Elena and Sergei landed on the balcony without incident; had Sergei been the size of his brother Nightsong, they couldn't have done it, but the balcony was just large enough for something pony-sized. She slid off, and pushed open the balcony door.
Clang!
She staggered back, reeling, from the blow to her head. Which fortunately, had been mostly absorbed by her helm but still — her ears were ringing and for a moment she had seen stars! "Hey!" she shouted indignantly, fending off the angry, poker wielding young woman who advanced on her. "What do you think you're at, wench? Julian sent me! I'm here to rescue you!"
"What?" the poker dropped from the young woman's hands and clattered to the stone floor as she stared at Elena in shock. "You — "
Once again, Elena felt the weight of The Tradition collapsing around her and even as she seized on the opportunity to replenish her magical stores, she was pulling off her helm. The Tradition had its own path for those who rescued ladies in Durance Vile. And Princess — now Queen — Kylia had spread her arms wide to embrace her "rescuer," automatically, impelled by The Tradition. And in a moment, Kylia was going to find herself a different sort of prisoner, manipulated and pushed into falling in love — or at least, into something that felt just like love. And she might, possibly, recall that once she had felt exactly the same thing for her husband, but at that point, it would already be too late.
"Yes," Elena said, shaking her hair loose, firing the words out as quickly as she could to warp The Tradition back to the path she wanted. "I'm Godmother Elena. Your husband, Julian, sent me — he's leading a frontal assault on the gate as a distraction in order to set you free to join him."
Kylia stopped dead in her tracks, as stunned for the moment as Elena would have been if that poker had connected with her skull instead of her helm.
"Oh," she said, in a small, uncertain voice. "A woman?"
"Julian sent me," Elena said firmly. "I am a Fairy Godmother, come at his call for aid. He's single-handedly leading an heroic assault on the front gate to act as a distraction so you can escape."
This was, of course, a lie. That didn't matter. What mattered was to deflect The Tradition from the course it was on with certain key words. It wasn't quite a spell, as such, but it had all the force of a spell. Kylia — and through her, The Tradition — heard
"Julian — single-handedly, heroic — so you can escape." The force impelling Kylia into falling in love with her rescuer (which had been the source of no end of tragedy in the past) was deflected by the clear impropriety of Kylia falling in love with a woman, and by the apparent sacrifice that Julian was making of himself. Given those key words, she was impelled right back into the love of her husband.
This was the problem with Tradition-created "love." It was manufactured. In time it would solidify into the real thing, far more often than not, but in the first year or two of marriage, the bond was fragile, easily broken, and easily reformed onto another object of affection.
The Tradition created tragedy as well as happy endings; The Tradition did not care if a story ended happily or in sorrow, so long as the tale was powerful enough. For every Sleeping Princess, there was a Fair Rosalinda. For every Mark and Yseult, the Tradition was perfectly prepared to create a Trystan....
Not in my Kingdoms.
"Julian," Kylia breathed, "he's out there, you say?"
"He is, and waiting for you." Elena took the opportunity to shove her out the door of the balcony before she had a chance to object. And before she had a chance to react to the presence of a horse on the balcony, Elena had lifted her into Sergei's saddle. Just in case, she tied off the poor child's belt to the saddle. Kylia grabbed the pommel reflexively.
"Off!" she shouted, darting back inside. "Good luck!" Sergei shouted back, and leaped from the balcony with Kylia suddenly coming to her senses and shrieking in fear at finding herself several hundred feet above the ground and plummeting towards it like a stone.
But that was not Elena's problem; that was Sergei's.
With luck, if any of the winged things were attracted back to their guard-post by Kylia's shrieks, Sergei would already be on the ground. By that time, Kylia would be silent (or even fainted, poor thing), and they would find the balcony door open and the balcony vacant and assume that, rather than become the bride of their master, she had flung herself from the tower.
And, being no fools, if not very bright — and, as were the minions of most evil creatures, believing firmly in the principle of looking out for themselves first — if they were not magically bound, they would swiftly bugger off before their master found out what had happened, rather than go looking for a body.
She dashed for the door to the room; if winged guardians did come back she wanted to be sure that she herself was not here. The door to this level wasn't locked, and she darted into the staircase, closing and locking the door behind her, creating one more reason to believe that Kylia had plunged to her death.
It occurred to her, as she began working her way down through the levels of the tower, that Kylia might not be quite the milk-and-honey princess that Elena had thought her. She had, after all, armed herself with that poker, yes, and she had been perfectly ready to attack anything coming in the balcony door with it! Well, good; good for her. That boded well for Julian, too....
Get your mind back on what you're doing, she scolded herself. The most difficult task is yet to come. And she worked her way down through the empty tower levels until, at last, she found a door that was locked.
