Faerie Path #6: The Charmed Return (17 page)

The people on the river cheered even louder, all faces turned to the skies, the whole world bathed in coruscating light as the sky erupted into balls and spiraling columns of sparkling fire. Among the boats more fireworks were lit, sending gushing plumes of red and blue and yellow and gold sparks up into the night; sparks that fell back onto the river did not go out—staying bright and burning as they whorled away under the water. In the depths of the river the sparkling lights danced, forming patterns and marvelous designs, so that folk did not know whether to watch the skies or to lean over the bows of their boats and gaze down in wonder at the submerged display.

Voices drifted over the water.

“’Tis most wonderful!”

“Princess Eden has outdone herself this night!”

The fountains of light that were still pouring upward from Eden’s fingers began to form immense shapes in the sky. Tania stared, awestruck at the forces her mystic sister could command. The lights swarmed and separated and took on the shapes of people in a gigantic, luminous ring. While Tania watched, feeling impossibly tiny in that little boat on that little river, the immense sky-folk joined hands and began to dance, their colossal feet skipping across the rooftops and towers of the palace and over the uppermost branches of the trees of the southern forest.

As the sky-dancers whirled, music rang out and the firiencraft burned and blazed. Then the great starlight shapes began to break up again, to dissolve into points of dazzling light. The sparks went shooting up into the profound dark of the upper skies, lustrous and color-shifting, trailing behind them a wake of burning light so that the sky was streaked with ragged bands of ruby and turquoise and aquamarine, emerald and amber.

As the boats and barges floated under the bridge and away along the river, so the celestial lights followed them, and the music was all around them, and there was laughter and the speech of delighted and amazed voices.

“Hail to the lady Eden! Blessings be upon her!”

“All joy to the princess, and to all the Family Royal!”

“All joy this wondrous night!”

“All joy!”

Even Tania lost herself in the wonder and the grandeur of the celebrations that marked the eve of the Pure Eclipse.

“Do you have a backup plan for if we’re caught?” Jade’s voice was a sharp whisper in the darkness of the night.

“No, not really,” Tania replied, slipping along a wall and peering through an arch to where moonlight fell soft on a long floor of cobblestones. “I’m hoping everyone else will be asleep.”

The festivities had gone on into the small hours. Tania guessed that it was well past midnight when the boats finally came back downstream and moored to let their bedazzled passengers off. Tania and Jade managed to avoid contact with any of the Royal Family as they headed for Tania’s bedroom. But even so, they let a good while pass before they ventured out again. After such a night people would find it hard to sleep straightaway—not with their ears still ringing with the music and their eyes still filled with the light of the firiencraft.

Tania didn’t dare risk lighting a candle, so they had to move slowly and cautiously as they approached the long courtyard with the tall square towers at its far end.

Tania’s nerves jangled as she stepped out into the moonlight and saw the Dolorous Tower ahead of her, brooding in its graveclothes of ivy, the birds huddled on its roof and windowsills. She shuddered, her blood chilled at the sight. Part of her was absolutely convinced that Eden would appear out of nowhere at the last moment.

Her plans for leaving Jade behind had failed miserably. Waiting for Jade to fall asleep so she could slip away had been a total waste of time. Her friend had virtually laughed in her face when Tania had tried to suggest that she should go it alone.

“This isn’t a game, Jade. It’s dangerous!”

“I know that. But I didn’t just come to Faerie to stand around gawking and going ‘wow’! I wanted to make sure you would be all right. And that’s just what I intend to do, so shut up about it. I’m coming with you. Get used to it!”

Despite Tania’s misgivings it was comforting to have her friend at her side—she just hoped and prayed she wasn’t leading Jade into a deadly trap.

They moved along the courtyard and came to the three gray stone steps.

Tania was one pace ahead of her friend as she climbed the steps to the dark door. There was no handle. She reached forward, pressing the palms of both hands against the black wood.

Surely it would not be so easy . . . ?

She pushed hard but the door did not move.

“Whatcha doing?” whispered Jade.

“Seeing if I can get the door open,” Tania hissed back.

“Is it locked?”

“I don’t know.”

Jade came onto the top step. “I’d get out of the way if I were you,” she said. “I’m going to try something.”

“What?”

“It’s called a yoko geri,” said Jade. “Watch and learn!”

Tania moved aside as Jade stood on the wide top step, staring hard at the door, breathing long and slow.

