SEVENTEEN

In the king’s mirrors, they watched for monsters. Ronan, so exhausted he could have dropped then and there to the stones and slept, managed to stay on his feet with his charred eyes open. The half-dozen mirrors blinked through images of a dark and tranquil forest; even the trees seemed to dream. Now and then something moved. But it was always named, recognizable: a hunting fox, an owl, a very old woman picking flowers opening under the touch of the moon.

Ferus, muttering and growling with increasing impatience, snapped finally at the princess, “We could have used your powers. If you had brought them with you instead of hiding them.”

Ronan woke a little at that, looked at her curiously. “I thought you said you had none.”

The king whirled at her, his single eye fulminating. She answered Ronan icily, “You misunderstood me, my lord. I said I have none here.”

He had not misunderstood; on the cliff road she had made herself as clear as possible. But he let it pass, presuming that she was tired of the king shouting at her. As Ronan had pointed out to her, it did not matter anyway. She was very angry with him for some reason or another. But her anger would pass; his mother’s had. As Calandra crossed his mind, a guard opened the door.

“My lord,” he said to Ferus, “the queen.”

Ferus grunted, still searching the mirrors. Calandra entered, her own gaze caught and held by the face of her son. Ronan saw the uncertainties, the fears, the questions in her eyes as she came toward him. She did not touch him; she stood in front of him, studying him, and asked a question like a test. Vaguely, through his weariness, he sensed its importance. But he could not care. He was her son. He could only tell her the truth; if that did not convince her, he did not know what would.

“How did you escape from Brume?” she asked.

He tried to remember; it seemed a season or two since he had left the witch. “Gyre,” he answered finally. “He turned me into a firebird and gave me to Brume. He left me trapped in a cage in the witch’s house, while he left wearing my face. I guessed then that he intended to return here and marry the princess in my place. I bit Brume when she tried to feed me, and she threw me out the door. The cage broke. When I freed myself, the wizard’s spell over me was gone. But not the witch’s, because I had failed to bring her the firebird. She told me then that she would set me free if I brought the wizard to her, for she had seen enough of his powers to want them for herself.

“But Gyre found me before I found him. He caught me at the bottom of the cliff road and told me that he would take me to you and my father to convince you that I was truly your son. Then he would leave Serre because his work here would be finished. But in truth, it would be I who left Serre behind forever, while he stayed wearing my face, taking my name, my memories, my past, and marrying in my place.”

Ferus, who had turned away from his mirrors, made a guttural sound; his single eye had gone flat black with a deadly fury, as it did when he fought.

“How,” the queen whispered, “did you escape the wizard?”

Ronan paused, rubbing his eyes tiredly as he wove threads backward. “Earlier that day, the firebird came to me and asked me to help her return her fallen egg to its nest. So I did that. Hours later, when I finally found the palace road, the wizard found me. I remember standing there, frozen in the grip of his mind like a hare under the fox’s eye. I could not move, I could not speak, I could not think… And then I heard the firebird sing. I saw Gyre walk away from me. She sang to him in her woman’s shape; she lured him back into the forest; he followed her without a thought.” He hesitated again, unable to comprehend or quite believe what he had seen. “While I watched them, I saw the witch’s cottage of bone run up behind her, open its door. Still singing, the firebird stepped across the witch’s threshold. The wizard followed her. The door closed behind them both. Brume ran back into the forest. She had what she wanted and I was—I was free.”

He stopped. The word sounded odd as he said it, as though it did not quite mean what he was. But free meant free; it was a simple, unambiguous word, and there he was, Prince Ronan of Serre, back in his father’s palace, owing-nothing to the witch, and safe for the moment from the wizard.

After a moment, the king said to the queen, his voice harsh with hope and dread, “Well? Do you challenge this one?”

Her face, usually so stiff and drained around Ferus, seemed to be choosing and discarding expressions like jewels. Blood warmed her skin; her eyes glittered as with tears; a corner of her mouth crooked toward laughter. “The firebird herself saved your life? Because you rescued her egg? And now Brume has the wizard?”

“Or he is the wizard,” Ferus breathed, “with all my son’s thoughts?”

“But what a tale you brought out of the forests, my son,” the queen said with wonder. She was raising one hand toward Ronan at last to touch his face when Ferus struck.

