Incarceron

by Catherine Fisher

  For the next few minutes he was sure that the roof was dipping so low that it would meet the floor and trap him; then, to his relief, the gap began to widen and at the same time tip leftward and slope more steeply. Finally he could rise to his knees without banging his head on the roof. "It opens ahead." His voice was hollow.

  "Wait there."

  Gildas fumbled. There was a loud crack and light hissed; one of the crude, smoking flares the Comitatus had used to signal distress. It showed Finn the Sapient lying flat on his stomach

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  dragging a candle from the pack. He lit it from the flare; as the spitting red light died, the small flames flickered, guttering in a draft from somewhere ahead.

  "I didn't know you'd brought those."

  "Some of us," Gildas said, "thought to bring more than garish clothes and useless rings." He cupped his hand around the flame. "Go quietly. Though whatever it is it will have already smelled and heard us coming."

  As if in answer, something rumbled ahead. A low grinding sound, sensed like a vibration under their splayed hands. Finn tugged the sword out and gripped it tight. He could see nothing in the blackness.

  He moved on, and the tunnel opened, became a space around him. In the flicker of the tiny candle flame he saw the ridged sides of the metal strata, outcrops of crystal quartzes, strange furrings of oxides that gleamed in turquoises and orange as the light edged past them. He pulled himself to hands and knees.

  Ahead, something moved. He sensed it rather than heard it, felt a draft of foul air that caught in the back of his throat. Very still, he listened, every sense straining.

  Behind him, Gildas grunted.

  "Keep still!"

  The Sapient cursed. "Is it here?"

  "I think so."

  He was becoming aware of the space. As he grew accustomed to the darkness, edges and facades of sloping rock began

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  to separate from shadows; he saw a pinnacle of scorched stone and realized with sudden shock that it was immense, and a long way off, and that the draft was a wind now, blowing in his face, a warm stench like the breathing of a great creature, a terrible acrid stink.

  And then in an instant of clarity he knew it was curled all around him, that the black, faceted rock face was its scabbed skin, the vast spurs of stone its fossilized claws, that he was in a cave formed by the ancient, scaly hide of some smoldering beast.

  He turned to yell a warning.

  But slowly, with a terrible creaking weight, an eye opened. A red eye, heavily lidded, bigger than he was.

  ***

  ALL THE way through the streets the noise was deafening. Flowers were flung constantly; after a while Claudia found herself flinching at the repeated thud and slither of the impact on the carriage roof and the scent of the crushed stems grew sweet and cloying. The climb was steep and she was tossed uncomfortably in the seat; beside her Jared looked pale. She took his arm. "Are you all right?"

  He smiled wanly. "I wish we could get out. Throwing up on the Palace steps won't make much of an impression."

  She tried to smile. Together they sat in silence as the carriage rumbled and clattered through the gateways of the Outer Citadel, under its vast defenses, through its courtyards and cobbled porticoes, and with each twist and turn, she knew

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  she was becoming ensnared deeper and deeper in the life that waited for her here, the mazes of power, the labyrinth of treachery. Slowly the raucous shouts faded; the wheels ran smoothly, and peeping around the curtain she saw that the road was lined with red carpet, expensive swathes of it, and all across the streets garlands of flowers hung and doves flapped between roofs and gables.

  There were more people up here; these were the apartments of the courtiers, the Privy Council and the Office of the Protocol, and the cheers were more refined, punctuated by bursts of music from viols and serpents and fife and drum. Somewhere ahead she could hear roars and clapping--Caspar was obviously leaning from the window of his coach to acknowledge his welcome home.

  "They'll want to see the bride," Jared murmured.

  "She's not here yet."

  A silence. Then she said, "Master, I'm afraid." She felt his surprise. "I am, truly. This place scares me. At home, I know who I am, what to do. I'm the Warden's daughter, I know where I stand. But this is a dangerous place, full of pitfalls. All my life I've known it was waiting for me, but now I'm not sure I can face it. They'll want to absorb me, make me one of them, and I won't change, I won't! I want to stay me."

