Red Palace

by Sarah Dalton

  “Don’t say that,” I reply, aghast.

  His old face nods slowly. He is grey: from his hair to his beard, to the pallor of his thin skin.

  “Help an old man back on his feet,” he says. “I am ready to face my inventions.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quite sure. Come on. Up I must go.”

  Beardsley leans on me as he rises. I feel the frailty in his body.

  “Good bye, Mae,” he says to me, cupping my cheek with one hand. “You have reminded me that there is still good in the world. I believe we are on a constant scale of good and evil, and there are often slight dips either way. For a long time our world has been tipped further towards evil than good. But I believe you have been sent to us to balance those scales.”

  “No—” I begin.

  “Yes, yes. Do not argue with an old man. You won’t see it—not for a long time, perhaps—but you are a force in this world. Now, off to my spiders I shall go.”

  My eyes burn with unshed tears. I know this is what I need to happen in order to break the Nix’s plans, but my gut twists with remorse. This vision feels too real. Part of me believes I will never see Beardsley again.

  Chapter Seventeen – The Vision of Temptation

  Psst. Psst.

  Click-ick-ick.

  The Nix.

  “Psst!”

  “Who’s there?”

  A cacophony of sound bursts through the silence and the room spins and spins until I think I might throw up. A horrible corset digs into my ribs. There is music in the air, slow and melodic. People giggle and flatter each other, or glug down wine. Wig powder flurries to the floor as heavily rouged women take canapés from silver platters. Next to me, a little boy pokes his head around a gold embroidered curtain.

  “Prince Casimir,” I say, a smile coming to my lips. Those eyes haven’t changed. They are still as open and kind as ever.

  “Have you seen my brother? He’s the tall brute with the whip.”

  I bend down to eye level with the little prince. “Now, you listen to me. You’re worth ten of people like him. He is a bully because he is weak, and you should not be afraid of weakness. Never be afraid of someone’s weakness, it’s a waste, Cas, a waste of your energy. You should focus on your own strengths. You are a kind and gentle soul, and you should nurture that, because one day you will become king and you will need those qualities to be a good king.”

  “That doesn’t stop him hitting me.”

  “Then you must think of one thing you are good at that he is not, and then use that one thing to your advantage.”

  Cas nods. “There is something. I’m faster.” His eyes widen, he steps out from behind the curtain.

  “That’s good! You use that.”

  “What if he still wins?” Cas asks. His boyish eyes catch the light in the room.

  “He isn’t winning. As long as he remains a bully, no one will truly care for him. He will only frighten people into doing what he wants. That’s no way to live. It’s a lonely way to live.”

  Cas breaks into a smile. “Thank you.” He moves out from behind the curtain and stands a little taller. “I will always remember you.”

  His words give me a chill, even though I know this is only a vision version of Cas, I feel as though he really will grow up to know me.

  “Hey, how did you know my name?” he asks, his silver eyes narrowing.

  “I, umm, well…”

  The sucking sensation is back, pulling me away so I don’t have to explain myself. That’s three of the fears dealt with. Some seem easier than others. Most concern standing up to those who frighten us. I suppose I’ve never realised how afraid we are of other people.

  This next fear is one I have dreaded. It is the queen’s fear, the gruesome depiction of regicide and fratricide conducted by the disturbing Lyndon. It has not escaped my attention that I have never been inside Lyndon’s deepest fear. Perhaps he doesn’t have one. The Nix needs something personal to work with, and if there is nothing there, then there is nothing to show.

  This time I am not in the queen’s body and it is this time that I see her face as her son’s head is dumped on top of her sheets. She struggles away from the dead eyes of her husband and collapses back onto the floor away from the bed.

  “I can be king now, Mummy, isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?” Lyndon says, in a sickly sweet voice that sends a shiver down my spine.

