The City in the Lake

by Rachel Neumeier

  Jonas slowly moved to stand at the window, beside the mage. Kapoen moved behind him, reaching around to lay his hands over Jonas’s on the window’s broad sill. His touch was insubstantial, like the touch of shadows. Jonas kept his eyes on their paired hands: his own solid and real, the mage’s overlying his like mist.

  “Now,” said Kapoen. “Look out.”

  For a long moment Jonas could not bring himself to move. Then he lifted his head.

  At first he saw nothing but darkness. Then light broke through, poured down like liquid, silvery and pure. Moonlight, Jonas recognized eventually, and for a moment that was all he could see: light pouring down through the dark.

  Light, light, light . . . light on white stone. On a balcony, dizzyingly high in the air. On Timou, who stood, clad all in white, white hair dressed with pearls, standing with an assured poise that somehow looked . . . odd. Out of place. Unlike her usual natural grace. Her attention was on a young man with dark hair, elegant features, wide dark eyes. . . . Timou held a silver knife in her hand. . . . She was not Timou. He knew that suddenly.

  “There,” breathed Kapoen at his back, and lifted a hand to point.

  There was Timou, hard against the side of whatever tower it was she had found herself on, as terrible in its way, Jonas thought, as the Hunter’s tower. Silver chains bound her to the stones. She had been weeping. She was weeping still: tears ran down her face. The moonlight turned her tears to pearls, to diamonds. . . .

  There was a man with her, bound as she was, with the same white hair and the same face, though harsher and stronger. That face was set now with fear or anger or despair. The man’s eyes, unlike Timou’s, were black. They held no hope. He had his arm protectively around Timou’s shoulders, not like a lover, but perhaps like a friend. The bleak expression in his eyes said clearly that he had no expectation that he could actually protect her. Even so, she had tucked herself close to his side. Jealousy ran suddenly through Jonas like fire.

  “What is this?” he asked Kapoen in a fierce whisper.

  “Almost too late,” breathed the mage. “Almost too late.”

  “Too late for what? Too late how?” Jonas found himself shaking. On the other side of the window, the woman who was not Timou spoke. Her voice did not enter the Hunter’s tower: they could not hear her. The young man she faced heard her. He turned away, went across the balcony to Timou . . . no, to the white-haired man. He stood with his back turned to the woman. He had taken the older man’s hand in both of his, and they stood together, speaking quietly. . . .

  “She will kill the boy first,” said Kapoen softly. His deep voice was heavy with grief. “Then her way will be clear to finish what she began so long ago. She will devour the Kingdom through the children she has made. The children we helped her make.”

  “That is Timou’s mother?”

  “Yes,” said the mage, and bowed his head. Turning, incredulous, to look at the mage, Jonas found that Kapoen, too, was weeping. His tears were made of darkness, and fell into darkness without sound.

  The Hunter stood in the center of the tower room, not even glancing out the window. He did not speak or move. His round yellow eyes watched Jonas steadily, without passion.

  Jonas faced him. “What do you want of me?” he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

  That is not my Kingdom, said the Hunter. There I am blind: I need your eyes. There I am voiceless: I need your tongue. There I am bodiless: I need your hands.

  “And my heart,” whispered Jonas.

  So that I will care to act, said the Hunter. Do you understand?

  “No,” whispered Jonas. “I think I do not understand anything. Yes. I know what you want. All right. All right. Take it, then. Take everything.”

  Yes, said the Hunter. Everything. He reached out.

  Even having made his decision, Jonas could not help but flinch away. He tried to draw back against Kapoen, but the mage was no longer there. He was alone. He felt that he had always been alone, that companionship and friendship were illusions he had dreamed once, long ago. He leaned against the stone, turning his face into its cold surface, and wondered whether Timou’s father had ever been there, or whether the Hunter had made him out of shadows, a phantasm to break his prey to his will . . . perhaps nothing he had seen through that window had been real. Perhaps it had all been made of shadows. . . .

  The Hunter laid his hand on Jonas’s shoulder and drew him wordlessly into a cold embrace. And then everything was made of shadows.

