Bedtime Story (70 page)

Jacqui stood for several seconds in the doorway, listening, expecting someone to come running at the sound of her breaking into the house. A single lamp burned on the table in the foyer before her. When no one came, she stepped inside, leaving the door open.

In the lamplight she could see a staircase, but it was pitch dark at the top. The same for a doorway to her right: dark and silent. She turned to the left, where a light was on in what looked to be a small sitting room.

She walked through it and into a kitchen. And through the next door saw a narrow staircase.

She took the steps carefully, planting her feet softly on each in order to prevent any creaking. From the landing halfway up she could hear the faint sound of voices coming from above. Voices that became clearer as she climbed: a woman’s voice, mostly. And then a man’s. Chris’s voice.

But she had never heard him sound like he did right now.

She peered over the top stair into what looked like an office; she could see a desk, and the back of a woman standing next to it. She was speaking to someone hidden behind the frame of a doorway behind the desk.

Pushing down her fear, Jacqui climbed the last few steps and pressed herself against the wall outside the office.

Mareigh had to trot to keep up with the captain of the watch as he led her through the wide halls of the castle. She clutched the letter tightly.

She had been inside the castle only once, years ago. Like everyone else in the walled city, and many of the people from the shore, she had gathered in the large square to watch the new King’s coronation, late the same afternoon that had seen the passing of his father, the old king.

He had looked every bit the prince regent that day. The way the sun caught his eyes had made his hair look like a river of gold over his shoulders. He wore a simple white tunic as he walked the length of the yard, two steps behind the Master of the Stone, the senior member of the Brotherhood.

Behind the prince strode his two closest friends, the men who had been at his side at the Battle of Deren Plain. Paul Bream, who had been named captain upon his return from the war, marched proudly in full dress, the sunlight sparkling off the crest on his chest. Loren, however, looked the same as he always did, older than Bream and the prince, but looking older still in the grey robes of his order. While Bream stared straight ahead, the magus seemed distracted, glancing furtively about as if looking for someone.

When he saw Mareigh in the front row of the gathered crowd, he stopped searching. He smiled at her, a sad, understanding smile, then turned away.

The prince had passed near her that afternoon, almost close enough to touch, but he hadn’t seen her, his eyes fixed forward, head high, unwavering on that day that had mixed tragedy and jubilation. His jaw was set, but she could see the puffiness around his eyes—he had been crying, and she alone of all the hundreds gathered was able to recognize it.

She watched as he knelt before the empty throne, and heard him swear the oath to the country, and to the Stone which was its symbol, its very source. And then the Master lowered the thin gold crown to rest on his head, draped his shoulders with the blood-red cape.

When he rose to his feet and turned to face the people gathered—his people, now—she couldn’t help herself, lowering her head so her tears fell to the ground. She knew that she wasn’t alone, that many others within the crowd were weeping, but none, she knew, for the same reason.

That was the last time she had seen him. She had refused to attend the ceremony marking the Royal Wedding, the King’s arrival home with his new Berok wife. She was, she explained to people, far too busy, trying to establish the Mermaid’s Rest with a little boy underfoot.

“It’s not much farther, ma’am,” the captain of the watch said, leading her around a corner.

She bit her lip and tightened her fingers around the letter, praying that she wouldn’t be too late.

Cora prodded me through the door with the barrel of her gun. I stepped into the room, reeling from a foul smell of rot and decay.

It was an octagonal room, cold, stone. A candle guttered in a nook carved into each wall, the flames casting a dancing light around the small space.

“What have you done?” I said hoarsely.

Painted on the floor in rusty tones was a perfect circle, equidistant to the edges of the octagon. Inside the circle were the same symbols as on the cover of the book. The same pattern was painted on the ceiling.

At the centre of the circle on the floor was a bed, barely big enough for the man who lay in it.

“Lazarus, honey, this is Chris Knox. He’s a big fan. He’s read all your books.”

I barely recognized the shape on the bed as a man. He was wizened almost to the point of desiccation, his skin stretched tight over his bones. He looked mummified. Skeletal.

And then he opened his eyes.

“He’s alive,” I gasped, the bile filling my throat.

“What?” she said. “Did you think I was making the introductions for dramatic effect?”

“But how …?” I took another few steps into the room, toward the bed.

