by Amy Little
In spite of everything, Annika found herself returning his smile.
Zak was frowning. “What is it, father?” Zak’s voice was sharp.
“You may not recall meeting me,” his father said to Annika, ignoring Zak’s question. The man’s voice was a smooth baritone.
Annika shook her head.
“You would have been no more than seven when I last saw you and your sister. It was at a ball. We even danced together.”
“Unless you have shrunk in the years since, I find that impossible to believe,” Annika returned. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Zak nodding with approval at her boldness.
“No, albeit you have grown. You danced sitting on a maid’s shoulders.”
Something flickered before Annika. Vague recollections…. “I have that memory,” she said, with wonder. “But I thought it was my sister, sitting on top of our nanny, and dancing with a very tall man.”
The man nodded. “Cara did too. It was her idea, and she went for three rounds.”
“She was always the one with the outlandish ideas,” Annika said.
An uneasy silence ensued which she eventually broke by saying, “Surely, you did not steal on us to recall past days?”
“The past preys on the future,” the man said, not taking his eyes off her. “There is something I wish to say to your highness.”
“Let’s hear it, Councilor,” she said, unable to suppress a shiver at the man’s grave voice. Only the presence of Zak beside her, standing still and half-turned towards her as though to offer her protection if need be, gave her the strength to speak in as firm a voice as she did.
“There may not be another time to speak of this, so hear. It is dangerous for our Houses to be together.”
“That is no secret,” she said. “All tell me that, starting with your son.”
“Then he has more sense than I credit him.”
“If that’s all you have to say, father, then your departure from your chamber will bear little return,” said Zak.
His father shook his head impatiently. “That is not all.”
“Go on!” she exclaimed, eager for the meeting to be done with.
“Fiery,” said Zak’s father, observing her closely. “I can see why you are attracted to her.”
Annika flushed. So Zak has told his father…. She stomped her foot. “I will not stand here and be appraised in that way!”
“I meant no ill by that,” said Zak’s father. “Zak has been so complimentary about you that I would have been a fool not to have expected this result. And, with a caveat, I do approve.”
Breath stopped in Annika’s chest. “Approve… of what?”
Zak’s father gave a slight smile. At that moment, he looked like an older, grayer, and more imposing version of Zak. “Of the young being young.”
Annika felt herself flush, but it was not long before the cold that seeped from the corridor’s thick stone walls again penetrated her limbs.
The man’s expression grew somber as he spoke: “Yet although I approve, I counsel caution. Now is not the time for such a link between the two Houses. The future of the Empire is in question with the snakes’ incursions. We would do well not to upset the balance.”
“We can avoid upsetting the balance no more than we can avoid living, father,” said Zak, his voice low but hard like a rock.
Annika drew closer towards Zak and they stood together, facing Zak’s father’s bulk – an impassive shadow with just a steely glint to his eyes betraying life. “Wait you must. That was the first thing I wanted to speak of. There is another.”
Annika nodded, mute against the power of this man’s voice.
“The convention is for the Emperor to crown the new head of the House. Until that is done, you are Queen in name only.”
“I do not intend to speed the process,” Annika said. “Yet what concern is it of yours?”
“The Emperor may be laying a trap for you. Delay your journey to the Emperor’s stronghold as long as you can.”
“I mourn for my father and sister,” said Annika. “I do not intend to travel to secure the Emperor’s blessing for months.”
“That is well,” the man nodded with approval. “Perhaps there is something of your sister’s cunning in you. Delay will give you time to think, to grow your magic.”
Annika started. She stared at Zak, seeking to burn him to cinders with her glance. “You told him that too?”
“No. He knew,” said Zak.
Annika spun to the man. “How?”
In response, the old man closed his eyes.
Suddenly, Annika felt something reaching out towards her. It was warm, and friendly, and almost… furry. If anything, its presence was like that of the probing nose of a curious animal, like a dog, or a wolf. Yet there was immense strength in this being, much like hers, but darker, more assertive, more fierce. “You wield power,” Annika said with astonishment.
The man opened his eyes. “Yes. I cannot heal, but my power lets me smell and sense things miles away. Only those with powers of their own can sense mine. That was how knew that you were in my castle, and I sought you out.”
Annika remembered reaching out with her power across the ballroom when she was seeking Zak. She turned on him. “Do you also wield magic?” she demanded.
“I would’ve told you if so,” said Zak.
“You would have felt it if he did,” Zak’s father said. “I could conceal my power from you, but only as I have had years of practice. Even then, I could not have concealed it long. After a few meetings, you are certain to have felt something of my ability.”
Annika looked hard at the man. “What is it that you want?”
After some moments, during which he looked at her with cold appraisal, Zak’s father spoke. “For many years, I sought for our Houses to be joined.”
“Father,” said Zak. He had lowered his head and was looking sideways at Annika.
