Two and Twenty Dark Tales Page 5

  She insisted on dressing herself, which fortunately had been a quirk of hers back before her transformation. Then, it had been because she didn’t want maids to see the strange dyes on her hands, the unattractively bulging muscles of her upper arms, the occasional cuts when she had needed to use her own blood. There had been rumors about her back then, of course, whispers that she snuck out at night to practice witchcraft, that she was apprenticed to a powerful and evil witch. But there was a large difference between whispered rumors and confirmed rumors.

  Now that she had been a mouse, none of that mattered. But she still refused to let her maid dress her, even though the endless buttons and ties of her gowns were difficult to master. Because she still carried a knife strapped to her leg, and she certainly didn’t want the maids seeing that.

  It was a simple knife with a short handle and a straight blade, nothing ornate or valuable marring its simplicity. Here in her room, she couldn’t tell whether it had been forged by moonlight. But she knew that just touching it made her hands tingle—with memory or magic, she couldn’t tell—and that staring at the shiny blade made her head hurt. She kept it strapped to her leg, hidden beneath voluminous skirts, and waited for her chance to learn more.

  She managed to sneak back into the library only once. It required a glamour—a small spell, needing no more than a prick of her own blood and proximity to an hourglass—and then, while her evening maid was distracted by a handsome footman, Amarind slipped invisibly out of her room, down the hall, and into the library.

  The grandfather clock chimed slowly as she entered. Amarind waited for the chimes to die, then approached it hesitantly, not sure what exactly she wanted. It was an old, stately, and powerful clock; she was not yet skilled enough to touch her blood to it and control the outcome. But maybe she didn’t need magic that strong to find out what had happened to her.

  She dragged over a small, ornate chair, climbed onto it, and touched one hand to the hour hand of the clock.

  Time whirled around her, flinging her mind back, into a memory so real it enveloped her. She was lounging on the white couch, playing with the folds of her dress. It was short and stiff, a child’s dress, and her body was a child’s body.

  “I saw you do it!” An even younger child was hanging over the back of the couch, all spindly arms and wild brown hair. “You turned Cousin Cedric into a frog. Tell me how you did it!”

  “I did no such thing,” Amarind said loftily, though her whole being hummed with secret knowledge. “You have quite an imagination, Lily.”

  “Why won’t you tell me?” The younger girl pulled herself over the back of the couch and sprawled into Amarind’s lap. Amarind laughed and pulled her close, hugging her while Lily squirmed to get free.

  “I will tell you,” Amarind promised. “I’ll tell you about the magic, and the clocks, and the Witch. When you’re old enough.”

  Lily snorted, got free, and stomped away. Amarind laughed and stretched … and time hurtled forward. She stood in front of the clock, balanced on the tiny chair, eyes blurred with tears.

  Lily had never gotten old enough.

  She could have asked the clock to show her that. But her glamour was probably about to wear out. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see her sister die.

  She made it back to her room just as the glamour began to fade. Her maid didn’t bother to ask why she was crying.

  ***

  On the third day, Cedric left the castle for a day-long hunting expedition. It was foolish of him, but as Amarind recalled, he had never been one to forgo his pleasures. And maybe he thought she was harmless, now that she had spent the past three days wandering about court in soft-colored gowns.

  She worked the glamour again, making it stronger this time. No one stopped her when she left the castle, or when she stepped out of the formal gardens and into the woods. She checked, but no one followed her as she walked along the narrow path lined with dead leaves and mud.

  A mouse would never have walked like this, in a straight line, out in the open. Amarind had to force herself to keep putting one foot in front of another, to not dash sideways into the shadows of the trees. Above her, the tree branches crisscrossed the sky, letting in only the occasional, sharp shimmer of white sunlight.

  This path, she had learned early, was there for her but not for anyone else. It had been that way since she’d first found it, at the age of twelve, and followed it to the cottage where the Witch was waiting for her.

  She didn’t need the clock, this time, for the memory. She would never forget the first time she had walked down this path. It had been more obviously magical then, fairly shimmering with enchantment and wildness and the possibility of escape. She had run down it without a second thought, desperate to get away from the stifling trap that was her life, to find anything—anything—that could breathe some magic into her endless, dreary days.

  Today she walked slowly, stepping over a fallen sapling, aware that there were worse traps than the constricted life of a princess. At least a princess could dream of something different. A mouse could not dream at all, could not even think past the next bite of food or the next place of safety or the next burst of terror. Every single second of its life was a cage.

  Amarind shuddered all over, then set her chin and kept walking. She turned around a bend in the path, and there it was.

  Today it wasn’t a cottage. It was a house, tall and stately, made of yellow bricks with crystal windows. The Witch’s home was never at exactly the same place on the path, and it never looked exactly the same either.

  Amarind left the path, tramping through ferns. There was no sign of the Witch, and that was also the same. The Witch couldn’t leave the house. Someone had trapped her there long ago.

  The door swung open as she raised her hand to knock. Amarind took a deep breath and walked into the empty front room.

