The False Princess

CHAPTER NINE

I told Philantha about it after I returned to the house. Not all of it, or even most of it, the largest omission being that of my possible follower. I said only that I had met Nalia in the street and that we had spoken. But I did ask her about that tugging I had felt just before I saw Nalia—the sensation of being drawn toward her.
“I was standing there, outside of the shop, and then I felt like I had to look in her direction. I didn’t even know anyone was standing there, but I glanced that way all the same. It was like …” I shook my head, searching for a comparison. “Like there was a string between us, pulling us together.”
Philantha paused, her pestle resting on the edge of the small bowl in front of her. “Did the princess seem to feel it, too? Did she say anything about it or, for that matter, did you ask her if she had felt it?”
“No,” I admitted. “I was shocked to see her, and I forgot.”
Philantha clinked the pestle against the side of the bowl in irritation, the sound sharp enough that I winced. “A wizard must always be aware of magical phenomena. You remember the story of Engahar Yarren?” I nodded, wincing again with the memory of the grisly story. “Good. Keep it in mind next time you feel a spell that you didn’t cast affecting you.”
Little cat’s paws of trepidation frolicked up my spine. “A spell?” I asked. “You think it was a spell?”
She peered into the bowl, then shoved it toward me. “Do you suppose that these seeds can be ground much more finely than this? I don’t—they looked absolutely pulverized to me—but it never hurts to check, after all.” When I agreed, she snatched the bowl back and set the pestle aside. “Yes, I think it was a spell, or rather, the effects of a spell. The spell that made you appear to be the princess was, from what I can tell, a sort of transferring of a tiny bit of the princess’s essence. They pulled out a little bit of her soul, for lack of a better word, and transferred it to you. They used it to mask your own essence so that, to any probing wizards, you would appear to be the princess. Things were made easier for them, of course, because who would ever think to try to look for another person hiding, as it were, under the princess’s own skin?” She wrinkled her brow and crossed her arms. “Now, for all that they took only a tiny piece of her soul, it was a powerful spell. It made you appear to be the princess in every way, even pushing the magic inside you so low that it reasserted itself only a long time after the spell was broken. I think—though I may, of course, be wrong—that you will always feel that … current if you are near Nalia.”
“There was part of her in me?” I asked.
Philantha gave a quick shake of her head, neither a yes nor a no. “As I said, it’s only a theory. I tried to ask Neomar about it—I told him I was professionally curious—but he wouldn’t tell me anything. In any case, it is only a theory, so it may not be the truth, but I think it is. In fact, it sounds as if they weren’t able to get every last bit of her soul, since you’re feeling drawn to the original. As if they accidentally left a little of Nalia in you.” Gazing off into the distance, she narrowed her eyes in thought. “Such an odd spell, really. They would have had a time of it if the princess had died as a child, while she was living in that convent. The spell would have fallen apart then, and your magic would have come back to you, just as it has now. They wouldn’t have been able to say you were the princess then. But I suppose there was no other way to do it. But now I really have to start to work on this”—she shook the bowl of powder around a little so that it swirled up the sides and then fell into the bottom again—“or it will lose its potency. Blood fig seeds are notorious for it.”
After that, I wandered, restless, through the house. I wanted something to occupy my mind, something other than thoughts of my conversation with Nalia or the unsettling idea that parts of us had been exchanged during the spell laid on us. Or the idea that some unknown person was having me followed. I knew that I should use the message spell to send word to Kiernan, to tell him that he had been right about Nalia, but every time I began the spell, I stopped. I wasn’t ready yet; it was all too fresh, too tender, like a newly unbandaged hurt. Some of the wounds within me might have been lanced by talking to Nalia, but that didn’t mean I wanted anyone else prodding them. So I made a general nuisance of myself, bothering everyone from Gemalind, who sent me scurrying from the kitchen in a cloud of flour, to Tarion, who tolerated my presence in the stable until I accidentally levitated several curry combs, spooking Philantha’s mare. After being evicted from the stable, I returned to the house, shuffling along the hallways and occasionally entering a room only to leave again after a few moments. Even the library held no appeal for me, and I eventually found myself at my own door. Sighing and unable to think of anything else to do, I opened the door, went inside, and flopped down on the bed to stare up at the ceiling.
What was Nalia doing? Had she made it back to the palace? I wondered if she had felt the … remnants of the spell they had worked on us. I rubbed my eyes, irritated with myself. I hadn’t thought to mention it at the time, and now I couldn’t ask her. Maybe I could have Kiernan ask her, if I ever managed to let him know that I wanted to make up.