He gave Ronan little more time than the blink of an eye to evade the sudden flare of power that seemed to come out of the ruby eye in the skull. It slammed into Ronan with all the force of the water pounding down the cliff. It spun him like a leaf, dragged him across a table, and then swept the contents of the table on top of him as he fell. Blinking dazedly in the aftermath, with the skull on his chest and the poisonous toad on its back hissing furiously in his ear, he thought: A wizard would have fought. The room grew dark; he felt himself begin to slide over the falls. He cried out in terror, felt his hands caught, held tightly. When he could see again, he found himself still on dry stone, the queen kneeling beside him, gripping his hands. Her face looked wintry again, bloodless and pinched; her eyes, on Ferus, seemed cold enough to burn.

“I told you that I knew him,” she flared.

“Now,” the king said without compunction, “so do I. A wizard would have defended himself.”

“You might have killed him to prove a point!”

“I did what I thought best,” he answered, his voice rising dangerously. “Don’t question me.” He reached down, hauled Ronan to his feet. The prince caught a glimpse of Sidonie, frozen across the room with both hands over her mouth. Then, abruptly, he was on the floor again, with the one-eyed skull grinning at him.

He pulled himself up this time, beginning to feel now that the numbing shock of the power was wearing away. He might have run headlong into a stone wall, his stunned bones told him. He said calmly to his mother, who seemed unaccountably willing to drive the king to further violence, “I understand. It was a test. Like yours.”

The blood streaked into her face; she seemed suddenly close to tears again. “Not like mine,” she whispered. “Not like mine at all.”

“But it worked,” he said inarguably. “Now you are both certain.” He limped to the nearest chair, sat slumped, his elbows on the table, his hands over his eyes. He dropped his hands at the silence, dragged his eyes open again, and found them both gazing at him oddly, as though they recognized him as more or less their son, but what was more and what was less, they did not have an inkling.

“My lord,” the queen pleaded finally. “He must rest. I will watch with you.”

Ferus nodded. “I want you to see this monstrous thing for yourself. You might recognize it from some tale.” He threw open the door, spoke to the guards in the hall. “Bring a pallet and blankets for the prince; I do not want him out of my sight tonight. Take the princess to her chamber. She is useless here. Bring her company up to stand along the walls outside the gates. If they begin to fall, we’ll know the monster has found us.”

“Should we give them back their arms, my lord?”

“No. If they argue or try to run, throw them over the falls.”

The princess turned as white as bone; for a moment she seemed to waver on her feet. But she said nothing, just put one foot in front of the other until she reached the door. There was nothing to say, Ronan thought. She seemed to be learning that. The king spoke again before she crossed the threshold; she stopped mid-step at the sound of his voice, her back and profile rigid.

“You will wed when my son and my house are safe. I will not have another ill-omened disaster on my hands.”

The princess could not seem to find her voice, so Ronan answered for them both. “Yes, Father,” he said mildly. He remembered the toad then, upside down on the floor and vulnerable to a careless boot, because such small details seemed to matter. He picked it up and put it back on the table. Then he laid his head down beside it and went to sleep.

When he woke, the tower room was flooded with light. He stirred on the pallet, aching in every bone and muscle. The king, gazing into the mirrors alone, turned as Ronan struggled to sit. The sound of cool water rushing uselessly past him seemed suddenly unbearable; he reached for the nearest pitcher.

Ferus growled, “Don’t drink that.” He raised his voice, sent a servant running for food and wine, then handed his son another pitcher, from which Ronan drank noisily and sloppily until he could finally speak.

“Did you see it again?” he asked the king.

“No.”

“Do you want me to go—”

“No,” Ferus said tersely. “You will stay here under the queen’s eye. She was first to recognize the imposter, and first to be certain of you, despite her confusing ways. I’ll take a company into the forests. If the wizard wants to wear the ruling face of Serre, let him look out of mine. Let him try.” He paused, his single eye dubious, as though he were studying the face of Serre himself. “The witch,” he said abruptly. “How powerful is she? Can she keep the wizard in her cottage?”

Ronan, considering the witch, dipped a hand into the pitcher, dragged wet fingers through his dusty hair. “She said she wanted to boil his bones for broth and drink the magic in them.”

The smoldering eye contemplated that with interest. “Can she do that?”

“I don’t know. At times she seems almost stupid, at others…” He remembered the astonishing sight of the firebird singing the wizard through the open door of the cottage made of bone, its round green window, silvered with moonlight, flashing like an eye as it watched. “In the end she got them both. At such times, she seems almost subtle. But subtle enough to deal with Gyre? I don’t know. Don’t ride down any white hens while you’re in the forest.”

“I’ll give her all the white hens in my kingdom if she kills that wizard,” the king said grimly. “I wanted Gyre to help us fight that monster. Now we may be faced with fighting both of them at once.”

“Maybe my mother can remember some way in a tale to outwit the monster.”

