Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy) (13 page)

“And how would I know that the sorcery is working?”

Grial smiled, and the smile filled her face, but never quite reached the depths of her so-very-dark eyes.

“You would know it worked,” she said, “because by the end of the day and night you and this city would still be alive and standing.”

Another long pause of grim silence.

“Wait!” said the King. “You say that only the ultimate figure of authority, the—uhm—highest ruling
personage
may attempt this feat of sorcery? Could it be interpreted to mean the one who is highest ranking?”

“It could, Majesty, it certainly could.”

“Well then!” King Roland Osenni exhaled in profound relief. “While it is obvious that I am the King of Lethe and ruler of this fine city, it cannot be forgotten that we have an even higher authority in our midst! Naturally I speak of Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Princess Claere Liguon, who is the Emperor’s own daughter and Heir to the Crown of the Realm! Why, it is clear as day that she and none other must be the one to perform this deed of sorcery!”

“Oh, Roland, are you certain? Why, the poor dear is but a child!” Queen Lucia spoke up, with an uncertain glance to Grial and then back to her spouse.

“She is certainly a capable Grand Princess, and she is
of age
, if you might recall, having recently turned sixteen—”

“But she is
dead!
” Lucia said.

“Even more reason why she should be the one to do this
dangerous
procedure,” the King said firmly. “No further harm can come to her, if she takes care to keep away from burning projectiles, and if she is properly guarded—as she most certainly will be. Her Imperial Highness has already demonstrated an excellent diplomatic ability in her attempt to parlay with the villain Hoarfrost. Now she can demonstrate her ability to
rule
.”

“Wonderful! It is settled then, Your Majesty!” Grial said in her ringing voice. She looked at the King unblinkingly, with a curious smile.

“It certainly is settled. You, Mistress Grial, will now proceed to show Her Imperial Highness how it is all to be done. And so, let us not waste another moment here.”

And with those words the King wiped the palms of his hands against his jacket and sent servants to inform the Infanta of her new duty and fate.

S
now was falling.

Outside the window of the moving carriage the air was thick with the illusion of white blossoms descending from heaven, delicate petals swirling, and the streets of Letheburg appeared to be ghostly shapes of pallor. Occasional dark lines of building corners came into view and angular roofs jutted out, and then came lines of street lanterns burning in rare bright spots through the veil of snowfall.

Claere Liguon sat next to Vlau and across from Grial in the carriage. They were headed once more toward the city walls.

Half an hour ago, Claere had been in her chambers in the Winter Palace, seated on the sofa, her soul isolated in the prison of her dead flesh, as always. Only now that same soul was a strange,
joyful
prisoner, brimming with a sense of completion . . . a soft wistful serenity, and a rush of impossible wonder.

Everything was different now, after what had happened between
them
in the darkness before dawn.

He
was at peace with
her
at last, even though he was never to be at peace with himself.

He loved her.

After their moments of shared intensity—the confessions that had happened just before the first light, awkward, bittersweet, perfectly forthright for the first time, and at long last—after he had wept and wanted to die, and offered up his life to her, Vlau had fallen asleep once more in exhaustion. Only this time, his head rested in her fragile lap, and her fingers, cool and brittle like china and stained with his tears, were cradling him gently, stroking his soft dark hair . . . even though she could barely feel its touch.

And then came the knock on the door, shattering their illusion of peace, and once more the Royal Summons.

Claere felt something like a distant
memory
of having a heart, and then having that same living heart torn out of her by the disruption of their impossible, illusory,
soft time
together. Vlau came awake into grey dawn and into both exultation and despair, for he glanced first into her eyes, and there was everything in that look, all of him. “Claere . . .” he whispered. And then they faced the summons together.

This time, fortunately, they saw a familiar and welcome face. Together with a liveried royal servant, Grial, of all people, entered the chamber.

Grial was dressed as always in a colorful shabby dress and stained apron, and her kinky strands of wild unruly hair stood out past her attempt at a head kerchief.

But even as Claere looked at her, there was something decidedly
different
in Grial’s very dark, very black eyes. . . . Whatever it was, however, Claere had no time to consider.

“Good morning, Your Imperial Highness! And Vlau, my dear young fellow!” Grial exclaimed, and her raucous loud voice for some reason acted like a warm soothing balm.

“Grial!” said Claere. “Oh, I am so glad to see you! What are you doing here?”

“Well, dearies, my heart is entirely aflutter to see both of you!” said the older woman, advancing to the sofa and suddenly putting both her hands on each one of their shoulders. “But, it appears that we have a very long day ahead of us, dumplings! Up you go, right now! To the battlements we head immediately, on the fine orders of His Royal Majesty—and a fair amount of orders there have been indeed, I dare say! An order here, an order there, and it all comes down to this—Letheburg needs
your
help, young lady, and a Grand Princess is the only one who can provide it!”

“What?” Claere almost forgot to draw the requisite amount of air to operate her lungs, and at first it came out in a creak. “
My
help? What do you mean, Grial? What does the King command? The battlements, again? Is it the Duke Hoarfrost?”

“No, girlie, thankfully it is not that stubborn old lump of a Duke, not this time. Instead, I am going to show you a little bit of—well, how does one call it?—oh yes, I do believe it is called
magic
. But, fear not! Because magic and sorcery is in truth all nonsense and silly posturing while following a complicated recipe, and ordinary smart people are rightfully cautious of all that woo-woo, as well as any sane person should be! Thus, no—while His Majesty might expect me to show you spells and sorcery, what I am going to teach you instead is the magical power of your
desire
.”

