Red Palace (12 page)

“A ghost,” I reply, my mouth filled with apple.

“Don’t say that,” she says. There’s a warning in her eyes, a glassiness. “It’s not right.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean… it doesn’t mean you’re dead.”

“I know. It’s just frightening to know my body is out there. It feels vulnerable somehow, like I’m unable to protect it. And I’m hardly able to protect you, too. I can’t help tend to your wounds, or fight the Nix. I can’t do anything.”

“Yes you can. You can use your mind.
Your presence helps me,” I say. “I’ve missed you.”

Sasha feigns shock.
“A kind word from Mae Waylander? Is the sky now green and the grass blue?”

I can’
t help it, I laugh, but then I think of all that has happened and the laugh fizzles out. “There’s been so much going on since I got to the Red Palace. First I had to work with Ellen to trick the king. Then I decided to leave Ellen and Cas. Then I’ve been sent into these visions where the worst fears of some of the court members come alive. I’ve seen… terrible things. It’s all happened in a blur. I can’t… I can’t slow it down. I…”

Sasha bows her head. “I’m sorry
, Mae.”

I take another bite of my apple and try to push it all aside. “It’s fine. I can
deal with it.”

“Why did you send Allerton away?” Sasha asks.

I shrug my shoulders and stare down at my apple, almost chewed to the core. “I believe that Allerton wanted to protect me. I think I was beginning to trust him, and I know his knowledge was helping me. He has a lot of wisdom.” I shake my head and let out a sigh. “But he isn’t a good man, I don’t think.”

Sasha regards me with a blank expression. She blinks twice and maintains her gaze. It’s non-judgemental and somehow puts me at ease.

“I haven’t fully forgiven him but I am working on it. That wasn’t the reason, though. When we met him in the Borgans tent, he never showed a good side to him. He was always giggling and laughing at things that weren’t funny. He had Ellen trapped in a cage and regarded her with disdain. He isn’t a good person, Sasha, I can feel it. You
are
a good person. You’re the one I want protecting me. Not him.”

Sasha leans towards me. “I wish I could hold your hands and pledge my allegiance—”

“No,” I say. “I’m not royal. I’m not a queen. I don’t want you to pledge yourself to me. You’re my friend. That’s all I ever want from you.” Inexplicable tears fill my eyes. I’m unsure as to whether they are tears of joy or tears of pain. Perhaps both; joy that Sasha and I are together, and pain that neither Cas, Father, or Anta are here.

Sasha swallows thickly and turns away. “I will be the best friend you’ve ever had. You can count on that.” Then she turns to me with a wicked grin. “And I forgive you for cho
king me.”

I let out a hollow laugh. “I’m sorry for that. I was full of anger after my father died.”

“And you’re not now?”

“It seems pointless
. It created a barrier between me and my feelings. I don’t want to let that happen again.”

“A barrier between yourself and
your feelings is a barrier between yourself and happiness,” Sasha says.

I’d never thought about it like that before, but of course she is right. How could I ever let someone love me, or even be happy
, if I couldn’t feel it for myself?

After a long pause, Sasha clears her throat. “I am he
re to help you. So far I know you are stuck in the Red Palace and that you have been hurt by the Nix. You mentioned that you have been in the worst fears of
other
people. That is something I have never heard of before. We need to work out how to stop all this. Tell me everything you know.”

I don’t hold back on any detail and Sasha sits patiently as I recall the last couple of days. It has all been such a blur that I
find myself going back and adding in details as I remember them.

“So you have the king’s personal journal?” she asks.

“Yes,” I say. “It has all the lock combinations—”

“And what about his private thoughts?
Have you read them? Have you read the journal at all?”

I pull the small book from my pocket. I haven’t read any of it.
“I’ve been too busy with the Nix.”

“Well read it, Mae. Everything seems to go back to the
king when you think about it,” she says. “The queen has a secret passageway to get away from him. The designer of the castle is afraid of him. His youngest son wants to
be
him. There’s some sort of secret laboratory somewhere. He owes money to rich people in the Haedalands, and he has already commissioned weapons for some sort of war. You need to read that book if you’re to outwit whatever the Nix wants.”

I crack the wel
l-worn spine and open the book to the first page.

I am in despair.

I am in despair. I need Beardsley to end this. If what they tell me is true, there is nothing else I can do about it. The end will come and I will be powerless.

I am the King, born to a bloodline chosen by the Gods
. I will not accept my fate. I will not sit idly by and let this happen to me. I have not worked at keeping my crown against the usurpers who wish to take it away from me only to have it prised from my cold fingers in such a humiliating fashion. This turn of events is unacceptable to me.

Beardsley tells me that there
is a solution, but it is somewhat of a legend. I believe it exists, and I believe it is in Aegunlund. I just don’t know where. I will make sure that Beardsley uses his damn brain to acquire it for me. There has to be a way. He says that it is tied to the magic of the realm. Why does everything have to come back to the damn craft-born? It adds insult to injury that it is always a useless girl given the power. The king should have the power.

