The Crystal Heart (10 page)

I walked at a fast pace and reached the stream in just over half the time the journey had taken us when we'd first arrived. The boat was exactly where we'd left it a month ago, and though some dust and leaves had blown into it, it was undamaged. Pulling it out of the bramble bush, I carried it down to the water and rowed some way up the stream, to where it merged with another, bigger waterway, for I wanted to be sure that it was navigable all the way. It was, and the bigger stream would eventually lead us to the little town that marks the Ruvenyan border.

I rowed back and replaced the boat in its hiding place, then began the journey home. I was glad to get back under the shelter of the trees, for the wind had risen and the temperature dropped while I was on the water. If I hurried, I'd arrive at the cottage well before nightfall. I was eager to tell Izolda that everything was all right with the boat and that at least the beginning of our journey
should be easy enough. I knew that, like me, she was keen to get going.

But even if for some reason the pigeon did not return, I thought, we will go anyway. Staying in our forest hideaway was no longer an option. I no longer wanted to feel as though I was obliging Izolda to keep away from the world. If we were abroad, at least she'd be free. And we'd both be safer than if we were at large in Krainos. Sooner or later, someone would find out about the cottage, and then we'd be caught like rats in a trap. At least there were more places to run to abroad. And there was the hope that diplomacy might get us out of the difficult situation we were in.

Dear Angels, she is beautiful, I thought, as I hastened through the forest. It was getting colder, for the wind was insinuating itself even here. Rain began to fall, droplets at first, then faster and faster and I was soon soaked to the skin. Thunder and lightning started, crashing and flashing violently around me, and it was as much as I could do to keep my nerve and keep walking.

Suddenly, a lightning flash brighter than any I'd seen smashed into the sky, immediately followed by the most deafening crash of thunder yet, so close that I could not help an involuntary shout. The next moment, I had to jump for my very life, for just a short distance down the path, a big tree came down with a screech of timber and a cacophony of branches, missing me by mere inches. I hardly had time to draw my breath when another giant of the forest screamed in pain as it split from end to end, disembowelled by the storm, then toppled on top of the other, the reverberations from its fall echoing through the forest.

With the path completely blocked, I waited until the storm had subsided. By then, my pulse had returned to normal, but not the light. It was fading fast, for though by my reckoning it was not yet late, the storm had darkened the sky. And though the worst of it had passed, the rain was still falling, making everything gloomier than it normally would have been.

Maybe it was that gathering darkness, maybe something else, but I felt a greater sense of urgency than ever before as I hacked my way through the forest. Was it my imagination or were the brambles and thorns thickening as I went? Did that vine really try to snare my ankle as I pushed my way along? That muffled sound I could hear – was that the soft pad of paws behind me? Would I ever find my way back to the path?

I'm a man of the woods, I know them well, and they do not frighten me. But at that moment, unease ran deep in my veins, thinning my blood, making me feel light-headed and confused. Something bad was brewing. Something really bad … I set off at a run, ignoring scratches, bruises and obstacles. Twice I fell, but I got up again and kept running, the breath whistling in my throat, every muscle straining with effort, running as if the Evil One himself were after me.

At last, I reached the good side of the path, but I did not stop to draw breath. The night was really closing in now and, even at the speed I was going, I would not be back at the cottage till it was completely dark. It was still overcast and there was no moon so it would soon be pitch-black. I ran and ran till my sides ached so much I had to stop. It was then that I saw it, above the trees, in the direction of the cottage.

The sky was no longer dark. On the contrary, it was getting lighter, as though the night had already been and gone in the blink of an eye and now it was morning. Only, the light was not the grey, quiet light of morning …

‘Fire!' I shouted desperately. Lightning must have struck somewhere near the clearing. The cottage could well be ablaze. Oh, what had I done, leaving Izolda on her own!

I don't remember how I managed to cover those last few miles of ground. I know only that, when I finally burst into our clearing, I could hardly even comprehend the unbelievable sight that presented itself to me, for dreadful images of Izolda surrounded by fire were still flooding my brain.