She paused, her ear pressed to the keyhole, listening with all of her attention. Was there a guard out there? Was there some other sort of creature? She couldn't hear anything, nor could she sense any sort of magic. All she could hear were the distant echoes of the fighting. Either Alexander had not yet challenged the Sorcerer, or he had, but the fighting at the gate was continuing anyway.
That might change at any moment. It was time to take yet another chance, and hope that luck was with them all.
Chapter 20
Elena knelt beside the door, touched her wand to it, and teased another fragment of magic into the door-lock.
"Open locks, whoever knocks," she whispered to it, and tapped, gently, on the wood of the door beside the lock.
With a click, the lock tripped, and she pushed the door open — gently.
She peered around the door, to see that she was in a hallway. There should have been lamps illuminating the whole area, but this hall showed signs of a struggle. Only about half of the lamps were lit; the rest lay on the floor, broken, and the little tables that had once held vases or statues were overturned, their burdens shattered.
Evidently Kylia had not gone to her imprisonment quietly. Once again, Elena found the Princess rising in her estimation. So, she fought, did she? Well done to her.
At least the hallway was clear. If I were the throne room, where would I be? she wondered. Or did she, in fact, actually want the throne room? Sergei had guessed that this was where the Sorcerer's heart would be, but he had not actually known. So who — or what — would?
Well, there was dark magic everywhere, the sort that only evil mages could use without being tainted, for it carried the overburden of death, or of being wrenched away from someone who was afraid and unwilling. That was the bad part; she couldn't use it. It hung in the air in clouds, dark and glowing with a sullen red, as if the place was on fire.
The good part was that with so much magic hanging about, a little more wouldn't be noticed. So she eased out a tiny trace, a thread of the stuff, spun it out from her wand, and concentrated on it.
"Clever, cunning, silent, wary;
Come to me and do not tarry.
Anyone who's wise
knows that Nothing will escape a cat's eyes."
The thread of magic formed into a tiny sphere and shot off at floor-level. She closed the door most of the way, sat back on her heels, and waited.
She did not have to wait long, fortunately for her patience. Within a few minutes, a
long, slender, black shape oozed through the crack she had left open, and stood looking expectantly up at her.
"Godmother," she said.
Elena was not surprised that the cat identified her immediately. Cats, even the commonest barn and kitchen cats, had an affinity for magic.
"Daughter of Bast," she replied, with a little bow. Cats liked to be reminded that they had once been worshiped. They pretended that they didn't, that they were above flattery, but of course, that only meant that they were all the more susceptible to it. "I am looking for something. It will be strange. It is very precious to the Bad Pack Leader of the Bad Pack that has taken over this castle, and he will have hidden it." She used the word "pack leader," not because cats had a hierarchy anything like a pack, but because they very well understood how dogs operated, and tended to think of humans and other two-legged creatures in those terms.
"Strange...." the cat pondered this. "There is hard shiny no-scent stuff, but it is precious to all of them, and like the hard shiny stuff that was here already. Will it be — " and here the cat used a word that didn't translate into human terms. This was because it was the complicated, multilayered feline term, incorporating scent, sound, sight, magic-sight, and a sense that only cats seemed to have that somehow involved magic at a level completely alien to humans. It meant "something that is physical but is also extremely magical" with a modifier specifying "bad magic."
"Yes, it will!" Elena whispered, grateful beyond measure that she had somehow managed to attract one of the castle matriarchs, and not a kitchen-cat, a kitten, or a pampered lady's cat.
"Hmm, the size of a six-week kitten ? Hard shiny stuff on the outside, but alive inside?" the cat persisted.
Now that could only be the heart, as Sergei had described it! He'll probably encase it in diamond or something, and put the diamond in a box and you'll have to figure out how to get it out...
"That's it exactly, wisest of the wise!" she exclaimed. "Can you take me to it?"
"Can you walk-through-walls?" the cat asked.
Now, Elena had never been entirely certain what that meant. Cats used the term all the time. Sometimes, it seemed to mean only that the cat could ooze through small cracks and holes that seemed too small for it. Sometimes it seemed to mean merely that it could find a way wherever it wanted to go. But sometimes it seemed to mean just that, literally — as if there were cats who could, indeed, walk through walls.
Mind, knowing cats, she didn't entirely doubt it, though that didn't help her at the moment.
"No," she said with regret. "I am not so clever."
"Clever," in feline, meant a number of things that included being powerful, intelligent, cunning, and very, very magical.
"Can you walk unseen?" the cat persisted. "We must pass many dogs of the Bad Pack. They are roused by the Good Pack at the gate and the two Pack Leaders fighting, but there are still some along the way who are not distracted."
Elena felt her throat tighten; so Alexander was in combat! She had to move, and move quickly, for he could not battle so powerful a magician for very long....
