The Wildkin’s Curse (21 page)

T
HE ROYAL PALACE OF
Z
ARISSA SOARED AGAINST THE SKY
, built high on an immense headland surrounded on three sides by wild seas. The palace seemed to be made of pure crystal that glittered and shone in the sunset, reflecting the flaming colours of the streaming clouds.

Merry stood on the ship's deck, the ferret clinging to his shoulder, staring up at the palace in utter amazement. His companions clustered around him, all with the same astonished expressions on their faces.

Zakary yawned ostentatiously. ‘Zed, darling, do
try
not to look such a rustic. One should always endeavour to look bored.'

Zed ignored him. ‘Look at how it shines! How on earth did they ever build it? You'd think all that glass would break.'

‘It's built with foundations of stone and a framework of steel,' Zakary said, inspecting his nails. ‘An engineering marvel, I believe.'

‘Is that the wildkin's tower, that tall one there? How high is it?' Liliana asked.

‘Twelve storeys high, I believe,' Zakary replied. ‘The tallest building in all of Ziva. When a strong wind blows, it sways. I'd not like to be up there today. This wind is such a bother! I cannot put my parasol up.'

‘The wind got us here nice and quick,' Liliana pointed out, rather smugly. ‘It's been a record trip! More than a thousand miles in only eleven days.'

The ship came round the headland, which rose more than nine hundred feet into the air, a massive jumble of rocks at its base. The mouth of the harbour was only narrow, guarded on the far side by another tall headland, with steep stone cliffs rising high all around in a half-circle, the sharp peaks of the mountains behind wrapped in gloomy clouds.

The roots of the cliffs were buried in an ancient forest, as dark and mysterious-looking as the Perilous Forest, so many miles behind them. A tall stone wall divided the city from the forest, which lapped at the base of the escarpment on which the palace was built. A road climbed out of the forest and zigzagged up the steep slope to an immense gatehouse at the top.

A breakwater had been built out from the base of the smaller headland, creating a large harbour protected from the rough waves of the wild sea beyond. The harbour was another forest, this time of bristling masts, some flowering with white sails that billowed with the force of the wind. Ships of all shapes and sizes sheltered within the stone arms of the harbour, rocking on the whitecaps that raced under their hulls.

Behind the rows of wharves were warehouses and shops and marketplaces and houses all built higgledy-piggledy on top of each other, spires and turrets and steep gables jutting in all directions and hazed with smoke from the thousands of tall chimneys. Merry wondered how many people lived in there, and where they grew their crops and grazed their animals, for on the eastern side of the wall there was not a hint of greenery, only grimy stone walls and tiled roofs, while on the western side the forest grew dense and wild, looped with vines and flowering creepers.

‘Look at all the pelicans,' Merry said, nudging Liliana with his elbow. They looked across the harbour where a line of pelicans floated serenely, their bills tucked down into their chests, their feathers ruffled by the cold wind.

‘They're always in a crowd,' Liliana said. ‘I wonder if that's a family or just a group of friends.'

‘How on earth are we meant to get a feather from them?' Zed murmured. ‘They'll fly away as soon as we get near.'

‘We need to contact that friend of Briony's,' Merry replied, keeping his voice low and his words cryptic, in case anyone should be listening. It was hard to have a private conversation with so many people crowded all around them.

‘We've got almost a week until the spring equinox,' Liliana replied. ‘Lucky, that.'

‘Fancy the wind blowing in just the right direction all that time,' Merry mocked.

‘Fancy!'

‘Look at all the flags fluttering in the wind,' Priscilla said.

‘Why are they all at half-mast?' Count Zygmunt wondered.

‘And I can hear bells,' Priscilla said.

They all fell silent and listened. Across the water came a great clamour of bells, peal after peal after peal, never ceasing.

‘It's chain ringing,' Merry said, his heart beginning to sink. ‘In reverse. The bells are announcing a death.' He had lived with his grandfather, the bellringer of Levanna-On-The-Lake, until Johan's death when Merry was nine. He knew all too well the sombre pattern of the peals, one stroke on each of the eight great bells, from smallest to largest, till the finale, when all the bells were rung together. Again and again the pattern was repeated, and would be until sunset on the day of the funeral.

