The mage shut his eyes. He blurred suddenly, shredding into the air—his own power, and not hers; the woman’s dark gaze pulled him back ruthlessly into his own shape, pinning him in place. She frowned slightly. Marcos made a low sound in his throat. The air between them rang with power like a bell. Marcos was fighting her, the Bastard knew, but Lelienne did not seem to feel his power. She stroked the long fall of her white hair back with both hands, looking satisfied; a delicate blush rose under her fair skin.
Marcos’s hands stiffened suddenly, his arms, his face. He was turning to stone before them. Stone closed across his mouth, stopping a sound he had tried to make: a word, a plea. The stone cracked around the mage’s fingers as he fought it, and closed again, merciless. His robes fell around him in folds of marble and lime. His eyes remained human, trapped in a face of stone, and after a moment it was clear that Lelienne meant to leave him that way: trapped and aware behind stone.
The guardsmen had fallen back, their faces white and set. Galef threw a stricken look at the Bastard, asking how he could fight this.
The Bastard looked only at his mother. He said, “Undo it. I will do anything you ask.”
“I will leave him like this, and you will still do anything I command, my son. I will crush one man after another in my hand, until all who fight me are destroyed and all who are left have fallen at my feet. I can do this. Do you wish me to begin?”
“The more you destroy, the less you have to rule. Do you wish to destroy what you came here to hold?”
“Do you think you know why I came here?” asked Lelienne, smiling again. “You will hand me this City, and this Kingdom. My son. My King-born son. And my mage-born daughter will yield to me all the strange old magic that it holds. You will have no choice. Nor will she. Will you fight me?”
“Yes,” said the Bastard.
“No. Or I shall break every stone in this City into pieces. You cannot even stand without my leave. Stand.”
He could not.
“Kiss my foot.”
The Bastard bowed his head, struggling against the weight of her regard. “Undo what you did to Marcos, and I will.”
His mother’s strength, limitless, crushed the Bastard to the floor and stopped his breath. All his bones bent under that pressure. The stones of the floor ground into his palms, into his face. He would have cried out, but had no breath for a cry. She said softly, from infinitely far above, “Never bargain with me, my son. I never bargain. But yield to me, and perhaps I shall be generous.”
Slowly, bone by bone, fighting for every movement and every breath, he crossed the few feet that separated them. It took all his strength to turn his head enough to set his mouth against her white slipper.
At once the pressure disappeared. Shaking, the Bastard dragged himself back to his knees. He did not try to get to his feet. He did not trust his own strength to make it upright; he did not trust his mother’s whim to allow it.
“Who rules here?”
“You,” whispered the Bastard.
“Whose hand lies upon this City?”
“Yours.”
“You will give me this Kingdom.”
The Bastard shut his eyes, opened them. He said steadily, “You have taken it already.”
“You may kiss my foot.”
The Bastard at once placed one hand on the stone floor and touched his lips again to his mother’s foot. He stayed there, bent low. She moved above him; when he looked up, he saw she was smiling. Her smile sent horror prickling down his spine, but he did not move.
“I can be generous,” said Lelienne, and began to walk away, adding casually over her shoulder, “You may stand, my son.”
The Bastard got to his feet. In the time it took him to do so, his mother had already restored Marcos. The mage was pale. His eyes were open, but blind. He swayed, and would have fallen except that Galef took a step forward and caught him. It was a brave act. Lelienne glanced at him and away, fortunately disinterested.
“This is my City,” said Lelienne, speaking to the Bastard. “I claim it, and all within it, and all without, to the very edges of this Kingdom. You, my son, may present me to your court and to the City, at dusk. There will be a great feast. See to it.” She spoke without evident triumph, but only with that same satisfaction that had been in her voice from the start; she had known from the beginning that he would surrender to her power, that the City would yield to her strength, and so there was no reason for triumph. When she walked away, it was with quiet steps and no fanfare. She did not need fanfare. She already ruled, more subtly and with an infinitely tighter grip than the Queen in her tower, or the missing King, or the Bastard, whom she had made to bring all their power to her.
