* * *
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The sound rose to a screech that made Jared jerk away; the disc fell and rolled on the floor.
Keiro pounced on it and yelled, ‘Claudia!’ but there was only a hissing and spitting that might have been the noise of a multitude or the chaos of interstellar static.
Finn turned on Jared. ‘Are you crazy? She was right! Without its body...’
‘I know.’ Jared was pale. He leant against the fireplace, the Glove tight in his hand. ‘And I ask you what I asked her. I have a plan, Finn. It may be foolish, it may be impossible. But it might save us all.’
Finn stared at him. Outside the rain lashed, flinging the casement open, snuffing the last flicker of the candle out. 1-Ic was cold and shaken, his hands icy. The fear in Claudia’s voice had infected him like a taste of the Prison, and for a moment he was back in that white cell where he had been born, and was no prince but a Prisoner with no memory and no hope.
The house shivered around them as lightning struck. ‘What do you need?’ Finn said.
It was Incarceron that stopped them. As the Prisoners surged to the second step its voice rang out in power through the vast hall.
I will kill anyone who comes closer.
The step pulsed with sudden light. Currents of power ran along it and rippled in blue waves. The crowd
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convulsed. Some pushed on, others stopped, or squirmed back. It became a vortex of movement, and the spotlights circled lazily over it, stabbing down to show a terrified eye, a flailing hand.
Attia snatched the kindling from Rix.
She moved to thrust it into the rotten fibres, but Claudia grabbed her hand. ‘Wait.’
‘For what?’
She turned, but Claudia jerked her wrist savagely and the tiny burning scrap fell, flaring in the air. It landed on the tapestries but before the whoof of flame took hold Claudia had stamped it out.
‘Are you mad? We’re finished!’ Attia was furious. ‘You’ve finished us. . .‘
‘Jared. .
‘Jared is wrong!’
I am very pleased to have you all here for this execution. The Prison’s sarcasm echoed through the freezing air; tiny, icy snowflakes drifting from its heights. You will see my justice and understand that I have no favourites. Behold, the man before you. John Arlex, your Warden.
The Warden was grey and grim but he drew himself up, his dark coat glistening with snow.
‘Listen to me,’ he yelled. ‘The Prison is trying to leave us!
To leave its own people to starve!’
Only the nearest heard him, and they howled him down. As she closed up beside him Claudia knew that only the 441
Prison’s proclamation kept the mob back, and that the Prison was playing with them.
John Arlex, who hates and detests you. See how he cowers under this image of Sapphique. Does he think it will protect him from my wrath?
They needn’t have bothered with the tapestries. Claudia realized that Incarceron would burn its own body, that its anger at the Glove’s loss, at the end of all its plans, would be their end too. The same pyre would consume them all. And then, beside her, a sharp voice said, ‘Oh my father. Listen to me.’
The crowd hushed.
They stilled as if the voice was one they knew, had heard before, so that they quietened to hear it again.
And Claudia felt in her bones and nerves how Incarceron zigzagged closer, moved in, its reply murmured in her ear and against her cheek, a quiet, fascinated question of secret doubt.
Is that you, Rix?
Rix laughed. His eyes were narrowed, his breath stank of ket. He opened his arms wide. ‘Let me show you what I can do. The greatest magic ever performed. Let me show you, my father, how I will bring your body to life.’
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He raised his hands. They saw his coat was feathered like the wings of the Swan when it dies, when it sings its secret song. And he opened the door that none of them had seen until now.
LEGENDS OF SAPPHIQUE
As Finn moved out into the corridor he saw that Keiro was right. The very antiquity of the house was against them now; all its true decay, like the Queen’s, had come upon it at once.
‘Ralph!’
Ralph came hastening up, stepping over lumps of fallen plaster. ‘Sire.’
‘Evacuate. Everyone is to leave.’
‘But where will we go, sire?’
Finn scowled. ‘I don’t know! Certainly the Queen’s camp’s in no better shape. Find what shelter you can in the stables, the outlying cottages. No one must stay here but us. Where’s Caspar?’
