The Wildkin’s Curse (31 page)

‘Bless you, I have my own set of steps,' Palila said. ‘They lead up to the cellars. Most of the servants think I sleep there somewhere, if they think about it at all. Princess Rozalina and I spend the day together, playing games and telling stories, and then we have supper and I come home. She wants to talk to her mother most nights.'

‘Talk to her mother? But . . .'

‘But Queen Shoshanna is dead. Yes, I know. Her ghost haunts the tower. I do not mind, but it has driven other guards of Rozalina's close to madness.'

‘I think I saw her,' Merry whispered.

‘Queen Shoshanna?'

‘I think so.'

The old woman regarded him with steady dark eyes. ‘There are few who can see so clearly. Most only
feel
the ghosts of the dead. It does not surprise me though. You found my cave, which few can do. You must have some measure of the Sight. And you called to Horace.'

‘No . . . I didn't call him . . . though I did follow him . . .'

She frowned.

‘I need a pelican feather.' Merry thought how stupid he must sound. He tried to explain, but the old woman waved her hand dismissively, saying, ‘Of course, we know that. I told you we heard you calling.'

‘You heard me calling?' Again Merry had the sense that it was his brain that was stuffed with feathers, not the cushion he was sitting on. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

‘Do you not know you have the Gift of Calling? Three times already I've heard you call.'

Merry shook his head. ‘I don't understand.'

‘It is one of the Gifts of the wildkin. You can call to birds, like I can. One day you'll be able to talk to them, if you wish. We call it the Tongue of the Heavens.'

Merry stared at her, wondering if she was mad, like the boy on the wharf had said. ‘I can't speak with birds.'

She made an impatient movement with her hand. ‘No, of course you can't. Not yet, anyway. Yet you have the Gift. You are like a newborn child, with a brain hungry for language, first learning to babble sounds that have meaning.'

‘But . . . do you mean when I whistle? Or try to mimic bird sounds? Or when I play my lute . . . sometimes I try and put the songs of birds into my music.'

‘They are all ways of speaking, but they are not what I mean. I mean when you reach out, with your mind, with longing, with desire, when you seek to connect . . .'

He stared at her, and she said gently, ‘You are calling now.' At her feet, the pelican stirred, turning his head, looking at Merry with great, dark eyes.

‘You do not know how rare it is, to have the Tongue of the Heavens,' she said, leaning forward to stroke the pelican's smooth white head with one of her misshapen hands. ‘I have it too, and the Tongue of Darkness, the secret language. Princess Rozalina, she has the Tongue of Flame. Now that is the rarest of all Gifts, the most beautiful, the most dangerous.'

‘What does it mean?'

‘She has the power to move people with her words, to sway them, to make them feel and think and understand things they've never felt or thought or understood before. She has the power to change people's minds, which you must know is the most difficult thing to do in the world. Yet she lives in a world haunted by silence. I fear she will go mad if she does not escape soon. That, or her enemies will kill her.'

‘So you know why we need the pelican feather?' Merry said after a long pause.

‘I can guess,' she said peacefully. ‘You have the cloak of feathers?'

He nodded, and she sighed a long, deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Then ask him.'

Merry leant forward in his chair, fixing the pelican with his eyes, thinking only,
Please . . .

The pelican shuffled forward a few clumsy steps and opened wide his beautiful white wing. Merry reached out and gently plucked one of the feathers.

‘Thank you,' he said, and the pelican bowed his head.

R
OZALINA WATCHED THE PELICANS SOAR AND WHEEL AGAINST
the sky with new hope in her heart. It had always been a bittersweet joy, watching the white-winged birds soar over the vast blue water and wishing she too could fly free. Now there was no bitterness in the sweetness, no sorrow in the joy.

Rozalina had wished for a hero to come to her, someone tall and fair and strong, and he had come. That at least was one wish she did not need to fear. Unlike longing for her mother again, or hoping her father would die. Both those wishes had come true too, but they were dreadful things to want. Rozalina thought of Count Zedrin with a warm glow in her heart. He was the one, she knew it, and today was the day when at last she would fly free as a bird over the wave.

She looked around her, at the small room that had been her home for sixteen long years, and was filled with exultation at the thought she might never see it again. She had done what she could to make it a home, but since she was not permitted any curtains or tapestries to soften the hard, cold, glass walls, or anything that might be used to help her escape, it was rather stark and bare.

She was allowed only songbooks and storybooks, which Palila brought her from the palace library. Sometimes Palila dared to conceal within them fragments of older books written in the secret language of the wildkin, what Palila called the Dark Tongue. She had taught Rozalina how to read it and speak it, and many of the stories she told at court were inspired by these old tales.

Rozalina had to be careful how she told the old tales, or the new stories that were sent to Palila from all over the country, by pigeon post or pelican messenger, news and gossip written in secret codes and concealed within the pelicans' great bills, or tied in scrolls to the pigeons' legs.

She would write the tales down on parchment with her quill, giving them different names and scenery, and new rhythms and cadences, until the old tale was barely recognisable. This was when Rozalina was at her happiest, her quill pen scratching against the parchment, her fingers ink-stained, her brain busy with words and visions unfurling.

If she was not careful to conceal one story within another, her father or the astronomer would guess she had been in contact with the outside world, and they would take Palila away again, hurting her to try to find out what she knew and how.

