I felt a tickling at the edges of my mind. Then Wolfgang was there with me, inside my mind. I’m not sure exactly what he did but it felt as if one minute I held the reins to a team of out-of-control carriage horses and the next he was sliding those reins from my hands. A struggling turmoil was lifted from my shoulders and I was free.
I sagged against him and said, ‘Thanks.’
‘It was a lot of minds to thrall in one hit.’ He smiled. ‘Don’t think I could have done it.’
‘But you hold them now.’
‘The holding is the easy part.’
He turned towards the night faeries and wiggled his fingers at the leader. ‘Obey.’
‘What the…?’ The leader struggled to free his hands.
‘Obey,’ he said again before nodding at Aethan.
‘We go in peace to your land,’ Aethan said. ‘You will follow us.’ He set off at a fast pace but the night faeries stayed exactly where they had been.
‘Urrrr Aethan,’ Wilfred said.
Aethan stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the still stationary faeries. ‘Wolfgang?’
‘Guess I should have been a bit more specific.’
He wiggled his fingers again and said, ‘Obey him.’
This time the night faeries followed Aethan when he left.
The sun was high in the sky when the night faery leader said, ‘We are home.’
‘This is Emstillia?’ I asked.
‘Emstillia. Home of the night faeries, the greatest jewel in the land.’
Isla let out a snort. ‘We’ll see about that.’
We travelled for another hour before we encountered a night faery patrol. They took one look at us, with our prisoners, and they flipped black masks onto their faces and unsheathed their swords.
‘Stop them.’ Wolfgang’s voice was calm.
‘Halt,’ the leader called out. ‘In the name of King Arracon. They come in peace.’
‘If they come in peace,’ one of the other night faeries hissed, ‘why are you tied?’
‘We ambushed them and took them captive. They overcame us but did us no harm. They have brought us safely home.’
‘Is it just me,’ I whispered to Isla, ‘or do they all sound like snakes?’
‘Sound like snakes, act like snakes….’
The other group of night faeries stayed as they were, masks lowered and weapons drawn. They studied us until their leader held up a hand. ‘We will honour your truce,’ he said.
The masks flipped back off their faces as they rode towards us, but I didn’t relax until their swords were all re-sheathed.
‘Why have you come to Emstillia,’ the new leader asked.
‘The matter is between us and your king,’ Aethan said.
They eyed each other as if in a staring contest. Finally the night faery said, ‘Come, we will take you to him.’
‘Do you swear on the shade of your mother and your mother’s mother that no harm will become us?’
The other man watched Aethan for a minute. ‘I see you have had dealings with us before.’
‘In other words he sees that we know they are a bunch of treacherous cowards,’ Isla whispered in my ear. She really had it in for them.
Aethan inclined his head.
The other man sighed. ‘I swear on the shade of my mother and my mother’s mother, that no harm will come to you while you are under my protection.’
‘Good enough,’ Aethan said. He fell in beside the other man.
And just like that, we entered the capital of Emstillia.
8
Caught Between A Rock And A Hard Place
‘You have to admit,’ I tried not to smirk as I looked at Isla, ‘that is impressive.’
‘I’ll admit no such thing.’ She lifted her chin and flicked her braid back over her shoulder. ‘Not in public, anyway. I have an image to uphold.’
We were staring up at Emstillia castle. The whole thing, turrets and walls and even the bridge over the large moat, glistened like a black jewel in the sun.
We had been stopped by yet more guards and now we waited for King Arracon to be notified of our presence. I was taking advantage of the break to scoff another couple of rock-hard biscuits. I had given my share of the dried meat to Scruffy. He was starting to look lean from all the walking, and while I thought it suited him, you could tell by the way he begged for food that he wasn’t happy about it.
‘What’s it made of?’ I wondered out loud.
Wolfgang took a seat beside me. ‘Ice.’
I stared at him while I chewed my latest bite of biscuit till I’d generated enough saliva to swallow. ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘Made by magic, from magic, within magic.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense.’