Never mind, it will be of no concern in the end. I will uncover this secret e
ven if I have to drain the craft-born of the last drop of blood in her body.

It will be mine, and with it I will become a God.

“What does all this mean?” I say out
loud.

Sasha shakes her head. “It sounds like the
king is afraid of losing the throne.”

“He wants to drain my blood in order to keep the crown?” I say with a shake of my head. “I don’t think so! The man is a maniac.”

We carry on reading, but the journals are the ramblings of either a drunk or a deranged man. Anyone who thinks they will become a God can’t be in his right mind. But then I think of Allerton’s stories about the Gods I had always thought created us, not the other way around, and wonder if more is possible than I had ever thought before.

“Do you think it could be the Nix? He could be afraid of the Nix?”
I say.

“It’s possible,” Sasha replies.

It’s black, all black. I see nothing, only the ever stretching dark. It lies before me, waiting, waiting.

And inside grows the evil. It is consuming me as I breathe.

Beardsley, that useless old lump.
He has not come up with a way to find it without the magic, and there is not a craft-born to be found. I will make that magical bitch marry my son if it is the last thing I do.

No, no, not the last.
Never the last.

Find it. He must find it.

I shake my head.
“None of this makes sense. He could be looking for anything.” I slam the book closed. “It’s probably a diamond so he can pay off those he owes in the Haedalands. Or he’s looking for a way to finance his stupid war.” When I think of the king it makes my blood boil. It should be Cas on the throne, not this rambling mad man.

And inside grows the evil.

It
sounds
like an insane thing to say, and yet there is truth there too. He
is
evil through and through. It shows that he has some awareness at least; unless he is talking about something else, like his favourite son, Lyndon.

“There’s
more to all this,” Sasha says. “The king isn’t just crazy. He wouldn’t be able to function if he was. He wouldn’t be able to rule. There are plenty of power hungry people who would gladly take the throne if they had the chance. He’s managed to maintain his position of power despite being verging on destitute. That takes cunning and manipulation and fear. Insanity is not as frightening as ruthlessness. Trust me, if he really is as crazy as that journal suggests, he wouldn’t still be king. ”

I think for a moment. The answer lies in all of this somewhere, and I know that I only need t
o put the pieces together, but everything is going off in different directions and I find the pressure of it all overwhelming.

“We
need to go back to the tunnels,” I say. “There was some sort of code written on one of the stones and I think it might be useful.
En Crypt Saran.
Cas said he thought it was a crypt, a dead foe buried in the walls of the secret passageway, but I think that’s hogwash. I think it is a clue. I had a feeling in my stomach that it was important.”

“Cas was there with you?” she asks.

“A vision version of him. An imposter made up by the Nix,” I say.

Sasha regards me with that annoying assessing look she often gives me. “Mae, in these visions, is Cas… romantic with you?”

I squirm away from her. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes you do, and I will take that as a yes.”

“I know what you’re going to say, so don’t bother saying it. The Nix is playing a game with me. The Cas in the visions is not really him and I shouldn’t believe a word of it.”

“
In fact, no, that isn’t what I was going to say at all,” Sasha replies. “The Nix feeds on fear, but it needs an
actual
fear to feed from. It needs something that is true. That’s why, when it stalks its prey, it learns everything it can about its prey. When the Nix caught my mother in the Waerg Woods, I believe it used all that knowledge to frighten her to death. Without the truth, the vision would not scare us.”

“But th
e Nix is targeting me, not Cas.”

“Is it?” she replies. “You said that you have been in Ellen’s greatest fear, and Beardsley
and the queen, do they sound like they are about you?”

“No, I suppose not. I didn’t even feature in some of them. I was inside the person. Like a passenger.”

“Exactly. Perhaps the Nix is using a valid fear from Cas to torment you with. Maybe Cas really does have feelings for you,” she suggests.

“And
that
is his greatest fear?”

“Think about it. He is a young boy engaged to a girl he doesn’t know. He’s forced into this marriage, Mae. Don’t you think that would mess with his head?
He has to
believe
he loves her because he has no choice. And all this time he has spent with you, knowing you, being in life threatening situations, all of that must have confused him further. To Cas, letting down his people, his king and his mother is probably his greatest fear. Being in love with you could be his greatest fear.”

It is as though someone has shone a bright light in my eyes. I see nothing. I feel numb.

“I don’t… I don’t believe it,” I whisper, even though every part of my body
wants
to believe it.

“Oh stop being a nincompoop.” Sasha waves a dismissive hand in front of her face. “Anyway, we have far more important things to worry about than
boys
.”

“You brought it up,” I remind her.

“Yes, good point. I might try not to do that from now on. Boys are so very boring.”

