“And so you answered it, just like that?”
“Not precisely,” I acknowledged. “I don’t know how things are where you live, Lady, but, where I come from, knowing your heart and what it holds is considered pretty important.”
The Queen of the Night took another step toward me, so close that, if I had dared, I could have reached out and touched her.
“Did the call of the bells match what is in your heart, young Tern?”
“No,” I answered truthfully. “Not precisely. But it was as close as anything has ever come. Too close a match to be ignored, even if I had wanted to. And so I came. It’s as simple as that. What does it mean? Do you know?”
“I do,” said the Queen of the Night. “But answer me just one more question first. What color are your eyes?”
It would have to be that, I thought.
“That is a question not even my mother can answer, not to her own satisfaction, anyway,” I replied. “For I am told that my eyes change color according to the light.
“In the morning, they are golden. At midday, green. By late afternoon, they have mellowed to fawn brown. My brother, Arthur, insists that they turn gray as a pewter plate at twilight, then silver when the first stars appear in the sky. At full night, things are easier for all concerned, for, at a certain point, I simply close my eyes. My father calls them hazel, and says we should simply leave it at that.
“My hair is just plain brown,” I added after a brief pause.
The Queen of the Night smiled. “There is nothing plain about you, young Tern,” she said. She looked over her shoulder at Lapin. “Let your heart rejoice, for you have done well.”
At this, Lapin got to his feet and swept her a tired bow, a thing that made the birds around him eddy like leaves in a gentle wind.
“My heart can never truly rejoice until the Lady Mina’s does.”
“Well spoken,” the Queen of the Night said, and she turned back to me. “Come walk with me, Tern, and I will tell you what you need to know.”
“I have a daughter,” the Queen of the Night said. “Mina, my only child. Last night, she was stolen from me by a mighty sorcerer, the Lord Sarastro, who intends to choose a husband for her. Unfortunately, he’s also her father.”
That would be the night of the storm, I thought. The night the world began to change.
“I would have my daughter set free,” the Queen of the Night continued. “But more than that, I wish her to have the freedom to know, and choose, from her own heart. While her father holds her, this can never happen, for he would have her bend her will to his.”
“But—,” I said.
The Queen held up a hand for silence.
“I know what you will say,” she pronounced. “That many a father has chosen a daughter’s husband. The fact that this is true has never made it right. But more than this, Mina’s father broke an oath when he took her from me. I cannot trust him to do what is right for our daughter.
“Therefore, Mina must be set free, and so I set Lapin to play the bells.”
“Wishing your daughter to be freed from captivity I understand,” I said. “But I don’t understand about the bells.”
“The bells have been in Lapin’s family since his grandmother’s time,” the Queen said. “They were a gift from the powers that watch over the universe. If struck correctly, they enable the player to summon their true love to their side.”
“I don’t think Lapin is my true love,” I said.
“I’m pleased to hear it,” the Queen of the Night answered with a smile. “But I set Lapin a special task, to play the bells in a way they had never been played before. He has known my daughter since she was an infant. It was his hopes for her that he held in his heart when he played the bells, not his hopes for himself. And this was the hope that I held in mine:
“That Lapin’s playing would call to the one who could both rescue my daughter and win her heart, for the call of the bells would come so close to the music of his own heart that he could not refuse to answer its summons.”
“Oh,” I said. It was a pretty accurate description of what I’d experienced, I had to admit.
At this, the Queen of the Night gave a laugh as silver as her eyes. “Come,” she said, and she reached inside her cloak and drew out a locket made of silver. “Let me show you my daughter’s likeness.”
“It doesn’t matter what she looks like,” I said swiftly. “Not if she is the true match of my heart. And even if it turns out that she isn’t, she’s been wronged and needs to be rescued. I can certainly do that much.”
She paused then, with the hand that held the locket half-extended toward me. “I do believe you are afraid, young Tern.”
“Well, of course I’m afraid,” I said.
“Of what?”
“Of every part of this,” I answered, seeing no reason not to be completely honest. “It’s changed my whole life. I’d be foolish not to be afraid, I think. But that doesn’t mean I won’t do what needs to be done.”
“Perhaps your whole life has been spent in waiting for this moment and you just didn’t know it,” the Queen suggested. “In which case, all you are doing is fulfilling your destiny and not changing anything at all.”
“Perhaps,” I acknowledged.
“All right. Let’s say you end up rescuing my daughter, but nothing more,” she said. “Not that that wouldn’t be quite a lot. It would still be helpful to know what she looks like, don’t you think?”
“You’ll have to excuse me for being an idiot,” I said. “I think I’ve been up as long as Lapin has, for, as long as he played, I listened.”
The Queen of the Night threw back her head and laughed once more. Then she sobered, and those eyes like stars looked straight into mine.
“When Mina was taken, I was sure I’d never laugh again. Sure that my own heart was broken. I think you will do very well, young Tern. Now take this, and look upon my daughter.”
I’ve never really believed in love at first sight, though that could be nothing more than rejecting the notion because it hadn’t happened to me, I suppose. And it isn’t altogether accurate to say that love at first sight is what happened to me at that particular moment. Because the truth is, this wasn’t my first glimpse of the Lady Mina’s face. I had seen it before.
