The Crystal Heart

by Sophie Masson

  ‘Was any of it true?’ I burst out. ‘Or did you and your friends on the Council invent it all to cover up your real history, just as you covered up the truth about Izolda, so you could justify every foul thing you did?’

  My words clearly rankled him. ‘There was no invention, you fool! It is my real history.’

  Before I could say anything, Izolda broke in. ‘You didn’t know, did you?’ she said, looking him right in the eyes. ‘Not back then. You were brought up as a human, and didn’t know what you truly were. And your friends in Krainos still don’t know.’

  He held her gaze for a moment. ‘The Chief Magus was right about you, Princess,’ he said in such a gentle tone that I was immediately on my guard. It was the Chief Magus’s prophecy that Izolda’s magic powers would awaken and lead to the destruction of Krainos, which had decided the Council to murder her on her eighteenth birthday.

  No, it wasn’t military secrets the Commander was after, and it certainly wasn’t information about an abandoned tunnel system. Naively, we thought we’d been tricking him when, all along, he must have been laughing at our gullibility. No wonder he wasn’t shaken by Izolda’s revelation of his true nature. It didn’t matter if we knew. We weren’t getting out of here alive to tell anyone. We were the walking dead. He had lied to us about the way out, just as he had lied about so many things. Whatever was at the far edge of the Forest, it was certainly not a route to Krainos.

  I had to warn Izolda, yet I could not say anything that might make him suspect that I had divined his true intentions. I had to do just as he had done over so many years, and mask my real thoughts as I tried to work out a way to escape. So I said, in a slow, puzzled tone, ‘I don’t understand, sir. How can a feyin not know he’s a feyin?’

  He turned his head towards me. ‘If a child is taken so young that he has no memory of his former life, if the secret is kept so well that he never even gets an inkling – then, whether he is born feyin or human, it little matters. He becomes what he believes himself to be.’

  Izolda

  Taken. He had been taken, just like me. But at least I had a memory of my former life. I knew who I was. My skin prickled with cold as Kasper asked, ‘Who did this to you, Commander Los?’

  Something flickered in the Commander’s eyes – the shadow of remembered pain, quickly suppressed. He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes, it does.’ Kasper glanced at me, and I understood he was trying to buy us time. ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘A chance meeting, when I was in my twenties, in an Almainian prison. Many years before that I’d fled the Forest after one too many beatings from my father in one of his drunken rages, and wandered the world making a living with my sword. Eventually I found steady employment in Almain as head of the household guard of one of the Grand Duke’s rivals. It was a job that landed me in prison for a stretch of three years when said rival tried to mount a coup against the Grand Duke.’

  I saw the startled expression that flashed briefly across Kasper’s face. This was the truth, I thought. ‘Was it a prisoner who told you, then?’ he said. ‘But how –’

  ‘There are all kinds of prisoners,’ the Commander replied. ‘This one was a witch, an old feyin witch, the first I had ever met. She’d been arrested after a complaint by someone she’d made a spell for that hadn’t worked out as they had hoped. Anyway, she took a liking to me, because, unlike the others, I was not afraid of her. What was there to be afraid of, I thought, in that frail old body whose powers were only small – just a little healing magic and a minor gift of second sight? And then, one day, she told my fortune – and turned my world upside down.’

  I found my voice. ‘She told you that you were a feyin?’

  He liked our questions, I could see that. He had probably never shared this story with anyone. Like Kasper, I knew what it meant, this willingness of his. I knew that he thought he had nothing to lose by telling us, that we would not live to tell the tale. So why not at last unburden himself?

  ‘Yes,’ said the Commander. ‘It was a shock to her, I could see that. But if it was a shock to her, imagine what it was like for me. How could I be a feyin? I knew my own history. My parents – my late mother, my old father – were human, I was sure of that. They had never shown me much in the way of love; indeed, my father had frequently taken out his bad moods on me, but then I was hardly alone in that. And I had certain talents – an eye for strategy, an ability in battle, a talent for sizing people up very quickly. But I had no shred of an idea that they could be anything other than human qualities. No feyin I’d ever heard of had these kinds of gifts. I thought the witch was surely mistaken. But I could not get it out of my mind – it explained so much. So, one day, I broke out of prison and went straight back to my father to make him tell me the truth.’

