Anna von Wessen (10 page)

“So it seemed to me,” Greyson said miserably.

“That’s well, then, for now. But tonight we will go, you and I, and we will find Vaya Eleria. We will kill her, exactly as Ephram did – and we will return her to the crypt.”

“I don’t know, Anna.”

“You needn’t know anything,” rejoined Anna, rather viciously. “It is for me to decide. You asked for my help – and you shall have it.”

Contented he was not; but Greyson argued no more. What could he really have said?

So he went that night with Anna, to search through the forests for the lost Princess. The entirety of their work needs not be set down here; but suffice it to say, that Vaya Eleria was nowhere to be found.

The next day passed; and at night they hunted. Still there was nothing. Another day passed; and again they hunted.

Still there was nothing.

The following day marked the seventh of Ephram’s absence. He had sent word from York that all was well, and that he would come as soon as he was able; but neither Anna nor Greyson could find an ounce of rest or peace while he remained away. They spent their days wide awake, and paced the floor. They spent their nights weary but sleepless, and roamed the woods.

In finding the Princess they had no new fortune, but three days later they were blessed with Ephram’s coming. He arrived in the early evening; but as many times as  Anna inquired, no one at all seemed to have seen him since he entered the castle.

In spite of her impatience for him to have come in the first place, she feared that he would call for her. She spent the whole night in dread, wishing with all her might that he would not feel too eager to see her; and in this she was humoured, by whatever power which saw fit to give ear to the pleas of such a woeful creature as she.

Ephram, in fact, never called either for Anna or for Valo. He saw them in the dining hall on feasting night, and sat with them just as usual; but he desired no particular conversation with them, after he had embraced them at the end of the meal.

For this Anna was abundantly grateful. She kept up with Greyson the routine they had formed; but neither of them had even the slightest hope that they would ever find the Princess. There seemed nothing more to be done for it, than to hope that there was some horrible error; or that, in the absence of such an error, Vaya Eleria had fled far away, never again to return. Or perhaps Greyson had only raised her temporarily, and she now lay sleeping again in the midst of some distant circle of trees, with her coffin to remain forever but secretly empty. They thought these, and any and all other manner of thoughts which would protect them from doom.

True, these were days full of foolishness and ignorance.

But they were happy days.

X:

The Princess’s Arrival

Y
es – they were happy days. Or, if they were not happy, they were pleasant. No – they were passable. They were tolerable. The waking part of them, that was.

Every time Anna closed her eyes, she saw the face of Vaya Eleria. It was not the face from the well-known portrait, oh no, but rather the livid and feral countenance which had stared out from under a wild shock of hair, that night in the crypt. It was full of anger, pain and fear. Anna felt the horror of these things, and the added difficulty of what would come of facing them alone. Strangely, it was all that she could think of. Vaya Eleria was awake, and alone. Her world had been one which faded long ago from existence. What would she make of what she found, past the boundary of the New Forest? Would she flee farther? Or would she return?

Though Anna knew full well that the latter choice could mean her own undoing, still she could not bring herself to begrudge the Princess for choosing it. She felt almost a sliver of personal responsibility for Greyson’s horrible handiwork – perhaps because she always felt in some way responsible for his ineptitude, or perhaps because she had not fought hard enough against the black idea which had come into his head. And perhaps
that
was because, on some very deep level, she herself had been intrigued by it. She could not wholly deny it.

And so these passable, tolerable days all rolled into one another, forming a longer and longer chain with a singular point in the past. The chain stretched forth from the crypt, to the silent and lonesome chamber where Anna lay thinking, always thinking. It stretched from several days past, to several weeks past; and the longer the chain grew, the heavier it weighed upon Anna’s shoulders, till her back bent and her knees buckled. The longer it grew, the tighter it cinched round her neck, till her head threatened to separate from her body.

It seemed that the thing must reach a breaking point. She wondered if she would lose her composure, and tell Ephram all. She wondered if she would lose her mind, and puncture her own heart. She wondered, and she wondered, just how the story would end.