I climb
to my feet and wince at the sharp twang in my chest. Even with the fast heeling my injuries still smart. We make our way back to the secret tunnel where this all began. I’ve been at this very spot many times now. It makes me wonder if the queen had her suspicions regarding the curse. I now believe she brought me to this very room on purpose. But why would she bring me and not Ellen? Surely the craft-born—in her eyes—would have been a better choice.

I
now have the combinations memorised. The effort is uncomfortable with my injuries, but I push through the pain. We are in the tunnels in no time and I am eager to find secrets I have never seen before, not even after exploring the castle before the curse fell. I used to follow the royal members as they moved around the palace, fascinated by the twists and turns of the long corridors. I have a reputation for remaining unseen in Halts-Walden, it wasn’t hard to spy on many members of the court.

But I never followed the
king. I didn’t want to be anywhere near him after what he did to me in the Waerg Woods. Perhaps that was a mistake. Then again, how was I to know that the curse and its responsibilities would fall on my shoulders? One thing I never seem to understand is that all my actions seem to be training for something worse. Whenever I think I have overcome a problem, I step around a corner and into something worse.

“I think it was around this bend and down those steps,” I say to Sasha as we press on.

She runs her fingers through her hair and purses her lips. “It’s dark down here. I don’t like small spaces, not even when I am little more than a soul.”

“You can walk through walls you know,” I say
, holding the lantern higher to light our way.

She shudders. “No thank you.
Especially not if there are dead bodies in the wall.”

I laugh.
“Come on, just a little further. Oh, here it is.”

I
move the lantern closer to the writing on the wall. Those three words again:

En Crypt Saran.

“Blessed Celine, how creepy. Are you sure it isn’t a crypt? It certainly sounds like it. And, no, I will not be walking into the wall to find this ‘Saran’ person,” Sasha says.

“Saran sounds a little like a Borgan name,” I observe.

“There are no Sarans in the camp as far as I’m aware. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a name before.”

“Nor I.
In fact, I don’t think it’s a name at all.” I brush away the moss from beneath the words to reveal the eye symbol. “Beardsley mentioned a viewing area for the secrets in the castle. I think Beardsley would mark such a place, and an eye would be perfect, don’t you think?”

“Yes, actually.
It does make sense.”

“And look at the stone here. It’s smoother, I can feel it.
The colour is slightly off. All around this area, the stones have darkened over time. This portion is lighter, as though a picture has hung here or it has been cleaned.”

“But to be fair,” Sasha says. “There
could
have been a picture hung here, and the caption could have related to the picture.”

“True. But
listen to the words:
En Crypt.
Encrypt. It’s like it’s telling me to solve the puzzle.”

“But how could you solve
Saran
. We’ve already established that it isn’t a name, and it’s certainly not a word I know. Maybe it’s in another language, Jakani or, Gods forbid, Ibena.”

I shudder at the mention of the
Ibenas. The memory of them trying to sacrifice me to their Gods is still fresh in my mind. “No, I don’t think so. When Father taught me to read we used to read history books about the monarchs of Aegunlund. During the war between the Jakanis and the Southern Archipelagos, King Frederick used to send letters written in code. He used the alphabet and assigned each letter a number.”

“Well, I don’t see any numbers here,” Sasha replies.

“No, I suppose not. I don’t really know anything else about encryptions. You have to have the code in order to crack it.”

“Well, yes, Mae.” Sasha rolls her eyes at me.
“Unless it’s just a jumble of letters. Perhaps if we reorder them—”

“—we’ll uncover the clue,” I finish. We turn to each other. Sasha is grinning and I am filled with renewed energy.

“Snap,” Sasha begins.

“Prance,” I add.

“Rant.”

“Cane.
Pry?”

“Carry.
Ants. Pen?”

“Trans… Tran…”

“Transparen… wait, no.”

And then we say together.
“Transparency!”

We turn to the words on the wall expectantly, but nothing happens.

“What did we do wrong?” I say.

“I don’t think it’s a magic word,” Sasha replies. “Didn’t you say it was an inventor who created this castle?”

“Yes.”

“
I don’t think an inventor could use enough craft to create a spell like that. You must have to use the word somehow.”

“You mean write it?” I say.

“It could work.”

I lift my finger and carefully trace the word along the stone. As I silently spell it in my mind I thank my father for for
cing me to read as a child. Many of the peasants never bothered to learn when they were children, and I had always hated book learning. Now it is has become invaluable to me, and the thought of never sitting down with my father and a book, it leaves an ache in my heart.

I shake my head as I finish the last letter. “No. It hasn’t opened.”

“There must be something in here,” Sasha says. “A place to write the word, or move the letters.”

W
e search the wall, but there is nothing. I press my hand against every inch, expecting something to move. But there is nothing. I let out a sigh and place the lantern on a sconce. My eyes are drawn to the joist holding the lantern. Could it be so simple? I’ve heard of bookcases containing trick books, and candle holders that turn. I reach up and twist the joist left. It doesn’t budge. Right, it turns.