“They don’t want shoes,” King Glower said patiently. “They don’t want anything but to be left alone.” He shook his head. “Now, Celie, explain what this independent village has to do with Arkwright . . . ?”
“While we were in Hatheland,” Celie continued, “Lulath became certain that the language we heard the wizards speaking is the one they speak in that village.”
“I am traveling there at once ago,” Lulath said. “I am wanting to learn of them, but they are telling me no, I must go back, making show with the hands, because they are not speaking my Grathian. But of among each other, I am hearing a speaking that is not dislike the one we heard of Wizard the Arkower and the Ethan.”
Ethan was a young man from Hatheland who had begged permission to come with them to Sleyne. He now worked in the griffin stables, grooming and caring for the griffins as he’d been trained to do in his homeland, though he’d tried and failed several times to bond with a baby griffin.
“So, if Lulath is right,” Celie finished, “that means that the people of that village are the griffin riders who survived. The griffins chased the unicorns to the sea, the riders followed them, the unicorns got on a ship, the griffins died, and the people who were left shut themselves off from the world.”
“That is so odd that it must be true,” King Glower said after a moment’s deliberation. “And it’s our best chance for finding out anything about Arkwright. He has to have been with them at some point. Even if he isn’t there now, they might know where he would go to hide.”
“Brilliant,” Lilah said, clapping her hands. She turned to Celie with shining eyes. “You see? Now we have to go to Grath!”
“What joy is bringing me!” Lulath exclaimed, beaming at Lilah. “You must be coming to my Grath for the meeting of that family of mine, my only Lilah!” He reached out his long arms from his seat on the floor, and embraced Lilah around the knees, crushing her elaborate skirts.
“Yes,” Lilah said, not seeming to notice the wrinkling of her gown. “Finally!” She ran her fingers through Lulath’s gleaming hair, which was only a shade less gold than Juliet’s fur.
“Oh, dear,” Queen Celina murmured. “I thought the escaped wizard was complication enough.”
“I’ll be in the library,” Pogue said, and left in disgust.
“Wait,” King Glower said. “Now someone has to explain this to me. Immediately.” He pointed to Lulath and Lilah and looked to his wife for help this time.
But it was Lulath who explained. He leaped to his feet, nearly knocking Lilah down in the process. Before she could stumble, he caught her up in his arms and held her high.
“Oh, My Our Majesty King Glower!” Lulath did a little spin while Lilah shrieked with laughter, her face bright red. “I am wanting, so very, to be having this our Lilah for my bride!”
“That’s what I thought was happening,” King Glower said, putting one hand to his forehead.
“May I? May it be so?” Lulath lowered Lilah tenderly to the floor, his eyes on her. She gave a little sigh and leaned against his chest.
King Glower waved one hand. “I’m fairly certain that nothing I can say will put a stop to this now,” he said.
“Oh, Father!” Lilah said in horror. “You wouldn’t say no!”
“Of course not, my dear,” King Glower hurried to reassure her. “I was only joking. Let me assure you both that nothing would make me happier.”
Juliet and Lorcan began rubbing their heads together, cooing, while Celie just stood and stared. Rufus butted her, and she put a hand on Bran’s arm to steady herself.
“I don’t want to leave the Castle,” she told him.
“I don’t think we’re going to have a choice,” Bran said, blinking rapidly at Lilah and Lulath, who still had their arms around each other.
“Ew,” Rolf announced.
Chapter
3
Hiding was childish, but Celie didn’t care. She wasn’t about to sit in the throne room for one more day and watch Lilah and Lulath mooning over each other while her father sent off messages to Lulath’s family and everyone buzzed about the pending betrothal.
“‘Betrothal’ is a stupid word,” Celie said, and Rufus squawked in reply.
They were in the farthest reaches of the Castle, in what had been the old nursery. Celie figured that if someone did find her there, she could always claim that she had come to look for some old baby blankets for the griffins. Autumn was coming, and Rufus had a tendency to chew on her blankets at night.
