Descent

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Eventually he came to the deeper part of the palace, where the corridors were dark, and guards stood alert. At the end of one of the largest hallways there was a door with four guards standing in front of it.

  ‘What’s behind there?’ he asked and they glared at him closely before one of them answered, ‘This is the High Queen’s chamber.’

  ‘Is she in there now?’

  There was no reply.

  ‘Please inform her that her stepson would like to speak with her and is waiting outside her door.’

  One of the guards raised an eyebrow but another turned and knocked on the door three times before entering. Minutes later he returned and nodded.

  Inside candles were burning and the walls were covered by large draperies. Each depicted an exterior landscape, and the effect was quite bizarre; Altor had the impression of being outdoors, the effect magnified by the huge green plants that were everywhere.

  Elixia was sitting on a long red couch, holding her baby in her arms. When he entered she rose and put the child into a nearby cot, returning to stand before him.

  ‘You are misinformed,’ she said softly, her green eyes flashing. Those eyes—they were huge!

  ‘I have no stepson.’

  ‘A jest, my lady,’ he said calmly.

  ‘Your name?’

  ‘Altor of Burmia, highness,’ he said with a bow, noticing that her eyes narrowed fractionally.

  ‘You are Satine’s son?’ she asked and he nodded. ‘Greetings, Black Prince,’ she said. She was very small, with a sharp face, set off by the greenest eyes he had ever seen.

  ‘I didn’t realise you were here with us.’

  ‘I came with Jane and Fern from Sitadel.’

  She nodded calmly. ‘To what do I owe such a visit?’

  Altor thought for a moment, then said shortly, ‘I found this door and decided I’d like to meet you.’

  She looked at him strangely and waved him to a seat.

  Before he sat he stopped, staring at the baby.

  ‘A good-looking child,’ he commented idly. He didn’t care for children. He wasn’t sure if it made a difference that this baby was his half-sister. It didn’t seem to make any difference. There wasn’t much room inside him anymore. ‘She looks like you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Elixia said graciously. ‘Would you like to hold her?’

  ‘Not even a little,’ he assured her, moving to sit, not on the offered chair, but next to her on the red couch. She continued to peer at him through the low orange lighting, no change in her expression.

  ‘How old are you now?’ she asked suddenly.

  ‘Why?’

  She shrugged. ‘I know the story. I know how you age. I’m curious as to how it works,’ she said, no pity at all in her voice.

  ‘I’ve been alive nine years,’ he replied flatly. ‘You can see me—decide for yourself how fast it works.’

  She nodded, but gave no other indication that she was doing what he’d said.

  ‘How old are you?’ he asked, wanting to change the subject.

  ‘Eighteen. I was queen at sixteen.’

  ‘You have done well.’ It was a simple statement, and Elixia nodded. ‘Quite a situation your husband has got us into,’ Altor said, his eyebrows arched.

  ‘Indeed,’ she murmured. ‘But every day is as important as the next when a kingdom of people are relying on you for their safety. I would be remiss if I were to act without as much concern for my people’s lives every single day.’

  She was smooth, her answer immediate and unwavering. He had imagined that this woman, the king’s ignored, unloved wife, must have been unpleasant at best. A woman who couldn’t keep her husband happy, who couldn’t make her own opinions count in matters as big as these—must not be much of woman at all.

  Sitting beside the young queen, Altor realised how utterly foolish such a thought had been. Her sharp eyes gazed at him, completely aware of what he’d implied with such a mild comment, and her expression was fierce and compelling. The prince could come to only one conclusion. Accolon was more insane than they all thought for not appreciating what was his.

  Just then, Altor wanted something real and unmeasured. ‘You resent me,’ he said simply.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘I know what happened with my mother and your husband.’

  ‘I don’t resent you.’

  Altor had much experience in playing this game of words. It struck him somewhat belatedly that Elixia wasn’t playing at all. She was truly this measured. She wanted truth as much as he did.

  ‘What then?’ he asked, sitting forward to look at her more closely.

