Sunlight and Shadow (8 page)

That was when I heard it again, louder this time: the high, sweet call of bells. The sound they made seemed to set my whole heart jangling, so near, so very near it was to my heart's own song. And at that moment, I knew what I must do. If I was ever to search out my own destiny, find the one whose heart beat with mine, I had to set out. Right now.

“My lord,” I said, and I went to kneel before my father as my brother had done. “I honor you, and I honor this land. But as you commanded me to carve what I would from the heart of the Kings Oak, now let me say what is in my own heart.”

“I pray you, do so,” my father said. And he stooped and put his hands on my shoulders, urging me to rise.

“Father,” I said when I had gotten to my feet. “Let my brother, Arthur, be king when you are gone. For his heart bids him to stay, while mine urges me to go. I cannot be a good king, a true king, if my heart lies elsewhere, no matter how much I love our land or the people I would govern.”

“Is this truly what your heart speaks?” my father asked.

“It is,” I answered steadily. “I swear this on my honor, as your son.”

“Then so be it,” my father said. He embraced me, stepped forward to embrace my brother, then, with one arm around my shoulder and the other around
Arthur's, he turned all three of us to face the assembled crowd.

“Hear now, all of you!” he cried. “Prince Tern will travel through the wide world, listening to the music of his heart until he discovers what it may hold. Then, with all my heart, I hope he may return to us once more.

“Prince Arthur will succeed me. He will rule in this land after I am gone. Now let the kingdom be filled with rejoicing, for the riddle of the King's Oak is solved!”

“Long live Prince Arthur!” the people shouted. Caps flew into the air. Children clapped their hands as they were hoisted up onto shoulders. “Long live Prince Tern!”

“I'll thank you to notice they said my name first,” Arthur murmured as my father went back to stand beside my mother, leaving the two of us to stand waving at the crowd.

“They're just brownnosing,” I murmured back. “You're going to be king, after all.”

At this, Arthur gave a shout of laughter, and the people hoisted us up onto their shoulders and carried the two of us home through the dawn.

Shortly after a good breakfast, in which it seemed to me the entire kingdom took part, I tucked the flute into a pocket of my tunic right above my heart and pulled a well-provisioned knapsack upon my back, for I am not entirely without good sense. Then I set out to answer the call of the bells.

The Lady Mina Speaks Her Mind

Fear.

I could feel it in the arms that held me. Taste it on the tip of my tongue. Hear it in the sound of the wind as it tore through the trees. Fear and pain and rage combined.

My fear. My pain at the duplicity of my father. The breaking of my mother's heart. The fear of my father's soldiers. Where the rage came from. I could not tell. But, every now and then, like a flash of sheet lightning against a pitch-black sky, came an emotion that stood alone, and this one was easy to identify: It was the Lord Sarastro's triumph.

Just when I was sure my ribs would break from being bounced against the hard shoulder bone of the one who held me, I heard a barked command, and the company halted. Almost at once there came a great clang, like the raising of a portcullis. There was a second command, and, again, we moved forward. As we did so, I heard the hard-soled boots of the soldiers ring out upon stone. Since I was facedown, I could easily see the way that sparks flew up, so smartly did they march inside the Lord Sarastro's
dwelling place. With a second clang, the great doors of iron closed behind us.

Trapped, I thought.

“Set her down,” said the Lord Sarastro. “But bring her along.”

At once, I was set on my feet. One strong hand remained on my arm. It propelled me through a series of narrow corridors so swiftly, it was all I could do not to stumble. Then, with a suddenness that reminded me of the way the earth will sometimes abruptly fall away on both sides of a twisting mountain path, the walls of the corridors winged back and a great hall yawned before us.

I could tell this mostly by the feeling of immense open space, by the way the room felt, not because I could see it for myself. My hood was still pulled over my face, so low I could see nothing save when I gazed straight down.

“Release her,” the Lord Sarastro said. And, at his command, the hand fell away. I heard the scrape of a boot as my captor stepped back. I was left standing alone.

Of course my first impulse was to push my hood back, the better to study my new surroundings. Or, if not that, then at least to stare with open defiance at the man who, within the last few moments, I had decided I would never call father.

I did nothing.

Instead, I kept my head bowed, my hands folded
inside the sleeves of my cloak. For it came to me without warning, as inspiration often does, that my silence might be a weapon I could use in whatever battle I was about to fight with the Lord Sarastro. That there must be a battle seemed obvious.

He had broken the agreement made at my birth, broken his own oath. Set his will against my mother's and broken hers into pieces. But he had yet to learn how strong my own will was.

“Welcome, my daughter, Pamina,” the Lord Sarastro said. “Welcome to your new home.”

And, at his words, I felt my legs begin to tremble as a terrible emotion seized my whole body.

You are wrong, my lord, I thought. I cannot have a new home, for I never had an old one. A home is a place one's heart creates and so recognizes as its own. A place it enters of its own free will. All others are merely dwelling places.

I bit my lip to keep from crying out my pain, for it seemed to me, in that moment, that I saw my future spreading out before me. My father would marry me to some stranger of his own selection, a man who matched the criteria of the Lord Sarastro's heart but not mine. I would spend my life in the dwellings of others. I would never know my own true home.

