Moonlight and Ashes (25 page)

I murmured, desperately, ‘You are my enemy, as I am yours; but we have a common enemy now, and so I beg you to listen.' There was an uproar in the chamber. The General Secretary held up a hand for silence and I heard his cold, precise voice in my head: ‘It is said an enemy's enemy may be an ally, if not a friend. So speak, moon-sister, and we will hear.'

I swallowed down a rising tide of bile and whispered
,
‘A Master of Ashberg has betrayed his vows and joined with Prince Leopold and Count Otto von Gildenstein to overthrow the Emperor and destroy my friends in the process. For the sake of your honour, I beg you to act. Ah!'
I screamed as the mirror melted in my hand, turning into a hot silver lump which promptly vanished, leaving a fiery red mark painfully branded on my flesh. Outside, in the room, there were yells, screams and loud crashing noises. The wall panel opened, the lamplight flooded in and I was roughly hauled out.

Count Otto was shouting hoarsely in my face, incoherent words I couldn't make head nor tail of. Something had happened to him: his face was bruised, his clothes torn. Leopold lay slumped at one end of the room, moaning and holding his head. The room looked as though a gale had been raging through it: the table and chairs were overturned amongst shattered plates and crockery that'd been bent out of shape.

‘Stop it, Otto.'

It was Bastien's voice, a little shaky but still commanding. He got up from the tangle of chairs and came towards me. He, too, looked as though he'd been in a brawl: there was a bruise on his face that was going to turn into a beauty of a black eye. He grabbed my hand, turned it over and recoiled.

‘It can't be true,' he whispered.

‘What can't?' Count Otto yelled.

In answer, Bastien held up his other hand. There, branded in his palm, was a mark identical to mine. Blankly, he said, ‘She took my power. She used it. Mine and hers.'

‘What are you talking about?' shouted the Count.

‘She must be a witch,' Bastien stammered. ‘But that spell – whatever it was – I have never seen anything like it. I have never
heard
of anything like it. It's never been done. Never. Never . . . How could she possibly have known to –'

The Count's eyes flashed as he cut Bastien off in mid-sentence. ‘She's a
witch
, and I sent her to you, and you said
nothing
?'

Bastien shook his head dazedly. ‘I didn't see it. I didn't see it at all. Even when I used her hair – her blood – I felt . . .
nothing
. She seemed just an ordinary girl; a gullible, lovesick little fool who had walked into your trap, that's all.'

The Count's voice stung like a whip, his eyes were icy chips. ‘Devil take it, Master, how could that be? Your job is to hunt witches. You know all the signs. How did you miss it?'

‘He didn't,' I said, finding my voice at last – my voice, along with my strength and my pride, ‘because there were no signs. How could there be? I am not the kind of poor, pathetic specimen he is used to dealing with. The power of Dremda is in me for I am a moon-sister.'

There was dead silence. Both the Count and Bastien stared at me as though I had sprouted two heads and a forked tail.

‘She's lying, she has to be,' the Prince said petulantly, looking the worst of them all, his face weirdly twisted out
of shape. ‘The moon-sisters died out a hundred years ago. They don't exist, except in the pages of history books.'

I smiled and looked him right in the eyes. ‘Wrong,
Your Royal Highness
. We were just in hiding, waiting for the right time.'

I reached behind me and picked up Prince Leopold's revolver which was lying on the ground. I cocked it and advanced upon him. He took a step back, then another, his eyes wild.

‘Help me, help me! Do something! She's going to
kill me
!'

But the other two didn't move.

With the wild new clarity that sang in my veins like moonlight, I knew that the magic I'd created was so powerful that not only had it used up all of Bastien's power, it held the pair of them as though they were flies in a web. I could do anything I wanted and they could do nothing but watch, helplessly.

I'd backed the Prince into a corner he couldn't escape. He was weeping now, the tears rolling down his face, his skin so grey and pasty that it looked like melting wax, his eyes fixed on me in abject terror. There was no pity in me, only a fierce joy as I raised the gun and –

‘Selena, no! Stop!'

And there was Max, suddenly beside me. He was – alone, pale and travel-stained. There was an expression in his eyes that struck my very heart.

