SHADOW WEAVER

by Claire Merle

  It is the first time I have seen myself in silver glass since I was ten. My face is still heart-shaped, the structure of my cheeks and snub nose bear the same neat contours as before. My skin is sandy, my brown eyes almost black they are so dark. But I do not recognize myself. I am a stranger. The eyes ageless and haunted. I look away.

  Disturbed, I tell myself it is the effect of midnight-black hair pouring down my back, the uncomfortable dress, the sudden shock of seeing myself six years older. I tell myself I am not afraid of the girl in the mirror, but deep in my bowels I am all twisted up. It is as though I do not know myself. And that is almost as unnerving as what awaits me in Lyndonia.

  Twenty

  After miles of vast flat forests, hamlets and villages the Lyndonian fort emerges on the horizon. It stands in the center of a frozen lake, six towers reaching to the leaden sky. During the heart of winter the lake ice would be thick enough to walk across, but now its surface shimmers with cracks in the dawn half-light. And even if you could cross it, the smooth, damp walls would be almost impossible to climb. Besides, the guards in the towers have already spotted our arrival. Apparently, Lyndonia is not a place one enters or exits without being accounted for. I could never have made it inside without the Prince. My stomach twists. When I find Kel, how will I get him out of here?

  We gallop around the shoreline towards a wooden bridge, the fort's only access. Four guards on horseback appear and head us off. Helmets shield their faces. Armour covers their breasts, and longswords hang by their thighs. As they circle us, Tug slips his hand beneath his saddle where he keeps his extra knife. Jakut's shoulders straighten. His expression at once arrogant and aloof.

  “We must ask you to move on,” a guard shouts. “There is sickness in Lyndonia. It is forbidden to enter or leave the fort at this time.”

  “Whose orders do you follow?” the Prince asks.

  “His Royal Highness Prince Roarhil, Duke of Rathesyde.”

  “Perhaps you could tell my uncle his nephew is here.”

  The guard reins his horse to a halt. He drops from his stallion and takes off his helmet. Jakut dismounts and closes the gap between them.

  “Commander Fror?” he says, “is that you?”

  The commander's wide face shifts with recognition and confusion. “Your Royal Highness,” he says bowing. “Prince Jakut, please accept my apologies. It has been a long time.” The other guards follow his lead, dismounting and bowing.

  I watch Jakut with a growing sense of disquiet. The risk he's just taken is dangerous and unnecessary. He has hazarded a guess based on Deadran's description of a man with a hoarse voice, reputed for his giant moustache being the head of the Duke's army.

  “Deadran has not changed so much these ten years,” the Prince says. “You must recognize him.”

  Deadran nods in their general direction.

  “Of course,” Fror answers. Confusion flutters behind his gaze again. I can almost feel the questions pouring through his mind. Not least of all, why the missing heir to the throne has arrived at his uncle's castle with his old, blind tutor, two thugs and a girl.

  “Well,” the Prince says. “I am sure we have taken you by surprise. And what is this sickness you speak of?”

  “The pox, Your Royal Highness,” the commander says.

  “A strange time for such a virus to spread, is it not? Usually, we are safe from such things until mid-summer. Nevertheless, I have had the pox. You must not concern yourself on my account.”

  Jakut returns to his horse and mounts with graceful ease. Fror hesitates. The Prince searches about expectantly.

  “Something wrong, Commander? It has been a long ride. I am hungry and I wish to speak with my uncle.”

  “Your Royal Highness.” Fror bows his head in compliance, but uncertainty shadows his movements as he returns to his horse.

  The commander rides at the head of our group, a guard on each side of us and one at the rear. As our horses clatter across the pier stretching into the lake, there comes a shout from the bell tower. A drawbridge lowers connecting the pier with the fort's archway. Ahead of me, Tug tilts his head to the spiked portcullis, the armed soldiers on the walls and in the towers, and I wonder if he's thinking what I'm thinking: The Duke looks like he's anticipating an imminent attack.

