Arabesque

by Hayden Thorne

  It was past midnight. Ulrike’s lessons would take another two hours, and then the chill would vanish, the night resuming its normal cloak of darkness.

  In the meantime, Ulrike sat in the family vault, specifically in an old and unoccupied chamber that had been marked for her parents’ future interment. She needed no light to guide her steps there, for she could easily see in the dark with a few whispered words of magic.

  On the cold stone floor she sat, not at all feeling the bone-numbing iciness of the subterranean crypts. She was protected by her tutors, after all. And like a dedicated, immensely talented scholar, she sat with her back straight and her head bowed, the hood of her cloak covering everything save her mouth and chin. Like a dark ghost she sat still and read the black pages of the ancient book she’d spread on her lap. Murmuring in the dark, she read that night’s lessons as they appeared in fiery text across each page, glowing red and casting an eerie glow on her marble-like features.

  A low, hollow voice interrupted her reading every so often, and Ulrike glanced up to stare at the wall before her—at the shadowy forms of predecessors who’d also learned the same dark arts, flitting across the weathered, slimy stone, encouraging her with voices from beyond the grave.

  They were her tutors, anyway, all bound together as one entity, there to guide anyone from a future generation who’d dare attempt those terrifying lessons. From what Ulrike had discovered, there were half a dozen of her ancestors who practiced black magic, and while none suffered death by execution, she also knew that they all succumbed to the soul and mind-eating power of the dark arts.

  She’d learned about them through dusty records kept in the royal family’s library—old and abandoned tomes that were never destroyed, perhaps kept around as a means of remembering the past, or as Amara would likely refer to it, the sins of the past. Of course, there was also the possibility that they were kept in case someone down the line decided to dabble in black magic—a ghastly legacy that seemed to be made specifically for the royal family’s bloodline.

  Inserted between the pages of one of those books were torn sheets of paper in an ancient tongue, which Ulrike rightly guessed to be some kind of spell that began her lessons by making her book appear on her lap after she spoke those old, old words several times over. From there on, the spirits of her ancestors took her on, instructing her where to go and at what time, and Ulrike gladly obeyed.

  But Ulrike wasn’t like any of her ancestors, though. She’d decided to learn these forbidden lessons with a very pragmatic turn of mind. She had her ambitions, all of which coincided nicely with what the court had long been saying about her: a successful marriage to a great king, a long and magnificent reign marked by prosperity and peace, a beautiful and strong family.

  I need a bit of help to get there, she’d written in her journal. Unlike other princesses who prefer to sit around, look pretty, and wait for a champion to come along, I’d rather take matters in my own hands and see to it that my ambitions bear fruit. Luck is a joke. Free will isn’t.

  She was sixteen then, having begun her midnight lessons on her birthday, and she proved to be a quick learner. Just after she turned eighteen, she was married to the king of a land far, far greater than hers, and he whisked her off to his grand palace and its magnificent pleasure garden.

  Ulrike laughed, her giddy, girlish voice reverberating through the trees as she ran past them, following one pretty lane after another. “I’m here!” she cried, throwing her head back as she lifted her skirts, somehow managing to run in several layers of cloth over stiff hoops, her silk slippers not at all made for such activity. Perhaps it was magic that kept her from stumbling or twisting her ankles, or perhaps it was triumphant joy at ensuring that the path to her new life was as trouble-free as possible—that is, that the path was littered with the bodies of her rivals, all struck down one after another in the most remarkable chain of coincidental and horrific accidents.

  “I’m here!” she cried again and again, her joy all the more delicious as she imagined the ground beneath her soaked with the blood of those useless, pretentious sluts from kingdoms in France or England or Russia among several others, princesses her age or older who thought themselves worthy of King Lambrecht’s attention. No. Absolutely not.

  Ulrike—now Queen Ulrike—would never be challenged by useless women who wouldn’t lift a dainty finger to help themselves.

