The Lost Queen (14 page)

Tania wondered if she had fainted and fallen into some kind of weird nightmare.

Zara lay in a crumpled heap on the carpet, face-down, groaning. Cordelia pulled herself into a sitting position and gently turned Zara over, resting her head in her lap.

Sancha stared at the ceiling with a look of absolute horror. “Eden has sealed the portal behind us,” she said. “
They
cannot follow, but neither can she.”

Tania staggered to her feet. Even in her shock she saw that the clothes her three sisters were wearing were stained and crumpled, and that their hair was wild and their faces smeared with grime.

She also noticed that Sancha was holding a bundle of white silk under one arm and that there was another cloth bundle lying on the carpet near to where the white crystal sword had stabbed into the
floor—a tied bundle that was tube-shaped and about a yard long.

“Who can't follow?” she asked. “What's happened? How did you get here?”

Sancha gave her a grave, bleak-eyed look. “It is Rathina,” she said. “She has betrayed us all.” She bit her lip, her eyes glancing fearfully around. “This place may not be safe. We should not remain here.” She looked down at Zara. “Is she hurt?”

“Nay,” Cordelia said, smoothing Zara's golden hair off her face. “Bruises, nothing more.” She looked up at Sancha. “Would that Hopie were here to ease her pain.”

“Please!” Tania's voice was shrill in her ears. “I don't understand. Tell me what's happening!”

Sancha took an awkward step toward Tania and put her hand on her shoulder. “It is ill to meet you so, Tania,” she said. “We have a grievous tale to tell.”

“Had we but known,” said Cordelia, shaking her head, “mayhap we could have prevented it.”

“Water, please,” Zara whispered. “My lips are dry and there is so foul a taste in my mouth that I can hardly bear it.”

“Come with me,” Tania said. “We'll go to the kitchen. And then you can tell me exactly what's happened.”

“Call for a servant,” Sancha said. “Zara will need aid if she is to walk far.”

“I don't have servants,” Tania said, helping Cordelia get Zara to her feet. “I'm on my own here but
the kitchen isn't far away.” Keeping in step with Cordelia, she supported Zara as they walked to the door.

“This is your bedchamber?” Sancha asked, her voice filled with amazement as she stared around the room. “There are so many curious devices here.” She turned to the desk and reached toward the computer. “What is this thing?”

“Don't touch it!” Tania shouted, startling her sister. “It's made of metal.”

With a look of alarm Sancha drew back her hand sharply.

“Be really careful, all of you,” Tania said. “Please don't touch anything without asking me first. There's metal everywhere.”

Cordelia gave her a look of distaste. “You surround yourself with
Isenmort
?” she asked. “How do you abide it?” She glanced around the room with narrowed, wary eyes. “Your chamber is unlovely, Tania. It has too many sharp edges and it is ugly and unnatural. I do not like it.” She frowned. “And what is that foul taste in my mouth? Is the air so corrupted in this world that it tastes like wormwood on the tongue?”

“No, that's not normal,” Tania said. “I thought Drake was causing it somehow.”

“Drake?” said Sancha. “Nay, sister, 'tis far worse a foe. But I would have water to wash the taint from my mouth ere I speak of it.”

“We'll go downstairs,” Tania said, looking uneasily at her sister.
A worse foe than Gabriel Drake? Was that possible?

Sancha stooped and picked up the long bundle. She followed Tania as she and Cordelia helped Zara out of the room and down the stairs. Tania was aware of Sancha and Cordelia's eyes moving rapidly and warily around as they took in their new surroundings.

“'Tis all so small and bleak,” Cordelia muttered as they came down into the hall and headed for the kitchen. “Do you have no longing for space and beauty in this world?”

Tania didn't reply. She felt strangely embarrassed by her home. The princesses were used to richly decorated and ornamented rooms, and to wide corridors and polished oak stairways hung with tapestries and paintings, to high ceilings of carved plaster and to windows that shone with colored glass. To them this ordinary Camden house must seem drained of all life and color.

“Be really careful in here,” Tania said as they entered the kitchen. “This room is full of metal things. Sit at the table and I'll get you something to drink.”