  Beyond the main gate lies a courtyard surrounded by high walls with fist-sized windows. Arched passages lead off in several directions. A bell tower to our left, a large brick building on our right. If an enemy made it across the bridge, they would be surrounded and immobilized at once.

  Stable hands run towards us from the building. We dismount and once they have taken the horses, Fror guides us through a flagstone passageway with thick walls and arched roofs. We cross a second smaller courtyard, weave through a passage inside the wall, and come out in an open square.

  Only a handful of stallholders occupy the fort's main marketplace. Soldiers parade by the water fountains and in front of the barracks. More soldiers than customers. A dozen streets wind off the plaza, arched passages constructed inside the towering walls.

  Commander Fror leads us to a north-facing street. We pass narrow doorways and steep stone stairways. We wind into a small yard, walls so close together you can barely see the sky. A woman drying bed linen with a beater, orders her children inside. They gather smooth pebbles from the steps where they play, and scuttle away through a low door.

  I wonder if Commander Fror's warning of the pox holds some truth. Neither Kel nor I have ever had the virus. We have never been ill with anything. An advantage, the only advantage, of growing up in isolation. My clammy skin prickles with heat and I mock myself for worrying that I could already be showing symptoms.

  The commander leads us into a hall with a high wooden roof and a dining table as long as three men.

  “Please make yourselves comfortable,” he says. “I will send word to the kitchen to bring you breakfast and let the Duke know that you are here.”

  “Thank you.” Jakut drapes himself on a cushioned bench while the rest of us watch Fror leave. Even Deadran listens to the commander as he strides away. Four guards remain outside the hall doors, far enough away for us to talk without being overheard.

  Tug pulls at the collar of his new tunic, which looks wrong with his tattooed beast-face. He catches my eye. I look away and turn my thoughts to Kel. Has he arrived already? Could he be part of the reason they have closed the fort?

  Seven days ago, my brother's eyes showed the faintest signs of settling, the golden glimmer minutely duller. Even so, it could take months for the gray-blue of his irises to swallow all evidence of his Uru Ana blood. His captors will keep him hidden until then, because if rumour got out that the Duke and Duchess had broken the law and purchased a shadow weaver, even they could be hanged for treason against the King. But if Kel is here, Commander Fror knows about it.

  “Find out what you can,” the Prince says. I nod, extending my awareness in the direction the commander was headed. Minds brush into me like spider webs breaking against skin, but none match the angular shape and sawdust feel of the commander's. I continue until I find one moving faster and surer than the rest. I prod the edges, careful not to be sucked in, only wishing to flutter on the fringes where the memories form.

  He marches through a long corridor posted with guards, knocks on a door, enters a round tower room. A table stands in the center with a giant map sprawled across it. Several men discuss lands, positions of soldiers, security. They all defer to a man cloaked in white bear fur. The Duke, Prince Roarhil. He looks up at Commander Fror, blue eyes so penetrating it is as though I am there and he is looking straight at me.

  “Leave us,” he instructs his advisers. Unlike Jakut, the Duke's eminence flows across the room, intimidating, unwavering. This is the difference between a man who knows he is royalty and a man who thinks he is, but who does not remember. The genuine article exposing a counterfeit.

  Once the Commander and the Duke are alone, the Duke's gaze shifts to a conceal
ed corner of the room. A woman perches in a velvet chair. Chestnut curls fall in waves around her shoulders. Her eyes match the ruddy browns of her hair and light up her face. The Commander does not seem surprised by her presence.

  “What is your news?” the Duke asks.

  “Prince Jakut is here, Your Royal Highness.”

  A unmistakable look of fear passes between Duke and lady.

  “He would not be deterred from seeing you by news of the pox.”

  The Duke recovers slowly. The lady rises, swishes to where he props himself against the table, and places her hand over his in a gesture of support.

  “Who travels with him?”

  “Deadran, two odd looking men, and a young woman.”

  “Deadran?”

  “His old tutor, Your Royal Highness.” The Duke turns to the woman. When he speaks it is as much to her as his commander. “His timing, his sudden reappearance… The King's soldiers search for him in the north, yet he shows up here, out of nowhere, without an escort.”

