Carola stumbled to her feet. Rain had left her shroud stiff with mud, her joints swollen. To her left, a lark cried out. She turned, clumsily, her train tearing loose with a sound like burnt bones popping.
As she paused there in the moonlight, a brief thought touched the back of her neck once, and was gone:
There is something, something . . . I have forgotten.
But it slipped away before she could quite catch hold.
The lark cried again, and was silent.
Carola had been out of the black earth since late summer and all through the autumn, stumbling after a slippery rope of moonlight which fell, every so often, between the faded curtains of the leaves. But now the trees began to look like ice-slicked skeletons again, and the air was chill. She would have shivered, had she felt it.
Carola sniffed the wind.
It had an unfamiliar scent tonight. Something fleet, almost barren, which yet refused to dissipate on further consideration. Like candle-wax, left to drip in a dark place for longer than was really wise. Or a rust-pitted blade, unsheathed at last. Like old blood.
It stank of foxes run to earth.
It stank like rebirth.
And once more, the pull:
. . . something . . .
The gaunt moon broke over the highest leaves and hung there, half-eaten by its own topography. It cast a finger to the north.
Carola followed it, and found a city crouching there against the ridge. It was a sign, of sorts.
Well, then.
Gathering her shroud about her, she set her feet toward it, and let them have their will.
* * *
The city was in fact a town, and that only loosely: More like an inhabited boil, allowed to flourish—by the surgeon’s disinterest—under the shadow of the knife. It lay heaped haphazardly together, a mess of gables, chimneys and uneven stoops. Stone, wood, shingles, slate and mud. Fear ate at every table.
The town was old. No one remembered its name. And no one could even dare to guess whether it predated the castle in whose shadow it squatted.
A long shadow. Very dark. And very cold.
* * *
Walking swiftly, Carola crossed the bridge without a backward glance. Stones slipped beneath her stride. Thorns, provoked by her presence, reached down to pluck at her hair. Her eyes were open, her thoughts absent.
Something.
In her mind, a door swung slowly open on a stone room, floor strewn with rushes. Its windows stood tall and narrow, empty against the wind. From the fireplace, a knot of driftwood spilled shifting light. And in front of it, an iron chair. A man, speaking:
We are noble, daughter. God’s favored servants. Our acts are His will made flesh. A hard thing to serve, truly, but harder thing still to truly rule—to know, to will, to dare, and to keep silent.
His eyes were grey.
And you. To you, the hardest task of all . . .
She saw the cancer which was to kill him rising in his throat like a black tide.
. . . to marry well, or well as may be. And to rule, despite it.
The moon went out, like a lamp. And when Carola found she could see again, nothing remained but the blue-black road, the horizon, and a mouthful of salt.