Thornspell

by Helen Lowe

  A quick glance around the room showed him his saddlebags lying on the table, and their contents appeared untouched. Sigismund almost smiled when he saw Master Griff’s treatise on boar hunting but pushed it aside for the last of his bread and cheese, packed that morning for the hunt. He devoured it before trying the door, which was locked as he expected, and peering behind the hangings. But there were no windows concealed there, just dark wood paneling from ceiling to floor.

  No way out, thought Sigismund, so what now? He sat down on the bed and rested his dusty head in his hands, trying not to think about Flor’s betrayal, or how long it would be before he was missed and the hue and cry went up.

  But I must find a way to escape, he told himself, not just rely on Balisan to come looking for me. How will he find me anyway, if this is one of those places that lie between the different planes of existence? Perhaps, he thought with a shudder, no one will ever find me, no matter how long or hard they look. I have to assume that I’m on my own.

  This realization made him get up and go around the room again, but he still couldn’t find any way out, except through the locked door. Tiredness hit him, solid as a tree branch, and he yawned, feeling as though his face might crack. He needed to sleep, regardless of what the Margravine intended. But Sigismund caught himself before he dropped straight down onto the bed. He did not know whether or not the faie portion of his blood had made him more susceptible to the Margravine’s trap, but he knew he needed to try and connect his awareness to any aspect of the mortal world that was part of this place.

  Sinking into the familiar practice lightened his fear, and as Sigismund’s awareness extended, he realized that his guess had been right: this was a place where the planes overlapped. As his mind cleared further, he heard the familiar deep hum that he recognized from his own world, and the shift and flow of its energy weaving through the alien fabric around him. Sigismund let his mind sink into that flow until it coiled in and around him like a serpent, and he felt secure enough to relax into sleep.

  If he had thought about it at all, Sigismund would have said that he would not dream in this place, it was too unsafe—but he found himself in a dream so clear that he might as well have been wide awake. In it, he was drifting through the Margravine’s house and he discovered that Flor was right: it was far larger on the inside than it had appeared from the gate. He could hear music and the sound of laughter in the distance and he made his way toward it, coming out into a wide hall. The roof was so high that it seemed lost in shadow, but a second glance up, into those shadows, showed the outline of leaves and branches, and a few stars peeping down.

  Sigismund shook his head and worked his way around the perimeter of the room. There was a sweet, wild tune playing and a merry whirl of dancers in the middle of the hall, but it was hard to bring them into focus. They were half corporeal, half shimmering light, and he received an impression of jeweled coats and floating sleeves, with firefly sparks where eyes and fingertips should have been. There were long tables set back against the wall, heaped with glowing food, and these seemed more solid, as did the somber, plainly clad servants standing behind them. The only other beings that Sigismund could see clearly were the Margravine and Flor, seated side by side in golden chairs, on a dais above the dancing.

  He drew further back into shadow, watching their golden heads bent close in talk, then drifted toward them through the layers of his dream. He was deeply curious, but also afraid that the Margravine might look up and see his dream persona. Sigismund did not want to think what would happen then. The Margravine, however, did not look up; she kept her eyes fixed on Flor.

  “It was a pity,” she was saying, “that he killed the boar. I was enjoying the havoc that it caused, and it could have proved useful later.”

  Flor bowed his head. “The servant intervened and the prince took the chance that the melee offered him. Forgive me if I have failed you in this, Grandmother.”

  A white finger tapped on the chair arm, close to his hand, and the blue jewel on it glittered like a star in the torchlight. “I was not pleased…but still, it drew him out, away from the palace and his protectors there, as we hoped it would. That at least was well done, grandson of mine—and now he is here and the imposter in his place, so I am disposed to be lenient.” She smiled, and the hand lifted, patting his cheek. “You have come to know something of this prince these past weeks. Do you think he will prove apt to our purpose, or will he test our powers of persuasion?”