‘It took you long enough to return, Kasper Bator. I imagine the Princess thought you had left for good.'

The words – the voice – made no sense to me. How could it be?
How could it possibly be?
I looked around the clearing, struck dumb as my mind struggled to adjust to the reality of what I could see.

The clearing was filled with men holding torches – men in the uniform of Krainos. In the blink of an eye, my whole world shifted. Turning, I sprang upon the man who had spoken, going for his throat.

‘Izolda!' I yelled. ‘Izolda! You villain! What have you done with Izolda?' I was wild with rage and fear so strong that it took three men to drag me off him.

Rubbing his throat, Commander Alek Los said harshly, ‘Bator, do you really want to make things worse for yourself?'

‘You black-hearted beast, where is Izolda?' I howled, earning myself a painful cuff on the side of the head from one of the guards.

‘What have we done to the Princess of Night? Why, only returned her to the bosom of her loving family,' said the Commander, smiling a thin, hateful smile. As I turned, following the direction of his gaze, I saw the most incomprehensible sight of all.

Izolda, on the arm of a tall man dressed all in red, his black eyes cold and hard as stone, under a thatch of startlingly white-blond hair. Beside them were two giant guards. They were not in the uniform of Krainos but in the black armour of an alien race. I'd seen figures like those in history books. The Marshals, crack troops of the Prince of Night.

‘Surprised, Bator? Why should you be when betrayal is your own coin?' came the Commander's gruff voice, but I paid him no heed. All my attention was on the group advancing towards us. On Izolda, who was pale as a ghost, but whose eyes shone with a hectic gleam.

‘So, you are the young man who rescued my daughter.' The Prince of Night's voice was as soft as the Commander's was harsh, and for a moment, I was fooled by it, imagining that somehow the horror that was pounding in my blood was nothing more than a misunderstanding. There had to be some simple explanation why the men at arms of both Krainos and Night were here.

I nodded.

‘Then it appears I do owe you something in return,' said the Prince.

I heard him, but I was looking at Izolda. Why didn't she speak? Why did she look at me like that? ‘Izolda … Izolda, what has happened?'

Her eyes filled with tears but still she did not speak. Her fingers fiddled with the pendant at her neck. I could not
understand it. Shaking myself free, I took a step towards her but was immediately stopped by the Marshals.

The Prince of Night shrugged. ‘The Princess is grateful. That is all you need to know. It is for this reason your life will be spared.'

I stared at him. ‘I don't understand,' I said weakly.

‘We have come to a certain understanding, the Commander and I. All you need to know is this. My daughter will come home. You will stay. Your life will be spared. Beyond that, I cannot say.'

‘That is ours to determine,' said the Commander, with a grim little chuckle.

‘You cannot do this,' I said, finding a desperate courage. ‘We are pledged to each other. We love each other. Nothing can part us.'

‘Nothing?' said the Commander, with a thin smile. ‘
We
certainly can. Isn't that so, Your Royal Highness?'

But the Prince of Night did not answer him. Instead, he fixed me with an expressionless stare. ‘You will never see her again. Not in this life, nor the next.'

‘No!' I cried. ‘Izolda, speak to him! Tell him!'

She looked at me, and now the tears were running down her cheeks. She opened her mouth as if to speak – and then closed it again. Her fingers tightened convulsively on each other, and in a flash I saw what was going on. She
couldn't
speak. Her father had put a spell of silence on her. I saw the pleading look in her eyes and knew that, for the moment, I too must keep silent, or it would be the worse for her. She was not going with her father of her own free will; she was being obliged, because of some dirty deal that had been done between two enemy lords.

Do not be afraid. I will move heaven and earth for you
, my eyes promised her.
Nothing will keep us apart. I promise, with every fibre of my being, that I shall escape, find my way back to you, and free you once more.
Outwardly, it must have looked like I had given up, for I bowed my head meekly.

The Prince of Night smiled and turned to the Commander. ‘We will be speaking further soon.'

‘Very well,' said the Commander, nodding. He proceeded to say more, but I was no longer listening, for I had noticed something nobody else had.

