Anna von Wessen (22 page)

To avoid screaming was a feat she could hardly manage. She gave a fierce cough, and spat onto the floor, as she drew the sword from her middle. Then she lifted her shirt to inspect the spot, and was immensely pleased to find it clean and dry, without a drop of ooze to be seen. The blade, nevertheless, had formed a two-inch separation in the skin, which could be opened and closed like a flap, and which was exceedingly excruciating. The pain started up a sickly whirling in her stomach, and she needed fly to the outer door. She felt the single piece of flesh she had swallowed, rising up through her throat like a chunk of vile slime. She watched as it fell, appearing as little more than a dead and rotting slug in the dewy, moonlit grass. Then she turned away; pressed a hand to her wound; and shifted to her chamber.

It was not five minutes later that the knock came at the door. She bade the caller enter, and was not in the least surprised, when Ephram appeared before her.

“Are you all right, my dear?” he asked. “You disappeared from supper.”

“I’m sorry, Ephram,” she said. “I’m only not feeling very well tonight.”

“Not feeling well!” he exclaimed. “Whatever is the matter? Should I send for Teo?”

“No, no,” said Anna, with a smile grandly forced. “It’s nothing that won’t heal on its own.”

“But what happened?”

“I was only having a duel with Vaya today,” Anna lied. “I was somewhat off my game, however; and the sword went through –” (she showed Ephram the wound she had just made) “– here.”

“My poor Anna!” said Ephram. “You must be careful of Vaya’s blade, my dear. It is a deadly force to be reckoned with.”

“So much I have learnt,” answered Anna.

“Ah! I suppose you have.” He leant down to kiss her cheek, and asked once more, “Are you quite sure you don’t want Teo?”

“Quite.”

“Well – all right, then. I’ll leave you to yourself. But do go down to the kitchens, will you, if you get hungry? I’ll see that something is set aside for you.”

“Thank you, Ephram.”

“You’re welcome, my dear.  Now get some sleep! And no duelling tomorrow.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.”

“That’s my girl.”

“Goodnight, Ephram.”

“Goodnight, Anna.”

She breathed a great, heavy sigh – a thing very different from the empty sighs she had used to give – when he had gone. Her breath came and went, it seemed, between times of anxiety and calm. Presently she sat back in her chair, and rested for a long moment, till once again the thick thudding of her heart had ceased, and all her body was naught but a cold, still rock. She was very near, even, to falling asleep where she sat; but then she had a sudden thought, and with the weariness of limb which accompanies one who has fought for weeks in the wilderness for one’s own survival, she shifted from the room. 

XXIII:

The Crimson Curtain

A
rrived in the corridor outside the door to Vaya Eleria’s chamber, she knocked softly, and choked down the dull heartbeat which fought to rise up in her throat.

The door opened straightaway, to reveal a room nearly pitch black. Vaya stood behind the threshold, looking out into the dimness of the hall, where a sputtering torch glowed some twenty yards off to the right. “Hello, Anna,” she said.

“Hello, Vaya. Might I come in for a moment?”

“Of course.”

Vaya stepped aside for Anna to pass by. Anna went into the room, and stood quietly for a moment, thinking perhaps that Vaya might move to light a lamp. Yet she made no such motion, and seemed not to intend to; so Anna went on very quickly to say:

“I have only one thing to ask of you – and then I’ll leave you. This thing is going to seem very strange, I know. But I can only go on with it, if you promise not to ask after the cause.”

It was somewhat difficult to make out Vaya’s face, in naught but the sliver of moonlight that shone through a thin crack in the drapes at the window. But Anna thought she smiled faintly, as she answered, “I’ll not ask.”

“Your father may say something to you tomorrow,” Anna said, “about a duel we had today.”

“We had no duel.”

“I’m very much aware of that.”

“Ah,” said Vaya. “All right, then.”

“Anyway,” said Anna, “he may say something about this duel – or perhaps he mayn’t. If he does, though, you should not appear surprised when he alludes to the wound you gave me.”

“The wound I gave you!”

“Yes. The wound you gave me.”

“I assume that this wound,” said Vaya, in rather a displeased tone of voice, “will not give him cause to think that we have been quarrelling again?”

“Certainly not. It was entirely accidental.”

“Well, then! That’s a small comfort, I suppose.”

“Thank you, Vaya,” said Anna, as she turned to go.

“And that’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“Well! No nonsense for you, then, I suppose?”

“What?”

“Can’t be bothered to sit for a moment?”

“Are you asking me to sit down, or are you insulting me?”

“I was asking you to sit down.”

“You couldn’t have said that to begin with?”

“I suppose I could have. It’s a fault, though, it seems – for I never do.”

