by Glenda Larke
Dropping her gaze once more, she saw a groom leading a horse through the archway into the forecourt. Behind him walked someone in better quality clothes, a couple of large fellhounds at his heels. Once out from under the archway, the man mounted his horse, whistled his dogs and headed towards the gateway. His servant followed on foot, a look of tired resignation on his face.
She wasn’t worried, even though they were going to pass a few paces in front of her. Her concentration was total and she was sure her glamour was flawless. Anyone looking her way would see the uninterrupted stone wall of the forecourt.
Then one of the hounds scented her. In Throssel Palace all the dogs had known her and ignored her, but here? Va-damn, why didn’t I think of that?
The dog halted, raising its snout, nostrils twitching. Neck thrust forward, it turned to look straight at her. Its nose told it she was there. The other dog, incurious, still trotted obediently after its master.
Sorrel stayed still, barely breathing.
The nearer dog growled a warning, a deep rumbling. The rider didn’t notice anything, but the servant called out, “Heel, Brute! Heel!”
Brute. Right. And it’s not taking any notice.
It lunged at her, front paws thudding into her just below her shoulders, its weight slamming her back against the stonework. Lips drawn back in a snarl, it sniffed at her face. She was terrified. Whatever happened, she knew she must not drop her glamour. If she did, she was dead. The fellhound’s lips curled back, displaying its fangs and gums so close to her chin that she could feel the animal’s bad breath on her face. Her throat was less than a finger’s width away from being ripped out by the yellowed teeth. Saliva dribbled down her tunic top. And if ever a dog had looked crazed, this one did.
No doubt about it, her attempt to locate Princess Bealina looked like ending in disaster almost as soon as it had begun.
Keep your glamour going. Don’t let it slip. Whatever you do, don’t let it slip, not for a second.
Unless her glamour was absolutely perfect when she moved, people staring so intently might notice something was wrong; a distortion perhaps, or a gauziness in the air.
Every head was turned her way. Faces registered incomprehension at the dog’s behaviour, apparently clawing and snapping at the wall. A group of kitchen servants stared from the gateway, where they had just arrived with baskets of vegetables and a handcart laden with pig carcasses. Hands on swordhilts, the gate guards watched, alert but reluctant to leave their posts when they could identify no real cause for alarm.
The dog continued to whine and snarl. The groom grabbed its collar and tried to pull it away. Even though he was close, he was so preoccupied with the dog’s odd behaviour that he still didn’t see her. The horseman dismounted and stalked across, shouting angrily at the hound and cursing the servant for not controlling it.
For a moment she thought it might all subside without anyone noticing her.
It was the second dog that spoiled everything.
As the servant pulled the first one away and its master walloped it with his riding crop, the second bounded forward to see what was so exciting. It sniffed and clawed at her shoes. People watching began laughing at its antics. When the dog’s nose encountered the leg of her trousers, it snapped at it and sank its teeth into the cloth. It began to pull.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw several of the guards on the archways abandon their posts to head in her direction. Her mouth went dry.
She built herself a different glamour, making herself appear to be a larger, more ferocious hound than the one tugging at her trousers. The real hound was not fooled; it knew exactly what it had in its teeth. Her aim was to confuse the folk watching. Where there had been only one dog, they now saw two, the smaller of which was tugging at the leg of the other.
Wide-eyed and panicked, the huntsman and his servant lashed out at both animals indiscriminately, apparently unwilling to admit that a moment before there had only been one. Sorrel winced when the blows hit her arms. The real hound turned tail and fled, so she vanished her canine glamour by changing it into the wall behind her. Once she was invisible, she stepped sideways, which left her assailants even more confused. Several who had been approaching within a pace or two of her hastily backed off.
