by Amy Little
“What had taken you so long?”
“This slight inconvenience,” said Zak. He looked uncomfortable. “Another attack on your father’s castle. Your father isn’t well.”
“Is he still at the baron’s castle?”
“No. He sought to return.”
“Did Cara return?”
“They were attacked by the snakes on the way,” said Zak, wiping the sweat off his forehead. “As I told him they would. I sent a messenger to tell them to stay put, but they would not listen.”
“Where are they?” exclaimed Annika, unable to contain her agitation.
“Your father is… recovering… in his chamber. Annika, wait…. Annika!”
But having heard the bad news in Zak’s intonation, Annika was already running through the blood stained courtyard towards the hall and up to the solar where her father’s study was.
The door to her father’s chamber was guarded by two men. One of them was Thiel. He still looked weak, his face deathly white, but he bowed low to Annika and pressed one fist to his chest, “My princess. My life is yours.”
“What are you doing here?” said Annika. For a moment, she felt buoyed by seeing a familiar face, but also concerned. “You ought to rest!”
Thiel shook his head. “There is no time. Your healing worked a miracle, and we are down on men. I owe you my life. The least I could do was help protect your father, the Councilor.”
“Is he wounded?” asked Annika, dreading the response.
“I do not think even your arts can save him,” Thiel quietly said. “I am sorry, my princess.”
“Oh,” air deflated out of Annika as she heard those words.
Inside the room, a group of men were gathered by her father’s bed.
At a glance, Annika recognized the castellan, her father’s physician, and the captain of the guard, but then her gaze was drawn to her father’s face.
He lay on a low, wooden bed that would not have been out of place in a new recruits’ barracks. He always had simple tastes.
Annika squatted beside the bed.
Her father was covered up to his chin in a scratchy, brown blanket. His eyes were closed. With his open mouth, he was straining to breathe.
Annika closed her eyes and reached for what resources of power she had left. She explored the tiredness and the pain, that radiated from him.
He had sustained a chest wound. It missed his heart, but the cut was deep and his lungs were slowly filling with blood.
When she opened her eyes she realized her face was drenched in tears.
The castellan leaned across and whispered, “Can he be helped?”
The wound was not capable of being healed by any conventional method. It took her a little while to understand what the castellan meant. Then she slowly shook her head. The wound was not fresh. She would have needed more power than she possessed to have healed it.
The castellan nodded gravely. “The Councilor’s physician did not hold out much hope,” he whispered softly.
Her father’s lips moved concertedly. “Annika,” he croaked. “It is you.”
“Yes, father,” said Annika. She could barely stop herself from braking down into tears of frustration and sadness.
“Be strong,” he said. “Are we alone?”
The others withdrew, with the castellan leaving last with a lingering glance as though he wanted to stay and hear what secrets would be discussed.
Annika waited for them to close the door. “We are now, father.”
Her father’s voice came in spurts. “It pains me to leave you now… without a father… you had no mother for most of your life… and your sister....”
Her heart skipped a beat when she thought about Cara. Did anything happen to her as well? But she said, instead, “You will be fine, father. You will see.”
Her father’s eyes were opened now, and fastened on hers. “Seek Cara. If she lives, help her.”
Annika held her breath, before exclaiming, “What had happened to her?”
“Your sister…” Then her father’s voice rasped and petered out as he mouthed something. Despite bringing her head to his lips, Annika could not make out any words.
He was delirious. Then, slowly, his voice slowed, as did his breath, which then stopped.
Annika held his hand. When she let it go, his skin was already growing cold.
Annika kissed him on the forehead and fled the room before tears could overtake her.
The physician was sitting in the corridor outside on a low settee, a few steps away from Thiel. The old man threw occasional, wary glances towards the soldier, between resting his head on his hands. When he lifted his head, the bags under his eyes, his long, unkempt hair, and his wrinkled mantle look made it look like he had not slept in days.
Annika’s words struggled to come out. “He is gone.”
“No one could have saved him. Such is the will of the seven suns. I am sorry.”
“My sister,” asked Annika, feverishly grasping at the remaining loose thread. “Cara. What’s happened to her?”
The physician shrugged his shoulders heavily.
Annika seized him by the hand. “Where is she?”
The old man placed his wrinkled hand on top of hers. It trembled slightly. “It was on the return trip. We decided to make a break from the baron’s stronghold, but the snakes knew we were coming. In a forest a mile out from the city gates they waited for us. Reinforcements sent by Prince Zak of the Wolf House saved us. They met us and helped us. We rode as fast as we could and somehow managed to the city, but there were more snakes inside the gates. Cara was still there with us, I recall, but just after the city gates, I looked around, and she was gone. I don’t know what happened to her. No one saw her.” He stopped speaking for a few moments, then repeated again, “No one saw her.”
“I have spoken to the soldiers who returned,” Thiel gravely spoke from beside the door. “Some stayed on after others rode to the Tiger castle with the Councilor. They searched for Princess Cara. They came back not long ago. They could not find her.”
