The City in the Lake (22 page)

Lelienne sighed, stretched, and relaxed, dismissing the possibility of further struggle from her daughter. “Better,” she said. “Yes. I should not like to have to harm you—”

Lord Neill, face set, stood up from the stones where he had been kneeling when his father’s body disappeared. He did not approach Lelienne; he did not even look at her. He did not look at any of them. Instead he took two steps sideways, placed one hand on the marble railing, and vaulted over the balustrade before any of them—certainly before Timou—had any idea what he meant to do. He fell without a sound.

Cassiel, leaping forward, was the one who cried out.

Lelienne sprang to the railing with a sharp wordless cry of her own and reached out into the air. She cried out again, uttering words that had physical weight and power: they rolled through the air like thunder and fell after Neill like hunting hawks.

And they caught him, long before he was broken by the tiles and stones of the City below. Timou was too shocked to understand at first that she should mourn his failure: her first thought was that he had meant to shape himself into air and so escape, and her realization that he had meant to die, and in dying confound all their mother’s intentions, was slow in coming. She understood only after the words Lelienne had sent after Neill carried him in their talons back to her feet and flung him down on the stones where she stood. Timou, too stunned to move, saw his face as he gathered himself slowly to try to stand. Then she understood.

Lelienne had never been puzzled. She was not amused at all. She struck her son across the face and pulled silver chains out of the air. With these she bound him by one wrist to the stones of the tower, and Timou also. The silver was cold. Timou looked into her brother’s bleak face, then shut her eyes.

Neill touched her hair with one hand and leaned close, placing his free arm around her shoulders. Timou, even knowing that he could not protect her, still found this oddly comforting.

Cassiel had been left free. It was perfectly clear that Lelienne did not mind if
he
threw himself down from this high place. Indeed, she already had the little silver knife back in her hand. The Prince saw this, too. He stood with his head up, facing Lelienne. His breath came rapidly, but he did not otherwise seem frightened. Anger snapped in his eyes. His sword lay on the gallery floor not far from his feet, but pride kept him from so much as glancing at it: the sword had been tried before, and Lelienne clearly would not mind if it was tried again. It was obvious he did not know what else to try.

C
HAPTER
13

he Hunter’s castle . . . was not like any ordinary castle or tower. When the Hunter moved, drawing Jonas with him, the dark castle seemed to move also, rearranging itself to suit his intentions or wishes. The great hall faded around them while a smaller chamber folded itself out of the shadows. They were now, Jonas understood after a moment of confusion, much higher in the tower: the room in which they stood was square, no more than a dozen feet across, and furnished with tall narrow windows on all four sides. Nothing was visible outside any window but darkness, and yet the sense of great height was so strong that Jonas closed his eyes against a wave of vertigo.

The Hunter’s face was masked by the confusion of shadows that crowned him, although his eyes stared down with predatory intent. Wordlessly, simply with a curt gesture, he sent Jonas toward one of the tall windows.

Looking obediently out the window, Jonas could see nothing. But gradually he became aware that someone was standing at his side—not the Hunter; someone else. The first shock of recognition, simply that someone was there, sent Jonas stepping sharply away so that he came up hard against the Hunter’s massive presence and froze in place, flinching.

Look again,
said the Hunter.

Cautiously Jonas took a step back toward the indicated window. The man standing there was visible as a shadow among shadows; a presence more suggested than defined by the air and the darkness. The figure stood straight and quiet, his hands on the windowsill, gazing out. He seemed somehow familiar. . . .Jonas knew him suddenly. “Kapoen,” he said, and after the first startled moment was not surprised.

Timou’s father turned his head. “Jonas,” he said. “Come here, if you would.” His voice was quiet, but not bodiless like the voice of the Hunter. He did not, on careful study, seem quite real. Compared to the Hunter, he still seemed very familiar, very welcome: a friend in the dark. Jonas, who had always respected and liked the mage, nevertheless stood still.

“Come,” Kapoen said patiently.

Go to him,
demanded the Hunter, far less patient.

Jonas thought of what else the Hunter demanded, and dread ran through him suddenly, like water. He asked the mage, “Why? What will you do? You know . . . you know what he wants from me—”

“You must give him everything, but freely,” the mage said gently. There was sympathy in his eyes, in his shadowed face; it frightened Jonas almost beyond thought. “I can take nothing from you, whether offered freely or otherwise. All I can do is help you see out of this darkness. Which you must do. Please, Jonas. Come here to the window.”

The Hunter only waited.

“I don’t—I can’t—I don’t know how you can ask this of me!” Jonas cried suddenly, frightened and furious. “It’s easy enough for a mage, I suppose! You have—you have plans or spells or something! Do you think I don’t know? You’re helping him—you have been—that was you, in the dark, when all I wanted was to lie still! Wasn’t that you?”

