The King's Blood (74 page)

Her hastily slapped together scabbard bounced against the narrow walls and she tried to grab the slipping sword. It was built for someone much rounder than herself, even the narrowest of belt holes was too large and kept trying to slide past her armored hips. She used that as an excuse to hide from the glaring omission of having no plan, no army, and no idea where she was.

"We are arrived!" he called triumphantly, pausing before one of the brick indentations in the wall that looked just like every single other they'd passed.

Ciara stepped into the freeing higher ceiling, and looked up. Blackness answered back. She glanced over at the Caretaker who grinned and hopped back and forth like he needed to visit the little monster's room as he whispered to his friend, "yes, of course I remembered. I always remember. Aside from the time I forgot. You always bring that up."

"Uh, your friend is being awfully shy," she started, trying to break the monster out of his trapped psychosis. "Maybe he'd like to speak up."

The black eyes snapped to her. Ciara shrunk away as she only saw her own reflection swimming in the monster's dark orbs. His mouth rose, a section of the teeth glinting in the dancing lantern light. "Ha ha ha!"
 

"Ha ha ha?" Ciara answered back, afraid for her, well, at most he could reach was her stomach and maybe gnaw on her legs.

"'He?'" the caretaker repeated back, "Oh you've done it now. She really hates you now."

Ciara gulped and tried to steady the pounding ricocheting through her limbs. But the Caretaker placed his gloved hand upon her forearm and said through his ungentlemanly snorts, "It's all right. She hates everyone. Now, step onto the platform please."

He ducked into a bag dangling off his midsection, digging through piles of what looked like quills for something. Ciara shuffled on her feet without moving, afraid to ask what the platform was.

"Ah!" the claws hooked around something not much larger than an eye.
Gods, I hope it's not an eye
, she thought, shrugging sore shoulders as he looked over at her. "A bit more to your left," he pushed with his hands and she tried to shuffle away. "No, your other left. By the sprites, did you change cardinal directions again as well?"

The Caretaker grabbed onto her dangling sword and pushed her into the middle of the indentation. He handed her his lantern and nosed over to the sides, crouching down a bit. Ciara raised the lantern up, trying to find something within the utter darkness above. A small breeze, broken free from the real world swatted at her frizzing hair. She could about imagine the look of horror on some of the lady's faces in her state.
 

"Now it is always a trick," he muttered, his fingers pushing and pulling on various knobs attached to the wall. Some slid out easily, others required a hard yank. A few refused to budge on principle alone. "Most likely locked off when they ran underground," he muttered to the girl, "I need to find a derivative of, blast it, take this Base 12!" He poked and prodded some more, before falling back on that old standby of kicking. Something ground within the wall and a drawer popped out with a small circular hole cut inside.

"Ah!" the Caretaker exclaimed, holding up his hopefully not an eyeball and looking at the girl, "You may wish to hold onto something."

Ciara looked around at the stone enclave, barely large enough to house more than three people, and as smooth as a princeling's chin. She shrugged at the monster and gripped onto herself. He bared his teeth in that smile and dropped the ball into the slot. It rolled deep into the drawer and pulled it with. Gears ground inside the walls, then picked up steam until gears all around her were chugging and huffing their way into service. A smell, like old lamps on their last burn filtered into the cavern. Ciara looked over at the panel beside the Caretaker just as a button lit.

"Going up?"
 

The ground sprouted wings, rising as quickly as it should fall, flying past the stationary walls. Ciara teetered on her feet before ending on her knees, trying to keep her stomach out of her throat. The Caretaker leaned upon his hip and looked at his wrist, as nonchalant as if he were waiting for tea. The occasional picture, done in luminescent paint, whooshed past as their platform rose to the gods, but they moved so quickly it was nothing more than a lined blur.

Ciara waited for her life to come flashing before her eyes, they always said that would happen just before death, but all she got was the sight of the monster tapping his foot in impatience. "Why can't this thing go any faster?" he muttered to his friend, as if a body could take much more without exploding.

Bong!

It rattled through the chamber like a priest late for his services and trying to make up for it. The kind of "bong" that nibbled on your soul until all that was left behind was a man who glared at kittens.

