by Grace Martin
We didn’t come up with a complex idea. Neither of us could think of one. We came up with a simple idea. I would take Aine’s place and run away when she and Sir Cai were travelling after the wedding. Since I wouldn’t have my full magic back until the full moon after challenging the dragon and Aine still had her magic, Aine would change her form. She would be the horse I rode out on. Between us, we would get away from Sir Cai and be back home long before morning. It might be nice to spend a whole night sleeping in my lovely bed.
Aine was right that the Empress wasn’t going to let her out of her sight that day. We weren’t in Aine’s rooms for very much longer before the Empress called for her. I was very kindly included in the invitation. We went down to the throne room. There were still courtiers everywhere and I wondered if they were the same ones who were there this morning, or if they courtiered in shifts. The Empress was on her throne already, dressed again in gold silk. While the Empress’s face was far too hard to be beautiful, she must certainly have been striking when she was younger.
We both got a fanfare this time, Aine and I, as we entered the throne room. The courtiers moved out of our way so we had a clear path to the Empress. Standing at the foot of the dais was Sir Cai, an arrogant grin on his face. Aine’s steps faltered. I gripped her arm to stop her from stumbling and to keep her moving forward. The only way we were going to get her out of this was if we went along with it. We had no complex or covert plan. We planned to get through the rigmarole to allay suspicion and then run like hell.
Aine and I walked together towards the Empress and the knight. The Empress gestured for the pair of us to continue up the stairs. She rose as we approached her and took Aine’s cold hand from mine.
‘In this time of despair there is also joy!’ she announced. ‘Although we grieve the dreadful necessity that takes our beloved daughter Aoife from us, there yet remains joy and hope in life. Our daughter Aine has been betrothed to Sir Cai for some time, and in view of the terrible necessities and fears surrounding us at this time, we have decided that the best thing is to bring the wedding forward. Tonight, the Thousand Counties will rejoice. Princess Aine and Sir Cai will wed at sunset!’
The crowd cheered. This was what people saw: the pretty princess who kept her eyes downcast so that no one could see her tears; the handsome knight who grinned like he was the happiest man alive; the doting mother who wanted to give her daughter a beautiful wedding to give her joy in the midst of despair. There was nothing here to suggest that the ceremony tonight served the main purpose of allowing the knight to legally assault the princess. Nobody asked her opinion. Wasn’t she lucky to have such a handsome knight for a husband? Wasn’t she lucky to be a princess?
There are two kinds of luck, remember. She was very lucky indeed.
After the announcement the Empress took us back to the Council Chamber where the other two had wept on each other this morning. This time it wasn’t empty. All the chairs were occupied except for three that were very obviously for the Empress, Aine and me, and one chair in the centre of the room that looked very lonely.
We took our places. I looked around and suppressed a shudder when I realised that all the chairs were filled with Librarians. It looked so much like the creepyguardian meetings that it was all I could do not to run away. Hot Stuff ‒ Kiaran ‒ was there and he gave me a saucy look. I returned it with a haughty stare. I couldn’t run away now. Kiaran would laugh at me.
The Empress knocked a gavel against the block. ‘Bring in the first,’ she said.
A door opened and a young woman was dragged in by two of the Librarians’ guards. When she saw all of us waiting for her, she started shouting. ‘No!’ she cried. ‘Please, no! I don’t want to!’
Neither the guards, nor anyone else around the table, listened to her. They planted her in the chair, and when she bolted straight out of it, they struck her with an immobilising spell. I recognised the Librarian who rose to his feet as Garbhan. He had a wand in his hand and pointed it towards the girl.
‘We seek Umbra,’ Garbhan intoned. ‘Where is the wand, Umbra?’
The girl didn’t even have to speak. Every Librarian looked up at the ceiling and my mouth fell open when I realised that there was a scene playing out above us. It was like being present, it was so clear. We were looking out of someone’s eyes and it was so strange to watch the scene moving around without moving my head to look at something in particular, and when I did want to look at something in particular, I couldn’t change the field of vision.
