‘What did you see?’ he asked instead, lacing together his ink-stained fingers.
‘What you wanted me to. But there was more. When you first touched me, you hit me.’ Her hand moved automatically to her cheek.
He sighed. ‘You were trying to make me ill.’
‘I thought you might be ill because you were so thin. You used the image you allowed me to see to distract me.’
‘You are quicker than I thought. What do you think I saw?’
‘Something that frightened you,’ she said, leaning over the desk.
‘What could you do that would frighten a man such as myself?’
‘I might have been more powerful than you imagined. I might have connected myself to those you would use me to destroy. But it might not matter now what you saw. For the king is missing, and the reason you wanted me dead is now the reason you need me alive.’
He tapped his finger twice on the page before him, and a chair appeared beside her. She pulled it out slowly and sat down, folding her hands in her lap. ‘Where are the others?’ she asked, looking around the room beyond his desk. He stared at her and, despite her frustrations, Ana filled the silence. ‘You were seeking others with gifts as well.’
‘Perhaps I did not find any?’
Ana opened her mouth and then closed it. She hadn’t considered that she might be the only one, although she was sure Dray had said something. Or had it been the lord as the mage had held her face too tightly?
‘Perhaps I used them for something else,’ he said with a shrug. ‘What do you think I want?’ he asked.
‘Power. To be more than you are now. Although you claim to work for the king’s regent, to better his place in the world, I think you do far more to better your own.’
‘I’m an old man,’ he said with a laugh, leaning back from the book. ‘What could I get?’
‘A longer life, a more comfortable life, recognition through the ages.’
‘Truly? I don’t think any of these are important.’
‘But I am important enough to want dead, and now you think I can help you.’
‘You will, and the king is not important,’ he said.
‘What did you see?’ she asked, leaning forward.
‘Would you like me to take another look?’
Ana shook her head and stood. She needed to know why she was where she was, and if what this man had seen was anything like Ende’s idea of her. But she didn’t want him looking, in fear he might see something else. Something of Ed and Dray. She only hoped that they weren’t far away.
‘Why is the king not important?’ she asked, trying not to fidget with her sleeve. ‘He is the king.’
‘The boy doesn’t want the title, and he doesn’t care for the people. His uncle does. I need to help the people.’
Ana laughed easily at how serious he sounded. ‘You don’t care for the people. You could find the king,’ she said, leaning forward, ‘like you found me.’
‘I found your magic. The boy doesn’t have any magic, and so I cannot trace him.’
Ana wondered how right he might be. She didn’t want this man knowing the whereabouts of Ed or who he was with. But she needed to know he was safe. And if she could bring him to the castle like this man had magicked her, it might be easier. Although if she could find him, she wondered if she could bring the others too.
‘Tell me of the soldier,’ the mage asked, interrupting her thoughts.
‘What soldier?’
‘The one who threw himself across the Walk to save you.’
‘I asked and he acted.’ Ana tried to sound bored.
He stared at her, his sharp grey eyes trying to read her, and then his face relaxed and he leaned back. He nodded once. ‘Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know,’ she admitted.
‘Will he try to find you?’
‘We parted ways,’ she said.
He continued to watch her, Ana wondering if he could read her.
‘Can I try to find the king?’ she asked.
‘We might not want him found, but you could try. You will need something personal. I shall have the maid take you to his room.’
She nodded once and headed back into her room, wondering how he had come to have her coat. It had burned in the copper bowl, that must have been what he had used to find her. The idea of others with gifts niggled at her. Had he found any others? And if so, what had he used them for?
The maid knocked once and entered the room. She could learn something of etiquette herself, Ana thought. But then Ana wasn’t a lady of the castle; she was a prisoner of a kind. The maid held the door open and indicated out into the hallway. Ana nodded and moved into the dimly lit passageway. The soldier, someone she hadn’t seen before, bowed his head to her.
Ana had asked the maid’s name previously, but she wasn’t talkative, and Ana had stopped trying to bond with the girl. She might not be anyone important, but Ana was no longer a maid, no longer someone who could chatter and gossip. Ana followed the woman without a word as she led the way to Ed’s room, the guard keeping pace behind them.
As they made their way up through the castle, the hallways became lighter and wider. Soon they were passing more people in their travels, some of whom stopped to stare at her. But it wasn’t a lavish part of the castle. It reminded Ana of the hallways that led to the kitchens on Sheer Rock. This castle was much larger than the one she had grown up working in, and she longed for a chance to look over the city that surrounded it.
Their journey came to a stop at an ordinary door in the middle of a hallway. The maid nodded once to Ana as she stepped to the side. Ana opened the door herself, and what she saw took her breath away. He was treated as a boy—an insignificant boy—and she realised in that moment why he lacked the confidence he did. She closed the door quickly behind her and moved into the small space.
There was a narrow bed across the wall by the door, neatly made. On the opposite wall, a large desk sat beneath a window. She leaned over the desk and looked down at the stables. Her hands rested on the desk and the papers spread over it. They didn’t treat him as King. No wonder the people questioned not seeing him. He didn’t have the chance to know them or himself.