  “This is what real power’s all about, Amara!” she added, laughing again. She’d taken a lovely tour of the glittering palace; she’d been introduced to the court. Now she was given time to herself as she’d demanded, for she needed to gather her wits, make further plans, and simply revel in her triumph. She slackened her pace and continued her rounds of the pleasure garden, delighting in the decadent mix of artificiality and rustic natural beauty. Yes, she’d have a cottage built in the garden somewhere—a retreat of hers and perhaps her children as well. Farther out, as close to the north border of the garden as possible, she’d have a waterfall made, even a watering-hole of some kind for her private enjoyment. Cottage, waterfall, watering-hole, and any other additions she’d decide on would be strictly for the royal family, which meant that a good portion of the pleasure garden behind the palace would have to be set apart from the rest. No, she’d no need of her powers now that she’d arrived at that first destination; everything else would fall into place quite nicely for her, and she wouldn’t need to whisper a spell to see that through.

  “You see, sister, I did tell you that I know what I’m doing,” she said, grinning, as she ran a careless hand over a marble statue that rose from between thick clusters of bright pink flowers. She watched petals tear off and float down to the grass, enlivening the deep green with a shock of pink. Her eyes twinkled. “As long as you know when to stop, you’ll never be overcome by your powers. I’m not stupid—not like you. From this point on, my head will rule, not my magic, and I’ll show you just how baseless your claims have always been.”

  She shrugged, looking up and enjoying the brilliant sun above as more plans for improving the garden crammed her brain. “I’ll worry about those things when the time comes,” she said, inhaling the fresh air deeply. Then, once again overcome by the excitement of reaching one goal in such a remarkably short amount of time, Ulrike broke into a run, laughing and shrieking through the trees.

  Around her, birds flew off branches, startled by her noise.

  And hours turned into days, weeks, months, a year, then two, then five…

  Chapter Two

  Ulrike sat at her loom and wove. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary as weaving had always been a part of her queenly distractions, along with standing by her king and smiling with a vacant brilliance at her subjects—that is, whenever the king and queen thought fit to set foot beyond the tall, gold-painted, wrought iron fence of their immense sanctuary.

  “All hail the queen!” It was her job to draw those adoring words from her people, the poor, filthy, ignorant lot, despite the injuries they suffered from her brainless boor of a husband.

  “All hail the queen!” Be beautiful. Be virtuous. Be everyone’s goddess. Then half the people who’d been robbed through nightmarish tributes in exchange for the king’s protection would forget the scars, the empty, shrinking stomachs, and the scores of disease-ravaged children lying dead and buried in paupers’ graves.

  And all hailed their queen. Ulrike was their savior, their emotional balm. As long as she stood there, smiling and beautiful and perfect, her subjects would love their iron-fisted king. How could a ghoul such as he be attached to someone so divine?

  “She sees something good in him. Yes, there’s hope there,” wizened crones hissed between discolored teeth. Surely their king wasn’t beyond redemption. Some of the half-starved subjects agreed because tradition and absolute power blinded them, and the rest were simply too stupid to know any better.

  Besides, as was the case where the nobility was concerned, the court remained an untouchable fortress, set apart from
the rest of the land by a twelve-foot high wrought-iron fence that seemed to be a handiwork of magic, for it sported elaborate floral motifs all throughout, every inch painted in gold that never seemed to weather despite its daily exposure to the elements. A massive iron gate marked the entrance, its intricate patterns of writhing and interlocking rose vines and blooms shimmering in the sun, no differently from the way the rest of the amazingly long fence that linked each half of the gate shimmered.

  Even the expansive pleasure garden with its exuberant flowering trees and shrubs that jostled for space with trees seemed to speak of an unearthly hand being responsible for the remarkable explosions of color and fragrance that filled the air day and night. The palace sprawled east and west in the middle of the massive garden, rising to meet the heavens with three storeys of tall, sunlit apartments that stared prettily out in ornate architectural playfulness, an emphatic turning up of its aristocratic nose at the ragged world beyond its sacred grounds.

