by Sarah Dalton
It sounds like an insane thing to say, and yet there is truth there too. He is evil through and through. It shows that he has some awareness at least; unless he is talking about something else, like his favourite son, Lyndon.
“There’s more to all this,” Sasha says. “The king isn’t just crazy. He wouldn’t be able to function if he was. He wouldn’t be able to rule. There are plenty of power hungry people who would gladly take the throne if they had the chance. He’s managed to maintain his position of power despite being verging on destitute. That takes cunning and manipulation and fear. Insanity is not as frightening as ruthlessness. Trust me, if he really is as crazy as that journal suggests, he wouldn’t still be king. ”
I think for a moment. The answer lies in all of this somewhere, and I know that I only need to put the pieces together, but everything is going off in different directions and I find the pressure of it all overwhelming.
“We need to go back to the tunnels,” I say. “There was some sort of code written on one of the stones and I think it might be useful. En Crypt Saran. Cas said he thought it was a crypt, a dead foe buried in the walls of the secret passageway, but I think that’s hogwash. I think it is a clue. I had a feeling in my stomach that it was important.”
“Cas was there with you?” she asks.
“A vision version of him. An imposter made up by the Nix,” I say.
Sasha regards me with that annoying assessing look she often gives me. “Mae, in these visions, is Cas… romantic with you?”
I squirm away from her. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yes you do, and I will take that as a yes.”
“I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother saying it. The Nix is playing a game with me. The Cas in the visions is not really him and I shouldn’t believe a word of it.”
“In fact, no, that isn’t what I was going to say at all,” Sasha replies. “The Nix feeds on fear, but it needs an actual fear to feed from. It needs something that is true. That’s why, when it stalks its prey, it learns everything it can about its prey. When the Nix caught my mother in the Waerg Woods, I believe it used all that knowledge to frighten her to death. Without the truth, the vision would not scare us.”
“But the Nix is targeting me, not Cas.”
“Is it?” she replies. “You said that you have been in Ellen’s greatest fear, and Beardsley and the queen, do they sound like they are about you?”
“No, I suppose not. I didn’t even feature in some of them. I was inside the person. Like a passenger.”
“Exactly. Perhaps the Nix is using a valid fear from Cas to torment you with. Maybe Cas really does have feelings for you,” she suggests.
“And that is his greatest fear?”
“Think about it. He is a young boy engaged to a girl he doesn’t know. He’s forced into this marriage, Mae. Don’t you think that would mess with his head? He has to believe he loves her because he has no choice. And all this time he has spent with you, knowing you, being in life threatening situations, all of that must have confused him further. To Cas, letting down his people, his king and his mother is probably his greatest fear. Being in love with you could be his greatest fear.”
It is as though someone has shone a bright light in my eyes. I see nothing. I feel numb.
“I don’t… I don’t believe it,” I whisper, even though every part of my body wants to believe it.
“Oh stop being a nincompoop.” Sasha waves a dismissive hand in front of her face. “Anyway, we have far more important things to worry about than boys.”
“You brought it up,” I remind her.
“Yes, good point. I might try not to do that from now on. Boys are so very boring.”
I climb to my feet and wince at the sharp twang in my chest. Even with the fast heeling my injuries still smart. We make our way back to the secret tunnel where this all began. I’ve been at this very spot many times now. It makes me wonder if the queen had her suspicions regarding the curse. I now believe she brought me to this very room on purpose. But why would she bring me and not Ellen? Surely the craft-born—in her eyes—would have been a better choice.
I now have the combinations memorised. The effort is uncomfortable with my injuries, but I push through the pain. We are in the tunnels in no time and I am eager to find secrets I have never seen before, not even after exploring the castle before the curse fell. I used to follow the royal members as they moved around the palace, fascinated by the twists and turns of the long corridors. I have a reputation for remaining unseen in Halts-Walden, it wasn’t hard to spy on many members of the court.
But I never followed the king. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him after what he did to me in the Waerg Woods. Perhaps that was a mistake. Then again, how was I to know that the curse and its responsibilities would fall on my shoulders? One thing I never seem to understand is that all my actions seem to be training for something worse. Whenever I think I have overcome a problem, I step around a corner and into something worse.
“I think it was around this bend and down those steps,” I say to Sasha as we press on.
She runs her fingers through her hair and purses her lips. “It’s dark down here. I don’t like small spaces, not even when I am little more than a soul.”
“You can walk through walls you know,” I say, holding the lantern higher to light our way.
She shudders. “No thank you. Especially not if there are dead bodies in the wall.”
I laugh. “Come on, just a little further. Oh, here it is.”
I move the lantern closer to the writing on the wall. Those three words again:
En Crypt Saran.
“Blessed Celine, how creepy. Are you sure it isn’t a crypt? It certainly sounds like it. And, no, I will not be walking into the wall to find this ‘Saran’ person,” Sasha says.
“Saran sounds a little like a Borgan name,” I observe.
“There are no Sarans in the camp as far as I’m aware. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a name before.”
