Castle of Lies

by Kiersi Burkhart

  It hurts to hear, but it’s the truth. He’s the King, however awful that feels. “Fine. We’ll go find the Baron. I don’t want to be out on this road any longer than we have to be.” I still don’t know where the full elven host is, and I don’t want to find out.

  Clouds drift in as we climb on our horses and start off down the same road we took yesterday. The men complain a lot more this time. Before long, the clouds darken and gather so thick that the sky vanishes, so there’s no way to know when the sun finally sets.

  “Gonna snow,” Harged says, glancing skyward.

  “It’s too early in the cycle.”

  “Early or not, snowin’ is what these clouds are here to do.” Injury on top of insult on top of your king’s death.

  We stop to find dinner and the men hobble their horses. I step into the woods to search out branches for a fire—I need a distraction. Harged stands up. “Boss, I’m going with you.”

  I want to roll my eyes, but wandering off alone did go pretty poorly for me last time. “Come on, then.”

  Thick, fat snowflakes are falling by the time we return. I drag our prisoner under the shelter of a tree and she curses at me. By the time we get four tents up, the snow is cascading down in waves of white. The sky lights up as the moon rises, reflecting off the thick layer of clouds and casting the world in pale, eerie silver.

  As we huddle together, the temperature drops. In the corner, the prisoner glares at us whenever we catch her eye. I listen to Halrendar’s hooves shuffling, wishing I was back at the castle.

  I should have stayed and fought.

  We wake up to heavy snow cover and gray skies. As soon as it’s light enough to see, we pack up our makeshift tents and ride on.

  Plodding through the snow and bramble, none of us speak until our path is blocked by what looks like the rotted-out beams of an old shack, covered in snow and brush. “Hey, boss,” one of the men calls. “Look.”

  One of the men drags away some branches that have been draped across the skeletal wooden mass. “I think it’s a catapult.”

  “It’s been camouflaged,” I say. Someone hid this here. “Maybe it belongs to the Baron.”

  We descend deeper into the woods and pass a brush-covered wagon that I forbid the men from investigating, in case it’s rigged. Harged spots a trap in the forest floor before anyone can step on it. We get off our horses and make a wide arc around it. I keep my gaze pinned on the ground, looking for more traps, until I hear one of the men shout.

  My hand is on the hilt of my sword before someone strong grabs me by the back of my coat and yanks. I stumble backward, toppling into the freezing snow.

  Three men in fur coats and fur-lined helmets stand above me, swords pointed at my face. I raise my hands in the air. I recognize their colors right away—the red, white, and black of the Crimson Woods. Baron Durnhal’s men. Just who I was looking for.

  “Don’t move,” one says.

  “Relax.” I show my empty hands. My sword never made it out of its sheath. “You’re the Baron’s soldiers? We’ve been looking for you. I want to talk to him.”

  They don’t answer and their faces are unyielding. One drags me over to the rest of my men, who’ve been surrounded. The prisoner laughs hysterically, even when one of the soldiers growls at her. She flaps her broken wrists at him.

  The Baron had an entire army hidden away out here. Why did I think coming to the Crimson Woods was a good idea?

  We’re tied up and tossed back on our horses like vegetables. There’s an old saying my dad used at times like this: Free from one jaw of a biylar bear, swallowed up by the other.

  Sapphire

  I leave the room in North Hall before the humans awaken and head to the kitchens to make breakfast. As I step into the dark room, the wisp lighting my way, a shriek greets me. A figure darts in front of me, and reflexively, I grab it. Disgruntled pots and pans hop and float out of our way as we collide on top of the counter.

  “Let me go!” she wails in her human language, blue eyes flashing with maddened fear, long red hair in messy tangles all over her head.

  I know that red hair, those fearful blue eyes—just like her father, the King. “Princess?” I ask. She cowers like a starving animal and tries again to escape my grip, but her body is like a twig in the wind. She has spent too long hiding.

  The door flies open and Ellze stumbles in. He must have heard us screeching. He rushes over to us, pulls a rope from his belt, and ties the Princess’s wrists. She screams and sobs, the noise drawing other elves in. “I got her!” Ellze crows. “I found the Princess. Someone tell my uncle.”