“She doesn’t think such a thing belongs to Serre.”

“Dacia, then?”

“The princess did not seem to recognize it. And why would the King of Dacia send that for a wedding gift? He might have sent it instead of his daughter. But not with her.”

“He sent the wizard,” Ronan said evenly. “Perhaps that was the king’s plan all along: to marry his daughter to Gyre and take Serre for himself.”

Ferus’s empty eye swung toward the casements, contemplated the invisible land beyond the distant mountains. “You’ll marry her,” he said tersely, “if I have to drink the wizard’s marrow myself to defeat him. What possessed you to go chasing after firebirds and letting Gyre into your place, and your face, and nearly into your bed?”

Ronan lifted a shoulder. “I was possessed,” he said simply. “Now I hardly remember why.”

“You were possessed by ghosts,” the king reminded him harshly. “Past as well as magic.”

He remembered the funeral fire burning all night long, illumining the dark, swirling water, eating at his heart until there was nothing left at dawn but ash. It seemed something that had happened to another man, a sad tale his mother might have told him long ago. “Yes,” he said, and pulled himself painfully to his feet. “But past is past. The Princess from Dacia is the future of Serre. The sooner we can safely marry, the better. I need a bath.”

The king seemed to be gazing at him out of both eyes, then, the blind eye trying to see what the seeing eye missed.

“What,” he wondered, “did that witch do to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“I never saw myself in you before.”

He sent Ronan to wash and dress, accompanied by a dozen guards and as many servants. When the prince returned to the tower, he found his breakfast and the queen. He stood beside her, eating bread and cold meat, while they watched Ferus lead a heavily armed company out of the gate. When the riders disappeared behind the falls, the queen turned to Ronan.

“I have sent for the princess,” she said. “I thought that this might be a good time for you to talk.”

Ronan settled himself to watch the mirrors. In one a bluebird flew through a brilliant shaft of light to a high bough. In another, the king’s standard-bearer appeared from behind the falls, the standard limp with spray. “About what?”

“About—” Her voice faltered. “About yourselves. About your marriage.”

“What—” He paused as the door opened. The princess entered, more sedately dressed than he had seen her last, her eyes oddly swollen and wincing at the light. She greeted them courteously and expressionlessly, then stood gazing blankly at a mirror.

“Sit down, my lady Sidonie,” Ronan said as politely. “My mother thinks we should talk.”

She brushed a few dried moth wings and an old bone off a stool and sat without taking her eyes from the mirrors. “What is there to talk about?”

“Exactly,” he began with relief, “what I—”

“I am a prisoner in this palace, my guards and servants stand outside your walls as bait for that monster, and as your wife I will have no choice but to do what you want. What do you want me to say?”

Ronan opened his mouth, paused, and scratched one brow with a thumbnail. “My father isn’t using them as bait,” he said reasonably, tackling the easiest argument. “Only as a kind of warning signal. Someone must do it.”

“He makes them stand unarmed! They’ll be killed! I travelled for weeks with them—they are not only guards but my hunters, my cooks and drivers—they brought me here safely and now they must die? Because the king is afraid to give them weapons?”

“Well. It’s likely that weapons would be all but useless anyway. So why—” He stopped as the princess flung herself off the stool to stand at the window, her eyes reddening as she stared across the forests to the high, jagged peaks awash with light. Ronan said patiently to her back, “I am trying to be fair. You’ll get used to my father’s ways.”

“Ronan.” The queen’s voice cut sharply at him, cold and edged with astonishment. “What is the matter with you? You came out of that forest as heartless as your father.”

Ronan looked at her. He drew a long breath as her eyes held his. It seemed as though that wintry light in them unburied memory like something lost amid a shower of leaves. “Yes,” he said slowly, seeing it finally, clearly. “I remember. I had to leave something with the witch, so that she would show me the road home, and I could find Gyre for her. It must be something, she said, that I would find worth returning for.”

“What did you leave with her?”

“My heart.”

The princess turned, stared at him. The queen closed her eyes.

“No,” she whispered. “You are not free. But you cannot go back into the forests—you can’t! I will not lose you again!”

“But you see I tricked the witch,” he said, surprised that he had to explain. “She really believed that I might return for it. I could not, at that moment, think of anything I wanted less.” He saw the women, their faces stunned, give one another an incomprehensible look. “It’s not important,” he told them. “Let the witch keep it. I can live without it.”

He heard the princess make a small mouse’s squeak in the back of her throat. But she said nothing; neither did the queen. In silence they watched the tranquil, deadly forests within the mirrors.