  CHAPTER 14

  fter Lelienne had bound both her children to the tower, there did not seem very much that either of them might do. Timou leaned wearily against her half brother and thought about the Kingdom, and how one might go about devouring it, and what it might mean to devour a Kingdom. And a little, perhaps, about her father, and the dead King, and Prince Cassiel.

  Though Neill held her firmly, he himself had attention only for Cassiel. Timou could not divine what he was thinking.

  “Well,” Lelienne said briskly, “I believe we shall proceed.” She glanced up at the moon, and searchingly into the distant reaches of space. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. The silver knife shifted: light ran flashing down its blade and over her hand.

  “Wait,” said Cassiel, and when she lifted one graceful eyebrow, he said fiercely, “What difference does it make now? You have everything. You can spare one moment more.” He stood straight, head up, oak-dark eyes on hers. He was afraid, Timou could see, but really he was angry. Perhaps his fear had been worn out of him over the course of this past hour, leaving mostly anger. Timou could understand that. Although she felt cold with fear herself, fear that had worn out anger. . . .

  He did not wait for Lelienne’s permission, but simply turned his back on her—he did not lack courage—and crossed the gallery to his brother.

  Neill, still holding Timou, lifted his other hand as far as he could, and Cassiel took it in both of his.

  Neill said quietly, “I am sorry now I was ever born.” He wore his face like a mask: reserved, cool. An expression he might have worn on all those occasions his father had dismissed him in favor of his younger brother. His tone gave away nothing until the very end, and then began to break; he cut the last word off short.

  “I’m sorry she was,” Cassiel rejoined. “Except I cannot regret that you exist. Neill. You—I—”

  “I know.”

  Cassiel searched his face. “Do you? I hope so. Our father—”

  “I know,” Neill repeated gently.

  Lelienne’s mouth twisted a little. She moved her hand, the knife glinting suddenly. Timou flinched, trying to look away, unable to take her eyes off its silver sheen.

  But the knife did not disappear from Lelienne’s hand. Instead the woman made a faint sound of surprise, turning her head to take in a shadow that moved suddenly in one of the windows that pierced the tower.

  Cassiel, facing the wrong way to see the open gallery or Lelienne, heard the sound but not the surprise. He stiffened, gripped his brother’s hand hard, and shut his eyes. Then, when pain did not come, he opened his eyes again, startled, looked at Neill’s face, and followed the direction of his brother’s gaze to the tower window.

  The form there moved, shifted a hand on the sill, and then bent suddenly, ducking through the window and onto the gallery.

  “Jonas?” Timou said uncertainly, taken utterly aback.

  Cassiel’s eyes had widened. He stared at the man . . . seeing, Timou thought, something other than what she saw herself. Neill’s hand closed hard on his brother’s.

  “Who is this?” inquired Lelienne coldly. “I had thought we were done with interruptions?”

  “No,” said Jonas.

  He was, Timou realized after a second, speaking not to Lelienne, but to her, answering her. His eyes were on her face.

  His voice was strange. It was distant, as though carried from a thousand miles away. His face, too, was strange: Passionless. Remote. As though no emotion had ever touched his
heart, nor ever would. He stood still. Too still. No man could stand so still, as though he were not breathing, as though his heart were not even beating. . . . He came a step away from the tower, into the moonlight. He turned his face to the light, lifted a hand to it, as though he found the light puzzling, as though he expected it to pool in his hand and flow through his fingers like water.

  The moonlight pulled his shadow out before him, cleanedged and blacker than any shadow could have been during the day. It was not, Timou realized, a normal shadow. It stretched out and out, far too tall for the man who stood there; it moved, turning its head, although Jonas stood still. Long branching shadows crowned it, moving as it moved. It was blind, being a shadow, but it looked through his eyes. Jonas should have had brown eyes, but he had instead the eyes, Timou saw, that belonged to his shadow: yellow and round as the eyes of an owl.

  First the shadow and then the man turned finally to her mother. He said softly, in that strange voice, “Lelienne. Is that your name?”

