The Queen's Necklace (69 page)

But she was too late. The door flew open before she could reach it, and a stocky young man in the sky-blue uniform of the Palace Guard entered the room all in a rush.

“Your Majesty!” At the sight of the queen, the lieutenant came to an immediate halt and saluted smartly. “I bring you an urgent message.”

Ys drew a long sigh of relief, realizing he had come to serve her, not to harm her. Gathering what dignity she could, she smoothed out the silken skirts of her gown, adjusted the diamond bracelets on her wrists, and replied imperiously: “Tell me your message at once, then.”

“Your Majesty, there is a mob forming outside the gate. They demand to see you. They insist that you turn over the keys to the palace and leave the city at once. They—”

Ys stopped him by striking her hands together loudly. “It is not for the rabble to present me with their demands—or even,” she added sternly, “for you as my representative to carry their messages.”

Wheeling about, she moved swiftly to her writing desk, took up a
pen and dipped it into the inkpot, and wrote out a quick proclamation. “You may read this to the mob at the gate,” she said, signing and underlining her name with a decisive flourish, then handing the paper on to the young officer. “Tell them—tell them this is my answer, which you received directly from me. It is the only answer I will ever give them, so they need not trouble themselves further with more ultimaturns.”

The lieutenant read through her declaration quickly, shaking his head as he did so. When he looked up again, all of the color had drained out of his face. “Your Majesty, you must realize that if I were to read this out exactly as you have written it, they would tear me to pieces before I was halfway through it.”

“If you are afraid to read it, then have it nailed up by the gate. Have other copies written out and distributed to the crowd. What?” she added, with a scornful little laugh. “Do you turn coward even at that? But if they do not receive my warning, if they do not do exactly as I tell them to do, then
you
will be the one to blame when the entire city is de—”

“Madam, I urge you to think,” the lieutenant interrupted. “You cannot mean—or if you do mean, it is a grave mistake! You cannot turn them aside with such threats as these. Indeed, you will only enrage them. Be wise, Your Majesty. Be more temperate. If you will not do as they ask, at least send them some soothing message. Buy yourself some time and the frenzy may pass.”

Ys fingered the cold white stones at her throat. Conquering her distaste for using the necklace in this way, for initiating that intimate contact with yet another Human creature, she looked the guardsman straight in the eye. “I ask you, lieutenant, to deliver my message. Will you not do as I say?”

A confused expression crossed his face, one of mingled pleasure and distaste, and his face, which had been very pale a moment before, was now suffused with blood. “Yes, madam, I will do as you say.” And he turned slowly, and walked dazedly out of the room.

Ys hurried after him to slam the door and bolt it shut. Then she threw herself down in a chair and wept uncontrollably for a quarter of an hour.

It was an exhausting journey from Ottarsburg to Tarnburgh, though Luke provided the money to hire a large and comfortable coach as soon as they landed in Nordfjall, and the hired coachman proved stalwart and invaluable all along the difficult northern roads.

But the countryside was in chaos and strangers were no longer welcome. Half the inns where they stopped refused to serve them, and they missed many meals before their long journey was done. The men grew irritable and contentious—as hungry people will—and Tremeur and Lili turned light-headed.

As they approached the Winterscar border, mountains smoked and rumbled in the distance. The River Scar was in full flood, swollen by snow-melt from the high peaks. In other years, the peaks remained white all through the summer, but volcanoes long dormant were coming back to life, and heat from their vents had melted the snow.

Whenever Lili and Raith stopped to take a bearing with their wands, crystals, and compasses, the results seemed to point in a half-dozen different directions.

Blaise had possessed the forethought to obtain a map before leaving Catwitsen. Now Lilliana and the Leveller covered the face of that map with mysterious markings, and they spent many long hours studying and discussing these notations, while the heavy coach jolted along the rutted forest and mountain roads.

“But what does it all mean?” Luke asked, from the seat facing them, as he craned his neck to get a better look at the unfolded parchment. It was the first civil word he had spoken in many days, but the map with its puzzling notations was exactly the sort of thing which invariably engaged his curious mind.

