“While the garden dances with light.”
“What?”
“Your second line,” I explained. “‘While the garden dances with light.’”
“You sure she will want to hear about a garden?” Alfric whispered. “Don’t girls want to hear about themselves?”
“In a minute, brother,” I replied, sliding away from his hand, crawling into the branches of the nightingale.
“Meanwhile, you want to set the mood. It’s what the poets call ‘creating atmosphere.’ ”
Alfric stared into the shrubbery bird, looking long and mistrustfully for me. Finally he gave up, turned back to the window, spoke aloud.
“‘While the garden dances with light.’”
A stifled sound descended from the chamber window.
Laughter? Who could tell?
I composed for a moment in silence, then prompted my brother.
“While the moon glides low in the evening sky, borne aloft in the hands of the night.”
“What?”
“For Huma’s sake, Alfric, open your ears and listen to what you’re saying! It’s not Quivalen Sath, but it does for topiary romance!”
He turned, faced the window, and spoke loudly.
“While the moon gets low in the evening, and something happens at night.”
I didn’t think the line was that bad, but it turned poisonous in Alfric’s translation.
“Great, Alfric,” I spat. “That’s just magnificent. You couldn’t win Lexine the cook’s daughter with a display of oratory like that!”
All of a sudden, from the recesses of Enid’s room above us came a scream, loud and frightful and filled with desperation. After the scream died, the keep and the orchard about it were terribly silent. In astonishment Alfric pulled me from the nightingale. He and I stared at one another—that stupid, childhood stare that comes when you have broken something, when you stand there in the aftermath, trying to figure each other: “Is he trustworthy enough that we can conspire in silence?” or “Is he stupid enough that I can blame him entirely for this?”
As we stared, a long silence settled in the shrubbery and shadows around us. The orchard birds that had not grown quiet at Alfric’s poetry grew quiet now at the sound of screaming above them. For above us came the sounds of movement, commotion, and through it all continual screams. I started for the keep wall, somehow intending to scale it, to vault in Enid’s window . . . But Alfric’s hand restrained me. My brother crashed back into the shrubbery nightingale, drawing me with him.
It was this bird that swallowed us—my brother and me—just as Enid’s window filled with shadows. Concealed beneath the shrubbery’s overgrown wings, we watched as if paralyzed as a core of darkness rose out of the large keep window, and as that darkness moved rapidly down the wall.
Across the courtyard it moved, quick in the light of the moons. But neither the red nor the white light could enter its thickness, its opaqueness. Its surface was pocked and dappled like molten wax doused with cold water. From within it I thought I heard screams.
I struggled with the green, fragrant branches around me. Once again I tried to break free of my brother, to storm the keep and rescue the damsel in distress as any good Knight in any old story would be bound to do. But Alfric only clutched me tighter, drawing his knife again and pressing it uncomfortably against my ribs. It was refreshing not to be the most cowardly Pathwarden.
In the shifting light of the moons I saw the shadow rush rapidly toward the gate, and two shouting guardsmen move almost as quickly in a desperate effort to cut it off.
The shadow gathered speed, as though something within it were guiding it, propelling it with an increasing sense of will and of urgency. It struck them with a sharp wet sound, and they fell over. Their screams were unspeakable.
It was then I heard the screams once more, cascading from the window above me. They were no longer stifled, but muffled somehow, as if whoever was screaming was a great distance away and the sound was reaching me from afar and far too late.
Gradually the shadow grew smaller and smaller as it passed through the gate in the outer walls of the castle and from there moved toward the plains, in what direction I had no idea.
“Alfric!” I called aloud. There was no sound behind me but that of branches breaking, of sobbing, of something large and clumsy crashing away into the darkness.
“Damn it!” I muttered, and turned to follow my brother. I was stopped by the screams from above me. When I remember it, it seems the most foolish thing I had done, at least until then. Why, helping the Scorpion steal the armor seemed like an act of genius next to this.
I grabbed the trellised vines against the wall of the tower and climbed up to the Lady Enid’s window, where I heaved myself over the sill and toppled inside.
Dannelle di Caela lay screaming, bound on the bed, a vacancy beyond terror on her face. It was clear to me now that the Lady Enid was being carried from Castle di Caela in shadows, toward what murky destination and for what reason only the gods knew.
But I knew that somewhere in the days ahead the Scorpion would make good his most deadly threat. It was all I could do to get to the base of the southeast tower, more than I could do to climb the stairs that encircled it from the outside. Nonetheless, I climbed the stairs, stopping to gain my breath twice, three times, wondering how Mariel di Caela ever got all those cats to this altitude, and filled with a rising sense of despair that despite climbing a topless tower, I would not see what I hoped so devoutly to see. I was nearly to the top of the southeast tower when the spiraling stairwell gave me a view of the plains to the east of the castle. I stood on tiptoe, squinted, and cast my gaze to the limits of the horizon. Where the red light of Lunitari shone on a dark shadow moving quickly toward the Throtyl Gap. And beyond to the gods knew where.
Part III
To the Scorpion’s Nest
Chapter Sixteen
We learned what had occuredonly after the di Caela castle guard burst into the chambers of the Lady Enid to find the very lovely and very unconscious Dannelle di Caela, who on awakening told of the mysterious abduction.
The two of them, she and Enid, had been seated by the Lady Enid’s antique dresser, ridiculing the failed suit of Gabriel Androctus, whom Enid had described as having “all the glamor of an undertaker.” It was then that a cloud—a darkness of some sort—settled on the hearthstones and blotted out the light of the fire.
“At first we thought there was damage in the fireplace,” Dannelle explained weakly, propped up by maids and pillows. “Something perhaps to do with the flue, I suggested, since the flue is the only part of the fireplace I can name for you. And Cousin Enid approached the hearth, drawing up her skirts and listening absolutely not at all to my warnings that she should stop there—that she would soon find herself in smoke and ash that would ruin her dress, not to mention her complexion. But you know Cousin Enid.
“She stepped toward the hearth and, all of a sudden, vanished entirely. I could hear her scuffling and shouting from somewhere within the darkness, and immediately I rushed to her aid . . . but found myself here, bound and gagged in this bed. I had no idea how much time had passed, but then I heard the scuffling and shouting just outside the window. It could not have been long.
“I struggled to break free of the ropes, to loosen the gag so I could shout for help. But for the life of me I could not move and . . . I don’t want to talk about it any more.”