She brought her knee up sharply, twisting sideways from the door, rotating from the hips, her raised leg thrusting suddenly outward. The heel of her foot slammed in hard against the side of the door. With a tearing sound the door lurched inward. Jade brought her leg down, her arms lifted a little for balance. She turned and looked at Tania, a slow grin spreading across her face. “And that’s why tai chi is so great!” She gestured toward the gaping door. “After you.”

Tania stared out across the courtyard, her heart pounding. Jade’s side kick had not been silent. Anyone close by would have heard it. But no shadows moved through the moonlight. No one was coming for them.

“It’ll be dark inside,” Tania said. “Be careful.”

To be honest, it wasn’t the darkness inside the tower that Tania feared—it was those menacing creatures in the walls of the room beyond the entrance lobby. She had encountered them once before, and although she had gotten through, it was not an ordeal she relished repeating.

All the same, she steeled herself and stepped into the gloom. She remembered the layout of the tower. To the right an archway led to spiral stairs. To the left a simple door of gray wood was all that stood between them and the room with the monsters in the walls.

She fumbled for the latch that held the inner door closed. She lifted it and pushed the door open.

At the far end of the long, narrow room a circle of moonlight shed a little grimy light over the bare wood floor.

“See anything?” Jade hissed over her shoulder.

“No,” Tania whispered. She took a step into the room. There was no sense of menace in there—just the long, sad quiet of a room seldom visited.

“Now what?” Jade whispered.

“Upstairs. It’ll be dark.”

“Okay. I’ll stick close.”

“You’d be better off staying down here—just in case.”

“Tania? Shut up!”

Well, you can’t say I haven’t warned you.

Her hands groping ahead, Tania went through the arch and began to climb the stairs. This was a part of Eden’s tower that she had never been in before. She had no idea what might be lurking in the upper parts—demons, deadly traps, mystical barriers—
nightmares!

She could hear the blood coursing through her temples as she moved upward into the blind dark. The thumping of her heart seemed to fill the air.

She came to a landing. A faint seepage of light showed. Square. Like an occluded window. She ran her fingers over a wooden shutter. She found a catch and pulled the shutter in. Moonlight came in, seeming strangely bright to Tania’s eyes.

It glimmered on the rising curve of the stairway. Darkness lurked around the bend of the spiraling staircase. Darkness and death and worse than death.

She continued to climb, and Jade was never more than a single step behind her.

“If Eden is here and she comes for us, get out of my way,” Jade whispered. “I know a few moves that should slow her down.”

“If it is Eden, she won’t attack us like that,” murmured Tania. “And if she finds us—trust me, there’s nothing you could do that would stop her.”

“We’ll see about that.”

Tania turned and glared at her friend. “Jade!”

“Chill out, Tania. I’m just trying to be positive.”

“Be realistic. If Eden’s up here, run! Don’t look back—just run!”

They came to a second landing. Jade pried the shutter open so that a little more of the unending stairway was revealed in the moonlight.

Tania almost wished Eden would appear—just to get it over with. Much more of this and the fears that were teeming in her head would get too much to bear.

A third landing and a third shuttered window.

But this time when Tania pulled the shutter open, the moonlight allowed in fell on a small door. And there was something else: the sill outside the window was filled with birds, and they were all turned toward the glass, almost as if they had been perching there waiting for the shutter to be removed. Bright, beady eyes stared in at the two girls. The silence and the stillness of the birds were uncanny. Unnerving.

Tania turned away. There was a crystal bolt on the door. As she drew the bolt back with a sharp, scraping sound, she thought she heard a furtive movement from beyond the door.

Jade’s mouth came up close to her ear. “There’s someone in there!”

Tania nodded.

Pausing to gather her courage, she leaned into the door and pushed it open.

It was a small room, a grimy, shadowy room that smelled musty and stale and unpleasant. There was a bed and a table and a chair. A single, thin yellow candle stood in a mound of wax at one end of the table. There was a plate and a cup. A hunk of bread.

Tania heard a sound from the far side of the room. A shadow quivered.

Something monstrous waiting to pounce? The guardian of the Great Spell?

There were more sounds—small dry sounds. The rustle of clothing, the scrape of bare feet on floorboards, an indrawn breath. The shadows in the corner of the room shifted again.

Tania stepped into the room. She paced slowly to the table. Her heart in her mouth, she wrenched the candle up. A splash of hot wax burned on her wrist.

