Nameless: A Tale of Beauty and Madness (20 page)

W
HEN THE BOAT BUMPED AGAINST THE BOTTOM OF A
high sweeping flight of stone stairs, she was almost—but not quite—ready for the terror.

The stairs.

They had sharp polished edges, each step mirror-shining. She knew how they bit when you fell down them, stabbing and slicing. She also knew what the fresh red streaks bubbling on the glossy stone were.

She gets . . . hungry.

The doors were tall, made of the same polished black stone. Their carvings shifted with faint scratching noises, apples and dogs and faces with long flowing hair and foxfire-glowing eyes. The bad place in Cami’s head bulged again, and she heard tinkling laughter.

This time she stepped off the boat first. Felt the sharp edges under her bootsoles, and the idea that she might faint and fall on them kept her upright. Tor’s arms dropped to his sides; he hopped with eerie grace to the steps too, balancing.

Her hand flashed out, she steadied him.

He didn’t even look at her.

The doors creaked, a soft musical sound. Tor stepped up once, waited for her. She took a step, and her breakfast rose in a hot acid gush.

She retched, milk-curds and blackcurrant jam splattering on the bright clean steps, and her heart was going to explode. She could feel it tightening before it shredded into useless scraps, her entire chest full of clawed wriggling dread.

The doors flowed outward, and the hounds poured free. They were almost silent, only the occasional yip as they bolted down the stairs and surrounded Cami’s swaying and Tor’s poker-stiff frame. They didn’t press close, and she struggled to stay upright.

Just at the threshold, the man in the tan trench coat stood. Only now he was in leather, different tones of brown matching his wooden skin. The Huntsman’s face was wooden too, blue eyes afire with a different light than the pale diseased glow. That light dimmed as he gazed down, and behind him, like a pale moon rising, was a shadow of white.

“My runaway children,” the White Queen murmured. Dulcet honey, her voice scraped like the smoke and made the bad place in Cami’s head shudder and squeeze down on itself. “Home at last. How I’ve missed you.”

A dog snarled and jumped. Cami let out a miserable vomit-scented little cry and took the next three stairs in a rush. Tor began to climb, and the reek of spoiled honey and rotting fruit was quickly swept under a pall of spiced, numbing smoke. The inside of Cami’s head began to feel very strange—too big, an empty ballroom with nobody to take her hand or start the scratchy ancient Victrola.

The dogs drove her through the door, and as she passed the wooden man he twitched. Not much, but the Queen laughed.

“One happy little family,” she purred, and one broad, soft white hand touched his shoulder for a moment. “Greet your father, little Nameless. After all, he gave his heart for you.”

The warm draft was from tall greasy-white candles with oddly pallid flames, serried ranks of them on either side of the high-ceilinged hall. Blue gouts of incense rose from powdery dishes, veiling the ceiling. The
Biel’y
—tall spare men and women with blank eyes holding only
her
reflection, there were no children—wore gray robes, and each throat held a silver gleam. The medallions were eager, avid little eyes too, and Cami, her mouth full of sourness, stumbled miserably up the center of the aisle in the White Queen’s wake.

She was so tall, the Queen. Her parchment hair was piled high and elaborate, ringlets bobbing and bone pins with dangling colorless crystals thrust artfully through. The other women were shaven-headed, the men short-haired, and their feet were bare while the Queen swayed on lacquered sandals with funny wooden blocks on the soles that went
tic tic tic
against the stone floor. She wore white velvet and silk, but the hems dragged on the dusty floor, little motheaten bits showing.

At the far end, there was a low wide padded bench on a dais, under a great fountaining fall of crystallized glowing fungus. It pulsed and glittered, this colony of light, and its glow bleached the Queen still further.

Cami stopped dead at the bottom step of the dais. Her arms and legs shook, the tremors spilling through her in waves, her bandaged knees and hand throbbing. Every hair on her body was trying to stand up.

Imagining that pale slimness with a baby was . . . Cami’s stomach cramped again. Heaving nausea passed through her and away, an earthquake in numb flesh.

The Queen turned, sank down on the bench, and Cami realized it was her throne. A sigh went through the assembled
Biel’y
. More were coming, their robes shushing and their bare feet padding.

She knew that sound. The black bulge inside her brain swelled a little more. The faint tang of acridity under the incense’s spice coated the back of her throat, and that was familiar too.

