Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 6
The voice came from the base of the statue, which he now saw was actually a chair or throne, of some sort.
Seated there, in shadow, was a woman. Her hair fell in dark ringlets, and her eyes were black mirrors, reflecting the blue light from the ceiling. She wore a sleeveless white gown with complicated figures stitched along the hem. Her features were delicate, even fine, but not childlike.
Something about her felt enormously familiar.
He approached a bit closer, near enough to smell cloves, attar, and lilies.
She smelled like a funeral.
“I’m Errol Greyson,” he said.
“Yes,” she replied.
“Are you—do you know anyone named Jezebel?”
She smiled, showing teeth like pearls.
“I don’t know that name,” she said. “But you have traveled far, have you not? Perhaps a distant cousin.”
“So the curse . . .” he trailed off.
“Of course,” she said. “The curse is everywhere. It has broken things. The Kingdoms are shattered. Do you think you can put them back together again?”
“I’m not even sure what you’re talking about,” he said. “What I know is that when I was here before, everywhere I went, something had happened to the adults. They had either become monsters or just kind of disappeared.”
“That is so,” the woman said. “We are mostly removed from the world, yes. Mostly. The nature of our recusal varies from place to place and by the quality of our birth.”
“So are you—dead?”
“Life. Death. Here the difference is less than where you are from, Errol.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He glanced nervously at the toothy monster. “Is he going to eat me?”
“He is not,” she said. “But he did reveal your nature to me. Your courage and your compassion are admirable. So I will help you, if you wish.”
“I . . . yeah, that would be great.”
On his first trip into the Kingdoms, he’d met a monster called the Snatchwitch, a kind of cannibal ogre. But she also had another nature, which she showed only one day a week, on Sunday—and then, she had been very helpful. So had her sister Jezebel, who also was a monster most of the time. If this woman was like them, how long did he have before she went full zombie on him or whatever? Or was she something else entirely? The whole place had sort of an ancient Egyptian vibe, which was not reassuring.
She lifted a hand from her lap, and he saw she was holding a feather.
“The storm will soon be over,” she said. “This will show you the way.”
“To Dusk? To the glass pyramid?”
She nodded. “But you must go further,” she said. “Five Kingdoms that once were one, must be one again. You must help bring them together, together at the Isle of the Othersun.”
Five Kingdoms? Othersun? Did she think he knew what she was talking about?
“I don’t understand all of this,” Errol said. “My friend, Aster, or maybe Dusk . . .”
“Yes,” the woman said. “You are not the key. You are the companion. But the companion is essential. You must help her bring our skies back together, restore the fundaments of the Earth. Else I might as well have let the ghul eat you.”
“Let me eat him anyway,” the toothy creature said. “Look how weak he is. He will accomplish nothing. Your gift will be lost, and all hope vanish.”
“Hope is very dim as it is,” the woman said. “We cannot wait for a more perfect companion.”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and suddenly appeared larger, somehow, even though her dimensions were the same. He felt very cold, as if immersed in ice water, and strange, distant music began somewhere.
“Take it,” the woman said.
Errol walked over, getting colder with each step.
She thrust the feather toward him. He thought maybe it was a hawk’s feather.
“Take it,” she said. “Hurry. The storm is over. You must go.”
Up close, he could smell the decay. Her face, although beautiful, did not look natural, almost as if it was made of porcelain. Beneath her clothing, he saw something shift, like the body concealed there was not human at all.
“Go!” she barked.
Errol grabbed the feather and ran. The armor bundle, still tied to his waist, hampered him, but he kept going in the direction of the door, determined not to look behind him. Once outside, he didn’t stop. The sand was wet; steam rising from it, and the air was stifling. The sun was visible again, glaring down—if anything, with more heat and fury than before.
After a few hundred paces, his limbs failed him again, and he collapsed. Looking back the way he had come, he no longer saw anything but the desert.
But in his fingers, the feather quivered. It lifted up on a breeze that was not there and began to drift away from him.
“Okay,” he said, doggedly pushing himself back to his feet. “Let’s hope this isn’t me losing my mind.”
EIGHT
VESPER
When Veronica woke, it had grown colder, and since it was daylight, it bothered her. Aster noticed and fished a hooded sweatshirt out of her backpack. It was ugly, but it took the chill off.
She looked outside, and saw a plain of tall, thick-bladed grass.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Aster said.
“Then where are we going?”
“Ghartas Essenas,” Aster said.
“That’s a mouthful,” Veronica said.
Aster nodded, but she didn’t smile. She had that look, the one that Veronica had come to know meant she was hiding something.
“That’s where Errol is?”
Aster shrugged. “I hope so.”
“But you don’t know.”
“He could be,” Aster said.
Veronica let that sink in for a second.
“You’re not trying to find Errol, are you?” she said. “You’re going after something else.”
“We’ll find Errol, Veronica,” Aster said.
“But not now, right? Or anytime soon. What are we doing, Aster?”
Aster sighed, then looked out the window.
