Dinah struggled against her restraints as her arms fell asleep and her spine raged in protest from being bent forward for so many hours. “Yeh best quit moving,” noted the Spade quietly. “Don’t call attention to yourself.”
“Mmm….” The Spade removed her gag for a short second. “Morte?” she gasped. Even with the blindfold, she could feel Sir Gorrann’s disappointment boring into her as he put her gag back in place.
Finally, he gave a nod. “Amazing what yeh care about. Morte let me climb up—probably because I was carrying yeh. He’s heavily drugged from the mushrooms—he probably isn’t even aware what’s happening right now. He’s just walking. Otherwise, I think he would have killed a great many today.” The Spade paused. “I want to warn yeh that Morte might not live long once we get to Hu-Yuhar. Yeh must understand that he has killed many, many Yurkei. Iy-Joyera means the black devil.”
Dinah felt her eyes blur with tears and blood dripping from her head wound. She strained against her gag. “Whhhh….” Sir Gorrann pulled it out again. “Why… why did you lead me here?”
“Don’t yeh worry about that quite yet. It will all play out.” Dinah closed her eyes again, half-reassured, half-alarmed by the Spade’s presence behind her. “Sleep. I’ll wake yeh when we arrive. Best get yer wits about yeh. And don’t try to kill the Chief again, otherwise we’ll both end up riddled with arrows.”
I can’t promise that, thought Dinah drowsily, on the edge of sleep as Sir Gorrann struggled to blindly put her gag back in. Not if he tries to kill me first. I will fight for my pathetic existence, no matter how meaningless it is at this point. Her head throbbed and she dropped swiftly into the soothing arms of sleep.
Chapter Nine
She awoke flat on her back, her eyes staring up at a circle of bright blue sky. She blinked a few times before her hands came up to wipe her watering eyes. Her arms were free. This was a good sign. She let her eyes play over her surroundings, hesitant to move. She was in a tent of some sort, but it wasn’t triangular, or square. It was perfectly round and short, shaped like the tarts she had loved back at the palace. She knew if she stood that her fingers would brush the tip of the roof, and if she were just a bit taller she would be able to stick her hand through the open hole at the top. Dinah pushed herself up shakily. She was sitting on some sort of incredible mattress made of woven grass. Her back felt better than it had in weeks of sleeping on the hard ground. For the first time in a long time, Dinah’s body felt truly rested. She stretched her arms out in front of her body—which led to a pulse of pain that radiated down from her head.
Tenderly, she probed the wound near her temple. Dried blood covered the area, and a lump the size of an apple protruded from just over her ear. Her head was pounding, and the pain pressing against her skull made her grind her teeth. She sat still for a few minutes until the pain decreased to where she could move around. Dinah took a breath. She was fine. She was alive. It was enough. She looked longingly back at the mattress of grass and considered simply curling up and playing dead for the rest of the day, but she had a feeling that wasn’t in her best interest. There were questions to be answered. Her eyes finally adjusted to the light of the tent and she saw that two Yurkei warriors stood silently near the door, their hands locked around their bows.
Dinah turned back to the mattress. A simple red tunic and a pair of white feather pants had been laid out for her. She dressed herself quickly, vaguely aware that the warriors’ bright blue eyes watched her every move, even while their faces remained unreadable. She attempted to braid her hair, though the thick black curtain that she once so loathed was more a rat’s nest than a hairstyle these days. Her boots were gone, and she hoped that they weren’t gone forever if she was going to live through all this. She had grown quite fond of wearing boots.
When she approached the door of the pod-shaped room, the two guards parted. “Mundoo wish to see you,” said one of them in heavily broken Wonderlander. Dinah nodded, hoping they couldn’t see her growing fear. They haven’t killed me yet, she told herself. That’s something. The seething hatred in one guard’s blue eyes was intense, while the other looked simply intrigued by her presence. Taking a breath, she pulled back the tent flap. White sunlight assaulted her eyes as Dinah struggled to comprehend what she was seeing. After a few moments, she let herself exhale, stunned into a respectful silence. She was in Hu-Yuhar, the hidden city of the Yurkei. She stood in a very narrow valley surrounded by rocky gray cliff faces on both sides that veered up and away. Past these towering walls of stone, the gorgeous Yurkei Mountains rose up around them, their tops always concealed behind a foggy mist that rolled and leapt like a child at play. The mountains were said to be topless, and the closer Dinah got to them the more she believed it.