“Betrothal,” Celie said again, kicking at a trunk of old toys.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want Lulath and Lilah to get married. She loved Lilah, and she really liked Lulath. No, after all they’d been through together, she loved him, too. He was like a brother to her now—how could he not be?
But if they got married, Lilah would go live in Grath. The king and queen had already begun talking about who would go to Grath to announce the betrothal and for how many months.
Not days, not weeks, but months. And Celie was included in the party.
The wedding would take place in Sleyne, but royal weddings took time. There was a great deal of preparation to be made, and Lulath’s family had to meet Lilah—and Queen Celina and even Rolf and Celie, apparently—and they had to decide terms of the marriage: how much land in Sleyne they would inherit, how much in Grath. Would Lulath be in line for the throne of Sleyne, or would Lilah give up her title, in favor of possibly being queen of Grath? This last item meant that a handful of people had to die, though, because Lulath was the third son, and fifth child, and it seemed that his older brothers and sisters all had children as well. But it had to be put in writing anyway, and approved by both families.
Lilah was getting her wish for a new wardrobe, both here in the Castle and in Grath. It seemed that, according to Lilah, she and Celie would need gowns suitable for traveling to Grath, then other gowns for their stay in Grath, and any other fashionable gowns, shoes, fans, or gloves they saw between the Castle and Lulath’s home as well. Lilah was insistent that they could not look poor or outmoded in front of Lulath’s family. And the seamstresses needed to start right away, because Lilah and Celie were leaving Castle Glower as soon as their gowns could be made.
Celie had been hoping that the Castle would object somehow, but it showed no signs of caring. She knew that she couldn’t hide forever . . . well, she could probably hide in the Castle for at least a month . . . but she’d need food, water, and a reasonable excuse, so she knew she couldn’t be gone long.
She could, however, hide for the afternoon, and avoid being measured for her gowns and hearing Lilah squeal over fabrics. Just for one afternoon.
Everyone was acting ridiculous, and now no one seemed to care that Arkwright was missing. Bran had sent out more doves, and he was planning to leave on his own in the next few days, to travel ahead of them to the College of Wizardry and then on to Grath. Members of the Council, backed by Castle guards, had been sent to the villages and cities of Sleyne to hunt for the escaped wizard as well.
Celie thought that leaving the Castle wouldn’t be so bad if she were doing something important, like finding Arkwright. She’d offered to go, too, had proposed that she and Rolf and Pogue take a dozen guards and ride for Sleyne City, and her father had said no without even considering it. But traveling in state so that she could stand behind her sister while Lilah got married sounded too horrible for words.
“Beeee-troth-aaaal,” Celie said again.
She idly flipped open the trunk that held some of their old toys. There was a leather ball that had belonged to Rolf lying on top, and Rufus immediately tried to grab it. He couldn’t get his beak open far enough to bite it, though, so Celie took it out of the chest and started to throw it for him. Rufus went through a ball a week, since after fetching the ball for a few days he would try to tear it apart like a juicy ham. Celie bent down to see if there were any more balls in the chest, but only found a set of blocks and some puzzles. The chest was
barely half-full: the queen had donated many of their old toys to families in the village, and Lilah still had her dolls, looking like new, lined up on a shelf in her room.
Celie’s favorite childhood toy, a stuffed lion named Rufus, held pride of place in the middle of her bed. She used to feel self-conscious about keeping Rufus, but a year ago her old toy had become part of the spell that brought Lord Griffin briefly to Sleyne, where he attacked the murderous Prince Khelsh and saved Celie’s life. Months later, Celie had named her real live griffin after the toy, then found the toy Rufus again in Hatheland, being kept in a run-down stable by Lord Griffin. The poor, grayish toy lion had been washed and mended and was viewed almost with reverence by the housekeeping staff. Consequently, Celie was no longer embarrassed when people saw him in her room.
“No more balls,” she told Rufus the griffin, closing the lid of the trunk. She threw the one they’d found for him a few more times. “What’s in here?”
