The Keeping Place

  An eternity of unbearable noise later, the carriage stopped. The air seemed to resound with the shrieking cacophony. I tried to ask Dragon if she was all right, but I could not hear my own voice.

  The doors swung open, and I squinted against a blinding light. There was an unmistakable salty odor. It was some minutes before I could see well enough to confirm that we had reached the sea.

  The silver rails upon which the metal carriage had traveled ran from an opening in the cliff behind us, across the narrow strip of rocky beach, to the end of a rickety pier. I barely had time to notice there was a ship moored before men in long, flowing robes herded us roughly along the pier. They spoke, but I could hear nothing.

  The gatekeeper was standing on the deck of the ship, talking to a dark man in a blue robe. His air of authority marked him the captain of the ship. He looked us over as if we were bales of wheat, and suddenly I was sure that he was a slaver.

  Just then I spotted Maruman trussed up on the deck. Relief at seeing him gave way to fear, for he was still, and a trickle of blood ran from one ear.

  I probed him, and to my relief, his life force pulsed strongly. He had simply been rendered unconscious by a blow. Nearby lay the bear, also bound and muzzled. This meant it had not been killed when the arrow hit it. I could not enter its mind to discern how badly it had been wounded, but I could see the end of the arrow protruding from a sodden patch of fur, beneath which blood lay in a dark congealing puddle on the oiled deck.

  I heard a cry, muffled as if through many layers of cloth, and swung my head to see Dragon again struggling against her captors. The queen lay ashen-faced before her on a pile of hessian bags, her once white gown stained crimson from neck to hem.

  “Mami!” Dragon shouted. “Mother!”

  “Don’t worry, my dear. She is wounded but not dead,” said the gatekeeper, a cruel smile twisting his lips. “I could have killed her, you understand, but it pleases me to think of her shackled and enslaved. Let her bitterly repent her refusal to take me as her consort.”

  “Traitor!” Dragon screamed.

  His smile broadened, and for the first time, there was a glint of real humor in his eyes. “Traitor? Some might say so. I have deposed the queen, after all. It is a pity she had to go, but she was so bound up in the past and pretty legends that she could not see what could be made of this land. Rest assured, I will be an admirable and progressive replacement.”

  “You can’t replace her,” Dragon hissed. “You have the wrong blood. No one will obey you!”

  “Oh, I think they will, my dear, because I will uphold the legend of the Red Queen and vow to guard the throne against all comers until she returns. All know how deeply she trusted me. I am the logical choice to watch over the land in her stead, and if I am a trifle—heavy-handed, shall we say?—well, the legend can be stretched to cover that, can’t it?”

  The seaman made a sign to the men holding Dragon and me. “Tie them up, and we’ll cast off.”

  Dragon resisted, kicking and shouting, until one of the seamen lost patience and slapped her hard enough to stun her. I did not resist, and soon my hands were shackled to the rail that ran around the deck. I sat passively as the seamen set about casting off. When I was certain I was not being watched, I stretched out my foot to touch the tip of Maruman’s tail. The physical contact allowed me to force his mind to wakefulness.

  “I am here/awake,” he responded at last in groggy ill humor.

  I withdrew my foot with relief. “Dragon and I are tied up behind you,” I sent.

  I glanced over my shoulder to see the shore receding and thought in dismay of Rushton.

  “Perhaps he lies elsewhere,” Maruman sent.

  “I hope so. I just wish I could make head or tail of all this. I can’t figure out why Dragon would impose herself on this legend of the Red Queen. Where does the fiction end and Dragon’s actual memories begin?”

  “No choice but going on. We are part of Dragon-dreaming now. But if cycle completes itself, will start again, only we will have less freedom. Only first time has no set pattern.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Dragon’s wild tears and curses had become a dry, hurt sobbing that lanced my heart, and impulsively I turned to her. Before I could even think what to say, the queen groaned softly and stirred between us.

  Dragon gasped and bent as close to her mother as the rope around her wrists would allow. “Mami?”

