Dark Mist Rising (Crossing Over)

by Anna Kendall

  Tarek son of Solek son of Taryn, and now consort to the Princess Stephanie, stood grimly,. Never had two people looked less like a bridal couple. A frightened little girl and a savage warrior clad in feathers and fur, claiming what had been promised to his father.

  All at once a cry ran through the crowd, and this time no one, neither nobles nor common folk, tried to stifle it. Another of the boy singers walked alone across the throne room. On a huge pillow he carried two crowns. One was a simple silver circlet. The other was the Crown of Glory.

  Fashioned of heavy beaten gold, the Crown of Glory was set with jewels of every hue, a rainbow of the colours of every queen who had ruled The Queendom. Emeralds, sapphires, rubies, amethysts, diamonds. Onyx, beryl, opal, topaz. Jewels I could not name, neither the stone nor the colour. The Crown of Glory had been set on the head of every new queen on her thirty-fifth birthday, and thereafter worn only upon state occasions. I had last seen it on Queen Caroline's beautiful dark hair.

  Standing beside her bridegroom, Stephanie began to cry. The Young Chieftain said something sharp, and her sobs stopped. But silent tears continued to roll down her thin cheeks.

  A woman broke from the crowd and ran towards the dais. Not a lady-in-waiting, not a courtier, not an adviser, not anyone of the nobility, who should have had their princess's welfare as their first duty. This was a stout middle-aged woman in white apron and stiff little cap with white lappets: a nursemaid. Before she could reach the steps, two savage soldiers caught her and dragged her behind the dais.

  ‘Nana!' the princess cried.

  One of the ladies-in-waiting spoke loudly, clearly, in defiance of whatever threats had been made earlier: ‘It is all right, Your Grace. They will not hurt your nana. I will see to her now. Just stay a little while longer, my dear.' The lady walked with defiant dignity after the two savages. She did not run. She did not look at the Young Chieftain. But her purple satin skirts rustled and her head was held high, without trembling at whatever retaliation might come.

  Well done, Lady Margaret.

  There was no retaliation. The Young Chieftain made a slight gesture with his hand, and no soldier seized Lady Margaret. All this while the boy singer with the two crowns had continued to advance across the throne room. Now he reached the steps of the dais and knelt. When he rose again, I saw under the red dye his strong resemblance to the Young Chieftain. This was a young brother or cousin, a prince in his own right, chosen to crown Stephanie in lieu of the lords of The Queendom who should have done it. And still the crowd in the throne room did not protest. What punishment had they been threatened with if this premature crowning of their little princess did not proceed a-right? Whatever it was, only Lady Margaret had defied it, and she in only a small way.

  Tears still rolled down Stephanie's face. Her skinny little neck did not look strong enough to support the Crown of Glory. The red-dyed prince carried the crown up the steps. The first singer burst again into that wordless, weirdly beautiful song of victory. Princess Stephanie bent her neck.

  And the savage prince placed the Crown of Glory upon the head of the Young Chieftain.

  A moment of long terrible silence while people struggled to believe what they had just seen. And then the crowd broke.

  Courtiers reached for the swords that were not by their sides. Ladies screamed insults. The common folk broke ranks and rushed at the dais, murder in their eyes. The savages were ready for them, and the soldiers were armed. From the left side of the room they sprang towards the attackers. The Young Chieftain drew the knife at his belt.

  I saw that knife plunge into the heart of the gardener who reached the dais first. I saw a savage's cudgel come down on the head of a courtier fighting to get to the princess. I saw blood on the throne room floor. Then I saw no more because a savage soldier dragged me behind the dais and through the same door through which Stephanie's nursemaid had been taken. I struggled and shouted, but I was bound and one-handed, and he handled me as easily as if it were I who were six years old. The door was yanked closed behind us and I heard no more of the revolt in the throne room. A revolt that I, and everyone else, knew would be futile.

  The soldier opened another door, thrust me inside and slammed the door shut, locking it behind him. I was in a small guardroom, now stripped of all weapons, with one barred window set high in the wall, and with me were the nursemaid and Lady Margaret.

