Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 10
“Cool,” Errol said.
“Is your betrothed here, too? Have you come to rescue her?”
“No,” he said. “There’s another woman here, a little older than me. Her name is Dusk—”
“Oh,” Lotus said. “Her.”
“You’ve seen her, then?”
Lotus dipped her pen in an inkwell and wrote a few more characters.
“Out of curiosity, while you scale glass mountains to rescue women you are not planning to marry, where is this woman you love?”
“That,” Errol said, “is complicated.”
Lotus smiled.
“I’ll wager it isn’t,” she said.
“Dusk is here,” Errol pressed. “Do you know where I can find her?”
“Whether you marry me or not, Errol, you’ve broken the spell that traps me here. I am now free to return home. If you wish, I will take you with me. If you stay here, I’m afraid things will go badly for you. Cousin Hawk is not a fair-tempered man.”
As she said this, she rolled up the papers on her desk and put them into a leather tube.
“I have to find Dusk first,” he said. “Maybe you could help me—”
“Hush,” she said, rolling her eyes. She rose and padded to some baskets in the corner and returned with an armful of clothing.
“If you intend to stay, best put these on. They can see you though the floor and walls, but if you have my clothes on, they might think you’re me, at least for a little while. And they mostly ignore me, so that’s good for you.”
“I don’t think they’ll fit,” he said.
“Not the pantaloons, maybe,” she allowed. “But see, this shirt and robe, the shawl—that should do the trick. The top of the shawl can wrap around your face—I wear it like that sometimes. Just don’t get too close to anyone. You’re pretty, but not as pretty as me.”
“It’s worth a try,” he said. “Could you, uh—turn around?”
“I can do better than that,” she said. “Djinn. I’m ready.”
He felt a sudden gust of wind, followed by a stronger one. Lotus stood straight, holding her tube, and began to pirouette and twirl, her feet leaving the ground as the breeze became a cyclone so strong it now forced him back.
“I heard the horn earlier,” Lotus said. “That means they went hunting. There should only be a few servants around. Good luck.”
Then the wind rushed away from him. He watched through the glass walls as she flew up the stairs, through the floors above, and out the door he had entered through. In a moment, she was a tiny speck, receding in the lapis sky.
As she suggested, he put on her clothes.
The inside walls of the pyramid were transparent, but that didn’t mean he could see everywhere. The angles created countless opportunities for reflections and rainbows, so while looking down through the floor he caught glimpsed of things below, they weren’t always clear. Furthermore, couches, beds, ornate rugs, pools of water, and potted plants also obscured perfect vision. From what he could tell, it looked as if much of the lower levels were gardens of some kind.
It was a big place, so he figured he had better get started.
He soon found that Lotus had given him good advice. Now and then he saw someone through a wall, floor or ceiling. Some saw him too, but never gave him much more than a glance as he descended deeper and deeper into the place.
He’d been right about the gardens. The lowest level was basically an arboretum, with a ceiling high enough to accommodate trees of respectable size. He didn’t recognize a lot of them, but some were familiar enough—apples, pears, and figs. He had never seen a real olive tree, but he saw fruit he was pretty sure were olives.
He was hungry, and thought about eating some of the fruit, but that was probably dangerous in a place like this. What the magical pomegranate had given him, one of these figs might as easily take away. Or worse. His hunger could wait.
Dusk was still nowhere to be seen, and by coming all the way down through the glass structure, he was certain he would have at least seen where they might have hidden her.
He had now reached the stone part of the pyramid, and after a bit of searching found stairs that continued down.
He didn’t see any torches, and soon he knew he would be feeling his way through the dark. But as the light behind him faded, a faint blue glow beckoned him onward. He thought it might be gems, like those in the tomb in the desert, then he saw it was a faint mist, moving ahead of him.
Once he thought he saw a face in the mist, but when he tried to focus on it, it vanished.
The passages were much tighter here than in the glass portion. He passed several chambers, some fairly large, all decorated like rooms that someone ought to live in—chairs, beds, rugs, water basins—but while he didn’t see anyone in any of them, they all had one thing in common—each had a large sarcophagus in the center.
He passed them by.
Finally, after what might have been hours, he heard someone singing—or rather, humming—a wordless melody.
After a few turns, he found Dusk.
She was in one of the furnished rooms, although hers was lit by a crystal vase on one of the tables. She was clothed rather like Lotus had been, which struck him as strange, somehow even stranger than she had appeared in Laurel Grove greens. It made her look soft, which he absolutely knew she wasn’t.
“Errol,” she said. “There you are. You look quite fetching in that outfit.”
She didn’t appear surprised at all, and his reaction must have shown on his face.
“I was expecting you,” she said. “I never doubted that you would come for me.”
“Okay,” he said. “Uh—yeah, here I am. So—let’s go.”
But Dusk was frowning a little.
“Where is your armor?” she asked.
“Dusk,” he said, “thanks, but no thanks. I didn’t have a good feeling about it.”
“Then how did you get in?” she asked.
“You, know,” he said, “I managed it. Without the creepy armor.”
She looked impressed. “You are resourceful,” she said. “You found the princess, I assume?”
“Sure,” he said.
