by Claire Merle
I am cold, shivering, which doesn't help the pain. My throat is raw and dry. My mouth bloated. I lie on the steel cage bars, unable to find any position even mildly comfortable and think of my father. He used to always tell me I could do anything I set my mind to. He used to tell me I was strong. I wonder what he would say if he saw me now.
Footsteps ring down the tunnel. Fear thumps through me. I reach towards the mind that approaches, and the wild battering of my heart softens.
The soldiers who dragged me here, and who have been left by Commander Linx to keep guard, stand to attention. I pull myself like an injured crab across the bars towards the door.
“Halt!” a soldier says. In the gloom, the white apron worn by the court maid stands out against the gray blouse and skirt. Calmi wears her hair in a handkerchief, pulled back from her face. Her head is lowered as she manages to curtsey and balance a tray. But if I recognize her, so will the soldiers.
“Who has sent you?”
Calmi's eyes rise and shift across to my prison. I watch breathless, desperate to talk to her, to find out whether Tug is still alive. Whether the Prince has a plan to free him.
“I have been sent from the kitchens with soup for the prisoner,” she says coolly, defying them to question her, even when their postures stiffen, taking in her distinct blue eyes.
“Commander Linx made it clear the prisoner was an imposter and a traitor.”
“Then why isn't she in the dungeons with the other prisoners? Why is she in a cage?”
“You'll have to put your questions to Commander Linx.”
“Were you posted in the Royal Court last summer?”
“I was, My Lady,” the second soldier says, stepping forward. He has recognized her.
“Then you know the treachery Commander Linx is capable of towards the Prince. Do you choose to question your sovereign's will now?”
“But Lord Strik—”
“What about my grandfather?”
“Five minutes,” the second soldier says. He must outrank the first because the man clenches his jaw and steps aside. The second soldier slips a key in the lock and turns. My pulse pounds against my neck, as Calmi moves into my prison and is locked in with me.
“I have been sent to look at your injuries,” she says, loud enough for the men to hear, but the urgency in her eyes says she also brings news. I lean on her and she helps me to the wooden palette at the back of the giant cage.
With our backs turned to the men she slips me a necklace. At first I do not understand, then I notice the pus-liquid in the round glass pendant: Nocturne Melody. I am so happy the tears of pain in my eyes turn to ones of joy.
“Is Tug alive?” I whisper.
She nods, helping me down on the pallet. I moan, but if Tug lives, the pain is bearable. Lady Calmi takes a small sachet of herbs from the pocket of her apron and pours them into the steaming teapot.
“Sixe has been drawing endless towers for the carrier pigeons,” she says. “I think he wanted you to know that when Tug sent the carrier pigeon that was shot down, he sent two others that were not. His capture was a necessary decoy to ensure two of the birds lived.”
Now I really am crying. My head spins and my chest froths with giddy bubbles. Tug got a message to the Duchess! She will be informed of the imminent attack on Lyndonia. She will realize Kel serves her no purpose. Keeping Kel safe and under her protection is more advantageous than breaking her word.
Lady Calmi stirs the herbs in the tea and pours a cup. “Drink this,” she says. The veil of indifference has fallen and I'm surprised to read concern in her gaze. I do not want the Prince hearing about the state I'm in and worrying when he needs all his wits about him.
“I didn't think you'd be so fast to take up the offer of poisoning me,” I say, taking the cup, trying to lighten the mood.
“You are a rival to be reckoned with,” Lady Calmi quips, playing along. “It is arnica,” she adds. “Now drink.”
“Will the Prince free Tug?”
“We are working on it. Grandfather thinks Tug is a mercenary who has posed as your guardian while you postured as a Lady to get close to the Prince. For now he believes the Duke and Duchess are behind the ruse.”
“When he questions me he will learn the truth.”
“After I leave you, take the Nocturne Melody. There is enough to knock you out for six or seven hours. This will give us time to get your friend out.”