Kapoen met Jonas’s eyes, his shadowy face grave. “Yes. That was I.”

“Why?” cried Jonas. “Why?”

“Because if you had given up and lain still on the ice, Jonas, you would have died, and the dark Hunter needs a living man.” Kapoen spoke matter-of-factly, even with sympathy, but there was no apology in his face or his voice.

“But why me?”

“Why not you?” Kapoen did not move, but his voice unexpectedly gained depth. “Whom else should the Hunter have chosen? Was it not you who walked out of despair into this Kingdom, four years past? What price were you willing, then, to pay for four years of peace? For a tranquil life, and friends, and the possibility of love? What price are you willing to pay for them now?”

Jonas, struck suddenly wordless, could only stare at him.

“Come here,” said Kapoen, and held out one shadowy hand.

Jonas slowly moved to stand at the window, beside the mage. Kapoen moved behind him, reaching around to lay his hands over Jonas’s on the window’s broad sill. His touch was insubstantial, like the touch of shadows. Jonas kept his eyes on their paired hands: his own solid and real, the mage’s overlying his like mist.

“Now,” said Kapoen. “Look out.”

For a long moment Jonas could not bring himself to move. Then he lifted his head.

At first he saw nothing but darkness. Then light broke through, poured down like liquid, silvery and pure. Moonlight, Jonas recognized eventually, and for a moment that was all he could see: light pouring down through the dark.

Light, light, light . . . light on white stone. On a balcony, dizzyingly high in the air. On Timou, who stood, clad all in white, white hair dressed with pearls, standing with an assured poise that somehow looked . . . odd. Out of place. Unlike her usual natural grace. Her attention was on a young man with dark hair, elegant features, wide dark eyes. . . . Timou held a silver knife in her hand. . . . She was
not Timou.
He knew that suddenly.

“There,” breathed Kapoen at his back, and lifted a hand to point.

There
was Timou, hard against the side of whatever tower it was she had found herself on, as terrible in its way, Jonas thought, as the Hunter’s tower. Silver chains bound her to the stones. She had been weeping. She was weeping still: tears ran down her face. The moonlight turned her tears to pearls, to diamonds. . . .

There was a man with her, bound as she was, with the same white hair and the same face, though harsher and stronger. That face was set now with fear or anger or despair. The man’s eyes, unlike Timou’s, were black. They held no hope. He had his arm protectively around Timou’s shoulders, not like a lover, but perhaps like a friend. The bleak expression in his eyes said clearly that he had no expectation that he could actually protect her. Even so, she had tucked herself close to his side. Jealousy ran suddenly through Jonas like fire.

“What is this?” he asked Kapoen in a fierce whisper.

“Almost too late,” breathed the mage. “Almost too late.”

“Too late for what? Too late how?” Jonas found himself shaking. On the other side of the window, the woman who was not Timou spoke. Her voice did not enter the Hunter’s tower: they could not hear her. The young man she faced heard her. He turned away, went across the balcony to Timou . . . no, to the white-haired man. He stood with his back turned to the woman. He had taken the older man’s hand in both of his, and they stood together, speaking quietly. . . .

“She will kill the boy first,” said Kapoen softly. His deep voice was heavy with grief. “Then her way will be clear to finish what she began so long ago. She will devour the Kingdom through the children she has made. The children we helped her make.”

“
That
is Timou’s mother?”

“Yes,” said the mage, and bowed his head. Turning, incredulous, to look at the mage, Jonas found that Kapoen, too, was weeping. His tears were made of darkness, and fell into darkness without sound.

The Hunter stood in the center of the tower room, not even glancing out the window. He did not speak or move. His round yellow eyes watched Jonas steadily, without passion.

Jonas faced him. “What do you want of me?” he asked, knowing what the answer would be.

That is not my Kingdom,
said the Hunter.
There I am blind: I need your eyes. There I am voiceless: I need your tongue. There I am bodiless: I need your hands.

“And my heart,” whispered Jonas.

So that I will care to act,
said the Hunter.
Do you understand?

“No,” whispered Jonas. “I think I do not understand anything. Yes. I know what you want. All right. All right. Take it, then. Take everything.”

Yes,
said the Hunter.
Everything.
He reached out.

Even having made his decision, Jonas could not help but flinch away. He tried to draw back against Kapoen, but the mage was no longer there. He was alone. He felt that he had always been alone, that companionship and friendship were illusions he had dreamed once, long ago. He leaned against the stone, turning his face into its cold surface, and wondered whether Timou’s father had ever been there, or whether the Hunter had made him out of shadows, a phantasm to break his prey to his will . . . perhaps nothing he had seen through that window had been real. Perhaps it had all been made of shadows. . . .

