Pharinet went to the window, rubbed it and peered more intently out at the beach. No, that could not be Everna. The fog might have skewed perspective, but it looked as if the figure was unnaturally tall. Without pausing for further evaluation, Pharinet pulled on her clothes: trousers, shirt and boots. She ran out of her room and down through the castle, startling servants and guards in her passage. Voices called out to her, but she paid them no heed.
Outside, the air was humid and muggy, difficult to breathe. Hamsin stood talking to a couple of his men near the main gate.
‘My lady!’ he cried as he caught sight of Pharinet charging towards him. ‘Is all well with you? What’s happened?’
‘Stay here!’ Pharinet commanded. ‘I will speak to you presently.’
Without pausing, she ran under the arch of the gate and onto the cliff path. Quickly, she went to the place where a narrow staircase cut out of the rock sloped steeply to the shore. The figure was still there, standing motionless. Pharinet could not see whether it was staring out to sea or up at her. The ocean was strangely quiescent, moving sluggishly. Fog rolled off it like young wood smoke, thick and white.
By the time Pharinet reached the sand, she could no longer see the figure, but she was sure it had been female. A female titan, too tall to be human. It must have been a vision, then, a portent. Pharinet stood upon the beach, gazing up and down it, but could see nothing unusual. What did this mean? Was it to do with Ren and Elly, or Val himself? She had no doubt it meant something.
Disconsolately, she walked up the shore, following the tide-line towards her favourite cave, where as a girl she had spent a lot of time fantasising about the future. It was also the place where she’d first made love with Valraven. Now, she craved its memories that were caught in the fabric of the rock.
The tide was lapping at the outer stones of the cave, which were covered in bright green weed known as mermaid’s hair. Pharinet climbed to one of the larger rocks and sat down upon it, her chin in her hands.
Valraven had been missing for a couple of months now, and there was still no news of Ren and Elly. Niska had assured her she shouldn’t worry, and the conviction in the Merante’s voice had comforted Pharinet for a while, but now, as time went on, she felt her optimism begin to fray. Everna felt the same, she knew, although her older sister would not speak of it. Pharinet was aware Everna was nervous of inviting bad luck by voicing negative thoughts. Pharinet had come to trust Niska implicitly, but was it possible she might be wrong? The Sisterhood of the Dragon had met twice a week since Niska had returned from Old Caradore alone. They had pooled their strength and projected it to Valraven, wherever he roamed. Niska said that this was all that they could do. She spoke of having seen Varencienne and Ellony in visions and insisted they were not in danger. The rest of them could only take her word for it.
Pharinet picked up a pebble and cast it into the advancing water below. This time of waiting was a torment. What if it never ended? Many years ago she’d learned of the heritage of the Dragon Heir: so many terrible things had happened since then. Mistakes had been made in ignorance. She did not regret what had happened between her and Valraven, because it seemed as right to her now as it had when they’d first become close, but she mourned their estrangement. That should not have happened. They should have handled things differently. She should not have let Bayard seduce and deceive her in his desire to take command of Foy. It was too late, though, for these regrets. Nothing could wipe away the past and she was sure that whatever Valraven and his wife and daughter were going through now was the result of her past actions with Bayard and her brother, the ritual which had resulted in the death of Khaster’s sister, Ellony. A thought occurred to her. What had happened to Val’s first wife had been terrible, but if it had not happened, then Varencienne would never have come to Caradore. The ritual with Ren at the old domain, when Valraven had made the first tentative steps to embrace his heritage, might never have taken place. Pharinet saw Varencienne in her mind’s eye. She pictured her sister-in-law’s laughing face, the brightness she had brought to Caradore that had healed so much. She was not jealous of Ren, because she was not a rival for Val’s affections. No one was. That was the pity of it.
Pharinet picked up another stone to throw into the water, but her hand stilled before she could release it. Something was moving in the fog, just a few yards from where she sat. Something was dragging itself from the water, a dark, hunched form. Holding her breath, Pharinet scrambled to her feet and narrowed her eyes. What was it? Just a bundle of flotsam rags, or something else? ‘Foy, preserve me,’ she whispered and, dropping the stone, made a sacred sign with three fingers against her brow and lips.
