Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 8
“Horses,” she said. “I think we’d better go someplace else.”
But she’s hardly got the words out when she realized they were already surrounded both by people on foot and horseback.
A boy about her age stepped up to the window.
“Come on out of the carriage, miss,” he said.
She stared at him for a moment.
“I’m just passing through,” she said. “There’s no need to bother me.”
“We’re supposed to stop everyone,” he said. He sounded a little apologetic, but firm.
“Horses,” she said.
But she saw the beasts were held fast by at least half-a-dozen armored figures.
“Miss,” the boy said. This time his voice was rougher.
“I’m coming out,” she said. “No need to be unpleasant.”
The Hollow Sea was only about a hundred yards away, and she knew there were things there that could help her. If it was night. But it wasn’t; everything now had the rosy glow of morning. If they cut her or stabbed her as she was, she would bleed.
But if things continued as she had observed, the sun would soon go back down. Then things would be different. She only had to wait.
“May I ask where we’re going?” she asked.
“The princess will want to see you,” the boy said.
“Well,” she said. “I’m always happy to meet a princess.”
She slipped the little sphere into her pocket and stepped out of the carriage.
The last time Veronica had visited the castle, she had reached it by air. This time she was conducted up a long, narrow staircase carved into the stone. Six of the soldiers escorted her though the high, airy halls, until they came at last to the princess.
She had hoped the princess would turn out to be either Mistral or the Brume, both of whom had lived here when last she came.
Instead, when the woman in the robes turned to greet her, she saw Dusk.
But only for an instant. Their faces were similar, but not identical. This woman was paler and a little rounder of face, and the star glittering on her forehead was silver, with only five points. Her eyes were almost white, with huge black pupils. Her hair was so black it looked like it had shoe polish in it.
“The Princess Nocturn,” one of the soldiers said.
The woman smiled.
“You thought you knew me, didn’t you?” she said. “I saw it on your face.”
“I was just surprised by how pretty you are,” Veronica said.
She was pretty, and dressed well, in a long black gown and a wide-sleeved robe embroidered in silver stars and comets that fanned out in a train behind her.
“Or perhaps you were sent by one of my sisters,” the princess replied. “Or a brother. We all resemble very closely. You were sent, perhaps, to assassinate me?”
“Nope,” Veronica said. “Just going about my business. I’d be way gone from these parts if your guys hadn’t held me up.”
“Your name?”
“Veronica Hale,” she said.
“An odd name,” Nocturn said.
“I’m named after my great aunt,” she said. “Crazy old lady, but I always liked her.”
She realized as she said it that it was true. She had forgotten her Geegant, but now she could see her face clearly in her mind’s eye. The old lady had been full of stories of her travels in China and South America and all sorts of other places. Always full of jokes. She had never married. The consensus in the family was that most of her adventures were imaginary, although they allowed she had gone missing for a few years at a time here and there.
“So you remember your elders,” Nocturn said.
“I guess so,” Veronica replied. “Don’t you?”
“Yes,” she said. “But the memories are diminishing. The curse is growing stronger.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Veronica said.
Nocturn shrugged. “There is enough to deal with without growing sentimental,” she said. “Or wasting time. You say you’re merely a traveler, with no interest in my affairs?”
“Yes,” Veronica said.
“And you were not sent by one of my siblings?”
“Don’t even know them.”
“Or by Him?”
“I don’t know anyone name ‘Him,’” either,” Veronica said.
“The Abomination,” Nocturn said. “The Elder. Scratch.”
“I thought the old people were out of the picture.”
“They were, and are, for the most part. But my sister brought Him, and it has changed things. Do you truly not know of this?”
“I’m not from around here,” she said.
“He took my throne,” she said. “He destroyed half of my army. I barely escaped with my life. I came to this place because I heard my sister had been here. Despite everything, I hope to make an alliance with her. So if you were sent by Dusk—or Dawn, or any of them—there is no reason to fear me. I stand ready for alliance.”
“Sorry,” Veronica said.
Nocturn nodded. “Very well,” she said. “Brume?”
Veronica felt a chill, a wave of cold, wet air, and saw a little girl had entered the room. She was dressed in a dirty pink dress, and her green-black hair hung in a tangled mass.
Well, hell, she thought. This was a bad twist.
“Do you know this one?” Nocturn asked.
“She was here with Dusk,” the Brume said. “That was ages back.”
Nocturn nodded. “Thank you, Brume,” she said. “You may return to your play.”
“Thank you, princess,” the Brume said.
Nocturn returned her gaze to Veronica.
“Now do you have anything to say, now that I’ve exposed you as a liar?”
“Your sister is a bitch,” Veronica said. “I see the family resemblance.”
“And yet you lied to protect her. Curious.”
“Not her,” Veronica said. “I honestly don’t give tiniest damn about her. She tried to kill me.”
“One of her other companions, then? I’m told there was a wooden boy, and another girl with a star on her brow. And a giant, in human guise? What became of them? Are they still with my sister?”
“I don’t know,” Veronica said.