“I’ve well noticed.”

“Ah! Then you shouldn’t look so surprised.”

Anna was caught between wanting to shake her, and wanting to smile. She settled for neither, seeing as they both seemed to her two ends of an extreme; and instead she only stepped away from the door, towards the pair of chairs which she and Vaya had occupied, the evening of their return from Night House. She hoped that this particular visit would not end so badly.

“Eh now,” said Vaya, with a quick swivel of her head. “What’s that smell?”

“What’s what smell?”

“It smells of a wolf in here. Tell me – have you been thrashing the servants?”

She asked this question, apparently, not as a jest; for her countenance (at least what Anna was able to make of it) could not have been more composed. She seemed, rather, somewhat disappointed.

“No!” Anna exclaimed. “Whatever are you talking about?”

“I’m not talking about anything. I’m only asking if you were thrashing the wolves.”

“Well, I wasn’t. Whatever odour has pervaded your chamber, Vaya Eleria, has only to do with whatever
you
have been doing – and not me.”

“Ha!” said Vaya, with what seemed an earnest burst of laughter. “And that, you see, is why I like you, Anna von Wessen.”

“Why you like me?” repeated Anna. “I thought we had only just settled that you didn’t despise me? That’s enough for now, I think.”

“Is it? Probably it is.” 

Silence reigned for some few minutes or so, wherein Vaya’s recent levity began to appear as nothing more than the mask of troubled thoughts; thoughts as thick and unfathomable as they had seemed to Anna, that night in the nursery corridor. Anna wondered if she should ask something about them. Her eyes, however, having by now adjusted to the weak white light (or perhaps they had merely regained once again a little of their sharpness), roved faster than her tongue, and caught sight of the crimson curtain over the wall, twitched some six or so inches out of place.

“Vaya,” she said suddenly.

“Anna.”

“Would my question be unwelcome, if I were to ask you what lies behind that curtain there?”

“Most likely.”

“I retract it, then.”

“That’s very polite of you! But you needn’t do that. Here – do you really want to see behind the curtain?”

“I believe I do.”

“Then I believe you shall.”

Vaya rose from her chair, and went finally to light a little lamp that stood upon the dressing table. Then she stepped over to the curtain, and stood before it for a number of seconds, ere reaching out a hand that seemed almost to tremble, to draw the great red veil aside.

Anna saw that there hung three large portraits upon the wall. The first frame held two occupants: Ephram on his throne in the royal chamber, and beside him that old second throne, that stood within the chamber for hundreds of years, but was there no more. On this second throne there sat an ivory-white, stately-looking woman, with rich dark robes swathed all about her, and a shining crown upon her head. In her face, Anna recognised the wooden mermaid from Ephram’s ship. She shivered as she looked, for truly she thought, that there could not in all the world have been a colder being depicted than the one within the portrait. Though none could say that Vyra Iyenov was not beautiful, the lines of her face were sharp with cunning, and her steel-grey eyes shone cruelly upon the canvas. Beside her, Ephram seemed somehow less terrible, as if his own capacity for evil was dwarfed by the blackness of his Queen’s white face.

Vaya looked to Anna, and smiled sadly. “I was very fond of my mother,” she said. “But she was terribly frightful, wasn’t she?”

Anna nodded silently, and looked to the second picture, where she found infinite relief from the murderous gaze of the dead Queen. Here there was a solitary woman, very dark and lovely. In her countenance there seemed displayed all the kindness and love that the universe could possibly hold. Anna stared at her for a long moment, transfixed by the pleasantness of her light brown face; but in examining her eyes more closely, she experienced a sudden shock, and looked quickly to Vaya.

“Yes,” said Vaya. “That is she – the one you have heard of, the one who gave me life. It is Clarisa Bartoli.”

Vaya paused, and returned to her chair with a staggering step. She looked upon the portrait with a pained expression.

“Finding her likeness,” she said after a little, “was no easy feat. But after many years of searching, I found one finally in a house that had belonged to her mother, in the South of Rome. I took it from its dusty trunk, and brought it back with me, to have it reproduced in secret. The result was what you see before you.”

“It is no wonder, now,” Anna said with a gentle smile, “that you are so very beautiful.”

“Ah! A present I do not deserve, from a woman who did not deserve to die.”

“It was no fault of your own. You had no say in the matter.”

Anna watched Vaya’s hands, as they clutched forcefully at the arms of her chair. Her fingernails ripped two holes in the leather, through which the stuffing proceeded to trickle out.

“I suppose not,” Vaya said quietly, with her eyes still on the portrait. “Though certainly I have had a say, in all of the things I’ve done since. I had a say in
them!
But never did I say the right thing.”

“Never?”