Could not find, rang the word in Annika’s ears. In a haze, she stumbled to the courtyard.
The fighting had continued there. It seemed to have become more intense, or at least more frenzied, as the fighters flung themselves at one another with blood stained swords while the cries of the wounded and the dying provided a mournful background dirge.
She looked for Zak among the living and the dying. The sight of the suffering around her made her heart clench and nausea rise up in her throat. One of the fallen men, young and handsome, dragged himself after her for a few meters for some reason, the bleeding stumps of his severed legs trailing behind him.
There was nothing she could do for this man. It was as much to flee his pain as it was to seek Zak elsewhere that she fled the courtyard.
Chapter Ten
The corridors seemed deathly quiet after the commotion outside. A mouse scurried in the corner. It was dark, and the corridors smelled of wax tallow.
Annika looked after the mouse with a lack of comprehension. It was difficult to adjust her bearings. She let her feet take her instinctively up one level, finding herself the door to her father’s study.
Inside the study, the castellan sat behind her father’s desk. He was shuffling the thick stack of papers. His head looked more grey in the faint light sifting in from the open window. Fire burned brightly in the fireplace. Snowflakes drifted in, forming a lightly-glossed puddle next to the desk.
Annika closed the window shutters and lit the candelabra. This gave her the time to gather her racing thoughts. Then she directed herself to the castellan. “We need to send out a party to look for Cara.”
The castellan bowed her head. “We have, Princess, on four occasions. Regrettably, none have returned. The city is in turmoil.”
“Then what do you intend to do? Sit here and do nothing?” Annika hotly returned.
“She is gone, my Princess,” the old man said. “It saddens
me to tell you this on the day that you came into possession of your rightful inheritance of this House.”
“Where is Prince Zak,” asked Annika, not knowing who else to turn to, and hating herself for this.
“I do not think the Prince can do any more than what he has done. He has fought valiantly for this House as though it were his. But even his strength and the men who follow him have not been enough. He had few men left last I saw him by the gates, repelling yet another attack.”
“He said he had advised against the trip to the Emperor’s castle,” said Annika, forcing herself to think through the events. “Why did my father go?”
“He had no choice,” the old man replied, placing the stacks of papers into the desk drawers, and locking them. “The Emperor summoned him, and to refuse such summons as you know is not possible.”
“What did the Emperor want?”
The old man paused with his rheumy eyes staring at Annika. “Land. The Emperor discussed the strip of land that the House of the Tiger historically holds in the river delta. Given the lack of blood ties to the House, he suggested that the land be transferred to him.”
“My father never would have! Baroness Hale is our relation, besides, so there’s the blood link!”
“The Emperor seemed certain that the Baroness did not have long to live,” said the old man. “So your father sent a messenger to her as soon as we left the Emperor’s palace. I hope the messenger fared better than we did – the first ambush, a test of our strength and no more, came as soon as we were a mile out of the palace gates.”
“What about the Emperor’s escort that every visiting house gets?” asked Annika. She tried to beat the chill that she felt on hearing the remark about Baroness Hale. Although she felt little love for the woman, she would have been sad to lose her, and especially in this way.
“They melted away as soon as the attackers came. Some said,” the castellan added, “that they joined the attackers. But I did not see that myself. Just as I did not see what had happened to your sister, Princess. Forgive me.”
Annika shook her head stubbornly. “I will not give up on her that easily. I know she will pull through. I can feel it.”
The castellan bowed his head again. “They say you have great powers, Princess. Such powers as none in our House have had in thousands of years. That is momentous, if it is so. All I can hope is that your powers can save this House. This is yours now.” With those words, he gave her the key with which he had locked her father’s desk. “Queen Annika. Our Queen. This House has a new Queen!”
The castellan’s words followed her out of the room and into the hallways beyond.
Here and there, the floors and the walls were stained with dried blood.
She moved as though in a haze. It seemed to her as though an unknown power animated her limbs.
In a way, she was now free. No father, her sister gone, no ties…. Her thought swirled like so many flakes of snow.
In the courtyard, men with hard faces dragged bodies into piles and poured spirits onto them, before setting the piles alight.
The smoke made Annika retch.
“They burn the bodies to keep away those green and black birds,” said a soft voice next to her. It was one of the kitchen maids she saw earlier. “This is no place for my lady.”
“There is no other place for me, now,” Annika replied.
“You are the last of the Tiger princesses,” the woman replied. She bowed to Annika. “It is now your place to rule us all.”
Annika left the courtyard as quickly as she could. She wandered the crooked halls, almost hoping for the snakes to come upon her. How could it be that her sister and father were no longer there? For the years she was in exile, she railed at their absence, but she always had the thought that she would rejoin them and things would return to normal. She felt now an emptiness, and stealing into that emptiness, rage.
Something of what the maid had said must have occurred to the others in the castle. The few soldiers and grounds men and kitchen staff and maids that she had chanced upon all bowed to her with unexpected formality.