“Maybe you’ve forgotten,” Nocturn said, granting her a smile that would have been at home on a pageant queen. “Maybe with the correct prompting, you’ll remember.”
She waved her hand and the soldiers grabbed hold of Veronica.
“Hey!” she yelped. But Nocturn was already walking away.
They took her deep into the living rock, to a little chamber with no windows and only one door closed by an irregular but apparently sturdy iron door. Like every room in the place, her cell might have been worn into its shape by wind or water rather than by human hands and tools. It wasn’t tiny, but it was small, far too small for her liking. She had once been buried head-down in a stone shaft no wider than her shoulders and since then, she had—issues—with tight spaces.
But it got worse. They put shackles on her arms and legs, passed the chains through holes bored in the stone in such a way that she could not sit down. She could hang by her arms, with her knees almost touching the floor, but that hurt.
She couldn’t help it. She screamed, and once the first one tore out of her throat, more screams came from deeper inside of her. The boys locked the door and left.
She yanked at the chains, she pounded her heels on the floor, and she screamed some more.
Meanwhile her heart slowed and stopped. The blood in her veins ceased coursing, her lungs stopped inflating.
At the same time, her senses grew, which only made her panic worsen. But then she closed her eyes, and let her nighttime senses go, and she seemed to leave the shackles and the little cell behind. She heard the guards talking, far away, sensed the pulse of their lives, each following a slightly different cadence. She smelled the water below the stone floor and felt it like a distant skin. She searched for voices, for snakes and crawfish or any number of much stranger aquatic creatures which might be bent to her will. But she found the waters beneath the castle to be oddly silent, as if everything was asleep.
The lock on her door rattled, and a boy stepped in.
He looked like a boy, at least, perhaps nine years old. He had strange green eyes that were a little unfocused, a shock of snow-white hair. With him was a girl a few years older, and several guards now stood in the hall outside.
“Hey,” the boy said.
“Hi,” Veronica replied. “Nice day, wouldn’t you say? I’d offer you some iced tea, but, you know.” She rattled her chains.
The boy came closer and pulled a little knife from his belt. He held it up so she could see.
“Got some questions to ask you,” he said.
She was trying to think of something to say when he quite casually brought the knife up to her cheek and cut it. For a second, she couldn’t believe he had really done it. And it hurt, awfully, which was also new. Back when she had been dead all day, a little cut wouldn’t have bothered her.
“Look at that,” the boy said to the girl. “She don’t bleed.”
“Why would that be?” the girl asked.
“Reckon she’s dead already,” the boy said. “Or half dead.” He grinned. “But you can feel it, can’t you?”
“Don’t,” Veronica said.
But the boy grinned.
“I’ll bet I can cut you quite a lot before you can’t talk anymore. This ought to be real interesting.”
PART TWO
SUNDERED KINGDOMS
ONE
OUBLIETTE
Gloam chattered near constantly as he led Aster past fallow fields and pastures carpeted in flowers like feathery purple wands, deep orange starbursts, tiny white bells clustered on tall stalks. Occasionally they encountered what looked like statues, carrying packs of firewood, shepherd’s crooks, or frozen in the act of walking. Gloam spoke chiefly of philosophy, which she found boring and useless and soon stopped paying attention to him.
He stopped for a moment when they broke from the fields and forest and stood on a hilltop overlooking a broad, open valley with a river snaking through the heart of it. On one side of the water lay a small village. Across and beyond it, a fortress.
The fortress was a massive block of stone, taller than it was wide with conical towers projecting from either side off its top; it made Aster think of some large, catlike monster crouched on a hill, with its ears up. From the center of the wall facing her, a waterfall plunged hundreds of feet into the river. The stone, probably white or light grey, appeared bloody in the perpetual sunset. The whole view was framed by the sliver of sun and bright evening star on her left horizon and the crescent moon frozen on her right.
“Quite a sight, eh?” Gloam said.
“Yes,” Aster agreed.
“The proportions, they say, are based on an ancient geometry, consonant to certain properties of the fundament,” he began, rapidly becoming even less intelligible and engaging. Again, she stopped paying attention as best she could.
The town was small and neat, and to all appearances almost deserted. The few people she saw were young and mostly male. The handful of girls she noticed all looked to be below the age of nine. The figures of stone adults were everywhere; some had been pushed over, others hung with garlands of woven flowers. A few had been painted, perhaps to make them look more lifelike, but the affect was—in her eyes—macabre.
“Where are the girls?” she asked Gloam as innocently as possible. “I don’t see any.”
“Ah ha,” he said. “You noticed what? I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”
But his face lost its cheerful aspect, and he was quiet for the rest of the ride.
A drawbridge spanned the narrows of the river, and beyond that an enormous arch divided the waterfall near its base, so the torrent parted above their heads and cascaded on either side of them. Beyond the arch lay a gate, which opened as they approached. The gatehouse guards watched them enter with diffidence; giving lackluster responses to Gloam’s apparently enthusiastic greetings and well-wishing. They took his horse and began unsaddling it.
