Red Palace Read online

  Allerton silences me with a sweep of his hand. “Pay no attention to the Nix. It is true that the Nix uses some truth, it uses our real fears and twists them. But your destiny is as fluid and turning as the River Sverne. Whatever you become it will not be down to that overgrown cockroach. Your heart, Mae… That has a rather large part to play in your future. You need to choose wisely when it comes to whom you trust it to.”

  I had never thought about it like that before. Perhaps I never imagined that my heart was worth giving to anyone except Father. If I had stopped to think, maybe I would have been more cautious. It was the way Cas treated me more than anything. Despite being prince of the realm, he made me feel like his equal, and that is something I’d never known.

  “It spoke to me as well,” I say. “When I was in the basement, I heard its voice in my mind. It told me some sort of riddle, and then I was pulled into a vision. It happened again not long after. First there was the riddle and then it showed me a vision.”

  “And the visions were from the Nix?” Allerton asks, the humour long gone from his voice.

  “Yes, except they were different this time. They didn’t focus on me and my fears, they focussed on the fears of the others. It was Cas in one vision. He was afraid of his younger brother. The other was Ellen, who was attacked by her father. They seemed so real I felt as though I was physically hurt by it.”

  Allerton’s frown deepens. “And what was the riddle? Do you remember it?”

  “Yes,” I say, relaying the riddle to him. “Don’t you think it sounds like the answer is the Nix itself? Wearing down its victims is the Nix’s specialty. Showing us our greatest fears… wait, no, it isn’t the Nix at all.”

  You cannot touch me, but I make you cold.

  “Fear makes our blood run cold. That’s the answer to the riddle!”

  Allerton nods. “Very good, Mae. I think you’re right. Perhaps fear is the key to all this and perhaps you can use that to help break the curse.”

  “But why would the Nix tell me?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he replies. “But we are going to figure it all out.”

  “What is the Nix’s greatest fear?” I ask.

  “Fire,” Allerton replies.

  Chapter Four – The Queen’s Code

  Allerton instructs me to wash and change. My scrappy dress is torn and covered in dust. As it is a fraction too long for me, it catches on the bottom of my heels and slows me down. The thing needs to go, and not a moment too soon. Dresses are definitely not my style.

  In the queen’s washroom, I notice a change come over my countenance. My face is muddied from attempting to dig my way out of the castle, and my elbows are grazed from my tumble in the basement. The cuts, grazes, and dirt used to make me feel like a scrappy urchin child for whom no one cares for. Now I see them as signs of strength. Battle wounds.

  The only clothes I find that may fit me are a pair of britches and boots, and a silk tunic, far too fine for the likes of me, yet somehow befitting this new confidence. The Waerg Woods have changed me. My eyes are dark and level. The restlessness has gone. My arms are roped with muscles and I have filled into a more womanly figure. I hold my chin up. Gone are the days of me staring at my feet as I walk. This is how I will hold myself from now on.

  It’s as though my humours are somehow coming to align. There is still the haunted shadow over my eyes, the one that carries grief. The mischievous grin—the one that always got me in trouble—has almost gone. But there’s still something, a sparkle, a twinkle of the girl I used to be, the one who would joke and laugh. I like that. The responsibility I always eschewed fits well with this version of me. The weight settles on my shoulders and it is a comfortable one.

  I am ready for the tasks ahead of me. I leave the washroom with my shoulders back. In the queen’s bedroom we begin the training.

  “It will take a strong heart, a strong head, and a strong stomach to defeat the Nix,” Allerton says. “You need to use all the tools available to you, and you need to start using the craft as an instinct as well as a power. It resides in you waiting to be used. Bring it to the surface and see what it can do.”

  But no matter how his words stir me, I can’t escape the churning in my stomach. Cas, Ellen, the queen, Beardsley… They remain unconscious while I attempt to create a flame in the palm of my hand.