  Sigismund expected Flor to shrug and return a light answer, but instead he frowned. “I’m not sure. He doesn’t say much, but he watches what goes on around him and you can see him weighing it all up. I think he could prove stubborn.”

  The Margravine lifted her wineglass, studying the contents as they shifted in the light. “The worse for him then,” she said, and shrugged. “I will not let some grubby whelp, sired of the beggars this world calls kings, stand between me and my right. Nor will I tolerate those renegades who sully the very name of Faerie with their pathetic attempts to thwart my purpose.” She brought the glass to her lips and drank, her lids half veiled. “I have waited,” she said, “but soon, very soon now, they will regret opposing me.”

  Flor leaned forward, his expression avid. “Give me the word,” he said, “and I will hunt them down for you, each and every one.”

  The Margravine smiled. “When the time is right,” she said, “you will get that word. But not now. First we must enlist this princeling in our cause.”

  Sigismund watched Flor scowl as the lady hummed, her long white fingers tapping out the same wild rhythm that the dancers moved to.

  “Why do we need him at all?” Flor demanded. “He stains the honor of your line, just as his mother did, and I can detect little of your power in him. And he has only just begun to train with Conte Vigiani in the fencing hall, so I would have no trouble killing him. Surely doing away with him and his House would be the best course?”

  The Margravine glanced at Flor beneath her lids, a sweetly sleepy look, but Sigismund thought he glimpsed something wilder and darker in her eyes. Flor must have seen it too for he drew back a little, and her smile became thinner, almost cruel.

  “Oh,” she said, “but he does have power all the same, a power of his own. You can see it in his eyes, if you know what to look for. Fortunately for us, his line have grown blind to what they are, which makes him a useful tool, fit for my purpose.” The sweetness of her laughter tinkled out and she drained the glass, tossing it to the ground.

  The glass shattered as Sigismund took a step away, and one of the servants standing against the wall raised her head, staring straight at him with Rue’s face. Sigismund fled, back through the dream to the room where his body slept, but he could not break the connection to the servant girl’s eyes. Even as he retreated, she followed, stepping out of the hall and into his room.

  “You!” Sigismund exclaimed, unsure now whether he was waking or sleeping. “What are you doing here? And who are you?”

  She looked half starved, he thought, as she crossed to the table where the saddlebags lay. There was a hollow, pinched look to her face and bruises on her arms and legs. Her clothes, if possible, were even more torn and ragged than before. But her smile, as she drew out the treatise on boar hunting and showed him the herb pressed between its pages, was a little sly.

  “The rue?” he asked, meeting her eyes. “Is that how you followed me here?”

  She smiled, nodding, and he noticed how beautiful her eyes were, despite the dirt and the tangled hair. They were large and dark, with gold flecks in them, and they slanted in her face—a little like Balisan’s, thought Sigismund, staring into them, or a faun’s. There was a smile in them now, glimmering somewhere far down, like sun in water, but sadness too, like the darkness of a pool where the light never falls. Sigismund pulled his own eyes away with an effort.

  She must be a faie too, he thought, one of those helping Syrica. And she must know her life is in grave danger simply by being her
e.

  “Can you help me escape?” he asked urgently. “Is there a way out that you can show me?”

  She considered him, the smile fading, before pointing: first to herself, then to his forehead and eyes, and finally at each of the four walls in turn. Sigismund stared, not understanding, and saw his own frustration mirrored in her expression as she repeated the action.

  “If only you could talk,” he began, but she lifted her hand, still and intent as some wild thing. There was a sound, a slithering in the walls as though something alien was moving there. Rue took a step away, her dark eyes strained as the noise grew louder. She took another step, and then a third, and disappeared. The last thing Sigismund saw was her eyes, lingering on his, and then they too vanished as an unseen force shoved him out of sleep and into tense, wide-eyed wakefulness.

