The City in the Lake (14 page)

After a moment the Prince answered, “Sometimes there are shapes, and voices. Sometimes you see movement you can almost recognize as someone you know. This place is the one where they come through the most clearly. I stay here and watch them.”

Timou opened her eyes and looked at him. He was not looking into the wall now. He was watching her, his oak-colored eyes crowded with questions. She said, “So you have given up searching for a way that leads out of this place?”

The Prince shrugged, a minute gesture. “I searched at first. For a long time. There is no—If there is a way out, I could not find it. I tried to break a wall once, but my sword shattered first.” He followed Timou’s glance to the sword lying in front of him, whole and undamaged. He said, “I found a place where the broken hilt reflected between walls like a whole sword. When I looked at it again, it was whole.”

“How strange,” murmured Timou. “How strange.” She looked, narrow-eyed, into the shadowless distance, thinking. She was relieved to find that she could, that she had not after all been stunned senseless by . . . everything. That she had not altogether lost the stillness her father had taught her. “I think . . . I think this is not a place at all. I think it is a reflection of something more real than it is. A trap, yes, but not made to be a trap.”

“What, then?” the Prince demanded in clear frustration, getting to his feet. “It is enough of a trap for me!”

“She means it to be. But I think . . . I think really it is a puzzle.” Serpents rose up in her mind, long and black, or small and white, or huge and made of fire. . . . Their eyes, slit-pupiled and unreadable, stared back at her out of memory. She said slowly, “Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Or sometimes there are, I don’t know, layers beyond what you first see. This place . . . I don’t think this is part of the Kingdom at all. But I don’t think it’s really outside the Kingdom either. I think the Kingdom encompasses it.”

The Prince dismissed all abstract considerations with a sharp wave of his hand and went straight to the point: “If you are a mage, can you find a way out of this place, wherever it is? Puzzle, maze, whatever it is?”

“Well,” said Timou, holding out a hand for him to help her to her feet, “I know that there is always a way out. That is a beginning.”

C
HAPTER
8

he Bastard did not for one moment mistake the woman who came out of the mirror for the girl who had gone into it. The girl had been a mystery, a curiosity, a puzzle . . . but she had not struck the Bastard as dangerous.

The woman, it was immediately clear to him, was exceedingly dangerous.

Her eyes were dark, darker than his: black as the night at the heart of the world. They had seen everything, and forgotten nothing. The weight of that dark gaze pressed on him like a physical force when she met his eyes. And the woman was smiling. The Bastard could imagine a tiger smiling like that as it found its prey at bay, trapped in a corner before it.

“Well,” she said, and looked slowly about the room before bringing that heavy gaze back to press against the Bastard. Her voice was light and pretty. Behind the prettiness was something else: a sleek satisfaction that was deeply disturbing. “My son. Have you no greeting for your mother?”

The Bastard did not doubt this claim. He almost thought he remembered her himself, though he had been only a baby when she had left the City. Her name, he knew, was Lelienne. Her white beauty was as the tales described, but no story recalled her ageless gaze or the sense of power that clung to her: these things she must have hidden from his father. Questions fell through his mind like the pieces to a puzzle, then locked into shape. He said, knowing it was true, “You took my brother.”

“Young Cassiel.” The woman’s smile became a shade more brilliant. “Oh, yes.”

“Why?” asked the Bastard. He had not moved. He did not move now.

The woman did. She took a step forward. “You are my son,” she said. “My son, and son of the King. You can give me the Kingdom. Young Cassiel must first give it to you.”

“I will give you nothing,” the Bastard said flatly.

The woman’s smile did not dim. “How unfilial. My son, is that how you speak to your mother?”

Her tone had been gentle, but the weight of her gaze now became terrible: it pressed on the Bastard until he could not endure it. Though he fought it, it pressed him down. He went to his knees at last with a low cry of anger and humiliation, shaking. He was aware, tangentially, of Galef moving to draw his sword, and then stopping, white and still, with the sword half drawn. He was aware of Marcos beginning to move, and also stopping, one thick hand reaching suddenly out, as though for something beyond his grasp.

The pressure eased once he had been forced to yield to it. On his knees, he looked up at his mother. The Bastard had spent his life wondering about his mother, and now he did not need to wonder: he felt his heart pause in its beating, in terror and dismay. Pride demanded that he try to rise. Sense and the memory of her power suggested otherwise. The Bastard had both pride and sense in abundance, but he had always known how to rule his pride. Sense won. He stayed on his knees, grimly. She smiled down at him. Her eyes did not smile. They were expressionless, blank, filled with age and secrets.