“It is better that she knows all,” his father said. “Annika. Your father wanted peace and trade across the Empire. I, power to be wielded, for the good. We were agreed. To achieve our aims, Cara and Zak were to be wed.”
Annika ground her teeth to stifle her gasp. She had suspected there was something between her sister and Zak. “They never told me!”
“The plan was not far progressed. We did not count on the snakes. They changed the balance of power, against us. And in this new world, a link between Zak and Cara, with Cara the future head of the House, became too risky. Besides, there was no love between them. Hence your father and I decided that the link would have to have a lower profile. We decided that if the children agreed, Zak was to wed a younger princess of the Tiger House – you.”
“I swear I knew nothing of that plan!” said Zak.
“You’ve set me up!” Annika cried. She let go of his hand and stepped away from Zak, her eyes blazing, disbelief mixing with rage inside her. “How could you!”
“Annika!” said Zak. “All I knew was that the betrothal between Cara and me was no longer going ahead. Both Cara and were relieved! Then I was asked to meet you. Not a single word I have said to you was false!”
“You said nothing of the background to this!”
“I did not think it changes anything,” said Zak.
“It does!” cried Annika, and through the blinding red curtain that descended on her, wondered, for the first time in her life, whether the power that she used to heal could be used for more malevolent ends.. “This is so… vile!”
His father’s eyes were narrow slits. “Yet does it not give you hope?”
“It fills me with revulsion to have been lied to and have had my future… traded!”
“Considered,” his father said. “But only if you both were willing. It seems to me you both are.”
Annika could not be sure but there seemed to be a glint of amusement in the man’s eyes. “I…,” her voice ground to a standstill. “I need to leave.”
“Annika!” Zak called out after her.
He seemed to say something else but she did not hear – did not want to hear.
She broke into a run.
She only stopped running once she was inside her carriage, leaning back in the ample seats, with the windows closed and her face bathed in warm, bitter tears. Betrayal, she said to herself, over and over, by someone whom she had loved, and trusted, someone to whom she had opened her self.
Again, she had been betrayed.
In the days that followed her conversation with Zak and his father, she kept returning to her sister’s room. That was the only place she could find warmth and comfort, even as the pain of her sister’s disappearance haunted her.
Each time she went there, Cara’s room struck her for being just as Annika had remembered from childhood. It had a comforting and embracing feel, despite what she had learned of the planned tie up between Cara and Zak. A neat bed, a neat table, a small fireplace with a neat stack of firewood a few steps away. The fire, once she started it, flickered unevenly.
Annika warmed her hands, then walked around the room.
Opposite the fireplace was an overflowing wardrobe.
Inside it, Annika counted six gold and precious-stone embroidered dresses, ones fit for the stateliest occasions.
Cara was always one to keep up appearances.
Previously, the thought made Annika want to wrinkle her nose as though she smelled something distasteful. Now, it just made her feel sad.
Annika sat gingerly on the end of her sister’s firm bed. Even though the room was austere, as it had always been, as far back as Annika could remember, everything here bore her sister’s mark. Except for… Annika looked with surprise at the curtains.
The curtains were thick brown velvet. They hung loosely over the windows, which also had the usual white-painted shutters. While curtains were not unusual among the aristocracy, they seemed very unusual for Cara, who liked to be up with the sun, and whose room was so high up in the residential wing that there was no chance of anyone or anything peering into the windows.
Annika looked at the curtains’ thick folds for a few minutes. Brown… didn’t Cara hate that color? Or did Annika remember that wrong? Either way, it was likely to be yet another thing about her sister that Annika would not have a chance to find out.
Footsteps and voices in the corridor outside grew louder and then tapered off into the distance.
Annika remembered how her heart beat on returning to Karrum. How she wanted to regain the closeness with Cara that they had felt as children. Closeness to Cara, closeness to her father. There was no chance of it now.
Wind howled outside, seeping through the cracks in the roughly inserted window panes, and making the thick curtains sway.
Perhaps the five year absence was not the only reason that they failed to connect again, Annika thought to herself. If she were being honest, she had to admit that she had failed to give her family a fair chance. Nor, she thought, Zak. Was it so horrible what he did, going along with his father’s wishes for a good match? Besides, that plan had come to naught, and he did say he wasn’t aware of his father’s plans for him and her…. It could not have all been a lie, she said to herself.
Annika stood up and paced the room in agitation, then found herself outside the room, walking along the corridors thinking about Cara, and Zak, and her duty to her House, and how something inside her tugged when she thought about Zak, and how she could not, must not, would not let herself think about love.
Her steps took her to the library, which was adjacent to the solar and looked like it had not been used since her father’s death.
Annika walked along the shelves, letting a finger trail along the leather spines. Dust furred up into a little ball.
As a young girl, she had often wished she could spend all her time in the library, lost among the rows of books. Cara had shared her enthusiasm. They both looked forward to nothing more than the opportunity to while the afternoon away among the leather-backed tomes.