  29

  Despite the dim light and the two years gone by, Lady Margaret recognized me. ‘Roger the queen's fool.'

  ‘No. Not any more.' As if that mattered now!

  ‘Roger the avenger then.' She smiled thinly, as if knowing that her words could be taken two ways. By bringing back the Blue army from the Country of the Dead, I had broken Solek's power over the palace and avenged The Queendom. But that Blue army had also killed the Greens allied with Solek, and then the Blues had proved only ‘magic illusions' that had vanished. Everyone in the palace had been related to soldiers in one army or the other. So I had killed them all, avenging myself on Queen Caroline even as I rescued Maggie. You could view events either way, but most people cannot hold in their minds two views at once. Lady Margaret was one of the few who could. I saw in her eyes that I was, all at the same time, a rescuer, a murderer, a deceiver, a witch and still and always the queen's fool.

  The nurse, whom I did not know and who did not know me, cried, ‘What of the princess? What is happening? Did they dare crown her?'

  ‘No. They crowned the Young Chieftain.'

  Both women gaped at me. The nursemaid gasped,

  ‘With the Crown of Glory?'

  ‘Yes.'

  The nurse began to curse, a string of foul oaths more to be expected from a bargeman than from a maid of nursery. Lady Margaret stood motionless for a long moment. Then, always practical, she drew tiny embroid-ery scissors from the pocket of her gown and sawed laboriously through my bonds, pausing only a second when she first saw the stump of my right wrist.

  ‘Roger, what else can you tell us?'

  ‘When the savages crowned the Young Chieftain, the palace folk rioted. There was ... there was bloodshed. I don't know how bad it became. But it cannot last long. None of our people are armed.'

  ‘They are not your people,' Lady Margaret said tartly.

  ‘You forfeited that right, I think.'

  ‘No,' I said, ‘I did not. And you, you must remember, helped me do what I did.'

  ‘I did not know your intent. And I will not dispute with you now, when both of us are probably going to die. But, Nana,' she said, turning to the nurse, ‘I think you will be safe. The Young Chieftain has no women with him except those naked whores, and he will not want to be bothered with the care of a child on the long journey over the mountains. He will need you.'

  This was much more information than I had had until now. The savages were going to take a princess royal away from The Queendom? No princess or queen ever left her own queendom except once, during her betrothal journey, to inspect the lands brought to her by her consort. But no one could expect a six-year-old to inspect anything intelligently. Nor did I expect the Young Chieftain to return Princess Stephanie – now Queen Stephanie, if the riot in the throne room had ceased long enough to crown her – to The Queendom. She would be a prisoner in that far western land that none of us had ever seen.

  The nurse said hotly, ‘If he dares to harm her—'

  ‘Surely he will not,' Lady Margaret said.

  The nurse, in her fear, turned on the lady-in-waiting. ‘You cannot know that!'

  ‘I know he has gone to great trouble to wed her, and that keeping her well is the only thing that will hold The Queendom for him.'

  ‘True, true,' the nurse said distractedly. ‘My poor motherless lamb! And her so often unwell, and plagued by nightmares!' She began to pound both fists on the door.

  ‘Stop that,' Lady Margaret said in a tone I remembered well. The nurse stopped pounding. Lady Margaret, older and far less foolish than had been the rest of Queen Caroline's lad
ies, was usually obeyed. She was plain and severe-looking, and no courtier had chosen her to wife. One of them should have, for she had dignity and strength. Looking at her settle her skirts on a three-legged stool and fold her hands in her lap while still looking alertly around in case there should be anything useful to do, I was reminded all at once of Maggie. What was Maggie doing now? How would she learn of my death?

  All of my fear for my own life, a river diverted by concern for the little princess, rushed back in a torrent. My belly clenched and my throat closed, making each breath an ordeal.

  No one spoke again, although the nurse muttered to herself. We were not left alone for long. The door flew open and two savages entered. The first seized the women, one in each hand, and dragged them out.

  Lady Margaret looked back at me. ‘Goodbye, Roger,' she said. Both of us knew she meant more than a common farewell.

  ‘Goodbye, my lady.'