‘Who? Who has died? Can you tell?' Everyone spoke at once.

‘The city bells would only be rung so for someone important,' Merry said, his chest hurting. He pressed both fists against his heart. Tom-Tit-Tot wrapped himself more tightly about Merry's neck, trembling with fear.

‘The king?' Zakary demanded. ‘Could it be for the king?'

Merry nodded, and watched with interest how Zakary had to fight to hide his smile.

As the
Wind Dancer
glided in to the jetty, the clanging of the bells became unbearable. Merry saw that people were standing everywhere in groups, their faces shocked and afraid. Most were dressed in vivid ruby-red, the starkin colour of mourning. The hearthkin serfs, labouring among the wharves and warehouses, all had red cloths binding their arms.

‘And I have no red clothes packed!' Zakary said. ‘Whatever shall we do? We must visit my tailor at once!'

‘I wonder what this means for us?' Zed said in a low voice to Merry and Liliana. ‘Is this good news or bad news?'

‘Let us find out first exactly what the news is,' Merry said grimly.

The ship came in to the wharf and was securely tied by thick ropes at bow and stern. Immediately people began to shout and wave, holding up baskets of bruised-looking fruit, or trays of cheap trinkets, or thin, wailing babies. Ribs showed through the rents in their rags, and their bare knees and elbows were sharp and knobbly. The whites of their eyes looked yellow, and their mouths showed black gaps instead of teeth.

Zakary held an apple studded with cloves to his nose. ‘Best tell your guards to draw their swords,' he advised Count Zygmunt. ‘And everyone, hold on to your purses.'

‘What is wrong with them?' Priscilla asked. ‘Are they sick?'

‘No doubt,' Zakary replied.

‘Sick and hungry, I'd say,' Count Zygmunt replied, and began to wave his steward forward.

Zakary laid one white hand on his wrist. ‘Do not give them money,' he warned. ‘Your purse is not deep enough, and there are ten thousand more than these you see here. We'll be torn to pieces if we show even a glint of gold.'

‘But they're starving,' the count protested.

Zakary shrugged. ‘You cannot feed them all, and anyone you give money to will be killed for it. Each day, at sunset, the palace throws out its garbage for the crowds to pick over. If you're feeling charitable, you can pay for a few extra buckets to be tossed out then.'

Count Zygmunt looked distressed, but he did not throw out gold coins as he had done in Hespera, and again at the harbour town in Rigella. The soldiers all beat the crowd back with the flats of their swords, and Merry and his friends hurried through, averting their eyes from stick-thin limbs, distended bellies, desperate eyes and outreaching hands.

Inside the customs house, bored-looking officials sat behind massive registers, writing down the names and business of all who disembarked in tiny, cramped writing, dipping the black-stained nibs of their quills in enormous ink pots. Count Zygmunt's steward slipped one of the officials a gold coin to hasten matters along, while the count and his retinue waited nearby.

‘What has happened? Why are the bells ringing?' Merry asked a porter trundling a barrow piled high with luggage.

‘His Royal Highness, Prince Zander, is dead,' the porter answered, leaning wearily on the handles of his barrow. ‘He was killed three nights ago, burned up by his own fusillier fire. He's being buried this evening, what little there is left of him.'

‘The prince? The prince is dead?' Count Zygmunt sat down on one of his trunks. ‘But how could this be? What happened? Surely . . . surely it was not . . .' He could not bring himself to voice the sudden suspicion that the prince had been killed by rebel forces within his own regiment. Everyone knew that the crown prince was hated and feared, but it seemed impossible that his own men would dare turn against him.

The porter pushed his cap to the back of his head. ‘It was the Hag.'

‘The Hag!' several voices cried at once.

Merry sat down abruptly.

‘Apparently the prince had been hunting her for the last few weeks. She'd rescued a prisoner the Count of Hespera had nailed to the stocks, and for once left a trail the prince could follow. He chased her all the way into Mistrala and thought he had her trapped there with her back to the sea.'

