The Queen's Necklace (68 page)

Raith glanced around him, to make certain they could not be overheard. They were alone on the forecastle, and even if the wind carried their words, anything they said would be blown harmlessly over the water. He turned his particularly penetrating gaze full on her face as he spoke. “But are the best interests of Men and Goblins truly opposed? Surely the Padfoots and the Ouphs—and the majority
of the Wrynecks and the Grants—have made it abundantly clear that they wish to live in peace.

“As to the Maglore—my parents died when I was so very young, it is hard for me to remember all that they taught me. As I understand it, for many years there were two factions. One was determined to win back the Empire, and they were ready to do whatever was required in order to do so. The other, essentially pacifist, wanted nothing more than to live their lives in obscurity and safety. They felt that the other party imperiled that safety, and were willing to put their principles temporarily aside and fight a secret war. Unfortunately, the other party proved stronger in the end, and they were destroyed.”

“And to which faction did your parents belong?” Lili asked, with a searching glance of her own.

“I have reason to suppose they had been born into families of opposing principles. In any case, they chose to ally themselves to neither party, to live apart from their own kind, and to break all ties. Others had made the same choice before, doubtless others have made it since. As some Men do live in Goblin Town, so it is possible for Maglore families to do so also and to still pass as Human—at least in the eyes of the Human population. But those who do so place their families in jeopardy. If both parents die in this self-imposed exile, there is no one on hand to take charge of the children.

“I was one such orphan, wandering the streets, until one day I chanced to find my way into an Anti-demonist orphanage. The good people there took me in, and raised me as one of their own.” His eyes kindled at the memory, but he gave no other sign of emotion.

Lili raised her eyebrows, with a slight incredulous smile. “And they never guessed who and what you were? I find that difficult to believe!”

“They guessed soon enough,” said Raith. “How could they not?”

“And yet they kept your secret?”

The Leveller shrugged. “Like most people, the Anti-demonists firmly believed that the last Maglore was exterminated more than a thousand years ago. What were they to suppose upon discovering me? To their way of thinking, it was a miracle: a Maglore child brought forward in time. As vile a thing as he was—a creature who, in his own time and place, had much better not have been born—they felt he had been spared for some special purpose, appointed by a Divine Providence to perform some great service to Mankind, perhaps in expiation for the sins of his forefathers. So they set about making him fit for that task. It was not easy, for them or for me, I can assure you.”

For a moment, it was as though some barrier dropped, and his strong, passionate nature was revealed to her. “There is no creature on earth more wild, more willful than a Maglore child. But in time the Anti-demonists tamed me, in time they taught me their faith, in time they schooled me to an absolute conviction that I had been singled out for some great purpose.”

“But—you knew all along when and where you had originated.”

“I was so very young, so very ignorant.” The barrier descended again, but now Lili was aware of the iron control by which he achieved his apparent serenity. “I could not even tell them what year I had been born, nor refute, even in my own mind, the idea that I might have been carried from another time and brought into theirs. And the adults around me all seemed so much wiser than I, that I was ready to accept whatever they told me. Much later on, when I was an adult myself, I found my way back to the neighborhood where I was born, and there I discovered the truth. But by that time, I had already discovered a great many extraordinary things about myself, things which seemed to support the idea that I
was
made and meant for some extraordinary purpose.”

The wind had died momentarily, and the ragged sails went slack. Then a series of gusts caused them to fill again. As the wind gained
in strength, the ship leaped forward, with the foam flying off of her bow, and a milky white wake boiling behind her. The air was colder now, and Lili took the edges of her cloak in both hands wrapping them around her.

“What had you learned about yourself?”

“My kind protectors at the orphanage first discovered my secret when I became ill again and again after eating their food. But I had eaten enough salt during that time that I ought to have been dead, not ill. You have perhaps guessed that I had an inherent gift for healing. I was able, unconsciously, to neutralize the poison—in much the same way that you did during your initiation. On another occasion, when I was careless with a candle, my arm caught fire. Though someone immediately doused the flame with water, I still bear the mark to this day.”