  His green eyes flash to me, and then away. She keeps screaming.

  The Commander is smiling for the first time in days, but it shows more lines on his face than there ever have been before. He walks around the Princess in circles as she kneels on the floor, crying. “I want to see my dad,” she whimpers.

  “I will allow it,” the Commander says in her language. He kneels and lifts her chin with one hand. “If you send a smoke message to each of your sworn lords telling them to surrender to us.” She may be starving, but she has enough spirit left to spit on his shoes. The Commander sighs and stands up. “Put her in the dungeon until she is more agreeable.”

  “Should my humans know we have found her?” I ask.

  Ellze snickers. “Your humans?”

  I scowl back at him—my supposed friend. He finds nothing wrong with the Commander believing it was he who found the Princess. “You know my intent.”

  “Say nothing to them,” Commander Valya says. “We face even greater obstacles now. Our squadron leaders back with the rest of our force should have encountered the King’s army by now . . . but it appears they have gone missing.”

  “The King must know where they are,” I say.

  “I doubt we will glean anything of value from him. His mind is going. And your humans, Sapphire.” Commander Valya looks hard at me. “If the Princess refuses to talk, they are the ones who can tell us where their army has gone. Find out.”

  I nod, though I wish I could tell the Commander how wrong he is. And I fear what will become of Thelia and Parsifal when they cannot provide the information he demands.

  Thelia

  When I wake, Sapphire’s gone. Parsifal and I both let out our breath.

  Breakfast arrives on the cart—some kind of starchy egg mush that tastes nothing like eggs. “What is this?” I ask, choking it down. I need the nutrients, but it’s agony.

  “Certainly not eggs.” Parsifal picks at it. “Didn’t Sapphire say the castle is out of food? This wasn’t laid by a chicken. It was made.”

  I choke down as much as I can. Now it’s time to get out of here.

  When the cart skitters out of the room and the door starts to swing closed, I lunge to catch it before it slams—and my outstretched arm smashes into a hard, flat surface. The air around the door ripples.

  I howl, clutching my hand, and stagger back. In terms of pain, this doesn’t compare to most things Mother did. But something about this hurts much more.

  Parsifal helps me to one of the chairs by the fire. “So much for getting out that way.”

  I sit up, the pain only emboldening me. “What about the secret place? It’s connected to this room, right? If we can’t get out through the door, maybe we can find Corene—if she hasn’t already starved to death. Then we could try again for the sewers.”

  Following the wall, I tap with my good hand and hope the secret place passes through here. I tap and tap, but it doesn’t have the hollow sound I was hoping for. Parsifal joins me and we keep going, tapping along the wall in his room together. Nothing.

  The doorknob twists in the main room. We scramble onto Parsifal’s couch and pretend to be reading as Sapphire walks in. They look exhausted, and it’s still morning.

  “Do you want to go out?” they ask, holding up a length of rope. “Outside?”

  We both glance out the window. Oh, to feel daylight on my skin again, to f
eel fresh air through my hair . . . “Yes!” I jump from the couch. “Yes, please.” I don’t even have a plan. I just want to see the outside. I can figure it out as I go.

  Sapphire winds a rope around each of us at the hip and holds the end. At the door, they wave one hand in front of the shimmering emptiness that I know from hard-earned experience is a solid, hard wall. “Open, please.”

  With a familiar shhhhh sound, the door opens. We pass through the doorway unimpeded.

  The castle is empty and silent, the little pink wisp leading the way down the dark hallways. On the ground floor, Sapphire takes an abrupt turn to pass through the stable. I yank at the rope. “Parlor Trick!” I holler. “Please, Sapphire. I miss my horse.”

  Sapphire sighs and lets me walk over to Parlor Trick’s stall. She shoves her head eagerly over the door and lips at my hands. “I’m sorry, girl. I don’t have any treats.” I pat her nose and she snorts, annoyed.

  “Hold your hand out.” Sapphire drops a whole apple into my palms.

  “Where’d this come from?” Parlor Trick’s perfect white ears flick forward and her huge nostrils widen.

