The City in the Lake (20 page)

Marcos returned the Bastard’s grip. “My friend, if she did not steal him away and yet he went, where else do you suppose he might be? And of course you can open the way.” He shook the Bastard gently. “Why do you think she wanted a King-got son at all? You are the key that will make this Bridge run to two destinations, Neill. Think of the Bridge. Think of the way the lilies change at dusk, becoming so real you can smell them . . . think of the tigers: did you never hear them walking behind you through the streets?”

“Can she hear us?” Galef asked suddenly, uneasily. He held the reins of both horses in one hand. The other hand, from long habit, rested on the hilt of his sword, though he had never yet found it useful to draw a sword against either Lelienne or any mage.

“Probably,” said Marcos. “So it would be good if we were quick.”

“Cracking ice,”
said the Bastard, and turned away from them both to set his hands on the heavy worn railing of the Bridge. The sun, huge as it sank below the Lake, was in his eyes. The wind died. Below the Bridge, the Lake gradually stilled.

“Hurry,” Marcos said tensely.

“Be quiet,” snapped the Bastard, his eyes on the water. Colors fell out of the air and welled out of the Lake to meet at the boundary between air and water: crimson and dusky blue and a purple that rapidly shaded away toward black. The air became utterly still. Shadows tangled across the carved Bridge, making sight uncertain, until the Bridge above the water and the Bridge reflected in the water seemed precisely alike.

A voice cried out, seeming to the Bastard somehow both very near at hand and at the same time almost too distant to hear. But he could not spare it attention. He was studying the Bridge in the Lake. In the Lake, another Lord Bastard looked back at him, face hollowed by weariness and strain, eyes dark as though made of the night itself, pale hair falling down his back like moonlight. The reflection seemed truer to him than any face he had ever seen in any simple mirror, and he reached out his hand as though to touch its hand.

With an almost audible vibration of light and shadow, the world reordered itself. The Bastard still stood on Tiger Bridge, reaching down toward his reflection, which held its hand up as though to reach out of the water to him. But although everything was the same, everything was also, in some indefinable way, different. Around him, the scent of lilies wafted sweetly into the air. He straightened slowly, lifting his gaze: before him the Lake spread itself out to the horizon, as though it alone encompassed all the world.

Somewhere close at hand, unmistakably, a tiger coughed. The Bastard moved to look at the stone plinths that guarded the Bridge, and found them empty now of the tigers they had held by day. Though he stood still, listening for tigers in the dark, there was no other sound. He was entirely alone in the night.

C
HAPTER
12

he King led Timou and his son through the Palace at a breathless pace, seeming certain of both his way and his intentions, which was more than Timou could say for herself. He swept them up, and farther up, until Timou was dizzy with height, and finally up to the highest gallery of the tallest tower of all. The gallery ran all around the tower, its slim marble balustrade seeming a fragile protection against the fall that lay beyond. The air this high seemed pure as glass, so still a sudden cry might shatter it. Below them the City spread itself out, flushed ruddy gold in the last sun.

The King stood with his broad hands spread wide on the rail, staring outward and down. His voice, when he spoke, was surprisingly gentle, although still gravelly. “You can see all the way to the edge of the great forest from this place. If the air is especially clear. It is like a shadow at the edge of sight.”

His son came forward to join him at the balustrade. He had carried his sword with him, out of habit, Timou thought, and now, having mislaid the sheath somewhere behind the mirror, set it aside on the stone floor of the gallery. “And she wants to rule all this.”

“Rule it?” said the King. “No. How could she rule it? She is not part of it. She never was.”

“Then—”

“She wants to possess it,” said the King curtly. “She cannot use you for that, boy. You are nothing of hers. But she can use Neill, especially if you and I are out of the way.” His powerful gaze fell on Timou as he turned his head suddenly. “And she can use you, girl. Her son for the right to rule. Her mage-born daughter for the magic. How can Kapoen have been so stupid?” He waved away Timou’s answer before she could try to make it. “Yes, I know. The same way I was stupid, I suppose. Neither of us knew her for what she was.”

“You seem to know her now,” Timou offered cautiously.

The King pinned her in place with his heavy stare. “Yes. Now. One of Deserisien’s get, is she?”

“Yes. But . . . how do you know her now, if you did not know her before?”

“Because I am paying attention now,” he said harshly, and turned back to the silent City, spread out below. “I have read history, even that which goes beyond this Kingdom.”

“I thought I had,” whispered Timou. But her father had hidden the book that held whatever story might have guided her. She found she was shaking, and did not even know if it was with grief or with anger.

“Come here. Look at this.”

Collecting herself with an effort, Timou came guardedly to the balustrade and gazed over.