  He sighed, and she saw his dark gaze was fixed on the veiled window. "Claudia, you're the bravest person I know."

  "I'm not..."

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  "You are. And no one will change you. You will rule here, though k won't be easy. The Queen is powerful, and she will envy you, because you're young and you'll take her place. Your power is as great as hers."

  "But if they send you away ..."

  He turned. "I won't go. I am not a brave man, I understand that. Confrontation disturbs me; one look from your father and I'm chilled to the bone, Sapient or not. But they can't make me leave you, Claudia." He sat upright, away from her. "I have looked death in the face for years now, and that gives some sort of recklessness, at least."

  "Don't talk about that."

  He shrugged gently. "It will come. But we mustn't think so much of ourselves. We should consider whether we can help Finn. Give me the Key and let me work on it a little more. It has complexities I've barely guessed at yet."

  As the coach joked over a threshold she took it from her hidden pocket and gave it to him, and as she did so the wings of the eagle deep in the crystal flickered, as if it flapped them and took off. Jared pulled back the curtain quickly, and the sun caught the gleaming facets.

  The bird was flying.

  It was flying over a dark landscape, a charred plain. Far below, a chasm gaped in the earth, and the bird swooped and plummeted inside, twisting sideways into the narrow crack, making Claudia hiss with fear.

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  The Key went black. One single red light pulsed in it.

  But even as they stared at it the coach rumbled to a halt, the horses stamping and blowing, and the door was flung open. The Warden's shadow darkened the threshold. "Come, my dear," he said quietly. "They're all waiting."

  Without looking at Jared, without even letting herself think, she stepped out of the coach and drew herself upright, her arm in her father's.

  Together, they faced the double row of applauding courtiers, the splendor of silk banners, the great stairway leading upward to the throne.

  Sitting on it, resplendent in a silver gown with vast ruff, sat the Queen. Even from this distance the redness of her hair and lips were evident, the radiance of the diamonds at her neck. Behind her shoulder, a scowling presence, stood Caspar.

  The Warden said calmly, "The smile, I think."

  She put it on. The bright, confident smile, as false as everything in her life, a cloak over the coldness.

  Then they walked steadily up the stairs.

  ***

  IT WASthe ironic stare of his nightmares and he recognized it, his voice hoarse. " You? "

  Behind, he heard Gildas's gasp. "Strike at it. Strike, Finn!"

  The Eye was aswirl. Its pupil was a spiral of movement, a scarlet galaxy. All around it, heaving itself up, the darkness convulsed, and he saw the vast hide of the Beast was studded with objects,

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  bits of jewelry, bones, fragments of rags, shafts of weapons. They were centuries old; skin and hide had grown over them. With a tearing and cracking an outcrop of dark faceted rock became its head and reared up over him; spurs of metal slid out like claws, grasping the shuddering tilting floor of the cavern.

  Finn couldn't move. Dust and fumes clouded over him.

  "Strike!" Gildas grabbed his arm.

  "Its useless. Can't you see ...?"

  Gildas gave a roar of anger, snatched the sword from him, and thrust it into the clotted hide
of the Beast, leaping back as if he expected blood to cascade out in a great gout. Then he stared, seeing what Finn had seen.

  There was no wound. The hide opened and dissolved, absorbed the blade, reassembled around it. The Beast was a composite creature, a grinding, swift formation of millions of beings, of bats and bones and beetles, dark clouds of bees, an ever-changing kaleidoscope pattern of rock fragments and metal shards. As it turned and rose into the roof of the chamber, they saw that over the centuries it had absorbed all the terror and the fear of the City, that all the Tribute sent out to placate it had been absorbed, eaten, had only made it grow huger. Somewhere inside it were the billions of atoms of the dead, of the victims and the children dragged out here by decree of the Justices. It was a magnetized mass of flesh and metal, its crumbling tail studded with fingernails and teeth and talons.

  It stretched out its head above them and leaned down,

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  bringing the great red Eyes close to Finn's face, making his skin scarlet, his shaking hands look as if they were red with blood.