“You cannot fight me,” she said gently. “You will try, of course, and fail.” She glanced around at the little dressing room, by implication through its walls and out around the Palace. The Bastard would not have been surprised if she could look through walls: he even expected it. Perhaps her gaze pierced beyond the Palace, to the City. Perhaps she could see beyond the City, to the edges of the Kingdom. He would have believed it of that gaze. When she returned her attention to him, the power of it struck him like a blow, and he could not keep from flinching.

“My son,” Lelienne said, still gently. “You may kiss my foot.”

The Bastard saw that his mother understood his pride, and that she meant to break it at once. She meant him to refuse. She would punish that refusal in a way that would break the nerve and the pride of everyone in the Palace. He understood this, and yet he also knew that if he did not try to sustain his pride in the face of this woman, the memory of that failure of nerve would break his pride forever. And besides this, he judged it important to see what his mother would do. What she would choose to do, and what she had the power to do. He therefore did not move.

The woman, smiling again, glanced once more around the room. Marcos, looking pale and strained, met her eyes for an instant and then looked away, his mouth twitching. Galef had shoved his sword back into its scabbard and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked at the Bastard, then at Marcos. When he saw that Marcos was afraid of the woman, he did not look down himself, but stared into her eyes, pale and steady; the Bastard wanted to shout at him to look away. There were several other guardsmen present. Taking their cue from their captain, they stood stolidly, waiting. She looked back at last at Marcos.

The mage shut his eyes. He blurred suddenly, shredding into the air—his own power, and not hers; the woman’s dark gaze pulled him back ruthlessly into his own shape, pinning him in place. She frowned slightly. Marcos made a low sound in his throat. The air between them rang with power like a bell. Marcos was fighting her, the Bastard knew, but Lelienne did not seem to feel his power. She stroked the long fall of her white hair back with both hands, looking satisfied; a delicate blush rose under her fair skin.

Marcos’s hands stiffened suddenly, his arms, his face. He was turning to stone before them. Stone closed across his mouth, stopping a sound he had tried to make: a word, a plea. The stone cracked around the mage’s fingers as he fought it, and closed again, merciless. His robes fell around him in folds of marble and lime. His eyes remained human, trapped in a face of stone, and after a moment it was clear that Lelienne meant to leave him that way: trapped and aware behind stone.

The guardsmen had fallen back, their faces white and set. Galef threw a stricken look at the Bastard, asking how he could fight this.

The Bastard looked only at his mother. He said, “Undo it. I will do anything you ask.”

“I will leave him like this, and you will still do anything I command, my son. I will crush one man after another in my hand, until all who fight me are destroyed and all who are left have fallen at my feet. I can do this. Do you wish me to begin?”

“The more you destroy, the less you have to rule. Do you wish to destroy what you came here to hold?”

“Do you think you know why I came here?” asked Lelienne, smiling again. “You will hand me this City, and this Kingdom. My son. My King-born son. And my mage-born daughter will yield to me all the strange old magic that it holds. You will have no choice. Nor will she. Will you fight me?”

“Yes,” said the Bastard.

“No. Or I shall break every stone in this City into pieces. You cannot even stand without my leave. Stand.”

He could not.

“Kiss my foot.”

The Bastard bowed his head, struggling against the weight of her regard. “Undo what you did to Marcos, and I will.”

His mother’s strength, limitless, crushed the Bastard to the floor and stopped his breath. All his bones bent under that pressure. The stones of the floor ground into his palms, into his face. He would have cried out, but had no breath for a cry. She said softly, from infinitely far above, “Never bargain with me, my son. I never bargain. But yield to me, and perhaps I shall be generous.”

Slowly, bone by bone, fighting for every movement and every breath, he crossed the few feet that separated them. It took all his strength to turn his head enough to set his mouth against her white slipper.

At once the pressure disappeared. Shaking, the Bastard dragged himself back to his knees. He did not try to get to his feet. He did not trust his own strength to make it upright; he did not trust his mother’s whim to allow it.

“Who rules here?”

“You,” whispered the Bastard.

“Whose hand lies upon this City?”

“Yours.”

“You will give me this Kingdom.”

The Bastard shut his eyes, opened them. He said steadily, “You have taken it already.”

“You may kiss my foot.”

The Bastard at once placed one hand on the stone floor and touched his lips again to his mother’s foot. He stayed there, bent low. She moved above him; when he looked up, he saw she was smiling. Her smile sent horror prickling down his spine, but he did not move.

“I can be generous,” said Lelienne, and began to walk away, adding casually over her shoulder, “You may stand, my son.”

