“Quite the dilemma we have here,” came the iced tones of she who I was to kill.
I raised my head to the majesty that was Queen Serena of the Nordics. She stood in the open doorway resplendent in the colours of her domain, impassive. The albino queen could have killed me then, and Linka, if she'd wished. She did not.
“I shall leave,” I said without hesitation.
“And, if I was not to allow it?”
“I give you my word, Serena. I will not return if you promise to shelter Linka.”
“Why should I?”
“She is a member of the Hierarchy, is it not your duty?”
“Perhaps, and I realise she is innocent in this game. However, I dislike surprises. This is the biggest in more time than I care to reflect upon. I am disturbed. Your letter disturbs me.”
“Not as much as I.”
“More so, Jean. Someone placed this letter on my throne, whilst we Nordics hunted. This should not have been possible. Hvit is closed to all but my own people; they were all with me.”
“I… I don't know what to say,” I stammered like a nervous child.
“I gather this is not your first contact with whoever sent that.” She pointed to the letter with a look of utter contempt plastered across her sculpted face.
“It is not,” I confessed.
“I also gather you have not done as they wished.”
“I did not have to.”
“That is not very reassuring.”
“It is the truth.”
“Who were you to kill?”
It was the question I'd dreaded. I felt like I was drowning in subterfuge and lies, the truth, my only life-raft. “Linka's father,” I whispered.
“Speak up, Jean, I did not hear you.”
“I was to kill Linka's father!” I growled. My love's leg flinched at that, but she remained otherwise deadened.
“Rudolph!” Serena sounded surprised.
“Yes, it is a long story.”
“One I do not wish to hear, fortunately for you. Why do you think leaving would be preferable to doing as they wish?”
“I have had, and never will have, any intention of doing their bidding.”
“Ah, a man of principles, I see. What if their wishes coincided with what was best for you?”
“Pardon!” I exclaimed, burying my face in my hands.
“With me dead, the most senior of all Eternals, then you as courtesan to the oldest house remaining in this fractured world would be in a powerful position.”
“You have children, don't you?” I snapped.
“They are not me, though some would wish it.”
“Well, either way, I have never intended to be anything other than left alone.”
“I don't believe that was always the case, Jean. I do not believe that for one second. Doubly so, now.” Serena nodded in Linka's direction.
“You know what I meant.” An insipid response from between clasped fingers.
“Possibly? One thing I do know with an assuredness to level mountains is the girl you sit beside is your entire world. Ironic, really.”
“Why's that?” My tone was savage but toothless.
“That the vagabond prince should, at last, find true love, as the planet nears its end.”
“I would sooner spend a minute with Linka than a lifetime without her.”
“Yet, you would leave her.”
“If it spared her, then yes. I am the magnet they are drawn to, not she.”
“Do you not think your blackmailers know this?”
“How do you mean?” I said, taken aback by her words.
“These people are resourceful, knowledgeable, even. They may have foreseen your reaction.”
“I don't know.”
“Do you not think the note's true purpose is to act as a provocation?”
“I don't know, Serena!” I snapped. “It is a nightmare I find myself unable to wake from.”
“Ah, at last, a little of the real man.” Serena stroked the ermine trims of her robe. A dismissive flick of her milk-white hair followed, and then she spoke again. “You must go.”
“I know.”
“Now, Jean. I believe time is of the essence. Hvit's door shall soon move and the entrance to our realm will again become invisible to all but our own.”
“Then, I will leave.”
“I do not want that,” came Linka's tremulous voice.
“Even though you know the truth, my love.”
“I know it was not of your doing, nor of your choice.”
“It never is.”
Linka looked up then with eyes like flooded grasslands. Without even trying, I'd broken the girl's heart, her spirit swamped and floundering. Shame on me. Shame on the world.
“I have to go. There is no other way to guarantee your safety. I trust Serena's word, she is honourable. What happened with the twins is proof of that.”
Serena shuffled uneasily in the doorway, but all my attention was upon Linka.