  “How is this going to?—”

  “Shhh,” Allerton chastises. “Concentrate.”

  “But—”

  “Imagine you are a great furnace. Imagine the fire building inside your belly. You are the conduit, and through you, fire will come.”

  I try again, closing my eyes and imagining the engine room in the castle. The workers are there shovelling coal into the fires. The rhythmic chug of the shovels, the hiss of the fire, the crackle of the flames… it should rise from my gut. But somehow, nothing comes to me.

  “I can’t—”

  “—is not a viable excuse.” Allerton looks down his nose at me, with a creased forehead.

  After another fruitless attempt, Allerton sighs and sits beside me on the floor of the queen’s room.

  “Perhaps if you understood more in regards to the origins of the craft-born,” he says.

  “What else is there to know? It comes from nature, from the four elements. It flows through me because I have the blood of the Ancients in my veins.” I shrug.

  “That’s all true,” he says. “But do you know how it links to the Gods?”

  I shake my head. “Father sometimes spoke of them, but he was never very devout. Halts-Walden follow the teachings of Celine. Wind keeps us safe.” I shrug. “The stories are nice, but we were too busy almost starving to care.”

  “According to the teachings of the craft, the Gods are more complex than many believe. They are not always good. They are not always concerned about the poor and helpless.”

  “I thought Gods were supposed to help?” I say.

  “In a way,” Allerton replies. “But it is more complicated than that. Long, long ago, before our kind inhabited Aegunlund, the Ancients worshipped the source of their magicks. They worshipped the four elements, not the Gods. In worshipping the nature, they conjured them in their own image. They created the Gods.”

  “Then how can they be Gods? I thought Gods created our worlds?”

  “Not this time,” Allerton says. “There could be Gods who created our world, but the Gods of your powers were made from your powers. Celine, God of wind, Endwyn, God of fire, Ren, God of water, Fenn, God of soil. They came from the source of your powers, Mae. There is nothing you cannot change with your craft. Nothing you cannot do. The Nix has one huge weakness. Now, close your eyes and create a flame.”

  “Why is the Nix afraid of fire?” I ask.

  “Because it is the last of its kind. A lot like you, Mae. You are born of the Ancients. It was born of the Ancients, too. The difference is, the Nix came from a twisted mix of beast and magic. When the craft first stirred through the veins of the Ancients it was too powerful to be tamed. It was in everything, all the elements of our world, from the plants to the clouds, and before the Ancient Ones could harness and control those powers they shot out at tangents into everything and anything. Great beasts, tiny insects, birds, men, women, it distorted them all. It wasn’t until men learned to control the craft that the world began to take shape.

  “Now, you see, the Nix is part of one race of creatures made from that great surge of power. It is a monster with a brain. There is little it cannot achieve with that brain because it wears its victims down until they are nothing at all. It controls them. You’ve seen the way it feeds on fears. But what you don’t know is that during the great Purge during Ancient times, the Aelfens burned many of the Nix’s kind. Mass killings.”

  “Aelfens?”

  Allerton tuts. “You need to come to the Borgan camp soon. There is so much that you do not know. The Ancients were called Aelfens a long, long time ago.”

  “Aelfen,” I say, running the name over my
tongue. “And I am part Aelfen then?”

  He nods. “The last.”

  “So the Aelfens attacked the Nix’s kind. But if it happened in the Ancient times—?”

  “The Nix remembers. It is born with the memories of its ancestors. It remembers the pain of the fire. It has already died a thousand deaths. It needs fears of others to make it strong because its own fear is debilitating.”

  I don’t speak for a moment. The entire history is appalling. “Is that why it’s evil? Because of the pain felt by its ancestors?”

  Allerton hesitates. “Perhaps.”

  “Does that mean it has a chance to redeem itself? To become good?”

  “Do you think that?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine experiencing that pain. The pain of my father’s death was unbearable. It made me hard, vengeful. The thought of experiencing that thousands of time over… I’m not sure I would be me anymore.”