  It was the only room in the Witch’s home she had ever been allowed into, and it never changed. The wooden floor lined with rushes, the long table and elaborate brocade chairs, the pot in the corner where she had spent so much time stirring and stirring. Amarind’s upper arms ached just looking at that pot.

  And at the far end of the room, so immense it should not have fit, a grandfather clock of wood and gold and diamonds. Its base and sides were carved with runes that, Amarind knew from experience, made your vision blur if you stared at them too long. The clockface was carved of diamond, but had no arms. The pendulum and weights were solid gold, and despite the glass covering, the power leaking out of the clock was enough to make Amarind shiver.

  “Stepmother?” she said carefully.

  “I’m here,” the Witch said. And she was, sitting in the chair at the head of the table.

  Amarind dropped into a curtsy. Her heart was pounding, but that, too, was nothing new. Despite all her years of tutelage, the Witch still terrified Amarind.

  As a child, she had secretly liked that rush of fear, that sense that anything could happen to her at any moment. It was part of why the Witch’s home was the only place she had ever felt truly alive, away from the sameness and boredom of every day at court, where it felt like nothing new could ever happen.

  That had been before she learned what true fear was. Before it was driven into her that anything really could happen, including unthinkably terrible things.

  When Amarind rose from her curtsy, the Witch was staring right at her, eyes large and dark against her unnaturally white skin. She was as cold and beautiful as ever, and as unmoved by whatever she saw on Amarind’s face. Aside from insisting she be called Stepmother—for whatever reason, that amused her—the Witch had never acted as if she cared what Amarind did, or who she was, or why a princess was willing to stir her cauldron and run her errands in return for a few scraps of spells.

  Right now, though, there was anger on her face, vast and terrifying. She looked Amarind up and down and said, “You bring a weapon into my home?”

  Amarind’s hand flew to her leg, to the hardness o
f the knife hilt beneath her skirts. “No. I don’t even know how to use it. I’m just keeping it because it was here when I… when it…” And then the question flew up her throat and out. “Did you turn me?”

  “No,” the Witch said.

  But she didn’t bother to ask what Amarind meant.

  There were no hands on the clock face, and that always meant a spell had been cast, a spell so powerful that the Witch had drawn on the power of Time itself. Transformations were powerful spells. The Witch had taught Amarind how to do them, and Amarind had spent many days turning cats into birds and dogs into cats. Once, in a fit of spite, she had turned Cedric into a frog.

  But none of those enchantments had lasted more than a minute or two. Time ruled the spells it lent its power to, always. Only the Witch had ever been able to make any spells last. Only her castings had ever wiped the hands off the face of the great clock.

  “If you didn’t turn me,” Amarind said, almost steadily, “who did? Who else has that kind of power?”

  “I am hardly the most powerful of my kind,” the Witch said. “Someone trapped me here, after all.”

  “Who?” Amarind asked.

  The Witch’s mouth went flat, and the small, hunted creature in Amarind cringed back, recognizing a powerful predator when it saw one.

  But Amarind wasn’t a mouse anymore. She could be a predator too, even if her strength was only a fraction of the Witch’s. And she still had a knife strapped to her leg. She forced herself to meet the Witch’s eyes, and hold herself still.

  She had never before defied the Witch in even the smallest of ways. Just the touch of anger in those black eyes made her feel she was about to die. But by now she was used to that feeling.

  At last, the Witch looked away, and Amarind found that she could breathe again.

  “I cannot speak of that one,” the Witch said flatly. “Nor should you. You were a mouse; now you are human again. You need to regain your place in the castle, do you not? I have spells that can help you with that.”

  That was why Amarind was here. But it made her suspicious, that what she wanted should come to her so easily. Slowly, she shook her head.

  “I need to know who did this to me,” she said.

  “Why?”

  Because someone had made her small and afraid and helpless, and she needed to do the same to whomever that person had been. Someone had killed her parents, had ended forever her sister’s laughter, and that someone must be punished.

  None of which the Witch would understand. So Amarind said, “Because they might try again.”

  The Witch was silent for a moment. “You don’t remember any of it?”

  “No,” Amarind said.

  “That can happen, with transformations.” The Witch’s voice was smooth and ice-sharp. “I could restore your memory. But it would require much power.”

  And I would have to pay for it. Amarind didn’t know what the Witch would want, but she knew enough to shudder. “No.”

  “You cannot do it yourself, you know. Enchantments cannot be broken from the inside.”

  There was a hint of bitterness in the Witch’s voice, and Amarind didn’t dare look at her. She turned and started for the door.

  “As you wish.” The Witch’s tone didn’t change. “Leave the knife here, and I will use it to find out who changed you.”

  On the threshold, Amarind stopped and turned around. The Witch was still smiling.

  In the ten years she had labored here, the Witch had never offered her any sort of aid. And there was something… hungry… in her eyes.

  She wanted the knife.

  Where had the knife come from? Amarind was a princess, not trained in knives; she could as soon have wielded it effectively as shot an arrow. So it must have been used that night, by her attackers. Somehow—with magic, no doubt—she had taken it from them.

  By her attackers…

  Who hadn’t attacked only her.