“She is the only one who can protect you, my love. She already has.”
“I would rather die than be without you,” Linka implored.
“It will not come to that, dear, dear Linka. I will not let it. I will find who seeks to manipulate me and end this once and for all. There is no other way.”
“Unpleasant actions garner unpleasant rewards,” Serena cooed.
“That is the sort of thing a good friend of mine would've said.”
“Would he?”
“How did you know it was a he?”
Serena paused before answering, “You do not strike me as a man with female friends, only dalliances.”
“You see, a lot.”
“I have seen, a lot,” she corrected. “Now, you must go. I can already hear the ice creaking. It signals Hvit's repositioning. Our city moves.”
She was right. A crack of such magnitude split our conversation I thought lightning had somehow penetrated the ocean and struck us.
“Jean, I'm begging you, don't go,” Linka wept.
Cascades of tears washed over the contours of her perfect face; they froze as waterfalls before reaching the floor. I couldn't bear to look.
“I promise, my one and only love, I shall return when I can.”
My words did nothing to assuage her dread. Linka threw herself upon me, a limpet to a rock, whilst I remained impassive. Only Serena's surprisingly gentle coaxing extricated her from me. Perhaps the queen still possessed some trace of humanity after all.
“Go, Jean, I shall watch over her,” Serena said, as Linka clung instead to her, as though her very soul depended on it.
I stood, looked to the two, and then walked from the room. I could not say another word for I did not have the strength.
The long walk down that silent corridor was like a path to my doom. The echoes of my booted feet were my sole accompaniment, nothing more.
Through the doors to the throne room, I departed. The chamber, pristine again, stood deserted apart from a guard of Serena's children. They stood in two lines of three with Narina at point holding the doors to the outside world ajar. I said nothing as I strode between them, and neither did they. Only the flicker of a crystal tear in the corner of Narina's eye belied any emotion. Even the maimed twins remained statuesque at my passing, silent and still. I witnessed my own wake, or so it seemed. Perhaps, it was? Narina handed me a backpack containing the reassuring slosh of bottled blood, but it was lost in the thud of the closing doors.
I reached the top of the staircase before I realised I'd even set foot on it and stopped with my hands pressed against the exit. I don't know why I looked back over my shoulder, what I expected to see? But when I realised my love did not follow, I pushed upwards and emerged into an Arctic maelstrom.
An acerbic wind bit deep into my bones. The tempest, violent and wild, threatened to upend me such was its magnitude. I pulled my cloak closer lest it wrapped me in my own dark shroud and stared into a solid wall of white. I could not see nor hear anything other than the Po
lar storm. I should have been cold then, scared, perhaps even nervous, if any other creature. Yet, I was Eternal, and felt nothing. Nothing at all.
Knowing the ocean lay before me, I struggled to turn my back to the wind, slung my pack over my shoulder, then set off in the opposite direction. I left behind not only the hated water, Hvit, and those contained within it, but the sun. When I would see it again, I did not know. What little soul I had grew a shade darker.
The compacted snow, closer in composition to ice than the fluffy white stuff I loved, had already covered to a depth of at least a foot. I did not care, for what had I to worry from it? There were only two things on my mind: Linka's tears, and my determination to quell them. Those thoughts fuelled me, consumed me. My mind swirled with violent intent. Angry hands gripped my cloak, their clutching talons piercing both fabric and palms. The suppressed rage that stemmed from embarrassment and shame surfaced. My deception of the one person I'd not have wished manifested in a roar of such anger as I'd never before expelled. The maelstrom winds swallowed my anguished howl the moment it left my mouth. Even in despair, I was unheard, unseen, unwanted.
I stood there a moment swaying to the planet's will. I hadn't taken twenty paces, but I felt a million miles from Linka, and perhaps a few closer to Alba, wherever she dwelt.