“Can you feel it beating in you? Like your heart? Like it contains all your life? All your breath?”

Timou could not.

“I feel it like that,” said Cassiel, staring in surprised wonder over the City.

“Of course you do, boy. Do you feel her hand over it? A grip like winter itself ? I recognized it. But I did not know what it was, until I saw this girl’s face. So like Lelienne. Your eyes are different,” added the King to Timou abruptly.

“So I have been told.”

“You don’t have her eyes. Or Kapoen’s. His, as I recall, were dark. Yours are like the Lake itself. Like light through the water. He is dead, you say?”

“Behind the mirror,” said Timou. “With a silver knife in his heart and a river of blood running out of it.” She made her tone inexpressive, but the King looked at her sharply, and unexpectedly gentled his rough voice.

“I knew Kapoen. I am sorry for his death. He was a fine man, and a good mage, if too cracking serious for his own good. I am sure he acted as wisely as he knew how. But”—the King lifted his voice abruptly in a roar, making Timou flinch—“he was a fool to lie down with that woman! Although,” he added, suddenly gentle again, “no more a fool than I. I suppose she set his head spinning like a weathercock. As she did to me. Fools, both of us. Well. That is water under the Bridge, and now here we are.”

On the far side of the Lake, the sun was setting. Light ran across the water in jeweled colors: garnet and lapis and amethyst. Cerulean shadows followed the blazing sunset. The moon was already visible in the fair sky, nearly full, promising a pale lustrous light to come.

“What shall we do?” asked Timou at last, rather timidly. She was not used to being timid, but this forceful King made her feel so. The way he spoke of her father shocked her. It had never occurred to her that anyone might speak so carelessly of Kapoen, or so unceremoniously judge his actions foolish and dangerous. Or judge him at all.

As though the King’s judgment freed hers, she understood at last—it was a strange understanding to have about her father—that Kapoen had been ashamed. Ashamed to tell her the truth about his own foolishness. And so he had not told her the truth about her mother, or the great sorcerer Deserisien, who had been Lelienne’s master, or the dark sorcery that was half Timou’s birthright. He had told her nothing at all, leaving her to walk blind into the trap Lelienne had left for her. Timou wanted to weep. She steadied her breathing with an effort and tried to pay attention to the King.

“Do?” the King was saying. “We do what we can, and what we must.” He looked at his son sharply. “Right, boy?”

“Yes, sir,” Cassiel agreed instantly.

“All right, then,” growled the King. “Then I think it’s time—don’t you agree?—to throw that woman out of our Kingdom. Now that I know what I’m about. Come here.” He laid one powerful hand on his son’s arm and stretched the other out over the silent City. “Feel that?” he said. “That is our heart, and none of hers.” Father and son stared out at the Kingdom. All Timou saw was an expanse of nameless buildings that moonlight turned to cream and silvery dusk, and beyond that the endless smooth dark mirror of the Lake. She thought she might feel a gathering pressure, like the violent stillness that rides before the storm, but she was not certain even of that.

Sweat stood out on the King’s face, as from some powerful effort. Cassiel gripped the balustrade with both hands. He made a low sound, swaying. The King shouted suddenly, wordlessly, and swung around to catch his son as Cassiel’s legs suddenly buckled underneath him.

Timou pressed her hands over her mouth and stared at them both, not daring to move, because she did not know either what they had tried to do or whether they had succeeded or failed.

“Storms and
ice,
” snarled the King in a voice that rose to a shout on the last word.

“She’s far too powerful for shouting to help,” stated a crisp, half-familiar voice, and Timou spun, eyes widening. “The other—if you care to try again to throw her out, it’s possible I might be able to help with that—”

Lord Neill stood in the doorway of the tower. Light fell across him and flung his shadow down the gallery. His stark features might have been carved from stone, his pale hair spun from moonlight. His breathing was quick, his shirt torn, and his black eyes brilliant. He looked like he had been running or drinking or brawling, or perhaps all three. Timou thought that she had never in her life looked anything like him.

“You!”
roared the King, and lunged to his feet, his fist already moving.

Unlike Cassiel, his elder son stepped economically to one side. The blow whistled past his head, making the King stagger, and Lord Neill caught his wrist as the swing went past and pinned his father efficiently against the wall of the tower. He was not nearly so large a man as the King and certainly could not match his power, but at that moment he seemed to have a wild strength all his own.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said to his father with a precise inclination of his head, as though involved in a formal encounter in the court. “And you,” he said to his half brother, who was sitting now with his back against the marble balustrade, eyes wide and vulnerable. “Though
you’re
a surprise,” he added to Timou. “Do you know you’re my sister?”