Sancha laid the two lumpy bundles in the middle of the pine table and the three sisters sat down. Zara lifted her head, blinking. She was less pale now, and looked as if she was beginning to recover.

“My head swims,” she said softly. “Was Eden successful? Is this the Mortal World?”

“Alas, but it is,” Cordelia said grimly.

“You're in my home, Zara,” Tania said as she took a carton of milk from the fridge and put four glasses on the table. She sat down, pouring milk into the four
glasses and handing them around.

“Your home?” Zara said, looking around. “Oh! I had often wondered what it would be like…but…” Her voice faltered. “It is so strange…like a dream.”

“Or a nightmare,” Cordelia muttered. “I would almost rather we had stayed in Faerie and carried the fight to the Sorcerer King.”

“We would have been killed,” Sancha said quietly. “And who would have benefited from our sacrifice?”

Cordelia didn't reply.

They all drank thirstily, and for a few moments no one seemed willing or able to speak. As they sat there together, Tania noticed that Cordelia was constantly looking out of the window, gazing at the trees and bushes in the garden with a haunted, longing expression on her face.

Sancha was looking thoughtfully around the room, taking in the things that surrounded them: The fridge and the stove and the microwave and the coffeemaker, the rows of gleaming knives and kitchen utensils that hung on the wall above the work surface. The chrome sink and the shining metal taps.

“This is a strange and curious world,” she murmured under her breath. “It discomforts me greatly, but I would know more of it.”

“This liquid has the look of milk,” Zara said, staring into her empty glass. “But it tastes like no milk I have ever known. What beast does it come from?”

“From cows,” Tania said. “Something is done to it so it lasts longer, that's probably why it tastes different.”

She looked at her sisters. It was so bizarre to have them sitting there at her kitchen table that she had to keep telling herself that this was really happening.

“There are cows in the Mortal World?” Cordelia said. “Strange. I had not imagined it would be so. They must be sad beasts, indeed.”

Tania had no idea what to say in response to that. “Tell me how you got here,” she asked, looking from sister to sister. “If Drake didn't do it, then who did?”

“It was Rathina,” Zara said breathlessly.

Tania caught her breath.
Rathina?

“It is small wonder that Eden could sense no trace of our errant sister,” Cordelia said. “Eden was seeking afar for her, yet all the while Rathina was beneath our very feet.”

“She was in the palace, you mean?” Tania said.

“Indeed she was,” said Sancha. “Eden understood too late the wicked deed that Rathina intended. She sensed the brewing of evil in time to save us but too late to prevent Rathina's treachery from rising up and striking at the very heart of Faerie.”

“The Palace has fallen to our bitterest enemy,” Cordelia said, her face drawn with misery. “The King of Lyonesse has been freed!”

Tania gasped in disbelief. “But he was trapped in amber in the dungeons! You mean Rathina set him free?”

“Aye,” Sancha said grimly. “Our own sister loosed this peril on the world once more and brought the darkness upon us.”

“All is not yet lost,” Zara said. She looked at Tania with her bright blue eyes. “Our hope rests with you, Tania—our last hope.”

“You have to tell me exactly what happened,” Tania said. “How could Rathina do such a terrible thing? And how did she free the King of Lyonesse? I thought there was nothing in Faerie that could destroy an amber prison.”

“It was not with a thing of Faerie that she did the deed,” Sancha said. “It was with a thing brought into our realm from the Mortal World. It was with a sword of Isenmort. A sword that lay in the dungeons—the sword that you brought into Faerie, Tania, the sword that you used to free Edric Chanticleer.”

Tania stared at her in dismay. When Gabriel Drake had realized that Edric was betraying him, he had encased his servant in a globe of impenetrable amber. Tania had gone into the Mortal World to seek something made of Isenmort—of metal—to break him free. She had sidestepped into modern-day Hampton Court Palace and snatched a sword from a display suit of armor.

Tania had taken the sword back into Faerie through the Oriole Glass. Then Eden had led her to the dungeons and she had searched the myriad tunnels until she had found Edric. The touch of the sword to the amber sphere had destroyed it, but Edric had been weak—she had needed both hands free to help him get away—and she had left the sword lying there on the ground.

“It's my fault!” Tania whispered. “The King of Lyonesse is free because of me.”