"I can," she said, electing to spend a great deal of her magic to make herself invisible. She hadn't planned on doing so — it would leave her very little to work with —
But now it was a matter of time, and they had none to waste.
"Do," the cat said, and sat on her haunches, expectantly.
Elena gathered the magic and smoothed it over herself with her wand like a second skin. Then, holding it in place, she concentrated with all of her will, and gave it the direction she wanted it to take —
"Fool all eyes that look on me; fool each mind that wants to see. Make me clear as purest air; I'm the one who isn't there."
She had never done this before, although she had read about it, and it was most unnerving to watch herself, for she just — faded away, growing more and more transparent, until there was nothing where she was, at all. She'd taken pains to form the spell so that it not only worked on the eyes but on the mind — so that even if one of the Sorcerer's creatures could ordinarily see things that were invisible, such as spirits, it still would not see her unless it worked a counter-spell, because its mind would refuse to acknowledge that she was there.
The cat's mouth opened in a feline grin. "Well done, Godmother. I see you not. Come."
That was proof enough that the spell was properly set, for cats, as everyone knew, were perfectly capable of seeing spirits. The cat oozed around the door again, and Elena pulled off her boots and followed.
The hallway was quite short, and probably represented the point where the tower connected to the castle itself. It led straight into a larger room — much, much larger — that could only have been Stancia's Great Hall where everyone had been at dinner when the Sorcerer came. The bodies had been taken away, but the tables and benches were pretty much still where they'd been when the fight was over. Crockery shards and broken wooden trenchers were scattered everywhere, there were sticky pools of what might have been blood and what might have been drink, mostly dried now. There was no sign of anything edible. Some of the tables and benches were broken or hacked up, the tapestries had been torn off the walls and shredded or were lying in heaps against the walls. There was a foul stench in the air that made both Elena and the cat wrinkle their noses in distaste.
The foul aroma probably came from the creatures still here.
Elena could not put a name to what they were; they were outside her expertise, and now she could understand why Stancia's men were calling them "demons." The things that they looked most like were spiders, except that they had a hard armoring skin, and only four legs. All four had nasty cutting pincers on them, though, and they had a manlike torso with two "arms" each as well, with appendages that served as hands. They had oval, hairless heads with masklike faces and large, slanting, glittering eyes. They were all, from the top of the head to the tip of the pincers, a shiny black in color.
There were fifteen of them, and they were simply — immobile. They might have been statues, except that Elena was perfectly certain that they were watching everything that passed around them.
No wonder the cat had asked her if she could be invisible.
They paid no attention to the cat, however. Perhaps they were unconcerned about anything below a certain size. The cat wove her way across the hall, tail in the air, sauntering as if she hadn't a care in the world, and Elena followed in her wake. Elena did note, however, that the path that the cat took was the one that enabled her to keep as far away from each of the things as possible, even though that actually meant that she was weaving her way among them rather than going in a straight line.
Well, that suited Elena. She made herself as small as she could, and was glad that she had thought to take her boots off first. She clutched them to her chest, and walked as silently as stockinged feet would permit. That cat moved slowly as well; perhaps rapid movement would also trigger their interest. That suited Elena just fine as it made it easy to keep right on the cat's heels.
When she was most of the way across the room, with none of those creatures between her and the doorway, something back behind her — fell. There was a tremendous bang and clatter; she froze.
The change in the monsters was instantaneous.
They came alive; they rose up on the tips of their feet, they all turned as swiftly as thought, and then — moved.
They swarmed on some spot near the other door, presumably where the noise came from. They moved like nothing Elena had ever seen before, with a clattering sound, and the ticking of claws on stone. The sight was terrifying, and Elena only gave one horrified glance behind her before turning tail and following the cat into the "safety" of the doorway.
The cat said nothing, but her tail was a bottle-brush and her back humped as she scuttled on.
She led Elena through a succession of three rooms, all of which had been richly appointed, and all of which had been ransacked and not yet cleaned. There were more dried, dark stains here as well, an
d there was no mistaking that rusty color for anything but blood.
Then came the fourth room.
Elena stopped, and blinked for a moment, eyes dazzled.
It was difficult to say what purpose this room might have served King Stancia; it had no windows, but all the light came from magnificent sconces that had probably held huge, fat candles, but which now supported weirdly glowing balls of green light. But what dazzled her was that around the walls, heaped up as if they stood in a dragon's hoard, was treasure.
There was far, far more of it than there could possibly have been in Stancia's treasury. The heaps were as high as Elena's chest, and there was no order to any of it, except that the heaviest and most massive items were on the bottom. Avalanches of coins, loose jewels, and jewelry, cups, plates, platters, and bowls, boxes and bags, bales of cloth-of-gold and cloth-of-silver, candlesticks, incense-censors, breastplates, swords, daggers, lamps, bottles —
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