So this is where we continue – the place where the story does not end, but where it takes its most important turn thus far.

Listen carefully.

~

The chain had been lengthening for precisely one month, and increasing steadily in weight, when there came another feasting night to Castle Drelho. Anna came late to the dining hall, and sat down almost reluctantly at her place between Ephram and Greyson. Valo looked at her moodily from across the table, while Ari stared wistfully at the side of his face. Anna paid neither of them any attention, but turned her eyes down to her plate, and began eating silently.

The food was nearly gone, when finally Ephram spoke.

“I am sorry,” said he, “that I have been so preoccupied these past few weeks.” He looked first into Valo’s face, and then into Anna’s. “But my children do not seem happy.”

“On the contrary, Father,” said Valo; though he did not shift his eyes from Anna as he spoke. “I am ecstatic.”

“Wonderful!” said Ephram, with a clap of his hands. “And you, Anna?”

“Simply marvellous,” she answered blandly.

“Lovely, lovely – just lovely.” Ephram chuckled, and took a long draught from his goblet of wine. “Or, at least, it
would
be lovely – if I did not suspect that you were both lying to me. But I will pry no further! I shall simply leave you to the mysteries of your youth.”

Anna helped herself to a third slab of meat, and drained yet another full goblet. She noticed, though, after a little, that all those who sat in her immediate vicinity were staring at her.

“And what are you all looking at?” Ephram snapped. “There is nothing wrong with a healthy appetite. We can eat all we want, you know, here at Drelho.”

A dozen pairs of eyes fell away from Anna; but the faces to which they belonged were by no means pleasant. Their hatred for Anna only increased, it seemed, with each protective remark offered by Ephram on her behalf. But it made no difference to her – for indeed she hated them all much more than they could ever dream of hating
her.

She leant back against the leather headrest of her great mahogany chair, and dug her fingernails into her palms. She looked deliberately out over the heads of her own house, and gazed upon the sea of faces which made up the population of Drelho. There were nearly one thousand in all – every one of them presently talking with his neighbours, laughing easily, and stuffing himself with human flesh.

She turned her eyes up to the dark ceiling, and stared with great intensity towards the wide skylight, through which the tiny and sparkling stars could only just be seen. She would have given anything, then, to have been able to shift out into the clean and open air – and away from the foul, fetid odour of blood which filled the hall. Now that she had eaten her fill, and was no longer hungry, the scent was rather disagreeable.

She lowered her eyes, and looked out again over the heads which topped the many tables, each one equally capable of loathing her, and spurning her – just as her own house did. Surely they would eventually, when they discovered that they themselves could not be favoured, or brought anywhere near to King Ephram’s heart, simply because it was Anna von Wessen who filled the space surrounding it.

The very thought made her nearly mad with rage. She glanced at the ridiculous visages of Valo and Ari, which turned to her in succession, one with unrequited longing and the other with undisguised detestation – and she felt quite as if she could have killed them. She looked last to Ephram, and returned with some difficulty the smile he gave her. She nearly hated him, too, in that instant, merely for smiling at her so very affectionately.

If only he knew,
she thought bitterly.
If only he knew that his daughter lived!

For a moment she despised Vaya Eleria; and then for another she pitied her. She alternated rapidly, for long minutes, between these feelings of hate and sympathy – and was just about to settle upon a single emotion, so as to hold it and nurse it all through the lonely night, when there came a sight to her eyes which nearly made her cry out. We say nearly, because in fact she was strangled by her own fright, and could not speak. She believed at first that the image was no more than a product of her own unhappy thoughts; but soon she knew otherwise, on account of the reaction which was sweeping like wildfire through the hall.

The first cry came from a fellow down in the lower regions of the room (whose name was Clyde Whist; and about whom you will learn more in due time), in a space by the wide doorway which was half-shrouded in shadow. He leapt from his seat in astonishment, and many others followed suit. Second after second, and table by table, they all rose up like a tidal wave. Countless screams rang through the air.