He stared at the castle for a few moments longer. ‘I don’t suppose it does,’ he said. ‘I read that. Can’t remember where.’
A few minutes later a guard strode back across the bridge. ‘The King welcomes you Prince Aethan, brother of Prince Orion, son of King Arwyn, and all your friends. We will take you to your rooms and your horses to stables.’
Aethan eyed him for a moment. ‘Our mounts are not to be stabled in the same stalls as your hagons.’
The man shrugged one shoulder. ‘Of course not, Prince. We would not think of it.’ But a twitch of his mouth made it obvious he might have thought of it if Aethan had not mentioned it. ‘We will take the dog as well.’
‘My familiar stays with me,’ I said, sweeping Scruffy up in my arms.
‘A witch?’ He fairly spat the words.
‘Part witch, part faery.’ I stared at him, just daring him to take offence. I was trying to be open minded, but Isla was rubbing off on me.
He met my eyes, and I was reminded of how similar and yet different the night faeries were from the land faeries.
Being the same height and build, from behind it might be possible to mistake us for each other. But while land faeries’ skin was snowy white, night faeries’ was an olive brown. Also our eyes were rounder than their almond ones, and whilst our hair varied from blonde to dark, all of the night faeries I had seen, had jet-black hair.
‘Very well,’ he finally said, ‘the familiar stays with you.’ His tongue flashed out of his mouth and licked his upper lip and then he turned and strode back towards the bridge.
I stared after him. ‘Was his tongue…?’
‘Forked?’ Isla said. ‘It’s why they sound like they do.’
‘They’re born like that?’
She looked at me and squared her shoulders. ‘They do it to their new-born babes. Something for Orion and his new bride to fight about.’
With that bouncing around in my head we were half-way across the bridge before I thought of my other question. ‘What’s a hagon?’ I said to Wilfred.
‘Cross between a dragon and a horse.’
‘Well the original hagons were,’ Wolfgang added. ‘They trapped the souls of baby dragons and forced them into horses.’
I could feel my eyes bulging as I imagined Emerald’s soul being forced into a horse. It made me want to hit something. ‘They must be hard to train.’
‘The originals were impossible to train, so they bred them. The resulting animals are not as intelligent as the originals, but they can still breathe fire.’
As we crossed the threshold, the cold of the castle hit me like a wall of snow. We turned left into a hallway which curved with the shape of the castle. Walls of ice towered above us, dominating us with their cold presence. I reached out a finger to touch one but Isla stayed my hand.
‘Ever touched dry ice?’
I shook my head.
‘Well don’t,’ she said.
I stared instead at the icy, black walls. Soft lights glowed from within and illuminated our path. The hall seemed to go on forever, spiralling gently upwards, room-after-room opening off it.
When my legs were starting to complain about a night and day of walking, our guide stopped and opene
d one of the doors. ‘This will be your suite.’ He gestured for us all to enter.
The door opened into a cavernous room made of black ice. Thick, white, fur rugs littered the cold, hard floor and chandeliers of black crystals hung from the ceiling. Black cushions were scattered around the edges of the rugs and more doors opened off the room. It was bitterly cold and oppressive and I wanted to run all the way back down that hall till I burst into the warmth of the sun.
But instead I opened one of the doors to reveal a smaller room. This one housed a bed piled high with blankets and fur. A small ensuite opened off it.
‘Rest,’ the guide said. ‘We will bring you your evening meal.’
‘I bags this one.’ I entered the room and deposited Scruffy on the bed with my saddlebags. I hoped those blankets were going to be enough to keep us warm.
While the thought of a warm shower was inviting, I doubted I would be warm for long once I turned the hot water off. So instead, I pulled as many layers of clothing on as I could and crawled under the blankets pulling Scruffy in with me.
I stayed like that for a few minutes before guilt got the better of me. Mum would be frantic by now. The small mirror was close enough that I didn’t have to leave the blanket nest to get it. I held it up in front of me and concentrated on thoughts of Mum.