* * *
A few yards became a few miles, and a few miles, many more. In truth, I was clueless to how far I'd walked, or for how long, but the Arctic did not loosen its grip upon me for even an instant. There was no up, nor down, in that world of devastating obliteration. All I knew was that sometimes the going seemed hard and other times, harder. My plane of existence teetered between limbo and Hell, I cared not which. I deserved everything the Arctic threw at me.
I tried logic: I considered my situation, evaluated it and sought answers. But I had none. No nearer to finding who manipulated me, nor to finding who had ruined what life I had, I trudged on through the relentless blizzard. My one certainty was that with every difficult step my fury grew greater. Whether it was with them, or myself, I wasn't sure.
* * *
An absence of sun, moon, and apparently season soon told upon my body. The passage of hours became a confusion of whipping winds and blanketed white landscapes. I even imagined my fangs freezing, then cracking off in a sudden gust like icicles plucked from a ledge. My body clock was off and my mood with it. If I couldn't be moody, my one dependable state, then what had I left other than tedium. I mired in it.
Then, as if in response to my confusions, the storm stopped. As abruptly as it had started it finished. A few half-hearted snowflakes that descended from the sky like shed angel's feathers were all that remained of my personal purgatory. In its place, a pristine sky freckled by stars. The beauty above was matched by its star-filled and gently undulating reflection?
I had stopped less than three feet from an almost exact replica of the shoreline I'd left long behind. They were so alike, I imagined a circuitous route had returned me whence I'd came. But the momentary panic of the lost cleared like the skies, the sun's absence proving I'd not. What else was there to do but sit and have a drink.
I removed my cloak, folded it into a square, then sat upon it, as though picnicking with Alba, as we had by the once blue Danube. I'd have preferred it being in the shade of the Alps with Linka, but an expanse of bland white would have to do. The sea wasn't included in my observations; I held only contempt for that.
I uncorked the only bottle of what appeared a fine looking liquid, sniffed it to no effect, and took a long draught. Within seconds, everything felt much better. I took another swill of the crimson liqueur, gargled it around my mouth until all my senses became infused with it, then lay back in the snow. The stars always looked better when laid on one's back. But unlike the old me, who would have happily laid there forever, the ever twinkling lights were a constant reminder of she I'd deserted. Every pattern in the night sky was Linka. Every glimpse of the moon, her porcelain skin. There was no submerging her memory in my inner depths, no purging my core of her infection. The thought I might even have tried revolted me. I cursed my pathetic self, then the onyx sky, then the sea, and resolved to do something about it.
I got back up, brushed myself off, put the bottle back in the backpack and replaced my cloak. There wasn't time to dally. I had to press on, but where?
I looked about like some pathetic lost sheep. There were no landmarks to note, nothing to give a clue as to my whereabouts. I even contemplated continuing in the same direction. I couldn't swim, of course, but I considered sinking to the seafloor and walking in a generally straight line.
However, I was robbed of even that ridiculous solution, for as I stared over whatever ocean lay before me three dorsal fins rose from the dark waters splicing the waves like black blades. They were graceful in their way, although I did not thank them for spraying me with their expelled breaths. The orcas awaited my entrance with a patience I myself should once have envied. They circled five yards from my position not even bothering to hide. They knew my thinking even better than I.
The Nordics and orcas shared so simple a living arrangements as to be admirable. Not only did they provide food for each other, to greater or lesser degrees, but a certain joint security. I doubted any stray Eternal should've sought entry to Hvit past those most fearsome sentinels even if they had discovered where it lay. Likewise, I suspected no Nordic of being so foolhardy as to risk escape in the opposite direction. It was a marriage made in Heaven and consummated in Hell. If Serena had planned it, then she'd given more thought to her circumstances than I'd given her credit for. I would not make the mistake again.
The orcas swam in languid circles. On occasion, they'd rise clear of the water like half-submerged carriages to spy me through those gigantic eyes. Like kittens, the orcas toyed with their prey, their actual lion selves never far from pouncing.
