Castle of Lies

by Kiersi Burkhart

  Parsifal

  I’ve always wanted this, but long ago I resigned myself to letting her go.

  Thelia Finegarden’s ambitions have always ruled our relationship. The most I could ever hope for was to be one of her advisors. Never her consort, or even a secret lover. A Queen like her—a true leader—would never waste time so frivolously.

  Even in my fantasies, I didn’t dream it would be like this with her. That it could be like this, with anyone. Yet here I am, still full of the smell of her, the feel of her, the taste of her. Is she asleep? I can’t see her face from behind, so I run my fingers through her short hair. She doesn’t move. Asleep, then. I love her hair like this.

  As I start to drift off, my bare skin chafing on the rug and the orange flames dancing in front of us, I’m reminded of when we were just children, lying with the dogs in front of the fire. When we fell asleep curled up with them, and only Thelia’s nightmares broke the spell.

  I’m awoken by a grinding sound, stone scraping on stone. A doorway is opening in the wall. How did we miss it before?

  I leap up, throwing a blanket over Thelia, and scramble for my clothes. I’d rather nobody know that her backside has been pressed against me all night.

  As I’m pulling my trousers on, a shock of orange-red hair appears in the gap. The Princess’s face slides through.

  “Corene?” Thelia’s voice comes from behind me. She lunges across the room at Corene, wrapped only in a blanket, and throws her arms around her cousin before she can emerge all the way.

  “Thelia!” Corene’s crying when they finally release each other. “You’re alive. I didn’t think . . .” Her voice breaks into tears again. She’s thinner, and her face is broken-out and pasty.

  “Alive,” I say. “Though we haven’t had a meal in a few days.”

  “Percy.” She’s smiling through her tears. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “You as well, Princess.” I peer at the hole in the wall behind her—a place I thought we’d surely checked. “How did you find us? Have you been hiding all this time?”

  She shakes her head. “No. An elf caught me trying to find food. I was tossed in the dungeon.”

  “Oh, no.” Thelia cradles Corene’s hand, as if we can undo everything that’s happened since we left her in the secret place. “They put you there too?”

  I can’t imagine fragile, spoiled Corene confined to stone floors and an overflowing chamber pot with criminals reaching through the bars.

  “Everyone was dead,” she says, and I can barely understand her through the tears. “The long ears just ignored them. But that one elf kept saying, ‘It’s not my job. I can’t do anything.’ When the last prisoner finally died—you’ve smelled nothing like it.” I have, actually. “And then the bodies started to move.”

  I’m listening again.

  “They got up and screeched like animals, trying to tear through the bars to get to me. I thought the ones in the cell next to mine would kill me. Where there were two to a cell, they’d bite and rip at each other. I was sure I’d ended up on the demon plane.”

  Thelia wraps her arms around Corene again, and the Princess cries into her shoulder. I pat her back. “You made it out, though.”

  “The elf came for me. Took me to see my father. He looks so awful.” Corene has to keep stopping to sob. “I ended up back in my old room again. Stupid long ears—they never did find the secret place.”

  So that’s how she got here.

  “I waited until I was alone and decided I’d try to escape again. But while I was finding my way around in the dark—no candles left, you know—I heard your voices.”

  She glances at me and I wonder what she heard. “I’m glad you’re all right,” I offer.

  Her face crumbles. “Sure, I am. But my father . . . He’s dying.” Thelia and I exchange a look. “They could stop it, but they don’t. We need to get out of here. Once the long ears are done with their little operation, they’re going to finish what they started.”

  It sounds like Morgaun’s grim fantasy. I grab her arm. “What do you mean?”

  She pulls away in disbelief that I’d even dare. “I know how these things go. Invasions end in blood. We have to get out now and find Nul while we can, before we die and rise again and the long ears get rid of us too.”

  Nul, not Bayled. Very interesting.

  “I agree that we need to escape,” I tell Corene. “And I have an idea. Thelia, you’d better get dressed.” While Thelia returns to her room, I walk over to a wall. “Hey there, friend,” I say, tapping it with a knuckle. “I have something yummy for you to eat.”

