Iron Hearted Violet (25 page)

“Perhaps the ‘heart of the castle’ isn’t in the castle at all,” Nod said thoughtfully. “Like the heart of the matter or the heart of the problem. Maybe the heart of the castle is where everything starts.” Nod’s voice was off-kilter and dreamy. “Or where it stops,” he added.

“Don’t be an idiot, Nod,” Auntie said, though, Demetrius noted, with a little less force than usual.

“But what are we supposed to do?” Demetrius asked. “And how do we get back?” There was, after all, no sign of the pit, no sign of an upward shaft, no way of knowing that they had come from anywhere except for the place where they
were
.

“I suppose we walk,” Auntie said, moving forward. “Our people have been charged with bringing one of
you
to this place to see the Old Gods should the Nybbas ever attempt to escape its prison. We never knew what might happen
next
, you see. The stories never touched the issue of
next
.”

Great
, Demetrius thought.
We’ve traded our lives for a lousy story.

He had no sooner thought this than the stones under his feet began to shiver and shake, and the high, curved ceilings began to rumble and moan.

“YOU’LL TRADE MORE THAN JUST YOUR LIFE, BOY,”
a voice boomed from the far end of the shadowed corridor.

Auntie swung around, her face blazing. “
What did you do?
” she hissed.
“Don’t embarrass me, Demetrius, or so help me, I’ll—”

“
THAT’S ENOUGH, AUNTIE
,” the voice boomed again, and the old woman went pale and silent.
“BRING THE BOY TO ME. I’D LIKE TO TAKE A LOOK AT THE CHILD UPON WHOM THE FATE OF THE MULTIVERSE NOW RESTS. ONE OF TWO, I UNDERSTAND.”

“No, sir,” Auntie said, looking up at—well,
nothing
, as far as Demetrius could see. “We attempted to reach the Princess Violet, but—” She faltered. “We failed.” Her voice choked, and her eyes filled with tears.

Nod rushed to Auntie and wrapped his arm around her. He whipped his head around as though trying to decide—not so much
who
he was talking to, but
where
. “It was me, your… your Old Godishness,” Nod said bravely. “Auntie did her best. I’m the one who failed.”

“Hush, Nod!”

“I won’t, neither,” Nod said stoutly, but Demetrius had stopped paying attention to the familial spat on the ground. Something distracted him.

That voice—that big, booming, ever-so-important-sounding voice—was laughing. And the laughter intrigued Demetrius. It was the type of laughter that he had heard a thousand times growing up—laughter that erupted without restraint from his mouth or Violet’s mouth when they were very young, laughter he had heard since from the very young children in the walled city outside the castle. It was a joyful, almost giddy laugh, and completely unself-conscious.

“DON’T WORRY ABOUT VIOLET,”
the voice said with a sigh.
“SHE’S TAKING STEPS THAT EVEN A GOD CANNOT TAKE. VIOLET WILL END ALL, AND BY ENDING ALL WILL SAVE ALL.”

There was a long silence, and the confusion raging in Demetrius’s heart was matched on the faces of his three small companions.

“IF SHE SUCCEEDS, THAT IS,”
the voice added in a broad, worried rumble.

At that very moment, the Mountain King was having a perfectly miserable evening. It was cold and windy, with a merciless drizzle pelting the camp. The war was not going well. Despite their preparations, it had been many generations since anyone had experienced the discomforts and horror of battle, and the soldiers of the Mountain King groaned in their tents and shivered in their damp bedrolls.

Not that the Mountain King noticed. Not that he
noticed much of anything. Not since he discovered his one true love.

He had a mirror—finely wrought and beautifully detailed, and his true love lived
inside
. Trapped, poor thing. But not for long. In the meantime, his tailor had sewn a special pocket at the front of all of his waistcoats so that he could
feel
the mirror next to him at all times. And though the news of the war was not particularly good (
“Dwindling supplies,” his advisers warned, “and disgruntled soldiers”
), the news from the
mirror
was particularly fine. And
oh
, that voice! And
oh
, that mouth! Those eyes! Peeking out of the mirror was the most beautiful face he had ever seen. A face that rippled and flowed, that changed with emotion and diction and light. The Mountain King was entranced.

THE EMPIRE YOU DESERVE
, the mirror told him.

THE BESPECTACLED DIMWIT FROM THE ANDULAN REALMS WILL NOT EVEN BE FIT TO POLISH YOUR BOOTS
, the mirror promised.

