The Crystal Heart (2 page)

Days passed, then weeks. It wasn't quite what I'd expected. I might have worn the smart grey uniform with its red stripe, but I was hardly carrying out elite work. At nearly nineteen years of age I was the youngest and most junior member of the Tower Guard, so my duties were pretty menial. I was a kitchenhand, in fact.

When I had first arrived I was introduced to the chief of staff on the island, Lieutenant Romus, who asked what my parents did for a living. On my telling Romus that they owned a small restaurant, I was swiftly assigned to a position in the kitchens. I had thought of protesting, but one look at the Commander's face informed me that I would be making a mistake. This was all part of the test and I had to accept it.

So I did. Romus sent me off to get kitted out in the uniform and I was allocated a place to sleep – a hammock in a wooden dormitory with other young guards. My peers accepted me with a sort of casual kindness, but they
were clearly not interested in me. After introductions in the dormitory that first night, they returned to their own evening pastimes, which, for those who weren't on watch, mainly consisted of playing cards and other games of chance.

After the first couple of nights, I was allowed to join in on one of those games, and soon proved that I knew my way around cards. After a short time, three of those card players – Franz, Serek and Marcinek – became my friends. Franz also worked in the kitchens, but as assistant to the cook. The other two had duties in the armoury, which Serek said mostly consisted of cleaning guns that had never been used.

From the outside the island might seem like a fearsome place, with the grim Tower and its deadly prisoner. But actually, despite the fact that from time to time we were reminded by the chief of staff about how important our jobs were and how we must always be on our guard, life on the island was pretty quiet, even humdrum. With the officers' neat thatched houses dotted around the place, complete with little gardens, and the cluster of buildings for the single soldiers, it looked and felt pretty much like any small settlement, apart from the fact there were only a few women on the island. And there were no children at all – they were all sent to school on the mainland. But though I'd got used to my new surroundings, I couldn't help being aware of the Tower and wondering about the prisoner. I'd asked my friends, but none of them had ever seen her. In fact, neither had most people on the island. ‘The door to the elevator is always locked and Lieutenant Romus keeps the keys,' Franz said one evening when we
were sitting around the card table. ‘He goes up every week when the room must be cleaned.'

‘But who cleans the room?' I asked.

‘Oh, an old woman who is specially brought over from the mainland. But she's never seen the witch. She's blind.'

‘Blind!' I exclaimed.

‘Yes. If she wasn't, she'd have to wear a blindfold, like Lieutenant Romus and anyone else who goes up there,' said Serek. ‘Plus, the witch is made to wear a veil whenever there are any visitors. Remember, if your eyes were to meet hers, you'd turn to stone.'

‘So no one knows what she looks like?' I said.

Serek shook his head. ‘No. And nobody wants to, either.' He leaned forward. ‘I've heard that if she meets your eyes, she can burrow into your mind and read your dreams. And then she destroys you.'

‘I don't really understand how that power can remain to her when she's locked in the Tower,' I said. ‘Isn't it supposed to ward off all magic?'

‘It does,' said Marcinek, ‘but I guess the bosses think it's better to be safe than sorry. I tell you what, if I had to go up there, I'd make certain I was wearing a blindfold! And if ever you draw the short straw, Kasper, you'd better do the same thing!'

‘Ha! I'm neither a blind cleaner nor a bigwig, just a lowly kitchenhand,' I retorted. ‘So there's no chance of my going up to face the witch.'

‘And I would keep it that way,' said Franz. ‘Now how about dealing those cards you've got in your hand?'

Despite her fearsome reputation, the witch seemed to eat and drink like anyone else, for her food was prepared in
the kitchens and sent up the Tower by a contraption called a dumb waiter – a mechanical platform that went up a narrow elevator shaft from the cellar. I'd seen the food before it went up – and there were certainly no eyes of newts or toads' legs or whatever you expect to see on a witch's menu. No, the witch ate the food we ate, which is to say, big hearty stews and the occasional roast – nothing fancy. Our cook, Flamel, prided himself on his plain meals. ‘Food fit for soldiers,' he'd declare, waving his spoon around. ‘And if your society ladies ever visit, they'll have the same menu, no matter what!' Franz and I would look at each other and stifle a desire to laugh. For what lady would ever visit the island, anyway?