  No response. When Thelia comes back, wearing her one remaining clean gown, I hear Corene whisper to her, “Has he gone all the way up the parapets and over the top?”

  Thelia makes a shushing sound. “Wait.”

  I gesture again at the wall. “I know there are a lot of demands on your time.” I pick up a vase, and Corene yelps as I hurl it to the floor. It shatters into a hundred pieces.

  “What are you doing?” she snaps. I hold a finger to my lips as the broom against the wall sits up suddenly. Corene shrinks back when it bustles over, sweeps the broken pieces into a little pile, and brushes it toward the wall.

  The stones grind and move apart to make room for the mouth. It swells up, tongue sliding out. Corene starts screaming and I pinch her arm. “You need to stop, Princess.”

  The broom launches the pieces of broken vase, and the tongue laps them up. The bits are smashed between the white teeth and swallowed. Before it can vanish, I say, “Wait. If I feed you more stuff, will you help us get out of this room?”

  The tongue jumps back out and the corners of the mouth rise. “Is it smiling?” Corene asks. “What is happening right now?”

  “Just watch and be quiet,” Thelia says.

  The mouth starts to move across the wall, and the stones shuffle and part to make space. Once it arrives on the far side of my room, it stops and opens wide. Wider and wider, teeth spreading apart like cobblestones on a broken city street, until it’s as high as our necks. The tongue lolls out, unrolling across the floor like a rug. Then it flaps—beckoning us in.

  “Absolutely not,” Corene says. Thelia ignores her and goes first. Corene grabs her wrist. “It’ll eat you.”

  “So?” Thelia shakes her off. “How is that worse than starving to death here?” Into the mouth she goes, ducking under the protruding teeth. The tongue wobbles as she walks over it, like her feet are tickling it.

  I go next, my slippers squishing on the tongue. As I crest the teeth and descend into the darkness, I hear Corene shout, “Wait for me!”

  I turn and offer her my hand. She seizes it, charging past me into the depths. The mouth closes behind us, and we’re entombed in black.

  “I can’t see!” Corene shrieks. It’s not wet in here, as I’d feared—nor is it warm. It’s cold and dry and reminds me of the secret place. Maybe that’s where we are. “What have we done?” I hear Corene ask. “We’ll be eaten like that vase, Percy.”

  Suddenly, the tongue under our feet moves. It pushes me forward and I stumble, landing on my hands. Ahead of us, a spot of light appears, growing and growing until the tongue jolts again—and launches us forward in a tangle of limbs.

  Through the opening we go. I land partially on top of Thelia, and Corene topples over both of us. Thelia yells, “Get off me!”

  We all climb to our feet. I spin around just as the mouth closes up, tongue and teeth vanishing. There’s a shloop sound as it shrinks to nothingness, and the stones around it rearrange themselves.

  I look around. We’re in Corene’s room, right next door.

  “I asked to get out of the room.” I touch the wall. “It took me very literally.” At least we’re not out in the hall, where any passing elf could discover us.

  “Well, we’re alive, and only covered in a little slobber.” Thelia lifts her shoes, sniffs them, and makes a face.

  The mouth opened a passage through one
wall, from one room to another. Maybe we can keep going, one wall at a time—pass into the hall, and then into the next room, on and on until we make our way into the belly of the castle.

  I dash across Corene’s room and yank a painting off the wall. “Percy! What are you doing?”

  “I have to find out more.” I drop the painting to the floor and smash my foot through it. There’s no reason to suffer in ugliness, but what if ugliness is the end to your suffering?

  “Stop!” Corene races over to stop me, but it’s too late. The stones grind and groan, and the tongue darts out again, panting eagerly.

  “Hold on.” I hold the shards of the painting away like a tease. “Can you get us out of the castle?”

  The tongue retracts and the mouth closes up, the lips pursing.

  “I don’t think it can,” Thelia says, picking up a piece of the picture frame and kneeling in front of the mouth. “It is the castle, after all.” The tongue whips out and she drops the piece in. It’s chewed up and swallowed. “Hey friend,” she says. “Can you get us down to the sewers? Then we can find our own way out.”

