The City in the Lake

by Rachel Neumeier

  “What are you?” Timou asked it when she could speak. Her voice shook. “Which is true?”

  It said, as it had before, “Do you not know me?”

  Timou took a breath and let it out, looking in lingering amazement for the shadow of the great fiery serpent hidden in the shadow of this little hatchling. She could see nothing. She could not imagine what it was. “No,” she whispered.

  “You should,” repeated the snake, and added in a tone like a promise or a threat, “You will.”

  Timou was no longer angry. She felt drained, hollow, emptied out of herself by emotion and amazement. She stared at the little serpent with eyes that felt gritty when she blinked. She asked after a moment, in a voice rough with unshed tears, “What do I seek this time?”

  The snake tilted its head a little to the side. “What you will find if you go that way is the Prince,” it said, not quite answering her question.

  Of course. The Prince. Everyone had been seeking the lost Prince. The stolen Prince. Of course he was here, behind the mirror, in this strange place of solidified light where no one had looked. Except, perhaps, her father. And what had Kapoen earned for his cleverness? “I don’t care whether the Prince is ever found or not!” Timou said passionately.

  “You will,” said the little serpent.

  Even through shock, Timou knew that this was probably true. She rubbed her eyelids with the tips of her fingers, trying to calm her heart. The mere attempt made her think of her father and she found it impossible. She made a small sound, which she tried to catch back but could not quite suppress, and put her hands over her eyes.

  “If not now, when?” asked the snake, unmoved. It uncoiled itself and indicated a narrow angle of light that crossed in front of them perhaps a hundred feet away. “The Prince is that way.”

  After a moment Timou stood up wordlessly. She hesitated, looking at the place her father’s body had lain for her to find it, but there was no sign it had ever been there. The blood was gone. Yet she was oddly reluctant to walk away, as though as long as she stayed in this one place, her father might suddenly reappear, might not really be dead. . . . She knew this was not true. She was alone.

  The snake had not waited. It was not out of sight, but soon it would turn along a different angle of light and then it, too, would be gone. . . . Timou moved, stiffly, to follow it.

  It seemed this time that she followed the little snake for only a little while. It turned swiftly and confidently from one flat plane of diamond-hard condensed light to another, from one path to another that always led in some strange and unpredictable direction.

  At length the snake stopped, allowing Timou to come up to it. Ahead of them a path crossed theirs at a nearly perpendicular angle, slanting upward steeply. “The Prince is there,” said the snake.

  Timou was still not certain she cared. But she asked after a moment, “Is he alive?”

  The snake let its mouth open a little, seeming to smile. Timou could see the milky crystal of its fangs. “Go and find out.”

  “Where will you be?”

  “Everywhere,” said the serpent. It watched her, its winterblue eyes impossible to read.

  Timou turned her back on it, cleared her mind of expectation—this was difficult, because the image of a silver knife and a trickle of blood kept wanting to appear before her mind’s eye—and walked forward, turning the sharp-edged corner when she came to it, and finding herself on a level path, as always.

  The Prince was there. He sat staring intently into a wall of opalescent light, cross-legged on the floor, his hands on his knees, his back to Timou. She wondered what visions or memories or wishes the Prince might see moving within that wall. All she saw in it when she followed his intent gaze was a faint blurred reflection of his face.

  The Prince’s hair, dark oak-brown and perfectly straight, fell down his back in a neat braid, bound off at the end with gold. He wore a russet shirt with gold showing through narrow russet ribbons at the puffed sleeves, brown leggings embroidered with russet and gold, and black boots with an intricate gold tracery around their cuffs. He looked like a Prince. A naked sword with a black hilt lay by his side. Timou could see the rise and fall of his shoulders as he sighed, so at least she was sure he was not dead.

  She came a step forward, oddly reluctant to speak and thus break the privacy and silence that held the Prince. But he heard her step and turned his head.

