by Lynn Egan
"If the gull leads to Seasguir, that's too far of a walk for us without food or water. And the dovecote is too close to the palace for my liking." The decision hung in the air unspoken and the princess shrugged.
"To Ishald we go."
Chapter Nine
Michael had an excellent sense of direction, and it felt like they were walking the right way despite the layers of rock around them which made him feel trapped and disoriented. The princess walked steadily, though she did seem jumpy. He decided to try to break the tension.
"It seems a bit odd to call you Murud now, you know. May I call you by your given name?"
She stiffened a bit at his question, "Marinarae l'Aestir a'Murud is my given name. Murud will do." She glanced at him, "You have not said what I should call you."
She didn't know! "My name is Michael. Pleased to finally meet you." He grinned at her, and she seemed to thaw a little bit.
"You do not know why you were captured."
Michael shook his head; he had no idea. "Do you?"
She shook her head at his question. If it was a mystery to the Heir to the Throne, it must be some mystery.
"You said there've been executions?"
"Yes, some. We are a peaceful kingdom but times have become uncertain. The saava are dying and crime and suspicion are becoming a problem. Some criminals have been arrested and killed without recourse to trial or to plead before the Throne. Some of the noble houses have been threatened, old feuds rekindled, and there have been accidents among them."
Michael felt a chill go down his spine. He cleared his suddenly-dry throat and asked, "What kind of accidents?"
Murud shrugged a shoulder, "Some injuries, a death. Count Sjuir simply left, with his whole family, servants, everything. I was told of a bad fire, as well. Father is very upset." Her face hardened with some unspoken thought.
Michael breathed a little easier. She had not mentioned his family. They walked on.
~
The cavern they were in gradually narrowed and the ceiling lowered, the way becoming fuller of twists and turns. Murud lifted her face, said that the air was getting better, and pushed on. They were both filthy, damp, hungry and thirsty by the time the last twist turned into a crack they shimmied through and out into a gathering dusk. A lovely warm breeze greeted them as they stepped out onto a dry streambed. A few more steps brought them to a still pool. They looked back at the way they had come and saw that a trickle of water ran down the face of the rock they had exited. It was likely to be a waterfall in wetter months. From just a few yards away the crack in the cliff was hard to see, and beneath a fall of water it would be undetectable.
"Quite the little hidey-hole! Don't you ever worry someone will invade the palace from underneath?"
The princess shook her head, "The escape is one way only. Once the cell is sealed again, there is no going back."
Michael thought a moment about the implications of her statement. "You are going back, though, right? Leaving me to my own devices now that I'm safe?"
"Oh, no. I have been waiting for a chance to see the world. All will be well. I left Father a note."
He echoed her odd phrasing, "You left him a note?"
"Oh yes, he is sure to get it. We have a special place to leave notes. I let him know that I was safe and would return in time. I am not really needed; he is healthy and only three hundred or so. I will travel and come back wiser and ready to rule when it is time."
Michael stared at her in awe. The only Heir to the throne of the kingdom was rescuing a man, a presumed criminal, leaping unthinking into danger deep underneath her cozy castle, talking about seeing the world… and she left the King a NOTE?
"Yes. You need not be so loud about it. I am able to hear you clearly." She tilted her head at him, "I am not sure why I hear you so. It is not usual."
This statement brought him back to himself and their current situation. Her obvious insanity would have to wait; the evening was warm, but they needed food and a fire. He didn't know how long they'd been walking underground, or how far from the castle grounds they were, or how far it was to his home. He went to rub his face with his hand, saw how dirty it was, and looked around for a pool downstream from the first one they'd seen. He washed up as best he could there, then went back to the first pool for a long drink. The water was tepid, but fresh. Murud watched him curiously, then followed his lead. He wondered if she had ever had survival training.
"I have been…"
"All right, you need to stop that!" His voice was louder and harsher than he'd intended. "Sorry. I'm used to being the only person in my head. I don't know how you're hearing me but you need to stop listening. A person has a right to what's inside their own thoughts."
The princess looked hurt at this harsh rebuke and cast her dark eyes downward. An uncomfortable silence followed where Michael realized he'd just yelled at the second most important person on the Island and that he should probably figure out a way to shield his mind from her. He'd learned techniques but had never had to use them. He was about to apologize, but she got to it first.
"I… am sorry. I will try to not listen. As I said it is unusual for me to hear the thoughts of others." She regarded him almost timidly. It was unlikely she was used to criticism.
"Ah, thank you. I'm sorry I yelled at you. I should learn to guard them better." He ran a hand through his mess of black hair and looked up into the jet depths of her gaze. Goddess above, she was gorgeous. She blushed and looked away as Michael realized that had been an exceptionally loud thought.
~
They determined that a nearby overhang was not only an excellent secluded camp site, but that it wasn't unusual for passers-by to use it that way. Murud helped build a fire, demonstrating a magical ability which Michael could not duplicate without flint and steel, and soon the crackling and warmth filled the small space. His hope was that the site saw enough use not to warrant attention should their light or smoke be seen, but not enough to have unwelcome guests at the fireside. It was full dark by now, and he was more tired and more nervous than he had ever been in his life.