The Hunter laid his hand on Jonas’s shoulder and drew him wordlessly into a cold embrace. And then everything was made of shadows.

C
HAPTER
14

fter Lelienne had bound both her children to the tower, there did not seem very much that either of them might do. Timou leaned wearily against her half brother and thought about the Kingdom, and how one might go about devouring it, and what it might mean to devour a Kingdom. And a little, perhaps, about her father, and the dead King, and Prince Cassiel.

Though Neill held her firmly, he himself had attention only for Cassiel. Timou could not divine what he was thinking.

“Well,” Lelienne said briskly, “I believe we shall proceed.” She glanced up at the moon, and searchingly into the distant reaches of space. Whatever she saw seemed to satisfy her. The silver knife shifted: light ran flashing down its blade and over her hand.

“Wait,” said Cassiel, and when she lifted one graceful eyebrow, he said fiercely, “What difference does it make now? You have everything. You can spare one moment more.” He stood straight, head up, oak-dark eyes on hers. He was afraid, Timou could see, but really he was angry. Perhaps his fear had been worn out of him over the course of this past hour, leaving mostly anger. Timou could understand that. Although she felt cold with fear herself, fear that had worn out anger. . . .

He did not wait for Lelienne’s permission, but simply turned his back on her—he did not lack courage—and crossed the gallery to his brother.

Neill, still holding Timou, lifted his other hand as far as he could, and Cassiel took it in both of his.

Neill said quietly, “I am sorry now I was ever born.” He wore his face like a mask: reserved, cool. An expression he might have worn on all those occasions his father had dismissed him in favor of his younger brother. His tone gave away nothing until the very end, and then began to break; he cut the last word off short.

“I’m sorry
she
was,” Cassiel rejoined. “Except I cannot regret that you exist. Neill. You—I—”

“I know.”

Cassiel searched his face. “Do you? I hope so. Our father—”

“I know,” Neill repeated gently.

Lelienne’s mouth twisted a little. She moved her hand, the knife glinting suddenly. Timou flinched, trying to look away, unable to take her eyes off its silver sheen.

But the knife did not disappear from Lelienne’s hand. Instead the woman made a faint sound of surprise, turning her head to take in a shadow that moved suddenly in one of the windows that pierced the tower.

Cassiel, facing the wrong way to see the open gallery or Lelienne, heard the sound but not the surprise. He stiffened, gripped his brother’s hand hard, and shut his eyes. Then, when pain did not come, he opened his eyes again, startled, looked at Neill’s face, and followed the direction of his brother’s gaze to the tower window.

The form there moved, shifted a hand on the sill, and then bent suddenly, ducking through the window and onto the gallery.

“Jonas?” Timou said uncertainly, taken utterly aback.

Cassiel’s eyes had widened. He stared at the man . . . seeing, Timou thought, something other than what she saw herself. Neill’s hand closed hard on his brother’s.

“
Who
is this?” inquired Lelienne coldly. “I had thought we were done with interruptions?”

“No,” said Jonas.

He was, Timou realized after a second, speaking not to Lelienne, but to her, answering her. His eyes were on her face.

His voice was strange. It was distant, as though carried from a thousand miles away. His face, too, was strange: Passionless. Remote. As though no emotion had ever touched his heart, nor ever would. He stood still. Too still. No man could stand so still, as though he were not breathing, as though his heart were not even beating. . . . He came a step away from the tower, into the moonlight. He turned his face to the light, lifted a hand to it, as though he found the light puzzling, as though he expected it to pool in his hand and flow through his fingers like water.

The moonlight pulled his shadow out before him, cleanedged and blacker than any shadow could have been during the day. It was not, Timou realized, a normal shadow. It stretched out and out, far too tall for the man who stood there; it moved, turning its head, although Jonas stood still. Long branching shadows crowned it, moving as it moved. It was blind, being a shadow, but it looked through his eyes. Jonas should have had brown eyes, but he had instead the eyes, Timou saw, that belonged to his shadow: yellow and round as the eyes of an owl.

First the shadow and then the man turned finally to her mother. He said softly, in that strange voice, “Lelienne. Is that your name?”

“I am not from this Kingdom. My name will give you no power over me,” the woman stated. She looked curious and annoyed, but not worried, though terror sang down Timou’s spine and made the delicate hairs on the back of her neck stand up.

“Do you think not?” asked Jonas. Or the shadow that spoke through his mouth. “Lelienne. Lelienne . . .” His voice, lowering, trailed off like the end of night.

