And no wonder, for every word bit and scratched like a thicket of thorns, inflicting a hundred tiny wounds.
‘And what do they call you, Phineas Drake?’ continued the Thorn. ‘The baker’s boy, wasn’t it?’
‘It is what I am.’
‘A fit companion for a princess,’ hissed the Thorn, with withering sarcasm.
Then it began to seem as though the voice was his father’s, and at his most disappointed. ‘And you are not even a very good baker’s boy, are you?’ said the Thorn. ‘You should be in England, tending your family’s shop in your father’s absence. But you have abandoned it.’
‘The… the Lady Silver’s need was the greater,’ faltered Phineas.
‘She took you along out of pity,’ said the Thorn cruelly, and since the words echoed the doubts Phineas had been harbouring in his own heart, they cut like knives. ‘Forlorn little baker’s boy, lost and confused! Poor Phineas Drake. She could no more leave you alone there than she could have left a puppy to starve in the snow. But make no mistake, baker’s boy. There is a limit to her patience and her pity. When she is finished with you, she will cast you from her presence without a moment’s hesitation.’
‘She would not,’ whispered Phineas, trying desperately to believe it.
The Thorn chuckled. ‘Will she not? You are a menial. You are nothing to her but a fleeting interest, a passing convenience — how could you ever be more than that?’
Phineas shut his eyes, as though by doing so he could shut out the voice as well. He tried to remember the Ilsevel he knew: the warm look she sometimes directed at him; the way she spoke of him, and to him. My Phineas.
But the visions slipped away. He saw a great lady instead, terrible and proud, beautiful beyond belief and so very far above him…
Go, said this Ilsevel, cold as winter. I have no further need of you.
Something precious shrivelled inside him, and died without a sound.
‘You should leave,’ whispered the voice. ‘Go home. Save her the trouble of tending to you; save yourself the pain of a dismissal.’
‘How?’ whispered Phineas. Never in his life had he felt smaller or more pitiful; if he could have erased himself with a thought, he would not have hesitated.
‘I can help you there. Only tell me that it is what you wish, and it shall be done.’
Phineas saw, in his mind’s eye, My Lady Silver walking steadily away from him, back turned, not an ounce of warmth or welcome left in her. It is what must be, he thought in despair.
‘It… it is what I wish,’ he said painfully, and every word hurt as he forced it from his lips.
There came the sensation of a vast satisfaction. It radiated from the walls, wrapped Phineas like a suffocating cocoon. ‘Good little baker’s boy,’ said the Thorn.
Defeated, Phineas awaited his fate.
The moment Phineas’s fingers touched the fallen mushroom, he was gone.
That was it. No flurry of darkness to sweep him away, no sudden attack, not even a whisper of sound; he was simply gone.
‘Phineas!’ she called, her heart pounding wildly.
No answer came.
‘Right,’ she muttered, and retraced her steps along the path until she came to another of her soundlessly stolen flowers: a frosty, velvet-blue hellebore. She took a steadying breath, braced herself, and bent to collect it.
And then she, too, was somewhere else, as soundlessly as Phineas had disappeared. She did not even experience any sensation of movement. The cool, clear night air simply faded, replaced by the dank-smelling air of some underground spot. A single, silver-wrought lantern hung from the earthen ceiling of some uninspiring underground chamber, and that was all. The room did not have the courtesy to provide her with a chair, let alone a way out.
Ilsevel drew herself up. ‘Where is Phineas?’ she snapped.
‘The baker’s boy,’ said a dark, low voice. ‘Does it matter?’
To Ilsevel’s alarm and dismay, these words echoed in her heart, sinking deeper with each repetition until she almost began to believe them. Does it matter? Does it matter? Did it matter, indeed? Why should the fate of a tradesman in any way concern her?
‘Yes,’ she hissed, pushing these thoughts away. ‘It matters a great deal.’
‘Why?’ whispered the voice, and that, too, resounded in her mind, growing bigger and more penetrating, more difficult to dismiss. Why indeed? Why?
She took another slow, deep breath, sternly steadying herself. ‘Because he is my friend,’ she said firmly. ‘And full worthy of being so.’