“What is going on?” asked Ephram. He looked to the steward, who sat beside him; but Byron Evigan merely shook his head, and held up his hands in befuddlement.

So Ephram stood up on his feet, and looked towards the entrance of the hall, round which great throngs were already flocking. Neither he, nor any of the others at the head table, could make out even a sliver of what was happening.

But Greyson looked to Anna with wide eyes – and neither of them for a second doubted the situation. Anna closed her eyes briefly, and shielded her face with her hand; for she knew that the very sky would shortly be falling down upon her head.

There came a reverberating shout from the centre of the floor, and instantaneously the crowd parted in two, dividing in either direction like the Red Sea. There was created a wide corridor betwixt them, down which a single individual began to travel, till she had reached the base of the platform atop which the head table stood. Her eyes blazed, but her face was set like stone, while the very smallest smirk tugged up at the corners of her lips. Her entire countenance seemed a horrible paradox.

But in one thing she did not waver: and this was her object of attention. Firmly, resolutely, and unfalteringly, she looked into Ephram’s disbelieving eyes. As his frown grew deeper, her grin grew wider; and as he began to moan, she began to laugh.

“Hello, Father!” she exclaimed.

A shrill cry was loosed from Ephram’s throat. He tried to step back from the table, but tripped over the edge of the platform, and went sprawling down to the eight-foot-distant floor.

The solitary figure before the table, looking like a black-eyed fiend, laughed still harder. Then she turned round towards her astounded audience, and held up her arms in greeting.

“Good evening, Drelho!” she cried, in a voice that boomed like a gong, and spun away from her to fill every corner of the hall. Some of the spectators cowered. Some fell down to their knees.

With a last screeching cackle of laughter, Princess Vaya Eleria flapped the folds of her cloak, and disappeared from sight.

Ephram lay for a long while behind the platform; and the hall stood in amazement, staring at the spot from which his daughter had vanished.

~

When finally the stupor broke, and all manner of chaos and mayhem came to reign in the dining hall, with the Lumaria running this way and that in their frenzy of panic, Anna and Greyson took full advantage of their opportunity to escape. They shifted immediately to Anna’s chamber, and bolted the door fast – forgetting perhaps that such a precaution would do no good whatever, should Ephram decide to enter.

They fell into a pair of chairs beside the empty grate, leant their heads together, and began to whisper.

“What do we do, Anna?” Greyson whined, as he tapped his boots anxiously upon the floor. “What do we do?”

“There’s nothing to be done,” Anna replied. “We can only wait.”

“Only wait? Anna, when they find out –”

“Who is to say they will? The Princess fled – didn’t you see? Who knows when she will come back.”

“Who – who knows?” Greyson echoed incredulously. “No one knows – that’s the problem! What if she has already returned? What if she is telling all, as we speak?”

“I doubt it.”

“Well, you’ll have to do better than that! This could mean our heads, Anna.”

“
Our
heads? What do you mean –
our
heads? You woke her, Greyson. I told you not to! I told you never even to
think
of it again! What fault is it of mine, if you are a useless fool?”

“You – you would leave me?”

Anna looked for a long moment into his worried and pitiful face. She wished very much that she could say
yes –
but after a minute or two of silence, she sighed heavily, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, Greyson. I’ll not leave you.”

“Thank you, Anna! Oh, I knew you wouldn’t –”

His overflow of gratitude was interrupted, however, by a swift kick to both of his shins. “Ouch!” he cried. “What did you do that for?”

“If I can’t abandon you, then I must get my frustrations out in some way. Perhaps you don’t understand how angry I am with you, Greyson!”

They lapsed, then, into a long and uncomfortable silence. They expected, at any moment, for Ephram to appear, with the steward and his “decapitation squad” – but the night began to fade, and finally to turn to morning, without his ever having come.

Wary and uncertain, Anna and Greyson slumped down in their chairs, and stared with narrowed eyes into the grey gloom which hung over the chamber. But their weariness mounted with the rising of the sun; and as the first rays of yellow light pierced the dark shade, their eyes slipped shut, and they knew no more of their fear for several hours.