His sister coaxed him to sit beside the fire. Drawing out her dagger, she shouted toward the other two tents, her gaze never leaving the surrounding trees.
A loud rumble of thunder broke overhead—an ominous portending. Pulse skittering through her wrists, Stain crouched low and dragged the bag around to her chest. Her spine ate into the bark. Her hands clamped like iron bars across her lips. Every nerve prickled beneath her skin, every bone stiffened to near breaking. She was voiceless, incapable of pleading Crony’s case; and she, too, would be captured and placed in chains.
Fabric rustled as the other tents opened and their occupants leapt out. Rushing footsteps, crackling leaves, shuffling ash—growing ever closer.
Witless mite, Scorch snapped. Once again, I must save you. Glowing, orange sparks drifted in the greenish haze around her. I’ll catch fire to their tents and set loose their horses to draw the others away. When he’s alone, you slash his throat. No hesitation. You owe me that.
Yes. Stain agreed, dragging out the knife. But she had her own plan. The prince mentioned searching for the boy . . . for her. She would lure him to the moon-bog where she first met Scorch. It was close—and the perfect place wherein to trap someone unfamiliar with the terrain.
The prince must live to be Stain’s bargaining chip. For surely the prophesied king’s life was valuable enough to trade for a lowly witch’s safe return.
19
The Murkiness of Fate and Other Illusions
The storm must have been enchanted . . . or so most Eldorians believed. Other rains had drenched their skies over the past five years, yet these were the first to feed the honeysuckle plague more rapidly and vigorously than sunlight itself. Within hours of the rumbling thunder and splattering raindrops, the pink blossoms swelled to the size of cabbages, calling more stinging bees to their syrupy pollen. The foliage and thistles tightened around every cottage like a bristly green fist, in the same as it held the castle’s courtyard, walls, and towers, effectively nailing all doors and windows shut. The thoroughfares—which had worn the green cloaks for years—undulated and rolled, resembling the spiny tongue of some mythical lizard and making it impossible to walk upon.
Citizens huddled in their dimly lit homes—weak from lack of physical labor and play, malnourished from lack of hearty food, chilled to the bone from lack of sunlight upon their skin. They peered out of slits in the vines covering their windows, watching for the arrival of the night prince and his infantry of spiders and shadows. A prayer went up to their golden sun, that together with their princess—a ghostly figment occupying the palace dungeon—Prince Vesper could bring back their freedom to walk outside. Prejudice had been traded for tolerance, a by-product of harsh experiences shared. Even those who once laughed at the ill fate of Nerezeth, buried beneath blizzards that muffled all sound and barren of fragrant flowers, were looking forward to snowflakes falling silent from moonlit skies—as winter evenings would mean a land untainted by cloying perfume and the constant buzz of bees.
Griselda’s royal spies, armored infantrymen with axes hung at their waists and white gold lining their purses, hacked through the honeysuckle vines to forage for news of the kingdom’s state, and the condition of people’s spirits. Upon learning that many commoners believed there was no longer a princess—as in all these years she had not been seen even by the castle’s twenty-some inhabitants—Griselda smiled. At last, people were at their most desperate, providing the perfect opportunity to introduce the queen-in-waiting she had so diligently crafted.
Griselda sent word by her infantryman, back to the castle keeps and cottages, that the princess was to make an appearance in the highest southern tower just before the wink of twilight. As every townsperson with a westward-facing window or door used axes and gardening shears to widen their line of sight, Sir Erwan did the same for the tower’s dormer.
Griselda dressed herself, her two daughters, and “Lyra” in their finest tight-laced court gowns, fur-lined mantles, and cone-shaped hennins. Though Griselda despised the beribboned headdresses, today was about tradition and propriety. So, accompanied by her two trusted knights, Regent Griselda led her family in a royal procession. They started at the bottom of the dungeon’s staircase and wound up toward the turret’s dormer window—the very one from which Lyra had looked down upon her kingdom through blue-tinged glass, years ago.
The procession grew longer as they ascended each flight—council members, subjects, and servants attaching to their tail like a gemstone rolling up hill and gathering moss.
Anonymous whispers bounced off the white marbled walls and floors.
“See the princess’s star-struck beauty,” said one.
“I’d forgotten how silver her hair and lashes,” said another.
“She practically glows with moonlight and grace,” said a third. “We needn’t have worried. Nerezeth’s dark prince will worship her upon first sight. Told you she’d grow into her own, didn’t I?”
“She’s more than grown into her beauty,” said a fourth—the words erupting from the end of the procession on a booming bass. “She’s grown in diplomacy, wisdom, and fairness under the council’s written disciplines, and is now fully prepared to rule our kingdom. Perhaps she might offer us a blessing, in her special language?”
This voice Griselda recognized even before seeing the cropped black hair and intelligent green eyes among the assembly. Of everyone they needed to convince, Prime Minister Albous would be the most difficult. He was the one soul, still living, who had spent more time with Lyra during her last few months than anyone else. Though he hadn’t seen her in years, he hadn’t forgotten his special rapport with the small princess—a closeness that would be difficult for Lustacia to emulate since she had stopped practicing the ancient sign language. The most she could offer was a greeting, and two or three phrases . . . certainly not a poetic blessing.
Thus, Griselda chose that moment to unleash her final, most brilliant deception.
She tapped Lustacia’s elbow. Responding with a slight nod, “Princess Lyra” turned in front of the turret door to face the assemblage. Opening her pale, purplish lips, she released a nightingale’s warble that echoed through the corridors—silver and pure.
Her audience, adrift atop the mellifluous notes, grew as silent as stone. The princess beckoned with her palm upturned and three fingers curled—a regal gesture that might’ve been mistaken for a hand signal. Her flaring sleeve stirred at her wrist, and the shadows that had been darkening the floor and walls alongside her and her sisters and mother peeled free and hovered in midair. There were but five—one for each goblin smuggler Griselda’s spell-chant, brumal-blood potion had warped and reshaped. They were half-lights now, dimmed to only a portion of their customary mass—mere wraiths in a world of solidity. However, it was that vaporous form that allowed them to swoop and shudder with such ferocity they appeared to be a multitude of shadows.
The audience ducked and gasped, no longer mesmerized, but afraid.
“The day of fate is at last upon us,” Griselda said as the goblin-fray darkened the cathedral ceiling like a gathering of storm clouds. Turning to face Lustacia, the regent dropped to her knees. Wrathalyne and Avaricette exchanged wry glances and knelt beside their mother. “Soon, the moon will rise and cleanse our kingdom of the plague. It is time we join Princess Lyra’s shadow attendants in celebration, and give allegiance to our queen.”
As one, each person around them dropped to their knees, including Albous and the members of council.
Griselda’s pride kindled bright as hand signals were all but forgotten for the princess’s authority over the shadows. No one would dare question her daughter’s legitimacy now.
Their princess humbly dipped her head. The translucent, beaded veil erupting from her hennin’s tip gilded her silver hair like a layer of frost. The picture of elegance and majesty, she turned and strode into the turret.
“Our royal family wishes privacy as the princess first reacquaints her kingdom,” Griselda insisted. She and her daughters followed at Lustacia’s heel. The “shadows” swept down, blocking anyone who would enter, until Sir Erwan and Sir Bartley took their places outside the closed door under which the shadowy creatures disappeared.
As their sooty forms seeped into the turret like black smoke, Griselda made a wide berth to avoid the half-light goblins’ annoying antics. Avaricette and Wrathalyne squeaked and grumbled when the cursed beings sniffed them and swirled in and out of their gauzy gowns. Though Griselda had managed to change their forms, she’d been unable to curb their obnoxious personalities.