Then the horse whinnied, and they saw the lights of the Court, all its hundreds of candles and lanterns and windows flicker and go out. For a whole minute the Palace was a blackness under the stars. Claudia held her breath. If they didn’t come back on . . . If this was the end.
Then the Palace was blazing again.
Finn held out his hand. ‘I think you should give me Incarceron.’ She hesitated. Then she drew out her father’s watch and handed it to him, and he held up the silver cube, so that it spun on its chain. ‘Keep it safe, sire.’
‘The Prison is drawing power from its own systems.’ He glanced down at the Palace, where a clamour of bells and shouts had begun to ring out.
‘And from ours,’ Claudia whispered.
‘You can’t. Rix, you can’t.’Attia’s voice was earnest and low, anything to keep him calm. ‘It’s ridiculous. I worked for you — we went against that gang of bandits together, that mob in the plague village. You liked me. We got on. You can’t hurt me:
‘You know a few too many secrets, Attia.’
‘Cheap tricks! Cons. Everybody knows them’ It was the real sword, not the collapsible one. She licked sweat from her lip.
‘Well maybe.’ He pretended to consider, and then grinned.
‘But you see, it’s the Glove. Stealing that was unforgivable.
The Glove is telling me to do it. So I’ve decided you’ll go first, and then your friend there can watch. It’ll be quick, Attia. I’m a merciful man.’ Keiro was silent, as if he was leaving this to her. He had given up on the knots. Nothing would undo those in time.
Attia said, ‘You’re tired, Rix. You’re mad. You know it.’
‘I’ve walked a few wild Wings.’ He swept the sword experimentally through the air. ‘I’ve crawled a few crazy corridors.’
‘Talking of which,’ Keiro said suddenly, ‘where’s that pack of freaks you usually travel with?’
‘Resting.’ Rix was working himself up. ‘I needed to move fast.’ He swung the sword again. There was a sly light in his eye that terrified Attia. His voice was slurred with ket.
‘Behold!’ he muttered. ‘You search for a Sapient who will show you the way Out. I am that man!’ It was the patter of his act. She struggled, kicking, jerking against Keiro. ‘He’ll do it. He’s off his skull!’ Rix swung to an imaginary crowd. ‘The way that Sapphique took lies through the Door of Death. I will take this girl there and I will bring her back!’ The fire crackled. He bowed to its applause, to the ranks of roaring people, held up the sword in his hand. ‘Death.
We fear it. We would do anything to avoid it. Before your eyes, you will see the dead live.’
‘No.’ Attia gasped. ‘Keiro …’ Keiro sat still. ‘No chance. He’s got us.’ Rix’s face was flushed in the red light; his eyes bright as if with fever. ‘I will release her! I will bring her back!’ With a whipping slash that made her gasp the sword was raised, and at the same time Keiro’s voice, acid with scorn and deliberately conversational, came from the darkness behind her.
‘So tell me, Rix, since you seem to think you’re Sapphique.
What was the answer to the riddle you asked the dragon?
What is the Key that unlocks the heart?’
23
He worked night and day. He made a coat that would transform him; he would be more than a man; a winged creature, beautiful as light. All the birds brought him feathers. Even the eagle. Even the swan.
Jared was sure he was still delirious. Because he lay in a ruined stable and there was a fire, crackling loudly in the silent night.
The rafters were a mesh of holes above his head, and in one place a barn owl stared down with wide astonished eyes.
From somewhere water dripped. The splashes landed rhythmically just beside his face, as if after some great rainstorm. A small pool had formed, soaking into the straw.
Someone’s hand lay half out of the blankets; he tried absently to make it move, and the long fingers cramped and stretched. It was his, then.
He felt disconnected, only vaguely interested, as if he had been out of his body on some long and tiring journey.
As if he had come home to find the house cold and comfortless.
His throat, when he remembered it, was dry His eyes itched. His body, when he moved it, ached.
And he must be delirious because there were no stars.
Instead, through the broken roof of the building a single red Eye hung huge in the sky, like the moon in some livid eclipse.
Jared studied it. It stared back, but it wasn’t watching him.
It was watching the man.
The man was busy. Over his knees he had some old coat — a Sapient robe, perhaps — and on each side of him rose a great stack of feathers. Some were blue, like the one Jared had sent through the Portal. Others were long and black, like a swan’s, and brown, an eagle’s plumage.
‘The blue ones are very usefuclass="underline" the man said, without turning. ‘Thank you for them.’
‘My pleasure,’ Jared murmured. Each word was a croak.
The stable was hung with small golden lanterns, like the ones used at Court. Or perhaps these were the stars, taken down and propped here and there, hung on wires. The man’s hands moved swiftly. He was sewing the feathers into the bare patches of the coat, fixing them first with dabs of pitchy resin that smelt of pine cones when it dripped on the straw. Blue, black, brown. A coat of feathers, wide as wings.
Jared made an effort to sit up, and managed it, propping himself dizzily against the wall. He felt weak and shaky.
The man put the coat aside and came over. ‘Take your time. There’s water here.’ He brought a jug and cup, and poured. As he held it out Jared saw that the right forefinger of his hand was missing; a smooth scar seamed the knuckle.
‘Only a little, Master. It’s very cold.’ Jared barely felt the shock to his throat. As he drank he watched the dark-haired man and the man stared back, a rueful, sad smile.
‘Thank you.’
‘There’s a well just near here. The best water in the Realm.’
‘How long have I been here?’
‘There’s no time here, remember. Time seems to be forbidden in the Realm.’ He sat back, and there were feathers stuck to him, and his eyes were steady and obsessive as a hawk’s.
‘You are Sapphique,’ Jared said quietly.
‘I took that name in the Prison.’
‘Is that where we are?’ Sapphique pulled plumage from his hair. ‘This is a prison, Master. Whether it’s Inside or Out, I’ve learnt, is not really important. I fear they both may be the same.’ Jared struggled to think. He had been riding in the Forest.
There were many outlaws in the Forest, many woodwoses and madmen. Those who couldn’t bear the stagnation of Era, who wandered as beggars. Was this one of them?
Sapphique sat back, his legs stretched out. In the firelight he was young and pale, his hair lank with the forest—damp.
‘But you Escaped,’ Jared said. ‘Finn has told me some of the tales they tell about you in there, in Incarceron.’ He rubbed at his face and found it rough, faintly stubbled. How long had he been here?
‘There are always stories.’
‘They’re not true?’ Sapphique smiled. ‘You’re a scholar, Jared. You know that the word truth is a crystal, like the Key. It seems transparent, but it has many facets. Different lights, red and gold and blue, flicker in its depths. Yet it unlocks the door.’
‘The door. . . You found a secret door, they say.’ Sapphique poured more water. ‘How I searched for it. I spent whole lifetimes searching. I forgot my family, my home; I gave blood, tears, a finger. I made myself wings and I flew so high the sky struck me down. I fell so far into the dark that there seemed no ending to the -abyss. And yet in the end, there it was, a tiny plain door in the Prison’s heart.