Ralph tugged off his decaying wig. Underneath, his own
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hair was shaved close. His chin was stubbled, and his face unwashed. He looked weary and lost. ‘With his mother. The poor lad is devastated. I think even he had no idea of her reality.’
Finn glanced round. Keiro had Medlicote in an armlock. Jared, tall in his Sapient robe, carried the Glove.
‘Do we need this scum?’ Keiro muttered.
‘No. Let him go with the rest.’
Giving the secretary’s arm one last painful jerk, Keiro shoved him away.
‘Get outside,’ Finn said, ‘Where it’s safe. Find the rest of your people.’
‘Nowhere is safe.’ Medlicote ducked as a suit of armour beside him suddenly crashed into dust. ‘Not while the Glove exists.’
Finn shrugged. He turned to Jared. ‘Let’s go.’
The three of them ran past the secretary and along the corridors of the house. They moved through a nightmare of dissolving beauty, of fragmented hangings and paintings lost under grime and mould. In places chandeliers of white candles had fallen; the crystal droplets lay like tears in the broken wax. Keiro moved ahead, heaving wreckage aside; Finn kept near Jared, unsure of the Sapient’s strength. They struggled to the foot of the great stairway, but as Finn looked up he was appalled at the destruction on the upper floors. A silent blink of lightning showed him a vast crack running right down the outside wall. Debris of vases and
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plastiglas crunched under their feet; potpourri and fungal spores and the dust of centuries blurred the air like snow. The stairs were ruined. Keiro climbed two, his back flat against the wall, but on the third tread his foot plunged through, and he tugged it out, swearing. ‘We’ll never get up this.’
‘We must get to the study, and the Portal.’ Jared looked up anxiously. He felt utterly weary, his head light and dizzy. When had he last taken his medication? He leant against the wall and tugged out the pouch and stared at it in despair. The small syringe had broken into pieces, as if the glass had brittled and aged instantly. The serum had congealed to a yellow crust.
Finn said, ‘What will you do?’
Jared almost smiled. He replaced the pieces and tossed the pouch out into the dark corridor, and Finn saw his eyes were remote and dark. ‘It was only ever a stopgap, Finn. Like everyone else, I must now live without my little comforts.’
If he dies, Finn thought, if I let him die, Claudia will never forgive me. He glared up at his oathbrother. ‘We have to get up there. You’re the expert, Keiro. Do something!’
Keiro frowned. Then he tugged off his velvet coat and tied back his hair in a scrap of ribbon. He tore away some of the hangings and bound them rapidly round his hands,
swearing as he touched his scorched palm.
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‘Rope. I need rope.’
Finn snatched down the thick tasselled ties that held the curtains and knotted them firmly together — bizarre cables of gold and scarlet. Keiro looped them over his shoulder. Then he set off up the stairs.
The world had inverted, Jared thought, watching his inching progress, because a staircase he had climbed every day for years had became a treacherous obstacle, a deathtrap. This was how tune transformed things, how your own body betrayed you. This was what the Realm had tried to forget, in its deliberate elegant amnesia.
Keiro had to
ascend the stairs as a mountaineer climbs a scree slope. The whole central section was gone, and as he grabbed at the higher treads their edges crumbled away in his hands.
Finn and Jared watched, anxious. Above the house thunder rumbled; far off in the stableyard they heard the shouts of the guards, ushering everyone out, the neighing of horses, the screech of a hawk.
Finally, at Finn’s elbow, a breathless voice said, ‘The drawbridge is down, sire, and everyone across.’
‘Then you go too.’ Finn didn’t turn, willing Keiro on as he balanced precariously between a bannister and a fallen panel.
‘The Queen, sire.’ Ralph wiped his smeared face with a filthy rag that might once have been a handkerchief. ‘The Queen is dead.’
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The stab of shock was so distant that Finn almost missed it. And then the news sank in, and he saw that Jared had heard it too. The Sapient bowed his head, sadly.
‘So you are King, sire.’
