33
“MAMI, DID YOU see the bear?” Dragon cried.
The queen rose and turned to her with gentle reproach. “My dear, you are interrupting an audience.”
“I am sorry, but, Mami, the bear. It has been whipped, and it is proof that the arena exists.”
The queen sighed. “My dear child, no such thing exists outside nightmare. But you are right that the bear has been abused. It is not forbidden beyond this city, though someday it shall be. Perhaps you can reach it with food or physical kindnesses. Its mind was closed to me.”
“But, Mami—”
“Go now,” the queen said gently but with regal firmness.
Dragon’s shoulders slumped in dejection as she walked off into the garden. How odd, I thought, that her dream self should be the daughter of some mythical, faraway queen. The queen turned to me with a sigh. “My daughter is as headstrong as I was, and as filled with imagination. But she will grow and become wise.”
“What is it that she fears?” I asked carefully.
“There is a foolish myth that within my city, where beasts are welcome and protected, is an arena where they are forced to kill one another for the pleasure of an audience. Of course, it is madness, for my gatekeeper knows every street and canal running through this place. If such a thing existed, he would know of it.” She shook her head. “But I do not wish to trouble you. I am pleased to have met you, and I bid you welcome to the city.”
“Uh … Your Majesty, I wonder if we might walk awhile in your garden? The road has been long and the city, though fair, is not so to Maruman.”
The queen smiled graciously. “Why not. My gatekeeper will disapprove, but I have seen into the beast’s heart, and no harm lies there.” She waved us away, and as we went, I heard the bell ring out again.
“I wouldn’t trust that gatekeeper as far as I could throw him,” I muttered as soon as we were out of earshot. “I’ll wager that arena does exist, and he knows about it. Look at the way his eyes devoured you.”
“Let us seek out Mornirdragon,” Maruman sent.
I sighed and tried farseeking her, but as before, I could find nothing.
“I can sniff her out,” Maruman sent, and proceeded to do so.
The garden became more wild and dense as Maruman led us deeper. I realized we were walking steeply downward and thought of the wall we had followed—there had been no dip in it. I reminded myself that the physical rules of the real world did not necessarily apply here, but just the same, I felt a deep unease when Maruman brought us to the lip of a hollow where mist lay thick and heavy as soup in a bowl. The only hint of what lay beyond were the very tips of trees protruding above the mist.
I hesitated, thinking that the mist looked almost exactly like the purplish smoke that had straggled from the gatekeeper’s pipe, and then I heard Dragon’s voice coming from the misty depression.
“O, Bear, why can’t you let my mother into your mind? I know you have escaped from the arena. If you could just show her! Her sweetness makes her blind. When I am queen, I shall not be so good nor so blind.”
I took a few careful steps into the clinging mist, and then I saw them: Dragon and the bear, standing in a clearing. I had made no noise, but the bear lifted its head in my direction and sniffed.
“Who is there?” Dragon demanded. She spotted me and frowned. “My mother’s visitors. But what are you doing spying on me?”
“Not spying,” I said. “Your mother gave us leave to enjoy a walk about her garden.”
Dragon’s stiffness dissolved, and she sighed. “It does not surprise me. She cannot imagine any evil in people, and that is surely a saintly kind of stupidity.” She studied me for a time. “Do I know you? Your face seems familiar.”
“Perhaps you dreamed of me,” I said, unable to decide what to do now. What would happen if I simply told her the truth: that everything around us was a dream and that she was the dreamer? Kella had said she would never come out of her coma sane unless she resolved whatever had been repressed. Just being told would not achieve that, or else she would never have repressed anything in the first place.
“I do dream of things,” Dragon murmured. “I dreamed of the bear. I thought if he came, she would see the truth.”
I tried to ignore the specifics and see the pattern underneath. Here was a mother blind to something that a loved daughter could see and fear. Was that what had happened in Dragon’s past? Had she known about something, some danger, that her mother had not been able to see? And what did her real mother have in common with the Red Queen?
“Maybe we can help,” I said, the words rising unbidden to my lips.
Dragon looked at me. “What do you know of the arena?”
“Only rumor,” I said. “Road gossip.”
Dragon shook her head. “That’s not good enough. My mother does not believe gossip. I need proof.”
“Why do you believe it if you have no proof?”
For a long moment, Dragon looked utterly confused, and I sensed that somehow I had pressed too hard upon the reality of the illusion. To my horror, the mist about us thickened appreciably, and I found it hard to breathe. “What did you dream about the bear?” I asked hurriedly.
She blinked. “I … I thought she would see in his mind what was happening.”
“Are you so sure he is from the arena?”
Dragon looked at me, and again confusion clouded her eyes, but she said, “Nowhere would such hurts as he has suffered be inflicted except within the arena. I have seen whipped animals before, but they are not like this.” As she spoke, she stroked the bear.
All at once, Dragon shot to her feet, her eyes wide with horror.
“Mami!” she screamed, and she raced back the way we had come.
“Quick, let’s follow her,” I sent to Maruman.
Without waiting to see if he obeyed, I ran up out of the mist and through the forest until I came to the pavilion. There the queen was struggling with the robed gatekeeper. Even as Dragon flew across the open space, I saw him lift a dagger and stab the queen. She fell to the ground with a soft moan, blood streaming from her breast.
Dragon shrieked and threw herself on her mother.
Maruman gave a growl. He launched past me, but a net flew out to cover him. At the same time, another landed over my own head, and as I struggled against it, men ran from their places of concealment. We were caught.
Instinctively, I tried to coerce my captors, but their minds were closed. I realized this was because all of their minds were really Dragon’s. I could use the dangerous killing power I possessed, but I didn’t trust my control over it. What damage might it do to Dragon? Better to go with the dream and see what happened next, I decided.
Dragon, held by two men, was screaming curses and struggling to get to her mother.
The gatekeeper glanced over at me. “It is a pity you were caught up in this. I should have liked that beast of yours for the arena, but there are enough like the queen to look into its mind and see too much.”
At that moment, the bear burst from the trees to attack the men holding me. One man fell beneath his claws, screaming; then a bow sang, and the bear fell at my feet.
“Let’s finish this,” the robed man said in a bored voice. “I want no evidence of any disturbance when the queen’s loss is discovered.”
Dragon and I were dragged to a shed wherein stood a long, peculiar, windowless coach. It had no stocks or strapping for horses and no place for a driver to sit. Yet it was meant to go somewhere, for its wheels were grooved to sit neatly along two metal strips laid parallel on the ground and running to the entrance to a tunnel going under the ground.
Dragon and I were forced inside the carriage. I fought, not wanting to be separated from Maruman, but it did me no good, for my captors were strong. The door slammed shut, and the carriage began to jerk and vibrate. A dreadful squeal of metal upon metal rent the air, the noise increasing to the point that it seemed a physical assault. Then there was a thunderous clangi
ng.
We were moving!
Clutching my ears and unable to brace myself, I was thrown from side to side until I managed to press myself into a corner using my knees and elbows.
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 Dragondreaming 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?
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.