  “I made it out of hay.”

  I let her have it all, and she’s in bliss. The other horses’ heads are all bowed, and their stall doors bear chew marks. “Are you feeding them?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Exercising them?” Sapphire looks down at the ground, and I want to break Parlor Trick out of here right now. “Horses need exercise or they’ll be miserable. Let them run around the courtyard, or in the paddock behind the castle at least.”

  “I will try,” Sapphire says.

  I scowl. “If you won’t exercise them, then let them go. Keeping them in here is cruel.”

  Sapphire glances at me and then away, face full of guilt. The long ears don’t know what they’re doing, not at all.

  I have to say good-bye to Parlor Trick, and Sapphire leads us out of the stable into the muddy courtyard. I expected we’d be alone out here—until we turn a corner.

  Peasants, dozens of them, are trapped in wooden cages. They reach for us through the gaps, calling out. Some are sobbing; others lie on the cage floors, staring straight up.

  Parsifal gasps and covers his mouth, then runs toward the cage dragging me with him. “Derk!”

  Sapphire tries to pull him away, but Parsifal digs his feet in. On the other side of the wooden bars, at the very back, sits Derk the baker—his clothes torn, and his hair and face covered with mud. He barely lifts his head. “Parsifal?”

  Parsifal sinks to his knees, reaching through the bars.

  I turn to Sapphire. “What are you going to do with them?” This is no better than the dungeon—worse, since it’s colder out here.

  “Wash, relocate,” Sapphire says, not meeting my eyes.

  Parsifal stretches a hand out. “Derk, I’m so glad you’re all right.”

  “Are you?” the thin, dirty baker asks. “I’d say you’re more glad that you’re not in here with me.”

  A fragile, elderly man rises up next to Derk. “Traitors,” he snarls at us. “Working with them.”

  “What?” Parsifal stands up again, his face red. “That’s not at all—”

  “Then why else are you out there with one of them?” Derk asks with a rueful laugh. “You’ve never cared what becomes of commoners like me. And neither do they.”

  I reach for Parsifal’s arm and pull him away. This will do no one any good. He lets me, and Sapphire pulls us along through the muddy courtyard. I apply steady pressure to his arm through his shirt—Derk didn’t mean it. Though I know better.

  “Sapphire,” I ask. “What did you mean by washing? And relocating where?” They don’t answer. I refuse to move, letting the rope stretch taut in Sapphire’s hand.

  Sapphire lets out a frustrated sigh. “We must not be seen,” they say. “Keep moving.”

  So they’ve disobeyed orders to bring us out here. Another little piece of what Sapphire’s thinking.

  Soon we’re returning to the castle, and I say good-bye to the sky. The trip to North Hall is a blur. Wherever our parents are, I hope they’re being treated better than those people in the cage.

  Sapphire leaves us in our room in silence, sealing the door behind them. Parsifal and I sit in front of the empty hearth together, not speaking. I think about my lovely Parlor Trick, alone in the stable. She must be bored and lonely, like us. And all those people like Derk, crammed into wooden crates. At least I get my lunch on a sentient cart—they probably eat from a trough.

  It’s almost sundown, and getting cold. I turn to Parsifal. “Wouldn’t a fire be nice right now?” I miss the old days—falling asleep together in front of the fire with the dogs.

  Parsifal nods. “I wouldn’t mind.” There’s a sound like a spark, and the logs in the hearth burst into flame, showering us with warmth. We’re not even surprised anymore.

  “This is just . . . so beyond reality,” I say. “It all feels like a nightmare we can’t escape.” My hand finds its way into his. I’ve never craved someone’s touch like I do now.

  “At least we’re here and not down in the dungeon anymore.”

  He’s right. In a way, though, this is worse. The fire in the hearth. The walk around the courtyard. Morsels of kindness, of comfort—enough that we want to feel grateful, when really, we deserve our lives back.

  “We’re still prisoners,” I say. “What about Daddy? And your parents? I want to see them.” I get up and pace to the window. “I want to know if they’re alive.”

  In the reflection I see Parsifal approach me. He places his hands on my shoulders, and I don’t move as he sinks his fingers into my tough flesh. I didn’t realize how tense my iron muscles have been, how much pain they’ve been waiting to release.