Grial proceeded to describe with her usual manic energy and enthusiasm what was expected of Claere—how she was to circle the entire walkway around the city battlements, then stand up and hold the torches, and of course how she was to dream and think and use the power of her imagination
just so
, and in a
very particular
way.

While spewing forth this equally disturbing and comforting torrent of chatter, Grial took both Claere and Vlau by the hands and practically dragged them after her, first however ordering Vlau to grab his warm cloak, and use the privy next door to Her Highness’s chambers, since it was going to be a very long day and night. Grial then told the Palace servants to hurry and fetch some freshly baked rolls for the young man to eat on his way—since there was no time for a sit-down breakfast.

A short time later they descended the many Palace stairways, exiting outside into a pale grey world filled with flurries of snow. Next thing they knew, they were stepping into a carriage surrounded by a military convoy, and sitting down on velvet-upholstered cushions across from each other. Grial wore her usual simple coat and her wide-brimmed hat, while Claere had her new velvet cloak courtesy of the King, and Vlau was dressed in a barely adequate wool jacket worthy of a lower servant.

Vlau however did not seem to be aware of anything else around them, and did not even notice that he held Claere’s cold little hand in a tight merciless grip—not until they were seated and being driven through the city.

Claere broke the silence at last. “Why me?” she asked. “Why does His Majesty want me to do this thing?”

“Because,” Vlau said with intensity, answering in Grial’s stead, “you are the only one who can.”

“Oh, well said, young man, well said!” Grial nodded at Vlau with a smile of approval.

In a matter of minutes it seemed, they approached the city walls. It was soon apparent how badly these fire-ravaged neighborhoods had suffered since morning, for even the new blanket of snow did not sufficiently cover the smoking ruins of wooden houses and the piles of rubble resulting from the projectiles cast by the catapults. Soot and grey smoke was everywhere, mixing with the snowflakes, and so were the garrison soldiers, carrying out their grim duty and moving rapidly to perform the needed tasks in this broken military hive.

Their carriage stopped at the pomoerium space before the walls, filled with wounded soldiers and supply carts and smoking rubble, and the small convoy of the King’s elite soldiers accompanying them led the way. Claere recognized the same captain who had taken them to parlay with Hoarfrost, and this time he bowed to the Infanta respectfully, then nodded to Vlau. Following him, they again ascended to the battlements, engulfed by an auditory sea of shouts and hoarse cries of agony and the familiar crackle of the flames. Except, now the flames beyond the walls had gone down to a low simmer instead of a roar, the orange glow had been replaced with a thick curtain of black smoke, and the Letheburg soldiers were engaged in fierce melee fighting along nearly crenel and merlon of the parapets.

Overhead the sky was slate and silver, and beyond the walls, a chaos of dark crawling shapes of the dead silhouetted against the falling snow.

“Stay well back, Your Imperial Highness!” the captain cried hoarsely, walking with his long sword drawn. “Stay as far away from the outer edge of the exterior wall as you can—” And then he turned with a fierce cry and parried a strike from the mace of a burly dead soldier who had scaled the parapet right next to him.

“Oh, my
 . . .” Grial shook her head as she stood just behind Claere and Vlau, watching the hell unfolding.

“What is your name, captain?” Claere said, raising her mechanical voice above the din.

“Brandeis, Highness!” the captain replied, having cut off the limbs of the enemy soldier, casting him back over the walls, and continuing to walk ahead of them.

“Captain Brandeis, would you have a sword to spare, for this man here who is at my side?” And Claere nodded in the direction of Vlau who gifted her with a look of gratitude and intensity.

In moments, a spare sword was procured, and Vlau Fiomarre was properly armed for the first time in days—indeed, for the first time since he had struck his love down with the dagger—

No, don’t think, don’t think
. . . .

“Now, then,” Grial said, as she waved to a soot-covered soldier here, and another group of tiredly grinning musketeers there. “I think it is time to start.”

Claere stilled for a moment, gathering her will and her thoughts and her strength. She looked out over the walls at the distant horizon of haze and snow and enemy chaos. “I am ready,” she said. “What must I do?”

“First, the easy part, dumpling,” Grial said with a smile. “You take a nice leisurely walk all around the city,
your city
, and I’ll be right here beside you. As you walk, imagine that you are drawing the line of a great city-wide circle directly into the ground below. Make it take root and continue downward underneath you, many, many feet down, deep below, through the walls of stone itself. See that the line is drawn by every footstep you take and it is shaped and marked in the stone beneath your feet by the very shape that is your body, its death shadow and its once-living reflection, all moving endlessly forward. . . .”

As Grial spoke, in a voice that was both resonant and sing-song, for a moment Claere thought she saw, in a purely strange instant of doubled vision of soot, snow, and smoke,
someone else
in Grial’s place—a tall statuesque woman dressed in an ancient flowing garb, with her dark hair braided in a stern regal crown, and her face impassive and beautiful in its immortality. . . .

The vision lasted an instant only—then once again Claere was seeing Grial, and none other. And thus she started walking forward, her thin frame held tense and straight, in a balancing act to keep her dead body upright. She looked below her feet and before her, allowing herself,
her mind
, to soar suddenly—to transform into winter air, into in a butterfly flurry of snowflakes, and into the many gusts of ice wind all around as the world tilted and then straightened again in vertigo, for the ground was up and the sky was below, and everything, everything was
hers
.

Thus did Claere Liguon, the Grand Princess and the Infanta of the Imperial Realm, together with her ethereal death-shadow, circle the city of Letheburg, making it her own.