She tried to keep her mind off the betrothal and subsequent departure from the Castle by looking through more trunks. She found some old clothes, quite a few early reading primers and scribbled-in schoolbooks with broken spines, and finally some blankets. She took out a few that were in fairly good shape, wondering why her mother would keep such things. She supposed they reminded Queen Celina of her children as babies, but some of them were little more than rags, and Celie couldn’t see the point.
She tucked the blankets under one arm and closed the lid of the chest. Rufus had gotten the ball stuck in the corner of the room, behind the leg of a table, and she went over to help him, her gaze on the tapestry on the wall behind the table.
Celie considered herself an expert on the Castle’s tapestries, now that they’d been to the Glorious Arkower and Hatheland, and realized that some of the tapestries had been made by one people, and some by another. Arkish tapestries were more stylized and the people looked very stiff, while the Hathelocke tapestries were very elaborate, with lots of curling vines and flowers. This was a Hathelocke tapestry. It had griffins on it, as they all did, and she idly kicked Rufus’s ball free as she felt the fine stitches of the tapestry. It was in very good repair, though dusty, and she decided to ask about moving it to her bedchamber. It wasn’t doing any good here.
She couldn’t remember seeing this one before, which was strange, since she’d spent the first years of her life in this very room. She decided that it must have been in Hatheland and just arrived with the rest of the Castle. There were a lot of new furnishings and even dishes and linens, now that the Castle was whole. Of course, none of them were actually new; they were the Castle’s original goods, and most of them were old and battered.
Celie looked to the top of the tapestry to see how it was attached, wondering how much work it would be to take it down, air it, and rehang it. It had curtain rings at the top, she saw, and was hung on a rod. That was also strange. She pulled it sideways to see if it really moved like a curtain and found a door behind it. She was sure there hadn’t been a door there when she was little. In fact, she was sure this wall had been home to a series of pictures of horses and dogs and deer, painted by one of their mother’s cousins.
Celie had been trying to correct her atlas of the Castle since they’d returned from the Glorious Arkower, but the Castle was now more than twice as big as it had been, and she still wasn’t done. And now here was yet another room she didn’t know about! Setting down the blankets on the table nearby, Celie didn’t hesitate to open the door.
To her disappointment, it was only more storage. Large bundles and crates, marked in a foreign language that was probably Hathelocke, though possibly Arkish—she would have to find out if Ethan could read it. She took a few steps into the room and peered around, to make sure she hadn’t missed anything, but there weren’t even any windows, and no other door. She turned to walk out and screamed.
Looming in the corner by the door was a griffin standing on its hind legs and wearing a crown!
Rufus came, screeching, to her rescue, but by the time he’d taken position in front of Celie she had already realized that the griffin was carved out of wood. It appeared to be a strange and slightly terrifying statue of rich dark wood, with touches of gilt lining the crown, eyes, and feathers. Rufus hissed at it, but Celie found that she liked it, once her heart slowed down.
“Maybe I’ll put that in my room, too,” she told him. “Or the throne room, if everyone starts being nice to me.”
Rufus just hissed again.
Chapter
4
“Good heavens, Celie, do you know what this is?” Bran put both hands to his head, dislodging his round wizard’s hat and scrubbing at his hair.
“A statue?” Celie asked uncertainly.
“Close. It’s actually a figurehead,” Bran said. “For a ship. A large one, judging by the size.”
“A ship? A figurehead?” Celie gaped. She had not been expecting that.
“The Builder’s ship,” Ethan said in reverent tones. He’d been invited to come and see the goods in the storage room Celie had discovered, and translate any of the writings that he could. “I thought it was just a myth.”
“Apparently not,” Bran said. He ran his hands along the back of the griffin.
Celie moved around, raising the lamp she held higher, and saw what Bran had seen. The back of what she’d thought was a statue was a long, squared-off beam. There were marks where it had once been fastened to the prow of a ship, the wood scarred from being pried loose. The carved griffin’s back arched, and his wings flared. Celie could imagine him poised on the front of a ship with golden sails.