Was it that simple? he wondered. But all he said was,
‘Ralph, go now.’
The old steward didn’t move. ‘I would like to stay and help. To rescue the Lady Claudia and my master.’
‘I’m not sure there are any masters now.’
Jared drew in his breath. Keiro had slithered to one side; now all his weight was on the curved bannister, and it was bending, the wood snapping out, dry and brittle. ‘Be careful!’
Keiro’s reply was inaudible. Then he heaved himself up, leapt two steps that cracked under him and flung himself at the landing.
He grabbed it with both hands, but as he did so the whole staircase collapsed behind him in a thunderous crashing of dust and worm-ridden timber, tumbling down on the hail, choking the stairwell.
Keiro swung, dragging himself up, every muscle in his arms straining, blinded by dust. Finally he got one knee over and crumpled on the landing in cold relief.
He coughed until the tears made tracks down his smudged face. Then he crawled to the edge and looked down. Below was a black swirling vortex of dust and debris. ‘Finn?’ he said. He stood, his legs aching. ‘Finn? Jared?’
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***
He was either completely crazy or off his head on ket, Attia thought.
Rix stood before his audience in perfect confidence, and the people stared up at him, bewildered, excited, thirsting for truth. But this time the Prison was in the audience too. Are you mad, Prisoner? it said.
‘Almost certainly, father,’ Rix said. ‘But if I succeed, you will take me with you?’
Incarceron spat a laugh. If you succeed you really would be the Dark Enchanter. But you’re just a fraud, Rix. A liar, a mountebank, a conman. Do you think to con me?
‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’ Rix glanced at Attia. ‘I’ll need my old assistant.’
He winked, and before she could stammer an answer he had turned to the crowd and stepped forward to the edge of the pedestal.
‘Friends he said. ‘Welcome to my greatest wonder! You think you will see illusions. You think I will fool you with mirrors, with hidden devices. But I am not like other magicians. I am the Dark Enchanter, and I will show you the magic of the stars!’
The crowd gasped. So did Attia.
He raised his hand, arid he was wearing a glove. It was made of skin, dark as midnight, and flickers of light sparked from it.
Behind Attia, Claudia said, ‘I thought . . . Don’t tell me 448
Keiro had the wrong one.’
‘Of course not. This is a prop. Just a prop.’
But the doubt had slid into Attia too, like a cold knife, because how could you know, with Rix, what was real and what was not?
He waved his hand in a great arc, and the snow stopped falling. The air grew warmer, lights in every colour rainbowing from the high roof. Was he doing this? Or was Incarceron amusing itself at his expense?
Whatever the truth, the people were transfixed. They stared upwards, crying out. Some fell on their knees. Some moved back, afraid.
Rix was tall. Somehow he had brought nobility to his craggy face, made the wildness in his eyes a holy glimmer.
‘There is much sorrow here,’ he said. ‘There is much fear.’
It was the patter of his act. And yet it was fragmented, changed. As if in the kaleidoscope of his mind it was falling into new patterns. Quietly he said, ’I need a volunteer. One who is willing to have its deepest fear revealed. Willing to bear its soul to my gaze.’
He looked upwards.
The Prison flickered white lights over its statue. Then it said, I volunteer.
For a moment all Keiro heard was his own heart thudding and the echoes of slithering wood. Then Finn said, ‘We’re all right.’
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He stepped out of an alcove in the wall, and from the shadows behind him Ralph said in despair, ’How do we get up now? There’s no way …’
‘Of course there is.’ Keiro’s voice was brisk. From the darkness a red and gold tassel came down and hit Finn on the shoulder.
‘Is it safe?’
‘I’ve tied it to the nearest column. It’s the best I can do. Come on.’
Finn looked at Jared. They both knew that if the column gave way or the rope fell apart the climber would fall to his death. Jared said, ‘It has to be me. With respect, Finn, the Portal is a mystery to you.’
It was true, but Finn shook his head. ‘You won’t manage...’
Jared drew himself up. ‘I’m not so weak.’
