Infinity tcon-3

by Andria Buchanan

  “What is she doing here?” the Fate Maker snapped. “She’s supposed to be locked in the highest room of the tower, not roaming the halls.”

  “And you’re supposed to be trapped in the in-between,” I gasped as I pressed farther back against the wall, desperately wishing I still had my sword. “I locked you inside the Bleak.”

  “Is this your queen?” the blond man walking beside the Fate Maker asked.

  I glanced over at the man, the Fate Maker’s exact opposite in every way. Where the Fate Maker was tall, dark, and menacing, with glowing eyes, the man beside him was short—not even as tall as my own five feet six inches—and pudgy with small brown eyes and an upturned nose that made him look more than a bit like an overgrown pug.

  “Who are you?” I asked, looking between him and the wizard I’d banished into the Bleak ten months before.

  “Rannock, Prince Consort to her Graciousness, the Night Lily of Bathune, the great and powerful Empress Bavasama, Ninth of her Name. Oh, and I’m also the Grand Vizier, of course. Charmed, I’m sure.”

  “Not in the slightest,” I said, not taking my eyes off the Fate Maker.

  “Really?” Rannock asked. “I’m rather charmed to meet you. Any queen with the guts to trap a wizard like Piotr in the in-between not once but twice? If you weren’t standing in the way of my empress’s throne, I’d be impressed. Now, why are you in the South Tower instead of shackled to a wall at the top of the North Tower?”

  “Sire—” Mikhail started.

  Rannock glanced over at the young man standing beside me and frowned when he caught sight of Mikhail’s burned, twisted hand. “Ah, that’s not good. What have I told you about touching magical elements, boy? Never a good thing. It always leads to trouble, and any idiot would have known that a crown would have protections on it. I would heal you, but perhaps it’s better to let you learn from your mistakes.”

  “But—” Mikhail looked at him, his eyes wide, and Rannock grabbed the wounded hand, squeezing it.

  “Perhaps the wound will remind you not to mess with things you don’t have the power to control. Now hush,” Rannock ordered before he snapped his fingers and Mikhail’s mouth shut, his teeth snapping together with a loud click.

  “Piotr,” Rannock said, snapping his fingers at the Fate Maker this time. “See her back to her cell—if you don’t mind, my friend—while I deal with my disobedient Hound.”

  Mikhail let out a muffled yell from behind his closed lips, his eyes wide with fear.

  “Come along, Your Majesty.” The Fate Maker reached for my arm, and I jerked away.

  “No. Not until I see Jesse and make sure he’s okay.”

  “I said, come along.” He got a grip on my sleeve and pulled me after him as he hurried down the hall, dragging me as he went.

  “Stop it!” I tried to pull away, but he just kept dragging me down the corridor.

  There was a sharp clap behind us and then a loud scream that morphed first into a howl and then the high-pitched whimper of a dog.

  “What was that?” I tried to look over my shoulder but couldn’t see anything as the Fate Maker turned into the North Tower and began to pull me up the stairs.

  “Punishment. Now keep moving. Rannock gets a bit twitchy after he’s performed black magic. You don’t want him to decide to test some of his newer spells on you.”

  “So what are you doing? Protecting me from him?”

  “Yes.” The Fate Maker’s voice was tight as he hurried up the stairs until we reached the top. He brought his hand up, and the heavy brown door flew open, smacking against the wall inside. “In.”

  “No.”

  “In.” He wrapped his hands around my waist and tossed me into the room hard enough that I lost feeling in my legs when my butt hit the floor. “Stay here, and stay quiet. Don’t give Bavasama or anyone else here any more reasons to kill you.”

  I pushed myself up onto my feet. “Why are you trying to protect me?”

  “Because I want you alive.”

  “Why? You’ve suddenly decided to become a hero or something?”

  “Hardly.” He snorted and then stepped into the room, closing the door behind him. “If this were a fairy tale from your world, I’d be the very worst villain you could possibly imagine. The one that made all the other villains cry and run back to their mothers.”