We saw a battlefield. The girl must have been a Librarian, or at the very least, a mage, because she was defending herself magically. People were all around her and I couldn’t even tell who was a friend or a foe. I found myself moving in my chair to dodge the blows and lightnings aimed at the girl.
In the distance, there was a man riding a chariot pulled by a black Pegasus. He was dressed all in black and there was so much magic flying around him that it was all the Pegasus could do to keep the chariot steady. The Pegasus flew down towards the earth and landed. The man leaped out of the chariot and drew his sword. He fought another man, dressed in armour that didn’t look any different from any other person on the battlefield.
We couldn’t watch the two men fighting all the time. The girl whose eyes we were borrowing would look away for something trivial, like to save her own life, before we caught sight of the two men battling in the background. When we caught sight of them again it was clear that the man in black had slain the other. He leaned down to take something from the body. The man in black returned to his chariot and flew away. As he went, we could see that there was a boy crouched low in the chariot, holding a horn to his lips and sounding the retreat.
The scene stopped abruptly. I jerked back suddenly when a fist appeared out of nowhere and struck the viewer in the face.
I looked back down at the girl where she was now slumped in the chair. The immobility spell had worn off quickly, but the theft of her memories had drained her strength and she was now unconscious. All that kept her upright were the two guards holding her shoulders back against the chair.
‘That will be all,’ Garbhan said. ‘Bring in the next one.’
This one was an old man. I knew that there were several people in the room who could claim to be past their hundredth birthday, even if they didn’t appear to be old (I’m looking at you, Hot Stuff), but this man looked like he was old enough to have known Umbra personally.
He went obediently into the chair. I couldn’t tell if he went willingly, but he did what he was told. This time another Librarian rose to his feet and harvested the man’s memories.
The scene this time was a cottage, at night. We were low to the floor, like the viewer was sitting on a chair or was a child. An old man, as old as the man sitting in the chair today and bearing a striking resemblance to him lay on a bed and wheezed. The viewer turned to the side and there was a woman sitting on a chair beside the bed. The viewer leaned his head onto the woman’s lap and she stroked his hair and hummed a lullaby in a voice that broke with tears occasionally.
‘Tell me a story,’ said a childish voice, as we all looked up at the woman again.
The woman smiled through tears that slowly seeped from her eyes and kept stroking the boy’s hair. ‘Many, many years ago, before the Thousand Counties even existed, we were a kingdom called Ce’Maborann, ruled by a King and Queen who were cruel and hurtful to their subjects. The people were not safe and the King and Queen took delight in hurting them. Everyone was afraid and there was no one to save them.
‘Only one person stood up to save them, a young girl, whose name was Umbra. Umbra had powers like no other magi. They say that Umbra wasn’t born in Ce’Maborann. She was brought to this kingdom as a baby, carried on a streak of lightning. She was powerful, but the King and Queen harvested the young magi in their kingdom and their power was also immense.
‘Umbra confronted the King and Queen and defeated them, but at great personal cost. Her spirit was separated fro
m her body, but she did not die. She had promised to return, to save our kingdom again in its hour of greatest need. Umbra will come back to us, when we need her the most.’
The child stared up at the woman. ‘How can Umbra come back if her spirit has left her body?’ The gaze drifted to the old man, suffering so near by. ‘You said grandpa’s spirit would leave his body and he would die and wouldn’t be able to come back.’
The woman caught the child close for a bout of weeping. I found my own eyes stinging with tears. Not only had I never seen this man before in my life, I’d never had a grandfather or lost a relative before. Who could blame me, though, if I asked myself, who would hold my boy like that? Who would answer his questions? Who would show him what it’s like to love and be loved? I lowered my eyes, before the threat of tears was too much.