  “I’m inclined to agree with you, Mae. I don’t believe the Nix has a shred of humanity left in it. I don’t know why you have been targeted, but it has to be for a selfish reason.”

  I rub my chin, mulling over this new information. It seems more whole now, like my enemy has a face. “The court is experiencing their worst fears. It has to mean something.”

  Allerton frowns. “Tell me more about those visions. It could be important.”

  “Ellen’s was horrible. I was in her body and she was beaten by her father.” I decide against telling Allerton Ellen’s deepest secret. Somehow it doesn’t seem right.

  “Perhaps this is part of the spell. Oh, that is very clever indeed.” Allerton smiles. The thought that he admires the Nix is as unpleasant as the thought that each of my friends are experiencing their worst fears over and over. “A perfect way to wear you down. It knows, you see, it knows you so well. The thought of your friends facing their worst fears is more unpleasant to you than facing your own. It will wear you down until it gets what it wants.”

  “What could it want? I don’t understand.”

  I stand up and pace the room.

  “Mae, you really must learn flame,” Allerton says in an exasperated tone.

  But I am too lost in my thoughts now. There is a mystery to solve and I feel as though I must solve it before I can work on my craft. It nags at my mind.

  “Something in the castle… what could it be?” I mutter to myself.

  “Sit down, Mae, you’re making me dizzy.” Allerton attempts to grab hold of my arm but it goes straight through me. He stares at his hand in dismay. “It’s very bizarre to see myself like this. I am a nonentity.”

  As I stare through Allerton’s hand, that’s when I realise that the locks on the inside of the door are far more complicated than the outside. There is another set of rings woven into the pattern with notches that are different to the exterior. I struggle to remember how the queen managed to release us from her chamber. At the time I had been dumbstruck by her questions, and so amazed at the beauty of her room, that I hadn’t paid any attention.

  “Allerton have you seen the door?”

  “How curious.” He moves behind me and his noiseless body causes me to start when he speaks. It only now strikes me as strange not to hear the breaths of a human being, or feel their movements next to your body.

  “It seems the queen must be hiding something.”

  “What makes you say that?” I ask.

  “Well, why else would she have an extra lock on her door? Either she is very safety conscious—and with that brute of a husband I can’t say I blame her—or those locks lead to something else in the room.”

  “You mean another door?” I ask.

  “That is exactly what I mean.” A slow smile spreads across Allerton’s features. “Let me ask you, do many people other than the queen enter her chambers?”

  “Well I have only lived in the castle a few weeks but I did hear a rumour amongst the servants regarding the secrecy of the queen. They also said that she never entertains the king, that he always summons her to his chambers, and then very rarely.” I feel my cheeks turn red as I discuss the relations between husband and wife.

  “Well, now there could be a good reason for that,” Allerton says. “Perhaps she only wants her most trusted companions to know about the extra door.

  Like me, I think. She invited me here to show me, except I was too stupid to notice.

  I back away from the door and begin to examine the room instead. If I was to install a secret doorway in my chambers, where would I hide it? There is the wardrobe. It seems a little obvious, but I stride up to it and work on pulling the large piece of furniture away from the wall.

  “I’m terribly sorry I can’t help, dear Mae,” Allerton says in a voice that suggests he is not in the slightest bit sorry.

  But the furniture is too heavy. I’m only able to rock it forward an inch and press my eye to the gap between the wall and the wardrobe. There isn’t even the tiniest crack in the bricks, and besides, it would be useless to the queen if she had to move the wardrobe during an escape.

  I work methodically around the room, removing tapestries and paintings, pulling the desks and dressers away from the wall… none reveal any secret passageways out of the room.

  “There’s nothing here.” I wipe a film of sweat from my forehead and pant air into my lungs. “I’ve tried everything except…” my heart soars. “Except the washroom, of course! It’s angled perfectly over the stairs in the castle, which could easily hide a narrow passageway.”