“We’re going to my father,” she said. “Errol might be there, too. You know how things work in this place. It isn’t like back there, where things just happen. Thousands of years of wishes, and designs, and curses—that’s like gravity and magnetism in the Kingdoms. Part of how things are.”
“Sure,” Veronica said. “I get that. What I don’t get is why you didn’t let me in on your decision.”
“You were asleep.”
“Not that asleep. If you’d told me something important had to be decided, I would have roused. Especially if it had to do with Errol.”
Aster shrugged.
“I thought we were supposed to have each other’s backs,” Veronica said.
“That’s unfair,” Aster said. “I saved him, didn’t I? I could have had Billy, but I saved Errol instead.”
“I’m not talking about Errol,” Veronica said. “You act like I don’t exist. Like I don’t matter. I thought—”
Before she could finish, she realized she didn’t know what she thought. That she and Aster were friends? Aster had more-or-less raised her from the dead—not to do her a favor, but so she could perform a service. That service was long done, now. She didn’t owe Aster anything, and Aster didn’t owe her anything. That’s the way it was, wasn’t it? The way it really was.
“Veronica,” Aster said. “He’s my father. He sacrificed everything for me, do you know that? I failed him once, I can’t fail him again. Not for you. Not even for Errol.”
“Do you really think it will be so simple? You just said it doesn’t work like that here. What if we need Errol to save you father? Did you think of that?”
“Errol ran off,” Aster snapped. “Somebody came for him—maybe Dusk, maybe some other cousin of mine. I don’t know. But he went with her. He left you and me and my father hanging out to dry, don’t you get it?”
“Errol would never do anything like that,” Veronica said. “He’s so loyal, it’s almost a disease.”
“You think you know him,” Aster said. “You don’t. He’s abandoned me before. More than once. He’s completely capable of that, especially if a pretty girl is involved. The quicker you figure that out, the better.”
Aster had become red in the face.
“Holy crow, Aster,” Veronica said. “You’re jealous.”
“Don’t be stupid,” Aster said.
“No,” she said. “I see it now. I haven’t been thinking. You had to pick me. I was the only nov anywhere near you. You didn’t have any other choices. But Errol, you wanted him. Not just so he could help you, but because—”
“Shut up,” Aster said.
“No,” Veronica said. “You need to—”
“Keidi!” Aster said.
Veronica suddenly felt her throat seize up. After a moment, she stopped trying to speak, and nursed her outrage, instead.
Aster breathed another word, and she felt the catch in her throat vanish.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have done that.”
“This is my carriage,” Veronica said. “It was given to me. Get out.”
Aster opened her mouth to speak, but Veronica never got to hear what she was going to say. The carriage door swung open, and Aster, wide-eyed, got up and stepped out. She muttered several words under her breath, but nothing obvious happened.
“Veronica,” she said. “Wait. I shouldn’t have done that. I should have talked to you first.”
“You got that right,” Veronica said. “Horses, take me to Errol.”
She grabbed Aster’s backpack and heaved it out the door.
“Please,” Aster said. “Veronica . . .”
Then the door slammed.
The horses, however, weren’t moving.
“Oh, yeah,” Veronica said. She glanced back at Aster, watching her through the window. Did she have any idea where Errol was?
Probably. But she would never tell her now, even if she was willing to ask, which she wasn’t. She knew someone else whom might know—and if they didn’t they could probably find out.
“The Mountain of the Winds,” she told the horses. “On the shores of the Hollow Sea.”
The carriage jerked into motion. Veronica leaned back in the seat, ignoring Aster’s cries behind her.
Aster began to form a Recondite Utterance, but never said the words. Destroying the carriage wouldn’t help her, even if she could. It certainly wouldn’t win Veronica back.
But standing on the road wouldn’t do her any good, either.
She had made her decision. She had made this. So she would deal with it.
She picked up the pack and continued on.
She hadn’t walked far before the wind picked up, and it grew even cooler. The sun touched the horizon, first a red inferno, but soon fading to ginger. Above, where they sky had already darkened to a velvety cobalt, the evening star shone, and on the eastern horizon, the moon began to rise, pallid and enormous.
She stopped to stare at it for a moment, transfixed. She had never seen the moon appear so large, even though it was only a crescent. Despite its majesty, its light appeared somehow sickly, the scars and craters on its distant surface sharper and deeper than usual, as if seen through a telescope.
She walked on, glancing at the moon once in a while. After a time, she realized it wasn’t rising anymore, but was fixed just peeking over the edge of the world. Nor had the sun entirely vanished; a burnt orange sliver of it remained, and the western horizon still blushed faintly in its light.
Now her feet whisked through fallen leaves. The fields on the side of the road were yellowed, and haystacks rose in steep mounds. Beyond the fields the trees wore leaves of gold, bronze, and copper.
Her light jacket didn’t keep the chill out, and she began regretting giving Veronica the sweatshirt, but all she could do was continue, hoping soon she would reach a town or at least shelter. She said a Whimsy to warm her feet, which helped for a little while. But by then, she realized she had another problem.
