The City in the Lake (17 page)

At last he made his way across those last few steps that lay before him and into the great dark that waited. The dark had seemed like a chasm, and Jonas seemed to fall as he stepped into it—his breath stopped and he did not cry out aloud. He might have truly fallen or only seemed to fall, but he caught himself, staggering, within a great hall. Sharp-edged columns came down from a high-vaulted ceiling far above. The darkness within the hall was fine and delicate. He could see in this place, almost as though there were true light. The Hunter was present, on a massive throne at the far end of the hall. Twisting, branching shadows shifted and moved immeasurably far above, confusing the eye; Jonas tried not to look up at them. The Hunter seemed at first enormous, many times the size of a man, and then only mansized; at first very far away, so far Jonas might have walked forever without coming before his throne, and then close by, so close that three steps would bring him to it. He was not a hallucination or a dream, and could never have been mistaken for either.

Closing his eyes, Jonas took three steps; then, sinking to his knees, he opened his eyes and lifted his head.

The Hunter was there. His hands gripped the arms of his throne, like the hands of a man but made of deep shadows. Bending his head so that shadows whirled above, he looked down at Jonas out of pitiless yellow eyes that were definitely not blind.
Jonas,
he said.

“Lord.” Jonas looked up into those predatory eyes and shaped the word without sound, from a throat and with a tongue too dry to produce sound.

The Hunter moved his hand as though he held something, and Jonas saw after a moment that he did: a cup, larger than any two ordinary cups, short-stemmed and with a broad base. The cup held liquid, clear as crystal, glimmering faintly within.

Drink,
said the Hunter.

Jonas took the cup from the Hunter in both his hands, hands that shook with shock as well as an extremity of weariness, and gazed into it. Then he looked up mutely.

Drink,
the Hunter bade him.
Drink.

Shutting his eyes, Jonas lifted the cup to his lips.

It was water, but it was not like any water Jonas had ever tasted. It was like drinking rain on a fine summer’s day, or dew from a spring flower, or water drawn from a deep well from within the earth. It tasted like waking from sleep on a clear winter morning when snow has just fallen, or like the moment that comes after the lightning and before the thunder, or like the realization of first love. It tasted like light, or the memory of light. It slaked thirst, but it also healed the heart and restored the soul.

Jonas gave the cup back to the Hunter with hands that trembled now with a different kind of shock. It seemed to him that, after he had had the extremity of fear ground out of him in the Hunter’s dark Kingdom, this extremity had now been restored to him as well. Terror ran through him, bright and quick as fire.

The Hunter said,
Perilous to drink from any cup you are given in any Kingdom that is not your own.

Jonas took a moment to gather his nerve, and answered in a voice that shook only a little, “Lord, I have no hope save your mercy, and I have been told that you are merciless.”

The Hunter turned his head a little, studying his captive. Immeasurably far above, shadows twisted and writhed in answer to that movement.
Surrender to me your hopes and your fears,
he demanded.

Jonas shut his eyes, shuddering. “Lord,” he said, “I have nothing that matters of hope, and all my fear is already yours.”

It seemed to him that the Hunter might have smiled.
Jonas,
said the Hunter.
Surrender your name to me.

Bowing his head, Jonas yielded his name to the Hunter.

Yes,
said the Hunter.
Jonas. Give me your heart.

“I can’t,” Jonas pleaded. He opened his eyes to meet the passionless unhuman gaze that looked down at him, and said helplessly, hopelessly, “Be merciful, Lord Hunter. You brought me here to your Kingdom. Why? I don’t understand. To torment me? Why should you care about me one way or another? Am I a tool for you to use against Timou? I will not be used that way. But what is it you want?”

The Hunter moved restlessly. Shadows swung and twisted. He said,
I want you.

“I will give you everything you demand, but I cannot give you my heart!” cried Jonas. “Ask for something else. For anything else.”

Your eyes,
said the Hunter.
Your tongue. Your hands. Your heart.

Jonas bowed his head, his hands closing into fists, gripping nothing. “Why?” he whispered. “Why?”

It is what I need.