With a growl I pushed myself up and scanned the room, desperate for something that would let me stop thinking so much. I was tired to death of pondering my situation, of worrying about who I was and who I wasn’t. Please, I thought, sending a petition to the Nameless God, even though I knew it was, in most respects, an unworthy request. After all, the God had better things to worry about than one dissatisfied scribe girl. Still, I closed my eyes and prayed, Please let me stop. I just want to be me—I just want to be useful and … content. I want to stop wondering if I’ll ever feel whole and just be whole. I want to have a purpose, one that I can look at without feeling like I’m less than I was.
If I was expecting some sort of sign—a clash of thunder in the rainy sky or a tremor of acceptance in my breast—I was waiting in vain. Nothing happened, not even a breeze against the window. Feeling silly, I kicked my feet against the side of the bed a few times until my eyes fell on my desk, which was littered with papers and books I had borrowed from the library. Well, I thought, if the Nameless God wasn’t going to drop everything to attend to my needs, I might as well clean up.
My room, to tell the truth, wasn’t really messy; it took only a short time before the desk was straightened. In the process of cleaning, however, I found a pair of gloves that had fallen behind the desk. Not one of the well-used pairs that I had purchased to help Philantha gather plants, but a set of leather riding gloves that I had taken with me when I left the palace. I picked them up, finally recalling that I had gotten them out several weeks ago for an excursion out of the city with Philantha. She had decided against it at the last minute, however, and I must have dropped the gloves onto the desk and then swept them off without realizing it. Shrugging to myself, I opened the chest that still contained the things I had brought from the palace and started to put them away. As I did, my eyes fell on a roll of fabric lying gently atop a folded dress.
The map to King Kelman’s Door. I hadn’t thought about it since I had returned to the city. Now I felt a pang of guilt as I carefully picked it up and spread it out on the clean desk. It wasn’t mine, had never been mine. I should return it to the palace, where it could be put somewhere safe, somewhere other than an unused nook in the library where two children could find it. The pang increased, throbbing in my chest as regret joined the guilt. It would have been something, I thought, if we had been able to find the door. I let my fingers glide across the surface of the map, intending to roll it up, but just then, something happened.
I read a word, one of the untranslatable runes written across the bottom of the map.
I didn’t breathe for so long that, when I realized it, I had to gasp for air and ended up coughing violently. Only once I had control of myself did I dare to glance at the runes again.
They were the wizard’s language. Something I had never studied as a princess, something that even wizards hardly used anymore. And these were not even the most recent incarnation of the language that Philantha had insisted I study, but a more archaic version, with little curls on the ends of some symbols and what looked like abbreviated forms of some others. Still, I could read at least every third word, bending over the desk in my room.
Take … who … Door … Let … known … one … blood … Door …
What had Kiernan guessed that last day in the garden? That the runes might be a code, or a magic language? It looked as if, against all odds, he had been right.
I was gripping the desk with my hands so forcefully that my knuckles had gone white. There were too many words I didn’t know, or words that were so different from their later forms that I couldn’t recognize them. And there were several words at the very end that I had never seen in any form.
But, I realized as a grin broke across my face, I had a wizard’s library downstairs, full to bursting with books on spells and magical theory and even treatises on the various incarnations of the wizard’s language.
Words, I thought blearily. It might be words. Or fish. I squinted once again at the rune on the map, then shifted my gaze to the open book that sat propped against a stack in similarly thick volumes. Why would anyone ever make the runes for words and fish look so similar? I wondered. Were they trying to make a joke?
Outside the library, the clock in the hall tolled twice and then fell silent. Leaning forward on my elbows, I massaged my temples and thought about laying my head down on the table. But no, I was close, so close to reading the runes that I could almost imagine myself standing at King Kelman’s Door, watching it open up before me. I had to keep going, even if I was tired enough to go to sleep on the uncomfortable wooden chairs of the library.
I had been researching for hours, pausing only to wolf down some supper and go back in the library before my stomach had finished growling. It had been slow going, trying to decipher the archaic runes running across the bottom of the map. At times, I had considered taking it to Philantha, who I thought might be able to read them without resorting to half a dozen cracked and moldy books. But each time I despaired of finding the answers myself and picked up the map to go to her, I imagined Kiernan’s face when I told him that I had shared our secret with someone else. Each time, I sighed and vowed to search just a little longer for whatever rune was currently giving me fits. And finally, in the late hours of the night, it had come down to only four untranslated runes standing between me and the answer.