She appeared suddenly, her face a mask of surprise as she stared at me. I gathered by the damp tendrils of hair that clung to her face and the steam that whirled around her, that she had just hopped out of the shower.
‘Isadora,’ she yelped, pulling her robe closed around her.
‘What’s that love?’ A man’s voice asked.
The look on her face turned from surprise to horror. ‘Nothing,’ she yelled, holding a hand up in front of the mirror.
‘I can still see.’ I peered around her hand. Who was there with her?
Mum whipped her wand out of her hair and flicked it. A towel rose from the floor and hovered in front of the mirror.
‘Mum?’ I said.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Do what?’
‘Activate the spell from your end. How did you even know where I’d be?’
‘Lucky guess,’ I lied. ‘I can call back later if this is inconvenient for you.’ That voice had sounded familiar.
‘Hang on a minute.’
I heard the bathroom door close and then a few minutes later the towel dropped from in front of the mirror. Mum had replaced the robe with a pale-green dress. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes sparkled.
‘Is there somebody there?’
‘Hmmm? Why would you think that?’
‘That man’s voice.’
She laughed a little too loudly. ‘I had the television on in my room. Some terrible movie. I turned it off.’
I didn’t call her on her obvious lie. ‘So, you haven’t been worried about me?’
‘Of course I have. I’ve been worried sick. What with you and your Grams both off Dark Sky knows where.
‘Grams is still missing?’
‘She contacted me.’ Mum sniffed. ‘Wouldn’t tell me where she was though. Was acting all secretive, checking over her shoulder every thirty seconds as if someone might be following her.’ She let out a laugh. ‘Sometimes she’s such a drama queen.’
‘Ahhh Mum.’ I paused unsure of how to phrase my question. There wasn’t any easy way to ask her if she’d had relations with Santanas. ‘Are you sure who my father was?’
Her eyes narrowed and her lips pinched tight. Okay so perhaps that hadn’t been the best way to phrase it.
‘I don’t mean it like that,’ I said. Goodness knows I wasn’t accusing her of being a slut. ‘I mean it was definitely Alexis wasn’t it? It couldn’t have been somebody pretending to be him.’
The I’m-going-to-make-you-wish-you’d-never-been-born look relaxed off her face and I let out a sigh of relief.
‘Well I was assigned as his personal assistant so I was with him the whole conference,’ she said. ‘All the other dignitaries thought it was him. So did all the other faeries. What’s this all about?’
‘Oh nothing,’ I said. ‘I was just wondering why he hasn’t come to see me. You know, now that my presence is common knowledge.’
‘Last I heard he was an ambassador in Australia. Perhaps he doesn’t know about you yet?’
‘Maybe,’ I said. That hadn’t been my true line of investigation but now, for the first time, I was curious about my father.
‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be late for book club.’
I resisted the urge to say, ‘Yeah right.’ It looked like Grams had been right about the whole book club thing. Mum was doing something naughty and I was dying to know with whom.
I packed my mirror back in my saddlebags and then dug around until I found my dream-catcher. I hung it on the bed head and lay back, pulling the pile of blankets right up over Scruffy and me, tucking the edges in underneath us. The cold seeped in if you left any gaps. And then I thought about Grams.
Was someone following her or was it all just another one of her games? That thought would normally have been enough to give me a sleepless night. But as soon as I closed my eyes, it drifted from my mind and, before I knew it, I was sound asleep.
***
‘What are they waiting for?’ Aethan paced up-and-down the manicured lawn of the Royal Gardens.
‘I say we leave.’ Isla had been pushing for that the entire three days we had waited to be summoned before the king.
Aethan didn’t even bother responding. He just threw a glare at her as he continued his pacing. The waiting was making him cranky.
I sat up and crossed my legs. ‘Anyone want to walk to the fountain?’ We spent our days in the garden soaking up the warmth of the sun. I dreaded returning to the cold of the castle.
