Enchanted (27 page)

“I’m not a fan of heights,” Rollins admitted in a whisper.

“You should go on to my rooms,” said Rumbold. “Erik and Velius and I can take care of this.” He tore his eyes away from his mother’s impressive winged shadow long enough to place a hand on the shoulder of the man who had been far more of a father over the years than his own flesh and blood. “I’ll be fine.”

Rollins didn’t seem to trust Rumbold’s show of bravado.

“He’ll be fine,” said Erik.

Rollins obviously trusted the guard slightly less. “I’ll tag along, if that’s all right.”

“The more the merrier,” said Velius.

“Well, gentlemen,” said Rumbold. “Shall we?”

This time he knew where they were going, so Rumbold and his men made short work of the distance to the tower. Shadow Madelyn also dispensed with the light show, merely accompanying their fleeting forms as they raced down the hall and up the stairs.

The higher they climbed, the colder it became. Wind whistled through the cracks in the mortar and sang them a mournful lullaby. It wasn’t long before Rumbold could see his breath before his face. He was thankful he hadn’t removed his smelly jacket along with the sash. He patted the lump at his breast where he kept Sunday’s shoe tucked safely near his heart.

“Really
not a fan of heights,” Rollins muttered again. He flattened himself against the wall as they ascended.

“I’ve always hated this godsforsaken tower,” Erik said as they passed another window blocked completely by cloud. “Nothing should be higher than heaven.”

“Nothing in this world, anyway,” said Velius. “Tell me, Cousin, what are we hoping to find at the end of this maze?”

“Wednesday,” Rumbold said. “My father and Sorrow ... I think they’re going to do something to her.”

Velius halted mid-step. “No. Not now. Not yet. I mean, I suspected, but the marriage bond wouldn’t have set this quickly. There hasn’t been enough time. They don’t need her consent, granted, but it’s so new, the pain would be unbearable. Unimaginable. The pain ... Oh, gods.” He snapped to attention. “Quickly, men! There isn’t a moment to lose!”

So Velius knew, then. Rumbold wondered how long his cousin had been possessed of the knowledge that the king was a wife murderer. The prince was desperate to know exactly what had happened to his mother, what pain she had suffered, what agonies had bound her to her current ephemeral state, but it was a conversation for another time. Right now, he needed all his borrowed breath to get him up those stairs and spare Wednesday a similar fate.

Rumbold lifted his knees to keep up the pace behind his suddenly eager cousin, being careful not to slip on the damp stone steps. Madelyn’s shadow flew steadily and beatifically above their heads.

The prince’s thighs screamed louder than his feet. His sweaty palm still burned from Velius’s touch, and his lungs froze with every breath of the chill mist surrounding them, but he was determined to see this to the end. He owed it to Sunday for the hell he’d put her through. He owed her the life of her sister.

The screams reached them before they arrived at the top of the tower: both a man and a woman, and possibly all the angels in heaven.

Up this high, the clouds outside had become guests of the castle, decorating the aerie with fog. Several times, the men were almost blind, and it hampered their pace. Screams echoed through the mist, bounced off the bare walls, and rang in their ears. Luckily the pea soup layer was thin, and they soon passed through it. Rumbold bade good riddance to the damp, but the cold lingered. It was much harder to breathe now, and his eyeballs felt too big for their sockets. If it hadn’t been for Velius’s magic infusion, he never would have made it this far.

They emerged from the fog to find themselves at a thick, dark Elder Wood door banded with iron. Velius stopped Rumbold before he could approach. “We do not want to play our hand before we know what awaits us on the other side.”

“Wednesday,” said Rumbold.

“Blood,” said Rollins.

“Death,” said Erik.

Madelyn said nothing.

“Which is why we’re going to assess the situation first,” said Velius, and he leaned out a window.

If one has a castle with a tower (or several) that scrapes the heavens, one puts as many unshuttered windows as possible at the top so that one can look out over one’s domain on a clear day. Rumbold wasn’t sure which ancestor had constructed the sky tower, but he’d had a very big ego and very strong legs. The screams came to them not from behind the massive door, but from the windows—which meant there was also a window in the room behind that door.

Erik stuck his head out as well and scanned the outside wall of the tower. “There’s no purchase,” he said. “You don’t expect one of us to climb around.”