  The room he had been given was utterly dark; there was not even a reflected glow from the fire. It was silent too, and it occurred to Sigismund that even without windows he should be able to hear some sounds from the outside world, just as he had in the hunting lodge the previous night. He stared into the darkness but his eyes could not pierce it, and after a moment he sat up and reached for his coat. This at least was where he had left it on the foot of the bed, but he had to grope for his boots and then for the saddlebags on the table. The floor felt cold and rough beneath his feet before he pulled the boots on, despite a recollection of piled carpets, and he got a splinter in his finger from the tabletop. It had been smooth before, he thought, pulling the jag of wood out. He stretched out a hand to the wall that had been hung with velvet cloth and touched rock and bare earth.

  So, thought Sigismund, not a palace after all. Or perhaps the Margravine spun an illusion so I would not realize that I had been drawn into her dungeon? It explained Flor’s smile, he supposed, but not how to get out—and what had Rue meant by pointing to herself, then to his eyes and forehead and the four walls? He wondered if she had seen the walls for what they truly were, even in his dream, or whether she too had been taken in by the Margravine’s illusion.

  The stone beneath his hand rippled and he snatched it back, but the slithering noise had begun again. Sigismund stood as still as the darkness, listening, the saddlebags clenched hard in his other hand.

  “You will need to pay the blood price for this one.” The voice was a hiss on the surface, a deep rumble underneath. “He is kin, of a sort. I can smell it in him.”

  Sigismund strained to pinpoint the direction of the voice but was disoriented by the blackness all around. A second voice spoke, cool and disembodied, but he recognized it instantly as Flor’s. “What sort of kin? He is my kinsman too, through his mother, but our line has no connection to yours.”

  “Distant blood,” said the first voice, and Sigismund thought he detected cold humor in the tone. “You will have to pay me gold for shedding it.”

  “It may not come to that.” The chill in Flor’s voice had deepened, as though he too detected the humor and suspected it was directed at him. “My grandmother believes that he will make terms with us.”

  “Your grandmother is powerful and farsighted, and those from the world of light do not like to be trapped beneath the earth.” The humor was open now. “This boy may be willing to agree to much once he sees the full extent of the darkness that surrounds him.”

  “Perhaps,” said Flor. “But continue to keep close watch. He must not escape.”

  Sigismund waited, but no one else spoke, and he did not hear the slithering sound again. Who besides Flor is watching me, he wondered, and why can I hear them, even though I’m awake? And what does the Margravine want?

  He was sure that he would not like any bargain she had to offer and that the Margravine would not let him leave her house unbound, no matter what he agreed to. Yet even in her own house the Margravine could not see that he was already using the power that Balisan had said was part of his inheritance—and nor could she detect his dream presence. And Flor and whatever creature he was talking to had not realized that Sigismund could hear them.

  Perhaps, he decided, standing up and beginning to pace the room, I am not so powerless after all, not the pawn that the Margravine thinks me.

  He turned on his heel, frowning as he remembered Rue’s strange pantomime. She had been trying to tell him something, but what? Sigismund stopped, his head bent and his arms folded hard against his chest, trying to think it through. “The Margravine as good as told me that this is one of the places where Faerie and the mortal world overlap, when she said that the house I entered was Highthorn. And this room is bound by illusion—” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was thinking aloud and that the unseen watcher might hear him.

  Illusion and overlapping planes of reality—if I’m right, Sigismund thought, his eyes wide, I should be able to just walk out. He shook his head, finally guessing what Rue must have meant when she pointed to his eyes, his forehead, and then the four walls. If he could see with the mind’s eye, then he could depart his prison in any direction and follow the earth’s energy flow back into the mortal realm.

  If, thought Sigismund, his fingers fumbling with the saddlebag strap as he tried to remember what Balisan had said about the conjunction of stars and planets with the earth. He pulled out the treatise on boar hunting and searched for the sprig of rue pressed between its pages. He let his breath out on a long sigh when he saw that it was there, just as it had been in his dream when Rue opened the book. The sprig crumbled a little between his fingers, releasing the faint dry aroma of the herb. “Rue,” he breathed, scarcely more than a whisper, and a line of pale light gleamed in the darkness.