“How can we fight her?” Galef asked the Bastard later, while the sun slid lower in the sky and shadows lengthened. He had helped bring Marcos to the Bastard’s rooms, where the mage now lay, eyes closed, across the blankets of the bed. His breathing was still ragged.
The Bastard watched him with concern, but answered the captain’s question briefly. “We cannot. Don’t ask such questions.”
“But—”
“Neill is right,” whispered Marcos without opening his eyes. “She will hear you.”
“What is she? A mage?” asked the Bastard.
Marcos turned his head a little toward the Bastard’s voice. “She is an echo in an old story. A name in a history older than this Kingdom. She is not a mage. I have no clear idea what she is.”
“Is she really your mother?” Galef asked the Bastard, and then bowed his head under the Bastard’s icy stare. “Forgive me—” he breathed. “I am stupid with fear.”
The Bastard touched his arm, forcing a smile. He had spent his childhood dreaming of the mother who had left him in the heart of the Kingdom and gone away . . . and now this was the face of all his dreams. He made himself speak gently. “No. I am sorry. We are all stupid with fear, I think. Her name is Lelienne. That is the name she gave my father. She is my mother. What else she is, I think none of us ever knew, least of all my father.”
“Her heart is stone,” whispered Marcos. “Or ice. I am still made of stone. . . .”
“Hush,” said the Bastard gently, and helped him to sit, offering him a cup of hot spiced wine.
Marcos waved away the cup. “Inside,” he said. He touched his own chest. “She has enclosed me in stone, though you cannot see it. I move, I breathe . . . but, Neill, I am not a mage. The memory of power is there, but I cannot touch it, nor reach out of myself. I cannot light so much as a candle for you. Neill, I’m sorry. . . .”
“For what?” said the Bastard harshly.
“I can’t help you. I can’t. Even if I find a way out of her spell. I am afraid of her. Don’t trust me, Neill. I don’t think I can fight her.” The mage met his eyes.
The Bastard touched his shoulder absently, considering this extraordinary statement. He said after a moment, “I don’t think you can either. It’s all right, my friend. I understand.”
“Do you?” Marcos asked urgently. “Do you? I’m sorry. . . .”
“Hush. I promise you I understand.” The Bastard pressed his shoulder again, and rose. He stood thoughtfully, looking out the window at the deepening shadows. “It will be dusk very soon. Stay here, Marcos, until you are able to go back to your own house. Then go there and stay there, if you think that best, out of her way. Galef—” He looked at the captain. “Can you come? I must go to the hall, but can you stand at my back? I expect there will be some danger.”
The captain picked up his sword, slung it on—a matter of habit, since he could not have imagined it would be useful. “More to you than to me, I should think.”
“Oh, no. I am not in danger.” The Bastard moved restlessly. “Save my vanity, I suppose. But she has shown already she will strike at others to punish me. I will try, but I do not know whether I will be able to yield my pride to her quickly enough to protect you.”
The captain shrugged. “I will stand at your back,” he s
aid.
The great hall had been lit with all its multitude of white parchment lamps. Word had gone out without the Bastard needing to give any specific order: all the court was in attendance, waiting behind their chairs for the appearance of this newest and most surprising power that had come into the City. Courtiers were interested; ladies curious; the young men who had been Prince Cassiel’s close friends and confidants looked suspicious and angry. The mage Trevennen was present, high up along the King’s table. He stood behind his chair with his hands folded on its carved back, looking contained, attentive, and patient. The guardsmen in the hall cast uneasy glances at their captain, and Galef left the Bastard’s side briefly to speak to one and another among them. Servants hurried here and there, fussing with the last-minute table arrangements. They, probably the best informed of all the court, looked terrified.
The Queen alone was already seated, at her place to the immediate left of the head of the King’s table. Her face was as still and stiff as if she had been made of wax. Her gaze, when she met the Bastard’s eyes, was unreadable. Her ladies fluttered around her nervously.