  It licks its lips, thinking. I toss it another piece of the painting, but it still frowns.

  Corene stands up. She throws one of the pieces in herself and the mouth gives her a jolly grin. “If we get to the Pit on our own, can you drop us into the sewers below it?”

  The mouth eats up and smiles again. “I’d take that as a yes,” I say.

  Thelia

  “How do we get to the Pit?” Parsifal says. His energy is high and furious. With Corene’s help, we can finally escape.

  “When you left me . . .” Corene turns her head away. “And then never came back, I thought I was going to die.”

  Shame rushes through me. I should have tried harder to find her, to contact her.

  “I had to leave or starve to death. I knew there was a service tunnel that the servants used to bring me hot meals straight from the kitchen—so I took it hoping I could find food. But that’s when that horrid blue elf caught me.” She spits.

  “Sapphire,” I say without thinking.

  Corene throws me a sharp look. “You know its name?”

  “Their name.”

  Corene rounds on me. “They, cousin?” she snaps. “They are not human. They are monsters. You’ve seen how they’ve treated us!”

  Maybe some of the long ears are—especially Sapphire’s commander. “But Sapphire—” I begin.

  “Is no different from the rest!” Corene peers at me, suspicious now. “You’ve been seduced by a beautiful face.”

  She’s wrong. Sapphire is beautiful—absolutely. But they are so much more than that: shy, curious, and sharp-witted. I may resent Sapphire—maybe hate them for abandoning us—but I can still appreciate them as someone who mattered to me. Someone I wanted. Someone I kissed, and liked kissing.

  “So these service tunnels,” I say, ignoring her. “You think we can use them to get to the Pit?”

  “Yes,” she huffs. “And good thing. I need to get you out of here before they can brainwash you. Maybe we’ll find Nul out there. He’ll want to stop the long ears as much as I do.”

  Corene stomps off into her adjoining room to get some traveling clothes and boots. The moment she’s out of earshot I whisper to Parsifal, “She wants to find Nul, not Bayled.”

  He frowns. “Makes sense to me. He’s heir to the throne. The Klissen has soldiers and defenses. It’s the perfect place to establish a new seat of power.”

  A seat that won’t be mine. If Nul se Lan becomes King of some new, mutant Holy Kingdom—a merging of the Klissen and the remnants of our own people—with Corene as his Queen . . .

  There’s no space for me in the South. Or anywhere.

  “We don’t know what happened to the army,” Parsifal whispers. “Nul and Bayled might both be dead. Maybe we join up with one of the sworn lords. Or return to Frefois! Dad’s old friends would welcome us.”

  Everything he says sounds so impossible. All I want is to make it out of Four Halls alive. I want to see trees and walk on dirt and feel like a human again. Where we go, what alliance we build, whether the stupid crown goes to Nul se Lan and Corene . . . I feel tired.

  And poor, foolish Bayled, caught up in all of it. “Do you really care anymore about all that, Percy?” I ask wearily. “Because I don’t.”

  He looks me up and down, as if there’s been some mistake and I’ve become someone else in front of his very eyes. “Are you ill?”

  I shake my head. “I’m just exhausted.”

  Corene stomps back through the door with coats and boots. “Can’t guarantee they’ll fit,” she says, dropping them at our feet. We change our shoes and layer up to prepare for the winter world outside Four Halls, then duck into the secret place. We don’t speak as we trail along behind Corene in the darkness, each of us holding onto the other’s shirt so we don’t get separated. She walks with perfect confidence, even though she can’t see. She must’ve spent a lot of time in here.

  Corene stops abruptly, bends, and lifts a trap door in the floor. “Service tunnel,” she says and disappears into it. I follow, feet first, feeling around with my toes to find the ladder. Down and down, what feels like a hundred rungs, and suddenly—hard ground.

  The passageway is wider here, but just ahead it ends in a flat wall that I can only make out because of the faint light around the outline of a door. Corene feels along it, then pulls on something. There’s a creak and it opens.

