The Measure of the Magic (15 page)

“I don’t like doing this,” Pan said at one point. “Deceiving your parents feels wrong.” He paused. “Of course, telling them the truth doesn’t feel like the right thing, either.”

She stopped what she was doing and looked him in the eye. “I’ve been a Tracker long enough that I have the right to make that decision. So let’s not talk about it.”

They continued with their preparations in silence. Prue was glad for the excuse to keep busy, not wanting to think too hard about what lay ahead, still uncertain in her own mind that they were doing the right thing. Going to the Elves might create fresh complications since it meant getting involved with Phryne again. But abandoning her wasn’t something that she was prepared to do, either. Even knowing that things were likely to be much more difficult than they expected, she was in agreement with Pan that they had to do something.

She worked quietly in her world of grays and shadows, trying not to think about how dreary it all was. She imagined the colors she wasn’t seeing, tried to remember the intensity of hues when she began selecting from her clothes and pleased with herself when she could do
so and irritated when she couldn’t. She pictured the colors of the furniture and wood moldings, of walls, floors, and ceiling, of the rendition of the little painting of a woman at a well that Pan’s mother had loved so much and that he kept on the wall even after she was gone. She tried to guess the color of his clothes, then of curtains and his old comforter.

Stop it!
she admonished herself finally.
Let it alone!

She caught herself crying again and brushed the tears away roughly. This was not the time or place. She’d had her cry. She was bigger than this, stronger. Pan shouldn’t have to see her cry anymore.

When they were finished and had shouldered their packs, they took a moment to look around the cottage, ostensibly to determine if they had missed anything, but on a deeper level to consider the possibility that it might be the last time they would ever be here.

“Don’t worry,” Pan told her, as if needing to voice a response to what they were both thinking. “Now that we’re back together again, we can handle anything that comes our way.”

Prue nodded, smiled encouragingly. It was the right thing to say and the right attitude to take. “Anything,” she echoed.

Moments later, they were out the door and walking through the predawn darkness.

H
IDDEN DEEP
within the trees where there was virtually no chance of being discovered, Bonnasaint watched them depart the cottage. They did not turn south toward Hold-Fast-Crossing and Hadrian Esselline, as Skeal Eile had insisted they would, but north toward Arborlon. Bonnasaint smiled. This was why you never put your trust in others, not even someone who normally could be depended upon, but only in yourself. If he had listened to the Seraphic, he would already be miles away from where he should be if he was to carry out his assignment, wasting his time looking for someone who was never coming.

The Seraphic hadn’t been right about the boy being alone and the girl being gone, either. It made him wonder what he
had
been right about, but he left that question alone. What he had been right or wrong about wouldn’t affect how successful Bonnasaint would be with the task he had been given.

It never was.

He stayed where he was, watching until the boy and the girl were well out of sight before leaving his cover. He would not attempt to shadow them, although that might be the easiest way. He knew something of their reputation as Trackers, and he respected their skills enough that he wouldn’t risk getting caught following when he could just as easily and more safely wait for them to come to him. He knew they would go to Arborlon because that was where they would find their Elven friends. So he would go on ahead of them, taking a different route entirely, find a suitable place where they must pass, and wait.

Sooner or later, they would appear. When they did, he would put an end to them.

B
ECAUSE SHE WAS A PRINCESS AND DESERVED A
measure of respect in spite of the accusations lodged against her, Phryne Amarantyne was not locked away in the prison that housed ordinary criminals. Instead, she was given a windowless room in the lower section of the buildings that contained the Council chambers, a room normally used for storing supplies. That way, it was reasoned, she would not be exposed to unnecessary dangers while she awaited her trial.

The room was of reasonable size, almost twelve feet by fourteen feet, but it felt so small because of boxes of records stacked floor-to-ceiling against two of the walls. She was given a pallet to sleep on, some bedding, a chamber pot, a small table and chair, and some writing materials. She had the use of candles for light, which was considerate as the sun never reached this room and so day and night were pretty much the same. A guard kept watch outside her door twenty-four hours a day, and the door was locked at all times save when a little serving girl brought her food on a tray. When the serving girl
appeared, the door was unlocked just long enough to allow for the tray to be placed on the floor inside the opening and to replace the chamber pot—the serving girl was forbidden to go in any farther or to say anything—and then it was sealed back up again.

All of the Home Guards assigned to watch her were men she did not know. None of them was allowed to speak to her. When she tried asking for things, they made her write out a request, which they claimed they would take to those responsible for seeing to it that she had what she needed. She wrote out several requests and there was no response to any of them. When she asked one of her jailors why she hadn’t heard anything, he told her that such things take time and to be patient. Something in the way he said this warned her that patience would not be enough. She quit asking for anything soon after.

She was allowed no visitors.

She was not permitted to write letters.

She was not told anything about what was happening outside the walls of her cell.

She was not advised when her trial would be held.