He pushed back the sleeve of his dark woolen coat, rolled up the linen underneath, and showed her a muscular forearm, hideously scarred. “A Human child would have suffered only a minor burn from so brief a contact.
I
should have been reduced to ashes before anyone had time to react.”

He rolled down his sleeve again, covering the scar. “Then, too, I am far stronger than anyone I have ever met. Finally, as you may have noticed, I do have an ability to think ahead and to plan much further into the future than most Goblins. When I first discovered these things, I imagined that I was unique.”

“But you don't think so now?” said Lili.

“No,” said Raith. “I believe I have detected another—superior Maglore—at the heart of the conspiracy to steal the Jewels. To be more precise, I believe I have detected evidence of a mind capable of a plan far more complex and subtle than any ordinary Goblin could possibly devise, but with certain flaws inherent in that plan that a Human might have avoided.

“But at the time of which I speak, I was very far from suspecting
anything of the sort. I had heard rumors of the existence of the Specularii. I felt that their purpose and mine exactly matched. I longed to seek them out, to prove myself worthy of membership in their noble order. Eventually, I succeeded, but at a great cost. There is little privacy in Anti-demonist households, and it did not take long for my foster-parents to discover that I was involved in the practice of magic, which is strictly against our Doctrine. So I was cast out, so I was excommunicated. This was painful to me, of course, but as I had been taught that physical and mental anguish were good for the soul, this only confirmed my belief that I had chosen the correct path. I was not being punished, I was merely being tested.”

By now, Lili was almost past wondering at the odd motivations of this strange cult. Almost, but not quite. “They cast you out—but still kept your secret from the rest of the world?”

“I do not know, Mrs. Blackheart, the strength of your own religious convictions. But whatever your inclinations, you could not easily over-estimate the overwhelming power of faith among the Anti-demonists. They are not in the habit of questioning miracles. They continue to believe there is some divine plan being expressed through me. Because they do not understand this plan, that is no reason for them to doubt its existence. At the same time, they do not think it wise to allow me a place among them, lest I corrupt their children with evil influences. They cast me out to make my own way in the world, yet their belief that I will ultimately redeem myself remains as strong as ever, and they keep my secret. Now it seems that the time of my testing is near at hand. I hope I will not disappoint them.”

Lili turned toward the back of the ship. She stood for a while in thought, with the wind in her face and her hair streaming behind her, before she ventured another question. “Then you don't think that this!—all this we have seen, is the beginning of the end of the world, as foretold by your prophets?”

“No, I do not. The Apocalypse, when it comes, will be an Act of God, not the work of Men or Goblins. Once, I believed that day might not be far off, but I can no longer maintain that comforting thought.”

“Why comforting?
How
comforting?” asked Lili, shaking her head in wonder at this strange new friend, so calm without, so intense within. He was a creature whose very existence as he stood there before her now was a study in irony—Maglore, Anti-demonist, Specularii magician. How did he live with his own contradictions?

“Because when the Apocalypse comes there will be nothing to do but accept the Will of God, knowing that after the Fire and the Flood there will come Rebirth, knowing that what the Almighty tears down He can easily build up again.”

They were sailing past a line of rocks, where there was evidence of some recent wreck. Broken spars floated on the water, and scraps of wet canvas, which had caught on the rocks, flapped in the breeze. “But what Men and Goblins destroy,” said Raith, “it will be for Men and Goblins to restore.”

T
he days before Midsummer found Tarnburgh in turmoil, as rumors that the king was dead swept through the city in a matter of hours
.

The story seemed to originate with the tradesmen and the common laboring-men, who gathered on every street corner, whispering at first, then shouting the news out loud. In the summer heat, it did not take long for their excitement to reach the boiling point
.