“Looking forward to your wedding?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Very funny. You could have warned me. About a lot of things.”
“It’s no matter,” she said. “Lotus and her Djinn await us, I suppose?”
“Well—no. They left.”
“She can’t leave without you,” Dusk said. “Not unless you—”
She stopped, closed her eyes, and sat down.
“You released her, didn’t you?” she said. “From your marriage.”
“Well, yeah,” he said. “I wasn’t going to marry her. I don’t even know her.”
“You wouldn’t have had to go through with it,” Dusk said angrily. “You were just to agree to it. Then she would have had to consider any requests you had.”
“Look, if you expect me to lie to someone, you need to give me a heads-up. We had a long flight here on that hobby-horse, and you could have filled me in on all of this.”
“I didn’t know they would be waiting,” she said. “I thought we would have more time. And I hoped things would go differently. Being a prisoner does not suit me, and I expected to avoid it completely.”
“Whatever, I’m here—let’s go. Hawk and his posse are out hunting, or something.”
Dusk sighed. “Do you notice anything about my room?” she asked.
“Nice bed,” he said.
“The door,” she said.
“What about it?”
“There isn’t one,” she said. “No lock, no chains, nothing to keep me from walking out of here. So why haven’t I?”
He shrugged. A bad taste was developing in his mouth.
“Because we’ll never escape them, even if they are out for the moment,” she replied. “Not on foot. We needed Lotus. I was counting on Lotus.” She looked crestfallen for a moment, but then brightened.
“Or the horse,” she said. “Did you bring the horse?”
“The wooden carousel horse?” he said. “Yeah, I carried that thing all the way here. Got it right here in my pocket.”
“You remember that it can fly, yes, Errol?”
“Yeah. It did, too. But it decided to throw me, first.”
“Oh,” she said. “That’s unfortunate.”
“Look, I brought your armor. It was as much as I could carry.”
“Truly?” she said. “You brought my armor?” She smiled, finally. “Oh, Errol. That’s worth something. Where is it?”
“I hid it outside.”
“Outside?”
“Of the pyramid.”
“How do you propose we descend the pyramid?” she asked.
“I have an idea,” he said. “It’s not a great idea, but it’s all I’ve got. Come on, I’ll tell you on the way.”
“A moment,” she said. “I came here to steal something.”
THREE
THE DAY QUEEN, AT REST
Aster was playing cards when something peculiar happened. A part of the wall—which appeared quite solid—suddenly wasn’t there. Instead, there was a rectangular hole, shaped something like a door. Beyond the opening stood a woman in a red dress, with red-rimmed glasses.
“Aster,” the woman said. “Come here!”
“Do you mean me?” she asked.
She realized she was holding something and looked to see what it was. She found it to be a playing card, with a knight on a horse, reared up.
“Aster!” Someone said. She turned, and saw a woman, standing in a doorway.
“Keep your eyes on me,” the woman said. “Walk here.”
As she rose, she bumped against the table. She was trying to remember what she was doing when she heard someone call her. It was a woman, wearing glasses, motioning toward her frantically. She was already standing, so she started walking that way, to see what the matter was.
She blinked her eyes, wondering what was happening. About two feet away, a strange woman with brown hair and a red dress was yelling at her. Had she done something wrong?
She started to back up, but the woman darted forward, grabbed her arm, and yanked her through a hole in the wall.
Almost instantly, she felt dizzy and sick, and doubled over, vomiting. The woman kept her grip on her arm. She gasped, trying to keep everything from spinning.
The woman was looking down at Aster, and she suddenly recognized her. It was Ms. Fincher, her high school guidance counselor.
“What . . . ?” she got out, before another wave of dizziness overtook her.
“I’m sorry,” Ms. Fincher said. “We have to go, or we’ll both get caught.”
She heard a sliding sound, then a thump. Then they were in near darkness.
“Ms. Fincher?” she said.
“Oh, thank goodness,” Ms. Fincher said. “You know me. Come along, quickly. Can you—can you make some light, or something?”
“Oh,” Aster said. “I can try.”
To her great relief, she could now remember her spells, so she said a firefly Whimsy, and a mote of light appeared; she could see the woman’s face.
Ms. Fincher was a small woman, slight of frame. Pretty, with brown hair cut short, but longer than Aster remembered it. She looked strange in her red gown, as if dressed up for some sort of theatrical production. She knew she wouldn’t have had that reaction to anyone else dressed that way here, where it was perfectly natural and expected.
But Fincher was not from here. Aster had only ever seen her in suits—usually skirt and jacket—once in jeans at some kind of fundraiser.
“Thank you,” Ms. Fincher said. “That will help.”
“Ms. Fincher. What’s going on?”
“I’m saving you, hopefully,” she said.
“Wait. My father—”
“I came here with your father, remember? With Dusk. She used the necklace you put on me to command me.”
“You’re not wearing it, anymore.”
“No,” she said. “Watch out, there are stairs ahead.”
“What happened to Dusk?” she asked.
“I think she escaped,” Fincher said. “Otherwise, Kostye wouldn’t have been so angry.”
“And the other guy—”
“Do you know him? The chancellor? Do you know who he is? What he is?”