When she asked to see her grandmother, Mistral Belloruus, a request that under any circumstances should not have been refused, she was told that her grandmother didn’t want to see her. It was such a patently obvious lie, she accepted that nothing she really wanted was ever going to be provided and that the best she could expect was that they would do just enough to keep her alive and well.

She knew, of course, who was behind all this.

If it were possible to hate someone enough to kill them simply by wishing for it, Isoeld Severine would already be dead. But since her stepmother was still out there walking around, Phryne assumed she needed to find another way.

She spent hours mourning for her father. The images of his final moments were burned into her memory, and days after she had been seized and locked away she could still see the shock and anguish in his face as his assassin had stabbed him again and again with that knife. She could hear him cry out, could recall the way his head had turned and looked at her while Isoeld held her pinned to the floor, recognition of what was happening reflected sharp and clear in his eyes. He knew
his wife had betrayed him. She could feel his pain as the dagger sheathed in his body withdrew, and his lifeblood drained away.

Phryne could see it all, even when she didn’t want to.

The Home Guard had appeared shortly after, and they had hauled her away in spite of her protestations. The weapon that had killed the King was lying next to her. The real assassin was gone. Both Isoeld and First Minister Teonette pointed fingers at her, claiming to have witnessed the consummation of her vengeance, to have heard her cry out that her father would never mistreat her again, that she had endured enough. It must have had something to do with the terrible argument they had engaged in only days earlier, the one that everyone in the city had been talking about. Phryne had screamed at him even as she drove the knife home that he had humiliated her and could not be allowed to live. She had even accused him of letting her mother die all those years ago.

It got worse. Her accusers quickly suggested that she was suffering from delusions and other mental disorders, that her ability to reason and act rationally had been adversely affected. Isoeld had witnessed this behavior herself in the presence of the King, but had chosen to keep quiet about it and let her husband handle the matter. Phryne was not her daughter, after all—even though she loved her dearly—so it was left to her father. But she had always worried that sooner or later the girl would do something terrible, that her illness would overcome her in a way that would prove disastrous.

So they locked Phryne Amarantyne away in that storeroom and left her there to await her fate. She already knew what that fate would be. They would try her for her father’s murder, convict her, and sentence her to death in the Elven Way. Everyone knew about that. It was an old punishment, seldom employed, reserved for the most heinous of crimes and criminals. She couldn’t remember when it had last been used. Not in her lifetime, certainly. It was considered barbaric, monstrous.

But that was why it was utilized for killings like this one—a combination of patricide and regicide, the murder of a father and a King.

She tried over and over to tell anyone who came close that this was a mistake, that she was innocent of the crime, that she was not mentally
ill or insane. But if she were sane, Isoeld told her on the one visit she and Teonette had paid shortly after her father’s killing, then the murder must have been deliberate. That made things even worse, didn’t it? But of course, as a dutiful stepmother, she would carry that message back to the members of the Elven High Council, who were charged with determining her fate, so that they could make up their own minds.

There was nothing she could do but wait for something to happen that got her out of this room and into the presence of other Elves. Then, and only then, would she have a chance to state her case to those who might stop long enough to listen carefully to what she had to say. In point of fact, she knew all of the members of the High Council, and she stood a reasonable chance of being able to persuade them that she was not guilty.

At least, that was what she told herself.

She thought all the time of ways she might get a message to the Orullians or to Panterra Qu. She kept hoping the brothers would find a way to come to see her, knowing they must have learned of her fate by now. Word might even have gotten as far south as Glensk Wood, so that Pan would know, too. If any of them had heard, surely they would come, wouldn’t they?

But no one had appeared, and after a while her hopes had begun to dwindle. She started to think of ways to escape. When she wasn’t thinking of her father, she was thinking of getting out of that storeroom. But she didn’t have any weapons or tools or implements of any sort that might help her pry or loosen or break down the walls and doors that held back her freedom. She had no realistic hope of overcoming the guards. It seemed she was searching for something that didn’t exist.

Things did not get any better when, a week into her imprisonment, her stepmother came for a second visit.

Phryne had no idea what time of day it was when Isoeld appeared. The locks released, the door opened, and her stepmother walked into the room in the company of Teonette. Phryne, who was seated at the tiny table, working on a drawing of some flowers in a meadow, closed her notebook and rose to face her visitors, unpleasantly surprised. A visit from Isoeld could not be good news.

“How are you, Phryne?” Isoeld asked, sounding genuinely interested. She smiled warmly and waited for the guard stationed outside to close the door before the smile left her face. “I don’t imagine you’re doing very well, locked away in this dark room. Maybe you would like to talk about what it would take to get you out?”

Phryne tightened her resolve. “I can’t think of any reason you would want that, Isoeld. If I were let out, you would risk being locked in, wouldn’t you? You and your consort. You would risk someone finding out who really murdered my father.”