  “Well, that’s where you’re wrong,” I said. “This world started out as a book of fairy tales. A book you trapped us inside, remember?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Your Majesty. The Chronicles of Nerissette weren’t meant to be fairy tales. Fairy tales end with happily ever after. And, if I were you, I wouldn’t hold my breath for that.”

  “So if you’re such a villain, why are you trying to help me?”

  “I’m not trying to help you.” The Fate Maker stepped closer. “I’m just making sure that, when the time comes, I’m the one who gets to kill you. After all, I need your soul.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How do you think I got out of the Bleak?” he taunted. “Kuolema doesn’t just let his prisoners go for free. I had to promise him a soul in return for my release, and I figured why not give him yours? No sense in it going to waste after I’ve killed you and taken your throne.”

  He swept out of the room and let the door slam closed behind him without looking back. I could hear him laughing as he walked away.

  I stood there, staring at the door, trying to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do now. Because if the Fate Maker was here, then things had just gone from bad to really bad. And I didn’t even want to think about how much worse it was going to be when Kuolema showed up, wanting the soul I wasn’t quite done with yet.

  Chapter Twenty

  I walked over to the door and beat on it, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good. I was a prisoner, but I couldn’t just sit there doing nothing. I had to find a way out, to keep fighting until my army could get there. It didn’t matter what I did, I just had to do something. Even if it was just escaping long enough to figure out the layout of the castle so I could get Heidi and Jesse out safely once my army arrived and the fighting started.

  I slammed my shoulder against the door, more out of frustration than any real hope of breaking it down, and then slouched over to the window. Enough sulking and beating myself up—I was trapped, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t be useful. I just had to be smart enough to find a way to save my people while locked inside a tiny cell.

  I pulled open the shutters on the inside of the window and looked at the bars blocking the way out, each piece of iron less than six inches apart. I grabbed the bars on my window and pressed myself against the wall, looking out at the castle keep beyond. I could see a small group of soldiers marching back and forth across the courtyard while men were play fighting with wooden swords in another area, swinging and ducking as their opponents pretended to attack them.

  The sounds of men barking orders and the rattle and groan of heavy metal weapons filled the courtyard. I pushed my face closer to the bars, trying to see what they were hauling forward to defend their walls.

  “Heave, you weaklings!” a rough, male voice yelled. “Heave or we’ll throw you in the pots to check the temperatures first. Heave! That pitch won’t float up these walls.”

  I felt my stomach clench. They were hoisting bucket loads of pitch to the top of the wall. Possibly cauldrons full. Boiling oil to pour on my army as it tried to siege the Palace of Night’s walls. That wasn’t good.

  “Keep those nets loose, boys. Don’t want them tangled,” another voice shouted.

  I turned to watch as a young man laid out roughly woven nets and then carefully rolled them into large balls. Once the nets were balled up, another man in black robes lifted his hands and began to chant over the mess of rope. I watched as they started to glow a dull, blue-black color. When the wizard was done with his spell, he dropped his hands and stepped back, motioning for the younger men to step forward again. I watched as each boy picked up a
long stick and began to push the still glowing net-balls to rest against a large wooden catapult.

  I swallowed convulsively, my stomach turning as I realized that the men had been making ammunition. The nets weren’t just regular nets. They were nets meant to bring down dragons—they had to be—and I’d have bet every book in my library that the spell the wizard had placed on them would be exceptionally nasty.

  I needed to come up with a plan. When the army attacked, I needed a way to get not only myself free but Heidi and Jesse as well. While the army was distracted, we’d need to find a way out, a way past those soldiers in the courtyard.

  My shoulders slumped, and I shoved my hands in my pockets, staring at the room around me. If only I had a sword, I thought to myself. Or the Relics. Anything that would help me fight back from inside the palace. Not that the Relics had turned out to be much good so far. The Dragon’s Tear imprisoned my enemy in the in-between, but it was a worthless trick if the dragons that were supposed to be guarding the prisoners were so easily bribed.