  I looked at Kasper. His face was still, his glance steady. Like me, he was listening closely, trying to glean something – anything – that might help us.

  ‘The old man told me that he and his wife had found me abandoned at the base of a tree in the heart of the Forest,’ the Commander snarled, ‘and that it was his wife who had wanted me. He would have left me there to starve, because he could see I was a feyin. I knew he was lying, I knew he and his wife must have stolen me. But he kept saying that I had been left to die in the Forest, because that was what a feyin did when they did not want a child. He told me that he’d tried to beat the alien nature out of me, but that I was irredeemable, and now that his wife was dead he wanted nothing to do with me. I granted him his wish, and struck him down and burned his house of lies down to the ground.

  ‘I walked for days till I reached the White City and enlisted in the army. On my long journey I had decided that, though I had learned this thing about myself, it belonged in the past, along with the heap of ashes in the Forest. Whatever I had been born, I was that thing no longer. I had chosen my own path, and I vowed to myself that I would never look back. I rose through the ranks despite my lack of noble birth until, finally, the chance came for me to truly prove myself. When war broke out with Night and we –’

  ‘No. No. I cannot believe this, sir.’ The words burst out from Kasper.

  The Commander stopped. ‘What do you mean, boy?’

  ‘Sir, I cannot believe that you of all people can truly be feyin.’

  ‘Then you are a dimwit indeed,’ the Commander snapped. ‘I am telling you the truth.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Why should I lie to you now?’

  Kasper

  He must truly have thought me a dimwit, if that was his argument. The liar of liars claiming truth on his side! ‘Sir, it is not you I speak of, but the old witch. How did you know she was telling the truth about you being a feyin?’

  He stared at me. ‘She was,’ he said flatly.

  ‘But you said she saw it in your hand, sir. I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

  ‘Just because a fool like you, Kasper Bator, from the thick-headed back of beyond hasn’t heard of something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,’ he snarled.

  ‘But how does it work, sir? Does she look in the lines of your hand, like an ordinary fortune-teller? Is that it? Do feyin have different types or numbers of lines in their hands than humans?’

  ‘No, you idiot. They do not. She had a special feya talisman. It showed her the truth, written in my hand.’

  ‘Oh! That’s why you wear gloves, sir,’ I said, with a diffident air. ‘So no one else would ever know. They are special gloves, are they not? Designed to ward off magic like the Tower?’

  The Commander looked at me sharply, then shrugged. ‘Yes. I had them specially made.’ He spoke freely, almost carelessly. It was as if it didn’t matter to him, what we learned, and the meaning of that indifference chilled my blood. But I could not allow myself to be distracted by any fear.

  ‘Then, sir, I wish we could see, with our own eyes, this proof. For only then would I truly believe. But it cannot be done.’

  ‘Why not, you fool?’

  ‘We
have no proper talisman, sir. Only the crystal heart, and it is in pieces. It is useless for such a task, for it is only designed to ward off goblins.’

  The Commander laughed. ‘Of course that’s not all it does! And even in pieces it will show you what you want. Give them here, and I’ll show you.’ Impatiently, he held out his hand.

  Izolda looked at me, anxious. I nodded. ‘Give it to him, my love.’

  I could feel her other hand trembling in mine, and knew she was deeply uneasy. She trusted me to have some reason for what I was doing. But I was not certain of myself. Was it instinct or despair that had brought the notion to my mind that the crystal would somehow aid us? Not because it was a feyin talisman, but because it had once been a gift from the Prince to his wife. Love is stronger than death, the Prince of Night had said, and perhaps that’s what gave the crystal its power. The eternal love of a young feyin prince for a human; the protective love of a mother reaching beyond the grave; the belief of a true lover who never stopped believing in her man, even when his own faith had become faint. It could not work by itself – it had to be linked to love. But how it might work for us now, I had no idea.

