Uprooted

I didn’t feel I owed Marek anything, but I said honestly, “If it were my mother—I’d try anything, too.”

“Then you’d be behaving like a child instead of a prince,” Alosha said. “Him and Solya.” She turned to Ballo. “We should have known better, when they offered to go after the girl Sarkan had brought out.” She looked back at me grimly. “I was too busy worrying that the Wood had finally got its claws into Sarkan. All I wanted was to have her put to death quickly, and Sarkan dragged back here for the rest of us to look over. And I’m still not certain that wouldn’t be for the best, after all.”

“Kasia’s not corrupted!” I said. “And neither is the queen.”

“That doesn’t mean they can’t still be turned to serve the Wood.”

“You can’t put them to death just because something dreadful might happen that won’t even be their fault,” I said.

Ballo said, “I cannot disagree with her, Alosha. When the relics have already proven they are pure—”

“Of course we can, if it’ll save the kingdom from being overrun by the Wood,” Alosha said, brutally, overriding us both. “But that doesn’t mean I long to do it; and still less,” she added to me, “to provoke you into some stupidity. I’m starting to understand why Sarkan indulged you as far as he has.”

She tapped the blade on the table again before she spoke on, with sudden decision. “Gidna,” she said.

I blinked at her. I knew about Gidna, of course, in a vague distant way; it was the great port city on the ocean, far to the north, that brought in whale oil and green woolen cloth; the crown prince’s wife had come from there.

“That’s far enough from the Wood, and the ocean is inimical to corruption,” Alosha said. “If the king sends them both there—that might do. The count has a witch, the White Lark. Lock them up under her eyes, and in ten years’ time—or if we do manage to burn down the whole rotten Wood—then I’ll stop worrying so much.”

Ballo was already nodding. But—ten years! I wanted to shout, to refuse. It was as though Kasia would be taken all over again. Only someone a century old could so easily throw ten years away. But I hesitated. Alosha wasn’t a fool, either, and I could see she wasn’t wrong to be wary. I looked at the corrupt bestiary lying on the table. The Wood had set us one trap after another, over and over. It had set a chimaera on the Yellow Marshes and white wolves on Dvernik, trying to catch the Dragon. It had taken Kasia, to lure me in. And when I’d found a way to break her out, the Wood had still tried to use Kasia to corrupt the Dragon and me both, and when that hadn’t worked, it had let her live, to lure us into its hands again. We’d fought our way out of that trap, but what if there was another one, some way the Wood could turn our victory into defeat all over again?

I didn’t know what to do. If I agreed, if I went along with Alosha—would the king listen to her? If I wrote to Sarkan, and he wrote back to agree? I bit my lip while she raised one cool eyebrow at me, waiting for me to answer. Then she looked over: the doors to the Charovnikov had swung open. The Falcon stood in the doorway, his snowy robes catching the light, a white figure framed in the dark opening. His eyes narrowed as he took the three of us in standing together; then he manufactured another of his smiles. “I see you’ve all been busy here,” he said lightly. “But in the meantime, there have been developments. Perhaps you’d care to come down to the trial?”

Chapter 21

Outside the haven of the Charovnikov, the noise of the party filled the empty corridors. The music had stopped, but a sea of raised voices in the distance roared and fell like waves, louder and louder as the Falcon led us to the state ballroom. The footmen opened the doors for us hastily onto the staircase leading down to the vast dancing-floor. The ambassador in his white coat sat in a chair beside the king’s throne, on a high dais overlooking the floor; Prince Sigmund and his wife were on the king’s other side. The king was sitting with his hands clenched over the lion-clawed arms of his chair, face mottled with anger.

In the middle of the floor before him, Marek had cleared a wide-open circle, six full rows of shocked and avidly staring dancers drawn back from him, the ladies in their billowing skirts like strewn flowers in a ring. In the center of that circle stood the queen, blank-faced in a white prisoner’s shift, with Kasia holding on to her arm; Kasia looked around and saw me with relief on her face, but I couldn’t get anywhere near her. The crowd was packed up the stairs, hanging over the edge of the overlooking mezzanine to watch.

The royal secretary was almost crouched before Marek, speaking in a tremulous voice, holding a heavy law-book in front of himself as if it could make a shield. I couldn’t blame him for cowering. Marek stood not two paces from him like a figure stepped out of a song: encased in armor of bright, polished steel, with a sword in his hand that could have cut down an ox and a helm under his arm. He stood before the secretary like a figure of avenging justice, shining with violence.

“In cases—in cases of corruption,” the secretary stammered, “the right of trial by combat is not—is expressly revoked, by the law of Boguslav the—” He fell back with a choked sound. Marek had swept the sword up barely inches from his face.

Marek continued the movement, swung the sword around all the room, turning: the breathless crowd drew back from the point. “The queen of Polnya has the right to a champion!” he shouted. “Let any wizard stand forth and show any sign of corruption in her! You there, Falcon,” he said, whirling and pointing up the stairs, and the whole court’s eyes turned towards us, “lay a spell upon her now! Let all the court look and see if there is any spot upon her—” The whole court made a sound together, a sigh that rose and fell, ecstatic: archdukes and serving-maids as one.

I think that was why the king didn’t stop it right away. The crowd on the stairs parted to make way for us, and the Falcon swept forward, his long sleeves trailing down the staircase, and coming to the floor made the king an elegant bow. He had obviously made ready for this moment: he had a large pouch full of something heavy, and he crooked his finger and brought four of the high spell-lamps down from the ceiling, to stand around the queen. And then he opened the pouch and flung a wave of blue sand up into the air over her head, speaking softly.

I couldn’t hear the incantation, but a hot white light came crackling out of his fingers and ran through the falling sand. There was a smell of melting glass, thin wisps of smoke escaping: the sand dissolved away entirely as it came down, and a faintly blue distortion formed in the air instead, so that it seemed I saw the queen and Kasia through a thick pane of glass with mirrors all around them. The spell-lamps’ light shone blazing through the distortion, brightening as it passed through. I could see the bones of Kasia’s hand through her flesh, where it rested on the queen’s shoulder, and the faint outline of her skull and her teeth.