Annika sought to escape them all.
In a haze, she looked for the way to her room, going through the castle’s corridors. She knew she had missed the turns that she had to take. Yet she could not make herself focus.
In the guest wings, that were away from most of the fighting, the vague sounds of voices, footsteps, and activity, had all ceased.
In the silence, she walked with the torch she had picked up along the way high up in her hands – she did not dare use the golden dagger in case she chanced on any of the castle’s staff.
What was she going to do? What was she running from, and to? Annika did not know. All she knew is that she felt a void, an emptiness, and the only way she could hope to fill it was by finding her bed, and curling up in it, with a blanket over herself. She walked in a cloud of thoughts and feelings, of exhaustion that permeated every part of her. Certain that she would eventually stumble on her room, she barely looked up from the ground, staggering on, and on, only stopping when she had reached it.
Annika stared at the door to her room. It was opened. She wondered dully at what was keeping the door ajar.
It was a foot, encased in a black leather boot.
Following the outline of the body, Annika gasped when she realized who it was.
Zak lay sprawled on the ground. His doublet was covered in blood. He was breathing through his mouth, in rasping, quick breaths.
Annika dragged him inside and then with all her strength heaved him onto the bed, before closing the door and bolting it shut.
She somehow found the strength to light the fire and close the shutters, before returning to him.
He had a wound in his arm. He kept his right arm over it, but even so, some of the blood oozed out.
He must have been bleeding for some time, Annika thought with concern. She closed her eyes and reached for what scraps of power she had left.
The power danced just out of her reach.
She tried to grasp it, holding on to Zak with one hand, and reaching with the hand in which she still held the dagger… when the dagger suddenly surged with unexpected strength.
Power flowed through it.
Annika could feel the power rising up, from far below the castle, through the tunnels beneath and then up and into the room, the dagger, and then finally through it to her. With the power she held, she wove the intricate patterns that she herself did not know she could weave.
Zak groaned.
Annika dared to open her eyes.
Zak was still unconscious. The wound on Zak’s arm began to close.
Annika shut her eyes again and directed the power. More and more of it flowed through her, filling the void and the emptiness. She could feel herself now strong enough to heal anyone, to do anything… and then the tiredness suddenly took over. I must rest, she said to herself, and, not entirely conscious of her movements, stretched out on the bed next to Zak and lay her head on his shoulder.
His shoulder was hard, covered in grime.
“I’ll just rest a little,” she said out loud, closing her eyes.
As though it had heard her, the dagger winked out, although it continued to emit strange warmth that heated the room.
The warmth, and Zak’s peaceful, even breaths of recovery pulled her into a deep, calm sleep.
She woke up when she felt a breath on her face. She opened her eyes.
Zak was above her. He was propped on his elbow, looking at her. A tired but steady light danced in his eyes. The fire still flickered in the fireplace, and there was the faint glow of the suns outside, behind the shutters. “Good morning,” he said.
“I doubt it will be. It wasn’t a good night,” she said, although it felt that all the events she had experienced until that moment took place in a different lifetime, in a different place, far away, leaving behind nothing but a single need: the need to be with the man who was now next to her.
&n
bsp; “I am sorry for your loss, Annika.”
“That’s not all you should be sorry for,” she said, hoping to push both him and her need away.
His face darkened. He sat up straight. “I won’t let you hold your own actions against me!”
Annika sat up as well. She found herself quivering with rage that suddenly surged through her. “You took advantage of me while I was asleep!”
He glared at her. “Are you asleep now?”
“Obviously not!”
“Well then,” he said, and drew her towards himself.
She felt his lips brush against hers. Then he pressed them against her, hard, harder than she had recalled him ever doing.
He let her go. They sat a hand’s breadth apart, across from one another, staring, quickly breathing.
She felt the need that she tried to deny surge through her, impossible to resist. She shut her eyes, trying to block him out, block everything out, but that only gave her feelings for him strength. Surrender, limitless and all consuming, was the only option she had left.
Later, she lay with her head on his chest. “Zak,” she said. When he opened his mouth to respond, she held a finger to his lips. “I wanted to apologize. I was wrong to say what I did. I couldn’t admit to myself that I wanted, needed you. Not then….”
“And now?”
“It’s now beyond words.”
He nodded, accepting this.
“Why did you return here?” she then asked.
“I was looking for you when I chanced on a group of snakes. Afterwards, I did not think the wound too dangerous. But I was losing blood.” He smiled grimly. “I must have been a sight!”
“You scared me,” said Annika, shivering at the recollection and the feelings that had raced through her on seeing Zak wounded. “Thank you for fighting for my House.”
“I fought for you.” He brushed her hair. His hand was warm and calloused. He kissed her ear, then her bare shoulder. “I wanted to keep you safe.”
She felt him beside her as though he were her shield from the world, her wall, her personal cave into which she could crawl and where she could feel safe. She did not want the sensation to end.