“Who is he?” Arkády queried.
“Lord Lásky,” his brother indicated. “A real dolt. He was given this post as reward for his service in the barbarian wars. His ‘service’ consisted of quartermastering two brigades. The real commander is his deputy, Sir Lóngin von Zumpt. He’s a nasty bastard, mean as a badger. If he has his way, we’ll all be tortured before the king even hears about it.”
“Nice,” Arrhiána commented. “However, there’s another way out.”
“What!” they all gasped simultaneously.
“We’ve got plenty of accomplished Psairothi here,” she noted. “Let’s just make a transit mirror, and we’ll get all of these folks to safety.”
“But how?” Arkády blurted out. “We have no gold.”
“No,” she agreed, “but we have plenty of high-quality steel, and if we can generate enough energy to melt several of the swords together, we might be able to get a surface shiny enough to reflect and refract light.”
“Oh, dear sister, I’ve never heard of anything like this being done before,” Arkády stated.
“What choice do we have?” she posed.
“None,” he responded.
Then Arkády turned to his brother: “Zakháry, round up the two captains, and send them up to Level Six to mount our defense. I assume it’ll take Lásky a while to get organized up above. Then you and Kir and Chette and Mother and Rhie and any of the other adepts that can be found must clear an open area in the lower keep that’s both level and self-contained. I’ll lay out a dozen of the best quality swords. Let’s get to it!”
Soon they had brushed off a relatively even area of the stones in the one large room of this section, and built a dirt and brick embankment around it.
“Normally,” Arkády said, “we would set certain defenses about the area, but I don’t think we have the proper implements with us, or the time. So we’ll make do with what we have. Now, who will direct the working?”
“You should, Kásha,” his mother proclaimed.
“No, I’m too shaky from the bad food and conditions down here,” he replied. “So is Arrhiána. One of you will need to do this.”
“I’m too old, son,” Polyxena noted, “and Kiríll and Zakháry, as strong as they are, lack the finesse for this kind of work.”
“Let me,” Sachette pleaded.
“You’ve been here as long as we have,” her brother stated.
“You think that because I’m blind I’m capable of nothing,” the girl replied. “Like father, you see me as damaged. I’m not, Kásha. This is my element. I live in the dark. Always. I have for many years. I’m a night dweller. I see both wonders and horrors there that you can only guess at. My world is my mind. Let me do this. Let me contribute.”
He looked at her in the dim light as if envisaging her for the first time. He took her pale hand in his and kissed it gently.
“Very well, Chette,” he agreed. “You will control the working.”
The group of nine adepts—Arkády, Arrhiána, Sachette, Polyxena, Kiríll, Zakháry, Timotheos, Vydór, and Athanasios—sat in a circle and joined hands. Each centered him- or herself on their psai-ring, entered a trance, blanked out any stray thoughts, and allowed Princess Sachette to weave their energies into one fabric.
She carefully took the individual strands of their lives, and focused them on the floor between them. The swords, which had been laid there side-by-side, began to glow a dull red, pulsating with their synchronized heartbeats. They could hear the “boom, boom, boom” of the blood rushing through their veins, as the princess changed the nature of the metal, allowing their energies to penetrate and smooth the iron within, turning it white, and then melting and shaping the flowing steel. Sachette reached out one bare foot, seemingly stretching it far beyond the bounds of human possibility, and using it like a trowel quietly and quickly to smooth the surface of the white lake, charging it with psychic energy as it began to cool. Then it was finished.
Prince Arkády called all of the prisoners together except those guarding the hallway on Level Six.
“Who’ll be first?” he asked, raising high his torch, peering down at the odd metal construct to determine if his reflection was actually visible.
“I will,” Sachette responded.
And before the prince could say nay, she stepped to the middle of the red-hot working, spit on it to cool the metal to a bright, gray sheen, and then felt with her toes for the leys that she knew were there.
“This is how you must do it!” she exclaimed, flashing an image to them through her psai-ring.
Then she vanished, sinking right through the floor to her destination.
One by one the remaining mages sent the prisoners to private destinations, until the area was clear save only for their own small group.
“Zakháry,” Arkády instructed, “please fetch Captains Kérés and Fösse. Let’s get out of here!”
The prince was back in a moment with their troop.
“I gummed up the lock with mud, highness,” Kérés reported. “It will take them a while to get through.”
“Good work, captain,” Arkády commended. “All right,” he added, “we’re going straight to Tighrishály Palace. Put poor Pál’s body in a cell; we’ll retrieve it later. Now, let’s go.”
They transited out in three groups, leaving the area completely deserted for the prison guards to find.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
“A GREAT MYSTERY TO THE BOTH OF THEM”
But just a few moments later, the artist Zélénÿ walked back through the drawing in his cell, only to find his door wide open and the place unnaturally quiet. Very, very carefully, he peered out into the corridor, looking both ways several times. All of the other units on his block had their doors ajar and were clearly vacant. This disturbed him so mightily that he went back into his cell, closed the door, and retreated to one corner, huddling in the shadows until the guards finally found him the next morning, shining an amber light onto his haggard face. His presence there remained a great mystery to the both of them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, SON”
Queen Polyxena, Prince Arkády, and their small group of supporters gathered in the former’s quarters at Tighrishály Palace in the waning hours of the night. Their plan was quite simple: they would secure the king in his apartment while he still lay sedated in bed, and then quickly assume control of the seat of government. If confronted by the palace guards, they would say they were accompanying the queen as part of her special security detail.