  She hesitated. ‘I’m frightened of you,’ she replied, not shying away from his gaze. ‘Your presence here, and your mother’s.’

  He nodded slowly. ‘I’m sorry for that.’ Surprisingly, he meant it. Word tricks were for daylight, when one was sly and sharp. Now he only wanted to talk to her.

  ‘I have heard that you walk within dreams, as well as death. I’ve heard you can fight the Valkyries within your nightmares.’

  She nodded. ‘Theoretically I can.’

  ‘Then you know what they look like?’

  She frowned. ‘I haven’t seen one for myself, but—’

  ‘Then you can’t fight them. You don’t know anything about them.’ Her eyes widened a fraction at his bluntness. He sat back, disappointed.

  ‘I’ve worked with people who have seen them,’ she said calmly. ‘I teach people how to control their nightmares.’ She paused and looked at him more closely. ‘You see them, don’t you? You’ve been touched by one of them.’

  He didn’t reply.

  Elixia shook her head. ‘It is a very dark path you walk, Black Prince. If you want, I could help you to—’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ he snapped. ‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’ Altor desperately wanted to change the subject. ‘Do you love your husband?’ he asked bluntly and she drew back.

  ‘Such questions are inappropriate, don’t you think?’

  He met her eyes. ‘You know they aren’t. Not tonight. Do you love him?’ He wasn’t sure why this question mattered so much.

  She sighed, and he could hear her sorrow in that breath. ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘How?’ he asked, unable to conceal his surprise. ‘How could you possibly love a man that weak?’

  Elixia frowned. ‘You are very young, Prince Altor. There are many different kinds of strength in the world, just as there is a great deal yet for you to learn.’

  Which made him feel horribly inadequate in a way he’d never known before.

  ‘Do you understand love?’ she asked. ‘Do you understand how it can work?’

  Altor merely shrugged.

  ‘Perhaps you know a little about infatuation,’ she murmured. ‘But I doubt very much that you’ve ever let yourself know love.’

  He felt it like a blow. She was undoing him with but a few simple words, carefully placed.

  ‘Is there a girl?’ Elixia pressed.

  Altor clenched his jaw but didn’t reply.

  ‘How do you feel, knowing she wants another? That’s it, isn’t it?’

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘I know you didn’t say it, but answer the question.’

  ‘The question is—’

  ‘Inappropriate? You said it yourself, no questions are inappropriate. Not tonight. So tell me. Please.’

  Altor was handed a goblet by a servant, and he gulped it gratefully. It was Ice Wine from Torr. It felt almost sinful to be drinking it on this night. But she was too quick, too clever, and had managed to gauge everything he was in mere moments. He needed the wine.

  ‘It’s fitting,’ he murmured and suddenly felt as though he had lost control of himself. ‘I watch from a distance, and I know that had I any real part in her life, it would not be right. I am ... too damaged by far, and the one she loves is far more worthy than I could ever be. But...’ and here he faltered. ‘It still hurts.’
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  Elixia frowned sadly. ‘I think, Altor, you don’t want this girl. Not truly. You merely wish you could be allowed to want.’

  Altor drew back. Her green eyes were too huge, too probing. He gave a careless, dazzling smile, and said, ‘I am a prince. I don’t want for anything, highness.’

  ‘Unworthy,’ Elixia shook her head, wiping the smile from his lips. And then she told him, ‘You can measure a person by their courage in loving.’

  ‘Even when they’re broken?’

  ‘More so,’ she said firmly.

  She was unsettlingly calm, her words like a weapon against his unprepared heart.

  ‘I’ve known a lot of people like you in my life,’ he told her softly. ‘People who think they know me. Who think they have me worked out. But they never do, Queen Elixia. Nobody ever knows anything about the kind of darkness that is within me.’

  ‘Only because you don’t let anyone know it,’ she said calmly.

  Suddenly the anger that was always under the surface threatened to overflow. ‘Don’t you think,’ he asked her through gritted teeth, ‘I would like the luxury of being able to let someone know me? Don’t you think I’d give anything for it?’

