Thornspell (10 page)

She must be a faie too, he thought, one of those helping Syrica. And she must know her life is in grave danger simply by being here.

“Can you help me escape?” he asked urgently. “Is there a way out that you can show me?”

She considered him, the smile fading, before pointing: first to herself, then to his forehead and eyes, and finally at each of the four walls in turn. Sigismund stared, not understanding, and saw his own frustration mirrored in her expression as she repeated the action.

“If only you could talk,” he began, but she lifted her hand, still and intent as some wild thing. There was a sound, a slithering in the walls as though something alien was moving there. Rue took a step away, her dark eyes strained as the noise grew louder. She took another step, and then a third, and disappeared. The last thing Sigismund saw was her eyes, lingering on his, and then they too vanished as an unseen force shoved him out of sleep and into tense, wide-eyed wakefulness.

The room he had been given was utterly dark; there was not even a reflected glow from the fire. It was silent too, and it occurred to Sigismund that even without windows he should be able to hear some sounds from the outside world, just as he had in the hunting lodge the previous night. He stared into the darkness but his eyes could not pierce it, and after a moment he sat up and reached for his coat. This at least was where he had left it on the foot of the bed, but he had to grope for his boots and then for the saddlebags on the table. The floor felt cold and rough beneath his feet before he pulled the boots on, despite a recollection of piled carpets, and he got a splinter in his finger from the tabletop. It had been smooth before, he thought, pulling the jag of wood out. He stretched out a hand to the wall that had been hung with velvet cloth and touched rock and bare earth.

So, thought Sigismund, not a palace after all. Or perhaps the Margravine spun an illusion so I would not realize that I had been drawn into her dungeon? It explained Flor’s smile, he supposed, but not how to get out—and what had Rue meant by pointing to herself, then to his eyes and forehead and the four walls? He wondered if she had seen the walls for what they truly were, even in his dream, or whether she too had been taken in by the Margravine’s illusion.

The stone beneath his hand rippled and he snatched it back, but the slithering noise had begun again. Sigismund stood as still as the darkness, listening, the saddlebags clenched hard in his other hand.

“You will need to pay the blood price for this one.” The voice was a hiss on the surface, a deep rumble underneath. “He is kin, of a sort. I can smell it in him.”

Sigismund strained to pinpoint the direction of the voice but was disoriented by the blackness all around. A second voice spoke, cool and disembodied, but he recognized it instantly as Flor’s. “What sort of kin? He is my kinsman too, through his mother, but our line has no connection to yours.”

“Distant blood,” said the first voice, and Sigismund thought he detected cold humor in the tone. “You will have to pay me gold for shedding it.”

“It may not come to that.” The chill in Flor’s voice had deepened, as though he too detected the humor and suspected it was directed at him. “My grandmother believes that he will make terms with us.”

“Your grandmother is powerful and farsighted, and those from the world of light do not like to be trapped beneath the earth.” The humor was open now. “This boy may be willing to agree to much once he sees the full extent of the darkness that surrounds him.”

“Perhaps,” said Flor. “But continue to keep close watch. He must not escape.”

Sigismund waited, but no one else spoke, and he did not hear the slithering sound again. Who besides Flor is watching me, he wondered, and why can I hear them, even though I’m awake? And what does the Margravine want?

He was sure that he would not like any bargain she had to offer and that the Margravine would not let him leave her house unbound, no matter what he agreed to. Yet even in her own house the Margravine could not see that he was already using the power that Balisan had said was part of his inheritance—and nor could she detect his dream presence. And Flor and whatever creature he was talking to had not realized that Sigismund could hear them.

Perhaps, he decided, standing up and beginning to pace the room, I am not so powerless after all, not the pawn that the Margravine thinks me.

He turned on his heel, frowning as he remembered Rue’s strange pantomime. She had been trying to tell him something, but what? Sigismund stopped, his head bent and his arms folded hard against his chest, trying to think it through. “The Margravine as good as told me that this is one of the places where Faerie and the mortal world overlap, when she said that the house I entered was Highthorn. And this room is bound by illusion—” He stopped abruptly, realizing that he was thinking aloud and that the unseen watcher might hear him.

Illusion and overlapping planes of reality—if I’m right, Sigismund thought, his eyes wide, I should be able to just walk out. He shook his head, finally guessing what Rue must have meant when she pointed to his eyes, his forehead, and then the four walls. If he could see with the mind’s eye, then he could depart his prison in any direction and follow the earth’s energy flow back into the mortal realm.