Only once did anything trouble the even tenor of my days. I was crossing the courtyard on some errand when I happened to glance up at the single window of the Tower, and just for an instant I saw a blurred shadow move behind the dark, barred glass. My pulse quickened. I thought to look away, just in case the power of the witch's glance could pierce through the glass. But I was much too curious. Look as I might, though, I could see nothing beyond the merest hint of a form, nothing more. Suddenly, I became conscious of an odd feeling in my throat – a thickening, a choking. Quickly, I looked away – and when I looked back, she was gone.

I told my friends about it that evening. ‘I feel stupid that I looked away so quickly,' I confessed.

Franz laughed. ‘You'd have been stupid if you
hadn't
looked away!'

‘You'd have been a lunatic,' Serek chimed in.

‘No, you'd have been a statue,' said Marcinek, ‘frozen there with your mouth wide open like a goldfish.'

They'd never seen anything at all at the window, not even a shadow, not even the faintest shadow of a shadow, and they intended to keep it that way. ‘Don't look up there again,' Franz advised me.

I nodded, but truth to tell, a part of me wished I'd seen more. I sneaked glances up at the window over the following weeks, but I never saw anything else. And in time, I forgot about it.

Three months into my time on the island, and it all felt normal to me. The island, the Tower, the unseen prisoner – it was my life now. I was homesick at times – I missed my parents, the village, my beloved woods, my old friends. But I had made new friends, and despite the pot-scrubbing and floor-washing, life on the island was much better than life in the recruits' hall with that bully Gawel bellowing in my ears and having slops served up on tin plates. Flamel's food might be plain but it was hearty and good, and we young guards were all treated fairly.

I wrote to my parents several times about life on the island, and they replied saying how pleased they were to hear I'd settled in well. They were proud of me, just as Commander Los had said they would be. They could hold their heads up high not only in Fish-the-Moon but in the market town nearby, because no one from our region had ever been chosen for the Tower Guard. I was by way of being a local hero now, they said. This made me happy, though I was honest enough to admit to them that I had started out as a lowly kitchenhand.

‘From little things, big things grow,' my father had answered.

‘Take care of yourself, my dearest child,' my mother had added. She still thought it was unsafe. I understood that from far away it could look like that. But from close by it was all so different. So reassuring. So normal.

Until the day it all changed.

It was a day like any other. I'd finished my morning's work in the kitchens and had lunch in the mess hall. Afterwards, my friends had preferred to stay inside and play cards, but I felt restless that day and in need of some air. I walked out of the soldiers' quarters, past a couple of the officers' houses, and then turned sharply down a path that led to the other side of the island, the side that faced not the mainland but the open sea. On one of my earlier wanders, I'd found a little sheltered beach where there were rock-pools in which sea urchins lurked. I was fond of the taste of sea urchins, and had a thought to collect some to cook up for a card-party snack the next day.

I was squatting by a big rockpool, scooping up one sea urchin after another, when all at once a sharp pain burst behind my eyes. Overbalancing, I hit my head on a rock and fell headfirst into the water. My eyes stinging, my lungs bursting, I thought I was going to die. And then, suddenly, I heard a voice – a girl crying, ‘Why? Why?'

Then another voice, which I recognised to be Commander Los, said, ‘I am sorry but it has to be. On the day of your eighteenth birthday, you must die. It's the only way to keep our land safe.'

Spluttering, coughing, I managed to crawl out of the water and lie there gasping. I could feel a bruise forming on the side of my head where I'd hit the rock, and my throat was sore from swallowing salt water. The headache or whatever it was that had made me pass out so suddenly had gone. And yet the words remained, repeating themselves over and over in my head.

My heart thundered. I tried to tell myself it had been nothing other than a hallucination after hitting my head. But it hadn't felt like a hallucination. It had felt utterly real.

What did it mean? Forgetting about the sea urchins, I hurried away from the rockpool and headed back to the comforting cluster of buildings. I meant to catch my friends before they returned to work to tell them what had happened. But they'd already left so I went back to the kitchens, which I found in an uproar.

‘Where have you been, Bator?' shouted the chief kitchen hand, Lew, as I skulked in. ‘We're loaded down with work, and you go sneaking off!'

‘What?' It had been an ordinary day when I'd left.