‘I’ll come.’ Wolfgang unfolded himself out of the painful looking yoga position he had been holding and jumped to his feet. ‘I need to stretch my legs.’
‘You looked like you were stretching them pretty well already.’
He chuckled as we walked away from the others. ‘That was a static stretch.’
We followed Scruffy as he sniffed and peed his way down the garden. There was a question I wanted to ask Wolfgang, but I was scared of the possible answer. I grasped my courage in my hands and said, ‘Did you want to continue my training?’
He scratched at his cheeks with both hands. ‘Not having to shave every day only just makes up for the itching.’ When he’d finished scratching he said, ‘Frankly I don’t think there’s much point in continuing your training.’
My heart sank. He didn’t think it was worth training me. I was a total loss.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I see.’ I tried not to let my disappointment show in my voice but I mustn’t have been successful.
He glanced over at me, his bushy eyebrows wiggling up-and-down as he examined my face. ‘Not like that.’ He shook his head. ‘I mean I don’t think training can help you. Hmmmm. That didn’t come out right either.’ He paused and stared up at some birds circling overhead. ‘You can already do everything you need to; you just need to have faith in yourself.’
‘But what about my limitations? How will I know what I can and can’t do?’
‘That’s the beautiful thing about the way you wield the power. Most of us have to think about cause and effect. You need only imagine the effect.’
‘But it’s so unpredictable.’
‘Yes,’ he nodded his head, ‘it is. But unpredictable can be advantageous when you are engaging the enemy.’
I could see the fountain in the distance. I spent a large portion of each day there letting the enormous spouts of water gushing into the air soothe my fractious boredom.
‘Izzy, Wolfgang.’
We spun to see Luke running towards us.
‘We have been summoned.’
‘Finally,’ Wolfgang said, smoothing down his robes.
We trotted back to the others and formed two lines wit
h Wolfgang at our head. Aethan and Isla stood behind him, and then Wilfred and I. Luke and Brent took up the rear. Like that, we followed the messenger into the icy castle.
Instead of heading up the path we normally took to our rooms, the messenger wound around to the right, circling down into the bowels of the castle. The icy walls threw out enough light to see where we put our feet, but the cold grew in intensity, icy fingers wrapping around my bones till my teeth chattered as we walked. I hugged Scruffy to my chest and hoped we didn’t have to go much further.
Down, down, down we wound till I couldn’t feel my fingers or the tip of my nose. The lights in the walls dimmed until shadow clothed our features. I yearned for warmth and light. I ached to feel the sun kissing my skin.
Just before I lost control and starting sprinting back up the way we had come, the messenger stopped and rapped on a door.
A voice boomed from the other side of the door. ‘Who dares to enter the Royal Throne Room?’
‘Prince Aethan and Princess Isla Gabrielle of Isilvitania,’ Wolfgang said. ‘We come with a retinue to discuss a proposal with King Arracon.’
There was silence for a few moments before the same voice said, ‘Come in peace.’
A gust of warmth hit us as the door creaked open to reveal a room very different from any other I had seen in the castle. Stone ringed the circular space and paved the floors. A huge fire roared in an ornately carved fireplace. Animals, frozen in time by a master craftsman, continued up the wall and around the tops of the arches and pillars, as if they were leading a merry chase around the room.
A row of high-backed chairs stood on either side of an enormous throne. Men, dressed entirely in black, sat in the chairs, but the throne was empty.
As if nothing were wrong, Wolfgang strode to stand in front of the throne. ‘We come with bad tidings and an offer of a new beginning.’
The man to the left of the throne stood. ‘Peace cousin. We have had no emissaries from Isilvitania for years. We would share a meal and talk of pleasantries before we hear of these bad tidings.’
I could see the muscles in Aethan’s cheeks bulging and practically hear his teeth grinding. We get ignored for three days and now this? No king, and they want to eat first.
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