If,
thought Sigismund, his fingers fumbling with the saddlebag strap as he tried to remember what Balisan had said about the conjunction of stars and planets with the earth. He pulled out the treatise on boar hunting and searched for the sprig of rue pressed between its pages. He let his breath out on a long sigh when he saw that it was there, just as it had been in his dream when Rue opened the book. The sprig crumbled a little between his fingers, releasing the faint dry aroma of the herb. “Rue,” he breathed, scarcely more than a whisper, and a line of pale light gleamed in the darkness.

Sigismund looked into the light, watching it widen until Rue stood there, smiling through her tangle of hair. Her face lifted, just as it had in his dream of the Faerie hall, and she extended a hand to him, beckoning.

“Come.” Sigismund was not sure whether he had imagined the whisper or not, but he reached out a hand to meet hers. There was no touch of fingers, no warmth, but a force tightened around his hand and drew him forward, into a wall where the substance was no longer stone, but fluid. He swam his way through and into the long, low-roofed corridor on the other side.

Substance and Shadow

T
here was a howl like a great wind rushing through the earth and a clangor of blowing horns. Rue fled, a pale glimmering down the corridor, and Sigismund followed. The corridor twisted and turned, with flights of stairs up and down, and sometimes Sigismund was uncertain whether he was running through rock and earth or a dark twisted wood that reached out to clutch and trip. He focused his awareness as Balisan had taught him and found it helped separate illusion from substance on either side. Mainly, however, he concentrated on staying on his feet and following Rue.

The howling was louder now, baying at their heels, and Sigismund could hear voices in it, crying and cursing after him as the walls alternately closed in, then drew back. The pursuit would catch up soon, he thought, unless Rue could get them out. He snatched a quick look back but saw nothing, just a deeper blackness pressing after them around every corner. The breath was beginning to tear in his lungs, sweat stinging his eyes, so that at first he didn’t see the line that seared the air between himself and Rue. He swerved aside as it blazed bright, stumbling into the wall. By the time he pulled himself upright again, Rue had vanished and the Margravine stood before him.

The howling and the dark narrow corridor were gone. He was standing in what looked like a wooden belvedere, with fluted pillars holding up a shingled roof. Great trees pressed in close on every side, obscuring any view of moon or stars, and there were leaves and vines tangled across the floor. The Margravine stood in a nimbus of pale light that cast a soft glow around her face and body. Like clouds around the moon, thought Sigismund, awed by her beauty in spite of himself. But her face, like that of the moon, was hidden in shadow.

She extended a hand and he was drawn toward her whether he wished to go or not. It didn’t help, Sigismund found, to know that magic was being used against you if you could do nothing to stop it. He gritted his teeth, thinking of the long hours spent meditating on the tower roof and how he would not give in then either. Inside him, the serpent of power uncoiled, hissing.

Sigismund stopped moving forward and regarded the woman in front of him. She was beautiful, he thought, detached now, but he remembered his mother’s death, and the boar that had killed Wat, let loose in the forest of Thorn.

“Prince Sigismund,” the Margravine said, “I congratulate you. You really have been quite clever.” She was smiling and her tone was sweet, but he guessed that she was far from pleased. “Someone has taught you well, it seems.”

Saying nothing, Sigismund decided, was the wisest course. He was certainly not going to tell her about Rue, and he could see no point in mentioning Balisan.

The Margravine took a step closer, and he saw that her blue eyes had turned so dark they were black hollows in her face. “Clever,” she repeated, still smiling, “but discourteous to abandon my hospitality when we still have business to discuss.”

“I have nothing to discuss with anyone who traps and then imprisons me,” Sigismund said, his voice rusted metal against her sweetness.

She widened her eyes at him, stepping forward again. “So hasty—but can you be sure of that? What if I offered you peace in your father’s kingdom, an end to the wars in the south?”

Sigismund stared at her, thinking how long those wars had bled his country dry, absorbing the energy of its kings. “In exchange for what?” he asked slowly.

Her smile deepened. “So you are interested,” she murmured. “I thought you might be. And the exchange I ask is such a little thing.” She was watching him closely and her voice crooned on a singsong note when she spoke again. “Such a little thing.”

She was very close to him now, her perfume delicate yet dizzying, and Sigismund could feel the weave of illusion and magic. He blinked hard, trying to clear his mind. “Then ask it,” he said, his voice hard, and something dangerous flared in the hollowed eyes—but was as quickly gone.