  The queen opened her eyes and chided her daughter in a frail, papery whisper. “Queens do not shed tears except when they are completely alone, my darling daughter. Now listen to me. I was a fool. I who would not see ugliness am destroyed by it. You will be wiser. But the important thing—the only thing you must think of—is returning to claim the throne. For the sake of Cassandra and the promise made to her by our ancestor.”

  The name Cassandra turned me to stone.

  “I d-don’t understand,” Dragon stammered.

  The queen continued. “I know you are young, but you must remember the day I showed you the grave marker of the first Red Queen. Beside that was the grave marker of her brother. I thought there would be time to impress it more indelibly on your mind. Yet you can remember if you try. You must remember, for someday one will come for what is hidden there, and it must be given lest the world fall into darkness.”

  “Mami, we will find a way to go home, and you—”

  The queen gave a coughing laugh that ended in a moan of pain, silencing her daughter. “I will die soon. I am not afraid. All men and women die, even queens, my darling. The only good and true immortality humans have lies in their dreams and in their children.”

  “No!” Dragon pleaded hoarsely, but there was no answer. The queen had fainted again.

  Dragon’s cries echoed piteously in my ears as all I had thought I knew shattered and reformed into a new and compelling picture. The truth of Dragon’s history wasn’t merely symbolized in what I was witnessing.

  This had actually happened to her. She had truly come from that red land where Matthew was now enslaved. And she was heir to that land’s throne.

  She and her mother had been betrayed and sold away to slavers. Somehow, Dragon had ended up alone in ruins on the Land’s west coast, where we had found her years later. Either she had been put overboard, or something had happened to the ship. That would certainly explain her mysterious terror of water.

  It did not bode well for the Red Queen.

  She had spoken of Cassandra, which was almost the same name as Kasanda. And it fit. All of it. Cassy had been a Beforetimer who had opposed Govamen with Hannah Seraphim. The flamebird had told her she was telepathic, and she had been an artist. Later, for some reason, she had become D’rekta and had led a group of people who called themselves gypsies to the land of the first Red Queen in the aftermath of the Great White. Her Tiban lover must have died, for she had bonded with the Red Queen’s brother, who later perished at the hands of slavers. A vision had bade her seek out the Land, and she had done so, leaving something with the Red Queen for me. For the Seeker. Then she had come to the Land and had given birth to a child—a son to whom she had left the duty of guarding the signs she had created for the Seeker. Again slavers had taken a hand, capturing her and bringing her to New Gadfia, from which the Sadorians rescued her. Whereupon she became the seer, Kasanda.

  A chill ran down my spine like a trickle of ice at the thought that I now had what Kasanda and Atthis had directed me to find: I knew the keeping place of some necessary key, knowledge that had been passed down from one Red Queen to the next for generations.

  In terms of my quest, there was no reason for me to stay.

  I thought of the dark power coiled deep inside my mind, and I knew that I could leave with Maruman whenever I wanted. That’s why the cat had been silent when I’d asked how I was to get back. Getting back wasn’t the problem. And the darkness within me seemed to ask, Aren’t one girl and a mindless man a small price to pay for saving the world?

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; No, I thought savagely. I won’t leave them. All of us will go free, or none of us.

  “Can you untie my paws?” Maruman sent.

  “I will try.” I focused a probe to the point it could be used as a physical force, working at his bonds until he could slip free when he chose. My head was thumping, and I could feel sweat running down my spine by the time I had finished.

  “Now the bear,” Maruman sent, licking his paws to restore their circulation.

  I rested for a time, then turned my attention to the bear. Its bindings were looser than Maruman’s. Nevertheless, by the time I had finished, I was utterly drained of energy. My bindings were long enough that I was able to lie down, if uncomfortably. I closed my eyes, thinking to rest before releasing myself.

  It grew considerably colder. By dusk, the mist had become mackerel clouds infused with lilac and streaks of green over a dazzling ocean of molten gold and red. I lay for a long while simply admiring it, but finally the throbbing pain in my wrists forced me to sit up.