“It’s not,” Jonas breathed, “a price I can pay.” He looked up, and up, at the dark Hunter. It seemed to him that the Hunter filled the hall, filled the castle, filled this entire dark Kingdom: it seemed to him that the round yellow eyes were as large as moons, standing infinitely far above; that the Hunter’s twisting crown crossed all the sky. When the Hunter moved, the darkness all around moved with him, shadows sliding and crossing everywhere.

You must,
said the Hunter.
Jonas. You will.

“I can’t.” Jonas could not stop shaking. “Whatever you will do to me, Lord, I cannot pay that price.”

You will.
The Hunter moved, reaching out, and Jonas flinched, stifling a cry of helpless terror. But the Hunter’s hand only took him by the shoulder. His grip was not cruel, but there seemed no limit to his strength. He rose, drawing Jonas also to his feet; he seemed now tall, but no taller than a very tall man.

Come,
he said.

C
HAPTER
10

imou stood with Prince Cassiel and watched echoes of color move through the plane of light before them. Sometimes she thought a shifting glimmer of color and form might resolve into the shape of a person, although this resolution never actually happened. Sometimes she thought she heard, faintly, a sound that might have been voices.

“I think,” she said slowly, “this is a reflection of the real Kingdom. That we glimpse it here, dimly. It is distracting. But I do not think it offers a way out.”

“Well,” demanded the Prince, “how, then?”

“There’s a way. Be patient.” Timou saw at once that the Prince was not in a mood for this particular advice, and added hastily, “Prince Cassiel, have you seen your father here?”

The young man stared at her, completely startled. “My father?”

“He is missing, too, evidently. For several days, I think. Not nearly so long as you have been missing. But is he here? Or is he somewhere else?”

The Prince said sharply, “If I am here and my father is missing, then who is ruling the Kingdom?”

“It seemed to me that it was your elder brother. Lord Neill.”

“Neill.” Cassiel moved a hand across the wall, vaguely. “All right,” he whispered. “All right, then.”

“You think he is working with . . . my mother?”

“I think . . . I think he could be working with his.” Cassiel studied Timou. “You could be his sister. I think you are his sister. I think your mother was also his. She trapped me here. But I have not met my father here. Where is he? If it was not that woman who moved against him, then who was it?”

“You think it was Lord Neill.”

“It could have been.” Cassiel seemed to be struggling with the idea. “I don’t want to think so,” he said painfully. Doubts crowded into his eyes, and he looked away.

Timou said sympathetically, “Surely not. I would not have thought so. Did my mother tell you any such thing?”

It took Cassiel a moment to answer. When he did, he spoke quietly and not quite steadily, without turning back to meet Timou’s eyes. “She told me very little. Other than to tell me that she would possess my Kingdom and all its power. That she would unravel all its strange and wonderful power, she said, so that she could possess it for herself. She did not care that she would destroy the Kingdom. I said I would stop her.” He did meet Timou’s eyes then, shame and anger and fear struggling in his. “She said I was a source of power, but had no power of my own. She was right. I cannot even break free of her cage!”

Timou winced at the despair in that cry. She said swiftly, “There is always a way out. We shall find it. Wait.” Then she sent her mind outward, staying clear of the measureless planes of light, looking for an edgeless, ungraspable presence. She found nothing. The serpent was not there. She could not find it anywhere in all the avenues of infinite light that surrounded them. It was gone. “

And if it is gone,” she said aloud, frowning, “then there is a way out. It is still leading the way.”

“What is gone?”

“A serpent,” Timou said absently, barely listening to him. “A creature that sometimes seems to be a serpent. Or serpents, but I think in the end really they are all the same.” She paused as the Prince shifted impatiently and started to speak. The point was—“The point is,” she said, lifting a hand to forestall his words, “it is not here. Whatever it is, it was here, it was here and now it is gone. I wonder how it went?”

“Yes. . . .”

“Prince Cassiel. My mother called you a source of power. What power?” Timou gave the Prince a searching look, a look that she sent probing suddenly into his mind, into his heart. When, catching a startled breath, he moved to evade her, she only followed patiently, so that he found her always before him whichever way he turned. “What power?”