‘And you, My Lady Silver,’ said the voice softly. ‘Are you a worthy friend to him?’
Ilsevel wanted at once to answer, without the smallest doubt, yes. But to her own surprise, she hesitated. Was she? What had she ever done for him? She had shamelessly ripped him out of his own life, his own world, because it had suited her to do so. She had needed — nay, wanted — his help and his company, and so she had simply taken both, recognising in Phineas a person who would gladly let her do it.
What had she given back?
Nothing.
Unable to defend herself, she was silent.
The voice laughed. ‘Quite so. And it is not your first failure, princess, is it?’
Visions drifted through Ilsevel’s mind. Her sisters: Anthelaena, who had died. No, she was not dead, but she was in exile, cursed and broken, and had remained so for years. Where, in all this time, had Ilsevel been? Why, transformed, for like the weak, pitiful excuse for a princess that she was, when the enemy had come for her she had fallen in an instant. She’d had to be rescued.
And Tyllanthine? Poor Tylla, her youngest sister, forever excluded and marginalised… she and Anthelaena had both failed Tyllanthine, had been failing her from the moment of her birth. She remembered, with distant pain, the gentle chiding of her own mother, so long ago. Do not forget Tyllanthine. Take Tyllanthine with you. Wrapped up in each other, she and Anthelaena had so often failed to heed their mother’s advice. If Tylla had grown up into a bitter, hard, untrustworthy woman, whose fault was it that she had?
The list went on. Her niece, Lihyaen, whom she had failed to protect — it had fallen to others to do that. Edironal, Anthelaena’s husband. Dead? Missing? She did not even know. She had failed everything, everyone, she had ever professed to care for — even the throne at Mirramay itself. And what was she now doing but casting desperately about, trying — too late, too late — to correct the terrible consequences of her own inadequacy?
Distantly, some part of her recognised that these thoughts were not hers, and not the truth, and that part briefly rallied. ‘These things,’ she forced out, ‘were not my fault.’
‘No, no!’ said the voice soothingly. ‘Of course they were not your fault, princess.’ Ilsevel felt, for an instant, a little eased — but the voice went on. ‘They were, however, your responsibility. Were they not?’
Of course they were.
‘But,’ she said, her hands going to her face. ‘But…’ She could not think clearly; doubt, regret and misery shrouded her thoughts like an impenetrable fog, and fight though she might to hack through them to the clarity she knew must lie somewhere beyond, she could not maintain her grip on any more reasonable thought. They slipped through her fingers like bright, glittering fish, and swam heedlessly away.
Phineas. That thought flashed into her mind, cutting through the darkness, and she grabbed hold of it like a drowning woman offered a rope. His face was, for one searing instant, vivid in her mind: that grin he had when something pleased or amused him; the look of tender concern he sometimes wore when he thought she was not paying him any attention; the vulnerability of him, which he strove so hard to hide; the absurd, painful youthfulness of the clever baker’s boy. The hopefulness he had, whatever happened to harm or disconcert him. His diligence, his quickness of mind, his staunch reliability. The way he cared.
‘What,’ she said, mustering herself, ‘have you done with Phineas?’
‘
What, are we back to that? The little baker’s boy?’
‘Yes, we are back to that. Is this what you have done to him?’ The thought horrified her. She, My Lady Silver, Princess Ilsevellian of Aylfenhame, replete with a self-confidence to which she had been born, raised with an unshakeable sense of her own power — indeed, her own right to power — why, if even she could be damaged by the insidious whispers of the Thorn, what effect might the wretch have upon poor Phineas? What defences could he possibly have against it? He had no high station to protect him, no sense of grand purpose, no power of any kind. Even his own father had been disappointed in him, though Ilsevel could not in the smallest degree understand why, and his mother had been dead too long to be anything to him now but a regret. For all his brilliances, Phineas would crumple like wet paper under this kind of treatment.
He’d need her.
She had no right to be defeated by such paltry attacks. Would she let mere words vanquish them both? She would not.
