Beyond the Shroud

by V M Jones

  And then a man’s voice spoke up on the other side of the grille, only slightly muffled by the heavy drapery, and every other thought was instantly banished from my mind.

  ‘I ask again: Who are you?’ The voice had a silken, almost hypnotic quality; a gentle, sinister insistence.

  There was a pause; just the merest heartbeat. Then another voice — a gallant, staunch little voice that sounded as out of place in the bleak castle as a skylark’s song. It was a voice that brought me leaping to my feet and over to the grille in a flash, mashing my face against the cold steel so as not to miss a single syllable, my heart thundering.

  ‘I’m Hannah Quested.’

  ‘Han-nah Ques-ted? A strange name for a little girl. Especially a little girl who told me only yesterday that she was … let me see now … Princess Fenella Foo-Foo. Yet today, you have a different tale.’

  ‘I was Princess Fenella yesterday, and I’m Hannah today. People can be different things on different days. Depending.’

  ‘Depending? Depending upon what?’

  ‘Depending on how they feel.’

  ‘So. Today you are Hannah Quested.’

  There was a short pause while King Karazeel — as I knew it must be — digested this information.

  Then, the merest whisper: ‘I want my daddy.’

  Quick as a striking snake — ‘And who is your “daddy”, sweetmeat?’

  ‘Don’t call me sweetmeat! And don’t touch my hand! You feel all slimy!’ I closed my eyes, beaming her a silent, desperate message: No, Hannah — no! Hang in there — don’t make him angry, whatever you do!

  But he was angry — I could hear it in the silkiness of his next words. ‘Very well … Hannah Quested. Tell me where you come from.’

  ‘I told you already. Quested Court!’

  ‘Quested Court? A court is a king’s residence. Who is this king? And you say your name is Hannah Quested… daughter of the court … yet you deny you are a princess. You trifle with me, child.’ I could sense his anger growing to a terrible, cold rage — but still he hid it from her. ‘But come now. Let us be friends, hmmm? Perhaps if I know more, I can help you return to your … daddy. So tell me: where is Quested Court?’

  ‘I told you — I don’t know! It’s at home. It’s where I live with Q.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Very well then. Tell me this: how did you journey to Arakesh? A little girl like you, all on your own?’

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  Hannah, with exaggerated patience: ‘Through the computer!’

  Richard and I exchanged a horrified glance. ‘And what is a com-pew-ter, little one?’

  Even on the other side of the thick drape, I could hear Hannah’s sigh — a sigh that said clearer than words that she’d had enough. ‘A computer is a computer, you silly billy! Don’t you know anything?’

  Instantly, the voice changed to a low hiss. ‘You dare call me silly? Me, His Eternal Excellency High King Karazeel of Karazan, Ruler of the Realm of the Twin Moons, and Conqueror of the Lands Beyond the Distant Sun?’

  There was a ghastly silence. We waited, hardly daring to breathe. Then Hannah’s voice came again, very quietly, with a slight wobble. ‘You sh-shouldn’t yell at little girls.’

  ‘We shall see, sweetmeat, what His Eternal Excellency High King Karazeel of Karazan should and should not do — and who will tell him so.’

  As if at some invisible signal, the door behind us edged open and our guard reappeared. At the same moment, the heavy drape was drawn aside, revealing the throne room of King Karazeel, a fleeting glimpse of a small figure in an extremely dirty fairy costume being roughly bundled out of the huge double doors at the far end … and the king himself.

  The throne room was horseshoe-shaped, with a raised dais at the open end. Holding chambers were ranged at intervals round the curved perimeter, each with a metal grille and a heavy drape that could be opened or closed as required. I took all this in at a glance … and then all my attention was fixed on King Karazeel.

  I’d been expecting a throne. Instead there was a long settee on the dais, with a backrest at one end. On it lounged the king, flanked by four motionless guards in golden armour.

  By now I was used to people wearing drab colours in Karazan — and staring at the king, I felt as dazzled as if I’d been watching an old movie in black and white and it had suddenly switched to brilliant Technicolor.