“My newest
Okhotnik
may approach,” the Queen murmured, and a rustle went through the assembled. The candleflames bowed.

Tor staggered mechanically up the three dais steps. Cami’s hands itched to help, but she was nailed in place. His black hair, still slicked back under a mask of crud, gleamed wetly, and the rags of his T-shirt flapped.

She still could not look at the Queen’s face. Her eyes simply refused. Instead, she stared at the hands, lying folded in the velvet and silk of her lap. The soft fingers, the dimpled knuckles—but there was something wrong.

There were marks on those hands. They had always been plump and soft and
young
before. Now there were pronounced veins, and shadows of age spots. And a tremor that had never been there before.

“Good boy.” The Queen’s chuckle was soft, but so cold. “You brought My Nameless back to Me. I had my doubts, young one. But you will make Me a fine husband. I will not need another.”

A cracking sound. Cami flinched, whirling. The dogs had crept up the aisle, red tongues lolling and their coats washed pale by the weird directionless light. The wooden man stood in the aisle, slump-shouldered and stiff; another rending cracking noise echoed and he listed to the side. His blue eyes were closed, and a rivulet of splintering crawled through him, crunching and creaking, tiny pieces falling from his face and grinding themselves into dust. The leather of his clothes sagged obscenely, sawdust pouring from sleeves and legs, and collapsed inward.

The memory of Papa’s slow crumbling folded through her brain, slid away.

“Such a strong heart he had, and given so thoroughly.” The Queen sighed, and the
Biel’y
sighed too, a susurrus passing through candleflames like wind through wheat. “Now, My Nameless. Come here.”

She’s talking to me.
Dread choked Cami. Little black spots danced in front of her. The dogs crept closer, on their bellies. One whined, a high nervous sound.

Silence stretched, thin and quivering. The candles hissed, and even the crystalline mass over the throne was making a sound—a felt-in-the-teeth ringing, like a wineglass stroked with a wet finger just before its singing shivers it into pieces.

Until one word broke it. “N-no.” Cami dug her heels into the stone floor. The Queen’s will wrapped around her, pulling her toward the steps, but the sourness in Cami’s throat and the sudden pain from her bandaged left fist, its knuckles throbbing with the feel of glass splintering underneath them, both refused the urge to obey.

I’m here. You can have me instead of Tor. But I’m going to make you work for it.

The silence returned, but changed now. This was the quiet of utter shock.

Cloth moved. The sandals tip-tapped. A draft of clove and numb smoke, the taste of fruit edging into decay, brushed Cami’s hair. The Queen loomed over her, and the shudders went away.

The terror was so huge it could not shake her. Or she had become so small the whole world was aquiver, and she could not tell. The only thing left was to tip her head back and back, her gaze traveling up silk and velvet grown dingy, pinprick holes in its splendor, the subtle silver trimming tarnishing.

The Queen’s ravaged face bent down, a grinning moon. Wrinkles spread from the corners of her eyes, no matter how immobile she kept her expression. Fine lines bracketed her mouth, but they were not Marya’s laugh-lines, or even Gran’s marks of dignity. They clawed at the Queen’s face, and her eyes glared through the cracking paper mask of her skin with utter madness.

Her blue, blue eyes.

The slap rocketed against Cami’s face. Her head snapped aside, her neck giving a flare of red agony. She spilled backward onto cold stone, elbows smacking
hard
,
her left hand crying out and her ass immediately numb. On her side now, all her breath gone, curling protectively around herself. But she wasn’t tiny enough to curl up like a pillbug anymore. The Queen’s wooden sandal caught her just under the ribs, and the black spots became huge blossoming flowers as she struggled to get a breath in.

“
Bitch!
” the White Queen screamed. “
You bitch! You little bitch! YOU MADE ME OLD!
”

A merciful blankness descended. The real part of her curled up tightly inside her skull, watching while everything outside rocked back and forth, jerking under the force of the blows. It went on forever, and when it stopped, the gray-robed
Biel’y
slid forward and the handcuffs clicked, and it was as if she had never left at all.

T
HE DARKNESS WAS A LIVING THING, PRESSING DOWN
with chill gritty fur. Stone above her, stone below, the clink of dragging handcuffs oddly muffled as her body twitched every once in a while.

This was familiar, too. It was a penitent’s cell, meant to punish those who displeased
her
. In this deep blackness, the black bulge inside Cami’s skull relaxed, and it was like drawing aside soft ragged smoky veils. Or like torn blue gauze sliding down from a mirror’s unblinking eye, and the reflection beneath coming into focus.

