Authors: James Moloney
“That is true,” Lord Alwyn conceded. “But what of it? Some twins can barely be told apart, while others are no more alike than two children plucked at random from the street.”
“My brother,” Marcel whispered slowly, still taking it all in. First a sister, then a father; then a mother, tragically dead by her husband’s own hand. Now he had discovered a brother. He and Fergus had once been sworn enemies, and even now his devotion to the soldier’s life was completely
alien to Marcel. He looked at the shield above Bea’s sleeping figure. “My brother,” he said again, as though repeating it like this would make it easier to believe. How close had they been when they lived together in this room?
Nicola struggled with the same disbelief, but her mind wandered even further. “He’s still up there, in the mountains,” she cried with a sister’s anguish. “He still thinks Damon is his father.”
“So it seems, but it was not meant to happen this way,” said Lord Alwyn, his voice strangely free of the ponderous authority it so often carried. “I should have been more vigilant in my duty to protect you.”
“Protect us!”
Marcel cried incredulously. Suddenly he was seething with resentment at what this man’s sorcery had done to them. “You sent Termagant after me. If she’d caught me in Old Belch’s barn that day, she would have torn me to pieces!”
But Lord Alwyn took them aback with a hearty laugh. “I sent her to stop you, not to kill you. Only a special command from me would have let her harm you, and I was not about to give it. I had chosen her for that very purpose, because she loves you.”
“Loves me? But she growled and showed her teeth. We were terrified of her.”
“Oh yes, and I’m sure she enjoyed seeing you so frightened.”
“You make it sound as though… as though we knew her before you took us away to Fallside.”
Lord Alwyn nodded. “Perhaps it is time I told you the truth. Here, Termagant, come to me,” he called.
Marcel gasped at the sound of that dreadful name. Both he and Nicola looked towards the door in terror, expecting the snarling beast to come bounding in to join her master at any moment. But then Marcel realised that Lord Alwyn was not even facing the door, and that he had spoken softly, so that his voice could be heard only inside this room.
As he watched, astonished, the black cat at his feet abandoned him and padded quickly to Lord Alwyn’s side. The old wizard took something from the pocket of his robe and, stooping gingerly to one knee, he tied it around the cat’s slender throat.
The little cat shook her head, as though a fly buzzed about her ears, and then suddenly her whole body shuddered. Before their eyes, her claws grew rapidly into vicious talons and her front teeth became long, savage fangs. By the time the transformation was complete, the playful bundle of fur had become the terrifying beast they had known in Fallside.
“You named her yourselves, using a word from the fables Queen Ashlere told you. A termagant is a wild and angry woman. Perhaps you had already guessed what secrets lay in her heart.”
“What sort of magic could make this happen?” Nicola asked breathlessly.
“A magic you have already encountered,” was Lord Alwyn’s
cryptic reply. He was testing them, urging them to guess the answer, as he had done with their brother’s bed.
Marcel stared at Termagant’s sleek and awesome lines until his eyes fell on the familiar pouch around her neck. “That pouch. Does it hold something from the Book of Lies?”
“Ah, you have guessed it. A whole page torn from the back of the Book, folded many times to make it fit,” Lord Alwyn announced with a hint of impish delight that astonished them almost as much as Termagant’s sudden metamorphosis. “The Book’s power is to know a heart’s desire. For men, it can tell when that desire is to deceive, but for animals it is less predictable. In her own mind, your little pet is a great beast, savage and feared by all. She was just the kind of guard I needed with me in Fallside, ferocious to anyone who came near and fearsome enough to make you obey me.”
He waved languidly towards Termagant and she snarled suddenly, sending the children staggering backwards.
“Unfortunately, Marcel, I did not anticipate the courage that you and your little friend would find to defy me.”
At a further nod from her master, Termagant’s growl died as quickly as it had appeared and she became calm and docile.
Marcel watched her, his mind still trying to catch up with what his eyes had seen. All the terror this beast had brought him had been for nothing. The claws that he had imagined slicing into his flesh were meant to scare him, not hurt him.
Would there be any end to the way his world was turning inside out?
Before Marcel could make sense of his confusion, Nicola challenged the old wizard. “You said you wanted to protect us. But why did you take so much away from us – our names, who we were, all our memories of life here in the palace?”
“I was only doing what your father wanted, to save you from great harm and misery. Yes, to protect you. That was why he insisted that I go with you to that remote foundling home in the high country. He is a good man who loves you dearly, just as he has been a good king, loved by his people, for his justice most of all.”
Nicola could not bear any more of this. “
His justice!
” she shouted. “How can you say that? He poisoned our mother, his own wife!”
Lord Alwyn winced at her words. “There is much still that you do not know – and even more that you can never know, by the terms of my own magic. If you want to know the source of the evil done within this kingdom, then look to Starkey and those two cousins you helped to release from their prison. Is it any wonder that your own father distrusts you? Those two want his throne at any cost, and Starkey is determined to win it for them, so that he can share in their power and its spoils.”
Marcel did not need to be told what drove Starkey or Eleanor, and he had long since guessed that Damon was just the same. What surprised him, though, were the things he was learning about Lord
Alwyn. He had feared the man since he first set eyes on him back at the orphanage. He had hated him for almost as long. But much had changed since Gadfly had touched down in Elstenwyck – amazingly, less than an hour ago. Where once Marcel had seen an enemy, now the wizard seemed to offer him the truth.
Both wonderful and shocking, that truth told him that Eleanor, Damon and especially Starkey, whom he had once trusted so completely, were the ones to fear now.
Gazing at Lord Alwyn’s ravaged face, Marcel wondered if he dared trust this man instead. What could he find in those eyes? Should he confide in the wizard about what he knew?