She looked down at the papers beneath her hands, and her eye caught the framed images of a woman and a man at the end of the desk. His parents, she thought, wondering if he had drawn them himself. She could see a similarity between him and his father, but there were elements he shared with his mother.
She sat down on the hard chair at the desk and picked up a sheet of paper. It appeared to be notes about the general history of the kingdom. She scanned through the other pages on the desk. On one she found notes about the stables, with a series of small strokes along the side of the page. Perhaps he was counting something, or watching the men she could now see moving around. She closed her eyes. He hadn’t taken a horse, instead walking most of the way to the mountains. Desperation had driven him to find Ende, although he hadn’t known whom or what he was trying to find.
If someone had taken the time to look at what he was doing, they might have realised his plans. If she looked now, would she discover where he was? Would that help either of them? She ran her fingers over the ink on the page, closed her eyes and tried to picture him. The sad boy she had first met, sitting at the table in the little cottage in the mountains, came into focus. She remembered sitting beside him, his strong hand in hers, calloused from sword use, shoulder to shoulder and his strong frame.
He isn’t a boy.
He hadn’t been a boy for a long time, yet the kingdom still thought of him as such. The regent the night before had talked about him coming of age. Surely, he was a man now. What age must he be? Had the regent convinced the people that he was younger than he truly was?
The room was a similar size to the one she had off the side of the mage’s work space. She wondered how he had felt living in such a small world. Even her cottage was larger. But he would not have been trapped here all day. He woul
d have had classes and the like, taking him around the castle.
She stood, the chair scraping across the floor as she tried to imagine Ed living in the room. She thought she had a good sense of him, and yet she couldn’t picture him here at all. Ana moved slowly to the bed and lay down, looking up at ceiling and imagining the loneliness he had grown up with. She only hoped he had more around him now to support him.
Closing her eyes, Ana tried to picture them all together. Ed and Belle and Dray. They would have made it back to the cottage by now, to Phillip and the general. She couldn’t quite focus on an image of Ende, who changed between the scaly red beast and the old man. Even when he was a man, she saw the dragon when she looked at him now, as the gwelka had.
Could that be why he avoided the capital? Had he left because they knew what he was and that was a danger to him? Or had the queen tried to protect him? Ana opened her eyes and glanced across at the image of her on the desk. She had been Ende’s friend, and the reason Ed had sought him out. She wondered just what he knew of the man, what he had been told.
She could hear shuffling in the hallway, so she closed her eyes and listened. The sound increased as she focused on it. She wondered what skills she could learn, whether she might have been able to listen to more if she had tried.
‘Why have you brought the witch up here?’ a man’s voice asked. An angry man, but it wasn’t a voice she knew. Not that she knew very many in the castle at all.
‘The mage directed her.’
‘Why is that man getting involved?’ There was more hatred than she expected in the voice.
She wondered if his anger was aimed at the missing king or those who had not watched over him as they should. This man might be an ally. She sucked in a breath and waited, but he didn’t open the door.
‘The mage is not someone to be queried,’ the maid said. Anna wondered for the first time why a maid would be questioned in such a manner and what she might know.
‘Does no one care where the boy is?’ the man asked, desperation in his tone. ‘Does no one want him returned?’
Ana stood slowly and opened the door. ‘The whole kingdom would want him returned,’ she said carefully. The older man beside the maid turned a hateful look towards her, glancing at her up and down. She stood rigid, holding tight to the door. He had a weathered face, like Dray’s in a way, and yet he was smaller, more sinew than muscle. ‘I am trying to find him,’ she said, looking back into the room and scanning the scant objects for something distinctly his. ‘He has his sword,’ she murmured, releasing the door, and the man was suddenly pushing her inside and closing the door behind him, leaning into it.
‘How do you know that?’
‘I saw it,’ she said carefully. These people thought she was a witch; she might be able to play on that fear to learn what she needed to find Ed.
‘The idiot,’ he murmured, looking down.
‘I do not think that an appropriate term for the king.’
He glanced up at her. ‘Where is he?’
She shook her head. ‘Far,’ she said. She didn’t know if she could trust this man, but then he might be someone who knew Ed better than others. ‘Does he know how to use the sword?’
‘Quite well,’ the man said with a sigh. ‘But I doubt he would have the courage to use it against another man.’
‘He had the courage to leave.’
‘That surprised me too. But did he?’ he asked, looking at her now. ‘Did he go willingly, or was he taken?’
‘Who would take him?’
‘The…’ He stopped and looked her over again. ‘You are quite young yourself,’ he said.
She raised her eyebrows. ‘A boy king and a girl witch, what a kingdom we have.’
He growled something under his breath that she couldn’t make out, and she waited. ‘Why are you here?’ he eventually asked.
‘In the castle? I was taken from where I was, unwillingly. Here in this room? To find Ed,’ she said, looking around again.