“It means, Mr. Guilian, that there seem to be Philosophic Engines located in each of the large cities which lie on or near this line we have drawn—which describes an arc more or less similar to that of the Circumpolar Mountains, many miles further north,” said Raith.

Under the shadow of his dark hat, the set of his jaw, the uncompromising line of his thin lips was as grim as ever, but his black eyes sparkled with emotion. “Which of the missing Goblin Jewels are in which cities we cannot determine—even less,
where
in each city a Jewel might be hidden. Whether the Chaos Machine is even among them, we cannot tell. It may be that it has not yet travelled so far north as we have, yet it is clear, at least, that many of the missing Jewels are now located within a two-day journey of Tarnburgh.

“This makes us more convinced than ever,” the Leveller concluded, “that the person who can answer all of our questions will be found in your cousin's capital city.”

Luke was appalled by the changes he saw in Tarnburgh. Riding beside the coachman up on the box, while Raith perched behind him on the roof, he could not resist commenting on everything he saw.

“What has become of her? She was exquisite—the most elegant little city in the world. Now there is mud in the streets, the house-fronts are dirty, and as for her people—” Luke almost fell off the coach in his efforts to see better. “That gentleman there, the one with his wig askew and his lace all in tatters—I'm sure I know him. He was a pompous old merchant, ten years an alderman of the city; now he looks like a man run distracted.”

Luke resumed his seat on the box, with an ache in his heart. Nothing he had seen along the way had produced quite the same impact as this ruin of Tarnburgh. “It is hard to believe that so much damage has been caused in this city by one small female.”

Before long, the press of moving bodies in the street made it impossible for the coach to go any further. While Lucius paid off and
thanked the driver, Raith opened the door and informed the rest of their party that the time had come to go on foot. They piled out of the coach, staring with wide eyes at the tide of dirty, unkempt, and hysterical citizens moving past them.

When they tried to make inquiries, no one was willing to answer their questions, but by listening to messages shouted back and forth by the crowd, Raith and his companions soon learned that Lindenhoff was under siege. An angry populace was attacking the palace, but the guards were putting up a spirited defense. The fighting had already gone on, intermittently, for several days now.

“We
must
get inside the palace before the mob does,” said Lili, as she and the other travellers gathered in a doorway. “If the queen has the Winterscar Jewel—if it should be lost or carried off in the confusion—then the entire city could be buried under a sheet of molten lava in a matter of hours. Or if she doesn't have the Jewel with her but has sent it away for safekeeping, then—”

“—then it would scarcely be advisable to allow her to be torn to pieces by revolutionaries, before she reveals its whereabouts,” Raith finished for her.

“But how
do
we get inside, past the insurgents, past all of her guards?” asked Will. “For myself, I am ready to make the attempt, to follow any plan no matter how desperate or foolhardy, but we ought to have some
small
chance of succeeding.”

The roar of the crowd swelled for a moment, then there was the sound of tramping feet, followed by a vast creaking and shaking, as if some tremendous wagon or immense piece of machinery on ironclad wheels went rumbling over the cobblestones two or three streets away.

“There is a way that I know of into the palace,” said Luke. “One that has seen very little use for fifteen hundred years, and it may well be that no one else has thought of it. If we take that way, our path may be clear.”

Moving through the crowd, he had reached out instinctively and taken Tremeur by the hand. Now, he pulled her closer as he spoke. “Lindenhoff was built by the Maglore, though it's been extensively renovated. It was originally a summer palace, but the staff of servants who lived there all year round heated the place during the winter in the usual Goblin fashion: with vents and pipes, and elaborate machinery to bring up heat from the volcanic fires below. The tunnels and underground chambers which house that machinery still exist. While the men who maintained the machines used to enter from the city, some of the tunnels do connect to the palace. Jarred and I often explored down there when we were boys. It is like a great maze, and anyone who ventured recklessly in without knowing the way would soon get hopelessly lost and might wander for days in the dark. But I think I remember enough about those childhood explorations to take us through.”

