The Queen's Necklace (70 page)

As the others backed away, the Leveller took a long audible breath and began to pull. The hinges creaked, the stone to which they were fastened seemed to groan and shudder, but there was no other result. Raith stopped, took another deep breath, seemed to be drawing strength from some inner reserve, and pulled again. Very
slowly, the stone began to crumble. A few minutes later, the Leveller stood up, gasping for air, but with half of the grating in his hands.

He stepped back, laying the section flat against the other portion, to which it was still secured by the chain. He said nothing, but indicated with a gesture that the way was now clear and it was up to the others to proceed.

Luke took up one of the lanterns and stepped through the gap, and the others followed him down the steps in a close single file. When he had caught his breath, Raith brought up the rear.

The stairs went down for what seemed a very long time, before finally stopping and opening out into a narrow passageway. The air was hot and heavy. “There may be poisonous gases,” said the Leveller, coming up behind Wilrowan.

“Lucius and I will go ahead,” said Lili. “He to lead the way, I to draw on my healer's training to test the air. By paying close attention to my own breathing and heartbeat, I should know if the atmosphere becomes insupportable.”

Though Will was by no means eager to see Lili play this rôle, there seemed to be no other way to guard the safety of the whole party. He gritted his teeth and kept silent as the group proceeded down the tunnel: first Lili and Luke, then Will and Blaise, with the Leveller still stalking behind.

The tunnel had apparently been carved in solid rock, and the way was long and winding. Every now and again, some cavernous chamber or low-ceilinged tunnel opened on the passage they were following, and several times Luke turned into one of these intersecting corridors. As they passed some of the larger rooms, they caught glimpses of ancient machinery covered with rust and verdigris. Several times, they saw clouds of steam pouring out of broken pipes, and once a rain of burning ashes drifted out of one room. Luke and Blaise caught sparks in their clothes, but were able to brush them off before their coats caught fire.

Realizing, as the others did not, the danger to Raith, Lili looked back to see if the Leveller had passed the opening safely. The hem of his cloak was smoldering. Reacting swiftly, he tore the garment off and cast it aside. Very pale indeed, but showing no sign of panic, he signalled to her that all was well with him and that they ought to move on. Lili lengthened her stride to catch up with Luke.

Twice, their path was blocked by some crack in the earth, opening on the molten depths below. The blast of heated air coming up through these cracks, the glare of incandescent gases, made it impossible to pass, even where the fissures were comparatively narrow. Luke was forced to turn aside and seek some other path through the maze. For a time, he seemed to lose his sense of direction.

“We must be under the palace by now. I found a map of the tunnels in the archives, once, which showed five different staircases leading up into Lindenhoff, though Jarred and I were only able to find one.”

But at last he seemed to regain his bearings. His aspect brightened, and he began to move forward with a more purposeful stride. “This is the way; I know this passage. Look here where Jarred and I carved our names in the rock.”

Then they were at the foot of a long staircase, and then they were running up it. A moment later, Luke pushed open a door. The others followed him through, and found themselves inside the palace, in what looked like the scullery.

“Now you must show us to the queen's apartments, or to any other place where you think she may have taken refuge,” said Raith.

Luke frowned thoughtfully. Since he had only met the woman once, he had no way of knowing how she might react in a crisis. “I will take you first to the Royal Apartments. If we don't find her there, we will try the clock-tower. It is the place
I
would choose if I were in her place.”

He started off at a brisk pace and the others continued to follow.
Wilrowan hurried to catch up with Lili. “I want you to take this, in case we should be separated.” He pressed something smooth and cold into her hand. “Gods, Lilliana! Be careful where you point it. That gun is loaded.”

Still moving forward, she glanced down at the pistol. “Will, I haven't the least idea how to—”

“Just aim it, cock it, and pull the trigger. You can do that much, I know. But only at close range and only as your last resort, since there is no time for me to show you how to reload it.” As she continued to protest, he shook his head stubbornly. “I will feel much better knowing you have it.”

Lucius led the way swiftly through the kitchen regions, across a banquet hall bright with murals, and up a long marble staircase. In the gallery above, they met a party of four guardsmen. No doubt mistaking them for insurgents, the guards promptly attacked.