  “I am not from this Kingdom. My name will give you no power over me,” the woman stated. She looked curious and annoyed, but not worried, though terror sang down Timou’s spine and made the delicate hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

  “Do you think not?” asked Jonas. Or the shadow that spoke through his mouth. “Lelienne. Lelienne . . .” His voice, lowering, trailed off like the end of night.

  “Who are you?”

  “You do not know me. And yet you would possess me. Does that seem wise to you? You have power, but are you wise? I think not. You would possess this Kingdom. All the Kingdoms, as they lie layered one beyond the next . . . and yet you do not know them. You have not even glimpsed what you would take into your hand.”

  “I know who you are,” Cassiel said unexpectedly from beside Neill and Timou.

  Jonas, followed after a breath by his shadow, turned his head to examine the Prince. “Yes,” he said. “I know you. Give me your name.”

  “Cassiel,” the Prince said steadily.

  “Yes,” Jonas said again distantly. “The King above the Lake is dead; long live the King.”

  “If you would help us,” Cassiel said to him, his tone now a little uneven, “I would pay . . . any price you might ask of me. I believe . . . I believe it is my right to offer, is it not—as the King?” His brother moved in slight, instant protest, and then was still again as Cassiel gripped his arm above his bound wrist.

  The shadow moved, Jonas himself moving a heartbeat more slowly. The shadow stretched, lengthened, reaching out toward the Prince as Jonas lifted his hand. Cassiel neither moved nor looked away, though his eyes widened. But the dark hand of the shadow passed him, fell instead on the silver chains that bound Timou and Neill to the tower. The chains dissolved into shadow, into mist, into cold. Timou rubbed her wrist, shivering violently.

  “I ask no price of you,” Jonas said to Cassiel. “All my price has been paid.” Those disturbing yellow eyes shifted from the Prince to look into hers. “Timou,” he said. “I know your name. I hear it in my heart. Jonas knows you. Do you know me?”

  “Yes,” Timou breathed. She let her gaze fall on his shadow, on the branching crown that confused the eye around its head, and swallowed. “Oh, yes, Lord. Yes, I know you.”

  “Well, I do not,” said her mother impatiently. She was uneasy, Timou thought, and trying to hide her unease behind a tone of sharp confidence. “Who is this? Is there any reason I should not kill him immediately where he stands?”

  “I don’t . . . I don’t think you can,” whispered Timou. She backed away, drawing both Neill and Cassiel with her. She was aware she was trembling, but could not stop. Nor could she take her eyes from Jonas. From his shadow.

  “Oh, I expect it won’t be so difficult,” Lelienne said briskly, and sent the knife from her hand to Jonas’s heart. It stood in his chest.

  Blood showed through his shirt, through his jacket. . . . He touched the knife, which faded into the dark and was gone. The blood ran slowly down his chest, but this he did not seem to notice. He bent, and straightened. In his hand was Cassiel’s sword: the sword that had gone with the Prince behind the mirror, and then found its way in his hand to this strange reflected City, where it had been changed into a thing of light and darkness. Jonas held it as Cassiel had, as though he did not have to think about it, as though it were part of his body. “Yes,” he said softly. “This, too, I know. It is not my usual weapon. But Jonas understands it. It will do.” He took a step toward Lelienne.

  In the distance something cried, high and piercing, far up in the sky. It might have been geese. Timou knew it was not geese. Despite the clear sky thunder crashed, so loud and sudden that they all jumped.

  Lelienne, her eyes narrowed, moved her hand.

  Stone closed around Jonas, over his face, over his eyes. Then his shadow moved, and the stone cracked and fell away. He took another step.

  She cried out in that heavy, rolling language; her words leaned forward, trying to crush Jonas. He moved the sword, drawing a line that lay between them, from his feet to Lelienne’s, and the words parted and rolled harmlessly to either side while he stepped forward between them.

  “Run,” he said to Lelienne, his voice strange and dark, the voice of nothing mortal. “Run. If you outrun my storm, I cannot touch you. You will not outrun my storm.”

  Lelienne stood still for one more instant, staring at him. She took a step back. “What are you?” she asked in amazement.

  “Run,” said Jonas softly. He took another step, and again Lelienne backed away.

