“But what about all the times he’s risked his neck for us?” Chloe said. “Like when he nearly died fighting Rahgnall in Seraph’s Tear?”
“Rahgnall was standing in his way to the Slaugh throne,” I reminded her.
“He’s been training you to make you fight better!” Chloe argued. “How do you explain that?”
“A diversion,” I said. “All this time I should have been working on my magic.”
Chloe sighed. “I just can’t believe it.”
I didn’t want to believe it, either. I just couldn’t deny all the signs.
“I’ll hold a council to tell the others as soon as you’re ready,” Chloe said. “Thanks for confiding in me first.”
I didn’t want to think of what might happen when everyone realized what my dumb crush was about to cost Ivywild. If I had not been so blinded by my emotions, I might have seen through King Hugo sooner.
“You know what I must do.” Chloe said.
My mouth went dry. I nodded. “Send a ship to intercept him. Get the dagger back one way or another.”
“Right,” Chloe said. She didn’t need to add what we were both thinking. Any Slaugh would kill himself before being taken prisoner.
Chloe cleared her throat uncomfortably. “There is a little time before we must act. Just a little. He can’t pose much a threat if he’s out at sea. If you really believe what you have told me, I’ll call up a council in the morning and you can present your evidence.”
The pragmatic suggestion took me by surprise. Dwarfed by her father’s throne, Chloe might have looked like a child playing at royalty. Not so long ago that’s all she had been. A change had taken place. She was no adult yet, but Chloe Nokomis de Lolanthe did not stay in anyone’s shadow for very long, not even her father’s.
“Are you sure we should wait?” I asked, for once feeling a pang of nervousness at questioning her authority.
The princess propped an elbow on the arm of the chair and let her forehead come to rest wearily against her palm. “I’m tired. You’re tired. My kingdom was just attacked, Ivywild is overrun with homeless and my coronation is in two days. If Lev—I mean, King Hugo, is dumb enough to try something before then, let him. I guarantee he’s never faced a woman’s fury like the kind I can bring down on him right now.”
It was an attempt at humor but I knew she was just padding her excuses. “There’s something else, isn’t there? You don’t believe me.”
Chloe looked away. “I think we should take some action against him, but…” she glanced at me and looked quickly away again. “Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I know you guys were close. If we’re going to take him down for something I have to be sure we’ve got good, solid reasons and not just, you know…hurt feelings.”
“I’m not out for revenge,” I said in total sincerity. “I’m just worried about Ivywild.”
Chloe raised an eyebrow. “Let me worry about Ivywild. You go sleep on it and come talk to me first thing in the morning.”
The idea of sleep was ludicrous, but I took it as a cue that Chloe was ready to be alone so I started to walk out.
“One more thing to consider,” Chloe called after me.
I paused. “What?”
“The lock,” Chloe said. “Have you got any idea where or what it is yet?”
“No,” I said regretfully.
“But you think King Hugo may be searching for it?”
“Yes. I don’t buy his line about finding a cure for Seraph’s Tear. It sounds like a cover story.”
A flash of mischief twinkled in her eyes. “There’s not much he can do about it if we find the lock first, right?”
Sleep on it. Like that would be easy. Of course, I saw Chloe’s point. Perhaps my slant on Hugo was slightly tinted by the fact that he’d wrecked my heart and my dignity. Even so, I grew more nervous for Ivywild by the moment. I couldn’t shake the chill that had been haunting me for days. In my blood stirred the ancient instincts of a Guardian. Those instincts kept me on edge. I stood by what I’d said in Mag Mell. Nothing was safe.
Ivywild had become an alien place. Packs of unfamiliar faces walked the streets. None were smiling. I saw only expressions of fear and suspicion. Shops and homes were shuttered up, barring the tide of newcomers. People who hadn’t found shelter yet huddled in the alleys off the main square. There was a strain in the air that had never been there before and it only made me feel colder.
At first I had no clear idea where I was going, but soon enough my feet picked up the familiar path and I found myself beneath the arches leading to the cathedral. I stopped, staring at the place I’d been so many times. It still held mysteries. There was also guidance if I cared to seek it.