The pain of this realization stopped up my voice, so I made no answer to the Lord Sarastro's welcome. “Let me take you to your room,” he finally said
when it became clear that I would not reply. “Perhaps, when you have had a chance to rest, you will see that all will be well.”

How can it be, when it has begun like this? I thought. Though the truth was that the pain of this moment had been started long ago, in the moment my parents first turned away from one another.

He must have made some signal, for, again, I felt that strong hand upon my arm. It piloted me across the great hall and toward a flight of stairs. As I lifted my foot to place it upon the first step, I suddenly cried out, for, as the torchlight fell upon the stair, light leaped into being, a light so bright it all but dazzled my eyes. Some vivid mineral flecked the stone, sleeping deep within until awakened by the light of the torch.

“This is porphyry,” the Lord Sarastro said as he paused to let me catch up. “Do you know it? It is beautiful when the light shines upon it, don't you think?”

It is, I thought. And it is not It seemed even the steps beneath my father's feet had been created to prove a point, the same point he had driven home to my mother by snatching me away. No matter how strong, no matter how beautiful, dark would always be overcome by light.

And so, for the third time, my father, the Lord Sarastro, spoke to me and I said nothing. But beside me, I heard the one who held me make a sound. In
one ear and out the other before I could determine what it meant.

“Statos,” my father said as if he'd understood precisely. “That will do. You must give her time.”

Statos. The golden one, I thought. The one who had tried to trick me into giving him my hand. And I knew then what my father had in mind. There would be no parade of potential husbands. There would be no need. He already had the one he wanted.

Without another word, my father turned and continued to the top of the stairs, a servant lighting the way before, Statos and I following behind.

At the top of the stairs was a wide, curved corridor of white marble, gleaming like a river of milk in the light of the torches. Open to the air and bordered by a low balustrade on the left and by the stone wall of the mountain itself on the right. The Lord Sarastro moved down it at a brisk pace, so swiftly I almost had to run to keep up, an action which caused my hood to slip back. For the first time, I began to get a better look at my surroundings.

A row of illuminated sconces lined the wall on the right. Between them were hung tapestries depicting the course of the sun across the sky. Like the stairs which I had climbed to reach this place, the background of each tapestry was dark. But the sun was embroidered in gold thread so that it flashed in the light.

At the far end of the corridor, my father stopped.
In front of him was a single door. At his nod, the servant knocked once, then threw it open and stepped inside. My father waited until I had reached him.

“This will be your room, Pamina,” he said. “If not tonight, then one day soon, I hope that you will find it to your liking.”

Then, with a gesture that I should go first, he ushered me inside. It was like walking into a jar of honey, warm and golden. The floor was burnished amber. Great swathes of gleaming silk just a shade lighter adorned the walls. A bright fire burned in a black iron grate, with a great overstuffed chair and matching footstool pulled invitingly in front. An enormous bed covered in ivory damask stood on a raised dais in one corner.

But it was the windows that drew me most of all. One entire wall of lead-paned glass. How it will sparkle in the sun! I thought. Even now, the stars shone through, beautiful and hard as diamonds.

“How many times must I tell you to draw the curtains at night, Gayna?” I heard my father's voice say. And it was only then I realized that the room was already occupied.

She was tall, dark-haired, and beautiful. But then I knew these things already, for I had seen her often enough. At the sight of her, my heart gave a strange twist. This was the girl my father had raised instead of me, the forrester's child.

He has given me her room, I thought.

“I beg your pardon, my lord,” she said, and she moved toward the windows.

“Why not leave things as they are?” a new voice proposed. Deep and smooth as the velvet drapes for which Gayna's long fingers were even now reaching. Statos, I thought. His voice was like the color of the room, warm and golden as honey.

“Your daughter is accustomed to the night, my lord. Perhaps seeing one thing which is familiar will make this transition easier for her.”

He was right, of course. Not that I liked him for it. I saw the girl, Gayna, hesitate, as if uncertain which man she wished more to please.

So that is the way things are, I thought.

“Very well,” the Lord Sarastro said, though I could tell by the sound of his voice he wasn't pleased. “But for this one night only. Pamina is my daughter, as much as she is her mothers. Not only that, she lives with me now. That is a fact to which she must grow accustomed. The sooner the better.”

He talks about me as if I wasn't even here, I thought.

Gayna's hand dropped to her side. The room filled with silence.

“I will leave you now, daughter,” the Lord Sarastro went on. “Gayna will stay with you this one night, so that you will not be lonely. In the morning, I will send for you.”

I laughed before I could help it. I didn't mean to, but the sound rose up and out, quick and bitter,
before I even knew that it was forming.

“You're worried that I'll be lonely?” I asked, and I made no attempt to hide the derision in my voice. The disbelief. “Don't you think it's a little late to be concerned about that?”

In the shocked silence that followed, I heard a piece of wood snap inside the grate.

“So you can talk,” the Lord Sarastro said, his voice curiously mild. “I was beginning to wonder.”