He opened his eyes. Pain flowed back like a wave, filling his veins, his mouth, his nerves.
Keiro said, “Jared. Climb. Climb!”
He obeyed. Like a child, without thinking, he tugged himself up, hand over hand. Climbing through the pain, through the dark fire of his breathing, while far below Finn and Ralph were two glimmers in the black hall.
“More. A bit more.”
Something grabbed above him. His sweat-soaked hands slid on the ropes, the skin raw, his knees and ankles knots of rubbed flesh. A warm grip caught on his. A hand hauled under his elbow.
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
And then a strength that seemed miraculous to him heaved him upward and he crouched on all fours over the pain, coughing and retching.
“He’s safe.” Keiro’s yell was calm. “Move, Finn.”
Finn turned to Ralph. “Ralph, you’re not coming. Do this for me. Get out and find the Privy Council. They have to take charge now. Tell them I …” He paused and swallowed. “Tell them the King orders it. Food and shelter for everyone.”
“But you …”
“I’ll be back. With Claudia.”
“But sire, do you mean to re-enter the Prison?”
Finn wound the rope around his hands and swung upward. “Not if I can help it. But if I have to, I will.”
He climbed quickly and fiercely, pulling himself up with jerks of energy, disdaining Keiro’s hand and rolling over the edge swiftly. The landing was dark. The whole gable-end of the house must have gone, because down at the far end he could see the sky against rafters and half a chimney.
“The Portal may be wrecked,” Keiro muttered.
“No. The Portal isn’t even in this house.” Finn turned. “Master?”
The landing was empty.
“Jared?”
Then they saw him. He was far down the corridor, at the study door. “I’m sorry, Finn,” he said gently. “This is my plan. I have to do this on my own.”
Something clicked.
Finn ran, Keiro at his back, and when he reached the door he flung himself at it, the black swan arched defiantly over him.
But it was locked from the inside.
34
The Prison was a being of beauty once. Its program was love. But perhaps we were too hard to love. Perhaps we asked too much of it.
Perhaps we drove it mad.
—Lord Calliston’s Diary
Rix reached out with his gloved hand, and from above, a tiny pencil-thin light beam came down to touch him. It rippled softly over his palm, and after a while he nodded.
“I see strange things in your mind, my father. I see how they made you in their own image, how you woke in the darkness. I see the people that inhabit you, I see all the corridors and cells and dusty dungeons where they live.”
“Rix!” Attia’s voice was sharp. “Stop this.”
He smiled, but he didn’t look at her. “I see how lonely you are, and how crazed. You have fed on your own soul, my master. You have devoured your own humanity. You have fouled your own Eden. And now you want to Escape.”
“You see a beam of light in your hand, Prisoner.”
“As you say. A beam of light.” But the smile was gone now, and Rix raised the glove so that the light caught a glitter of silver dust that fell through his open fingers.
The crowd gasped.
The dust fell and fell. There was too much of it. It became a cascade of tiny sparkles in a black sky.
“I see the stars,” Rix said, his voice tight. “Beneath them lies a ruined palace, its windows dark and broken. I peep at it through the keyhole of a tiny doorway. A storm roars about it. It is Outside.”
Claudia gripped Attia’s wrist. “Is he … ?”
“I think it’s a vision. He’s done this before.”
“Outside!” She turned to the Warden. “Does he mean the Realm?”
His gray eyes were hard. “I fear so.”
“But Finn …”
“Hush, Claudia. I need to understand this.”
Furious, she stared at Rix. He was shivering, his eyes thin slits of white. “There is a way,” he whispered, rapt. “Sapphique found it.”
“Sapphique?” Incarceron’s voice hummed and rumbled around the hall. And then it spoke again, and there was sudden fear in it, and wonder. “How are you doing this, Rix? How are you doing this?”
Rix blinked. For a moment he seemed shaken. The people were silent.
Then he moved his fingers, and the shower of silver became gold.
“The Art Magicke,” he breathed.