"What day is it, do you think?"
"You were brought in near dawn, and I went to the guard room after dinner. It is likely the next night now."
"Do you do that often? Be a cat, I mean."
She shrugged, "As often as is needed for the servants to believe there is a palace cat."
He smiled, "And what does the princess do when the palace cat is on her rounds?"
Murud squinted up at the rock ceiling, "The princess may indulge in a tantrum, or read, or have a headache. She has so many responsibilities." Michael couldn't tell from the tone of her voice if she was serious or in jest.
"And no one thinks this is odd?"
Another shrug, "It has been that way for twenty years or so. Aeldhind grow old or move on. It is no longer questioned."
Her statement reminded Michael of his relative youth. He himself was in his thirties, though the years didn't show and he could pass for a Pahat of twenty if he hid his ears. As full-blooded Aeld, how old was she? Her father was three hundred. She looked very young, perhaps late teens.
"I can still hear you, I apologize. We are not full Aeld but it is our strongest bloodline. I am seventy or so." She waved her hand as if it was nothing.
He clamped down on his thoughts before the next one could leak out. Twice his age and half his sense. Lovely.
Chapter Ten
They slept hungry and Michael woke starving. As he started up, surprised at the morning light, he realized they hadn't set watches or even banked the fire for the night. His wilderness survival instructor would have been very disappointed. He stretched, wincing as his adventures of the past few days caught up with him, and glanced at the sleeping form of his companion.
Relaxed in dreaming as she was, he had leisure to examine her. Her forehead was tall and her eyebrows even and well placed. Her nose was long and regal, without dominating her face. Her lips were on the thin sid
e and her cheekbones were high like all the Aeld, leading to her long-pointed ears. Her disheveled braid was golden blond rather than ashy, and her skin was fair and clear underneath the cave grime. She had a slight cleft in her chin. The clothing she wore was neither tight nor loose, but well-tailored to her form. It was in various shades of gray and very high-quality suede. Naturally, he thought, she was royalty!
He sighed and stood up, careful not to disturb her. His boots made little noise on the damp ground as he walked over to one of the pools of water. He kneeled beside it and was about to drink when he noticed how still and mirrorlike the surface was. He took a moment to reflect on the person who stared back at him.
His black hair hung around his face; slightly shaggy and too long for fashion. It all but hid the subtle point on his own ears, and he preferred it that way. His nose was straight and almost beaky, his lips full and with a perpetual quirk on one side as if he didn't quite believe the world around him. His jaw wasn't square, but it wasn't pointed the way Aelden chins often were. The indoor pallor he usually saw in his mirror at school had deepened to fair, though the blacks and greys he preferred to wear washed him out a bit.
What was memorable about him, he knew, were his eyes. They were large, very expressive, and a striking gold color in every light. They never faded to yellow or darkened to brown, but remained a definite gold, though it could range from bright to dusky. He knew from experience that in very strong light his pupils would contract into slits like those of a snake or a cat. Most of the time it wasn't noticeable.
Michael sighed. This self-examination wasn't getting him anywhere. He bent further and drank a few handfuls of water, then washed his face and neck. He very much wanted to concentrate on finding a way to shield his thoughts from the princess, but knew from the gnawing in his stomach that his body would be too distracting now. He decided to forage around the area to see what was edible.
He came back to Murud with his hunger appeased and with handfuls of berries and ground nuts, as well as some early stone fruits he had found. He also knew where they were and the direction they needed to go. He found her awake and waiting for him. Their eyes met in the morning light and he was surprised to find that hers were a deep, unfathomable black, and not the dark brown that was called black.
"Good morning! I found breakfast." he had used his shirt for a makeshift bowl which he held out in front of himself. She raised her eyebrows and examined what he'd brought, then selected the larger fruits and the ground nuts, leaving the rest. "Go on, I ate while I picked."
"Thank you. I am not fond of berries." She examined a stone fruit carefully before taking a bite. Her face as she chewed had an expression of disgust mixed with determination. He wondered if she'd ever eaten anything that hadn't been inspected and approved by five servants. Oh well, more for him. He gobbled the mixed berries and brushed at his shirt front, which had a few small red and purple stains on it now. He could hide them by lacing his vest again. He did so, and then arranged the things he'd picked up along the way in his makeshift belt. He'd have preferred to sling them over his shoulder, but his back was still painful from binding the Claw there. Murud finished her breakfast by the time he'd finished his preparations. She still had the sword and buckler, but simply carried them as they walked.
"I also know where we are now. We're at the northern end of the Ishald orchards. We should reach the manor by midday."
The princess raised an eyebrow. "You know the area."
Perhaps her mind reading ability wasn't so precise, if she hadn't picked that up by now. Michael smiled, "I grew up here."
She frowned and looked troubled. "Had you told me this, I would have avoided bringing you."
Michael lost his smile. A whisper of a phrase in N'mari drifted across the back of his mind, Ishald is betrayed… The Crown says nothing…
"Why?" His mouth was dry and the word felt distant from the lips that uttered it.