She turned and held the candle out toward the thing in the corner of the room.

There was a soft laugh. There was a glimmer of ragged clothing—the dull sheen of bare skin.

Dark eyes glowed with candlelight.

A mouth stretched in a feral grin.

“What’s this, now?” croaked a low, female voice. “More flibbertigibbets come to mock me in my despair?” There was another laugh—a gust of sound without a trace of humor in it. “Why do you bother me now?” the hoarse voice inquired. “You can’t harm me. I’m quite mad, you know. Entirely mad. Mad as moonlight.”

Tania took another step forward, and the grimy, wild-eyed, hair-draggled face was finally revealed.

“Cordelia!” she gasped, almost dropping the candle in her astonishment and disbelief. “Oh my god—
Cordelia!
”

Chapter XXVII

“Good morrow, sweet sister,” Cordelia growled. “Have you come to play blindman’s bluff with me? Come, we are a merry gathering, Tania.” She swept her hand in a low gesture along the floor in front of her dirty bare feet. “See how my friends are gathered? Mice aplenty to sing and dance. And shall I have the spiders weave you a ball gown of finest silk and set the flies to playing sweet melodies for you upon the horse-hair fiddle?” Cordelia’s wide eyes closed and opened slowly. “Or would you pluck me by the tail and tweak my furry ears and whiskers and mock me, sister?”

“Cordelia . . . ?” Tania took another step forward, unable to take in what she was seeing and hearing.

Jade’s voice whispered at her back. “I thought she was meant to be . . .”

“. . . dead,” murmured Tania. “Yes. She is.” No wonder the birds had been flocking about this tower—they had sensed Cordelia’s presence. They had gathered here to be close to her.

Tania crouched, bringing the candle closer to Cordelia’s face. Her sister shrank back, huddled in on herself in the corner like a wounded and terrified animal. Heartbreakingly, Tania saw that she was still dressed in the ragged remnants of her wedding gown, sky blue and gold showing among the rents and tears, some few jewels still glimmering on the bodice. But the long sleeves were gone and the hem was ripped, so that Cordelia’s bare, grimy arms and legs showed.

Her face was framed with a matted tangle of tawny hair, her freckled cheeks smeared with dirt, her eyes burning like blue ice, her lips pulled back in some limbo between snarling and grinning.

“Mad as the moon when mayhem calls.” Cordelia’s voice was a bleak singsong. “Empty castles and empty halls.” She pointed a trembling finger to the candle flame. “Is that your soul, sister mine? My, how it does shine. Come.” She stared distractedly at the floor. “My mice would sing for you—we have been practicing—’tis a song fit for a king. The song of a princess set adrift on the never-ending sea.”

“She’s lost her mind,” said Jade breathlessly. “Tania? Is this how you treat people with mental illness in this world?”

“No!” Tania gave Jade a quick look. “Not at all!”

Why has Cordelia been locked away like this? What’s going on?

Cordelia half rose, her head drawn down on her shoulders, her back squeezed into the corner of the room. She pointed at nothing. “Look!” she cried. “See how the ducks swim on Robin Goodfellow’s pond! But they must watch out for the crocodiles among the soapy suds.” She held her trembling hand out to Tania, palm upward. “Do you see this stag? Did you ever see such a small stag, Tania? Why, ’twould fit in a poke and leave room enough for all our hopes and desires besides.” She cocked her head. “Listen! Do you hear him? He sings songs of the deep forest.” She nodded vehemently. “He has been the greatest friend to me. A great comfort, although he has no head . . .”

Tania stood up, backing away from the wretched sight of her sister. “They told me you were dead, Cordelia,” she murmured. “Why are you here? Why have you been put in this terrible place?”

Cordelia’s eyes flitted from Tania to Jade. “Come, uncle, you can do better than this puppet show.” She poked a finger at them. “I see you! I see through your masks, uncle—do you think you are sweet, dead Zara that you can play upon me as upon a flute?”

“We have to get her out of here,” said Jade. “How could anyone leave her like this?”

But something Cordelia had said had lodged in Tania’s mind. “Did Uncle Cornelius bring you here?” she asked.

Cordelia grinned, padding forward and wagging her finger in Tania’s face. “Fie, uncle—would you blame others for your deeds? ’Tis not honorable, indeed. We shall have to convene the parliament of owls if you persist! And to draw a veil over those sharp eyes is a thing not possible.”

