Sapphique - Incarceron 02 (41 page)

'Indeed he is,' Jared said.

But Keiro looked up at him. 'It's worth knowing, Master. Flesh and blood. It's a start, anyway.'

As they helped him up Finn looked round and saw Caspar under guard, the other men being hustled out.

'Get that tunnel sealed,' he hissed, and Soames bowed. 'Immediately, my lord.' But as he turned he stopped dead, and in that second something terrible happened to the world.

The bees stopped buzzing.

The table dissolved into worm-eaten dust and collapsed. Patches fell off the ceiling. The sun went out.

32

My Realm will last for ever.

KING ENDOR'S DECREE

Finn lurched to the casement and stared out.

He saw a darkening sky, clotted with clouds that built up and blotted out the daylight. The wind had risen, and the day was far, far colder than it should have been.

And the world was transformed.

He saw horses in the courtyard collapsing into twitching cybernetworks of limbs, their skin and eyes shrivelling and shredding. He saw walls crumbling into holes, a stinking moat where nothing grew, parched acres of arid grassland. Flowers withered as he gazed on them; the swans rose and flapped away. All the glorious beauty of the honeysuckle and clematis was dried into spindly crisp bines, the few weak petals blown away by the wind.

Doors were flung open; a guardsman came running down the steps, his fine livery a
mismatched moth-eaten suite of
grey.

Pushing in next to Finn, Keiro stared. 'What's happening to it all? Are we still in the Prison? Is this one of Incarceron's clean-ups?'

Finn's throat was dry. He couldn't answer.

It was like a spell dissolving. All around him Claudia's paradise of the Wardenry was coming apart, the house a slipshod ruin, its golden-stoned splendour fading even as he watched, colour washing from the mews and the stables, even the maze twisting to a dank thicket of brambles.

Jared murmured, 'Perhaps the Prison is in us.'

Finn turned. The room was a shell. The fine velvet hangings were rags, the once-white ceiling a mass of cracks. Jared bent over the wreck of the table, searching in its dust.

The fire was out, every bust and portrait showed patches and crude repairs. And worst of all, on every wall, their illusory holo
-
images dead, hundreds of cables and wires were revealed in all their naked, ugly uselessness.

'So much for Era.' Finn grasped the red curtain and it fell to shreds in his fingers.

'This was how it was all the time.' Jared straightened, the Glove in his hand. 'We fooled ourselves with images.'

'But how

'The power is gone. Completely.' Jared gazed around, calm. 'This is the true Realm, Finn. This is the kingdom you've inherited.'

'So you're telling me thi
s whole place is a trick" Keiro
kicked a vase over and watched it smash. 'Like one of Rix's tacky stage routines? And you
knew?
All along?'

'We knew'

'Are you all mad?'

'Perhaps we are Jared said. 'Reality is hard to bear, so Era was invented to shield us from it. And yes, most of the
time
it was easy to forget. After all the world is what you see and hear. For you that is the only reality.'

'I might just as well have stayed Inside.' Keiro's disgust was complete. Then he turned, caught by the truth. 'This destruction is the Prison's work!'

'Of course it is.' Finn rubbed his sore shoulder. 'How else —

'Sire.' The guard captain burst in, breathless. 'Sire! The Queen!'

Finn shoved him aside and raced up the corridor, Keiro close behind. Jared paused to slip the Glove in his robe and then followed, quickly. He climbed the great staircase as fast as he could, over rotten treads and mice-gnawed wainscots, gusted at by the wind whipping through the windows where plastiglas had vanished. He dared not think about his Tower — but at least all the scientific equipment there was genuine.

Or was it?

Stopping with one hand on the bannister, he realized that he had no way of knowing. That nothing he had taken for granted could now be trusted.

And yet this disintegration didn't devastate him, as it had Finn and his wayward brother. Perhaps it was because he had always felt his own illness to be a tiny flaw in the Realm's perfection, a crack that could not be patched up or disguised.

Now everything was as marred as he was.

In the unsilvered mirror he caught a slant of his own delicate face, and smiled gently at himself. Claudia had wanted to overthrow Protocol. Perhaps the Prison had done it for her.

From the battlements, though, the terrible vista drained his smile away.

The Wardenry was a wasteland. All its meadows were scrub, all its rich woodlands mere naked branches against the grey winter sky. The world had turned old in an instant.

But it was the enemy camp that held everyone's eyes. All the gaudy pennants, the flimsy pavilions were wrecked, their poles snapped. Horses neighed in confusion, men's armour rusted and fell from their bodies in the turmoil, their muskets suddenly useless antiques, their swords so brittle that they snapped in the hand.

'The cannon.' Fin's voice was hard with joy. 'They'll never dare fire the cannon now, in case they explode. They can't touch us.'

Keiro glanced at him. 'Brother, this ruin doesn't need cannon. A good shove would knock it down.'

A trumpet rang out. From the Queen's pavilion a woman came out. She was veiled, and she leant on the arm of a boy in a gaudy coat who could only be the Pretender. Together they walked through the camp, almost unnoticed in the panic.

'Is she surrendering?' Finn muttered. Keiro turned to a guard. 'Get Caspar up here.' The soldier hesitated, glancing at Finn who said, 'Do as my brother says.' The man ran. Keiro grinned.

The Queen came to the edge of the moat and looked up through her veil. Jewels glinted at her throat and ears. At least those must be real.

'Let us in!' the Pretender yelled up. He looked shaken, all his composure lost. 'Finn
1 The Queen wants to speak with
you!'

