The boy came back to consciously slowly. It felt as if he ascended to wakefulness through layers of water, first dark, then blue, then the azure of the sky brimming with light. Without knowing where he was or how he had got there, he choked awake, sat upright, coughed and looked about in a panic. He remembered ghaist-grey hands, like claws and cloying coldness, but now he was lying on a floor of hard stone, cut from marble and merely cool rather than chill. Everything around him was darkness. He groped about and found a limp hand. Feeling along the fingers, palm, arm, he found Caewen’s shoulder and her hair, and her gently touched her face. She was breathing, but seemed to be asleep.
Before he spoke, the boy tried to think about whether there was anything inside him.
It didn’t feel like anything had made a home of his heart.
But how would he know?
Perhaps there was a demon inside him and it was simply silent and watching?
He spoke. “Please wake up. Caewen, please.”
At the same moment a light bloomed and opened at the farthest end of the dusty hall. Patches of starlight like stepping stones seemed to manifest themselves out of the stone floor and a glow like wan fire blazing on gold poured out of an open doorway. The boy looked, and he saw heaps of gold and coins, and also burnished armour of strange and wondrous make, helms of silver and bronze, shields studded with green-glinting stones and swords and axes of a weird glittering metal. It looked like a trove fit for a king–or he thought, fit for a long-vanished people of wizardry.
He could see now that Caewen lay on her back and had a faint frown on her face as if she were dreaming unpleasantly. Without warning, Caewen’s hand leapt and grabbed him by the wrist. Her grip was as tight. It hurt.
“Ow,” he said, without thinking. She opened vague and distant eyes at him, seemed to realise what she was doing, and let go.
“Sorry. I thought… I don’t know what I thought. Bad dreams. Bad dreams. She touched her forehead and screwed her eyes shut. “The fetch was in my dreams. It was laughing at me. And there was something else: a man in charcoal and ivory, with long hair and a beautiful face. His eyes shone. He called me beautiful, and he kissed me.” She touched fingertips to her lips. Then, a look of embarrassment overcame her and she shook her head, and tried to smile, and looked around. Where are we? What happened? I only remember a cold voice, and shivering, shivering… and hands.”
“I don’t know,” said the boy. “But there is light now and doorways too.”
A glance around.
“And treasure in heaps. Something is amiss.” She stood. “I think we’ve been misled.”
“How so?”
“Let us discover.”
She nodded towards a richly carven doorway that dominated the farthest wall. Light spilled from it. “Let’s find out.”
They picked a path around the coins and strewn swords, shields, bright green stones, helms and breastplates. Neither of them were keen to touch anything in the room.
The light grew stronger as they approached the door, until it was like standing in the glow of ten thousand candles. On the other side of the doorway, there was another room. This was also piled with treasures, but there was also an object in the midst of the room. It was something like a grand casket, but it was cut from crystal as transparent as thin sheets of ice. Lying within, on pillows of green and gold velvet, was a woman of strange, unearthly beauty. She wore battle-harness and armour that was dinted and stained with dirt and blood. From above her left breast, dangerously near the heart protruded a great, thick-shafted arrow with white and red tufts of feathers. But most strange of all, her chest was rising and falling slowly. Though she looked as pale as death itself, and though her eyes were shut, and she did not move except for her breathing, she was clearly still alive. A voice spoke to them, carrying across the gulf between minds:
– i am asleep, yes. that is true. and you have been tested and you have proven yourself, lady-warrior, lady-mage, lady of sword and magic. you passed my test.
“But I refused the sacrifice,” said Caewen, and it seemed to the boy almost as if she were speaking underwater. Her voice was weird to hear in this odd atmosphere.
– ah, but no–you did make the sacrifice. You sacrificed power, eternal life, great weapons, troves of magic and enchantment, wealth and riches and gold and silver and stones of purity and light: all for one life. that was the sacrifice.
“And if I had not?”