My throat grows tight. Hearing her speak of Tug as a friend, I am hit by the realization that I am no longer alone. I am imprisoned in the Ruby Palace, I may die here, I am about to face a man who plunges souls into darkness, but there are others, not only Ma, Pa and Kel, rooting for me.
I never imagined my closest friends would be a mercenary and a prince, or that my life would be in danger so often because of them, but in different ways, Tug and Jakut have bridged the enormous chasm that locked me out of the world.
One of the guards rattles on the door. “That is enough, Lady Calmi.”
“When your grandfather questions me,” I whisper, “I will not be able to resist the power of his voice. He will discover I am Uru Ana and the Prince has lost his memories.” There is no point trying to hide anything from Lady Calmi. Anything the Prince has decided not to tell her, she would have been told by Sixe.
Lady Calmi retrieves an ointment and some cloth. “I need to clean her wound,” she calls to the soldier. She rolls up the sleeve of my shirt until she reaches the arrow wound. “The Prince's memories are coming back,” she continues in a low voice. “When Grandfather discovers the Prince took the mist-berries, he will see it as an act of remorse and weakness. It will confirm his belief that the Prince is feeble, troubled, all the easier to manipulate. And when he understands the purpose for your presence, he will lose interest in you.”
The ointment stings my flesh. I suck in my breath. “But if he discovers Jakut performed the cleansing, he will realize the Prince is unreliable, capable of changing his mind. Jakut will never have the opportunity to kill him. He will become your grandfather's puppet, if it has not happened already.”
“I came to the Ruby Court last spring. Before then I lived in my grandfather's house for thirteen years. I am not his puppet. And do not forget, as I told you before, the Prince is different.”
“Why?”
Calmi dabs the wound with the cloth, then pulls down my sleeve. “It is safer for him if you do not know,” she says, standing. My stomach dives to the floor and panic floods me. She is going to leave and the next person in here with me will be Lord Strik. Just the thought of the mind-world swallowed up with his black hole, sucking everything into hellish darkness, terrifies me.
“But what if Lord Strik questions whether the Prince is loyal to him? What if I do something that gives away the Prince's true intent?”
“If Grandfather harbours doubt concerning the Prince's ignoble ambitions, doubt enough to ask you such questions, then it is over for us all, and we have already lost.”
“What will your grandfather do when he discovers I am Uru Ana?”
“He assumes people are weak. Your people in particular have a reputation for passivity. He will not consider you a threat. He will assign you to the next tundra expedition to work in the mines, or as a slave in his household.”
The key turns in the prison latch. Lady Calmi steps across the metal rungs to the door. At the bars she pauses a moment, then without looking back, vanishes into the tunnel.
The cage rattles as the soldier locks it. I pop the cork from the round glass bottle on the end of the necklace, fingers shaking. My body hums, anticipating the pain relief. I think of Tug confiscating the Nocturne Melody when we reached the Red City.
If I take it, I will be oblivious to all goings on in the palace for the next seven hours. Much could happen before I wake. Much could go wrong and I will be powerless to see anything, or warn anyone. But whom am I fooling? I am already powerless.
I raise the cloudy yellow liquid to my lips. The rev
olting smell holds a sweet promise of oblivion. I tell myself that Tug would understand. As long as I am unconscious Strik will believe Tug is of no interest. This is his chance to escape.
I hold up the round glass as though I'm raising a champagne flute in a toast. To Tug! Then I drink until it is all gone, and sink down, welcoming the fog on my mind's horizon.
Forty-Seven
I am standing in the palace throne room on the empty dais. Sunlight streams through the enormous windows behind the thrones. A hushed beauty fills the hall and for a moment I feel at peace.
I turn slowly wondering how I got here. Where is the Prince? As though my questions summon the darkness, the room turns cold and gray. Ice crystals form in the dampness I now notice trickling down the walls. Water drips from the domed ceiling and freezes. Stalactites form at an unnatural speed, their icy points resembling the teeth of a huge beast, its mouth widening, teeth extending to bite me. I stretch out my hands to fumble through the murk. Voices whisper. Wailing, crying, begging me to help them.