Anouk was already in her plaid night robe when I knocked on the door to her dormitory. Her pretty face held the same taut lines of worry as everyone else.
“What brings you by so late?” Anouk asked, holding a lantern to shine out into the street.
“Garland said to tell you goodbye.”
Her eyebrows twitched. She stood aside and lifted the lantern out of the way. “Get in here. No sense in standing out in the dark.”
“Actually, I was hoping you could get me into the cathedral.”
Anouk squinted at me. “At this hour?”
“I must get inside,” I said. “Please.”
The young priestess took my plea with a look of relenting skepticism. “But surely you could persuade the Door to let you in if it’s urgent. What do you need me for?”
“The Door doesn’t like me,” I said. It was the truth. The judgmental spirit who lived in the cathedral door had never shown any fondness for me. What I didn’t add was that my personal list of transgressions had gotten much longer over the past few days. If the Door had given me a hard time before, it would certainly have just cause to now.
My prediction turned out to be entirely accurate.
“Good gracious!” Anouk exclaimed as The Door slammed shut behind us. We stood alone in the cathedral hall.
“Told you,” I said, avoiding eye contact.
Anouk shook her head. “I’ve never heard the Door carry on so. ‘Wrath, envy, corrupted virtue’…what did she mean by all that?”
“Don’t get me started. I stand guilty as accused. If she wants to rub it in—”
“Shhhhh!” Anouk said, looking over her shoulder. “She just barely let us in. She can kick people out, too. I’ve seen her do it.”
“I’ll try not to take too long,” I promised, slipping out of my shoes. The stone floor was like ice under my feet.
“Do hurry,” Anouk said, bouncing from one bare foot to the other.
I went down the barren hallway. Pale lanterns flickered, barely warding off the gloom that billowed through the place like smoke. There were many doors. All were shut, but I knew where to look for the one I needed.
Now that I knew the truth, it would be hard to speak to my Spirit Mentor without thinking of King Hugo. Linaeve was his mother. Was I reminded myself. Linaeve had no memories of her life. I had come to depend on her as a guiding force, somebody to keep my head clear and my goals in focus. Hugo didn’t deserve her in the same way that his father didn’t deserve Linaeve as a wife. Both men were frauds. It was just one more thing that Linaeve and I had in common.
I arrived at the door I was looking for. To my surprise, light glowed around its edges.
Something crinkled along my spine. Had Linaeve been waiting for me? The spirit only appeared if I watered my Spirit Tree with tears. I hadn’t been to the tree in days.
I entered the small room cautiously. Somebody was there waiting for me and it wasn’t Linaeve.
Astonished, I stared into the puckered old face of High Priestess Grimmoix. “What are you doing here?”
The high priestess looked haughty. If she was enjoying herself, something must be terribly wrong.
“I knew you’d come tonight,” she said as she placed herself squarely between me and the tree.
“How?�
��
She tapped the side of her head with one of her long, wrinkled fingers. “I have a gift. An old Grimmoix heirloom. It is the gift of prophecy.”
I knew she was a Prophet, but she’d never breached the subject before around me. I suspected this was because her most famous prophecy was about me—or at least, about a Flute Keeper. Since I was the last one, that really narrowed down the field.
“Why were you waiting for me?” I asked.
Priestess Grimmoix glanced over her shoulder at the thin sapling where Linaeve usually appeared. A spiteful scowl transformed her face, making her look more gargoyle than Fay. “You thought I wouldn’t find out, didn’t you? Of all the spirits in the Twi-Realm, you had to call her.”
I didn’t like the lethal looks that she was giving the tree. “You know as well as I that spirit selection is random. It’s just a coincidence that Linaeve is the one who came to me in the Spirit Well.”
“THERE ARE NO COINCIDENCES!” High Priestess Grimmoix shouted.
I jumped. “What are you talking about?”