Drawing their rapiers, Will and Blaise eagerly entered the fray. The Leveller was right behind them. He dispatched one man by kicking the legs out from under him, aiming a sharp blow with his fist to the head. The guard went limp and did not move after that. But a second man dodged his initial attack, and it was Raith who was put on the defensive, skillfully evading the flickering point of his opponent's saber, but unable to move close enough to disarm him.

Luke was in the act of reaching for the sword of the unconscious guardsman, meaning to join the battle and assist his friends, when Lili put a hand on his arm to stop him. “You and I have to go on—I know it is hard,” she said with a tremor in her voice, watching her husband wage a left-handed battle. “But I need you to show me the way. The others may follow if they can.”

Luke nodded grimly. With a last reluctant glance at the continuing struggle, he took her by the hand and pulled her along, first down the gallery, then swiftly through a maze of luxurious rooms as confusing to Lili as the tunnels had been. “I didn't recognize a single
one of those men. And did you chance to get a close look at their faces? I thought there was something—not right with any of them.”

“I had heard,” said Lili, growing breathless with the pace, “that this ‘Goblin Queen' has some power over the minds of those around her, but until now I had dismissed the story.”

They were crossing a very large chamber hung in tapestry, when the sound of running footsteps behind them caused Luke to drop her hand and whirl around, and Lili to uncertainly raise Wilrowan's pistol. But it was only Raith racing to catch up with them.

“The—others?” Lili faltered.

“They were both injured and did not wish to slow us down. Captain Blackheart insists that you go on without him.”

Lili caught her breath. “He is not—?”

“Dead or dying? No,” the Leveller answered firmly. “I would not deceive you about something like that.”

She looked to Lucius, as if for confirmation.

“Raith would tell you the truth, no matter how bitter a thing it was. He is not in the habit of telling people comforting falsehoods,” Luke assured her, and Lili was forced to be satisfied with that.

L
ong before they reached the Queen's Apartments, Lili smelled smoke.

“I heard rumors of a catapult, when we were down in the streets—one meant to throw flaming brands at the palace and smoke out the queen and her Goblin servants,” said Raith, running along beside her. “I did not think they would move so quickly.”

Several strides ahead, Luke threw open a pair of french doors and stepped through; the others crowded behind him onto a small wrought-iron balcony. The gardens of Lindenhoff stretched before them, and beyond that expanse of cool green lawns, white gravel paths, and shimmering fish-ponds, there rose another white-and-gold wing of the palace. Lili made a small sound of distress deep in her throat. There was a crimson flicker of firelight behind every window in the opposite wing, and the leads on the roof were melting like wax.

“The fire is still a long way off,” said Luke, turning back toward the doors. “We're in no danger yet.”

As Lili and Raith followed him through, the Leveller's expression was grimmer than ever. “Unless, of course, they adjust the range of their catapult and something falls on this side of the palace. I suggest we redouble our efforts to find the queen.”

Luke assented and the three moved on, as fast as their legs could carry them. “We have nearly reached Zelene's old rooms.” Luke threw open a pair of doors and passed swiftly into a large antechamber. A single guardsman stood by the inner door.

“Allow me,” said Raith, and the guard was dispatched neatly and efficiently. His body fell down in a heap against the door, blocking their way. Luke took the feet and Raith the shoulders, and they moved him aside. Too impatient to wait for them, Lili was the first one across the threshold by several steps.

Inside the bedchamber, a blonde girl in a grey satin gown turned away from her post at one of the windows, allowing the heavy brocade curtains to fall into place behind her. “How
dare
you—” But at the sight of Lili, followed almost immediately by Raith and Luke, the sentence died unfinished.

A slow look of recognition appeared on the queen's face. “Mr. Lucius Sackville-Guilian, isn't it?” Her expression grew calculating, her manner cool and imperious. “To see a kinsman at a moment like this is a very pleasant surprise. Have you come to rescue me, sir?”

“I think I have come here to wring the life right out of you,” he ground out between his teeth. “Where is my Cousin Jarred, and what have you done with the Winterscar Jewel?”