A strange voice, garbled by chewing rocks, muttered something after the bong and the lift slowed as quickly as it started flying, coming to a cautious stop. Ciara released her death grip from the smooth floor and looked up at the monster. His smile dropped as he looked up at a flashing symbol above the entryway to the chamber then back to the control panel.

"Mages light your underwear! This isn't the right floor," he cursed, "It should be but a moment." The Caretaker kicked a bit more and pushed a few buttons. Before Ciara could rise to her knees the lift resumed its flight, spinning off into the ether.

As it Bonged again, and came to a much heavier stop, Ciara asked the Caretaker with her hands and feet still on the floor, "Have we stopped?"

"Yes."
 

"Is this where we need to stop?"

"Yes."

"Will we be moving again?"

"Hopefully not."

"Good!" she rose and looked around. The entryway was gone, replaced by a series of grooves carved into the stone. A crude ladder. Ciara squared her shoulders, trying to shake the past few miles out of them. She may burst into tears at the sight of daylight after this. Grabbing onto the grooves, she rose up, easily skipping past three or four on her climb.

The Caretaker hooked his lantern to his belt and followed suit, the light banging rhythmically against the stone. It wasn't much of a climb until she rose into a stone dome, her head gracing dangerously close to the top. There was no place for her to get off the ladder. "What do I do now?"

"Push!" the monster called from below, "When in doubt, push! Or pull. I forget which."

She sighed loudly enough for the babbling fool to hear and, hooking her feet into the narrow grooves, pushed her weight against the stone ceiling. Miraculously, it shifted and, like an egg cracked open, the top half tumbled to the ground on a hinge. Blissful air burst into her lungs. She forgot how cleansing the breeze off the frozen mountains was deep in the stale breath of the mythic stout folk.
 

Lifting her weight up, she placed her hands in the still melting snow and rose onto what for her was the real ground. After rising onto her fawn-like legs, she stretched and spun about searching the horizon. Her jaw skidded to the ground.

Framed by the setting sun, a tower encapsulated the landscape, less than fifty feet from their position. "How," she looked back around at the river bubbling beside without a care, and the open field, mostly free of its winter blanket. "How had no one noticed this? It's practically upon their doorstep."

"Humans notice something unordinary?" the Caretaker rose himself, and pushed the rock back into place where it blended perfectly with a few others positioned beside. "I am amazed you can find your own noses at times."

The monster looked up at the stones. It'd been centuries since he'd last seen it. He wondered if it still had those juniper bushes growing in the back that he planted. That was a disaster of a few decades in home brewing that ended in five deaths and a new tale of hell-mouths.
 

"Your Tower of Ashlan. Sorry, Ashar."

Ciara nodded slowly, looking at the magnificent specter before her. It made the Albrant castle look like little more than a summer home. Then, most every other castle, tower, keep, and wealthy pig farmer with a strange obsession about architecture did. "And how do we get inside said tower?"

The Caretaker's tongue licked across his mouth and darted back in, his fingers counting something against his wrist, "I had not formulated that part, yet."

"Perfect." She tried to rub her forehead, but got a burst of pain. More gingerly, she touched at the welt bursting beneath her skin.
 

"Pst!"

Ciara questioned just which god she must have insulted so dearly to have her life go so crushingly bad. Was it the time she was caught mixing the cheese with the butter on Oleo's Day? Or the wren hunt that ended in a pile of feathers adhered to a pinecone? It's not as if the knights noticed, as far gone as one can get before liquor leeks from your tear ducts.
 

"Pst! Pst!"

"Unless you have some incredibly clever plan to fight off hundreds of soldiers and get us through a closed gate, I'm not in the mood," she muttered to the Caretaker.

But the monster dropped his hand off his chin and said, "It was not I, me, or she," he nodded to his invisible, non-talkative friend.

"Pssssst!" Ciara's eyes snapped to a set of bushes clinging to the river's edge, that bounced with the impressive stage whisper.

"Whoever you are, we're armed and dangerous...probably!" She unsheathed the sword of Cas for the first time; it fit surprisingly well in her terrified hand.