  I slumped over to the table and sat down on top of it, dropping my head into my hands. Everything I’d done to keep my people safe, all the people I’d let die, and we were worse off now than when we’d started. My people were suffering more now than they ever had under the Fate Maker’s rule.

  I should have stayed here, never agreed to take the throne. I should have just given up and let the Fate Maker continue to run things. Forced him to find a way to send me and my friends home again. At least then no one would be dead. Half of Nerissette wouldn’t have been reduced to ashes.

  I closed my eyes and thought about the life I should have had, the life I was meant to have before we were sucked into this mess. Swim team. College. Maybe I’d have become a teacher like Gran Mosely had been. I could have been a good teacher. I liked kids after all—even if I wasn’t all that good with them. I could have met a nice boy—or more likely, realized that there was a nice boy right next door and fallen in love with Winston. Except that I would have been a teacher and not a queen, and Winston wouldn’t have been able to turn himself into a big black dragon.

  We could have lived a nice, safe, boring life. One where the only princesses we ever saw were in picture books and the knights were always brave and good always triumphed over evil. Instead, I picked up a copy of The Chronicles of Nerissette that day in the library, and we’d all ended up here.

  Because of me we’d all ended up in a place where queens were trapped inside mirrors, locked away from the kingdom against their will. Where evil sisters could steal your face and lock you in a tower to rot. A place where brave knights were kidnapped and kept away from their families and even the princesses could start killing people at any moment.

  “I wish my mother were here,” I said to myself.

  “Why?” a sharp, feline voice snapped out from the fireplace, and I turned to stare as flames burst up where there hadn’t been any before. “What good do you think a woman in a coma is going to be when you’ve got a war to fight?”

  “Esmeralda?” I gasped as the cat’s form took shape.

  “In the flames.” The cat sat down delicately in the fireplace and flicked the tip of her tail, sparks crackling with the movement. “I’m not really here, of course.”

  “And?” I hopped off the table and hurried over to kneel beside her, smiling. “What else is new?”

  “The Relics,” she said. “Do you have them?”

  “I have the First Leaf,” I said.

  “And the others?”

  “They’re in my crown box with the Orb of the Dryads, hidden inside one of the supply wagons. John of Leavenwald is guarding them. Not that it matters—the things are absolutely useless.”

  “They are not!”

  “They are so,” I retorted. “It’s a prison that you can bribe your way out of, a crown to keep me alive when the last thing Bavasama wants to do is kill me, and a portal between worlds that no longer does anything more than show you the place you want to go. They’re worthless.”

  “That’s only because you don’t know how to use them,” Esmeralda scolded.

  “So how do I use them?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “What? You mean, you don’t know?”

  “Of course I know.” Esmeralda sniffed. “I just can’t tell you. All I can say is that if you plan to protect Nerissette, you must be prepared to sacrifice.”

  “I’ve already sacrificed.”

  “Not like this,” she said quietly and then began to fade away as I knelt there, staring at her.

  “What will I have to sacrifice?” I demanded.

  “The one thing that you’ve spent all this time trying to protect,” she whispered, nothing but a pair of brilliant emerald eyes now.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  I didn’t bother to move from my spot on the table. There was no bed in the room—just a fireplace, a chair, and a table. Oh, and a nasty-looking brown blanket in one corner and a bucket in another. Obviously, one was supposed to be my not-really-a-bed-to-sleep-in and the other was Bavasama’s idea of a toilet.

  I briefly considered finding some way to prop the bucket on top of my door so that it tipped over on the next person who came in, but I couldn’t be sure it was going to be Bavasama or the Fate Maker so it didn’t really seem worth it. I mean, after all, dumping a bucket full of crap on one of the maids would just be mean. They hadn’t been the ones to take me hostage.