Izolda's hand that had been fixed around her pendant had come stiffly to her side. She unclenched it without looking at me, and I saw something small and shining tumble to the ground to fall under her skirt. The Prince called to his men to go, and while attention was diverted by their departure, I quickly bent down and picked up what she had dropped. It was one half of the crystal heart. As she passed me, our eyes met in a pledge of love for the last time, before I was dragged away and she vanished from my sight.

To pass him without a word or a touch was a thing so painful that I could barely breathe as I walked away. All we could do was speak briefly with our eyes, and all I could hope was that he would understand. I had to make a terrible bargain so his life would be spared. They promised me he would not be harmed, but what are their promises worth? I did not trust that wicked old Commander. I did not trust my own father. It was only Kasper I trusted.

Hold fast to the crystal as you hold fast to our love
, I said to him through my eyes.
Believe, believe without fail in us. Believe that one day we will be together again.

That was the last sight of him I would carry away with me, and it would haunt me for as long as we were apart.

Long ago, the nightmares stopped. The nights grew black and heavy, the days grey and long. My world shrank to four walls, my feelings to a foggy numbness. I saw nobody except for the guards. My parents hadn't come in over a year, and who could blame them? The only way for my family to survive was to forget I ever existed.

In the beginning, the Commander came every day. Then he, too, stopped. I was no longer of interest, even as a traitor. I was nothing. The world went on without me. More to torment me than to inform me, they revealed how it had all been explained away. The people of Krainos were told that the witch of Night had died in a shipwreck shortly after her escape, ending the enmity with the Prince of Night. As to me, I had been captured and would never be released.

During the day I occupied myself with all kinds of tasks. I read, endlessly, books in which there were no people, no feelings. I became interested in geology and learned a good
deal about the composition of soil and rocks. I made small objects out of quick-drying clay, which the guards took to sell. And though I knew they pocketed most of the profit, they did in turn bring me small luxuries of pencils, sweets, newspapers and smoked fish. In one of the newspapers I saw a photograph of the Prince of Night on a State visit, with his smiling daughter on his arm, and it stopped me sleeping for almost a week. I thought then that I might truly go mad. I begged the guards to never bring me papers or anything that might pull me apart again. The world made no sense but it didn't matter anymore, as long as I could keep away from it.

When I was first taken, it was very different. Despite the pain of what was happening to me, a shining belief burned in my heart and armoured my mind. Izolda loved me. She loved me like I loved her – body, heart and soul. Nothing could change the beauty of that knowledge. Even if we had been snapped apart, like the two halves of the crystal heart, we were still one. And though they had taken my piece of the crystal heart, it remained bright in my mind.

The first few days and weeks, it was easy to keep to that dream. No matter what insults they flung at me, no matter how many cruelties they inflicted, I held fast to my shining truth. Even when they delighted in telling me every detail of how hard the news of my treachery had hit my poor parents and sisters – even then, when my stomach churned with bitter sorrow and black pain, I held fast to my truth.
Our
truth.

After I was taken to the prison in the White City, I was questioned for days on end without respite. First, by
a trio of political police. Then by the Lord High Judge, followed by the Chief Magus. There were always brutal guards there, too, and they were the ones who inflicted the beatings, who burned my skin with cigarettes, who threatened to break my fingers. It was they who brought a bear into the interrogation chamber and threatened to set it upon me if I did not tell the truth.

Tell the truth I did, and little by little they were forced to accept that. The Commander sat in on all these interviews, but he said not a word. He just watched and listened with a face impassive as rock. Nothing moved him. When I explained that I'd helped Izolda escape out of love – not hatred – for my country, the questioners had gasped in horror. But not he. When I said that Izolda had not wanted to return to Night because she did not want war to break out again, the others sneered. But not he. When I told them we had planned to obtain the protection of Almain, they all laughed except for him. When the guards beat and tortured me, the squeamish questioners looked away. But not the Commander. Not even a flicker of an expression would pass across his face.

