“You know the boy will never be crowned,” a duchess archly noted, her skirts swaying on their hoops as she skillfully navigated her way through narrow doors.
“He’s a bastard, the poor child,” a lady replied, following her friend from one apartment to another. “Why he wasn’t whisked away to spare the court this scandal is beyond me. There’s nothing wrong with a retired life in an obscure village somewhere. The royal family can afford to retain him like that.”
The duchess whirled around, laughing, and gave her friend a playful thump with her fan. “But that’s just it, my dear—scandal! Why deprive everyone of the most delicious outrage yet? How can you be so boring?”
“I suppose it’s worth watching Her Majesty get knocked down the ladder by a few rungs,” the lady said, her smile hardening. “I’ve always known that she’d be bad news.”
“Hmm. I don’t even remember where she’s from originally. I suppose that says something about her, doesn’t it?”
Elsewhere in court, ladies whispered and tittered behind their fans. Gentlemen nudged each other and muttered a few choice words about whores, lechers, and bastards before suppressing laughter. All their eyes followed Ulrike’s shrunken and feverish figure as she went about her usual business, a hollow-eyed shadow of her old self. Mute and listless, her mind always fixed elsewhere and never the present. As her belly grew, her despairing hold on her last chance at salvation—her hoped-for baby girl—gradually slipped along with her mind.
She despised her life even more, and her dark powers, long-suppressed, festered in her, feeding her madness.
But such is the way with many queens, her sister would whisper at her bedside night after night. There, there. You’re not alone in this, you know. At times, the dead princess would stroke Ulrike’s hair, charred hands rough and cold against her skin, smelling of decay.
* * *
When Ulrike’s thoughts found their way sluggishly to the present, she heard nothing but her son’s incessant crying.
“Find a wet-nurse for him,” she ordered one of the servants who’d responded to her summons. The nervous girl immediately complied. “I won’t touch him. He repulses me.” Once left alone with her tearful child, she passed the time singing to herself while casting furtive glances about the room, nervously searching for signs of her dead sister coming back to keep her company.
* * *
There was a family heirloom, a looking-glass, to which Ulrike often repaired for reasons known only to herself. Then again, the subjects understood that their sovereign had gone quite mad, and they merely looked the other way during these occasional odd displays.
The young prince, now in his fifth year, didn’t quite understand it, either, but he knew well enough to avoid it and the room in which it was kept. What had been grounded into him had been nothing more than an odd tale or two woven around this rather plain-looking piece of furniture.
“The looking-glass,” his nurse told him as she helped him dress, “has been the royal family’s most feared heirloom, my pet. It’s their oracle, wrought several centuries before by an ancestor renowned for sorcery and who was subsequently executed by fire.”
Alarick listened, puzzled. “I thought Mama uses it to look at herself. Isn’t that what mirrors are for?”
“Well, yes, I suppose. Ordinarily, anyway, it should be used for nothing more than vanity purposes.” The nurse smirked as she combed the prince’s hair. For all her ambitions, where was the queen now? As with everyone else she knew among the servants, the nurse whispered a little prayer for Alarick’s salvation. The boy clearly showed no signs of being like either of his monstrous parents, but perhaps it was still too early to know.
“Mama’s very pretty. Why would she cry when she sees herself in it?”
“We don’t know, darling. It’s not an easy thing, being queen.”
The child sniffed. “She has maids-in-waiting. I don’t see what the problem is.”
The nurse would only laugh and give Alarick a fond hug. The boy would have remained in the dark on several things about his family, not the least of which was the looking-glass, but he was sure that his secret friend would be able to tell him even if his nurse refused.
His secret friend, yes—the woman who’d appear in his room only when he was alone and forgotten by the world. The woman who’d talk to him, tell him stories till he fell asleep, answer his questions, and give him a cold kiss on his cheek before she vanished in the deepening darkness just as the servants would appear, bearing candles with which to light those in Alarick’s bedroom.
The nurse was usually with him from breakfast till dinner, so his secret friend never visited him then, though she sometimes took advantage of Alarick’s solitary hours to check up on him as well.
“What’s wrong with your face?” Alarick asked one day, frowning as he gazed at the strange scars that marred half of her face. He tried to touch them, but he didn’t like the way her skin felt too cold against his fingers. It was all he could do to compare the two sides of her face as she turned her head left and right while laughing indulgently.
“Burned, I’m afraid,” she said once Alarick had settled down on his bed. “It happened a long time ago, sometime before you were born.”
“Does it hurt?”
“Not anymore.”
“But you can’t find a husband now, and it isn’t fair.” Alarick’s heart went out to his friend, who might have been a beautiful woman at one point.
She merely smiled and shook her head as she settled herself on the floor, resting her arms on the bed and her chin on her arms. She gazed up at him, pleasure and wonder in her eyes. “It doesn’t matter now,” she said. “I can’t marry anyone, anyway. It’s too late for that. If it’s any comfort, I really look far worse than what you see now, but a bit of magic takes care of that. I don’t wish to frighten you.”
“Magic? Are you a witch?” Alarick asked, breathless. He’d never had a witch for a friend before.