  At once he was on his feet, and at once, in an attack wholly unexpected, that sword was in his hands and driving at Timou with all the fury and desperation of long trapped months. The Prince was very fast. Timou could never have avoided that blow. Vivid terror shocked her back into the moment; she melted into the blade instead, became a line of light reflected along its deadly edge, rode it through the arc of its attack, and poured herself into the wall of light on the other side. The light tried to carry her with it along its infinite path; for a moment Timou almost went with it, letting herself dissolve into it forever. But even as that impulse formed, Timou knew it was childish; she was ashamed even to have felt it. She pulled herself back into her own form, shaping her body out of the fall of light and the memory of darkness and the movement of air. It was harder to do this time than it had been when she’d first found herself in this maze: she had less to return to now.

  The Prince, with a sound of despair, flung down his sword. “What do you want?” he cried. “Just tell me what you want!”

  “I think—” Timou said shakily, “I think, Your Highness—you are Prince Cassiel, of course?—I think you are mistaking me for someone else.”

  The Prince stared at her. Slowly his expression changed. He did not look much like his older half brother. His face was gentler, elegant rather than harsh. His eyes were not the night-dark eyes of his brother, but a warmer color: the color of the wood at the heart of an oak. They were wide now, with rage and desperation just giving way to dawning surprise. His mouth was tight. He said harshly, in a voice not meant, Timou judged, for harshness, “Who are you?”

  “No one you know.” Timou came forward a cautious step. “No one who is your enemy.”

  “You are a mage. How old are you?”

  “How old do you think I am?”

  “Ageless,” the Prince said. His voice shook, then steadied. It occurred to Timou that he was not, in fact, much older than she. “I think you are as old as the world, and as cruel as the sky. If you would tell me what you want, at least I would know.”

  “I am seventeen. My name is Timou. My father—” Timou stopped briefly, and then went on with difficulty, “My father, the mage Kapoen, was here. He died here. Blood ran from his heart in a great river.”

  “I saw him,” the Prince said slowly. “I followed the river of blood out of curiosity and found the man at the end. He was already dead. I did not know him, but I tried to draw out the knife. It was like smoke in my hands; I could not grasp it. He was your father? I am sorry for your loss.” He sounded perfectly sincere, as though even in this strange place and suspecting her of being his enemy, the Prince could still spare a moment of compassion for the loss of a father.

  Timou did not want to think about that loss, and somehow the kindness of the Prince’s voice hurt her as the chill indifference of the serpent had not. She wavered for a moment toward tears.

  The Prince’s voice, questioning, steadied her and drew her back to the present. “Do you know who killed him?”

  Timou bowed her head. “I think . . . my mother.”

  The Prince moved a little, and stilled again. “Your mother.”

  “I think you have seen her. I looked in the mirror in your Palace and saw myself reflected, but I think . . . I think it was my mother looking out at me. From this place. This trap she had . . . she had prepared for me. I wanted to find her,” Timou confessed, “but I know now why my . . . my father did not want me to.” She shut her eyes for a moment, waiting to be beset by sorrow or anger. But there was, for the moment, nothing but a cold silence. “If only he had told
me about her,” she whispered. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?”

  “Perhaps he couldn’t bear to,” the Prince suggested gently. “Perhaps he loved her, or feared her. Perhaps he hoped you would never need to know about her.” He came closer to Timou and stood gazing down at her. She brushed her hair away from her face impatiently with her hands, blinked away tears, and stared back at him.

  “Your eyes are different,” he said at last. “Your face is a little different. Rounder. Softer. Or maybe that, too, is your eyes. . . . You look younger. She looks . . . Her eyes look like they have seen all the ages of the world. Your voice is different. You sound . . . She mocked me. She told me . . . well. Your voice is not like hers. Timou. Is that your name?”

  Timou nodded.

  “She would not tell me hers. But I know it, or at least I know the one she gave my father. Lelienne. Was that your mother?”