But I couldn't allow it to weaken my resolve. Keeping a wary eye on the dumbstruck Prince, I said, harshly, ‘It's too late, Max. This is how it must end.'

‘Oh Selena,' he whispered. ‘Please, if ever you cared for me, don't do this.' And he took a step closer to the shaking, terrified, moaning Leopold.

I swallowed hard. ‘You don't understand. Stand aside, Max.'

‘No, I will not. Not until you tell me why.'

‘You need to ask that? After all he's done to you?'

His eyes flicked to Prince Leopold, then back to me. He hadn't even glanced in his father's direction or in the Mancer's. It was as though only the three of us existed.

‘Yes,' Max said, steadily, ‘I do.' He paused. ‘Because I don't think you're doing it for me, Selena.' His voice was full of a terrible sorrow and it cut me to the quick.

‘It was for you!' I cried. ‘To keep you safe. You and our friends.'

‘Is that what you heard at Dremda?' he said, and for a moment I thought I hadn't heard him right.

‘You know . . .
about Dremda
?'

‘Yes,' he said and looked at me. ‘Olga told me she'd seen the old man coming out of the barn in Smutny. We remembered how he'd changed so suddenly so we went back there and he told us what you'd asked him. And then I knew.'

‘Knew what?'

‘Why our compass had been changed. What the old lady in the wagon was. Why you had gone to Dremda.'

My throat was constricting. I stared at him and said, numbly, ‘How . . .?'

‘Because it was once the sacred place for the moon-sisters. I've read a good deal, you know, Selena. A good deal about the . . . the history of the empire. I knew then what your secret was – I knew you were a moon-sister.'

I looked at his face and saw that there was no horror, nor fear or judgement in his eyes, only love and acceptance. ‘Then you understand that I must keep my promise.'

‘What promise, Selena? For pity's sake, what is it?'

I whispered, ‘The shadow will only be lifted if the last daughter of Serafina spills the blood of the last son of Karl,' and I raised the gun, my finger on the trigger.

Max cried out, ‘If that is true, then it is
my
blood you must spill, Selena!'

I stared at him, my finger trembling on the gun. ‘What do you . . . what do you mean . . .?'

But before he could speak, Leopold yelled, the terror in his face replaced by a wicked glee, ‘You fool, he's the Prince – the
real
Prince! We got a spell to change places.
He
's the last son of Karl, moon-sister, the very last one – not me!'

A red mist appeared in front of my eyes and blackness raged in my heart. With an inarticulate cry, I rushed at Leopold, my finger on the trigger. Before I could stop, Max threw himself across my path in front of the spitting gun. He fell to the floor, red blood seeping through his shirt just over his heart.

Leopold, laughing hysterically, screamed, ‘You killed him! Idiot, you killed him!'

Then the room erupted with noise as a crowd of people rushed in: men in Mancer masks and cloaks, others in the uniform of the special forces, and my friends – Andel, tall as a giant with Tomi perched on his shoulders, and Olga with her hair flying and her eyes flashing.

I hardly even noticed as the gun dropped from my nerveless hand and I sank to the floor beside the dying young man I'd known as Maximilian von Gildenstein. The
world shrank down to just him and me and the terrible thing I'd done. I'd murdered the love of my life for the sake of a faith that cared nothing for us, but only about the ghosts of a dead past.

His eyes were closed and his breathing had become shallow. He was so white it was as though all the blood had already left his body. But then he opened his eyes and whispered, ‘I'm sorry, Selena. I'm so, so sorry.'

I ripped at my petticoat, pulling off strips and wadding his wound to try and stop the bleeding. My hands worked without my even being aware of it, my whole being suspended and unreal. My lips so stiff and my throat so raw I could hardly speak; the tears which were running down my face half-blinded me. ‘Don't, my love. Please, don't.'