‘How dare you,’ she uttered fiercely, and her fractured confidence grew with every word. ‘What are you, that you should attack me so? I am, as you have kindly reminded me, a princess of Aylfenhame and I will not be so spoken to!’
‘You are presently at my mercy, princess, and as such you will be spoken to in any fashion I so choose.’
This was better. Insidious, poisonous whispers Ilsevel could not so well withstand, not when they were saying the same things she sometimes said to herself. But direct opposition was another matter entirely — particularly when she was so absolutely in the right.
She drew herself up. ‘And who are you, then, that you take such a right to yourself?’
‘They call me the Thorn.’
‘An absurd name.’
Silence, for an instant. Had she disconcerted the creature? Good.
But not for long. ‘What will they call you, in ages to come?’ continued the Thorn. ‘The third princess? The weak princess, powerless in her own defence, who needed everyone else to save her?’
But the spell was broken; these insidious words could no longer harm her. ‘Oh, do stop,’ she said impatiently. ‘There is no shame in sometimes needing the help of others, and I am far from powerless.’
Silence.
‘Tell me who you are,’ she commanded. ‘Who you really are.’
‘I will not.’
‘Are you Gilligold?’
‘No.’ The word was uttered with scorn.
‘Then who? Someone I have known? You appear to know a great deal about me.’
‘I will not answer your questions, Lady Silver.’
‘Very well. I am not so interested as to be overpowered with curiosity. You will instead release me, and restore Phineas to me.’
‘Is that what you wish?’ whispered the voice.
‘It is!’
And then the underground cavern was gone, and Ilsevel stood once more under the starlight. A cool breeze ruffled her hair, there was grass at her feet, and to her intense relief there was Phineas at her elbow. She clutched him. ‘Listen,’ she said fiercely. ‘You must put that creature’s words out of your mind. There is not a particle of truth to anything that he said.’
Phineas sighed, and leaned against her. ‘If there were not a particle of truth to it, then it would not be nearly so persuasive.’
He was right. The Thorn had a talent for finding the weaknesses in one’s own character, or position, or history, and exaggerating them until one could see nothing else. ‘Still,’ she insisted, ‘what truth there might be is twisted out of all sense or recognition and you must not let him overpower you.’
‘Oh, I did,’ said Phineas softly. ‘I was quite overpowered.’
‘But you are here now, with me. Cast him from your mind, my Phineas. Do not let his poisonous words linger in your heart, for I declare them false.’
She spoke with all the authority she could muster, and for an instant the very air rang with it.
Phineas did not seem much affected. ‘I will try,’ he said wearily.
Ilsevel was forced to content herself with that.
So intent was she upon the matter of Phineas’s state of mind that she had not taken careful note of her surroundings. It occurred to her at last that they had not been returned to the same place from which they had been taken. They stood some way farther up the peak, near the pinnacle. The stolen flowers hung once again from her sash, and the jug of ice-wine had been restored to Phineas’s possession.
And there was something odd about the terrain up there. The greenish stuff at her feet that she had, at a glance, taken for grass — or perhaps for moss, or something of that sort — was nothing of the kind.
She bent down, and touched her fingers to it. ‘Phineas,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘This is velvet.’
Phineas stooped, and applied his hand to the ground. ‘It… it appears so,’ he said doubtfully. ‘How can that be?’
How indeed? What manner of madman would array the earth in velvet? It was rumpled and creased and… was that a pocket stitched into the surface?
Ilsevel stuck in her hand to check. It was. ‘This is somebody’s velvet doublet.’
‘But it is enormous.’
So it was, but that was clearly no impediment to its existing. Moreover, it did not appear to be an improbably gigantic doublet spread upon the ground; it had too much shape for that, too much in the way of bulges and swells, and, well…
‘Somebody is wearing it,’ said Ilsevel.
Phineas took a step back, and cast a long look over the gentle slope of the hill they were presently standing upon. ‘Nobody could be so vast,’ he said.