She blessed the rarity of her witchery; a cleric or shrine keeper might have thought of a glamour to explain what was happening, but not these folk. Edging slowly away along the wall, she watched the chaos of the forecourt until she thought it was safe to walk briskly towards the smaller arches. She thought she’d got away with it. No one was now guarding the door ahead. No one was following her, or even looking her way. Behind her, a hysterical servant screamed about dogs that vanished. The horse, unhappy at all the noise and babble, panicked and started to dance out of the gateway, scattering guards and visitors, barely under the control of a servant who had grabbed its reins. But a moment later, when she glanced back over her shoulder again, she saw the first dog racing across the forecourt towards her.
Smelling her fear, its muscled body was a projectile that would have had her on the ground before another breath was drawn. She threw herself down on the cobbles and rolled just as it leaped. The breath whooshed from her lungs and she lost her glamour.
Run, Perie, she thought. Go tell them I failed…
The dog missed and whipped around to leap again. And then, whirling from above, singing its flight song, a dart of greyish silver plunged into its shoulder.
The impact she’d expected never came. The animal twisted in midair and fell to the cobbles, where it mouthed at its shoulder in distress. The dagger that had brought it down dislodged and fell close to her: the kris, an arm’s length away.
She built her glamour again and reached out to hide it under her hand. Glancing up, she glimpsed Ardhi peering over the roof edge, just before he ducked away. Slowly, she stood up and looked around the forecourt. It was as if time had stopped. Everyone was stilled, like run-down clockwork figures. Every head was turned her way, every gaze blank with shock, every voice silenced by bafflement. A moment before they had seen her; now there was nothing.
Right, all of you, stay like that…
She walked slowly away towards the door that would lead her upstairs into the castle. The centre of her back crawled with fear, as if there was a target drawn there. She waited for a ball to be fired, an arrow to be shot, a lance to be thrown.
Nothing happened.
Behind her noise burgeoned once more: screaming, barking, footsteps running, orders shouted, the clunk of the gates being shut.
Pox on’t, if a knowledgeable cleric hears about this, everyone in the entire palace is going to be looking for a glamoured woman.
Out of sight of the forecourt, she pounded up the stairs as fast as she could flee.
30
Never a Queen
Peregrine knocked at the front door of Proctor House, using the rhythm that was a signal between themselves. When Horntail answered, he stumbled inside, gasping, dragging in breath as best he could.
Horntail closed the door and shot the bolts. “What happened?”
“I think… she’s in a real bad pickle.” He bent over double, gasping.
By the time he’d forced those words out, the Pontifect had arrived, grim-faced, followed by Gerelda, strapping on her sword.
“Everything went widdershins after she entered the gate,” he said. “At first I couldn’t see her because she was out of my line of sight, but I did hear barking and people squawking.”
“Dogs,” Horntail muttered. “Fob it.”
“People running and flapping this way ’n’ that. More barking and bawling and such. Bit later I actually saw her, still glamoured, hurrying across the forecourt, but she didn’t match herself to the background very well. There was a sort of wavering in the air folk might have seen. Reckon she was going too fast. Anyway, this great big dog was after her. She fell and lost all her glamour. Folk saw.”
He gulped, dragging in another b
reath.
“Saw Ardhi, too, I did. Don’t think anyone else did though. I was looking for him, like. He was up on the roof and threw something. Reckon it was that wavy dagger of his. It hit the dog. That’s when she glamoured again. I don’t know what happened after that, because they closed the gate, but I think she got away.”
He looked around at them all. “There’d be more dogs, I reckon,” he said.
Fritillary Reedling nodded calmly. “Indeed. Time for the boat…”
She had made such a botch of this. No point at all in moping about it, either. So snap out of it, you dewberry…
At the top of the stairs, Sorrel emerged into a long corridor with rows of doors on either side. If all had gone as planned, she’d have had as much time as she wanted to wander about and observe. Fritillary’s suggestion – that she loiter until she saw where meals for Bealina and Garred were taken after leaving the kitchen – had been a good one, but now she had to hurry.
Guards would already be scouring the palace for her. She’d been seen, and sooner or later Fox would understand they had an intruder with a glamour witchery. A moment more thought would tell them that the uninjured dog could find her again in minutes. As soon as they got themselves organised, she was in trouble.