“It was necessary,” she said, as if that phrase were enough to excuse everything. “I couldn’t write the book myself, and the spell that he wove with the words was enough to …” She gestured with the gun. “Well, you can see.”

I did see. “The book is keeping him alive as well.” Clutching it closer to my chest, I moved closer to the bed.

“More or less. Once I realized I couldn’t do it without him, I made him part of it. All this—” She gestured at the symbols on the floor and the ceiling. “That’s all mine. Well”—she smirked—“his.”

What I had thought was brown paint used to craft the symbols was actually blood. Took’s blood.

With a groan, Took turned himself in the bed, pushed himself up slowly to a sitting position. As the covers fell away, I retched: his skin was grey, covered with oozing sores, caked with mustard-coloured pus. As he moved, the stench in the room became unbearable.

“He’s a prisoner,” I said.

“He’s a conduit,” she said. “These symbols and glyphs, they focus the power of the book—”

“The souls of the children.”

“Through him and his story, and into me,” she said, with a feral smile.

I took another step toward the bed, around the end of it now. I shifted the book, holding it close to my heart. The beginning of a plan was coming to me.

“So this is how you treat the man you claimed to love?”

Step one—keep her talking.

She rolled her eyes. “Love. Love had nothing to do with it. We both went into this relationship knowing what we were looking for. Power. Magic. Renown. And that’s exactly what we got.” She too stepped closer to the bed, leaning over to meet Took’s eye. “As long as we both shall live, right, darling?”

I took advantage of the momentary wavering of her attention to take two quick steps along the bed, tucking myself in close beside him, putting
him between me and the gun. I crouched slightly, reaching into my pocket, disgusted with myself for hiding behind the body of a suffering man.

“Oh, very clever, Chris,” she said. “You think I won’t just come around the bed? How long do you think you can hide there?”

“Long enough,” I said, “to do this.” With my left hand I held the book by one cover and let it fall open, allowing the pages to fan free. I struck my Zippo with my right thumb, bringing the flame toward the open pages.

“What are you doing?” she cried, her voice betraying her surprise.

Lazarus’s eyes flashed in the firelight.

“Don’t come any closer,” I said. I held the book near my body, keeping the flame close to the pages.

“You don’t want to do that,” she said. She was coming around the bed, the gun in plain view again.

“This is keeping you alive, right? Either you let me go, or …” I teased the lighter close enough to singe the edges of the pages.

“Right now it’s keeping your son alive, too,” she said. “Is that what you want?” She took another step toward me.

I moved around the bed, behind her husband again.

“Do you want to be the one to kill your son? Because that’s his soul you’re holding there.”

I looked down at the book again, at the flames playing near the dry paper. I wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to be part of the greater good, to protect future children from this woman, no matter the cost to myself.

“You’re a terrible bluffer, Chris.”

I dropped my lighter, heard it hit the stone floor.

Looking at the book, the charred edges, the unscathed leather, I realized that I was crying.

“That’s better,” she said, back in control. “Now why don’t you put that down, before you do something you’ll really regret.”

I didn’t have any choice—there was nothing else to do but drop the book on the bed beside Lazarus Took.

As I watched it fall toward the stained sheets, I heard Jacqui call from the direction of the doorway, “Chris, don’t!”

I looked up in time to see her face, to see her reaching out toward me, before Cora turned and fired the pistol. The shot blossomed red in the centre of Jacqui’s chest, the force of it throwing her backwards with a sickening thud on the stone floor.

David wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand as the magus rose slowly to his feet, rubbing his bruised throat.

Both of them were watching the Queen.

She untied the thongs holding the bag closed with a look of barely contained excitement, then opened the mouth of the bag and poured the Stone into her hand.

Her smile widened, a dark, bitter maw. “It’s mine!” she cried triumphantly. She raised the Stone high in one hand, extending her other hand toward David. She muttered a few words in a language he didn’t understand, and then—

Nothing.

She frowned, a sharp line crossing the centre of her forehead and between her eyes. She shifted her grip on the Stone, flexed the fingers of her right hand toward David.

And again, nothing happened.

She lowered the Stone, staring at the markings on its surface, then glared at David. “What have you done?” she demanded.

A wheezing, gasping sound came from the bed, barely recognizable as laughter. The King’s laughter. His eyes were pressed tightly shut, his mouth wide, his head thrown back.