“You’ll get through it.”
“I will,” Halfreda nods, “but I will never be the same.”
They spend the morning in a strange silence, moving around each other, bathing, getting dressed, eating, warming by the fire, all with barely a word exchanged.
“I need a minute.”
Halfreda leaves her friends and retreats to her bedroom. She lies down on his bed, looking at the ceiling. This is it, what the teacher believes she has been called for, what he thinks her purpose in life is. Killing one Kingmaker after another until the one who shall live appears. She knows she will not sleep but she closes her eyes, gathering her strength, asking the spirits for help, visualising a smooth and easy day.
It will not be a smooth and easy day – she will have one dead Kingmaker and two dead princes to deal with very soon, but she needs it to be as easy as it can be for her. She cannot say the wrong words, she must get all of her chanting right and she must – when she makes the slit with the small dagger – do so with a sure hand, so poor Isla dies instantly. She cannot suffer, blood gurgling from her throat while the Realm watches on with delighted disgust.
Calm now, she tucks the dagger into the folds of her cloak, takes all of the potions and tablets the teacher has given her and faces her friends.
They can see a change in her demeanour; anyone would. She is standing stronger, prouder, steadier on her feet. Her eyes reflect the peace she is feeling. She is here to do this and do this she will.
With final hugs and kisses, her friends leave her side, heading to the seats with the hundreds of others to watch this spectacle.
Halfreda waits and then follows them.
She heads through the courtyard, eerily empty and quiet, and around to where the dais is set up. There are so many people, that she comes to a standstill. People standing, people sitting, little boys on their father’s shoulders, youngsters jostling for a view.
The pallets are laid out, decorated with floral wreaths, ready for three dead bodies.
The Kingmaker is there, so small and frail looking now that the end is near. Halfreda cannot bear the sight of her after she disappointed her so at the river. False hope is the cruellest of all tricks.
Three brothers, all handsome and tall, any one of them fit to rule, but only one will be chosen by the Kingmakers magic blood.
The King, ready to step aside for his child to go forward and his Queen, pale and sickened by the whole debacle.
Was this really the only way to choose a new King, the best Ofia and the others could come up with?
As she threads through the crowd, they fall silent. A beautiful young woman, Halfreda, now shrouded in the disguise of witch, wise woman, murderer. Not so alluring anymore. No one in the crowd can meet her eyes.
Each step feels heavier as she walks towards Isla, but she can feel the loving weight of her teacher’s gaze as well as those of Nerida and Kinsey.
The siblings all look scared. The odds aren’t good – three dead and just one will live.
Halfreda looks out at the people, and she feels them shrink away from her.
“And so the new King shall be crowned.”
She faces Isla, chants a string of odd words, mixed with dramatic gestures.
When she pulls out her dagger, there is no sound; the entire Realm has stopped breathing. Isla looks set to faint and the boys look queasy. Once she is murdered they have to drink her blood. Death will befall two of them instantly.
Isla takes a breath, and although her voice is thin and shaky she says the words she must; the words she has practised saying all her life, the words that have reverberated around her head: I am the Kingmaker and I willingly die to make one of you King.
At the word, King, Halfreda steps hugs Isla close to her, and then with one swift, unpractised but thankfully precise movement, slits her throat. A guard holds a goblet underneath the wound to catch the blood and then another takes Isla’s lifeless form away and lays her on a wooden pallet. It is ghastly to see.
Halfreda now stands with the goblet of freshly drawn blood and begins chanting again. She pours the blood into three cups and passes one to each prince. The three brothers smile unsteadily at each other and then raise their cups in unison. There is a hush from the crowd as they watch their beloved princes, their father, the King, watching over them, Halfreda sombre at their side.
Without a sound, two of Isla’s brothers drop dead, caught on the way to the floor and placed on the pallets next to their sister. Without a second to grieve, the old King takes his crown and places it on the new King’s head.
The crowd erupt into frenzied cheering, some weeping for the dead people and some laughing; the mood borders on hysteria and Halfreda can do nothing but stand with tears pouring down her face and blood dripping from the end of her dagger.
The teacher takes her hand and pulls her away from the celebration; she will have more work to do next week when she crowns the new King formally, but for now she needs to be away from the drama and the dead. He removes the dagger from her hand and passes it to a little maid, telling her to clean it and return it.
Nerida and Kinsey are following, neither sure of what to say or do. They both cried watching their poor friend carry out her duty. She did it so well, but she is visibly shrunken from it.
The teacher gives more orders to another little maid, though they don’t hear what he says. They imagine it is ale and food, maybe a tonic. She will need both.
Halfreda rushes through her suite of rooms and into her wash room. She grabs an empty bowl, the one she uses to rinse her hair and she vomits into it. Over and over. There is a jug of clean water and she washes her face and rinses her mouth.
She did it. She ended a life, and as a consequence two more lives ended. She cannot stop crying. She cannot face the teacher or her friends; she cannot shoulder this responsibility time after time and yet she knows she must.
The responsibility is hers; she has accepted it. By wielding the dagger so neatly this time she has changed the course of her life. She might have refused before, she could have run away or convinced the teacher that she couldn’t do it, wouldn’t do it.
But she did it.
She rinses her mouth out again and nods.
She is the wise woman of the castle. She will kill every Kingmaker until the day comes when one of them passes her test. She will help change history.
She opens the door and her friends and the teacher gasp.
“What’s wrong?” she asks them.
“Halfreda. Your hair.” Nerida looks concerned and Kinsey is crying. Halfreda touches a hand to her hair, confused.
The teacher takes her hand. “It’s changed colour. It’s changed to silver.”
“Why? What does it mean?”
“Your heart has changed, Halfreda, with the deed you just performed. You are you no longer. Now you are Halfreda, wise woman of the castle, maker of history. You will find the first Queen of the Realm. This is a duty no longer; this will be your life’s work.”
Halfreda nods. She knows it. She will live and die now purely to find the first Queen of the Realm. She has no idea how many Kingmakers she will need to kill or how many years it will take, but she is ready.
The Kingmaker Prophecy Page 13