Rozalina sighed. She looked out the south-facing window, down to the fountain where the swans floated. That was where she had first seen Count Zedrin, the hero she had wished for. She had seen into his heart and known what she must do.

Count Zedrin was there again, sitting on the stone edge of the fountain, staring up at the window. When he saw her, he got to his feet and raised a hand to her. She raised hers in return. He then pressed his hand to his heart and bowed to her. Rozalina smiled.

Zed stood for a moment longer, his hand pressed to his heart, which was beating uncomfortably fast, then he sighed and turned away.

He had not slept well last night, his brain on fire with thoughts of Rozalina and plans to rescue her. In the end, he had got up in the pale pre-dawn light and scouted the courtyard and round the tower, dismayed at its height and impregnability. He had seen her in the window, so small and frail and so far away. Was it even possible to get in and out that narrow slit of a window? And the doorway was well lit and well guarded. No one could approach without being seen.

If only he knew whether Merry had managed to find the last two feathers! Because it seemed clear to Zed that he needed the cloak of feathers. Even if he tried to rescue Rozalina while she was at the feast today, they would still need to fly over the high surrounding walls. And then what? He needed a fast ship to get her away. A fast ship and fair winds.

He thought of the
Wind Dancer
and strode back to his room, where he hurried to the desk and scribbled a note to the
Wind Dancer
's captain, asking him to have the ship provisioned and ready to sail, pending further orders. He sealed the note with wax and his signet ring, and rang the bell.

Aubin the Fair answered it, looking rather displeased at being required to do such a menial task. He was tired-faced and dishevelled, his moustache without its usual waxen twist.

‘What has happened to your squires, my lord?' he said testily. ‘It is their job to answer bells and run messages, not mine.'

‘They're busy,' Zed said curtly. ‘Though if you see them, tell them I want to see them now. And get someone to run this down to the harbour for me, as quick as you can.'

‘Yes, my lord,' Aubin replied, taking the note in his big, callused hand. He stood, hesitating.

‘What is it?' Zed asked impatiently.

‘My lord, I hope you will forgive me talking out of turn . . . it's just, with your uncle being dead and all, and you not having anyone older and wiser to advise you . . .'

‘Yes?'

‘It's this wildkin witch, my lord. You seem fair enthralled by her and it doesn't seem right, a young lad like you, getting trapped in her guiles.'

Zed jerked irritably. ‘You should not speak of the king's granddaughter in such a way. She is the crown princess, and just an innocent girl. It's a crime the way she's been kept locked up all this time.'

‘No, my lord. It's a crime for you to say so,' Aubin said. ‘The king knows what he's about, keeping her locked up. She's a wildkin, and dangerous. Haven't you heard the tales about how she cursed the poor prince so all his other children died? And now she's bewitched the king to change the law so she will inherit the throne. A wildkin! And a girl! The king must've run mad.'

‘Aubin! You must not speak so. It's all gossip and lies.'

‘It's no gossip that he named her crown princess,' Aubin pointed out. ‘I was there, I heard him. It doesn't seem right, to disinherit you in her favour.'

‘I'm not disinherited,' Zed said, trying hard not to lose his temper. ‘If the king had not changed the law on female inheritance, I would never have been in line for the throne anyway.'

Aubin looked dissatisfied.

‘Please, just take the message for me,' Zed said.

The constable looked down at the note. ‘A message for the captain? You planning on setting sail?'

‘Chtatchka blast it, that is none of your business! My message is private. I have given you an order! Go and do it!'

Aubin shook his head worriedly. ‘A starkin lord uttering hearthkin oaths. It's a bad sign, a very bad sign. Indeed, yes, the world is coming to ruin.' He turned and went out, one hand worrying at the limp end of his moustache.

Zed stared after him, deeply perturbed.
Where were Merry and Liliana?

Palila insisted on Merry resting a while longer, and made him a cup of hot peppermint tea while she laboriously ground up some chestnuts in her mortar to make him a bowl of thin gruel. Merry was not hungry, but after a few mouthfuls he began to eat more eagerly, feeling warmth and strength returning to his body.

‘It was so lucky I met you,' he said. ‘You are the Erlrune's contact in Zarissa, aren't you? Would you be able to organise a boat for us, to get away from here?'

‘Perhaps,' she answered after a long moment. ‘When?'

‘Tonight,' Merry said. ‘At sunset.'

‘Very well,' she replied, after a much longer pause. ‘I have friends among the fishermen, people who owe me favours. I'll see what I can do.'

‘It has to be ready,' Merry said. ‘All will be lost if we cannot escape the city. Make sure it is down below your cave at sunset.'

‘A boat, at sunset, below my cave,' she repeated, and drew a small wooden desk towards her, beginning to scrape clean an old piece of parchment.

‘Have you always lived in the cave?' he asked, tasting another mouthful of the chestnut gruel.

‘For many a long year,' she answered. ‘I like to be close enough to see and hear the sea.'

‘And how did you come to be nursemaid to the princess?'

She shrugged. ‘I came when Queen Shoshanna was first brought here. I thought perhaps I could help her escape. She was too heavily guarded, though. I tried sleeping potions, and poisons to strike the guards down with cramps and vomiting, and I tried bribes. Three times I almost had her free, only to be seen, or betrayed. I was lucky not to be killed for my pains.'