But no one questioned them at that early time of the morning, and everything went perfectly, until they reached the king’s quarters. His bed was empty, and they found no trace of Kipriyán anywhere.
“I thought you said you’d drugged him?” Zakháry asked his mother.
“I did!” she emphasized. “He should have slept till hektê. I just don’t understand it.”
“What’ll we do?” Kiríll pleaded. “He must know something. Maybe Lord Lásky fetched him after all.”
“Stop!” urged Arkády. “We know nothing of where he went or why, and until we do, there’s no use speculating. Kérés, I want you to check Kórynthály and its environs, particularly the royal tombs. Fösse, do you have any means of quietly finding out whether the alarum has been given yet over the prison outbreak?”
“Yes, highness,” the captain replied. “I have a few friends among the local gendarmerie who are discreet enough, but at this hour.... Well, I just don’t know who might be on duty. Not many, I suspect.”
“Do what you can,” the prince ordered.
“Kiríll and Zakháry, you two can still be seen in public without raising any suspicions,” he added. “I’d like you to search the palace with the remaining guards. Did anyone bother to ask the two men just outside the door whether they saw the king leave?”
“I did,” Polyxena replied. “They were awake, or so they claim, and no one left after I.�
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“Then he either had to transit out,” Arkády sighed, “or he blurred their minds. Father Athanasios, I’d like you and the patriarch to check the cathedral, unless you think it’s too risky, holiness.”
“At this hour, none of the brethren will be awake,” Timotheos replied.
“Very well,” Arkády said, “let’s all meet back here in an hour.”
They hurried away to their respective chores, while Arkády, Arrhiána, Sachette, and Polyxena remained behind to plot their strategy.
“Any ideas, ladies?” the prince inquired, collapsing onto a nearby couch.
Polyxena had prepared a pot of tea and a light meal.
“Yes, run away,” Arrhiána snorted. “My old dingy palace at Aszkán is beginning to look better and better to me. Seriously, I’m starting to wonder if Kiríll is right, that father somehow got wind of this.”
“I honestly don’t see how,” their mother replied. “I’ve been extraordinarily careful, and I prepared and administered the drug myself tonight. It should have knocked out a horse. No, I think this is just another sign of his growing mania. I tend to believe that he’s wandering around in Paltyrrha somewhere, perhaps not even understanding what he’s doing.”
“Whatever the reason,” Arkády stated, “we need to find him before daylight. The longer this goes on, the better the chance that Lásky or one of the other hardliners will get to him first. I don’t have to tell you what that would mean.”
He grinned up at both of them.
“For now,” he continued, “I’m about to collapse from exhaustion. Wake me in an hour.”
He immediately went to sleep, his soft, gentle snores indicating the depth of his weariness. Sachette soon joined him.
“Perhaps you’d best lie down, too,” Polyxena said to her eldest daughter.
“I’d love to, mother,” Arrhiána replied, “but I’m just too keyed up to rest.”
And so they talked quietly to one side while waiting for the others to return.
But the Princess Sachette dreamt that she was in the Church of Saint Ióv in Kórynthály, where she had often played as a child, before the incident which had rendered her sightless. She floated over to the black marble tomb of Tighris the Founder, and rubbed the onyx mosaic which covered it.
Suddenly she became aware of a great armored figure standing next to her. She felt no fear, only an overwhelming sense of awe that she should be honored by such a presence.
“Why have you come to see me, daughter?” the man inquired.
“To find my father,” she said.
“And who might that be?” he continued.
“Why, King Kipriyán the Conqueror!” she exclaimed.
“‘The Conqueror,’ eh?” The warrior laughed, long and loud. “A mighty title for a very little man. Yes, I remember him now. The last time he saw me, he was just a boy, and very much afraid. I think he’s still afraid.”
“Why?” Sachette asked.
“Because he guessed the truth,” the king sighed, “and the fear that gripped his heart so tightly then has never left him. And it never will, daughter.”
He coughed into his hands, and from his breath he created a pinwheel which he set spinning above the tomb.
“So does the wheel of fate turn, and turn again,” he intoned, “and grinds mortal men down in its revolutions. Alas, I can do nothing to save him. He has chosen his fate, and it must work through to its ultimate conclusion.”
“And what might that be, grandsire?” she inquired.
He laughed, not unkindly, and took her right hand in his.
“You’re quite inquisitive for a Tighrisha,” the great warrior smiled, “and unusually gifted, even by our standards. Your brother will become the most illustrious example of his race, and your elder sister will shine almost as brightly, setting down the history of our family in a way that separates truth from fiction. But they will pay a fearsome price for their fame, for the wheel has a way of exacting its own toll, and of insisting upon a balance in the end.”
