“Stop already!” Sondra shouted, surprising me and bringing Vesno running to nose her inquiringly. She patted his head, gaze on me. “The fact that Anure abducted us is Anure’s fault. The fact that the wizards tortured Lia is the wizards’ fault. Despite your delusions of grandeur, Con, you are not the master of the universe. Get over yourself.”
I eyed her. “Was that supposed to be a pep talk?”
She bared her teeth in a flesh-eating grin. “Yes. Now, how are we getting Ambrose to let down his golden hair?”
Snorting in turn, I studied the ceiling, then cupped my hands to my mouth to focus my shout. “Ambrose!” My voice ran around the windowless chamber in a mockery of echoes. Ambrose … mbrose … brose … sss. “Ambrose, let us in!” Us in sin sin nnn … “You’d think he’d have a bell pull or something,” I commented sourly.
“But then people could reach him,” Sondra pointed out.
I set my jaw. “This is ridiculous. I’m getting up to that trap.”
“As you say, Conrí.” Sondra snapped me a salute. “I shall locate a ladder.”
While she was gone, I shouted for Ambrose some more, even inciting Vesno into a spate of barking, which made him wildly gleeful. I was jumping up and down, encouraging Vesno to leap ever higher on his hind legs—the wolfhound could clear some serious height—both of us barking at top volume, when Sondra returned with two servants carrying a long ladder.
She eyed me dubiously, but simply instructed the servants to put the ladder in place. I crouched down to calm Vesno, both of us panting. Oddly enough, I felt a little better. Less roilingly frustrated, anyway.
The servants disappeared immediately, both casting wary glances at the ceiling, as if a monster lurked up there. I climbed the ladder, finding a midway point where I could stand and still reach the trap. “It should push up and in,” I remembered.
“Unless Ambrose is sitting on it.”
“He’s not heavy.”
“Are you sure?”
I grunted, not willing to debate that. How Ambrose appeared and how he actually was didn’t always match up. I pushed, and it felt like pushing on the ceiling. Nothing gave. “Ambrose!” I shouted. Vesno circled the bottom of the ladder, adding his howls. Sondra leaned against the wall, calmly putting her hands over her ears.
I slammed the meat of my hand against the trap, yelling for Ambrose. Going up another rung took me a bit out of center but let me coil my legs, giving me spring to pound on the stone in steady thumps that bounced the ladder.
“Con!” Sondra shouted. “Give it up! This is insanity.”
“No,” I snarled, keeping up the pounding. Ambrose was supposed to be Lia’s wizard and she needed him, so he could dammed well step up and be accessible. I’d blast the trap open with vurgsten if I had to. If we had any left after squandering everything we’d painstakingly saved, all on that one battle that should’ve ended Anure forever and had instead left us crippled and broken, Lia and her realm shattered—both continuing to erode beyond recognition or repair.
The rage returning, I unslung the rock hammer from my back with the other and swung it. The leverage was wrong—and the ladder tilted precariously away from the wall with the change in balance—but I heaved the heavy mallet against the stone with a small clang.
“Conrí, please!”
I swung the hammer again, my shoulder protesting the awkward position, but managed to hit the stone harder. Clang.
“Conrí!”
I ignored Sondra, winding up to hit the door again, fury lending me additional strength.
“Con! Listen, you fucking idiot!” Sondra screamed.
Pausing, I glanced down. Sondra stood there, pointing ostentatiously at Ambrose beside her. Vesno sat on his haunches, tongue lolling happily. Ambrose cocked his head at me, his smile very like Vesno’s. “Why, Conrí,” he said mildly. “What an unexpected pleasure. Would you care to come in for tea?”
5
“Is he gone?” I asked Ibolya when she slipped into the darkened room.
“For the moment, Your Highness. But he’ll be back before long. Conrí was most distraught.”
“I heard.”
“When he returns, as he undoubtedly will, if Your Highness still wishes to keep him out, I might have to use power to deflect him.”
“You have My permission.”
“Truly, Your Highness? This is Conrí.” She carried her lit candle to light one on a far table, then moved to the lanterns. “He simply wishes to see You.”
Well, I couldn’t bear to see him. Couldn’t bear to see him worry for me and be unable to do anything to help. No one could. “No, don’t light the lamps. And blow out that candle. I prefer the dark.”
“Yes, Your Highness. Can I bring You anything?”
“No. Leave Me.”
Ibolya poured a glass of water anyway, setting it within reach, and replaced the cooled teapot with a warm one. Then she slipped out the doors, finally leaving me in blessed silence.
Except for Calanthe. As much as I tried to block out Her rage and savage hunger, the din of it roared through my mind, my heart frantically beating to keep up. In the dark, I listened to the raging storm. It only seemed to be growing wilder, tearing at my palace, my island and ripping pieces away. Once it had been second nature for me to steer storms around Calanthe. Though I tried to send this storm out to sea, I had as little strength to do that as to lift my own arm. Ibolya had sponged me clean and assisted me into a fresh sleeping gown, but I was weak as a babe, needing help to use the toilet. And what had come out of me …
I didn’t know what all the wizards had added to my blood, but it was gone now. I hoped. Expelling it all had left me shuddering in a cold sweat, and dizzy to the point of fainting.
All I could do was stare at the shrouded ceiling. My twig fingers caressed the skin of my good hand, tickling and not like a part of myself. I’d never been a person to dwell on death. I’d certainly never longed for death until those last moments on the wizards’ sacrificial altar, but when I’d resigned myself to the inevitability of it, when I’d actively embraced death and welcomed Her in … I couldn’t seem to stop. There might be no coming back from that.
It could be that was one invitation I couldn’t rescind, and those final thoughts clung to everything else I tried to consider, a cobwebbing of death that cast a shroud over my soul. Perhaps my body had only seemed to come back to life—animated by a ghost of my former self.
Unable to summon the will to fight it, I succumbed to the drugging sleep—and the nightmares that awaited me.
* * *
“What’s wrong with Lia?” I demanded.
Ambrose raised an eyebrow. He wore the robes that Lia had given him as court wizard of Calanthe, the dark velvety material studded with constellations of jeweled stars. “Drink your tea, Con, and consider phrasing your questions better. Cookie?”
“No,” I bit out, but I drained the teacup and set it aside. Ambrose never could be rushed along. I fed a cookie to Vesno who’d lifted his tufted ears at the invitation. Sondra stood at the open window, gazing out at something, unflinching though cold rain spattered her face and the fierce wind tore at her clothing. Ambrose reclined on a wine-red sofa with gold tassels. That was new. In fact, everything was new since we’d unwillingly stayed in that tower, the room much larger than seemed possible. It had been divided into work areas, some screened off, others openly cluttered, some I couldn’t seem to get my eyes to focus on. A large bed poked out from behind a curtain, while chairs and more fancy sofas clustered in conversational groupings like a ladies’ salon.