“I don’t know what he is,” Aster said. “But he’s bad. He killed my friend Veronica. He wants to kill me. To take my soul, even though I know that sounds kind of crazy.”
“I might have thought that once,” Ms. Fincher said. “But not now. I’ve seen things . . .”
She stopped and turned around.
“Obviously, Aster, you know a lot more about this—world—than I do. Do you know how to return home?”
Aster considered the question. Ms. Fincher knew that she, Errol, and the others had entered the Kingdoms. She did not know that she had returned from them, did she? Furthermore, Aster hadn’t been able to return to Sowashee on her own the last time; Billy had done that, in his giant form. This time she’d arrived in a carriage provided by some guy—yet another guy—who had the hots for Veronica. If she put her mind to it, she could, given time, probably find her way back to the Reign of the Departed. But she didn’t know how to do it right now, nor did she have any interest in doing so, not without her father.
“I don’t know how to go back there,” she said. “My father does, or at least did.”
“Yes, I’ve tried talking him into it,” she said. “The problem is, he not only has no desire to go back, he doesn’t remember ever having been there.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “I gathered that.”
“I’m sorry. It must be hard to know he doesn’t remember you at all. Coming here has changed him. His condition. In fact, I guess it’s reversed. He remembers everything since arriving here, and he remembers events of many, many years ago. But not his time on Earth. Or you, obviously.”
“I need to see him again.” Aster said.
“It won’t go any better, Aster. It will be worse.” She sighed.
“I wish we could have talked about all of this—before.”
“Yeah,” Aster said. “‘Hi, Ms. Fincher, I’m here for my counseling session. My dad is a sorcerer from another world. He brought me here to protect me from some terrible evil, but a curse of some kind is affecting his memory.’ That would have worked out great, right? Dad in an institution, me in some kind of halfway house or whatever.”
Ms. Fincher nodded. “I suppose you’re right. Still, once I was involved, you might have filled me in. As it is, I’ve been having to learn as I go, which is . . . difficult. Can you tell me what you know about the curse?”
“Only that it affected adults, everybody over a certain age, and that the deeper into the Kingdoms you go, the stronger it seems to be. At the outskirts, just past the Pale, the grown-ups have turned into monsters, but one day a week they’re human again. But when we got farther in, they had become trees and stones and so forth.”
Ms. Fincher nodded. “I’m sure you’ve seen what happened here.”
“Yes,” Aster said.
“And the sun? The seasons?”
“What do you mean?”
“Surely you’ve noticed. It’s always sunset, and it’s always autumn.”
Aster shrugged. “Maybe some kingdoms are like that.”
“No,” Ms. Fincher said. “This happened after I arrived. When I first got here, there was still day and night. Whatever this curse is, I think it’s getting worse. Like your father.”
“Pulling things apart,” Aster said. “Breaking the day into pieces, the year into pieces, as it split old from young.”
“That’s what I’ve been thinking,” Ms. Fincher said.
“I can’t believe you’re not more freaked out about this,” Aster said.
“I’m completely freaked out,” Ms. Fincher said. “But I’m also rational. If I can’t trust what I see, hear, and feel, then I’ve gone insane. And I refuse to believe I’ve lost my mind. The question is, is there any remedy? Your father talks about putting things right, but he doesn’t know what happened, either. Do you have any clue?”
“I’ve been told it can be fixed,” Aster said. “But I don’t know how.”
“I was hoping . . .” Ms. Fincher said, but then she shrugged. “Someone told me there was a way. A way to save you and break the curse. I’m taking you to her. But I don’t know—I don’t know who to trust, Aster.”
She studied the counselor’s face.
She didn’t know who to trust either, including herself. One voice insisted that if she could see her father one more time, she could make him understand. He would come around, and everything would be okay.
But that wasn’t really how things worked. She knew that by now. She had magic words to call whirlwinds and lightning, but the words to make her father better didn’t exist—or if they did, she didn’t know them yet. Ms. Fincher was right—if she went back, things would go like they had before, only this time Ms. Fincher would probably get caught, too, and then she wouldn’t have anyone to lure her out of the oubliette.
“If you know someone who thinks they know how to end the curse, then by all means, take me to them,” she said.
The counselor smiled grimly.
“I can’t take you any further myself,” she said. “If I don’t get back soon, they’ll figure out I helped you escape.”
“Why not come with me, then?” Aster asked. “My father used to be bad—very bad. He talked about it sometimes when he was drunk. He says he was a monster. He says he changed for love. He means he changed for my mother. And since she died, he tried to stay good, to be like she would want him to be. To protect me and raise me. But if he doesn’t think I’m real anymore, or worse, if he doesn’t remember Mom—”
“I know,” Ms. Fincher said. “That’s what has happened. Right now, your father is capable of awful things. The chancellor knows that and it feeds his worst instincts. He’s like the devil on your father’s shoulder.”
“And you’re like his angel?”
“I’m not an angel. But I’m the best he has. Aster, whatever good your mother’s love may have woken in him—it was already there. She just helped him find it. He’s not a lost cause. But without my influence, I fear what might become of him. And what he might do.”