She laughed. “I might as well be, I suppose. But it’s a small matter, this magic thing, and not worth anyone’s time or trouble thinking too much about it.”
“I don’t like you being alone. I’ll keep you company.”
“I’m very glad.” She sighed as she watched him, reaching out on occasion to brush stray dirt off his clothes or to tousle his hair fondly. “I enjoy talking to you.”
She’d identified herself as Amara.
“Do you know anything about the mirror that Mama’s so fond of?” Alarick asked her while toying with one of the ribbons on her bodice, which was discolored and tattered, not at all like anything a respectable woman, whether gentry or nobility, would dare put on. Amara simply allowed him to examine her dress, which also sported burn marks in several places.
“It’s the royal family’s curse,” Amara said, the pleasure in her eyes darkening, as she went on about the looking-glass’s nature. Its existence had long been deeply and tightly woven into their bloodline by a sorcerer-king, and so generation after generation till the present have been subjected to its prophecies, all of which having been fulfilled, regardless of whether or not the family’s fortune swung to the side of good.
Insurrections, assassinations, betrayal, and politically advantageous matches and alliances had all been laid bare by the oracle, and there was nothing that the royal family could do to change the direction their fate was to take. Oh, yes, countless attempts—courageous and ultimately foolish attempts—had been made to thwart the prophecies, but fate had always found a way of duping them back to their predetermined paths, rendering all efforts ineffectual and further instilling a melancholy sense of fatalism in every member of the royal family. It had been rumored before that it was the looking-glass, not the current monarch, that ruled the kingdom, but no one dared venture anything more than fearful whispers of superstition and doubt. And anyone who dared try to destroy the looking-glass ended up dead.
Alarick frowned as he listened. “I don’t understand anything you’re saying
,” he said after a moment’s pause.
Amara laughed and then stood up in a rustle of decaying fabric. The burned patches of skin on her face seemed to vanish, sinking into her skull so that it looked as though she only had half a face left. Alarick shrank back at the sight, but she held her hands out to him, showing their perfect condition despite the ghastly state of her dress. The prince took her hands in his, and she bent down and gave him a kiss on the forehead.
“You’ll understand everything well enough when you’re older,” she whispered, smiling, and then stood up again, releasing his hands. “Keep yourself safe, though, and stay away from the room where the mirror’s kept. It’s your mother’s treasure, and it won’t do, invading her privacy for curiosity’s sake.”
The prince nodded. “I promise I’ll leave it alone.”
“This palace is full of mirrors, anyway. If you’re allowed to wander around a bit more, you’ll enjoy some of the apartments with the mirrored walls. I daresay they’ll offer you a great deal more than any cursed looking-glass can.” She paused, smiling, as she gave his shirt a playful little tug. “Besides, you’re far better off looking at beauty—”
“But I’m looking at myself in the mirror!”
“Exactly! As I was saying, you’re better off looking at beauty than wickedness when you stand before any looking-glass.”
Alarick frowned as he pondered, absently touching his cheek at hearing himself associated with beauty.
Amara withdrew into the shadows, vanishing gradually while keeping her gaze fixed on the prince. Just as the gloom overcame her, she raised a hand in farewell, and Alarick thought he saw the palm rotting away, with bits of flesh missing and white bone showing through the holes. He blinked, and Amara was gone.
He certainly believed his secret friend as far as the nature of the magic looking-glass went. After all, he simply needed to watch his mother enter the cursed mirror’s room, shut herself in, and then at length leave looking more and more aged and distracted. He was certain that she’d spent all that time gazing into the mirror, determining the family’s fortune, and from the looks of things, it didn’t seem to bode well for anyone.
But the queen had given strict orders to keep him away from the mirror, from the room, and from her. What he knew of her activities were merely conjectures as well as revelations he’d wrung out of Amara, and it was all he could really do to play with his toys, alone, till his nurse came by for a meal or the rare bath.
Every so often, he wondered what his future held. And sometimes he wished that he’d be allowed to peer into the accursed mirror and see for himself his mother’s tormentor.
“I’ll be the king,” he proudly announced, puffing out his chest, green eyes glinting. “I can defeat the monster in the mirror.”
“Of course, my love,” his nurse purred, and she carried him away.
Spying on his mother one day, he caught the faint sounds of her voice in the room. She always spoke with the monster in the looking-glass. He always knew that, and it irked him. Sometimes he’d hear her weeping, sometimes cursing. He wasn’t sure, but he believed that sometimes he’d actually hear her laugh. Then again, monsters were clever, and it was very likely that the one haunting the mirror had the queen firmly wrapped around its finger. Alarick was outraged, naturally. His mother should let him march in the room and break the glass and release the family from its curse.
Then again, it was quite another thing to convince a mad person of the most prudent course to take.
“You’ll be hard-pressed to get her to talk to you sensibly,” Amara once said with an earnestness that gave Alarick some pause. But her influence on him sometimes only lasted for the briefest moment, and they’d be back to where they were before.
“Nonsense!” he retorted, pulling himself away from his secret friend’s hold.