“Who are you?”

“You do not know me. And yet you would possess me. Does that seem wise to you? You have power, but are you wise? I think not. You would possess this Kingdom. All the Kingdoms, as they lie layered one beyond the next . . . and yet you do not know them. You have not even glimpsed what you would take into your hand.”

“I know who you are,” Cassiel said unexpectedly from beside Neill and Timou.

Jonas, followed after a breath by his shadow, turned his head to examine the Prince. “Yes,” he said. “I know you. Give me your name.”

“Cassiel,” the Prince said steadily.

“Yes,” Jonas said again distantly. “The King above the Lake is dead; long live the King.”

“If you would help us,” Cassiel said to him, his tone now a little uneven, “I would pay . . . any price you might ask of me. I believe . . . I believe it is my right to offer, is it not—as the King?” His brother moved in slight, instant protest, and then was still again as Cassiel gripped his arm above his bound wrist.

The shadow moved, Jonas himself moving a heartbeat more slowly. The shadow stretched, lengthened, reaching out toward the Prince as Jonas lifted his hand. Cassiel neither moved nor looked away, though his eyes widened. But the dark hand of the shadow passed him, fell instead on the silver chains that bound Timou and Neill to the tower. The chains dissolved into shadow, into mist, into cold. Timou rubbed her wrist, shivering violently.

“I ask no price of you,” Jonas said to Cassiel. “All my price has been paid.” Those disturbing yellow eyes shifted from the Prince to look into hers. “Timou,” he said. “I know your name. I hear it in my heart. Jonas knows you. Do you know me?”

“Yes,” Timou breathed. She let her gaze fall on his shadow, on the branching crown that confused the eye around its head, and swallowed. “Oh, yes, Lord. Yes, I know you.”

“Well, I do not,” said her mother impatiently. She was uneasy, Timou thought, and trying to hide her unease behind a tone of sharp confidence. “Who is this? Is there any reason I should not kill him immediately where he stands?”

“I don’t . . . I don’t think you can,” whispered Timou. She backed away, drawing both Neill and Cassiel with her. She was aware she was trembling, but could not stop. Nor could she take her eyes from Jonas. From his shadow.

“Oh, I expect it won’t be so difficult,” Lelienne said briskly, and sent the knife from her hand to Jonas’s heart. It stood in his chest.

Blood showed through his shirt, through his jacket. . . . He touched the knife, which faded into the dark and was gone. The blood ran slowly down his chest, but this he did not seem to notice. He bent, and straightened. In his hand was Cassiel’s sword: the sword that had gone with the Prince behind the mirror, and then found its way in his hand to this strange reflected City, where it had been changed into a thing of light and darkness. Jonas held it as Cassiel had, as though he did not have to think about it, as though it were part of his body. “Yes,” he said softly. “This, too, I know. It is not my usual weapon. But Jonas understands it. It will do.” He took a step toward Lelienne.

In the distance something cried, high and piercing, far up in the sky. It might have been geese. Timou knew it was not geese. Despite the clear sky thunder crashed, so loud and sudden that they all jumped.

Lelienne, her eyes narrowed, moved her hand.

Stone closed around Jonas, over his face, over his eyes. Then his shadow moved, and the stone cracked and fell away. He took another step.

She cried out in that heavy, rolling language; her words leaned forward, trying to crush Jonas. He moved the sword, drawing a line that lay between them, from his feet to Lelienne’s, and the words parted and rolled harmlessly to either side while he stepped forward between them.

“Run,” he said to Lelienne, his voice strange and dark, the voice of nothing mortal. “Run. If you outrun my storm, I cannot touch you. You will not outrun my storm.”

Lelienne stood still for one more instant, staring at him. She took a step back. “What
are
you?” she asked in amazement.

“Run,” said Jonas softly. He took another step, and again Lelienne backed away.

The storm hounds came then, before the driving edge of the rain. They were lean, long, terrible: each one as tall at the shoulder as a man. Their eyes were fierce as flame, and Lelienne fled suddenly before them, away through the sky, a whisper through the wind. But the storm hounds had her scent and followed, baying behind her with the wild voices of hunting eagles. The first drops of rain fell, cold and viciously hard, like razors of ice.

The white horse of the Hunter fell through the sky like lightning, thunder shaking from its hooves, its dark eyes wild, and Jonas put his hand to its shoulder and vaulted onto its back, his shadow towering above him. The sword in his hand blazed, terrible and brilliant, and the mare flung up its head and leapt away into the storm. The thunder of its going shook stones from the tower. In front of him, running before the storm, the hounds cried; behind him thunder crashed, the sky tore open, and the rain came down in a blinding icy deluge.

He never looked back.