“Never!”

“I don’t believe that.”

Vaya turned to her quickly, and looked doubtfully into her face. “How could you know it?” she asked.

“I know enough, I think,” Anna answered.

Vaya made no rejoinder; for she could not seem to construct one. So Anna left the questionable moment where it hung, and looked away from Vaya, towards the last portrait. There she saw a collection of numerous figures, the majority of them grouped into the background, and fading away into the blackness of the trees behind, while in the fore there stood two people. One was Vaya, clad in armour and chainmail, with the little gold ring shining on its chain round her neck. The other was an enormous man, very handsome, with closely cropped yellow hair atop his head, and rageful blue eyes.

“That is Krestyin,” said Vaya. “And that was our army.”

“Your army!”

“Yes.”

“Whatever did you need with an army? Hadn’t you already one of your own?”

“I had my father’s, yes. But I could not make them do all I wanted.”

“What do you mean?”

Vaya stared at Anna for a very long while before continuing. It was as if she were searching for proof of something, something she believed that she had seen in her face; and as though convinced of her correctness in the first place, finally she went on.

“I met Krestyin much by accident,” she said. “He and some of his pack were hunting near the castle – hunting a group of wild Lumaria who had strayed too far – and Ephram’s guards intercepted him. They tried to capture him, and to bring him to Ephram, but really they only succeeded in wounding him. He was much too quick for them, and so with only an arrow caught in his leg, he fled into the wood. But he . . . well, he looked at me before he ran. I saw something there in his face, something that struck me as different from all that I had seen before. There was an anger like mine; a hatred like mine. A hatred of my people, untainted by prejudice, or even by the belief in his own race’s supremacy. He only hated the evil.”

“A hatred like yours,” Anna echoed, her eyes locked with Vaya’s.

“Yes,” said Vaya. “Like mine. I tell you now – and I do not fear you shall betray me – that I hate the Lumaria, and I hate myself. I hate all we do. I hate all we are.”

Anna said nothing.

“Almost as if spurred by some will other than my own,” Vaya went on, “I went searching for Krestyin that very night. Of course I did not expect to find him. You can imagine my astonishment, when I found him waiting for me at the edge of the wood.” She smiled. “He said he had known that I would come.”

“And after that?”

“After that – things passed as they passed. For that day, you see, Ephram’s guards had battled against the very creature they had sought for some ten years: the leader of the rogue wolves of the Weld. None had ever known what he was named. Our people called him the White Wolf of the North.”

“I have never heard of him.”

“You are not from this place,” Vaya said. “And besides – my father would never have told you of the Weld of Wales.”

“And what is that?”

Vaya began to relate a brief account of the Weld; and it amounted, essentially, to the following.

Some hundreds of years ago, a Narkul named Magen established a fortress of rock in the North of Wales, to defend against the wild Lumaria of that country, and also against violent factions of his own race. Small at first, this fortress grew and grew, till it was populated with thousands upon thousands of Narken, many of them the best warriors of their race, and known also for their propensity towards peace. The Weld became a sanctuary – for Narken, and sometimes even for a number of humans, who came to call the inhabitants of the Weld their friends.

As time went on, the Lumaria came to view the Weld as a singular threat. Chieftains of all the surrounding lands sent their soldiers to attack the fortress; but always they were killed. Soon, even the sovereigns of the Night Council began to take notice, and finally Kryo himself. One night he sent his whole army to lay siege upon the Weld. It came back in pieces; though not without many Narkul deaths to boast of. The majority of the fortress, however, had scattered to the winds. Some time thereafter rumours of its relocation began to spread. But never could it be found.

In the year 1748, the Weld was at the height of its rebel operations. It was believed by the Lumaria that the fortress had been moved finally back to Wales. They sent many hosts to reconnoitre for the spot, but if ever they came too near, they were sighted by the wolves, and were very speedily either dispatched or chased away. The Weld worked with some of the surrounding tribes of Narken, striving always for a plan of peace – no matter how much war must be fought, in order ultimately to come by it.

After Vaya had finished with this tale, Anna sat silent for a while, thinking deeply. Surely she had never heard of such Narken as these; but she recollected the words of King Balkyr, and wondered if this Weld of Wales was the reason he retained hope for the race as a whole. She looked again to the portrait of Vaya and Krestyin; and frowned.

“Krestyin was King of the Weld?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”

“And you stood with his army?”

Vaya answered nothing; for Anna had spoken the truth. But, as with lies, truth can sometimes be a convoluted and complex thing. It is interesting to note that it is merely the
presence
of lies that makes it so; for, if the truth were always told in the beginning, and if it had no alternate or replacement, it would not be very complicated at all. This, however, is hardly ever the case.