  Refreshed, it did not take long to loosen my bonds. Then I looked around. Land, if indeed it was land, was little more than a bluish shadow on the horizon.

  Maruman sent, “Red Queen bids us be ready to act when the funaga-li are distracted.”

  “Distracted by what?” I asked.

  Without warning, the ship shuddered violently and lurched sideways.

  “Shoal! Shoal!” someone cried. On deck, men ran frantically back and forth, tugging on ropes and craning their necks to peer over the rail.

  “Have we hit a shoal or not?” the blue-robed captain demanded of the man up in the crow’s nest.

  “I can’t see,” he bellowed. “There’s something—”

  The ship gave another lurch, and everyone standing was thrown to their knees.

  “Whales! Whales!” screamed the man in the crow’s nest. “They’re attacking us!”

  “Get the harpoon,” the captain yelled, and I heard a note of real fear in his voice. I slid my hands free of their ropes and untied Dragon’s. She bent over her mother, and I turned to look into the water. Incredibly, the waves seethed with gigantic black fish with shining, smooth skins.

  “They come at the bidding of the queen,” Maruman sent.

  I looked to the Red Queen, who had dragged herself into a sitting position. “You must jump over the side while the men are busy,” she told her daughter.

  Dragon shook her head. “I will not leave without you.”

  The queen hesitated, a strange look on her face. Then she smiled and nodded. “I will come with you, of course. Why not?”

  “But…Mami, you can’t swim,” Dragon protested.

  “I have summoned friends who will help us.”

  “The whales?” I asked.

  The Red Queen looked at me. “They will deal with the ship. My other friends are smaller and silver-gray. They are some distance away, but they come.”

  “Ship fish?”

  A smile flickered over her face. “I have heard them named so, though they call themselves Vlar-rei.”

  “Children of the waves?” I said, translating from beastspeech.

  Her eyes widened. “Who are you?”

  “Another who understands the minds of beasts.”

  To my amazement, the queen spoke directly to my mind then. “Help me up. There is little time.”

  “You have lost too much blood,” I sent.

  “My daughter must not fall into the hands of the slavers,” the Red Queen responded.

  I nodded and bent to take the queen under her arms. The coppery smell of her blood made me feel sick.

  The ship lurched again, and the queen groaned and slumped against me. I helped her to stand upright and was horrified to see fresh blood flowing from the stab wound. Her eyes, cloudy with pain, met mine. “Do not hesitate or all will be lost. More is at stake here than my life.”

  “Stop them!” I heard the captain cry, and there was the sound of running footsteps.

  I heard the bear roar and a man scream in fright, but I dared not look back. “You must jump with her. You will have to support her until the ship fish come,” I told Dragon.

  “I…I am afraid,” she whispered, her face as white as milk.

  I reached out and grasped her roughly by the arm, knowing there was no time to explain or coax. “You are the daughter of a queen! Have you less courage than your mother?”

  Some of the terror in her blue eyes abated, and she clenched her teeth and climbed the rail. For a second, mother and daughter were balanced there; then they were falling away from me into the churning waves.

  I turned to find Maruman and the bear positioned to shield me from a phalanx of seamen, several of whom were attempting to nock arrows to bow strings on the shuddering deck.

  “Go now, ElspethInnle,” the old cat sent imperiously. “We will follow.”

  I dived over the edge, praying I would not land on one of the whales. There was a swift rush of salty air, and then I hit the water hard enough to wind myself. It was icy cold. I fought my way back to the surface, shedding boots and outer clothes so that I could swim. All around me were the silken black whales, but if they were savage, I could not see it in their mild eyes. There was no sign of Dragon or the queen, but I sensed they were close.

  I looked up in time to see a flash of black and gold, and Maruman landed in the water beside me, emanating loathing. Fortunately, although he hated being wet, he could swim quite well.

  There was another splash as the bear leapt into the water.

