by Terry Brooks
It never was.
He stayed where he was, watching until the boy and the girl were well out of sight before leaving his cover. He would not attempt to shadow them, although that might be the easiest way. He knew something of their reputation as Trackers, and he respected their skills enough that he wouldn’t risk getting caught following when he could just as easily and more safely wait for them to come to him. He knew they would go to Arborlon because that was where they would find their Elven friends. So he would go on ahead of them, taking a different route entirely, find a suitable place where they must pass, and wait.
Sooner or later, they would appear. When they did, he would put an end to them.
BECAUSE SHE WAS A PRINCESS AND DESERVED A measure of respect in spite of the accusations lodged against her, Phryne Amarantyne was not locked away in the prison that housed ordinary criminals. Instead, she was given a windowless room in the lower section of the buildings that contained the Council chambers, a room normally used for storing supplies. That way, it was reasoned, she would not be exposed to unnecessary dangers while she awaited her trial.
The room was of reasonable size, almost twelve feet by fourteen feet, but it felt so small because of boxes of records stacked floor-to-ceiling against two of the walls. She was given a pallet to sleep on, some bedding, a chamber pot, a small table and chair, and some writing materials. She had the use of candles for light, which was considerate as the sun never reached this room and so day and night were pretty much the same. A guard kept watch outside her door twenty-four hours a day, and the door was locked at all times save when a little serving girl brought her food on a tray. When the serving girl appeared, the door was unlocked just long enough to allow for the tray to be placed on the floor inside the opening and to replace the chamber pot—the serving girl was forbidden to go in any farther or to say anything—and then it was sealed back up again.
All of the Home Guards assigned to watch her were men she did not know. None of them was allowed to speak to her. When she tried asking for things, they made her write out a request, which they claimed they would take to those responsible for seeing to it that she had what she needed. She wrote out several requests and there was no response to any of them. When she asked one of her jailors why she hadn’t heard anything, he told her that such things take time and to be patient. Something in the way he said this warned her that patience would not be enough. She quit asking for anything soon after.
She was allowed no visitors.
She was not permitted to write letters.
She was not told anything about what was happening outside the walls of her cell.
She was not advised when her trial would be held.
When she asked to see her grandmother, Mistral Belloruus, a request that under any circumstances should not have been refused, she was told that her grandmother didn’t want to see her. It was such a patently obvious lie, she accepted that nothing she really wanted was ever going to be provided and that the best she could expect was that they would do just enough to keep her alive and well.
She knew, of course, who was behind all this.
If it were possible to hate someone enough to kill them simply by wishing for it, Isoeld Severine would already be dead. But since her stepmother was still out there walking around, Phryne assumed she needed to find another way.
She spent hours mourning for her father. The images of his final moments were burned into her memory, and days after she had been seized and locked away she could still see the shock and anguish in his face as his assassin had stabbed him again and again with that knife. She could hear him cry out, could recall the way his head had turned and looked at her while Isoeld held her pinned to the floor, recognition of what was happening reflected sharp and clear in his eyes. He knew his wife had betrayed him. She could feel his pain as the dagger sheathed in his body withdrew, and his lifeblood drained away.
Phryne could see it all, even when she didn’t want to.
The Home Guard had appeared shortly after, and they had hauled her away in spite of her protestations. The weapon that had killed the King was lying next to her. The real assassin was gone. Both Isoeld and First Minister Teonette pointed fingers at her, claiming to have witnessed the consummation of her vengeance, to have heard her cry out that her father would never mistreat her again, that she had endured enough. It must have had something to do with the terrible argument they had engaged in only days earlier, the one that everyone in the city had been talking about. Phryne had screamed at him even as she drove the knife home that he had humiliated her and could not be allowed to live. She had even accused him of letting her mother die all those years ago.
It got worse. Her accusers quickly suggested that she was suffering from delusions and other mental disorders, that her ability to reason and act rationally had been adversely affected. Isoeld had witnessed this behavior herself in the presence of the King, but had chosen to keep quiet about it and let her husband handle the matter. Phryne was not her daughter, after all—even though she loved her dearly—so it was left to her father. But she had always worried that sooner or later the girl would do something terrible, that her illness would overcome her in a way that would prove disastrous.
So they locked Phryne Amarantyne away in that storeroom and left her there to await her fate. She already knew what that fate would be. They would try her for her father’s murder, convict her, and sentence her to death in the Elven Way. Everyone knew about that. It was an old punishment, seldom employed, reserved for the most heinous of crimes and criminals. She couldn’t remember when it had last been used. Not in her lifetime, certainly. It was considered barbaric, monstrous.
But that was why it was utilized for killings like this one—a combination of patricide and regicide, the murder of a father and a King.
She tried over and over to tell anyone who came close that this was a mistake, that she was innocent of the crime, that she was not mentally ill or insane. But if she were sane, Isoeld told her on the one visit she and Teonette had paid shortly after her father’s killing, then the murder must have been deliberate. That made things even worse, didn’t it? But of course, as a dutiful stepmother, she would carry that message back to the members of the Elven High Council, who were charged with determining her fate, so that they could make up their own minds.