  The queen’s screams are frantic and terrifying, high-pitched and desperate. For a brief moment I want nothing but to disappear from that room, to leave the stench of death and blood-soaked sheets, and the sound of a mother screaming for her child. But I can’t. I need to take control. I need to show the Nix that I am more than capable of taking control, and that my magic is stronger. He can control our minds, but only if we are weak. I am strong, and I will defeat him. I have to change this vision into a solution.

  So I take a deep breath and I change the surroundings. Within seconds, the horrifying screams stop, replaced by new sounds: a baby crying and the panicked hushes of a mother trying to quieten him.

  “This is for the best, this is for the best,” the queen says over and over. I walk with her as she hurries down a corridor. She does not see me. It is as though I am invisible. “I must keep you away from him. It’s the only way.”

  Her feet scuff against the stone floor, and in her haste she almost trips. She wears a cloak covering her face, and the baby is swaddled in a light grey woollen blanket.

  “Your Majesty,” comes a whispered voice. A man steps out from the shadows. He is dressed in britches and light armour. I recognise him as Finan, Cas’s bodyguard killed by the Borgans in Halts-Walden. “I am here.”

  “You must take my son and ride far from here. I cannot say why I must do this, only that I know if I keep him near my husband, something terrible will happen. Do you trust me? It will mean going behind my husband’s back. You will never be able to return to Cyne.”

  “I am your loyal servant, my lady.” There is a glint in his eye that reveals a personal moment between the two of them, and I am glad that the queen has known at least some happiness while married to a tyrant.

  “Good bye my little Lyndon. Grow to be the man I want you to be, not the man your father wants you to be.”

  I back away from the conspirators, pleased that I found a solution for the queen’s fear. She finally admitted to herself that she believes her son is evil under the influence of the king, and she found a way to deal with it.

  A sense of calm spreads over me. I close my eyes and let the smile come back to my lips. If only I could change real life, I could make sure everyone gets what they want. Perhaps even me?

  But these solutions are temporary. As soon as I break the curse, all these fears will come back. Lyndon will still be in the Red Palace.

  A cold dread seeps through my veins, thick as molasses. The image of Anta pops into my mind, and again I feel as though something bad is going to happen. This picture is somehow disconnected from the Nix, separate from the fears I have been treading. I can’t explain why I know that, perhaps it is my connection to the craft, my gut instinct telling me, forewarning me. Both Allerton and Sasha tell me that the Nix likes to trick people, that it will show you distorted versions of the truth, and I must disregard anything I cannot control, yet there is a horrifying niggle in my mind that Anta is in real danger, and while I am stuck in this curse there is nothing I can do about it.

  I shake my head, trying to force the image out of my mind. It is just the Nix trying to weaken me. I have been able to infiltrate his visions, to control them and stop the fear it spreads. The Nix feeds on fears, and while ever I control the fears, I stop the Nix from controlling me. That means I can stop myself from working for the Nix.

  “It wants you to think you need it,” I remind myself. “It wants you to believe that your loved ones will die without its assistance. That’s why it keeps sending you into the fears. Control it, Mae.” A strong mind and a strong hear
t.

  I push my worries away, form fists at my side so tightly that my fingernails dig into my palms, and then I concentrate on going to my next destination.

  Click-ick-icker-ick.

  Where are you going, craft-born? The words appear in my mind, in the sickly voice of the Nix, making my skin-crawl. What do you think you will achieve?

  “I’m going to defeat you once and for all. You can’t control me anymore, I’m too strong.” A searing pain rips through my skull and images hurtle through my mind. They are all of me and Cas: talking in the Waerg Woods, dancing in the ballroom, Cas alone on the bell tower after we talked about the sea, the kiss in the hidden tunnel… more, things I’ve never seen—a magical day where we walk hand in hand through a garden filled with flowers, Cas turning a bright silver ring on my finger and leaning forward to move stray hairs from my eyes, we’re older and my stomach is swollen. He reaches out and places a hand on my belly…

  “NO!” I shout. “Stop it. We will never have any of that. We can’t be together—”

  Because you lied to him.

