Crown of Midnight (36 page)

Mort sniffed. “It sounds to
me
like it’s a riddle giving the location of three very powerful items.”

She read through the poem again. “But three
what
? Sounds like the second thing is hidden in—in a volcano? And the first and third ones …” She gritted her teeth. “‘Gate-Stone of the Wyrd’ … What is this a riddle for? And why is it here?”

“Isn’t
that
the question of the millennia!” Mort crowed as Celaena walked back to the papers and books she’d scattered at the other end of the tomb. “You’d better clean up the mess you brought down here, or I’ll ask the gods to send some wicked beastie after you.”

“Already happened; Cain beat you to it months ago.” She replaced Damaris in its stand. “Too bad the ridderak didn’t take
you
off the door when he burst through.” A thought hit her, and she stared at the wall in front of her—where she’d once fallen to avoid being ripped apart. “Who was it that moved the carcass of the ridderak?”

“Princess Nehemia, of course.”

Celaena twisted to look toward the doorway. “Nehemia?”

Mort made a choking sound and cursed his loose tongue.

“Nehemia was—Nehemia was
here
? But I only brought her to the tomb …” Mort’s bronze face gleamed in the light of the candle she’d set before the door. “You’re telling me that Nehemia came here after the ridderak attacked? That she knew about this place all along? And you’re only telling me
now
?”

Mort closed his eyes. “Not my business.”

Another deceit. Another mystery.

“I suppose if Cain could get down here, then there are other entrances,” she said.

“Don’t ask me where they are,” Mort said, reading her mind. “I’ve never left this door.” She had a feeling it was another lie; he always seemed to know about the layout of the tomb and when she was touching things she shouldn’t be.

“Then what use are you? Brannon just made you to piss everyone off?”

“He
did
have a sense of humor like that.”

The thought of Mort actually having known the ancient Fae king made her quake inside. “I thought you had
powers
. You can’t just speak some nonsense words and have the meaning of the riddle be revealed to me?”

“Of course not. And isn’t the journey more important than the end?”

“No,” she spat. Spewing a concoction of curses that could have curdled milk, Celaena tucked the paper into her pocket. She would need to study this riddle at length.

If these items were things that Nehemia was looking for, things that she’d lied about to keep secret … Celaena might be able to accept that Archer and his friends were capable of good, but she certainly didn’t trust them to hold an object with the power that the riddle mentioned. If they were already looking, then perhaps it was in her best interest to find the items before anyone else. Nehemia hadn’t figured out that the eye riddle referred to Damaris, but had she known what the three objects were? Maybe she’d pursued the eye riddle because she was trying to find the objects before the king did.

The king’s plans—had they been to find these things?

She picked up her candle and strode from the room.

“Has the questing spirit seized you at last?”

“Not yet,” she said as she walked by. Once she found out what the three items were, then maybe she’d consider finding a way to go after
them. Even if the only volcanoes she knew about were in the Desert Peninsula, and there was no way in hell the king would let her go off on her own for such a long trip.

“It’s a pity that I’m attached to this door,” sighed Mort. “Imagine all the trouble you’ll get into while trying to solve the riddle!”

He was right; and as Celaena walked up the winding stair, she found herself wishing that he actually could move about. Then she’d at least have one person to discuss this with. If she did have to go hunt these things down, whatever they were, then she’d have no one to go with her. There was no one who knew the truth.

The truth.

She snorted. What truth was there now? That she had no one left to talk to? That Nehemia had lied through her teeth about so many things? That the king might be searching for an earth-shattering source of power? That he might already
have
something like this? Archer had mentioned a source of power
outside
of magic; was that what these things were? Nehemia had to have known…

Celaena slowed, the candle guttering in a damp breeze through the stairwell, and slumped onto a step, bracing her arms on her knees.

“What else were you hiding, Nehemia?” she whispered into the darkness.

Celaena didn’t need to turn to know who sat behind her when something silver and glimmering shone in the corner of her eye.

“I thought you were too exhausted to come here,” she said to the first Queen of Adarlan.

“I can only stay for a few moments,” Elena said, her dress rustling as she took a seat a few steps up from Celaena. It seemed a distinctly un-queenlike thing to do.

Together, they stared into the gloom of the stairwell, Celaena’s breathing the only sound. She supposed Elena didn’t need to breathe—didn’t make any sounds unless she wanted to.

Celaena gripped her knees. “What was it like?” she asked quietly.

“Painless,” Elena said with equal quiet. “Painless, and easy.”

“Were you frightened?”

“I was a very old woman, surrounded by my children, and their children, and their children’s children. I had nothing to be afraid of when the time came.”

