“Mama!” said Zen, surprised into the childish appellation. He was in his usual seat, but he wasn’t reading.
“I thought you were–”
“I was. What happened?”
“The passage has vanished,” said Dai, biting her thumb. “It was just here, and now it’s gone.”
“Did Kako do it, or was it the Keep itself?”
“The Keep,” said Suki worriedly. “It’s closed up completely.”
“Where is Kako?”
Dai looked away. “We think she’s in the seventh Circle.”
“Is the dragon with her?” asked the plump gentleman.
“Of course he is, dear,” said Kako’s mother.
“Probably,” said Zen at the same time. “She’s got the shard, after all.”
“Will that be enough to keep him near her?”
Kako’s mother smiled, as if involuntarily. “That, amongst other things.”
Kako’s father said: “Other things? What other things? What have I missed?”
Dai laughed suddenly. “Never you mind, Father! Do you think you can open another passage?”
“Not a chance,” he said. “How Kako did it in the first place, I haven’t a clue. We’ll have to wait until it opens again.”
Miyoko, her lower lip sticking out, sat down by the curtains that had once contained a passage to the Enchanted Keep but now hid only solid brick. Zen, after a moment’s indecision, did the same. Dai, sighing, dragged a chair closer and threw herself into it, and Suki leant gracefully against the wall. Kako’s mother slid her arms around her husband’s waist in return, allowed her head to sink on his shoulder…and they waited.
The Sixth Circle is ended
The Seventh Circle
Prince Akish looked almost unbearably self-satisfied. Rafiq didn’t think he’d ever wanted to hit the man so much in all his life. The thought worried him a little. His more violent thoughts had always been distinctly dragonish, whether he was in human or dragon form: this was the first time his impulses had been human.
He felt Kako’s fingers in the crook of his elbow, and was reminded that perhaps it wasn’t exactly the first time his impulses had been entirely human. He smiled down at her, but Kako wasn’t looking at him. She was gazing around the room with a particularly blank face. That also troubled him slightly, since Kako with a blank face was a worried Kako. He followed her eyes around the room and discovered exactly what it was that was worrying her: there was no Door Out. She had said as much in one of the earlier Circles, but Rafiq hadn’t realised exactly how trapped that would make him feel. Prince Akish must not have noticed, because his smugness only seemed to expand.
“What is the manner of this challenge?” the prince demanded. “Wench! Cease your goggling! What is the manner of this challenge?”
“I don’t know,” Kako said, her hand slipping away from Rafiq’s arm. Against the brilliant white of the room her algae-soiled trousers looked even dirtier, and her cobweb-frosted head-dress looked particularly shabby.
“I’ve told you in every Circle so far that the seventh is unknown except to the Keep. I have no help to give you, and there’s no Door Out. You’re on your own.”
Prince Akish’s eyes seemed to glow with feverish excitement. “Very well! One last challenge! I shall be equal to it!”
All three of them gazed around in silence. It was a vast white room: white tiled floor, white walls, white ceiling. There were no windows and no doors—not even the one by which they had ostensibly entered—and the walls were all of a uniform height and length. The only difference to the walls was in the one directly opposite them, which had a wide, deep alcove in it. It was well lit, and bare except for a low, round piece of furniture that could have been a small footstool but didn’t quite seem to be.
The prince was already striding forward to examine it, and when he dropped to one knee to run his fingers over the surface of it there was silence for a good few moments.
Then he said: “Lizard. Look at this.”
Rafiq, strangely reluctant to approach the thing, did as he was told. There were criss-crossing straight lines chipped into the footstool, or low table—whatever it was—deep, certain, and vicious.
“That must have taken a bit of effort,” said Kako, who had wandered along behind them. She slipped between the two of them and crouched to examine it. “It’s marble too, isn’t it?”
“Indeed,” said Prince Akish. “Most curious. We will examine the room.”
“I don’t think there’s much to examine,” Kako said.