  I clamp my hands against my ears. “Shut up!”

  He will never trust you now.

  “I said shut up!”

  You will lose him as a friend. Unless you help me. Help me find the Ember Stone and I will give you anything you want.

  “No,” I whisper. “You couldn’t, you don’t have the power.”

  The visions are easy, aren’t they, Mae? Life is much simpler when you are in them. Your life with Cas could be like that.

  “It would be a lie,” I say. “I would be living a lie.”

  Before I can do anything more, I feel the familiar, dizzying sensation of being pulled through into another vision. I’m back in the tunnel. Cas’s silver eyes burn bright through the darkness.

  “We should go,” he says. “We don’t have much time.”

  “Where are we going to go?” I ask.

  “Does it matter? As long as we are together.”

  “Why? Why do you love me?” I ask. His hands are on mine. They are warm and comforting, but grip hard enough to send tingles up my arms.

  “Mae, you’re like a whirlwind. You’re passionate and free spirited and you never stand still. Life with you is an adventure. I want us to have our own adventures, away from here, away from these people… my father.”

  “But you were meant to be king. You would be a good king. ”

  “I don’t want to rule and I never have. Deep down I never expected to make it to the throne. I always thought Lyndon or Father would finish me off by then. But you and me together, that is something I want. I’ll get Gwen, you can find Anta, we’ll ride down to the Haedalands and see the South Seas. It will be beautiful. Imagine the stretching yellow of the Anadi Sands. Don’t you want to see it, Mae? Don’t you?”

  More than anything. To open my lips and say yes feels like the most natural response in the world. “Why is this your fear?”

  “Pardon?”

  Tears well in my eyes. “Why is this your greatest fear? Loving me frightens you. Why?”

  “It doesn’t frighten me,” he says. He drops my hands and takes a step back. “I don’t… I don’t know what you mean.”

  “This is your fear, Cas, but I can’t figure out what you are afraid of. Are you afraid of me? Or are you afraid of marrying someone you don’t love? Or are you afraid of staying here and having to be king?”

  Cas runs his fingers through his sandy-blond hair. “I don’t know.”

  “Then we can’t leave,” I say. “You can’t just run away.”

  He takes my hands again. “Yes, we can—”

  “No, because none of this is real.” I pull away from him. “It’s not real. This is all… it’s some sort of…”

  “What are you talking about, Mae?”

  “You have to go back.” The tears run down my cheeks. “Go back and face your brother and your father and tell them that you will rule the kingdom and you will do a better job of it than they ever have or will. That’s your destiny, Cas. It’s not to be with me.”

  “I don’t want any of that.”

  “You don’t want it, but Aegunlund needs it. We need you. The people need you.” I need you. The words are on my lips, but they remain unsaid. There is a lot inside of me that has remained unsaid, and probably always will.

  “Is this what you want?” he asks, looking deep into my eyes.

  I know that this isn’t real. I know that the Nix has created this vision, and yet it feels authentic, like it is the greatest truth I have ever known. My body is burning with the desire to change course, to run away with Cas, and live in this world where he and I are together, even though our bodies lay sleeping in different parts of the Red Palace. It would be living a lie, but what a lie it would be!

  I shake my head. And what happens when the Nix pulls me back? And I know it will. What happens then? I’ll be weak, physically and mentally, at mercy to its will. By then it will have power over the kingdom, with the curse still fallen on the castle and the realm in disarray. The Nix wants me to choose this path. It wants me to fail. It wants me as its puppet, to use my powers to acquire the Ember Stone and live forever, ruling the world into its dark version of hell.

  “This is what I want, Cas,” I say. “I don’t want to go with you, I’m sorry. I just want to be alone.”