  I rush into the small bathroom where I had changed and washed only minutes ago. It contains a small marble basin and a large porcelain bath. I hadn’t noticed anything unusual about the room before, but there is a large mirror behind the basin, which spreads across the wall from one side to the other. I place my fingers on the mirror and feel each side. The left, the closest to the wall near the stairs, has a tiny draft escaping from it.

  I almost run straight through Allerton as I make my way back to the door. One of these rings corresponds with the secret door in the washroom. But how am I supposed to work out which one it is.

  “Have you found it Mae?” Allerton asks.

  “One of these rings will open the door in the washroom. I think the mirror is the door. I don’t know which one.”

  Allerton watches as I nudge the rings, uselessly. There are too many combinations to choose from.

  “How does she remember how to do this every day?” I muse. “It must be a lot to remember.”

  “Perhaps she doesn’t,” Allerton says. “Perhaps she leaves herself reminders around the chamber.

  “Of course!”

  I careen around the queen’s large four poster on my way back to the washroom. There has to be a clue in there, something I’ve missed. The washroom still smells of the rose scented soap I used to clean myself, and there are small beads of condensation on the glass of the mirror. As I lean forward to examine the glass, the slight breeze tickles my ear. I put my fingers on the glass and explore the edges. It’s there that I notice tiny grooves in the mirror, the same length and shape of the notches on the rings.

  “Found anything?” Allerton once again sneaks up silently and causes me to start.

  “There are grooves on the side of the mirror. I can’t see them, but I can feel them. Each one of the brass rings has a different set of grooves. Maybe I can match them to one of the rings.”

  “Not bad, dear girl,” Allerton says. “You’ve got a bright mind on those shoulders.”

  “Now I just need to…” I suck in air. That voice is back. The Nix.

  Trailing silk, I glide, spin patterns to catch you, suck you dry.

  What am I?

  “Mae?”

  The ground disappears below my feet. A sucking pulls me down, and the room fades away…

  *

  My feet hit solid ground. There’s a clanking and hissing of the engines in the Red Palace. The air smells of charcoal and damp earth. My ears are fuzzy, as though I
am hearing through water. It takes a few moments for that fuzziness to dissipate.

  “And what was it that you wanted to ask me?”

  I turn away from the sight of the burning engines to see an old man resting on a cane by a large bowl of soil.

  “Beardsley,” I say.

  “You wanted to ask me something?”

  “I… I don’t remember.”

  The old man’s eyes narrow and his brow furrows as he examines my expression. “You seem quite perturbed, young Mae. What could be the matter?”

  “I don’t know. I feel strange, like I’ve done this before. I… I shouldn’t be here. I’m looking for something. There’s a puzzle that I need to solve.”

  “Then you came to the right person.” Beardsley’s eyes shine. “I am quite adept at solving puzzles. In fact, that’s what I do. I create puzzles for other people to solve. Some find it quite frustrating.” His expression darkens. “And sometimes the puzzles are unsolvable. Sometimes they puzzle you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Beardsley shakes his head. “Nothing of any use. Now, why don’t you tell me all about it?”

  “Well, it’s to do with the queen’s chambers, and—”

  “Shhh!” Beardsley lifts a hand in the air and tilts his head to one side. “Do you hear that?”

  Aside from the heaves of the men working by the engines, and their voices as they laugh and joke through their work, there doesn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary. The large copper pipes hiss and clunk as the castle chugs along, surging power into every room.

  “No, what is it?” I reply.

  “Oh, nothing,” he says, still staring out into the distance. His voice is vague, distracted. “Go on. The queen’s chambers. Yes, I believe I designed the lock. She wanted something different to the king. I wondered whether it was to keep out certain members of the court. She was quite adamant…” His voice grows fainter and I wonder if he is lost in some long lost memory. “Oh, and there was the… yes, that’s right… the… Don’t you hear that demon thing scraping and clanking?”