At the silence, she turned slowly, cursing herself at the easy slip of the tongue. The mage would find a better use for her if he found out their connection. She reached out a hand, unsure how to plead for this man’s silence when she didn’t know which side he stood on or whom he reported to. Too many could make false claims as to who they were, she realised, thinking of the gwelka. She gulped down a sudden fear that they might have all been eaten.
‘Where did you see him?’ he asked, stepping forward.
‘Who?’ she asked, looking around the room.
‘The king.’ He waited, and she turned back to his expectant face. ‘Edwin.’
She shrugged.
‘Why would you call him Ed?’
‘It was how he introduced himself,’ she said. ‘I don’t know where he is now. I want to find him, but I don’t know how.’
Now he raised his eyebrows. ‘I am Master Forest, Sword Master.’ He bowed, and she stepped back. ‘And you are?’
‘The witch,’ she muttered.
‘They have made it appear so. Who were you before then?’
‘Ana Merrin,’ she whispered.
‘Merrin?’ he asked, his voice loud as he stepped forward again. She backed into the desk, bumping it and knocking over the image of the queen.
She nodded.
‘Tevis Merrin?’
‘My father,’ she said, straightening. ‘You knew him?’
‘He’s dead?’
She nodded, and he surprised her by taking her hands. ‘When?’
‘Many years ago.’
‘Where did you meet the king?’
‘In the mountains.’
‘Edge Mountains? What was he doing all the way up there?’
‘Looking for help,’ she said, squaring her shoulders and pulling from his hold. ‘I don’t know you, sir, even if you knew my father. I am just a hideous witch.’ She turned away from him. ‘You cannot trust what I say.’
‘You are no witch,’ he said. ‘They may have made you look like one, and I’m sure you have gifts they want for themselves. You are so like your mother.’
‘I cannot remember her,’ she said, turning back to him.
‘You could be her,’ he said as he took her face in his hands.
‘How did you know them?’ she asked, pulling back and moving around the small room so he could not pin her against anything else.
‘I served together with your father in the King’s Men.’
She shook her head. ‘My father was no soldier.’
‘Long ago, the world was different.’
‘It has barely changed from my perspective,’ she said unkindly. ‘And what did you do, sir, to keep the king safe?’
‘I taught him all I could with a sword and his feet and his mind.’
‘Forest,’ she murmured, remembering the look on Belle’s face when she pointed out the king. Had they not seen who he was because they weren’t looking, or because he was better at hiding it than Ana had thought?
The man looked at her expectantly.
‘He introduced himself as Ed Forest.’
‘He might actually survive,’ the man said, sitting heavily on the bed. ‘If he can stay away.’
Ana shook her head. ‘He needs to claim what is his.’
‘His uncle will destroy him.’
‘Not if we protect him.’
‘You are a girl,’ he said too loudly. ‘What could you do to protect him?’
‘Maybe you are right,’ she said, giving the man a shallow curtsy. ‘He should stay lost.’ She pulled the door open and then stopped. Without glancing at the sword master, she returned to the desk, picked up the fallen image of the queen and then headed back out into the hallway.
‘I have all I need,’ she said to the maid, who glanced in at the sword master before she turned back in the direction they had come.
‘Wait,’ he called after her, but she continued forward, the maid unwavering in her pace and the guard behind. He might think Ed better off away from the c
astle, but Ana would find a way to reach him.
Chapter 30
Ende looked over the group before him and tried not to sigh out loud. This was a far cry from the soldiers he had travelled with previously. The captain might be worth something, and the boy could hold the sword, but he didn’t know whether he could actually use it.
‘We have a long way to go,’ he murmured.
Drayton looked at him expectantly, but he shook his head.
‘We need to be sure what we are going for.’
‘Ana,’ the king said without reservation.
Belle licked her lower lip and glared at him. ‘I thought you wanted to reclaim your crown.’
‘And that,’ he said, but he didn’t take his eyes from Ende.
‘I can only do so much for you,’ Ende said. ‘In many ways, you will need the girl. But long before we reach her, we need to make it through this kingdom alive. I have my doubts as to whether we can do that to any degree of competency.’
‘You think we are going to die.’ Belle scowled, and the king reached out to put a hand on her arm. She turned her glare on him, but the anger eased. ‘What can we do?’
Ende closed his eyes and tried not to sigh. He had no idea. There were not enough of them to make any real difference. He didn’t know if they should raise a force on their way or rely on the girl. He was certain she lived, but how well he couldn’t tell. And he couldn’t gauge whether her time alone with the mage, and possibly Prince Thom, might twist her as they had originally wanted. They would need to find a way to keep her on their side. But then, she didn’t yet have the control of her skills to do anything. He hoped.
‘Ende?’ the captain asked warily.
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted.
‘We are packed with provisions and have gold to buy more. Let us start this journey and find ourselves along the way,’ Phillip said, adjusting the pack on his back and striding out before the others. ‘I thank you, General, for your hospitality.’
The old man bowed his head. ‘I’m here when you need me,’ he said, looking at Ende.
The Empty Crown Page 20