“No,” Cordelia said sharply. “Rathina did the foul deed. None other shares her blame.”

“The first I knew was when Eden woke me in the deeps of night,” Sancha said. “‘Come,' she said to me. ‘Be swift and silent. We must wake the others. Dark deeds are afoot this night. Rathina has returned.' ‘How do you know?' I asked her. She touched a finger to her forehead. ‘I see it in my mind,' she said. ‘Alas that I could do nothing to prevent it, but at least we may escape the wrath that is coming.' And so we fled from bedchamber to bedchamber until all sisters were roused.” Sancha licked her lips, her eyes hollow. “Rathina's flight from the palace was pretense,” she went on. “She allowed the stable boy to see her riding away so that all should think she had departed.”

“Had Eden thought to cast her net of seeking to the stones 'neath our feet, Rathina would have been found,” Cordelia said. “But she was sending her mind out over the far hills and saw her not.”

“Rathina lay hidden from us until the night that you came to the gallery,” Sancha said, looking at Tania. “For it was only a short time after I bade you farewell at Bonwn Tyr and returned to my chamber that I was awoken by Eden.” She reached out to the round bundle and began to unwrap it. “And this will tell the tale of how Rathina survived the touch of Isenmort and was able to wield the sword that freed the Sorcerer King.” She opened the silken cloth to
reveal the white crystal crown that had belonged to Queen Titania. The only other time that Tania had seen the exquisite, finely worked crown had been in Titania's melancholy apartments in the Royal Palace.

“Do you see?” Sancha said, pointing to the crown's circlet ringed with inset stones of black amber. “One of the jewels has been prized loose.”

Sure enough, Tania saw that one of the black stones was missing from its setting.

“Rathina took it to protect herself from the bite of the Isenmort blade,” Cordelia said. “Then she went down to the dungeons and searched until she found the King of Lyonesse.”

“And then she set him free,” Zara added.

“But why would she do something like that?” Tania asked.

“Of the workings of her mind we can but guess,” Sancha said. “But it seems most likely to me that she believed the King of Lyonesse would be able to find Gabriel Drake and bring him back from exile. Lyonesse is a mighty sorcerer; he has great power in him. Rathina must have hoped he would grant her a reward for freeing him, and that the reward should be the return of the man she loves, the traitor Drake.”

A coldness pierced Tania's heart. So Drake
did
have a part in all this. “Did he agree to bring Gabriel back?”

“That we do not know,” Cordelia said. “But Lyonesse has no honor or gratitude in him. He would not feel bound to reward Rathina for her service to
him. Like as not he would have killed her on the spot.”

“No,” Zara said softly. “I do not believe that she is dead.”

“Alive or dead, Rathina's actions have brought ruin and desolation to Faerie,” Sancha said. “‘What has our sister done?' I asked Eden when we were safely hidden. ‘She has freed the Sorcerer King of Lyonesse,' Eden told us. ‘Lyonesse has burst out of the dungeons and he has taken Oberon in his sleep and he has cast him into an amber prison. And he has put an incantation upon the sword of Isenmort to form it into bands of adamant wound all about the amber prison so that even Oberon cannot break free.'”

“Oberon is a prisoner?” Tania gasped.

“He is,” Cordelia said. “And once Lyonesse had done that wicked thing, he returned to the dungeons and set free his knights. Many of the pale horsemen of Lyonesse were imprisoned over the long centuries of war. I know not how many: One hundred, two, perhaps? They are cruel and evil to the rotted core of their hearts. It is in them to see the Tamesis run red with blood ere they are done with their sport.”

“They're
killing
people?”

“Some few who faced them were slain,” Cordelia said. “But most fled the palace. Hopie was among those who escaped. She and Lord Brython rode west to Caer Kymry in Talebolion to summon aid, drawing away the attention of the knights from we who remained.”

“In the confusion Eden led us to the Queen's Apartments to take the crown,” Sancha said. “She did not want the black amber to fall into the hands of Lyonesse. He had already taken possession of Oberon's crown, but at least the Queen's crown was denied him.” She reached out a shaking hand and touched the black jewels. “And so we have protection against the perils of this barbarous world,” she murmured. “At least until the Gray Knights of Lyonesse come.”