Kingdoms of the cursed, p.9
Kingdoms of the Cursed, page 9
“No! I want to know who is behind this. Put her in the oubliette and make certain she cannot escape. But do her no harm. Yet. That will come later, and at my hand, if she does not answer me.”
“Sire, word is she is a sorceress.”
Her father nodded. He said a word that obliterated itself even as she heard it. Pain fanned out within her to every extreme of her body, then faded into a sort of fuzziness, as if she was wrapped in layers of invisible gauze.
“The oubliette is made to render sorcery moot,” her father said. “That will keep her quiescent until you reach it.”
“Yes, sire,” the Sheriff said.
Once they were alone, in the corridor, Aster tried to bespell the Sheriff, but whatever her father had done left her unable to recall any of the magic she knew.
“Is it only you who’ve come back or is your whole little gang?” the Sheriff asked.
“You do know me,” Aster said.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “You were the brightest girl in my class. How could I forget? To be honest—and I feel I am now able to be honest, Aster—I was, in the past, somewhat obsessed with you. I told you that eventually you would meet someone who valued you for your true qualities. I just didn’t tell you I was standing right in front of you.”
The voice was still the Sheriff’s, but it somehow didn’t sound like him. The Sheriff had been spare with words, always to the point. He didn’t talk like this.
Brightest girl in his class?
“Mr. Watkins?”
“Do I smell as sweet?” he asked.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. A Shakespeare reference—Romeo and Juliet. As impossible as it seemed, it had to be Mr. Watkins, her English teacher from Sowashee High. And according to Veronica, Mr. Watkins hadn’t been exactly what he appeared to be, either.
“I was David Watkins,” he confirmed. “Or, better said, Mr. Watkins was a name I went by for a time, a face, a life. I believed it myself, until you and your father finally set me free. And Veronica, she did her part, too, I suppose. She had good intentions—she tried to kill me, if you can believe it. But I do not die, I merely move on. And this time I did not have to move far. Aster, where is the Kingdom of Silver?”
“What do you mean?”
“Dusk had two of the Kingdoms when she left here, but they were separated. I believe she left one for you, to bring you here. Your father saw you with one, in a carriage, a short time ago. Where did you hide it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Aster lied.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “I can use your father’s orb to find it again. It’s time I relieved him of it anyway—before he gets suspicious. This is another black mark in your ledger, I’m afraid. But don’t worry. The questioning will no doubt hurt—all the more because it will be your dear father torturing you. Ah, the tragedy. For that I’m sorry, but right now I must have your father’s trust. Once he is done with you, I’ll help you escape.”
“Escape? Why?”
“Oh,” he said. “You misunderstand me. I mean to help you escape that body of yours. Then you and I can truly be together, for all time, the way we were destined to be.”
That he meant it was very clear, and it made her almost physically ill.
“You may have changed your face somehow,” she said. “But you’re still insane.”
“‘I was walking among the fires of Hell, delighted with the enjoyments of Genius; which to Angels look like torment and insanity,’” he said. “That’s William Blake, remember? Junior Lit?”
“Now you’re proving my point,” Aster said.
The oubliette was not a cell, as she had expected, although it was two floors beneath the castle. It was a suite of rooms, furnished with bed and chairs, tables with playing cards and chessboards. Mr. Watkins—or whatever he was, ushered her in.
“Soon,” he said, and closed the door.
She looked around the room, trying to recall where she was and how she had gotten there. She ran her finger over the cards and toyed with the chess pieces.
She felt good. Not happy, but she knew she had once been very worried, and now she wasn’t. The bed was soft, and comfortable, and next to it stood a full-length mirror. It showed her a young woman with reddish-brown hair and peculiar birthmark, like a star, on her forehead.
“Who are you, I wonder?” she murmured.
It took a great deal of willpower to watch Aster step into the oubliette and close the door behind her. He had been first searching and then waiting for her for what seemed like eternity. To have her so near, completely in his power, and be forced to restrain himself was almost intolerable.
But as he shrugged off David Watkins and his mortal limitations, he was beginning to remember what eternity really was, and what it could be. After ages imprisoned in the rough clay vessels that inhabited the Reign of the Departed, he was determined that from here on he would have immortality on his own terms. That meant patience. For the time being, it meant keeping control of Kostye and maintaining his trust. If Aster suddenly vanished now, it might raise suspicions. The curse was strange and fickle, and he didn’t understand everything about it. If some shock or turn of events brought Kostye’s memories of his daughter back, that would be an immense setback.
Besides, he had other girls now, many others who had light to give him. His collection would never be complete without Aster, but for now he could be satisfied by sheer quantity. Quality would come to him in time.
But there was the matter of the Kingdom of Silver. He needed that.
He found Kostye in dream, as he often was, drowsing in his quarters. It was no matter to take the sorcerer’s orb; he would miss it if it was gone for long, but what he meant to do wouldn’t take long. He followed the steps up into the highest room in the tower, carrying the rose-colored sphere in his palm.
Kostye had seen Aster with the Silver Kingdom not long ago—less than a day, he guessed, if days still existed. She must have hidden it or given it to someone else before entering the fortress. That meant it shouldn’t be far.