  Timou closed her eyes for a moment. She was remembering that the name had unlocked her father’s most private book. “I think that it was. I think it must have been.”

  “You are not her. I see that now. She could . . . I am sure she could make herself look younger or older. But I don’t think . . . I don’t think she could change her eyes. Not to your eyes.”

  “It isn’t hard to change the color of one’s eyes.”

  “I was not referring to the color.” The Prince moved restlessly. “You say this is a snare she meant for you?”

  “Yes,” Timou said reluctantly. “For me, and for . . .”

  “For your father, yes.” The Prince touched her hand in quick sympathy.

  “And for you, perhaps.”

  “I have indeed been trapped here a long time, I think. This is a good cage, and not only for mages. I have not found a way out.”

  “There is always a way out.”

  The Prince said, his voice sharp with despair, “Did your father teach you that?”

  “Yes,” said Timou. It was true, she realized. Her father had not told her about this maze of light, about Deserisien and his sorcerers . . . about her mother. But he had taught her to trust that no puzzle was unsolvable. And she knew that was true. The things he had taught her had been true. She drew a slow breath and let it out, feeling her heart begin at last to settle with that realization. She closed her eyes and sat down where she was, on the floor, her back against a wall of light. She said, her eyes still closed, “My father taught me that riddles have answers. We will find the answer to this one.”

  The Prince did not respond.

  Timou wrapped her arms around her knees and bowed her head, reaching after stillness, the quiet of mind and heart that would let her find the answer she sought. She held in her mind the shape of this place, the space the Prince occupied, the space the sword occupied. She knew when the Prince bent and picked up the sword, and knew when he sat down on the floor, cross-legged, as he had been when she had first seen him. She asked, “What were you looking for, earlier, in that wall?”

  After a moment the Prince answered, “Sometimes there are shapes, and voices. Sometimes you see movement you can almost recognize as someone you know. This place is the one where they come through the most clearly. I stay here and watch them.”

  Timou opened her eyes and looked at him. He was not looking into the wall now. He was watching her, his oak-colored eyes crowded with questions. She said, “So you have given up searching for a way that leads out of this place?”

  The Prince shrugged, a minute gesture. “I searched at first. For a long time. There is no—If there is a way out, I could not find it. I tried to break a wall once, but my sword shattered first.” He followed Timou’s glance to the sword lying in front of him, whole and undamaged. He said, “I found a place where the broken hilt reflected between walls like a whole sword. When I looked at it again, it was whole.”

  “How strange,” murmured Timou. “How strange.” She looked, narrow-eyed, into the shadowless distance, thinking. She was relieved to find that she could, that she had not after all been stunned senseless by . . . everything. That she had not altogether lost the stillness her father had taught her. “I think . . . I think this is not a place at all. I think it is a reflection of something more real than it is. A trap, yes, but not made to be a trap.”

  “What, then?” the Prince demanded in clear frustration, getting to his feet. “It is enough of a trap for me!”

  “She means it to be. But I think . . . I think really it is a puzzle.” Serpents rose up in her mind, long and black, or small and white, or huge and made of fire. . . . Their eyes, slit-pupiled and unreadable, stared back at her out of memory. She said slowly, “Sometimes things aren’t what they seem. Or sometimes there are, I don’t know, layers beyond what you first see. This place . . . I don’t think this is part of the Kingdom at all. But I don’t think it’s really outside the Kingdom either. I think the Kingdom encompasses it.”

  The Prince dismissed all abstract considerations with a sharp wave of his hand and went straight to the point: “If you are a mage, can you find a way out of this place, wherever it is? Puzzle, maze, whatever it is?”

  “Well,” said Timou, holding out a hand for him to help her to her feet, “I know that there is always a way out. That is a beginning.”

  CHAPTER 8

  he Bastard did not for one moment mistake the woman who came out of the mirror for the girl who had gone into it. The girl had been a mystery, a curiosity, a puzzle . . . but she had not struck the Bastard as dangerous.