The old woman grinned crazily. She plucked a leaf from the tree and twisted it in her knobby hands. “Even in death Linaeve defies me. She picked you, a worthless, wanton hybrid just like herself. She had the gift. She could see the threads that intertwine everything in existence. Even then, she tried to fight against them and tear her own path through the fabric of destiny. She left behind a wake of chaos and you, Flute Keeper, are just jetsam in that wake.”
My instincts warned me of danger. If I had been paying better attention to them I would have run away.
“That’s not true!” I said. “None of us are bound by fate. I’m here because of choices I made!”
“You really think you’re above it, don’t you?” she said. “Such arrogance! You will take your proper place now. As for Linaeve, she has no place here anymore. Time to send her back to the Twi-Realm where she belongs!”
She snapped her fingers and the tree burst into flames.
“No!” I screamed.
There was nothing I could do. The Spirit Tree was Linaeve’s anchor to the living world. The leaves blackened and curled. The branches turned gray and brittle. Acrid smoke curled towards the ceiling.
High Priestess Grimmoix cackled with glee. “No more Spirit Mentor for you, Flute Keeper.”
I trembled with rage. “How could you? Linaeve was your niece!”
“Linaeve was a traitor!” High Priestess Grimmoix countered. “I can’t have her influencing you, not if you’re going to be a good little priestess. From now on your training will be a bit more…rigorous.”
I took a cautious step backwards. “I don’t want to join the clergy anymore.”
“Too late,” High Priestess Grimmoix said.
“Emma!” came a warning shout from Anouk. It was quickly muffled.
I ran to the hall but the way was blocked. Judge Kesper and Judge Nuckelvee stood there, flanked by their intimidating personal guards. Anouk was being hauled away by cathedral security.
Kesper grinned. With his fat, round body and his beady eyes he looked like a spider that had just found something scrumptious caught in its web. “Well, well, Flute Keeper. Isn’t this convenient?”
Every reflex in my body tensed to react. The only thing stopping me was the fact that all these people were my superiors. An attack on them was an attack on Ivywild.
“Watch her,” Kesper said sideways to one of his guards.
“What is going on?” I asked in an unsteady voice.
“Just a little re-organization,” Kesper said. “Surely today’s events were proof enough that things need to change around here. It’s time for a new order, starting with the clergy.”
My palms grew sweaty. I went to take a step backwards into the room with the scorched Spirit Tree, but High Priestess Grimmoix was behind me.
“I-I’m not in the clergy yet,” I said.
“Of course not,” Kesper said, glaring at the bare spot on my neck where a source crystal should be. “With accelerated training, you should pass induction in no time.”
I knew a threat when I heard one. “But I don’t want to become a priestess anymore,” I said, clenching my fists.
“You no longer have a choice in the matter,” Judge Nuckelvee said. He was taller than Kesper so he was able to look down his nose at me.
“Come with us,” Kesper said, reaching his stumpy fingers for my shirtsleeve.
I drew on my energy to conjure a barrier. It would buy me time to get around the judges and their guards.
“Block her!” Kesper shouted.
Just as I was about to unleash my magic, one of the guards grabbed me by the shoulders and held me a locked grip. My training kicked in and I butted him in the chest with my head. Stunned, the guard let me loose and clutched his chest. Another guard tried to grab me, but I twisted out of his reach and gave him a rapid jab in the stomach.
“Out of the way!” Kesper said, shoving the injured guards aside. He had a handful of some kind of Enchanter’s powder.
“Fight back now,” he said, tossing the whole handful of powder into my face.
It was as though someone had stolen every bit of light from the room. I blinked furiously, trying to clear my eyes, but the powder made me completely blind.
Panicking, I stumbled in the darkness. I felt guards around me so I swung my fists. I only hit air.
Kesper, Nuckelvee and High Priestess Grimmoix cackled.
“Not so brazen now, are you?” Kesper taunted.
I turned towards his voice and gave a mighty swing. I longed for the satisfaction of hitting him. Instead I pitched forward from my own momentum and fell to the floor.
The laughter around me grew louder.