  ‘I think that’s a lie. I think you hide behind your disability. I think you love it, because it lets you behave like a cruel, malicious man.’

  Altor was stunned speechless.

  ‘I’m finished now,’ Elixia said, her manner softening. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt you. It simply seemed to me, that on a night which is probably going to be our last, something called for truth.’ She paused and with a quirk of her mouth, added, ‘We can dissect me now, if it would make you feel better?’

  Altor breathed out, long and slow, feeling the world settle back into place. Almost back into place. ‘I could tell you I hate you for saying such a thing,’ he said.

  ‘But it would be a lie?’

  After a moment he nodded. ‘It would be. And I’m not a liar. Whatever else you might think of me.’

  He shifted a little closer to her on the couch, catching as he did the scent of flowers on her skin. He found himself watching her mouth, unable to look away.

  ‘Imagine this is the last night of your life,’ she said very softly, leaning subtly towards him. ‘Who do you want to spend it with, Black Prince?’

  It caught him off guard. People’s faces flashed through his mind as he thought about the question, and with them came a kind of hollow ache. ‘You first,’ he rasped.

  She considered this a moment, then inclined her head. ‘All right.’ A kind of sadness washed over her, and it seemed to Altor that she was far too young to know that kind of sorrow. She looked down at her hands.

  ‘He still loves her,’ Elixia whispered. ‘He says her name in his sleep at night.’

  And suddenly there was something in his chest, hurting—a pressure, a tightening. It came from her eyes and wrapped him up, encircling him and holding him tight. Who was this man, her husband, not to treasure her as she deserved?

  ‘So I guess I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘I guess I don’t know who I’d spend it with, and that’s the most horrible thing of all.’

  Altor realised something as he looked into her bright eyes. The High Queen of Paragor—last necromancer in the world, attuned to the gods, beautiful in a sorrowful way—was here, next to him on this night of chaos, and she was telling him her most awful truths as if he was actually worthy of such things. As if she believed him worthy, and was making him so. There were endless layers in the world, in the human mind and heart that he could never hope to understand.

  But he was starting to understand a little more about himself, and what he was capable of giving, and that was enough for now.

  A strange, unexpected thing to discover at the end.

  Gently he reached out and brushed a lock of hair behind her ear, letting his hand linger on her cheek. ‘The truth?’ he murmured, barely more than a whisper. ‘Tonight, I wouldn’t be anywhere else in the entire world than right here with you.’

  Chapter 39

  Outside the city of Amalia, on the other side of Uns Lapodis, there was a smattering of coastal towns. Amid these towns were a series of watch-towers designed to protect against attack in the dark.

  In one of these towers a boy stood, his bow and arrow at the ready—always, in every moment of darkness, at the ready. For two years, since the beginning of the descent of Paragor, he had never once set foot inside a city at night, or slept underneath the protection of the Elvish threads. Instead, General Terret, discovered as a boy in the annual Amalian games and recruited into the king’s guard at the age of fourteen, stood out in the open, keeping guard over his people, watching for attacks and leading his men in their lonely night battles against the creatures of nightmare.

  This night in Amalia, chaos was afoot. But out here in the dark, this night was the same as the rest.

  ‘Two sightings to the west, Captain,’ one of his men told him calmly and the soldiers in the tower swung their bows and fired, killing the two Valkyries instantly.

  They had become accustomed to the darkness, to being able to fight in it. They had developed measures against it. Torches to light up the sky. And crude telescopes to see into the distance.

  The group fell back into easy talk as they watched, knowing that they had to stay calm and strong. Terret turned his eyes to the new boy. He’d come from the High City, and had specially requested being assigned to Terret’s squadron. He was a baby. But Terret had been exactly the same at first. He was still a child in most people’s eyes, and he knew how hard it had been to gain respect in the beginning.

  ‘Why are you here, boy?’ Terret asked the child softly.

  Thor’s blue eyes looked into his face, and he replied, very clearly, ‘To help.’