  Cas’s jaw goes slack. “But I thought…” He straightens his back. “Very well, I saw something that wasn’t there. And to think I almost tore myself apart with the guilt…” his voice fades away and he shakes his head. “I was so afraid of my own feelings that I never thought of what this moment would be like. I’ve been such a fool.”

  The tears spring into my eyes, thick and fast enough to drown in. “No, you are not a fool, and you never have been. Not even when we first met and I treated you as though you were. I just didn’t know you. Once I knew your heart…” My voice breaks on the word heart.

  “Well clearly not enough,” he says, letting out a hollow little laugh. “Fine, if you say I will make a good ruler, then I will. Now I know that… Now this has been resolved, I can put all my efforts into becoming the king Aegunlund needs.”

  “I think that’s for the best,” I say.

  “Still, it isn’t safe for you here—”

  “Don’t worry, I won’t stay. I… shouldn’t stay.” Again, I forget that this isn’t real. My bottom lip trembles as I force back tears. “I’ll take Anta and go south.”

  “You still want to see the Haedalands?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Very well. This is goodbye then.”

  “I guess it is.”

  Cas holds out his hand towards me in the formal way, but I push it aside and pull him close to me instead. At first he is rigid, but then he sinks into my embrace. I’ve taken him off guard, and I’m glad of it; it gave him no time to resist.

  “Maybe one day we can meet, sometime in the future when all this madness has ended and we can sit by the sea and it will be like those campfires in the Waerg Woods.”

  “I would like that,” he says.

  And then he is gone. My arms are empty and I am left in nothingness.

  Complete nothingness. Fear grips my heart as though in a vice. Where am I?

  Chapter Eighteen – The Powerful and The Weak

  After a few moments of utter panic, I calm myself long enough to recognise my surroundings. The pitch black expanse. The nothingness. The death of the king. That wracking sob warbles out into the empty space. My eyes see as much open as they do shut, and my breath comes out in ragged gasps as I try to control the dread seeping over my skin.

  “You’re dying, aren’t you?” I shout.

  He falters, sucks in a breath, and then the crying continues.

  “That’s what this is all about. You’re dying, and because you’re afraid, you’re taking it out on Aegunlund. You’ve orchestrated the laboratory in the Red Palace so that you can make your diamonds, and you have pulled me into your little
scheme because you are desperate for the craft-born to reignite the powers in the castle. And all this time you have ruined your own land and polluted the air in order to create an Ember Stone. But you failed. You can’t make an Ember Stone at all.”

  The crying stops. He lets out a succession of quick breaths.

  “You are the most pathetic man I have ever known, and I have met many a wastrel in The Fallen Oak. What did Aegunlund do to you? Does it deserve the way you have treated it? Does it? Do the people deserve such a weak man for a king? You should step down and let Casimir take over, a fair and just man.”

  “Bah! He is weaker than I!”

  “Only someone who cannot see beyond skin would say such a thing. Have you ever taken the time to stop and get to know your son? Well, have you? I think not. You did not see the fearless way he fought in the Waerg Woods. He was frightened at first, but only idiots have no fear. Real strength comes from being afraid and doing it anyway. The opposite of what you are doing right now. I have seen Cas look death straight in the face without flinching. I have seen him embrace his death. Not like his father, a sobbing, quivering mess—”

  “You don’t know!” he booms. “You don’t know how I’ve lived, how I’ve suffered.”

  “Oh spare me. I do know. I have come close to death several times during my journey here, and, yes, I have flinched, I have fought, and I have almost failed more than once, but I never gave up, and I would never, ever, take another life in order to live longer. You have taken hundreds of lives to try and prolong yours. You have killed your own people to do it. You are a small man, a despot king, a man to be laughed at. I will kill you myself.”

  I step forward in the dark with my hands in front of my face. It is useless. The nothingness is so thick that I cannot see even an inch in front of my face. If I am to find the king I must use light. The only way I can do that is by conjuring fire. I gulp at the thought. That means releasing more rage.

  “You’ll have to find me first,” the king growls.