JARED STOOD back from the door. If Finn was beating on it, as he suspected, the sound did not come through.
He turned.
The Realm might be ruined, but nothing in this room had changed. As the Portal straightened itself he felt the quiet hum of its mystery calm him, the gray walls and single desk focus his vision. He raised a shaking hand to his mouth and licked blood from the grazed skin.
Suddenly, fatigue rippled through him. All he wanted to do was sleep, and he slumped in the metal chair before the snowy screen and fought the desire to lay his head on the desk and close his eyes and forget everything.
But the snow held his gaze. Behind its mystery Claudia was trapped, and the Prison and the Realm were caught in that destruction.
He made himself sit up, wiped his face with a grubby sleeve, brushed the hair from his eyes. He took the Glove out and laid it on the gray metal surface. Then he made a few adjustments to the controls and spoke.
He used the Sapient tongue. He said, “Incarceron!”
The snow still fell, but its patterns changed, to a swirl of wonder. It answered him, its voice amazed. “How are you doing this, Rix? How are you doing this?”
“I’m not Rix.” Jared spread his fine hands on the desk and stared at them. “You spoke to me once before. You know who I am.”
“I knew a voice like this, long ago.” The Prison’s murmur hung in the still air of the room.
“Long ago,” Jared whispered. “Before you were old, and evil. When the Sapienti first created you. And many times since, in my endless journeying.”
“You are Sapphique.”
He smiled wearily. “I am now. And you and I, Incarceron, have the same problem. We are both trapped in our bodies. Maybe we can help each other.” He picked up the Glove and fingered its fine scales. “Perhaps the hour has come that all the prophesies tell of. The hour that the world ends, and Sapphique returns.”
CLAUDIA SAID, “They’re out of their minds with terror. They’ll rush us and kill him.”
The crowd was increasingly disturbed. She could feel their panic, sense the urgency in the way they pushed forward, craning to see, their hot sweaty stench rising toward her. They knew if Incarceron Escaped it was the end for them. If they began to believe Rix could do this, they would have nothing left to lose.
Attia grabbed Rix’s knife. Claudia lifted the firelock and looked at her father. He didn’t move, his eyes fixed in fascination on Rix.
She pushed past him, Attia with her, and together they edged around to stand on the steps between Rix and the crowd, even though it was futile, a mere gesture of defense.
“I knew a voice like this, long ago,” the Prison murmured. Rix laughed harshly. The words of his act seemed charged now, like prophecy.
“There is a way Out. Sapphique found it. The door is tiny, tinier than an atom. And the eagle and the swan spread their wings to guard it.”
“You are Sapphique.”
“Sapphique returns. Did you ever love me, Incarceron?”
The Prison hummed. Its voice was hoarse. “I remember you. Out of them all, you were my brother and my son. We dreamed the same dream.”
Rix swung to the statue. He gazed up at its calm face, its dead eyes. “Keep very still,” he whispered anxiously, as if for only the Prison to hear. “Or the danger is extreme.”
He turned to the crowd. “The time has come, friends. I will release him. I will bring him back
!”
“AGAIN!” FINN and Keiro threw themselves at the door, but it didn’t even shudder. There was no sound from inside. Breathless, Keiro turned his back to the ebony swan and said, “We could get one of those planks and—” He stopped.
“Hear that?”
Voices. The clamor of men in the house, men swarming up the rope in the stairwell, shadowy figures crowding the fragmenting corridor.
Finn stepped forward. “Who’s there?”
But he knew who they were even before the flickering lightning showed him. The Steel Wolves had come in a pack of silver muzzles, their eyes bright behind the masks of assassins and murderers.
Medlicote’s voice said, “I’m sorry, Finn. I can’t leave it like this. No one will be surprised if you and your friend perish in the ruins of the Wardenry. Then a new world will begin, without kings, without tyrants.”
“Jared is in there,” Finn snapped. “And your Warden …”
“The Warden has given his orders.”