The Bastard got to his feet. In the time it took him to do so, his mother had already restored Marcos. The mage was pale. His eyes were open, but blind. He swayed, and would have fallen except that Galef took a step forward and caught him. It was a brave act. Lelienne glanced at him and away, fortunately disinterested.

“This is my City,” said Lelienne, speaking to the Bastard. “I claim it, and all within it, and all without, to the very edges of this Kingdom. You, my son, may present me to your court and to the City, at dusk. There will be a great feast. See to it.” She spoke without evident triumph, but only with that same satisfaction that had been in her voice from the start; she had known from the beginning that he would surrender to her power, that the City would yield to her strength, and so there was no reason for triumph. When she walked away, it was with quiet steps and no fanfare. She did not need fanfare. She already ruled, more subtly and with an infinitely tighter grip than the Queen in her tower, or the missing King, or the Bastard, whom she had made to bring all their power to her.

“How can we fight her?” Galef asked the Bastard later, while the sun slid lower in the sky and shadows lengthened. He had helped bring Marcos to the Bastard’s rooms, where the mage now lay, eyes closed, across the blankets of the bed. His breathing was still ragged.

The Bastard watched him with concern, but answered the captain’s question briefly. “We cannot. Don’t ask such questions.”

“But—”

“Neill is right,” whispered Marcos without opening his eyes. “She will hear you.”

“What is she? A mage?” asked the Bastard.

Marcos turned his head a little toward the Bastard’s voice. “She is an echo in an old story. A name in a history older than this Kingdom. She is not a mage. I have no clear idea what she is.”

“Is she really your mother?” Galef asked the Bastard, and then bowed his head under the Bastard’s icy stare. “Forgive me—” he breathed. “I am stupid with fear.”

The Bastard touched his arm, forcing a smile. He had spent his childhood dreaming of the mother who had left him in the heart of the Kingdom and gone away . . . and now this was the face of all his dreams. He made himself speak gently. “No. I am sorry. We are all stupid with fear, I think. Her name is Lelienne. That is the name she gave my father. She is my mother. What else she is, I think none of us ever knew, least of all my father.”

“Her heart is stone,” whispered Marcos. “Or ice. I am still made of stone. . . .”

“Hush,” said the Bastard gently, and helped him to sit, offering him a cup of hot spiced wine.

Marcos waved away the cup. “Inside,” he said. He touched his own chest. “She has enclosed me in stone, though you cannot see it. I move, I breathe . . . but, Neill, I am not a mage. The memory of power is there, but I cannot touch it, nor reach out of myself. I cannot light so much as a candle for you. Neill, I’m sorry. . . .”

“For what?” said the Bastard harshly.

“I can’t help you. I can’t. Even if I find a way out of her spell. I am afraid of her. Don’t trust me, Neill. I don’t think I can fight her.” The mage met his eyes.

The Bastard touched his shoulder absently, considering this extraordinary statement. He said after a moment, “I don’t think you can either. It’s all right, my friend. I understand.”

“Do you?” Marcos asked urgently. “Do you? I’m sorry. . . .”

“Hush. I promise you I understand.” The Bastard pressed his shoulder again, and rose. He stood thoughtfully, looking out the window at the deepening shadows. “It will be dusk very soon. Stay here, Marcos, until you are able to go back to your own house. Then go there and stay there, if you think that best, out of her way. Galef—” He looked at the captain. “Can you come? I must go to the hall, but can you stand at my back? I expect there will be some danger.”

The captain picked up his sword, slung it on—a matter of habit, since he could not have imagined it would be useful. “More to you than to me, I should think.”

“Oh, no. I am not in danger.” The Bastard moved restlessly. “Save my vanity, I suppose. But she has shown already she will strike at others to punish me. I will try, but I do not know whether I will be able to yield my pride to her quickly enough to protect you.”

The captain shrugged. “I will stand at your back,” he said.

The great hall had been lit with all its multitude of white parchment lamps. Word had gone out without the Bastard needing to give any specific order: all the court was in attendance, waiting behind their chairs for the appearance of this newest and most surprising power that had come into the City. Courtiers were interested; ladies curious; the young men who had been Prince Cassiel’s close friends and confidants looked suspicious and angry. The mage Trevennen was present, high up along the King’s table. He stood behind his chair with his hands folded on its carved back, looking contained, attentive, and patient. The guardsmen in the hall cast uneasy glances at their captain, and Galef left the Bastard’s side briefly to speak to one and another among them. Servants hurried here and there, fussing with the last-minute table arrangements. They, probably the best informed of all the court, looked terrified.