The gray-robed, shaven-headed women cooing as they cosseted and cared for her. They were not allowed to speak—the Queen forbade it. Some of them whispered, though, when the smoke lessened and some focus came back into their eyes. They had sought cessation in the
Biel’y
, a release from the obligations of Above, and had found it.

Who cared what the price was?

Yet they whispered, and she learned. She was wrapped in discarded pale silk and velvet and played with small things—wooden balls, scrubbed-clean trash brought back by the close-cropped men whose pupils all held pale slivers—for the Queen was all the men saw. They brought the baubles to please Her, and the ones She cast aside the women gathered. The women taught the Nameless to count, and she accepted it as normal. What else did she know?

The voice came filtering through the dark, directionless, a hoarse whisper. It muttered, it teased, it tapped at her ears. What did it say?

She was taken to see the Queen from afar sometimes, and told to love Her. Love pleased the Queen. Heart in mouth, excitement running through her entire body, the Nameless loved the beautiful woman in Her finery, the smoke around Her making all the colors soft and hazy, Her smile meaning all was well with the world. There were other times when the women grew drawn and fearful, and the Nameless understood She was not happy. Those times passed, though, sooner or later, and some of the women disappeared. New ones came.

New ones always came, seeking the drug of forgetting, searching for release.

There were other children, too, but she was not allowed near them. They crept around the edges, scavenging in corners, a feral pack. Sometimes She chose a favorite, and jealousy was rank and rife until the favorite, petted and indulged for a while . . . vanished.

Very familiar. When she moved, pain nipped at her. They had even taken the bandages off, hissing when the fey-charmed cloth spat in their hands. She did not struggle.

And then, a great excitement. The women whispering again—the Nameless was needed. She was called for. She was to be brought.

Scrubbed and dried, her long black hair combed and braided, the women making soft sounds of approval, and then the hall with its mirrors and Her, recumbent on a white-draped bed, the blue of her eyes matching the blue of the Huntsman’s. Of all the men, only his pupils held no pale slivers, and he stood to the side as the long pale loveliness stretched, delicately.

“Here is My Nameless,” the Queen chirped brightly. “Come to Me, child.”

And she did, her heart beating in her throat, her skin alive with joy at the nearness. The incense smoke was thick that day, and the Queen was a haze of beauty, the red-winking gem at Her throat the only color in the world. A white page to be written on, a white bird to nestle in the hand.

The Queen’s broad soft hand touched the Nameless’s slender girl-chest. “Here it is,” She murmured, softly, restfully. “Here is the youth and the living.”

“So it is,” the other Biel’y chorused, and the Nameless was confused. Was this a Ceremony? Were they supposed to speak?

“Do you love Me?” She leaned close, her face filling the Nameless’s world. “Me, and only Me?”

Stunned, the Nameless could only nod.

“Say, yes, Mommy. If you can.”

She struggled to shape the words. “Y-yes, M-Mommy.” Her tongue wouldn’t obey her fully, but She looked pleased.

“Oh, someone has taught you to talk, have they? Well, we will punish for that. But for now . . . ” Her hand tensed, and the Nameless could feel the fingernails, lacquered with white paste and sharpened, through fabric. “Give Me your heart, little Nameless. I want your heart. I will eat it, and grow strong.”

Horror descended. A terrible draining sensation, as the Queen laughed and her fingers flexed. Casually cruel, a cat playing with a mouse before it loses interest. Her jaw snapped, strong white teeth champing just like the dogs’, and the Nameless jerked aside, thrashing and terrified.

Her thin elbow hit something hard and unforgiving, and the gasp of horror passing through the ranks of the Biel’y made the radiance dim. A furious howl arose, for the child, in her struggles, had struck the White Queen in Her lovely, ageless face.

“TAKE IT AWAY!” the Queen screamed. “LOCK IT UP! TAKE IT AWAY!”

And then the pain began.

She shifted, cold stone bruising-hard under her hip, the chill leaching into her bones. The voice was very far away. It didn’t matter. She knew what it was whispering, the same thing it had started whispering after she had done the unforgivable.

“You are nobody,” it breathed, hoarsely. “You are nothing.”

She lay in the stone-closed darkness, the handcuffs biting her wrists, and listened to her heart’s thundering refrain.

I am. I am. I am.