– if you had not? the boy would have awoken unhurt near the entrance of my cold domain, though he would remember nothing. and as for you? you would be but a pair of clawing hands in the darkness, a voice laughing with madness, groping for what you cannot have. you are not the first to trespass here. i keep those who fail the test. i keep them close. i keep them in fetters that will last unto an age of the world–or at least until i awake and walk again. that day will come too, in time.
A suspicious realisation grew in Caewen’s voice. “There was no elder voice of darkness then? That was a trick?”
– I looked into you mind and found a thing that has frightened you in the past. It was a lie, yes.
“But what stops you leaving?” said the boy, though he regretted drawing attention to himself the moment he spoke. “Walking again, I mean. You must be someone of power and great magic. Why are you sleeping in a crystal coffin?”
– i was the queen of my people. i stood upon our battlements and seethed with sorcery of war, and cast fire and storm down on the scarle ranks as they marched against us. i turned the great lords and masters of their armies to crumbling embers with my song-charms. i spoke a hundred words of power against the tide of steel and night-darkness, and yet the tide came on. our arrows rained upon them. our spears clashed against them. and yet the tide came on. and then as I stood upon our battlements a great chieftain of the scarle-folk let fly an arrow and sunk it in my chest. the point was poisoned and i would have been dead before i fell to the ground had i not been richly veiled in hexes against scarle-venoms and witcheries. though our healers did their best for me the arrow nicked my heart. either i would die, or they would put my body into an enchanted sleep. and so i rest here now, waiting for a worker of healing magic who has the arts and skill to draw the arrow and draw the poison, so that i may arise and walk again. I am the queen in waiting now. The sleeper in the darkness beneath. the fane know me, and await me.
The boy thought about this. “So… you’re not dead?” He didn’t understand. “I thought you were a spirit of this place.”
The voice in his head laughed. It was sad laughter and it sunk away into weird echoes in his skull when it ended. – i cast my will about my small dark queendom in the shadows under the earth. But I am no fleshless spirit. I am no warth of the dead, either. if i am a ghost, i am a living ghost.
“Can you range beyond these walls?” asked Caewen. “We are hunting a prince of the Sorthelanders, an ally of the Lords and Ladies of Twilight. He would be an ally of the creatures that destroyed your city. He is called Athairdrost.” She considered he next words carefully, but spoke them all the same. “We believe that he possesses a fragment of the last Old Great Spell.”
– is that truly so? one of the elder weavings still exists, and is not yet spoken and laid into the soil?” The voice of the enchantress-queen sounded wistful and longing. – now there is a thing to conjure wonder in the heart. what i could not do with just a fraction of that power? but… no. i cannot easily leave my small queendom. not without risking true and everlasting death. i could make a body for myself out of spell-stuff–the same as the Faer-Folk–but if that body were to be destroyed, I would die too. as for the prince, i know nothing of your Athairdrost, and i know nothing of your old great spell, if it exists. i am sorry. i cannot help you on that.
“A pity,” said Caewen with a slight curl of her shoulders and a weary stoop of her neck. “We may have disturbed you for no good reason then, for I was told to come here by a little shadow-spirit, and I was meant to look for weapons, or armour, or something, I suppose. And though I see blades lying hither and yon in your house, I cannot think what we would have to offer as payment.”
But the enchantress’s voice was kind and gentle in its reply. – there are treasures here aplenty, for my people hid with me all that they hoped the scarle would not steal or despoil. you may take from the armoury of the next room, though you must take just one gift each. elsewise, my store of arms would deplete. One day I will have need of weapons and steel raiment again. however, you may take one gift each, without obligation or debt.
“Thank you, Fair Lady. I cannot think what else to say but thank you.”
– thanks is not needed. i wish you well on your way. i wish you good fortune against the servants of the queen of the old night and chaos. i wish you luck in your dealings with this prince that you seek. i wish you good health and long life. go now. my power to keep light in this place is ebbing, and when it fails you will be left in darkness. the living do not easily slip from the darkness under the earth. not even in a place ruled by a living spirit. now take what you will and go. Hear me and go.