Beyond the gatehouse lay a rather impressive garden, made all the more interesting by the small river flowing through it, which welled from an enormous fountain in a pond near the other end of the yard. Ornate footbridges crossed the water in three places before it poured into an outlet, presumably to join the river below. Red and gold swans swam about the fountain, and tall white cranes stalked in the shallows. The trees—chestnut, maple, weeping willow, oak, ash, and many others—all were cloaked in various shades of yellow and orange.
From her new vantage she saw that there were four of the horn-shaped towers, one at each corner of the largely hollow keep.
Gloam led her into one of those towers. Up close they were gigantic, like small skyscrapers. The lowest floor of the one they entered was one vast room. A long black carpet formed a path across a floor of polished red marble, ending in front of a throne. Carved of some dark wood, its back curled up like the trunk and branches of a tree with spreading limbs and its legs resembled roots. Blue-white gems winked like stars on a clear night from where they were embedded in the branches.
On the throne sat her father, his red hair flowing down his shoulders, clean and brushed, from beneath a golden crown which bristled with little spikes pointing skyward. His robe was bright yellow figured with black and red sunbursts, bordered in dark red on the hem and wide cuffs. His feet were clad in black leather buskins.
One either side of the throne stood four boys in armor.
“Dad!” she said, starting forward.
Two boys from each side moved quickly to block her way.
“Let me go!” she shouted. “Dad, tell them to let me go.”
But then she realized, from the blank look in his eye that he didn’t recognize her. Of course he didn’t. It was the same look she had gotten used to for eight years. His last memory of her was when she had been nine, not seventeen.
“It’s me, Dad,” she said. “Aster.”
Her father took a deep breath and let it out. On the good side of things, he looked to be sober; he had spent most of the last four years drunk.
“And what is your name, daughter?” he asked.
“Aster,” she replied. “Aster Kostyena.”
He smiled, but she knew that smile, and understood it did not mean he was even remotely happy.
“You are the second young woman making that claim,” he said. “That last one was a fraud, and when I catch her, she will pay dearly for her deception.”
“Right,” Aster said. “That was Dusk. She must have tried to convince you she was me . . .” she trailed off.
“Wait,” she said. “You remember that? You remember her trying to trick you? But that must have happened days ago, weeks, maybe. You usually forget in minutes.”
“She also claimed my memory was impaired,” her father said. “That I could not remember anything for more than half a clock-strike, that in my mind, my daughter was still a little girl.”
He nodded at the boys holding her.
“Let her come forward.”
They released her, and she took a few steps.
“Stop,” he said, when she was very near.
“Try to remember,” she said. “Remember how you carried me, when I was hurt? You got a silver ship, and we sailed across the Hollow Sea. A dragon tried to kill us. I know you remember all of that.”
Their gazes met, and for an instant she thought she saw recognition there, the light of realization dawning.
“Do you know how I knew Dusk was a fraud?” he asked, softly.
“How?” she asked.
“Because I have never had a daughter named Aster,” he said. “I have never had a daughter named anything at all.”
For a moment, she was struck speechless. In the back of her mind, she had known she would have to convince him of who she was. But she was good at that, from years of experience, and because he remembered her as a little girl, and because he loved her. That made him willing to be convinced.
But she saw no love in the look he gave her now, and everything in her gut told her he was telling the truth. This man did not remember her at all, at any age. There was no ladder she could erect to bring him from her childhood to the present.
“It’s the curse,” she said. “It must have gotten worse since you got here.”
“Again, you mimic your predecessor,” her father said. “Before you go on, let me assure you I have never been to the Reign of the Departed, much less lived there for years.”
“No, that’s not true,” she said. “You did. We did. The curse is real.”
“Yes, it’s real,” he said. “And I, like all the others past childhood was caught in it, oblivious. Yet now I am free of it, while the others are not. Fate has chosen me, or perhaps I chose myself somehow. I concede I do not know what Dusk—or you—hope to accomplish with this rather complicated piece of theater. Will you tell me? And who is behind this? She would not explain. Perhaps you shall.”
Aster knew she was crying, now. She made no attempt to hide it.
“I’m just trying to get you back,” she said. “Fix you, restore your memory. I want my dad back. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. I love you.”
“She’s really very good,” another voice cut in.
She hadn’t noticed him enter. He was dressed all in black, all the way down to his boots. His hair was black and grey, and longer than the last time she had seen it, when it was cropped very short. Now it had begun to curl, a little. His eyes were glacier blue.
“I know you,” she said. “You tried to kill me.”
“Is my chancellor also your father?” her father asked. “Or an uncle? Or your mother?”
“No,” she said. “This guy chased me and my friends all over the place. Killed a bunch of people. Everybody called him the Sheriff.”
“I, of course, have never met this young woman,” the Sheriff said.
“Naturally not,” her father said. He stood up. “That’s enough of this, for now,” he said.
“I will escort her to the docks,” the Sheriff said. “A ship is leaving soon.”