“And little Sachette?” she cried, “what of her life?”
He turned her hand over, and gazed sadly upon her palm.
“I will not lie to you,” the man said, “your time upon this plane is shorter than theirs. What you make of it, what any man or woman makes of it, lies entirely within these hands of yours.”
He took both of her small hands in his large ones, and placed them around either side of the spinning wheel.
“Feel here the pulse of life,” he instructed, “and then choose wisely, my daughter.”
His voice sounded hollow now, and she felt that he was beginning to fade.
“Wait!” the princess said, “I need your help.”
“Look to yourself,” he replied faintly, “and to God Almighty.”
Then he was gone, but the wheel kept spinning before her, and she saw things in her mind that she had never before envisioned, and witnessed great empires coming and going, and their leaders crumbling to dust with them; and she realized then, for the very first time, that her blindness had become as much of an excuse for herself as it was for her relatives who had put her away. She raised her head to the cross shining in its mystical light at the beginning of the end of the old church, and she knew what she should be, and how far short she had fallen. She pledged then to dedicate the rest of her life to Jesus Christ, to become His bride in truth as well as fiction, and to return to the Holy Church all of the peace it had freely and unselfishly given unto her.
She touched again the great wheel of life, and felt therein her father, he whom she had been seeking, and the great Tighris, and King-to-Be Arkády her brother, and Princess Arrhiána her sister, and so many, many others, and she knew, in a way that they would never understand, what their lives had been and would now become. She knew then a great pity for her sire, the King Kyprianos, a pawn in the game of kings, he who had thought himself a king, but had never understood what game was being played. She forgave him the awful things that he had done and would do to her and hers, and prayed most earnestly that God the Father would ultimately agree.
And still the wheel turned. She bent over and kissed the tomb of her ancestor, the black marble cold upon her lips, and felt the sharp twist in her side. It was the beginnings of the consumptive complaint, she knew, taken from the damp depths of Legalsó Vár, but the knowledge did not bother her. She would do what she could do with the time that she had, and then her life would be harvested, along with all the rest.
Poor Arkásha, she thought, the eldest of Papá’s children, yet he will outlast us all. What a terrible fate to live so long!
Then she returned to her parents’ apartments in Tighrishály Palace, gradually awakening from her deep sleep.
Most of the wayfarers had now returned. They had found nothing.
“I know where to find him,” Sachette exclaimed. “I know where he is!”
“Where?” asked Arrhiána.
“The Tower of Glass,” her sister replied.
“What!” Kiríll stated. “Why would he go up there in the middle of the night?”
“He’s looking for something,” Sachette indicated. “He won’t find it. We must go to him soon.”
Kiríll started to say something, but Arrhiána held up her hand.
“What is he looking for, Chette?” her sister asked.
“Courage,” Sachette said, “honor, all of the good things he’s lost. They’ve been taken from him.”
“Who took them?” Arrhiána continued.
“The Dark-Haired Man,” her younger sibling replied. “That’s what Papá thinks. He doesn’t understand that there’s a dark-haired man waiting inside all of us. He’s afraid.”
“I must go to him,” Arkády suddenly interjected.
“Yes, Kásha,” Sachette indicated, “you and no one else, or all will be lost. Take care, my dearest brother.”
He hugged her tightly, and then ran off.
He used his ringflam
e to light his way up the winding stairs of the tower.
When the prince reached the top, he let his fire die and carefully eased himself out onto the open platform, next to the image of the Silver Bird. It glowed faintly in the pale starlight, almost as if it were lit from within. On the railing opposite sat his father, his legs draped over the trailing edge. He was humming something to himself, staring out into space.
“That you, Arkásha?” he stated. “’Course it is. Who else would come traipsing up here after me? True blue Arkády, the fair-haired heir. Tell me, my boy, how did you ever get yourself out of that ‘Hole’ I stuck you in? Never mind, doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. You’ve come to get me, haven’t you, one way or the other? Why don’t you just push me off the edge, and be done with it? At least that would be clean, in a manner of speaking. No messy trials. No uncomfortable executions. No weeping women. God, I hate weepy women.
“You know,” the king continued, “Melanthrix said you’d do something like this, and I just wouldn’t believe him. I said, really I did, that no matter what happened, it wouldn’t be you, that I could trust my eldest boy to do the right thing. Guess I was wrong, eh?”
“What are you doing up here, father?” Arkády asked quietly.
“Doing?” Kipriyán replied. “What do you mean, doing? I came up here to piss all over my beautiful city of Paltyrrha, to show them all that I could do any damn thing I wanted to. And there’s nothing any of you can do about it, either.”
The king jumped up on the ledge, carefully turned around, and then pulled a dirk from his belt. He smiled very sweetly.
“And now I’m going to kill you, son,” he said, jumping down towards the prince.
He stepped forward, one methodical step at a time.
“Just so we know who’s king around here,” he murmured. “I gave you your life in the first place, and now I’m taking it back.”
He abruptly lunged at the prince, who deftly leapt across the stairwell opening, using the Silver Bird for leverage.
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