Rafiq had to agree. But for the alcove, there wasn’t anything to be seen. He walked around the room anyway, one hand trailing along the wall with the hopeful suspicion that a trick of the light hid a passage out in all the white that surrounded them. He found nothing: the walls were simply walls, the corners were corners, and the floor proved only to be the same marble tile as the rest of the Keep.
Akish was tapping at the tiles with his sabatons—checking for hollowed out tiles?—and Kako, who seemed to be doing something very strongly magical with one hand, very carefully walked so as to keep what she was doing hidden from the others. She was so very careful about it, in fact, that Rafiq began to wonder if she knew the way out of the seventh Circle too.
He considered the idea, observing Kako in his peripheral, but ultimately dismissed it. She had been genuinely concerned about entering the seventh Circle, unlike the other Circles. She had obviously been convinced that it was dangerous, and had done everything she could to convince Prince Akish to take a Door Out before they got to it. She had been very clear, moreover, about the fact that she didn’t know how to complete the seventh Circle. Rafiq didn’t think she’d been lying: he’d begun to know her quite well, and though she might have some idea of what needed to be done now, he was certain she hadn’t known when they entered the room. Still, it seemed like a sensible idea to keep his eye on her.
It was fortunate that Kako happened to be on the alcove side of the room when something red and shiny began to appear beside the round marble block. It meant that Rafiq, who was still watching her, had a reasonably good view of what happened. It happened very quickly: a slight gleam of metallic red to the air beside the marble block that clanked in a horribly familiar way.
“Who goes there!” said Akish at once, wheeling toward Kako and the disturbance.
Kako gave a muffled squeak and sprang away from the impending threat, her magic-entwined hand flashing forward defensively. By then the red glint had become a tall, visored knight in shiny red armour, whose plumed helmet was only dwarfed by the battle-axe he carried.
Akish stared up at the strapping knight. “What in the–!”
Kako, putting her hand back into her pocket, said thoughtfully: “That looks awfully sharp, doesn’t it?” Her eyes were flitting from the axe to the block, and Rafiq, who had seen his fair share of beheadings, felt a creeping sense of foreboding steal over him.
Still, the knight didn’t at first seem inclined to actually do anything. He looked very impressive, the massive bulk of him braced in his alcove at a battle-ready stance and his plume high and fierce, but for a few minutes he did nothing but stand there.
Akish said: “What happens now?” rather impatiently, but as he did so the knight moved.
His blood-red sabatons screeched against the marble tiles as he swivelled to face the marble block and raised his axe in a smooth clinking of metal against metal.
“A forfeit is paid!” said a voice from the depths of the knight’s visor. It sounded rather metallic itself.
“What forfeit?” Akish demanded. “We haven’t done anything!”
The knight didn’t reply. It simply brought its axe down in a sweeping arc of scarlet upon the black chopping block. The sound of blade meeting marble rang almost painfully through the room, a note of high, perilous, music; and the axe sprang back up.
“Ow!” said Kako, covering her ears.
The knight looked around him once while the sound
of his blade still sang around the room, and began to disappear.
“Stop him!” shouted Akish.
Rafiq watched the knight disappear completely, and said: “How?”
“Blister it, how should I know, you son of a lizard! You’ve let him get away!”
“I don’t think any of us could have stopped him,” said Kako. “I’m not sure that I really want him here, if it comes to that.”
Prince Akish made a frustrated noise and flung himself away across the room. Kako met Rafiq’s eyes, amusement mingling with caution, and gave her half shrug. A moment later, she said: “Is it just my ears, or is that clanging still going?”
“It’s still going,” said Prince Akish sourly. He had one hand against the far wall, his fingers tapping. “It’s got into the walls.”
“Into the walls? What do you mean?”
“They’re ringing,” the prince said. “Put your hand against one. You’ll feel it.”
Rafiq cautiously laid a palm on the wall closest to him, and the suggestion of sound in the air merged with the ringing in the wall. That was curious, but curiouser still was the fact that as he was pushing his palm against the wall, the wall seemed to be pushing back.