  Which was more than enough in times like these, when soldiers died a dozen a day and there were not enough men to replace them. Terret had seen so many men—children, too—die out here. But he continued. He kept fighting, because their foes kept coming.

  ‘Can you use a bow?’ he asked Thor.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Because that is all you’ll need out here. No use for swords, unless they get too close. And that means we aren’t doing our jobs.’

  Most nights the men laughed and joked, and managed to stay human even in the darkest times. But some nights it was much too dark for laughing.

  A swarm of Valkyries, much bigger than usual, descended from directly above them. It was hardest to see them when they came from straight overhead, and tonight they came, and they crashed through the ceiling of the stone tower, killing three men on impact. Terret swung his bow and began to fire as quickly as he could, but as if his words had been an omen, the beasts were already too close for arrows to be of any use. Drawing his sword he saw the new boy do the same, and he began to pray to all the gods that he knew the names of as the remaining men fought for their lives.

  Chapter 40

  Jane paused to scratch her arm, then went back to fiddling with Fern’s hair. He was sitting with his back to her cell, and the bars were wide enough that she could reach through and touch him.

  ‘How are you doing?’ she asked after a moment, her fingers idle and distracted.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, predictably. It was clear that Athena was the last thing Fern wanted to talk about, and it was starting to worry Jane. He’d not mentioned his wife’s name once since her death.

  ‘This sucks,’ she muttered. She’d been trying, without fail, to use her powers to get out of the cell, but no matter how hard she focused, she just couldn’t get a hold of the slippery spar of energy she needed. It lay dormant at the base of her, untouchable and infuriating.

  ‘Why is it that I can only call my power up when I don’t really need it?’ she muttered, frustrated.

  ‘Maybe stress makes it harder for you?’ he suggested. ‘Maybe you need to relax a bit.’

  ‘An impossibility,’ she sighed. ‘Whatever this power inside me is, it
seems to be directly related to my emotions. And right now I couldn’t slow my head or my heart even if my life depended on it.’ Jane sighed, feeling hopeless. ‘Could we be anymore useless in here?’

  ‘Not even if we tried,’ he said flatly. ‘It’s driving me mad not knowing what’s going on.’

  ‘And not being able to help. Can you believe we’re actually going to have no part in things this time?’

  ‘You’re uncharacteristically optimistic about the fact that we could help at all.’

  Jane frowned. ‘Well, I was until you pointed that out.’

  She knew he was smiling, even though she couldn’t see him. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Got any bright ideas?’

  ‘Not one. How would I know what to do?’

  He shrugged. ‘How did you get rid of him last time?’

  Jane opened her mouth, then realised what Fern had said. Her fingers stilled in his hair, her heart thumping. ‘What did you say?’ she asked faintly.

  Fern pulled away so that he could turn around and look at her gently. ‘I asked what you did last time. When you banished him.’

  Jane’s mouth fell open. ‘How could you possibly know?’

  He smiled tiredly. ‘Jane, I figured it out.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean you figured it out?’ she fumed. ‘You just guessed that I happened to be the reincarnation of some long dead saviour of Paragor?’

  He spread his hands. ‘I’ve been piecing it together for a long time. The legend always said that Amara would be reborn again in a time of great need. Then there was the way you looked when I told you the story of Amara, the look in your eyes when you saw the mosaic in the temple on Guanu. Even the detail of you waking up on the cliffs named after her seemed to fit. Besides which, you have an amazing power that arose from nowhere. Not to mention the pearl.’

  ‘What about the pearl?’

  ‘Amara was known to wear a single white pearl around her neck. It was her trademark.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me that you’ve known about this all along—you knew before I did, and you didn’t tell me?’

  ‘I had a suspicion,’ he said calmly. ‘There was never any reason to burden you with what has always been a far-fetched guess. I mean, really Jane—you struggled enough with the thought that you were foretold in this lifetime, but to have to live up to the actions of someone from a thousand years ago?’ He let this sink in.