WITH ME AT YOUR SIDE, WE SHALL BE UNSTOPPABLE.

The Mountain King needed no food nor drink nor sleep. He needed only his mirror. He stared at it and spoke to it and whispered his love as though it were a lullaby.

No one knew what to do.

The King is mad
, the whispers began. And once they began, they began to grow; and once they grew, they began to spread.
The King is mad, mad, mad, and we are lost.

The Nybbas heard, and the Nybbas smiled.

On the same night during which Violet reappeared in my study, when she was, at that very moment, tersely confronting me, the Nybbas whispered to the Mountain King.

IS EVERYONE ASLEEP?

“Everyone, my love,” the King crooned. “There are only you and I, and I and you, and the world is now and ever ours.” His words lilted and sang. He stroked the lovely face in the mirror. The Nybbas wrinkled its nose in disgust.

IF EVERYONE IS ASLEEP, MY DARLING, THEN YOU MUST PUT ON A SERVANT’S TRAVELING CLOAK AND SLIP OUT OF SIGHT. THERE IS SOMETHING YOU MUST DO, PRECIOUS LOVE, AND IT WILL NOT BE PLEASANT. BUT IT IS NECESSARY.

“Anything for my heart’s treasure!” the Mountain King said, and he busied himself in finding a cloak.

Once disguised, the Mountain King slipped past the patrols and perimeter-keepers and hooked into a copse next to the curve in a small creek. The creek itself was so small
that it didn’t have a name—none, at least, that I ever knew, and none that ever appeared on a map. But children often called it the Creek of Flashing Rocks because of the particular abundance of a queer little stone that was scattered heavily over the creek bed.

The King sat down on a rock, sighed deeply, and pulled out the mirror. He held his breath in anticipation of seeing the ever-changing face of the Nybbas. He felt his love lodge in his throat like a hook. He could not swallow. He could not rip it away.

FOOL!
the Nybbas cried.
IDIOT! SABOTEUR!
A mouth full of knives. Golden skin stretched tight across an elongated snout.

“My love!” the Mountain King cried, aghast. “How can you say these things?”

LOST! ALL LOST! MILLENNIA OF CAREFULLY WROUGHT PLANS HAVE ALL COME TO NOTHING!
A reptilian tongue flicking out to catch tears from those hard, cold eyes. Thin lips widening into a crocodile grin.

“My darling! My precious! Tell me what to do! I cannot bear to see you suffer so!” He held the mirror to his chest, panic expanding through his body, crowding out his breath.

The image in the mirror rippled and flowed like water.
It transformed to light, then stone, then billions upon billions of stars glinting in the dark. One of those stars twinkled more prettily than the others, and the twinkling became larger, rounder, more defined, until it grew to lips, ears, eyebrows, a delicate chin, pearly teeth, and two hard, jeweled eyes. The Nybbas blinked and smiled.

THERE ARE ONLY TWO THINGS, MY ANGEL, THAT STAND BETWEEN US AND OUR VICTORY. ONE IS THAT NASTY DRAGON THAT THE ANDULANS NEGLECTED TO KILL. WHAT SORT OF COWARD HAS A DRAGON IN ITS GRASP AND REFUSES TO KILL IT?

“I shall do it for you, my darling! I shall slay the dragon as a sign of my love for you!” the Mountain King cried, though he had no idea how.

The Nybbas waved him off.
NONSENSE
, it said.
YOUR BEST GENERAL HAS EVEN NOW WOKEN FROM A TERRIBLE DREAM AND WILL SEND HIS GUARDS TO DO THE DEED PRESENTLY.

The King found that his mouth had gone quite dry. “I—” he began. “I thought—” Someone else was to provide favors for his love? The very idea! The Mountain King felt his cheeks redden and his heart thump angrily against his ribs.

The Nybbas ignored him.
THE OTHER PROBLEM IS THE CASTLE ITSELF. THAT WRETCHED EXCUSE FOR A PRINCESS—CURSE HER NAME!—PROMISED TO GIVE ME MY HEART. SHE PROMISED! BUT SHE HAS TURNED TRAITOR. DESTROY ALL THE MIRRORS, INDEED! NASTY, SNEAKY THING. SHE WILL PAY, MY LOVE, MARK ME.

“An abominable child,” the Mountain King agreed. “Spoiled. And selfish. Everyone says so.”