As he placed the sphere against his eye, he felt the faint tickle down in the bottom of him that was Vilken, the man he had first known as the Sheriff, whose body he now inhabited. There wasn’t much left of the fellow, but what was there was useful. Memories of his former life, for instance, especially the years when he and Kostye had been friends—or at least partners in crime. The many decades before the falling out, and the curse. Before Vilken’s exile in the Reign of the Departed.
And the magic—the Whimsies, the Recondite Utterances, the Names. Those were very useful indeed.
But of himself, the Sheriff had lost almost everything. Not quite enough to be reborn in some other Kingdom, but too much to cause him trouble in this body they shared.
The sphere became his eye, peering into the places where the other Kingdoms were. He saw pyramids under a bright sun, an island bathed in morning light, a cavernous hall of stone.
At last he saw her, the one who possessed the Silver Kingdom. He sighed in delight.
It was the other he had missed. The girl with the golden hair and the white tennis shoes.
Everything was coming together, now, all fortune bending toward him.
It was about time.
With a smile on his face, he began preparing for the journey.
TWO
LOTUS
Errol soon regretted his choice to lie in the sun rather than the small sliver of available shade. But he was trying to get noticed, not hide, and it had seemed the obvious choice at the time. Now he dared not move. But even lying still, the armor he had salvaged was beyond hot, it was stifling.
What must it be like to walk wearing this stuff, ride—fight, for Pete’s sake?
He’d never had trouble respecting Dusk. She was smart, courageous, and one hell of a fighter. But now his regard for her went up another notch because she wore her armor almost all of the time. She looked a little weird without it.
And of course, she was also deceptive and a bit murderous, both marks against her, and double points because she had betrayed him personally and tried to kill his girlfriend.
He wondered what Veronica would think if she saw him right now, if she knew what he was doing. How mad would she be? How betrayed would she feel?
He remembered the last time he’d seen her, her face so close to his, telling him she loved him.
And he hadn’t been able to answer. Why? He remembered when he thought she was dead—really dead, dead for good. It had felt like something was torn out of him, like he wanted to die himself. How could he feel like that and not be able to tell her?
What was he doing? How would he explain this?
He would explain that it wasn’t about Dusk, or any feelings he had for her. It was about doing the right thing. Doing what he said he would do. That was important.
Except—hadn’t Dusk sort of kidnapped him? Had he really promised her anything, or it was it just him accepting her assumptions about him?
He heard a horn in the distance, a bright, high note, and a few moments later it sounded again, closer. He dared not move to see what it was. He heard it once more, far in the distance, moving away from him. Hours crawled by.
He was fairly sure his blood was near boiling when the shadow fell on him. For an instant, he didn’t know what it meant, even though he’d been waiting for it. But then he understood.
Okay, here we go, he thought.
So many ways this could go wrong.
The bird hit him with such force that it knocked the wind out of him, and when he got it back it was all he could do to stay limp and not scream. But by then, he was also in the air, clutched in the creature’s gigantic claws, its wings beating ponderously above him. He cracked his eyes and saw the mortuary plaza shrinking below him, the shining surface of the glass pyramid coming into view.
As he had hoped, the bird thought he was dead, just another piece of carrion that had tumbled to the bricks after an unsuccessful attempt to climb up the pyramid. He’d put the armor on to avoid being cut up and run through by the monster’s talons as much as to fit the profile of a failed rescuer. But what if it dropped him now, to make sure he was deceased? It would be like tossing a box turtle off of a sixteen-story building. He could almost imagine the impact, but he bet he wouldn’t feel it. Not for long.
The bird accelerated, sending his blood rushing to his head, then slowed. Below him he saw the terrace at the top of the pyramid. It was smaller than he’d thought, maybe only about ten feet wide.
He was hot and scared and angry, and it didn’t bear thinking on. He was tired of waiting.
He drew the knife from his belt, leaned up, and cut at the bird’s leg as hard as he could.
To his chagrin, the blade only went in about an inch, but by the bird’s reaction, you would think he’d cut the whole foot off. It screamed so loudly it hurt his ears and let him go, so he fell the final ten feet and hit the pyramid with the sound of a half-ton of buckets dropped from a housetop. The impact hurt more than was reasonable, and then he was struggling against the weight of the armor to get back on his feet. Frantically eyeballing his surroundings, he saw the bird had flown back up, but he knew that was temporary. He’d seen it in action; it would get some altitude and dive, and if it hit him, he was done. Even if he stabbed it somewhere vital and killed it, its momentum would still knock him to his doom.
By the time he got back on his feet, it was on its way back. He looked around frantically, but there was no place to go except the other side of the smaller pyramid standing up from the middle of the terrace. That was better than nothing.
The bird saw what he was up to and changed its angle. It was no use. If he waited until the last second, maybe he could throw himself to the side, and the monstrous raptor would slam into the pyramid . . .
Then he realized that there was a door in the glass. He hadn’t seen it a first, but now he noticed a rectangular hole in the reflection of the sky. He clanged toward it, trying not to look back, seeing the mirrored image of the bird of prey grow larger with impossible speed.