“Tell us the myth,” Celie said to Ethan. “Please,” she added.
She had a hard time talking to Ethan. He had helped them escape from Hatheland, and from his onetime master, the Wizard Arkower, as well. Then Ethan had gathered up the eggs that were now nestled in the Castle’s hatching towers, and hidden them from the Arkower until Celie and her friends could rescue them.
But Ethan had been a servant of the Arkower since he was younger than Celie, and he’d tried and failed three times to bond with a newborn griffin. The baby griffins, unwilling to eat from Ethan’s hand and with no parents to care for them, had died. It made Celie uncomfortable to think about the griffins that had died, and how Ethan kept trying to bond with one, even when he knew that failure would mean their death.
“It’s not a really exciting myth,” Ethan said apologetically. “More like just another chapter in the life of the Builder. He built a ship on the shores of the lake, and when it was ready, he sailed it from the lake to the sea, and then on to exotic lands. He brought back two of his wives from that journey . . . I suppose you saw their likenesses in the tomb?” He looked at Celie, and she nodded.
Celie had been to the Tomb of the Builder, the first king of the Castle, in the Glorious Arkower. Celie and her companions had gone first out of curiosity, then to hide from the battling wizards, Arkower and Bratsch, and later to retrieve the griffin eggs that Ethan had hidden. Bran and her parents had been with her that last time and had seen the Tomb of the Builder with their own eyes.
The tomb was filled with treasure: weapons, jewels, rich clothing, and even food. It also contained statues in the likenesses of the Builder’s five wives and two dozen children. The only actual bodies in the tomb belonged to the Builder and his griffin, who lay side by side at the far end of the long chamber.
“Well, anyway,” Ethan said. “Two of his wives were from far-off lands, supposedly brought back on this ship. And then the ship was either sunk in a storm or just got old and was no longer fit to sail, depending on who tells the story.” He shrugged.
“How do you sail a ship from a lake to the sea?” Celie frowned.
She had sailed on the now-poisoned lake and knew that it was very far from the ocean. They’d never even seen the ocean in that world, since it was several days’ travel away.
“There used to be a wide river running from the lake to the ocean,” Ethan
said. “But there was an earthquake and a landslide or something that filled in part of it a few hundred years ago.”
“It was probably the Arkower,” Celie said darkly.
“No, it really was an earthquake,” Ethan said. “It was before the Castle left, though apparently it did make the lake much easier for Arkwright to poison.”
“Ugh,” Celie said.
“What happened to the river hardly matters now,” Bran said. “What does matter is that this is a magnificent piece, and we need to bring it to the throne room to show Father.” He ran his hands over the griffin’s wings. “Magnificent,” he murmured.
“There appears to be more of the ship stored here,” Ethan said. “This crate is marked as belonging to the captain’s quarters. And that one says ‘sails’ on it.”
“Even better,” Bran said.
“I’ll go get some men to help us move this,” Ethan offered.
“Excellent. Thank you,” Bran said.
After Ethan had left, Celie set her lamp down and paced around the crates, studying them. If they were all parts of the ship, then there was a great deal here. How large a ship had it been? Did it look like the ships Celie had seen pictures of?
“I’ve never been to the sea,” she said, half to herself.
“You’ll be in Grath in less than two months,” Bran said. He grunted a little, trying to shift the figurehead himself. “The palace is right on the shore.”
“Ugh,” Celie said again.
Bran stopped admiring the wooden griffin and turned to her in surprise. “Don’t you want to go to Grath?”
“Not particularly,” she said, not caring that she sounded like she was pouting. “Not that anyone cares how I feel about it.”
“But they . . . why should . . .” Bran appeared to be at a loss. Celie supposed that this sort of thing wasn’t covered in classes at the College of Wizardry. “Lulath and Lilah are in love,” he finally said, rather severely. “Aren’t you happy for them? I thought you liked Lulath—who could possibly not like Lulath?”