“In the west, where you grew up,” the Margravine said, the timbre of her voice deepening, “there is another Wood, as you know, of which many tales are told. Mystery surrounds it, and fear, the fear that led your ancestor to place it under an interdict, forbidding any of his subjects to go there.”

Sigismund’s stomach muscles tightened as he met her eyes briefly and then shifted his gaze away, frightened of the wild ancient darkness he saw there. Her voice whispered close to his ear, like the wind in a midnight forest. “But there is a castle at the heart of that Wood, and in it a princess lies sleeping, imprisoned by magic for a hundred years.” Her voice dropped lower still, a murmur on the surface of the night. “You think me your enemy, Prince Sigismund, and my purposes evil, but my sole desire is to release the princess from her long sleep. For me, that is worth as much as the peace of your father’s kingdom.”

Sigismund drew a ragged breath and forced himself to step back so he could see her face through the dim light. “And where do I come into all this?” he asked, wanting to hear her answer. “What have I to do with hidden castles and magic spells?”

The Margravine smiled. “Only one of your blood can lift the interdict that your ancestor placed on the western Wood. And only a trueborn prince may break the spell that holds the princess in sleep.”

Sigismund’s eyes narrowed, but he thought it wisest to pretend ignorance still. “So what is this princess to you? Why does breaking the spell matter so much?”

The Margravine’s eyes opened a little wider. “Why,” she said softly, “I thought you knew. The princess is my goddaughter, and the spell was cast upon her by another faie who is my deadly enemy. She does not care who is harmed, so long as her plotting hurts me. By the time I found out what she intended, it was too late to save my goddaughter.”

She turned her face away from Sigismund, her voice sad. “And then your forefather took my enemy’s part, closing the Wood and shutting out any who might have undone the spell. Your family have persisted in their enmity ever since, attacking my human kin and those known to be my friends, while my goddaughter remains trapped. Now you, Prince Sigismund, accuse me of taking you prisoner, when you know that I would never be allowed to speak with you openly.” She paused, looking at him again, and shook her golden head. “Yet you are the last of your bloodline, so what choice had I but to resort to desperate means?”

There was a buzzing in Sigismund’s head, like flies caught against a summer window, and he swallowed, shaken. It could be true, he thought. What actual proof do I have, other than Syrica’s word, that it is she who is the good faie and the Margravine who is evil? But then he remembered Balisan and the buzzing cleared a little. He found it impossible to believe that Balisan would lie to him. And why, if the Margravine was acting in good faith, had Flor turned into his enemy?

He hesitated, not quite able to dismiss the Margravine’s plea, and she reached out her hand to him. “You would be righting a great wrong, Prince Sigismund,” she said.

Sigismund frowned at her, undecided, but it was hard not to be moved by her beauty and soft-voiced appeal, or the sweetness and distress in her expression. His head felt muzzy, and his tongue was thick, his speech clumsy when he spoke. “If I do help you and lift this spell, what then? What happens to the princess when she wakes?”

The Margravine looked puzzled. “What should happen,” she asked, “except that my goddaughter will be free, and there will be peace in your father’s kingdom?”

“And your enemy?” asked Sigismund. “Will she just let this happen?”

The Margravine smiled. “If you are with me, she will have little choice. But I won’t let you go into the Wood unguarded, or leave my goddaughter open to her influence again.” She drew the blue ring from her finger and held it out to him. “This will repel any spells that my enemy may cast. And as soon as my goddaugther wakes you must place it on her finger, so that she is protected against any more ill-wishing.” The ring gleamed against the whiteness of her hand. “Take it,” she said, “as a token of my good faith and evidence of our bargain.”

Sigismund watched his hand reach for the ring. There was something familiar about the whole scene, as though he had experienced it before. He hesitated, thinking he saw something move in the darkness behind the Margravine’s head. Could it be the wind, he wondered, playing in the tangled vines, or had he glimpsed a pale face?

“Take it, Prince Sigismund,” the Margravine urged him, sweet and low, “for my goddaughter’s sake.”

There was someone behind her, Sigismund was sure of it now. He could make out a figure, bound about by thick cables of vine, and a pale face lifting, the dark eyes fixed on his above a gag of thorns. He stared as the face moved slowly from side to side, just as it had in his dream, warning him, warning…. He heard the faintest of whispers, an echo of the Margravine’s voice, speaking in his dream of the Faerie hall:
I will not let some grubby whelp, sired of the beggars this world calls kings, stand between me and my right.