Pistols were raised.
Beside him, Finn felt Keiro’s arrogant defiance, that odd way he had of making himself taller, every muscle taut.
“Our last stand, brother,” Finn said bitterly.
“Speak for yourself,” Keiro said.
The Steel Wolves advanced, a tentative line across the corridor.
Finn tensed, but Keiro seemed almost languid. “Come on, my friends. A little closer, please.”
They stopped, as if his words made them nervous. Then, just as Finn had known he would, he attacked.
JARED HELD the Glove in both hands. Its scales were curiously supple, as if the centuries had worn them. As if only Time had worn the Glove.
“Aren’t you afraid?” I ncarceron asked, curious.
“Of course I’m afraid. I think I’ve been afraid a long time now.” He touched the ridged and heavy claws. “But what would you know about that?”
“The Sapienti taught me to feel.”
“Pleasure? Cruelty?”
“Loneliness. Despair.”
Jared shook his head. “They wanted you to love too. Your Prisoners. To care for them.”
Its voice was a wistful draft, a crack of sound. “You know you were the only one I ever loved, Sapphique. The only one I cared for. You were the tiny crack in my armor. You were the door.”
“Was that why you let me Escape?”
“Children always escape from their parents, in the end.” A murmur came through the Portal like a sigh down a long, empty corridor. “I am afraid too,” it said.
“Then we must be afraid together.” Jared slipped his fingers into the Glove. He pulled it on firmly, and as he did he heard far off a pounding, maybe on a door, maybe in his heart, maybe of a thousand footsteps crowding close.
He closed his eyes. As the Glove enfolded it, his hand chilled, became one with the skin. His neurons burned. The claws curled as he clenched them. His body became icy, and vast, and crowded with a million terrors. And then his whole being collapsed, shriveling inward and inward down an endless vortex of light. He bent his head and cried aloud.
“I AM afraid too.” The Prison’s murmur rang through all its halls and forests, over its seas. Deep in the Ice Wing its fear snapped icicles, sent flocks of birds flapping over metal forests no Prisoner had ever crossed.
Rix closed his eyes. His face was a rigor of ecstasy. He flung out his arms and cried, “None of us need to be afraid ever again. Behold!”
Claudia heard Attia’s gasp. The crowd gave a great roar and surged forward, and as she jumped back she turned her head and saw her father staring intently at the image of Sapphique. Its right hand was wearing the Glove.
Amazed, she tried to say, “How … ?” but her whisper was lost in the tumult.
The statue’s fingers were dragonskin, its nails were claws. And they were moving.
The right hand flexed; it opened and reached out as if groping in the dark, or searching for something to touch.
The people were silent. Some fell on their knees, others turned and fought their way back through the packed rabble.
Claudia and Attia stood still. Attia felt as if her amazement would burst through her, as if the wonder of what she saw, of what it meant, would make her scream aloud with fear and joy.
Only the Warden watched calmly. Claudia realized that he knew what was happening here.
“Explain,” she whispered.
Her father gazed at the image of Sapphique and there was a grim appreciation in his gray eyes.
“Why, my dear Claudia,” he said in his acid voice. “A great miracle is happening. We are so privileged to be here.” And then, quieter, “And it seems I have underestimated Master Jared yet again.”
A FIRELOCK slashed the roof. One man was already down, crumpled and moaning. Back to back, Finn and Keiro circled.
The ruined corridor was a breathless tangle of light, slanted with darkness. A musket fired, the ball splintering wood at Finn’s elbow. He struck out, sweeping the gun aside, crashing the masked man back.
Behind him, Keiro fought with a snatched foil until it was broken, then threw it down and went in with bare hands. He moved with accuracy, savage and fast, and for Finn, beside him, there was no longer any Realm and no Incarceron, only the hot violence of blows and pain, a stab at the chest desperately fended off, a body flung against the paneling.