The entire valley couldn’t have been more than half a mile wide. The ground was covered by a lush, bluish-green grass. Horses were everywhere, roaming free—eating, running, sleeping. The valley floor seemed to belong to them, although she watched several hundred Yurkei going about their daily business on two narrow dirt pathways flanking the rock walls. Dinah looked up, shielding her eyes from the light that draped the whole valley in dewy sunshine. Hundreds of tents—shaped just like the one she had awakened in—protruded from the mountain side, hovering hundreds of feet above the ground like little clouds. Round and flat, they jutted out from holes in the rock or the edges of cliffs, or sometimes, just the vertical, flat rock face. Some sort of wooden structure secured each tent to the mountain with long wooden beams that twisted and wrapped under the pods, supporting them from below. Biscuits, thought Dinah, that’s what the shape reminded her of. Round, flat biscuits.
Soaring through the space between the two mountain faces was a system of lofty bridges, made of the same wooden material that secured the tents to the cliff sides. Yurkei moved across the bridges with alarming speed: children chasing each other, women with baskets full of food or clothing, men carrying handfuls of arrows. The valley bustled with life, although most of it was taking place above Dinah’s head. Something hit her shoulder, something blunt and hard. She winced and turned around. The Yurkei warrior who had looked at her with such loathing stood behind her, brandishing the butt of a long, curved spear at her. “You. Move. To Chief.”
Dinah began walking forward, not sure of where she was going until several Yurkei children ran in front of her and proceeded to lead the way. Their long white hair flowing freely over their shoulders, clean of the white stripes that marked the men. Boy or girl, Dinah found it hard to tell. Altogether they were lovely, until one of them turned and spat in her face.
“C’hallgu Quon!” Then several others turned and followed suit. “C’hallgu Quon!” “C’hallgu Quon!” they chanted. Bad Queen? Dinah tried to translate in her mind as she wiped the spit off her lip. Small rocks appeared out of nowhere and suddenly Dinah was being pelted with all kinds of things: grass, rocks, spit, dirt…. She raised her hands to protect herself and the two Yurkei guards closed in on her, each taking one arm and barking orders at the children. Fervently, she looked around for Sir Gorrann, but his grizzled face was nowhere to be seen. She was alone.
On the sides of the valley, Yurkei women had lined up to watch her, this dirty and humiliated princess. She tripped over her feet as they stared, and she felt even more humbled by their wild beauty and piercing stares. The women wore only white feathered skirts that draped loosely around their legs and a white feathered band that hung loosely around their breasts. Each woman was muscled and lean, with smooth dark skin and shining blue eyes. Their hair was long and twisted back into several elaborate buns accented by sparse blue beads that winked in the sunlight. Dinah felt so out of place, a hideous monster with her pale white skin, black hair, and black eyes. Their eyes narrowed as she passed. The tunic was given to her with a purpose, she realized. She was wearing red, the color of Wonderland Palace, a color to remind those around her exactly who she was. Red, the color of blood, the color of the oppressor. I should have gone naked, she thought, s
tumbling again. I might have attracted less notice.
The crowds parted in front of her as she approached a massive white rope ladder that seemed to hang in midair. Dinah glanced up, her neck straining to take in its height. Far above, carved out of the two mighty rock walls that lined the valley, two cranes faced each other—their wings outstretched, their chests puffed out. Two long necks elongated into huge heads with terrible, open beaks. The carvings were so large that the beaks were almost touching, though they began on opposite sides of the valley.
“Meir hu-gofrey,” murmured the Yurkei warrior who had looked at her with such curiosity. “Our protectors and gods.” Dinah nodded. She knew that the Yurkei worshipped the birds, and that Wonderland’s fascination with birds had grown out of their early meetings with the Yurkei. In between the two birds, a single large pod was suspended between the curves in their necks by the same wooden rope material she had seen in the valley. The Chief lived there, she guessed, suspended perpetually between two warring birds, each the size of a mountain.
Dinah stopped and stared at the ladder. It blew about in the wind, looking weak and worn. “I can’t.”