  King Karazeel wore a loose shirt of golden silk, and breeches of silver cloth, with a wide scarlet sash — the colour of royalty, I remembered Kai saying — encircling his waist. From his shoulders fell a heavy cloak woven of every colour imaginable — an exotic, dazzling kaleidoscope of shifting colour that glimmered and shone in the bright sunlight beaming down onto him like a spotlight from a skylight far above. His hair was the deepest black, thick and luxuriant. He wore a crown — a design I had the weirdest feeling of having seen before: a heavy, interlocking circlet of gold and silver. Had it been on the box of Quest for the Golden Goblet — a kind of logo, perhaps?

  But his face — I couldn’t take my eyes from his face. It was harsh and utterly compelling: golden-skinned and strikingly handsome, with a thin, cruel mouth and a curved, hawk-like nose. On anyone else, the lines on his face would have been smile ones … but these were as different from Q’s laugh lines as night from day. A voice spoke in my mind, with absolute certainty: Those are lines drawn by pleasure in other people’s pain.

  It was the face of a man in his prime … yet somehow it wasn’t. There was something strangely ageless about King Karazeel, as if he was suspended in time. But most striking of all was the aura he gave off, so strongly my senses reeled from it: a stench of power, greed and corruption.

  As I stared at him, at the same time fascinated and repelled, his pale, hooded eyes slowly swivelled towards us … and settled on me.

  The Mauler

  It was as if no one else in the room existed. I stared into those pale, empty eyes and felt the world fall away under my feet.

  Dimly, I realised the metal grille had been slid aside, and the others were being herded reluctantly towards the dais. Automatically I moved with them, my eyes still locked on Karazeel’s. It was as if his eyes were made of cold, grey steel — magnets, drawing me forward.

  We reached the raised edge of the platform, and stopped. Karazeel was no more than two strides away. I was dimly conscious of a strange, musky odour almost like incense, overlaying another smell — one I couldn’t identify.

  ‘Kneel!’ It was the guard, his whisper loud in the silence. ‘Kneel before the king!’

  There was a dull thump from beside me as Jamie thudded to his knees. I felt rather than saw the others follow his example. It was what we’d agreed — do as you’re told. Buy time. Keep what options we still have open. Above all, don’t make waves.

  The order came again, more urgently this time. ‘Kneel, imbecile!’

  I knew he was talking to me. I knew my life depended on it. But I couldn’t. My legs were as stiff and wooden as tree stumps, rigid and unyielding. I could no more have bent them and knelt to King Karazeel than sprouted wings and flown up through the skylight.

  ‘Adam …’ Gen’s desperate whisper.

  Still, I stared into the eyes of the king. Then suddenly his lips curved into a smile, and he spoke. ‘This boy … interests me. Let him stand if he will. Evor …’ He held out one hand.

  Our gaze broke. From behind Karazeel, a hump-backed, misshapen figure shuffled forward. I had a fleeting impression of a dark robe, purple as night and spangled with stars; sharp, calculating eyes glinting from a nest of long, matted hair; a twisted hand with nails curled like claws.

  The hand reached out to a low, gilded table beside the king’s seat. Ranged on the table was an array of phials … crystal phials that shone like diamonds in the shaft of sunlight. Shimmering phosphorescence … liquid ebony … crystal-clear transparency … distillation of emerald … and a dull mustard sludge,
the colour of pus. The hand stroked over them, as if considering. The long nails made a faint rasping sound as they trailed delicately over the gleaming crystal, like the scritch-scritch-scratching of rats in a dungeon.

  The hand settled on the sludge-brown potion, thick as liquid mud. As the sorcerer touched it, a mottled shadow slithered into my memory, lifting its blunt head and tasting the air with its flickering tongue. Inner Voices. The Potion of Insight.

  King Karazeel’s heavily ringed hand reached hungrily for the phial, almost snatching it. He held it up to his nose and inhaled deeply, savouring its scent. Then abruptly he put the phial to his lips and upended it with a greedy, sucking sound. Instantly, his eyes rolled up in their sockets leaving only blank, bloodshot slits of white, a thin string of drool sliding from the corner of his slack mouth.