The porter paused to push back his hat, scratching his head and continuing with a look of wonderment on his face, ‘She has some tricks up that sleeve of hers, you have to give her that.'

‘Why, what did she do?' Zed demanded.

‘She sent a message to the prince, telling him that she would not kill him if he agreed to lay down his weapons and meet her to talk about the rebels' demands. He agreed, and so the Hag and all her followers rode up from the beach.'

Merry felt as if his body was made of twigs, bent to breaking point. He felt both Liliana and Zed look at him with concern, but he could not meet their gaze. All he could think, irrationally, was,
I hate it when they call her the Hag. She's not ugly. She's beautiful.

‘It's so terrible,' Priscilla sighed, sitting down next to her uncle, her face pale under her veil. Annie quickly caught up the fur muff her mistress had let fall to the ground.

‘So what happened?' Count Zygmunt asked, a furrow between his brows. ‘Tell us everything.'

‘Well, the prince and his men fired on her, of course. They were on the top of the headland, in what they thought was a commanding position. Only thing is . . .'

‘But . . . they promised . . . no weapons . . .' Merry was so sick with terror for his mother he could barely frame the words.

‘Well . . . you can't expect the prince to parley with rebels and traitors,' the porter said, looking about uneasily.

‘Did he not give his word of honour?' Count Zygmunt asked.

‘Well, yes . . . but . . . it's not for me to say . . .' the porter stammered.

‘So what happened?' Liliana demanded.

‘Well, it turns out this headland was the windiest place in Mistrala, which is of course the windiest land in all of Ziva. It was just on sunset, when the wind springs up even stronger, and so when the prince and all his men fired, well, their flame was just blown back into their own faces. They didn't stand a chance.'

‘So he died by his own hand, just as Princess Rozalina predicted,' Liliana said slowly.

‘Well, I wouldn't like to say that,' the porter said, looking furtively from side to side. ‘But there is one odd thing . . .'

‘What?' Zed asked.

‘Well, I heard this from someone who has a neighbour who knows someone who's a healer. They were called to the palace to look after those what survived, not that there were many of
them
. Anyway, apparently the Hag flew away afterwards on the back of a grogoyle. The thing is, if she's got a grogoyle now, why didn't she just flame the prince to death in the first place?'

‘The rebels do not murder people, they only do what they can for the poor and suffering,' Count Zygmunt said, looking out through the windows to the crowd of beggars thronging around the customs house. ‘The only time any of the rebels have ever killed is in self-defence, or while rescuing one of their own.'

‘Is that so?' the porter asked in interest.

‘My dear Count Zygmunt, have you been listening to rebel propaganda?' Zakary asked. ‘Next you'll be telling me the hearthkin serfs
want
to be free of our king's benevolent rule.'

Merry was barely listening. All he could think of was how he had told his mother about the wind that Liliana had summoned at Stormfell Castle, killing a soldier with his own fusillier fire. Mags had then told him to encourage Liliana to call up a wind to speed their passage. For eleven days now, this strong, steady, powerful breeze had been blowing their ship up the coast of Ziva, straight past Mistrala and the headland where the prince had died.

Did she kill the prince on purpose? To make me the king's heir?

The very thought made him feel sick and faint. He leant forward, letting his head hang down, trying to breathe. His chest hurt. He reminded himself that the prince and his men had fired their fusilliers after a parley had been declared, and that they should have felt the wind blowing in from the sea. It was stupid and arrogant of them, he decided, and felt a little better.

‘What about the rebels?' Zed asked, with a quick concerned glance at Merry. ‘Were any of them killed or captured?'

‘Not one,' the porter replied. ‘They all escaped.'

Merry let out his breath in a long sigh.
Thank Liah
.

‘At least until the king tracks the rebels down. He'll never forgive them the death of his son and heir,' Zakary said in a bored voice, examining his nails which he had painted blue and silver in stripes to match his silk coat. ‘I would not like to be that Hag when he catches up with her. He'll have her head nailed above the city gate.'

Merry clenched his fists till the knuckles were white.