I contemplated numerous miraculous escapes: springing atop their shiny backs, riding them to safety, etcetera, etcetera, but each was more flight of fantasy than the last. One whale, a huge specimen, as if sensing my lunacy, leapt from the sea and bellyflopped not two yards away, saturating me from head to toe. Unamused to start with, and even less so then, I was on the point of lavishing my antagonist with a verbal lambasting when I was deprived of even this. The three leviathans gave me one last wide-eyed glare and then each dived below the waves, lost to their liquid world. They did not resurface.
At first, I was surprised, then suspicious. I even suspected the creatures of hatching some master plan to dispatch me. I soon saw why, or rather, heard, why they'd departed with such permanence.
It started as a slight drone, a bee on the wing, then a wail like a trodden on cat, if I'd ever had a cat to tread on, then louder still. Out of the distant sky, a flying platform sped towards me over the rolling waters. I was so ecstatic to see it I almost waved my arms about in joy. Almost. I could not see the machine's pilot but did not approve of his trajectory, nor his erratic movements. So much so, I dived full length to avoid being flattened by the strange device, as it ploughed unceremoniously into the snow. In a great crash of unyielding metal on even tougher ice, the contraption sent volcanic amounts of snow raining down in all directions.
I picked myself up, dusted off my shirt, then strolled nonchalantly over to my visitor. I would not give them the pleasure of seeing me ruffled. That cool demeanour dispersed when I recognised the pilot, hurt, bleeding and half covered by snow. It was the aged form of my one true friend, my blind friend. It was Sunyin, alive, but just.
Chapter Six
-
Grey
Collecting Sunyin's crumpled form was a bittersweet torment. The tang of blood, which seeped from both a cut forehead and gashed arm, was like a natural aphrodisiac. I had no choice but to resist.
“Sunyin,” I said taking a handful of snow and mopping at his injuries. “Sunyin, it is I, Jean.”
There was no response. I tried to compress some snow to water to provide a drink, but t
he cold hands of the dead refused so simple a task. Instead, I took a handful of that most bountiful provision and tried to feed him it. Most fell from Sunyin's mouth to his robe, but some melted into his mouth if judged by his gulping throat. Scant else revealed any sign of life. His milk-white eyes stared off into the night at I knew not what as he lay otherwise limp. I offered him a little more snow until a short cough signalled the precursor to words.
“I knew a Jean once. I dreamed him.”
“Yes, yes, my old friend!” I exuded. “It is I, Jean, the one you mistook for a good man, but you did not dream me. Do you not remember?”
“Jean?” He rolled the name over his tongue as if tasting a memory. “I recall a raven called Jean. It was many lifetimes ago.” A wracked cough made him wince in pain.
“Say no more, old friend, I shall care for you.”
“Ah, that sounds like something a good friend would once have said.”
If Sunyin was serious, delusional, or teasing, I was unsure, but I removed my cloak, wrapped it into a tight bundle, and laid his head upon it. That seemed to ease the monk's frowning features, but I noted from the shining crystals collected across his shuddering body, he was very, very cold. I removed my shirt, as it did nothing for me, slipped it over Sunyin's head and rested him back down again.
“Jean…Jean,” he mused. “I cannot remember his last name.”
“I have not got one,” I said, wiping the last smears of blood from his blue-tinged skin.
“Everybody has one. You have merely forgotten it…” Sunyin's words trailed off into the Arctic night, as his eyes slid closed.
I shook my head in despair not knowing what else to do? Caring was not my forte, Alba and many others would've testified to that, but I was not about to let humanity pass from the world without trying to prevent it. So, I did the only thing I could, I righted the craft, laid Sunyin in its rear and in mimicry of Merryweather's handling of the last flying platform took the controls. Through clenched teeth, I depressed the red button.
The vehicle stung into action. The front end trembled, spluttered, then lifted from the snow. I wasn't sure what to expect next, but a sixth sense told me to hang on. I did. Good job, too.
Hunter Hunted (The Eternals Book 2) Page 5