Silent Kingdom (24 page)

CHAPTER 15

I
slipped in and out of consciousness for hours, praying and thinking with no further clarity. Often I closed my eyes in an attempt to shut out the dark. The cold air kept me shivering even as I pulled my cloak close about me, pulling up the hood and shoving my hands in my pockets. Over the sounds of my heartbeat and breathing, I occasionally heard water drip and distant skittering—probably rats. I cringed at the sound.

Eventually I heard another noise: first, approaching footsteps echoing along the corridors, and then voices. As they drew nearer, I realized that one belonged to a woman. Light pierced the blackness, casting shadows on the wall opposite my cell door. The voices were coming toward me.

To give me food rations?
My stomach growled at the thought, reminding me that it had been a long time since my last meal. But anxiety, fear, and sadness still wrestled within me too, pressing down on my heart and twisting in my stomach until I felt sick. I wasn’t sure if I was interested in food, but I needed it.

“Here we are, Your Highness,” came a guard’s voice outside my prison door.

I almost gasped aloud.
Your Highness?

“Visitor!” the guard shouted gruffly, and he went about unlocking the door as noisily as possible. He swung open my door and stepped aside.

Scrambling to my feet, I blinked against the light streaming in through the open doorway. At first she was just a dark form standing there, still and solemn. Slowly my eyes adjusted so I could see her face, shrouded in shadows. For a few breathless seconds the queen’s expression was void of any signs of recognition.

Why had she come?

Then her stern face softened and her eyebrows lifted: she knew me. With a deep breath, I dared to span the distance between us until I stood directly in front of her. Neither of us spoke as we studied each other in the dim light.

I was startled to find that after years of having to stretch my neck to look up at my mother, I was now gazing down at her. Everything about her frame looked fragile and small. I was dismayed to see what changes four years had wrought upon her: her face was creased with wrinkles, her dark hair streaked with grey, and her eyes dim and sad. Even her posture was less powerful and poised. She looked stern and hard, yet fragile, like the smallest shove could loosen her grip on herself and she would finally give up and shatter.

Without warning, my throat burned with tears, but I held them back. I saw the queen glance over her shoulder, toward the guard.

“Leave us,” she ordered him.

He walked down the corridor to give us space, his heavy boots thudding dully on the stone floor.

The queen turned to me. “So the news I hear from the guards is true. You came back.” Her voice was soft and low. Was she relieved? Accusatory? Prepared to watch me be sentenced to death a second time?

Her eyes. They are so dark.
At first I could not respond for fear of crying and my mouth trembled. Angry, I bit my lip to keep it steady.
How can you stand there and do nothing when your daughter is in prison?
I swallowed and managed to speak. “Yes.” My voice was surprisingly firm.

She lifted her hand…slowly, slowly…and reached out toward me, as if to touch my cheek. At the last moment her hand wavered and her fingers brushed at my hood, sliding it back. Her eyes weren’t as bright as they used to be; they were a faded green that reminded me of seaweed when it washed ashore and began to lose its color. She let her hand fall back to her side.

Our silence stretched on for minutes…hours…years.

Something inside me snapped and I dared to open my mouth, if only to whisper. “Mother.” The word tasted foreign on my lips, sliding around on my tongue like a bittersweet flavor. I stopped, not knowing what to say next.

Her body stiffened and she stepped backward. “How dare you use that term to address
me
.” Tears sparkled in her eyes and her lips quivered as they twisted into a scowl. “My daughter, the princess, was banished four years ago when she chose to slander the king’s name.” The last word came out in a fierce whisper. No matter how angry she had been with me when I was a girl, I had never heard this much fury packed into her voice. “You are not my daughter.
She
would not betray her own father or plot with a band of rebels to murder him. You are nothing but a criminal.”

My mind was numb, my mouth dry. I dropped my eyes to the floor, unable to meet her hard gaze any longer. The familiar pain of betrayal returned, coursing through every vein in my body, squeezing through every organ, threatening to consume me. I could not speak or think or even breathe; I could only feel.

