Then another.
Her lips were salty with sweat.
Why had she asked him that? Where had it come from? Her mother was someone she never thought of, never even imagined. It was as if she had never existed. Even when she'd been small, looking at the other girls at Court with their fussing mamas, she had had no curiosity about her own.
She gnawed the bitten nails on her fingers. It had been a deadly mistake. She should never, never have said that.
"Claudia!"
A loud, demanding voice. She closed her eyes.
"Claudia, it's no good hiding in all these hedges." Branches swished and cracked. "Talk to me! I can't find the right way!"
She sighed. "So you've finally arrived. And how is my husband-to-be?"
"Hot and irritable. Not that you care. Look, there are five paths here at a meeting point.
Which do I take?"
His voice was close; she could smell the expensive cologne he used. Not splashed on, like Evian, but just enough. "The one that looks least likely," she said. "Toward the house."
The peevish mutter became more distant. "Like our engagement, many would say.
Claudia, get me out of here!"
She scowled. He was worse than she remembered.
Yew thrashed and snapped.
She stood quickly, brushing down her dress, hoping her face was not as pale as she felt.
On her left the hedge shuddered. A sword came through and hacked an opening, and his big silent bodyguard, Fax, stepped through, looked quickly around, then held open the branches. Through them came a thin youth, his mouth sour with dissatisfaction. He glared at her crossly. "Look at my clothes, Claudia. They re ruined. Quite ruined."
He kissed her coldly on one cheek. "Anyone would think you were avoiding me."
"So you've been expelled," she said calmly.
"I left." He shrugged. "Too boring. My mother sends you this."
It was a note, on white thick paper, sealed with the Queen's white rose. Claudia opened it and read.
My dear, You will have heard the good news that your wedding is imminent. After waiting all these years, am sure yours excitement is as intense as my own! Caspar insisted on coming to escort you here—such a romantic. What a handsome couple you will make. From now on, my dear you must think of me as your loving mother.
Sia Regina.
Claudia folded it. "Did you insist?"
"No. She sent me." He kicked the astrolabe. "What a bore getting married is going to be, Claudia. Don't you think?" She nodded, silent.
12
The decay was gradual and we were slow to recognize it. Then, one day, I had been talking with the Prison, and as I left the room I heard it laugh. A low, mocking chuckle. The sound turned me cold. I stood in the corridor and the thought came to me of an ancient image I had once seen in a fragmented manuscript, of the enormous mouth of Hell devouring sinners. It was then I knew we had created a demon that would destroy us.
The sound of the unlocking was painful, as if the Prison sighed. As if this was a door that had not been opened for centuries. But no alarms howled. Perhaps Incarceron knew no door could lead them out.
Gildas stepped back at Finn's warning; chunks of debris and a red rain of rust clattered.
The door shuddered inward, and stuck.
For a moment they waited, because the narrow slit was dark and a cool, oddly sweetsmelling air moved beyond. Then Finn kicked the rubble aside and put his shoulder to the door. He heaved, and rammed it until it stuck again. But now there was room to squeeze through.
Gildas nudged him. "Take a look. Be careful."
Finn glanced back at Keiro, sitting slumped and weary. He drew his sword and slipped sideways through the gap.
It was colder. His breath frosted. The ground was uneven, and ran downhill. As he took a few steps a strange tinny litter rustled around his ankles; putting a hand down, he felt drifts of crisp stuff, cold and wet, sharp against his fingertips. As his eyes grew used to the deeper gloom, he thought he was standing in a sloping hall of columns; tall black pillars rose to a tangle overhead. Groping to the nearest one, he felt it over with his hands, puzzled. It was icy cold and hard, but not smooth. A mass of fissures and cracks seamed it, knots and swelling growths, and branches of intricate mesh.
"Finn?"
Gildas was a shadow at the door.
"Wait." Finn listened. The breeze moved in the tangle, making a faint silvery tinkle that seemed to stretch for miles. After a moment he said, "There's no one here. Come through."
A few rustles and stirrings. Then Gildas said, "Bring the Key, Keiro. We need to shut this."
"If we do, can we get back?" Keiro sounded worn.
"What's to get back for? Give me a hand." As soon as the dog-slave had slipped through, Finn and the old man shoved and forced the tiny door back into its frame. It clicked quietly shut.
A rustle. A scrape of sound. Light, steadying, in a lantern.
"Someone might see it," Keiro snapped.
But Finn said, "I told you. We're alone."
As Gildas held the lantern high, they looked around at the ominous enclosing pillars.
Finally Keiro said, "What are they?"
Behind him, the dog-creature crouched down. Finn glanced at it, and knew it was looking at him.
"Metal trees." The light caught the Sapient's plaited beard, the gleam of satisfaction in his eye. "A forest where the species are iron, and steel, and copper, where the leaves are thin as foil, where fruits grow gold and silver." He turned. "There are stories, from the old times, of such places. Apples of gold guarded by monsters. It seems they're true."
The air was cold and still. It held an alien sense of distance. It was Keiro who asked the question Finn didn't dare to.
"Are we Outside?"
Gildas snorted. "Do you think it's that easy? Now sit before you fall." He glanced at Finn.
'I'll deal with his wounds. This is as good a place as any to wait for Lightson. We can rest.
Even eat."
But Finn turned and faced Keiro. He felt cold and sick, but he spoke the words stubbornly.
"Before we go any further I want to know what Jormanric meant. About the Maestra's death."
There was a second of silence. In the ghostly light Keiro gave
Finn one exasperated glare and crumpled wearily in the rustling leaves, pushing back his hair with blood-streaked hands. "For God's sake, Finn, do you really think I know? You saw him. He was finished. He would have said anything! It was just lies. Forget it."
Finn looked down at him. For a second he wanted to insist, ask again, to silence the nagging fear inside him, but Gildas eased him aside. "Make yourself useful. Find something to eat.
While the Sapient poured water, Finn tipped out a few packages of dried meat and fruit from his pack and another lantern, which he lit from the first. Then he trampled down the icy metal leaves into a clotted mass, spread some blankets on them, and sat. In the shadowed forest beyond the pool of light, small rustles and scrapings disturbed him; he tried to ignore them. Keiro swore viciously as Gildas cleaned his cuts, stripped his jacket and shirt, and rubbed chewed-up herbs of a disgusting pungency onto the wound across his chest.
In the shadows the dog-slave crouched, barely visible. Finn took one of the food packets, opened it, and held some out.