“Take her,” Kesper said.
The guards yanked me to my feet. I braced myself, but they lifted me higher so that my toes dragged the floor.
Blind and overpowered, I realized it was useless to waste any more of my strength. I wanted to scream.
The hallway scraped under my toes as the guards took me away. I had prepared myself to fight the enemies outside of Ivywild. I knew what lengths they would go to and even what some of their weaknesses were. As for the judges and the priestess, I didn’t have a clue what they’d do to me.
High Priestess Grimmoix was still cackling. “One doesn’t need the gift of prophecy to see that this is going to end badly for you, Flute Keeper,” she said.
CHAPTER NINE
The guards placed me alone in a room with a cold, gritty stone floor. I could touch all four walls with my limbs spread. There was a smelly chamber pot in one corner. My senses could tell me little else.
The blindness that Kesper had cast upon me seemed to last forever. I began to fear it was permanent. I did not know whether it was night or day.
One factor on my side was that in their rush to put me away, they had forgotten to check me for weapons. I thanked my lucky stars that I was still wearing my white funeral robe. Underneath it, I wore my shortsword strapped to my thigh.
A million questions screamed in my head. The loudest was “Why?” I was a prisoner, but I didn’t know the crime.
Wild hopes flitted through my mind. Chloe was expecting me. If morning had already come and I wasn’t there, she would order a search. She’d discover what the judges and the priestess had done.
Hours crept by. Nobody came for me.
Eventually I fell asleep out of pure exhaustion. There were no dreams, only a darkness heavier than my blindness. When I awoke my body ached all over from lying on the hard floor. I opened my eyes and was relieved to see hazy light. I still couldn’t make out shapes, but it was an improvement. It calmed me enough that I could evaluate my situation more clearly.
I started with what I knew for certain. I knew I was still in the cathedral. As for where I was exactly, I had no clue. The absolute silence meant nothing. Nearly every inch of the cathedral was charmed to muffle sound.
Next, I recounted the things that High Prie
stess Grimmoix and Judge Kesper had said. I mulled over the priestess in particular. Delphi Grimmoix was a bitter, lonely old woman, but I felt no sympathy for her. I would never forgive her for destroying Linaeve’s Spirit Tree. How cruel did someone have to be to harbor a grudge against a family member who had been dead for years? Maybe her prophetic gift made her that way.
Then something rang in my head like the banging of a gong.
High Priestess Grimmoix was Linaeve’s aunt. Linaeve was Hugo’s mother. I tried to think if Hugo had ever shown signs of having magical ability. Maybe he didn’t have the gift since he was mostly Slaugh. He had been able to enter Seraph’s Tear without suffering the curse that drained all magical folk. Then again, I recalled, he had mostly stayed close to me in Seraph’s Tear and I’d had the benefit of protection from the curse. There was also his habit of always showing up at the right time. Was it his well-tuned Slaugh senses or something else?
Thinking about Hugo made me feel sick to my stomach. He had gotten me through a lot of rough patches. There were times when he had stayed by my side when nobody else would. But it was all a sham. He had merely used me. I was just as angry with him as I was at his despised great-aunt. Linaeve was the only bright spot in a family tree full of rotten apples. Now she was out of reach.
Judge Kesper was another bad apple. He had finally put me in my place and Lord Finbarr wasn’t around to help me. More disturbing than that was Kesper’s mention of a new order. It made me nervous for Chloe.
Hours passed in silence. My vision cleared enough that I could see the gray-black walls that imprisoned me. It was a barren cell. There were no bars, just a door made of the same blank stone as the walls. There was nothing for me to look at. I was just as well off being blind.
There came a scraping noise near the door. A small slot opened at the bottom and somebody shoved a plate of fruit inside.
“Eat up,” said a gruff voice on the other said of the door. “Special course just for you.”
I eyed the food suspiciously. The shiny berries and fresh fruits looked delicious and I was starving, but I knew better than to accept food from people who meant me harm.
The Flute Keeper's Promise (The Flute Keeper Saga) Page 12
