter made the arrangement all the more intolerable. The vizier-turned-king had decided the battle was in capable—not to mention highly motivated—hands, with his sons at the helm. He would return to the comforts of his castle in Zirtan. Though Muiwiyah Akaber had only recently declared himself king, he had lived in imperial splendor all the years, ever since Yusuf Evrayad had bestowed on him the title of Vizier of the East Province.
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