‘Umbra put her spirit into a crystal, my love. She was turned into a wand. From there, she promised to return and save us. But Umbra was lost, so many years ago.’
‘Where did Umbra go, Mummy?’
‘For many years, Umbra was kept safe by the Librarians.’ She looked at the old man lying in the bed, wheezing and awake and looking at the ceiling. ‘Umbra was the Library’s greatest treasure. She was choosy about who she allowed to use her power. Sometimes Umbra would sit, still and lifeless in the hand of the greatest mage. Other times Umbra would flame to the highest heavens in the hand of the least and youngest of the magi. No one could predict what Umbra would choose to do.’
She looked at the man on the bed. For a moment her face was tight and angry. He turned his face away. ‘Your grandfather was a servant in Cairnagorn. He heard Umbra calling to him. When he touched her, he experienced power like he had never known before. He did the wrong thing. You must know that Berne. Your grandfather did a terribly wrong thing that day, but he was still a little boy. He took the wand and left Cairnagorn. His family lived in Caillen at that time. When he went home, he used the wand to multiply the family’s treasures, used the wand to give them prosperity.’
Still facing the wall, the old man finally spoke up and continued the story his daughter had begun. ‘As I grew older, I used the wand to get whatever I wanted. I used the wand to defeat my enemies. I used the wand to become powerful in the land. I used the power of the wand to force the most beautiful woman in the Thousand Counties to be my bride. And that was when Umbra abandoned me.
‘I was so ashamed. I knew I’d done the wrong thing. Umbra was my friend and I had forced her to do things that made her so unhappy that she faded in my hand. I handed Umbra down to my son. He carried her into battle yesterday, but Umbra has done all that she will for this family and today your father’s body has been returned to us from the battlefield. Umbra is no longer with him.’
The little boy looked back at his mother and now that I knew what to look for, I could understand the grief and the shadows beyond it that I saw in her face. She wasn’t grieving the old man ‒ she was grieving her husband, and she was having a hard time forgiving the old man who had given her husband a useless talisman to carry into battle. A talisman that was worse than useless, because it made him a target.
The Librarian let the memory fade away. The guards carried the old man from the room.
The next memory was taken from a young man. He also needed to be carried into the room. He looked like he hadn’t been conscious for some time, but that was a mercy, because anyone who’d been beaten to a pulp like he had could only find escape in oblivion.
Kiaran harvested this memory. It took a moment to adjust to the different perspective ‒ an active man instead of a child. He was on a castle wall, pacing from side to side. Guarding. I never realised how often guards roll their eyes or took a long, slow blink. He looked out over long, rolling fields. It was beautiful and hard to imagine what danger might possibly come over such green grass.
Another guard came and the pair of them performed a complicated ritual to change over. When that was done, the other guard gave the viewer a broad grin. He was very handsome, dark haired, tall, broad and that rakish grin was damn nigh irresistible.
I cast a quick glance at Kiaran. I wondered if he realised that the guard relieving the viewer looked so much like him that they could be brothers. They both had the same suave smile, the same skin, the same lock of dark hair that flopped onto their foreheads and made feminine fingers itch to smooth it back.
The viewer walked away from the parapet, down a close spiral of stairs and through a courtyard much like the one in this palace. I suppose service areas are the same the world over. All that was really different was the banners on the flagpoles.
I’d spent time on both sides of the class divide and I knew that there was nothing that divided the rich from the poor like a staircase. Rich people go up a staircase lightly, one hand skimming the bannister. Poor people go up a staircase heavily, laden with things for the rich people who are skipping up the stairs ahead of them. And that was when they were allowed to use the same staircase.
Going upstairs is a good sign, in any case. Altitude is strongly correlated with class for some reason.
This guy went right to the top. He climbed so many stairs that if he wasn’t fit when he started the journey, he was fit when he finished. It was a fitness program in itself. He climbed to the top of a tower.