He had this little wooden sword, after all; he was impressively armed. He had his books; from them he’d learn what he could about the nature of curses. He was very good friends with the alchemist who lived in town, and the man would surely accede to his demands for a magic potion concocted specifically for his purpose. Yes, this was merely one of several tests of strength and character he was destined to face.
Even as Amara continued to talk him out of his defiant fantasies, Alarick would ignore her, his mind wandering down familiar paths, his heart nearly bursting out of his chest at the incredible thrill he felt as he played out his adventures in his mind
“My love, what are you thinking about now?” she asked after several minutes of a one-sided conversation had passed. She lifted Alarick’s chin with two cold fingers and forced him to look at her.
“Oh—just thinking about how I’ll deal with that monster in Mama’s mirror.”
Amara, at first curious, broke out in quiet laughter. “Really now! And how would you do it, Alarick?” She never called him by his royal title, which at first annoyed the boy, but he’d quickly grown used to her familiarity.
Encouraged, his eyes widening in excitement, Alarick plunged into a rambling, detailed account of how he planned to go about rescuing his mother.
“Come out and face me, demon!” he’d cry, pointing his sword at the glass. “Let this be the day of our battle! Yes, just you and me! I’m not afraid of you!”
And, swoosh, swoosh, swoosh! his sword would go, slicing through the air as his hands moved with impressive dexterity and strength. And the air would clear, and the stench of blood would hang in space to fill his nostrils as he stood tall and victorious over the slashed, mangled corpse of his nemesis. He’d keep the head for a trophy, of course, present it to his mother as a token of his love. After all, she’d long been tormented by this hideous thing. Yes, Alarick was quite sure that it was that demon that had long been responsible for his mother’s madness.
He should convince her that his scheme was worth a moment of her time. Now if only she’d let him near her…
“You know it’s impossible, child,” Amara whispered at length, her face a damaged picture of earnestness, and all his adventures vanished in an unpleasant haze till all that filled his immediate world was the figure of a half-burned woman in tattered and scorched court dress, gazing solemnly at him, the melancholy in her air putting an immediate end to his wild ambitions.
When he burst into tears, she pulled him close for an embrace, shushing him and humming a familiar nursery song, while filling his senses with the smell of earth and old fabric.
Chapter Four
If there was one thing on which Alarick outdid his parents, it would be character. Perhaps it was because of the concern—sincere and born of deep love and respect—shown by some of those who surrounded him through his childhood and youth. No one in this small group, regardless of position in the royal household, wanted to see him turn out like his “adoptive” father or mother, and they truly pitied the boy for being mocked in court as “the bastard prince.”
“Don’t abuse your intelligence,” his tutors growled over the candles, while spreading faded atlases and dusty books before him.
“Don’t abuse your subjects,” his playmates warned, at times jerking their heads in the direction of the cursed forest. Then they’d taunt him with swords, and soon all would be engaged in mock battles, filling the air with screams and yelps and harsh laughter of soon-to-be-warriors. Around them, flowers shed their petals, peppering the air with a playful flurry of colorful and fragrant snow.
“Don’t abuse your body,” his spiritual ministers chanted as Alarick sat in the gloomy little antechamber of a holy sanctuary situated in a quiet wooded patch of land beyond the town’s borders, the area filled with candles and silent, hooded figures that flitted through the shadows.
Alarick had absorbed and obeyed. For a time, anyway. He studied hard and surpassed his peers, at times putting on a show—for no one but himself, really—by outsmarting his masters. He felt kindness and mercy toward the haggard, reeking peasants. He even visited the local markets, observing the comings and goings, surpris
ing everyone. After all, he was outside the palace walls, he wasn’t demanding tributes, and he wasn’t getting drunk and raping virgins. What a strange fellow he was, so unlike Lambrecht—or, indeed, even Bittan von Eisenberg—courtiers whispered, though they continued to smirk behind their fans and handkerchiefs. Alarick flattered those lucky enough to earn his interest. He kept his head and tried to maintain good health with the right food and plenty of exercise.
“He’s a remarkable boy!” a few of those closest to the royal family said, watching Alarick go about his day, their admiration deepening. What could one expect from perfection, after all? From a boy belonging to a bloodline that was one step down from immortals, bastard or no? Alarick’s obvious virtues managed to win over even some of the most hardened gossips and jealous peers of the royal household despite the handicap of his birth. While his activities didn’t stop them from indulging in whispered mockery and all kinds of vicious tales, the court at least seemed more inclined to like him on the whole.
It had always been the queen’s dearest wish to have a perfect baby, and lucky her, he was everything she’d always wanted in a child—save for his gender and complexion, naturally. And what a shame that she was simply too insane to appreciate her blessings.
Some took issue with Alarick’s occasional adventures outside the palace and among the filthy populace. “Why does he bother to go out there, risking his health and his life, talking to these wretches?” the lower ranking nobles asked.
“True,” their friends would acknowledge with a puzzled frown. “He’s got several people he can appoint for his representatives. Let them face the disease-riddled mass, while he stays safe. Is he bent on dying young? Who’ll replace him?”
“And why does His Majesty allow him this much freedom?”
“I don’t even understand why His Majesty would care. The boy’s not his son.”
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