  Sigismund looked into the light, watching it widen until Rue stood there, smiling through her tangle of hair. Her face lifted, just as it had in his dream of the Faerie hall, and she extended a hand to him, beckoning.

  “Come.” Sigismund was not sure whether he had imagined the whisper or not, but he reached out a hand to meet hers. There was no touch of fingers, no warmth, but a force tightened around his hand and drew him forward, into a wall where the substance was no longer stone, but fluid. He swam his way through and into the long, low-roofed corridor on the other side.

  Substance and Shadow

  There was a howl like a great wind rushing through the earth and a clangor of blowing horns. Rue fled, a pale glimmering down the corridor, and Sigismund followed. The corridor twisted and turned, with flights of stairs up and down, and sometimes Sigismund was uncertain whether he was running through rock and earth or a dark twisted wood that reached out to clutch and trip. He focused his awareness as Balisan had taught him and found it helped separate illusion from substance on either side. Mainly, however, he concentrated on staying on his feet and following Rue.

  The howling was louder now, baying at their heels, and Sigismund could hear voices in it, crying and cursing after him as the walls alternately closed in, then drew back. The pursuit would catch up soon, he thought, unless Rue could get them out. He snatched a quick look back but saw nothing, just a deeper blackness pressing after them around every corner. The breath was beginning to tear in his lungs, sweat stinging his eyes, so that at first he didn’t see the line that seared the air between himself and Rue. He swerved aside as it blazed bright, stumbling into the wall. By the time he pulled himself upright again, Rue had vanished and the Margravine stood before him.

  The howling and the dark narrow corridor were gone. He was standing in what looked like a wooden belvedere, with fluted pillars holding up a shingled roof. Great trees pressed in close on every side, obscuring any view of moon or stars, and there were leaves and vines tangled across the floor. The Margravine stood in a nimbus of pale light that cast a soft glow around her face and body. Like clouds around the moon, thought Sigismund, awed by her beauty in spite of himself. But her face, like that of the moon, was hidden in shadow.

  She extended a hand and he was drawn toward her whether he wished to go or not. It didn’t help, Sigismund found, to know that magic was being used again
st you if you could do nothing to stop it. He gritted his teeth, thinking of the long hours spent meditating on the tower roof and how he would not give in then either. Inside him, the serpent of power uncoiled, hissing.

  Sigismund stopped moving forward and regarded the woman in front of him. She was beautiful, he thought, detached now, but he remembered his mother’s death, and the boar that had killed Wat, let loose in the forest of Thorn.

  “Prince Sigismund,” the Margravine said, “I congratulate you. You really have been quite clever.” She was smiling and her tone was sweet, but he guessed that she was far from pleased. “Someone has taught you well, it seems.”

  Saying nothing, Sigismund decided, was the wisest course. He was certainly not going to tell her about Rue, and he could see no point in mentioning Balisan.

  The Margravine took a step closer, and he saw that her blue eyes had turned so dark they were black hollows in her face. “Clever,” she repeated, still smiling, “but discourteous to abandon my hospitality when we still have business to discuss.”

  “I have nothing to discuss with anyone who traps and then imprisons me,” Sigismund said, his voice rusted metal against her sweetness.

  She widened her eyes at him, stepping forward again. “So hasty—but can you be sure of that? What if I offered you peace in your father’s kingdom, an end to the wars in the south?”

  Sigismund stared at her, thinking how long those wars had bled his country dry, absorbing the energy of its kings. “In exchange for what?” he asked slowly.

  Her smile deepened. “So you are interested,” she murmured. “I thought you might be. And the exchange I ask is such a little thing.” She was watching him closely and her voice crooned on a singsong note when she spoke again. “Such a little thing.”