“Oh!” said Kako. She was just a little further down from him, and she was clutching her hand to her chest as though the wall had bitten her. “It moved! Rafiq–!”
“I felt it,” he said grimly. As a matter of fact, the wall was still moving. Rafiq took a step back, straightened his arm, and laid the palm of it flat against the wall once again. Kako, who had come closer in curiosity, watched as his arm was forced into a bend and until the wall encroached almost to Rafiq’s toes.
“How far by your count?” called Akish.
Rafiq met Kako’s worried eyes. “Perhaps two and a half yards in total.”
“I concur. This wall also moved by approximately two and a half yards. Did the others move?”
“The northern wall moved, but the southern didn’t,” said Kako. “The Keep obviously doesn’t want to obstruct the Knight.”
“Ominous,” observed Akish. “We’re at the top of the hour: I expect the pantomime will happen again at the next hour.”
Kako, her eyes very wide and thoughtful, said: “That seems sensible. If the walls are moving at a rate of two and a half yards from every side, every hour, how long will it be before we’re crushed?”
Akish paced the room swiftly, counting aloud, and at length met them at their wall on a count of one hundred yards.
“That gives us a little less than twenty hours to find a way out,” said Kako. She blew her cheeks out and gazed around the room. “Nineteen, to be safe.”
“There must be another way out,” Prince Akish muttered. “Spread out! Find it! We’ll come together again for the hour.”
Rafiq, who had been puzzling over the room in the privacy of his own thoughts, said: “Why the knight?”
Kako’s eyes flicked up at him and away.
Akish said: “What do you mean, lizard?”
“The walls are drawing in,” Rafiq said slowly. “If we don’t find our way out we’ll be crushed.”
Akish shifted impatiently. “As we observed. What of it?”
“Then why the knight?”
“Why anything in this accursed place?” said Akish, but he looked thoughtful. “However, if we’re bound to die by one peril, why introduce a second?”
Rafiq gave a slight nod. It was the same question that had been exercising his mind.
“Turn your mind to finding a way out of this scrape,” Prince Akish said. “I will think on the matter myself.”
He was lucky, Rafiq thought with a slight, grim smile, that Akish hadn’t spoken his remark as a Command. The prince hadn’t yet been so dictatorial as to Command Rafiq’s thoughts, and it would have been remarkably short-sighted to begin now, when the problem to be solved required as much thought as possible.
Rafiq thought he might already have something of an idea of what needed to be done to finish the seventh Circle. It wasn’t an idea that appealed to him, however, and he was quite certain that it would have even less appeal for him when it occurred to Prince Akish. Far better not to openly speculate on it just yet: better to wait until they’d exhausted every other option before bringing out his theory.
Kako remained nearby, following quietly and unobtrusively in the background; not quite with him but not by herself, either. She didn’t seem to be particularly concerned with trying to find a way out of the Circle: Rafiq saw her eyes flick most often away to where the red knight had appeared. Her spell-webbed hand, which had been in her pocket, was now flexing open and closed by her side as the spell grew.
Rafiq opened his mouth to ask: “What is that?” but by then Prince Akish was calling impatiently across the room at them.
“Wench! Put yourself to it! We have no time for your vagaries!”
Kako gave slight sniff of laughter, though her eyes remained solemn. It was the least sarcastic and the most serious Rafiq had ever seen her. Still, she seemed to turn her mind more thoroughly upon the problem of finding a way out, her spell apparently forgotten and unused in her hand.
She was diligently running her hands over the corner opposite the alcove when the prince said sharply: “Hark!” and the red knight winked into being. He went through the same routine as he had the first time; silence, the screeching of metal on tile as he turned, and then the metallic call of: “A forfeit has been paid!” before the ringing blade of the axe set the walls humming again.