There was no one in the passageway and all the doors were closed, making it ill-lit. She glamoured herself again, but this time she wore the robes and the face of a male cleric, an elderly man with a bit of a humpback and a cast in one eye, which was about as different from herself as she could conjure up.
She hurried on, hoping she was heading in the direction of the central tower. When she rounded a corner and saw a housemaid dawdling down the passage carrying linen, she put on her most imperious voice, deepened her tone, and said, “Lass, I’m looking for the quarters of Princess Bealina. I have been sent to give spiritual guidance, but there is such a disgraceful to-do downstairs and my guide was called to help deal with it. They are all concerned with some intruder, or something equally worrisome. Which way should I be heading?”
The maid’s eyes widened. It was obvious she hadn’t heard of the trouble downstairs. “Oh, reverend sir, I don’t rightly know! But the laundry maid says she takes her clean linens to the central tower.” She pointed. “That’s down that way. Walk to the end, then upstairs.”
She thanked the woman, dismissed her with a wave of the hand and walked on, hurrying as soon as she was out of sight. A narrow staircase led to a room where two bored guards were playing draughts using peach and apricot seeds on a board drawn in chalk on a desk. They both looked up the moment she entered.
“I’ve been sent to offer the princess the solace of Va and lead her in prayer. Have I come to the correct place?”
They exchanged glances and then the older man said, “We haven’t heard anything about that!”
“I don’t care whether you’ve heard about it or not! Those are my instructions. She is to be weaned away from her attachment to Shenat and I’ve been told to come here and talk to her about the state of her spiritual life. And I certainly don’t intend to discuss the matter with mere guardsmen. Well, what are you waiting for? Give me entry to the princess!”
She flicked an arrogant hand to hurry them, and then added, “Oh, and I think one of you should go below and help the search.”
“What search?”
“There’s an intruder in the palace, some woman with a hunting dog, I believe. She overturned a cart. Or something like that,” she added vaguely. “Anyway, they were asking for all guards to scour the building. One of you should let me in to see the princess before I get tired of waiting. And I think – if I were you – I’d be very careful about disobeying His Reverence’s orders. He does not take kindly to that.”
The older man scowled. “Go and see what all that’s about, Jecho. I’ll deal with this.”
The younger guard unhooked his sword belt from where it hung on a wall hook and left the room as he buckled it on. The other took a key hanging on the wall and walked over to the door at the side of the room. “I will lock the door after you. When you are finished, bang on it and I will let you out.”
He flung it open and indicated she was to enter. As she went to walk past him, she staggered.
“Argh! This fobbing knee of mine!” She clutched at him, wincing with make-believe pain. “Ah, help me to a chair, my man.”
Taken unawares, he did what she wanted, assisting her into the room as she leaned on his arm. Without warning, she dropped her glamour and wrenched him forward so that he lost balance. Before he could react, she pivoted, bending and lunging so that she hit him with her full body weight in the midriff. As he fell forward over her back, she yanked his arm, flipping him. Behind her, someone screamed – Princess Bealina, she assumed.
The guard crashed down, falling awkwardly head first, ending up flat on his back.
Thanks, Ardhi. All that practice on board ship really worked.
She whirled to wrench the key from the lock and pull the door shut, which shoved the guard’s body fully into the room. After locking the door from the inside, she turned her attention back to the man. When she knelt beside him, the kris in her hand in case she needed it, he groaned and looked at her without comprehension. His head was bleeding on to the floorboards and his eyes were glazed.
The young woman who’d been sitting at a table when she entered was now standing, white-faced, with a small boy clutched tight in her arms. “Who are you?” she asked in a high-pitched squeak.
“My name wouldn’t mean anything to you, but if you’re Princess Bealina, I’ve come to get you out of here.” She took a closer look at the guard but he appeared to have passed out. She relaxed a little and sat back on her heels, to look around properly for the first time. “I rather think he’s going to be out for a while, but we need something to tie him up, just in case.”