“So I have been told,” she allowed, fascinated. Then she gathered her wits and added, far more sharply, dread running through her bones, “Oh, no. Oh. Lord Neill. You are her son. And I . . . You should never have come here.”

“What?” said Lord Neill blankly. “I assure you, I had very little choice, and was very glad at the time to be able to come here. It seemed very important to us all that my father be found.”

“He can’t fight her,” said Timou. “Don’t you know that?”

“Russe said—”

“Thunder and ice, girl, I can fight anyone I need to fight. Let go of me,” commanded the King, staring belligerently into his elder son’s face. Their eyes were exactly at a level.

“Will you try again to hit me?” his son inquired.

“Cracking ice! I might.”

Lord Neill released him, stepping back guardedly.

His father moved with slow deliberation, straightening his clothing, fussing with his sleeves. He said, not quite looking at his elder son, “Well. Are you all right, then?”

Timou thought, astonished through her fear,
Why, he is embarrassed.

What Lord Neill thought, she could not tell. He said sharply, “Better, now that I am here and have found you. Do you even know what it was you let into this Kingdom and into your bed thirty-odd years ago?”

“I do now,” said the King, tone dour.

“You do not,” said his ashen-haired son grimly. “You can’t. You have been safe here in the Lake, searching your deeper Kingdom for Cassiel, leaving
Ellis,
I might add, to think
I
had done away with you both.”

The King gave a crack of harsh laughter. “She thought what?”

“Oh, it was a popular opinion, for a little while. That didn’t occur to you?” His son came a step closer, voice lowering in volume, but gaining in intensity. “Along with what else? Here you have been while those you left behind in
your
Kingdom have been at the mercy of a woman who, believe me, hasn’t any. Did you never look her in the
eyes
when you bedded her?”

This time, when the King’s fist moved, Neill did not step aside. But the King checked, and hooked both his hands deliberately in his belt instead of completing the blow, though he was breathing hard. His voice, when he spoke, was almost mild. “So I was here. You were there with her. So, you tell me about her, then.”

Lord Neill took a breath. He glanced at Timou. When he spoke, it was gently. “She makes her children only to devour them, and through them, all the Kingdom.”

Timou said, “Yes, I know. It’s what I was trying to say. It’s why you shouldn’t have come here—”

“I told you—”

“Yes, I know.” Timou shut her eyes. “I shouldn’t have come here either. But for both of us to be here together is worse. Because we are her children. She will follow us, and through us she will devour the Kingdom. She will take its magic and its power and leave behind a land with neither—” Her voice caught.

Cassiel was still sitting with his back against the balustrade, half hidden in its shadow. He said, voice uncertain, “Can she do that?”

“Oh, yes. If she can indeed follow us,” said Neill, and moved suddenly to stand over him. “Cassiel. Are you all right?” He offered Cassiel a hand, and, at his younger brother’s nod, drew him up and into an embrace. Neill was the taller, but, Timou saw with faint surprise, by very little.

“I’m sorry,” Cassiel said, muffled against Neill’s shirt, and Timou knew he meant for every doubt of his brother he had entertained, as well as for getting himself trapped behind a mirror in the first place.

Neill shook him a little. “When you climb too high on the roofs of the Palace and tempt the young men to follow you so that someone falls off and breaks his arm, that’s your own fault. When you steal Esel’s stallion and let it loose in the kitchens so that the cooks have hysterics, that’s your own fault. But this was not some boy’s prank. You may put the blame for this one where it belongs. With Lelienne.” He looked deliberately, an arm still across his younger brother’s shoulders, at their father.

“And with me,” the King said heavily. “Do you think I do not know that? Well, boy, you found me. Here I am. I’ve already tried to clean her out of the Kingdom. Now you’re here, I’ll try again. We’ll all try.”

“It won’t work,” said Timou.

The King looked at her, eyes narrowed. “No? Well, what do you suggest, then, girl?”

Thinking about it, she said, “We should have gone to the great forest. We could go now, all of us—No. Cassiel and I. Cassiel needs to stay in the Kingdom. It isn’t whole without him, and I think my mother would have trouble finding him in the great forest. But you should stay here, Your Majesty, and Lord Neill should go somewhere else—somewhere very far away, as fast as he can. He should . . . I think he should really leave the Kingdom. All the Kingdoms, this one and the ordinary one and any others that may lie layered with them. If he would.” She looked apologetically at her white-haired half brother, trying to gauge his reaction. He didn’t show any she could recognize. “I know it’s a terrible thing to ask—”

Lord Neill said merely, “Do you think this would keep us all safe?”

Timou did not know. She gave a little helpless shake of her head. “It might make it hard for her to find you.”

“I have met her. And I think,” Lord Neill said precisely, “that she will find me in the end, if she wishes. Wherever I may go. And you as well.”