After I repeatedly begged them for an answer, they told me they had discovered the cottage because Fela had been intercepted by a sharp-eyed soldier in a provincial town. But very soon I realised that was a lie. They knew about our carrier pigeon only because I'd talked about Fela and how soon Almain would be coming to our aid. They could hardly have found out where we were from the message Izolda and I had composed. When they saw I did not believe them, they claimed that they had found us because Izolda had betrayed me.

I had laughed and said, ‘If Izolda had done that, then why had the men of Krainos been there too, working in tandem with a supposed enemy?'

For that, I was struck across the face by the Lord High Judge himself. ‘You are a black-hearted villain,' he had shouted. ‘You should hold your tongue if you don't want to swing from the gallows, which is where you should end up if there were truly justice in this world!'

‘You don't think my punishment is just, do you, Lord High Judge?' I had asked. ‘I wonder what the Commander thinks of your opinion, given that he clearly has a nice little arrangement with our erstwhile enemy?'

The Commander gave me a sharp look but said nothing. For my insolence I was given another ‘tickle of the ribs', as the chief tormentor amongst the guards put it.

Nothing they said about how they'd found us, or why they'd allied themselves with Night, made any sense to me. I knew I would not get the truth from them. It was something dishonourable, of that I was certain. Something secret and underhand that had forced the Prince of Night to ally himself with the people who had imprisoned his daughter for ten years. It was only later that I was to learn about the things both sides had gained by the arrangement. But I knew from the beginning that greed must have played its part.

And inescapably for them, part of the deal included me not swinging from the gallows. I was the traitor who could be presented to general disgust as the worst of the worst, who'd used undefined evil magic to do his wicked deeds. The fact that a simple soldier had made a mockery of their so-called impregnable Tower and hidden from
them successfully for weeks could thus be glossed over, as could the fact that now, somehow, Krainos and Night were no longer in a state of cold war. The men of the Supreme Council were masters of the well-spun lie that looks like the shining truth. I had been like all the rest. I had followed along like the other sheep, in the wake of disguised wolves.

After a few weeks, they changed tack. They took off the chains, stopped the beatings, allowed me to wash and gave me clean clothes. I was still kept in solitary confinement but in a bigger, lighter cell. I had a bed, a chair and a table. I was given writing material and some books. Most amazingly, a guard returned my piece of the crystal heart. By way of the Commander's orders, I was told. He'd seen I hadn't broken under bad treatment. He was going to treat me well. Breaking was still the purpose, though. I could see that.

I was still determined to keep to my own truth. Nothing would change that, I had thought. My half of the crystal heart sat on the table in my cell. It seemed to bring me closer to her, as if, wherever she was in her father's underground kingdom, Izolda was looking at its twin half and thinking of me. In those moments, I was happy despite everything. The physical scars were starting to fade and the relentless questioning had halted, too, so that my mind was free to roam.

I needed a plan – a way to escape. It might have seemed impossible to any other prisoner, for where I was held was a prison within a prison, with no entrance or exit to the outside world. But I had done the impossible before. The Tower had supposedly been secure, yet we had broken
out of it. Here, too, I would do it somehow. Little by little, as the questioners and tormentors left me alone, and my spirits slowly began to rise again, I began to think my way around the difficulties that faced me.

First, I needed some idea of where I was. I'd been brought to this place in darkness, and though I knew it was close to the White City, I had no idea exactly where. I didn't even know the layout of the prison itself. Occasionally I heard distant shouts, but I saw no other prisoners. There seemed to be not another soul in my wing, the ordinary prisoners segregated by a thick wall. I constructed a map in my head of what my wing of the prison was like, for I was now allowed to roam the echoing passages and empty rooms.

Looking back, I see I was in a fool's paradise. No matter the hopelessness of my situation, I still
believed
that miracles could not only happen but that I, Kasper Bator, a Krainos man of no particular talent or position in life, was truly loved by a
feyin
princess. I thought our love was a shining truth that nothing could ever dull – a beauty that could never be broken, a promise that would be kept even in the shadow of death. Now I knew that, too, was a lie. Or a half-truth, which I had already learned, to my cost, could be worse than an outright lie.