‘I wanted to tell you so much,' he said. ‘But I couldn't. I could tell no-one till I had found a way to break the spell I'd so stupidly agreed to. You see, what I'd done – it had already put everyone and everything I cared about in so much danger. And all for what? For my own selfish whim, in the end. Oh, I told myself it was for the highest purpose. That I needed to know what my people really felt. But inside, it was all about me. Because when you are the Prince, everyone sees that, first. First
and
last. I wanted to know what it was like to be seen for myself. In the old days, I could have just gone incognito. But these days – our faces are on every public building, in every newspaper and magazine. Someone would have recognised me. And then my friend – Max – he and his father came up with this brilliant and risky plan . . . for us to change places in a way that no-one would ever guess.'

‘Of course they did,' I said, bleakly, ‘it was their great opportunity.'

‘It was
my
fault, Selena.
I
cast aside my duty. When they proposed that we use Mancer magic to literally change our faces, I could have said no. It's forbidden magic.
I
 could have refused to break the law.
I
should have seen that my poor, weak friend was consumed with jealousy and that his father was consumed with ambition.
I
should have foreseen the danger. Instead,
I
allowed myself to be tempted.'

‘Because you are not superhuman,' I said, my voice breaking, ‘but only human.'

He looked up at me. There was a wondering expression in his eyes. ‘Then you . . . you forgive me? You don't hate me for what I did? For what I am – the Emperor's son?'

‘Never,' I said. ‘Never. How could I? I love you, prince or not, Max or Leo, it makes no difference. Only that it is you and I wish I was dying in your place. I cannot bear what I have done to you and –'

He had taken my hand and kissed it and, crying, I could speak no longer. The others had begun crowding around us and I was vaguely aware of them but it was as though they were behind glass, my love and I alone in these last precious, dreadful moments as he held my hand and closed his eyes . . .

A voice spoke quietly behind me, cold and precise. ‘May I sit by you, Selena dez Mestmor?'

I turned my head and saw a cloaked old man. A little hunched, he appeared grey and frail yet his eyes were not old and the aura that came from him was not frail in the least.

I whispered, ‘Yes, General Secretary.'

He knelt down beside us, a little creakingly, and said, ‘Put your hand on his wound.' He added, a little ironically, ‘The one with the brand on it.'

I did as he said, and then he laid his hand on mine. It was leathery and dry as a snake's and, instinctively repelled, I wanted to jerk my own hand away. He looked me in the eye and I knew he knew exactly what I was feeling but all he said was, ‘Are you ready to do this?'

I nodded mutely, every one of my nerves strained to keep my hand where it was.

He smiled a thin smile, but a real one nevertheless. ‘Then, Selena dez Mestmor, together let us save our Prince's life.'

He closed his eyes and murmured some incantation. His hand twitched and gripped mine harder, and a flutter of panic rose in me as I felt his mind lock onto mine, but I managed to keep my nerves and my hand steady. Though my eyes were open, I could see a vision before me.

It was of Dremda, not as it was when I saw it – sad and broken and neglected – but as it had been in my dreams. It was beautiful: the green-lit forest, the tumbling waterfall and the sparkling pool. But that wasn't all that was beautiful about it, for my mother stood there smiling at me. Her face shifted and I could see the old moon-sister's features; then it shifted into the lovely face of the woman I never knew, Serafina.

My mother's face appeared again, smiling at me with so much tenderness and so much love. She reached out to me and I felt her touch on my forehead. Warmth flooded through me, rushing through every vein, every cell, every
pore, my whole being aglow with it. It flowed through me and melded with the crackling energy of the General Secretary into a vast healing power that flowed into my beloved's body – into the true Prince's failing life force.

His face had begun to change, the features realigning. It was almost too much for me, almost too frightening, but I held on. I locked my power with the Mancer's, making it even stronger; I could see the General Secretary getting tired, even afraid. There was sweat on his brow, his grey face even greyer, while a band of steel constricted around my own heart, tighter and tighter.

And then my beloved opened his eyes. And I saw that though his face was no longer the one I had known – no longer the borrowed face of Maximilian von Gildenstein, but the face that had stared out at me from those official portraits and newspapers – the eyes were the same as the ones I'd fallen in love with. Clear, grey-blue, and warm. Those official portraits hadn't told a lie. They'd told the truth, if only I'd seen it. The spell had broken. This was the true Prince. And my true love.