This was the face that my mind had been conjuring, slowly yet surely, ever since I first played the flute that I had carved from the heart of the King’s Oak, and heard it answered by a call of bells. Hazy, at first, its features indistinct, growing more and more clear the closer I came to the sound of the bells. Right up until the moment that I had burst into the clearing, at which point the sight of Lapin and all that had happened since had driven the image to the back of my mind.
But not, as it happens, from any portion of my heart. For, at the sight of the face in the locket, my heart gave a great leap, and, after that, all my mind needed was but a small step to understand the cause. It was the Lady Mina’s face I had been moving toward, her call I had heard in the voice of the bells. And, as her mother hoped, so, now, did I. That the reason I had been summoned would be because the Lady Mina’s heart was the one true match for mine.
“Well?” the Queen of the Night inquired softly. “Will you know my daughter when you see her again?”
“I would know her anywhere,” I said. “For her face is written in my heart.”
At this, she laid her hand upon my arm. “You give my heart hope, young Tern,” she said. “Lapin!”
A moment later, slightly disheveled, as if he had fallen asleep, Lapin appeared in a flurry of birds.
“Did I hear my mistress’s voice?”
“There’s no need to be cheeky just because you know I’m pleased with you,” said the Queen of the Night. “Besides, there’s no time to rest on your laurels. I want you to go with Tern.”
“He’s a prince!” Lapin protested. “They’re supposed to be good at this sort of thing. He doesn’t need my help.”
“He does. Mina knows y
ou, while he is still a stranger. Though not, I hope, for very long.”
Lapin gave a great, exaggerated sigh. “Oh, very well. If I must do everything, then I guess I must.”
He is making it all up, putting on an act, I thought. He wishes to go as much as she wishes to send him.
“I will be glad of your company,” I said, and found that I meant it.
“Oh, well, that settles it then,” Lapin said, but I thought I detected a twinkle in his tired eyes. “It’s not every day I get to be a sidekick to a prince.”
“Enough!” said the Queen of the Night. “Let my women tend to your hands, Lapin. Then you and Tern should set out at once.”
“Which way shall we go?” I asked. For, now that I didn’t have the call of the bells to guide me, I realized I wasn’t quite sure precisely where I was, let alone where the path by which I had arrived had gone.
“Lapin knows the way,” replied the Queen of the Night. “I have done all that I dare. Now it is up to you.”
In Which Many Things Begin to Converge
THOUGH THIS MAY TAKE MORE THAN A SINGLE CHAPTER TO ACCOMPLISH
It seemed like such a splendid idea, at the time.
To run away, and thereby escape from the Lord Sarastro and show my defiance of him, both at once. And not only that, to run away just at dawn. At the moment when the sun begins to reclaim its ownership of the world, just as the lord wished to claim ownership over me.
Could there have been a more complete rejection of his plans for me, of all he stood for? I thought not. Oh, yes, it was a brave and splendid idea, one worthy of a heroine in an adventure novel. One who was going to have a happy ending beyond her wildest dreams.
Eventually.
In the meantime, she—I—was being forced to admit a painful truth.
Running away really isn’t all that much fun.
In the first place, the tunnels through which I was making my escape were dark. Not a problem for me, or so you and I would both have thought. But the darkness of the hidden passageway through which I moved was not the kind to which I was accustomed. It was close and cold. The further I moved along it, the more it seemed to me that I was walking through my own tomb.
Gayna had discovered the series of passages as a child, she had told me as we raced to put our spontaneously made plans into effect. Though the Lord Sarastro had taken her in, there were few women in his household. As a result, Gayna was often left unattended for long periods of time. Like any child, she’d been eager to explore, and, consequently, she had discovered a series of narrow passages that seemed to her to run between the very walls of the Lord Sarastro’s dwelling.
What this meant, what their purpose was, Gayna had never learned, for she had never confided her discovery to anyone. As she had grown older and her household duties had increased, she’d visited the tunnels less and less frequently, but she had never forgotten them. There was an entrance to one behind the wardrobe in the room in which I’d spent the night. And it was through this passage that Gayna proposed I make my escape, while she, dressed in the finery intended for me, would stay behind.
“Stick to the main passageway,” Gayna had said as she bundled me into her own cloak. “This should be easy, for it is wider than the others. Turn neither to the left nor to the right. Keep walking until you come to a great stone door. If you put your two hands together in the center and push with all your might, the door will open. You must then hurry through it quickly, for, as soon as you have let it go, it will swing back all on its own. I don’t know how it does this, but I do know it’s heavy enough to crush you.”
“I will take care,” I said.
We stood back and regarded one another. She was beautiful in the fancy dress wed found, its gold a perfect complement to her dark hair and her fine, pale skin.
“He’s a fool not to want you,” I said, then cursed myself for a fool when I saw her cheeks flush and the tears rise, unwanted, in her eyes. “But perhaps he does, and cannot show it,” I hurried on. “The Lord Sarastro is his master, after all. And if he has other plans for Statos—”
“Perhaps,” Gayna interrupted. “And perhaps I’ll ask him and see what he does. But as for you, you’d better go. There isn’t much time. It’s nearly dawn.”