The bush vibrated some more and a shadow rose out of the branches, prickly bits clinging to blonde white hair. A pair of oversized blue eyes blinked in rapid succession at the girl brandishing a sword.

"Marna?" Ciara called, "By the pantheon, what are you doing here?"

Marna looked down at her feet, then back up at Ciara, "Standing."

"Marna..." Ciara warned, her voice falling back into old patterns before her brain and soul could follow.

"In a bush?" she added. "Wossat beside you?" her pale finger extended to the Caretaker, who was trying to hide behind Ciara's legs while also keeping a watchful eye on the girl in the bush.

"He won't hurt you," Ciara said simply, not certain how to answer Marna's question. She forgot to ask what he was.

"Course not," Marna smiled wide, "He's got big batty ears and green skin like in them tales we used to hear. 'The Goblin 'n' the Princess!'"

"Didn't the goblin kidnap the princess?" Ciara asked, stupidly leading Marna down a trail she may never recover from.

"Course, tha's what goblin's do. Capture Princesses and eat gold! Or was that capture gold and eat Princesses?"

The Caretaker mumbled beside her, "Please. Princesses are nothing but skin and bones."

"Either way, I's not gold nor princess. He won't be capturing me."

"Marna, how are you here?" Ciara pressed. At the girl's most likely obvious answer of "a stork delivered me" she added, "At the Tower of Ashar."

"Oh, we's all come with Lordy pants and your Da. He said somethin' about ford if frying their poison." It was difficult to read Marna's expression in the shadows of the setting sun but Ciara could guess it was nothing but pure certainty that they were all here frying their poison. "But something happened that was real bad, See-Ya," her singsong voice turned cold and broken, a note she only sang when she was caught thieving.

"What, Marna?"

"You'll be sad, then mad. Then do something bad. But you mustn't or you won't never be glad," the girl stood rigid as if her body was fighting hard against gravity. Gods only knew how long she hid in those bushes, probably through the entire battle as the Empire took the tower.

"Marna..."

But the girl shook her head, unwilling to say more. "You came for the key."

"Key? What key?" Talking to Marna was a bit like catching fireflies. By the time you saw the light of realization it was already too far out of your grasp.

Her fingers lifted up an iron key strung around her neck on some "borrowed" thread, "I's for the cellar. But the cellar's not happy anymore," her voice dropped down to a whisper as she confided in her only friend, "it's angry."

Ciara inched towards the bushes, holding her hands open as if she were approaching a startled animal. "Why is the..." no, there wouldn't be any answer. Ciara switched tactics, "Where is this angry cellar?"

A small smile curled up Marna's lips which looked dangerously pale in the rising cold of night, "Behind the knotted tree. No one knows of it. Only ol' Marna can find it. It speaks things of long ago."

"Uh huh, that's nice," Ciara said, nodding her head. She inched closer to the waif who looked as if she were about to topple over, and gingerly placed her fingers around the key. Next to Marna's washed out flesh, Ciara looked blacker than a starless night.

Something glinted in the setting sun from beneath the bushes and Ciara's eyes followed it down. Her fingers tightened around the key, the only way into the tower, but her entire body tried to inch back away. "Marna," she tried to keep her voice as calm as possible while terror strangled up from the depths, "there's a sword sticking through your chest."

The dead girl placed her hand around Ciara's, trapping it against the key before stepping forward, causing Ciara to scuttle back. As she parted from the bushes, sure enough, a hilt was embedded deep through her stomach. The spilled blood was crusty and red as old bricks.
 

Ciara tried to scream, but it caught as she looked into the pitiful pools of the unbreakable girl, "You're dead."

"Is I?" Marna looked down at the sword that took up residence in her stomach and then over her shoulder to the pointy bit coming out the backside. "That would explain this headache."

Ciara looked deep into eyes that should be lying motionless upon the bloodied snow and then down at the weapon that did it, "Help."

A green hand grabbed onto the thread stretched around the dead girl's neck and sliced it with a small cheese knife. Slowly, Ciara tried to pull her hand away with the key securely inside but Marna kept her grip.