“Stop it,” whispered the Prince.

“Can you stop me?” Timou touched his mind, riffling through memories of his ash-haired elder brother. These memories were difficult and confused. At one moment Cassiel remembered a man he admired, an older brother he loved; but in the next, a severe, self-contained man with dark secretive eyes—a man he feared he did not know, might never have known. He fled from confusion into other memories, earlier ones: of his father, very tall, shouting with laughter or fury, or both, at some moment important to a younger Cassiel; of his mother, volatile but tender, reaching out toward him. Curious, Timou pursued that memory.

“Stop it,” said Cassiel again, half plea and half command. He stood with his hands over his eyes, as though that might shield him. It did not. His breath came hard.

“Can you stop me?” Timou asked again, then answered her own question, thoughtfully, “No. A source of power, but no power of your own. . . .” She drew back, behind her own eyes again.

The Prince dropped his hands to his sides. He took a hard breath. “Don’t . . . do that again.”

That had been a command, from a young man remembering another kind of power. Timou bent her head. “I am sorry. I was curious. Am curious. What power do you have?”

“Does it matter, if I can’t use it?”

“It might. It does. You did not try to stop me.”

“I tried. I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t you?” She studied Cassiel. “Do you know what you are?”

“What?” he said uneasily.

“You are the heart of the Kingdom.” Bending, she gathered up his sword—it was much heavier than she expected, and wavered in her grasp—and offered it to him, but when he reached for it, she took his hand in hers with the hilt between their palms. “You are the source of power, and your power is the Kingdom. If you step away, I’ll stop. Don’t step away.”

Startled, the Prince nevertheless stopped himself from drawing back. He looked into her eyes. Whatever he saw there made him set his teeth and hold still.

Timou met his eyes and sent her mind forward again, looking this time not for Cassiel, but for the Kingdom itself.

Power unrolled before her eyes, vast and complicated and far beyond her ability to comprehend: magic rolled through the air like smoke and bubbled up like water. It was dark and formless as the great forest, brilliant and piercing as light. It seemed to Timou that she heard a single perfect harp note, swelling and falling, underlying everything. The sound pierced her heart. She had never heard it before, never imagined it, but somehow it was familiar. She fell away from its unbearable purity and found herself gasping, clinging to Cassiel’s hand as though it were the single point of stability in the world.

Cassiel caught her by the arm when she swayed. “Are you all right?” he asked with sharp concern.

“What?” Timou stared at him. She said in amazement, “You may be the heart of the Kingdom, but I think I just saw its soul. Does she think to possess that? Either she is insane or she must have terrible power.” Timou shut her eyes. “She has terrible power.”

“Yes,” said Cassiel. “But—”

“Oh,” said Timou. She drew herself back a step, steadying herself with an effort, shaking her head. “Yes. So do you.”

The Prince let her go, watching her carefully. “But I can’t use what I have,” he reminded her. “I think she can use her power. I think she can use it delicately as a cat steps or powerfully as the hammer of lightning strikes.”

“Yes,” said Timou. “But she can’t keep you in this prison. She could not keep you in any prison. You yourself are the way out.” She held out a hand to him.

After a moment he took it.

“Close your eyes,” Timou whispered. She closed her own and drew him forward, stepping forward herself out of the maze of light and into the Kingdom, blindly, knowing that where her foot would come down would be . . . would be . . .

She opened her eyes.

They stood hand in hand on a broad street embraced by the golden light of a hot summer afternoon. The pavement beneath their feet was dusty gold; the buildings to either side, tall and pale, caught the light and echoed it. Towers with rounded cupolas made of glass and silver shared the street with longer, lower buildings roofed with creamy-pink tile. Trees, some of them as tall as the towers, cast a dancing lacy shade across the cobbles. The street ran upward in a slow lazy curve, inviting the eye to follow; looking along it, it was possible to see in the distance the graceful white walls of the Palace.

It was the City. But it was entirely empty and completely quiet; it was filled with the heat of a still summer day that owed nothing to the late season of the City Timou remembered. “This isn’t right,” said Timou, shaken.