  Alarm bells were jangling in my mind. Fragmented thoughts jostled with the growing panic on the edge of my consciousness … This boy interests me … Evor … sorcerer … Inner Voices … Insight …

  Then I felt it. Sly and subtle, as if fingers made of jelly were probing my mind. Fondling, stroking, digging oh so gently into the deep reaches of my thoughts … deeper … and deeper. There was something comforting, soothing and luxurious about giving in to the soft searching. Pictures began to float to the surface of my mind, hazy and seductive as dreams, as if my memory was on slow rewind.

  A distant view of a village from a mountainside … a stomach empty and hollow as a drum, and the minty taste of gum … searching, searching … swirling mist … a burning raft … searching, searching … a small figure in striped pyjamas … a computer keyboard … a dog’s hot breath on my face… closer, closer … the blue of Q’s eyes, clear as the sky … a shabby brown book … a haunting tune, the melody clear and pure as raindrops, made by … made by … yes?… yes?

  A glint of silver hovered faint as a note of music on the edges of my mind, flickering and starting to take form …

  …the blue of Q’s eyes …

  NO!

  Denial rang through my head like a clash of cymbals, almost exploding my brain with its force. The trembling image shattered and was gone before it existed. Instinctively, in desperate reflex, I threw up a wall in my mind — a wall of stone, blank and featureless, stretching to the sky. All I saw was the wall. I stared at it, eyes squeezed shut, metallic echoes still ringing in my skull. I stared at my wall. It was solid, strong. My world was the wall.

  Gradually, the echoes faded and died.

  The groping fingers were gone. Warily, I opened my eyes. King Karazeel was lying back, head lolling. His pale eyes were half-open, but vacant and empty.

  The sorcerer hovered at his side, peering into the blank eyes. His bony fingers snapped once — twice. There was no response. He reached for the phial that shimmered with liquid mother-of-pearl, and held it gently, almost tenderly, to the king’s slack lips.

  I watched, sickened, remembering another time, in another world …

  Karazeel sipped, coughed — then greedily sucked. At once colour flooded back into his face and his eyelids fluttered. His eyes opened, searching me out again with glittering intensity.

  The hunchback fussed over him, straightening the crown, smoothing the rainbow cloak, dabbing at the pale lips with a silken cloth. The king murmured something to him. Evor hobbled forward with his awkward, lurching gait, and fixed me with eyes that burned dark as coal. He spoke in a hissing whisper that made the hairs on the back of my neck rise. ‘King Karazeel bids me tell you there are more ways than one to unlock the secrets of the mind. Ways more painful for you … though not for him. But there is time enough … You will await his pleasure.’

  At last Karazeel’s gaze moved down to the others, huddled silently on the floor at my feet. His eyes rested on them one by one. His lips curved into a dismissive smile. ‘Only the boy,’ he said finally. ‘He has a look about him … but now I am tired. Dispose of the rest.’

  Evor gestured to the guard and murmured something to him — I caught the words ‘boy … dungeons … others …upon the eastern wall …’

  My heart froze.

  The guard grasped the girls by their arms and hauled them roughly to their feet. Kenta’s eyes were pools of terror in her ashen face. She’d heard what I had … maybe more. But Gen’s eyes sparked blue fire. Her tawny hair was wild and tangled as a lion’s mane, her teeth bared in a ferocious snarl. She fought the guard’s grip on her arm, kicking and scratching like a wildcat … and then, unbelievably, she pulled free, leapt forward onto the dais, and spat full in the face of King Karazeel.

  Instantly, the four soldiers were on her, her struggling figure surrounded in a second. Gen was helpless in their grip, a drawn sword at her neck, another at her heart. They turned to face the king, awaiting his order. Karazeel watched, face expressionless.

  The moment stretched forever.

  Then King Karazeel smiled … a smile that chilled my blood. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, as if to himself. ‘How did I not notice her before? A little beauty — and the fiery spirit will be easily quelled. She will do very well as a handmaiden of the court, serving the king … and she will not spit so well, nor so far, when she lacks a tongue.’

  Two of the soldiers dragged Gen away towards the huge doors at the far end of the throne room. ‘Let me go!’ she screamed. ‘I want to stay with the others! I won’t ever serve you! You’re evil and hateful — I’d rather be dead!’