Wolves. At first they were merely shadows in the ruddy light, weaving through the trees that had now crept closer to the road. But soon they grew bolder, venturing near enough for her to make out their shapes and eyes, to see that they were bigger than she had ever imagined wolves should be.
She spoke a Decree of Light, hoping to frighten them away. For a moment the air above her shone brighter than the sun, and the wolves scrambled back, growling low in their throats. But almost immediately the force of her spell weakened, and the brilliant illumination dulled to match that of the faded sun, which was not enough to keep the wolves a bay. They began what appeared to be a little game. Several would run in front of her, while more crept up behind. But it was a sport whose goal was to see her eaten—and soon, she knew, one would make a try for her.
Again, a Recondite Utterance came to her tongue, and this time she spoke it almost without meaning to—like a sneeze.
The air near her rippled out and away from her, and she saw the shapes of the wolves bend, as if through hot air rising off pavement, although there was no heat. The ripples swept the beasts from their feet and hurled them away in every direction, so that all of them vanished from sight into the deeps of the forest.
Her legs went weak; one of them bent, and she fell down on one knee. She felt her heart racing in her chest, and her head ached.
She heard he shush of leather shoes through leaves, but she was too spent to do anything about it. Someone took hold of her and lifted her in a carry. She was aware of others around.
“Hurry,” someone said. “They will return.” Then, to her, “Don’t struggle. We are friends.”
In the little house in the woods, by the light of the small fire in the stone hearth, Aster studied the faces of her rescuers. The one who had carried her was big, rather flat-faced, but was amiable enough. His name was, fittingly enough, Oak. Of the three others, two had flaxen hair, and looked like they might be twins. Their names, Sharp and Quick, underscored that probability. The final member of the quartet, Copper, was a small fellow with a shrewd gaze and hair that had likely given him his name. All were dressed in layers of homespun and rough felt that had seen better days.
She noticed Oak kept staring at her.
Quick noticed, too.
“Don’t be rude, Oak,” he said.
“But she’s a girl, i’n’t she?” The big fellow said. “Dressed like a boy, sort of . . .”
He trailed off as the others glared at him. Aster realized that under her jacket she was still dressed in the jeans and T-shirt she’d had on when the police came to her house.
“I’m a girl,” she said. “What of it?”
Instead of answering, Quick changed the subject.
“Nice trick with the wolves,” he said. “I don’t suppose you can teach it?”
“I don’t know,” Aster said. “I’ve never tried.”
“Do y’think—” Quick began, then stopped and looked at his brothers. They nodded.
Quick moved to the back of the small dwelling and lifted a blanket that lay on the bed. She had noticed it before, and the lumps underneath, and assumed they were pillows.
They weren’t. A man and woman lay there. Neither looked all that old; both were clad in homespun and felt. They were also both made of stone. To Aster, it looked like granite, with flecks of mica in it.
“They turned to stone?”
“Yeah,” Quick said. “All of ’em. The growed-ups.”
“That’s the curse,” Aster said. “I don’t know how to fix that.”
Oak shrugged. “Worth asking, I guess.”
“I’m trying to figure it out,” Aster said. “It’s like this everywhere. My father is cursed, too. I’m sorry. I wish I could help, after all you’ve done for me.”
“We’ve got to help each other,” Copper said. “Especially these days, with Scratch on the throne.”
“Scratch?”
“A nickname, is all,” Sharp said. “You know who he means.”
“I don’t,” Aster said. “I’m from far away.”
“Oh,” Quick said. “Very far away, it must be. Well, Scratch, he showed up a bit ago, and things has been nasty since.”
“And he’s old,” Oak said. “Old, but not stone like the other growed-ups. It seemed all right, at first, like the olders had waked up and things were going to be okay. But then it got bad.”
“How?” Aster asked.
“He wanted the girls,” Copper said. “Every girl over eight. First, he put out the word, and some went because of that, because he was growed-up. But those that didn’t—he sent his riders out, and they brought them in. That’s what’s got Oak all confused—girls is in short supply, hereabouts. And, uh—you’re a girl.”
“And he’ll want you, too,” Sharp said. “Soon as he knows about you, he’ll want you. The wolves may have already told him. Or the birds.”
“She looks like her,” Oak said. “The star on her head. She looks like the regent.”
“The regent,” Aster said. “Is her name Dusk?”
“Oh,” Oak said. “You know her then.”
“Yes,” Aster said. “Where can I find her?”
“Her?” Copper said. “Why, she’s long gone. They say she’s the one brought Scratch here, but none has seen her. Some say she’s killed, others that he put her in the dungeon. Others claim she escaped.”
What was going on? Was Scratch her father? Dusk had released him from his self-imposed prison, and all the evidence pointed to the fact that Dusk meant to impersonate her, his daughter. Her father was cursed so that he couldn’t remember anything for more than a few moments, but he could recall everything that had happened before about eight years ago, perfectly. To him, Aster was still nine years old, and she and Dusk looked similar enough that he might believe her subterfuge. Armed with Aster’s diary and the notes Aster had written to her father over the years, she’d had a good chance to pull it off.