Ilsevel saw his point, for the distance in question was improbably huge considering that, if she was correct, they must be standing upon the doublet-wearer’s belly. And a fine, swollen paunch he had at that. ‘It used to be said of Gilligold,’ she began, ‘that as his hoard of treasures grew, so did he. I am not sure anybody has ever taken it as the literal truth; more as a figure of speech, in some obscure way. But it was also said of him that he was the richest person in Aylfenhame, and by a long way, Phineas, so if it should happen to be the literal truth after all then he must indeed be the size of a mountain!’ She picked up her skirts and ran lightly up the slope, for on the far side it dipped downwards again and she was almost sure there must be a head up there somewhere.
‘Phineas!’ she cried soon afterwards. ‘I have found an eye!’
Phineas, incredulous, joined her, and looked at the spot her pointing finger indicated. ‘I see nothing of the sort.’
Ilsevel prodded the eye in question with her foot. The ground here was bare — if ground it was — and though the light was too low to be certain, it did have something of the appearance of weathered skin. ‘I think it is an eye,’ she insisted, ‘closed at present. Have you anything sharp about you?’
She received a suspicious stare, and good Phineas took a step back from her. ‘You are not going to put out the eye?’
‘Gracious, no! I am only going to stab the sleeper a bit, to see if he wakes up.’
‘We are standing on his face,’ Phineas reminded her.
‘So you do believe me!’
‘Whether I do or not,’ said Phineas steadily, ‘if you are right, we are standing on his face. Are you sure you want him to wake up?’
‘I am persuaded we will not much rouse him. He has practically taken root here.’
Phineas raised a disapproving brow, but he did produce a short knife from one of his pockets, and handed it to her. ‘Stab away.’
Ilsevel immediately sank the point of the knife into the maybe-face, not too far from the possible-eye.
Perhaps she had not truly believed in her own surmise, for when the eye snapped open, revealing a pale-blue eyeball the size of a four-horse carriage, she squeaked and took a great jump backwards — almost toppling Phineas in the process.
‘Steady,’ he said, catching her fast, and setting her back upon her feet.
‘Thank you,’
said Ilsevel quietly, and then, in ringing tones, uttered, ‘We bid you good day, sir!’
A second eye opened, and the pair blinked sleepily.
‘We are here to bargain with you, sir!’ proclaimed Ilsevel, and took up a station atop the sloping ridge that could only be a nose. ‘You are Gilligold, I suppose?’ she said, suddenly anxious, lest they had stumbled into quite the wrong mountain-sized man.
A rumbling began in the great giant’s chest, followed by a tearing cough; the ground jerked and shuddered, and Ilsevel almost fell off her perch. ‘Who calls my name?’ said a booming, earthy voice, and the hill echoed with the sound.
‘Lady Silver,’ said Ilsevel proudly. ‘I am a princess of Aylfenhame, sir, and I am here to retrieve the articles you have most disgracefully stolen from the Court-at-Mirramay!’
Phineas gave a slight cough. ‘Perhaps a more conciliating approach?’ he said in an undertone.
‘Nonsense!’ she said firmly. ‘A villain must answer for his crimes!’
‘My good lady,’ rumbled Gilligold. ‘How very small you are.’
Ilsevel stamped her foot upon his nose. ‘In fact, sir, it is you who has grown vast.’
The eyeballs swivelled as Gilligold looked about himself. ‘How did there come to be so much sky?’ he complained. ‘And so little of anything else?’
‘You have stolen too much, and grown too big. It is, therefore, quite your own doing.’
Gilligold accepted this placidly. His eyes began to drift shut. ‘At least I am comfortable,’ he said drowsily.
‘I am inclined to think that you are not,’ said Ilsevel, and stamped again upon his nose. ‘There is naught beneath you but solid rock, sir, and you have not even a blanket against this chill night air! Should you not like to be a little smaller?’
The eyes opened again. ‘Perhaps I might, at that.’
‘Then you will give back to me the articles you stole from Her Majesty’s Court.’
‘I?’ said Gilligold in an injured tone. ‘I do not steal.’
‘Then you have acquired all these things from somebody who does, which amounts to the same thing,’ said Ilsevel, beginning to grow impatient. ‘Come now, will you not give them to me? You could hardly miss them, so well-supplied with treasures as you are.’
Mr Drake and My Lady Silver Page 24