Moving past me, she fiddled with the back of the wardrobe. I heard a click, then watched as Gayna put her hands in the center of the back of the wardrobe and pushed. It swung back, and a draft of cold and musty air poured out. Gayna stayed where she was, her weight against the door. Beyond her, I couldn’t see a single thing.
“Thank you for everything, Gayna,” I said. “Good luck.”
“And to you,” the girl my father had raised instead of me said.
Then I stepped forward into the passage. She stepped back. And the door swung closed behind me.
“Do you actually know where we’re going?” I asked. “Not that I’m complaining or anything. But we have been walking for several hours.”
Lapin yawned hugely, a thing he had been doing off and on ever since we’d started out. I couldn’t precisely blame him, but it was starting to get on my nerves. It’s not exactly as if I’d had any more sleep than he had, after all.
“Of course I know where we’re going,” he said now. “I’m just being careful, taking the long way around. We can hardly march right up to Sarastro’s front gates, pound on the door, and demand that he let the Lady Mina go.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I said after a moment. “He and all his retainers might die laughing. Then we could walk right in.”
There was a moment of silence. Then Lapin gave a chuckle, a pleasing sound. All the more pleasant because it seemed to have put an end to the yawning.
“You will be a worthy adversary for the Lord Sarastro,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll be expecting a sense of humor, somehow.”
“What will he be expecting?” I asked. A question that had been much on my mind.
“I’m not sure, to tell you the truth,” Lapin acknowledged. He gave a grunt of exertion as, together, we scrambled up a series of boulders.
We had been climbing steadily since we started out, as if the course Lapin had set would take us to the very top of the mountain. The slope had been gentle, at first, the forest dense all around us. As we climbed higher, the land began to change. The trees thinned and the ground grew rocky.
“He may not be expecting anyone at all,” Lapin continued, pausing for a moment to catch his breath. “I don’t think anyone’s ever truly challenged the Lord Sarastro’s authority before.”
“Not even your mistress?” I asked, then bit my tongue. I have a tendency to speak before I think, a trait which I know often worried my father, for it’s the kind of thing that can get a person into serious trouble.
“Actually,” Lapin said, “they stay out of one another’s way as much as possible. Not that this has prevented either from feeling threatened, if you know what I mean.”
I thought I did. “Oh,” I said after a moment.
“Precisely,” Lapin commented. “And now, young prince, if you are rested, we’d better keep going. I’m thinking standing on the top of these rocks leaves us too exposed to prying eyes.”
With that, he began to clamber down.
“Wait just a minute,” I said as I followed. “We stopped so you could rest, not I.”
“You just go right on believing that,” Lapin suggested.
In the air above us, I heard a single bird call, sounding as if it were laughing at us both.
“Gone,” the Lord Sarastro said. “What do you mean my daughter is gone?”
“She isn’t in her room, my lord. It would appear that she has run away.”
There, I thought. I’ve done it
I’d told my lord and master that his daughter had fled rather than be subject to his will. Rather than be my wife. Now all I had to do was to wait for the explosion. The only bright spot about the situation that I could see was that I’d been able to reach the Lord Sarastro before he’d ent
ered his great audience hall. He’d still been in his antechamber, and this meeting between us was, therefore, private. I’d stationed the retainers who had accompanied me to the Lady Mina’s chamber outside the door to help make sure of that fact.
“Run away! Impossible!” the Lord Sarastro exclaimed now. “She would not dare. She is still my daughter.”
“She is your daughter, my lord,” I replied. “It would seem that this means many things, including that she will dare much.”
At this, the Lord Sarastro stopped, and his face grew hard. “She is her mother’s daughter also,” he said. “Surely the Queen of the Night has had some hand in this. I should never have left my daughter alone, Statos. I should have married her to you at once.”
I’m not so sure that would have made a difference, I thought. Not to the Lady Mina’s desire to escape, at any rate. Though it might have deprived her of the means.
I must tell him how it happened, I thought. I must do my duty. But I discovered I was filled with a strange reluctance. Try as I might, I couldn’t shake the image of Gayna from my mind. Gayna, who had grown up here as an outsider, just as I had. Who longed for many things, just as I did. But longed, most of all, to be loved.
Just do it and get it over with, I told myself. You can’t afford to think of Gayna now.
I drew a breath to speak, but the Lord Sarastro suddenly spoke before I could.
“But I didn’t leave her alone, did I?” he asked, his tone quiet, almost as if he was speaking to himself and not to me at all. “I feared she might be lonely, and so I did not leave her on her own. I left Gayna with her, did I not, Statos?”
Now I did find my voice. “You did, my lord.”
“My daughter is unfamiliar with my dwelling,” the Lord Sarastro continued, “for she never set foot in it before last night. She could not have run away all on her own. I did not aid her, and I’m certain you did not. To do so would destroy both our hopes. In fact, I can think of only one member of my household who might have wished my daughter elsewhere.”
Sunlight and Shadow Page 9