  The storm hounds came then, before the driving edge of the rain. They were lean, long, terrible: each one as tall at the shoulder as a man. Their eyes were fierce as flame, and Lelienne fled suddenly before them, away through the sky, a whisper through the wind. But the storm hounds had her scent and followed, baying behind her with the wild voices of hunting eagles. The first drops of rain fell, cold and viciously hard, like razors of ice.

  The white horse of the Hunter fell through the sky like lightning, thunder shaking from its hooves, its dark eyes wild, and Jonas put his hand to its shoulder and vaulted onto its back, his shadow towering above him. The sword in his hand blazed, terrible and brilliant, and the mare flung up its head and leapt away into the storm. The thunder of its going shook stones from the tower. In front of him, running before the storm, the hounds cried; behind him thunder crashed, the sky tore open, and the rain came down in a blinding icy deluge.

  He never looked back.

  CHAPTER 15

  he City seemed unsurprised to have lost its King: perhaps it had felt his death, echoing from the other Kingdom. Or perhaps the understanding that the King had died had spread outward from the Queen. Because Ellis knew. She welcomed her son, returned at last to her side, with love and relief. But she did not ask after his father. She moved quietly through the days following the storm, never shouting or throwing plates, as though the driving rain of that night had permanently quenched her temper. And she greeted the return of the King’s elder son with such careful restraint that he understood, to his surprise, that she was ashamed.

  “You know, I do not blame you for anything,” he told her when, a few days after their return, he made a moment of privacy with the Queen.

  Ellis bent her head. They were in her rooms, as they had been once before not so long ago. She had thrown a water pitcher at him on that occasion. This time she did not seem inclined to throw anything. She looked elegant, weary, and, for the first time Neill could remember, as though she might one day be old. “You protected me,” she said. “You protected us all. We—I—gave you little enough cause. Thank you.”

  Neill listened to what she did not say. He said gently, “I would have saved him if I could. I tried. You were wrong, you know. I never hated him. I took any small excuse he ever gave me to love him.”

  “He gave you so little. I never minded. I encouraged him in that. I wanted everything for my son. I never cared that there was so little left f
or you. You should blame me.”

  “He gave me enough,” Neill said steadily.

  “I am glad,” said the Queen, obviously with some difficulty, “that you were there for him, Neill. For both of them. Cassiel told me. . . . I will be grateful forever that you were there.”

  “If I hadn’t been,” Neill said drily, “the whole problem would never have arisen.”

  “One cannot hold against the child the terrible acts of the parent.” The Queen studied his face. “Or the stupidities. Or the unkindnesses.”

  “I hold nothing against you, Ellis. Far less against Cassiel.” He met her eyes, and added gently, “Everyone loves Cassiel. He is easy to love. Why should I be excepted?”

  “It will make me glad,” said the Queen softly, “to know you will stand beside my son when he takes the throne. To know he will be able to depend on your courage and your loyalty.”

  “You may be sure of it.” He looked at her thoughtfully: her wide, guileless violet eyes, her calm face. Those eyes met his for a moment, and then dropped. A faint flush rose under her fair skin. He said, without heat, “Will you believe me if I tell you I do not want it? That I will indeed be content to stand quietly beside the throne?”

  Her violet eyes lifted again. “I will believe anything you tell me,” said the Queen. “I have learned that, at least.”

  “I am glad to hear it. I do generally tell you the truth.” He rose to his feet and took her hand in his, raised it to his lips as he offered a slight bow. “I’m grateful for your regard. Truly,” he added as her eyes searched his face for any trace of mockery.

  The Queen rose gracefully and accompanied him to the outer door of her apartment: a signal courtesy. “I shall see you tonight, then.”

  “Yes,” he said, “tonight,” and took his leave.

  “You’ve been to see my mother,” Cassiel said to him later; it was not quite a question. Waving away hovering attendants, he took his brother by the arm and turned toward the balcony of his room. The air was cold and clear. The view from that balcony, though excellent, did not match the one from the highest Palace tower. Neill did not miss it. He had no special desire to set foot on that high gallery ever again.