  "Finn,'' it said, in a voice of deep pleasure, a throaty treacle of huskiness. "At last."

  He stepped back, into Gildas. The Sapient's hand gripped his elbow. "You know my name."

  "I gave you your name." Its tongue flickered in the dark cavern of its mouth. "Gave it long ago, when you were born in my cells. When you became my son."

  He was shuddering. He wanted to deny it, shout Out, but no words would come.

  The creature tipped its head, studying him. The long muzzle, dripping bees and scales, fragmented into a cloud of dragonflies and re-formed again. "I knew you'd come," it said. "I've been watching you, Finn, because you are so special. In all the entrails and veins of my body, in all the millions of beings I enclose, there is no one quite like you."

  The head zoomed closer. Something like a smile formed and broke. "Do you really think you can escape from me? Do you forget that I could kill you, shut down light and air, incinerate you in seconds?"

  "I don't forget," he managed to say.

  "Most men do. Most men are content to live in their prison and think it is the world, but not you, Finn. You remember about me. You look around and see my Eyes watching you, in those nights of darkness you called out to me and I heard you ..."

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  "You didn't answer," he whispered.

  "But you knew I was there. You are a Starseer, Finn. How interesting that is."

  Gildas pushed forward. He was white, his sparse hair wet with sweat. "Who are you?" he growled.

  "I am Incarceron, old man. You should know. It was the Sapienti who created me. Your great, towering, overreaching endless failure. Your nemesis." I zigzagged closer, its mouth wide so that they could see the rags of cloth that hung there, smell the oily, oddly sweet stench of k. "Ah, the pride of the Wise. And now you dare to seek a way free of your own folly."

  It slid back, the red Eyes narrowing to slits. "Pay me, Finn. Pay me as Sapphique paid. Give me your flesh, your blood. Give me the old man and his terrible desire for death. Then perhaps your Key may open doors you do not dream of"

  Finn's mouth was dry as ash. "This isn't a game."

  "No?" The Beast's laugh was soft and slithering. "Are you not pieces on a board?"

  "People." His anger was rising. "People that suffer. People you torment."

  For a moment the creature dissolved to clouds of insects. Then they clotted in abrupt gargoyles, a new face, serpentine and sinuous. "I'm afraid not. They torment each other. There is no system that can stop that, no place that can wall out evil, because men bring it in with them, even in the children. Such men are beyond correction, and it is my task only to

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  contain them. I bold them inside myself. I swallow them whole."

  A tentacle lashed out and around his wrist. "Pay me, Finn."

  Finn jerked back, glanced at Gildas. The Sapient looked shrunken, his face drawn as if all his dread had fallen on him at once, but he said slowly, "Let it take me, boy. There's nothing for me now."

  "No." Finn stared up at the Beast, its reptilian smile inches from him. "I've already given you one life."

  "Ah. The woman." The smile lengthened. "How her death tears at you. Conscience and shame are so rare. They interest me."

  Something in its smirk made him catch his breath. A jolt of hope hurt him; he gasped, "She's not dead! You caught her, you stopped her fall! Didn't you? You saved her."

  The red spiral winked at him. "Nothing is wasted here," it murmured.

  Finn stared, but Gildas's voice was a growl in his ear. "It's lying, boy."

  "Maybe not. Maybe ..."

  "It's playing with you." Sour with disgust, the old man stared at the swirling confusion of the Eye. "If it is true we made such a thing as you, then I'm ready to pay for our folly."

  "No." Finn grabbed him tight. He slid a dull circle of silver from his thumb and held it up, a glittering spark. "Take this for your Tribute instead, Father?'

  It was the skull-ring. And he was beyond caring.

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  21

  ***

  I have worked for years in secret to make a device that is a copy of the one Outside. Now it protects me. Timon died last week and Pela is missing in the riots, and even though

  I am hidden here in this lost hall, the Prison searches for me. "My lord" it whispers, "I feel

  you. I feel you crawl on my skin."

  --Lord Calliston's Diary

  ***

  The Queen rose graciously.

  In the porcelain whiteness of her face her strange eyes were clear and cold. "My dear, dear, Claudia."