“No,” said Prince Cassiel, and smiled suddenly. He still held his sword. It had changed: it had turned to glass, or perhaps to light. Its hilt was made of shadow. It looked now delicate and deadly and somehow more perfectly like a sword. Cassiel seemed to take the sword’s transformation for granted, perhaps because he had no attention to spare for it in the midst of all else that had changed. He turned in a slow circle, head tilted back, eyes wide open. He breathed deeply, seeming to want to take in all the air in the City at once. “Don’t you know it? This is the other City. The first one: the real one. The City Irinore and the first King, Castienes, saw when they built our City. This is the City in the Lake.”

Timou and Prince Cassiel walked through the City in the Lake slowly, side by side. Timou found this City disturbing despite its beauty. Cassiel loved it, with a deep unspoken love that she could hear in his voice when he drew her attention now and then to a finely carved balustrade or a particularly lovely screen made of delicately filigreed wood and ivory. She could see it in his eyes, which lingered like the eyes of a lover on the curve of stone that formed the flank of a tower or on the broad flat flagstone stair that led in a spiral down from their street to another at a lower level.

Timou did not know which was more real and true: the busy City with its thousands of inhabitants, worn by time, or this one, new and fresh, held in a perfect eternal summer within the Lake. Cassiel had called this one the
real
City. Timou thought perhaps both were real: layers of reality lying across one another. But she knew she had liked the inhabited City far better.

They walked toward the Palace. “It is at the heart of the City,” said Cassiel simply. Since she had no better ideas, Timou acceded to his desire and walked beside him up the winding street toward the Palace. When the street turned, they could see it before them, white and graceful, growing slowly nearer.

Its gates stood wide open and welcoming, so that even the walls were made to seem welcoming as well, as though they hid secrets behind their sheer faces, but pleasant secrets that one would enjoy discovering.

The Palace was set beyond the walls in the midst of green and growing gardens. Timou remembered only a little of what she had seen of the Palace in the ordinary living Kingdom, but this Palace was as fine and delicate as a spun-sugar confection. Its walls were carved in intricate relief, but here, unlike in the living City, the carvings were fresh and clean, untouched by time. Stone roses nodded heavily above the subtly carved doors; they seemed so real that Timou almost believed one might pluck them from their thorny stems. Living roses, pink and cream and palest gold, swept up a great expanse of wall to the left of the doors: they breathed a warm and heady perfume out upon the air.

Prince Cassiel, moving as though in a dream, walked forward and laid a hand on the doors. Though they were tall and heavy, they swung smoothly back at his touch.

Timou had never had a real chance to see the interior of the Palace in the living City. This Palace amazed her. It was rich, lavish, opulent, and entirely unpopulated. Hallways had vaulted ceilings twelve feet high and floors of polished marble; walls were hung with jewel-toned tapestries.

Cassiel told her about the tapestries as they passed them, a few words about one or another. “This is the first King, laying the first stone on the shore of the Lake. This is my great-greatgreat-grandfather Casien, building the Bridge of Glass.” Timou nodded politely to each and wondered whether the Prince knew where he was going. He seemed to.

Then Cassiel stopped in the middle of a word, turning.

Timou turned as well, looking back the way they had come. “Someone is here,” she said nervously.

She had not needed to say anything. Prince Cassiel, intent, shifted his weight. The sword he held, with its blade of light and its hilt of darkness, glimmered in his hand.

The step that approached was firm. Decisive. Arrogant. It was a man’s step: boots rang on the stone. The man turned sharply into their hall and paused, head up, eyes hard with pride and anger. He was a big man, but that was not what gave the impression of sheer power that he brought with him: mere size was not enough to yield that sense of power. That radiated from him like heat. His face was broad, with rugged bones and a generous mouth. His hair, grizzled with silver, was cut very short, adding to the impression of uncompromising harshness. His eyes, the color of dark rich earth, passed over Timou as though she did not exist and fixed on Cassiel. Timou recognized him from a memory she had taken from Prince Cassiel.

Cassiel, dropping his sword unheeded to the marble floor—when it struck the stone, it rang once like a bell and then was silent—took a single step toward his father, and halted.