“No,” said Velius. “We’re going to walk.” He held a hand out the window, parallel to the sea of cloud just below them, and closed his eyes.

“Wait!” said Rumbold. “They’ll notice you doing magic.”

Velius opened one eye to squint at him. “Right now, they wouldn’t notice the castle walls falling.”

Fair enough.

Velius shut his eye again and whispered something that sounded like
“Xalda.”
For the briefest of moments, the moonlit cloudscape shimmered a violet blue. And then Velius jumped out the window.

Erik was slower to follow, but follow he did. Rumbold turned to Rollins. “You don’t have to do this. You can stay right here.”

The manservant looked out at the clouds and then back down the winding stair. “I’ve come this far,” he said. As Rumbold straddled the sill, Rollins grabbed his hand. “If we encounter any breaks in the cloud cover, I’ll trust you to lead me around them.”

“Of course,” said the prince.

The cloud floor was less resilient than Rumbold had expected: it was more like thick grass than solid wood. The bright moonlight enabled Madelyn’s winged shadow-ghost to fly along the outside wall to the window of the room they sought.

“Would you mind, Your Highness?” Velius asked. Madelyn spread her wings wide so that her shadow hid them from view.

Not that they needed it—they could have stood there belled like jesters and no one in that room would have noticed them. There was a white and red triangle painted on the floor, with a star inside it. On one point of the triangle stood Wednesday in her wedding finery, arms splayed, head thrown back, and screaming to the stars. Sorrow was on her knees at another point of the triangle, bent by the weight of the obviously powerful spell she was performing. She seemed to have taken back what power she’d lent the king these last three days. He sat at the third point like a statue, thin and desiccated and still as a corpse.

A corpse with a crown.

Before their eyes, Wednesday began to wither and shrink. She curled into herself like a fern in an ice storm. Her mouth closed, but the screams echoed on. The wedding gown she wore enveloped her in white, swallowing her. The only bits of darkness that remained were her eyes, those haunting violet eyes that now stared out from the body of a pure white goose. She spread her wings and flapped wildly. Her screams transformed to a succession of quick, desperate honks.

But while Wednesday’s body had turned into a goose, her shadow had not. It remained poised, arms outstretched, head tilted back, voiceless throat crying impotent nothingness.

Sorrow collapsed.

The king, who was not as dead as he looked, reached a skinny arm out in front of him and grasped tightly onto noth-mg. His shadow grabbed shadow-Wednesday’s dress and pulled her to him.

“No!” Rumbold lunged through the window. Velius and Erik clawed at him, but they could not stop him. He swept the frantic goose under one arm to keep her from injuring herself with flapping wings. She pecked at his belly with her sharp beak, but he did not let her go.

Unhindered by his son’s presence, the king reached the hand not holding the invisible Wednesday out to a bowl filled with blood. Fey blood. Judging by the deep slashes down her forearms, all that blood was Sorrow’s.

Rumbold gagged as he put the pieces together. The king had feasted on goose after Madelyn’s funeral. He had stolen Madelyn’s shadow and drained her power, her essence, until there was nothing left for her, while he had gone on to live his long, unnatural life.

“You will not kill this bird, father.”

“You are no son of mine.” The corpse spat the words at him in a raspy voice. Rumbold had said as much to himself many a time throughout his life, but they still hurt. “I will take that bird from you, and I will devour it, and her power will be mine forevermore.”

The king pulled a long, wicked needle from the hem of his wedding doublet and dragged it through the blood. When he held it up again, it was threaded by a fine, dark red strand. Dumbly, Rumbold watched him make a stitch.

He was sewing Wednesday’s shadow onto his own.

He made another stitch and sat up straighter. With each pull of the thread, the king absorbed more of Wednesday’s youth and power. Erik threw a dagger at the king to stop him, but it fell to dust at his feet. Velius cast a lightning bolt that shattered into a shower of fairylight.

One more stitch, and the king’s hair turned from gray to wheat again. He began to grow taller, as big as he was before, and then more.

“That’s certainly never happened before,” said Velius. “I would have remembered.”

“We have to get out of here!” Rollins grabbed Rumbold’s sleeve and pulled him out of his daze. “Quickly!”

