The Lost Realm (19 page)

“That's clever too.” John clapped halfheartedly, but his brow was creased.

“You can do it, John. You taught me how!”

“I doesn't remember that!” Tears sprang to John's eyes. He started backing away. “Why d'you tell me things I doesn't remember? I doesn't even know you. Go away! You makes my head hurt!”

Gulph pursued him. “Please, John, try!”

“Go away!”

“You have to remember!”

“You isn't my friend! Go away!”

Why won't you just remember!
he thought, ashamed at the sudden wash of anger, but powerless to prevent it. By now he'd backed Sidebottom John against the green crystal outcrop.

“What did this to you, John? Was it some kind of magic?”

“Don't like magic!” John batted at Gulph with his hands, trying to push him away.

“Please, John, I just want to help you!”

“Don't need no help! Just want to go home!”

“Where is your home, John? Do you remember
that
?”

“Go away!”

Gulph's head felt hot and dry, as if a sandstorm were scouring the inside of his skull.
What's happening to me?
Then he recognized the sensation: it was the peculiar, arid feeling that came over him whenever he was about to turn invisible. What he'd come to think of as “
desert trance
,” although what deserts had to do with invisibility he had no idea.

The feeling intensified. Heat thumped through him, filling him up. Just when he thought he was ready to burst, he felt himself spilling out of his body and into the humid, Celestian air. The sand was pouring out through his eyes, his nose, his mouth, and he was the sand, and the sand was him. John's face grew enormous before him, and then blurred, and then . . .

I am John. I am inside the cave of his head, looking out through the windows of his eyes. There is movement, dancing light. Sun through smoke. I am afraid, hiding, making myself small. A vertical line of stone: the pillar I am hiding behind. Into the shadows. Hide, John, hide! But my friends . . .

There is Willum, there is Dorry, and there, oh, there is Pip. The players. The Tangletree Players. My friends, in the sun, in the smoke.

In chains.

My friends are in chains, and the chains are in the hands of the undead, the rotting monsters, the bone-men, and they are herding my friends like cattle, and all I can do is hide and watch. I have escaped, but my friends are taken, my friends, oh, my friends are . . .

He was stumbling backward, panting hard, shocked to the core. The eerie sensation of
leaving his body
had come and gone in the blink of an eye. He'd been Gulph, then he'd been John, and now he was Gulph again. He palmed sweat from his forehead and sat down hard on the crystal ground.

“Is you all right?” said Sidebottom John. He looked puzzled but otherwise unaffected by their brief meeting of minds.

Gulph clambered to his feet. His heart was a horse bolting through his chest. He stared into John's eyes, the very eyes which, just a few breaths before, he'd been looking out of.

Not out of his eyes. Into his memory.

Was that true? Had that really just happened?

Are they really alive? Willum? Pip? All the others?

He'd never seen the undead taking prisoners before. They just transformed the living into more walking corpses. What cruel, new plan of Brutan's was this?

Gulph didn't care. If what John had shown him was true, there was only one thing that mattered now. He clapped Sidebottom John on the arm. “Thank you, John.”

“What did John do?”

“More than you know.”

Gulph marched back between the lines of ruby roses and made for Ossilius, who was standing near an elegant crystal sculpture of a swan, deep in conversation with Marcus.

“Ossilius!” Gulph hissed. “They're alive!”

“Who is alive?”

“The players. Pip. The others. My friends. They're alive, all of them!”

“Gulph, wait. How do you . . . ?”

“It doesn't matter. They're alive, and that's that. We have to go back. We have to go back to Idilliam and rescue them!”

“Whom do you wish to rescue?” The voice belonged to Lady Redina. Gulph hadn't heard her following him; she must have moved in complete silence.

He was about to repeat what he'd said to Ossilius, when he stopped himself. He'd already told her he thought Pip and the others were dead. How could he explain his sudden change of mind?

“Er, my friends,” he stammered. “I was just saying that, er, that
if
they were alive, I would want to rescue them.”

Marcus looked confused. He opened his mouth, about to speak. Gulph shook his head minutely from side to side, and to his relief Marcus's mouth closed.

“What makes you believe your friends might still be alive?” said Lady Redina.

“Oh, I don't,” said Gulph. “Don't believe it, I mean. It's just . . . I just hope they might be. If John survived, maybe the others did too. That's all.”

Yes. That's all. I don't have strange powers that let me see into people's thoughts. In fact, there's nothing unusual about me at all. I'm an acrobat, just an acrobat.

“I understand,” said Lady Redina. “You are loyal to your friends. The fact that you wish to help them proves that. It also proves that you are brave.”

She brushed the backs of her fingers down Gulph's cheek. Her hand was hot.

“Sadly, there is nothing you can do. Even if your friends were alive—and I doubt that they are—you cannot now leave Celestis. The lost realm must remain lost. It is the only way to keep it safe from the wars above.”

“You mean we're prisoners here?”

She looked affronted. “Celestis is not a prison. It is a haven. I am not a jailer, merely the one who has granted you permission to stay. That permission cannot now be taken back. It is the way of Celestis.”

Not a prison? I might as well be back inside the Vault of Heaven.

“What if I were to leave anyway?”

“Then you will be in exile. Those who leave Celestis may never return. All who try to enter the crystal realm a second time must die.”

Her expression was stern. Her warning was clear. Yet her words brought Gulph grim hope.

So, people
do
leave. All I need now is to find the way out. And take it!