  ‘Whatever you say under pain does not matter. It cannot diminish you.'

  There was no time to answer; the soldier hurried her down the corridor. Lady Margaret had done what Mother Chilton had urged me to do: think of another. As my captor yanked me along a different corridor, not bothering to retie my wrists, I tried to think of others, in order to not think of what awaited me.

  Maggie stirring stew on the hearth at Applebridge, her fair curls falling over her forehead ...

  Jee blowing on a willow whistle ...

  Tom triumphantly bringing back a rabbit for dinner ...

  None of it helped. Fear infested me like lice, and my whole body and mind itched with it.

  The savage led me to the stable courtyard. Here, even though it was full dark, all was activity. The army's stables were outside the city, but the royal hunters and coach horses and courier mounts were kept here, along with coaches and wagons. Torches flickered in their holders on the courtyard walls. Savage soldiers shouted orders. Palace grooms and stable boys leaped to obey. Horses, catching the tension, pawed the cobblestones and whinnied. Three men pulled a wagon from its housing.

  Whatever revolt had happened in the throne room must have been quickly put down. How many had been injured or killed? I would never know.

  My captor pulled me into a coach house, at the back of which stood a small oak door, not quite the height of a man. He took a torch from the wall, unlocked the door, pulled me through and locked the door again. We stood on a narrow wooden landing at the top of a flight of stone steps. In my months at the palace I had never learned the location of the dungeons. Here they were.

  ‘Dungeons' – such a grand name for such squalor. At the bottom of the steps a short corridor had been dug into the earth. Its rough walls, fortified with wooden beams, stretched no more than twenty feet. The floor of hard-packed dirt felt uneven under my still-wet boots. On each side of the corridor two wooden doors with barred windows were set into the earthen walls, and one more door at the corridor's end. Between the windows torch holders, now empty, were fastened to the walls. No one called out in response to our torchlight; no one screamed in agony. The place resembled nothing so much as an empty grave.

  But it was not empty. The savage unlocked one of the wooden doors. A stench hit me: unwashed bodies and slop buckets. The soldier thrust me into the darkness within. He hesitated. Then he closed the door but the light did not go away. He had left the torch to burn, for as long as it lasted, in the holder outside the door.

  ‘Who are ye, that ye merit such consideration from a savage?' a voice asked, not gently.

  It took a moment for my eyes to accustom themselves to light so dim that beyond the circle of torchlight only shapes were visible. The shapes resolved themselves into four men, three sitting with their backs against the far wall and one prone on the floor.

  ‘Speak! Who are you?' said a much different voice. It robbed me of my own. I knew that voice.

  ‘Come into yer own light then,' growled the first man. ‘Why be ye unchained?'

  I stayed with my back to the door, keeping my face shadowed from the small wavering circle of light from the torch outside the cell. ‘I am ... am Peter Forest.'

  ‘I know no Peter Forest.'

  But the second man, he with the accent of nobility, jerked in surprise. ‘Roger? Roger the fool? '

  My eyes had adjusted enough to see that they were all chained to the wall. It was that which gave me courage enough to answer. ‘Yes, Lord Robert. Roger the fool.'

  The first man lunged in his chains. ‘It was ye who led the Blue army against us! The magic illusions that killed all those Greens! Yer a traitor, a murderer, a witch!' If he could have reached me, he would have torn me apart. But my death would have to wait for the savages. Their chains kept all three men in place, with only a limited range of movement.

  Lord Robert Hopewell, lover of the queen whom my Blues had burned, said nothing. But I could feel his hatred flaming into me, palpable as the torch outside the barred door. Carefully I edged to the corner furthest from the three men, where the prone figure lay face down. He was also in chains and did not move.

  The first man continued to curse me. I said nothing, my eyes adjusting further to the gloom. The man beside Lord Robert, closest of the three to my corner, seemed young. Slightly built, he was dressed in the riding clothes of a courier, although the garments were not purple. But it was impossible in the darkness and the courier's dirt, to see what colour. His stare at me did not carry the rage of the other two men.

  Eventually the curses of the first man wore themselves out. Shortly after, to my surprise, both the first man and Lord Robert began to snore.