  The woman, it was immediately clear to him, was exceedingly dangerous.

  Her eyes were dark, darker than his: black as the night at the heart of the world. They had seen everything, and forgotten nothing. The weight of that dark gaze pressed on him like a physical force when she met his eyes. And the woman was smiling. The Bastard could imagine a tiger smiling like that as it found its prey at bay, trapped in a corner before it.

  “Well,” she said, and looked slowly about the room before bringing that heavy gaze back to press against the Bastard. Her voice was light and pretty. Behind the prettiness was something else: a sleek satisfaction that was deeply disturbing. “My son. Have you no greeting for your mother?”

  The Bastard did not doubt this claim. He almost thought he remembered her himself, though he had been only a baby when she had left the City. Her name, he knew, was Lelienne. Her white beauty was as the tales described, but no story recalled her ageless gaze or the sense of power that clung to her: these things she must have hidden from his father. Questions fell through his mind like the pieces to a puzzle, then locked into shape. He said, knowing it was true, “You took my brother.”

  “Young Cassiel.” The woman’s smile became a shade more brilliant. “Oh, yes.”

  “Why?” asked the Bastard. He had not moved. He did not move now.

  The woman did. She took a step forward. “You are my son,” she said. “My son, and son of the King. You can give me the Kingdom. Young Cassiel must first give it to you.”

  “I will give you nothing,” the Bastard said flatly.

  The woman’s smile did not dim. “How unfilial. My son, is that how you speak to your mother?”

  Her tone had been gentle, but the weight of her gaze now became terrible: it pressed on the Bastard until he could not endure it. Though he fought it, it pressed him down. He went to his knees at last with a low cry of anger and humiliation, shaking. He was aware, tangentially, of Galef moving to draw his sword, and then stopping, white and still, with the sword half drawn. He was aware of Marcos beginning to move, and also stopping, one thick hand reaching suddenly out, as though for something beyond his grasp.

  The pressure eased once he had been forced to yield to it. On his knees, he looked up at his mother. The Bastard had spent his life wondering about his mother, and now he did not need to wonder: he felt his heart pause in its beating, in terror and dismay. Pride demanded that he try to rise. Sense and the memory of her power suggested otherwise. The Bastard had both pride and sense in abundance, but h
e had always known how to rule his pride. Sense won. He stayed on his knees, grimly. She smiled down at him. Her eyes did not smile. They were expressionless, blank, filled with age and secrets.

  “You cannot fight me,” she said gently. “You will try, of course, and fail.” She glanced around at the little dressing room, by implication through its walls and out around the Palace. The Bastard would not have been surprised if she could look through walls: he even expected it. Perhaps her gaze pierced beyond the Palace, to the City. Perhaps she could see beyond the City, to the edges of the Kingdom. He would have believed it of that gaze. When she returned her attention to him, the power of it struck him like a blow, and he could not keep from flinching.

  “My son,” Lelienne said, still gently. “You may kiss my foot.”

  The Bastard saw that his mother understood his pride, and that she meant to break it at once. She meant him to refuse. She would punish that refusal in a way that would break the nerve and the pride of everyone in the Palace. He understood this, and yet he also knew that if he did not try to sustain his pride in the face of this woman, the memory of that failure of nerve would break his pride forever. And besides this, he judged it important to see what his mother would do. What she would choose to do, and what she had the power to do. He therefore did not move.

  The woman, smiling again, glanced once more around the room. Marcos, looking pale and strained, met her eyes for an instant and then looked away, his mouth twitching. Galef had shoved his sword back into its scabbard and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked at the Bastard, then at Marcos. When he saw that Marcos was afraid of the woman, he did not look down himself, but stared into her eyes, pale and steady; the Bastard wanted to shout at him to look away. There were several other guardsmen present. Taking their cue from their captain, they stood stolidly, waiting. She looked back at last at Marcos.