E
verything the same.

Everything different.

Elodie sat at the banqueting table in the grand council chamber of Castle Vicerin, just as she had hundreds of times before. The polished dark wood of the tabletop gleamed in the light of the hanging chandeliers. The silver plates and goblets gleamed too. On the chamber walls hung tapestries celebrating the many triumphs of the Vicerin family through the ages. Near the door to the kitchens, servants stood, awaiting their lord's command.

Everything just as she remembered.

Everything except me.

And yet, when she looked harder, Elodie saw that there
were
changes, small but unmistakable.

There are two footmen where once there would have been four. And the tapestry commemorating the Battle of Elder Gorge is frayed at the edge.

Glancing up, Elodie noted that only half the candles on the golden chandelier were lit.

The war is taking its toll.

“Have another cake, my dear,” said Lord Vicerin, waving his hand across the table with a flourish. He sat at the head of the table as usual, with Elodie on his right. For now, they were the only diners.

“Thank you, Father.”

She selected a tiny yellow cake from the plate. It was impossibly dainty, molded with flutes and flowers and iced with bright whorls of color. To Elodie, after weeks spent eating roast wild boar, dripping with fat and served on an upturned Trident shield, it hardly looked like food at all.

“Will anyone else be joining us?” She bit into the little cake. It was unbelievably sweet and sticky.

“I thought it would be pleasant to dine together.” Lord Vicerin inserted a lurid green cake into his mouth, trapping it behind his large teeth and mulching it with his tongue. “Just the two of us.”

His words echoed around the chamber. The vast expanse of the banqueting table stretched into the distance. Far away, in the corner of the hall, the servants stood impassively.

“Lovely,” said Elodie, the last crumbs of the cake catching in her throat.

As she watched Lord Vicerin dab at his lips—they looked very red, as if he'd colored them with rouge—a sudden thought came to her.

Did you sit here, Tarlan? If so, what did you make of all this?

The idea of her brother in this ridiculous carnival of a castle—that wild boy from the frozen wastes of Yalasti, who spoke with animals and turned up his nose at the slightest hint of civilization—almost made her laugh out loud. She grabbed her own napkin and pressed it over her mouth.

“I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to have you back under our wing again,” Lord Vicerin said, setting his plate aside. “The day you were snatched away by those dreadful ruffians . . . Oh, Elodie, it was the worst day of my life.”

I bet it was
, Elodie thought.
You'd lost your little puppet, and your key to the throne of Toronia.

“I sent men after you at once, of course,” Vicerin went on. “I scoured the whole of Ritherlee, offered rewards. I was so desperate to have you safe once more.”

Under your control, more like.

Lord Vicerin beamed. Tiny blobs of icing had stuck to his teeth. “And now you have returned and our ordeal is over. Our family is whole once more.” He paused, clearly expecting her to speak.

“I can hardly believe it myself,” Elodie managed to say.

Clasping together his long, powdered hands, Lord Vicerin leaned forward over the polished table. “And here you must stay. Your protection is now my priority, dear Elodie. That is why I must ask you some questions, just a few. Questions about those awful vagabonds who kidnapped you. And about what happened. You do understand, yes?”

“Of course, Father.”

“Let us take this Fessan, for example. How much responsibility does he give to his lieutenants? Is he a dictator? Or is he one of those dreadful people who likes to talk out his problems until the sun goes down?”

“I don't really know what a dictator is, Father.”

“Very well, then what of his tactics? I understand you were present at the Battle of the Bridge, although what a daughter of mine was doing in the middle of such a scene I cannot imagine.”

I was using my sword to hack down undead warriors, if it's any business of yours. And I am not your daughter!

Elodie made herself nibble at another cake. “Yes. I was there.”

“The knowledge makes my heart weep. Now, Trident attacked even though the bridge was broken in the middle. How did they plan to cross it? Do they have siege engines?”

“What's a siege engine?”

Lord Vicerin patted her hand. “Never mind. The attack was repelled, we know that. Trident's numbers must have been greatly reduced as a result.”

“A lot of people died.”

“Did Fessan plan to recruit new soldiers in Isur?”

“We passed through some villages. Most of the people threw rotten fruit.”

At first Elodie had to work hard to keep her answers vague. But as the interrogation went on, she relaxed into the part she was playing.

It's only what you expect of me, isn't it? You think I'm a silly little girl who only understands dresses and pretty jewels. Maybe I used to be. But not anymore.

“You are a very brave girl,” Lord Vicerin said, leaning back extravagantly in his chair. His tone—that of a parent speaking to a small child—reassured Elodie that she'd succeeded in her attempts to fool him. “Won't you take some more refreshment?”

He spooned pieces of fruit from a tortoiseshell bowl onto her plate. Each was carved into the shape of a rose.

“Oh, I nearly forgot.” Lord Vicerin smiled expansively. “There is just one more question. Are those wretched Trident ruffians still spreading rumors that you are one of three? A prophecy triplet? And that your siblings are alive?”

His tone was light and breezy. Yet his eyes were as cold as steel.

“Yes,” she said. She didn't like this turn of the conversation, and judged that any further lies would have to be dressed in the truth. “They all believe it.”

Here it comes.

“And what about you, my dear? What do
you
believe?”

She chewed and swallowed a petal carved from a pear.

“I believe I
am
one of three,” she said.

Lord Vicerin's eyes widened, then grew narrow.