“Lord Alwyn,” he began in a faltering voice, “Damon and Eleanor are in Lenoth Crag, trying to raise an army to take the throne. King Zadenwolf is too cautious to help them, but in these last few days Starkey has spoken of another way. He wants to conjure a great dragon. He even knows its name, Mortregis. He wants to summon it up and use it to defeat King Pelham… my father,” he added softly, finding the words strange on his tongue.
“Mortregis!” Lord Alwyn responded with a contemptuous snort. “The beast has been gone for centuries. As Master of the Books, it is my job to see that he never returns.”
“But Starkey is convinced that he can conjure Mortregis from the Book of Lies.”
“Nonsense! The Book of Lies cannot make Mortregis rise up again.”
There was more Marcel could say, but should he? He turned to Nicola, who knew immediately what he was thinking.
“He will find the verses soon enough, whether we tell him or not,” she whispered.
Lord Alwyn had heard her in any case. “What are you two talking about? Verses?”
There was no going back now, and besides, Nicola was right. It was only a matter of time, whether they trusted Lord Alwyn or not. “Some strange verses have appeared in the Book,” Marcel answered reluctantly. “Right before our eyes, in letters of gold. They are still there now.”
At the mention of Mortregis, Lord Alwyn had remained calm, even regaining a little of the disdain that he so often showed for the world around him. But when Marcel spoke of the mysterious verses, he could not hide his distress.
“Show me,” he demanded as he slipped the heavy sack from his shoulder and took out the Book of Lies. Marcel opened the back cover and there were the verses, the letters shining even more brightly than when he had last seen them.
Lord Alwyn’s eyes raced urgently over the words, but once he had arrived at the last lines his confidence rapidly returned. “It is nothing to worry about,” he declared categorically.
Marcel was baffled. Surely the wizard could see the danger threatened in those words. “But the meaning seems so clear, Your Lordship. Starkey
must
be right. Mortregis is more powerful than
any king. There it is on your robe,” he said, nodding at the intricate embroidery that circled the wizard’s legs.
“If you understood these verses as I do, Marcel, you would know there is nothing to fear.”
“But Starkey thinks
I
can summon Mortregis,” Marcel confessed. “He insisted that I had some kind of magic in me.”
Lord Alwyn laughed openly now. “Your magic was just for show, Marcel.”
His magic! Those simple words, uttered with such condescension, had startled him. “You mean I
do
have some magic in me?”
“Yes, you dabbled in such things,” Lord Alwyn admitted in the same patronising tone. “You showed considerable aptitude for the tricks you learned. I wished my apprentices had displayed as much skill for more powerful magic.”
He saw their amazement at the mention of apprentices. “Yes, I tried to teach many a young man over the years, but they proved a poor lot. In the end I dismissed them all.”
“All of them?”
“None was worthy of the power sorcery bestows. Oh, yes, each of them wanted to become Master of the Royal Books after me, and swore to protect the Kingdom as the Master must do. But they failed the tests I set for them. I could not let any of them take my place.”
He had grown solemn and distant as he told them this, but finding Marcel’s eye on him, he permitted himself a tight-
lipped smile. “And I could not let you play too much with sorcery. As a prince, your destiny lay elsewhere.
“I taught you a few tricks, nothing more. That is why you have so many books beside your bed. You borrowed them from me. See this one?” He picked up a volume from the top shelf. “It is a book of charms and incantations. Simple magic, for entertaining your brother and sister. You can probably still manage the easiest of them. Go ahead, try it.”
“What shall I do?”
Lord Alwyn glanced around the chamber until his eyes settled on Marcel’s bookcase itself. “Those books on their side are untidy. Stand them upright on the shelves. Here, I will find the words for you,” and with a sweep of his hand, the pages of the book began to fan back and forth, reminding Marcel of a far more powerful book close by.
The magic stopped, and on the page that lay open before him, Marcel found a simple couplet.
Lines and angles, flat and bland Raise these volumes, make them stand
He spoke them under his breath, prompting a gentle rebuke from Lord Alwyn. “Out loud, boy. The simpler the charm, the louder it must be heard.”
Marcel tried again, with more strength in his voice this time. As he spoke, a strange sensation filled his skull. The
words became echoes crashing noisily against his own thoughts, knocking them aside so that they would not distract him.
Concentrate
. That was what the feeling was telling him, and closing his eyes, he began to focus on the bookshelves and nothing else.
Was it working? A gasp from Nicola almost made him open his eyes again, but he sensed the spell would be broken if he did. He could feel an energy leaving his body now, not enough to exhaust him, but sweat was beading on his brow and his breathing had quickened. Without a view of the bookcase, somehow he knew, nonetheless, that one by one the fallen books were righting themselves.
The door to the room opened suddenly and a woman’s voice called, “Your Lordship, I’ve been sent up with something for the Prince and the Princess to eat.”
Marcel could not block out the sounds and their meaning, trivial though they were. He felt the words inside his head fade instantly, and opening his eyes he was just in time to see book after book rain heavily on to the floor. Only one weighty volume remained stubbornly in place, in the centre of the top shelf.
“Ah, you let the world intrude upon your spell. So like the young and the weak of mind,” Lord Alwyn announced, like a father whose baby son had fallen on to his bottom while learning to walk.
“Just like when he was little, always leaving his books all over the floor for me to pick up,” tut-tutted the plump,
motherly maid as she entered and saw the mess Marcel had made. “Put those things here,” she instructed the other servants who now appeared behind her, carrying a splendid table and three matching chairs. When these were arranged in the centre of the room, the maid placed the steaming tray she bore on the table and stood back.
The delicate fingers of a delicious aroma were already tickling Nicola’s nostrils. She inched closer to the table. Despite the wonder of what he had just discovered, Marcel was doing the same. It was now mid-afternoon, and he realised he had not eaten anything since breakfast.