  The palace stood on an island of lush grass, a deep green lawn that served as vivid carpeting separating the palace from the rest of the grounds. Beyond that lawn stretched the pleasure garden, which through past generations had undergone quite a bit of aesthetic changes. For this period in time, it was turned into a landscape of a strictly measured idyll. Unlike the elaborate flower gardens so popular elsewhere, this area was something akin to a small, magical woodland of sorts, with carefully chosen trees and plants coyly hiding the royal family’s favorite retreats at the extreme end of the garden: a rustic little cottage here, a pretty glade there, a small clearing through which a crystal clear brook cut its way, an elaborate mountain of rocks among which a steady fall of water poured in mimicry of a real waterfall. No one but those whom the royal family favored was allowed in that portion of the garden, and it was to the court’s great credit that servants and nobles who visited the royal family respected those strict limits and satisfied themselves with the rest of the expansive garden for their enjoyment.

  The pleasure garden was divided into large square sections, each of which was bordered by romantic lanes along which were scattered marble benches and statuary. Here and there, torches were put up and lit to guide the royal family and their guests after the sun had set, lending the pleasure garden an even greater romantic feel to it. During certain celebrations, small orchestras were hired to play music in selected areas among the trees so as to be hidden from view, their nocturnes and minuets filling the day and evening air as lovers strolled, inspiring them to carry on later in the privacy of their bedrooms.

  Together, the pleasure garden and its nestled palace were known as Paradies to the rest of the kingdom.

  So in her chosen sanctuary in Paradies, Ulrike sat and lost herself in womanly work as she counted the minutes till the moment. Weaving used to bore her, but not anymore, now that she’d discovered that she could “paint” stories with thread, not just senseless, pretty patterns. Her magic, so long suppressed in favor of “normal” queenly activities, had proven itself to be too powerful to silence completely, and while music and needlework did nothing to help, weaving surprised her with its strange and inexplicable connection to the darker arts. Ever since Ulrike learned to use the loom, she’d been amazed at how masterfully her fingers were guided even without extensive training. All she needed to do, she’d discovered, was to think of a story, and her hands would fly as though they’d just developed a life of their own, her thoughts slowly taking shape in brilliant color and elaborate patterns. It was an oddity, to be sure, to have a queen at that day and age to turn to something as primitive as weaving, but a queen could do whatever she damned well pleased, and besides, it was an activity that Ulrike had always kept secret—a prudent move, to be sure.

  Ulrike paused to run her gaze from left to right, a smile growing. Within the intricacies of an extravagant border, an event played itself out. First, on the far left of the tapestry was a wedding celebration, with the bride looking quite angry, her husband, drunk and cavorting with a handful of maids of honor. Then the scene flowed into a garden kiss between the sullen bride and—someone else. A nobleman. If one were to follow the trail of strewn blue rose petals, he’d find himself watching the couple in bed next, a sword leaning against the man’s side. The trail of rose petals continued from there—no, not rose petals, but drops of blood. The husband lay on the ground, his head cut off. His wife stood nearby, smiling and glowing, while her lover held a crown above his own head, looking as though he were about to crown himself. The final scene showed them both sitting on their thrones, majestic, all-powerful, and so, so content.

  The tapestry was Ulrike’s personal delight. Her fury, disappointment, and countless other poisonous feelings that had built up and festered over five years found release in that loom, and those same toxins had fed the dark magic that she’d been trying to keep in check. Bitterness, hate, and powers that she’d long mastered in an ambitious effort at rising up the ranks alternately fed and ate off each other—a never-ending nightmarish spiral. Her pale fingers moved quickly, the loom’s frame shook under her desperate speed, and several bobbins emptied themselves of their colorful, cocooning thread.