Vaguely I was aware of my hands trembling at my sides while my mother spun on her heel and marched from the room. I forced my lungs to work—sucking air in, out, in, out—as I listened to the departing footsteps, as the light slowly drifted down the corridor. Leaving me in darkness again.

I sank to the floor, leaning my back against the stone wall and becoming increasingly aware of the emptiness surrounding me. A thousand thoughts and emotions whirled through me, the most prominent being anger.
She doesn’t believe the king is a murderer.
My mind reeled.
She does not know. She does not know the king tried to execute me.

But she had still betrayed me. She stood by the king when he “banished” me, and she didn’t even question my imprisonment or execution now. She would let me die.
No mother should treat her daughter this way
. I squeezed my eyes shut against the blackness.
This isn’t right
. The emotion grew—a raging fire towering higher, higher, higher—until it overwhelmed me and erupted in a scream.

My own voice sounded strange in my ears, piercing and wild and desperate as it echoed off the walls. My lungs gasped for air and my raw throat begged for relief before I finally let my cries fade into nothingness. After all my years of silence, my wordless shriek expressed more than an entire book could have. Yet at the same time, it said nothing. It did nothing. I was alone and helpless, without an escape. Still, the sound continued to ring in my ears, pierce my heart, and keep me company long after the quiet settled around me.

Exhausted, I pulled my knees to my chest and wrapped my arms around them. Whether I did it to try to shrink until I disappeared into the emptiness, or to pretend to hold myself together, I was not sure. Slowly I gave into tears. I let the sobs rack my body until I couldn’t breathe and thought I would be ill. After what felt like hours, I curled up in the corner of my cell and managed to sink into a restless sleep.

It was impossible to tell how much time passed. In and out of nightmares, I opened and closed my eyes to the same unending blackness and stillness. Sometimes my dreams taunted me with visions of my mother returning to my cell and having compassion on me, as mothers were supposed to. Other times Avrik was my rescuer, regretting his decision and rushing to my aid like the heroes in books. But no matter what sleep brought, my greatest nightmares were my waking thoughts.

The pain of loss and abandonment was quickly driving away my fears until my worst fear was not to be executed, but to live. Where was the Giver of Life in this living death? Had he healed me in the woods just to lead me here, into isolation and despair? What good was I doing locked in a cell?

As time dragged on and the tears came and went, I began to hate myself, too. Despite the truth I carried, I had held it in all these years. When I could have spoken and perhaps spared others pain, I’d been silent.
What good are words if no one believes them?
I argued with myself, but I knew I was still to blame.
What good is a voice if I do not speak?

In my prison cell I saw myself for what I was: selfish and cowardly. Maybe I deserved to suffer, like my people had. Maybe I deserved to be abandoned, just as I had abandoned my family and my kingdom. Maybe I deserved to die.

At great intervals, a guard would break the silence with his distant footsteps. I watched flickering torchlight dance along the walls outside my cell to herald his arrival. Without ceremony he would shove a tray through the gap beneath my cell door and stride away, leaving my ears ringing from the unusual noise.

I left the first few trays of food untouched. I felt sick to my stomach, not hungry. Burrowing my head into my cloak, I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to escape into unconsciousness again.

At some point I drifted off into a dream that was half-nightmare, half-memory. The details were as vivid as they had been the day the events happened, but some were wrong.

In my dream, I walked with my father along the beach, far below the palace, and listened to his stern voice rise over the sound of crashing waves. It was a day not long before my uncle’s death, when whispers had begun to echo through the palace corridors about the possibility of a new king.

“There is a chance that you and I both will soon be holding a more prominent position in the public eye,” the man before me was saying.

My breath caught in my throat and I stopped in my tracks. It was one thing to hear servants gossip together; it was another to hear my father say the words. Overhead, the gulls’ cries sounded mournful, like notes to a tragic song. Even the sea and the wind spoke of loss. A thousand questions spun through my mind and slipped away just as quickly, vanishing into nothingness. There were no words.

I couldn’t find my voice.