  We watched as the Commander slowly peeled off one of his gloves. His naked hand was big and strong, with long fingers. The pale skin bore the trace of old scars. Clasping the twin crystal halves between thumb and forefinger, the Commander brought them carefully together. As soon as they touched, a tiny tongue of blue flame leaped from one to the other.

  ‘Only at a true-blood feyin’s touch will that blue light appear,’ said the Commander. ‘That’s what the old woman told me.’

  As he spoke, the blue flame rose higher, stronger; then, as if drawn by a magnet, the two halves fused so that the crystal heart was whole again.

  ‘And that is …’ the Commander began, when all at once the blue flame flickered, wavered and died. At the same time, the lights went out, and we were plunged into complete darkness.

  Izolda

  It was a darkness so profound it was a presence, not an absence – a prowling, patient, hungry presence. I could hear the Commander’s curses and Kasper’s yells as they fought each other for control of the carriage. I groped on my hands and knees for the crystal, but when I found it, it lay dead and cold in my hand. No light appeared, not even a flicker.

  Thought fled as my throat was suddenly grabbed, the Commander’s fingers tight around my neck. Kasper came to my aid, but he was being pressed hard and I could sense him weakening. I had to do something – anything. Swinging out wildly, with the crystal still in my hand, I heard a crack and knew that I had connected with a skull. I gasped. ‘Kasper, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes. We’ve got to get out now,’ Kasper panted, and then came the crunch of a lever and the hiss of the door opening. I could still see nothing as the darkness was even thicker out than in. It was only by touch that we found our way to the opening and fell out.

  We heard a groan behind us. The Commander had only been momentarily stunned, and he’d come after us, of that there was no doubt. Safe in his carriage, he would hunt us like animals in the Forest – a forest that already I could hear awakening, stirring all around us in the darkness. It was not our enemy, but it was not our friend, either.

  As we stumbled across the uneven ground, holding on to each other, disturbing thoughts chased themselves across my mind. There was no ‘secret’ way out. The abyss was no legend. The Commander had not come this way to steal me from my father’s palace ten years ago. He had come the same way he’d entered this time – through the Lake, undetected. He was a feyin who had spent the greater part of his life masking what he really was. He had learned how to hide in plain sight.

  Yes, he had always intended for us to die. He still held all the cards, for whether we perished in the abyss as he’d planned, or in the grip of the Forest, what did it matter to him? We would be dead either way. And it would be Night itself that would have killed us. If I died here, in the grip of those ancient forces in the Forest or the abyss, it would be as though the whole feyin race had been reduced to nothing, as though Night had destroyed its own future. No need for any human to kill my father then – he would be dead on the inside.

  That would be a great pleasure for the Commander, an irony to savour. He hated my country more than anything. I wondered whether that was not just because Night was the enemy of Krainos, but because, in its feyin pride, it was a symbol of everything he could have been and chose not to be when he turned from his feyin nature to become a leader of men.

  I was trying to hold my breath as well as my tongue. There were predators out there – the raised hair on the back of my neck told me so. The delayed dimming of the lights would have disturbed the Forest’s usual patterns. And like wolves troubled by a blood moon, or bears awakening from hibernation, the Forest’s predatory instincts were not quite as sharp as they might be. But it wouldn’t last, I was sure of that.

  At that moment, the darkness behind us lightened a little. I felt Kasper’s hand tighten in mine. We did not need words to know what the other was thinking: the Commander had found the vehicle’s searchlight. Around us, the Forest had frozen at the reappearance of light. In the feeble dimness, we could see the vague shapes of a big grove of stone trees not far away.

  Kasper drew me close, and I could feel his heart racing against mine. ‘We’ll go up a tree,’ he whispered. ‘He won’t expect that. Ready?’

  ‘Yes,’ I whispered back.