  I don’t look at his face in the window. My eyes are riveted on the castle’s high walls, and the occasional shimmer of blue that keeps us all trapped here. “Patience,” Parsifal says. “Every time Sapphire speaks, we learn something new. Like today—washing. Relocating. Each one is another piece of the puzzle.”

  But what image does the puzzle make? I’m tired of being a pa-chi-chi stone for others to use. “Percy,” I say, and his hands stop. It felt so good. “I won’t wait. I don’t want to end up like Derk. I want to choose where I go next.”

  I reach out and pull the handle on the window. It doesn’t budge. Locked—and frigid cold. Taking a breath, I reel my arm back and punch the glass. My fist crashes through the window, scattering glass all over the floor.

  Parsifal stumbles back. “Maybe some warning next time?”

  I ignore him. My hand burns from tiny cuts, but I’m setting myself free.

  Reaching through the hole in the glass, I grab and pull the exposed window frame. Nothing happens, so I pull harder, with my entire body weight. It gives way and opens.

  When I climb up on the sill, shards of broken glass bite through the soles of my shoes. “What are you going to do?” Parsifal asks. Not bothering to answer, I step over the side and start climbing down the stone wall. “Is your head full of mincemeat?” he calls after me.

  “I’m making it up as I go.” I find the next ledge with the toe of one shoe and start to bring my other foot down. I lean back and—

  I can’t move. A glance over my shoulder tells me there’s nothing behind me, or under me.

  I’m stuck in mid-air. “What’s happening?” I mutter. I’m still holding onto the sill, so I try to climb back up to the window where I started—but something holds me back. I’m riveted to the spot, hanging in emptiness.

  Parsifal’s head appears over the sill. “Oh, demons. Why are you floating?”

  “I don’t know!” I let go of the sill with one hand. As I’d feared, I don’t fall. I’m trapped like a bug in a spider’s web. I reach back with my free hand to find out what’s caught me, but all I feel is something soft and sticky, like wet sand. I try to pull my hand away but it’s stuck now too, and whatever is holding me back tears the hai
rs out of my skin. “Percy! Help!”

  Chapter 12

  Parsifal

  Hovering in midair, Thelia flails her arms, but they only move a little—like she’s stuck on a giant, invisible spiderweb.

  “Help!” she calls again. She rips one arm forward, trying to free herself, and succeeds only in peeling off her sleeve. She wriggles like a trapped fly. “I’m stuck. It’s going to tear my skin right off.”

  This is surely the demon plane, and we’re locked in a prison that looks like Four Halls.

  I can’t watch her flail anymore so I slide to the floor, putting my head in my hands. “Percy!” Her voice rips a hole through me, and I clutch at the opening it leaves behind. If I close my eyes, maybe I can pretend for a moment this isn’t real. Maybe I can find some kind of equilibrium again, start over, and wake up ready to solve this mess.

  Behind me, the door opens. I spin around to find Sapphire striding in. “What is . . .?” they start. Faster than a lightning bolt, they’re at the window. “Thelia!” I’ve never heard Sapphire use our names before.

  Without hesitating, they jump out the window. One hand grips the windowsill as they slide down the stone wall, keeping flush against it. I lean over the side and watch. With their free hand, Sapphire grabs one of Thelia’s arms and pulls.

  She roars in fury. “My skin is stuck!”

  “I know.” Sapphire’s not sympathetic. They pull her arm free and she lets out a shriek. Next they grapple with one of her legs, then the other. Even the one time I spied on horrible old Delia’s sparring lessons, I’ve never heard Thelia make a noise of such terrible agony.

  Finally, Sapphire’s able to loop an arm around her waist, and with one last pull, Thelia’s second arm comes free—leaving behind pieces of her clothes, strands of hair, and bloody bits of skin.

  She fiercely holds in her sobs, her body limp, as Sapphire climbs back up and passes her through the window to me. I try not to touch the fresh wounds on the backs of her arms and legs as I bring her in. Her long hair sticks out everywhere, stiff and wild at the same time.