The memory brought a wry and sad smile to her face, and she felt the turmoil inside her abate.
The far end of the library housed the more speculative volumes. Dragons, conflicting theories on the origins of the land and sky, supposed first-hand accounts of strange monsters. Annika had avoided that corner, while Cara had spent as much time in it as she could.
Annika picked up a tome from a shelf beside Cara’s favorite spot by the window. The tome was lying face up, unlike all the other books she had passed, and Annika briefly wondered if it was one of the last books that Cara read.
The tome, while purportedly a chronicle of the House of the Tiger, contained page after page of description of different types of dragons.
Annika was curious to find out that some of the dragons looked like Memory Beasts. Intrigued, she read on.
The Memory Beast-like dragons were said to have been native to the area around Karrum for centuries before the land was conquered by the Vranos. These were a mysterious tribe that worshipped the gods of geysers and volcanos, and that set up their homes on volcano slopes – preferably, ones that were live.
The Vranos also rode enormous red dragons that had little in common with their Memory-Beast-like cousins. The dragons of the Vranos would dive into volcano vents and freefall down to the lava lakes below. Then, they would soak up the heat, leaving the lava placid and cool, while the dragons, filled with fire and strength, would terrorize the nearby lands. While they left the Memory Beasts alone, the dragons had particular dislike of the people of the snake.
But within a few centuries of their arrival, a strange ailment struck these dragons, making them lose their strength. The Vranos tried everything to cure their friends. But one by one, the dragons returned to the lava lake beneath Karrum, from which they would not again emerge. Emboldened, the snake people attacked. Although the Vranos fought valiantly, without the dragons they were overrun. Soon, hordes of snake people pressed the Vranos towards the volcano crater that subsequently formed the site of the city of Karrum. The Vranos would have been destroyed had they not been saved by a vicious earthquake. Much of what was now known as the Empire was remade – rivers were no more, where there had been open fields or forests in the north of the Empire now rose row upon row of vast mountain ranges, beyond which were inhospitable deserts, the volcano crater was covered over, and the marshy areas that were favored by the snake people were consumed by the earth.
As Annika read, the events formed a picture in her mind that was so unlike the present city of Karrum that she had to imagine a world utterly unlike her own.
The snake people believed the earthquake meant that the earth itself rose up to expel them. And so they cursed the land and fled. The Vranos fared little better, however. Few of them lived through the tumult. Some were inside the crater when the volcano collapsed. Others died on the slopes of the mountain. The survivors tunneled deep into the mountain for many years seeking survivors, but when they reached down to the lava lake, there were no survivors left.
In the years that followed, the remaining Vranos split into groups. Some favored living on the plains. Others, in the deep forests that grew in the valleys between the mountain ranges. Others yet remained close to the mountain slope, continuing the search for their brethren, who, they believed, found their way to the vast lava oceans underneath the earth’s crust, where it was believed dragons still lived. In time, as the book stated towards the end, each of these various groups of the Vranos formed one of the great Houses.
Here, the chronicle ended.
Annika put the book down, astonished both at the account and that she never heard it before.
Outside, it was now dark. A candle flickered next to Annika, lit by a wisp of a girl who was making her way around the room with a taper. The girl squeaked in terror when Annika approached.
“Do not be afraid.”
The girl bowed deeply. “Yes, my Queen.”
Annika waved her hand. “Just Annika. What is your name?”
“Josephine.”
“Do you often work in the library?”
“Every day for the last three years,” the girl proudly said. “Not everyone can keep the library neat and clean. I need to make sure I am very careful as the paper on which the books is written is flammable.” The girl pronounced the last word with an almost-sacred hush in her voice.
“Did you used to see my sister here?” Annika pressed on.
Josephine nodded. “Princess Cara was here often. She was very kind to me.” Josephine’s face grew bleak.
“I am sad too,” said Annika softly. “Tell me, what books did she read?”
Josephine looked up with surprise. “She read much, most of the books here, my Queen… Annika. She recently read, for instance, the book you now hold in your hands.”
“Can you read?”
“No, but I have often admired the beautiful red in this book’s binding. It is one of a kind.”
Annika glanced along the other books on the shelves.
Josephine was right. No other book had that color binding. This book’s binding looked like the deep orangey-red in the lava lake.
Annika thanked the girl and placed the book back on the shelf. As she let go of it, a very slight shudder ran through her. She recognized it as the same shudder she felt on letting go of the power.
The book was charged with power. The charge was so slight, that she did not feel it on picking it up, distracted as she was with her thoughts. But now that she was feeling weary, the separation from a source of strength felt more pronounced.
Her curiosity piqued again, Annika took the book back to her room.
But she did not get to read it that night.
At the entrance to her door, looking uncharacteristically subdued, stood Zak.
“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” said Annika, fumbling a few seconds too long to find the keys to the ancient lock.
“You sound disappointed to see me,” he said, his tone broody.