She shook her head, took a step backwards, pressed up against the pale gold curtains. “Jarred is gone, though I don't know where. I suggest you ask the doctors who spirited him away. As for your famous Crystal Egg—you'll have to ask Jarred's doctors about that as well.”

But her eyes betrayed her by a momentary glance in the direction of a small table, where a silver and satinwood casket containing a jeweled miniature of the city sat on a blue velvet cushion.

“Thank you, but I think we would prefer the real Jewel instead,” said Luke, stepping toward the table. His hand was almost on the music box when his movement was suddenly arrested, and a look of pure astonishment froze on his face.

The queen smiled, fingering the necklace at her throat. “For all that, I don't think you will have it.”

As Raith started to move across the room he was struck by the same remarkable paralysis. A curious look of startled recognition passed between the Leveller and the queen. Ys laughed, and stepped lightly toward the table, where she took up the Jewel herself. One hand moved toward the necklace again.

Lili felt a sharp pain in her head, heard a sweet, high voice speaking in her mind
. She struggled against the compulsion in that voice, but the more that she fought, the more the voice hurt her. A pulse was beating in her head, a red mist rose up before her eyes, every nerve in her body seemed to be thrilling with agony—yet her years of training as a healer enabled her to put aside much of the pain. Still, the compulsion remained almost unbearably strong, and all the time that the battle of wills continued, the queen was edging one sideways step at a time closer and closer to the open door.

Slowly, and with infinite effort, Lili clasped Will's pistol between both her hands—slowly and painfully she lifted it, until the barrel was pointing somewhere in the vicinity of the curly golden head.

“You may go—if you wish—but you will leave your necklace and the Jewel—behind.” Lili forced out the words past the constriction in her throat. She could barely hear herself over the shrilling in her ears, the thrumming of her nerves. “This entire city will—be destroyed—if you continue to tamper with things—that you don't understand. And perhaps I should tell you—Lindenhoff is already on fire.”

As if to confirm her words, a tendril of smoke snaked into the room through the open door, and the scent of burning was suddenly very strong. It seemed that Raith's prediction had come true: the men down in the street had adjusted the range of their catapult.

The queen hesitated. Her hand moved from the necklace to the beaded bodice of her gown. Then she gave a brittle little laugh, put
down the music box, and unclasped the necklace from around her throat. Dropping it on the richly carpeted floor, she ran from the room.

Gradually, the agony inside Lili's head subsided, and she was able to think clearly again. Released from the compulsion which had rooted her to the one spot, she stepped past the necklace. Still holding the pistol in one hand, she picked up the Winterscar Jewel with the other. The silver and satinwood casket, the tiny golden city inside, it all seemed so fragile, such an inconsequent thing to control the fate of a great city like Tarnburgh.

A voice spoke behind her, and Lili turned. Raith and Luke seemed themselves again, though both were pale and sweating, like men who had just survived some great ordeal. Lucius raised an arm and wiped his forehead with the embroidered cuff of his sleeve.

“She should not be allowed to escape,” said Raith, moving toward the door. “I will go after her. But you, Mrs. Blackheart, should go with Mr. Guilian out of the palace at once, taking the Winterscar Jewel with you. If the king is dead as the rumor tells us, you—who already know something of the inner workings of one such engine—have a better chance than anyone in the city of establishing the necessary rapport with this one.”

Before Lili could respond, he was through the door; his swift footsteps sounded in the antechamber outside. Luke stepped forward and gently removed the pistol from her hand.

“I think that next time, Lilliana, you may wish to cock your weapon, as though you actually mean to fire. It is likely to prove a far more effective threat if you do.”

Raith ran through the palace, trying to keep Ys always in sight. Sometimes, when she whisked around a corner at the bottom of a staircase, when she passed through a room with more than one exit, he lost her for a moment. Then he was obliged to pause, catch his
breath, and listen for the sound of her racing footsteps—often over the roar of the fire, which was sometimes just a room or a stairwell or a passage away. Had it not been for his much longer stride, which allowed him to make up some of the time that he lost, she might have eluded him entirely.