There was nothing she could do but wait for something to happen that got her out of this room and into the presence of other Elves. Then, and only then, would she have a chance to state her case to those who might stop long enough to listen carefully to what she had to say. In point of fact, she knew all of the members of the High Council, and she stood a reasonable chance of being able to persuade them that she was not guilty.
At least, that was what she told herself.
She thought all the time of ways she might get a message to the Orullians or to Panterra Qu. She kept hoping the brothers would find a way to come to see her, knowing they must have learned of her fate by now. Word might even have gotten as far south as Glensk Wood, so that Pan would know, too. If any of them had heard, surely they would come, wouldn’t they?
But no one had appeared, and after a while her hopes had begun to dwindle. She started to think of ways to escape. When she wasn’t thinking of her father, she was thinking of getting out of that storeroom. But she didn’t have any weapons or tools or implements of any sort that might help her pry or loosen or break down the walls and doors that held back her freedom. She had no realistic hope of overcoming the guards. It seemed she was searching for something that didn’t exist.
Things did not get any better when, a week into her imprisonment, her stepmother came for a second visit.
Phryne had no idea what time of day it was when Isoeld appeared. The locks released, the door opened, and her stepmother walked into the room in the company of Teonette. Phryne, who was seated at the tiny table, working on a drawing of some flowers in a meadow, closed her notebook and rose to face her visitors, unpleasantly surprised.
A visit from Isoeld could not be good news.
“How are you, Phryne?” Isoeld asked, sounding genuinely interested. She smiled warmly and waited for the guard stationed outside to close the door before the smile left her face. “I don’t imagine you’re doing very well, locked away in this dark room. Maybe you would like to talk about what it would take to get you out?”
Phryne tightened her resolve. “I can’t think of any reason you would want that, Isoeld. If I were let out, you would risk being locked in, wouldn’t you? You and your consort. You would risk someone finding out who really murdered my father.”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any real danger of that. Everyone seems to have accepted my story about your relationship with your father. I tell them all the same thing. You are a delusional, marginally sane young girl who needs help with her afflictions. Of course, your insistence on refusing to accept responsibility for your actions makes it rather difficult for anyone to feel sorry for you. Some are beginning to consider the possibility that your acts were deliberate and you ought to suffer the consequences.”
“We both know who ought to suffer the consequences of my father’s murder,” Phryne replied, eyes locked on the other. “Come close enough and I’ll show you what I mean.”
Isoeld laughed. “I think I’ll stay where I am. I prefer to keep my distance from someone as disturbed as you obviously are.”
Phryne actually considered the possibility of launching herself at her stepmother and tearing out her eyes. She measured the distance between them and decided that if Teonette weren’t standing beside her, she might well try it.
“Why are you here?” she asked finally, turning away. “What do you want?”
Isoeld brushed back her long blond hair and shrugged. “I’ll say it again. Would you like to get out of here? Do you want your life back? Because I can make that happen. I can arrange for you to be placed under house arrest. I can make your life a whole lot more comfortable, if I think there might be a good reason to do so.”
“Yes, we’ve covered that ground. Assuming for the moment that you’ve lost your mind, what would it take for you to do this? I admit I am marginally curious. Is there someone else you want dead? Someone else for whose killing I am to take the blame?”
“No. Accepting responsibility for your father will suffice. You will admit you killed him in a moment of madness. You will tell the High Council that you acted out of an ungovernable rage, but that now you realize how wrong you were. You will show remorse. If you do that, I can keep you from being put to death. I can have you sentenced to something less final.”
Phryne could not believe what she was hearing. “You actually think I might agree to accept the blame for my father’s murder? That I might even consider for a single second removing all chance of seeing you pay for what you did.” She laughed. “I’m not the one who’s insane, Isoeld. Not so long as you talk like that!”
“Tell her the rest,” Teonette snapped.
Isoeld clasped her hands behind her back like a satisfied little girl and leaned forward, clearly enjoying the moment. “You didn’t ask me what I expected from you in payment for my generosity, Phryne. Don’t you want to know?”
“I don’t care what you want. It doesn’t make any difference because I’m not doing what you want.”
“Not even to save your grandmother’s life?”
Phryne went pale with shock. Mistral! If she could have managed to move she would have attacked her stepmother on the spot, but she was frozen in place by the implied threat contained in the other’s sly words. It took everything she had to stay calm, something she sensed instinctively she needed to do.
“What have you done with her, Isoeld? She’s an old lady, and she has nothing to do with any of this. She barely spoke to my father after Mother died. You know that. What point is there in threatening her?”
“The point should be obvious. I want you to do what I ask.”
“Well, I won’t. Not even to save her. She wouldn’t want it. She would hate me for it.”