‘We have massive preparations, pulled on us at the last minute,' snapped Lew. ‘All the top people from the mainland are going to be here for a high-level Supreme Council conference tonight, and we have to cater for them all. Commander Los, the Lord Chief Justice, the Lord Administrator, the Chief Magus, the University Chancellor and heaven knows who else.'

‘But why?' I asked.

‘Do you think they told me? Something mighty important, because we're not allowed to send in the usual waiters. The food's got to be ready and placed inside the conference hall before they start. And everyone will be confined to quarters while it's happening. Oh, stop looking at me with your eyes popping out like a frog's, boy, and get that pile of cutlery polished till it shines!' He dumped a mountain of silver knives and forks in front of me. They looked old as the hills and about as dirty.

So I sat there and polished and polished, and all the while my hands were working, my mind was racing. Why was the Supreme Council of Krainos meeting here, on the island? Why all the secrecy? Could it have anything to do with the voices I'd heard – those words? Surely not.

It's the only way to keep our land safe
, the voice had said.
His
voice.
On the day of your eighteenth birthday, you must die
. And that girl's voice, her crying … How could such a wicked thing have come to my mind? Alek Los was a true hero, not someone who would murder a young girl in cold blood. He was not like the others on the Supreme Council, whom nobody held in much affection. Like everyone else in Krainos, I looked up to the Commander. He had saved our country. He continued to serve it selflessly. His aim had always been to keep us safe. Always …

My parents had always said I put two and two together and came up with the wrong sum, that I had too much imagination. Gingerly, I felt the bruise at my temple. I knew I should just dismiss the whole experience, but I couldn't. I had to know if those words I'd heard were real. I had to find out from someone who knew about
these things. From someone who could see into one's dreams …

I caught my breath as I realised where my mind was leading me. It was crazy. Dangerous. Yet not to try to find out seemed more dangerous than anything else. I had to see the witch. I had to ask her what it all meant.

I could hear my friends' voices in my head:
Lunatic! Stupid! Reckless!
But I also heard the voice of curiosity – the voice that had been nagging at me ever since I came to the island. I'd take all precautions. I'd wear the thickest blindfold I could. The witch's capacity for magic might be quelled in the Tower, but not her second sight. It was inborn in immortals. You could no more take it from them than you could unhook the moon from the sky.

I had to speak to her. Something deep inside told me it was urgent. The Commander's honour was at stake. I wanted to be sure we still had truth and justice on our side; Krainos must not be stained with a young girl's blood. And if it had been a hallucination, then she would tell me that too. She had to. Immortals cannot lie about what they see in second sight. They are bound to tell you. I knew that from all the old stories about the immortal
feya
. A
feyin
, who is only part-
feya
, may lie just like full-blooded humans do. But never an immortal. And so one way or the other, I would have my answer.

Now, for a way to get up to the forbidden room … I'd never be able to get past the locked door to the elevator, but I could go up in the dumb waiter. If I crouched down low I could fit in its narrow shaft. There was a lever you turned in the cellar to open and shut the door, and if I left it open down below, I could get down again without mishap.

I waited for what seemed like a long time. The conference doors stayed closed. The rest of the Tower Guard were confined to quarters but the kitchen staff had to keep working.

‘And I don't mind staying behind till the kitchens close,' I told Lew.

He looked hard at me, then growled, ‘I guess you think you're going to get all the leftovers.'

I nodded ruefully, trying to look as though he'd rumbled me.

‘Then you'd better stay till I tell you to go home.'

‘Yes, sir.'

I told Franz I'd volunteered to work extra hours because I couldn't afford to lose at cards again. And it was true – I had lost at cards a couple of evenings in a row. ‘Just tell Serek and Marcinek that old devil of a Lew kept me back,' I added. ‘I don't want them to know I'm penniless. You know what it's like.'

‘Sure, friend,' said an unsuspecting Franz, clapping me on the shoulder. ‘Rather you than me.'

Lew certainly kept me busy. I washed dishes till my hands were wrinkled, and swept till my arms ached. After I had finished all my work, I slipped into the cellar when Lew and Flamel weren't looking. I could hear them toasting each other and talking for what seemed like hours. Before long, I heard the scrape of chairs as they got up, blew out all the lamps and noisily clumped off to their beds.

At last, I was alone.