Her eyes searched his face. "There is no shelter there." He could not read her thoughts as she could read his, but those black depths without pupils seemed to hold a kind of anxious fear. A knowledge of something he should not know.
It was in his nature to seek to understand that which was hidden from him, so despite a growing fog that he felt in his mind - that he had felt since coming to this place - he turned silently and began the walk home.
~
He knew long before they got there that something was wrong. There should have been activity on the grounds of the estate: gardeners and their children, the sounds of the animals that supplied the place with milk, meat, and wool, horses in the field. All were absent. Only the wild things existed here, but everything was neat as if it had been tended just days before. They came to empty outbuildings, passed into the small silent group of dwellings set aside for those of the household who had earned a place of their own, and came ever closer to the great hulk of stone which had been Michael's childhood home.
An acrid smell drifted toward them before the building came into view. Michael stood for a moment and closed his eyes, breathing it in. It was sharp and heavy and unpleasant.
His sudden stop caused Murud to almost run into him. Her blunder brought him back to the fact that he was not traveling alone. "You smell that." He spoke in a tone too flat to be a question, but she answered it as such.
The princess took a long breath through her nose. "Yes. Burned wood and cloth, lacquer and bone. Meat and metal. Rot." She stopped and her eyes widened at him as if she had said too much. He stared at her and continued, resisting the urge to run ahead. He knew that running wasn't going to change what had happened. The memory of a familiar voice from what seemed like a faraway time spoke, "Your delay will do no extra harm."
As he came up the lane and past the trees which screened the mansion, he saw the extent of the destruction. The stone of the structure still stood, but most of the wooden beams supporting the roof had fallen in. The doors and shutters were nothing but memories of themselves, and the lead of stained glass windows had melted, sending colored traceries crashing into twisted rainbow piles beneath empty holes in the stone. Even his mother's tower had not escaped, and soot blackened the outside and left dark marks on the balcony that faced away from the main house.
He forced his wooden legs up the wide gravel drive, each step breaking the dreadful silence of the place with a thudding crunch. Murud's softer steps still trailed behind.
The only other sound was the susurration of the trees planted close by the walls of the place as a late summer breeze blew whorls of ash and fallen leaves in whimsical patterns across the ground, as if this were not the place where a man was discovering that everything he held dear had been ripped from him like a page from a book, never to be read again.
A few dull scraps of an overheard conversation from his stay in the palace dungeon came back to him as he realized they seemed to fit a growing picture.
"Were you in that burning business? Bad lot, that."
"Naw Jeffer said he'd go. I've no stomach for it."
"Cushy down here, tho. Pass that ale."
"Aye."
"Jeffer say what 'twas for?"
"Naw. Don't do to ask questions."
"Not where she'll hear."
"Naw. Don't do to think questions, neither."
Michael slowly mounted the stone steps he'd run up so often as a child, and spoke to the woman behind him.
"What do you know about what happened here?"
She was silent for a moment as they picked their way past the ruined main entrance, then said, "I know what news the messenger brought. We sent two lords to speak with Duke Richard, but they never returned. Only one of our guards returned with news of a fire. I am sorry, Michael." She looked awkwardly sympathetic, though she likely still didn't understand the extent of his loss.
He stepped over the blackened stone lintel and into what had once been the Great Hall. As he laid his hand against the remains of one of the doors, a shuddering deja vu came over him and he half exp
ected phantom dancers to be whirling when he looked up.
Nothing moved here. There was a haphazard pile of bones roughly in the center of the room. It was half covered in debris from the roof but he could tell even from here that it had used to be a great many people. He felt sick.
"Nobody got out." his voice cracked on the first word, giving it a sinister double meaning.
"I was told that it happened too fast..."
Her words pierced the thin façade he'd managed to maintain until now. "You were told wrong!" he shouted over the pounding of his head, the rising darkness in him that he tried to hold in check. The princess cowered back. "You were told a lie! You believed a lie! Look at them there!" he pointed accusingly at the silent remains. "They died at the hands of your guards and were burned here! Eliminated! For what? What do you get from their deaths? Why?" His battle with the raging forces inside him had to be plain to even the least sensitive of creatures.
Her mouth hung open in shock. She seemed about to speak and then stopped. With a suddenly open expression she said, "I did not know," looking confused and hurt.
Her tone and her admission gave Michael something to hold onto in the swirling maelstrom as he fought his way back to balance and toward sanity. He realized his breathing was coming to him very heavily and worked to slow and control it. Soon he forced his mind to level out, though he felt like a man standing in the center of an icy lake in spring with no confidence in the surface below him and no clear path to shore. Firmer mental footing would have to wait.
He wiped his nose with his sleeve and advanced into the room, leaving her behind him. The footing was treacherous with cinders and broken slates. He made it to the pile of charred bones and sank to his knees, numb.
So much waste. To what purpose? The duchy would go to the Crown if he didn't claim it. But King Aestir wasn't an evil man. Nor did his heir seem to be. It made no sense. Nothing on this blasted Island made sense anymore.