  King Karazeel watched her go with cold, expressionless eyes. Then he inclined his head, and instantly the sorcerer was beside him, wiping Gen’s spit off his face and bending to catch his next words. At a sign from Evor, pages sprang forward and drew back the heavy tapestries lining the far wall.

  I gaped. Beyond the tapestries was a luxurious chamber, an extension of the throne room itself. It was thronged with ladies — twenty, thirty or more: a gallery of queens. My eyes were drawn from one face to the next, each more dazzlingly beautiful than the last. Some were dusky-skinned, some rose-petal fair … some had dark hair, loose and flowing, some hair like spun gold piled high on their heads … some had eyes as wide and dark as fawns’, some eyes like angels, blue as heaven. Each wore a gown of a different colour — ruby red, bronze, rose, sapphire, silver, ivory — and a delicate crown of gold. They were like exotic birds of paradise, fluttering and preening and twittering among themselves as they cast sidelong smiles and sultry glances at the king.

  ‘Remove the vermin!’ Evor rasped. ‘The king wishes to be entertained! Heralds: a fanfare for the entrance of the Mauler!’

  The four of us were bundled hurriedly down the red carpet towards the door Gen had disappeared through. We stumbled along without protest, numb with the shock of being separated and dread of what lay ahead.

  As we reached the doorway a bright chorus of trumpets rang out. Instinctively, I glanced back. Our guard had also slowed and was gawking over his shoulder. A scarlet tapestry emblazoned with a golden coat of arms swished dramatically open and two courtiers appeared, wearing rich liveries of cream and bronze, each carrying a gilded cage. There was a bird in one, and in the other … a rat? Then my attention switched to the solitary figure behind them. Like his attendants, he was dressed in cream silk, but the trimmings on his tunic were gold. His hands were protected to the elbows by heavy leather gauntlets, matching boots covering his legs to the knee. His face was hidden by an ornate mask, crafted to represent the head of a snarling predator.

  In spite of everything I couldn’t help staring over my shoulder. I was certain this must be the Mauler’s keeper, and the Mauler wouldn’t be far behind.

  But I was wrong. The Mauler was already there.

  The Keeper paced slowly towards the throne. His hands were held at chest level, like a waiter in one of those expensive restaurants you see on television. On the palms of his hands, resting on the gauntlets like a tray, was a plump velvet cushion of purest gold.

  And on the cushion, with her paws curled under her, wearing a golden collar studded with jewels and lo
oking mighty pleased with herself, lay Tiger Lily.

  The grace of the Mauler

  ‘IT’S THAT DARN CAT!’ Richard’s voice, never soft at the best of times, rang out to every corner of the throne room.

  ‘Rich — pipe down!’ I hissed. Our guard had turned pale and was desperately hustling us through the door — I realised that if he was caught hanging back in hopes of a glimpse of the Mauler, his head would be on the block.

  But it was too late. The second she heard Richard’s voice, Tiger Lily was off the cushion and streaking down the scarlet carpet towards the doorway. The Keeper stood helplessly as if turned to stone. Shrill shrieks of terror came from the queens’ gallery — out of the corner of my eye I saw one after the other fainting to the floor, like brightly-coloured flower petals falling in the wind.

  For the first time, King Karazeel was bolt upright, leaning forward avidly, an expression of greedy anticipation on his face as he watched the savage Mauler bounding towards the unprotected prisoners.

  Just before she reached us, Tiger Lily sprang. She was only a little cat, but months of soft living in the royal court hadn’t done much for her waistline, and she hit me in the chest with a thump that nearly knocked me flying. She clambered her way up onto my shoulder and hung there purring like a steamroller, kneading my jerkin with her claws. Apart from the rumble of the Mauler’s contented purring, there was absolute silence.

  Then King Karazeel rose slowly to his feet. Gesturing to the Keeper to follow him, he walked slowly down the length of the throne room towards us, Evor hobbling after him like a shadow.

  He stopped an arm’s length away from me. When he spoke, it was to the sorcerer, though his eyes were on Tiger Lily. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

  ‘It may be … that the creature has in some way … evolved, my lord king.’ The slimy voice had an undercurrent of uncertainty. ‘We know it to be a sacred beast. It may be … that its wildness has for some reason deserted it.’