He yelled, sweat in his eyes, as Medlicote lunged at him, the secretary’s foil whipping double as it struck the wall, and instantly they were both grappling for the blade, and Finn had the man in a tight hold around the chest, forcing him down. Lightning flickered, showed Keiro’s grin, the steel flash of a wolf muzzle. Thunder growled, a low, distant rumble. A burst of flame. It shot up, and by its light Finn saw the Wolves dive, breathless and bloodied as it slashed over them.
“Throw your weapons down.” Keiro’s voice was breathless and raw. He fired again, and they all flinched as plaster crashed in a white snow. “Throw them down! ”
A few thuds.
“Now lie down. Anyone still standing dies.”
Slowly they obeyed him. Finn tore off Medlicote’s mask and flung it away. Sudden fury burned in him. He said, “I am King here, Master Medlicote. Do you understand?” His voice was a rasp of wrath. “The old world has ended and there will be no more plotting and no more lies!” He hauled the man up like a limp rag and slammed him against the wall. “I am Giles. Protocol is over!”
“Finn.” Keiro came and took the foil from his hand. “Leave him. He’s half dead anyway.”
Slowly, Finn let the man go, and he slumped in relief.
Finn turned to his oathbrother, gradually bringing him into focus, as if anger had been a rippling in the air.
“Keep calm, brother.” Keiro surveyed his captives. “As I always taught you …”
“I am calm.”
“Right. Well, at least you haven’t grown as soft as the rest of them out here.” Keiro swung around and raised the weapon. He blasted it, once, twice, at the study door, under the angry swan, and the door shuddered and burst inward.
Moving past him, Finn strode in through the smoke, stumbling as the Portal rippled its welcome.
But the room was empty.
THIS WAS DEATH.
It was warm and sticky and there were waves of it, washing over Jared like pain. It had no air to breathe, no words to speak. It was a choking in his throat.
And then it was a gray brightness and Claudia stood in it, and her father, and Attia. He reached out to her and tried to speak her name, but his lips were cold and numb as marble and his tongue too stiff to move.
“Am I dead?” he asked the Prison, but the question murmured through hills and corridors and down cobwebbed galleries centuries old, and he realized that he was the Prison, that all its dreams were his.
He was a whole world, and yet he was a tiny creature. He could breathe, his heart was beating strongly, his eyesight was clear. He felt as if a great worry had fallen from him, a great weight from his back
, and maybe it had, maybe that was his old life. And inside him there were forests and oceans, high bridges over deep crevasses, spiral staircases down to the empty white cells where his illness had been born. He had journeyed through it, explored all its secrets, fallen into its darkness.
Only he knew the riddle’s answer, and the door that led Out.
Claudia heard it. In the silence the statue rippled and it spoke her name.
As she stared at it she stumbled back, but her father gripped her elbow. “I’ve taught you never to be afraid,” he said quietly. “And besides, you know who this is.”
It came alive, even as she watched. His eyes opened and were green, that intelligent, curious gaze she knew so well.
The delicate face lost its ivory and was flushed with life. The long hair darkened and swung, the Sapient robe glimmered in iridescent grays. He spread his arms and the feathers shimmered like wings.
He stepped down from the pedestal and stood before her. Claudia, he said. And then, “Claudia.”
Words choked in her throat.
But Rix was leaping in the roaring adulation of the crowd; he caught Attia’s hand and made her bow with him in the storm of applause that went on and on, the howls of joy, the screaming cries that greeted Sapphique as he returned to save his people.
35
He sang his last song. And the words of that have never been written down. But it was sweet and of great beauty, and those that heard it were changed utterly.
Some say it was the song that moves the stars.
—Sapphique’s Last Song
Finn walked slowly to the screen and stared at it. It was no longer snowy, but clear and brilliant, and he could see a girl staring straight at him.
“Claudia!” he said.
She didn’t seem to hear him. Then he realized he was looking at her through someone else’s eyes, eyes that were very slightly blurred, as if the Prison’s gaze had tears in it.
Behind him, Keiro came close.