It was a study or a library, lined with books and with a plethora of strange objects on pedestals or half covered by piles of paperwork. A man was standing at a window, dressed in a dark robe that looked more like a comfortable garment than one with a mystical significance, secured with a wide leather belt instead of something fancier. The man at the window turned.
It was the man in black. I exchanged glances with Aine because the Empress wasn’t sharing. She kept her gaze fixed on the scene on the ceiling.
‘I’ve just been relieved, Father. You called for me?’ His voice was deep and pleasant, cheerful despite the fact that the father had summoned him up a nearly vertical staircase. I couldn’t speak for the other women in the room, but I noticed that he wasn’t at all out of breath and wondered how fit he actually was. I’m that shallow.
The man in black came over to the younger man and clapped him on the shoulder.
‘It’s good to see you, son. I’ve had some troubling news from the Thousand Counties. Come and read this message. Tell me what you make of it.’
The son followed the father and bent to read a letter on the desk. We read it with them. It surprised me when I realised that it had to be recent because it was about… me. It said that I had appeared out of nowhere, that I looked nearly identical to the twin princesses. It said that I had been named the Bach Chwaer and that the Empress was unusually attached to me. The son read the letter quickly and turned to his father.
‘What does this mean?’ the son asked.
The father sighed and sat down. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’ve read it twenty times or more by now and I still don’t know what it means. Who can she be? And as for that woman being unusually attached to her, if she shows any sign of affection at all, then that’s unusual enough, but according to all accounts she appears very affectionate with the girl.’
Beside me the Empress made an annoyed sound. I didn’t look at her because I might have rolled my eyes. I wasn’t the one who carried on like she was my long lost nearest relative.
The son’s viewpoint lowered, like he had just perched on the edge of the desk. His gaze dropped and he read the letter again.
‘Could she be some kind of imposter?’ he asked. ‘Someone who has changed her appearance somehow and is casting a spell on the Empress to gain her favour?’
‘Certainly not!’ It made me jump, and then want to giggle, because that was the Empress.
The father’s response was slower. ‘I can’t think of a way that would be possible, but we can’t rule it out. I have to wonder why she has appeared now. It is a strange co-incidence. Let me show you something, son.’
The father stood up and went to a cabinet in a bookcase. I
t held pride of place in the room despite the fact that it was only small, barely a foot square. The two little doors were lined with gold and their handles were made from rubies. This was a cabinet for a treasure.
The father took a key from a chain at his belt and opened the cabinet. Everyone in the council chamber drew in a deep breath, because there was Umbra. She was so small, the silver wand light and fine, the little amethyst crystal shining even when there was no light. I wanted to reach out and take hold of her because I could hear her singing my name.
‘Do you hear that?’ I whispered.
The Empress shook her head. ‘She only sings for you, Emer,’ she whispered in return.
I looked back up at the ceiling where Umbra was still sitting in a little stand inside the cabinet. She looked happy.
‘Do you see that glow?’ the father asked.
‘Yes,’ the son answered. There was a frown in his voice. ‘I have seen this wand before, Father, but never have I seen it glow.’
‘It started to glow when the Bach Chwaer first arrived in Meistria. It’s curious that it should coincide with the appearance of a mysterious young woman who rises so quickly to the position of Bach Chwaer, isn’t it?’
‘Indeed.’
The pair of them looked at Umbra for a long moment, before the father closed and locked the doors. ‘My son, I have a great favour to ask of you.’
‘Certainly.’ The reply was instant, and I wondered what it would be like to trust someone like that.
‘I need to know more about this young woman. I need to know where she came from. I need to know who she is. I need to know what she wants. And I cannot risk this information falling into the wrong hands. I need you to go into Rheged and find the truth for me. No one else can know that Umbra has responded to her presence or the war will escalate again.’ The father put his hand on the son’s shoulder and he looked into his eyes. ‘I don’t command you as your King, Gwydion. I ask you, humbly, as one man to another, will you do this for me?’