Her stepmother glanced at the first minister in a decidedly conspiratorial way. “If they should decide to put you to death in the Elven Way—an act I will try to prevent, but may not be able to—you will wish you had been less difficult. But what if they put Mistral Belloruus to death, as well? What if evidence were to surface that she conspired with you to kill the King? What if it became known that she encouraged it, and she did so knowing that you, only a step from madness already, would act on her suggestion? Her fate would be sealed. Think about it. Death in the Elven Way is not something you want to face at any age. Let me see. They bind you securely and then they bury you headfirst in the ground. But they construct an air pocket around your head so that you have sufficient time to contemplate your bad behavior before the air runs out or the insects start feeding on you. You and Mistral would be placed side by side. Perhaps you could hear each other’s screams before your hearts gave out.”
Phryne lost all control in that moment and flew across the room. She managed to reach Isoeld before Teonette could stop her. Screaming in fury, she raked her stepmother’s beautiful face with her nails, leaving bloody furrows down both cheeks. She got in a few good punches, as well, and then Teonette hauled her away, stood her up, and backhanded her so hard she was knocked all the way across the room where she slammed up against a wall. She tried to rise, her head spinning, but he was on top of her again, hitting her over and over.
“Stop it!” she heard Isoeld scream at him. The words rolled and echoed behind a wall of pain and bright colors. “If you kill her, we’ll never find them! We need her alive!”
The pummeling ceased, and she heard Teonette mutter something as he moved away. She tried to speak, to call them the names that were right on the tip of her tongue, but her mouth was full of blood. She lay where she was and listened as their footsteps receded and the storeroom door opened and closed again.
Then she was alone.
IT TOOK HER A LONG TIME to gain enough strength to sit up straight, bracing herself against the wall, her head still spinning, her body racked with pain. Everything hurt, especially her face, which Teonette had battered with both fists until she was barely conscious. She touched it experimentally and flinched. Wasn’t a good idea to do that, she told herself. Shouldn’t look in any mirrors for a while, either.
She desperately wanted something to drink, but the water pitcher had been toppled in the struggle and its contents spilled on the floor. She thought about lapping it up from the stones, but decided she wasn’t quite ready for that. She would be soon, though. She could feel a sense of desperation creeping in, and it wasn’t only about the water. Thoughts of her grandmother crowded her mind, and she imagined all sorts of terrible things that might have been done to the old woman. Mistral Belloruus was a tough old lady and a match for most, but sheer numbers and brute force might have been enough to overwhelm her.
What Phryne couldn’t quite understand was why Isoeld thought that making her grandmother a prisoner would be worth the effort. Word of a seizure of this sort was bound to leak out—through those old men who were the old lady’s consorts, in all likelihood—leading to rampant speculation. Mistral could hardly pose a threat to the Queen. She hadn’t been all that fond of Oparion in the first place; his killing would affect her less than most. If he hadn’t married her daughter, they probably wouldn’t have had any relationship at all. So to lock her away out of fear of what she might do, an old woman living by herself on the outskirts of the city, what sort of sense did that make?
Holding her head in her hands, bent forward so that the pain seemed to lessen somewhat, Phryne pondered the question. Did Isoeld really think anyone would believe that wild story about her grandmother encouraging her to kill her father? It was patently ridiculous. Isoeld must have known that Phryne would never agree to take the blame for her father’s death simply because of threats made to her grandmother. Doing any deliberate harm to someone of Mistral Belloruus’s stature posed great
risk in a tight-knit Elven community where everyone knew the history of the royal families.
No, something else was going on here. But what?
Phryne didn’t know. She couldn’t think straight. She wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but she knew that sleeping after a beating like the one she had taken was not wise. Concussions could kill you in your sleep. She needed to stay awake and wait for things to settle down. She thought about crawling over to the door to ask for water, but she had every expectation of being refused, and she didn’t think she could bear that just now.
So instead, she stayed where she was, breathing slowly and deeply, searching for slight shifts of position that might help lessen the pain and slow the spinning.
She was still engaged in that endeavor when she heard the snick of the door lock. She raised her head high enough to watch the door open and a pair of young women enter the room carrying cloths and basins of water. They came over to where Phryne was sitting and knelt beside her. Saying nothing, working in silence, they cleaned her wounds and daubed at her bruises, using the cold water in the basin to bring down the swelling and warm water in the other to wash away dirt and blood. Phryne let them work on her, grateful for even this little bit of help. She didn’t know these Elves and appreciated that in all probability they were under strict instructions not to make any attempt to converse with her. But at least someone was making an effort to keep her in one piece.
She wondered, though, who that someone might be.
When the young women were finished, they picked up the cloths and basins and disappeared out the door. Not one word had been exchanged.
Phryne went back to thinking about Isoeld’s offer. Was there some way that Phryne could turn it to her advantage? Maybe she should pretend to accept, wait until she got clear of this room, and then make a run for it. But she knew it wouldn’t work like that. Whatever sort of confession they extracted, they would put it on paper and have her sign it before they let her take a single step outside her prison. Besides, she knew she couldn’t make herself confess to killing her father; the very thought of such a thing was revolting.