Tania felt a sudden rush of pity and dismay for her sister. She stepped forward, throwing her arms around Cordelia’s shrunken shoulders, careful to keep the candle away from her hair and clothes as she held her close.

“I’ll make it better,” Tania said, tears pricking. “I promise—I’ll do everything I can to make it better.”

Cordelia’s body was cold—so terribly cold. But as Tania’s warmth seeped into her sister’s icy flesh, she felt the slender body stiffen in her arms.

“Tania?”

Tania pulled away, startled by the change in Cordelia’s voice. Her sister was peering intently at her, all trace of lunacy gone from her face.

“Tania? Is it truly you?”

“Cordie—yes! Yes, it’s me!”

“I thought you but another illusion sent to torture me.”

“No. No. I’m real! I promise!”

Cordelia’s finger stabbed toward Jade. “And who is she?”

“A friend,” said Tania. “A Mortal.” She frowned, confused. “You’re not . . .”

“Out of my wits?” Cordelia said, wiping straying locks of hair off her face. “I am not, sister—not now. Not for the past five days.”

Five days? Cordelia’s madness must have passed when the plague was lifted from Faerie.

Cordelia smiled bleakly. “But I have feigned madness still, sister,” she said. “In order to keep him at bay. I do not know what he might do if he knew I am whole again.”

“Him?” Tania asked. “Who do you mean?”

“Do you not know the author of this chaos, Tania?” said Cordelia. “It is our father’s older brother—Prince Lear.”

“No. He’s gone, Cordie. He
was
here—but I got rid of him.”

Cordelia looked thoughtfully at her. “You are deceived, Tania,” she said. “He is not gone. Lear is still the puppet-master in this realm—and all dance as he pulls the strings. All save me—and that only because I was lost in the madness that his plague brought down on me, and his Great Enchantment could not take hold in my mind.” She nodded vehemently. “Had he but waited a brief time with his spell, I would have been caught up in it, too. But he unleashed the spell while the plague was still in my blood, and so I was spared.”

Jade took a step forward. “I’m sorry—I need to get this straight in my head. Are you saying that this Lear guy has brainwashed everyone?”

Cordelia narrowed her eyes. “I do not know the word you use,” she said. “But Lear has come here often and delights in telling the tale of his great evil.” Her clear eyes turned from Tania to Jade as she spoke. “He told me how he came first into Faerie with deadly force, taking our family unawares as they strove in the Throne Room of Veraglad Palace to keep the Gildensleep intact. I was sick and under the power of the Gildensleep, but all others of our family he imprisoned in amber. He then brought us to this place, the better to savor his victory. Far from my wits I was then, and he did not seal me up in an amber prison, because it amused him to toy with me and listen to my ravings. Most entertaining, he thought it. He comes betimes and taunts me still.”

She nodded, her hands resting on Tania’s shoulder. “I know what you did in the Throne Room. He laughed when he spoke of it. How he had fooled you into thinking you had defeated him. How he let loose the greatest sorcery the world has ever known—sorcery enough to fog the mind of every man, woman, and child in Faerie—even of the King himself and his most powerful ministers.”

Horror and dread ran like ice water through Tania’s body. “It was a trick?” She gasped. “He wasn’t banished?”

After everything she’d done—Faerie was still not free?

When will this ever end?

“He was not,” said Cordelia. “Behind the masks he rules in Faerie.” She gave a slow smile. “When my sanity returned, I was wise enough to keep the fact from him. He still thinks me raving and witless, my mind ruined beyond repair by his plague, and so he has not sought to bring me under his spell.”

“But why’s he doing all this?” asked Jade. “It doesn’t make any sense. If he can play mind games like you say, why aren’t Tania and I affected?”

“You are not of Faerie, mistress,” Cordelia said, turning to Jade. “And Tania’s mind is only half Faerie. His sorcery cannot get a tight hold on minds not wholly of this realm. You, Mortal, are immune to his spells, and Tania can be only partially controlled. But he had the power to put false memories into her mind and to hide certain truths from her.”

“Like the truth about this tower,” said Tania.

“Indeed,” said Cordelia. “And I think it amused him to see you jump through his hoops, Tania, while he prepared you for the Darkling Tide.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Tania, a chill running through her.

Cordelia lifted her head and sniffed. “’Tis almost dawn,” she said. “You should not tarry—oft times he comes at sunrise to bring meager food and water and to mock me with his achievements.”