Sigismund shuddered, and knocked the Margravine’s hand aside.

The ring spun toward the ground in a shimmer of interrupted magic, disappearing before it reached the floor. The faint nimbus that clung to the Margravine contracted, and the shadow on either side of her grew until it had wrapped huge batwings around the belvedere. The Margravine’s form frayed with it, transforming into something primeval, raw with power. Dangerous too, thought Sigismund, his throat so dry that it was difficult to swallow. There was nothing human about what confronted him now: it was ancient, elemental, and fey.

“Shall I kill him for you now, Grandmother?” asked Flor, light-voiced, from behind him.

Sigismund shifted, trying not to turn his back on the Margravine, and saw that Flor had materialized on the topmost step, with a wedge of black-clad warriors behind him. The golden youth was smiling and a sword gleamed in his hand. The warriors behind him held drawn swords as well, but theirs were of glass and razor-sharp bone rather than metal.

“Really,” said the Margravine, her voice sighing around them, “I almost think you should.”

The moment hung in the balance, and Sigismund’s mind cleared as though a wind had blown through it. He felt a familiar shift in the balance of energy around him—and recognized what it meant a moment before the belvedere shook beneath him.

“Jump!”
said Balisan’s voice in his mind.

Sigismund jumped, vaulting over the side of the belvedere as the floor rose up and buckled in two. He just had time to think that there must be something huge coming up beneath it, before he was falling and crashing down through a tangle of dirt, tree branches, and leaves, while the wind howled behind him. He clutched frantically at the branches, trying to slow his fall, but hit the ground hard anyway—only to have it give way beneath him. He tumbled and bounced down a long slope of dirt and pebbles to sprawl flat at the bottom.

Afterward, Sigismund could not say how long he lay there, but it seemed like a long time. He knew he was breathing, but his body felt like one great, aching bruise and he hesitated to try and sit up, in case he couldn’t. The wind had died away again and there was no sound of pursuit, only the silence of stone and the soft steady drip of water. Sigismund groaned and rolled onto his hands and knees, then rose, still cautiously, to his feet. There must, he thought, be light coming from somewhere, because he could make out rough-hewn walls and a low rocky roof, but the origin of the light was unclear.

There was a hole where he had fallen through the ceiling, which seemed to be made of lathe and plaster rather than rock like the rest of the cavern. A mound of dirt was piled high beneath it, and Sigismund decided that he must have hit this first and then rolled to the bottom. “This place can’t be a natural cave at all,” he muttered. “It must have been dug out and some of the dirt left behind. Luckily for me.”

He peered up but could only see darkness through the opening in the roof. “So where’s the light coming from?” Sigismund murmured, and looked around the cavern again. He realized then that he had seen drawings of places like this before, in books that described the burial places of ancient rulers and heroes. If he was right, there should be an opening on the far side of this cavern, leading to a smaller cave where the dead had been laid to rest. “But am I back on the mortal plane,” he wondered aloud, “or is this place still part of the Margravine’s house in some way, or somewhere else entirely?”

Sigismund extended his inner awareness and decided that there was still much here that was of the faie, although with elements of the mortal plane—and possibly others—woven through it. But who, he wondered, would lie buried in a place that was of the human world but not of it at the same time? He swallowed, his throat tightening with a mix of anticipation and fear.

The aperture between the larger and smaller caves was so tight that Sigismund had to squeeze through sideways, before stooping to fit beneath an even lower roof. But he saw that he was right about this being a burial place: there was a sarcophagus, with light streaming up from it in a single beam. The light was so clear that it was almost white, but there was a ruddy glow along the outer edge of the beam. Sigismund approached with caution. One could never be certain what powers or talismans had been buried in the tombs of old, or how they might respond to being disturbed.

He had thought, at first sight, that the sarcophagus was made of crystal, but now he decided that it was diamond, hard and cold. There was a body sealed in its center, the traditional figure of an armored knight with hands folded in prayer. The body shone with a faint radiance, similar to the way the Margravine had glowed in the belvedere, but the beam of light was coming from a sword resting on top of the diamond tomb.

Sigismund stood very still and for a moment almost forgot to breathe. He felt dizzy, but it was not the confusing muzziness that had filled his head in the belvedere. This was amazement mixed with excitement because he had seen this sword before, when he dreamed of the storm-darkened Wood. He remembered the white gleam along the blade’s edge and the blood-red stone in the pommel. He recalled the sense of power too, like holding lightning in his closed fist.