The angry Yurkei warrior pushed Dinah up to the ladder and placed her hand on the bottom rung.
“Climb,” he demanded. “Climb.”
Dinah looked up. The pod was suspended hundreds of feet above the earth. A fall from even the middle would surely either kill her or break every bone in her body. She took a deep breath and began making her way up the rope ladder that somehow blew in the breeze but still managed to be strong and unbendable beneath her white-knuckled grip. Hand over hand, she made her way up with the two Yurkei warriors lingering behind her, obviously annoyed by how slowly she was climbing. A strong gust of wind rocked the ladder, and Dinah pressed herself against it, wrapping her arms and legs around the rungs. She heard the roaring laughter of Yurkei children from below as they watched her desperately cling to the ladder for dear life as it lifted off the ground and blew out behind the warriors, lashing like an angry tail.
“Up, up!” shouted the guard behind her. Dinah clutched the ladder, afraid to move, afraid of the long fall that would break her body on the jagged rocks below. The ladder twisted and swayed, and Dinah let out a cry before murmuring nearly forgotten prayers from childhood as she clutched the rung before her. She was frozen, unable to move. The ladder began to twirl in the wind, faster and faster as it cracked and whistled. She could hear the peals of laughter below and the angry roar of the wind that ripped through the valley. I’m so afraid, she thought. Have I ever been this afraid? I’m going to die here. The rung underneath her hand was growing slippery with sweat, and Dinah’s foot was tangled between two others. I can’t. I can’t move, she thought.
Before she could finish her thought, the kinder of the two guards began rapidly climbing up the ladder after her. He reached her in seconds. Once there, he moved slowly, circling around the ladder until he was on the opposite side, his face inches from Dinah’s. He dangled from the rope with one hand as he untangled Dinah’s footing with the other. He switched hands then and wrapped one palm around the wooden rope as it twisted in the breeze and the other tightly around her waist. “I will help,” he murmured. “Step.”
Dinah closed her eyes and reached for the next rung, secured by his hand supporting her waist. Her foot found the rung. Without thinking, she grabbed the next rung and the one after that, even when the wind wrenched the ladder sideways so roughly that Dinah almost lost her grip. The Yurkei warrior held onto her as she slipped and strained her way up. At times it seemed hopeless, but still she climbed. She climbed up past the breasts of the enormous cranes, past the crests of their giant necks and finally, straight up into the vast white pod strung between the two birds, like some saucer that the fowl had dropped from their mouths.
The Yurkei warrior was the first one through the pod, and he rapped his hand twice against a wooden bracket on the outside. A square of fabric was pulled from the bottom, and with a leap, he disappeared up into the hole, reaching back to help Dinah. Her feet dangled in the air lifelessly as he held her arms, and she looked up with fear into his glowing blue eyes, her life completely in his hands. He gave her a shy smile and yanked her up through the opening, setting her down roughly inside the tent. Dinah’s legs and arms were shaking so terribly that she simply rolled over onto her back, her lungs heaving and contracting with each long breath. Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking, a cold sweat pouring from her skin. It felt good to be on a hard surface, but she couldn’t forget the fact that this fabric tent was suspended hundreds of feet in the air. It was unnatural to be this high, and she longed to feel dirt underneath her fingernails. She was a child of the earth, not the sky. Her heart gave a terrified thud when she realized that she would also have to climb back down the ladder, which would be less physically exhausting but infinitely more dangerous. She closed her eyes and focused on breathing. After a few minutes, a man’s voice broke the silence.
“Did you enjoy your climb, Princess?” Warily, Dinah rolled over and pushed herself into a sitting position. She tried to force her heaving breaths down into her ribs, to appear more in control. Mundoo stood before her, looking resplendent in a full headdress made of blue feathers, wearing nothing more than a feathered loincloth and some sort of wooden sandal that laced up the ankle and calf. The white painted stripes she had seen on him before were gone, now replaced with elaborately illustrated white drawings and symbols that coated his skin. His muscles were lean and hard, his eyes brilliant and blue. He sat calmly on a huge throne of carved golden birds, which much to her surprise, was not unlike the Heart thrones in the Great Hall. In fact, the more she looked at it, the more she realized it was the twin of the thrones in Wonderland Palace. One was carved of hearts and the other of birds, but otherwise they were the same. Carved by the same maker at the same time, no doubt.