Words, I decided. It must be words. Fish just can’t be right. Royal blood—for that was the phrase before it—and royal fish? No. Definitely not. I wrote words down on my sheet of paper. Only three runes left to translate, I realized with a shiver.
But I couldn’t. The clock in the hall rang three times, and then four, and those last three runes remained stubbornly untranslated. I couldn’t seem to find any runes that truly resembled the ones on the map in any of Philantha’s books. Every time I thought I had it, I saw that the slant of one line was wrong, or the curlicue on the top faced the wrong way.
Maybe they were older than the others. Maybe they were so old that Philantha didn’t have any books that referred to them. Or maybe they weren’t wizard’s runes at all; maybe they were something else entirely. I shook my head to clear it. I had everything but those last three runes. Perhaps I wouldn’t really need them. I could go ahead and assemble a translation from my notes and see.
Clearing a space for a blank sheet of parchment, I dipped my pen into an inkpot and slowly transcribed my notes. Then, taking a shallow breath of excitement, I read the words that had eluded Kiernan and me for so long:
Take heed, all who would attempt the Door of the King. Let it be known that only for one of royal blood and royal words will the Door appear.
The words, so stark and formal, stared at me from the parchment, my own handwriting looking somehow foreign and strange. That’s why it was never there for us, I thought dimly. We were looking in the right place, but I didn’t really have any royal blood in me, and so it never appeared. Disappointment warred with the thrill of discovery; I had imagined myself being able to open the door, and now, unless Nalia was standing beside me, I never would. A clever spell, Philantha would have said. It truly was a secret created just for the royal family, one that would be no good without them.
I was rubbing the place where my birthmark had been, I realized, and I hastily pulled my hand away. I wondered vaguely what the last three runes were, for the message was clear enough without them. Maybe they were just the name of the wizard who had created the door, a signature of sorts. Wizards, even Philantha, were a vain lot, I had come to realize, and it wouldn’t be odd for one to want to preserve his own name on such a document.
My hand had strayed to my arm again. This time I pinched the spot so hard that it turned white and then pink, and tears sprang up in my eyes. Stop it. You’re just disappointed that you won’t be able to see it. But you were never going to see it anyway. It’s no different now. Which raised the question I had wrestled in my room that afternoon: What was I going to do with the map?
I should give it back. That was the right course, the proper thing to do. I could give it to Kiernan and he could easily sneak it back into the library. He could even pretend to find it so that it could be preserved as it should have been all those years ago. No one would know that he had given it to me. I let my fingers graze the edge of the map. Yes, it belonged in the palace, with the family for whom it had been created. Even if Kiernan had given it to me as a gift, as something to bridge the gap between my two selves. Still, there was no way I was giving it back without first bragging a little to Kiernan of how I had solved the mystery.
I pushed back my chair, decided. Reading my translation had burned away the exhaustion of the night, so that I felt oddly clearheaded and my limbs buzzed with pent-up energy. I put away the books I had pulled from the shelves, swept up my scraps of paper and notes, and rolled the map upon itself, tying it loosely with a ribbon. And then, without knowing why I did it, I left Philantha’s house and headed for the palace.
Morning had not yet broken the dark sky, though I felt a hint of coming warmth as I followed the streets out of Goldhorn, King Kelman’s map cradled in my arms. I walked quickly, not knowing why I hurried any more than I knew why I felt so compelled to visit the palace now. I could seek out Kiernan after the sun had come up, after all, and right now it seemed likely that the palace guards would turn me away for coming so early. Still, I kept going, as if the Nameless God himself had laid his hand on me and pushed me forward.
As the palace walls reared into sight I slowed. I had no story to tell the guards, and I knew I must look a sight, with my hair half escaped from its braid and my dress wrinkled from sitting so long. I didn’t stop, though, and as I neared the guards I heard myself saying, “I have a message for Kiernan Dulchessy from the wizard Philantha.”
It was dark, and the guards were tired from the long night. Neither recognized me, either as the false princess or as the scribe who had occasionally sought out Kiernan. “Can’t wait until a proper hour, can it?” the one on the right asked.
“If it could, do you think I would be here now?” I asked.
“S’pose not. Wizards,” he grumbled to his companion. “Glad I don’t work for one.”
I was glad that I did, though, for he moved aside and, after giving me directions to Kiernan’s chamber, turned his back to me.