  She peers through. “Clear,” she whispers. We follow her out, and I don’t recognize the empty room we’re standing in now.

  “Servants’ quarters,” Corene says. “The Pit is down the hall.” She pushes the door closed with an awful bang! as the stones snap back into place. “This way,” Corene says. We run, trying to keep our footfalls light, but we’re still human.

  The familiar odor of old shit and piss greets us in the latrine. A stone pool in the center of the room overflows with brown, steaming slop. Now that I know what I’m looking at, I can’t fathom how I missed before that it was a collapsed sewer pipe—a relic of a time long gone, when the Holy Kingdom and the dwarves cooperated. We should be standing right above the sewer system.

  Behind us, I hear footsteps. “Someone’s coming,” I whisper.

  “They must be coming to empty chamberpots,” Parsifal says. Our footsteps make slap, slap sounds through the muck. The distant footsteps stop, and the voices rise. I know that sing-song language. They’ve heard us.

  “Parsifal.” I grab his arm. “Call the castle. Now.”

  He looks around the room, brown eyes wide. “Nothing to feed it.” He sounds frantic.

  “Where’s the big mouth, Percy?” Corene hisses.

  Running feet echo down the hall. Parsifal hits the wall. “I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I think to bring something to feed it?”

  I glance backward. If they find us trying to escape, Sapphire can’t possibly save us.

  Parsifal

  Spinning around, I search the Pit for anything I could offer the castle in return for letting us through, even a leftover chamberpot.

  There’s nothing except shit. I’ve never been this foolish. “Please,” I whisper, as the long ears’ voices echo off the walls just down the hall. “Help us get to those sewers and I promise I’ll never mistreat another stone as long as I live.” I kneel down and press my palms to the floor. “Please.”

  Something inside me, down in a place in my chest I’ve never felt before, starts to vibrate. The feet are thundering. “Parsifal, they’re in the room,” Thelia whispers. She presses her lips to the side of my face. “I’m sorry. It’s over.”

  I’m hot everywhere, so hot I think I’ll faint. “Percy.” Corene sounds horrified. “You’re glowing.”

  The elves shout as they sprint toward us. “Well, come on then,” I say to the castle, in a voice that comes from deep inside me.

  The stones of the floor rise up, like a wave of ocean water. White teeth leap up over
our heads, and the elves stop in their tracks on the opposite edge of the Pit. An enormous tongue thrusts out from a growing hole in the floor. In one swoop, it scoops up all three of us.

  Everything goes dark. The shouting abruptly vanishes. My arms find their way around Thelia, squeezing her against me.

  “Percy,” Corene grunts. “Why are you hugging me?”

  Before I can answer, a hole opens—below us this time—and the soft tongue under my feet releases us, shoving us all toward the chasm.

  Down I fall. I land on top of Corene, who lets out a pained yelp. I look up only to find Thelia falling on top of me. Then the mouth closes, and everything disappears into darkness.

  The smell that assaults me is even worse than in the Pit upstairs. I shove Corene out of the way and fleg right there. Soon I hear Thelia doing it too. Our stomachs were empty, but my abdomen contracts and forces out fluid anyway.

  When I manage to stand up, I can’t see my own hands. Thelia lets out a frustrated noise. “I can’t believe we don’t have a candle.”

  “If we had, all that would’ve been a lot easier,” I say. I shut my eyes, then open them again. There’s no difference in how pitch-black it is. Up above, the sound of armored boots and shouting is muffled. They can find a way down if we give them time. We can’t give them time, but we can’t keep moving without light.

  That thing in my chest, that suffocating heat—can I find it again? I think of one word: light. “Won’t you help one more time?” I ask out loud.

  “What did you say?” Corene asks. I ignore her, thinking of a candle, of Sapphire’s little bobbing Magic light.

  Suddenly, Corene lets out a screech. When I open my eyes, pink light fills the yawning sewer pipe. “Melidia be damned.” She sounds as if this is her last moment on Helyanda. “They found us.”