“Where did you go?”

A soft laugh. “You know I can’t tell you that.”

Celaena’s lips wobbled. “She didn’t die an old woman in her bed.”

“No, she didn’t. But when her spirit left her body, there was no more pain—no more fear. She is safe now.”

Celaena nodded. Elena’s dress rustled again, and then she was on the step beside her, an arm around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized how cold she was until she found herself leaning into Elena’s warmth.

The queen didn’t say anything as Celaena buried her face in her hands and wept at last.

There was one last thing she had to do. Perhaps the hardest and the worst of all the things she had done since Nehemia had died.

The moon was overhead, casting the world in silver. Even though they didn’t recognize her in her current attire, the night watch at the royal mausoleum hadn’t stopped her as she passed through the iron gates at the back of one of the castle gardens. Nehemia wouldn’t be entombed inside the white marble building, though; inside was for the royal family.

Celaena walked around the domed building, feeling as if the wyverns carved into the side stared at her as she passed.

The few people still active at this hour had quickly looked away as she made her way here. She didn’t blame them. A black dress and a sheer, flowing black veil spoke enough about her grief, and kept everyone at a long, long distance. As though her sorrow were a plague.

But she didn’t give a damn what the others thought; the mourning clothes weren’t for them. She rounded the back of the mausoleum and beheld the rows of graves in the gravel garden behind it, the pale and worn stones illuminated by the moon. Statues depicting everything from mourning gods to dancing maidens marked the resting places of distinguished nobility, some so lifelike they seemed to be people frozen in stone.

It had not snowed since before Nehemia’s murder, so it was easy enough to spot the grave by the upturned earth before it.

There were no flowers, not even a headstone. Just fresh soil and a sword thrust into the earth—one of the curved swords of Nehemia’s fallen guards. Apparently, no one had bothered to give her anything more, not when she would be retrieved and brought back to Eyllwe.

Celaena stared at the dark, tilled earth, a chill wind rustling her veil.

Her chest ached, but this was the one last thing she had to do, the one last honor she could give her friend.

Celaena tilted her head to the sky, closed her eyes, and began to sing.

Chaol had told himself that he was only following Celaena to make sure she didn’t hurt herself or anyone else, but as she’d neared the royal mausoleum, he followed for other reasons.

The night provided good cover, but the moon was bright enough to keep him back, far enough away so she wouldn’t see or hear his approach. But then he saw where she had stopped, and realized he had no right to be here for this. He’d been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.

It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande or anywhere else on the continent.

This language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.

She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.

And then the song finished, its end as brutal and sudden as Nehemia’s death had been.

She stood there for a few moments, silent and unmoving.

He was about to walk away when she half turned to him.

Her thin silver circlet shimmered in the moonlight, weighing down a veil so concealing that only he had recognized her.

A breeze whipped past them, making the branches of the trees moan and creak, setting her veil and skirts billowing to one side.

“Celaena,” he pleaded. She didn’t move, her stillness the only sign that she’d heard him. And that she had no interest in talking.

What could he ever say to repair the rift between them, anyway? He’d kept information from her. Even if he hadn’t been directly responsible for Nehemia’s death, if either girl had been more alert, they might have had their own defenses prepared. The loss she felt, the stillness with which she watched him—it was all his fault.

If the punishment for that was losing her, then he’d endure it.

So Chaol walked away, her lament still echoing through the night around him, carried on the wind like the pealing of distant bells.

The dawn was chill and gray as Celaena stood in the familiar field of the game park, a large stick dangling between her gloved fingers. Fleetfoot sat before her, her tail slashing through the long, dried grass that poked up through the remaining layer of snow. But the hound didn’t whine or bark for the stick to be thrown.

No, Fleetfoot just kept sitting there, watching the palace far behind them. Waiting for someone who was never going to arrive.

Celaena stared across the barren field, listening to the sighing grasses. No one had tried to stop her from leaving her rooms last night—or this morning. Yet even though the guards were gone, whenever she left her room, Ress had an uncanny habit of
accidentally
running into her.

She didn’t care if he reported her movements to Chaol. She didn’t even care that Chaol had been spying on her at Nehemia’s grave last night. Let him think what he would about the song.

With a sharp intake of breath, she hurled the stick as hard as she
could, so far it blended in with the cloudy morning sky. She didn’t hear it land.

Fleetfoot turned to look up at Celaena, her golden eyes full of question. Celaena reached down to stroke the warm head, the long ears, the slender muzzle. But the question remained.

Celaena said, “She’s never coming back.”

The dog kept waiting.