  “Never again. Never again,” she murmured, her eyes narrowed and fixed on every inch of the tapestry on which she’d be working. Five years of misery were five years too long. Five years of being bedded by the king, five years of trying for an heir, the prospect of a son the only thing that kept her grounded in the moment, though she could never grow used to the disgust that roiled in her belly as her husband loomed above her, pouchy and streaked with sweat, his face powder and rouge smeared, his skin reeking from that day’s adventures through the countryside, that day’s executions of the hapless poor (all done outside Paradies’s borders, of course), that day’s drunken debauches within court and without. Lambrecht was thirty when he married her; at thirty-five, he might as well be sixty as far as his queen was concerned.

  Midway through her work, Ulrike decided to rest. Rubbing her fingers, flexing them as she sauntered to the window of her private cottage, she once again felt a nervous anticipation tickling her stomach. She glanced out the window and watched the snow collect on the uneven ground.

  “I suppose I should talk to the gardeners again,” she said. “They’ve been too sloppy in keeping up the winter landscape.”

  Yes, even with the plants mostly hiding till the spring, Ulrike refused to allow that respite to make complete sluggards of men under her employ, and she always ordered them out into the snow to find something for them to do. Ragged men had died in past winters, digging out rocks from the snow just to break up the monotonous whiteness for the queen’s pleasure as well as clearing up patches of the little woodland sanctuary in defiance of Nature.

  “I want to see spring in winter,” Ulrike occasionally demanded. She could, of course, use magic to achieve what she desired in less than half the time, but it also meant giving her powers away when the gardeners went about their daily maintenance duties.

  No, indeed—no magic. For something as ordinary as Paradies’s woodland paradise, it was far more prudent to make full use of hired help instead. Besides, those who were employed by the royal family should earn their wages, regardless. No use spending the entire winter doing nothing in their wretched cottages, after all, while their families faded with their dwindling supplies, though usefulness came at a high price.

  The minutes crawled, and Ulrike waited and wove her tapestry, idly turning her thoughts to the snow-white purity beyond.

  “I would dearly love it if I were blessed with a child with such a skin. It’s absolute—perfection,” she said. Unblemished and superior—the kind of complexion that only the next monarch deserved.

  She caught herself and shook her head, waving a hand vaguely before her as though warding off a persistent insect. “I can’t have my child looking like him,” she murmured with greater firmness. “I’d sooner die than have two of him in my life.” She could barely stifle a contemptuous sneer at the mental im
age of a child looking like her husband. Oh, by the heavens, no.

  Be the child a boy or a girl—white skin versus dark, red lips versus peach or flesh-hued—perfection was perfection, and a pale-skinned, red-lipped creature carrying her blood in its veins without the faintest hint of paternal connection with the king was just the right kind of feather in her cap.

  “No,” she said, her skin crawling when a quiet voice in her head reminded her. “A girl. It has to be a girl. We’ve had enough of men around here.” Yes, a girl. A strong-willed, intelligent young woman who’d grow up crushing importunate beasts between her dainty fingers. She’d fare far better than her mother, Ulrike determined. She’d know what to do, and she’d get her way, not be a glittering, brainless toy for her husband to showcase and brag about here and there. Ulrike would have to pass on those midnight lessons to her daughter as well, an added protection against the filthy wiles of men and the petty viciousness of women. Perhaps the hoped-for princess would find better use of the dark arts, and Ulrike had also taken care to bring her old chest and its black lesson book with her, much to her sister’s horror.

  At any rate, a girl instead of a boy would be a much-needed slap at Lambrecht’s filthy face for all the misery to which he’d subjected her since their wedding.

  Ulrike smiled as she resumed her seat and worked on. How could she have forgotten about the baby’s gender? She’d already had a number of tedious conversations with herself regarding that. How silly of her to forget. And those hoped-for physical attributes? Oh, yes, she’d also had tiresome conversations about those before…

  * * *

  “Not all nobles have white skin,” her younger sister, the pragmatic, ill-tempered chit (as Ulrike had always viewed her), used to always say. “And look at the gentry—a few shades darker than you, and all of them are handsome in their way.”