  “We must move the boys to the old tower,” the woman says, her voice soft but firm. “Four men and a lady will be easy to oversee. Assign two guards to each to ensure they do not wander where they must not. It is possible the Prince comes seeking you as an ally. We must act cautiously.”

  “Any word of the King's return from the Etean front?” the Duke asks Commander Fror.

  “Nothing, Your Royal Highness.”

  “This is no coincidence,” the Duke says. “It cannot be. We should get rid of the shadow-weaving boy.”

  The woman's hand tightens over his. “Husband,” she says, “we may still need him. Let us speak with Jakut first, find out what happened to his escort. Perhaps he knows who lies behind his attempted assassination.”

  The Duke nods. “We will receive His Royal Highness in the great hall,” he tells Commander Fror. “Bring them all.”

  Extracting myself from the Commander's mind is like walking head-on into a gale of dust. My eyes blur, struggling to refocus on the dining room.

  A bowl of soup now sits before me, and the Prince is by my side. Tug and Brin eat further down the table, heads lowered, eyes on the guards beyond the hall doors.

  “Your hands are shaking,” Jakut says.

  My thoughts reel, still spinning. The boys in the tower… Get rid of the shadow-weaving boy. I crush my palms in my lap, quelling my agitation. Kel is here! I can barely contain the joy, relief, and fear.

  It is more necessary than ever that the Duke and Duchess believe our story, and perceive Prince Jakut as an ally. He must not give them reason to suspect he is hiding something. Kel's immediate safety depends on it.

  But the Prince is as good as a counterfeit. An impostor. He might have lived eighteen years as heir to the throne, but he remembers none of it. Placed under scrutiny next to the Duke the fraud will be palpable. And they are already afraid of him. Afraid he will discover Kel's presence and know their treachery against the King.

  Jakut studies me. I force my body to relax. “I am tired from the journey,” I say.

  “Did you see anything of use?”

  “They question you turning up here when there has been no word of you since the rumours of your assassination. They do not understand what it means. And they fear whoever tried to assassinate you.”

  He nods, muscles in his face softening. “What of the pox?”

  “They wish to deter anyone from entering or leaving the fort.”

  “That much is obvious. The question is why?”

  “Whoever plots against you, may also be a threat to them.” I draw up my eyes to his. “It is crucial they believe you are here as an ally.”

  He breathes in deeply, holding my gaze. Then he rises and goes to Deadran two seats away. He lays a hand on Deadran's shoulder. The old tutor is the one who convinced him to seek allies and safety here, and now I realize two things. Jakut is relieved to discover his uncle has played no part in the plot against him. And I am not the only one who might fail this test.

  Twenty-One

  The great hall's carnelian red curtains and patterned stone floor swim in my vision. Nerves crush my ability to think. The mental abyss in my head is worse than the first time Pa left me in Blackfoot Forest to fend for Ma and Kel. Then, I barely ate for two weeks. I dreaded bounty hunters finding us, Ma's sickness worsening before Pa returned with medicine, Pa never coming back at all.

  Now I'm seized with the irrational fear that the Duke of Rathesyde will take one look at me, and realize I am no lady. One conversation with Jakut, and he will sense the man before him is not Prince Jakut of Caruca, but somehow an impersonator. Because without his memories, the Prince is pretending to be himself when really he has no idea who he is. In less than an hour, Kel could be taken from the fort and lying in a grave.

  The Prince says something. I concentrate on the sunlight dancing through the windows, warm on my face.

  You've come further than you ever imagined. And you will keep going. I am not a twelve-year-old girl left in a forest to care for an infant and a bedridden mother. Be the girl in the mirror, a voice deep inside whispers. Be strong and unfathomable.

  Beyond the grand hall's far door, eight minds swoop towards us. The Duke and his entourage approach.

  I straighten my spine and hold my head high, eyes fixed ahead. Tug and Brin stand somewhere behind the Prince and I, but I barely notice their presence. The fear I once harboured for them has vanished like a cloud of warm breath on cold air. They should fear me. I am the Uru Ana girl who will soon know her enemy. The Carucans believe if you are of royal bloodline, you have been chosen by their Gods, and will be protected above all others.