A figure was walking out of the sea, its footsteps slow and heavy. Water weighed down its dark clothes and its pale hands felt the air in front of it, as if it were blind.
‘Halt!’ she called, attempting to invest her voice with authority. ‘This is the land of Palindrake. Who goes there?’ Her voice sounded muffled in the fog.
The figure did not pause, but tried to increase its pace. Pharinet felt a frisson of fear. It was a man, she could tell that much. He might mean her harm.
‘Halt!’ she called again. ‘I will call the guard!’
‘Pharry!’ The voice was hardly more than a wheeze, but it carried far. She knew it.
In an instant, Pharinet threw off her coat, leapt into the water and waded out to the man crawling from the sea. The waves, though not as powerful as usual, sucked at her legs, impeding her passage. Eventually, she reached him and put her hands upon his arms. She wiped the soaked hair from his face, looked into it. Her brother.
‘Val!’ She clasped him close and they both sank to their knees in the frothing water. Was this possible? She drew away. ‘Are you a dream?’
He blinked at her, his face as pale as bleached bone. He shook his head. ‘Help me.’
She hauled him to his feet and, almost carrying him, assisted him to dry land. Here, he sank down on the sand, his body shuddering.
‘Get up,’ Pharinet said. ‘You’re freezing. We must get you home.’
‘A moment,’ Valraven said. ‘Give me a moment.’
Pharinet went to fetch her coat, which she put around his shoulders. Then she squatted beside him and stroked his face. ‘What happened? How did you get here? Were you ship-wrecked?’
He took her hands between his shivering icy fingers. ‘Pharry, I have seen such things.’ He shook his head. Words were clearly inadequate.
‘What things?’ Pharinet persisted.
‘She is alive, Pharry. She is with us again.’
‘Who? Ren? Where is she?’
‘No,’ Valraven said, ‘not Ren. Foy. The curse is broken, Pharry. I have reclaimed my heritage. All that you and the Sisterhood have worked for: it begins from here.’
Valraven’s reappearance naturally caused a great furore within the castle. Everna wept to see him, along with Oltefney and most of the female staff. Goldvane, the family steward, began to organise a feast for later in the day. Servants ran along the corridors, and the sound of their laughter made Pharinet realise that few people had been laughing in Caradore since Valraven’s disappearance.
All Valraven wanted to do was rest, but before he gave in to sleep, he asked to speak with his sisters in his private rooms. For some moments, he simply sat on the edge of the bed and held onto their hands as they knelt before him, as if he could not believe he was really home. Outside, the mist was slowly clearing. Perhaps it was an occult medium by which he’d returned to Caradore.
He described all that had occurred at Old Caradore, although Niska had already told them most of it. What Niska had not known, of course, was that Ilcretia Palindrake had somehow travelled through time to reach her descendant, and that it had been she who’d taken him away. She walked the way of light, which was not linear.
‘Sometimes,’ Valraven said, ‘it felt completely ordinary. I was taken to a Caradore that was the old dom
ain in its prime, but there were no servants there, no family, only Ilcretia and myself. She explained it was not a ‘real’ place as such, but an etheric representation of the castle. Still, everything felt real enough beneath my hands. I slept in a bed, ate food, walked in the gardens. For what felt like many weeks, Ilcretia imparted some of her knowledge to me. I learned about the life force that animates the entire universe and how an adept can manipulate that force through their own will. I learned to tap into it, to move it with my mind, allow different frequencies of it to be channelled by my body. Ilcretia taught me much about what makes a man a man, and the great fears that lie hidden beneath the surface. I began to see the empire as an expression of these fears, a great conglomeration of them that moves forward in destruction.
‘It seemed to me that no sane person would wish to be part of such a thing, and that even Maycarpe was wrong in his desire to find a ‘True King’. How could such a man exist? To be a king, he would need the desire to rule others, and that would make him a creature motivated by fear and greed. It was a paradox.’
One day Valraven had asked Ilcretia, ‘What are you training me for?’
‘To be king,’ she answered.
