Sunlight and Shadow (14 page)

It seemed like such a splendid idea, at the time.

To run away, and thereby escape from the Lord Sarastro and show my defiance of him, both at once. And not only that, to run away just at dawn. At the moment when the sun begins to reclaim its ownership of the world, just as the lord wished to claim ownership over me.

Could there have been a more complete rejection of his plans for me, of all he stood for? I thought not. Oh, yes, it was a brave and splendid idea, one worthy of a heroine in an adventure novel. One who was going to have a happy ending beyond her wildest dreams.

Eventually.

In the meantime, she—I—was being forced to admit a painful truth.

Running away really isn't all that much fun.

In the first place, the tunnels through which I was making my escape were dark. Not a problem for me,
or so you and I would both have thought. But the darkness of the hidden passageway through which I moved was not the kind to which I was accustomed. It was close and cold. The further I moved along it, the more it seemed to me that I was walking through my own tomb.

Gayna had discovered the series of passages as a child, she had told me as we raced to put our spontaneously made plans into effect. Though the Lord Sarastro had taken her in, there were few women in his household. As a result, Gayna was often left unattended for long periods of time. Like any child, she'd been eager to explore, and, consequently, she had discovered a series of narrow passages that seemed to her to run between the very walls of the Lord Sarastro's dwelling.

What this meant, what their purpose was, Gayna had never learned, for she had never confided her discovery to anyone. As she had grown older and her household duties had increased, she'd visited the tunnels less and less frequently, but she had never forgotten them. There was an entrance to one behind the wardrobe in the room in which I'd spent the night. And it was through this passage that Gayna proposed I make my escape, while she, dressed in the finery intended for me, would stay behind.

“Stick to the main passageway,” Gayna had said as she bundled me into her own cloak. “This should be easy, for it is wider than the others. Turn neither to the left nor to the right. Keep walking until you come
to a great stone door. If you put your two hands together in the center and push with all your might, the door will open. You must then hurry through it quickly, for, as soon as you have let it go, it will swing back all on its own. I don't know how it does this, but I do know it's heavy enough to crush you.”

“I will take care,” I said.

We stood back and regarded one another. She was beautiful in the fancy dress wed found, its gold a perfect complement to her dark hair and her fine, pale skin.

“He's a fool not to want you,” I said, then cursed myself for a fool when I saw her cheeks flush and the tears rise, unwanted, in her eyes. “But perhaps he does, and cannot show it,” I hurried on. “The Lord Sarastro is his master, after all. And if he has other plans for Statos—”

“Perhaps,” Gayna interrupted. “And perhaps I'll ask him and see what he does. But as for you, you'd better go. There isn't much time. It's nearly dawn.”

Moving past me, she fiddled with the back of the wardrobe. I heard a click, then watched as Gayna put her hands in the center of the back of the wardrobe and pushed. It swung back, and a draft of cold and musty air poured out. Gayna stayed where she was, her weight against the door. Beyond her, I couldn't see a single thing.

“Thank you for everything, Gayna,” I said. “Good luck.”

“And to you,” the girl my father had raised instead of me said.

Then I stepped forward into the passage. She stepped back. And the door swung closed behind me.

“Do you actually know where we're going?” I asked. “Not that I'm complaining or anything. But we have been walking for several hours.”

Lapin yawned hugely, a thing he had been doing off and on ever since we'd started out. I couldn't precisely blame him, but it was starting to get on my nerves. It's not exactly as if I'd had any more sleep than he had, after all.

“Of course I know where we're going,” he said now. “I'm just being careful, taking the long way around. We can hardly march right up to Sarastro's front gates, pound on the door, and demand that he let the Lady Mina go.”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said after a moment. “He and all his retainers might die laughing. Then we could walk right in.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Lapin gave a chuckle, a pleasing sound. All the more pleasant because it seemed to have put an end to the yawning.

“You will be a worthy adversary for the Lord Sarastro,” he said. “I don't think he'll be expecting a sense of humor, somehow.”

“What will he be expecting?” I asked. A question that had been much on my mind.

“I'm not sure, to tell you the truth,” Lapin acknowledged. He gave a grunt of exertion as, together, we scrambled up a series of boulders.

We had been climbing steadily since we started out, as if the course Lapin had set would take us to the very top of the mountain. The slope had been gentle, at first, the forest dense all around us. As we climbed higher, the land began to change. The trees thinned and the ground grew rocky.

“He may not be expecting anyone at all,” Lapin continued, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. “I don't think anyone's ever truly challenged the Lord Sarastro's authority before.”

“Not even your mistress?” I asked, then bit my tongue. I have a tendency to speak before I think, a trait which I know often worried my father, for it's the kind of thing that can get a person into serious trouble.

“Actually,” Lapin said, “they stay out of one another's way as much as possible. Not that this has prevented either from feeling threatened, if you know what I mean.”

I thought I did. “Oh,” I said after a moment.

“Precisely,” Lapin commented. “And now, young prince, if you are rested, we'd better keep going. I'm thinking standing on the top of these rocks leaves us too exposed to prying eyes.”

With that, he began to clamber down.

“Wait just a minute,” I said as I followed. “We stopped so you could rest, not I.”