Now that I was there, I felt the beginnings of embarrassment as I made my way toward the wing of the palace that housed minor nobility, taking the garden path rather than going through the palace itself. Why had I thought it was a good idea to come now? I was going to look silly, banging on Kiernan’s door to tell him … what? That we wouldn’t ever have been able to find the door? As interesting as my translation might be, I suddenly wasn’t sure it was worth being woken up for before dawn. Especially when I hadn’t spoken to him in days.
I halted, taking a step back and then a step forward and dithering with myself. No, I was already here, I told myself, I would keep going. But, even after thinking it, I felt strange, like something was pulling me back, slowly but inexorably. I was so caught up in my own thoughts that it took a moment before I realized that it wasn’t my imagination, that I really did feel a tugging deep in my chest.
It took a moment longer to realize that I had felt this sensation before.
Nalia, I thought, startled. She was somewhere nearby. Odd that she should be out so late, or so early, depending on which way you looked at it. Without meaning to, I turned toward the palace. A stand of tall bushes edged the building, softening the line of the gray stone, and I stood in their shadow. It was lucky, because when a soft light flared up in the window nearest me, its brightness didn’t reach me. I remained in darkness, watching curiously.
It was some noble’s room, though no one occupied the bed, despite the hour. Instead, two figures stood facing each other in the center of the room. One was cloaked, so I couldn’t make out the face, and the other was Nalia.
She was wearing a robe, long enough that most people probably wouldn’t have noticed the hint of lace peeking out from beneath it, and her hair fell unbound in long ripples down her back. I furrowed my brow as I realized that the lace was her nightgown. What was she doing out at this hour, wearing nothing but that?
I didn’t have much time to ponder it, though, for as I watched, Nalia raised her arms, palms extended upward. She did it slowly, like someone moving through a dream, and it was that oddness that made me take two steps forward, so that my toes reached the edge of the bushes’ shadow, to peer at her face. Under the creases of sleep and the dark smudges below her eyes, Nalia’s face was blank, as smooth and uncomprehending as a sleepwalker’s. The hand not holding the map rose toward my throat, and I pursed my lips in confusion as the other person in the room put out his or her hands and placed them atop Nalia’s. It made me look toward the figure, and when I did so, I had to rub my eyes and try again.
I had thought the other person was cloaked. But when I tried to look more closely, my eyes slid away without grasping even the color of the person’s hair or the shape of the body. A sight shield, I realized with puzzlement. Philantha had shielded herself only a few days before so that I might see how the spell rendered an object blurry, undistinguishable, preventing an onlooker from recalling what it looked like.
What? I thought, or began to think, because at that moment, something happened that made my heart contract painfully and my ears buzz like a nest of hornets.
A golden haze, faint at first, then bright, sprang up around Nalia, enveloping her. In my mouth, I tasted the iron flavor of blood.
A golden haze. The Hall of Thorvaldor. The king and queen watching. My birthmark vanishing and something I hadn’t known was there inside me disappearing as well.
The golden haze was falling away. Even with only one lamp lit, I could see Nalia’s arms quite clearly, outstretched as they were. The birthmark on her arm was glowing, the three red dots hot and bright looking. Then, as I watched, they faded back to their normal appearance, and I could barely make them out.
The shielded figure was saying something; I could almost hear the words through the glass windows, but not quite. “Let me hear,” I whispered, sending out a tendril of a spell toward the window. It was hardly anything, the weakest of attempts, because I was frightened that the shielded person would feel the spell and detect my presence. It wouldn’t work, I knew it wouldn’t. I had made the spell work only twice before, and I was hardly feeding it any power now. And yet faintly, so faintly I could barely hear it over the rushing in my ears, I heard, “Go back to your room. If you encounter anyone on your way, tell them that you felt ill and went in search of one of the palace physicians. Remember none of this.”
The person’s voice was spelled, too, so that it sounded neither male nor female, young nor old. Beside the figure, Nalia dropped her hands and walked toward the door. Now that I knew to look for it, I could see the languor of control in her movements, the force of the spell guiding her. She opened the door and left, shutting it quietly behind her. Inside the room, the other person swayed suddenly from the exertion of the spell, grasping the back of a nearby chair. The person stayed there, gripping the chair, for long moments, and I waited, my heart in my throat, hoping the sight shield would drop.
It didn’t. The person seemed to regain a measure of strength, for he or she straightened and, after glancing around, headed for the door.
Outside, I shuddered, convulsing over and over as the gray light of morning filtered into the palace gardens.
Nalia, or at least this Nalia, the girl once called Orianne, was not the princess. She was as false as I had been.