“Who are you?”
“Pontifect Fritillary Reedling sent me.”
“She’s dead! Fox told me he’d killed her.”
“He lied. She’s here, in Vavala. I saw her this morning.”
The room was more spacious than she had expected. There were windows on three sides, and a privy on the fourth. The furnishings included a canopied bed, a chest, a small table and chair. She stood up and strode over to the bed.
“Good news, Your Highness,” she said, using the kris to cut the frill from the canopy curtain. “The siege of Gromwell Holdfast has been lifted. And I’ve come to get you out of here.”
“You’re curdled crazy! I’m not going anywhere with someone I don’t know. There was a cleric, and then—What happened?”
Dear oak, she is so young! Barely out of the schoolroom. “We’ve got to be quick.” They had so little time before their situation moved from critical to dire… All her fault.
Explaining the situation as she went, she crossed back to the guard and began to bind his legs, then his wrists. He didn’t move. “Listen carefully. What you saw was a glamour witchery. I glamoured myself as a priest; that was how I got in here. The problem is how to get you both out of here before somebody realises.”
“I’m not going anywhere until I know who you are! It – it looked like sorcery to me. No one’s been granted a glamour for – for centuries!”
“Look, I can be myself, like this, or I can look like anyone. Even Prince Ryce.”
She glamoured up his likeness. It was a mistake, because Prince Garred cried out, “Papa!” only to burst into tears when she banished the image.
“How dare you!” Bealina cried.
Oh tush. Not another princess with an overblown idea of their own importance.
“Sorry. But we have so little time.” Opening one of the windows, she looked out over the roof. No sign of Ardhi. She thrust the kris outside, hoping he would sense it. He’d followed the dagger across the hemisphere once… “You have to escape,” she said. “Otherwise Prince Ryce can’t move against Valerian Fox. We were going to do it under cover of darkness tonight. This was supposed to
just be a preliminary reconnoitre to find out where you were being held, and to warn you in secret, to be ready for later.” She sighed. “I made a mess of it. Everyone knows I’m here, so you’re going to have to leave now.”
The princess’s expression was one of agonised indecision. “That’s clay-brained! How can I trust you?”
“Would you rather trust the man who put you in here?” This was one scenario that hadn’t occurred to them: that the princess would be in such a state of fear that she would refuse to trust her rescuers. “Did Ryce ever tell you about the Lady Mathilda’s handmaiden, a woman called Celandine?”
“No.”
Pox on’t, he wouldn’t, would he, confound his princely pride. She sighed. “Then I think you are going to have to take me on trust. A friend is coming to help us in a minute. He has a witchery too – a climbing witchery.”
“That’s ridiculous. Who’s ever heard of a climbing witchery?”
She gritted her teeth. “We have to escape out of a window, on a rope. You, me and Prince Garred. Who is an absolute darling, by the way, and he has his father’s eyelashes. If you won’t come with me, the consequences will be dire for Prince Ryce.”
“I can’t risk Garred’s life to strangers with a rope!”
She had a point.
In the distance, a hound bayed. Oh, rot it. “Pontifect Fritillary was sure you’d trust someone with a witchery. I guess none of us thought you’d think a glamour was something a sorcerer might do.”
“You don’t understand! He can coerce me into doing anything. How can I be sure he’s not coerced me into thinking up all this?” She waved a hand at her and the guard. She was one step away from hysteria.
“I don’t think he could do that. He’s made you think he’s more powerful than he really is.”
Bealina stared at her, bewildered. “I don’t know what to believe… I’ve been so… so alone.”
Empathy overwhelmed Sorrel. The poor woman. What Va-less hell had she and Garred had to endure? She softened her tone. “I know, I know. Maybe I can think of something that Prince Ryce knows and Fox doesn’t. Um, did the prince ever tell you King Edwayn ordered him to kill the nulled witan, Saker Rampion, and Prince Ryce rode up to Chervil Moors to do it, but then deliberately let him go?”