“Nor I. In fact, I don’t think it’s a name at all.” I brush away the moss from beneath the words to reveal the eye symbol. “Beardsley mentioned a viewing area for the secrets in the castle. I think Beardsley would mark such a place, and an eye would be perfect, don’t you think?”
“Yes, actually. It does make sense.”
“And look at the stone here. It’s smoother, I can feel it. The colour is slightly off. All around this area, the stones have darkened over time. This portion is lighter, as though a picture has hung here or it has been cleaned.”
“But to be fair,” Sasha says. “There could have been a picture hung here, and the caption could have related to the picture.”
“True. But listen to the words: En Crypt. Encrypt. It’s like it’s telling me to solve the puzzle.”
“But how could you solve Saran. We’ve already established that it isn’t a name, and it’s certainly not a word I know. Maybe it’s in another language, Jakani or, Gods forbid, Ibena.”
I shudder at the mention of the Ibenas. The memory of them trying to sacrifice me to their Gods is still fresh in my mind. “No, I don’t think so. When Father taught me to read we used to read history books about the monarchs of Aegunlund. During the war between the Jakanis and the Southern Archipelagos, King Frederick used to send letters written in code. He used the alphabet and assigned each letter a number.”
“Well, I don’t see any numbers here,” Sasha replies.
“No, I suppose not. I don’t really know anything else about encryptions. You have to have the code in order to crack it.”
“Well, yes, Mae.” Sasha rolls her eyes at me. “Unless it’s just a jumble of letters. Perhaps if we reorder them—”
“—we’ll uncover the clue,” I finish. We turn to each other. Sasha is grinning and I am filled with renewed energy.
“Snap,” Sasha begins.
“Prance,” I add.
“Rant.”
“Cane. Pry?”
“Carry. Ants. Pen?”
“Trans… Tran…”
“Transparen… wait, no.”
And then we say together. “Transparency!”
We turn to the words on the wall expectantly, but nothing happens.
“What did we do wrong?” I say.
“I don’t think it’s a magic word,” Sasha replies. “Didn’t you say it was an inventor who created this castle?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think an inventor could use enough craft to create a spell like that. You must have to use the word somehow.”
“You mean write it?” I say.
“It could work.”
I lift my finger and carefully trace the word along the stone. As I silently spell it in my mind I thank my father for forcing me to read as a child. Many of the peasants never bothered to learn when they were children, and I had always hated book learning. Now it is has become invaluable to me, and the thought of never sitting down with my father and a book, it leaves an ache in my heart.
I shake my head as I finish the last letter. “No. It hasn’t opened.”
“There must be something in here,” Sasha says. “A place to write the word, or move the letters.”
We search the wall, but there is nothing. I press my hand against every inch, expecting something to move. But there is nothing. I let out a sigh and place the lantern on a sconce. My eyes are drawn to the joist holding the lantern. Could it be so simple? I’ve heard of bookcases containing trick books, and candle holders that turn. I reach up and twist the joist left. It doesn’t budge. Right, it turns.
Sasha gasps as there is a scrape of stone against stone. Above the lettering, a small oblong box appears. Inside the box are twelve letters, each corresponding with En Crypt Saran. When I touch them, I find that they slide along the edges of the box, meaning I can rearrange them.
T R A N S P A R E N C Y
I hold my breath. In the first instant, nothing moves. There is no sound. My heart sinks. And then, like smoke filtering from the air, the stone dissipates into glass.
“It was an illusion,” Sasha says with a sigh.
“Or coloured glass,” I point out.
She shakes her head. “An illusion, it had to be. That means the craft was involved. No one has looked through this window since the last craft-born died.”
Mentioning the craft brings weight down on my shoulders. This is a monumental moment. We have beaten the code, and now we will discover the greatest secret in the Red Palace.
Sasha leans forward. “Wow, how far down does this thing go?”
The scene from the window takes my breath away. Right in the centre of the castle, somewhere between the first and second floor, is a cylindrical room that tunnels down, down into the bowels of the palace. Around the wall of the room is a set of stairs spiralling into the darkness below. And in the centre grows a tall, metal structure, reaching up almost to the window, brass coloured and covered in strange levers and arms. I recognise it at once as a Beardsley invention.
The spiral staircase has intermittent platforms at different levels. Each platform juts out towards the metal structure. They could be areas used to maintain the equipment. Places to stand and work.
“Look, this part of the glass is magnified.” Sasha points to a thicker portion at the bottom of the window. “You can see all the way down.”
I move closer to the window and gaze through the magnified portion. I’ve never known glass like this before. Sometimes a hunter would stay in the Fallen Oak in Halts-Walden with fancy spectacles that could see further than the eye. I never got the chance to look through them so I can’t say if Beardsley’s is better or worse, but the effect is so startling that I can make out even the smallest details down at the bottom of the room.
It appears that the metal structure sits atop a furnace, which is unused for the moment. Around the room is a circular bench covered in beakers and glasses. There are what seem to be tiny pieces of glass covering the surface of the bench, sparkling bright.
“It looks like a laboratory,” I say. “But the king already has a laboratory in the West Wing of the castle. Why would he want another?”
“To perform secret experiments I bet,” Sasha replies.