There was no ceremony, no Protocol, no heralds, no courtiers. Just a woman and a boy, looking lost. Finn drew back. 'Lower the drawbridge. Take them to the Great Chamber.'

Jared was staring down. 'It seems it's not just me then,' he murmured.

'Master?' Finn looked at him. The Sapient was gazing down at the veiled Queen with a great sadness in his eyes. 'Best leave this to me, Finn,' he said softly.

'There must be hun
dreds of them out there!' Attia
stared across at the juddering door.

'Stay here,' the Warden snapped. 'I'm the Warden. I'll face them.'

He stepped down on to the snowy floor and trudged quickly towards the hammering. Claudia watched.

'If they're Prisoners they're desperate,' Attia said. 'Conditions must be impossible.'

'They'll be looking for anyone to tear apart.' Rix stared, his eyes glinting with the crazy brilliance Attia dreaded.

Claudia shook her head with fur 'This is all your fault. Why did you have to bring that evil Glove here!'

'Because your dear father ordered me to, sweetkin. I, too, am a Wolf of Steel.'

Her father. She turned and ran down the steps, across the floor, after him. Locked in with madmen and thieves, her father was the only familiar presence here. Just behind her Attia gasped, "Wait for me.'

'Doesn't the apprentice want to stay with the sorcerer?' Claudia snapped.

'I'm not his apprentice. Keiro is.' Attia caught up with her. Then she said, 'Is Finn safe?'

Claudia glanced at her thin face and short, hacked hair. 'His memory has come back.'

'Has it?'

'So he says.'

'And the fits?'

Claudia shrugged.

'Does he . . . think about us?' It was a whisper.

'He thought about Keiro all the time,' Claudia said acidly. 'So I hope he's happy now' She didn't say what else she thought — that Finn had barely mentioned Attia's name.

The Warden had reached the small door. Outside it, the noise was terrible. Blades whacked into wood and metal; with one almighty smash the corner of an axe glinted through the ebony. The door shook to its foundations.

'Silence out there,' the Warden yelled.

Someone called out. A woman howled. The blows were redoubled.

'They can't hear you,' Claudia said. 'And if they get in
'

'They don't want to listen to anyone.' Attia went round and stood before the Warden's face. 'Least of all you. They'll blame you.'

Through the tumult he smiled coldly at them. 'We'll see. I'm still the Warden here. But perhaps before we start we should take a few precautions' He drew out a small disc of silver. On its lid was a wolf, the snarling mouth wide. He touched it and it lit.

'What are you doing?' Claudia jumped back as another blow sent wood splinters into the snow.

'I told you. Making sure the Prison doesn't win.'

She held his arm. 'What about us?'

'We are expendable.' His eyes were grey and clear. Then he said into the device, 'It's me. 'What's the situation Out there?'

As he listened his face darkened. Attia moved away from the door; it was buckling now, the hinges straining, rivets cracking. 'They're coming through.'

But Claudia was watching her father as he said harshly, 'Then do it now!
Destroy the Glove.
Before it's too late.'

Medlicote slipped the receiver shut, dropped it into his pocket and gazed up the ruined corridor. Voices echoed from the Great Chamber; he walked quickly towards it, through a crowd of scared footmen, past Ralph, who caught his arm and asked, 'What's happening? Is this the end of the world?'

The secretary shrugged. 'The end of one world, sir, perhaps the beginning of another. Is Master Jared in there?'

'Yes. And the Queen! The Queen herself!'

Medlicote nodded. The half-moons of his spectacles were empty the lenses gone. He opened the door.

In the ruined chamber someone had found a real candle; Keiro had made a flame and lit it.

The Prison had taught survival, at least, Finn thought. They would all need those skills now He turned. 'Madam?'

Sia stood just inside the door. She had not spoken since crossing the drawbridge, and her silence scared him.

'I presume our war is at a standstill?' 'You presume wrong,' the Queen whispered. 'My war is over.'

Her voice was broken, a faint quaver. Through her veil her eyes, pale as ice, watched him. She seemed bent, even bowed.

'Over?' He glanced at the Pretender. The boy who had claimed to be Giles stood grimly before the empty hearth, his right arm still bandaged, his fine armour tarnishing even as they watched. 'What do you mean?'

'She means it's finished.' Jared came forward and stood before the Queen and Finn was shocked at how she had shrunk. Jared's voice was gentle. 'I'm sorry this has happened to you,' he said.

'Are you?' Sia whispered. 'Maybe you are, Master Jared. Maybe only you can know something of what I feel. I once taunted you with your own death. You would be justified now in doing the same to me.'

He shook his head.

'I thought you said the Queen was young?' Keiro muttered in Finn's ear. 'She is.'

But then her fingers caught at Jared's sleeve, and Finn swallowed a gasp because they were the fingers of an ancient woman, mottled and sagging with wrinkled skin, the nails dry and splintered.

'After all, of us both I will be the one now to die first.' She glanced aside, with a trace of her old coquettish manner. 'Let me show you death, Jared. Not these young boys. Only you, Master, will see what Sia really is.'

Hands trembling, she moved before him and raised her veil. Over her shoulder, Finn saw how Jared was caught between horror and pity; how he gazed silently on the Queen's ruined beauty without lowering his eyes.

The room was silent. Keiro glanced back at Medlicote, standing humbly inside the door.

Sia dropped her veil. She said, 'Whatever else I was, I have been a Queen. Let me die like a Queen.'