  Claudia dropped a curtsy, felt the whisper of a kiss on each cheek, and in the tight grip of the embrace sensed the thin bones of the woman, the small frame inside the boned corset and huge hooped skirts.

  No one knew Queen Sia's age. After all, she was a sorceress. Older than the Warden perhaps, though beside her he was grave and dark, his silvered beard meticulous.

  Brittle or not, her youth was convincing; she looked barely older than her son.

  Turning, she led Claudia in, sweeping past Caspar's sullen

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  stare. "You look so pretty, my sweet. That dress is wonderful. And your hair! Now tell me, is that natural or do you have it colored?"

  Claudia breathed out, already irritated, but there was no need to answer. The Queen was already talking about something else. "... and I hope you won't consider that too forward of me."

  "No," Claudia said blankly into a second of silence.

  The Queen smiled. "Excellent. This way."

  It was a double wooden door and was flung open by two footmen, but when Claudia was inside, the doors closed and the whole tiny chamber moved soundlessly upward.

  "Yes I know," the Queen murmured, holding her close. "Such a breach of Protocol. But it's only for me, so who's to know?"

  The small white hands were so tight on her arm, she could feel the nails digging in. She was breathless, as if she had been kidnapped. Even her father and Caspar were left behind.

  When the doors opened, the corridor that stretched before her was a vision of gilt and mirrors; it had to be three times the size of the house at home. The Queen led her along it by the hand, between vast painted maps that showed every country in the Realm, adorned in their corners with fantasies of curling waves and mermaids and sea monsters.

  "That's the library. I know you love books. Caspar, unfortunately, is not so studious. Really, I don't know if he can read at all. We won't go in."

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  Escorted firmly past, she looked back. Between each map stood a blue and white china urn that could have hidden a man, and the mirrors reflected each other in such sunlit confusion that she suddenly had no idea where the corridor ended or if it ever did. And the small white figure of the Queen seemed repeated before her and behind and to the side, so that the dread Claudia had felt in the coach seemed to be concentrated in that swift, unnaturally young strid
e, that sharp, confiding voice.

  "And this is your suite. Your father is next door."

  Immense.

  A carpet her feet sank into, a bed so canopied with saffron silk, she felt it would drown her.

  Suddenly she pulled her hand from the Queen's and stood back, knowing the trap. Knowing she was caught in it.

  Sia was silent. The empty chatter was gone. They faced each other.

  Then the Queen smiled. "You will not need to be warned, I'm sure, Claudia. John Arlex's daughter will be well trained, but I suppose it won't hurt to tell you that many of the mirrors are double sided and the listening devices all over the Palace are most efficient." She stepped closer. "You see, I have heard you were recently a little curious about dear lost Giles."

  Claudia kept her face perfectly composed, but her hands were icy. She glanced down. "I've thought about him. If things had been different..."

  "Yes. And we were all devastated by his death. But even if

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  the Havaarna Dynasty is over, the Realm must be governed. And I have no doubt, Claudia, that you will do it very well."

  "Me?"

  "Of course." The Queen turned and sat elegantly on a gilt chair. "Surely you know Caspar is incapable even of ruling himself? Come and sit here, my sweet. Let me advise you."

  Surprise was freezing her. She sat.

  The Queen leaned forward, her red lips making a coy smile. "Now, your life here can be a very pleasant one. Caspar is a child--let him have his toys, horses, palaces, girls, and he will make no trouble. I have made quite sure he knows nothing about politics. He gets bored so easily! You and I can have such a pleasant time, Claudia. You have no idea how tiresome It gets with just these men."

  Claudia stared at her hands. Was this real, any of it? How much of it was the game?

  "I thought..."

  "That I hated you?" The Queen's giggle was girlish. "I need you, Claudia! We can rule together, and you'll be so good at it! And your father will smile his grave smile. So." Her small hands tapped Claudia's. "No more sad thoughts about Giles. He's in a better place, my dear."

  Slowly, she nodded and stood, and the Queen stood too, with a rustle of silk.