  “Open,” I heard someone command on the other side of the door. I looked up from contemplating the bucket and heard the bolt slide back. The door creaked once, loudly, before opening.

  I looked up and found myself staring at Rannock, my aunt’s Grand Vizier. My uncle? I wasn’t sure exactly what I was supposed to call the guy who was helping my aunt depose me so that she could take my throne.

  “Your aunt requests your presence for dinner,” he said.

  “Tell her I’m not hungry,” I retorted.

  He smiled bitterly at me. “I thought you might say that,” he said quietly. “But the thing is I wasn’t asking.” He stepped aside and then motioned out into the hallway. My doorway filled with large men dressed in rough tunics, all of them wearing the broken crown of Bathune on their chests. “Take her.”

  I pushed myself up and started to back away as the three men came into the room, the one at the front rubbing his palms together like hurting me was something he was looking forward to.

  “I’m not leaving this room without a fight,” I said.

  “That’s what we were hoping for,” one of the men in the back said as they maneuvered so I was pressed into the corner.

  The first man stepped toward me, and darted his hand out to grab me. I tried to duck under his arm. The one on the left was quicker than me, though, and snatched me by the back of my collar, lifting me into the air. I swung at him, but he held me far enough away from his body that my fist only grazed his nose. He drew me forward and then slammed his head into mine, his forehead bashing against my nose. I saw stars as blood began to pour down my face.

  He let go of me, and I crashed to the floor, my knees giving out as I cradled my face in my hands, trying to stop the bleeding.

  “Get up.” The first man clamped his hand down on my wrist. He jerked me to my feet again. “You’re not going to keep Her Majesty the Empress waiting.”

  The guards dragged me from the room, one holding on to each arm as the other prodded me from behind. I stumbled down the stairs, the three of them pushing hard enough to make me stumble. Once we reached the main floor, they dragged me across a large stone anteroom before they stopped in front of a set of black double doors with pictures painted on them in gold. The guards pushed me forward, and I saw that the images showed people being tortured in various ways. Near the handle was a man being burned alive and even higher was a scene where a man was being eaten by a large dragon, his mouth hanging open as his body dangled from the creature’s jaws.

  “The Golden Rose of Nerissette,
” the man who had head butted me said to a small green goblin in red livery who was posted next to the door.

  The goblin nodded once and then waved his fingers. The doors creaked open, and I stood in the center of the doorway, my hair matted and my clothes still smeared with mud, reeking like fish, with a guard holding me up on each side and another jabbing a sword into my back from behind.

  They shoved me into the long dining room, and I glanced around as they marched me into the center of the room. The walls were a dark blood red, and black candelabras hung from the walls with matching black candles inside. I looked up to see heavy wooden chandeliers with what looked like skulls acting as candleholders as wax dripped down their foreheads and along the sides of the bones.

  “Oh, Allie. There you are. What do you think?” Bavasama stood at the head of a long black table loaded down with the roasted carcasses of various beasts. Men and women in black flanked the sides of the table, and I could see that all of them were staring at me in ill-concealed curiosity.

  “I think you may have overdone it on the Goth theme. And the welcoming committee.” I jerked my head toward the guard on my right, trying to ignore the way my nose was throbbing in pain.

  “Let her go,” Bavasama said to my guards. “But stay close, just in case my niece needs another lesson in manners.”

  “What?” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You worried I might kill you if you don’t keep a guard on me?”

  “Not in the slightest,” she sneered. “But I’d rather not murder you before I’ve had dessert. It might put my weaker-willed nobles off their dinners.”

  “Like your dungeon-style dining room hasn’t put everyone off already?” I looked around pointedly.

  “Perhaps.” She shook her head and gave me what I thought was supposed to be her “disappointed” face. “Of course you are like Perfect Preethana in this way, too—all goodness and light.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m not a girl who gets into skulls much outside of Halloween. Although, now that you’ve brought up my mom, I guess I can see what you were trying to do with this place,” I taunted, rubbing my wrists with my hands.