The Bastard’s mother was not yet present. No doubt, the Bastard thought, she intended to make an entrance; he thought she would enjoy creating a spectacle. He walked quietly to claim his place, at the right hand of the King’s place. Galef walked behind him and took up a place behind his chair.
To the Queen, the Bastard said, speaking in a low voice, “Ellis, if you must throw something tonight, throw it at me. Do not throw anything at my mother.”
The Queen gave him a level look out of her striking violet eyes. “Your mother.”
“She is a mage, or something very like. She is very dangerous.”
“She has claimed you, I hear.”
“Is that what you hear?” The Bastard paused, then said harshly, “If you have hated me, Ellis, I think you will be satisfied by whatever claim my mother makes of me tonight.”
“Yes,” said the Queen, calmly deliberate. “That, too, I heard.”
Lelienne came into the hall at that moment. All white she was, save for her black eyes: white hair dressed with pearls, stiff white gown embroidered with ivory, skin pale as the most delicately blushed rose. She seemed in the soft light to be younger than the Bastard himself.
The Queen had stiffened when Lelienne entered. She stared down the length of the hall at the white lady, her back very straight, her hands folded flat on the table before her, her face closed and still. Her violet eyes glinted in her face, almost as pale at that moment as that of the other woman.
Lelienne strolled up the long, long hallway as though passing through a private garden. And yet, though she quite clearly meant to make a show, there was a touch of humor in her smile when she at last reached the head of the King’s table and met, for a moment, the Bastard’s eyes: it was as though she played an elaborate charade and invited the Bastard to share her amusement with it.
The hall had quieted the moment Lelienne had stepped into it. The quiet had deepened with every step she took from the tall entryway to the King’s table. By the time she reached the King’s chair and turned to stand behind it, the silence was absolute. Turning to the Bastard, she said, in her light, charming voice, “My son, introduce me.”
The Bastard closed his hands carefully on the back of his chair. He said expressionlessly, looking out at the assembled court and speaking to be heard at the farthest reaches of the hall, “This is Lelienne, my mother, once loved by my father the King. In his absence, she rules this Palace and this City and this Kingdom.”
Smiling, Lelienne seated herself in the King’s chair. With a rustle of stiff cloth and of whispers, the court moved as one to sit, but a small movement of his mother’s hand stopped the Bastard when he would have followed this example. “My son,” she said, smiling. “You need not sit. Kneel here, beside me.”
The Bastard lowered his eyes to hide rage and shame. He asked in a low voice, “If I refuse, whom will you punish?”
Long white eyebrows lifted as his mother turned to gaze at him with apparent surprise. “Perhaps I will let you choose.”
He moved, stiffly, to do as she commanded, kneeling on the hard stone at her right hand. Whispers exploded down the length of the hall, with a sound like birds taking flight off the waters of the Lake. The Bastard did not look up. Color had flooded into his face.
“You will eat the bread I give you from my plate,” said his mother gently. “You will not refuse. When I wish wine, you may rise to pour it. When I speak to you, you will answer, and you will speak truthfully. Who is powerful in this court?”
“I was.”
“Who else?”
The Bastard named half a dozen men, men who had been friends and advisors of his father, and three or four men and one woman who were competent and knew how to direct affairs within the City so that everyday matters ran smoothly.
“Will they fight me?”
“Not,” said the Bastard precisely, “when they see that you have brought me to your heel like a dog.” He could feel the covert stares of all the court from where he knelt, and knew this was true.
His mother smiled. She knew it, too. She said pleasantly, “You have not named Ellis, the Queen.”
Glancing up, the Bastard saw the Queen turn her head and give Lelienne a hard, narrow stare from her violet eyes. He said swiftly, “She had my father’s ear. Without him, she has nothing.”
“She has power. Men’s eyes will go to her, out of habit if nothing else. She could be a nuisance to me, if not a danger. As she might have been a nuisance to you—if not a danger. You shut her up in her own rooms. What shall I do with her?”