  I felt a rush of fear, because we would be easy targets for their arrows. Then I sensed the queen coldly command the whales to destroy the ship. They battered it now with terrifying force. The hull cracked and splintered, and in a remarkably short time, the ship sank, leaving nothing behind but a mess of floating timber. Not a single seaman survived, though I could not tell if they drowned or if the whales ate them. The enormous creatures vanished as mysteriously as they had appeared, and all at once, there were just the five of us, surrounded by shattered splinters of debris, with the sky darkening above and a profound silence about us.

  Struggling to control my fear by reminding myself that everything that was happening was part of a dream, I paddled over to where Dragon swam, supporting her mother with obvious difficulty.

  “She’s so heavy…,” she gasped.

  “Her clothes,” I said breathlessly, and began ripping away the billowing cloth. Only then did I see the water around her was red with blood. I summoned a probe and found her life force was running away as rapidly as her blood. Giving up on the dress, I slid my arm around her neck to relieve Dragon.

  “You are bleeding badly,” I sent.

  “I am dying.”

  “The ship fish…”

  “Will bring my daughter to shore,” she sent gently. “The important thing is that she lives and returns to sit on my throne.”

  I farsought until I located a solitary ship fish making its way toward us, but it was very far away. Too far for the queen.

  “Mami,” Dragon gasped through chattering teeth. “I can’t see the shore, and I’m so tired.”

  “The ship fish will come soon to carry you. It will know the way,” the queen murmured. She frowned a little, staring up. “It grows light. I would like to see…to see…” Her voice faded, and I felt her life force dissipate.

  “Mami! Mami!” Dragon screamed. She thrashed about so wildly in her distress that she wrenched the queen’s body from my grip and pushed me under the water. I almost panicked, for the draperies the queen wore wound about my arms and face, dragging me down as she began to sink.

  I fought my way free and struggled to the surface, trying to drag the queen back up, but again Dragon struck me with her flailing arms and the queen slipped from my grasp. I had no breath left to gather her again, and Dragon gave a hoarse scream of anguish as her mother vanished under the dark waves.

  I felt terribly weak all of a sudden, and Maruman sent, “The cords that hold us to our b
odies begin to fade. If you do not break the dream, we will drown, and the cycle will begin again,” he sent.

  Break it? I thought dimly. I couldn’t break us free without abandoning Dragon, but if I could guide her…

  I felt a stab of sheer horror, for she had vanished beneath the waves. Groping about desperately, I found her and dragged her back to the surface.

  “You…must…not…,” I gasped, holding her above the water.

  “I am no queen,” she whispered. “I should have died instead of her. I want to die.”

  I forced myself to answer. “Then she died for nothing.”

  “I…,” Dragon began, but a wave slapped her in the face, silencing her.

  “You must live and remember all she taught you,” I cried as the waves pulled her away from me. She sank again. This time, before I could dive for her, a silvery ship fish rose up between us.

  Its voice entered my mind as fluid and lovely as a song. “The Red Queen begged my aid, but I am only one and can save only one.”

  “Save her daughter,” I sent.

  Obediently it dived, emerging with Dragon clinging to its shining fin, coughing and sobbing.

  “Dragon! Remember who you are, for all our sakes!” I shouted as the ship fish bore her away.

  I watched until they were lost in the dark contours of the waves.

  “Help me,” Maruman sent, and I found him struggling to hold the bear above the surface of the waves. “He fainted from the wound.”

  I wanted to say that it didn’t matter, that we were all going to drown, but instead, I pulled myself wearily to his side and grasped hold of the bear.

  It opened its eyes. They were a brilliant and unmistakable green.

  “Rushton!” I croaked in disbelief.

  The bear merely sighed and closed his eyes again. I felt him slipping from my grasp. I clung, but he was too heavy. His fur pulled from my clenched fingers, and he sank.

  “No!” I dived.

  Somehow, despite the inky blackness, I could see him as a dark shape slowly drifting downward. Kicking hard, I reached out, but my grasp was too short. My lungs burned, but I kicked again and grabbed, this time catching hold of his fur.