I step back away from the glass. The metal structure is curious, I can’t imagine what it does or how it works. I notice a pipe running along the edge of the spiral staircase. When I examine the magnified portion once more, it seems as though the mouth of the pipe opens out onto the bench around the room. Whatever this structure makes, it comes out at the bottom.
“Do you know how far this room goes down? Is it lower than the cellar?” Sasha asks.
“I think it must be. I think it might go as far as the crypts.” I shudder slightly as I say the word. I’ve never ventured into the crypts below the castle because I’ve never wanted to.
“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” Sasha says.
*
The tunnels are a maze between the regular rooms of the castle, and, without the familiar tapestries and ornaments to follow, it’s easy to lose your bearings. After taking more than one wrong turn, we decide to head back to the queen’s room and work our way down to the crypts from there. As we walk, I find my thoughts drifting to my last vision with Cas. I used to wonder what it would be like to kiss Cas when we were travelling through the Waerg Woods. Now I know.
I can still taste him.
Like the sweet pastries in Halts-Walden.
But it wasn’t real.
I miss his presence. I miss waking to the sunrise, and seeing him sat by the fire keeping watch, his chin on his fist and his eyes hooded over. More than anything, I miss his counsel. It took me too long to warm up to him, but once I did, I enjoyed talking to him. We would share our problems. He didn’t always know what to do, but he always comforted me.
What we shared in the Waerg Woods can never be replicated. I will never go through that experience with anyone else. No one else will ever know. Not even Sasha.
I pull a deep breath in through my nose and attempt to quell the stirring of emotions deep beneath the surface.
“You should practice fire as we walk,” Sasha says. “If it comes down to a fight—”
“I know, I know. It’s the Nix’s greatest fear.”
“What’s blocking you?” she asks.
I rub my clammy palms against my clothes. “It’s hard to describe how I feel. Worn out, is the easiest way to say it. I’m worn out with the idea of being angry. I don’t want to tap into that emotion anymore. It doesn’t feel safe or right, somehow.”
“Well, of all our emotions, anger is probably the most dangerous. It is a destructive and unpleasant, I suppose. I can certainly understand why you might think of it like that. Why don’t you try praying to Endwyn? Fire doesn’t always have to be destructive. It can be creative too. It’s a fuel. It’s energy. You just need to learn how to redirect that energy in a positive way.” She shrugs, as though it’s the easiest thing in the world.
I let out a laugh. “I’ve never really prayed before, but I suppose it can’t hurt.”
“Think of it as meditation, or deep focus. Think strongly of fire, of the God of fire, and the creative aspect of it.”
I follow Sasha’s direction, and all through the castle, as we cross the ballroom, tread the stone slabs of the basement, pass Beardsley’s office where Cas sleeps, I focus of Endwyn. I’ve never seen an effigy. I don’t know what He or It or even She looks like, I picture a huge bonfire, stretching up to the sky. But every time, that bonfire becomes the funeral pyre for my father, and every time it is as though the God of fire is laughing down at me.
Finally, we come to a narrow passageway. On the lintel read the words:
Silence for the lost.
As I step beneath the stone passageway a chill creeps down my spine.
Chapter Thirteen – The Silent Kings
/> We walk into the dark. I light a torch on the wall and carry it aloft as we move down the steep, stone steps towards the crypt. I cringe each time my footsteps echo through the hall. Silence for the lost. Lost. It implies they might come back one day, that we have simply misplaced them.
“This feels like a dangerous place for a soul to be,” Sasha says. “Do you think I’ll end up trapped in a sarcophagus or something?”
“I hope not,” I reply. “This is why we burn our dead in Halts-Walden. The thought of my body ending up down here in the dark depths…”
Sasha nods. “I know what you mean.”
Down and down we go. I’m shaking so badly I have to grasp the torch with both my hands to steady it. Up ahead I see the door to the crypt. It is another brass door with the same loops designed by Beardsley. I hang the torch on a sconce as I pull the king’s journal and flip to the back pages. It takes some effort to move the rings, but eventually I hear the click of the lock and the door swings open with a creak. We both stand there, neither wanting to move forward. I swallow, my mouth and throat dry.
Retrieving the torch from the sconce, I move forward into the crypt. It’s a long room, with the walls covered in strange box-like shelves containing marble coffins. I find it an odd way to store the dead, as though they have been neatly folded away into drawers.
At small alcoves between these shelves there are candles fitted to the walls. As we pass each of them, I light the candle, filling the room with a little bit of light with each step. But as the flames dance, it creates more shadows, and more movement, which in turn sends shivers down my spine.
In the distance there is the scuttling sound of a rat—at least I hope it is a rat—moving through the room.
“This laboratory had better be worth it,” Sasha says.
“If we can figure out how to kill the Nix, it will be,” I add.
After lighting three more candles, the shelves come to an end, and instead we see lines of sarcophagi positioned on the ground by the walls. These coffins are chiselled from marble, higher than our waists, and on top of each one is a depiction of the inhabitant at rest, with their arms softly crossed over, holding their favourite weapon, or, for the women, clutching their favourite jewellery.