  Amarind’s stomach heaved. The deathblood of a virgin princess. Lily, so young and trusting. And the blade that had soaked up her blood was only a leather sheath away from Amarind’s calf.

  She wanted to unstrap it and fling it away. But she met the Witch’s eyes, so vast and hungry, and felt like prey. The feeling was familiar; she had sensed it every time the Witch looked at her in this vast room with its silent clock. But until now, she had not recognized the feeling for what it was.

  She remembered the cat’s breath wafting hotly over her body, and with the greatest effort, managed to meet the Witch’s eyes instead of turning and scrabbling away.

  “No,” she said.

  The Witch stood.

  Physically, that was all she did, but suddenly Amarind felt smaller than when she had been a mouse. It was as if a vast darkness spread around the Witch, filling the room, squeezing against Amarind’s skin and snaking into her body. That darkness seeped around her heart, and suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

  The Witch smiled, and Amarind knew that with one twitch of her finger, that darkness would squeeze her heart into a pulp. The Witch wouldn’t change expression, either, while she did it. She wouldn’t even blink as she watched Amarind die.

  “No,” Amarind said. Barely a whisper, but the Witch heard.

  After what seemed like forever, the darkness faded away, and the Witch sat down. She looked at Amarind, a single crease marring her forehead.

  “How did you know?” she said.

  Amarind shook her head, unable to speak.

  The Witch blinked. “You didn’t know that I can’t take the knife?”

  Amarind shook her head again.

  The Witch’s eyes narrowed. “The terms of my confinement are… subtle. I cannot take, and I cannot call. In the hundreds of years I have been in this house, you are the only person who has ever managed to find me. I used to wonder why. I used to think that if you could do it, someone else could, and would. But now I wonder.” The tip of her tongue flicked out, quickly, to lick her lips. “That makes you important, my child, to those who wish to keep me caged.”

  Amarind suspected that wasn’t a good thing.

  “I’ll give you the knife,” she said. “But I have to bring it back to the castle first. I have to use it to find out who betrayed my family. Once I’ve done that, I’ll bring it back to you.”

  The Witch sat perfectly still for a moment. Then she said, “Go, then.”

  Amarind went.

  ***

  Upon her return to the castle, Amarind went straight to the library and stood in front of the clock, her heart pounding.

  How had the Witch known about the knife?

  No, that was the wrong question. She had to ask another question first, a question she should have asked long ago: why did she know about the Witch? What did the Witch have to gain by teaching a princess magic?

  The deathblood of a virgin princess.

  Powerful enough to transform a human being into a mouse. Or to break a powerful enchantment and set a witch free?

  Enchantments cannot be broken from the inside.

  Amarind reached under her skirt and drew the knife. She held it up and looked at it, just as the door slammed open and the king strode in.

  Amarind whirled, but made no effort to hide the knife. Cedric was wearing hunting clothes, brown and green, and a short brown cape. Clearly, her disappearance had worried the staff enough that they had called him in from the hunt.

  Equally clearly, Cedric was not happy about that.

  “Where have you been?” he snarled, after only a quick glance at the blade in her hand.

  Amarind lowered the knife to her side, the way she had seen men do when they were about to fight. Cedric didn’t look the slightest bit wary, which was wise of him. Amarind had no idea how to use a knife in a fight. She suspected she wasn’t even holding it right.

  Cedric scowled at her with a malicious arrogance meant to remind her where the power lay. She should have been frightened, perhaps. But the visit to the Witch had accomplished what those v
isits always did: to remind her how much greater and vaster the world was, how petty the powers and concerns wrapped around this mundane court.

  Not that disdain would help her if Cedric decided to imprison or execute her. But it would make her feel better while he was yelling at her.

  “I think,” she said, “you know where I’ve been.”

  Cedric was silent for a moment. Then he reached behind him and pulled the library door shut.

  “Now why,” he asked, “would you think that?”

  “Because someone killed my sister and anointed this blade with her blood.” Amarind was gripping the knife hilt so hard her fingers hurt. “What did the Witch offer you, in exchange for her life? The kingship?”

  “Of course,” Cedric said.

  In the silence that followed, Amarind realized he never intended her to leave this room alive.

  “She gave you what you needed to engineer the coup,” Amarind said steadily. “She probably told you how to arrange it. And in return…” She wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her fingers clenched even more tightly around the hilt.

  “Yes. All that, and more.” He stepped toward her. “And all I had to do in return was bring her this knife.”

  “Not quite all.” Amarind was amazed at how calm her voice emerged, when she felt like she was drowning in rage. “You had to make the knife first, didn’t you? Forge it by moonlight.” Her voice was not so calm anymore. “Anoint it with my sister’s blood.”

  “It would have been your blood,” he said flatly, “if you had been where you were supposed to be.”

  “You can’t bring her the knife,” Amarind said. “She’ll use it to set herself free. This is what she’s been after, all along…” And not just, she realized suddenly, since the coup. It was why she had allowed Amarind to find her, years ago. She had probably meant to make the knife herself, to kill Amarind when the time came and use her blood.