“You just go right on believing that,” Lapin suggested.

In the air above us, I heard a single bird call, sounding as if it were laughing at us both.

“Gone,” the Lord Sarastro said. “What do you mean my daughter is gone?”

“She isn't in her room, my lord. It would appear that she has run away.”

There, I thought. I've done it

I'd told my lord and master that his daughter had fled rather than be subject to his will. Rather than be my wife. Now all I had to do was to wait for the explosion. The only bright spot about the situation that I could see was that I'd been able to reach the Lord Sarastro before he'd entered his great audience hall. He'd still been in his antechamber, and this meeting between us was, therefore, private. I'd stationed the retainers who had accompanied me to the Lady Mina's chamber outside the door to help make sure of that fact.

“Run away! Impossible!” the Lord Sarastro exclaimed now. “She would not dare. She is still my daughter.”

“She is your daughter, my lord,” I replied. “It would seem that this means many things, including that she will dare much.”

At this, the Lord Sarastro stopped, and his face grew hard. “She is her mother's daughter also,” he
said. “Surely the Queen of the Night has had some hand in this. I should never have left my daughter alone, Statos. I should have married her to you at once.”

I'm not so sure that would have made a difference, I thought. Not to the Lady Mina's desire to escape, at any rate. Though it might have deprived her of the means.

I must tell him how it happened, I thought. I must do my duty. But I discovered I was filled with a strange reluctance. Try as I might, I couldn't shake the image of Gayna from my mind. Gayna, who had grown up here as an outsider, just as I had. Who longed for many things, just as I did. But longed, most of all, to be loved.

Just do it and get it over with, I told myself. You can't afford to think of Gayna now.

I drew a breath to speak, but the Lord Sarastro suddenly spoke before I could.

“But I didn't leave her alone, did I?” he asked, his tone quiet, almost as if he was speaking to himself and not to me at all. “I feared she might be lonely, and so I did not leave her on her own. I left Gayna with her, did I not, Statos?”

Now I did find my voice. “You did, my lord.”

“My daughter is unfamiliar with my dwelling,” the Lord Sarastro continued, “for she never set foot in it before last night. She could not have run away all on her own. I did not aid her, and I'm certain you did
not. To do so would destroy both our hopes. In fact, I can think of only one member of my household who might have wished my daughter elsewhere.”

He moved to the door and yanked it open.

“Bring Gayna to me at once.”

There are many fine sayings in the world. This one, for instance: The darkest hour is just before the dawn.

Not true. I can tell you this from personal experience. For on the morning that I helped the Lady Mina run away, it was the hours before the dawn that had been filled with the brilliance of hope. Despair didn't set in until the sun came up, for, with the sun, came Statos.

He did not love me. Not because he couldn't, but because he wouldn't. He was not looking for love alone, as I was. He was looking for his marriage to make him a place in the world, a place no one could take from him. A desire I could understand all too well. A fact which made the situation even worse, somehow. Why could he not see how well matched we were?

All of a sudden, I couldn't stand it anymore. What good did it do me to love? Had I not loved Statos from the first moment I saw him? Loved the Lord Sarastro better than his own flesh and blood? Yet in neither case would my love do me any good, for mine was not the love that was desired. It was as valuable as a counterfeit coin. It would buy me nothing.

There is no reason for me to stay here, I thought. I could see the future, and it was bitter and bleak.

Moving quickly, my body in motion before my mind could contradict, I walked across the room, untying the Lady Mina's cloak and folding it over one arm as I did so. To appear in a cloak might arouse notice. There was no real reason for me to go out, as all were being summoned to the Lord Sarastro's audience that morning. But appearing in the finery I wore beneath would be quite appropriate.

Now all I could do was hope that Statos hadn't posted any men in the hall outside. I pulled in a breath, grasped the knob, twisted it, and pulled open the door.

“What do you mean you cannot find her?” the Lord Sarastro roared.

The retainer swallowed audibly, and I knew a moment of pity. By rights, I should have been the one facing the lord's anger.

“I went to the chamber as you commanded, my lord. But when I knocked, announcing your summons, there was no reply. Three times I called, and still there was no answer. So I opened the door and went inside. The Lady Gayna is not in her room. She is nowhere in your dwelling that I can discover.”

The Lord Sarastro gave a bark of unamused laughter. “It seems we have an epidemic of disappearances on our hands, Statos. But those who run would
do well to remember they invite others to pursue.”

He turned his golden eyes upon me, then, and though the anger was plain to see, it seemed to me there was something else in the Lord Sarastro's eyes. A thing that I had never seen before. And that thing was doubt. Perhaps even fear. For no one had truly set their will against his until this moment.

“Find my daughter, Statos,” he said. “Do this yourself. You may dispatch others to search for Gayna.”

“My. lord, I will,” I promised. Though my heart knew a sudden and unexpected pang. Perhaps Gayna had been right to be bitter after all. She would always come second to the Lord Sarastro's blood daughter.

“When you have found her, send word, then take her to the grove most sacred to our order,” the lord went on. “There, I shall decide what must be done.”

“My lord, I will,” I said again. Then I departed in haste, leaving him alone.

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