Stand up, Dinah told herself, now! You look weak. She forced herself shakily to her feet and raised her head. Mundoo stood and motioned to his guards. “Lu-feryir.” The guards turned and walked toward several open flaps around the bean-shaped tent and out into the open air. Dinah gasped, thinking that Mundoo had ordered them to kill themselves—then realized her foolishness when she saw that the ropes suspending the pods high above the earth were also walkways that led into slim tunnels carved right into the breasts of the stone birds.
“Would you like some water? The ladder climb can be… strenuous for those who aren’t used to it.” Dinah waved his water away. She didn’t want anything from him except for mercy, though her throat longed for liquid.
“The ladder climb was to make me look weak.” She raised her chin. “Your Highness.”
Mundoo gave a small laugh. “You know, you don’t remind me of your father, not much. Your pride and your blatant lack of self-control, perhaps. But otherwise….” He peered into her dark eyes. “I do not see the man in you who has killed so many of my own.”
Dinah lowered her eyes. “My father, the King, murdered my brother in cold blood so that he would not have to share the crown. He tried to kill me, his own daughter, but not until after he murdered his own son by throwing him from a window. He has pursued me through the Twisted Wood, so close I saw his breath and smelled the rage wafting off of his body. I have no love for my father and the fact that you see none of him in me is the greatest compliment I’ve been paid.”
Mundoo smiled and lifted his hand to Dinah’s cheek. She forced herself to stay steady as his tan, weathered hands caressed her jaw line. “And what of Wonderland Palace? Do you have loyalty to them? To the Cards?”
Dinah considered her answer carefully. I am a mouse in an eagle’s nest, she thought, and one wrong move will deliver me straight into his mouth. “I have no loyalty to Wonderland while it remains under the rule of the man who murdered my brother.”
Mundoo’s bright blue eyes sparkled as a smile crept over his face. “Well answered. I see you are adept at the language of ruling and politics. I should not be sur
prised.” Mundoo stepped back from her and began pacing around his throne. “You must know the history of my people and Wonderland. Our legends say that the Yurkei arrived here hundreds and hundreds of years ago, flown here on the backs of great birds. We lived in peace with the land, and made this place—Hu-Yuhar, the hidden city—our home. We had no need for war, for weapons, other than to hunt. And then one day, strangers came, born by a boat from a distant land, from the ‘Other Worlds’ as you call them. They had many weapons and many great and shiny jewels that impressed our foolish Chief at the time. These men established Wonderland Palace and proceeded to push us back into the mountains, though originally they had agreed to share all of the land. Your father’s father’s father declared war on us, and we have been battling the line of Hearts ever since.
“And for what? We long for nothing more than to live in our lands and have peace. It’s true—when a Wonderland village comes too close to our lands, we will burn it to the ground, because we must fight for each inch of grass. You Wonderlanders take and take and give nothing back. This is a vast country, and yet the Palace feels it must own every inch, from the Western Sea to the edge of the Yurkei Mountains. As our ancestors said, Yu-Fhullei-Ja-Drayden, Ja-Drayden—what cannot be, cannot be. As you are probably well aware, I have spies in Wonderland Palace, and I hear whispers that your father is laying out the groundwork to start his great war. He longs to push us into the sea, the place from where his ancestors came, with their red hearts and taste for blood and tarts. He seeks to find and destroy Hu-Yuhar.”
Mundoo gave a sigh and rested his hand upon the throne as he gazed at her. Dinah could see lines of worry etched across his strong face. “And so we come to you, you who rode so boldly into my territory astride the black devil. What do I do with an exiled princess? Most of the people down there would have you publicly executed. Look down.” Dinah stood still as Mundoo raised a few flaps on the side of the tent. Then he wrapped his hand around her neck and pushed her face toward the light. “Look down Dinah. See them, see the widows out there who lust for your blood to be spilled for their warriors who never returned. You may have been exiled from Wonderland and the King himself may wish you dead, but that matters little to a fatherless child or a woman whose bed will never be warm again.”
Queen of Hearts: Volume Two: The Wonder Page 10