  We hurriedly made our way to the closest stalagmite of reasonable size, but it proved too hard to climb. We tried another and another, but each time we failed. It was as though the Forest itself was playing with us, luring us deeper. Inwardly, I was reciting every prayer I know, begging the Lady to save us, begging the Angels to help us, begging for a miracle. But I heard no answer echo in my heart. All I could hear was the Forest. I could hear its stony breath, faintly on the air. Its voice, hissing in thin whispers. Not words. It was alive and waiting patiently for the light to fade. Once it did, we would be …

  Whispers. There they were again, and this time –

  ‘What was that?’ whispered Kasper.

  ‘Sounded like …’

  Again. And this time, it was clearer. ‘Who’s there?’

  A voice – a real voice, anxious and familiar, coming from … the stone tree we had just tried to climb. I peered into the darkness. Was someone behind it, trying to hide like we were?

  ‘Glarya,’ I whispered, ‘is that you?’

  ‘Yes! Yes. Oh, dear Princess – wait. Wait.’

  All at once the trunk of the tree shuddered and the hard stone shifted aside like a curtain, showing an opening in the stalagmite itself. For a heartbeat I feared that the Forest was trying to trick us into its maw, but then candlelight appeared, and Glarya’s anxious voice whispered, ‘Come in, quick!’

  Kasper

  It was like a miracle, like waking from a nightmare, the sudden change from the fear of the hunted creature to warmth and light and shelter at last. It was a very strange kind of shelter. As the panel closed behind us, I saw we were in a candle-lit, simply furnished room. In appearance, it was something like ground floor in a tower. Only, there were no other floors. On one of the walls, wooden pegs reached all the way to the top, jutting out at intervals like the rungs of a ladder. For a moment, I was puzzled. What was this place? And then I remembered what Izolda had said.

  ‘This is the watchtower!’ I exclaimed. ‘The watchtower at the end of the world.’

  ‘Quite so,’ said the young feyin woman whom Izolda had called Glarya. She’d been swiftly joined by Amadey and an old feyin couple that Glarya introduced as her uncle and aunt. We greeted each other with gladness and amazement.

  ‘I didn’t know you were coming here,’ said Izolda, smiling and hugging Glarya.

  ‘Neither did we,’ said Glarya, smiling back. ‘But when we could not find my uncle and aunt at their house, someone told us they had been rostered to work here. Every Outland family takes turns t
o work here.’

  ‘It wasn’t our usual shift,’ said Glarya’s uncle, ‘but the family that was supposed to do it had taken ill, so we took over.’

  ‘So we came along,’ Glarya rushed in. ‘We told them what had happened, and they agreed to send a message to the Erlking on the longvoice.’

  ‘The longvoice?’ I said.

  Amadey pointed to a square crystal box mounted on the wall. It had glittering opal wiring, and under it, a small shelf where rested a sheaf of very fine translucent sheets of some papery material, and a long metal pen. ‘It’s an Outlander invention that only works here, in this very place, apparently. And it works like a telegraph, I believe. Except it turns writing into voice. Don’t ask me how – it’s amazing.’

  ‘It’s only supposed to be used in dire emergencies,’ said Glarya, cheerfully. ‘We figured this was a dire emergency and, luckily for us, Auntie and Uncle agreed.’

  ‘And then we had to wait for an answer, which took its time coming,’ added Amadey. ‘By then it was too late for us to consider going back through the Forest, so we decided to spend the night here with Glarya’s family.’

  ‘All right,’ said Glarya’s aunt, firmly, ‘explanations can wait a moment. Please, my lady, please, young sir – sit down. Eat.’ She ushered us to the table, where a simple but satisfying meal was laid out in front of us. There was fresh bread, cheese and strong tea brewed in a samovar that looked almost identical to my family’s one back in Fish-the-Moon, and just as cheerfully battered. I had not realised how hungry and thirsty I was until that moment.

  After a few minutes of silence while we munched away, Izolda said, ‘You say there was an answer. From the Erlking, I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Glarya. ‘It said the Erlking and his son were on their way to Night with the Grand Duke of Almain –’