  ‘They sleep often. They have been here a long time, and they are weak,' said the courier in a hoarse whisper. He had a slight accent, not of the south. ‘Are you really Roger Kilbourne?'

  I said, ‘Who are you?'

  ‘David Arlen, courier to Her Highness Queen Isabelle.'

  Isabelle, ruler of the queendom to the north, bride to Queen Caroline's brother Rupert. Isabelle, who had failed to come to her sister-in-law's aid against the savage army. Once again I stood on the roof of the tower beside Queen Caroline as she scanned the horizon, day after day, for help that did not come.

  The courier spoke again, and now I recognized the tone in his voice: panic. He was one of those who babbled to keep hysteria at bay. Cecilia had been the same.

  ‘I was captured while bringing a message from Her Grace – a promise to Princess Stephanie – I mean to Lord Robert of course on Her Grace's behalf – a promise of help – the savages – they caught me two days ago – Lord Robert's groom says they use torture here – the savages – although no, of course those instruments were Queen Caroline's—'

  Those instruments. I said, ‘You have seen them?'

  ‘Yes – I was briefly in the room across the corridor – before they brought me here – and I saw—'

  ‘Don't tell me!'

  ‘Hush! Keep your voice down; you will wake Lord Robert!'

  He was right. I didn't want to wake Lord Robert. This jittery lad, obviously chosen for courier because his slight body could ride fast and hard, was my only source of information. I needed to keep him talking. ‘How long have you been here?'

  ‘I'm not sure. It's hard to tell in the dark.'

  ‘But Lord Robert was here first?'

  ‘Oh yes, as soon as the palace was seized.' Being asked questions seemed to steady him. In the corridor the torch sputtered.

  ‘And you are fed?'

  ‘Yes, and the slop bucket is emptied twice a day, and the water fresh. We have not been that ill-treated. But in that other room—'

  ‘Don't think of it. Who is the man with Lord Robert?'

  ‘A groom. He struck a savage soldier.'

  ‘And this man lying here? Can he usually sleep like this through anything?'

  ‘He's not asleep,' David Arlen said. ‘He is unconscious, and has been for a day now, although he bears no injury. He was put here with all his wits, and then suddenly it came over him like that. The groom
is an ignorant countryman. He called him some name but I can't remember it. The instruments in that other room—'

  ‘What name?' I did not care what the unconscious man was called, but the young courier had begun to shudder, long racking spasms that shook his whole body. I must keep him talking, if only to distract him. ‘What is his name?'

  ‘I don't remember!'

  ‘Try,' I said gently. Think of others.

  ‘It wasn't a name but a word. Not even really a word.'

  ‘What was it?'

  He said, ‘ Hisaf.'

  30

  At first I thought I hadn't heard right, that I couldn't have heard right. Stupidly I said, ‘Oh ... oh ... what?'

  ‘ Hisaf,' the courier repeated. ‘Oh, what does it matter? We are all going to die in horrible pain! I heard that they—'

  But I had stopped listening, had stopped caring about the courier's fear. Laying a rough hand on the prone man's shoulder, I shook him. He did not wake. I shook harder. Nothing.

  I rolled him over on his back. Every muscle was slack, his body an unresisting weight, his eyes closed. He could have been in a hisaf 's trance, but he could just as easily have been unconscious, or dead. By the dim light of the flickering torch in the corridor I could not see his features clearly. With my one good hand I seized his left leg and awkwardly dragged him as far into the light as his chains and my strength would permit.

  ‘Hey!' the courier said. ‘What are you doing?'

  The light was still not good, but it was enough. When I pulled back the man's eyelids, his unseeing eyes were green. And his face was mine.

  No. It was not possible.

  The man was clean-shaven except for a day's light stubble, while I had a wild beard from weeks in the wilderness. I was thinner in the cheeks, and my hair and eyes were brown, like my mother's. But the man's face was an older version of the one I saw in the mirror, when I had a mirror, and the heavy unconsciousness that had ‘suddenly came over him like that' could certainly be a hisaf 's trance. Was I looking at my father?