Tania remembered the footsteps she had heard the last time they had been in the courtyard.

“Where is he hiding?” Tania asked.

Cordelia laughed softly. “Hiding in plain sight, sister,” she said. “Have you not guessed it yet?” Her eyes darkened. “Do you not know that your memories of Master Cariotis are not real? There is no such man as Raphael Cariotis—there never has been such a man. Under his spell Lear caused Eden to plant false memories of him in your mind.”

Yes! Tania remembered how Eden had touched a finger to her head in the Great Hall and how her memories of Cariotis had followed.

She heard Jade swing around behind her. “Cariotis!” Jade’s voice was a frightened gasp.

“Well met, human child,” said a gentle, soft voice. “Well met, my pretty nieces. And what coil do we have here, Cordelia? Have you been fooling your fond uncle these past days?”

Tania turned, anger blazing in her.

Raphael Cariotis stood in the open doorway, a jug and a cloth bag in his hand, a smile on his face.

Jade leaped at him, her leg rising for a high kick.

Cariotis dropped the bag and jug, and with a swift but seemingly casual gesture he sent Jade crashing headlong into the wall.

Tania flung herself at him, but his hand rose again, and she froze, hanging helpless in the air, unable to move, the blood pounding in her head like the galloping of ten thousand horses.

From the corner of her eye she saw Cordelia lift the chair to hurl it at Raphael. But his eyes flashed red, and with a shout of pain Cordelia dropped the chair and fell back two paces before becoming as immobile as Tania.

“’Tis a pity indeed that my devices should be laid bare so soon before all subterfuge becomes unnecessary,” said Raphael, walking slowly around Tania.

Her skin prickled painfully, her every joint and muscle and sinew locked, only her eyes able to follow him as he circled her. She managed to form words through her gritted teeth. “Why are you doing this?”

He tilted his head. “Ah, you mean why are you not already dead, my child?” he said smoothly, no trace of emotion in his voice. “That is simple, Tania—I need you alive and alert if my great endeavor is to be fulfilled.” He smiled, reaching toward her and brushing a lock of hair off her cheek. “In all of Faerie only you have the power to move between the worlds without the aid of enchantments. For all my mastery of the ancient sorceries of Ynis Borealis, I cannot pierce that strange veil.” A cold smile grew on his face. “And yet I would be king of both worlds, Tania, my most cherished and beloved niece. And with your help I shall conquer both Faerie and the Mortal World.”

Tania forced the words out between her lips. “Never! I’ll never help you do that!”

“Oh, you misunderstand, Tania.” He smiled. “I do not need your cooperation—I merely need to harness your gift.” His eyes burned red. “In a certain place at a certain time shall all my plans come to full bloom. And you will be there, Tania. And when you stand with your back to the Quellstone Spire as the sun dims on the noontide of the Pure Eclipse—so shall I lead my armies into the Mortal World, and so shall you perish in fire and smoke!”

He gave a gesture and Tania was suddenly surrounded by a ring of cold, red flame. She could hear Jade, sprawled on the floor, groaning.

I should never have brought her here!

She managed a few painful words between aching jaws. “They have Isenmort . . . in the Mortal World. . . . They will destroy you if you . . . go there. . . .”

Raphael Cariotis laughed softly. “Do you think I have been idle in my ten thousand years of exile, child?” he asked. His voice snapped. “I have not! Over the slow millennia I learned all the ancient sorceries of Ynis Borealis. I learned to wield powers far older than the Mystic Arts of Faerie. Older and mightier by far! I became the lord of the strange men that lived on that bleak northern island. I had them build me a great dark castle—the castle of Gralach Hern!”

So Gralach Hern is not even part of Faerie! And the knights of Gralach Hern come from Ynis Borealis—they’re not Faerie folk at all!

Cariotis began to circle Tania again, and by the power of his eyes she was compelled to spin to follow his slow pacing, her whole body wracked with pain. She saw Cordelia standing frozen—Jade crumpled unmoving by the wall.

“Great spells I brewed in the high towers of Gralach Hern,” Cariotis intoned. “One spell to make us immune from the bite of Isenmort, and another to allow me to enter and control the minds of others.” He smiled like a wolf as he looked up at her. “So, dear niece, seventh child of my dear brother, I do not fear Isenmort, and neither do my warriors. We have drunk the dark brew of the Isenkur Goblet—nothing of metal can harm us!”