I wake gasping and trembling. My face is freezing. I am lying in a pool of water. Shirt, hair, trousers, every inch of me is soaked through.
“That's enough,” a voice says. A man with a scar stands over me. Fingers clenched around a jug. Huge pitchers line up across an uneven floor. I struggle to assemble the fragments of what I see into a whole picture.
Energy thunders in the mind-world, as though I am standing behind the torrential curtain of a waterfall.
The harder I try to grasp what is going on, the worse the thundering energy becomes, pulling me to the edge of the waterfall, dragging me down the crashing flow into the vortex.
Pain slices through me as the soldier with the scar drags me by one arm over metal bumps. Commander Linx. His name is Commander Linx. In an instant I regain my senses.
The commander releases me and I fall into a wet heap at his feet. He steps out of the cage.
“Leave it open,” Strik says. The agony in my ribs and arm relents and I am spinning, losing balance. Falling.
He strides into a great shimmering hall, walls of ice, floor of ice, thrones of ice. Eight thrones set in a circle, seats facing outwards. Silver carpets like the rays of an argent sun extend from each one. A middle-aged woman with long white-blonde hair sits opposite the door he has entered by.
“Every ten moons,” she says, her voice raised to travel the hall, “the children of royal blood are tested and selected to govern the eight kingdoms of Rudeash. Every test is designed to draw out the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. When you are in the test, you will forget everything else. Your mind will believe what you see and hear is real. From this moment on, everything I tell you will become your reality without question.” The woman's face softens. “The decision of those present here today is final. Good luck, my son.”
He gazes at her, confident, back straight, head high. My sense of my own life starts slipping away. As though her words condition my thoughts as well as his.
The ice cracks and melts, the kings and queens shimmer, growing translucent until they are a mirage of color, until they are gone.
In the place of the ice hall is a frozen white ocean and on the horizon an army. The army wears the Carucan uniform, and bears the Carucan ruby red flags. They ride enormous horses covered in long, thick hair.
The woman, his mother, stands beside him, her shimmering silver and blue dress dancing in the wind. He hands her the looking glass that magnifies his vision. She takes a moment, then says,
“There are too many of them. The shrouders are not strong enough.” She glances over her shoulder and he follows her gaze. Behind them, in the sun's low rays stands a magnificent ice-city, towers sculpted into spiral points, domes of misty blue and green swirls, enormous bridges that resemble wet glass. “They have broken the veil. They see everything.”
“It's not possible,” he says, shocked.
A gust of wind whips up the ice, cutting it into shards and throwing them in my face. I cry out. Blood drips where I’ve been cut.
I raise my hand and shudder as I regain my wits. I'm lying on my back in the cage. It is not blood oozing down my cheeks, but water. Blue eyes in a deeply lined face watch me. I am not him. This is not Rudeash. I am not Strik.
I pant gasping for air. A part of me is still trapped in his mind. On my inner-eye the Carucan army approaches, demanding my attention. I mentally wrestle against the drag of his inner-world.
“You will answer my question,” he says. The energy emanating from him surges. He is using the voice, and it strengthens his force, pushing me back towards the edge of the waterfall—the black rush. “Why were you travelling with the Prince?” A deafening noise drowns his words.
I'm suddenly surrounded by a deep mist. A snowstorm blankets the world. And then a crack opens in the haze revealing an icy spire.
“The veil,” I murmur.
“You are in command,” the young Strik’s mother says. “The army will reach the edge of the city in less than two hours. It is up to you to decide how we will stop them and protect our home and our people.”
“Send for the shrouders. I will give them my orders as soon as I return.”
“Where are you going?”
“I will take the fastest sleigh and be back in an hour.”
“If you go out there to speak with them alone, you could be killed.”
“It is my decision. I have been elected for this. And now I will do what must be done.”
Time jumps.