‘I have no desire to rule,’ he said.
‘But you have ruled Caradore for many years,’ she said. ‘Does the trust and faith of your people offend you so much?’
‘That is different,’ he replied. ‘It is an obligation I have, that I inherited.’
‘Just so,’ said Ilcretia, and smiled at him. ‘Your family live from the land and the produce your tenants grow, make and build. Your obligation is to keep those people safe, to be their link to the land, the spiritual king, who would die for their sakes. The people love you, for you are a fair man. You have earned the right to rule that was passed on in your blood.’
One night, as Valraven was retiring for bed, Ilcretia came to his room, as silent and ghostly as an owl. She beckoned to him without speaking and he followed her down to the cellars of the castle that in another reality he had investigated with Niska. Here, they were not ruined and dank and empty, but filled with neatly stacked shelves of produce and labelled casks. The floors were swept clean, the walls freshly brushed with distemper. It was as if an army of servants, cooks and cleaners had only recently left – even the air seemed to move faintly with their passing – but of course, other than Ilcretia and himself, the castle was empty, like a painting come to life.
Holding a lamp aloft, Ilcretia led the way through the confusing warren of passages and chambers, until they came to a wide flight of shallow steps that led downwards into darkness. Here, Ilcretia paused and without turning to Valraven, said, ‘In this place the ancient covenant was observed by our ancestors.’
Valraven peered down into the uninviting gloom and was a small boy beside the towering stillness of Ilcretia, nervous among the folds of her skirts. ‘Must we go down there, Mama?’
‘Yes, my son.’ She put a hand against the back of his neck. ‘Too long have you been denied. But don’t be afraid. The dragons will protect you. It is your right to walk here.’
With a gentle push, she propelled him forward. He could still feel her hands upon him as they began their descent. The lamp cast a dim flickering glow around them, holding them in a fragile bubble of light.
He thought they were on their way to a meeting with the Ustredi, even Foy herself. Years before, he had made a similar journey in his mind with Varencienne. He expected to emerge into a large cave, with a sandy floor, and a black lagoon, from where the Ustredi would rise, seeking tribute from their landbound allies. But when they stepped from the final stair and Ilcretia held her lamp higher, he was faced with an unknown place. A spit of flagstones tongued out from the stairs, surrounded by dark water on three sides. The water appeared to be a narrow U-shaped canal surrounded by walls of natural rock. Into the walls, niches had been cut, deep recesses into darkness.
‘This is the chamber of dreams,’ Ilcretia said. ‘Here, the Palindrakes communed with their element, the sea.’ She gestured at the water. ‘Go to one of the niches, Val.’
He looked at her in appeal. ‘Must I, Mama? It is dark and cold.’
She nodded, just once. ‘You must. You are not a child, Valraven, but a man. Relearn yourself. Face the darkness.’
Reluctantly, Valraven went to the edge of the flagstones and gazed down into the oily water. Anything might be lurking there. He shuddered.
‘Do it, my son,’ Ilcretia said softly.
Without looking back at her, he eased himself down into the water. It came to the middle of his thighs and when he looked up, he saw that the stone spit was about six inches above his head. Ilcretia was standing there, staring down at him. Her face was expressionless, but he got the impression it was taking her a great effort to remain that way. She was afraid for him. He had seen that expression before, on the day when the fire mages had marked him, the day his father had died and Caradore had died with him. When had that been? It was all so hazy now. It felt as if it was hundreds of years ago, yet surely it had been only yesterday?
Valraven waded to one of the niches and pressed himself into it. A feathery darkness closed itself all around him. Dimly, he saw his mother moving away from him to the wall near the foot of the stairs. He could no longer see what she was doing, but he heard a strange sound, like metal grating against metal, stone against stone. The earth shuddered beneath him, the walls around him. ‘Mama!’ he cried, but she was gone.
He was alone in the darkness, and the only sound was the slap of water against rock, and now, another sound, that of heavy stone grinding against the walls. He could no longer see the stone spit clearly, even though the lamp still stood upon it. An eclipse of his sight. It was then he realised he was being walled in. Inexorably, a slow-moving slab slid in from the side to entomb him in the water.