‘You’re not weak at all.’ Finn glanced up into the dimness. Then he grabbed the rope and tied it fiercely around Jared’s waist and under his arms. ‘Use it to abseil. Use all the footholds you can find and try not to put all your weight on it. We’ll—’
‘Finn.’ Jared put a hand on his chest. ‘Don’t worry: He braced the rope, then turned his head. ‘Did you hear that?’
‘What?’
‘Thunder.’ Ralph said doubtfully.
They listened a moment, hearing the terrible storm rage across the Realm, the atmosphere loosed from its long control.
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Then Keiro yelled, ‘Move!’ and Jared felt the rope jerk him up the first stairs.
The climb was a nightmare. Soon the rope was burning his hands, and the effort of clambering and hauling himself up left him breathless. The old pain burnt in his chest, and the ache of his back and neck as he groped from splintered step to panel, grabbing at cobwebbed sills and shifting timbers, exhausted him.
Above, Keiro’s face was a pale oval in the shadows. ‘Come on, Master! You can do it
Jared gasped. He had to stop, just for breath, but as he did the small notch into which he had jammed his boot gave way, and with a crash and a cry he fell, the rope bringing him up short in a bone-cracking agony of wrenched muscles. For a moment he saw nothing.
The world was gone and he was hanging weightless in a black sky, and around him, silently, galaxies and nebulae were icily turning. The stars had voices; they were calling his name, but still he circled, slowly, until the star that was Sapphique leant close and whispered, ‘I’m waiting for you, Master. And Claudia is waiting.’
He opened his eyes. Pain flowed back like a wave, filling his veins, his mouth, his nerves.
Keiro said, ‘Jared. Climb. Climb!’
He obeyed. Like a child, without thinking, he tugged himself up, hand over hand. Climbing through the pain, 451
through the dark fire of his breathing, while far below Finn and Ralph were two glimmers in the black hall.
‘More. A bit more.’
Something grabbed above him. His sweat-soaked hands slid on the ropes, the skin raw, his knees and ankles knots of rubbed flesh. A warm grip caught on his. A hand hauled under his elbow.
‘I’ve got you. I’ve got you.’
And then a strength that seemed miraculous to him heaved him upward and he crouched on all fours over the pain, coughing and retching.
‘He’s safe.’ Keiro’s yell was calm. ‘Move, Finn.’
Finn tu
rned to Ralph. ‘Ralph, you’re not coming. Do this for me. Get out and find the Privy Council. They have to take charge now Tell them I.. : He paused and swallowed. ‘Tell them the King orders it. Food and shelter for everyone:
‘But you …’
‘I’ll be back. With Claudia.’
‘But sire, do you mean to re-enter the Prison?’
Finn wound the rope round his hands and swung
upwards. ‘Not if I can help it. But if I have to, I will.’
He climbed quickly and fiercely, pulling himself up with jerks of energy, disdaining Keiro’s hand and rolling over the edge swiftly. The landing was dark. The whole gable-end of the house must have gone, because down at the far end he could see the sky against rafters and half a chimney. 452
‘The Portal may be wrecked,’ Keiro muttered.
‘No. The Portal isn’t even in this house.’ Finn
turned. ‘Master?’
The landing was empty
‘Jared?’
Then they saw him. He was far down the corridor, at the study door. ‘I’m sorry, Finn,’ he said gently. ‘This is my plan. I have to do this on my own.’
Something clicked.
Finn ran, Keiro at his back, and when he reached the door he flung himself at it, the black swan arched defiantly over him.
But it was locked from the inside.
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The Prison was a being of beauty once. Its programme was love. But perhaps we were too hard to love. Perhaps we asked too much of it. Perhaps we drove it mad.
LORD CALLISTON’S DIARY
Rix reached out with his Gloved hand, and from above a tiny pencil-thin light beam came down to touch him. It rippled softly over his palm, and after a while he nodded.
‘I see strange things in your mind, my father. I see how they made you in their own image, how you woke in the darkness. I see the people that inhabit you, I see all the corridors and cells and dusty dungeons where they live.’
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