The four men spilled out the tower window, back onto the immense stretch of cloud. Erik headed for the stair, but Velius stopped him. Madelyn’s shadow blacked the path.

“Not that way,” said Velius. “We must run.”

Like fleethounds they sprinted over the bright cloudscape. True to his word, Rumbold watched for any breaks in the surface, but there were none. He wondered how long it would take the king to finish sewing, and exactly what kind of monster he’d become once he did. Wednesday was by far the most fey-blooded wife he’d ever had; there was no guessing ... Then Rumbold heard his name bellowed behind them.

The furious call, while familiar, was deeper and louder than he’d ever heard it before. The men paused and turned their heads long enough to see one enormous arm emerge from the tower window, followed by an enormous crown on an enormous head. The casing cracked and crumbled around the king, as if he were a chick hatching from a stone egg the size of a house.

Wednesday’s awesome power had transformed the king into a giant, a giant who was about to chase them across the very cloud cover on which they had escaped. His legs were long enough to cross the distance in half the time it had taken them. He would eat them all in one bite once he captured them.

Rumbold closed his eyes and tightened his grip on the goose. As one, the men turned and began running again, headlong toward the Wood.

S
UNDAY AWOKE
on the stones by the window in Wednesday’s aerie. It was still dark. The birds were quiet. Clouds still obscured the moon, and the wind whipped through the trees. A storm approached, but it hadn’t started raining yet. Thunder rumbled in the threatening sky, followed by the sound that had broken through her dreams and prodded her awake.

Trix was calling for her.

Sunday didn’t stop to change out of her old nightgown. She didn’t care if she woke Saturday or Peter as she fled down the tower steps, nor did she call out to whoever was still tending a fire in the kitchen at this hour. She left the front door wide open behind her in her haste. Trix called for her and no one else. Her brother needed her, so she ran.

“Sunday!” he cried. “They’re coming!”

Sunday rounded the corner of the house to see Trix, dwarfed by the monstrous beanstalk, pointing toward the sky. She squinted up into the darkness until finally, against a paler swath of cloud cover, she made out several tiny figures climbing down the beanstalk. As they grew larger, she realized they were men. There were four of them: two made their way down quickly and one of the slower ones carried something under his arm that hampered his movements, something that dislodged itself and fluttered, then glided, slowly to the ground.

“No!” he cried, and she knew at once that it was Rumbold up there trying desperately not to fall from the beanstalk. The white goose he’d held in his arms landed at Sunday’s feet and looked up at her with violet eyes. Wednesday’s eyes.

What had happened at the castle after she’d left?

The dark figure in the lead made quick work of the distance from the heavens to the ground, until he had come far enough to leap the rest of the way. “Quick,” Velius said breathlessly as he crouched at her feet. “We need to chop this thing down.”

“Trix, go get Saturday’s ax,” she said, but Saturday was already running toward them, ax in hand, long golden hair streaming about her determined face. Her white gown billowed in the darkness as if she were a warrior ghost fresh from beyond the veil. Their avenger waited only long enough for the burly redheaded guard to jump clear of the base before she lifted her strong arms and swung. The polished blade of her small enchanted ax bit into the flesh of the beanstalk and sank deep, but it would not be quick enough to stop whatever was chasing them.

Sunday met Trix’s eyes long enough for them to make the mutual decision not to discuss Saturday’s miraculous recovery. “I’ll get Papa,” he said, and ran toward the house.

Velius looked down at the goose, who watched the scene with detached indifference. “Is she...?”

“She’s fine,” said Sunday.

“Sunday, whatever you may think—”

“Not now,” she said. “Please. Just help them.”

Erik had already begun hacking at the mass of beanstalk with his dagger, pulling each smaller stalk back and away to get to the heart of the tree at its base. Papa raced past Sunday in a loose shirt and trousers and added his own ax to the effort. The guard stepped aside as Papa and Saturday fell into a cadence: one striking and then the other in a long-practiced rhythm.

Sunday had never witnessed her father and siblings at work in the Wood. Their skill was impressive. Papa blew out even breaths as the sweat began to bead on his forehead; her sister was a flurry of muscles and blade and hair. But fast as they chopped, Sunday knew that none of the Elder Wood they felled was as thick around as this beanstalk.