Terror engulfed him in a black wave. He beat his fists against the wet rock, cried out, pleaded for help, and shrieked with fury. How long this went on he later had no way of knowing, but eventually a thread of light ignited in his mind, telling him Ilcretia did not intend to kill him. He was here to learn to be king.
Shuddering and panting, he leaned back against the far wall of the niche. Ilcretia had called this place the chamber of dreams, so he must dream then. He closed his eyes, although it made no difference whether they were open or not. A creeping coldness advised him the waters were rising. The tide was coming in. He thought he could hear the far calls of sea birds and the muted crash of collapsing waves. His entire body went slowly numb, until the water reached just below his chin. He felt drowsy now. He would give himself up to sleep and whatever came after.
He could no longer feel the walls around him, but was aware of space and air. Ahead of him, a silvery light appeared, growing brighter and brighter. He saw that it was a silver ship, her tall masts adorned with billowing silken sails. Her figurehead was of a mermaid whose extended arm pointed out the passage ahead. The ship moved towards Valraven swiftly, her unearthly light casting a leprous glow over the sluggish black water. Now she loomed over him so completely he felt he must be drowned beneath her, but then, without warning, a transition occurred and he found himself standing upon the prow, gazing ahead into darkness. He could hear the creak of the ship’s timbers and the slow slap of water below, but there were no other sounds. He knew the name of this ship: she was the Dragon Queen. She was an avatar of Foy herself.
His consciousness slipped out of his body and now he hung among the rigging, looking down upon a boy with long black hair, clad in dark clothes. Who are you? Valraven wondered. Are you me, or an earlier version of me, or are you all the Valravens who have ever lived since the day Caradore fell to the Magravands?
There is only one, he thought.
With this realisation, his essence was swept with sickening speed out of the vision. He found himself crouching in a corner of Caradore Castle with the sounds of battle all around. He was terrified, his hands over his eyes
, his knees up around his ears. He thought he was about to die. Then he heard his mother’s voice, scolding him. ‘Val, get up! Get up at once!’ He lowered his hands and realised another boy was hunched against him, sobbing quietly, a low desperate sound. His mother stood nearby, shrouded in a dark hooded cloak.
‘Come on,’ Ilcretia ordered. ‘Get up. You must come with me. Now!’
Valraven eased himself away from the other boy, who tugged at his arm. ‘Val, don’t leave me.’
‘I won’t, Khas,’ he said. ‘Come with me. It’ll be all right. Mama’s here. She’ll hide us.’
‘No,’ Ilcretia said. ‘Just you, Val.’
‘Mama, I can’t.’
‘It is what must be. Come now.’
The hideous sounds of fighting were getting closer. Valraven could hear the crash of stone, the hiss of arrows, the screams and moans of dying men, of men fighting for their lives. His mother was holding out her hand to him. She represented an island of safety in a tumultuous sea of terror. The air was filled with black smoke that smelled of burning flesh. Uttering a cry, Valraven pulled himself away from the other boy and ran to his mother’s arms. At once she began to drag him away up a passage, towards a door that led to a high tower.
The other boy tried to come with them, but Ilcretia beat him away. ‘You cannot come with us, Khaster. Your fate is not the same.’
Valraven had to listen to the cries of his friend as he was hauled away from him. He remembered how Khaster had come to stay with him for a summer holiday, how none of this had been expected, how Khaster’s home lay safely to the south, how it might as well have been a thousand miles away. He had not known then that the Magravands had crossed the Leckery land, and that Khaster’s father had ultimately surrendered because he feared for the lives of his people. If he had sent a messenger ahead, perhaps Caradore Castle could have been prepared for the attack, but the Leckery patriarch decided his only responsibility was towards his own people. The decision had cost him dear and haunted him for the rest of his days, but it could not be reversed. These actions had been written in stone, and had cast their dark light upon all future generations of both families. Valraven, becoming aware of these facts for the first time, could see that the legacy of Caradore’s fall involved more than the loss of his rightful inheritance. It had involved betrayal, abandonment and the death of trust.