8: Flashback

Pye placed the string of her crossbow into the goat’s foot hanging from her belt and her foot in the stirrup. She pressed down until the string caught in the trigger mechanism and lifted the crossbow, hefting it on her left arm while she felt at her back for a quarrel. She was down to only a few.

The crossbow was sturdy, but it was lighter than the arbalests her father’s soldiers used on the castle walls. She would never have been able to span one of those, even with all the strength in her legs.

She fitted the quarrel into the groove and raised the crossbow to her shoulder, the fingers of her right hand on the firing lever. She took a deep breath, sighting along the groove to the clay pot that she had set up on a tree stump. Carefully she squeezed the trigger. The crossbow kicked as the mechanism released the string, and the quarrel flew. Another miss.

She sighed, lowered the crossbow and closed her eyes. Why hadn’t the skeleton keys worked? They’d worked every time she’d used them around the castle. There was no door that was closed to her. She’d been sneaking around the castle for weeks now, with no-one the wiser. Sometimes at night it seemed as though she could pull the shadows around herself like a cloak. At those times, her father’s guards would walk right by her, oblivious to her presence.

She set to spanning the crossbow again. She raised it to her shoulder, sighted down the groove, squeezed, and missed.

Maybe the keys were only supposed to work in the castle? But that couldn’t be right. She wasn’t in the castle when she had received them. She didn’t think she was in the castle. No – she couldn’t have been. She’d searched the castle thoroughly since then, every night, and she hadn’t come across the strange cavern with the glowing crystal again.

She thought back to that night. She’d crept from her room, as she often did after dark. She was pretty sure her father and mother knew she did it, but since they had never said anything about it, she assumed that she had permission. She had always been happier and more comfortable during the night anyway, but the castle’s clock did not tick for her. Night, when the stars were out and the moons shone brightly – the large gold moon named Annis and the smaller silver moon, Shie, which always trailed in Annis’ wake. There was some children’s story or other about them that her nanny had told her when she was five, but which she had long forgotten.

The corridor outside her room was, as usual, deserted but for the guard snoozing on his chair at the end of the corridor, where the stairs down to the great hall were. She had never found out his name, but she knew that when he snoozed, very little would wake him. She went in the other direction, towards the window that was always ajar.

Like a spider she scurried down the sheer wall of the castle. She knew every hand and foot hold like she knew her own face in the mirror. This night, for the first time, she was going to leave the castle grounds.

She had scouted her route several times previously. She knew where to scale the outer wall where she would not be seen by the guards at the great keep. She knew the schedule of the guards that patrolled the top of the wall. She had even looked over the edge to see where she would reach the ground – behind an old stable that was thick with dust and the smell of horse. She had set out for the wall, deftly keeping to the shadows. It had rained earlier, but that shouldn’t make the walls too slippery.

Behind the servants’ kitchen there was a space where she could brace her legs and climb to the battlement. If she timed it right, she would arrive just below the battlement as the patrol went past. She would then have a minute and a half before they returned. Plenty of time. The rampart was brightly lit by braziers, but she was able to hug the wall just low enough to remain in shadow while the patrol passed.

Her soft shoes made no noise against the stones as she crossed to the tall merlons and hoisted herself between them. Without hesitation she dropped over the edge, turning and catching the edge with her fingertips while her feet sought for a foothold. There had to be one.

Of course the outer wall would be smoother than the inner wall, she had realised while dangling – that way enemies wouldn’t be able to scale the walls during a siege. She would have kicked herself for not realising this earlier, if her feet hadn’t been busy.

Her hands were beginning to ache and she wasn’t sure she could hang on if she didn’t find something soon. She looked over her shoulder, craned her head to try and judge whether she could make it to the roof of the stable. It was hard to see in the dark. Annis had risen, but on the other side of the castle, so she wasn’t casting any light here. She would just have to jump and hope.

She braced her feet against the wall just as her fingers slipped. She pushed hard, hoping to get as high on the pitched stable roof as she could.

She wasn’t able to get very far though, and she landed heavily on the slick wet tiles. She had half-twisted to try and avoid landing on her back, but it hadn’t quite worked and she wasn’t able to get both arms under her. Pain shot through her right shoulder, and she couldn’t prevent herself from crying out.

Belatedly she realised that she wasn’t able to grip the rooftop, and she was sliding back towards the castle wall – towards the ground. Her stomach leapt into her throat as the roof disappeared from under her and she fell freely into the dark space between the castle wall and the stable.

She fell for longer than she had expected to, so when she finally did hit the ground, it was a surprise that knocked the wind from her lungs. As she lay, gasping for breath, unable to move, she felt movement beneath her hurt shoulder. The ground was giving way! Aching and bruised, and still without breath, she was unable to stop herself from sliding headfirst into the crumbling hole in the ground. Something hard hit the back of her head and she didn’t feel it when she came to a hard stop against a smooth stone surface.

Pain brought her back to her senses – pain in her shoulder, her chest, her head, her hips, her ankle. She hurt in places she didn’t know could be hurt.

She opened her eyes, expecting it to be dark. To her surprise, she could see. She was looking up on a rough, unworked stone ceiling, some fifty feet above her. It was lit with a strange light that seemed to cast shadows in odd places.

Groaning, she tried to raise herself to her elbows, but her right arm gave way with a painful spasm and she fell in that direction back to the floor.

Which she now realised was covered in bones.

Painfully she raised herself to a rough sitting position, bracing herself on her left arm, and looked around. The entire cavern, which must have been several hundred feet across, was lit with that same strange light. And bones were everywhere. Human, mostly, though a few of the skulls had a bestial appearance that made her uncomfortable.

She had seen animals killed for food before, or when too badly injured to work, but the slaughter that must have taken place in this great cavern would have been horrifying.

In the centre of the cavern was the source of the light – a huge semitransparent spindle, floating in midair above a pit. It glowed with the light that illuminated the cavern. A light of a strange colour, which cast shadows which seemed brighter than the objects they outlined. The light was slowly pulsing and shifting as the spindle slowly rotated, and Pye felt a compulsion in the back of her mind to go up and touch it.

She told herself that she wasn’t that stupid, as she got painfully to her feet. She had no idea what it was, she said to herself as she took several steps towards it. She was still telling herself that she would never touch the strange object when she found herself standing at the rim of the pit and stretching out her hand.

Startled, she drew back. She had no memory of crossing the room. But the spindle… it was calling to her. It was promising… She knew that it would give her power if only she reached out and touched it…

The surface of the spindle felt smooth under her outstretched left hand. It was warm, like a summer night, and she smiled.

And that was all she could remember. She had woken the following morning, back in her chambers in the castle. Her shoulder did not hurt, or her head. She had convinced herself that it was all a dream, and was expecting it to fade from her memory the way all dreams do, when she spied the keys on her side table. At first she had thought that they were simply spare keys to her chamber, but on a whim she had started trying them in other locks around the castle. There was no lock that did not open for her. Even her father’s treasury, as she discovered when she had got up enough courage to try the most formidable lock she knew.

She left the castle again the following night – over the wall in the same place. She leapt more carefully to the stable roof and landed easily. She didn’t slip, and she was able to let herself down to the ground quietly. But there was no gaping hole in the ground between the stable and the castle wall. The ground was unbroken, as though she had never fallen into the underground cavern at all. It was gone.

She fitted the last bolt in her quiver to the groove of the crossbow, sighted, and fired. The pot shattered with a crash, and she pumped her fist in triumph.