Kako, who had already put her hands over her ears, said: “Hey!” in surprise. Rafiq and Prince Akish turned hastily to face her, and found that the walls had begun to move already. Not only had they begun to move sooner than the first time, they had begun to move faster: Kako was unexpectedly and unceremoniously being shoved further into the middle of the room. This time, moreover, the distance they moved was nearly four yards.
She said: “That throws our calculations out a bit, don’t you think? What now?”
They shared a moment of speechlessness that was as complete as it was hopeless. Then Rafiq said: “The Keep is trying to speed it along. Why hurry us?”
He hoped—oh how he hoped!—that Akish wasn’t following the chain of events to its logical end. But Prince Akish, his eyes dark and hard, said: “The matter is perfectly clear. One of us will have to die for the others.”
One of us not being Akish, Rafiq was certain. The thought sprang to his mind of the constructed story in the sixth Circle and he looked around again, hoping to see the sickening duality of sight that indicated the Keep had made copies of them all again. His sight remained horribly clear: they weren’t dealing with constructs. It was the real Kako who could die, the real Akish who would Burden Rafiq either to put Kako’s head or his own on the block, and the real Rafiq who would have to do or die.
Rafiq was still in the sick throes of processing his thoughts when Prince Akish hit Kako at the base of her skull with the hilt of his dagger. She gasped a little and crumpled where she stood, a pile of rather dirty, creased pink silk.
Akish said coldly: “There. You’re Burdened. Place her on the block.”
The Burden didn’t fall. Rafiq, who had started grimly across the room with the determination of placing his own head on the block before the Burden could call him back to do what he couldn’t bear to do, first doubted, then fiercely rejoiced. The Keep was interfering again. He couldn’t turn dragon, either; which was unfortunate. But when he strode back across the room to Akish and Kako, the prince was so sure he was returning to do as he was Commanded that he didn’t attempt to move. Secure in the safety of Rafiq’s Thrall—the certainty that Rafiq couldn’t harm him in any way—he didn’t move when Rafiq stalked closer still. He only had time to look surprised when Rafiq tore his sword from its scabbard and thrust him through the throat.
Akish fell as swiftly but not as quietly as Kako, the gurgle of blood in his throat and lungs. The blade slid free of his throat as he dropped, a
nd Rafiq let it fall beside him on the tiles, silently watching the blood spread. He would have preferred to kill Akish as a dragon; but whether by blade or tooth, the prince was dead and Kako would be safe. She would make it through the seventh Circle, and once beyond it there would be no Akish to menace either her or the princess.
It seemed to take a long time for the knight to appear again. Rafiq sank to his knees beside the chopping block at first, wanting to be ready for the blade when it appeared, but when moments stretched into minutes he settled back on his haunches. Eventually he sat on the block itself with a worried glance toward Kako, who could come around at any minute, and—if her past behaviour was any indicator—could only be depended upon to try and talk him out of it. That, he thought, suddenly chilled, or to try and take his place.
He spent his last few minutes wondering if he should tie Kako up; and then, having come to the decision that he should, in worrying that she wouldn’t be able to untie herself when the seventh Circle ended and she regained consciousness. He was on the point of rising from the block to tie her up anyway, when the red knight materialised again in a horribly familiar clanking of armour. With a thin, cold sweat across his forehead and suddenly cold hands, Rafiq slipped sideways from the block until he was kneeling again. He heard the motion of the knight’s upward stroke in deliberate, steady clanging of metal against metal, and laid his head on the block, his gaze on Kako. He was conscious of a desire that she would wake up, if only to be able to see her curious sideways smile again, but the desire was short-lived. He didn’t want her last memory of him to be his head rolling across the marble floors.
The knight said in its grating metallic voice: “A forfeit is paid.”
Rafiq closed his eyes briefly, but it seemed more pleasant to die with his eyes on Kako than with them closed, so he opened them again.
Metal shifted and whirred above his head, a bloody shadow shifting swiftly across the marble floor, and Rafiq’s life thread was cut in a single, sharp stroke.
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 23