It hit him as he got through the door, clipping him with one claw. The sound was hideous, like fingernails on a blackboard but much, much worse—especially considering that he was the blackboard. The pain that jagged through him was surreal as he went tumbling head over heels and slammed into the glass.
But at least he was inside. He lay there for a moment, dizzy, spots dancing before his eyes.
When he opened them, everything looked red. He tried push himself up, but the glass was incredibly slippery. With red stuff.
“What?” he managed. He heard someone gasp.
What he saw first was a tree, growing right in the middle of the pyramid-top, its branches spreading to fill the sharply-peaked ceiling.
Beyond the tree, a girl was watching him; her mouth formed a little “o”. He wondered what she looked so shocked about.
Then he passed out.
When he opened his eyes again, it was to a throbbing pain in his side. He was lying on a pile of large, brightly colored pillows piled on the floor. The air was thickly perfumed, reminding him of pine rosin, cinnamon, and honeysuckle.
“You’re feeling better, I hope.”
He looked over and saw the girl. She was kneeling on a cushion in front of very low, slanted desk, forming beautiful, curving characters on paper with an old-fashioned ink pen, the kind you dipped in a well.
She was maybe twelve or thirteen, with black hair and a sepia brown complexion and her eyes were made up with a lot of black eyeliner. She wore a diaphanous saffron robe over a white silk tunic embroidered with flowery yellow and blue patterns and loose turquoise pantaloons that gathered at her ankles.
“I was bleeding,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “A lot.” She turned to face him, smiling, and he saw she had a pale gold eight-pointed star on her forehead.
“I think you’re okay now, though,” she said.
He looked himself over and realized he was no longer in his armor. Or his clothes. Instead he wore something like a long white-and-blue striped nightshirt. He didn’t see any blood.
“How did I get out of my clothes?” he asked.
“They were a real mess,” she said.
“Yes but . . .” he trailed off, feeling his face burn.
“Oh,” she said. She blushed, too.
“No, of course not,” she said. “Djinn changed you. I didn’t even look.” She frowned, as if entertaining the thought made her progressively angrier. “Of course, I didn’t look.”
“Oh,” Errol said. “But the bleeding . . .”
“The tree,” she said. She inclined her head upward and, at first, he didn’t know what he was looking at. Then he realized it was a tangle of roots, suspended in water. He guessed he was about three stories beneath the entrance level to the pyramid, and most of that was a water tank. But there must be a staircase or something, winding around the outside of it. A little searching with his gaze and he found where it came out, and another staircase continuing down.
The room he was in now was draped with translucent, colored cloth, making it look a little like the inside of a tent, but the floor was bare except for the pillows. The glass was so clear, I looked like he was about to fall a few hundred feet any minute.
“It’s got these magic pomegranates,” the girl went on. “You can never tell exactly what they’re going to do, but it usually has to do with what you need, and you needed to stop bleeding.”
She had turned away from him and was again writing in her elegant hand.
“I’m Errol,” he said.
“My name is Lotus,” she said. “But you probably knew that.”
No,” he said. “I didn’t.”
She stopped writing. “Truly? You went through all of that, and you didn’t even know my name? When we are married, I hope you’re going to be a tad more attentive.”
“Married?” he said. “I—ah—think we’ve gotten our wires crossed, here. I didn’t exactly come up here to rescue you.”
“No?”
“I was kind of looking for someone else.”
She frowned slightly and digested that for a moment.
“Do you mean to say you don’t want to marry me?”
“Well, you seem—uh—very nice, and I guess you saved my life—”
“There’s no question about that,” she said. “You should see the mess Djinn had to clean up.”
“Okay. But the thing is, I kind of have a girlfriend—”
“You are otherwise betrothed?”
“Uh, we’re not engaged,” he said. “And you, aren’t you too young to marry?”
Her brow now creased dangerously. “Are you saying I’m not a woman?” she said. “Are you calling me some kind of little girl? Are you implying I am not desirable enough to be a wife?”
“No?” he said.
“My mother, grace her, was married and with child by the age I am now.”
“Look,” he said, feeling it all getting out of control. “I’m just—I didn’t come here to marry you. I’m not even thinking about marriage to anyone right now. Or anytime soon.”
She lifted her chin. “I am an honorable woman, sir,” she said. “I hope you do not think—”
“Or that either,” he said.
She appeared to relax a little. “You really don’t want to marry me?” she said.
“I don’t, no,” he said.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Thank goodness,” she said. “For I’ve no desire to marry either. As much as I wish to be free of this place, I do not desire that. This was all my father’s idea, you know. He arranged with my uncle for me to be ‘kidnapped’ and brought here. He thought a man willing to travel far and risk death for me would be worthwhile.”
“That sounds a little—wasteful,” he said, thinking about all of the corpses down below.
“Yes,” she said. “I think he may have been trying to sway me, frankly. That after one or two of the poor fellows died my heart would soften, and I would warm up to the idea of marriage. But then the curse came, and the spell on me and this pyramid became quite permanent. Until now. And I would have married you, the magic knows that. But I’m awfully glad I don’t have to.”