“Why not the same?”
“Why not,” suggested his mother, “something creative?”
The Queen, her mouth thin, her hands shaking with anger, had leaned back in her chair and now stared at Lelienne, eyes sparking with outrage. The Bastard caught her eyes with his and held her silent through a flashing effort of will that amazed them both. When he looked back at his mother’s black eyes, she was clearly amused, and he knew she had missed nothing. He answered, “Because the court would resent it, and that would be a nuisance to you, if not a danger. Put her back in her rooms and leave her there, and you will arouse no such resentment.”
“Not regarding what I may do to you?”
“I have enemies, and few friends. The City loves the Queen. When my father shouts, only Ellis dares shout back at him. And behind her temper she is kind. She has spoken for many men before the King. When you humble me, many men will be satisfied that you should. Do the same to the Queen, and they will feel differently.”
Lelienne smiled, her black eyes contained and secretive. “So,” she said, “my son has a feel for the rule of men.” She turned to Ellis. “Does the Queen have a temper she has not shown me?”
Ellis, amazingly, looked away, though an angry flush rose in her face.
“So. When you go to your rooms later, you will stay there, and be quiet. Perhaps I will forget you are there, if you are wise,” Lelienne said, and looked out thoughtfully along the hall, where all the court was watching with covert fascinated attention. “And you, my son. What shall I do with you?”
“You have taught me not to fight you.”
“You have begun to learn that, perhaps. And, evidently, you have no temper of your own. Who taught you that?”
“I learned it of life.”
“You learned it of power constrained, and as restraint is the beginning of wisdom, you have begun to be wise. Do you yield to me?”
“Yes,” said the Bastard tightly.
His mother smiled. “No. You resist me with every breath you take, and every lowered glance you show me. You are experienced at waiting, my son. But capable, I take it, of action. Where is your father? I had anticipated our reunion.”
The Bastard thought she was mocking him. He flushed. But Lelienne repeated her question, adding, “I took the son, and hid him in the light behind the mirror, but I
had not expected you to remove Drustan from his high place for me. In that, you did surprise me. In that, perhaps you are indeed my son. However, I shall need him. I know he is not dead. Where is the King?”
“I have no idea,” the Bastard said blankly. He still expected elaborate deception, though he could not imagine the purpose of it. He was off balance from this unexpected line of questioning, and thought she had done this to him intentionally. He was waiting for that hidden purpose to emerge. While he waited, he said cautiously, “I thought you took him, as you took Cassiel.”
His mother glanced at him. Her ageless eyes pressed down on the Bastard with a weight like the iron darkness at the heart of the world. His breath jerked under the pressure, and he set a hand against the floor for support. “Where is Drustan?” his mother asked again, dangerously quiet, and he understood at last that she was in earnest. “I will not ask again.”
The Bastard bowed his head. He said carefully, “I hid him in the eternal City. I hid him in the Lake. He wanders there, blind to what you do here.”
Lelienne leaned back in the King’s chair. She was smiling. Though she had her eyes on him still, the pressure had gone from her gaze. “The reflected City. That is where you put him? And you not even a mage?”
“He wished to pass into the eternal City,” the Bastard explained, still with the most exquisite care. “And he is, after all, the King. That City was only a breath away, for him. It took no spell to carry him there, but only the smallest nudge. Now he is lost in the Lake because he cannot find, even there, what he seeks.”
The Queen sat back in her chair, a hand lifting to touch her mouth, but his mother was pleased. “My clever son. Cassiel I have secured where I can reclaim him at will, but I shall need Drustan as well. You shall bring him to me.”
The Bastard set his teeth against any sound of protest.
“And Trevennen, too, shall help me, since your friend Marcos has become indisposed,” added his mother. “Where is Marcos? I see he is not here.”
The Bastard was still for a moment. Then he said, “I have sent him away from the Palace. He fears you. He will not return, I think.”
The City in the Lake Page 14