In the cafes where the nobility met to eat strawberry ices and drink coffee and cinnamon water, the topic was discussed and debated through three long restless, sleepless twilights. King Jarred had been steadily improving for more than a month—No, he had wasted away and died two weeks ago, and the body was spirited away from the palace and secretly buried—No, no, it was a living Man they had smuggled out of Lindenhoff and carried to a house in the country, that he might convalesce from his long illness, far from the noise and the hurry of his capital city
.

But down in the streets, there were very few who doubted that King Jarred was dead. It was the queen who ruled the country now—Ys the upstart, Ys the foreigner. She had replaced all the government ministers with her favorites, just as she had earlier replaced the palace guards and servants
.

Where was the king's rightful heir? a hundred voices demanded, as the days passed. Why, he was dead, too, a hundred voices answered—and of the same mysterious malady that carried off Jarred. That Lord Rupert had reportedly been seen hours or days ago, hale and hearty—sailing his yacht around the islands off the tip of Nordfjall, or fishing at his lodge in the mountains—carried little weight with anyone. Even if true, the news could hardly have reached Tarnburgh so soon. These reports must be, no, they
were
afabrication invented by the queen, spread by her agents throughout the city to conceal her complicity in the heir's death
.

Meanwhile, ill news came from everywhere. It was a time when reassuring words were needed from the palace, but those who inhabited the palace no longer seemed to care for the people. The queen and her favorites lived only for pleasure. They danced for ten, twelve, even twenty hours at a stretch, on the marble dance
floor—just as the last Maglore Empress and
her
court had reveled in mindless pleasure, fifteen hundred years ago, while
their
world crumbled around them
.

Or so the story circulated, and it grew with every repetition. The queen and her favorites were not dancing, they were engaged in orgies of drunken debauchery. Strange rituals were performed daily at Lindenhoff, by masked adepts behind locked doors—cats and wild birds had disappeared from the palace gardens, and their blood was flowing in scarlet streams on the palace floors. Meanwhile, the queen's Goblin servants were busy in the palace kitchens brewing up vats of poison, which would soon be tipped into all of Tarnburgh's wells and fountains, slaying thousands. The queen—

But these rumors came to sudden halt and a new sort of panic passed through the city, when steaming gases began to escape through cracks in the earth just to the north, and ashes were seen blowing on the wind
.

Tarnburgh, Winterscar—7 Messidor, 6538

A
t Lindenhoff, Ys was alone in her private apartments. Those down in the city who spoke of dancing and debauchery would have been surprised to learn just how quiet and solitary her life had become. With Madame and Zmaj dead, with Aunt Sophie and the rest so devastatingly estranged from her—without the aid and support of those imaginary sycophants and favorites, better known to the populace who had invented them than they were to Ys—she was growing daily more frightened, more uncertain as to her future.

So Ys paced alone in her rooms, rather than reveal her agitation to the servants. When Lord Wittlesbeck came to call on her, he was turned away by the Padfoot page, who said that the queen would receive no visitors.

As for that gaudy little music box, the Winterscar Jewel: it sat on her dressing table, looking deceptively innocent. Her attempts to establish a rapport with the tiny Maglore engine inside had been responsible for the intermittent explosions of steam and ash which had been plaguing the city for many days now; responsible, too, for the underground rumbling heard in the city since an hour before sunrise.

Ys paused in her restless transit to look at the sparkling, dangerous thing. She shivered at the very sight of it, terrified to think what might happen if she tampered with the mechanism again—if, in her ignorance, she upset some delicate, vital balance, and started a process impossible to halt. She could picture in her mind all too clearly a city flooded with liquid fire, herself destroyed along with the rest. But the Jewel was her only chance now, the only way that she could hope to regain some control in this rapidly deteriorating situation.

There came a pounding on her door, a voice demanding to be let in—louder and more vehement than the shrill voices of the Padfoot servants she could hear in the background. Realizing her Goblins might not be able to keep whoever it was out, Ys dashed across the room in a panic, to lock and bolt the door.