  But their Gods are not mine. I will carve my own destiny.

  Jakut is suddenly standing too close again. Mouth, eyes, lips filling my view. I try to ignore him, guarding my attention on the mind-world and the descending threat I will somehow defy. For Kel, for myself, for all Uru Ana.

  “Mirra,” he says, squeezing my arms until I look at him. “You did not choose to be here. I meant it when I said I was sorry for that.” His stance shifts. “I wish to confess something.”

  My eyes dart between the doorway and the Prince. A confession? The Duke is seconds from arriving. What is Jakut trying to do?

  “When I saw you in the forest with Tug—” He swallows, stress lines appearing on his forehead.

  I narrow my eyes. Tug must be right. Jakut is trying to play with my emotions, pretend he’s like the outcast who has no friends so that I'm more malleable to his needs. I'm an idiot for worrying his skills of deception would not get him through this. With the Duke to show him how, the Prince will learn to command a room within minutes. He will soak up his uncle's sense of entitlement and eminence and no one will see the difference.

  Urgency ripples from the Prince as though what he wishes to say cannot wait.

  “Stop,” I press my hand to his chest. “Whatever you're doing, stop.”

  His jaw twitches and twists. “I was jealous.” He smiles unhappily. “Tug has hurt you in unforgivable ways and yet somehow it's as though you've forgiven him. You forgive him, but not me.”

  Jealous of my relationship with Tug? Does he think me so gullible and needy I will fall for this? My jaw clenches and I am about to say what I think of him, when servants throw open the far doors.

  “Prince Roarhil, the Duke of Rathesyde and Elise, the Duchess of Rathesyde.” The announcement carries to every corner of the immense hall. The Duke and Duchess parade in, escorted by the Commander, three soldiers and two ladies-in-waiting.

  I curtsey, forcing Jakut to release his grip and face his aunt and uncle. He has done this on purpose, but I'm too flustered to figure out why. His absurd confession has stirred a longing inside me I cannot fight. I am Uru Ana, privy to men's darkest secrets, witness to the memories that haunt and the memories that comfort. It is my nature to desire a deep sense of connection with those in my company. Besides, anyone who has spent six years with only their parents w
ould be desperate for a friend.

  Eyes on the ground, I remain in a low curtsey as the Duke and Duchess approach. The Duchess curtsies and her husband bows. A fraction of a second later, the Prince returns their greeting.

  “Your Royal Highness,” the Duke says. “Your presence here is a great blessing of Rhag.” Jakut straightens and I count to three in my head as Deadran instructed, before rising. “We are relieved to see you in good health. It has been many moons since we learned fifteen of your escort had been found dead, and you along with five others were missing.”

  Five of his escort missing, this is something I did not know. I raise my head and meet the Duchess’s inquisitive gaze. Commander Fror's memories did not capture her accurately—the radiance of her skin; the auburn highlights in loose curls now pinned in a high chignon. I smile, but a new unease settles within. There is something familiar about her.

  “My injuries left me much weakened before the long-sleep,” Jakut says. I stare at his right hand. The ruby-stoned signet ring he has kept hidden around his neck, now displayed on his middle finger. “I was very fortunate to find good care and good companions to help me heal.”

  His attention shifts and I blink back at him, offer a tentative smile.

  “We have much to discuss,” he continues. “But first, I wish to introduce you to Lady Mirra of the House of Tersil in Delladea. Her father gave me refuge in the Delladean fort over the long-sleep, provided me with excellent healers, and kept my presence a close guarded secret at my demand.”

  I curtsey again.

  “These,” he continues, “are her trusted guards, Brin and Tug. And this is Deadran, my old tutor, and now my steward. We travelled under false names from Delladea for my protection.”

  “We are honored you stay with us,” the Duke responds. I risk another glance at the Duchess. She is looking over my shoulder, skin pasty with shock. “The King's soldiers scour the north for you,” the Duke continues.