“It may be very warm down there, with the volcano stirring,” warned Lili. “It may even be dangerous. But if these tunnels of yours provide our only chance of entering Lindenhoff in advance of the mob—”

The others agreed that it was worth the risk, and that it was necessary to move on to the palace as swiftly as possible.

“However, there is another matter we ought to consider,” said Raith. “Once we are in, it may be difficult to get back out again, or to bring the Winterscar Jewel out with us to safety. The mob may mistake us for allies of the queen. We may need friends in the city to speak for us. I know of at least one Specularii magician who has lived in Tarnburgh for many years; if he is still alive he may be able to summon further friends to come to our aid. One of us must go to him, while the rest attempt the palace.”

“I will go,” offered Tremeur, in a small voice. “If you will tell me where to find him. I
should
be the one to go, since I can be of very little use to anyone at Lindenhoff.”

“No!” said Luke, showing an unexpected reluctance to release his hold on her hand. In the midst of ruin, she suddenly seemed very precious to him. His resentment—which now seemed very foolish and petty—had faded, and all of his former affection, his desire to shield and protect her, came surging back. “To make your way through these hysterical crowds alone? A woman and a foreigner—reminding them of the woman they hate? If anything you did or said aroused their suspicions—”

“Then I will contrive some tale on the spot.” She managed an unsteady smile. “Luke, you know my powers of invention. I can spin them a story so fantastic, so fabulous, they won't be able to make head or tail of it—while they are trying to puzzle it out, I will slip away.”

Still, Lucius was reluctant. “You can't talk your way out of being crushed by the crowd in the midst of a panic. You can't—”

“Pardon me, Mr. Guilian,” said Raith. “I find this most affecting, but where the rest of us are going, she would be equally in danger. And while it is certainly romantic, this desire of yours to suffer the worst at Mrs. Guilian's side, I feel bound to point out that it would be of no practical use to either of you.”

With a hopeless gesture, Luke released his hold on her hand. “As always, Raith, you are correct. Tell me where this magician friend of yours lives, and I will try to describe the quickest and the safest way to reach that part of the city.”

The directions were given and repeated back again, to be certain that Tremeur had heard and remembered them correctly.

“If you cannot find Doctor Wildebaden, then go to an Anti-demonist meeting house,” said Raith. “I do not know how they will react if you mention my name. Yet they are good people. At the very least, they will not harm you, nor would I expect them to turn you away.”

After much searching, Luke located a small shop tucked away under an ancient aqueduct in the iron-mongers' district, one still doing business despite the turmoil outside. There, he and his companions bought lanterns and candles to light their way during their journey underground. Once they had obtained these useful items, they headed for the entrance to the tunnels. It took longer than they had anticipated, pushing their way through the milling crowds in the streets, and Lili and Wilrowan were briefly separated from Blaise, Luke, and Raith. It was only by spotting the Leveller's black hat—rising five or six inches above any of the others as he moved down one of the broad boulevards—that they were able to catch up with their friends.

The first obstacle they faced when they reached the stairs to the tunnels was a wrought-iron grating which completely covered the stairwell and made entrance impossible. The two halves of the grate had been chained and padlocked together, and the hinges on either side bolted into a solid stone facing.

“I don't remember this chain and padlock,” said Luke, with a frown. “They appear to be a recent addition, no doubt meant to keep children from wandering inside and getting lost. This grillwork, however, is considerably older; with the hinges and bolts so badly rusted, it may be possible to pull them loose.”

He and Blaise set to work at once. Wilrowan—still sporting one arm in a black silk sling—was forced to stand back and watch, as did the Leveller. But when all efforts to wrench the heavy iron grillwork off at the hinges proved futile, Raith stepped forward.

“If you will move aside,” he said, bending down and taking hold with his large knotted hands, “I believe I can do this.”