He is on a sleigh, travelling at high speeds across an endless white landscape. Wolves the color of nuts and ashes pull him along, their bodies large and underfed. Frost forms on the lines of his cheeks. The ground rolls and bumps. The specks of black and red on the horizon take the form of figures on horseback. A wolf at the back of the train starts yapping and gnashing his teeth. I lean forward to see if the harness is caught. His giant head turns and snaps at my hand. Teeth like metal skewers plunge through my flesh.
I howl in agony. Instinct makes me try to draw my injured hand to my chest, but my wrist catches on metal. I kick my legs. The chains around them rattle. My hands and feet are locked down.
“The bones of your little finger have been smashed to pieces,” Strik says. I flail around, shaking with fear, wondering where in the name of the Gods I am. “Which leaves nine more fingers and ten toes. Enough, I hope, to hold your attention. Are you listening now?”
“Yes!” I scream. The crashing energy of his mind is muffled. He is right. Physical pain will keep my spirit clinging to my body rather than getting sucked into the black hole. I must tell him why I was travelling with Prince Jakut. I must tell him because... I pillage the corners of my muddled brain, throwing everything out as I search for the reason.
“Tell me why you travelled with the Prince and Duke Roarhil.”
“The Prince needed my sight.” The sounds from my mouth seem broken. When I stop to catch my breath, I hear myself moaning.
“Go on,” he says. A compulsion writhes in me to spill everything. Every single minutest detail from the last three weeks. I struggle to tame the desire.
“A mercenary took me from Blackfoot Forest to the Hybourg. The Prince had woken from the long-sleep without his memories. He needed an Uru Ana to find out why he was in the north and why someone tried to kill him. He paid gold for me and brought me here to discover his assassin.”
Energy gushes and swells. “A shadow weaver,” Strik says. “If you are a slave, why did he risk his life to save you?”
I try to sit up. The chains rattle and keep me tethered. The stabbing agony dims enough for the dark energy of Strik's mind to roar in my head again, pulling me over the edge.
From out of the blizzard rides a man dressed in heavy bear furs, sword dazzling with jewels, lumps of ice in the curls of his shoulder-length hair. His highest-ranked commanders flank his sides.
“Why have you come?” Strik says, voice booming in the emptiness.
“We come in p
eace to explore new lands.”
I am back inside the test the Rudeashan elders gave Strik as a young man.
“An army does not explore, it conquers. But you cannot conquer,” he continues using the voice, “when the men riding at your side wait for the first opportunity to take your place.”
Distrust clouds the king's expression. He looks at his second-in-command. Confusion and fear sweep over the young commander's face.
A smile pulls at Strik's mouth. His gamble has paid off.
“Brother, he lies to divide us. Why listen to a man whom you have never met before?”
An eruption of pain severs me from Strik's mind. I am screaming, thrashing, biting at the air. The agony in my foot holds me on the cusp of blackness, the twilight of consciousness. I yank against my chains. Through strands of tangled hair and watering eyes, I glimpse Commander Linx at the foot of the metal platform, a hammer in his rigid arm, shock and horror twisting his face. Strik's voice cuts through my wailing, the chains clanging, Commander Linx retching.
“It seems we've reached this young commander's threshold for violence,” he muses. He stands near the head of the platform, almost close enough for me to spit in his face. “He could not watch the blow he administered and by the looks of it has smashed up most of your foot. So we had better move this along swiftly. Why did Prince Jakut save you during the bird-men attack?”
“I don't know.” Pain shapes my words, disfiguring them, making them barely recognisable.
“Tell me the truth.”
“He needed me,” I sob.
“And?”
The agony has me trembling and crying. The terror of more unbearable pain is overwhelming. But Strik no longer uses the voice. No longer drives deep inside me where I cannot resist.
“Arrogant!” I hiss. “The Prince's arrogance makes him think he's invincible.”
“Is he in love with you?”
“No.” I stop straining against my chains, close my eyes, drift in the sea of agony.