“It will be imperative that you obey me as both your father and sovereign, Halia,” he went on. “I will be ensuring you learn proper behavior for someone of royal blood, someone who might take the throne someday.”

I frowned as my father looked down at me. “Your cousin will be king when he comes of age,” he explained, “as long as disaster or sickness does not strike him as well.” His brow crinkled and he reached out to pat my shoulder. “These circumstances are not pleasant to consider, of course, but they are necessary to prepare for. One can never be too careful.”

Aware of trembles running through my frame, I hugged myself in an attempt to keep warm until I realized I wasn’t cold. A solitary tear crept down my cheek but I swiped it away. Father was not one to give way to expressions of weakness, and I knew he would think crying during a discussion about matters of state would be inappropriate for one of “royal blood.” I hated to disappoint him.

I closed my eyes. In a few moments, I would be fine.
Don’t think about it. Your uncle will be fine. Everything will be fine.

But when I opened my eyes, the dream shifted and the memory transformed into a nightmare. The king was still looking down at me, but his expression was wrong. Instead of his usual firm gaze, he wore an accusatory one. His countenance was hard and unwavering, like the day I realized he was a murderer.

“How dare you betray me,” he said. “How dare you speak words of treason against your father and sovereign! Who do you think you are, that anyone would ever listen to your wild ideas? You are no one. You’re disowned, an outcast—you’re less than a beggar on the streets. Your accusations are nothing but the imagination of a child, the words of a young brat against those of a king.”

I tried to protest, but my throat filled with seawater. It burned my throat, my mouth, and my lungs. I was mute; I was dying. When I opened my mouth to scream in anger and fear, nothing but water poured past my lips.

I woke gasping and coughing. Instinctively my fingers flew to my lips, but my mouth was parched and my throat felt like sandpaper. How long had I gone without drinking?

Slowly I settled back against the cold wall and tried to curl into a comfortable position. Rats skittered across my cell, exploring the tray of old food. Was it the third tray I’d ignored, or the fourth? I shivered, but the sounds of rats gnawing at my rations in the overwhelming quiet were impossible to ignore. There would be no more sleeping again for a long time.

Instead I lay motionless, staring into the darkness and hoping the rats wouldn’t decide to gnaw on me next.
Giver of Life, do you also give death if someone asks for it?

Memories came and went: moments with my father as he scolded me for behavior unsuited for a princess, hours with my mother as we read by the fireside or discussed my future. The memories were so far removed from me now they felt like they belonged to someone else. They’d occurred lifetimes ago, during a time when I’d known security. When I’d looked to the future, I looked to it with hope and purpose, knowing that as part of the royal family, I would be able to play a role in Misroth’s welfare and maybe make my parents proud of me. Maybe even earn their love. There was no anticipation of the nightmare I was living.

Where was that important royal woman now, when I was on the floor of a prison cell, waiting to die?

~ ~ ~

Another age passed until I heard the guard’s distant footsteps returning. As the torchlight flickered outside, the rats scattered.

“Push me your tray,” a gruff voice demanded.

I lay there several moments, wondering if I cared enough to move. I could lie here and never move again. I could refuse to give my father the pleasure of executing me; I could stay here until death carried me away and I could stop feeling pain.

But the anger I’d felt in my nightmare still burned inside. How dare my father steal my life from me? How could I give up now, when speaking the truth was my only chance to give my short life some purpose before it ended?

I used my anger to strengthen me and push myself to my knees. Crawling across the rough stone, I shoved the tray through the gap beneath my door and received a new one. In a way it was good that my chunk of bread was hard and chewy, because it forced me to eat slowly. Even so, the beggar’s meal disappeared all too quickly. My stomach felt emptier now than before I’d forced myself to eat.

But the weight of my despair had eased. Before my inevitable execution, I would make the world hear my voice. I didn’t know how, but I was sure that somehow the Giver would offer me one last gift: an opportunity to speak.

~ ~ ~

I was sure days had passed when I finally heard two sets of footsteps approaching once again. Had they come to lead me away? Would they bring me before the king, or march me off to be executed immediately?