YES, YES
, the Nybbas said impatiently. As it spoke, its beauty began to thin and fade, as though in its excitement it could hardly hold the form that so entranced the poor King. The red lips stretched and paled, the brows pinched, the soft cheeks pulled back as tiny scales crept forward.

AND HER TASK WAS SO SIMPLE. JUST A PHRASE. AN INCANTATION. A FEW WORDS COULD BURN AND RATTLE THE FOUNDATIONS OF THAT ACCURSED CASTLE, SETTING MY HEART FREE. AND I WOULD HAVE BEEN FREE, OH MY KING, OH MY LOVE. AND I WOULD HAVE BEEN YOURS. AH, WELL, PERHAPS IT SIMPLY WASN’T MEANT TO BE.

And with that the image of the Nybbas began to fade.

“Wait!” the Mountain King cried. “What words! Let me say them!”

MY LOVE
, the Nybbas said, coming quickly back into
view.
YOU ARE A DEAR TO OFFER, BUT I CANNOT ALLOW IT. YOU’VE DONE SO MUCH ALREADY. AND IT WILL HURT. VIOLET (MAY HISTORY SPIT UPON HER NAME) IS YOUNGER, AND THIS KIND OF MAGIC IS KINDER ON CHILDREN. I CANNOT BEAR TO SEE YOU IN PAIN, MY BELOVED. I WILL NOT ALLOW IT.

The image of the Nybbas leaned forward, its hard eyes wide with anticipation, an unbreathed breath pressing at its lips.

The Mountain King pressed the mirror to his chest. “I would endure all possible pain in all possible worlds, my darling,” he said ardently, and watched in wonder as writing curled, as though by magic, across the face of the Nybbas. “Tell me. Tell me the words. I command it.”

AS YOU WISH, MY LOVE, MY LOVE, MY LOVE.

It was as though an invisible quill etched each letter in scripted delicacy across the forehead, along the bridge of the nose, following the curve of each cheek. The same four words cut over and over again in the reflected skin of the Nybbas.

I will not—will
not
, my dears—tell you those words. I will never write them down. Suffice it to say, they are words that invite transformation, words that pledge loyalty, words
that offer the soul—nay, the very self—to the use and misuse of a terrible god. They are words, I understand, that are the same in each universe, each distinct world, though they have only ever been used twice in history.

He said the words.

That poor, poor man.

The Mountain King’s final moments were witnessed by a boy—no older than ten—who had been rounded up along with his older brothers and sisters to fight for the glory of their northern home. They had no choice in the matter. They weren’t even asked. In any case, this boy, knowing that on the morrow he would be required to handle a bow or a sword and to kill or be killed in a senseless war, was unable to sleep. Well, really, who could blame him? He had seen that the campfire, around which his loved ones were currently huddled, had gone out, so he slipped into the forest to gather sticks and bits of peat. It was there, next to a stream glinting with shining rocks, that he saw a man talking to a mirror. He didn’t know the man was his King—how could he? It was dark, and the man wore a simple cloak and no crown. The man crouched, cradling the mirror in his hands, declaring his love. He wept and sobbed and asked the mirror what he should do. The entire scene was
so utterly mad that the boy decided to creep closer for a better look, thinking it would make a funny story to lift the spirits of his older brothers and sisters, as he couldn’t bear to see them so downhearted.

He saw the man kissing the mirror, clearing his throat, and then, quite suddenly, he began speaking in a strange tongue—four foreign words, spoken in a strong, punctuated rhythm and repeated again and again and again. The boy held his breath. He had only ever seen magic—true magic, that is—once before in his life, but it was an experience that he never forgot. There was an energy around it, you see. You know, of course, how static electricity can make your hair stand on end, give you tiny shocks on your skin—now, imagine that, but on the
inside
. You wouldn’t forget such a sensation in a hurry, and neither, my dears, did he.

The boy watched, transfixed. He listened as the weak-chinned man with the tearstained face recited those four strange words again and again. He watched as the words seemed to transform—they were no longer only
just
sound, but they were light as well. And substance. They looked to the boy like bright ribbons uncurling from the man’s mouth and winding around his body like a snake, pulling tighter
and tighter and tighter. And then, quite without warning, the ribbons sliced the man’s skin and plunged inside. He didn’t stop speaking those words, nor did he seem to notice. The ribbons entered at his chest, at his belly, and at his throat. They wiggled and shuddered, widening the entrance wounds into bloodless gaps in the man’s body. The boy clapped his hand over his mouth in horror, terrified to let out a sound.